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

“Sexist.”

Jackson raked a hand through his short hair. “I’m starving.”

“Me too,” chimed Ani. “Canteen?”

“Think they’ll have beef?” said Harris. “I dream of beef.”

“Keep dreaming,” said Ani.

Jackson shoved open the cafeteria doors and August was met by the din of metal and plastic, scraping chairs and rattling trays and a hundred layered voices. Between the noise, and the stuffy air, he didn’t understand why so many soldiers ate together instead of escaping to their rooms. Rez had been the one to explain it to him.

“Sometimes it’s not about the food,” she’d said. “It’s about finding normal.”

Harris was holding the door. “You coming?”

This was a well-worn path—Harris always offered, and August usually said no, but the voices in his head were too loud tonight, so he headed into the crush of bodies and noise, hoping to smother them.

And saw Kate.

She was sitting alone near the edge of the room, head bowed over a tablet, and August didn’t know if it was déjà vu from their first day at Colton, or that she was the only spot of stillness at the center of a storm, or that she was Kate Harker, and everywhere she went, she brought her own gravity with her.

Whatever the reason, he started toward her.

Harris shot him a questioning look, and Ani’s gaze followed, but it was Jackson who spoke. “She shouldn’t be here.”

“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.