Chapter 16 #2
"Seris. She's still with him. My father. Twenty years old and she doesn't—" My throat closes up. Fuck. "She was supposed to be safe. I was going to get us out. Both of us. I had a plan."
I didn't have a plan. I had a fantasy and a lot of desperate hope, which is basically the same thing as nothing.
"She's smart," I say. "Smarter than me. She'll figure something out."
I stop, because if I keep talking I'm going to do something embarrassing, and I've already hit my quota of pathetic vulnerability for the day.
Koshin doesn't speak. The silence stretches, filled with crowd noise and clattering dishes, and he just sits there. Doesn't interrupt. Doesn't offer comfort or solutions or any of the useless things people say when they don't know what else to do.
Great. Now he's seen me crack. In public. Over lunch. Very dignified.
"She sounds strong," he says finally. Quiet. "You both are."
That's it. Not a promise, not a platitude. Just acknowledgment.
I don't know what to do with that. I don't know what to do with someone who listens without trying to fix it, without making it about themselves, without—
"If you tell anyone I got weepy over bread and whatever this is—" I gesture at the dish in front of me. "I'll deny it. Aggressively."
One corner of his mouth lifts. "Noted."
I shove more food in my mouth so I don't have to keep talking.
The silence that follows isn't awkward. That's the strange part.
Koshin picks up something from one of the platters—some kind of meat wrapped in leaves—and eats without rushing, without filling the space with empty words.
The marketplace noise washes over us, vendors calling out prices and cart wheels grinding against stone, and I let myself breathe.
This is... fine. This is almost nice, actually. Sitting here in the sun with a full stomach and no one hitting me.
The bar for "nice" in my life is so low it's underground.
I reach for another piece of bread. Koshin's knee presses against mine, warm and solid, and I don't pull away. I'm tired of pulling away. I'm tired of flinching and bracing and waiting for the next blow. Maybe I can just sit here for five minutes and eat bread and not think about—
A shadow falls across the table.
I turn my head.
The barrel of a gun fills my vision. Black metal, two inches from my face, close enough that I can see the rifling inside. Close enough that I can smell the oil.
Behind it: a man. Big. Armored. Coin insignia on his shoulder.
His finger is on the trigger.
My brain stops. Everything stops. There's no time to scream, no time to move, no time to do anything except stare at the dark circle of the barrel and understand, with perfect clarity, that I'm about to die in a marketplace over bread and whatever the fuck that meat was—
Koshin moves.
Gone. Across the table, on the enforcer, hands finding throat and chest, and he's laughing.
The sound cuts through the marketplace noise, high and delighted.
The gun never fires. Koshin's hands are already on him, already tearing, and there's blood on the stones now, blood on his fingers, the enforcer dropping before he can make a sound.
Koshin stands over the body with his head thrown back, terrible joy spilling out of him.
My thighs clench.
I actually look down to my thighs.
What.the.actual.fuck?
No.
I'm—no. This is not happening. I am not getting turned on by—
The enforcer's legs twitch. His blood spreads across the stones. And I'm wet.
Alrighty then, new kink unlocked, I guess.
My survival instincts have officially packed their bags. Left a note on the counter. Gone to live with someone who makes better choices.
Don't contact us.
Koshin turns. The laughter fades but the grin stays, bloodied at the edges. His eyes find mine.
He knows.
He has to. The flush crawling up my neck, the way I'm breathing too fast, the way I can't stop looking at his hands.
His grin widens. He takes a step toward me. Just one. Blood drips from his fingers onto the stones and I track the movement and my whole body tightens because apparently I'm broken in ways I didn't even know about until right now.
This is so fucked up.
I'm so fucked up.
And I can't even pretend otherwise because my body is making its opinions very clear and its opinions are more of that, please.
Koshin crosses to me, stepping around the body without looking at it. He offers his hand.
I take it.
His fingers close around mine. Blood-warm. Blood-wet.
I hold on tighter.
We leave.
The crowd parts around us—no one wants to be near the god who kills laughing, near the woman walking beside him with her breath coming too fast and her thighs pressed together and her head full of thoughts she's never going to say out loud.
To hell with it.
Let them watch.
Let them whisper.
I don't care anymore.
Eh, that's a lie. I care. I just can't make myself let go of his hand.
"You're not afraid," he says.
"Nope."
"You should be."
Probably.
“Yup. But strangely, I know you're not going to hurt me"
"No." Immediate. Certain. "Never."
"I'm not running," I say.
Koshin looks at me. That focused attention, that weight of his gaze that makes me feel visible in ways I usually run from.
"No," he agrees. "You're not."
We keep walking through the winding streets of Arkenhold, past market stalls.
His hand stays wrapped around mine, blood drying on his knuckles, and I should be thinking about the dead man.
About what it means that a Coin enforcer died in Discord's territory.
About consequences and retaliation and all the ways this could go wrong.
There's no coming back from this.