Henry had been quiet through all of it. He set his pen down. “Katarina, I’m going to propose something and want you to hear me out before we make any decisions.”
“Go ahead,” she said.
He turned to Doc. “You came here to offer K19’s resources on our terms. I’m going to ask you to offer something else instead. We can’t take Romanov alone, and after two years of trying, you’ve confirmed K19 can’t take him alone, either. What I’m proposing is a partnership. We share what we know about Romanov, our people work alongside yours, and whatever we build out of this room belongs to both houses, or it doesn’t get built.”
Henry turned to Beacon. “What do you think?”
“This isn’t up to me.” She looked from him to Mercury. “Lyra, this is your decision.”
“This house was built to protect me, and what we are trying to rebuild is what my father started.” She turned to Doc. “We accept the partnership on terms of full equality. Where we go from Lausanne is a conversation for tomorrow morning, when all of us have had a chance to rest and process what we’re facing.”
Doc nodded and turned to Beacon. “I want your thoughts on this too.”
“My grandfather and Horatio were tracking Romanov when it was still being put together,” she began. “They were killed before they could expose what it was becoming. I want to finish the work they started. If that takes a partnership, I have no objections.”
“I have a question. Why now? Who got too close and to what?” I asked.
Mercury answered. “Eleanor. When her coercion was exposed, Vasiliev lost his source inside Minerva. He had to assume we would trace everything she’d given him over the years, map the connections she’d exposed, and use what we learned to take his network apart from the inside.” She paused. “The bombingwasn’t revenge. It was containment. Destroy the organization before we could follow Eleanor’s trail to whoever sits at the top.”
Thirteen dead and four survivors. If the bombing was containment, we were loose ends. They would return to finish what the charges didn’t.
Mrs. Eggers serveddinner at seven. Everyone came, including Anna and Polina. The food was good, but I doubted anyone tasted it. I know I didn’t. The general mood was subdued after our conversation.
Beacon was quieter than I’d seen her. She ate, she answered when spoken to, but it seemed like the fight had gone out of her.
After the plates were cleared, she reached for the crutch. “I need some air,” she said and headed for the door.
I gave her a couple of minutes, then followed.
She was on the terrace that overlooked the valley. Her face was tilted up, and her breath was visible in the cold air.
“You don’t have to check on me,” she said without turning her head.
“I’m not checking on you. I needed air.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “There’s other air.”
“Not as good.”
I stood beside her. The mountains were dark against a sky full of stars. Neither of us spoke for a while.
“When I was a girl, my grandmother used to bring me out to this terrace after dinner,” she said. “She’d point at the mountains and tell me they’d been there before our family arrived and they’d be there after we were gone. She said that was supposed to be comforting.”
“Is it?”
“It was. Tonight, it’s just true.”
She turned to go inside, and her shoulder brushed mine. She didn’t acknowledge it, and neither did I.
6
BEACON
The following evening, Blackjack appeared in the ballroom doorway while I was losing a fight with my knee. Wheels up was the day after tomorrow. Henry and Doc had set the window that morning, and I’d been working against it ever since. I’d taken the brace off twenty minutes ago and had my thumb buried in the muscle above my kneecap. The throbbing hadn’t eased. The radiologist’s six-to-eight-week recovery estimate looked more optimistic by the day, and not in a way that favored me.
He stood there for a moment before he spoke. I kept my thumb where it was and looked up.
“I could use a drink,” he said. “What about you?”
