Page 60
Something from Carnage surges through the connection between us.
Sharp.
Immediate.
My eyes find his again.
“And whatever Malgrave did to him…” I swallow past the sudden tightness in my throat. “It feels too fucking precise to be his first time.”
Scar sets his coffee down and leans back in his chair, his attention shifting from me to Raze. “She’s right. I’ve seen Malgrave do it before.”
Raze turns toward him. “What did he take?”
Scar’s jaw tightens. “Fire. From a phoenix about three hundred years ago.”
That pulls Sentinel forward in his chair. “He stripped a phoenix of her fire?”
“Every fucking spark.” Scar reaches for his coffee again but leaves his hand wrapped around the mug instead of lifting it. “I was there when he did it. Put his hands on her and pulled until there was nothing left inside her that could burn.”
My stomach tightens. “Did she survive?”
Scar looks at me, and the answer is already sitting in his face before he gives it. “Barely.”
“Why?” Raze asks.
Scar shakes his head. “Never found out. By the time anyone started asking the right questions, Malgrave was gone, and she was too fucked up to give us much of anything.”
I glance toward Carnage, who is staring at Scar, one hand curled tight against the table.
“But you remember it,” I say.
“You don’t forget watching someone have a piece of themselves ripped out.” Scar’s gaze follows mine to Carnage. “Especially when you see the same fucking thing happen again three hundred years later.”
Across the table, Ash goes very still, her amber eyes flickering brighter for half a second before she banks them back down. I can’t blame her. Hearing about someone ripping the fire out of another phoenix has to hit somewhere deep.
Scar’s jaw works, and something crosses his face I haven’t seen on him before, not quite doubt, something older and more uneasy than that. “There’s something else. Something that’s bothered me since before some of you were born.” His eyes move to Raze. “In five hundred years, I’ve never once seen Malgrave negotiate on his own authority. Every deal he’s closed, every contract he’s brokered, it always serves someone else.” He shakes his head slowly. “I told myself it was thoroughness. That he never left himself exposed.” His eyes come back to me, and whatever’s sitting behind them isn’t comfortable anymore. “I’m no longer sure that’s what this is.”
The silence that follows feels different now. Heavier, because we’re all starting to realize Malgrave taking Carnage’s voice might have had fuck all to do with punishment.
And there’s something else at play here.
Raze looks at me for a long moment, the kind that measures rather than accuses. “Right… you’re staying here,” he states matter-of-factly.
I could argue.
I came here on the run, and staying means being seen. It means the Conclave that’s hunted me for twelve years will know exactly where to find me.
But I don’t argue.
Across the table, Carnage’s eyes hold mine, steady, and something in that gold-hellfire stare says he already knew I wouldn’t.
Chapter Twelve
CARNAGE
Church convenes in the big room, the long table scarred from decades of knuckles, blades, and one memorable incident with Ruckus and a bottle of holy water nobody talks about anymore.
I drop into my usual seat at the end of the table and rest my forearms against the wood. Everything looks the same as the last time I sat here.
