#Chapter 103 The Longest Lie

Ember I don't sleep after that. I sit up in the dark with my back to Clara's crib and my borrowed sword across my knees, and by morning I've turned my fear into the only thing I know how to make from it: a plan. If the Queen is watching my daughter, then the fastest way to make Clara safe is to finish what I came back to do—break Ines, prove what she is, strip her of the power to send women counting the doors of nurseries in the dark. I can't run, not with Chris loose somewhere in the wild and the cottage burned to ash behind me, so the only way out is through. I find Kaine in his study before the sun's fully up, already awake, already grim over a spread of papers and supply reports. I tell him I want in—all of it, the investigation, the evidence, whatever Lila's found—that I'm done being protected because I protect better than I get protected. Something eases in his shoulders when I say it, like he's been waiting for exactly these words, and he turns a page toward me with a look