Our Dark Duet (Monsters of Verity #2)(48)

Alice shrugged. “Wasn’t me.”

“I was there,” said the Malchai. “There was a monster. Wasn’t Corsai. Wasn’t one of us either.”

Sloan frowned. “A Sunai? On our side of the city?”

Alice glanced up, curiosity piqued, but the Malchai was already shaking his head. “No. Something else.”

“Something else,” echoed Sloan. “And how did it kill them?”

The Malchai’s eyes burned with a frantic light. “That’s the thing, it didn’t kill them. The Fangs took one look at it and just started killing each other.”

Alice snorted. “Sounds like humans being humans.”

Sloan held up a hand. “And what did you do?”

“I tried to stop the Fangs, and one actually went for me.” He sounded indignant. “I killed that one, but the rest killed each other, I swear.”

“And the something else?”

“It just watched.”

Sloan unfastened his cuffs, and began to roll up his sleeves. “Where did this happen?”

“That old warehouse on Tenth.”

“And who else was there?”

“Only me,” said the Malchai, gesturing to his stained self.

Sloan nodded thoughtfully. “I appreciate your discretion. Thank you for coming to me.”

The Malchai’s eyes brightened. “You’re welcome, s—”

He never finished: Sloan tore out his heart.

He had to reach through the Malchai’s stomach to get it, up around the bone plating on his chest, and by the time he pulled the offending organ free, his arm was slick with gore.

Sloan grimaced at the rot of death, the black blood dripping to the floor.

Alice rolled her eyes. “And you say I’m the messy one.”

Sloan unbuttoned the soiled shirt as a sound came from the table.

The female engineer had her hands over her mouth.

“Something to say?” asked Sloan lightly. “Have you found an answer to my problem yet?”

The woman shook her head.

The man’s voice was barely a whisper. “Not yet.”

Sloan sighed, turning to Alice. “Keep an eye on these two,” he said, shrugging out of the ruined shirt. He dropped it onto the body. “And clean this up.”

The Malchai’s corpse was already beginning to dissolve on the floor. Alice wrinkled her nose. “Where are you going?”

Sloan stepped over the mess and went to change his clothes.

“You heard our dear, departed friend,” he said. “We seem to have a pest problem.”





The hood went on again, and for several long minutes Kate’s world was plunged back into black. The door was opened, her cuffs freed from the table, and then she was hoisted up from her chair and onto unsteady feet.

She was shaking.

She hated that she was shaking.

This was why she’d started smoking.

A single strong hand—Soro’s, she could tell by the viselike grip—led her from the room, and down a hall. She could feel the knife holstered at Soro’s side.

“You know,” said Kate, “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

The Sunai scoffed.

“You don’t know me,” pressed Kate.

“I know who you are,” said Soro, “and I know what you are, and that is enough.”

“You monsters,” muttered Kate, “you think everything is black and white.” Her shoes skimmed a gap, the narrow line between floor and elevator. “Maybe it is, for you, but for the rest of us—”

The hood came off, and Kate blinked. Soro loomed before her, long as a shadow, their silver hair like metal in the artificial light.

The Sunai was blocking Kate’s view of the control panel. “Where are we going?”

Soro’s gaze was cold, their voice even. “Up.”

Her heart fluttered. She’d gotten through the interrogation, white-knuckled it, and for the most part managed to keep a grip on the words coming out of her mouth. She’d told the truth, if not all of it.

Maybe she was being released.

Maybe . . . but the absence of the hood worried her—wherever she was being taken next, it didn’t matter if she could see, and with every passing second, her nerves tightened, the desire to do something wearing away at the knowledge of its uselessness. Don’t, don’t, don’t, became the echo in her head.

Soro broke the silence. “Humans have free will,” they said, picking up the thread of the earlier argument. “You chose to err. You chose to sin.”

If only you knew, thought Kate, fighting her own muscles, her own mind.

“People make mistakes,” said Kate. “Not everyone deserves to die.”

A ghost of amusement crossed the Sunai’s lips. “You died the day you took another life. I am simply here to clear your corpse.”

A cold chill ran through her at Soro’s words, at their hand drifting toward the flute-knife, at the echo of pain in her wrist.

But the elevator stopped and Soro didn’t draw the weapon. The doors slid open and Kate braced herself for whatever was beyond, for prison cells, or a firing squad, or a plank at the edge of a roof.

But there was only August.

No troops, no cells, nothing but August Flynn, looking so staggeringly normal, hands in his pockets, the tallies peaking out from his sleeves, that for a second, Kate felt her composure slip. The exhaustion and the fear laid bare. The swell of relief.