Here, she wasn’t off guard. She’d had time to consider the situation, and while I’d been thinking of how to approach this conversation and what to offer, she had been coming to terms with that glimmer of Swansong within her.

She felt in control, poised, and powerful now because she was harnessing that glimmer. She’d used knowledge of Kenzie to hire Epeios, probably before today given the timing. She was using knowledge of me and Kenzie to get at us on a personal level, show how much she knew.

“Think of it less as you tying your hands, and more about… elevating them,” I said. “Moving up in the ranks, big-picture.”

She didn’t immediately respond.

That blade cuts both ways. I know you too.

“You’re a new team, pulled together, you can tolerate each other for the most part, okay. You’ve got power, a first win, some credibility. Geography’s changing. We put you in contact with Semiramis, Prancer, and the Undersiders. The rules we’re suggesting are the rules they want to play by too, I guarantee you. Play by their and our rules, you can sit at their table.”

She betrayed nothing in her expression, but her team sure did. I saw Trophy Wife smile a bit. Gibbet was nodding. Torso, still lying face-down, stopped trying to get up and twisted his head around to look up at Damsel.

They were transparent, but I felt like I knew her well enough that I was more sure about her answer. She would quibble, but she would say yes. She’d called her group Deathchester, after the territory she’d wanted back in Boston. Where she’d almost but never quite claimed her seat at the table among the local villains.

I could take a stab at giving her that. Give her exactly what she wanted, while embodying so much of what and who I didn’t want to be.

From Within 16.6

The snowstorm was about as intense as I’d seen it, this fall or last winter, and the degree of the city that had been evacuated left the building interiors dark and unlit, especially this far out. The lights I did see were just as worrying, because it marked people who would be lost to us if we let the city break. It was better to look at them as distress flares than anything reassuring.