Page 96 of Such a Feral Little Lamb
“Yes,” Mason says, and the word sounds as though it truly pains him. “Yes, if that’s what you wanted. What you want.”
“I don’t.” I turn my gaze back to that broken headstone. My life changed right when Mason’s did. And then, a little later, it changed again. I threw myself into clearing towns, hunting zombies, because it felt like the right thing to do. I swallow hard. It felt like the only way I might ever be close to my mother again, truth be told. But who was I serving? The Citadel has kept even the survivors it sent back out under its thumb. What if we could do something that was actually useful? “But what are we going to do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you plan to clean up this mess you’ve made?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Masonshakeshishead.He takes a step back. He never lets go of my hand.
“Clean up… I don’t want tohelpthem. Why should I—Why should—”
“You helped me. You saved me. Today, even.”
“But I—” Mason looks at me with imploring eyes. “Leave here, you mean? Go out there and—”
“And give those survivors a chance. They don’t have the magic you have. They’re fighting just to live through this. What happens when the Citadel comes for them?”
“They’ll die.”
“Why don’t we stop that, then? You wanted power over life and death, but you already have it, Mason. You’vealwayshad it.”
He stares down at the ground, but I know he’s not looking at grass and earth. His gaze is fixed somewhere beyond all that.
“You… You’ll come with me? We’ll do this together?”
“Yes.” The word comes easily. There’s no world where I exist without him anymore, strange as that might seem. And something else is building in my chest, something separate to Mason and all the still-confusing feelings he alights in me.
Excitement.
The idea of something new. Something tangibly helpful. I sigh and lean slightly left, resting against his shoulder.
“I’ll never leave you,” Mason murmurs. “I promise you that.”
“Mason…”
“If we die, we die together.” His tone is steel. “But I do not plan on that happening anytime soon.”
I huff. I’m leaning more of my weight against him, each blink slower than the last. Mason turns his head and kisses my temple.
“Let’s get you inside. I should heal you.”
“Could’ve started with that,” I mutter, and Mason pulls a face but takes me back into the church. I expect him to sit me on a pew, but he helps me down the stairs and into his room, then kicks the door shut behind us.
I groan when he sits me down on the bed. Everything will hit me again later. I can already feel it. It’s happened before, after a bad job, but there’s a shining edge to this dark cloud, as much as I hate to admit it.
Otto and Autumn and Blake should never have died. But I tried to stop it. I tried to save them. Dane and the Citadel are toblame for all that, not me or Rae or Mason. I’m certain he’s not lying about what happened with his mother, and if the Citadel thought any different, they would have gone after him properly, instead of sacrificing people in their secret war for control.
“Do you want it all?” I ask as Mason kneels next to the bed. He turns his face up to mine, and I swallow when I remember that Dane took him too, that he was probably injured.
“All what? All of you, little lamb? You know the answer to that.” Mason reaches up and eases my jacket off my shoulders.
“No. Control. Like the Citadel has. All of that.”
He snorts. I stare at him, puzzled, but he just takes my jacket entirely off, then leans down to work on my boots.
“I don’t even want thathere,” he says. “That’s Nia’s job, and she’s happy with it.”
