What remained was a pillar of pale ice with a shadow at its core, and a quiet so complete they could hear the lanterns burn.
Quinlan turned back to Iris as if nothing had happened at all.
She was looking up at him. The fury had spent itself and left her hollowed out, and for a long, long moment she just looked, blood dripping off her chain onto the stone.
Then she let him see it.
The rage was armor, and everyone in this mansion had seen the armor. What she let surface now, only for Quinlan, was the real thing underneath: fear. Plain, bald, childlike fear, sitting naked on a face that never showed it.
"He doesn't know." Her voice came out small and stripped. "Every rung said Covenant. I tried so hard, and there's..." The words wobbled, and she forced them level. They wobbled anyway. "There's no fucking name at the top. It's as if it never existed."
Her fist finally came down. The chain sagged against her thigh.
"So what do I kill?" she whispered. "How can I avenge Damian?"
