I turned around, surprised to find that he was right. The others had already piled into Poison’s car, which was pulling up behind us. Quillan had been waiting for them apparently, because he finally turned over the engine and pulled out onto the road.
We drove cloaked in a heavy silence, but the pressure of it lifted after a while, making room for something more comfortable and familiar. Quillan seemed to have calmed down, and the main emotion now radiating to me through the bond was his usual mix of guilt and sadness. I tucked my hands into the pockets of his coat, wondering if he had brought it just for me. He didn’t usually wear coats, which meant that he had anticipated the possibility that he would need to drag me out of the club half-clothed at some point. He had even been waiting outside.
My hands curled into fists inside the pockets, making the material bulge. I tucked my chin down to my chest, breathing in deeply. The coat was beginning to warm with my body heat, and it smelled like him, but it wasn’t much of a comfort.
“I’m sorry, Mir—”
“Don’t apologise,” he cut across me, his tone gentle but insistent. “I overreacted. I’m the one who should be sorry.”
“You’re right.” I pulled one of my hands free and raised a finger before his face. It was shaking.
A beautiful smile cracked through his mask and he captured my hand, closing his fingers around my fist and forcing my pointer finger to curl back inward.
“You don’t get to dish out punishments,” he said. “That’s my job.”
He was still holding me, resting our hands on his lap.
“What’s my job?” I asked him, my eyes on his face. I had asked the same question once before, and they had all considered me seriously, before telling me that they hadn’t decided.
“Staying alive.” Quillan’s jaw was set, his fingers tightening around mine.
They weren’t undecided anymore.
An hour later, I sat before the Klovoda. My hands were clasped in my lap as Poison and Clarin claimed either side of me, shifting around in obvious discomfort. It was odd for me to see Poison visibly intimidated by someone, almost as odd as I was sure it would be for them to be seeing her dressed as a stripper. Quillan, Noah and Cabe were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking off the entire entryway. Cabe and Noah were turned outward, their backs presented, while Quillan faced inward, his arms folded over his chest. He appeared relaxed but I knew that he was on edge; I knew, because it was impossible to not be on edge. Every single person currently in the room seemed to be two steps away from an escape.
Yas was looking down at me, her serious brown eyes turned assessing, her sharp features made gentle with the mark of trepidation that pulled at the corners of her mouth and crinkled up her eyebrows. We had told the gathered Klovoda members that we were trying to bring Silas out of hiding, but we hadn’t disclosed the reason why, or the method that we had used to lure him to us in the first place. They had asked remarkably few questions, and that made me suspicious.
The two dark-skinned men—Obasi and Nahab—sat side-by-side again on the same couch, almost as if they hadn’t moved since my last visit. They hadn’t so much as scratched their heads or said a word since Jayden had escorted us inside. Judging by the looks of surprise on the faces of the other Klovoda members when we had entered, Jayden hadn’t cleared anything with them before inviting us into the Komnata. I was sure that if any of the other members had taken such a liberty, it would have been an issue, but nobody seemed to be willing to chastise Jayden. I didn’t blame them. I wasn’t willing to chastise Jayden either… but I wasn’t a member of the Klovoda. They were supposed to be stronger and braver than me, or at least better able to control the other members of their own organization.