Savage Loyalty

The blood on my knuckles wasn't mine. That was the first thing I noticed when I woke up on Malone's floor, face pressed against cold concrete that smelled of gun oil and old coffee. The second thing was the boot. His boot, specifically, planted six inches from my nose, laces undone, leather cracked at the toe. He was sitting on the edge of the cot with his elbows on his knees, watching me like I was a problem he hadn't decided how to solve yet.

"You gonna lie there all morning?" His voice was gravel and cigarettes. "Or you gonna tell me why three of Volkov's men were dragging you down Rue des Ombres at four in the goddamn morning?"

I pushed myself up. My ribs protested. The room spun once, settled. Malone's place was what you'd expect from a man who'd spent twenty years killing people for money. One room. One cot. A table covered in maps and ammunition. No windows. A single bulb swinging from a cord, casting shadows that moved when you didn't.

"They weren't dragging me," I said. "I was following them."

Malone's eyebrow twitched. The scarred one. "Following them."

"One of them had Élise's bracelet."

The name landed like a grenade. Malone went still. Not the kind of still that means calm. The kind that means he's calculating angles, exits, consequences. He'd known Élise since she was twelve, back when she used to bring us stolen bread from the market and lecture us about the revolution like she was already running it. When she disappeared eight months ago, Malone didn't say a word. Just started working. For free. For me.

He stood up. Crossed to the table. Poured two fingers of something amber into a tin cup and handed it to me without looking.

"Drink."

I drank. It burned going down, which meant it was working.

"You should've called me," he said.

"There wasn't time."

"There's always time to not get yourself killed."

I wanted to argue. I was good at arguing with Malone. We'd been doing it since we were sixteen, two street kids who found each other in the ruins of the old library, me with my books and him with his knife and neither of us with anything to lose. But the words wouldn't come. My hands were shaking. Not from fear. From something else. Something I couldn't name.

Malone noticed. He always noticed.

"Timothé."

I looked up.

"Your hands."

I looked down. They were still shaking. Blood was drying in the creases of my palms, flaking off in dark red pieces.

"I killed one of them," I said. The words came out flat, like I was reading from a report. "The one with the bracelet. I didn't mean to. He had a knife and I had a brick and I just... I hit him until he stopped moving."

Malone didn't flinch. Didn't offer comfort. That wasn't his way. But he crossed the room and sat down on the floor next to me, close enough that our shoulders almost touched. Almost. Because Malone never touched anyone. Not if he could help it.

"Did you get the bracelet?"

I reached into my jacket pocket. Pulled it out. A thin silver chain with a small charm, a bird in flight. Élise's. She'd worn it every day since her mother gave it to her, the day before the soldiers came for their apartment. The day before everything went to hell.

Malone took it from my palm. Held it up to the light. His face did something complicated. Grief, maybe. Or rage. With Malone it was hard to tell the difference.

"She's alive," I said. "She has to be. Why else would Volkov's men have it?"

"Could be bait."

"Could be."

"Could be they're using her to get to you."

I hadn't thought of that. Or maybe I had, and I just didn't want to admit it. Élise was the only family I had left. If they were using her to get to me, it meant they knew about the pamphlets. About the network. About the bombs we'd been building in the basement of the old church on Rue Verte.

"Either way," Malone said, "we need to move. They'll trace you here."

"They don't know about you."

"They know about you. That's enough."

He stood up. Grabbed his duster coat from the hook by the door. Started loading a pistol with the kind of muscle memory that comes from doing something ten thousand times.

"You're coming with me," I said. It wasn't a question.

"I'm not letting you do this alone."

"I've been doing this alone for eight months."

"And look how well that's turned out." He holstered the pistol. Looked at me. Really looked, the way he did when he was trying to decide if I was worth the trouble. "You're bleeding on my floor, Timothé. You killed a man tonight. You think you can keep going like this?"

"I have to."

"No. You don't."

He crossed the room. Stood over me. His shadow fell across my face, blocking the light from the bulb. I couldn't read his expression. I never could.

"Élise is my sister," I said. "Not by blood, but by everything else. I'm not abandoning her."

"I'm not asking you to."

"Then what are you asking?"

He was quiet for a long time. Long enough that I started to think he wasn't going to answer. Long enough that I noticed things I shouldn't have noticed. The way his jaw tightened when he was thinking. The way his fingers curled around the silver ring on his right hand, twisting it back and forth. The way he smelled like rain and gunpowder and something underneath that I couldn't name.

"I'm asking you to let me help," he said finally. "I'm asking you to trust me."

"I do trust you."

"No. You don't." He crouched down. His face was close to mine now. Close enough that I could see the gray in his eyes, the flecks of something lighter, almost silver. "You trust me to watch your back. You trust me to kill people for you. You don't trust me with anything that matters."

"That's not true."

"Then why didn't you call me? Why didn't you tell me you were following Volkov's men?"

"Because I didn't want you to get hurt."

The words hung in the air between us. Heavy. Stupid. Malone's expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes. Something I'd never seen before.

"I've been getting hurt for twenty years," he said. "I'm still here."

"I know."

"So stop protecting me."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Because you're the only thing I have left."

There it was. The truth I'd been carrying for months, maybe years, maybe since the day we met in that library when we were kids. Malone wasn't just my friend. He wasn't just my partner. He was the person I thought about when I couldn't sleep. The person I imagined coming home to, if I ever had a home. The person I would burn the world down for.

He didn't say anything. Just looked at me. His hand moved, slow, deliberate. Touched my face. His palm was rough, calloused, warm. His thumb brushed the corner of my mouth.

"You're an idiot," he said.

"I know."

"A reckless, sentimental idiot."

"I know."

"I'm going to get you killed one day."

"Probably."

He kissed me.

It wasn't gentle. Malone didn't do gentle. His mouth was hard against mine, demanding, hungry. His hand moved to the back of my neck, fingers tangling in my hair, pulling me closer. I tasted whiskey and blood and something underneath that was just him. Just Malone. The person I'd been waiting for without knowing I was waiting.

I kissed him back. My hands found his coat, his shoulders, the hard muscle underneath. He made a sound low in his throat, something between a growl and a groan, and pulled me to my feet. My ribs screamed. I didn't care.

"Bed," he said against my mouth. "Now."

"Yours or mine?"

"Does it matter?"

It didn't. Nothing mattered except this. His hands on my skin. His mouth on my neck. The way he pushed me down onto the cot and covered my body with his, the weight of him grounding me in a way nothing else ever had.

"Tell me to stop," he said.

I didn't.

He didn't.