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The angel glances at me, and the faint smile he’s been wearing fades around the edges. “Carnage.”
The name shouldn’t suit him as well as it does.
“What happened to his voice?”
“That’s his story to tell.”
I look at him. “He can’t exactly tell it without a voice now, can he?”
His jaw tightens, and for the first time since we started walking, some of that easy patience slips. “Yeah.” He looks ahead again. “We’re all pretty fucking aware of that.”
The bite in his voice shuts me up for the few steps it takes us to reach the end of the hall. He opens the last door and stands aside, giving me enough room to enter without having to squeeze past him.
The room is basic. Bed against one wall, dresser, small bathroom, window wide enough to climb through if I need it. My eyes land on the lock fitted to the inside of the door.
“That works,” he says, catching where I’m looking. “Nobody gets in unless you let them.”
Another piece of this place I don’t quite know what to do with.
They let me keep my knife. Nobody searched me. Nobody took my boots or emptied my pockets. Now they’re putting me in a room I can lock from the inside and making damn sure I know it. For people who dragged me through their gates, they’re giving me a hell of a lot of chances to leave.
I turn back to him, but my mind has already gone back to Carnage.
Back to amber eyes locked on mine.
A hand wrapped around a throat that refused to give him the words he wanted.
“Carnage could’ve brought me in here.”
The angel’s eyebrows pull together. “What?”
“He was standing right there, but you’re the one showing me around.” I lean back against the dresser. “Why?”
His attention stays on me for a second longer than it needs to. “He has his reasons.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.” He leans against the doorframe, his arms folding, and for the first time since the gates, I catch the resemblance between him and Carnage down the hall. Not in the face, nothing that obvious, but in the way they both hold a room without needing to move through it. Two halves of something matched, linked by something that stretches even from the opposite ends of a building. I noticed it outside, the way Sentinel’s jaw tightened at the exact second Carnage’s voice broke, like the pain traveled a wire strung invisibly between them. I’m noticing it again now, in the careful way Sentinel keeps his eyes off wherever Carnage actually is, like a man deliberately not checking a wound he knows is still bleeding.
“You two are a matched set,” I say. “Even standing on opposite sides of a wall.”
Sentinel’s mouth curves, wry and unguarded for exactly one second. “That’s the kindest thing anyone’s called us in a while.”
I should leave it alone. Whatever happened to Carnage has fuck all to do with me, and I’ve stayed alive this long by minding my own business when someone else’s shit looks dangerous enough to get me killed.
Except I can’t stop seeing his hand wrapped around his throat. The way he kept trying to force words out, even after the first attempt gave him nothing. The anger that hit when his body refused to give him something that should have belonged to him in the first place.
I know what that feels like.
Maybe not the way he does.
Nobody ever took my voice completely.
But I know what it’s like when someone else decides your voice belongs to them.
And that’s the part I can’t seem to leave the fuck alone.
“What happened to his voice?”
