Chapter 13
Jasper stood at the kitchen window with his back to me, watching the tree line.
I stopped in the doorway and let myself have one second of him before I went down into the cellar.
He held his coffee like he'd already forgotten it was there, steam curling past his jaw, and my knuckles ached against the doorframe. He didn't even turn around.
I was about to walk downstairs and argue for his life in front of people who wanted him gone.
I almost said something, almost crossed the kitchen and put my mouth on the back of his neck where the hair was short and he always ran warm.
Instead, I turned toward the cellar stairs because the Kris didn't wait, and neither did the men who wanted to vote a Pantheon Judge into a shallow grave.
The Kris convened in my grandmother's root cellar because apparently we couldn't have important conversations anywhere with actual heat.
Six chairs waited on stone that had been cold since before my grandfather was born, which meant my ass was going numb in about thirty seconds. A brazier sat in the center with coals that weren't doing shit for the temperature. Six tin ingots lined up at the edge were already starting to glow.
Amparo took the good chair at the head. I sat and the cold shot straight through my jeans into my tailbone.
My lip had scabbed over from the mountain, but I kept splitting the crust. I planted my boots and let the cold work its way up through my knees because that was the deal.
You came to the Kris, you froze your ass off, you didn't complain.
Nicu Dracovici sat across from me with his hands on his knees like he was posing for a painting.
He'd argued against sanctuary when Valentina granted it.
He'd argued against the mountain challenge.
He'd lost every single argument, and it hadn't changed his mind about jack shit, which made him dangerous in the specific way that patient, stubborn bastards are always dangerous.
Two of Danior's men walked Rhadamanthys in through the back entrance.
The Judge put his weight on his good leg and dragged the bad one across the stone, leaving a line of blood.
They'd stripped him of the Stetson, the guns, and all the gold rings.
Without the costume, he was just a tall guy with a busted leg, hands visible on his knees, waiting to find out if we were going to kill him.
He looked at my grandmother and kept his mouth shut, which was the smartest thing he'd done all week.
Amparo picked up the tongs. She lifted the first ingot from the coals and held it up, bright copper lighting her face from below. She set it in the little clay tray in front of Nicu's chair with a click.
Nicu stood up and buttoned his jacket, which told me everything about the bullshit I had to sit through. A man who buttons his jacket before talking to family has already decided he's giving a speech.
"Brothers." He put his hands behind his back.
"We buried a man this week. A man who kept this family together for twenty years.
A man who never asked the gadje for help, never invited their wars through our doors.
" He turned to look at Rhadamanthys. "And now we sit here deciding what to do with a Pantheon Judge.
A man who serves the same machine that's been grinding people like us into dust since forever. "
He looked at me. I kept my hands on my knees and my mouth shut. My lip split again, and I tasted copper and swallowed it.
"I'm not disrespecting Diego. He won the mountain.
He earned his seat." Nicu spread his hands.
"But earning a seat and earning the right to fill this cellar with Pantheon problems are two different things.
My grandfather died in a camp. Yours did too, Beni.
We know what happens when we trust the gadje with our lives.
Emilio knew. Emilio spent twenty years keeping them out of this valley.
And now his nephew wants us to keep one alive under the same roof where we buried him. "
He turned back to the circle.
"And if we join this fight, we don't just risk bodies.
We risk every route, every safe house, every contact we've spent decades building.
The gadje see our network and they'll map it, use it, and burn it when they're done with us.
Emilio built something invisible. Diego's asking us to make it visible to people who've never once given a damn whether we survived. "
The ingot went dull. Amparo reached for the tongs.
"I'm not finished," Nicu said.
"The metal is." She pulled the dead ingot from his tray and set it on the rim of the brazier.
Nicu stood there with his mouth half open on whatever grand finale he'd been building toward. One more look from Amparo and he closed it and sat down, crossing his arms.
Amparo pulled a fresh ingot from the coals. The glow lit up her face, and she held it there for a beat, letting everyone see it. Then she set it in my tray.
Heat came off it in waves. I stood up. The cold left my legs. The ingot sat there, pulsing like something alive.
"Nicu's right," I said.
The room shifted. Nicu's chin came up.
"Yeah, I left. That's on me. Brought people here too. Guilty." The ingot still glowed. "And if my tío was sitting in this chair instead of me, he'd say exactly what Nicu just said. Probably louder. Definitely with more creative insults."
I shifted my weight. My ribs were killing me from the mountain.
"But here's the thing. My tío's dead. Someone walked into his shop Tuesday morning and put two bullets in him. And I wasn't here." I tasted copper. "So those men? They didn't follow me here, hermano. They were already coming."
Nicu opened his mouth.
"I'm not done." I looked at him until he closed it. "The Pantheon didn't give a shit about this valley until they needed something from us. They came because Emilio was the spine. They came because they knew how to break the network before the exiles showed up."
I turned to the circle.
"Nicu's worried about exposing the network. I get it. But Zeus already knows we're here. He sent men into this valley and killed my tío in his own shop. The network Emilio built is already burning. We didn't light the fire, and we can't put it out by pretending it isn't there."
"Nicu says we survive by keeping our own house.
Yeah? How'd that work out Tuesday morning?
We can hide. We can hand this guy over and pray they leave us alone.
And maybe they will." I pressed my fists against my knees.
"Or maybe they'll do what they always do.
Come down that mountain and take what they want because we don't have the power to stop them. "
Beni tightened his jaw. Mateo gripped his knee.
"This man walked through their blockade to get here. He can't walk back through it. He brought us intel on a resistance. Luka Aleksandar's alive. Rafael Oliviera's alive. There's a fight building, and he just handed us a way in."
The ingot died. Mierda.
"So kill him if you want. Vote him dead. But those men on the ridge are coming either way." I sat down hard, and the cold shot back through my legs. "And I'd rather go down swinging than on my knees praying they'll be kind."
Amparo lifted my ingot from the tray and set it on the rim. The dead metal clicked against the coals. I pressed my knees together because they wanted to shake, and I wasn't letting them.
Nicu raised his hand. "I'd like to respond."
Of course he would.
Amparo pulled a fresh ingot with the tongs, held it up, and set it in his tray.
Nicu stood. He didn't bother buttoning his jacket this time. Whatever performance he'd been running before, he'd dropped it for something leaner.
"The Pantheon came because Hephaestus was in the wind and they knew exactly where he'd go. The war followed Diego here." He folded his hands. "When has fighting the gadje's war ever ended in anything but our blood on their ground?"
Beni spoke from his seat without standing. "The children we took in from that facility in Alaska are real, Nicu."
"The children are real," Nicu said. "How long before the next set of gadje decide we're useful, then decide we're not?"
Beni closed his mouth. The ingot cooled in Nicu's tray, and I gripped my knees and waited for it to die.
It went dark. Amparo pulled it.
The next ingot went to Beni. He stood slowly, the way big men stand when they're not in a hurry. Beni ran the metalworkers out of the southern valley. He had hands like dinner plates and a voice that filled rooms.
"My wife's been feeding those kids for a week.
Knows their names. Knows which ones won't eat with their backs to a door.
Which ones sleep with shoes on in case they need to run.
" He put his hands in his pockets. "I don't know this man.
Don't trust him. But my wife trusts what she sees in those children. That's enough for me."
He sat down with half the ingot still bright. Amparo left it until it died on its own.
Mateo went next. He kept his seat, spoke low, and by the time his ingot died he hadn't committed to either side.
Mierda. I knew what that meant.
The fourth leader was Lenca. She ran a family on the coast and had driven through the night to be here.
The Pantheon had been squeezing her shipping routes for months, boarding boats, burning cargo, making it clear that independent Romani operations in the Mediterranean had an expiration date.
She stood, crossed her arms, and spoke for maybe a minute.
"Those men on the ridge will kill my family whether I vote yes or no. I'd rather die facing forward."
She sat. The ingot still had color. Amparo pulled it anyway because Lenca was done and my grandmother respected a woman who knew when to stop talking.
The fifth leader sat with his hands folded. When Amparo offered the ingot, he shook his head once and abstained.
I did the math. Three for. Two against. One couldn't be bothered.