Page 131 of Scarlet Wars
“Yes,” she continued, reading my mind like a clairvoyant witch. “I know where he went when he vanished for three days. I might’ve looked the other way, but it doesn’t mean I’m ignorant.”
My pulse spiked, but I forced my shoulders back, schooling my face into something neutral. “Clearly not,” I managed, though my throat felt tight.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. Two soldiers, equally stubborn, both pretending we didn’t see the cracks in the other.
“Fine,” I relented, exhaling through my nose. “I’ll have Colt as my second.”
Rachel gave a short nod, satisfaction flickering in her expression before she turned and headed for the door.
The latch clicked softly behind her, leaving me standing in the quiet.
Caden by my side.
Just awesome.
Because clearly what this mission needed was a solid dose of unresolved emotional tension and mutual avoidance.
I pressed my palms over my face, groaning into them. “Let’s pair the human disaster with the emotional tundra. What could possibly go wrong?”
But before I started drafting my eulogy, I decided to focus on the upside: Maybe if the trap was efficient enough, it would take us both out before the awkward silence did.
THIRTY-ONE
CADEN
It was well after midnight when we moved out to Gananoque.
I was geared up in full human kit: the machine gun hung across my chest, the strap biting into my shoulder every time the truck hit a bump. Cold metal, steady presence. A reminder of exactly what kind of night we were heading into.
Everyone else was armed to the teeth, standard for a bunch of magicians heading into a country without magic. Handguns, 9mm sidearms, steel-balanced knives strapped to thighs and forearms. Enough firepower to take down a small squad if things went sideways.
Everyone except Emma.
She’d refused a gun all together, muttering she wasn’t adding “shot myself in the foot” to tonight’s list of mistakes.
But knives?
She’d fastened more blades to herself than I’d ever seen on anyone. Hell, than I’d seen on an entire unit. Three at her belt, one up her sleeve, another strapped to her boot, and a curved one tucked behind her back like she planned to carve her way through the entire eastern shore if needed. Looked like a walking armory. A reckless, terrifyingly competent armory.
The town was dead quiet.
A thin fog rolled off the St. Lawrence, wrapping the docks and rocky shoreline in pale ribbons that caught the moonlight.
Somewhere in the distance, a buoy clanged, the only sound cutting through the stillness.
After Rachel dropped the wonderful news about me being Emma’s second, the latter and I pulled together a retrieval team of six Offensives, bringing us to a total of eight. How we managed it without speaking to each other would remain one of the great unsolved miracles of our time.
Not that I was particularly dying to fix that silence.
After jumping out of the magically silenced trucks, we huddled near the shoreline, the cold wind biting through layers of gear. I spread the map across the flat surface of a slick, sea-stained rock, the paper rippling under the breeze.
Emma crouched beside me, so close her scent godsdamnassaultedme.
Fresh cut pear and lilies.
It used to be a trigger, the kind that made my chest tighten for all the wrong reasons. Now? After her coming all over my fingers, after holding her while she unraveled, it wastorture.
Clean, devastating torture.
