Chapter Fifteen
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Ily
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VICTOR WAS HURT.
I’d watched it happen with my own eyes. Yet...he moved as if he didn’t feel a damn thing. He fisted my hair and half dragged, half carried me as he carted me through the gardens.
Out here, the skies were clear, the stars exquisitely bright.
No water fell from the heavens like in his citadel. No smoke or bangs or rubble.
I shivered as the droplets on my skin soaked into me with ice. The cut on the side of my throat felt deep but not too deep. I bled but...not enough to die.
I hope...
I cried out as he jerked me forward, sending me onto my knees again. My kneecaps crunched and bellowed, agony throbbing through my bones.
“Move!” he screamed. “Now!”
I tried to fight him.
I clawed at his wrist where he held me.
But after two months of hunger and abuse, I was embarrassingly weak. Horribly useless as he kept yanking me toward the battlement walls in the distance.
Another boom behind us.
Victor looked over his shoulder, his eyes bugging as fire billowed from broken parlour windows, cheery and orange-licking in the night.
“What the fuck is going on?” he hissed. “How is this possible?”
I wanted so much to gloat in his face. To say this was planned. That I knew those involved and just how proud I was of my fellow jewels.
But...I didn’t know how this was possible either.
I’d assumed the jewels had been punished enough to erase the very notion of escape. No one ever looked at Peter and me at night. No whispers, no winks.
Nothing.
But somehow, war had been delivered with a single command from an unseen man in the shadows.
Had it been Ben or Stewart who fired first?
How many guns did they have now?
How many guards were on our side?
Huge spotlights clicked on from the walls, scanning the gardens with giant yellow pools of illumination. One caught us in its arc. A guard high above and silhouetted by the moon, shouted in his loudhailer, “Sir...is that you?”
Victor waved his left arm, grunting in pain. “Don’t shoot, you idiots! I’m coming to you.”
I didn’t know if they could hear him, but he threw himself into a lumbering jog, forcing me to crawl and trip beside him. He yanked out handfuls of my hair, sending gushes of pain through my already overloaded system.
Every hedgerow we passed, I tried to grab one. To break off a branch and hit him with it. To find a way to escape and get back to Henri. “Let me go!” I screamed.
He ignored me, running faster like the coward he was.
If he got me into the battlement’s protection, I’d never get free.
I’d be used as collateral again.
Henri would be shot.
“HELP!” I screeched as loud as I could. “Someone!”
“Quiet.” He shook me. “Do that again, and I’ll rip out your throat.”
I’d lived too long with his threats. I had a physical reaction to his command and swallowed hard in silence, but then...the old me came roaring back. That feral creature who’d been born in these very gardens in a thunderstorm and a treasure hunt.
And I snapped.
Instead of fighting his hold, I leapt on him.
I threw all my weight against his trim torso and managed to knock him to the ground. He went sprawling in the grass, grunting in agony as he landed on his shot shoulder.
For a second, I couldn’t believe my luck.
Then adrenaline poured like gasoline, igniting every ounce of rebellion.
Falling on him, I slapped and punched and kicked.
He cried out as I became an unhinged animal. I raked my nails over his face. I tried to knee him in the balls. I managed to punch a few soft places, but then he gathered a lifetime of cultivated power and threw me off him like I was a damn mosquito.
“ENOUGH!” Struggling to his feet, he loomed over me.
“Fuck’s sake, do I have to do everything myself?
” Grabbing me around my blood-slicked throat, he pushed his thumbs into my larynx.
“I should’ve done this the very first night you arrived.
” His eyes flashed with evil insanity. “Au revoir, little pain in my ass.”
I tried to scream. I kicked. I scratched.
No use.
No use!
He cut off my air supply.
He coated me in blood, his and mine, blending, dripping...
Black spots danced in my vision.
My already tortured body faded far quicker than it should, thanks to so many nights of horror.
No.
Henri.
I gasped and choked.
I tried to hold on.
He went hazy, ghostly. The world faded and—
Victor bellowed as a bullet cracked from the hedges.
Rolling off me, he staggered to his feet and hopped on his left leg. Cursing with feral French, he looked down at the fresh bloom of blood on his trousers by his calf.
Scooting backward on my hands, I tried to put as much distance between us as possible.
My elbows wobbled and failed, sending me sprawling onto my back. Too weak. Too damaged. So useless!
Fuck!
My head roared. My empty stomach ached. My muscles were hopeless in this fight.
Limping toward me, Victor ducked to finish my murder, only another gunshot and a rustle of branches sent him reeling back. He spun and faced Mollie as she stepped out of the orchard, holding a scary-looking gun and pointing it right at Victor.
He froze.
She smiled.
She raised the muzzle to point at his heart. “Give the devil my regards—”
A horrifying pop sent Mollie tumbling backward. A spritz of blood erupted from her forehead. She fell like a brick wall, landing straight on her back.
“Sir, run!” a guard on the wall shouted in their loudhailer. Another pop released, kicking up dirt by my feet.
Snipers.
No.
Victor bared his teeth. He glowered at me and swayed in my direction. But then he smiled and winked. “I’ll see you in a few minutes, Ilyana. Once order has been restored, you’re the first I’m going to hang, draw, and quarter.”
He took off.
Cradling his arm, limping and cursing, he vanished past the invisible line of protection granted by his snipers.
Mollie.
Cupping my bleeding, bruised throat with one hand, I staggered to my trembling legs and stumbled to where Mollie lay.
Please, don’t...please don’t be dead.
“Mollie.” I dropped to my knees and cupped her cheek.
I recoiled in horror.
The perfect hole in her skull.
The blank glaze of her stare.
No...
Another pock-mock of dirt bounced into the air.
Another aimed right at my feet.
I threw myself behind the bush where Mollie had appeared, hiding from the snipers on the wall.
Through the branches and night-glossed leaves, I stared at my friend.
A woman who’d been so brave.
A jewel who’d traded her life for mine.
Great wracking sobs gathered in my belly.
I bit my fist.
Not yet.
Not yet.
I couldn’t cry.
Not yet.
Looking back at the fortress, I staggered to my feet and ran.
Flames danced from multiple stories and windows. The west wing had a hole in it where a dayroom used to be. The deck where I’d kneeled beside Henri so many times had caught fire, the wooden planks blazing like a platform to hell.
Another island-shaking BOOM.
In the distance, the tower standing guard to the dungeons shivered, shuddered, and tumbled. A waterfall of stone fell in slow motion, taking with it carved angels and gargoyles and Victor’s proudly waving flag of a brilliant sparkling diamond.
I kept running into battle.
Shadows of fights between Masters and jewels flickered in the backdrop of chaos. A few jewels jerked and twitched on the ground where Masters electrocuted them, only to be pounced on from behind by other jewels.
I ran into the thick of the acrid smoke, ducking past a fighting Master and guard, then dashing past a jewel hacking a Master to pieces with a butcher’s blade from the kitchens.
I didn’t study faces.
I didn’t want to know.
Rain continued to fall from the sprinkler system, hissing and splashing all around me as I darted back into the fortress.
I almost ran straight into Kirk who staggered out of the games room, soot streaking his face, blood dripping down his arms.
“Kirk.”
He blinked, dead-eyed and barely alive. “Ily, I....” Raising his hands, he frowned as if he couldn’t remember how he’d bathed in crimson.
I’d always thought he looked like a Viking with his tall frame, blond hair, and slightly wild eyes, but now he looked as if he’d stepped through time after slaughtering an entire medieval village.
Looking past him into the room where a billiards table waited along with dart boards, chessboards, and so many other games, I spied the reason for all the blood.
A Master I didn’t recognise lay in the middle of the carpet—his face caved in thanks to the billiard ball used to smash his skull apart. The black eight ball sat in a pool of gleaming red, streaked with evidence of its involvement.
Kirk’s hands shook as he stepped toward me, his gaze beseeching, broken. “Help me. Help me bring her back.”
I flinched as he crashed into me, slamming me into a wall.
Water hissed over our shoulders, raining, always raining.
“Suri. She left me. She’s hiding. But...
we’re fighting back. She can come home now.
I’ve made it safe for her. See?” He grabbed my cheeks, smearing me in the Master’s cooling blood. “Help me find her, Ily. Please.”
My heart cracked all over again even as nausea rushed up my throat.
God, his mind had snapped. How many others had snapped too? We might lose today or win today, but none of us would walk away from this without lifelong, soul-crippling scars.
“It’s okay, Kirk.” I squeezed his forearms, my skin slipping on his. “Just let me go, and we can—”
“Do you know where she is?” His fingers tightened on my temples.
I winced as he added yet more pain to all the rest. A flash of light-headedness made me sway. “No. But if you—”
“You’re hiding her from me. You’re all hiding her. No one will tell me where she is!”
“Kirk, stop—”
“No, you stop!” He pressed his nose to mine, snarling right in my face. “Tell me where Suri is and—”
“Kirk.” A masculine, familiar wonderful voice. I looked around Kirk’s slim shoulders and sagged in relief.
Peter.
Not dead.
Alive.
Vibrant and alive and...different.