“Not a chance,” I said.
He tilted his head, his lips spreading into a smile that made me nauseous. It was a look devoid of any warmth, of anything human. Worse, I didn’t mean he wasn’t human. I meant that even as a human, he lacked those basic emotions that allowed us to live together, to care for each other, to form connections. Everything inside me screamed thathewas the true danger in that room.
It took me back to what Shear had said, about being broken too early, about never coming back from whatever hadhappened. I had no doubt thatthisassholehad been at the heart of that.
“Goodbye. And please, don’t contact me again with this, because my mind won’t change.” I turned my back on them, wanting to keep my head held high.
Until his voice, far too confident, chased me as I walked out. “I’ll be seeing you, Yun.”
Chapter Thirteen
Carter
“I might be a combat esper, but I really hate being covered in blood.” I flicked my hands out, a spray of purple monster blood and chunks of flesh leaving like a dog shaking water from its fur. Where they landed, I didn’t know and didn’t much care.
“You’re always complaining,” Kenyon said, but stayed far enough back to avoid the mess.
“You say that because you’re standing back there.” Pettiness filled me, and I reached out, patting him on the cheek, leaving a purple handprint on his skin.
He groaned and wiped it with his forearm, though it left a streak of mess in its wake. Monster blood tended to be thicker, coagulating far faster than human blood. “And they say I’m immature.”
“No, we say you’re dumb.” Ingram appeared out of nowhere, as he often did. We’d cleared the small dungeon, the thing so lowly ranked that they hadn’t bothered to send anyone else. It hadn’t been a challenge, but the monsters inside this one had popped like ticks, spraying shit everywhere when killed.
Which was probably the exact reason they’d sent us, like some punishment for not letting Yun go.
Too bad they didn’t realize just how far we’d go for that girl. What was a little blood and death to espers like us?
Instead of heading to the trailer—I didn’t want Yun seeing us like this—we climbed into the large passenger van driven bysome underling headed for one of the communal shower trailers. They had better plumbing to deal with the mess that happened after a fight like this.
And if we made a mess of the van, well, that seemed like karma.
“Yun good?” I asked Shear.
He closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded. “She’s in the trailer.”
“That’s it? No other details?”
“If she’s getting herself off, I want to know,” Ingram chimed in.
Shear cast him a bored look, then ignored his comment entirely. “I’m trying not to pry deeply into her mind. I can only say that she isn’t any more upset or on edge than usual.”
“Aren’t you being considerate,” I said, unsure why Shear would give a damn about that.
In my experience, he avoided minds only because he didn’t give a damn. If he had reason to dive into someone’s gray matter, he’d do it without hesitation or guilt.
“She doesn’t like it. If we want to keep her around, we have to consider that. Besides…”
“Besides what?” I pressed when he didn’t go on.
“Given her reaction to me, I suspect that the corrupted who forced her to guide him was a mentalist. It explains why she dislikes that connection with me, why she said she’d never let a mentalist into her mind again. I find the idea of her viewing me the same way…distasteful.”
I stared at him, his words so strange to me that I struggled to make sense of them. I’d thought, for a while, that Obsidian had removed every emotion from Shear. Or maybe it was better to say he’d been fucked up since birth, and Obsidian had been the final nail in that coffin. To hear him say these things nowsuggested that wasn’t entirely true, that maybe there was still something that resembled a person inside there.
To think that one little guide would bring that out in him?
It nearly made me chuckle, if I didn’t worry what it could mean. I went back to the test, to what Shear had done, what shouldn’t have been possible even for him. That sort of power could prove devastating if not controlled, and he’d proven himself out of control at that point.
I kept my smile in place, my mind firmly locked to him. I didn’t need him to hear any of the thoughts I had, the concerns, the questions. It was better for him not to know I was watching him, just in case.
