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I may leave by my own choice, at any moment.

A refusal is an ending, and I will honor it at once.

No one who cannot choose has chosen.

I will not bend another’s will by glamour, voice, scent, or blood.

I will keep the rules of this house, and its keepers will hold me to them.

“Every member takes the oath before they’re allowed access downstairs,” Lenart says. “It stays binding for as long as they’re a member.”

“And if someone breaks it?”

“The wards respond. Security is alerted, and the offender answers for what they’ve done.” He pauses. “But the wards aren’t a mind reader, and they aren’t a guarantee. They don’t replace the hosts or the rules or anyone paying attention. They make sure there’s a cost.”

I think about the poisoner on the floor with silver crawling up his throat.

“And the records,” I say slowly. “The ledgers upstairs. The renewals.”

“Every oath in this building is in those ledgers. When one lapses and nobody notices, it’s still on the wall, but it isn’t in the wards anymore. It’s just words.” He looks at me. “Desmond kept that from happening.”

I think about Corinne, offering to take it off my hands so I could enjoy Portland. I think about myself, three hours ago, putting eleven renewals on my calendar before anybody’s dinner, mostly because I’m stubborn.

It wasn’t paperwork. Dez was keeping all of this safe.

I lift my right hand and hold it an inch from the stone. The center of my palm warms, the way it did over the ward stone last night, and a thin silver line rises under the skin.

“I haven’t taken it,” I say.

“No. You’re an owner. You were never asked.” He looks at the stone, then at me. “But you’d be the first owner to go through that door without it. Desmond took it. So did I.”

“Then I’ll take it.”

I put my palm flat on the stone. It’s warm, the way the ward stone was. After a second, Lenart puts his hand beside mine, long and pale against the gray.

“I took it when the treaty was signed,” he says. “I’ll take it again with you.”

We say it together, line by line, his voice low and even under mine. I come by my own choice. The silver rises in my palm and spreads a little way into the carving, faint as breath on a window. A refusal is an ending, and I will honor it at once. By the last line, the letters under my hand are glowing softly, and then they fade.

I take my hand away. It’s still tingling.

Every rule on that wall is about choosing. Coming in by choice. Leaving by choice. Saying no and having it stick. This whole floor, every room and every chain and every polished bolt, was built for people who decided for themselves what they wanted.

This morning, four men told me fate had picked them for me.

Down here, nobody gets picked. You walk in, and you choose.

The corridor past the lounge is quiet. One door near the end stands open, and through it I see William.

He’s alone in a room with a dark wood floor and a ceiling hung with steel rings. His wings are folded so tightly against his back that the tips cross, to keep them out of the way, and he’s standing under one of the rings with a coil of rope in his hands. It’s soft, pale rope, the color of unbleached cotton, and he’s running it through his fingers a foot at a time, looking at every inch of it.

His hands are huge. The claws on them are as long as my thumb. And the way he handles that rope is so careful, so exact, that it’s like watching someone thread a needle. He finds a place he doesn’t like and frowns at it. He doesn’t try to save it. He drops the whole coil into a canvas bin by the wall marked RETIRED, takes a fresh coil off a hook, and starts again from the first foot.

I’ve stopped walking. Lenart has stopped, too, a step behind me, and he isn’t saying anything.

William looks up.

He looks up from the rope and meets my eyes. I’m the one standing awkwardly in the doorway, and he seems perfectly happy to wait for me to explain myself.