Chapter 18 #2
He holds up his hand. And, so, I abandon my father. I detach myself from my blood, my creator, and the only other place where my mother’s memory lives. Papa gets to his knees, cartilage cracking beneath his weight. He grunts and braces a palm on the wet asphalt, finally resting on his knees fully.
He makes the sign of the cross and closes his eyes. This is it. A legacy gunned down in an airport ruin on the verge of rebellion.
The hammer clicks. I close my eyes.
A gunshot rings out. My father shouts.
My father shouts?
I open my eyes to see my father cowering, confused. Taylor holsters her pistol. “You don’t have much time. Board the plane, both of you.”
My father and I exchange looks. “What? That was not the agreement.”
“It is not the agreement I wish to honor. I promised to keep your daughter alive, and I intend to keep that promise. She is much safer with someone who would die for her, and it is clear you intended to do that.” Taylor straightens her back.
“When you land, the pilot will provide you with the address of a safe house and some money. You are to stay in hiding indefinitely. Neither of you are safe in the regions.”
My father laboriously rises from the ground, and I scramble toward him, burying my face in his shoulder. He looks past me. “Why are you doing this? What’s in it for you?”
“Miss Piccolo’s safety.”
Once I pull away from Papa, he crosses his arms and his posture stiffens. He’s obviously larger than Taylor by a considerable margin, but I know what she is. I know she could kill him before he could finish a blink. “How do I know you won’t double-cross us?”
Taylor rolls her eyes. “Why would I waste my time in such dramatic fashion if I wanted you dead?”
My stare lingering on Taylor, I lean into Papa. “She’s telling the truth, Papa. She’s…she’s letting us leave.”
The gravity of those words topples me. Leaving. I’m leaving. I’m getting on that plane with my father. He’s not going to die and I…I am never going to see Taylor again.
“I don’t get why some Order dog gives a shit about my daughter’s safety,” Papa says, still suspicious.
Taylor looks between my father and me. “I have come to care very much about your daughter, Leader Piccolo. More than I could hope to explain to you in the limited time we have here. I would prefer to keep her with me, but I no longer believe she is safe here. So, while it pains me to do so, I am entrusting her to the only other person I know who may care about her as much as I do.”
My father’s thick eyebrows rise in his forehead, but the devastated look on my face makes the realization dawn on him. “Oh. I see.”
“Excuse me, Papa. Taylor, can I talk to you?” I ask, but I don’t wait to guide her away from my father, near the tail of the aircraft, out of earshot. “What is going on?”
Taylor toes the ground with her boot. “When Theia made this agreement with your father, she ordered me to force you to execute him as a show of loyalty. If you refused, I was to execute you both. It became clear to me you were no longer safe with the Order.”
So much for making me one of them. I was always a means to an end, at least for Theia. I can’t say I don’t understand her, but she’s a colder bitch than I could ever be. “When did she tell you this?”
“On our way back from Wolfshield, via my watch. I would have told you,” she rectifies quickly. “But I knew you would try and convince me to let you stay. And I was worried I would let you convince me. It has become embarrassingly apparent I am quite weak where you are concerned.”
“But I…I am not ready to say goodbye to you.”
Taylor’s lips quirk into a brief, sad smile. “You haven’t been ready for anything since I took you, but you have done fine.” She runs her fingers through her rain-soaked hair. “You are the strongest person I have ever had the privilege to know.”
“I need more time. I want—I need more time with you.” Averting my eyes, I watch droplets of rain smack the ground and soak through the stone. I don’t feel strong. I feel undone, unmoored, unraveled. “You know, someone once told me you never abandon someone you love.”
“Believe me, I wish there were any other way.” Her breath quivers and she peers down at her shoes. “I am going to miss you so much more than I anticipated.”
A smile lifts my lips, imagining Taylor doing a serious risk assessment of how much she’d miss me. I take in a breath and consider the deepest, most treasonous betrayal I can imagine. “If I did as Theia asked…”
Her eyes blink in surprise. Before she can let the questions fill her mind, she shakes her head. “I will not let her turn you into a killer.”
“I already killed people.”
“I remember. Neutralizing legitimate threats, killing enemies, that is not what makes a killer. It is this—it is the choosing of violence, which makes a killer.” She steps forward and pins me with a fervent gaze.
“You are brave and compassionate and kind, and you are essential. I refuse to let her rob you of the very qualities that make you extraordinary. So, Theia can have this power she wants so badly. She can have the whole country for all I care. But she cannot have you.”
We square off, her eyes begging me to accept this ridiculous notion of my indispensability while simultaneously shoving me out of the country. She wants me to understand, to make this easier, but I can’t.
“I get that this martyr-hero business is, like, baked into who you are. And normally, I find it courageous and attractive for some stupid reason, but I can’t accept this. I—I need you. I…please don’t make me go. I don’t want to go.”
Entwining our fingers, she squeezes my hand.
“Lucy, you have proven to be not only worthy of the effort it took me to keep you safe, but deserving of so much more than I could ever hope to give you.” Her body shakes as she expels a shuddering breath, dropping her voice.
“I don’t deserve to keep you, but letting you go is the worst hurt I have ever felt. ”
“So don’t.” I blink back tears and firm my resolve. “Don’t let me go. Come with us. Can’t you stay with me?”
“Oh, Lucy.” She smiles sadly. “You know I can’t. But you’ll never know what it means to me to hear you ask.”
The plane’s stairs open with a loud thunk and I panic, reel Taylor in, and press us heart to heart.
I don’t want this to be the last time I speak to her, or touch her, or look in her eyes.
This is no ordinary goodbye. This is my heart splintering like stiff wood, prickly pieces never to be whole again.
Her heart thumps against the bottom of my ribs.
My hug is returned full force, her hands clutching the back of my jacket like I am keeping her tethered to the ground.
The disruptive sound of my one stifled sob is enough to make her pull back, but not out of my arms. I study her face, trying in desperation to imprint it in my mind.
The swell of the tips of her cheeks, the sharp lines leading to her mouth, the faintest scar along her jaw, the glowing intensity of her beautiful eyes, the matching hue of her unruly hair, the lack of crinkles around her eyes not only because of youth, but lack of reasons to smile.
My hand slides to cup her cheek and chin, tilting it up toward me. I feel her gulp, watch her lips tremble, and see desire rush to her eyes without repression. How can the same moment be so desperately sad and nakedly wanton?
Our lips brush in a featherlight prelude to a kiss, and a gunshot tears us apart. Both our heads whip to the source of the noise, and my father hits the ground like a cardboard cutout tipped over. Theia steps down the plane stairs, pistol smoking.
“No!” I scream, and Taylor blocks my path and holds me around the middle as I struggle to rush to him. “Papa! No!”
Taylor removes her gun from her pants and levels it at Theia. The new leader crouches next to Papa’s body and presses her fingers to his neck. Satisfied, she stands and holsters her gun. “Put your weapon down, soldier.”
“No.”
A black helicopter, Order symbol splashed across the side in bright orange, descends near where we’re standing and whips rain into our faces. Vehicles careen toward us and box us in. Theia takes point among them. “Enough nonsense. You are coming home.”
Hunter hops out of the helicopter, casually slinging a rifle over her shoulder. She approaches from behind Theia and gives us a nod as other Order members surround us. Taylor cocks her pistol. “Lucy goes free.”
An Order member whacks me in the back of my legs with a gun, forcing me to my knees. Taylor sweeps her pistol across to shoot him, but Hunter readies her rifle and takes a step forward. “Don’t be stupid, kid. Well, don’t be any more stupid.”
Theia is not impressed. “I will make this an easy choice for you. Drop your weapon, or she dies.”
A cold metal cylinder digs into the nape of my neck.
Taylor lunges toward me only to be held back by another man’s gun at her chest. With the ease of which I’ve become accustomed to seeing Taylor perpetrate violence, she takes his gun, whacks him in the face, spins the gun around, and disarms him.
With another jerk, she slams him in the temple and he crumples to the floor.
Holstering her pistol, she pulls the rifle up on her shoulder and aims the barrel at the man behind me.
“Put your gun down or I will kill her,” Theia orders in a strict voice, having spent the last coin of her patience.
Taylor hesitates, desperation in her eyes.
Even if she could take out the soldiers, she’d never be able to kill Hunter or Theia before one of them kills me.
Theia pulls down the hammer on her gun. “Do not test me, child.”