Hester looked at me, his eyes widening before he got out of the seat in a jump.“We’ll get going.”He rushed from the room, his little lackeys following like a line of lemmings, all wanting to get the fuck out of here before they got themselves into trouble.
Carter twisted in his chair to look over at me, then let out a long, drawn-out sigh.“Really?”
“I was bored.”I pulled the shadows back, let them rest inside my skin as they usually did.Sure, I hadn’t just been bored—I’d been pissed, but I didn’t feel like admitting that.
Telling them that would give them a glimpse of something deeper, and I saw no reason to let that happen.I preferred keeping shit close to the chest, not letting anyone get a look at anything that mattered.
Never expose your heart and no one can drive a knife through it.
Good fucking advice, if I did say so myself.
“Are we really going to work with those fuckers?”I asked.
“The Guild says yes.”Carter stared at his phone, his words light as though he paid more attention to whatever was on his screen than me.
“And since when do we do what the Guild wants?”
“We always do what they want—at least enough of the time to stay on their good side.No different from now.We do this, we get our good boy stickers, they stay off our backs for a while.”
“Yun doesn’t want to go.”Shear didn’t look at either of us, staring instead at his hands as though his fingernails had turned super fucking interesting.The weirdo was always like that, always doing something that made me think he really was as crazy as people said.
“Does anyone?It’d be weirder if she was excited.”
Shear shook his head.“Her reaction came when they saidThe Pitt.It is that dungeon that scares her.”
I frowned, hating that he had some insight into her I lacked—that any of the rest of us lacked.
Fucking mentalist.
“According to her record, she was there when The Pitt opened the last time.She lived in that area.”Carter shrugged, acting as though it didn’t matter, but the tightness of his voice betrayed him in a rare show of actual concern.“Her parents died in the attack, and it destroyed her home.She was found six months later, surviving in the ruins.That’ll leave a mark on anyone.”
I rubbed the center of my chest to clear a sudden heaviness there, the one that made it challenging to draw full breaths.“Maybe she should sit this one out, then?”
“Guild will never go for that.We’re just supposed to do mop up, though, so we can set her far enough back that she won’t see anything.Probably put her inside a trailer so she doesn’t even see the portal itself.We’ve done worse—I doubt we’ll need any guiding, and even if we do, we can use one of the Guild healers.”
I pressed my lips together, hating—well, pretty much fucking all of this idea.
I hated that the Guild thought to control us, that they could send us wherever they wanted.I hated that Yun had to be a part of it, that there wasn’t any way to keep her from it.I really fucking hated this tension inside of me, like turning a jack-in-the-box crank, hearing the music go around and around as I winced, ready for it to pop, knowing it would, but never fucking knowing exactly when.
It meant no matter what was going on, what any of us wanted, it seemed we all got to face our demons again.
Lucky fucking us.
Carter lifted his gaze from his phone, then peered over at me, a smile sliding across his lips that spelled nothing good.It was that unhinged look he got, and at times like that, I was damn glad we were on the same side.
“An S-Rank dungeon opened a few miles away.”He turned his phone to show the alert.It was a small one, hardly a block, and only set to stay open for an hour or two.That meant the Guild probably wouldn’t even send a team to address it, figuring it would take care of itself.
“And?”I asked even as I got up, even as I knew what he was saying.
“Well, maybe it’s time to blow off a little steam.”
And despite our differences, I had to admit, at least we could agree on this.
Nothing like a bit of violence to destress a man.
Chapter Ten
Yun
