The guard looked at her like she was missing a vital piece. “The Verity border’s been closed for months.”
“I thought it was open again.”
He shook his head apologetically.
“Huh,” she said, pretending to squint into the sun as she scanned the crossing for other signs of life. “Well, that’s a drag. How long have you been at this post”—she scanned his gear for a name tag—“Benson?”
“Two years.”
“And who did you piss off to get landed here?”
He chuckled, leaning his elbow on the hood. “Every now and then, someone tries to cross. I don’t know what makes them do it, if they’ve got friends egging them on or a death wish or they think the stories are just stories—I don’t know, and I don’t care. Protocol is protocol. It’s for your own good, miss—”
“Harker,” cut in Kate.
He twitched.
“Does that name mean anything to you?” she pressed, the cheerfulness bleeding from her voice as her left hand closed around the gun tucked into the driver’s side door. The darkness in her rushed forward at the touch, a current washing over her, trying to sweep her away.
“It should. My father was Callum Harker. You know, the man who kept monsters like pets inside that hellhole. Look around, Benson. All your cameras, all your weapons, all your everything is facing the other way. Do you know why that is? Because your job is to keep anyone and anything from getting out. It doesn’t matter who goes in. Don’t believe me? Just look.”
He actually took his eyes off her, just for a second, and in that second, she raised her gun. Benson looked back and actually jumped, lifting his hands in an automatic plea.
Do it, whispered the thing in her head, in her hand, in her blood. It will be so easy. It will feel so good.
Her finger drifted toward the trigger. “I am crossing that border today.”
Doubt swept across the soldier’s face. “Like you’d actually—”
She fired.
The desire had closed around her hand like a second grip, squeezed the trigger for her, but she’d felt it coming, just in time, and shifted the barrel several inches wide.
Benson stared in horror. “You crazy bitch.”
“Open the gate,” she said through clenched teeth. “I honestly don’t think I’ll miss a second time.”
The soldier backed away and punched a code into the box by the patrol door. The barricade began to lift. “We’re just trying to keep you safe!”
Kate cocked her head. “Haven’t you heard?” she said, shifting the car into gear. “There’s no such thing.” She gunned the engine and the car shot forward into the Waste. “Not anymore.”
The face in the mirror was covered in blood.
It dotted August’s cheek, splashed across the front of his fatigues. Red and black, black and red.
He turned the shower on, spun the tap until the hot water was all the way up, and stripped off his clothes, shivering as the air met the tallies on his skin.
He hadn’t slept, hadn’t been able to settle down long enough, so he’d gone back out again and again, trying to scrub Rez and Alice from his mind, taking on any and every mission. When his own team retired, he joined another, and another, made himself a shield and a weapon, let the trouble come to him. The night was a blur of violence behind his eyes, but the restlessness was gone, excised by action, leaving only an absence in its place.
He stepped into the scalding stream and bit back a gasp. The water burned, each drop a prick of fire on his skin. The pain was shallow, but he found himself clinging to it the way he’d once clung to hunger.
A way of taking control, of reminding himself that he could feel, that he wasn’t— A monster? taunted Leo in his patronizing way.
At his feet, blood and grime swirled down the drain, and August leaned his head against the tile wall, his vision blurring as fatigue washed up against him. He wasn’t sore—that was the wrong word—soreness was a physical thing, the product of tired muscles, strained bodies. But there was an ache all the way down to his core. He was empty, like the bodies he’d left behind, hollow without that spark of life, humans and monsters both reduced to empty shells, stardust to stardust, and— He turned the shower off and stepped out, slicking his wet hair back off his face. The room was full of steam—when he wiped the fog from the mirror and saw his gray eyes reflected in the glass, he couldn’t shake the feeling they had gotten darker. Leo’s eyes had been black—the black of piano keys and starless skies—darkened by all the times he’d shed his human form for the one that waited beneath the surface.
August turned away from the mirror.
He pulled on fresh fatigues and stepped into the hall. Allegro was there, chasing a piece of lint, but when the cat saw him, he shied back, and when August reached to pet him, the cat recoiled from his touch, black ears going flat against his head. He let out a small hiss and scurried away.
August frowned, following Allegro into the kitchen where the cat darted between Ilsa’s legs. She crouched, hauling the creature up into her arms and planting a kiss on his nose before lobbing a questioning look at August.
He took another step toward her, toward the cat, but Allegro hissed in warning.
What was it Ilsa said about animals?
They could sense the difference between good and bad, human and monster.
For a second, only a second, that other piece of himself—the piece he’d put away—tried to surface, stunned and hurt by the cat’s rebuff, by what it meant. But August forced it under.
It will weaken, promised Leo. It will fade.
Ilsa’s eyes narrowed. What have you done?
August stiffened. “What I had to.”
Her mouth turned down as she folded her arms protectively around the cat and shook her head. There were no words to that, none that August could read.
“What is it?” he demanded.
But she just kept shaking her head, as if unable to stop, and August prickled. He didn’t understand what she was trying to say, what she wanted from him.
He pushed a pad of paper across the counter. “Dammit, Ilsa, just write it down.”
His sister pulled back from the paper, from him, as if struck. And then she turned on her heel and swept out.
Soro walked in just as Ilsa rushed past. The two nearly collided, but Ilsa had a way of parting the world around her, and the other Sunai leaped gracefully out of her path. A second later, Ilsa’s door closed, a single punctuating note—the loudest sound she’d made in months—and August let out a low, hard breath.
Soro considered him. Their silver hair was swept forward, falling into gray eyes, but August could still tell they were raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t ask,” he said.
Soro shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
August leaned back, shoulders resting against the shelves.
“You are tense,” they said.
He closed his eyes and muttered, “I’m tired.”
Another beat of silence. “I heard . . . about the ambush.”