Chapter 84 ROAN'S DECISION

Chapter 84 ROAN'S DECISION
Ava's POV

I woke up to voices coming from the sitting room, and I lay still for a moment listening before I understood that it was Dominic and Roan, and whatever they were saying to each other it wasn't going well.

I got up and pulled on a shirt and went to the doorway and leaned against it and neither of them noticed me at first, too focused on each other, and I watched them and thought about what Dominic had said last night, that he loved Roan, and I could see it now in the way the argument had a specific weight to it that only happened between people who had history.

"You don't get to make this decision," Dominic said.

"It's already made," Roan said, and his voice was completely calm, the way it always was.

"You're not going to Kade."

"Dominic, I have been alive for four centuries and I have spent the last three years helping you manage a situation that started because of me," Roan said. "My network, my people, my failure to see what Vael was doing with what I built. This started with me."

"That doesn't mean you end it by walking into Kade's hands."

"I'm not walking into his hands," Roan said. "I'm going on my terms. There's a difference."

"There isn't," Dominic said. "Not to him."

I cleared my throat and they both looked at me and I came into the room and sat on the arm of the sofa and looked at Roan and said, "tell me what your terms actually are."

Roan looked at Dominic once and then looked at me and said, "I go to Kade willingly. I negotiate directly. I have something he wants more than a transaction, information about the faction's original founding documents, things that would give him power he doesn't currently have. I use that as leverage to make the agreement binding, not just a verbal promise."

"And if it works," I said.

"The faction stands down," Roan said. "Permanently. Not just Kade, the whole structure."

"And if it doesn't work," I said.

He was quiet for a second and that silence said enough.

I looked at Dominic and he was looking at the floor with his jaw tight and I understood suddenly that he'd been standing here for however long this had been going on and couldn't find the argument that worked because Roan's logic wasn't wrong and the only reason to refuse it was the thing that didn't belong in strategy conversations.

"Why now," I said to Roan. "Why are you willing to do this now."

Roan looked at me and said, "because I watched what Vael became when she lost everything and refused to accept that some things can't be held on to, and I'm not going to become that." He paused. "And because Dominic has something worth protecting now. He didn't before, not really. Now he does."

He looked at me when he said it and I held his gaze and didn't say anything.

Dominic sat down heavily on the chair and pressed both hands over his face and didn't say anything for a moment and the room was very quiet.

"Ask him," Roan said, and he was looking at me, "ask him what he promised me when he left."

I looked at Dominic and waited and he lowered his hands and looked at the ceiling and said, "I promised him that if he ever needed protection I would provide it. That whatever came after, that debt stood."

"And now I'm calling it in," Roan said quietly, "not asking for protection. Asking you to let me protect myself on my own terms. That's what I want in return for the debt."

Dominic looked at Roan and the thing on his face was complicated and old and had nothing to do with me and everything to do with three hundred years of something I would never fully understand.

"I need time," Dominic said finally.

"You have until morning," Roan said, stood up, and left the suite without another word.

Dominic sat there after the door closed and I went and sat on the arm of his chair and he leaned his head against my side and I put my hand in his hair and we stayed like that for a long time without talking.

"He's right," I said eventually.

"I know," Dominic said.

"That doesn't make it easier," I said.

"No," he said. "It doesn't."

I stayed there with him and after a while he pulled me down into the chair beside him, it was a tight fit but neither of us moved and I pressed my face to his neck and he held me and the bond between us was very warm and very steady and I thought that this was its own kind of intimacy, the kind that didn't need anything from either of us except presence.

His hand moved slowly in my hair and I felt his breathing even out and I thought he'd fallen asleep when he said quietly, "I brought you into this world knowing what it would cost you and never asked if the price was fair."

"I would have paid it anyway," I said.

"You didn't know that then," he said.

"No," I said, "but I know it now."

He was quiet after that and I stayed where I was and listened to the hotel settle around us and thought about Roan and what he was choosing and what it meant to choose something that cost you everything because you believed it was right.

I was almost asleep when Adrian knocked twice on the door, the short sharp knock he used when it was important, and I got up and opened it and he was standing there with his phone in his hand and something was different in his face, not the usual controlled Adrian, something younger and more uncertain.

"My sister just called," he said. "Her name is Nadia. She's in New York." He paused. "I didn't know she was coming. She says she needs to see me and she won't say why over the phone.”