33. Cross

Leni’s hand clenches mine, her nails digging into my palm. My heart hammers as I scan the advancing Queensguard, their every movement limned with vicious intent.

“I never liked them,” Sin comments, reloading with an uncharacteristically cold precision.

With a flick of my thumb, I check my clip. Three bullets. One in the chamber.

The odds have been worse.

I’ve been weaponless. I’ve been alone. I’ve been starved, with a broken leg and only a broken arrow as a weapon.

Having Leni by my side is harder, feels like I”m walking around with my heart outside my body.

I made a vow to protect her, no matter the cost.

I will not fail as I once did.

This situation is exactly what I was afraid of, exactly why I wanted to send her away, far away. When she’s with me, she consumes me. I’d have contained the grenade, I’d have heard the attack, I’d have pulled Luke back from the blast. All I could think was Leni. She chose me, said she”d follow me, threatened it, my dangerous pyro. If I were strong enough, I’d leave her.

There’s no amount of ambrosia I could drink to give me such strength.

“Okay,” Leni encourages quietly. “Yes. Just like that.”

Less than ten minutes ago, the attacking sentries retreated at the whistle from the Queensguard, ran to join the line of poisonous green in the lawn. Kleio, their commander offered us a truce. We relinquish the princess to their hands in the next fifteen minutes, and she doesn’t send us all the Tartarus.

The Blackguard are bleeding, exhausted, woefully unprepared.

Everyone down except for Leni. Her plan is in motion thanks to Drake’s and Meda’s steady hands.

“Like that?” Meda asks, hairline covered in crusty scarlet.

Leni nods, blue hair oddly serene among the surrounding disaster. “Yes. Light it.”

Lev’s the first to start sprinting, grabbing a fistful of my shirt as he shouts, “It’s going to blow!” A still smoking match clutched in his palm.

We scatter. I grab Leni by the waist, Luke by the arm, and run. Atlas throws a bleeding Rune across his shoulder. Drake helps. Meda slams Zeke in front of her.

The explosion rocks the earth, shakes the very foundation of the building.

We smash through the second-story windows, tumbling onto the grass as brick and glass rain down around us.

Then the real bomb goes off. The force of the blast knocks out the Queensguard, their bodies flying backwards like rag dolls. Success is bitter as we too flatten under its sheer power.

It’s too big and we’re too close.

Coughing and bleeding from the impact, we struggle to stand while the Queensguard regains their footing just inside the tree line. They do not charge, instead watching as their despicable Blackguard fail to rise.

Leni’s strewn over me, motionless, her eyes shut.

I push myself up, pulling her with me as Atlas crawls towards Rune, desperate to keep him conscious. Luke frantically reloads his gun, calculating the number of bullets he has left and how many enemies remain.

“There’s no way to win this,” Leni croaks to me.

Not an assessment, a forgone conclusion, as if she’s done the odds, considered every possible outcome.

I have, too.

I just don’t accept them.

Normally, the Blackguard could thrash Draven’s sentries three to one. With the Queensguard at their sides, warriors equally gifted as us, with no curse stalking them, Leni’s right. There’s no way to win.

The Queensguard commander pulls back her cowl, showing off thick blonde hair braided to her lower back. “Give her up,” she calls.

Lev growls, knocking fits into his palm, hair whipping like a war flag.

“Stay behind me,” I say to Leni under my breath. Protest shines brightly in her frosted gaze, but I silence her with a look. “You said you’d follow me anywhere. I’m staying here.”

“No,” Atlas shouts back to Kleio, rigidly rising to his feet. His perpetually neat hair is tousled, the honed tips of his ears exposed. He casts an appraising glance around our wounded, fucked circle, and lands on Leni. “It’s been too long since the Blackguard protected someone. And I won’t stand by and lose another innocent life.”

His words ricochet in my chest, sink in that my family chooses my happiness over they’re security, a male they can’t always remember, but one they love.

Kleio scoffs, rolling sooty eyes. “Come on! It’s not nice to keep things that aren’t yours. She took a vow, she promised to marry him.”

“As if she had an alternative,” Atlas shouts.

“Death is always a possibility, don’t forget that.”

“I haven’t,” Atlas returns, cool as ice.

Kleio switches tactics, locates a new target in Leni. “I get the jitters, princess, but it’s time to go. The king chose you.”

Leni folds into my side, teeth clenched as she wipes ash off her forehead, licks shiny pink blood off the corner of her mouth. Splotchy purple bruises are already forming on her skin. Injured, gravely, and yet her eyes are unbreakable ice. “No,” she shouts, singular, cold. Final.

Kleio tuts disapprovingly. “Alright, Atlas. Just toss her over and we’ll leave. That’s the mission objective. We get her. She goes with Draven, and we’re gone. You think I want to murder all of you in the woods? This isn’t exactly Malibu Barbie Dreamhouse.”

“Seems you don’t have a choice,” Atlas returns.

“Don’t I?” Kleio snaps gloved fingers and, from behind the line of green warriors, Meda appears, collapsed on the ground.

My whole body goes still. My heartbeat triples.

An enraged sound rises in Luke’s chest.

“Sashira?” Kleio coos.. “If you wouldn’t mind?”

“I wouldn’t,” Sashira returns, lifting a hand.

Meda shrieks, contorting in pain, clutching her head as the witch of the Queensguard flays her mind.

The thief is lighter than the rest of us, she must have been thrown farther, landed amongst the enemy. I should’ve grabbed her.

“Stop!” Luke screams.

Leni lurches for her. I pin her to my chest.

“Andromeda knows the rules,” Atlas lies to the Queensguard, a bluff. “Fallen soldiers get left.” He turns to me, saying urgently, “Take Leni and run. We’ll hold them off.”

“I can hear you,” Kleio bites, folding her arms, popping her hip. “You’re not even whispering. I’ll kill her, Atlas. Do you want more tattoos around your neck? What’s the limit before a stray thought guts you? Asking for a friend.”

Between pants, roiling in the scorched grass, Meda gasps, “Fuck. You.”

One of the green hoods, the tallest and widest, the only male, steps slightly forward, splitting their neat row, and Kleio waves him back. “Stop.” She clicks her tongue at Sashira to cease the attack on Meda. Rolls her eyes. “That’s a taste of our power, Chire. We’re not even warmed up yet.”

Meda lets out a hoarse sigh and collapses to the ground.

Atlas calls Kleio a coward, offers to fight one on one, stalling, as Leni pulls me to the back of our huddle, reading my thoughts.

There’s only one way out now. We run.

“Are you ready?” I ask, knowing the moment we bolt, the battle will begin. And it will be bloody. I draw what little remains of my gift, preparing to ensconce her in it and turn her invisible.

Her palms open and close, but she nods. “Yeah,” she looks up at me, shaking. “Yeah, I’m ready.” Tears well up in her eyes, blood stains her cheek, along with dirt and grass and soot.

I stroke her bangs back and haul her into me to whisper, “Think of it as a footrace. Winner gets whatever they want.”

Atlas and Kleio continue to spar across the lawn, voices rising, insults and boasts becoming increasingly intricate and deranged.

My pulse is in my throat. “Ready? On the count—”

Leni crushes her lips to mine. Hard. Frantic.

“I love you,” she whispers, taking my mouth again, kissing me like she’ll never have enough. Teeth and tongue. Consuming. She never stops feeding me that kiss. It’s torture. Wonderfully debauched and desperate, and it affects me all the way to my soul. I clutch at her, ready to run forever.

She breaks away with a cry, recoiling, fisting my tattered shirt.

Blood streams down her arm in rivulets, drips off her fingers. She’s been hit. Clipped or cut in the crossfire. I didn’t even notice, and now that the adrenaline’s wearing off, she finally feels it.

Anger makes me see red.

She stumbles back, as shocked as I am.

I catch her, bloodstained fingers curling into the hem of her shirt. “Hold still,” I tell her, generating solutions.

I’ll carry her. We’ll find a medic.

I’ll become a fucking medic.

“I love you,” she repeats, voice strained, eyes hooded. Her shoulder droops to support the gash in her arm. She cringes, adjusts in my grip.

Pain explodes above my knee.

My leg buckles automatically, thrown back as a bullet eats through muscle and bone.

The red turns black.

Leni drops her smoking gun—my gun—to the ground as I collapse to my knees.

She shot me.