15. Deacon #2
A fine tremble makes her arms quiver, but her chin stays level. Sweat glitters at her temple. A La Rosa woman stands near the altar with a phone mounted on a small stand, its camera aimed at Delia’s face.
Another soldier, a man I do not know, circles behind her.
“Again,” he says.
Delia’s voice is hoarse. “No.”
He touches the end of a thin cane beneath her left wrist and lifts slightly, forcing the arm higher. The prayer book wobbles. Her fingers flex to keep it from falling.
“If it drops, we start again,” the woman says. “Mrs. del Rosario only asked for one message. You make this unpleasant by being vain.”
Delia smiles.
It is a terrible smile. Reva’s mouth in a colder shape.
“Tell Isabel if she wants to hear my voice, she can come back and beg.”
The man swings the cane.
Nash’s hand clamps onto my shoulder before I realize I have moved.
He does not speak. He does not need to. His grip says wait, timing, not yet, and because Reva is waiting in a cabin with her hands wrapped around a cat instead of a gun, I force myself to obey.
The cane strikes the floor beside Delia’s knee.
She does not flinch.
The woman near the phone exhales. “You were raised better than this.”
“I was raised by Isabel.” Delia’s arms shake harder. “There is no better.”
The woman’s expression shutters. She glances toward the door.
Sabine whispers, “They are waiting for the hallway guard to bring fresh water. That’s the next reset.”
“How many inside?” Nash asks.
“Just the two,” I reply. “One woman. One man. Delia on the floor.”
Nash draws his weapon. “You take the woman.”
I keep my eye to the slit. “The man carries a blade low at the back. He’s closer to Delia. I take him. You take the woman and the phone.”
Nash nods once.
Trust, then. Not friendship. Not absolution. Just a practical surrender of the space between our knives.
For today, for this mission, that’s enough.
Sabine steps back and raises her radio. “Hall clear.”
The woman inside turns her head at the sound. Nash opens the door.
He goes left. I go straight for the man behind Delia.
He’s quick. Good enough to hear the change in air and reach for Delia instead of me. His hand wraps in her hair, yanking her head back as his blade comes free.
Delia’s eyes meet mine.
There’s no fear. Recognition, yes. Fury. Pain. A flash of something too old and too tired to name.
I throw my knife.
It buries itself in the man’s shoulder before his blade reaches her throat.
He staggers back with a curse, taking a handful of Delia’s hair with him for one brutal second before she twists, letting the prayer books fall as she uses his grip to drag him off balance.
The rosary on her wrist snaps. Red beads scatter across stone.
Nash has the woman pinned against the altar, one hand over her mouth, gun under her jaw. His other hand has already ripped the phone from its stand and crushed it beneath his heel. He looks calm. I know better now. Calm is only the shape Nash gives violence when he wants it to obey.
I cross the chapel in three strides.
The man with my knife in his shoulder swings at me left-handed. Sloppy. Desperate. I catch his wrist and drive my elbow into his throat, and he drops hard. I put him out before he can make another sound.
When I turn, Delia has not moved from her knees.
Her arms have fallen to her sides. Red marks ring both wrists. One palm is bleeding where a broken bead cut into the skin. Her breathing is controlled so tightly it looks like discipline rather than pain.
I crouch in front of her.
“Delia.”
Her eyes move over my face. She doesn’t respond.
“We’re leaving.”
A laugh slips out of her, small and razored. “That easy?”
“No.”
“Then don’t say it like that.”
Behind me, Nash binds the woman’s wrists and gags her with a strip torn from a choir robe. Sabine waits at the door, face pale, eyes fixed on Delia’s knees.
Nash stands, sees Sabine, and looks back at the woman he just bound and gag. Something moves over his face, and he crouches beside her, smoothing her hair back from her face.Then, with a dispassionate expression, he found the soft recess behind her jaw and drove his blade upward at a sharp angle.
“No witnesses,” he says. He tips his chin toward Sabine. “For her sake.”
I nod and hold out my hand. Delia shudders and looks at it, but she doesn’t take it.
Her gaze moves past me to the door, the shadows, the corridor where Isabel’s house and Isabel’s lessons and Isabel’s punishments have taught her nothing comes free.
“What’s the price?” she asks.
Nash steps beside me. For once, he doesn’t sound like a man giving an order when he speaks. He sounds like a man offering the only truth that matters.
“Your sister is waiting.”
Delia’s face changes. Barely. It’s a crack in ice. A breath taken too fast. The smallest betrayal of all the years she has spent training Reva out of her voice.
“She sent you?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. “She only stayed behind because we made her.”
Delia closes her eyes. When she opens them, she places her hand in mine.
I lift her carefully. Her knees buckle on the first attempt. She catches herself before I can steady her too much, pride locking her spine even as blood spots the stone beneath her feet.
“Can you walk?” Nash asks.
Delia gives him a look I admire despite the timing. “Can you?”
Nash’s mouth almost moves. “Good.”
Sabine passes Delia a dark coat. “Put this on. Head down through the corridor. Try not to limp if you can help it.”
Delia slides her arms into the coat, wincing only once. “You always did have a shitty bedside manner.”
Sabine’s face flickers. “Good to see you too.”
The comm crackles, and Ever’s voice cuts in. “Movement north passage. Two coming your way. Fast.”
Sabine curses under her breath. “Isabel?”
“Cannot confirm,” Ever says. “One tall male, one smaller. Thirty seconds.”
Nash looks at me.
The plan changes in his eyes before he speaks.
“Sabine takes Delia through service.”
“No,” I say. “I take Delia.”
“You take the rear threat with me. Sabine knows the service route and looks like she belongs.”
Every instinct rejects it. Delia’s hand tightens around my sleeve.
Nash sees it.