Page 117

Lucky

to a Gustaf fight.

I snort. Then laugh. Then laugh wildly enough that my ribs start to creak like the rock walls around us.

Next time.

“I fucking love you,” I choke out, and she shakes her head, laughing too.

Until the rock stops grumbling.

And the shouts start to register.

“Come on, beautiful. Get up.”

Every inch of my body aches, but I help Eden to her feet, and we run back toward the hall. Beyond it, I hear shouts and orders and feet—too many feet.

It takes us a minute to clear enough rubble to open the door to the hall, but when we do, there are civilians everywhere, blocking the hall.

“What’s happening?” Eden asks Mary Beth, who’s staring over our shoulders, horrified.

“What happened to our room ?”

I start pushing through the hall, twisting between civilians and Reapers and past Arthur, and I catch Deanna’s worried face sticking out of the med bay.

“What in the hell was that?” she asks. “Do we need to move? Is there more? Should I?—”

I don’t stop moving, but I shout back. “All fine, just a teensy tiny bit of C-4 to murder our enemies! Shouldn’t bother you anymore unless the room collapses.” I tug Eden through the thick mass of bodies, and bounce up on my toes to shout, “Is Dom still okay?”

“He’s stable. What?—?”

“Tell him I said hi!”

I glance into the sitting room, seeing Sawyer sitting between the rows of wounded, next to an unconscious Cole. Sawyer’s face is white and grim as he stares through the cracked sliding doors.

As he watches from inside.

Eden and I finally shove free of the crowd, coated in dust and joined by the hand.

“Back!” Jennifer is shouting on the porch. “Everyone inside, now ! Go !”

Eden and I exchange a look.

We both push forward, moving against the surge until we make it outside.

Reapers and civilians are abandoning the defensive platforms at speed, racing back to the house. In the distance, I see the second Sinner log bridge has been taken out, lying burned and discarded on its side, but the third...

I start to run, and Eden is right beside me, the same fear on her face.

She’s not armed, but it doesn’t matter.

Ava, Katherine, Ida, Ethel, Sloane, and Jasper are too close to the moat, under the shitty cover we used the other day, firing on every Sinner approaching the bridge.

A small horde lies dead on the other side, and more bodies dangle over pikes, but the Sinners are like a wave.

Like the ocean. There’s too many of them, and they’re all headed for us.

And then I see them.

Beau is kneeling right in front of the bridge, holding the Gustaf over one shoulder.

Jayk is behind him, loading up a heavy round.

“Oh, fuck,” I breathe.

Jayk has used our smoke round. We’ve only got high explosives or area defense rounds left.

“Fuck?” Eden asks, staggering to a halt beside me. “Why, oh fuck?”

The civs—the goddamned Valkyries out there protecting my guys—they stand, firing on the Sinners as they back up.

Henrietta squawks at my feet, her wings batting my legs in distress, and absently, I pick her up, tucking her against my chest. My heart’s pounding as quickly as hers.

“Well, you know the C-4 we just used?” I tell Eden.

Jasper rises beside them, lobbing two grenades, and the explosions make pockets in the horde in front of them. It buys Jayk and Beau enough time to run in.

Eden goes still. “ Yes ?”

Beau finally stops, stepping one foot onto the bridge, and the bazooka over his shoulder winks in the sun.

For the first time, the Sinners hesitate.

“Well, Beau just whipped his out,” I sigh.

A Sinner at the front lifts his pistol at Beau, and Jayk takes him between the eyes. Then another beside him. Jasper nails one in the thigh, then one in the gut—not as neat, but they’re not firing on Beau either way.

The civs run toward us, just as the Sinners start scrambling back.

I look at Eden regretfully. “And his is bigger.”

Beau fires.

In slow, mesmerizing motion, the blast lights up the trees in a violent, volcanic burst. It tears their roots out of the ground, ripping a hole in the forest, the fiery blast roaring outward with brutal, rushing force.

It rushes through the Sinners from behind, a mass of trees and dirt, stone and rubble slamming into them in a vicious wall of debris.

The earth churns up, splitting in a biblical fissure.

Men are thrown hard into the moat, skewered by pikes, or they land in the barbed wire, where it snags in their throats and cheeks. A flying branch crashes against the back of one man’s head, and a Sinner runs from the trees, screaming and writhing in flames.

In a thunderous crash, the force pushes out farther, faster, and Beau flies back off the bridge, hurtling hard into the grass, debris peppering him too.

I grab Eden to me, and Henrietta is hugged between us as Jasper, Jayk, the civs, are slammed to the ground by the shockwave. Platform Three’s wooden struts crack and then crash under force, until the whole thing crumples with a thud.

When the blast rushes past us, it only has enough strength to make us stumble back a step and the other platforms creak threateningly.

The field falls quiet.

Eden’s breath is hot against my face.

“Are they okay?” she whispers.

Silently, tense, I watch the field. I’m sure Jayk and Jasper were clear, but... Beau was closer.

For a long, long moment, nothing moves at all.

Then Beau staggers to his feet.

“Yeah, beautiful. They’re okay,” I whisper, seeing the others shaking themselves off too. “We’re okay.”

A few lucky Sinners get up, dragging themselves toward the trees. A few scream and moan, too damaged to move. Most don’t move at all.

And through the flashes of the blazing fire, I see the rest of their army... and they’re running away.

Henrietta’s soft, downy head rubs against my chest, and I pet her, smiling tiredly.

“I think we just won our first fight.”