Crimson Veil

Chapter Eleven — Adam's Order

✦ Eve's POV ✦

Caine came to find me before I found him.

I was halfway down the eastern corridor, still moving on the momentum of the decision I had made in Mira's office, when he appeared at the far end of it as though he had known I was coming. Which, I was beginning to understand, was simply how Caine operated. He had a quality of preparedness that suggested he spent most of his time three steps ahead of whatever was currently happening.

"Ashcroft," he said.

"I was coming to find you."

"I know." He glanced at the corridor around us — a brief, habitual assessment. "Come with me."

~ ~ ~

Adam was in the Black Division's command room.

I had not been in this part of the stronghold before — the section the Black Division occupied had its own interior logic, laid out differently from the rest of the building, and the command room was at its center. A large table, maps on the walls, a single high window. Functional, with no concessions to comfort.

He was standing at the table when we came in, looking at something written on a sheet of paper. He didn't look up immediately. Caine closed the door behind us and took a position near the wall that managed to be both present and unobtrusive, which was a skill I was beginning to think he had spent years cultivating.

Adam set the paper down and looked at me.

"Sit," he said.

I sat, because the tone of it was not the kind that invited negotiation and I had come here with information to deliver rather than a point to make.

He remained standing. This put him at a significant height advantage, which I suspected was not accidental. "Caine told me what you reported this morning. About what you sensed from the direction of the tower."

"Yes."

"And Perrin."

"Yes."

"And Mira." He said it with a flatness that told me he had already known about Mira — or suspected — and that this confirmation had settled something rather than surprised him.

"She left the faction years ago," I said. "She's not—"

"I know." He looked at me steadily. "She's been useful and she's been careful and she's kept her history to herself for reasons I understand even if I don't entirely approve of them." He paused. "What she told you about Aldric. About what he wants."

"My gift," I said. "Amplified through the mirror. The ability to project into a room full of people simultaneously — to manufacture fear, or compliance, or whatever emotional state serves him best at the war council." I kept my voice even. "Yes. I worked it out."

Something in his expression shifted — not surprise, but something that might have been a reassessment of some kind. He looked at me for a moment in that particular way he had, the quality of attention that felt like being read rather than merely seen.

"That makes you a target," he said.

"I'd already assumed that."

"Assuming and understanding are different things." He moved around the table — not toward me, just shifting his position, the way he sometimes moved during conversations as though stillness for too long was something his body resisted. "Aldric knows you're here. He knows what you are. He hasn't moved yet because he's careful and because moving too early would expose him before he's ready. But that window is closing."

I looked at him. "How long?"

"Weeks. Maybe less." He stopped moving. "Which means from today you are under the Black Division's protection."

I felt the shape of that land between us. "I don't need—"

"You don't get to decide that," he said. Not unkindly. Just finally.

"Commander—"

"You have a gift that Aldric will kill people to access." His voice was still even, still low, but it had the quality of something that was not going to move regardless of what I put in front of it. "You have information about his faction that he doesn't know you have yet. You have been in this stronghold for three weeks and you have already identified two things that my people missed." He held my gaze. "That makes you valuable. It also makes you a liability if you're unprotected and he decides to stop being careful."

The room was very quiet.

"I don't want soldiers following me around the ward," I said, because it was the most specific objection I had.

"You'll have them anyway."

"It will frighten the patients."

"My soldiers know how to be unobtrusive."

"Caine is unobtrusive," I said. "The rest of them look like they eat buildings for breakfast."

Something moved in his expression — fast, and quickly controlled, and I was fairly certain it was almost amusement. Almost.

"They'll stay out of the ward itself," he said. "Corridor only. And you'll have an escort between buildings until further notice."

I looked at him for a long moment. He looked back with the absolute, immovable patience of someone who had already won this argument and was simply waiting for me to arrive at the same conclusion.

"Fine," I said.

"Good."

I stood. "If one of them frightens a patient I'm telling you directly."

"Noted."

I moved toward the door. I was almost through it when he spoke again.

"Ashcroft."

I stopped. Turned halfway.

"You saw something you weren't meant to see," he said. "You reported it when you could have stayed quiet. You pushed until you understood what it meant and then you came here instead of going to ground." He paused. The morning light from the high window lay across the table between us. "That was the right thing."

It was not effusive. It was not warm in any conventional sense. But it was — something. A specific acknowledgment from someone who didn't give acknowledgment carelessly.

"So was sitting with me on the outer wall," I said, quietly.

He went very still.

I left before either of us had to figure out what to do with that.

~ ~ ~