59. Hope
59
Hope
“ I ’d rather kill him myself,” Lenna said.
Too many people had been involved in this rescuing. Too many strangers. Too many risks. If anything, this betrayal had proved again that people couldn’t be trusted. Ever.
The discomposed expression on Lenna’s face was a combination of rage, devastation and deep confusion all in one. Yet in the middle of this now-troublesome rescue, Hope couldn’t help but feel relieved at the fact that the traitor had been the damn fighter and not the panom who had vanished the moment he had killed two of the roixers in the security vault.
Hope shouldn’t care too much about his intentions or his alliances, but deep down she knew it would have affected her if the man who had opened the doors to his home had been a traitor. Ciaran’s body had disappeared from sight, and she couldn’t exactly tell how she knew, but it was not as when someone moured away. It was… different. As if his presence and his pine-and-night scent were still lingering around her, but she couldn’t see him. She could have sworn she had even felt Ciaran’s raw anger when Carson’s body dropped to the floor after Theon killed him in two moves.
Hope’s eyes locked with Nina’s panicked ones. She would not let the life of her first friend end at the hands of anyone, let alone a military force governed by the Organ Mandor.
She saw it in the eyes of the others, too. There were genuine feelings between them. Jake was standing next to Lenna, his body protecting her, presumably from the roixers inside the other security vault. Lenna couldn’t take the eyes off Theon for long, but when she did, her jaw clenched angrily at how the roixers were holding Sasha, Brendon and Indianna, the weapons pointing on their skins. Sasha was biting her bottom lip as tears flew down her cheeks and she appeared unable to get her eyes off her dead brother. Indianna’s lips were curled, looking at her mother with the maximum hate one being could bear. Ayla’s tearful eyes moved from Lenna to Nina, her hands clenched into fists with jumping silver sparks.
Nina was looking at Hope with fear, but also expectation and something else. Raoul was a few feet away from Hope. Hope nodded, looking at Nina, trying to reassure her he was here.
Raoul was here. Because the roixers hadn’t had time to move him somewhere else with the short notice of the fighter’s ink, or because they were stupid enough to think the Roix stood a chance against all of them, Hope didn’t know. Not that it mattered.
“I wondered when were we going to start killing.” Ciaran materialized next to Hope, as if he had never left. Those were shadows curling at his feet.
“Bloody courtrade,” the Roix Reigner spat. “The Organ Mandor should have killed you when he found out.”
The side smile on Ciaran’s lips was both utterly terrifying and the most beautiful thing Hope had ever seen. “Only an arrogant shithead like him could believe that amputating the arm with my Llunal mark would be enough to clean me from my courtrade blood.”
Hope tried to resist the urge to open her eyes wide and lift her eyebrows, but her peripheral vision noted that Lenna didn’t seem to care one bit about her expression being an open book as her jaw dropped. Hope couldn’t take her dark eyes from Ciaran, even if focusing solely on him in a corridor so full of armed enemies was a risky mistake.
Ciaran was a panom and a courtrade. There would be time for questions and explanations later, if they survived. Right now, he looked at Hope with that side smile she wanted to caress.
Ciaran leaned into her and whispered, so softly that only she could hear, “Do your worst, Hope.”
She was so ready for this. To exterminate every single one of these roixers and the Roix Reigner herself. The adrenaline was building up again in her veins, rushing as if she couldn’t keep it in, and maybe she couldn’t, because arterial-red sparks were swirling around the blades she was holding tight. She whispered back, “Do your worst, Ciaran.”
Hope recognized the shadows coming from his fingertips. She had seen them in action during those long weeks in the vessels. Except Ciaran’s shadows were dancing, adorned with dark green sparks.
So Ciaran unleashed his shadows, and Hope unleashed her daggers.