Page 118 of Queen of Volts

“They’ll kill you,” Harvey breathed.

Bryce drummed his fingers thoughtfully against the desk. That wasn’t the reaction Harvey had expected upon learning the most powerful people in the city had turned against him. It was only Harvey’s nerves that buzzed around the room like static. Bryce had an almost neutral energy. An eerie calm.

“How do you know this, Harvey?” Bryce asked, staring at him so intently Harvey unconsciously reached for his Creed. Though Bryce had not moved, had not raised his voice, for the first time, Harvey felt a pinch of fear to be alone with his friend.

“I...” His forehead was damp, his mouth dry. “I heard...”

“Are you working with them?” Bryce straightened and stood up.

Harvey swallowed. There was no use hiding it—he had never been good at lying tohim. “Are you surprised?”

“I am, but I shouldn’t be,” Bryce said softly. “You were always so good. I never should’ve asked you to help me. It wasn’t fair. And now you’re looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” Harvey asked.

“Like I’m the villain.”

Bryce walked closer, so close Harvey leaned back, his shoulder blades pressed against the cold of the window glass, his legs leaning against the heat of the radiator. There had been a time when they’d had no boundaries, when they’d been two outcasts who had found each other, a relationship far more intimate than friends. And while Harvey had been careful never to cross that line again, Bryce always did so thoughtlessly. The way he’d sometimes rest his hand on Harvey’s shoulder. Or smooth a curl fallen out of place. Or stand too close. Harvey had hoarded those gestures, for thoughts alone and late at night, when he could pick at them like the skin around his fingernails, pick until they bled.

“Please don’t look at me like that,” Bryce murmured.

“You’ve killed people—voluntarily. How am I supposed to look at you at all?” Harvey asked, even if he could look nowhere but him.

Bryce’s face fell. “I know. You know me better than anyone, and I...” He reached forward and cupped Harvey’s cheek, a touch that even Harvey’s self-doubt couldn’t imagine to be thoughtless. His breath felt blocked in his chest. “I wish I could go back. I love her, but I don’t love all of this. It wasn’t like this when I loved you.”

After spending weeks hating himself for being complicit, Harvey knew that wasn’t what this moment was. He couldn’t help who he loved, but he could help this. He could stop this. This wasn’t one of Bryce’s tragic romantic radio shows—this was toxic, and broken.

But it didn’t use to be.

“I never wanted you to hate me,” Bryce whispered. Bryce could’ve been tricking him, but the look in his eyes was so genuine that Harvey could see Bryce’s old self in them.

“I don’t hate you,” Harvey answered truthfully.

Bryce pressed his forehead against Harvey’s, and Harvey slipped an arm around Bryce’s back. It was all familiar, reflexive. It felt natural even when Harvey wished it wouldn’t. Like coming home.

“I’m scared,” Bryce told him. “I thought the Bargainer would have offered me the deal—I thought she’d ask to end the game. I was so sure... I didn’t think anyone else would have to die.”

“Canyouend the game, then?” Harvey asked.

Bryce shook his head. “Rebecca can. But she won’t. She wants to keep waiting.” Bryce found Harvey’s hand and interlaced his fingers with his, and Harvey’s knees nearly buckled, standing there, his broken pieces fusing together with every word and touch. All thoughts of Narinder fled. “But I’m scared about you. You helped, and that makes you implicated. Will they spareyouwhen all of this is over?”

Harvey hadn’t thought about it that way. He remembered the unease in the room at the Catacombs when they’d formulated their plan, how unwilling Levi and the others had been to trust him. It didn’t matter what Harvey did to prove himself. He was complicit. Guilty.

Harvey sucked in his breath, suddenly dizzy, suddenly nauseous. He might’ve fallen over if not for Bryce’s grip.

“Look at me,” Bryce told him firmly, as though Harvey had been looking anywhere else, now and always. Bryce’s lips grazed his. “There’s still a chance we could see this through. And when it’s over, we can go back to the way things were. Just...”

And then Bryce started kissing him.

Harvey’s mind swam with it all—the taste of him, the words, the memories. This was all a symptom of his self-destruction, he knew. Grasping at Bryce’s collar, tracing his fingers down the crooks and slopes of his spine, biting at the edge of his lip the way he remembered Bryce liked it. Harvey wouldn’t have done it had he not done it before, had he not dreamed of it, over and over again. With each fantasy, he’d dug himself a deeper hole, a grave wide enough for them both to lie in.

Growing more and more steady, Harvey backed Bryce to the edge of the desk, where Bryce could sit and be easier to kiss.

Complicit, Harvey’s conscience whispered. His emotions raked through him, equal parts guilt and desire. He was almost reminded of when he’d killed Zula, how it felt to take back his control, how it felt to let himself die.Complicit. Complicit.

But he didn’t stop. Not even if it felt like harming himself. Not even when Bryce’s hands found their way to Harvey’s belt.

His conscience no longer sounded like himself, anyway. Bryce’s warning had given it a new voice—the voice of the ten others in the Catacombs who were not his allies, not his friends. He remembered the way they had looked at him, the enemy. Bryce was right. They would turn on Harvey the moment the game was finished, too.