Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
QUINN
“ M ake sure it lines up,” I tell Tess as she smacks my hand away for the third time since she started sewing up the gashes in my chest. There’s no way around the scars it’ll leave, but I want as little damage to that rose as possible.
“How many times must I tell you not to move?”
A few more, apparently, because she’s batting at my hand again. “I just don’t want the rose to—”
“To look disfigured. I know. That’s apparently all you’re worried about.”
She’s upset with me. How did I miss that? I lean back down on the bed and make a point of being as still as possible. Thankfully, Tess has a steady hand and enough experience patching me and the others up that this won’t take long. She’d probably already be finished if she didn’t need to keep swatting me away.
“Alright. Let’s hear it.”
“You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”
She’s right about that, but I also don’t want her sulking. “You’ve never silenced yourself before, and it’s not every day you have me still long enough for a good berating. Don’t squander this opportunity.”
She doesn’t so much as smile, so I’m probably going to regret this. “You were reckless. Not only did you put your life in danger, you put everyone’s life in danger.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” I sigh. “You weren’t on that beach. You don’t know how close we came to losing people.” And thank the Gods for that. These aren’t just my people. These are her people. Her family.
She cuts the thread after her final stitch and then slaps my wound. “No. You don’t.”
I rub at the place she hit me and sit up. “That hurt, you know.”
Her face doesn’t soften. “You never should have changed him.”
Wait, that’s what this is about? “We couldn’t have known he would shift. It doesn’t work that way.” I shouldn’t have left him, but there’s no way I could have predicted this. And we needed answers. We’re one step closer to stopping Void because we finally understand what it is he wants.
“And how would you know? You’ve never seen it. You’ve never asked. And maybe that’s my fault. I should have made sure you understood the damage you caused. I know it wasn’t you and I’ve never blamed you for it, but this time you chose to do this to someone. I don’t care if he agreed.”
Oh, fuck this.
I turn to face her properly. “You think I don’t know? You think I didn’t wake up to what you call damage every time I shifted back? I hated myself for what I did to all of you. I still do! I made a choice and maybe it was the wrong one, but all I ever do is what I think is best. As much as I fucking hate to admit it, Jade was right. This is how we get into Lunae. This is how we save lives and then maybe—just maybe—I can make up for a fraction of that damage .”
She flinches at the harshness in my words, but I don’t take them back. She’s no stranger to calling me out on my bullshit, but this time she’s in the wrong. To even imply that I haven’t seen the harm that was caused by this curse is beyond cruel. She may have had to pick up the pieces when I couldn’t, but I was the one wishing for death just so that I could escape that guilt.
We look away from each other, neither of us willing to be the first to apologize. For quite possibly the first time, we’re at an impasse.
I move to pull on the shirt someone brought for me before sliding off the bed, but a knock on the door steals my attention.
“Come in,” I say when Tess doesn’t. Apparently she’s done talking.
The door opens, and Jade strides inside. He’s shirtless as usual, but the four jagged lines slicing into his chest are new—and almost the mirror image of mine. “You wanted to see me?”
I did, but I didn’t expect him to show up. “You could have gotten that taken care of first,” I say, nodding to his wound.
“No point. My blood burns through stitches and it’s hard enough not burning this fucking place down without wearing unnecessary fabric. Wrapping me in bandages is an accident waiting to happen. Why am I here?”
Straight to the point, then.
“I heard you were injured.”
He laughs, but I don’t hear the humour in it. “Don’t tell me you were checking on me.”
“I want to know why you were close enough to get scratched. You shouldn’t have been anywhere near Ty.”
He rolls his eyes before stepping aside so Tess can leave the room. She has every reason to still hate the dragon, and she’s already pissed at me. Jade doesn’t say a word to her as she goes, but once we’re alone, he turns his attention back on me. “On a first name basis with the enemy now, are you?”
“He’s not our enemy. Imelda is. Void is.”
“You know as well as I do that you can’t pick and choose when it comes to war.”
I was taught that lesson too, but that doesn’t mean I agree with it. There has to be a better way than blindly killing everyone who wasn’t born on your side. Ty grew up in Lunae. He joined the Guardians to survive. That doesn’t make him my enemy.
I rub the heel of my hand into my eye. I don’t have the patience for this right now and as much as I hate it, I need to sleep if my body is going to heal enough to be ready for the next part of our plan. We have two days to get Ty ready to return to Lunae, and I’m not trusting anyone else to make sure he gets there. I heal fast, but not when I’m running around and overexerting myself.
I can’t help Abby with this—but Jade can.
“Why did you let him hurt you?” The truth is, I already know why. Jade shouldn’t have been there to begin with, and even if he was, he’s more than capable of putting a wolf down without spilling a drop of his own blood. Yet he’s here, sporting almost the exact same injury as me while Ty was entirely unharmed. There’s only one explanation for that. “Say it.”
Jade hesitates and turns his back to me. The silver lines of old scars that match Abby’s stand out in the fire’s glow illuminating the room. “They would have killed him if he’d killed one of them. I wasn’t about to let you fuck up the plan because you couldn’t stick around.”
He’s using his anger to avoid the real question I’m asking. “Why can’t you just admit that you saved someone else?” I already know about the siren whose back was turned when Ty broke out. They didn’t see Jade step between them at the last second, but Ellis did. Not only did Jade save that person’s life, his interference gave Ellis the precious seconds he needed to shift and lead Ty out before he could go on a rampage through the tunnels. If he’d tasted blood, there might have been no stopping him.
And yet here Jade stands, choosing anger and denial rather than accepting the thanks he deserves. Not just from me. From everyone.
“Because I’m not the kind of person who saves anyone.”
He is, but I can tell he’s not going to admit it. “I don’t think that’s true. I saw Ty’s thoughts projected by that siren. You were going to kill him, but then you hesitated. Why? Was this idea of yours an after thought, or did you spare him because he’s hardly old enough to fight in this war?”
Jade’s hands ball into fists at his sides, and I prepare myself for his rage. But then he blows out a breath and his hands relax. “I let him live because he’s the only one out of the three of them who didn’t hurt me.”
What is he talking about? When would any of them have had a chance to hurt him? Unless… “You remember, don’t you?”
He shakes his head. “Not everything. I remember Lunae. I remember being whipped. I remember being beaten, starved, ridiculed. I remembered those Guardians, just as I can see the faces of so many more who deserve far worse deaths than those two got.”
“You don’t remember Abby.” It’s not a question. His reaction to her scars is more than enough proof of that.
“I remember her. I remember her watching at every execution. I remember her at mine. At least, until the memory goes black. I don’t remember her stepping in, but enough people have confirmed that she did.”
He’s a lot more messed up than I thought, but at least this explains the rage he still feels toward Lunae. Even the rage he felt towards Abby. She was just another face in his memories, but it was twisted in cruelty that wasn’t her doing.
“Abby is with Ty right now and I don’t trust him enough not to lose himself again.”
Jade scoffs. “And yet you’re hiding out in here.”
“I’m not hiding. I’m trying to do right by her by taking care of myself like she keeps asking me to. But I can’t do that if I’m worried about her. The wolves are there, but I’d feel a heck of a lot better if you were there, too.”
He turns back to me and gestures to his mangled chest. I can already tell the bleeding has stopped, and I wonder if that has something to do with the fire in his blood. “This isn’t enough for you?”
“Even without your memories, it seems I can still trust you. So yes, I’m asking you to do something else that I can’t. Can I relax knowing that you’ll make sure she’s safe?”
He hesitates for a long moment and his face twists from whatever battle is warring within him. There was a time when this would have been an easy answer, but things have changed. He’s not the same Jade that was willing to die so that she didn’t have to live with heartbreak—but he’s still Jade. He’s still the annoying bastard that steps up when it matters. Even with all the anger and doubt swirling within him, he somehow still manages to make the right choice when it counts.
“Yeah,” he says, though his voice has turned gruff. “I guess you can.”