Page 13 of Whispers of the Dead

Instead, I force a light tone. “You’ve got a real knack for pissing people off, huh?”

Her smirk is faint. “It’s a gift.” She winces when I brush my fingers over the worst of it.

I raise an eyebrow. “Does it hurt too bad?”

She pulls her arm back before I can ask more questions. “I’ve had worse.”

That’s not the answer I was hoping for. In fact, that answer makes things so much worse.

I watch her carefully, noticing the way she shifts just a little too carefully, and the slight wince she tries to hide. She wasn’t wincing like that before, but the dreg didn’t touch her anywhere else. Which means golden girl is hiding something.

“Okay, what else are you hiding? I saw you clutch your side just now.”

Zoey slides away from me and presses her back against the stone wall. More distance. More barriers. “It’s nothing,” she brushes off.”

“Don’t make me sic Damon on you.”

She lets out a huff of a laugh. “An old injury is all.”

“Old injury?” My eyes narrow. “What kind of old injury?”

As if summoned, Damon’s voice cuts through the air like a blade before Zoey a respond. “Tell us what happened, Zoey.”

Her fingers twitch against her ribs for a moment. I thinkshe’s going to dodge the question against. She doesn’t owe us anything, after all. Doesn’t mean we’re going to let it go, even if we have to annoy her to death.

Then she sighs and slumps her shoulders in defeat. I move along the bars so I’m sitting in front of her again, and grin at her surrender.

“Fine. I was stabbed, okay? A while back. I guess when that dreg shoved me, it re-aggravated it. I didn’t let it heal as well as I should have. There was no time to, considering the circumstances.”

My grin vanishes. “Stabbed?” I repeat, the word sticking in my throat. “When?”

Out of the corner of my eyes, I catch movement. Cole. The shadows shift as his green eyes move closer, and they lock onto her with an intensity that tells me he’s listening. Interesting. He’s hardly shown any interest in anything since we’ve been locked up in here. Damon is probably doing the same right now, though less brooding and more murderous. I don’t think I’m going to be able to have a proper conversation with golden girl here for a while. Regardless, all three of us are now hanging onto her every word.

Zoey leans her head back against the wall, oblivious to them. She shifts so her brushed arm is resting along the bars beside me, close enough to touch. She gazes up at the ceiling as if she can find answers in the cracks and peeling paint. “When my colony fell, one of the dregs got me before he died. It’s fine. A friend took care of me.”

I let out a low curse. “Jesus, Zoey.”

She says it like it’s nothing. Like it’s only another day in this fucked up world.

I rest my arm against the bars and keep my voice light, even as something sharp twists in my chest. “And you’re still running around like that?”

“You say that like I have a choice in the matter,” she replies, her voice tight. “I didn’t then, and I don’t now.”

“What happened to your colony?” Damon asks. I’m glad he’s keeping his murderous tendencies at bay.

Zoey hesitates for a long moment, then her voice trembles when she speaks before becoming more controlled, too controlled. Like she’s forcing it to stay even. “A dreg named Nathan.”

My stomach plummets at that name.

She keeps going, oblivious to the way my entire body locks up. “He came out of nowhere, charming and charismatic. We let him into our colony, gave him shelter and food. He used my best friend and nearly destroyed her.” Her fingers curl against her knee. “My people let him in. They believed his lies. Then he turned on us. Twice. The first time, he took everything. The second time?” Her voice shakes. “He burned the colony to the ground. Not everyone made it out.”

The weight of her words settles like ashes around us. My pulse pounds against my skull. Nathan. A dreg. The name hits me like a punch to the gut. I know that name. I know that man. And…fuck.

Memories are dredged up that I’ve tried so hard to bury. Things I’ve been trying to atone for. Ghosts coming back to haunt me. It was her.

This isn’t just some random nightmare from her past. It’s ours, too.

Zoey’s voice wavers when she speaks again. “He…he killed so many people. My friends. My neighbors. He killed them all, and he did it with laughter.”

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