Two figures. Donna and Tomas.
I laugh, low and cracked. "What's this? The light troops before the cavalry? Are my lovers too heartbroken to face me?"
"Hi, Sage," Donna says softly. Both keep their distance.
"What you're going through… we've been through it too," Tomas offers, voice infuriatingly calm.
"I'm not like you," I spit. "So no, you haven't." Then I grin, leaning back. "But if you want to play, by all means."
Tomas settles against the wall. Donna drags a stool closer, but still out of reach.
"Are you going to rip us apart, too?" Donna asks.
"That's the plan, isn't it?" I smile, even as the pain sears through me. The thirst is a living thing now. Gnawing, clawing. Worse than anything nature ever gave me.
It's fixable. They just won't fix it.
I tilt my head, eyes on Tomas. "Let's start with you. The follower. The soldier. Still wagging your tail for your Colonel, even when he fails you."
He meets my stare without blinking. "That's what loyalty means. Allowing space for someone's mistakes as well as their victories."
I smirk. "Or maybe you're just hollow. Running on inertia because you already died, really fully died, back in Vietnam."
A pause. Then that same infuriating tone: "I died when my family rejected me for what I'd become."
My jaw tightens. He's too steady. It's annoying. Even Asher cracked faster.
"Well," I say, rolling my eyes, "looks like anything interesting about you died, too."
I lean back into the shadows. There's something in the way he talks that sinks deeper than I want it to.
I turn my attention away from him.
Donna's easier prey. I want to make her cry. But for that, I need her alone. So I play the long game. I shift my face into something weary, something that looks like surrender. The exhaustion part's real enough. The rest is theater.
We sit in silence. Minutes stretch. Then I look at Tomas. "Can you do me a favor?"
He nods.
"You're starving me," I say, voice low, strained. "Least you could do is help me through it. I've got some weed stashed in my room. If you don't mind…"
He studies me for a moment, then nods again. "Do you want to step out with me?" he asks Donna.
She shakes her head. "I'll be fine."
Of course she will.
The door shuts behind him.
My mask slips the moment he's gone. A grin unfurls. "So, pretending to be brave, are we?"
"I'm not afraid of you, Sage. Just of what you're doing—to them, to the group, to yourself," she says softly.
"That's still a lot of fear to carry," I murmur, tilting my head, eyes fixed on hers. "You claim you've been through this before, that you can save me. Or that Asher can. But you never told me the story. What kind of darkness is hiding behind the sparkle-queen act, Donna? What did it take to make you this polished?"
Her throat bobs. "It did get dark," she says. "Before it got light again."
"How many?" I ask.
