Chapter Forty-One
Yun
“A dungeon?” I asked.
Carter pulled on his holster, the one that hung over both shoulders to keep two pistols, one under each arm.
I hadn’t seen him dressed up like this in a while, given the few issues lately had been unexpected.
“Yep. Nothing to worry about. It’s low-level, but it’s pretty close to a town. In and out, no problem.”
“Then why can’t I stay here?”
“With everything that’s happened, I just don’t want you alone. You’ll stay with Kaidan while we’re gone.”
That was just more suspicious. Carter hated Kaidan—they all did. They bitched each time I spent time with him, so why would he have me go there so easily?
Maybe they’re sick of you…
The thought slipped through my brain, and no matter how much I wanted to toss it aside, to unhear it, I couldn’t. Things had been tense, and I’d proven myself a problem.
Who wouldn’t get sick of that?
Still, I didn’t want to utter it aloud. Carter would either smile his fake smile and tell me I was wrong, or he’d admit it.
I had no idea which one of those would hurt more, so I wasn’t about to find out.
I said nothing else as they finished getting ready, and not even on the way over to Kaidan’s. I could have walked myself, but they seemed determined, and I felt too unsettled to argue.
“We’ll be back sometime tomorrow,” Carter said. “Hopefully early, but it might not be until late. Just stay here.”
“I have a training session—”
“No, you don’t. It was canceled,” Kenyon said. “I told the Guild that you weren’t feeling great and needed more rest.”
“I’m feeling fine, though.”
“Your adrenaline and cortisol are high, suggesting your body is under extra stress. You need a rest day.” Kenyon didn’t look directly at me when he said it, and I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that something was off. They weren’t telling me everything.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. What would I even say? I kept it to myself, pressing my lips together and offering a forced smile.
“Fuck you,” Kaidan said with a cheery voice, and Carter responded by blowing a kiss back.
Ingram flipped him off, and Kenyon waved.
Shear took longer, however, standing there, staring not at Kaidan but at me. Something rested behind his bright blue eyes, something different than usual. I couldn’t identify it, especially on Shear, but I knew it wasn’t good.
Without meaning to, my powers reached out, guiding gently, since that was really all I could offer to him.
Except the moment I did, something unexpected slipped through that line. Along with the corruption was the presence of a power that shouldn’t have been there.
I pulled back, questions swirling in my head. The brush of Shear’s mind to mine felt like a request, but I shook my head. I didn’t need him in there, not before I’d even worked out what I’d felt.
He frowned, but didn’t push. He could have easily forced his way into my mind, had more than enough power to do so, but he didn’t.
A part of me doubted that was about my own rejection and more that he had other things on his mind. A last nod in my direction, then he turned and left with the others.
“Come on. I made tomato mac and cheese.” Kaidan held the door open for me until I entered, the scent of tomato thick in the trailer.
I sat at the table, thrown by what I was sure I had just felt.
“You know, I never liked this as a kid. My mom made it, but I refused. Who would want to eat tomato mac and cheese when there was the basic boxed kind?” Kaidan spoke, not waiting for me to respond, as though he knew I needed the space filled by anything.
“The funny thing is, when I moved out, when I joined the Guild—and I did that pretty early—I found I missed it. When she came to visit one time, I asked her to teach me to make it, and I discovered it tasted like home. Something I’d hated for years, it turned out actually mattered to me.
” He added shredded cheese by the handful to a wide skillet, the tomato and macaroni already simmering inside.
The cheese melted, and he added more as he stirred.
He didn’t appear to measure anything, and I had no idea if it was because he’d memorized it from doing it so many times or if he did it all by look and taste.
He finished with pepper that came from a grinder, then served some into two bowls, placing one in front of me. Looking at it didn’t make my stomach rumble, though it might have any other time.
Somehow seeing it only reminded me of the home I didn’t have, the one that had been taken away as a kid.
“You know, my mom used to make this dish that used cold noodles and ice. I hated it, didn’t understand why she couldn’t just cook normal food.
You know kids, we want to fit in, to eat what everyone else eats, but my mom would still cook that meal.
Even the last time she did it, a couple weeks before The Pitt, I told her it was gross. Now I can’t ever have it again…”
“We could find a recipe?” Kaidan suggested.
“No. I’ve been to restaurants, tried, but it’s never the same. She always said it was something she learned from her mom, from her grandmother, that they did something special. She tried to teach me, but I didn’t want to learn. Now I can’t ever learn, though. It’s gone, all of it.”
I thought about the way she had moved in that kitchen, the tiny one in our tiny apartment, seeming so happy there. It had annoyed me, because we didn’t have the money of some other people, and I was always comparing everything. It had never seemed like enough.
Maybe that was why I’d lost it all, because I hadn’t seen the value in any of it.
And it’s happening again.
“I’m not hungry,” I said. “I think I should turn in.”
Kaidan pressed his lips into a thin line, clearly unhappy with the choice. He sighed but nodded. “Sure. You can go get into bed. I’m going to stay up for a while.”
“Thanks,” I said, the gratitude empty. It shouldn’t have been—he’d done so much for me over the years—but I just couldn’t muster anything.
I rinsed off in his shower, got into the pajamas I’d brought, then crawled into the bed. I kept my phone clutched in my hand, but I knew it didn’t matter. They weren’t going to call me, not today. Something about the way they’d walked away told me that much.
So I closed my eyes and tried to make sense of any of it. In the end, the part that kept repeating in my head was the one truth I was absolutely sure of.
Shear had held the energy of another guide, which meant that someone else had guided him behind my back.
Emergencies happened, sure, times where it was necessary.
I knew that I might have to guide other espers if it came right down to it, but the way the men had reacted, the fact they hadn’t told me about it, it all hung on me.
It couldn’t have been an emergency, and that sort of guiding wasn’t just a casual brush against each other, it wasn’t an area of effect guiding.
Which meant Shear—and the others, given how they had behaved—had been guided by someone else and they’d hidden it. Then, they’d all left on some bullshit lie of a mission.
I didn’t know what it all added up to exactly, but I knew it wasn’t anything good.
It felt like those cold noodles all over again.