Page 110 of Savage Torment

“Ben, right?” Minnie says, moving on from the topic more quickly than I would like, but I guess we need to hear what everyone is dealing with.

Ben smiles and nods as he lifts his hand. “Oh, I don’t have anything. I’m just glad to be out of the basement,” he says, and I smile slightly at his admission, despite how horrible I remember it being down there.

I’m glad about that too.

Minnie points her finger at herself. “What about me?” she says, teasing in her voice, and the humor lightens the energy in the room. Her gaze settles on her brother as she shrugs. “I like girls,” she blurts, her shoulder muscles coiling tightly as Lincoln stares at her in confusion.

“Well, duh,” he breathes, eyebrows raised in slight confusion, and Minnie’s jaw falls slack with surprise.

“Just… duh?” she repeats, and he shrugs.

“I mean, I love you, Minnie, but you’re so obvious about things. Your ability to keep a secret or hide how you feel is hilariously poor,” he states with a shrug, and the tension that riddled Minnie’s body moments ago depletes as she smiles from ear to ear.

“Oh, well, nothing else to report then,” she declares, turning her megawatt smile to Bryony, who beams back at her.

“Anything you have to say, Bryony?”

“Apart from liking girls too?” she adds, and I can’t stop the smile from spreading across my face.

“Apart from that,” Minnie murmurs, her cheeks pink, and Bryony’s gaze snaps to me for a moment, her eyebrows pinching for just a second before she turns her attention back to Minnie. “No, nothing.”

All eyes cast my way, the last one to be asked. “Polaris,” she breathes, acutely aware that we’re all here because there are things I need to share.

“Well, I had a visit from The Crow this morning, and I now have the locations for two more coins. He said the remaining coins, but I?—”

“Coins?” Ben says with a frown, and I dig my hand into my pocket, revealing the piece of gold that has saved me more times than I dare to count.

“Coins,” I offer, turning it in his direction, and to my surprise, both Blaze and Tatum do the same thing.

Ben’s eyebrows remain gathered as his jaw falls slack. “Oh, wait, one of these?”

I watch in slow motion as he reaches into his pocket, pulling out a gold coin for everyone to see, and I freeze, my body locked in place with shock.

“What the fuck?” Wylder grunts, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I’m not sharing again. The Vampire is bad enough,” he states, and Ben’s face scrunches up in disgust.

“Ew. No offense,” he quickly recovers, turning to me with a grimace. “She's like my sister,” he states, and I smile at him.

I've never been anyone's sister before. What's strange is that we weren’t very close back at Florentine’s, and I’ve hardly seen him here. However, since he’s the only one traveling with me and didn’t abandon me the moment we learned our true factions, I feel a similar connection to him as well.

“So if you've got the fourth coin, that means these are the final two,” I say, pulling out the piece of paper, and the room grows solemn.

“We need to analyze this,” Blaze murmurs, pointing his thumb at Ben beside him, who offers the coin to the vampire without question. Blaze takes it, slipping it into his pocket as I nod in agreement.

“For sure, but I think it might be easier to analyze everything once we have all of them together.”

Everyone murmurs their agreement as Lincoln clears his throat. “So, we're all going?” he asks, and I nod.

“We're all going.”

Lincoln purses his lips. “Half of us might be dead by the end of the week anyway, so maybe we try and get this done as quickly as possible. Nothing is stopping us from splitting up to cover more ground. Then we can check both locations and get back here to try and figure out what it all means.”

“And what The fucking Crow expects too,” Asher adds, and I nod, nerves bundling in my stomach, but I force the worry aside.

“Let's do this.”

“When The Crowgave you the paper, did he happen to mention that we would have to consider that these coins would still belong to somebody?” Blaze asks, and I hide behind my hands, embarrassed.

“I hadn't really thought of asking that,” I admit, and when I spy him through my spread fingers, he gives me a pointed look. But it’s Wylder who rolls his eyes, grumbling my name under his breath. I hold my hands up in defeat. “It was my first time meeting him. Excuse me for not knowing what I was doing,” I protest, throwing my hands up in surrender, and I’m quickly swept into Wylder’s arms.

---