章 90: Chapter 90

HE'D NEVER been shackled before. Dallin stayed still, staring straight ahead, while Corliss guided his hands to the small of his back and snapped the iron about his wrists. He refused to allow his cheeks to darken, refused to allow his chin to dip. Dallin was proud of what he'd done, from the moment he'd made the decision to help Wil and not arrest him, and no humiliating procedure would dim that. Down on one knee, disarmed, searched, the ghost-weight of the badge they'd taken from his pocket uncannily heavy--all of it seared into Dallin's chest, but the burn for what he'd come to see over the past few weeks as his real duty flared hotter.

The eyes of every worker in the stables were on him. Commonwealth soldiers looked on from the door. Woodrow and Creighton stared at their boots. And still Dallin kept his head up. Even beneath Corliss's sad, disappointed gaze, Dallin didn't wither.

"It breaks my heart." Corliss whispered it as the clasps snapped home.

"And yet you're doing it."