23. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

" W here are they taking Verner?" I demanded, wrenching my arm free of Astrid's grip and planting my hands on my hips to glare at her. I wasn't taking one step inside the palace until I knew Verner wasn't being sent away. Tallulah and Ophelia were there too, and while I knew they were trying to offer me support, I felt caged in and outnumbered.

"He's fine," Astrid replied, clearly as annoyed as I was and doing an equally poor job of hiding it. "Are you injured? What do you need?"

"I need the answer to my question."

Astrid huffed dramatically. "He's going to chat to the king about what the two of you have been up to."

"In the Pit?" I pressed.

Astrid narrowed her eyes. "Why would Verner need to be in the Pit, Meera?"

"He doesn't. Obviously. I was just asking."

"Astrid," Tallulah interjected softly, immediately trying to bring the temperature down. "Perhaps this isn't the best venue for this conversation. Meera, we thought you might need to go to the healers wing—"

"I don't need that. I'm fine. Can't I go to the meeting with the king?"

"No," Astrid replied firmly. "If you don't want to go to the healers wing then we can return to your room—I'll send down to the kitchen for whatever you want. But we are going to talk, Meera. Without Verner. You up and left, convinced the Hunters in Elverston House to lie for you, disappeared for over a day, then swanned back in with a massive chip on your shoulder that you never seemed to have before. I mean, come on. You don't think you owe us a fucking explanation?"

Tallulah and Ophelia winced, watching me like they expected me to crumple like tissue paper under the force of Astrid's rage.

But I had plenty of rage of my own. Enough to fuel an argument. Enough to maybe take down an entire organization, if I'd directed it well enough.

"I told you I could replace him myself," I reminded her.

Astrid frowned. "This is about Randal Jackman? I mean, I know you said that, but you didn't mean it."

"Astrid," Ophelia chided gently. "Maybe she did."

Tallulah was looking at me like she'd never seen me before, and guilt churned uneasily in my stomach. Not at what I'd done—for the most part, I felt pretty good about that—but at the idea of letting any of them down. I'd misled them. They thought I was a good person. A calm, rational person who always exercised good judgment and didn't make impulsive decisions.

That had never been true. I'd just been pretending that it had been for years.

"Why don't we sit outside?" Ophelia suggested, gesturing to a circular stone table with curved benches around it, surrounded by a manicured flower bed.

I infinitely preferred that idea to being trapped in my room, surrounded by glowering and/or confused faces, so I immediately made my way over, sitting down next to Ophelia while Tallulah and Astrid took the seats opposite.

While it made sense that Verity wasn't here since she no longer lived at court, I desperately wished she was. The two of us had never been the closest out of the group—probably because our personalities were like chalk and cheese. But our backgrounds weren't. If I laid out to the group what I'd done and why, I'd probably find Verity the most understanding out of all of them. Well, except for the new ex-Hunters in Elverston House, but I doubted I'd even have to explain things to them. They would just get it.

The Hunters had a pecking order, and life was not all college scholarships, free housing, and immediate job offers for those at the bottom of it.

"Where's Iris?" I asked.

"The nursery," Ophelia replied. "She's a popular guest there—the babies adore her."

Of course they did—Iris was the sweetest soul in the shadow realm. I should probably spend less time with her, lest I taint her goodness with my anger.

"Enough small talk," Astrid cut in. "Where have you been? What do you mean you were going to replace Randal yourself? Where exactly did you go?"

"I had a meeting." I knew I was being obstinate, but sitting in front of the three of them for an interrogation had put me on the defensive.

She made a strangled noise of disbelief. "With who? And how did you organize it from the shadow realm?"

"With a Criminal Investigation Special Agent from the IRS," I replied, glossing over the how question because I didn't want Harlow to get in trouble for helping me.

The wind itself seemed to stop blowing for a moment. Everyone was silent. Tallulah and Ophelia were slack-jawed and shocked, while Astrid's eyes were narrowed dangerously.

"That's quite the meeting to tee up on short notice," she said flatly.

"From what I gather, she's been investigating Randal Jackman for a while now."

"You didn't think that was pertinent information to mention?" Astrid clipped.

"I had no idea he was on the Council—and definitely no idea that he was leading negotiations from their side. I thought he was just another skeevy guy, just like the other skeevy guys who wield power within the Hunters. When I was young and dumb and afraid of everyone and everything, he'd used that to his advantage. From what I gather now, he was part of something much bigger. Something that a lot of other Councilors might be involved in too."

"What do you mean? What kind of criminal activity are we talking about here?" Ophelia asked nervously.

"Fraud. Tax evasion. There was definitely a business involved—I guess it was a shell company?—and by the sounds of it, other Councilors have gotten on board with it too."

Tallulah exhaled slightly. "Okay. And the IRS know about it now?"

"They'd clearly figured out something was wrong already, and their investigations led them back to me," I corrected. "I still had a lot of the paperwork that I'd kept hidden under a loose floorboard in the closet at my mom's house."

"That's kind of badass," Astrid muttered, leaning back and looking reluctantly impressed. "How come you had that stuff, though?"

I opened my mouth, waiting for my freeze reflex to kick in and silence me, but it never came. Apparently this time, I was ready.

"I'm sure you've all worked out that I'm not from one of the more illustrious Hunter families. Single mom. Immigrants. Barely getting by. We were very dependent on the Council for a lot of things." I cleared my throat uncomfortably, not wanting to cry. I'd never been a crier, and if I was about to start, then I wanted it to be in the comfort of my own room. "Looking back now, I can see that as a parentified teenager with very few friends and an overworked, exhausted mother… I was basically a sitting duck for an older authority figure to swoop in and gain my total trust. He promised me the world—material comforts, help with Latika, less financial pressure on Mom. And he'd give me things too—like a winter jacket, or shoes that didn't have holes in them. Either Mom didn't notice or… I don't know. Maybe she was just happy she didn't have to buy those things for me. This all started when I was a teenager. I just wanted to give you some context for why I let myself get involved in all this."

"You don't have to justify that," Tallulah said quietly. Her voice was gentle, but she was wearing her mama bear expression. "You were a kid, he was an adult. None of the responsibility lies with you."

I nodded awkwardly. "I was a minor, so he used me to run errands and stuff for his business. Collect up documents that he didn't want anyone to see—including his wife. I gave him my social security number. He took out a line of credit in my name—I was still paying it off when I came to the shadow realm. At the time, I thought I'd been helping him, you know? Obviously, I see now it was another tool to control me with."

Everyone was silent as I blew out a shaky breath to steady myself. I could feel myself reaching the upper limits of my bravery when it came to talking about this, and I didn't want to push myself too hard and fall apart completely. I didn't have the luxury of that right now.

"Anyway, that's how I got my hands on the paperwork. I was exiled after he turned on me, and I don't know why he never chased me down and asked me what I did with it. Maybe he just assumed I threw it all away? He never thought particularly highly of my intelligence. I guess even seventeen-year-old me knew that the stuff might come in handy one day, so I stored it in a shoebox under a floorboard, just in case. I didn't have time to grab it when my mom threw me out of the house."

I would have taken shock and looks of faint betrayal over the pity I could now see in their eyes. Seventeen-year-old Meera—eager for validation, and desperate for any kind of love—deserved their pity. Not twenty-five-year-old Meera. Not the person who I was now.

What I wanted— needed— now was friendship. Was the love and support of these amazing women who I'd come to care about since I'd moved to the shadow realm. But I also knew that was a tall ask at this exact moment because I was proving not to be the person they always thought I was.

"This, um, certainly changes things," Ophelia said eventually, twisting her wedding ring around her finger absently. "Or it will, if they press charges."

"Isn't the conviction rate, like, ninety percent for the IRS? These guys are fucked," Astrid replied confidently. "The question is when it'll all come out. And you know we can't let Sebastian find out before then, because he'll for sure give them a heads-up—he worships Randal."

Considering how we'd started the conversation, I was surprised that Astrid seemed to have warmed up the fastest. Then again, perhaps I shouldn't have been. I should have known Astrid would respect a vengeance mission. In hindsight, I felt a little silly not telling her about it.

Tallulah nodded uncertainly. "We're going to have to continue to peace talks as normal until it all comes to light. Just act like nothing has changed. But we're in a good position now—we can plan for it, so we have the upper hand when it all falls apart on their end. Though, we could also end up dealing with someone worse. My grandfather has been content to be hands-off in terms of governance since his money talked for him. But if there's a sudden exodus of Councilors… Well, he might deign to lower himself enough to get involved. Honestly, I'm sort of baffled by this whole thing. Why even bother with all this dodgy finance stuff if they had access to Grandfather's money in the first place?"

"As you pointed out, that money came with strings attached," Astrid said, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms. "Maybe they were working on having their own source of money, separate from the Thibaut family fortune. Isn't there an opportunity here for us to sway the new Council membership in a direction that's more cooperative for us? I'm not saying we should stack the bench, but you know. I'm not not saying that."

Astrid was in a good mood, so I opted not to tell her that I'd hijacked her human world contact and already had this exact conversation. It would come out eventually that Harlow had been involved, but surely it could wait. I already had enough damage to control on Jade's behalf, and the other Elverston House Hunters who had covered for me.

"Getting involved in that power struggle could be a slippery slope for us…" Ophelia replied hesitantly. "And as Tallulah said, her grandfather will probably get involved. He's a formidable foe."

I nodded to myself, thinking it over. Sure, we could swoop in and appoint a figurehead, but it wouldn't stick. Lasting, effective change was borne of belief . Of people rallying behind someone—or some ones —that they truly believed in. There were no shortcuts. That depth of feeling couldn't be bought.

"Anyway, that's a conversation for a different day," Ophelia said firmly. "What matters right now is making sure that this conversation stays between us, and Verner's conversation stays with those who are in the room with him right now."

I cleared my throat. "He won't have told them what I've told you. I'm not sure he'd have the vocabulary to explain it even if he tried—there's no IRS in the shadow realm."

"Right, we'll probably need to sit down with the king to lay it all out," Tallulah mused. "What about the other ex-Hunters in the realm, though? It feels a little uncomfortable to hide this from them."

Ophelia exhaled heavily, as the invisible divider between the original ex-Hunters and the new ones grew a little thinner. There was no question that Austin and Verity would be informed, but what about Jade, and Patrick, and the others in Elverston House? Iris was still a little bit of an unknown, but I think we'd all decided to trust her.

And then there was Cora. She'd come over here with Sebastian and her brother—they had been deemed negotiators, but she wasn't. She'd come because she wanted to, and it seemed like she was fitting in well, but her brother's betrayal had changed the way everyone saw her now.

"Sebastian sticks pretty close to Cora when he's in the realm," Astrid pointed out.

There was a general murmur of agreement, though no one seemed wholly comfortable with it. It was difficult to get a read on Cora these days, and it made sense for her to seek out a familiar face in Sebastian. Even if she was fully on our side, it was a big ask to put this secret on her shoulders when she was regularly in his company.

"I'd like to tell Iris myself," I said quietly. "Please."

Ophelia nodded, clearly wanting to ask why but deciding not to.

There was no way that Moriah Nash was coming out of this scandal untouched. If I was going to be the one who sent her parents to prison, the least I could do was tell Iris that myself.

"What about Verner?" I asked. "When can I see him?"

"Let me talk to Allerick," Ophelia said gently. "I'm sure it won't be too long. Just… give things some time to settle down. We'll figure it out."

It was the least comforting answer she could have given me.