Page 40 of Awestruck (Starstruck Love Stories #4)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Freya

I have been afraid before, but never like this.

“Elliot!” I gasp.

He does not stop moving, which means I cannot stop moving.

With the second gunshot, we stumbled to a back hallway that is far too small for us to be running through, but that has not hindered my bodyguard or decreased his speed.

He is right next to me, an arm around my waist as he hurries me toward the nearest exit.

But I need to go back.

People are in danger. Someone has a weapon, and someone else may have gotten hurt, and I cannot run when I need to ensure everyone is—

“Freya!” Elliot growls, pushing me faster. “Keep moving!”

We reach the doors, and Elliot bursts through them without first making sure the coast is clear. That is unlike him.

The guard stationed at the door swears loudly before realizing who we are, and then his eyes go wide. “Sir?”

“Armed assailants inside,” Elliot says with all the gruffness of a seasoned soldier. “One confirmed casualty. I don’t know who else might have—”

“I need to go back!” I say with all the force I can muster. Which is not much. My limbs have begun to shake, threatening to collapse beneath me. “More people may be hurt.”

Elliot clenches his jaw. “No.”

“Yes!”

“Elliot!” Sander barrels through the door we came through, his eyes wild. “It’s chaos in there. You need to get her out of here now!” I have never seen him afraid like this, and terror shoots through me. Where is Hex?

I step forward. “What’s going—”

“Unlatch the horse!” Elliot orders the guard. He grabs my arm in a vise-grip and pulls me toward the waiting coach without yielding.

The instant the horse is freed from the coach, Elliot lifts me onto its back despite the lack of a saddle, and with the help of the guard, he climbs up beside me and urges the horse forward.

“This horse is not meant for riding,” I say as people start filling the street, escaping the arena behind us.

It is an unimportant thing to note, even though the animal is far too large for me to comfortably sit astride.

I feel as if reality is playing out on a screen in front of me and I am detached from my body.

The real problems are too big for me to process. I still try.

Markham was injured. Someone tried to shoot me. My brothers are still in danger. Elliot has tucked an arm around me and kicked the horse into a canter, heading for one of the passes, toward our next stop where the vehicles will be waiting.

The city falls behind us in a blur.

We have been riding for hours or minutes.

I do not know. My heart is aching and my mind spinning, and Elliot holds so tight to me that breathing is difficult.

Instead of the city, nothing but trees surround us now, and Elliot has slowed the horse to a walk and moved us into the forest rather than on the open road.

As we continue to ride away from the arena and the people who need me, I ask a question despite knowing the answer. “Can we go back?”

Elliot grunts and shifts behind me. “It’s not safe.”

But a dense forest is acceptable? “We should not have left, Elliot. We should not have run when we could have helped.”

“You could have been killed,” he argues, loosening his hold on me. “If Grimstad hadn’t…” He grunts again.

He sounds angry. Is it really so difficult to admit that Markham might be a good man? “That is why I have to go back! He was hurt!”

“He’ll be fine. He was only…” He takes a breath, his lungs expanding against my back in a stuttered sort of motion. “The bullet only grazed him.”

The horse comes to a halt in a small clearing, though I have no idea why Elliot would not keep moving if he thinks it is too dangerous to go back to Skalridge. If he intends to go to our next stop, we need to move quickly to arrive before night sets in. But I will not go quietly.

Now that we have stopped riding and the adrenaline is leaving my system, I can think more clearly. Fear is making way for irritation and curiosity. “Elliot, we need to go back. I need to know who would do such a terrible thing and put people at risk like that.”

“Fenwick.” His voice comes out breathy against my neck. “I think he’s…some sort of radical.” Elliot’s hands slip from my waist and the reins, and the next thing I know he’s on the ground, landing in a heap in the underbrush.

“Elliot!” I grab the reins as the horse shuffles nervously, and I guide him several feet away before he accidentally tramples the man lying motionless in the dirt. Then I slide from the horse’s back, landing hard but upright, and dart back to Elliot.

His entire right side beneath his jacket is covered in blood.

Swearing, I drop to my knees next to him and grab the handkerchief I put in my pocket this morning. It will not do much, but I have to stem the flow somehow. But first I need to find the wound, and he is not conscious to tell me where it is.

Choosing the bloodiest part of Elliot’s side, just below his ribcage, I ball up the cloth and press it against his body.

Elliot lets out a growl of pain that makes me jump back, my heart beating so swiftly that I fear it may stop. “What was that?” he snarls, curling in on himself. “Are you trying to kill me faster?”

I can only gape at him, even though I should probably be grateful that he is still very much alive. “What?”

He glares at me. “That hurt.”

He cannot be serious. “I am trying to keep you alive! You have lost so much blood already!”

“I haven’t lost anything. I know exactly where it is.” He gestures to his middle and shuts his eyes tight.

I sit back on my heels, clenching the bloody handkerchief in my fingers. “You are hilarious.”

“I like to think so.”

If he is alert enough to make jokes, surely he is not in any true danger. Although, he did fall off the horse—not a sign of good health.

“Elliot, you were shot.”

He opens one eye to look at me. “Oddly enough, I’m aware of that.”

“Why did you not say?” And how did I not notice?

Groaning, he slowly rolls to his back again and stretches out, one hand pressed to his hip. “It’s not that bad. I was more concerned about getting you away from the city. Give me that.” Taking the cloth from me, he struggles out of his jacket, then unhooks his shoulder holster.

When he starts unbuttoning his blood-stained shirt, I realize I have sat motionless for longer than I should, and I grab his trembling hands to stop him. “Let me.”

His eyes glow gold in the afternoon sunlight when he looks at me, and there is as much surprise in his expression as there is pain. “You don’t have to—”

“That bullet would have hit me if you had not been protecting me. Let me help you, Elliot.”

With his eyebrows pulling low, he seems to struggle with relinquishing control as he slowly pulls his hands from mine and lets them fall to the ground at his sides. “I need to know if the bullet is still in there.”

If by ‘in there’ he means in the muscle beneath his ribcage…

Swallowing, I finish unbuttoning his shirt and push the soaked fabric aside, revealing the source of the blood.

I have not spent much time around other people’s blood, and my stomach twists as I take the handkerchief and use it to soak up what I can and give myself a better view.

At first, I try to keep my hands clean, but that is useless because I have to press the cloth to his wound to try to stem the flow.

“There is too much blood,” I whisper, hating that I am not strong enough to remain confident. Instead of a cool head and a plan, I have nothing but tears blurring my vision. Elliot was injured because of me. His pain is my fault.

“Hey.” Elliot curls cold fingers around my wrist, and when I meet his gaze, he lifts one corner of his mouth up in a smile. “I’m okay, Princess.”

“You’re clearly not.”

He chuckles, then winces. “No, probably not okay. But I’ll live. Unless the bullet is still inside me, in which case things are going to get more complicated.”

“I can’t see—”

“Let me…” Grunting, he twists his torso until he reveals the side of his back. “It came in back there, right?”

Again, I have to wipe the blood away, and now my fingers are coated in it. There is more blood at his back than I would like, and I think he should not be lying the way he is if we are to stop the bleeding. But I need to answer his question. “I…I think so.”

Falling back down, he nods and shuts his eyes. “Two holes. Good sign.”

“Nothing about this is good, Elliot.”

That gets another pained chuckle out of him. “And here I thought I was the paranoid one.”

“You were right.” I shake my head as my mind again runs through what happened after the debate.

Though I do not know what Fenwick hoped to gain by attempting to destroy the monarchy, Elliot has been right about him from the beginning.

“Is that why you disappeared yesterday? Because you suspected something like this would happen?”

Elliot nods slowly, his brow furrowed as he studies me. There is a darkness in his eyes that worries me. “I saw Fenwick in the city and followed him. I didn’t learn anything useful, and I should have stuck with him until I did. I could have prevented this.”

If anyone could have prevented this, it was me.

If I had only listened to Elliot and trusted his instincts at the start instead of holding him back, perhaps no one would have gotten hurt.

Or if I had accepted that I alone am not good for Candora and let Markham announce our engagement at the debate. Or—

“I need you to make sure my shirt is in one piece, Rapunzel.”

I meet Elliot’s golden gaze once more. “What? Your shirt? I think it is beyond saving, even if you wash it.”

His laugh quickly turns into a groan as he places his hand over mine where I have been holding the handkerchief to his skin. “Stop making me laugh. No. If there’s a piece missing, it could have been left inside me, and I’m not eager to deal with the infection that would come with that.”