Kit's jaw is clenched tight when she finds him, loitering at the bar as instructed. She is a beautiful figure in her soft teal gown, but there is a sadness to her face, the kind that makes him realize that she's been thinking about this for as many sleepless nights as he has.
Jacques tries to catch her eyes - unsure himself whether he wants to reassure her that they are doing the right thing or whether he wants her to reassure him - but they shift away after barely a second, over the unimportant opera-goers and then, eventually, to the floor. Jacques has known his sister since the day they were born, but he fancies even a stranger could have known that she was ashamed. The sight of his own conscience reflected back at him in the image of his twin makes the cold, guilty knot twist in his stomach, even tighter than before.
"Are you sure about this?" he asks, and the corners of her lips twitch down, just a fraction. What he means is are we sure about this, because there's never been a time that he and Kit have been on separate sides. Kit is like a compass. If he wavers off course she is always there to set him back. It has been that way since they were children. Kit is his sister, the most sensible of the three of them, and Kit has always known what to do.
She glances around again, as if frightened that they have been spotted together. They do not have long.
"It's done, Jacques," she says, but that doesn't answer his question. Jacques loves black and white and has never had any patience for grey. Kit is always the one deciding what to do with all the grey in their lives – and he feels like tonight, maybe one of the most important nights in their lives, is not the night for Kit to shirk that responsibility. "Give me the box."
He pauses uncertainly, drums his fingers against the countertop.
"Is this right, Kit?" he asks, more directly. "Is this the greater good?"
"What do you want me to say?" she asks, and he can see that she's wavering, can sense that she doesn't have the answers.
"There must be another way," Jacques whispers, and tightens his fist around the handle of his briefcase, as if he's making to leave and continuing to pretend that there are important financial documents in that case rather than a small tin box containing two poison darts.
This time she does look at him, and her eyes are stormy, turbulent. Their time is running out. There's only a certain amount of time Bertrand can keep Ernest occupied, and it's only going to be a matter of minutes before Esme catches Lemony on the roof. There is no time left to hesitate.
Suddenly, the words spill out, words she's spent weeks telling herself in the early hours of the morning when the concerns now at the forefront of Jacques' mind keep her from sleep.
"Not everything is black and white," she starts, brow furrowed, lips pressing together. "People are all good and bad, Jacques, and sometimes the only thing you can do is the wrong thing, but all that matters is that you're doing the least wrong thing."
"No," he says automatically, because that isn't the way they were taught. Noble firefighters, making the world a better place, that's what he knows. This ambiguity, this guilt lodged permanently in his throat, this isn't what they signed up for – not that they ever had even a shadow of a choice. "There's always something else, Kit. There always is."
Jacques is younger than Kit by a matter of minutes, but in that moment he looks at her and thinks it could be years instead. He sounds so childish, even to his own ears – and she smiles sadly, like a parent who can't bear to reveal the truth about the tooth fairy, and slides her hand alongside his in the handle of the case.
"Not always," she breathes, voice strained, and she peels his fingers away and lays the case out on the bar, reaching inside for the smaller box.
Jacques wonders, watching her, whether this is going to be the start of something awful. He doesn't know when Kit became so cynical, and a few years ago he would never have believed that he could find himself here, an accessory to a murder he doesn't agree with but can't avoid. Kit has always known what to do, but just this once he worries that she's got it all wrong.
But he hesitates a little too long, because when he tries to open his mouth and tell her all of these she's already gone, slipping back into the crowd.