“Tristan…”

“We’ve already had two rendezvous there, put on a bit of a show for those who followed us. Another few times, and they’ll start to lose interest. Then I can start meeting with the sympathizers. Once they know it’s me–”

“Tristan,” I interrupted. “It’s not the right time. It’s too soon. If you get caught now, we’re in no position to make a move and win.”

He stared at me. “Do you think I don’t know that? But what other damnable choice do I have?”

“I could–”

“You could what?” he snapped. “You’re the one forcing my hand on this, Marc. You’re the one who put us in this position.”

“I had no choice.”

“Yes, you did.” He was on his feet. “You chose her. Now the rest of us must make sacrifices to accommodate that choice.”

“It’s not like I’m dead,” I said, all the arguments I’d prepared for this moment abandoning me. “I’m still more than capable of leading. The half-bloods trust me. The humans trust me. Can you say the same?”

“No, I can’t. Which is exactly why we need to make the transition while you’re able to facilitate it. Because if we wait until the worst happens, it will go badly. It could set me back years. Stones and sky, it could end everything I’ve worked for.”

Everything we’d worked for. And I was being cut out of the decision-making completely. No longer reliable enough to lead, and how long until I was no longer reliable enough to be included at all? This had been as much my dream as his, and he was taking it away because he was angry with me for doing something without his blasted permission. A frantic sort of desperation took hold of my mind with the realization that I was about to become irrelevant. Extraneous. So I played my trump card. “Have you stopped to think that this is exactly what the Duke wants you to do?”

Tristan went deathly still, and for a heartbeat I thought I’d raised a point that he hadn’t considered. That I’d won my way back into the fold. As though such a thing were even possible.

“Yes,” he said. “Every time I see his smug face I think that we’re playing into his hand. That he’s going to take us down, and that thousands of lives will be lost along with our dream. And you’re–” he jabbed me in the chest “–the one who allowed it to happen.”

Chapter 24

Marc

It took over a month to arrange the meeting with Tips, half a dozen attempts forestalled by suspected leaks of information or concern that the Duke and his minions had infiltrated our ranks. Tips and I spent countless hours closeted away in the Dregs debating how best to proceed, and though he accepted I would not reveal the name of the revolution’s true leader until I was ready, the sense of anticipation the miner exuded was as agitating to me as ceaseless questioning would’ve been.