Our Dark Duet (Monsters of Verity #2)(63)

“Now, now,” started Ani. “The FTF takes in—”

“No,” snapped Jackson. “I don’t care if she’s got intel—she’s still a Harker.”

“She saved my life,” said August, his voice low. His team went silent. Here it was, the chill, the spot of cold, right here. The Sunai were supposed to be invulnerable, but they weren’t. Unkillable, but they weren’t. The fact she’d saved his life meant he’d needed saving.

Jackson crossed his arms. “She’s not one of us.”

“Neither am I,” said August simply.

He heard them stomp off toward the food line as he made his way to Kate’s table. She had looked up from her screen at some point and was watching him through her veil of blond hair.

“Standing up for my honor?”

August frowned. “You heard?”

She shook her head. “Educated guess.”

“What did you do with Colin?”

“Oh, I set him free.” She nodded at the far corner. “Sheep and wolves have never been a good fit.” Her gaze flitted over the holes in his shirt. “Bad day?”

“It could have gone worse.” He sank onto the bench opposite. “How was yours?”

“I’m holding my own,” she said. “Not big in the friend department yet, but the enemies are keeping their distance.”

“Give it time, and they’ll—”

“Stop,” she cut him off. “This isn’t one of those stories.”

Silence fell between them, and August could hear the whispers under the din, the rise and fall of low voices, still all too clear to him.

“Anything good?” Kate was staring at him intently. “I only have one decent ear, and you have two stellar ones. The least you can do is share.”

His gaze fell to the tablet on the table, a vid file open on the screen. “What were you watching?”

Kate slid the tablet toward him. “You tell me.”

August looked down and saw the line of a steel bow streaked with blood. His stomach twisted. It was him. Walking back to the Compound the night he’d slaughtered Alice’s Malchai. The black tally marks stood out against his skin—at least, the patches of skin not covered in gore.

He didn’t recognize the thing on that screen, and he did, and he didn’t know which was worse. He could feel Kate’s eyes on him. He’d never understood how some people had such heavy gazes.

“August—”

“Don’t,” he warned.

“This isn’t you.”

“It is now. Why is it so hard to understand, Kate? I’m doing what I have to. I . . .”

You owe her nothing, warned his brother. In truth, part of him wanted to talk to Kate, to exorcise the voices in his head, make sense of the confusion, but he didn’t have the strength to argue. Not about this. His sleeves were rolled up, and he focused on the thin black marks that etched his skin.

“I hated you,” she said out of nowhere.

August’s head snapped up. “What?”

“When we first met. I hated you. Do you know why?”

“Because I was a monster?”

“No. Because you wanted to be human. You had all this power, all this strength, and you wanted to throw it away—for what? A chance to be weak, helpless. I thought you were an idiot. But then I watched you burn alive for that dream. I watched you tear yourself apart to hold on to it, and I realized something. It’s not about what you are, August, it’s about who, and that stupid, dreaming boy—that wasn’t a mistake, or a delusion, or a waste of energy. It was you.”

She leaned forward. “So where did you go?”

August started to answer, but a tray came crashing down onto the table, loud enough that they both jumped. Harris swung a leg over the bench. Ani and Jackson, too. Kate sat very still, and for a long moment, no one spoke, the tension drawing out like a note, warbling and brittle. In the end, Jackson was the one who broke it.

“No beef,” he muttered sullenly.

“Told you,” said Ani, spearing a piece of wilted broccoli as Kate rose to leave.

“Where are you going?” asked August, but she was already walking away. He swore under his breath and followed, hundreds of eyes following them out. “Kate.”

“Fine.” She reached the hall and headed straight for the nearest exit. “You’re doing what you have to, but so am I. I’ve been playing boot camp all day, but I’m not going to sit around any longer. You go on having your existential crisis, playing the big bad monster, but there’s a real demon out there, in our city, and I’m going to find it, with or without you.”

“I can’t let you go out there—”

“Then come with me. Help me hunt this thing down. Or stay out of my way.”

August caught her arm. “What will you do when you find it, Kate? How will you kill it? Are you sure you can kill it, with its claws in your head?”

He watched her try to say yes, saw the words catch in her throat. When she finally answered, her voice was brittle. “I don’t know,” she said, meeting his gaze, “but I’ll be damned if I let it kill me. You might not want to fight your monsters, August. But I’m fighting mine.”

He sighed, slung the violin over his shoulder, and took her hand.