11. The Hearing #2
But Abberline’s words echoed in his memory. Sometimes a man can investigate more freely when he’s not bound by official procedures.
“I’m going to keep working,” Reid said. “Just not from here.”
Williams nodded slowly. “If you need information from inside... I can’t promise much. But I can keep my ears open.”
“Be careful. If they suspect you’re feeding me intelligence?—”
“Then I’ll be suspended too.” Williams almost smiled. “Worse places to be than outside this building, sir. Mr. Reid.”
Reid extended his hand. Williams shook it.
“Thank you,” Reid said. “For the letter. For all of it.”
“Just doing my duty.” Williams straightened. “Good luck.”
Reid walked away from Scotland Yard.
Eleanor’s townhouse was quiet when he arrived. The servants had been dismissed for the evening; James had taken position in the shadows near the back garden; the house felt empty despite the people it contained.
Charlotte met him at the door.
She didn’t ask what happened. He saw in her face that she’d known, felt it through whatever connection had grown between them these past weeks.
Her truth magic reading his defeat in the set of his shoulders, the absence of his warrant card, the way he stood on her sister’s doorstep like a man who’d lost his footing.
She took his hand. Said nothing. Led him inside.
The study was dim, curtains drawn against the February evening. Charlotte guided him to the sofa where they’d discussed evidence and planned operations, where they’d grown from reluctant allies to whatever they were becoming.
“Twenty years,” Reid said finally. His voice cracked on the words. “Twenty years of service. Cases solved, criminals arrested, justice served. And it ends because of a photograph.”
Charlotte sat beside him. Her hand remained in his, warm, steady, present.
“It doesn’t end,” she said quietly. “It changes. The work continues, just from a different position.”
“I should have protected you.” Reid closed his eyes. “The photograph was taken because I let my guard down. Because I forgot that our enemies were watching.”
“Stop.” Charlotte’s voice carried an edge he’d learned to recognize.
Her truth magic rising, cutting through pretense.
“You didn’t let anything happen. Sebastian’s surveillance was in place before we kissed.
Before we even knew how we felt about each other.
The photograph captured a moment, it didn’t create one. ”
Reid opened his eyes. Charlotte’s face was close to his, illuminated by the dim firelight. Her expression was fierce.
“You chose me,” she said. “Knowing the cost. Knowing what Sebastian would do with any evidence he gathered. You chose to help me investigate, chose to stand beside me in public, chose to pursue truth even when it threatened everything you’d built.”
“And now I’ve lost everything I built.”
“You’ve lost a position. A title.” Charlotte’s hand tightened around his. “You haven’t lost me. You haven’t lost the investigation. You haven’t lost the people who matter, Williams and his letter, Eleanor and James, the council members who know what you’ve risked for them.”
Reid looked at her. Charlotte Vance, who’d survived Sebastian’s manipulation and Cornelius’s binding and betrayals that would have broken lesser people.
Who’d learned to trust her truth magic even when it told her impossible things.
Who looked at him now with more certainty than he’d felt since the hearing began.
“You still have me,” she said. “You still have us.”
Reid raised his free hand to her cheek. Touched the curve of her jaw, the softness of her skin. Charlotte leaned into his palm.
“I’d make the same choice,” he said. “If I had to do it again. I’d choose you.”
“I know.” Her truth magic flickered in her eyes, not reading him, not testing. Just present. Just sure. “That’s why I chose you back.”
She kissed him. Not the hurried stolen kisses of their early days, fraught with uncertainty and fear of discovery. This was deliberate. Certain. The kind of kiss that marked a decision rather than a moment.
When they finally pulled apart, the fire had burned low and the windows had gone fully dark.
“Tomorrow,” Charlotte said, “we keep investigating. Without warrant cards. Without official sanction. Just us and the evidence and the truth.”
Reid nodded. His career was over, suspended, at least, with no guarantee of return. But the work continued. Sebastian Whitmore was still free, still plotting, still believing his network made him untouchable.
“Tomorrow,” Reid agreed. “We keep fighting.”
Charlotte’s smile was small but genuine. “That’s what we do.”
She led him upstairs, to the guest room that had become his refuge in recent weeks. The room was small. A bed, a washstand, a wardrobe holding the few civilian clothes he’d moved from his own lodgings, but it felt more like home than anywhere he’d lived since joining the Yard.
Charlotte paused at the door, her hand still in his.
“Stay,” she said. Neither a question nor a request. A statement of fact.
Reid nodded. There was nothing waiting for him at his lodgings except empty rooms and the silence of a man who’d devoted his life to work that had just been taken away. Here, at least, he wasn’t alone.
Charlotte led him to the bed. They didn’t undress, propriety still held, even now, but they lay together in the darkness, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her waist, their bodies curved together against the February cold.
“Tomorrow,” she said again.
“Tomorrow,” he agreed.
And later, when the house was silent and the fire in the study below was ash, Reid slept without dreaming of what he’d lost.
He dreamed instead of Charlotte’s face in the firelight. Of the twelve signatures warm in his pocket. Of the investigation that would continue, with or without a warrant card. Of the man he’d become since meeting the Vance sisters. A man who’d learned to see the impossible and believe it anyway.
He dreamed of what he was fighting for.
And for the first time since the photograph appeared in the newspapers, he slept without fear.