Eve’s POV
The petition arrived on a Tuesday.
Sa courier system.
Eve read it at the kitchen table.
Read it again.
Set it down.
Maya was across from her eating toast and not pretending not to watch.
"What is it," Maya said.
"He wants a room," Eve said. "Twenty four hours. Before the formal proceedings begin." She looked at the docunt. "An arbitration session. Just us."
Maya looked at the petition.
"Is that legal," she said.
"It’s an ancient provision," Eve said. "Vessa will know it." She paused. "It’s real."
"So he found a gap," Maya said.
"He always finds a gap," Eve said.
Maya was quiet for a mont.
"Are you going," she said.
Eve looked at the petition.
At Malachai’s seal at the bottom.
At the formal language wrapped around what was.....underneath all of it.....a man asking for twenty four hours before everything ended.
"I don’t know yet," she said.
She brought it to the study.
Put it on the table.
Let them read it.
Damian read it twice. Set it down. Said nothing.
Damon read it once. Pushed it away.
Silas read it and held it and looked at the seal for a long mont before setting it carefully back on the table.
Vessa read it last.
Looked up.
"The Arbitration Provision," she said. "Article nineteen of the original Conclave charter." She paused. "I haven’t seen it invoked in sixty years."
"Is it legitimate," Damian said.
"Completely," Vessa said. "If he filed it correctly....and he would have filed it correctly....we have forty eight hours to respond. If we don’t respond it defaults to accepted." She paused. "If we decline formally the proceedings begin imdiately without the session."
"Then we decline," Damon said.
Everyone looked at him.
"We have everything," he said. "The directive. The vote record. Sable’s testimony. The witnesses." He looked at the petition. "We don’t need a room with him. We don’t owe him a room." His jaw was tight. "We walk into the Conclave and we end it."
"Damon," Silas said.
"He signed a docunt authorizing Eve’s murder before she was born," Damon said. Flat. Controlled. "He doesn’t get a conversation."
The study was quiet.
Eve looked at the petition.
At the seal.
At the formal language.
"He’s not asking for a conversation," she said.
Damon looked at her.
"He knows it’s over," she said. "He’s not filing this to find a counter. He’s not filing it to delay in any aningful way." She paused. "He wants to say sothing. Before it ends." She looked at the petition. "He wants to say it to specifically."
"You don’t know that," Damon said.
"I know him," she said.
The room was quiet.
She did know him. Two books of watching him operate....the grandfather warmth, the patient calculation, the specific way he moved through situations that should have broken him and didn’t. She had stood in rooms with him and watched his face do the things it did when it wasn’t performing and she had built a picture of him that was.....not sympathetic. Not forgiving. But clear.
He wanted to say sothing.
She was almost certain she knew what.
"Eve," Damian said.
She looked at him.
His face was....not closed. Damian’s face was never closed to her anymore. It was careful.
"Tell ," she said.
"It could be a trap," he said. "Not a legal one. Sothing else. A room with him....we don’t know what he has left. What he’s willing to do when everything else is gone."
"I know," she said.
"If he’s dangerous...."
"He’s always been dangerous," she said. "That hasn’t changed." She paused. "But dangerous and cornered are different things." She held Damian’s gaze. "He’s cornered. And cornered isn’t his register." She paused. "He doesn’t fight from corners. He...." She stopped. Thought. "He accepts them. Recalculates. Moves sowhere else."
"There is no sowhere else," Silas said quietly.
"I know," Eve said. "That’s why he filed this."
The study held it.
Vessa was looking at her.
The specific look she’d been giving Eve since Aldenre.....recognition. The thing she saw in Eve that she’d seen in Lilith.
"Your mother would have gone," Vessa said quietly.
Everyone looked at her.
"Not because it was safe," Vessa said. "Because she would have needed to look him in the eye." She paused. "She was like that. She needed to see the thing directly. Not through docuntation. Not through testimony." She looked at Eve. "She would have walked into that room."
Eve looked at the petition.
At the seal.
At twenty four hours standing between her and the end of sothing that had started before she was born.
"I’m going," she said.
Damon stood up.
"Eve...."
"I’m going," she said again.
Damon looked at her.
The thing on his face was not anger. It was fear.
"He signed a docunt," Damon said. "With your na on it."
"I know," she said.
"Before you were born."
"I know Damon."
"And you want to sit in a room with him."
"Yes," she said.
He looked at her for a long mont.
His jaw worked.
Then he looked at Damian.
Damian looked at Eve.
"Not alone," he said.
"The provision allows two representatives," Vessa said. "One for each party."
"Then I’m coming," Damian said.
Eve looked at him.
Nodded.
Damon turned to the window.
Stood there with his back to the room.
"Damon," Eve said.
He didn’t turn around.
"I need you here," she said. "When we co back. I need you and Silas here holding this." She paused. "I need to know the estate is standing when we get back."
A long mont.
Then his shoulders dropped. Just slightly.
"Fine," he said. Quiet. "Fine."
He turned around.
Looked at her.
The fear was still there. Underneath everything else it was still there.
She crossed the room.
Put her hand on his face.
He closed his eyes for one second.
"Two days," she said. "We go in. We hear what he has to say. We co ho."
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