“Why would I be mad at you?” he asks genuinely. “He’s the reason you were able to find me in the sewers. I owe the man something for that.” He shrugs. “Besides, if you trust him, then I trust him.”
That complete certainty in my decision makes my heartrate kick up. Not because of some feeling of love, though I do care for Locke now that we’ve survived this place so long together. It’s more of a panic, an understanding of the weight that puts on me.
If he trusts me, it means I can lose that trust.
And I’m still a Wastrel at my core. We both are.
Trust is a finicky thing. I haven’t trusted anyone in a long time outside of Dox. We could rely on each other, and no one else. It’s strange to realize I do trust Locke, though not as deeply as I do Dox. But . . . it could grow.
Or it could go up in flames.
I smile at Locke and we both lean against the wall to wait. An hour later, the happy-go-lucky attitude Locke had sported in the beginning is gone. Havoc hasn’t appeared. There’s been no evidence of him coming at all, and so we both stand here on the street looking like idiots.
“How much longer are we gonna wait for the asshole?” Locke asks, clearly upset. “I say we move on without him at this point.”
“He’s a Tier Three Warden,” I point out, knowing he would be a huge asset in the long run.
“And I’m a Tier Two Bone Breaker,” Locke fires back. “Who cares? We can do it without him. We’ve been just fine until now.”
I sigh and look around one last time. There’s still no sign of him. “I guess he really isn’t coming.”
“Pity,” Svetlana says as she leaps down from the wall where she’d been exploring and hunting for bugs. “I was looking forward to seeing you rile him up more.”
Locke raises his brow at me. “You riled him up?”
“Oh, he was very hard in his trousers,” Svetlana nods. I roll my eyes at her words, my skin flushing. “I thought they were going to fuck in the middle of the street. What a sight that would have been, dah?”
Locke looks from the praying mantis back to me, something shifting in his expression. At first, I don’t know what it is, but the moment he opens his mouth, I realize that this could get ugly. “So what?” he says, crossing his arms. “You collecting us then?”
My stomach flips. “It’s not like that,” I grunt. “I’m not collecting anything.”
He stares at me. “Am I . . .” He stops and swallows. “I know you like to hoard things in your inventory. You’re not just . . . I’m not a . . .”
I cup his jaw and look him deep in the eyes. “I’m not collecting men for my stash, Locke,” I tell him. “I genuinely like you. Unfortunately, I just . . . may like Havoc . . . a little. It’s stupid, I know. But . . .”
His expression wipes clean. “Oh. Well . . . why didn’t you just say that?”
I blink. “What?”
“I don’t mind you being with other people. I just don’t want to be some . . . collectible.” He looks away. “I don’t want to be a toy.”
My hands pull at his jaw gently until he looks me in the eyes again. “You’re not a toy to me, Locke,” I reassure him, knowing exactly where this stems from.
If I could kill Mother Remainder, I would.
At least I’d been able to kill the Rat Queen.
“You’re a person,” I continue. “And we’re a team.”
He lets out a deep sigh. “Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
He nods. “Let’s go. If Havoc isn’t coming, we need to make it to the next zone and keep trying to level up. Otherwise, we won’t make it until your friend shows up.”
I look around again, as if Havoc will magically appear. When I still don’t see him, I nod. “Okay. We don’t need him anyway.”
We start walking down the street, weaving between the people occupying the sidewalk. While it’s not as busy as the nighttime, there are still crowds thick enough to make travelling slow. We round the corner, pointing southeast toward the next zone. I stumble to a stop, my eyes finding him immediately in the crowd.
