TOREN
To teach is to learn. To learn is to excel. To excel is to thrive. To thrive is to live.
I repeat the phrase over and over again as I drive back to the house at breakneck speed, my worry over Carnage's safety choking me. I feel sick to my stomach, knowing he was hurt because he was helping me.
The texts are still burning on my screen.
Halo — Get back here now! It was a set up. They knew we were coming.
Halo — They took Carn down, he's hurt… bad.
Bad. The word is lodged in my chest like a piece of shrapnel I can't dig out. I've heard Carnage has taken hits that would put any other man in the ground and kept walking. Whatever Halo means by bad, it is worse than anything I want to imagine.
Harper is in the passenger seat. She hasn't said a word since I yanked her out of the rink and pushed her toward the car. She knows better than to talk to me right now. She can see my hands on the wheel, knuckles white, jaw set, the version of me thatCarnage has spent weeks building, the one who doesn't crumble, who calculates instead of collapses and she is smart enough to let that version breathe.
I already told Meekan he would have to wait but he didn’t reply.
I already told Harper we're not meeting him tonight.
Some wars have to pause so you can count your casualties.
The operation was a set up. My father slipped through. The supply run was compromised before they ever got close, and the only reason anyone in that house knew the details of the plan, the routes, the timing, the number of men we had, was because it lived inside the walls of our house.
Inside our conversations.
I already know what I am going to find.
The lights are on when I pull up to the house. Two of the Kings' vehicles are parked crookedly at the front like they were abandoned in a hurry. I'm out of the car before Harper has her door open.
The front door is unlocked.
That alone tells me everything ran wrong.
The moment I step inside I hear it, low voices from the back bedroom, the particular kind of quiet that people use when someone is hurt and they don't want them to hear how bad it actually is. I follow the sound with my heart hammering against my ribs and push the door open.
Carnage is on the bed.
He's shirtless. There's a field dressing packed tight against his left side, the white gauze already blooming red at the edges. Omen is crouched beside him pressing it flat, his jaw locked. Vatican stands against the far wall with his arms crossed and his eyes on the door. He clocks me the second I appear. Pope is on the phone, voice low and clipped, and I catch the word medic before he turns away.
Halo looks up from his laptop. His face tells me nothing and everything at once.
Carnage's pale blue eyes find mine before anyone else can speak.
“You're late.” His voice is rough but it's him. Still him. The knot in my chest loosens by exactly one degree.
“You got shot.” I cross to the bed and stand over him, just looking at him for a second because I need to. I need to see him breathing and cursing at me before I can think straight. “Who?”
“Doesn't matter.”
“It matters to me.”
He shifts and Omen's hand presses harder. Carn exhales through his teeth. “Ambush on the fourth truck. They were waiting. Had men posted on both sides of the road, we didn't see them until it was too late.” His eyes find mine again. “They knew exactly where we'd be, Tor.”
“I know.” The two words feel like swallowing glass.
He hears something in my voice. He always does. His gaze sharpens even through the grey tinge crawling under his skin. “What do you know?”
I look at Halo.
