“It’s neither,” I say. “It’s strategic. She is safer knowing certain things than not knowing them.”
“And the part where you were in that alley after five seconds of him touching her?” Azriel asks. “Is that strategic too?”
I look at him.
He looks back. My youngest brother, who knows me better than anyone on this campus and is therefore aware I’m the most dangerous person in the room. He knows I wanted to kill Marcus for simply talking to her.
“I want you to hear me out,” Azriel says, his voice dropping to a quieter and more serious tone. “The Order gave you a leash, Saint. It’s a short one. You are one incident report away from being back in Unit 9, and this time they will not let me trade Valen’s induction to get you out. Do you understand me?”
I hold his gaze. “I understand you.”
“Do you?”
“I understand every word you said.”
Azriel studies me for a long moment. He has the eyes of someone who learned early to read the things people do not say, which is an inconvenient quality in a brother.
“That is not the same thing as saying you will be careful,” he says.
“No,” I agree. “It’s not.”
He exhales, looks at the ceiling, then back at me. “She can’t know it was you.”
“She won’t.”
“Saint —”
“She won’t,” I say again. Quietly. With the weight I put on things I mean completely.
Valen picks up his jacket. “On that cheerful note. Victor is going to know his man was attacked by one of us. He’ll assume it was Order-sanctioned since Marcus was an exposed liability. It buys us approximately one week before he moves to his next angle.” He pauses at the door. “Try not to break anyone else in the meantime. Or at minimum, be less obvious about it.”
He leaves. The door swings open behind him.
Azriel stays a moment longer. He looks at me the way he used to look at me through the acrylic glass in Unit 9, like a man trying to reach something he does not have the right tools for.
“She’s not a mission objective,” he says. “Whatever this is becoming for you, she’s a person. With history. With damage. If you’re going to be in her orbit, Saint, you need to understand that whatever you are to her is going to matter. Whether you mean it to or not. She’s not some nurse you can fuck and discard. And it’s obvious she’s not like the other Prey you’ve already fucked.”
I look out the window. The campus is doing its ordinary morning things. Students crossing the quad. A groundskeeper with a leaf blower. The fountain running.
Somewhere in the building three floors below, she is probably sitting on her bed, turning over the blank space in her memory. Counting her pieces.
“I know,” I say.
After Azriel leaves, I sit in the quiet of my room and look at my hands, the knuckles slightly swollen.
And I think about the way she looked in that alley when she came back to herself. Scared and cold and entirely alone, and still counting. Still refusing to fall apart.
I think about what Azriel said.
Whatever you are to her is going to matter.
I clench my hands into fists.
I don’t know what that is.
Saint
The sessions with Dr. Ward are a condition of my release.
