Olivia
Molly didn’t shoot me.
She didn’t let me go, either, despite my broken pleas, my begging for her to snap out of it. To wake up. I remained kneeling for so long that my legs pricked with needles and a deep ache settled in my hips.
The beach was a graveyard, the boat a forgotten battlefield. Every time the water lapped softly at the sides, I jolted, hoping it was Madoc.
If anyone could rise up from the dead, it was him.
The radio silence in my ear was just as devastating. Where was Jax? Was he hurt? Was he also dead?
Molly shifted, alerting me to a new threat. I looked up and squinted blearily across the beach. A lone dark figure emerged from the treeline and raced toward us. It wasn’t a man I recognized, and by the time he pounded across the dock, I knew I was in trouble.
He came to a wet, skidding halt in front of us, panting and cursing. He snapped something at Molly in a language I didn’t recognize. She responded in a dead voice as she jutted the gun at my temple.
The man was bleeding from his nose and a deep gash on his chin. There was a wild, fervent desperation to him, an unhinged panic that poured out around us. He gestured to the beach, then back at the cabin of the yacht.
Molly said drolly: “No. All dead.”
The man scowled, then spat on the deck in front of me. “Useless,” he said thickly. “Ah, it’s over. We leave now.” He pointed a finger at me. “Kill this one.”
Molly hesitated, her voice taking on a stronger edge. “Where is Marco?”
The man bared his teeth. “Dead.”
“And Luis?”
The man flapped his hand dismissively, an answer in itself. His impatience was palpable.
“They’re all dead,” Molly said softly, as if absorbing the words, considering them in full. “It’s just us now.”
The man started to curse, then paused and looked at Molly as if seeing her for the first time, clocking whatever expression accompanied the awe in her tone. Apprehension settled over him. He stepped back, wary.
Molly took a quiet breath, so quiet that I knew only I’d heard it. Then she lifted the gun from my head and shot the man at point-blank range.
Unlike Madoc, it wasn’t a clean shot. It was messy and loud. The man jerked as the bullet struck him. He staggered and clutched his chest, but he didn’t fall.
I scrambled to my feet. “Shoot him again!”
Molly did.
Once.
Twice.
Three times, and then the gun clicked empty. The man crumbled downwards, face ashen, chest hitching wetly. Molly stepped forward and kicked him swiftly in the head. He died a slow, gurgling death at our feet.
Mind numb, I turned to the sea.
I didn’t realize I had moved until I was leaning fully over the railing. The wind whipped at my hair, and the cold bit at my face. I searched the water frantically, jumping at shadows. I knew it was a long shot. I knew Madoc was probably dead.
Something slapped hard beneath me, and I jumped—
—A pale hand gripped the bottom railing below me.
I didn’t think. I just jumped overboard, into the frigid waters below. The air was punched from my lungs. I came up gasping, lips stinging, hair plastered over my eyes. Something brushed my ankle, and I recoiled with a yelp.
Now what, genius?
My eyes zeroed in on the dark figure clinging to the boat. I padded over noisily, like my life depended on it.
Like his life depended on it.
Madoc was in bad shape. He was still conscious but barely, his hand on the railing, clinging to the last of his strength. Or at least I thought so, until his eyes fluttered open, and even in the near-darkness, the glaring green was potent.
“You’re alive,” I said breathlessly as I bobbed in front of him.
He didn’t speak, but for once I knew it wasn’t by choice. He was ice cold to touch, his lip trembling as he fought the shock.
“She shot you,” I rambled nervously. Relief thumped through me. “I saw it. She—”
“Shut up.”
My mouth clicked shut before it started to chatter. The cold sank into my bones, different from the shock. I stared at Madoc, and he stared back as the water slapped between us, blood-tinged and salty. Then he adjusted his grip, and his mouth hitched up into a familiar snarl.
“H-hurry up.”
My hands fumbled over him, finding his waist and hooking into the material of his vest. His head turned away, like he couldn’t stomach the sight of me.
“Can you swim at all?” I asked him, struggling. He wasn’t exactly small.
“Yes.” His teeth flashed.
“Then why haven’t you?”
His silence was pointed.
His body collided with mine under the water, all hard muscle and bone. My frustration mounted when he refused to let go of the railing. “Will you swallow your humongous man pride already?” I snapped at him. I was losing feeling in everything, and not in a good way. “I will let you drown.”
His eyes narrowed. “Big sis still up there?”
I grimaced and nodded.
He stared at me for a moment. Then he sighed and loosened his grip before grabbing my shoulder.
I sank immediately under the additional weight before my legs remembered how to be legs and kicked us back to the surface.
It was awkward and clunky—our chins knocked together, and Madoc growled when my hand slipped low on his back. “Watch it.”
“You could help me!”
“My left arm is numb,” he growled in my ear. “I can’t move it.”
Shit. That meant the bullet had lodged somewhere vital.
Somehow, miraculously, I managed to drag us to the shore in one piece. Madoc didn’t struggle but his breath grew short and choppy near my ear, and I knew he was in pain.
When my knees hit the ocean floor, his weight became crushing for a moment before he lifted himself up and staggered the remaining distance to the sand. He clutched his limp arm to his chest.
I struggled after him, pausing only long enough to gag at the sickly pulse in my stomach. There was nothing left to purge, but my body didn’t care. It wanted to remove the gross feelings, the swirling relief, betrayal, and a man dying at my feet.
Sandy boots appeared in my line of vision.
I looked up at Madoc, who returned my stare coldly.
His skin was tinged green under the moonlight.
He didn’t express any gratitude, but he was there—he was always there.
Behind the door, in the shadows, in the wardrobe.
How could one person be so constant and so unreliable at the same time?
“Are you okay?” I wheezed up at him.
“Are you?” His tone dripped with scorn. It was rather touching.
“I don’t know.” That was the truth.
“What you did was stupid.”
“Oh yeah? Which part?”
“Exactly.” Madoc glanced away, toward the water.
The breeze moved his wet-stiff hair, revealing the striking portrait of his face.
Even wounded and bleeding, he was beautiful.
Vulnerability lurked beneath his skin, bruises that mottled his jawline, deepened the crescents under his eyes.
He looked tired and angry and beautiful.
And he was hurt.
My heart slammed into my chest. The urge to comfort him was overwhelming. Luckily, I wasn’t a total idiot, or I would’ve acted on it and probably lost my fingers.
Then there was movement behind me, and just like that, his face snapped shut, returned to familiar territory.
He stepped in front of me, ripping a gun from somewhere near his boot.
He aimed it at the dock where a listless Molly stood, watching us with an unreadable expression.
Her gun was gone, her hands dangling uselessly at her sides.
I grabbed Madoc’s wrist. “No.”
“She hurt you.”
“She didn’t—”
“She did.” His tone was cold, final.
Something about his words jarred with me. It wasn’t she shot me. It was she hurt you. Like Molly’s actions against me far outweighed what she’d done to him.
“She’s not herself,” I said, trying to be soft, coming across desperate. “She’s dissociated. Traumatized. They hooked her on something.”
Madoc’s brow dipped, and there was a flash like understanding on his face. But he didn’t lower the gun.
“She needs time,” I said, hoping it was true. “Time to recover and heal. Her mind is all messed up.” I shot her a quick look, wincing. I still felt her phantom gun pressed to my temple. “She’s a victim here, too.”
“Some people can’t be redeemed.”
“Can you?”
His eyes flickered to me. I gazed back at him evenly. “How many people have you killed?”
“Twelve,” he said, not even needing to think about it. At my incredulous look, he snarled: “I never said I wanted redemption.”
“Molly deserves a chance, even if you don’t.” I lifted my chin, ignoring the tremor in it. “I won’t let you kill her. You’ll be my one before she becomes your thirteen.”
Madoc considered that for a moment before he lowered the gun with a scoff.
“Pathetic.” Apparently, that was his limit because he wrenched himself away from me and moved up the shore.
His gait was awkward, hindered by his injury.
I watched him go, my energy flagging. I wanted to bury myself in the sand like a sullen crab.
And then a deep voice crackled in my ear.
“…princess?”