Page 151 of Deadfall

“North will understand,” I said firmly.

I repositioned myself so I could reach her better and nudged her chin up. “I see the love he has for you, and it’s more than enough to burn the world down in order to get you back.”

She scoffed softly. “I don’t know if I’m worth that—”

I vehemently shook my head. “Don’t say that. You are.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what you do for the people you love.”

She didn’t look like she believed me, but she studied my face intently like she wanted to.

“Who did the forest show you?” She asked.

I released her, and sat back with a sigh.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to tell me—”

“Her name was Kalena—” Her name felt like a knife to my chest to say out loud. The cuff around my wrist clinked against the metal pipe, as I rearranged myself and leaned back against the wall.

“Kally was my little sister,” I admitted. “She was kidnapped and trafficked while abroad. I–I searched for her—” I cleared my throat and forced the words out. “And, eventually we found her, but I was too late.”

A pained look came over her face. “I’m sorry. Is that why you became Deathwing?”

“Yeah.”

The silence stretched, heavy with the regret of the past.

“I’m sorry about Seven.” She sounded sad, and I turned to look at her, surprised by the heaviness in her words, and even more shocked to see tears in her eyes as she stared hard at the floor. I rubbed my chest, my heart hurt even worse.

I sighed. “Yeah. Seven was—he was—” I couldn’t finish my sentence. My words rasped against my throat until I just gave up. This time, it was her hand that came and rested on top of mine.

“I thought he was funny.”

“Yeah, he always made things seem not as heavy.”

“You should have seen him in the maze,” Emersyn said dryly. “He got caught in one of those hanging traps and he was dangling upside down, still cracking jokes—” She gave me a watery smile that broke my heart. “He told me if I had to shoot him, he’d understand. I didn’t get why he would say something like that, but I do now.”

“That sounds like him,” I paused. “He once fell in a pool during a job.”

“Seriously?”

I couldn’t help it, I grinned at the memory. “Yeah, he got startled by a rogue red balloon that was in the backyard—he was terrified of clowns—and tripped—” I shook my head. “Fell straight into the pool vacuum, which he then thought was a snake—so now this big bad teams guy is fighting his imaginary friends, while the rest of us are trying to make sure he doesn’t get his head blown off.”

Emersyn giggled. “Wow. I bet he never lived that down.”

“Nope. We still get him red balloons for his birthday—” My amusement faded with my words, because we wouldn’t get a chance to do that again. The thought made the grief surge, but now was not the time or the place to fall apart. Emersyn’s hand squeezed mine and I gripped hers back, our only anchor in a storm that threatened to consume us both.

The hours passed. Food was brought by faceless guards. I refused to let Emersyn take a bite until I tried it first to ensure none of it was drugged. Shockingly, none of it was.

I was even afforded bathroom breaks. Which really meant, Emersyn would get the key to my cuffs, and she would release me to use the facilities that were behind a flimsy divider on the other side of the concrete room.

Because we were being treated so well, and because Albatron had told Emersyn he would be returning us home, I didn’t stage any resistance. We seemed to be in silent agreement to wait it out and see what happened. There was also something else Emersyn wasn’t saying—

Sometimes I caught her staring at the door with a deep frown on her face, like she was lost somewhere in the past trying to make sense of something.

I finally couldn’t take it anymore. “What’s wrong?”