Page 99 of Red Ruin

Soothing fifty C-classes isn’t the way to show my worth.

Neither is burning myself out.

Tried that.

It didn’t work.

I take Vhex and Remy’s hands. “Stick with me.”

Vhex locks our fingers, teasing my knuckles with licks of hellfire. “Nowhere else I’d be.”

As shadow vines climb my arm, Remy snorts. “There are many other places you might go.”

“No one’s going anywhere,” I say and tug them along.

We pass Sentinels I’ve guided.

Guides are scattered around the tables, some sitting on a Sentinel’s lap, some straddling two or three. Most drooping over their plates, exhausted after the battle.

Everyone hunches as we pass, instinctively ducking away from the aura of Vhex and Remy’s volatile, S-class power.

I don’t feel the strain.

I just have to keep holding their hands and combing their silks.

When I reach Cherise, everyone else at her table goes face-to-plate.

She locks on to me with a ruler-straight gaze, working hard to ignore the Sentinels I’m wearing on my arms.

“You’re using that badge well, Commander,” she says lightly.

“I hope so.”I’m about to use it a lot more.“We have to talk about zombies.”

“And the monster that resurrected them.” Cherise shudders, and her hair ornaments clink. “I need a second shower after all that necromancy.”

“Same.” My skin pebbles. “Do you want to address the guard? Or should I say a few words?”

Her eyes narrow. “Have you eaten anything since yesterday?”

Huh. Good question.“When was yesterday again?”

With so much going on, hours feel like years.

“Go. Eat,” Cherise says, gently shooing me away. “We have a crisis twice a day. If it’s not on fire, it can wait. Besides. If you sit at that table for ten minutes? Morale will soar.”

Now that food is an option, my stomach whines. Pre-plated trays sit on the pick-up window into the kitchen. I crane around Vhex, trying to see what’s set out. “What’s for?—”

Shadows pull out a chair for me at the head table and then usher me into it in one smooth, sideways drag. A loaded tray winks in front of me as Remy slides into the chair at my side.

“—dinner?” Before I can finish the question, I’m blinking at a plate of sandwiches.

“You’re hungry,” Remy says as his shadows slice my bread. “Would you like to be fed?”

“No.” I brush his wisps off my plate. Other Sentinels don’t dare to stare, but their attention sticks to me as tightly as Vhex & Remy’s silks.

Cherise is right about morale.

I need to show them that I’m in control.

---