Page 57 of The Silent War
“I’m fine.”
Vivienne and Charlotte exchanged a look.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, slower. “I’m here. We’re doing war crimes at your kitchen table.”
Charlotte pointed the brush at me. “Micro-dosing lip balm is not a war crime. It’s art.”
“It’s premeditated flirting,” Vivienne winked. “Which is worse.”
Charlotte smirked, but her eyes went softer when she looked back at me. “Do you know,” she said idly, “my mother used to tell me that Crows don’t feel things. That they learn the shapes of feelings like languages they can perform.”
“Your mother also thinks ‘grief’ is a scheduling issue,” Vivienne continued to put the balms in.
“She thinks everything is a scheduling issue,” Charlotte rolled he eyes, “But she was wrong about that. The Crows feel. They just don’t announce it.”
“How do you know?” I asked, trying to sound like I wasn’t asking.
Charlotte’s smile went private. “Field research.”
Vivienne laughed outright. “Just say Rome. She’s sleeping with Rome.”
Charlotte didn’t dignify it with more than a neatly raised eyebrow and an extra-slow click of a lid.
“Field research,” she repeated, and the phrase sat there with too much gloss on it to be accidental.
“Rome is a bad idea,” I said, purely on principle.
“So is oxygen,” Charlotte said. “Still inhaling.”
Vivienne shook her head, amused. “And for the record, if we are doing confessions, I like knives and difficult men who pretend they have a soul. Which is to say—Nikolai.”
“Of course it’s Nikolai,” Charlotte said. “He looks like a line you shouldn’t cross.”
“He looks like a threat assessment,” Vivienne corrected. “And then he opens a door, and you think: oh.”
“And after that?” I asked, because apparently I wanted to suffer.
Vivienne’s smile went lazy, the kind that suggested secrets. “After that, you remember that my mother taught me to never leave without my own key.”
“Your mother taught you to marry a treasury,” Charlotte said.
“She taught me to become one,” Vivienne said, and slid the last balm into its velvet tray.
“Well that explains the extra four months overseas.” I said, moving an empty tray towards Charlotte. I felt useless with one hand.
Vivienne just smiled. I should have realised it was a man keeping her in those Dynasty halls, and not her grandparents.
We let the work move our hands for a few minutes. Lids. Clicks. Cases.
“What did Alexander say?” Charlotte asked, too carefully casual. “After?”
“About the crash?” I asked.
“About you being pulled out of a car by a Crow.” She didn’t look up when she said it, which meant she cared.
“We haven’t covered that,” I paused for a moment. “Yet.”
“Then he already knows.”
