Chapter 89

Wil looked up at Dallin slowly, more alert now, like he was taking in the things around him as well as inside him again. The look was rueful, anxious--

caught and caged

--but hope took up the corners, waiting for Dallin to negate reality.

'I think perhaps you're the only one in the world I do trust.'

Dallin wished with his whole self that the next few moments wouldn't belie that tender, too-breakable faith.

"Brayden." The warning in Corliss's tone was all too clear. "Say it and I'll believe it. Don't make me arrest you."

Perhaps it would be wiser. Allow them to be arrested and then figure out a way to get them out of it. Or say what Corliss wanted to hear and then figure out how to get Wil away again. No danger of having to fire on Corliss and whomever the two others from Putnam might be. No danger of having to fire on soldiers beside whom Dallin would have been fighting ten years ago. No danger of either one of them getting shot while trying to escape.