When I finished my cup, Cupid poured me another, and I drank that too. Cupid tried talking, but every conversation we started would fade away.
So we sat in silence.
Then footsteps were coming down the stairs again. I braced myself to apologize to Bryce, but it was Bull who entered the kitchen.
He gave me a faint nod and reached for Cupid’s cup, downing the whole thing in one gulp.
“Hey.” Cupid pouted.
The closest thing I’d seen to a smile from Bull pulled at his lips. Disappeared again.
“I need to talk to you,” I spoke up.
Bull sighed. He reached for the teapot and refilled Cupid’s cup for him. “Come, then.”
I followed him up the stairs, passing Bryce in the hallway. He was in the arms of a bigger and older man I didn’t recognize, who was rubbing Bryce’s back as he cried into his shirt.
Bull led me to a bedroom and closed the door.Hisbedroom, it seemed. The room was a decent size, with dark floors and blue walls like the rest of the house. It was also a mess—dark blankets bunched up on the bed, clothes all over the ground. Most of them were pink.
I turned to face him. “Archer didn’t do it.”
Bull stared at me for a long moment before sighing. “I know.”
“Henrik did.”
“I know.”
My jaw and throat tightened. “What do you mean, youknow? If you know, then why haven’t you done anything?”
“It is not so simple.”
“Not simple?” I scoffed. “It doesn’t matter what’s fucking simple. Archer… he’s gone now. Because ofhim. He needs to be held accountable for what he did.”
Bull nodded, taking a moment to think before he spoke again. “What can you do? Hmm? You can change the police’s mind? You can give them money and say go arrest this man who has an alibi because I say he is guilty?”
Heat pushed to the surface of my skin, prickling like needles as it was exposed to cold reality. “We have to do something. It’s not fair.”
Bull sighed again. “I know this. But Henrik is smart, and he does not care about what is right, or wrong, or fair. Just what his father wants.”
“You think Andor told him to do it?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “What I think does not matter.”
“But—”
“Whatyouthink does not matter. There are some things that you just cannot change.”
“I didn’t know you were such a defeatist.”
He shrugged again.
“Maybe if we tell the others and—”
“No,” he interrupted firmly. “You cannot have them trying to take on my family. It is safer for them if you keep it to yourself.”
“But Archer…”
“Archer will be okay. He is a fighter, and much stronger than he thinks.”
