“You’re not guiding yet.”
“Yeah, I am.”
I frowned and looked down to spot the maroon mist swirling from my palms up to hers, the sensation so comfortable that I had nearly missed it.
Guiding had always been a necessity to me—unpleasant at the best of times and painful at worst.I’d resisted it, hating the feeling, putting it off because of that clawing discomfort.
This was different, though.It was so easy that I hadn’t even felt it.Now that I focused, though, now that I paid attention, I could study it.
The corruption slipped out of me so easily that it made me shiver.Normally, that twisted energy clawed on the way out, left gouges inside me, fighting to stay put.This was entirely different, however.It flowed out of me without struggle.
It stunned me into silence as my mind tried to make sense of it, of how this was possible.I’d been guided for years, rare though it might have been, and never once had it ever felt like this.
“What are you?”I asked when I couldn’t come up with anything.
“A guide.”
I shook my head.“I’m serious.Whatareyou?How are you different?”
“Different?”The flow of corruption slowed, her gaze darting side to side, avoiding mine.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her expression said she knewexactlywhat I was talking about.No one got this uncomfortable if they were truly clueless over an accusation—they got evasive when they didn’t want to get caught, when they felt cornered.
Which meant she had something to hide, something to protect.
What was it?
I got off the chair, leaning forward without making contact.The action drew her backward, until she stretched out on the bed, trying to avoid me, leaving her beneath me.It again reminded me of the fantasies I’d had while getting off earlier.
Still, I made no contact.I didn’t touch her, bracing my weight instead against the bed, staring down into her face.
She was pretty, but that didn’t mean much.Other than her skills as an S-Rank guide, she didn’t appear to have anything special about her.Her history showed a pretty normal lower-class upbringing until the age of fifteen, when she got caught up in The Pitt appearance.She’d ended up among the casualties left behind in San Diego, the ones who’d had to scramble and fight to make it in the fucked-up wreckage—in her case, without parents.
She was located six months later, at sixteen, after an apparent attack in the ruins that used to be San Diego.The hospital identified her as a guide and handed her over to the Guild.
After that, she underwent training and moved from squad to squad, earning herself her nickname until she landed with us.
None of that told me anything useful, though.Judging from her reaction to us—and to others before—something dark rested at the center of all that fear and trauma.
What was it?
Was it connected to why her guiding felt so different?
So fucking good…
She didn’t look like some little broken puppy beneath me, though.She didn’t shiver and shake and cry.If she’d done that, maybe it would have snapped me free of this need to find answers.
Instead, she bared her teeth like a wild animal.“Get off me.”
“Then explain what’s different about you.Come on, Blizzard, you’re here with us because we’re your last shot, so why don’t you be honest and just let me in on it?”
“The only thing I’ll let you in on is how I got my name.If you don’t get off me in the next five seconds, you’ll get to experience it firsthand, and trust me, you don’t want that.”The threat rolled off her tongue, a warning there that said she wasn’t kidding.
I could see a bluff a mile out, but this girl wasn’t bluffing.
Did I want to let her try that?Part of me wondered if it wouldn’t be fun.Fuck, if she could scramble my brains like that, maybe I’d just thank her for it.
At least until I spotted a crease there in her cheek.It was subtle, so shallow, I didn’t know if I’d notice it any other time, but right now?From this distance?
