Page 62 of Beautiful Prey

Mrs. Varga is already waiting outside our building before we reach the steps. She must have seen us coming from her window. She wraps Onyx in a hug first, scolding him for getting thinner, then turns the same inspection on me. Her silver hair has escaped its braid again, flour dust still clinging to the front of her apron.

“There you two are.” Her voice breaks around the smile. “I was beginning to think Tempest had decided to keep you.”

“It tried,” Onyx says.

She clicks her tongue and presses a small ring of keys into my hand. “I watered your plants.” Another key. “Collected your mail.” Another. “And the heating behaved itself this week, for once.” She pats my cheek as if I’m still fifteen. “Go inside. Both of you. I’ll bring soup over later.”

I thank her automatically, but she waves it away before I can finish. Last winter, I carried her groceries for three months after she slipped on the ice. The winter before that, she sat with Onyx through one of his bad nights while I worked overtime underground.

That’s how our street works. Nobody keeps score. They simply remember.

Before I can answer, Widow Okafor from the floor below slips beneath Onyx’s free arm as if she’s been doing it his whole life.

“Enough.” She gives me a look. “You’ve carried him from Tempest. You can share him for another twenty feet.”

Together we ease him down the corridor toward our apartment as doors open ahead of us one by one.

Mr. Ferro is crouched beside our front window, a screwdriver tucked behind one ear. “Latch kept slipping,” he mutters before I can ask. “Fixed it.”

Nobody asks how the Hunt went or whether I won. They look at Onyx, and that’s enough.

Widow Okafor nudges our apartment door open with her hip. Everything inside is exactly as we left it. The little kitchen. Two chairs that don’t quite match. Maps stacked neatly across the table. Damp soil in the pots on the windowsill.

“Go.” She nods towards the bedroom. “Get him settled.”

Between the three of us, we guide Onyx onto the bed. He exhales the moment his head touches the pillow, eyes already drifting closed while Widow Okafor straightens his blanket, tucks the edge in, and doesn't look up.

Mrs. Varga follows us in, and I catch the exact moment the warmth leaves her face. She sets the soup on the stove and wipes her hands on her apron twice, a habit she only has when she’s deciding how to say something.

“Jade.” She keeps her voice low. “Mr. Vasco’s men came by.”

The knot that loosened when we landed tightens again. “When?”

“The day you left. Then again, three days ago.” Her hands keep moving over her apron. “It was Renn the second time. He stood in the stairwell long enough that Ferro went and sat on his own step with his door open, just so the man knew someone was watching.”

My jaw tightens.

“He said debt doesn’t pause for a funeral, a Hunt, or a sick brother. Said Mr. Vasco expects to see you the morning you get back.” She finally looks at me, and real fear is in her eyes now. “He smiled when he said it, Jade. That family always smiles.”

I keep my face still, and it doesn’t matter.

From the bed, Onyx murmurs, “How far behind are we?”

I turn. His eyes are open. Of course they are.

“Go to sleep, brother.”

“How far behind, Jade?” His voice is thin, but it doesn’t waver. “The medicine on Tempest. The tank they topped off. The refill that’s nine days out, at a price that keeps moving.” He pushes himself up on one elbow. “You think I don’t do the sums, too? I’ve been doing them in a hospital bed for a year while you did them down a mine.”

“Onyx.”

“If I weren’t like this, you’d never have entered the Hunt. You wouldn’t owe that man a single coin. You’d never have needed the overtime, never have needed...” His voice cracks as fever-bright eyes fill despite the hard blink he gives them. His lips tremble. “You went to a death planet to buy me time. And we came home with nothing, and a bill, and a man smiling in our stairwell. And it’s mine, JaJa. All of it’s mine. You just carry it.”

Mrs. Varga has gone still at the stove.

Crossing to the bed, I sit beside him and gently cradle his face in both hands. I’ve held him like this since we were small, long before either of us knew what we’d cost each other.

“Listen to me. There’s no version of my life where I finish that Hunt without you at the end of it. When everything went wrong out there, every road still led back to you.” I wipe his cheek with my thumb and, for his sake, pretend I don’t feel it shaking. “You’re not the weight, Onyx. You’re the reason I can lift it. That’s not the same thing. It’s never once been the same thing.”