Page 55 of Wrong Squad, Right Mess

“I don’t think so, at least not badly. She isn’t bound to him like a normal guide and esper would be. There is a bond, but the break shouldn’t harm her beyond a quick pain.”

The idea that this asshole had any bond to Yun made me even more certain that he needed to die. Not that there had been another choice for a long while.

“Obviously a surprise attack is the most likely path,” Carter said, voice low. “I can keep his focus, along with Shear. Ingram, sneak up on him from behind. No fuckups, no mistakes, we play this clean and simple. The point is to get rid of him. I know we’d all like to take our time with him, but given the power he seems to have…”

Even I nodded because I got it.

Corsa was an extremely powerful corrupted who would prove himself a problem for even the entire squad of us. We might still have won in a fair fight, but I had no desire to put Yun in danger by doing things that way.

So long as he was dead, I’d be able to ignore the disappointment that I hadn’t gotten to take him apart, piece by piece, like I really wanted. I’d let go of the desire to make him suffer and pay for all he’d done, ensuring he endured every last injury that he’d inflicted on Yun.

“Fair enough,” I said. “But he’s not there. Looks like he took off maybe half an hour ago?”

“Looking for us?” Kenyon asked. “Maybe he realized we’d still come after her?”

“I don’t think so,” Shear answered. “If he were searching for us, I’d have felt more mental probes, even if we are hidden. I don’t think he believes we’d come after her. I think he feels he already won.”

“So why wouldn’t he be there with her? Where the fuck else is there to go in a dungeon?” I muttered.

“Maybe he wanted more supplies? He could be raising smaller squads, or jumping individual espers. Once The Pitt closes, he’s screwed for ten years, stuck here.” Carter said.

But that didn’t sit right. I thought about the house I’d seen, the materials. None of it made sense to me. Leaving her alone did—he didn’t sense us nearby and likely didn’t think we’d ever show. Plus he had beasts keeping an eye on her.

That didn’t tell me where he went.

“Any sign?” I asked Shear.

“I can’t sense him. If he sends out a wave around the area, I feel that, but I can’t work out where he is. He’s far too powerful for that.”

I didn’t care one bit for Shear saying that. Shear was hands down the most powerful mentalist I’d ever heard of, let alone met. The idea that this fucker made Shear look like a weakling wasn’t setting this shit up that well.

Not that it mattered. We were going to do this no matter what.

We had to.

“So we wait for him to return, get set up, then try to take him down fast,” Carter said, nodding as though agreeing with his own plan.

“What if he doesn’t come back soon?” Kenyon asked. “We’re already running out of time. We can’t just wait forever. What if he doesn’t come back until it’s too late?”

Carter pressed his lips together, then spoke quickly. “Getting back to the portal at full speed will take roughly fifteen minutes, assuming Ingram carries Yun. With the portal closing, we shouldn’t have to worry about monsters, since they’re more disoriented then so less likely to attack. So if we hit thirty minutes before the close, we’ll move, regardless of if Corsa is back or not.”

“That’s cutting it close,” I said, thinking about not only the trip back but also having to deal with the heart.

“Maybe, but the last thing we want is to rush in and have Corsa be the one surprising us. If we move too fast, we risk him sneaking up on us, and we already know we can’t take him head-to-head.”

I shifted in my spot, digging my boots into the soil beneath me. I hated having to sit here and wait, especially with Yun there.

Worse, she’d looked so damn sad, sitting on that step, hunched forward. Her stance said one thing for sure, the one she believed for no good fucking reason. She truly thought that we weren’t coming.

She thought knocking us out and running away was going to somehow break what we had between us? That that would be the one thing we couldn’t get past?

It annoyed me as much as it charmed me. It was stupid, of course, but I knew it came from her own past, from her own hangups. She truly didn’t think there was any way someone would actually want her for real, that they’d stick with her no matter what. She had no idea just how hopelessly infatuated we were with her, or what we’d risk or do to keep her safe and with us.

She might not understand it right now, but she would soon.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Yun