On the other hand, if she was asking, then Dara had kept Noam’s secret.
That had to mean something.
Even so, Dara’s expression was as tight and angry as it always was nowadays; when Dara met Noam’s gaze, his eyes glittered with malevolence.
“Presumably he thinks I’m in the barracks,” Noam said, drawing both hands up at his sides in an open gesture, as if to say,You can read me like a book. “It’s not as if he tracks my every move.”
He wasn’t sure how good they were at reading faces. Wasn’t sure how good his face was at hiding things, for that matter.
He turned toward Leo so all Claire and Priya could see was his profile, pushing his glass across the counter for Leo to refill. But if Noam hoped his expression was uninterpretable, Leo’s was a blank sheet. Nothing moved behind that gaze as he handed Noam a fresh drink.
How well did Dara really know this guy? Noam frowned back at Leo, attention skimming down from Leo’s face to his arms, braced against the bar top. They were still well muscled, like he’d just gotten off active duty yesterday. Not the arms of a man whose only exercise was using a cocktail shaker.
“But you’re within his sphere of influence,” Dara said. “Isn’t this plan extremely dangerous? Not just for Noam, but all of us. Lehrer wouldn’t confront Noam—he’d track him here. He’d have us all dead in half a second.”
“This whole fucking plan is dangerous,” Noam snapped. “Going into that gala with a gun in your trousers was dangerous. Trying to dose Lehrer with suppressants was dangerous. At least I have the magic to defend myself.”
Dara’s posture went wooden, but Noam didn’t take it back. It was true. What the hell had Dara thought would happen, walking into that party like that—with his face, with his weaknesses? Lehrer might not be willing to kill Dara right in front of all those people, but he easily could have used persuasion to trap Dara in place. Would have, if he’d realized Dara was powerless.
“It’s the best plan we’ve got, Dara,” Claire said with an unexpected gentleness. A muscle twitched in Dara’s jaw.
Noam straightened his arm, tugging the sleeve of his shirt high enough he could glance down at the face of his wristwatch. “I have to go,” he said. “It’s late. I have basic in the morning.”
He half expected Dara to lob another sharp comment after him, but he didn’t. Noam made it to the door and onto the whiteout street, Dara’s gaze burning a hole in his back the whole way.
Claire caught up with him before he made it to the corner.
“Hey, Álvaro,” she said, fumbling to get her coat hood up against the gale winds. “Thought we could talk.”
“About what?”
She grimaced and gestured one gloved hand toward his whole body, his soaked sweater clinging to his shoulders and his umbrella tangling up in the wind. “Didn’t you bring a jacket?”
“Nope. What’s up?”
“We didn’t get a chance to go into much detail about the aftermath of the assassination attempt, back there,” Claire said, falling into step alongside him with both arms hugged around her middle. “But now that we’ve made such a visible move, I expect things’ll get complicated. Lehrer will be upping his security, I’m sure. You’ll need to keep an eye out for that, or any other changes he makes to his plans.”
“I’m not actually sure hewillup security,” Noam said. Claire grimaced and shook her head. It took Noam a second to realize she meant she couldn’t hear him over the shrieking winds. He raised his voice and repeated himself, then added, “There’s a reason you don’t see Lehrer walking around flanked by the Chancellarian Guard all the time. He hates having bodyguards, thinks it makes him look weak. The very fact you managed to shoot him at all makes him look weak, actually. He’ll probably be working twice as hard to remind people how omnipotent he is.”
“I hope you’re right,” Claire said grimly. “Have you ... has he done anything like this before? I mean ... surviving ahead shot... it’s a little bit extra, even for Lehrer.”
“You’re talking about the same guy who single-handedly destroyed DC. I don’t think we should assume there’s anything he isn’t capable of.”
They walked in silence a few more paces, Noam squinting against the snow that blew into his eyes. His lashes were already freezing. He tried to focus on making the air molecules closest to him speed up, but he clearly didn’t understand the science behind heat well enough, because it made absolutely no difference.
“You saw him very soon after it happened,” Claire said eventually. And if Noam wasn’t mistaken, there was a lilt of suspicion to her voice—which made sense, really. For all she knew, he’d never dosed Lehrer in the first place. “Did he summon you personally? A ... Level IV cadet?”
Awkward. Because ... no. Lehrer hadn’t summoned Noam. He hadn’t needed to.
But Noam couldn’t just be likeNah, I dropped everything and ran to his side, but that doesn’t mean anything, I swear.
“No-o,” Noam said, dragging the word out. Not that stalling did him much good. “But when I saw the news, I was worried about ... I wanted to know if he’d realized who was responsible. So I went to him.”
Claire didn’t immediately respond. It was impossible to tell if her eyes were narrowed because she didn’t believe him or just because of the wind.
“And did he?” Claire said. “Know who did it?”
Noam shook his head. “No. But I’ll have to tell him it was you. He won’t trust me if it looks like I’m keeping secrets.”
