Taste a Thousand Deaths (Marionettes of Myth #3)

Chapter Twelve

It was weird how cold it was outside.

No, that wasn't completely true. It wasn't really cold outside, even in the partial night that only the ever awake city could provide, not for Carmi. He could have pranced around in trunks through the sprinklers, a storm of condensation leaving his lips, and he'd still break out into a sweat, a thing he'd never get used to.

No, it wasn't really cold outside at all.

It was Toivo.

They sat together on the cement bench right outside the hospital doors, just under one of the buzzing lights, and even with space between them, Carmi could feel the waves of cold that wafted off Toivo as if he had just stepped out of a freezer.

And the shadows. The shadows were the scariest part. Carmi sat as still as he possibly could as the night vibrated, churning invisible gears and black steam. Even the average passersby noticed, stifling a shiver and glancing at Toivo, the hulking mass with his elbows to his knees and his face in his hands. Carmi tried smiling at them as they staggered by, hoping to put them off so that they didn't feel inclined to warn the guards that a guy with silver hair was trying to conjure the Dark Lord Satan.

But, after a while, the shadows hadn't dwindled, and Toivo wasn't freaking out any less. Carmi let loose a shaky sigh. "Don't stay mad at Ave, okay?"

A pause, and then Toivo finally pried away his hands to look up at Carmi. The usual bright blue of his eyes looked too many shades darker for Carmi's comfort.

Too close to Solara's.

"I don't want to," Toivo said and his hands curled into fists. "I don't. I just...hate how little I know about her."

"Yeah..." Carmi rubbed his knees through his sweatpants and peered up into the endless quilt of clouds that covered the city, tainted orange by light pollution. "I think she hates how little you know about her, too."

The words got Toivo in the chest and he winced. Carmi continued. "You don't want to be mad at her, and you don't want to blame her for this, but maybe this big ball of anger is just usurping everything in its path, and you can't really differentiate what you're mad at or scared of. So, see Ave as only a small fraction of that anger, okay? The rest is this whole...god fuckery. And Kali."

And Kali.

Everyone else tried not to be mad at her, but Carmi didn't. He was mad, and he couldn't look at her. After she had gone with Yuuhi to the house, after Solara had killed her, Carmi had done so much to shed his old, stale skin and become better. He had changed. He was different. He wanted her to be able to depend on him. And even if there was nothing he could do in the face of Cassius, even if she didn't have even the two seconds it took to leave a note behind that said, 'Hey, going to save Cain, be right back, laugh out loud,' he was still mad.

And now she and Toivo were supposed to be 'like gods'.

It still felt like...Carmi was getting left behind.

It still somehow felt like he was losing his family to things that he was completely powerless to stop.

"You're upset with Kali."

Carmi's eyes jumped down to Toivo. He tried to say he wasn't, but the effort died before words even bloomed in his chest. He looked away again, jaw tense and fingers curled around his knees. The wind tossed his untrimmed blond bangs across his eyes, but he couldn't even bother to push them away. "We're not...supposed to do things alone anymore."