“No,” he said. “I mean tomorrow.”
I looked at him.
For once, the joke was not hiding him.
“You know what happens tomorrow,” I said.
“They ask her to choose Ashford in front of everyone.”
“They ask her to make the other two of us disappear.”
Kieran looked at the floor.
“They can ask.”
He closed his eyes.
“If she comes to you,” I said, “do not make her prove she wanted you too.”
His eyes opened.
Green, bright, offended because the warning had found the place it was meant to find.
“I know that.”
“Tomorrow, remember it.”
His eyes narrowed.
“And you?”
I tied the leather tighter than I needed to.
“I’ll remember.”
He studied me.
I let him.
Marsh was clever in the way dying men became clever: impatient with easy lies, quick to notice where the truth had been hidden.
“You want her,” he said. “Not just because of the Mark.”
“Of course I do.”
The words came out before I could stop them.
Marsh nodded.
“Same. Tragic for both of us, probably,” he said.
I ignored his commentary and tied off the leather at the end of the stave.
The knot held.
My Mark quieted by a fraction.
Not enough.
