It was nice to see a smile on their faces. Tomoe had mentioned they were struggling when Emma asked for the dogs to come home with her a couple of days a week. It was odd sharing our babies with Elie and Emma, but it all served a larger purpose. If the girls were going to ignore the adults of The Compound and sneak around, then they might as well have some bodyguards. That was Harley and Suckerpunch’s job during the day, to protect the girls at all costs, and they loved every second of it. More times than not, they came home exhausted, ready to sprawl out for hours in front of the fireplace. We knew they were sneaking outside the walls doing who knows what—they were going to do that whether we tried to stop them or not.
I kicked Reina under the table with a smile and her steaming liquid fell out of her bowl like a tidal wave. Bone broth and bread for dinner. Again. How joyous.
“Where’s your girlfriend, Reina?” Alexiares tossed back at her in jest. “Shouldn’t you be keeping an eye on her?”
Reina’s smile faded, and she blushed. “Sorry, I’m too busy minding your business to worry about my own right now. Hope you at least washed your hands.”
“Want to smell them to make sure?” Alexiares teased.
Tomoe choked on her bread, her scoff of a laugh music to my ears. She didn’t do it often these days, but if she did, Alexiares tended to be the one to bring it out of her.
“Gross,” Abel grumbled, his hand falling over his face.
“So,” I said, my spoon clinking against the bowl of flavorless, murky water. “Everyone looks like they shat a brick. What morbid topic must I make my priority tomorrow?”
“Prisoners of war,” Moe said, downing her broth as if it were tea from a cup.
The weight of the room shifted, no longer resembling a safe space. I hadn’t given them much thought. It wasn’t top of mind with everything else going on. I knew we had them and they were being taken care of within the Geneva Conventions. That wasn’t an official rule or anything, but it seemed necessary to have some guiding principle for how to engage with them. A decision had to be made, eventually. God forbid I eat my dinner before doing so.
Riley draped his arm over the empty chair on his left. By the stacked dishes in front of him, he’d had dinner with Yasmin before the rest of us had arrived. “Any thoughts regarding how to move forward?”
I pursed my lips to the side and considered my options. We hadn’t taken prisoners from Covert during the battle, but there were a few injured that had refused to die over the three dayswe left their bodies out to rot. Their suffering was scaring the citizens. We had to do something. Shooting them after the fact crossed a moral line I wasn’t quite ready to hop over, so into the ‘dungeon’ they went.
“Well, don’t give them to Alexi.” Tomoe laughed darkly, her inked arms folding across her chest.
Abel exhaled sharply. “Is it too late to say thank you for not including me in that endeavor?”
Something about his tone made me glance up. His usual juvenile smirk wasn’t there—just an edge of unease, the ghost of something heavier in his expression.
“You didn’t want a personal Covert plaything?” Tomoe’s words were playful, but her eyes held an edge. This wasn’t mere jest.
Abel reached for his mug of hot lemon water, fingers flexing around the handle, before he sighed and leaned back instead. “Nah.” His voice was lighter than it should’ve been, like he wanted to brush past it. “Spent long enough pretending to sympathize with them when they came to Duluth’s gates. I don’t need the reminder.”
I frowned, curious to hear more about his time there. He hadn’t spoken of it much … at least not with me.
He rolled his shoulders, shaking off an old memory. “People don’t turn on you because they hate you. They turn because it’s easy. Because it’s practical. And once they do … I don’t see torture as the end all be all method, is what I’m saying.”
Silence fell over the table, the quiet more suffocating than any argument could’ve been.
I stared at him, trying to imagine it. Abel—loud, carefree Abel—living in enemy territory, smiling at people he knew would sell him out the second it benefited them.
Rex and Elie stood up in my peripheral before she slid into her usual seat next to Riley. She waved bye to her brother. Rileyshifted his chair, scooting a bit to give her some space, but she had already leaned away into Tomoe’s shoulder. The table grew some more as Emma followed in Elie’s steps like clockwork.
Long, sandy hair hung down her back, her posture a mirror image of the woman she sat by. Emma had quickly become part of the family, glued to Tomoe’s side if not Elie’s. Tomoe had even had her a small katana made and trained her at dawn with Hal’s permission. Emma was a little … rough around the edges for the other kids, even in the middle of an apocalypse. She needed more intensity. The life she had led before she got here required so.
Elie lifted her head toward Tomoe, admiration softening her features—until Alexiares’s scowl pulled her attention away. I rolled my eyes. We’d become used to speaking freely in front of the two troublemakers ever since we realized if we didn’t incorporate them into the plan, they’d find a way, anyway. Except without us being aware, their plans were significantly more dangerous. Reckless wasn’t a strong enough word.
“Well.” Alexiares’s scowl fell into a self-satisfied smile, breaking the awkward tension among the group. “They don’t call meBloodhoundfor nothing.”
“We see that now, lap dog.” Reina chuckled, reaching across the table to grab his bowl of soup. They fought over it briefly until Alexiares burst into an uncharacteristic bout of laughter. A sound I’d never heard, let alone expected from him. The table stared at him with lost eyes until realization struck. Reina finished the portion she intended to steal, then slid it back to him, releasing him from her power. He snatched his spoon from her with a glare.
“You were worried about resources and what we have left,” Alexiares continued in a more serious tone. “Is this really what we want to waste them on?”
I glanced at Elie. She had insisted on helping in some capacity and, with her refusal to quit at The Kitchens, I’d tasked her with working with the head of The Kitchens and Gardens. Instead of manning the coffee counter most days, she was part consultant.
Elie’s shoulders raised to her ears, then dropped. “I mean, it’s not like we havenofood. We can give them scraps.”
“Or you can just let the earth elementals restock,” Abel countered. Oh Abel, and hisopinionslately.
