“And my clause?” I asked.
He didn’t blink. “We’ll draft astatement of maternal prerogative.”
“That can’t be undone,” I said.
“It can be amended,” Marus said.
“No,” I said.
Corvin watched me. “You won’t get ‘no’ in this room. You’ll get language that looks like it. If you want more than language, you need leverage.”
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?” Alexander asked.
I thought about a set of dark hands dragging me out of a crushed car. I thought about another set of hands steadying me in a hospital chair, voice low in my ear telling me to breathe. Leverage had a dozen shapes. I wasn’t ready to put any of them on the table.
Alexander tapped one finger once against the glass. “The right man,” he said again. “We’ll find him. We’re not risking the Adams spine on a romance.”
“It isn’t a romance,” I said. “It’s a promise.”
“To a child who doesn’t exist yet,” Marus said.
“Exactly,” I said.
They looked at me like I was dangerous because I was sincere.
“Emilia,” Alexander said, softer than I expected. “You don’t want my job.”
“I don’t want your job. I want to do mine.”
“And what is that?” he asked, no sarcasm in it this time.
“To protect what’s mine. Even if I have to write the protection myself.”
We sat with that. The glass cooled under my hands. I could see my reflection looking back—still, composed, not the girl who used to make herself smaller when men raised their voices.
Alexander exhaled. The sound was almost a laugh and wasn’t.
“We’ll draft something,” he said. “It won’t be what you want. It will be more than we usually give.”
“I’ll read it,” I said. “I’ll mark it.”
“Of course you will,” Corvin murmured, and for the first time his voice sounded almost like approval.
Marus slid a calendar across to Alexander. “Timelines,” he said. “If we’re pausing mergers?—”
“We are,” Alexander said. “No new entanglements until the Accord is inked. I don’t want another family using this moment to charge us interest.” He turned back to me. “You will show up. On time. In cream. Not black.”
I almost smiled. “It photographs as grief.”
“Itisgrief,” he said dryly.
“And yet you’d like me to smile,” I said.
“That’s what we do. We carry and we smile.”
“For the record,” I said, because I couldn’t help it, “you weren’t always like this. There was a time you walked me home from school and stopped to buy oranges because I said they smelled like summer.”
