Chapter 19
IRIS
The world ends in a white flash.
The explosion blows the study doors inward. A wave of concussive force hits me, knocking the air from my lungs and throwing me back against the leather sofa.
For a second, there is no sound. Just a high-pitched whine drilling into my skull.
Then, the sound returns all at once.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT.
Automatic fire. Loud. Deafening.
It isn’t like the movies. It isn’t a clean pop-pop. It’s a chaotic roar that shakes the floorboards. Wood splinters. Books explode off the shelves, turning into confetti. The air fills with drywall dust and the acrid, burning smell of explosives.
“Down!” Cassian roars.
He’s firing, standing in the open with the stolen rifle shouldered, pouring fire into the smoke-filled doorway. He isn’t taking cover. He’s being cover, drawing their fire away from me.
I scramble behind the sofa, clutching the pistol with both hands. I’m shaking. My teeth are chattering so hard I think they might crack.
Soft targets. Don’t freeze.
“Varro!” Cassian shouts over the gunfire. “Hold the door!”
“Go!” Varro yells back. He’s crouched behind the overturned desk, firing a submachine gun. Empty brass casings rain onto the floor around him. “Get her to the tunnels! I’ll buy you time!”
Without hesitating, Cassian grabs my arm, hauling me to my feet.
“Move,” he barks.
He drags me toward the back of the study. Not toward a door, but toward the wall of bookshelves.
Bullets chew up the floor behind us. Thwack-thwack-thwack.
I look back. Through the haze of smoke, I see black shapes moving in the doorway. Thin beams slice through the dust, visible only because the smoke is thick.
One of them spots us. He raises his weapon.
“Iris, light!” Cassian commands.
Without thinking, I raise the pistol and thumb the pressure switch on the side, just like he showed me.
A beam of blinding white light stabs across the room.
It hits the soldier in the face. He flinches, dazzled by the sudden glare.
It buys us a second.
Cassian fires. One shot. The soldier drops.
“Good,” Cassian growls. “Now go!”
He hits a hidden panel behind a row of thick volumes. The shelf clicks and swings inward, revealing a narrow, dark passage. The smell of damp stone and old dust rushes out to meet us.
“Inside,” he commands. “Go.”
I stumble into the darkness. Cassian follows, pulling the bookcase shut behind us. The mechanism engages with a clunk. The roar of the battle is instantly muffled, cut in half by the wood and steel shielding. It feels like we stepped into a coffin.
“Keep moving,” he says, pushing me forward. “Hand on the wall. Don’t stop.”
I fumble for the wall. The stone is cold and rough against my palms.
“Where are we going?” I gasp. My lungs are burning. The adrenaline is spiking so hard I’m dizzy.
“Servant passages.” His voice is tight, controlled. “They run behind the wainscoting. We can bypass the Great Hall and get to the bunker access.”
We move.
I’m running blind. My boots clunk against the uneven floor. The passage is narrow, barely wide enough for Cassian’s shoulders. The air is stale, thick with decades of dust.
The lessons from the gym swirl in my head, mixed with the terror. I grip the pistol so hard my knuckles ache.
We turn a sharp corner. The passage widens slightly. There’s a sliver of light up ahead—a ventilation grate near the floor.
Cassian is right behind me, a wall of solid, tense muscle.
“Wait,” he whispers.
He stops, grabbing my shoulder to pull me back against his chest.
“What?”
“Hush.”
He presses a hand over my mouth.
I freeze.
Through the thin ceiling of the passage, I hear it.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Heavy boots on hardwood, moving right above us.
Dust sifts down from the ceiling boards, landing in my hair.
“Clear left,” a muffled voice says from above. “Check the panels.”
My pulse beats so loud I’m terrified they can hear it through the floorboards.
Cassian leans in close to my ear.
“They’re sweeping the perimeter,” he breathes. “They know about the tunnels. Someone gave them the architectural plans.”
The realization punches the breath out of my lungs. Someone sold the blueprints. We aren’t hiding. We’re being hunted in a maze our enemy already mapped.
“We have to get to the junction,” Cassian mumbles. “Before they cut us off.”
He removes his hand from my mouth.
“Move,” he says. “Quietly.”
We start moving again. Slower this time.
I place my feet carefully, rolling toe-to-heel to avoid stomping. The darkness presses in. Every shadow looks like a man with a gun. Every creak of the house sounds like a breach.
We reach a junction. The servant passage intersects with a wider maintenance corridor that leads to the boiler room. Pipes run along the ceiling here, hissing with steam pressure.
We round the corner—and run straight into him.
A soldier.
He must have breached the tunnel from the boiler room access. He’s huge, his black tactical gear bulking out his frame. We couldn’t be more than ten feet apart. There’s nowhere to hide. He sees us instantly, raising his rifle without a shout or a call for backup.
My muscles lock. The black bore of the suppressor points dead at my chest. He’s aiming right at me.
I try to raise my pistol, but the weight of it drags my arm down. My brain screams at me to shoot, but my muscles refuse to obey. I’ve never killed a man, and that hesitation is going to get me killed.
I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing for the impact.
Then Cassian moves.
He lunges, throwing his body across the narrow corridor to shove me out of the line of fire. As he crosses the open space, he raises the captured rifle with one hand and pulls the trigger.
The mercenary fires at the exact same time.
Thud-thud. Cassian’s shots take the soldier in the face. His helmet cracks, and he drops to the concrete floor, dead before he hits the ground.
But the soldier’s rifle goes off as he falls.
THWACK.
The sound is wet. Heavy. Like a hammer hitting a side of beef.
Cassian jerks backward, slamming back against the stone wall. A spray of blood erupts from his left shoulder.
Silence rushes back into the corridor, ringing in my ears.
I stand there, paralyzed.
Cassian is swaying. The rifle drops into its sling, clattering against his chest. Reaching up with his right hand, he clutches his left shoulder.
Blood pours between his fingers, thick and endless. It soaks the black T-shirt, turning it slick and shiny.
“Cassian,” I whisper.
He turns slowly.
His face is ashen gray. His teeth are gritted so hard that a muscle feathers in his jaw. Sweat beads on his forehead, mixing with the dust.
But none of that seems to matter to him. Instead, his hands sweep rapidly over my arms and torso, checking me for wounds.
“Are you hit?” he rasps.
“No,” I say. My voice breaks. “No, I...”
I look at his shoulder. The fabric is torn. The flesh underneath is mangled.
“You’re shot,” I say. The words feel stupid. Obvious.
He stumbles. One knee hits the floor.
“Cassian!”
I shove the pistol into my waistband and rush to him, falling to my knees in the dust.
“I’m fine,” he lies, trying to push himself up. But his arm gives way, and he slumps against the wall, sliding down until he’s sitting on the floor.
“You’re not fine!” I cry.
I reach for his shoulder.
“Don’t,” he winces, grabbing my wrist with his good hand. His grip is weak, his fingers ice-cold. “We have to keep moving.”
“You’re bleeding…”
I pull my wrist free and press both hands hard against the wound. The blood is slippery, welling up over my fingers and coating my palms. It reeks of raw metal.
I gag but don’t pull away. Pressing my entire body weight into him, I try to seal the tear.
“Iris,” he groans, his head falling back against the stone. His breathing is turning shallow, rattling in his chest like loose gravel.
“Shut up,” I rasp, my voice shaking. “Let me see.”
I tear the rip in his shirt wider.
The bullet hit high. It tore through the thickest part of the deltoid muscle, missing the bone, but leaving a deep, jagged channel. The blood is flowing heavily, soaking into my jeans and dripping onto the stone floor.
He’s bleeding out. Right here in the dark. I feel the heat leaving his body.
He’s the kidnapper. He’s the villain, the monster who told me I was nothing but leverage. He told me I was an asset. A bargaining chip.
Villains don’t take bullets for their hostages. Monsters don’t use their bodies as shields.
“Why?” I ask. Tears blur my vision, hot and stinging. “Why did you do that?”
He drags his eyes open. They’re dark, glassy, fading around the edges as the shock begins to drag him under. With a trembling, blood-slicked hand, he reaches out and grips my wrist.
“Survive,” he rasps.
Then his hand drops. His chin falls toward his chest, his eyes sliding shut.
“Cassian! No. Look at me.” I slap his cheek, hard. His head lolls to the side. “Cassian, please! Open your eyes!”
I press my ear to his chest. His heartbeat is a frantic, fluttery thing, losing its rhythm. He’s slipping away.
I slap him again, harder. “Look at me!”
He flinches, dragging his eyelids back open. They’re glassy and unfocused.
“We have to move,” he slurs, his voice a broken rasp. “The shots... even suppressed, they’ll hear it.”
He tries to stand and fails.
“Get up,” I desperately order.
Grabbing his good arm, I wedge my shoulder under his armpit. He’s heavy. Dead weight.
“Iris, go,” he wheezes. “Leave me. Get to the bunker. Lock the door.”
“No.”
“That’s an order.”
“I don’t care,” I snap. “I’m not leaving you.”
I grit my teeth and push upward with my legs, straining under his frame.
“Move!” I yell. “Stand up, Cassian!”
He gazes down at me. A flicker of surprise crosses his face, followed by something else.
Pride.
Somehow, he summons enough strength to push off the wall. I help him stand, staggering under his weight. He’s heavy. So heavy. But I lock my knees and wrap my arm around his waist, my hand pressing against the hard armor of his vest.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”
We start moving.
It’s agonizingly slow. Every step is a battle. We limp down the dark corridor, leaving a trail of blood drops on the stone behind us.
“We need to get to the alcove,” he wheezes. “Before the next patrol.”
We make it ten feet. Twenty. We reach the section of the corridor where the stone transitions into a heavy iron grating over a drainage trench.
Then, we hear it.
Boots.
Coming from the boiler room. Running.
“They found the body,” Cassian whispers.
“Here,” I say, pulling him into a shallow maintenance alcove past the grates. There’s a cluster of vertical pipes that we’re small enough to fit behind.
We press ourselves into the shadows, and I jam my hands over his torn shoulder, trapping the blood tight against his skin. Any drops that slip past my fingers fall through the iron grating into the dark water below, breaking the trail.
Cassian is swaying, his breath loud and rattling in his throat.
“Quiet,” I whisper.
I reach up and press my bloody hand over his mouth. He goes still, his fading eyes locking onto mine.
We stand there, chest to chest, tangled together in the dark. His failing heart hammers against my own and the heat of his blood soaks straight through my sweater.
The footsteps get louder. A beam of light sweeps the corridor, pausing over the dead soldier, then tracing the red drops on the stone.
The light swings toward us, hitting the pipes and slicing across the floor inches from my boots.
I stop breathing.
If they see us, we’re dead. Cassian can’t fight. I have the pistol tucked in my waistband, but if I draw it now, they’ll hear.
Please, I silently pray.
The light lingers on the pipes for an agonizing second before swinging down to the floor.
“The blood trail stops at the grating,” a voice shouts down the corridor. “They must have crossed over. Spread out. Check the junction.”
The footsteps recede, moving away to search the wider tunnels.
I sag against the wall, my knees trembling as I pull my hand from Cassian’s mouth.
He takes a deep, ragged breath. His face is inches from mine. In the gloom, he’s just a man bleeding out in the dark, but the lethal edge hasn’t completely left his eyes.
“Can you walk?” I ask, my chest heaving.
“If you help me.”
“I’ve got you.” I wedge my shoulder back under his good arm. “Let’s go.”
We step out of the shadows. He’s heavy, and his skin is terrifyingly cold, but he’s alive. Together, we limp toward the bunker door, leaving the war behind us.