CHAPTER 44: GIGI

Knox sutures Slate’s shoulder while Gigi holds Slate’s hand and watches his pallor. Despite the pain and bourbon, Slate stays lucid. Gigi presses for details about Eve, pushing past small talk to understand what happened.

Slate explains that Eve wanted an invitation to the Gilded Blade and came to St. Adelaide to get it. Their plan had been for Eve to lure out the Woman in Red and then disappear so Slate could track them. The Woman in Red appeared, hooded, and handed Eve a gun.

Instead of fleeing, Eve turned and fired at Slate. Slate insists she intended only to graze him—consistent with her tendency to skew down and right—so the bullet passed through as a flesh wound. When Slate recovered, Eve and the Woman in Red were gone. He found Eve’s tracker abandoned, along with five metal coins and a note marked with four black lines.

Slate identifies the coins as the Blake family seals, instruments of control once used by Eve’s great-grandfather; Eve had consolidated all five. Leaving them, plus the four-mark note, signals that shooting Slate was Eve’s “number four” unforgivable act, yet Slate remains protective. He plans to take another drink and wait for Eve’s father, Toby, whom he informed earlier. Gigi refuses to let Slate face this alone and vows to help, pulling Knox into the commitment.