Chapter 319: Sell Tickets To The Reckoning, Damn Right
Four hours ago, Garrett called him a shark while he threw a rubber ball at the ceiling.
Right now, the shark was standing in a doorframe unable to move because the person who was dying was someone he had no reason to grieve. Grateful, yes. Gavriel Sterling had saved his life in an act of courage Fin would never forget. But debt and grief were different currencies, and the grief sitting in his stomach was heavier than anything he’d felt for Guinevere, his own cousin, who was scheduled to die.
The math was so broken he stopped trying to solve it.
✦✦✦
SHADOWCLAW - FOUR HOURS PRIOR
Fin’s study in Shadowclaw was the one room in the castle where the king stopped being a king and started being a man with too many problems and a rubber ball he threw at the ceiling when he was thinking.
"I still don’t like that Agnes is hiding it from you. Why doesn’t she just tell you?"
Garrett was sprawled in the chair across from him. "I think she thinks she’s protecting me. I also refuse to ask her to betray her father outright. This way, I follow her, gather intel on my own."
"So you’re both lying to each other."
"Pretty much."
Fin let out a breath and tossed the ball. Caught it.
"I said this once, and I stand by it. She’s crazy."
Garrett rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes. I know your feelings. She’s done crazy, unforgivable shit. I agree. She would also agree." He dragged a hand down his face. "Am I making the wrong call by gathering intel instead of confronting her?"
"No." Fin’s voice shifted into the register he used when the king showed up and the friend took a step back. "This is a situation where you are an Alpha King first and a mate second. Notify a select few to track her movements alongside you when she meets with him, and pull the rug when it stops being safe."
"Already done," Garrett said.
Fin shook his head and let out a laugh that carried genuine amusement, which was rare enough that Garrett filed it away as evidence.
"The moment she finds out you’ve been a double agent too, I want to be there. Send a raven. I will clear my schedule. I will bring a chair. I want front row when she realizes the man she’s been lying to has been lying right back, because that woman’s face is going to cycle through every emotion in the dictionary in under three seconds and I want to see every single one."
Garrett laughed. "I’ll sell tickets. Now what’s going on with you?"
Fin sighed. "I am co-mating with Dexmon Drakenfell, to start with."
"We are admitting it out loud now," Garrett said, and the grin that crossed his face was broad and genuine and entirely too pleased with itself.
Fin shot him a look that could have frozen a river.
Garrett put both hands in the air. "I’m happy for you. Continue."
"Yes. My wolf and I have come to terms with it. But she is still struggling. When both of us are in the same room, she freezes up. The anxiety hits her before the thought does, and I feel it coming through our matebond." He threw the ball once. Caught it. "I was working through my own shit and didn’t notice how bad it was until recently."
Another throw. Another catch.
"She also hasn’t slept here in a week, and it’s bothering me, but I refuse to upset her right now because she’s under enough stress." He exhaled. "But I can also feel that she misses me through our matebond, and the distance is doing more damage than the discomfort of being in the same room as both of us ever could."
Garrett looked at him for a long moment.
"That is the most human thing that has ever come out of your mouth, Finnick."
"Don’t repeat it."
"Your secret emotional depth is safe with me."
"Garrett."
"Buried in the vault. Locked. Key swallowed."
Fin gave him the kind of look that on another man would have preceded a thrown object. On Finnick Shadowclaw, it preceded a very deliberate decision to let it go, which Garrett appreciated more than the thrown object.
"I’ll tell you what I would do, and this might be terrible advice, but it’s the truth," Garrett said, leaning forward. "I would go around Serena entirely and just talk to Dex about it. If he’s accepted being co-mates, and she is uncomfortable and doesn’t know how to navigate the logistics, you two should sort it out between yourselves. Set up a damn schedule if you have to. Take the navigation out of her hands so she stops drowning in the guilt of choosing one room over the other every single night."
Fin dragged a hand down his face. His other caught the ball mid-air. The two actions happened simultaneously, which was the physical equivalent of a man processing a suggestion he hated and acknowledging it was correct at the same time.
"This is my life now."
"It is."
"A schedule. With another man I punched a few months ago. For my own mate."
"Welcome to the future, Shadowclaw."
"Oh well. Why the fuck not." He threw the ball again. Harder this time. "There’s something else."
"What?"
"Guinevere’s trial was two days ago. She’s been sentenced to die."
The color drained from Garrett’s face. The transformation was immediate, the tan warmth of a man who spent his days outdoors replaced by something ashen and still. He sat with it for three seconds before he spoke, and the three seconds told Fin everything about the man sitting across from him.
"She was a nightmare of a girlfriend. The most stressful four months of my life, and I escaped a genocide, so the bar was high. But she’s not all bad. She’s destructive and unhinged, but there was a person in there. Are you going to let them go through with it?"
"Yes."
The word sat between them. Fin caught the ball and held it.
"She is family. Some of the only family I have left." His jaw tightened once before he continued. "But listening to her charges read aloud was fucked. She laid hands on Serena twice. She shifted on her while Serena was human. She assaulted Dex in his sleep and then accused him of the crime to my face."
He turned the ball over in his hand once. "I almost believed her. For one second, I almost drew on him. If I had, everything we’ve built between Shadowclaw and Drakenfell would have burned."
Garrett absorbed that in silence.
"If it were me," he said slowly, "I would pull her out. Strip her rank to omega and have her work as one. Let her live with the consequences at the bottom instead of dying at the end."
He exhaled. "But then again, my mate did worse. And I am going to crown Agnes, actually. So don’t listen to me."
Fin looked at him.
"I’m aware of the irony," Garrett said. "Trust me. I live inside it."
"When is the execution?"
"This evening."
Garrett was quiet for a long time. Long enough that the silence stopped being conversational and became structural, the kind of silence that held weight because the man inside it was choosing his next words with the care of someone who understood they mattered.
"I’ll be there," Garrett said.
Fin held his gaze. The look between them carried the specific gravity of two men who had survived different wars and arrived at the same table and understood that showing up was the only language that covered everything words could miss.
"You don’t have to," Fin said.
"I know. I’m coming anyway," Garrett replied. "She was my ex. She terrorized the woman I care about most. And she’s your cousin. I’ll be there because you shouldn’t have to watch your family die surrounded by strangers."
Fin’s jaw worked once. "You’re a better man than most, Darkhowler."
"Don’t tell anyone. I also have an image."
"Your image is a golden retriever in armor."
"And yours is a shark in a war room, but here we are, having feelings in a study while you throw a ball. Life comes at you fast. Keep up, Shadowclaw."
✦✦✦
Four hours later, Fin got the joke at last. Life had come at him fast. He had not kept up.
Gavriel Sterling was gray on a borrowed bed, and Fin stood in a doorway grieving a friend he had never once admitted he had.
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