Our Dark Duet (Monsters of Verity #2)(82)

Alice.

August rose to his feet. “Come with me,” he said, reaching for her hand.

She let him lead her, but her shoulders were tense, her body coiled. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere private.”

She raised an eyebrow, as if such a place didn’t exist anymore. There was a line for the elevators, so they took the stairs, climbing floor after floor in silence. Not a comfortable silence, but the kind that grew stiffer with every step. August didn’t know what to say and if Kate did, she didn’t plan on saying it, not yet.

When they reached the top, he led her not to the apartment, but up the hidden stairs to the flat stretch of the Compound’s roof.

For months, he’d imagined showing her this view. In his mind, Kate sat beside him, shoulder to shoulder on the sun-warmed stone, and they looked out at the city. In his mind, the war was over, and there was no North and South, no monster and human, only Verity, and a blanket of stars shining through the dark.

In his mind, it didn’t go like this.

The moment they were alone, the levy broke.

Kate turned on him. “Did you know?”

He could have deflected the question. After all, it hadn’t been explicit, but he knew exactly what she was asking about.

“Did you know?”

August let the truth rise up. “Yes. About a week after Sloan took control. We were on a rescue mission . . .”

“All this time,” she whispered, “you knew she was here and you didn’t tell me.”

His eyes flicked to Kate’s shadow, the thin shape twitching like a tail behind her. “All actions have costs. On some level, you had to know.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I knew what would happen, but I thought—I hoped—whatever it was—it was somewhere out there, haunting the Waste. It wasn’t supposed to be here.”

“Well, it is,” said August. “It came back. With Sloan.”

Kate wrapped her arms around her ribs. “It—it looks like me, August. That thing—”

“Alice is nothing like you.”

Kate’s head shot up. “Alice?”

“That’s what she calls herself.”

Something gave way inside Kate. He could feel it. “Of course.” She looked up at the sky in a way that said she simply couldn’t look at him. “My father told me that Malchai take their names from our shadows. Our ghosts. Whatever haunts us most. Sloan was his right-hand man—not his first kill, but the first one to leave a mark.”

“And Alice?”

Kate closed her eyes. “Alice was my mother. I pulled the trigger in that house, I shot that stranger, but Alice Harker was my first murder. I’m the reason we ran away. I’m the reason Callum sent his monster after us. I’m the reason she’s dead.”

Two tears escaped down Kate’s face, but before August could reach out, she was scrubbing them away. “I’m the reason that monster is here.”

August swallowed. He couldn’t lie, but the truth was cruel. He took a careful step toward Kate, and when she didn’t pull away, he wrapped his arms around her. She didn’t soften against him but held on tight.

“We’ll stop her,” said August.

“She’s my shadow,” said Kate, pressing her face into his collar.

And when she spoke again, the words were so quiet, a human would never have heard them.

“I’ll stop her myself.”





Sloan peeled off the gloves and examined his hands, the blistered, oozing surface of his palms.

“Sacrifice,” he mused to the shrouded cage. “Callum used to say that sacrifice is a cornerstone of success. Of course, Callum preferred sacrificing others. . . .”

He trailed off when he heard Alice coming.

That in and of itself was odd—she usually had an uncanny ability to appear and disappear without warning, but tonight her steps echoed through the basement. They came not from the stairs but from the subway tunnel on the other side. During Harker’s reign, the Malchai had been forced to come and go that way, so as not to frighten the building’s human tenants.

In the months since Sloan’s ascent, and until his newest project, the tunnel had become the realm of the Corsai, and the Corsai alone. But here she was, dusted with ash.

“How was our little diversion?” he asked. “I heard the blasts from—”

“She’s here,” cut in Alice.

“Who?”

“Kate Harker,” she said, eyes burning bright. “She’s here.”

The words sent a perfect shiver down Sloan’s spine. Not fear, oh no, but something sweet. The taste of fresh blood spilling over his tongue, the tang of hate, and the thought of life going out of those blue eyes. Callum’s eyes set into his daughter’s face. Eyes that no stand-in, no surrogate, no sacrifice could replace.

“You saw her?”

“She looks like me, but wrong, all squishy and human, and she’s with the Sunai. When did she get here? Did you know?” Alice couldn’t contain her excitement. She began to pace. “I wanted to tear her throat out right then and there, but there would have been nothing to savor, and I was caught off guard, but next time—”

“You will not kill her,” said Sloan.