Page 10 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘I’ll try to explain more later. Just saying his name—’

‘I said it’s fine,’ he bites out, frustrated.

Kade breaks the connection and gets off the bed. His mind seeks to reject everything, compartmentalise it. Put it away, lock it up, forget.

Focus on the now, the necessary.

‘I’m gonna hit the training room.’ Kade pauses, looks back. ‘That hurts you too, doesn’t it? When I train.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘I’m no stranger to pain,’ Riley says so softly Kade barely catches it.

‘I’ve been hurting you non-stop for seven years, haven’t I?’

Riley looks away. ‘I’ve been hurting you too.’

He means lying. He means hiding things.

Kade shakes his head, trying to dislodge the roiling betrayal souring his guts, the hurt that Riley knew so much for so long.

‘You could have written it down. You could have tried.’

‘You always forget, and I didn’t want to keep hurting you.’

‘I only have your word about that, don’t I?’

‘Yeah, you do.’

‘I have to trust you on all of this.’

‘You can trust me, Kade. I swear.’

Kade walks away so he doesn’t say something he’ll regret.

✴

Nightmares plague what should be restful sleep.

Kade dreams of shadows underwater, of the ocean at night, sea creatures brushing against his ankles. He’s in the ocean, but the ocean is inside the Tower, flooding and filling, and Kade has to run to the sixth floor to get out. He tries to drag everyone up, up, up to the top, but they’re heavy and they slip, and by the time he makes it to Riley’s windowless room, it’s just him because he lost everyone along the way. He locks the door, but the water trickles in through the cracks. It gets in everywhere, and with no way out, Kade has made his own Drowner, drowning slow, drowning alone in a prison of his own making with nothing but the walls to—

‘Kade!’

He flinches sharply, adrenaline jolting his system and waking him fully. His sheets are damp with sweat. His heart is pounding, his mouth bone-dry. Memory forms and clarifies.

The Tower is his home.

Iron Star is his family.

Varrow City is his world.

And this is his life.

Only… is it?

The recitation doesn’t reassure him.