Page 47 of Monster Queen Rising

He walks me through the entry. North wing. Two doors. Gargoyle patrol swings west at midnight, so we come in from the east. The analysis room.

I study it. I put my finger on the analysis room.

"I go in alone for that. Once the compound's dropped the guards, it's one job — cross the building, reach that room. I don't need an escort to walk a hallway."

Thaw stops. "No."

"The voice doesn't need backup."

"The voice doesn't. You do."

And the room turns.

I feel it happen before anyone moves — the thing none of them have said out loud since the porch. Crull, at the wall, doesn't look to Thaw to settle it. He looks at me. Harek's eyes come off the terminal and find me, not Thaw. Dean goes still, and the stillness points my way. The argument is between me and Thaw, but the room has already decided, and Thaw feels it decide, and I watch it cost him to keep pushing against a current that's running toward me now.

He plants both hands flat on the table anyway.

"I buried Mary Wylie with you. I drove you back from that riverbank." The gold comes up at his throat. "I'm not putting you in that building alone."

The bond at my wrist runs full, and I feel him through it — not a man pulling rank. A man asking.

So I don't answer it like a fight.

"Crull at my shoulder," I say. "Not an escort. Him."

Crull's off the wall before Thaw can say anything. "I'll go."

And it's done — not because Thaw allowed it, but because I said Crull's name. Thaw shuts his eyes one second, opens them, looks back down at the plan. The room lets its breath out.

I didn't ask for it to settle on me. It did anyway. A week ago this argument ends when Thaw puts his hands on the table. Tonight it ended when I said a name. I file that the way you file a thing you don't have time to understand yet, and I look up at Fen in the doorway.

"Roof's yours," Thaw says to him. Not an order. A confirmation.

"Yes."

"You're the reason the rest of us get in."

Fen nods once. The bond at my sternum goes hot — he's carried that role since Vance drew the plan and never once asked for a lighter one. He turns and goes back out to the porch.

Crull watches the door close behind him.

"He's good," he says.

Thaw nods.

The last two days move fast.

Mornings, Thaw drills the pack on the infiltration of Site Allison.

That afternoon, Harek packs the med kit. Dean analyzes the drawing and intel from Vance. They leave the room and it’s just Fen and me at the table, the valve schematic in front of him, his finger on it where it's been for ten minutes.

The dark lines come up his throat. Canines partial. He doesn't look up from the valve.

I know what it is. If he doesn't get it open, we're inside when the forty-one guards come. He can't say it. It's coming up his throat instead, the way everything he can't carry in words comes up.

I put my hand over his on the schematic.

"You'll get it open."