Page 89

Carnage grabs his phone and starts typing, his thumbs moving fast enough that I expect the screen to be shoved in front of me any second, but he stops. He stares at whatever he’s written, then he deletes it. He tries again, gets a few words in and stops a second time.

“What?”

His eyes lift to mine. There’s something different in them now, something fierce enough that my breath catches, and when he looks back at the phone, his thumb hovers over the screen without moving, then he tosses it onto the chair.

“Carnage?” I call, but he’s already heading for the door. “Where are you going?”

His boots pound down the hallway while I stand there with the towel still clenched in one hand, staring after him and wondering what the hell just happened.

Moments later, he comes back with Sentinel.

The angel looks like he got dragged out of somewhere mid-argument, wings tucked tight beneath his cut and one eyebrow already climbing toward his hairline as Carnage hauls him through the door by the sleeve. “Would you fucking…” Sentinel yanks his arm free. “I can walk, asshole.”

Carnage ignores him and plants himself in front of me.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

Carnage starts signing. His hands move fast at first, then slow, each gesture more deliberate than the last. Whatever he’s saying, he needs to get it right.

Sentinel’s attention drops to his hands. The irritation from being dragged in here lasts maybe another three seconds before it starts disappearing. Then he looks at Carnage.

Carnage nods toward me. Say it.

Sentinel seems to understand. His throat works before he turns to me. “He says nobody’s taking your voice.”

I stare at him. It takes me a second to understand what just happened.

Sentinel understood him.

Carnage brought him here to give his hands a voice.

Sentinel glances at Carnage again, and Carnage gives him another hard nod. “Not while he’s breathing.”

Something squeezes painfully behind my ribs.

Carnage could’ have typed that. He could have put those words on a screen and held them in front of me like he’s been doing since we sat down.

But he wanted me to hear them.

Sentinel shifts beside him, apparently realizing the same thing I just did. “Well… shit.” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Wasn’t expecting feelings this early in the day.” I glare at him. “Hey, I’m just saying, that’s the most he’s said since the binding, and the asshole needed my mouth to do it. I expect my heroic contribution to be mentioned at church.”

Carnage flips him off without looking away from me.

“There. That’s more like him.”

Carnage doesn’t even look at him. His eyes stay locked on mine while his thumb moves slowly across my knuckles, and this time, he doesn’t reach for his phone or start signing.

He just holds on to me.

And somehow, I still hear him.

That familiar pull between us grows stronger, warmth spreading through my hand and up my arm as something from him presses into me. It reaches straight through everything Thessaly left rattling around inside my chest, quieting some of it without Carnage saying a fucking thing.

My fingers tighten around his.

There aren’t words, exactly, but I know what he’s asking me anyway.

Stay.