Page 36 of A Touch of Gold and Madness

Dash chuckled. “You already know the answer.”

I pressed the dagger harder into his throat and shifted to kick the back of his knee. As I was about to connect, a bruising grip on my neck stopped me. “Fuck.”

I couldn’t counter the unknown attack without letting Dash go. So, I maintained my hold on him with my right arm, but they forced my left arm away from his back.

I threw an elbow at my attacker but missed.

And that’s all the assailant needed to get the upper hand. A sharp pressure drove into the joints connecting my nape and spine before a cloth covered my nose and mouth.

Darkness swarmed my vision. The world around me turned black, and my body felt incorporeal as strong arms caught my fall.

Chapter 15

Griffin

The princess slackened in my arms from the heavy dose of chloroform.

Carefully, I lay her on the wet asphalt before meeting Dash’s earthy brown eyes. “That was fucking stupid of you.”

Dash gaped at me, his incredulous expression morphing his severe look into one that matched his age. “Wha—how?” he stuttered. “I killed her!”

“Yeah, but that was an Endarkened. You’re a human. And as skilled as you are with a gun, she could’ve had powers that would crumple it, and then she’d rip out your vital organs before you even had the chance to pull the trigger. You got lucky.” I bent to pick up the princess’s bag and dagger before pocketing it.

Dash huffed, his petulance evident as he pushed the thick-rimmed glasses higher up the bridge of his nose. “But Ihadit!”

“Because you got lucky,” I snapped. “Had she not gotten all fucking weird…you’d be dead.”

“Well, it’s fine now,” Dash said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Now what?

I paused, and my lips slid into a grin, despite the nausea threatening to seize me. “Since it’s your kill, you have clean-up duty. Leave no evidence behind.”

With deflated shoulders, Dash dropped his head. “That is so unfair, dude.”

I shrugged. “It’s not. We can’t leave a trail of bodies for Forest to track us down.” I turned to face the unconscious princess at my feet. “You want the glory? Then you gotta take on the shit that comes with it.”

“Why didn’t you step in sooner if you saw her going all weird?”

Bending, I scooped my arms beneath the Kinetic princess’s knees and shoulders, rising with her cradled in my grasp. “Because I wanted to see how the princess would respond. But it seemed she was hesitant to pull out her blades due to your presence.” At least she didn’t seem eager to kill innocent humans.

Dash flailed his arms at his side. “You’re just going to leave me to clean this up on my own? Where are you going?”

I sighed. “I gotta find a place to hide out and sleep tonight. Probably in a nearby house. I’ll find you and let you know where once I get her settled in.”

Uncertainty crept into the creases of Dash’s brows. “What about me? Where do I go?” He might be a fearsome human, but he was still only a kid. A kid who had just encountered his first Endarkened and, not long prior to that, had lost a fight to two Kinetics. The possibility of more lurking around was always a chance. Despite his bravado, he was clearly rattled.

“Like I said, I’ll find you when I get in somewhere. Go back to the compound when the sun breaks in the morning. Understood?” I said, shifting Gray in my arms for the trek.

Dash rolled his eyes, but quickly nodded his head in agreement. Wild little sprigs of black hair bounced down over his brow. “Fine.”

I tipped my head down in acknowledgement before striding toward the train tracks behind the supply store, carrying the princess. A line of crumbling homes framed the road. I kept going, not wanting to risk detection by the Kinetics on passing trains.

After my run-in with a garrison of Warriors, I re-suppressed my magic and took Dash to hide far enough away from the Royal Domain to prevent detection, yet close enough to Princess Gray’s line of escape within the city. We had hopped on the train before she did, and once she rolled off near Macon as predicted, we trailed her at a distance, waiting for the least suspicious time for Dash to make his appearance.

Before Dash had awoken, I’d been about two seconds from flaying the skin from my bones in the desperate hope of removing the evil lurking beneath the surface.

Too much death.

The massacre only fueled the heaviest of temptations built from the darkest parts of me to surrender to its call. To become one with the darkness at long last. I had resisted as much as I could while simultaneously toeing the line of self-destruction. Only killing those who sought to further the King’s fucked-up agenda and those who wished to harm the innocent. Those were my boundaries, and I repeated them to myself over and over in a challenge to the wicked voice that sought control.

---