Page 83 of Saints & Sinners

“Hm, well, do you think he’ll stop training you?”

“Who knows?” I shrugged, trying to sound indifferent, but my voice cracked slightly, betraying me. “Hunter does what he wants. Maybe I should do the same.” But I didn’t want to. Ireallydidn’t want to.

Marnie hummed in agreement but as I tightened the knot in my laces and stood, there was an ache in my chest that I wasn’t sure if I was ready to find out what it was.

Marnie tilted her head, her lips curving into a knowing hum. She didn’t press further, but her silence was heavy, as though she could see right through me.

I exhaled deeply, tightening the knot in my laces as I stood. I hoped to shake off the weight in my chest, but it lingered—almost like an ache, deep and insistent, that I could not rid myself of no matter what.

I had a feeling it would stay with me for the remainder of the day.

When I stepped onto the training grounds, my eyes scanned the space, searching for Hunter’s familiar silhouette. Instead, I saw Silas by the weapons rack, his hair tied into a bun behind him, and Brandon standing beside him, stretching his arms out.

He smiled when he caught sight of me and jogged over. “There she is,” he greeted. “Missed you this morning. Had to deal with Silas’s nudity all alone.”

Alone?

Silas seemed to have heard Brandon from the racks and shouted, “Oh, fuck off!”

Brandon laughed, sneering at him, but all I could concentrate on was Hunter’s absence. And if he hadn’t been at the dorm this morning, then where was he?

“Where’s Hunter?”

Brandon’s face fell. He crossed his arms over his shoulders before shrugging, “I don’t know, we haven’t seen him since this morning. He’s not really spoken to us lately.”

“Right,” I said, all my resolve crumbling before me.

“I can fill in if you want,” Brandon suggested with a shrug, “It’ll be a lot better than having Azrael yell at you for not doing anything.”

Disappointment simmered in my chest, and Brandon could see it himself, but he didn’t dig for more. He understood, and he was always more understanding of the three.

After a minute, I nodded, and he steered me towards the other side of the field where fewer people were.

Brandon was patient for the remainder of training as he walked me through the basic maneuvers I’d first learned with Lucas and Hunter. But it wasn’t the same. His critiques lacked the sharp edge Hunter’s always carried, and no matter how hard I tried to focus, my frustration grew with each swing of my fist.

Azrael watched us from afar, and his eyes narrowed on me, which only made me more tense. After training was over, Idecided I didn’t want to head back to the Healer’s quarters. Instead, I searched for Hunter when I knew I shouldn’t.

He wasn’t in his dorm, and Brandon had mentioned he hadn’t seen him since this morning, so my last resort was to wait until the canteen was shut and sneak into the same place Hunter took me to where the armory entrance was.

It didn’t take long to find him after that. He was there, standing over a table as he sharpened a dagger under the dim light of an overhead lamp. The armory smelled just as it had before. Metal and oil mixed with the sound of the blade against the echoes of the whetstone.

I made my way down the stairs. “Busy?”

Hunter didn’t look up, but his jaw tightened. “What do you want, Grace?”

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

He finally glanced up, but his grey eyes were cool and detached. The look he normally gave anyone he wanted to hide his true self from. “I’m not avoiding you. I’m doing you a favor.”

I scoffed. Some kind of favor that was. “By pretending I don’t exist?”

His silence was infuriating as he went back to sharpen his blade. I gritted my teeth, grabbed a blade from a nearby rack, and held it up.

“You owe me a lesson.”

His lips curved into a humorless smile. “Put it down, Grace.”

Stubbornly, I refused.

---