Page 120 of The Final Cut

“She’s not wrong,” Delia says.

Ever turns slightly toward her. Shiloh goes still. Deacon’s arms remain around me, but I feel the shift in him, too.

Delia looks at the marked glass. “Isabel doesn’t know what to do with someone who brings the fight to her. Not really. She understands obedience. She understands fear. She understands punishment and retreat and people scrambling after she moves first.” Her gaze comes back to mine. “She has always been the one to initiate.”

I swallow.

“So what happens when she isn’t?” I ask.

Delia’s mouth tightens. “She gets angry.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It makes her sloppy.”

Ever’s phone rings before anyone can answer.

Every weapon in the room seems to come awake. Ever checks the screen, then exhales through his nose. “Nash.”

“Put him on speaker,” Shiloh says.

Ever taps the phone and sets it on the edge of the desk. “You’re on.”

Nash’s voice fills the room, clipped and controlled, with the hospital’s low background noise humming behind him. “Why aren’t you answering my texts?”

“We were dealing with the drones,” Ever says.

“Talk to me.”

“Six confirmed. At least two armed. Surveillance and glass test. Three down, maybe four. Remaining pulled back.”

Another pause, colder this time. “Injuries?”

“No.”

“Reva.”

“I’m here,” I say.

“Delia.”

Delia’s brows lift faintly, as if she is not used to being accounted for by a man like Nash. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“Deacon?”

“Annoying as ever,” Deacon says near my ear.

Nash exhales, short and hard. It might be relief if he were another man. “So the cabin is blown.”

“Yes,” Ever says. “Likely tracked from the convent route. Delia recognized an old maintenance path that ties back to Sainte Aurelia.”

“Can you hold for thirty minutes?”

Ever looks at the glass, the feeds, the hallway, the distance between the living room and the reinforced interior rooms. “Yes.”

“Forty-five?”

“Yes.”