“Don’t be a dick, Crook,” Wizard sighed, sliding his arm across my shoulder like I needed shielding from the older Knight.
“Medon’t be a dick?” Crook laughed harshly, his scowling, well-lined face as familiar to me as the cadence of my own breathing. “Dreamer’s dead, the Hunters are growing at a fucking alarming rate, and Jessia’s clearly traumatised to shit by what those cunts did, when she should have beensafewith us. But sure, I’m the dick.”
My shoulders burned, prickled, stung where Wizard’s arm rested. Static rushed in my ears, Crook’s words repeating. I shrugged out from Wizard’s hold, my hands shaking. Cold, empty numbness spread through my chest. He might have saidmy name. They might both have, but I didn’t turn back to see them as I fled.
I couldn’t feel my fingertips, couldn’t feel my feet even as I took step after step. I had no real destination, walking blindly along corridors, not seeing the rooms I passed or the people within them.
Wind slapped my face, dragged tears from my eyes I hadn’t noticed, and I startled to find myself in the middle of the garden. Cold bit into my arms and I shuddered, that sensation breaking through the numbness.
“Angel?”
Instead of jumping, my shoulders dropped and a small sound broke free, like I’d subconsciously known he was here.
Devil stood from the wooden planter that ran along the clubhouse wall, brushing dirt from his hands on his jeans, his blonde hair loose around his shoulders today.
“You said I could come to you if things got… bad,” I rasped, knotting my fingers as he came closer, concern settling into the wrinkles around his eyes. His nearness should have made me tense, should have brought that numbness and fear back, but it was the opposite. Relief spilled like air through my chest and I sighed.
“What can I do?” he asked, hovering a few steps in front of me, scanning my face with concern.
I needed to scour the image of Dreamer’s slit throat from my head so I could pretend he was okay. I needed to blank out the memories of the basement so I could go back to normal. “I—” I blinked at him. “There’s dirt on your nose.”
“Does it ruin my dashing good looks?”
“You have dashing good looks? I hadn’t noticed,” I said before I could even think through a response. The words came easily, effortlessly.
“Ouch.” He clutched his chest. “You wound me, Jessia. Wanna plant some radishes?”
The whiplash of those sentences made me pause for a moment, but… “Yeah,” I said. I did want to plant radishes. I had nothing better to do, and this wasn’t going to make me flinch like the bar or strain my injuries like the lesson.
“And you can talk to me about what made you run out here,” he suggested, trudging back to the planter.
“No, thank you.”
“The radishes will be sad if you don’t.”
“The radishes?” I asked sceptically, perching on the lip of the planter and looking at what he’d done so far. “I doubt they’re interested in hearing my worries.”
“On the contrary,” Devil said, dragging a fork through clumps of soil to make it fluffy. “They’re very interested, because when they know what’s wrong, they can help fix your problems.”
I looked at him, my heart heavy. “You can’t fix this, Devil.”
“Wanna bet?” he asked with a gleam of determination.
I shook my head, watching him create a divot in the soil to place a seed, replicating it when he handed me a seed.
“Let me help, angel.”
“Why do you call me that?” I muttered, filling the hole with soil and staring at the speck of dirt on my hands. “I’m not an angel. Far from it.”
“Even when I didn’t know what you’d been through before you came here, it was obvious you’d faced hell. You were afraid, and hurt, and recovering from something traumatic. People don’t just turn up at the gates and ask to live here unless they’re outrunning their nightmares.”
He accepted the fork back and swapped it for a trowel, creating spaces for new seeds, his eyes on the planter but his attention on me. I couldn’t have said how I knew he was utterlyfocused on me, but it was like a veil of warmth, like a ray of sunlight. I flexed my fingers, beginning to feel them again.
“I’ve seen every kind of reaction and coping mechanism. Hell, I’ve used some of them myself. Humour’s my go-to. I don’t even realise I’m doing it. Some people get violent. Others get drunk. Most get quiet and distant. But you, angel? It made you kind. You took all that darkness in your past and turned it into empathy.”
He glanced at me, an ocean of emotion in his eyes. “There are a lot of ways to be strong. Hitting the gym day after day to build muscles. Learning self defence. Riding out with us to put down abusers in a raid. I think people forget how much strength and courage it takes to be kind when you’ve seen the worst humanity has to offer. Your strength might be understated and quiet, but I’ve always been in awe of it, Jessia. In awe of you. So like it or not, I’m going to keep calling you angel. Because you are one.”
His voice was thick, rough. So much feeling. I didn’t know what to make of it. What to make of him noticing so much, knowing me so deeply. Had his eyes been on me this whole time, without my knowing?
