Page 79 of The Girl Who Should Be Dead

Stepping forward, Gurlien brushes his shoulders againstAmbra’s, tilting his body towards her, and Ambra tears her eyes away from the destruction she just wrought to meet his gaze.

“Let’s go,” he says, voice dipping low.

“Gurlien Banks?” Bianchi asks incredulously, as if that’s the confusing part of all of this. “Wait, is that you? What are you doing involved?”

Gurlien opens his mouth to respond, but Ambra grabs him by his shoulder, teleporting away.

21

Gurlien carefully sets down the scroll protectors on the oversized bed, his face sharp.

If they didn’t have to stay in a 45-meter radius of each other, Ambra would teleport herself to somewhere far away. Somewhere in nature, where she can sit alone for as long as she needs, and doesn’t have to see the look on his face.

“That was an interesting shield,” Gurlien says finally, and she squints at him. “That trap had a subroutine that tears through human shields. Thank you.”

Ambra hadn’t even noticed.

Gurlien pops off the top to one of the scroll protectors, pulling out the giant roll of whisper thin onion paper.

“Good call on the maps,” he says, and her skin prickles, like he’s building to something. He unrolls it, spreading it across the wooden floor, and it’s far more detailed than the version on his phone. Water lines, electricity, magical conduits, all of it. “So all that was horrifying.”

There it is.

She sits on the bed, watching him smooth the paper down, his actions neat, economical.

Like he’s used to doing this. Like the time in the compound, when she barely knew him, was definitely not the first time he handled maps like this.

“I am horrifying,” Ambra replies back, and her voice still hurts from even the memory of all the screaming. “There is no part of me that isn’t an abomination. I shouldn’t exist.”

“Okay, edgy,” Gurlien says, his normal sarcasm creeping in. “I meant how she expertly triggered you into a rage and then had the temerity to cry about how scary you were.” He sits up, so he’s staring at her. “I’ve known her for years. I’ve seen her cry hundreds of times. It’s never been genuine.”

It’s not what she expected.

“You’re not angry?” Ambra asks.

That seems to throw him. “I can recognize manipulation when I see it. Spend enough years among people like that, you have to.”

“I meant at me,” she says, and a bit of frustration filters back into her tone. “I’m the one who lost control.”

“Ambra,” he starts, sharp, and she straightens, her spine drawing up, “in the last month and a half I have seen a Necromancer bring back someone from the dead who had a bleeding hole stabbed through his chest. I’ve seen a Half Demon disappear before my eyes and almost kill his girlfriend on pure instinct. I saw the same Necromancer turn a combat mage into dust without knowing what she was doing.”

“That was terrifying,” Ambra murmurs in agreement.

“I have broken into a protected compound that I used to be loyal to, I saw an entire hallway of experiments that could never live outside of stasis. I saw a captive pre-teen held in what amounts to a torture chamber, and she had been therelong before I got kicked out, so that happened while I was there.” He thumps a book down on a corner of the map so it doesn’t roll up, then scowls in frustration at it. “You not quite having a grasp on regulating traumatic emotions when deliberately provoked does not even register on the things that get me angry.”

He stares at her, hard, like he could impact more meaning with it, and her mouth goes dry.

“Did I wish that you weren’t provoked like that? Yeah, it was terrifying, you literally damaged the foundation of a fucking house. Do I hold that against you? No!” He scowls. “Do you need to do a bunch of work so you don’t get manipulated like that? Absolutely. Do I think that’s something you do in, what, a week and a half since you’ve been out of stasis? Not at all. It took me years—years!—to recognize when someone was manipulating me like that, and that was with me dealing with it every day, all day.”

Ambra doesn’t know much about human development, but she does know that the College generally takes children with a grip on magic at a very young age, molding them and raising them to be what it wants them to be.

And the idea of Gurlien like that, a scared kid, underneath the brunt of all of the expectations and emotions and trainings, is just…sad.

“Did they kick you out because you were too kind?” Ambra murmurs, pulling the plush blanket off the bed and wrapping it around herself, sitting on the floor next to the maps as well.

“God no,” Gurlien mutters, then he rakes his hand through his hair, completely messing up the neat precision. “Can you heal yourself so you don’t bleed on the maps?”

“All of these are superficial,” she informs him, beforepoking at one of the cuts on her arm, prodding the skin together, feeding a bit of energy into it.

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