This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(35)

August looked down and realized that his sleeves had ridden up enough to reveal the lowest line of tallies. Four hundred and nineteen.

“Yes,” he said, the truth across his lips before he even thought to stop it.

“What do they stand for?”

This time August bit back the answer, and ran a thumb over the oldest marks around his wrist. “One . . .” he said slowly, “for every day without a slip.”

Kate’s dark eyes widened in genuine surprise. “You don’t strike me as an addict.”

“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “I didn’t strike you as a Freddie, either.”

She cracked a smile. “So what’s your poison?”

He sighed dramatically, and let the truth tumble off his tongue. “Life.”

“Ah,” she said ruefully. “That’ll kill you.”

“Not as fast as cigarettes.”

“Touché,” she said, “but—”

She was cut off by a scream. August tensed, and Kate’s hand went straight for her backpack, but it was just some student on the field faux-tackling his girlfriend. She squealed again, beaming even as she fled.

August let out a low breath. He would never understand why people screamed for fun.

“You okay there?” asked Kate, and he realized he was gripping the bleachers, knuckles white. Gunfire crackled like static in the back of his head. He pried his fingers free.

“Yeah. Not a fan of loud noises.”

She pursed her lips, gave him a look that said how cute, then gestured to the case at his feet. “Violin?”

August looked down, nodded. He’d smuggled the instrument out of the compound this morning, slipping out before Leo could stop him. His fingers were itching to play again. He’d gone to the music room only to discover that an ID card wasn’t all you needed to use the practice space. He was halfway through the door when a girl cleared her throat behind him.

“Excuse me,” she said, “but the room’s mine.”

August hadn’t understood. “Yours?”

She pointed out a clipboard on the wall. It was a sign-up sheet. “My time,” she explained. August’s heart sank. He held the door open and let her pass, then examined the list of times and names on the sheet. It was Wednesday, and the space was booked solid until Friday afternoon. August wasn’t supposed to stay after school—Henry had been insistent, wanting him back across the Seam before the gates closed at dusk, even though he didn’t use them to get home—but in a rare moment of defiance, August had signed himself up.

“I’ve always liked music,” said Kate, picking at the metal polish on her nails. August waited for her to go on, but the bell rang and she shook her head, settling her hair back over one eye. “Are you any good?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

“Will you play for me?”

August shook his head, and the look she gave him made it clear—she wasn’t used to being told no.

“Performance anxiety?” she said blandly. “Come on.”

She was looking at him through the sweep of blond, waiting, and he couldn’t exactly say that he played only for sinners. He swallowed, struggled to find a lie that skirted truth.

“Go on,” she insisted. “I promise not to—”

“Freddie!” shouted a voice, and August turned to see Colin waving him toward the cafeteria. He rose gratefully to his feet.

“I better go,” he said, taking up the case as casually as possible.

“I’ll get you to play for me,” she called as he descended the metal steps. “One way or another.”

He didn’t say anything, didn’t dare look back as he jogged over to Colin, who was staring baldly. When August reached the sidewalk, the boy patted him down. “He lives!” he announced with feigned shock.

August waved him off, and Colin fell into step beside him. “But seriously, Freddie,” he said, shooting a glance back at the bleachers. At Kate. “Do you have a death wish? Because I’m pretty sure there are faster, less painful ways to go. . . .”





Kate got through the rest of the day without hurting anyone, so that was something. She didn’t know if it was luck, odds, or Freddie. Even though she’d teased him, there had been a moment on the bleachers where the answer to Where are you? had really been Here. She wasn’t sure why, only that for the first time in ages, sitting in that strange but comfortable silence, she felt like herself. Not the Kate who grinned at the rumors, or the one who held a knife to a girl’s throat, or drove a crowbar through a monster’s heart.

The Kate she’d been before. The version of her that made jokes instead of threats. The one that smiled when she actually meant it.

But this wasn’t the right world for that Kate.

She tossed her bag onto the bed, and the vial from Dr. Landry tumbled out.

Maybe it was the pills, smoothing her edges. Maybe . . . but there was still something about Freddie. Something . . . disarming, infectious, familiar. In an auditorium full of stares, his was the gaze she felt. In a classroom full of students learning lies, he scribbled the truth in the margins. In a school that clung to the illusion of safety, he didn’t shy from talk of violence. He didn’t belong there, the way she didn’t belong there, and that shared strangeness made her feel like she knew him.