Page 44 of Darkness I Become
“I guess…I d-didn’t want to bother you,” Asha managed to say.
“Bother me,” Cade repeated tightly, as though the words offended him. “So, rather thanbotherme, you’d rather get yourself killed. Is that it?”
“No,” she said, hurt. “That’s not—I didn’t want to be an inconvenience. I wanted to prove that I was fine on my own.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, as though in pain. “You didn’t trust me. You thought I’d be annoyed, or dismissive, and not help you.”
It’s so fucking stupid when he lays it out like that…but he’s right.Years of being treated as little more than a nuisance had trained her to avoid asking for help at all costs. When she’d looked to him at the slave market and mouthedhelp me,it’d been the first time she’d ever entreated anyone to come to her aid, and it’d been born of sheer desperation. If she’d had any other options at the time, she wouldn’t have done it. She’d have muddled through it on her own, because that was the only way she’d ever done anything.
“Yes,” Asha admitted in a small voice.
A muscle ticked in Cade’s jaw. “And you put yourself, yourlife,at risk,” he said, almost shouting now. Asha gasped as he suddenly grabbed her face in his hands. She recoiled in fear, but he held fast, forcing her to look at him.
“You don’t do that!” he burst out. “You don’teverfucking do that! Nothing is more important than your survival. Nothing! Do you understand me?”
His steely eyes demanded an answer. She swallowed hard. She felt on the verge of tears, but for a very different reason.
“Yes,” Asha said again, trembling. “I’m sorry.”
The façade of Cade’s anger cracked. He made a choked sound in his throat and pressed a hard, desperate kiss against her forehead.
“Don’t be sorry, darling,” he said, his lips still against her skin, his voice suddenly a whisper. “God, don’t be sorry. You did what I taught you. You survived.”
He pulled back, and his hands moved to her upper arms, holding her.
“But you can’t doubt me again,” he said, much gentler now. “If you being one of us is going to work, you have to trust me. We have to be able to rely on each other, work together. For my part, I promise to take you seriously any time you come to me, and to protect you any way I can. Can you do that?”
“I think so,” Asha replied softly, strangely moved by the depth of his concern. “I never had anybody I wanted to trust before. Not really. So, I don’t really know how.”
Cade exhaled slowly. “I understand. But we made a deal—a bargain. And I’ve already failed once to hold up my end.”
Asha made a noise of protest. “You didn’t really fail. I know I was mad at you before, but…you couldn’t have stopped Angel. You did what ultimatelydidprotect me by meeting his stupid deadline, even when he thought it was impossible.”
“Even so,” he replied roughly, “I won’t fail you again, Asha.”
She knew by the intensity in those mysterious grey eyes that he meant it. Something deep inside her calmed. For the first time, she felt like he was truly on her side, like they were a team.
“What do we do now?” she asked, glancing over his shoulder toward the trees.
Cade sighed wearily and released her. “What we have to.”
“This is what happens,” Cade said, his voice booming and dangerous as he looked on the Blackguard soldiers, “when you betray your comrades.”
Golden rays of dawn fell over Garett’s pale, lifeless complexion. He stared straight ahead at nothing, strung up between two tall trees. He dangled precariously, ropes creaking as he hung there. They’d stripped off his shirt, and his waxen skin seemed to glisten in the early morning light.
Asha shivered as Cade unsheathed his knife, and she flinched as he carved a long, deliberate line down the corpse’s bare chest. He finished with a second line that struck through the first, cutting through the flesh like butter and forming the letterT.
Traitor.
“No one who attacks one of their own deserves a soldier’s death,” Cade continued, cold as ice. “He’ll be left for the crows as a reminder to everyone: an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. Is this what you want for yourselves?”
The chorus ofno, sirwas so immediate and sonorous that it was almost comical. Asha watched Cade closely: his tight body language, commanding tone, and unapologetic bloodthirstiness. She realized now, as she hadn’t at the bonfire, that it was mostly an act. He had a dark side, to be sure, but he didn’t relish brutality. He saw it as a necessity, like hunting or daily chores, to keep his troops in line. He understood that the Wasteland was brutal, and that that was all they’d ever known. When he was like this, it was as though he was speaking their language. Violence was a message they all understood.
Is it wrong that I find his bloodthirstiness…kind of hot now?Asha wondered, and then decided she didn’t want an answer. But she had to admit that he cut a striking figure in his black tactical uniform, his eyes so stormy and serious. The tight control he had, the command he took of any given situation…there was something intensely attractive about that. She found herself wondering what it might be like to witness that control suddenly snap.
“Good,” Cade said in response to the soldiers, his eyes flicking briefly to Asha before gesturing ahead. “Let’s move out.”
They set out again on their journey, leaving Garett’s corpse twisting in the wind. Asha shivered as a crow abruptly landed on his head. It had already begun.
