“Tell me what I missed.”
I give her the short version. The device, witch-made, turns clean blood to contaminated. The east wall gutted, half the supply gone. Adrienne bound by blood oath, her daughter the leverage. Carson's prototype authorized. And Charleston.
She takes it the way she takes everything. Steady. Filing each piece where it belongs.
"Julian wants me to go to Vivienne?"
"He does."
"Good." She studies Vivienne's territory on the screen. "She's not stupid. She's calculating. There's a difference. If I show up in her territory and lay out what Konstantin is doing, she'll listen. Whether she acts on it is her choice."
She leans back in the chair. The lamplight catches the crest on her finger and the line of her jaw and the place where her collar falls open against her throat. She's in my study, in my chair, running my war, and the quiet authority of her in this room undoes something I don't have the composure to put back.
She catches me looking. She doesn't ask what I'm staring at. She holds my gaze across the desk and lets the silence sit between us until it has weight.
"Maximus."
"Celeste."
"I need to be able to think."
"You're thinking fine."
"I'm thinking about you. That's not the same thing." She turns back to the screen, but the corner of her mouth gives her away. "I need to figure out how to walk into Vivienne's territory uninvited, and you're making that difficult."
"I haven't moved."
"You don't have to."
I stay where I am. She stays where she is. Neither of us looks away first.
The corner of her mouth moves. She pulls the southeastern corridor map from the shelf behind her and spreads it across the desk. I work my side. She works hers. We don't talk for a while, and we don't need to. Our hands pass over the same stretch of territory without touching, and neither of us pretends not to notice.
Deep into the night she kicks her boots up on the edge of the desk. She doesn't apologize for them.
We work. Her pen on the map. My hand beside hers. The space between us that neither of us closes and neither of us widens.
She sets the pen down. Looks at me across the desk.
"I love you," she says.
"I love you."
She turns back to the map. We work through the rest of the night, building the approach to Charleston. What Celeste will say to Vivienne. What she'll need if Vivienne listens. What she'll need if Vivienne doesn't.
By dawn we have a plan.
She hasn't eaten. Hasn't stopped.
She makes the last mark on the map. She leans back in the chair and closes her eyes.
When she opens them, she finds my face.
"I'm going to Charleston."
She closes her eyes again. Her breathing slows. She settles back with her hand on the map, palm pressed to Vivienne's territory, and the crest on her finger catches the first gray light through the eastern window.
I carry her into our room. I lay her in the bed and draw the blanket to her shoulder.
