Page 49 of Wrong Squad, Right Mess

If she had just had a fucking conversation with us, we might have resolved this quickly. We could have made a plan together.

I checked the bag, repacking anything we’d removed, then hauled it over my shoulder.

“What now?” Ingram asked, even though I’d bet he knew exactly what was next.

“Now we go find our guide and show her why running from us is a very bad idea.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Yun

“No guards this time?” I asked as I walked beside Corsa.

I didn’t want to have some big conversation, but the silence got to me. This tension grew inside me the more we didn’t speak. Each sound from the dungeon, the screeches of monsters, the swaying of the branches, all of it dragged on me until I couldn’t not say something.

Or maybe some part of me thought that there could still be some understanding with Corsa. Seeing him after ten years made me think, maybe there was a chance that he had recovered.

“You only had those when I couldn’t be there. Now that I’m here, they’re hardly needed.”

“I didn’t think anyone could control monsters like that.”

“Normally they can’t, but I’ve always done things differently. Maybe it’s my time here, the bond I have with this place, but controlling these beasts takes very little effort.” To anyone who didn’t know him, that might have seemed like an innocuous little statement. I knew better, though, heard the pride, the ego.

“Will they recover?” I recalled Spot, having no idea why I gave a damn.

Perhaps I just liked collecting random, morally gray things around me.

Corsa laughed, the sound causing goosebumps to rise all over my skin, the sound clawing its way out of my nightmares. “What do I care? When they become useless, I break the connection. You know, you really are amusing. I think I may have forgotten that over the years apart, the memories fading.”

I stumbled, but he didn’t bother to help, not as the men always did. I caught myself, grateful to not end up flat on my face.

Still, the walk took more out of me than I’d ever admit. We arrived after another thirty minutes or so, telling me we hadn’t rested that far from where we’d been headed. He kept the pace brisk, and my legs were burning, sweat covering my forehead, but I didn’t complain.

It wasn’t as though he’d give a damn if I did, and who cared if this walk ended me? I wasn’t headed toward anything good.

“What happened to that corrupted?” I asked to take my mind off the waves of power that radiated from the heart, a pull that grew stronger the closer we got. I had a pretty good idea, but I wasn’t sure.

“Dead, I assume.”

“You assume?”

He shrugged. “Well, last I saw she was clawing her own face off because I planted the idea that spiders had nested inside her skin. If she isn’t dead yet, she certainly will be soon.”

My stomach rolled at the idea of that. Mentalists were truly horrific in so many ways. They could twist the fabric of the universe—or at least make a person believe they did.

It made me pause, an idea inside of me that I hadn’t really thought about before.

“Why didn’t you do something like that to me?”

“Why would I want you skinless?”

I refused to look at him as we neared the heart, but I couldn’t stop myself from pushing for an answer. “You clearly could have rewritten my memories, could have forced me to accept you, to even believe I loved you. Why didn’t you ever do that?”

His steps didn’t change at all, as though the question were a normal part of any conversation. Usually people would react more strongly against such a horrible suggestion, but Corsa? He hardly blinked in response.

Even still, he answered. “We wouldn’t have bonded correctly then.”

I didn’t believe it. Something about his tone struck me as off, as strange, as though he had more to say that he refused to utter.