Page 10 of Finn
Gabriel was more than a memory to me. He was the one person who had believed in me.
And the truth was, I didn’t want to forget about him. Not ever.
“Fine,” I said, swallowing hard, pushing down the ache in my chest.
If Asher couldn’t understand, then I didn’t need him to. This was my final mission, my life. Whatever was left of it.
Asher ran a hand over his face, looking away for a moment as if gathering his thoughts.
“Look, just let me speak to the Elders,” he began, softer this time. “I’ll see if there’s any way to get more details on your target or a team to back you up. I don’t like this any more than you do.”
“You don’t get it,” I said quietly. “For the past five years, I’ve been working my ass off to make sure you and Donovan don’t have to fight my battles for me anymore.”
I turned toward the door, trying to put some distance between us before I said something I’d regret.
“Finn,” Asher called after me, his voice catching slightly.
I stopped, still facing the door, but didn’t turn around. I was too close to losing my composure to look at him.
“If you do this,” he said, his voice now almost pleading, “just... just make sure you come back. Whatever you think of the Elders, whatever you think you know about Gabriel… you and Donovan are the only family I have left that I can protect.”
I let his words sink in, feeling the weight of his concern but knowing it was too late.
Gabriel’s death had changed me irrevocably, and Asher’s desire to shield me couldn’t touch the part of me that had already resolved to see this mission through.
“Don’t worry,” I said, voice steady as I fought the tightness in my chest. “I’ve got this.”
Then, without looking back, I stepped out, leaving Asher in the silence of the hallway.
CHAPTER FOUR
GABRIEL
Monsters don’t dream,or at least, we’re not supposed to. However, I’ve always been an anomaly. Back then, and now.
My mind took me back to the past I’ve deliberately tried to forget, because remembering him hurts. And tonight, I dream.
I’m back in the early morning of the last day I was alive.
It was nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. I’d invited Finn to have breakfast with me, outside the Guild House.
No one liked the overgrown, neglected garden out back, with its eerie quietness and faint, unshakable scent of decay.
It clung to the damp air and tangled in the roots of wild roses, reaching around gravestones scattered in haphazard rows.
Most found it creepy, including Finn, but it was one of the only places I’d ever felt at home.
The others called it the garden, but it was more of a burial ground, a resting place for hunters who’d given everything.
When I was a child, I’d wander among the graves and the roses, always more comfortable with the dead than the living.
I led Finn there, a makeshift picnic breakfast stashed in a basket with supplies scrounged up from the cafeteria.
He raised an eyebrow at me, a bit skeptical but still intrigued.
I watched his eyes widen with interest as I unfurled a worn checkered blanket over the wild grass and sprawling roots of an ancient oak.
I’d spent countless afternoons under that tree, resting my back against its massive trunk, hidden from the world.
