Page 34 of Daggermouth

She had never witnessed such bravery.

Something snapped in her then as she watched the guard next to her tighten his finger on the trigger. She shot forward despite the agony aching through every inch of her body, desperate to stop the slaughter she knew was coming. She grabbed the neck of the rifle just as he pressed fully down on the trigger, yanking the gun upward. But she was too late.

She was too late.

The sound cracked in the confined space, and a prisoner in the cell in front of them fell, blood blooming across his chest like a macabre flower.

The singing faltered, a momentary hitch of horror, but then it resumed, louder and more defiant than before. The guard snapped toward Shadera as she twisted the gun from his hands faster than she had ever moved. She fell to a knee, pushing the butt of it into her shoulder and open fired on the guards. Veyra dropped one after another.

A baton crashed into her cheekbone and she felt it crack, her head snapping back. She forced her eyes to focus as she pointed the rifle upward and sent a bullet into the soft flesh under the guard’s chin and out of the top of his head. Hands clasped around her neck as the guard’s body hit the ground, and she clawed to keep her grip on the gun as it was snatched from her fingers.

Bullets were flying from every officer’s gun into cells, tearing through flesh and bone with sickening ease as she was dragged from the floor by her throat. Bodies crumpled around her, voices silenced forever, but still the anthem rang out. A clarion call to the fallen.

Shadera would never forget them.

A scream, a wordless howl of anguish and rage, unleashed itself from her lungs as she kicked and screamed against the Veyra’s hold.

“Kill me! Kill me instead,” she shrieked, the words tearing from the depths of her body. “I’m the one you want. They did nothing wrong!”

Shadera threw back her head, her skull crushing against the mask of the guard holding her, and it fell from his face. He scrambled toward it, freeing her of his hold as her boots connected with the blood slicked floor. She lunged for another guard.

She had to stop this, had to save someone—anyone.

Another blow caught across her face that sent her sprawling. She tasted blood, felt the crunch of her nose breaking, but the pain was nothing compared to the carnage and music unfolding around her.

A guard dragged her by the arm, his grip bruising as the toe of his boot found her stomach. Shadera recoiled into herself, retching acid as he threw her over his shoulder and turned toward the exit. Her nailsbroke and bled as she dug into his back, fists pounding against his armor.

“Kill me!Please. Kill me instead,” she screamed again and again as the prison door slammed shut at the guard’s back.

A sob lodged itself in her chest as she watched the massacre continue through the small square window of the prison entrance. The guard hauled her down the corridor, the song and window growing smaller as tears spilled over her bloodied cheeks.

She would be the only survivor, she knew that.

Knew that this act of savagery would be buried, would be hidden from this city.

She would die before she let that happen.

She barely registered the doors they passed, the turns they took, the elevator they’d stepped into—her focus narrowed to the single, searing point of her hatred for the man who held her.

For the system that bred him.

For the world that allowed such brutality to flourish.

The elevator crawled to a halt and the guard shoved Shadera from his shoulder as the doors slid open. She stumbled, her boots smearing blood across the polished marble floors as he dragged her toward two doors at the end of the hallway.

“You can’t silence us all,” Shadera spat, the words tasting of blood as the guard stopped in front of closed doors. “You can’t kill everyone outside of the Heart and expect no one to rise up against it.”

The guard stared at her for a long moment, saying nothing, then raised his fist and knocked on the door. The answering voice that sounded from the other side sent dread coiling down her spine.

“Enter,” Maximus Serel said as the doors swept open.

Chapter ten

You Do Not Have A Choice

Theworldexistedinlayers of white and gray, each stacked atop the other until the thrum of pain lost all meaning.

When Greyson woke, it was to the hard pulse of his own heart echoing against sterile tile, and the sharp medicinal stench of antiseptic burning the inside of his nose. No concerned mother gripping his hand too tight as she prayed he would live, no worried father waiting at his bedside. Just him, alone in a room, as hospital machinery beeped in a lazy rhythm. His eyes fluttered open and closed, the room alternately swelling and shrinking around him with every breath.