Page 42 of Orc’s Hex

“It costs me plenty.” I finish the second pattern, hold his wrist the same beat too long I held the first one. “I’ve just had ten years of practice not showing it.”

“I’m learning to see it anyway.”

The room is very quiet. The absorption medium is setting into a faint silver sheen along both his forearms, and the work is done, and there is no more reason for my hand to be around his wrist except that I haven’t let go and he hasn’t pulled away.

Two minutes left. Maybe less.

I should step back. I know exactly how to step back—I’ve done it a dozen times in five days, the professional retreat, the reassertion of distance that keeps a job a job. My body doesn’t do it. His doesn’t either. We stand close enough in the small room that I can feel the heat coming off him, off the marks, off the sigil under his shirt that’s been answering the Bondmark on my wrist since the morning it formed, and neither of us moves.

“Ziva.”

My name in his voice does something it has no professional business doing.

“We don’t have time for this,” I say. Which isn’t a no. Which we both hear isn’t a no.

“I know.”

He doesn’t move toward me. He doesn’t have to—the two feet between us has been nothing for days now, a decision neither of us has made yet standing where a distance should be, and standing here with his pulse under my fingers and the clock running out on how long we can afford to stand still, I feel that decision get heavier without either of us doing anything to make it heavier.

“After this,” he says. Not a question. Barely even a statement. More like a marker he’s placing, so that later, when there’s time, we both know exactly where we left this.

“After this,” I agree.

I let go of his wrist.

He rolls the sleeve back down over the setting marks, buttons the cuff with the same unhurried economy he unbuttoned it with, and something in the room settles back into the shape it’s supposed to have—professional, urgent, four minutes spent and zero to spare.

“Ready,” he says.

I pick up the chalk and the ritual blade, check the absorption vials at my hip, and don’t look at him again until we’re in the corridor, because looking at him right now would cost time we don’t have and would show something on my face I’m not ready to hand him for free.

The corridor outside my chambers is cold after the small warm room we’ve just left, and the change in temperature does something to clear my head that four minutes of professional focus mostly failed to do. I run the plan one more time, the way I always run a plan one more time before I execute it—the marks are set, the chalk is fresh, the blade is where it needs to be, and somewhere at the end of this corridor is a woman who has been running Blood Law possession through an entire garrison and is about to find out we know.

People do unpredictable things when they’re cornered. Even careful people. Especially careful people.

I glance at Drazhul beside me. His jaw is set, his stride even, every visible sign of a man walking toward a confrontation with total control of himself. I’ve learned enough about his stillnesses to know this one takes more out of him than it lets on.

“If she runs,” I say.

“She won’t get past Varek.”

“If she doesn’t run. If she does something else.”

He looks at me. “Then we handle what she does.”

It’s not reassurance. It’s not meant to be. It’s the flattest, most honest answer available, and I find I trust it more than I’d trust something softer.

We go to find Varek.

TEN

DRAZHUL

The east wing corridor smells of cold stone and old wax from the taper sconces that light the Hall of Ancestors entrance. He knows this corridor. Has walked it his entire life, past the statues of his ancestors—including the one he had damaged rather than destroyed, the one he could not bring himself to remove entirely even after learning what Korvak Xorn had chosen. He’d done it forty years ago, the third year after the second betrothal, on a night when the hold was quiet and precision was the only thing he could control. He had not felt better afterward. He had felt accurate, which was sufficient.

Varek is at the corridor’s north end. He looks at Drazhul, then at Ziva beside him, and nods once.

“South end. Inside the Hall. Working alone.”