7. Esmerelda
ESMERELDA
I'm dreaming about coffee, about Stellan's soft voice and the way he almost smiled yesterday when I told him about my grandmother's garden.
In the dream, he's sitting beside me somewhere warm and quiet, and for once he's not counting, not tensing, not holding himself apart.
He's just there, present and peaceful, and when he looks at me there's no fear in his dark eyes. Just warmth.
Then the first explosion rips through the compound and throws me out of my cot.
I hit the floor hard, the impact driving the air from my lungs, and for one disorienting moment I don't know which way is up.
The room is shaking, or I'm shaking, or maybe the whole world is coming apart at the seams. Plaster rains down from the ceiling, chunks of it landing in my hair and on my shoulders, and the air fills with dust so thick it's like breathing sand.
Then the screaming starts.
"EVERYONE DOWN!" Someone's voice, high and sharp with authority.
Kira, I think, but I can't be sure because my ears are ringing and there's dust in my eyes and the air itself has turned to chaos.
More explosions, closer now, rattling through the compound like thunder that won't stop, and the unmistakable crack of gunfire from somewhere outside.
Automatic weapons, I realize distantly. Military-grade. This isn't a raid. This is an assault.
I push myself up onto my hands and knees, coughing on smoke and plaster dust, trying to make sense of the darkness.
The power is out. Emergency lights flicker in the hallway, casting everything in bloody red shadow, turning familiar spaces into something out of a nightmare.
Around me, shapes are moving, the other women scrambling for cover, and I can hear Margot's voice calling for Roman, Camille's sharp curse, Eliza's sob of fear as she searches for something to hold onto.
"KIRA!" I scream, reaching blindly through the smoke.
No response. Just more gunfire, more explosions, the sound of men shouting orders in voices I don't recognize.
Then the wall blows in.
The force of it throws me backward, my head cracking against something hard, and for a moment everything goes white.
Pain explodes through my skull, sharp and blinding, and I taste blood, feel it running hot down my face.
When my vision clears I'm staring at sky where the ceiling used to be, pale pre-dawn light filtering through smoke and dust. Rubble everywhere, chunks of concrete and twisted rebar and the splintered remains of what used to be the back room.
Fire is spreading along the east wall, hungry and bright, throwing dancing shadows across the destruction, and somewhere in the chaos I can hear a woman screaming.
The heat hits me next, rolling off the flames in waves that make my skin feel tight.
The air smells like smoke and cordite and something else, something chemical and wrong.
I try to push myself up, but my arms shake so badly I can barely support my own weight.
There's blood in my eyes now, running from the cut on my forehead, and everything has a red tinge that makes the nightmare even worse.
I try to stand. My legs won't cooperate.
"Esme." A hand grabs my arm, hauling me upright with surprising strength. June. There's blood on her forehead, running down the side of her face in a dark stream, but her eyes are clear and sharp and completely focused. "Exit's blocked. We go through the kitchen."
"The others?—"
"We find them when we're not trapped." Her grip tightens on my arm, and she's pulling me forward, through the debris, away from the fire. "Move. Now."
I move. I don't have a choice. My body is running on pure adrenaline, legs carrying me forward even though my mind is still three steps behind, still trying to process the fact that the world has exploded and nothing makes sense anymore.
June leads, and I follow, stumbling over rubble and ducking under fallen beams, and I don't ask how she knows where she's going because there's no time for questions.
The kitchen is mostly intact, smoke pouring in from the hallway but the structure still standing.
June releases my arm to grab a knife from the counter, a big one with a wicked blade, and something about the way she holds it makes me pause.
That's not the grip of someone who's never held a weapon before.
That's the grip of someone who knows exactly what she's doing.
"June—"
"Later." She moves to the doorway, checking the hallway with the kind of quick, efficient sweep that looks practiced. "Clear. Come on."
We make it maybe twenty feet before the Bloodtusk orc appears.
He's massive, easily six and a half feet of green muscle and violence, and he's blocking the way to the back exit. His tusks are filed to points, his face twisted with the kind of hatred I've never seen up close, and when he sees us his mouth stretches into a grin that makes my blood run cold.
"Two soft ones," he says, stepping forward. "Dragan will be pleased."
June shoves me behind her with one hand and raises the knife with the other. For one terrible moment, I think she's going to try to fight him, this slight, quiet woman against a monster twice her size, and I open my mouth to scream for help.
Then June moves.
It's fast. Impossibly fast. One moment she's standing in front of me with the knife raised, and the next she's inside the orc's reach, her body twisting in a way that seems to defy physics.
The knife flashes, there's a sound like tearing paper, and the orc staggers back with his hands clutching his throat, blood pouring between his fingers.
He goes down. He doesn't get back up.
I stare at June, my mind refusing to process what I just saw. She's not even breathing hard. There's blood on her knife and splattered across her shirt, but her hand is steady and her expression is the same calm, focused look she's had since she pulled me out of the rubble.
"What—" I start, but she's already moving, grabbing my arm again, pulling me forward.
"Later," she says again, and her voice is flat, controlled, nothing like the quiet coworker I've known for months. "Kitchen. Now."
We run. The kitchen opens to a back door that leads outside, and June kicks it open without hesitation.
The compound beyond is chaos, fire and smoke and the sounds of battle from every direction.
Men are fighting, orcs and humans locked in combat, and I see Ironfang cuts mixing with unfamiliar colors in a blur of violence.
"Find the others," June says, scanning the chaos with those sharp, trained eyes. "Evacuation point is the garage. I'll cover?—"
The explosion comes from nowhere.
One moment June is beside me, and the next I'm flying through the air, heat and light and the smell of burning chemicals consuming everything.
I hit the ground hard, roll, and when I stop I'm alone.
Smoke everywhere. Screaming everywhere. I can't see June, can't see anyone, can't do anything but cough and gasp and try to remember which way is up.
I push myself to my feet. My ears are ringing so loud I can barely think, and when I touch my head my hand comes away wet with blood. But I'm standing. I'm alive.
I need to find the others.
I run toward where I think the garage is, dodging debris and bodies and the occasional burst of gunfire.
The compound is unrecognizable, transformed from a fortress into a war zone, and I don't know which orcs are ours and which ones want to kill me.
I just run, keeping my head down, praying that I'm going the right direction.
I make it maybe fifty yards before the Bloodtusk enforcer steps out of the smoke.
He's bigger than the first one, taller and broader, with scars that suggest he's survived more fights than I can count. His tusks are cracked and yellowed, his eyes cold and calculating, and when he sees me his expression shifts into something that makes my stomach turn.
"Human," he says, almost conversationally. "Good. You'll make excellent leverage."
I don't scream this time. I don't have the breath for it. I just stare at him, frozen, my body refusing to move even though every instinct is screaming at me to run.
He takes a step toward me. Another. His hand reaches out, massive and scarred, and I close my eyes because I can't watch what's about to happen, can't bear to see my own death approaching.
"ESME, RUN!"
Marcus's voice. Coming from somewhere to my left.
I open my eyes just in time to see him throw himself at the enforcer, all twenty-three years and six feet five inches of him crashing into the bigger orc with the kind of reckless courage that doesn't care about odds.
The enforcer staggers, caught off guard, and Marcus is hitting him, punching and kicking and fighting with everything he has.
"RUN!" he screams again, his voice cracking with desperation. "GET OUT OF HERE!"
I should help him. I should do something, anything, find a weapon or call for backup or refuse to leave him alone against a monster he can't possibly beat. But my legs are already moving, carrying me away from the fight, and all I can do is run and hate myself for running.
The sounds of combat follow me. Fists against flesh, grunts of pain and effort, Marcus's voice rising in what might be a battle cry or might be a scream of agony. I run faster, my lungs burning, my legs aching, tears streaming down my face as I flee toward the garage.
Then the sounds stop.
I freeze, my whole body going cold. The silence is worse than the fighting, worse than the screaming, worse than anything I've heard since the first explosion ripped me from my dreams. Because silence means one of them is down, and silence means it's over, and silence means?—
"Marcus," I whisper, the word barely more than a breath.
I should go back. I should check, should find out, should do something other than stand here in the smoke and the chaos while my friend lies bleeding or worse. But I can't make myself turn around. I can't face what I'll find if I do.
So I run.
The garage looms out of the smoke, a solid structure that looks mostly intact.
I can see people gathered near the entrance, Ironfang cuts visible through the haze, and relief hits me so hard my knees nearly buckle.
Familiar faces, familiar colors, a pocket of safety in the middle of hell.
I put on a final burst of speed that brings me crashing into Kira's arms.
"Esme!" She's alive, covered in dust and blood but alive, and her grip on me is fierce enough to bruise. Barrett is right behind her, his silver eyes scanning the perimeter with deadly focus, a gun in his hand and murder in his expression. "Thank God. We thought—when the wall came down?—"
"Marcus," I gasp, the word tearing out of me. "He was—there was an enforcer—he told me to run?—"
Kira's face goes pale. Behind her, I see Barrett's jaw tighten, see his hand flex on the grip of his weapon. They understand what I'm saying before I finish saying it, these people who've been living with war for months.
"Where?" Kira demands.
I point, my hand shaking so badly I can barely make the gesture. "Back there. Maybe fifty yards. There was fighting, and then it stopped, and I didn't—I couldn't?—"
Kira turns to one of the brothers standing nearby, a massive orc with blood on his knuckles and murder in his eyes. "Get Stellan. Tell him the human woman was attacked near the east side. Marcus engaged the threat."
The brother takes off at a run, and I watch him go with a sick feeling in my stomach.
Stellan. Of course Stellan. Because he's on interior security, because he's supposed to protect the women, because Marcus was his friend.
The only brother who consistently tried to reach him, who brought him coffee and cracked jokes and refused to be intimidated by the berserker reputation.
The only one who ever made Stellan almost smile.
"Esme." Kira grabs my shoulders, forcing me to look at her. "I need you to breathe. Can you do that?"
I try. The air doesn't want to cooperate, my lungs seizing with panic and grief and the kind of terror that doesn't fade just because you've stopped running.
Around us, more of the women are arriving, stumbling out of the smoke in various states of injury and shock.
I see Margot with blood on her hands, her face blank with a kind of terror I've never seen from her.
I see Camille with her knife still in her grip, her knuckles white.
I see Eliza crying, being held by another woman I don't recognize.
But I don't see June.
"Marcus saved my life," I whisper, forcing myself to focus on what I can process. "He threw himself at the enforcer so I could escape. He was so young, Kira. He was just a kid, and he saved my life, and I left him there?—"
"You did what he told you to do." Kira's voice is steady, gentle, the voice she uses when she's holding herself together through sheer force of will. "He made a choice. He chose to protect you. Don't dishonor that by blaming yourself."
But I can't stop seeing his face, that bright grin he always wore, the amber eyes that had made him look so young and so hopeful.
I can't stop hearing his voice screaming at me to run, can't stop remembering the way he'd brought me coffee that first day and told me Stellan was a teddy bear.
I can't stop thinking about what he said just yesterday, about pulling his head out of his ass and claiming me, about wanting to be invited to the party.
There won't be a party now. There won't be anything.
The tears come, hot and relentless, and Kira holds me as I shake.
Around us, the battle continues. Gunfire and explosions and the screams of men fighting and dying, the compound burning and the world falling apart.
But all I can think about is Marcus throwing himself at a monster he couldn't beat, buying me time with his life, making a choice that I'll carry with me forever.
He was twenty-three years old.
He died protecting me.
And somewhere in the chaos, Stellan is about to find out what happened to the only brother who ever tried to make him laugh.
The smoke clears just enough for me to see the east wing of the clubhouse, fully engulfed in flames now.
Everything I've built here over the past week, the morning coffees and the conversations and the tentative, fragile hope that maybe I could reach the gentle giant who watched me like I was the sunrise—all of it feels impossibly far away.
Impossibly naive. What was I thinking, believing I could find something soft in the middle of a war?
But then I think about Stellan's voice, low and gentle, telling me about counting to seven.
I think about the way he looked at me yesterday, like I was something precious, something worth protecting.
I think about the beast he carries inside him, the one that goes quiet when I'm near, and I wonder what happens when it wakes up.
The war has finally come. And nothing is ever going to be the same.