"It usually would." Vale should let go. He should step back, put distance between them, process what's happening with the rational detachment the situation demands. But August is looking at him with something Vale can't quite name, something raw and startled and barely held together, and Vale cannot make himself pull away. "I don't understand it either."
August sways despite Vale's hold, exhaustion winning the war against relief. "I used too much. I can't— I need to sit down."
Vale lowers them both to the platform floor, carefully, keeping his hands on August's arms. The tattoos are visible again, intricate dark patterns emerging from beneath the retreating corruption. Color is returning to August's face, the faintest hint of warmth where there had been nothing but deathly white.
"We need answers," Vale says. "About the rift opening early. About Voss knowing we'd be here. About what comes next."
"My notes." August's voice is faint, his eyes struggling to stay open. "In the bag. All my research, maps, the Cabal pattern, ley line confluences, everything. And I have more at a safe house nearby."
Vale nods. August can barely sit upright, let alone walk. And if Vale lets go of him, the healing stops. The corruption will start advancing again.
The decision makes itself.
Vale leaves him to grab August's bag, slings it over his shoulder, then retrieves his sword and sheathes it.
Then he bends and slides one arm beneath August's legs, the other behind his back. August makes a startled sound, surprise rather than protest, and Vale adjusts his hold to keep as much skin contact as possible. The necromancer is lighterthan he should be, all sharp angles and not enough weight, and something about that makes Vale's jaw tighten in a way that has nothing to do with the effort of carrying him.
"What are you doing?" August asks, but there's no fight in it.
"You can't walk and we need to get somewhere secure. Direct me."
"How do I know you're not taking me to the Order?"
Vale looks down at the man in his arms. The delicate features. The black veins still fading under his touch. The grey eyes watching him with caution that can't quite hide the fragile thing growing beneath it.
"You were right," Vale says. "About justice and law not being the same thing. I've been a Templar long enough to know the difference. Even if it took me too long to act on it."
August's expression shifts, something complicated moving behind his eyes, and he looks away. When he speaks, his voice is quieter. "My apartment is compromised. But there's a place, above an apothecary on Eve Lane, three blocks north once we're out of the tunnels. The owner doesn't ask questions."
They leave out of a different path than they entered and emerge into the night air of the Old City. Vale pauses to orient himself. The streets are alive with their usual nocturnal rhythms, and a man carrying an obviously injured person while wearing a sword on his back is going to attract attention. The kind of attention that leads to questions, and rumors, and eventually reaches ears that Vale would prefer it didn't.
Vale finds that he doesn't care. Let them stare. Let them talk. He has a necromancer in his arms who might be the key to stopping Maren Voss, and he'll be damned if he lets anything interfere with that.
August directs him quietly through the streets: left here, right at the corner, through the alley behind the herbalist. Vale follows, acutely aware of every point of contact betweenthem, of the corruption continuing to recede the longer he holds on. Something is happening between them that defies everything Vale knows about holy magic and death magic and the fundamental opposition between the two. Something that shouldn't be possible and is happening anyway, stubbornly and irrefutably, the way most impossible things seem to happen in Vale's experience.
Three centuries have taught him that impossible things happen more often than doctrine admits. And right now, with August growing steadier in his arms with every block, his breathing evening out, his grip on Vale's coat slowly relaxing from desperate to something almost trusting, Vale is not inclined to question it.
They can figure out the why later. Right now he has a conspiracy to unravel, a rogue Templar to stop, and a necromancer to keep alive.
In that order.
Though as August's fingers uncurl against his chest and those grey eyes meet his one more time, exhausted and grateful and holding something Vale isn't ready to name, he has to admit that the priorities might not be as neatly ranked as he'd like.
Chapter 6
August has been carried exactly twice in his life before tonight.
The first time, he was seven. He'd broken his ankle falling out of a tree, and his mother had scooped him up and rushed him to the hospital before he'd fully registered the pain. The second time, he was fourteen and had burned through too much magic trying to help a dozen spirits at once. He'd staggered home and collapsed in the entryway, and his father had carried him to bed and begged him to stop.
Both times, it had been by someone he trusted. Someone who loved him without question.
This is almost exactly the opposite of that, and yet his body doesn't seem to know the difference.
Vale carries him through the Old City as though August weighs nothing, arms steady, stride sure, his body warm againstAugust's side in a way that makes August's treacherous nervous system want to curl closer. But Vale is essentially a stranger, someone August has known for a matter of hours and fought beside out of necessity rather than trust. They are natural enemies. Twenty-four hours ago, this man was chasing him through these same streets with a sword and a clear intention to bring him in.
Now August doesn't know what to think. And everywhere they touch, Vale's arm beneath his legs, his hand against August's back, August's own hand resting over Vale's heart, the corruption recedes. The pain fades.
Last night in the graveyard, Vale's holy power had made August's skin prickle with warning, his magic recoiling instinctively. Now that same power is pouring into him, warm and impossibly gentle, and it is healing him.
