Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ingram
Yun bolted upright so quickly that she nearly took my nose out.
I recalled what had happened with Kenyon before and had to acknowledge that even if we had collided, she’d have taken the bulk of the damage.
Thankfully, my reflexes meant I moved to the side fast enough to avoid anything being broken or harmed.
She was panting hard, her eyes chasing around the room as though looking for danger. I didn’t stop her, didn’t butt in. It was better for her to realize where she was.
When she did, she frowned. “Why am I in your bed?” She glanced down her front, then tossed me a glare. “Did you do anything weird to me when I was asleep?”
“Please. What do you take me for?”
“A pervert.”
“Sure, but a pervert who waits for you to be awake to join in on the perversion, thank you very much.” I crossed my arms to prove the point, playing along as though she had horribly offended me.
She hadn’t, of course, but a little outrage was fun.
“A pervert with standards—who’d have thought?” She let out a long breath, finally appearing more at ease. “Really though, how’d I get here? Last I remember—” She froze, a telling pause that put all my senses on high alert. After she swallowed, she went on. “I was at Medical for the guide checkups.”
I didn’t narrow my eyes, keeping my expression even. There was no good reason to let her know how suspicious I found her behavior.
She’d been run down recently, restless, on edge. Sure, no one enjoyed medical, unless they had a weird kink—and that even went beyond my own—but I couldn’t shake the feeling it was more than that.
I gave her the answer I had. “Some guards brought you, said you fainted during a blood draw. Seems you have a problem with needles?”
“Right,” she said, the word drawn out.
“You’ve had blood drawn before—never fainted, that I know of.”
“It comes and goes.” She shrugged as though that sold it, made it seem unimportant and normal. “Sometimes I just get lightheaded. Guess this time I went out totally.” She let out a tense laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stress you out.”
“You didn’t. Kenyon checked in on you, said you weren’t hurt, so we just let you sleep. Seemed you needed the rest.”
She ran her fingers through her hair, grimacing when knots blocked the path.
“Nightmare?” I asked.
She nodded. “Seems the link wasn’t entirely broken.”
That wasn’t something I liked. Worse, Shear hadn’t been able to do much the last time, which meant I had no game plan.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I think throwing him out of my mind wasn’t that pleasant for him, either, so he stayed on good behavior.”
I doubted she told the entire truth there, either. The Corsa I knew didn’t know what good behavior was, and I doubted after turning into a corrupted his self-control had grown much.
“What was he like?” Her question was soft, like she didn’t want to ask it but couldn’t help. The timing of the question nearly made me wonder if she could read my mind.
“He was an asshole,” I answered honestly.
“He was the rich, spoiled brat of a congressman. He’d gotten everything handed to him all his life, so when he turned out to be an esper—especially a high-ranking mentalist—he figured he was owed everything.
I heard he only got through training because Daddy pulled strings for him, but who the fuck knows? ”
“So you didn’t pick him for your team?”
I snorted. “Not a chance. We were happy with the four of us, never wanted to add anyone else, but the Guild assigned him. It was supposed to be temporary, since he hadn’t fit into any other team during training.
I think they figured with us, he’d get some name recognition, get his name out there, then he’d turn into a poster boy for the Guild. ”
“How long was he with you?”
“A couple months, but this was the first big dungeon he went into.”
She didn’t ask anything else but the question was there, in her eyes, in the lines between her eyebrows.
“Just ask.”
“What?”
“You want to know, right? I know you’ve heard the rumors, so you want to know what happened.”
I expected her to say yes, because who wouldn’t want to know? The story felt like thick sludge in my throat, something I didn’t want to cough up but I would.
Fuck, I was pretty sure I’d do damn near anything she asked for. Was it pathetic? Sure, but I didn’t give a damn. If she needed me to spill my guts, to see the wriggling, rotten pieces of my past, I’d do it.
Instead, she shook her head. “I know what the rumors say isn’t true.”
“What do the rumors say?”
“That you left Corsa there to die, that you let the civilians there die, too, that you saved your own life.”
Hearing that from her own lips fucking hurt. Sure, it never felt great, even if I knew it wasn’t the whole truth, but from her it hit so much harder.
“You know how many news reports came out about it in the months after? We had our faces splashed all over the TV before, of course, but it had been praise before. After that, though?” I twisted so my feet were on the ground and leaned forward, hanging my head down, the memories ricocheting off the walls of my skull.
“I couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing us up there, like the world’s biggest criminals.
Instead of heroes, we were villains—no, worse than that, cowards.
Surprised you never saw anything about it. ”
“I was in The Pitt for half a year, and after I got back, I was straight into guide training.”
It felt like a small favor, that. Even if she knew what happened, I hated the idea of her seeing it somehow, of watching the stories that had our pictures up there like mugshots.
“And you still don’t want to know?” I asked again, unable to resist it.
“I know you all, now. I’ve seen the real you. I know that you wouldn’t just abandon people like that, and now knowing that other esper was Corsa? Yeah, I know the story isn’t right. If you want to tell me at some point, you can, but I don’t need to know.”
I turned my head to look at her, blinking slowly, struggling to understand how she could say that. How could she accept us so easily? She didn’t need the truth, didn’t need us to prove it to her?
I was used to people seeing the worst in us, believing the worst. Fuck knew I wasn’t some fluffy little bunny deep down, and neither were the others. We were killers through and through, and we were selfish, and we were dangerous. Others had always known that, accepted it, but Yun?
Even after her past, after all she’d suffered, she still could look at us and see anything other than that?
Part of me feared she viewed us like her tormentor, and I couldn’t have even blamed her for such a thing.
And yet she’s lying…
I knew it, deep down. That void inside of me that craved everything knew it, had seen it inside her, the secrets she still held. I didn’t get it, given how much we’d found out, how much she’d told us. We knew about her trauma, her past, her powers, yet she still held something back.
Why?
As I stared at that miracle, at the one good thing in my life, the only thing that had ever satiated me, ever made me feel a little less empty, I knew that whatever it was, I’d personally pluck it from existence for her.
After all she’d given me—us—nothing would hurt her. The troubles that followed her should run, because I was a far more dangerous monster.