This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(34)

August heard her coming.

People were made of pieces—looks and smells, sure, but also sounds. Everything about Emily Flynn was staccato. Everything about Henry was smooth. Leo’s steps were as steady as a pulse. Ilsa’s hair made the constant hush-hush of blankets.

And Kate? She sounded like painted nails tapping out a steady beat.

August was leaning back against the warm metal bleachers, chin tipped toward the sun, when she sat down in the row behind him. The steel bench thrummed from the sudden weight, and August decided that even if she hadn’t made a sound, he’d still have guessed it was her. She had a way of taking up space. He could feel the soft pressure of her gaze, but he kept his eyes closed. A gentle breeze ran fingers through his hair, and he let himself smile, a small almost-natural thing. A shadow slid across the red-white glow of sun, and his eyes drifted open and there she was, looking down at him. There was a softness to her features from this angle, a distant quality to her eyes, like clouds muddling a crisp blue sky.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” she said. And then, absently, “Where were you?”

He squinted. “What?”

But Kate was already shaking her head, edges sharpening. “Nothing.”

August sat up, twisting slowly around to look at her. “Tell me,” he said, regretting the words the moment they were out. He could see her gaze flatten, the answer rising to her lips. “Or don’t,” he added quickly. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Kate blinked, her gaze focusing again. But then she said, “It’s just a game I sometimes play. When I want to be somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

A small crease appeared between her brows. “I don’t know. But you’re telling that if you could be anywhere right now, you’d be here on the Colton bleachers?”

August smiled. “It’s pretty nice.” He gestured to the field, the distant line of trees. “And of course, there’s the view.”

She rolled her eyes. Up close, they were blue. Not sky-bright, but dark, the same shade as her navy Colton polo. She had her hair twisted over one shoulder, and again he saw the teardrop scar in the corner of her eye, the silvery line that traced her face from scalp to jaw. He wondered how many people got close enough to notice. And then, before he could ask, she was leaning back, stretching her legs out on the bleachers.

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” she asked.

“I have study hall,” he said, even though he obviously wasn’t there, either. “What about you?”

“Gym,” she said. “But I got kicked out for misconduct.” August raised both brows, the way he’d seen Colin do when feigning surprise. “Did you know they teach self-defense here?” she went on. “It’s a joke. I mean, S-I-N-G tactics, really? As far as I know, a kick to the groin isn’t going to stop a Corsai from tearing you apart.”

“True,” he said, resting his elbows against the bench behind him. “But there are plenty of bad humans in the world, too.” Like your father. “So, did you get kicked out for lecturing the teacher?”

“Even better,” she said, running a hand through her sandy hair. “I got kicked out for breaking his collarbone.”

Something escaped August’s throat, a soft, breathless laugh. The sound took him by surprise.

“According to the counselor,” continued Kate, “I have a violence problem.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

Neither one of them mentioned his map sketch or the monster she’d drawn across Verity, and soon an easy quiet settled over the bleachers, interrupted only by Kate’s nails, which she rapped in a soft, constant way against the metal bench, and the distant sounds of students running on the track. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this, thought August. He was sitting inches away from the daughter of a bloodthirsty tyrant, the heir to North City. He should feel disgusted, repulsed. At the very least, unnerved. But he didn’t.

He wasn’t sure what he felt. Frequency. Consonance. Two chords that went together.

Don’t push her away, said one voice, while another warned, Don’t get too close. How was he supposed to do both?

“So, Freddie,” she said, dragging herself upright, “what brings you to Colton?”

“I was homeschooled,” he said, and then, struggling to find words that weren’t a lie, “I guess my family thought . . . it was time for me to socialize.”

“Huh, and yet every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been alone.”

August shrugged. “I guess I’m not really a people person. What about you?”

Her eyes went wide in mock surprise. “Didn’t you hear? I burned down a school. Or did drugs. Or slept with a teacher. Or killed a kid. It really depends on who you ask.”

“Is any of it true?”

“I did burn down a school,” she said. “Well, part of a school. A chapel. But it was nothing personal. I just wanted to come home.”

August frowned. “You got out of V-City.” It was no small feat, with the border cities capped and the Waste in the way. “Why would you want to come back?”

Kate didn’t answer right away. Which was strange—most of the time he couldn’t stop people from talking—but she tipped her head back and looked up at the sky. It was a cloudless day, and for a second she seemed lost, as if she expected to see something up there, and didn’t. “It’s all I have left.” The words came out soft, like a confession, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her gaze drifted back to earth. “Are those real?”