Reth.
The sound I make isn’t quite a word. It isn’t quite anything.
His face… it’s terrifying.
White paint is cracked and flaking, smeared into uneven patches. The black circles around his eyes have bled into thewhite, turning them into deep, hollow voids, and I have no idea what it is I’m looking at.
Blood has dried at his temple, rusty streaks tracking down his ear. And his eyes? Their wild, bloodshot pupils blown wide like he’s still seeing whatever hell he crawled out of.
“Fuck me,” Ian mutters, and I try to say something but can’t find the words.
Reth’s hand hanging limp at his side is covered in blood. Knuckles split open to the bone, skin peeled back in ragged flaps over the joints, like he hit something—or someone—too many times and too hard.
“Sh…she planned it,” Reth mumbles incoherently. “Aaaall of it. It was him. But I…I fucking took his crow, man. Yes, I did. The whoooole fucking thing. Clean off.”
“Christ.” Ian takes Reth’s other side, sliding under his arm with a grunt. The transfer is fast, practiced, the way people move when they’ve done versions of this before and hated every one.
Reth’s weight shifts between them, boots dragging.
“What the fuck happened, Andrei?” Ian’s voice is low, tight, like he’s asking for coordinates instead of an explanation.
Andrei doesn’t slow down. “He’s been like this since Prague,” he says, steering them through the doorway. His accent is Eastern European—flat, clipped, stripped of anything that isn’t necessary. “Wouldn’t let us touch him. Barely let me get him on the plane.”
Reth’s head drops forward, chin to chest, then jerks up again in a spasm that looks more reflex than intent. “She knew what theydid. What aaaaall of them did. She liked to watch, too. Did you know that, Ian?”
“It’s okay. I got you, man.” Ian tries to calm him as they move from the foyer and past the kitchen.
“They gave her money…for me. Said I was pretty.” He lets out a maniacal laugh that penetrates my spine. “Until I made myself…unpretty.”
Made himself? What the hell is he talking about? The scars on his arms?
“Real unpretty,” he mumbles, and there’s a faraway look in his eyes as his gaze sweeps the room in slow, dragging increments—first the floor, then the wall, then the couch, then?—
Me.
Something moves across his face. Recognition, maybe. Blue eyes lock on mine and hold, pupils blown so large the irises are just a thin ring of navy.
“She—” His voice is wrong. Too dozy, too slow, dragging like it’s moving through water. “She can’t see…me.”
Reth’s arm comes up, the busted hand, fingers reaching for something at his collar. His buff. He’s trying to pull it up over his face, but his fingers won’t cooperate, and I watch him fight with the fabric with a specific helpless fury that makes my throat close.
“Stop.” Ian’s voice is firm and quiet. “Leave it. It doesn’t matter.”
“It fucking matters,” he blurts, words slurring. “I’m a freak and she’s…she’s beautiful. Me?” He manages to pull the fabric up to his nose. “I’m violence.” His eyes find mine. “She’s…porcelain.”
Ian swears under his breath, voice cracking. “Get him to the couch—now.”
They half-carry, half-drag him forward. Reth’s head lolls once, then snaps back up as if the motion alone is enough to keep him conscious, his eyes remaining on me like I’m the only thing tethering him to whatever’s left of himself.
My stomach lurches, and my knees lock. I want to move—forward, backward, anywhere—but my feet are nailed to the floor.
The sight of him like this hits me in the throat, in the chest, in the place where breath should come easy but doesn’t. It’s not pity. It’s worse. It’s fear…fear that he’s not okay.
They lower him onto the couch, and he collapses more than sits, head tipping back against the cushion, letting out a sound that isn’t quite a groan. His chest rises and falls in shallow, uneven bursts, and again I try to say something, but I can’t even get air into my lungs.
Ian drops to one knee in front of him, fingers prying his one eye open. “How much did you take, huh?” He looks at Andrei. “How much did he take?”
“I don’t know, man. He sobered up on the plane—mostly. Kept staring out the window like the clouds were gonna bite him. We landed, and he got in the car, tearing out of there like the devil’s riding shotgun.”
