2. Shiloh #2
Her voice cracks on the last word. She hates that it does; I can tell by the way her teeth click shut after, hard enough I worry she’ll crack an enamel.
I look toward the bedroom door, half-expecting Nash to appear through it by sheer force of will.
He doesn't. He’s still at Noir with the man who carries the rosary mark on his arm, and I'm standing in my bathroom with a woman we all swore to protect, trying to decide how much truth belongs to me to tell.
“We should talk about that when Nash gets back,” I say.
Reva’s face changes. For one second, she looks so hurt I almost take the words back and replace them with every secret I’ve ever kept. Then the hurt burns off, replaced by a cold, glittering distance.
“Of course,” she says. “We should wait for Nash. Or Deacon. Or Cal. Or maybe the next person who’s known more about my life than I have and decided I wasn’t privileged enough to hear it.”
The hit is clean and deep. I absorb it because I deserve it. Ever steps closer, his voice low. “That isn’t what he meant, Reva.”
“I don’t care what he meant.”
“I mean,” I say, gentle because I cannot afford to be anything else, “that whatever this is, you should not have to hear it twice. Let us tell you once, with all of us in the room, so no one gets to hide behind what the others didn’t say.”
Her shoulders rise and fall with a hard, shuddering breath. Then another. “Fine,” she says. It is not an agreement; it is a temporary stay of execution. I take it.
Ever holds the washcloth out again. “Can I finish?”
Reva hesitates, then sits back down on the lid.
The next few minutes move in fragments. Ever wipes the rest of the makeup from her face while I work the dress down her arms. I pause when the fabric catches at her hips, asking before I touch her skin.
She says fine without looking at me. We ease the dress away and leave her in black lace that should make my pulse misbehave—and it does, because my body is not noble even when my heart is trying its damnedest to be.
I take one of my shirts from the hook behind the door—soft, worn cotton—and drape it around her shoulders while the tub finishes filling. She looks at the floor, her fingers tracing the hem of the shirt.
“Did you know?” she asks, her voice very soft.
Ever’s hand stills. I do too. The water keeps running behind us, but the silence in the room is absolute.
“About my sister,” she adds, finally lifting her head. Her eyes search mine, looking for the tell, the lie, the shadow.
“No,” I say. “I didn’t know.”
Ever sets the cloth beside the sink. “Neither did I.”
She studies us both, peeling truth from skin. I let her. I have lied with my mouth, my smile, and my hands. Every part of me was made pretty enough to get away with it. But not this. Not to her. Not now.
“I thought she died that night,” Ever says, his voice gravelly. “Same as you did.”
Reva’s mouth opens, then closes. The first tear falls. She turns her head fast, but we both see it. “I just don’t understand,” she whispers.
That guts me. Because Reva understands too much, usually. She watches rooms like she was born in a corner with a knife in her hand. She reads motive in posture and hunger in the space between breaths. Tonight, she is seven years old again, and cleverness cannot make the dead behave.
I crouch in front of her. “We didn’t know about Delia. But there is something we do know. Something from before.”
Ever’s gaze cuts to me, sharp and warning. I ignore it. Waiting for Nash was the plan, but then she asked the one question none of us has the right to delay.
“What?” she says.
I stand, because if I stay at her feet, I may start confessing things just to see if honesty can buy back anything we lost. “The assignment that ended our time with the Syndicate,” I say. “It involved your family.”
The bathroom goes silent, the air heavy with steam and the weight of the past. Reva stares at me, her face draining of what little color it had left. “Say that again.”
“The assignment that made us walk away. It was your family.”
Ever growls, low and dangerous. "Shiloh."
“She deserves to know that much,” I tell him. “Nash isn't here, and Deacon is. She’s standing in the middle of it.”
Reva’s fingers dig into the edge of my shirt. “What assignment?”
“Mother Superior wanted the adults killed,” I say, the words tasting like copper. “And one daughter. She wanted the other daughter brought to her.”
Reva stops breathing. Her lips part, but no sound comes out.
I hate Mother Superior in that moment with a purity that almost steadies me.
I have hated her for years—for what she made us, what she asked of us, what she dressed up as loyalty.
But looking at Reva now, stripped nearly bare in my bathroom with grief standing all around her, I realize my hate was far too small.
“What?” she says, the word barely a puff of air.
Ever steps in then, kneeling in front of her so he’s at her eye level. “We did not take the job,” he says, his voice a steady anchor. “We refused. All three of us. Nash, Shiloh, me. We refused.”
Her eyes search his face, then mine. “You knew?”