Page 37 of Before Their After

Piercing blue eyes drilled into Tiago who remained unfazed. Even in his grief, the gravity of seriousness that reflected in his features was unnatural. I watched the two of them, curious about how the situation would play out. If we weren’t allowed to stay, I’d go with him, but as I studied the woman, I found her attitude oddly captivating. There was a defiant spark in her gaze, a casual confidence that was both intriguing and refreshing. It stirred something deep within me, something primal akin to flight or fight.

She couldn’t understand what we were saying and didn’t try to hide it. Her wicked expression was unmasked and genuine. The absence of fear in her struck me. For the first time, someone looked at me without any hint of fear. The rarity of it was disarming.

“Earphones on, all alone. Her senses cut off. We can’t trust this,” Tiago said in a hushed tone.

“Is there a problem, boys?” she asked, twirling the blonde hair underneath her beanie. “Not what you were expecting?”

Tiago retreated, refusing to give her his back. “We’re mistaken. Our apologies. We did not mean to startle you.”

A frown of genuine confusion consumed her round lips. “Why would I be startled?” She closed the gap between us once more. There was a swagger in her gait when she moved. Slowly, she tore her icy gaze from my friend and over to me. It felt like the first time she truly noticed me as her eyes trailed over me. Marking every detail. “There’s only two of you. I’ve taken more with less.”

I gripped Tiago’s arm, holding him in place. Over the last few weeks, we’d done our best to cover our bases, explore our options from the corners of towns we passed through and homes we lingered outside of. This was as safe as the world was going to get. We wouldn’t get another chance at this. “You got a name?”

“Finley,” she winked, biting down on her bottom lip. Her golden hair whipped in the wind with the toss of her head toward the city. “Don’t you forget it, sweetheart.”

“Maybe if you paid closer attention to instructions, your only friend wouldn’t be dead.”

“Finley!” Cael slammed his fist against the long table in the center of Finley’s lab.

“Dad,” she mocked, a shrill cackle passing through her viscous red lips. “What? Is telling the truth such a bad thing? He needs to hear this, and maybe he won’t kill the next one he makes.”

I winced. It still hurt though over a year had passed. The truth more times than not stung. There was no point in finding sadness in her words, for I had no one to blame but myself, and the one person I would give anything to have a chance to kill. Ideserved this pain. Embraced it. Pain was weakness, but it was also bliss.

“I followed your orders to the letter, Finny,” I ground out. She’d been in a mood for over a month and I was growing tired of being on the receiving end of her cruelty.

Finley had two sides to her: hot and cold. She was either vindictive and angry, or calm and collected. Never sweet, but genuine in a way that made it easy to forgive some of her worst moments. I’d been through worse, and she only inflicted what I allowed. It eased the pain of some of the harder memories. The ones that made me scream in the darkness of the night.

She swayed over to me, cupping my chin and planting a soft kiss on my lips. Blonde hair brushed against my cheeks as she pulled back to study me, searching with nothing but ice in her blue eyes. “Yet, you still failed me.”

I stared down the bridge of my nose, meeting the eye of the woman who had somehow become my wife. It had all happened so fast. A whirlwind of a year that had resulted in a role I now occupied with no clue on how I’d gotten here. Actually, I could. By not listening to my friend. To turning a back to Tiago and his warnings not only in life, but in his death as well. Had I listened to him two years ago …no.I couldn’t let myself think that way. There was no guarantee Tiago would have ever made it this far.At least you wouldn’t have been the one to kill him.

“Failed your daddy. Failed your mommy. Evander …” Finley’s hands traced the vials filled with blue and clear fluids along the brick walls.

“That’s enough.” Cael’s words were quiet but firm as he pushed up from his stool. He grimaced slightly at the movement. Just barely distinguishable from the usual jerkiness, but enough for me to notice it, along with the cough he now attempted to cover with the constant clearing of his throat. “What’s done isdone, Finley. Let it rest in the past and focus on how to move us forward.”

“Our people are starving,” Finley reasoned, her tone sliding into one of a spoiled brat who wasn’t getting her way. “Iamfocusing on how to move us forward. Had my disappointment of a husband managed to secure our next resource from Madison, we’d be one step closer to that goal. Instead, he lost them to … What was it this time—Gunfire? Molotov cocktail?—outside St. Paul.Again.After I specifically told him to avoid that barbaric little wasteland. Which by the way, common sense would tell you to find a new route considering you’ve lost three out of the last eight I sent you to fetch.”

It was a paradox really. How I could find such thrill in the sound of her voice, a small, pathetic tendril of comfort, yet hate it all the same. No matter how hard I tried or the crazy shit she put me through, I couldn’t figure out how to stop loving the woman on the other end. That’s what love was though, messy. A choice you had to make daily.Workis what my mother always described it as.

One moment the two of us were casually hooking up in the late nights at her lab and the next she was calling me her husband. The bronze ring on my left hand burned with my irritation. It was hard to find love in a symbol that had only woven us together in a way that confined me, trapped me … suffocatedme. She would help me control my magic, the power that had killed the last sliver of good within me along with my best friend. But not without a cost. Her help was conditional, and the other nine silver rings on my fingers proved that. Our weeks of fun were short-lived. Finley couldn’t keep up her facade for long.

Before the hookups had been the shameless bouts of flirtation she’d sent my way to the disapproval of none other than Tiago. He always had a way of convincing me to take a stepback to evaluate, not try to settle down, especially with theshe-devil.He’d called her that from the first day we’d met her in what felt like forever ago. After the war had been different. I needed another constant in this life that always seemed to be changing.

“Did you, babe?” I rolled my eyes. “Sorry, instructions were unclear over your screeching and?—”

“Dammit.” Cael’s pale fingers wrapped around his cane. He slammed it into the floor then hobbled over to his daughter. She was the opposite of him in every way. “There is one enemy here yet the two of you will tear each other’s throats apart before they have a chance to strike next.”

She brushed him off. Ignoring the pit that place had put us in since war. What they had taken from us. From me. “I’m not worried about that little bitch from Monterey. She’s down there and our people are up here. As long as she remains there, then she is none of our concern. They’re weak. I give it another year before theirsocietyfalls apart. No need to waste our efforts on drawing her out. This life isn’t meant for them, we’re safe.”

“Safety is a state of mind, Finley,” Cael reminded her with utmost patience. “It’s not real. I’ve taught you that.”

“I understand the sentiment but I’m focusing on the facts. Look, I’ve run the numbers, AquaXelium is far beyond my scope of abilities, gifts or not. Even the best know when to take on a mentor, someone more … specialized in their expertise.”

“Mentor.” I huffed a laugh, propping an arm against the counter in the corner to take in another one of her lies.

Cael was a decent man, but he willfully blinded himself to who his daughter had become. Sometimes the old her slipped through, or who I assumed she may have been before life happened. Lately though, that girl seemed gone, replaced with someone who was consumed in testing science and pushing the limits of what was possible with a touch of magic.

The pleasure she found in her mishaps was mildly concerning to the sane individuals of St. Cloud. It was why no one ever questioned her. Not even me. She glared at me, the promise of her rage later demanding my silence.

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