Page 183 of Property of Carnage

“Garage. Where else.”

Scar’s mouth twitches, the closest thing to a smile five hundred years usually allows him. “Go get him. Church starts in ten.”

I push off the doorframe and head down the hall, past the kitchen where Ivy is humming something low and green-scented over a pot that smells like it could raise the dead, past Ash sprawled across the common room sofa with her boots up on the arm and fire dancing lazily along her knuckles like she’s bored enough to set something on fire so she can watch it burn. The whole place hums with a kind of noise I used to think would drive me out of my skin. Now the silence back at my old apartment feels like the thing that would kill me.

The garage door is propped open, cold morning air blowing in off the lot, and Carnage’s voice reaches me before I see him, giving someone shit about something. I can hear the grin in every fucking word.

“… and I’m just saying, if Heaven wanted you looking like a fucking crow, they should’ve committed to the whole thing. Given you a beak. Little claw feet.”

“I will remove your tongue and mail it to Raze as a resignation letter.” Sentinel doesn’t even glance up from the bike he’s supposedly helping fix, his voice carrying that same dry, ancient patience it always has, except now it comes wrapped around wings the color of a bruise gone all the way to black, feathers that used to catch gold now swallowing the garage light instead of throwing it back. He still stands like a soldier. Still carries himself like something built for a war he no longer officially fights. But there’s an edge folded into him now, something that wasn’t there when his wings were white, a restlessness underneath the composure like he’s still learning the shape of what he’s become.

Carnage straightens from where he’s been leaning over the engine, wiping his hands on a rag that’s seen better decades, and turns his head toward Sentinel with the kind of delighted menace that means he’s about to make everything worse on purpose. “Nah, see, that’s the thing… a raven’s got dignity. You just look like you lost a bet with a house fire.”

“I lost considerably more than that, and you know it!”

“Details.”

Sentinel finally looks up, and even fallen, even stripped of every gold thread that used to run through him, there’s something in his face that could still make a lesser man reconsider his life choices. “I have watched you take a blade to the ribs and call it a Tuesday. I have listened to you snore through an active demonic incursion. I fell from Grace itself, and somehow you remain the single most exhausting creature I have ever had the misfortune of loving.”

Carnage goes still for exactly one second, something soft and unguarded flickering behind his eyes before he crushes it under a smirk built for exactly this purpose. “Aw… say it again, angel boy. Slower this time. I wanna savor it.”

“Absolutely-fucking-not.”

“C’mon, for the class.”

Sentinel throws the wrench at his head. Carnage catches it without looking, laughing loud enough that it bounces off the garage walls and rattles something loose in my chest every single time, the same way it did the very first night he stopped being a stranger and started being mine.

“Church,” I call from the doorway, and both their heads snap toward me at once, twin looks of transparent relief crossing their faces as if I’ve just saved them from having to admit they enjoy this.

“Right on time, Siren,” Carnage says, tossing the rag aside and crossing the garage toward me. I feel him before he even touches me, warmth spreading across my skin as he gets closer, my whole body already tuned into his. He drops a kiss against my temple, unhurried, like there isn’t a war room full of people waiting on us, like the only clock that matters is the one keeping time between his chest and mine.

Sentinel falls into step behind him, black wings folding tight against his back. “You know getting your voice back didn’t mean you had to use it every-fucking-second.”

Carnage keeps walking. “Miss the peace and quiet, bird-brain?”

“Desperately.”

“Could rip my voice out again if it bothers you that much.”