This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity #1)(65)

“What happened? Where are you?” He was actually raising his voice. Her father never raised his voice.

“There was an attack yesterday,” she said, trying to stay calm, focused. “At Colton.”

“I know. I’ve been trying to reach you ever since I heard. Four students and a teacher dead, along with two of my Malchai. It looks like one of Flynn’s—”

“No,” Kate cut in. “They weren’t your Malchai. They’d clawed off their brands. And it wasn’t a Sunai. It was a setup.”

Silence. Then, “You’re certain?”

“They were after me,” she said. “Dad, they brought a blowtorch, for my eyes.”

“But you got away,” he said, and there was something in his voice, surprise, or grudging respect. “Are you alone?”

Kate hesitated, eyes flicking to August’s violin case against the chair. “Yes.”

“Where are you? I’m sending a car.”

Kate rolled her head on her shoulders. “No.”

“Katherine, wherever you are, it isn’t safe.”

“It isn’t safe there, either.”

An exhale. A beat of silence. She could hear the words he wasn’t saying. I should never have brought you back. I should have kept you away.

She swallowed. “Where is Sloan?”

“He’s out. Why?” challenged Harker.

“Someone tried to have me killed, Dad. Someone tried to break the truce, and that someone had enough power to bend other Malchai to his will. And logically—”

“Sloan has always been loyal.”

“Confront him, if you’re so sure,” she said icily.

Silence again. When Harker spoke, his tone was careful. “You’re right, it isn’t safe here. You need to get out of the city until the problem is solved. . . . Do you remember the coordinates?”

She stiffened. “Yes.”

“I’ll call when I know more.”

Her fingers tightened on the cell. “Okay.”

“I promise, Katherine, the problem will be solved—”

“I killed them,” she said, before he could hang up. “The Malchai at Colton. I drove my spikes into their hearts, and when you find the monster behind this, I want to be the one to kill him, too.” Even if it’s Sloan. Especially if it’s Sloan.

A single word in answer. “Done.”

And then he was gone. It was the most she’d spoken to her father in five years.

Kate stayed on the line and listened to the silence until August came back.

August stood at the hotel window, watching the sun arc over the city skyline. The rain had stopped, the clouds broken from a solid pane of gray into a hundred slivers, blue shining through. Kate had burned through the last of her cigarettes, and when he refused to buy her more, she’d stretched out on the bed, and stared up at nothing, turning her silver pendant over in her fingers.

She said she had to get out of the city. She didn’t say where she was going, only pushed herself up from the bed and nearly tore her stitches when she fell. Between the blood loss and the painkillers and the lack of sleep, she wasn’t fit to go anywhere right now.

One night, he told her. They’d paid for the room. She could leave in the morning.

She. As if August was just supposed to walk away. That’s what Leo wanted him to do. That’s what Henry would probably tell him to do, if he actually phoned home.

“You should get going,” said Kate, as if she could read his mind. With his luck, it was probably the only thing written on his face.

“Yeah,” said August, sinking into a chair. “I probably should.”

“I’m serious,” she said, the faintest tremor in her voice. “Go while it’s still light out.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he said.

“What if I don’t want you to stay?” she asked, which wasn’t the same thing as asking him to go.

“Too bad,” said August. “I’m not staying just for you. Whoever’s behind this, they tried to frame my family. Do you have any idea what will happen if this truce breaks? If the city’s plunged back into territory war?”

“People will die,” she said hollowly.

“People will die,” he echoed, thinking of Ilsa. Ilsa in her room, surrounded by stars. Ilsa in the Barren, surrounded by ghosts.

“People are already dying,” muttered Kate. But she didn’t talk any more about him leaving, only sank back against the cushions and returned her attention to the silver pendant.

August shivered, his clothes still damp with rain. He turned away, and felt Kate’s eyes on his back as he stripped the shirt over his head, revealing the black tallies that had circled his forearm and were making their way like roots across his chest and back.

He drew the curtains against the sunlight, dizzy with fatigue. There was only one bed, so he sank to the floor beneath the window, his back against the hotel’s faded wallpaper. Kate said nothing but dropped a pillow over the side of the bed. August stretched out on the dingy carpet, tucking the pillow behind his head.

It was so quiet.

The motel was a nest of muffled noises: dripping water and far-off voices and the electric hum of appliances, and beyond, the growl of engines and tap of shoes on concrete. He missed his music player, missed the hundreds of more familiar sounds that came with living in the compound, every one of them helping to drown the gunshots that now rose to fill the silence in his head.