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“I’m not,” I lie quickly, wanting to be strong for him when he’s given so much. “I’m fine.”
He comes close enough that the light from the moon, shining in through my window, finally lets me make out his face. He smiles. “I know you too fucking well to believe that, butterfly. Don’t ever lie to me.”
Despite everything, the pain he must be in and the weight he’s carrying on his own shoulders already, he says it tenderly, and it breaks through the tissue-thin barrier I put up between us, tearing down a wall that I never wanted to be there in the first place.
“I’m worried about Dante,” I admit quietly.
He nods, taking a seat on the edge of my mattress and tipping my face up with his good hand. “He’s smart, butterfly.”
“I know,” I whisper, a deep, soul-twisting agitation inside me despite the truth of what Maddoc said.
He stares into my eyes like he can see it there. “Dante is one of the strongest men I know,” he finally says. “Physicallyandmentally. He’s capable of just about anything, and he was raised as an assassin by his father, so he’s deadly as fuck too.”
“I know,” I repeat, twisting my nightshirt in my hands. “I don’t know why I’m being such a fucking…”
I make a vague, frustrated gesture, not even having words for what I’m feeling.
I believe in Dante. I know he’s capable of pulling this off, but I also know that some shit will always be out of our hands, and I’ve had a whole lifetime of learning how to roll with the fallout of an unfair world that doesn’t care about the things that matter most to me.
But the silence from him, not fucking knowing, all the worst-case scenarios that fill my head…
“I know he can handle Austin,” I whisper, willing myself to believe it.
“He can,” Maddoc says. “And you may ‘know’ that, but you don’tknow. You haven’t seen him in action the way I have, not outside of taking that fucker down in the kitchen today. You’ve seen him be sweet with you. Playful. But you haven’t seen him deadly and ruthless, and believe me—trust me—that’s part of who he is too.”
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly as some of the worry twisting my stomach into knots starts to slowly unwind.
“Do you know how he first came here?” Maddoc asks, twining our hands together and raising them up. He kisses my knuckles, his face serious as he watches mine for my response.
“To the Reapers?”
He nods.
“Yes,” I say a little cautiously, not entirely sure how Maddoc feels about the fact that Dante was able to fool him so thoroughly, even though he chose to join him instead of betray him in the end. “He told me about the Crimson Crows.”
Maddoc smiles, and I realize that that’s not true. I do know how he feels. I see it in his face right now, and I’ve seen it every single day since I arrived, in the bond of brotherhood the two of them share.
“Then believe me when I tell you that he’s good at this kind of thing,” he says, squeezing my hand. “I don’t trust easily, and I’m a damn good judge of character. I’d like to think that that’s why I let Dante get so close, because I saw his true character under the bullshit he was selling when he first arrived, but the truth is, it wasn’t that. Not at first.”
“Why did you decide to trust him when he first showed up?”
Maddoc shakes his head ruefully. “I don’t know if ‘decide’ is really the right word. You gotta understand, he didn’t just come here playing a role to infiltrate us. He…” Maddoc stares into the distance for a minute, then huffs out a breath. “Fuck, butterfly. I’m not even sure how to explain it, and I was right there living it. But it’s like he can completely put himself aside. His true self, I mean. He doesn’t just play a role, he fucking becomes it. And he reads people so damn well that whatever he becomes is exactly what they most want to see.”
I take that in and sit with it for a minute, and yeah, I can see it. Dante’s always been able to read me like a book, and for all that he and I share a connection—something special and unique—I know that the way he gets me isn’t only because of that. It’s also part of his own special skillset.
“How did he ever earn your trust for real?”
Maddoc grins, sudden and fierce, a bright flash of white teeth in the moonlight. “By telling me he’d been lying. Once he stopped doing that, he wasn’t giving me exactly what I wanted to see every day anymore. He was being authentic, and he started pissing me off now and then instead of just telling me what I wanted to hear.” Maddoc’s smile fades. Not to sadness, but to a sober intensity that spears me right to my soul. “We’ve shared shit with each other, butterfly. The kinds of experiences that break most people, and the kinds of confessions you kill to keep secret. He became my family, my brother, and he’s not just one of the only people in the world I’ll ever say that about, he’s also the only one who ever could have fooled me like he did in the first place.”
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “So, you’re saying I don’t need to worry about him while he’s busy infiltrating West Point.”
Maddoc pulls me close, kissing me hard before resting his forehead on mine. “I’m saying he was made for this kind of shit. If you didn’t worry, you wouldn’t love him the way you do, but if something goes wrong, butterfly, it’s not gonna be because he fucked up or McKenna figured out the ruse. I trust Dante to get this done. I trust him to come back to us.”
I love Maddoc for giving me something to hold on to that isn’t just empty platitudes. For not reassuring me that nothing could possibly go wrong when we both know that will never be true.
I’m not stupid. Sometimes, bad luck just happens to strike at the worst possible time and life fucks you over even when you did everything right. But Maddoc is right about this; I know it. If anyone can pull it off, it’s Dante.
“Thank you,” I whisper, my voice breaking as the tight band of worry that’s been locked around my chest, making it impossible to breathe, finally loosens a little.
