Luckless by Cari Z

Author:Cari Z [Z, Cari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

The ground still shook. The wall still trembled. And Evan was still a pariah, no matter what the man outside had told him before they’d reentered Forge.

He had known he would be. If cowardice was reviled, then insane bravery was just as loathed, especially when it worked. It made people wonder whether or not they could have done what they’d seen, whether they should have done it, and that unsettled them. What did you do when the luckless man pulled off a ridiculous save?

You ignored him, for the most part. Few people met his eyes after he reentered Forge, and even fewer actually spoke to him. That was fine. He didn’t want interest any more than he wanted pity or contempt. Right now, in fact, he just wanted to soak in a hot bath, eat a quick meal, and fall asleep for a week.

The bath part he managed, although the water was lukewarm and cloudy. Evan sat back in the metal tub and closed his eyes, feeling every fresh ache and pain like they had just happened. He had jarred his shoulders when his stolen pike had gotten stuck in the wall, and his hands were covered with tiny scrapes and cuts. His lungs still twinged from the speed of his descent, and the part of his mind that wasn’t completely inured to the horror of a monster he’d never seen before wondered how long one of those leech-things would need to chew through a human body. If they could dig so deeply into a dragon’s armored flesh so fast . . .

A fresh jolt of pain emanated from his lip, where he was biting too hard. Evan took a deep breath and forced himself to relax, pushing his mind onto another subject. Something else, anything else . . . hell, he’d have to cancel working with Jason tomorrow—there was no way he’d be of any use once the stiffness really set in. Jason and Lee . . . he really ought to check in with them, let them know he was all right. Presuming that they cared.

Not fair. You know they care. Don’t make things more difficult for yourself than they have to be.

It was hard sometimes, not letting the bad thoughts become the only thoughts he ever had. Evan knew what depression was—they no longer lived in the age of information, but they weren’t savages. He knew that after Juree died, he’d been almost suicidal, unable to take that final step only because of the memory of her last moments with him, and how hard she’d fought for his life. It wasn’t as bad now—in fact, things had even been, well, good since meeting Lee and Jason. He shouldn’t take their support for granted, though. He couldn’t.

Only . . .

The water was cold now, and he shivered as he got out of the bath and toweled off. The thought of going back to his lonely cot in the corner of a group room where no one spoke to him or met his eyes was almost paralyzing.

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