Chapter 25 Kane
KANE
When Kane awoke the next morning, he promptly wished he hadn’t.
His body ached fiercely, pain radiating from his torso into each of his limbs.
Still, it was miles better than the gut-wrenching, nausea-inducing agony that had come before it.
He had only felt pain like that once prior, and his memories of that time were foggy from the copious amounts of laudanum.
What he did recall was how often he’d taken the drug in the days following.
How he’d convinced himself it was just to take the edge off, just to calm his nerves, just to help him sleep.
Even when Ward had forbidden him from taking it any longer—claiming it made him slow, foolish, distracted—Kane thought of it near constantly for weeks.
He’d started drinking not long after that. It was passed down from father to son, Ward had told him later, the predilection for mind-altering substances. And maybe that was why Kane sometimes felt he didn’t know himself: He was desperate not to.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Zaria, asleep in the nearby armchair with her hair unbound and her body contorted in a way that couldn’t possibly be comfortable.
Last Kane could remember, she’d declared she was going to retire to Cecile’s bedroom, and he’d bid her good night, his insides a snarled knot.
She didn’t believe he’d changed his mind about double-crossing her, and that was fine.
Let her believe what she wanted. It was clear she harbored regrets, whether she admitted them or not.
She looked far too innocent in unconsciousness. The slight divot between her brows was notably absent, the shape of her full mouth soft. Looking at her now, Kane could almost believe she wasn’t turning his life upside down. He wondered when she’d returned to the sitting room. Why she’d returned.
“You’re awake.” Fletcher’s voice caused Zaria to stir, and Kane shifted his gaze to his friend, feeling caught in the act.
Fletcher stood in the archway separating the sitting room from the tiny kitchen, his head all but brushing the ceiling.
He looked a mess; his clothes wrinkled, his hair disheveled, as if he’d been sprinting through a windstorm.
His expression was shadowed with weariness.
Kane could only imagine he looked ten times worse. When he spoke, the sound grated in his throat as if he’d been blowing clouds all night. “Yeah, I’m awake. But at what cost?”
Fletcher approached the sofa, then paused, hovering in the center of the room. He seemed to be weighing his next words, and the absence of familiar ease made Kane splinter in a way that hurt nearly as much as a dart to the torso. “How are you feeling?”
Kane couldn’t help it—he laughed. The action tore at his chest, pain lancing through his ribs, and spurred Zaria to lurch straight up in the armchair. He winced, waiting for his vision to clear. “I feel like shit, Fletch. Thanks for asking.”
“I thought I was going to watch you die.”
“You and me both.”
Fletcher’s gaze traveled over Kane as if to reassure himself that he was not, in fact, dead. “It was almost me.”
Zaria made an indelicate sound of surprise that Kane barely registered.
It was true—he’d seen Cleland struggling to aim the gun around Zaria, face red with pain and rage.
The man had been aiming for Kane, of course, but he didn’t have a clean shot.
The way they’d been positioned, Fletcher was in the bullet’s path, his focus trained on a dying Ferrington at his feet. He hadn’t even been looking at Cleland.
But Kane had. He’d lunged without thinking at precisely the moment Cleland fired.
Everything after that was a blur. He remembered relief.
An explosion of agony. The stars above him a distant haze he couldn’t quite focus on.
He remembered Zaria’s and Fletcher’s faces.
Begging them to end his misery and thinking that, if he had to die tonight, he was glad they were there with him.
A foolish sentiment, perhaps. How wretched—how pathetic—that he had nothing and nobody, save these two people he had already lost.
“I’d do it again,” he told Fletcher. “I’d do it every time.”
Fletcher’s throat shifted as he swallowed. “I know. You’re always trying to protect me, whether I want it or not.”
Kane couldn’t decipher his tone. “Fletch, I—”
“Come home. Please, come back to Moore several people were waving the periodical as if to punctuate their—very loud—opinions.
He slowed, putting a hand to his ribs as he attempted to pick out a few words.
“You okay?”
He hadn’t realized Fletcher had stopped and nearly walked into him. Truth be told, every step ached like hell, but Kane wasn’t about to admit it. “I’m fine. What do you think this commotion is about?”