Chapter 27 · Whoever's On The Log

"Don't you dare let go." Levi's fingers stay locked around my wrist, grinding my palm flat against the gauze, and under the gauze the panel crackles like a candy wrapper every time his pulse jumps.

"I'm not the one shaking," I say. "You are."

He is. I feel it through the bandage, through his skin, a fine tremor that has nothing to do with the cut and everything to do with the fact that his own intercom just told a room full of commission staff his hearing got moved up six hours, and he's currently locked in a cage-side hold with the cutman he tried to ban for life.

"Nine o'clock," he says again, like saying it twice makes it less true. "Everyone. Board, my lawyer, the ethics panel. Tonight."

"Then maybe let go of my hand and start planning your outfit."

His grip tightens instead. Pain lances up through the heel of my palm and I don't move, because moving means the dressing slides, and the dressing sliding means the panel underneath goes visible on a camera that hasn't