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A strange warmth curls low in my stomach. Beside me, Edward goes very still, and the Sickle exhales a quiet, reverent sound.

So it is not only me.

The Widow straightens and looks between us. “The way I see it, we all have a claim.”

“A claim?” Edward asks.

“Yes.” Her gaze lands on him first. “You captured him.”

Then on the Slaying Sickle.

“You lost someone you loved.”

Then me.

“And you seem disturbingly eager to keep part of him.”

“I am a collector of curiosities,” I say.

“You are a lunatic,” my brother states blankly.

“Many great men are misunderstood,” I retort.

“I did not say great.” Edward glares back at me as The Slaying Sickle snorts.

Edward looks as though he may murder all of us out of exhaustion alone. The Widow’s eyes return to Jack.

“But he is mine as well. Those women were under my protection. Their names were known to me. Their laughter. Their fears. Their favorite songs. The way they took their tea. The lies they told themselves when the world became too cruel.”

Her voice trembles once. Only once. Then it hardens. “I will not be excluded from his end because three men arrived first.”

Silence settles. Not an empty silence, but one of recognition. The kind that moves through the blood before the mind can name it.

I see it in the Slaying Sickle first. The grief sharpened into reverence. Then Edward, whose anger has softened into something far more dangerous. And myself— Well.

I have always appreciated a woman with conviction.

Edward slowly slips his hands into his trouser pockets. “What are you proposing?”

The Widow’s gaze lifts to his. For a suspended moment, they simply stare at one another. Something passes between them. Something old, though they have only just met within this room or perhaps that is not the case.

“Shared justice,” she says.

The Slaying Sickle tilts his head. “Shared?”

“We each take what we came for.”

Edward’s mouth tightens. “That is not how assignments work.”

“No,” The Widow replies. “That is how survival works.”

There it is again. That word. Survival.

The thing all of us understand too well. Jack makes a muffled sound from the table. This time, all four of us look at him. For the first time since arriving, he appears truly afraid.

How exquisite. The Widow smiles down at him. Not kindly. Not cruelly.

Like a queen deciding the fate of a traitor.