EMBER’S POV
My spine stiffens. I know what this is.
He’s going to plead his case. He’s going to explain why Knox should keep him, why the twenty years of service outweigh the sixty-three bodies, why firing him would be politically catastrophic.
He’s going to be logical and measured and strategically compelling because that’s what Nathaniel does — he engineers outcomes.
And he’s come to me because he thinks I have influence over Knox’s decision, which I do, and he thinks he can convince me to use it in his favour, which he cannot.
“If this is about Knox—”
“It’s about Queenie.”
I stop mid-dismissal.
Whatever I was about to say evaporates from my mouth and what replaces it is silence, because of all the things I expected Nathaniel to say in this corridor, that was not one of them.
