Our Dark Duet (Monsters of Verity #2)(17)
“Wouldn’t want to scare anyone,” said Kate dryly as she scrolled down, looking for more details.
She passed a brief mention of the explosion on Broad, and then her hand stopped, hovered over the next article, the familiar face staring up at her, blond hair curling into dark blue eyes.
THE VILLAIN OF VERITY
She held her breath, caught by the sudden blow of meeting her father’s unflinching gaze. His voice ground through her head.
Katherine Olivia Harker.
“Kate?” pressed Bea.
She forced herself back to the coffee shop, the table, the Wardens’ waiting stares, and flicked her fingers so the page scrolled back up, the article vanishing.
“We’ve been talking,” said Teo, “and Bea and I, we want to help.”
“You are helping.”
“You know what he means,” said Bea. “We could go with you. Provide backup.”
“Yeah!” said Liam.
“Not you,” said Teo and Bea at the same time.
“Not any of you,” said Kate.
“Look,” said Bea, leaning forward. “When this all started, it was a theory, right? But because of you we know it’s real, and it’s not going away, so maybe—”
Kate lowered her voice. “You don’t know the first thing about hunting monsters.”
“You could teach us,” said Teo.
But the last thing Kate needed was more people to worry about, more blood on her hands. “Send me the location of the crime,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ll check it out tonight.”
The members of the FTF Council stood in the command center, talking over and through one other, their voices tangling in August’s ears.
“Every person we take in is another mouth to feed, another body to clothe, another life to shelter.” Marcon brought his hand down on the table. “My allegiance is to the people we already have. The ones who chose to fight.”
“We’re not forcing any of our troops across that Seam,” said Bennett, a younger member, “but the fact remains that what we’re doing now, it’s not enough.”
“It’s too much,” argued another, Shia. “We’re running out of resources—”
“This isn’t a war, it’s a siege—”
“And if you would agree to attack instead of defend then maybe—”
August stood silently against the wall, his head resting back against the map of the city. He might as well have been a picture; he wasn’t there to speak or even to listen. As far as he could tell, he was there only to be seen, to serve as a warning, a reminder.
There is power in perception, observed Leo.
Not Leo, he corrected himself. Not real. Only a voice. A memory.
Not-Leo tsked.
At the head of the table Henry Flynn said nothing. He looked . . . tired. Shadows permanently stained the hollows under his eyes. He’d always been slim, but recently he’d started edging toward gaunt.
“We tried to take a fridge last night,” said Marcon. Fridge, that was what they called the buildings where Malchai and Fangs were keeping prisoners. Fridge—a place to store meat. “And we lost five soldiers. Five. For what? Northerners who didn’t give a damn about us until they had no choice. And people like Bennett and Paris who think—”
“I may be blind but my ears work fine,” sniped the old woman across the table. The first time he’d met her she’d been dripping cigarette ash into her eggs in a house two blocks north of the Seam, but she looked right at home in her council chair. “And everyone knows my support for those across the Seam. Easy to say what you would have done if you were there, but you can’t fault them for wanting to live.”
The quarrel started up again, the volume rising. August closed his eyes. The noise was . . . messy. The situation was messy. Humanity was messy. For the majority of his short life, he’d thought of people as either good or bad, clean or stained—the separation stark, the lines drawn in black and white—but the last six months had shown him a multitude of grays.
He’d first caught a glimpse of it in Kate Harker, but he’d always thought of her as the exception, not the rule. Now everywhere he looked, he saw the divisions made by fear and loss, hope and regret, saw proud people asking for help, and those who’d already sacrificed determined to refuse it.
The FTF was divided—not only the Council but the troops themselves. Tens of thousands of soldiers, and only a fraction of them willing to cross to the North.
“We need to protect our own.”
“We need to protect everyone.”
“We’re buying time with lives.”
“Have we gained any ground?”
“August. What do you think?”
He blinked, coming back to himself. What did he think? He thought he would rather be reading, rather be fighting, rather be doing anything than standing here listening to men and women talk about human lives as if they were nothing but numbers, odds, watching them reduce flesh and blood to marks on paper, X’s on a map.
He fought the urge to say exactly that, searching instead for other truths.
“Monsters,” he said slowly, “all want the same thing: to feed. They are united by that common goal, while you are all divided by your morals and your pride. What do I think? I think that if you cannot come together, you cannot win.”