63. I’ll Watch for You
~ VOSKI ~
Goldfinger. They called me Goldfinger, because they thought everything I touched turned to gold. But they didn’t know. They had no clue.
Endless planning. Endless analysis. Constant self-doubt. Every decision questioned, pressed down, shaken, distilled, and scrutinized. Even the split-second decisions, taken out and examined later.
The world was a dark and painful place. And those who intend ill always appeared the very moment you stopped watching for them.
I was paces away from her. Mere steps. Head shrieking. Heart burning. Soul on fire.
I had taken my eyes off the world because she was there and she was right—we were the same. We both disappeared in the dark.
But I was in a blind panic. Running on pure instinct. Until her voice rang in the night air.
“Voski!” she screamed. “Drop!”
The part of my chest that was her punched out from between my ribs. Her voice echoed between the buildings, and sang in my soul. My body refused to be deaf to her, and threw me to the damp cobblestones.
I tumbled to the ground, rolling instinctively, confused and bitter—in the same second a telltale thunk echoed in the dark, and Grace gasped, her light footsteps pattering on the stones behind me.
I’d rolled to hands and feet on the wet cobbles, hadn’t even turned my head yet, when the thud of a great weight hitting the ground vibrated through the stones under my palms and I froze, my nose just inches from the wide, startled eyes of a man.
White eyes.
Dirty hand.
Red, red blood.
Black hood over his head. Black scarf around his neck. Black clothes swathing every inch of his body.
He quivered and jerked, choking, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, stubby, calloused fingers clawing at the hilt of the blade buried in his throat.
“Voski!” Grace shrieked.
Shit. Shit!
I shoved to my feet as she reached me, kicking away the blade that he’d dropped and catching her around the middle as she slid to a halt, scrabbling like an animal turning in the hunt, as her eyes—white all the way around—locked on the dying man and a terrible noise broke in her throat.
Her jaw dropped and I clapped a hand over her mouth, whipping her aside, pinning her against that wall again. But she didn’t stare at me. She couldn’t see anything except him.
Her first kill.
“Grace,” I whispered urgently.
Her whole body shuddered. She blinked rapidly, over and over, leaning to peer past me, prying at my hands, instinctively fighting for release.
“H-have to help him. He’s b-bleeding.”
“Grace, look at me.”
“He’s going to die, Voski, let me go.”
“No.”
“Stop holding me.”
“No. Stop. Assess—did he throw? Hurt you? Breathe.”
“I can’t—you can’t! Let me go!” she hissed through her teeth.
Trembling, I curled myself around her, held her as tightly as I dared and pressed my lips next to her ear. She struggled like a cat, twisting, clawing, but I was too strong.
“Listen to me,” I whispered. “I know you can hear me. You have to listen. He’s dead, Grace.”
“No!”
“You did good. You did right. He had a knife. He would have—”
“No! We have to help him.”
“Grace—”
“Stop talking like that! Stop it!” Her eyes filled with tears and she clawed at my arms, but I barely felt it as the pain in my chest cracked the mortar around the frozen walls around my heart.
“Grace,” I breathed.
She screwed her eyes closed and shook her head. “Stop!”
“We have to leave, because he won’t be alone. He’s a thief. Or an assassin. He would have stolen, or killed, or… or hurt you.” I couldn’t even get the words out, the horror that filled my head on that last thought.
If I’d broken just a moment sooner.
If I’d fled seconds earlier.
If she’d been there alone in the dark, crying, because I hurt her—
I sucked in a breath as my chest constricted. Grace sobbed, and cried out, fighting as if I were the one trying to kill her. And I knew. I knew because I’d been there. Knew what this would do to her. And knew I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to curse the world, and death, and God.
“Let me go!” she whimpered. And I did. Just for a moment. Just long enough for her to shove me aside and throw herself to the cobblestones, weeping, and grasp at him, shaking him, reaching for that bubbling wound—only to cut herself on the blade and hiss. And sob.
“No, Grace—” But I was too late.
She yanked it out and threw it aside as if it sickened her—because it had. But that only left his feebly pumping heart an open cavern to bleed him out.
Probably a mercy.
She grasped at him, tried to cover the wound.
“Help me! Help him!” she hissed at me. “He’s dying! You have to help!”
Heavy with grief, and sickened with myself because this didn’t sicken me anymore, I knelt behind her, wrapped my arms around her and held her as she cried, and shook him, pleaded with him to wake up.
“He’s gone, Grace,” I whispered in her ear. “He’s gone.”
“No! He can’t… It wasn’t… I only wanted to stop him reaching you!”
“And you did. So well,” I murmured, tipping my forehead against her hair and grimacing, swallowing back the ache in my throat when she thumped on his chest with a closed fist, then again. Demanding that he wake up. Again and again.
She hit him so hard, she panted through her cries, and I feared she’d bruise herself.
I caught her hands, and held them. They were cold.
Shock.
“Voski, let me go!”
I shook my head because I couldn’t speak. Then shook it again, because if I could, I would have taken this away for her.
In that moment, I deeply wished neither of us knew how to disappear in the dark. Or use it. But if one of us had to, I would have taken that for her.
“Voski…” her voice was thin, rasping, barely more than a whisper.
I held on until she slumped. And the cry that broke out of her shattered the first brick of that wall around my heart. With a hiss, I clapped a hand over her mouth, just to muffle the sound, and I whispered everything I knew to soothe her.
You did right.
He was wrong.
Breathe.
I don’t know how long we knelt on that cold, wet stone. Don’t know how many minutes those animalistic cries tore through her. I tried to shush her, but held her through every one. Took the impact of every choking breath that wracked her chest. And rocked her between them.
Until the tavern door bell tinkled again.
We would be found. And if we were found, her life would never be the same.
There was no question. I swept her up, and sank into the shadows with her, and this time she didn’t fight me at all.
She curled up, buried her face in her hands, and my chest, and cried silently.
Because she knew. Whether she meant to or not, she knew.
‘Kham.’
‘What’s wrong? Koa is agitated. Grace has closed off.’
I couldn’t find the words, so I just showed him.
‘I’m coming.’
I had to take a deep, shuddering breath of my own at the wave of relief that almost took my feet out from under me. I always left Kham harnessed when I went into the city. I’d almost chosen not to in case he and Koa flew tonight. Thank God they hadn’t. If he hadn’t been close enough to hear me…
But I couldn’t give in to that fear. I had a purpose. And I wouldn’t deny it again. I had to learn from this—let it remind me. I could never ignore the world. Because the world hid monsters. Not noblewomen with knives at their hips. But real monsters.
And I should never have been so self-consumed that she was forced to rid the world of one.
Kham reached the city walls before I did. The moment we were clear of the city, I didn’t stop running, just turned her in my arms, wrapped her legs around my waist, and whispered at her to hold on.
I carried her up the mounting strap, to his back, while she clung to my neck like a child.
Then we flew.
Koa flew in our wake, darting and weaving, crooning to her. As we flew and planned, Kham reassured me that Koa would comfort her. But I shook my head. I knew.
A dragon could soothe and make their rider safe.
But this? Dragons held life sacred. While Kham was far slower than me to take lethal action, he also held that responsibility differently.
Where life was taken in defense of himself, or another—like me—it might be grieved as a waste, but the need was never doubted.
There was no recrimination. No regret. No questions.
A dragon didn’t kill in battle, then throw up for days after.
Grace needed someone who understood how death blackened your hands.
‘If you appoint yourself her protector, you cannot abandon her when it grows difficult,’ Kham sent carefully as we flew.
I ground my teeth. ‘No one understands that better than me.’
Kham rumbled approvingly, but Grace tightened her grip on me. I held her as tightly as I dared, my heart pounding. Not because of the kill. But because I knew she hadn’t yet broken. She was fighting. Reality. The truth. Trying to deny it. To tell herself it hadn’t happened.
God, help me, I knew that feeling intimately. And what would follow it.
Grace curled into herself as we flew, pressed into me, her body trembling.
‘Kham? The squad, they’ll be worried.’
‘I will inform their dragons, but not of the death. Only that she needed to go home—and you’re escorting her to her quarters so that she might rest safely.’
‘Thank you.’
There was a beat as we began to bank toward the launch hollow and I felt Kham’s ribs expand under us as he gave a heavy sigh, and behind us, Koa crooned to him.
I was afraid to ask, but I should have known he wouldn’t balk.
‘You have what she needs,’ he sent kindly. ‘But if she cannot forgive herself, you mustn’t—’
‘She will,’ I interrupted him, bristling. ‘She’s not stubborn like I was.’
Kham gave a huff that under any other circumstances I would have called a laugh. It didn’t seem the time for levity. ‘What’s funny?’
‘You said was,’ Kham sent with a little whistle that Koa echoed. ‘As if stubbornness were no longer a part of you.’ Then he huffed again, and Koa joined him.
I shook my head. ‘I can’t believe you’re teasing me right now!’
If he’d been human, he would have shrugged his shoulders. ‘Life doesn’t cease to be amusing, even when we’re in grief.’
‘I’ll tell that to Grace when she’s throwing up later.’
Kham rumbled again, this time chiding me. ‘I wouldn’t tease her at such a time.’
‘But—’
‘Voski, we have been here. I knew what was needed then. I know what is needed now. I will not let you sink into this and lose yourself again. As you walk this path again in defense of another… I’m here. You won’t be lost.’
The image he sent then was one of me, turning back down a path I had already walked, and him tugging back, turning me around, carrying me forward once more.
I had to clear my throat. ‘Thank you.’
‘You are always welcome, my brother.’
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
It tightened my chest every time he called me that.
I knew I’d been hard on him recently, and would be again.
I was already walking a tightrope. The thought of what was to come made me sick.
But as Grace clung to me, and Kham began to descend to the launch hollow, I couldn’t think about that.
I had to figure out how to get her to the only place she felt safe, without having to answer questions.
And I had to pray that no one had witnessed her throw that blade.