The face of the sister I loved to my core.
Shuddering, I grabbed her hands. “Flora,” she started to say. Wrapping my arms around her body, I leaned into her torso and sobbed. “Flora,” she said again, concern cracking her voice. “What is it, are you hurt?”
Rubbing my eyes, I pulled away. “No,” I said quickly. My smile was unstoppable. My tears more so. “I'm not hurt. Not anymore.”
It had happened.
The impossible had happened.
In the end, my sister was the saint I'd always known her to be. As close had we'd come to our bitter end, she'd turned around and fought back. I couldn't hate her for her mistakes, not when she showed where her loyalty really lied.
All I wanted to do was sit there and hug her, enjoying the shade of my sister that was peeking out of the clouds. Down the halls, more gunfire and voices warned us that this wasn't over with.
“We have to go,” she said, kicking Tully's gun aside. The sight reminded me.
Standing, I crouched by the dead man. “Wait, give me one second.” I'd seen a corpse searched so many times. This was my first, and I was no longer hesitant. I knew what was at stake; fear had no place in these halls.
Digging through his pockets, I yanked Ronin's gun free. Tully must have forgotten he'd even had it. That, or when faced down by the revenge-fueled Claudine, he'd frozen.
“Please,” she urged, hovering over me. “We need to run!”
Gritting my teeth, I found what I was looking for. In my fingers, the well-worn photograph was as good as any energy boost. And just recently, I never wanted to see this again. Baffled by the turn of events, I shoved the photo in my khakis and stood.
Claudine grabbed my wrist, yanking me down the hall. I saw we were going back towards where I'd come in through the window, and I dug my heels in, wrenching her back. “No!” I snapped. “I'm not escaping without the other girls!”
Deep in the indents of her blue irises, I glimpsed more of the old Claudine; the woman who had shown me how to be brave. Turning in place, she guided me down another path. “Alright, but we need to hurry! This place is going to hell.”
Our feet stomped, all pretense of being sly vanishing. There was enough noise rocketing through the mansion that we were better off moving fast instead of tempting fate. Claudine was right, the longer we waited, the more of a chance there was that we'd be caught.
Killed.
Crushing her fingers in mine, I hoisted Ronin's gun and pushed harder. I had no clue where we were going, and I started to wonder if Claudine really did, either. Each time we came to a bend in the halls, she'd hesitate, leading us deeper.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked, my lungs starting to burn.
“Every way I wanted to go is packed with the Knights. We'll need to go to the front, get outside and come in through the backyard!”
We turned a sharp corner, stumbling into the raised shotgun of a waiting biker. He was clearly shocked to see us, but that didn't make him lower his weapon.
On instinct, I started to aim Ronin's gun. The other man was too wired not to react. Maybe, if I'd done nothing—looked like we weren't dangerous—he would have left us alone. With everything going down in flames, this biker considered everyone a threat.
That meant us.
I held my breath. Shit shit shit. No, we'd been so god damn close to getting out of here! All I could see were those chambers, the place I knew the bullets would eject, puncturing my throat or my skull as they shredded me.
I was in slow motion, praying I'd shoot first, and knowing I would not. The man grinned, the tendons on his bare arms flexing as he crushed the trigger.
On his right, a door slammed open.
Shards of wood dazzled in the air as the hinges gave up on life. Claudine and I jumped back, shielding ourselves. The biker who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time crumbled under the heavy oak.
Motes of dust filled the hall, blinding me with their white fog. Through the haze, I gazed upon an illusion that I knew couldn't exist. After all, I'd abandoned this string of fate back on the barren roadside.
It can't be.
A shadowy shape rolled over, half-sitting on top of the wooden mess. Another man was clinging on top of him, partially hiding that rugged, familiar face. In my heightened, adrenaline fueled world, every color was saturated. The blood on the walls nearly glowed. It stained his hands, tangled the thick pieces of his hair that I'd once wrapped my fingers in.
“Ronin.”
I breathed the word, almost too scared not to. If this wasn't real, it meant I was pegged with bullets somewhere else in the mansion. Alive or dead already, if this was the last thing my fucked up mind would see, then well...
I couldn't think of a better way to go.
Chapter Thirteen