Page 48 of Shadow Weaver
His smile was wry. “This?” He looked down at his leg. “This was a blessing. My only gripe is that they didn’t completely relieve me of duty.”
His words knocked the wind out of my sails. “How can you say that?”
He shrugged. “Not everyone wants power and fame, Justice. Some of us just want to get through the day. Some of us simply want the sentence to be over.”
He didn’t want to be here … “But … I thought you loved being a shadow knight.”
He snorted. “And what gave you that idea?”
“You were a legend.”
“Being good, beinggreatat something doesn’t make it the right thing for you.” He looked back out into the mist. “Being a shadow knight was never my dream. It’s rarely any Hyde’s dream. It’s just what we’re bred for. The gene is strong within us, and the council pays our bloodline well to keep training the next generation of knights. Our path is chosen at birth.” He glanced at my wrists. “At least your cuffs are tangible things. Mine are in my name.”
I took another step toward him. “What would you have done? If you could have chosen?”
His lips curved in a soft smile. “I loved to paint. I would have been an artist. I used to paint in secret.” He held up his hands and flexed his fingers. “Then my father found out and broke every one of my fingers.” He sighed, then shrugged. “He broke them every week for a month until I agreed never to wield a brush again.”
Oh, God. “How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
My hands curled into fists. I wanted to break his father’s arms and legs and watch him rolling around on the ground trying to get away. Bastard.
“Deana nursed me through the pain,” Hyde continued. “She was … is one of my closest friends.”
A pit opened inside me—a chasm that separated us by time, space, and circumstance.
“She seems really nice.” The words left my lips numb. “I should go check on Thomas.” I turned to go, and he moved lightning fast to block my path.
I gasped and looked up at him, my mouth parting at the intensity in his eyes. “I want you to know that what happened between us, the attraction … It was real, and I’m sorry. I should have been stronger. I should never have acted on it.”
My eyes pricked with heat. “Yeah. Shit happens. Don’t sweat it.” I brushed past him, inhaling his scent greedily and then breathing it out again.
He wasn’t mine to covet, and even though it hurt, the thought of Brady took the edge off the pain.
Fourteen
Payne had wrangled a couple of cushy chairs and a table for the lab. He said he’d been meaning to get them anyway, but I knew he was doing this for me. For our pre-weaver class chats. They’d become a thing now, and it was obvious he enjoyed these meetings as much as I did.
Almost two weeks had passed since Harmon and Venerick had been taken, and the so-called explosives expert had been working on marking the tunnels for days. I missed my friend. I missed his gruff voice and his hugs, but dwelling brought rage and impulsive thoughts, so I shut them down and told myself he had to be okay. He had to be alive. Not understanding why the fomorians had taken him made it worse.
Thomas had gone into auto mode, but I heard him crying when his shift ended. Sobbing quietly into his pillow. I’d moved beds to sleep beside him. To hold his hand until he drifted off. Nightbloods didn’t need to sleep often, but we did need to sleep, and he’d gone four days straight without shutting down after Harmon was taken. In the end, I’d crawled into his bed and hugged him until he drifted off.
The impotence was the worst. Not being able to do any fucking thing about it was killing me. Harmon was a hollow space in my heart, one that ached every day. I needed him to be okay. I needed him to be alive.
“So, they start detonation today?” Payne asked.
I nodded. “They found stashes of weapons too.” I picked at my cucumber sandwich, unsurprisingly uninterested in food today. “The theory is that the fomorians developed a way to put the critters to sleep and adapted their burrows to get about beneath the mist.”
“It’s how they got to sector one.”
“Yes.”
We’d discovered I could talk to him about this stuff, and Payne had concluded it must be because he had the shadow gene. The oath didn’t prohibit me from telling him stuff. It felt good to be able to share the shadow cadet world with him. To listen to his advice.
“I worry when you’re out there,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t, you can take care of yourself, but I do.” He poured more coffee into our mugs from his flask. “I guess this is what being a parent feels like. The constant anxiety.” He smiled warmly at me. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
This feeling of comfort and safety was addictive. Being around Payne was addictive, and my brain was slowly coming around to calling him Dad, but only in my head. I wasn’t ready to say it out loud. Not yet.
