“It’s okay. The bullet didn’t hit an artery,” Tristan said to her unanswered question.

Unanswered because Lila hadn’t thought to ask.

Fry ran toward the cages, opening their squeaking doors to check on the children inside. “Oracle’s light, the gods were watching,” he called out, cradling the head of one of the girls. “There were a few close calls, but none of them got hit.”

“Thank the gods. Get them out,” Tristan ordered as he pulled hard on Dixon’s knot.

Fry did as he was bid, laying the children out carefully, their heads resting on pillows, their shoulders covered by the blankets that had once lined their cages.

“I never knew you could shoot like that,” Tristan said to Lila, finally turning away from his brother. “No wonder you’ve never taken me up on hand-to-hand training.”

His half-smile dissolved the second he spied her face. Jumping up, he tugged her toward the front of the room and sat her in a chair. “Hey, talk to me.” He caressed her cheeks with raw, swollen hands.

“Did I get shot?”

“No. You’re just…crying.”

Maria stared at the pair, wide-eyed, clutching the gun she’d stolen. She seemed not to know what to do with it or herself.

Tristan gently took the weapon from her grasp and placed it on the table.

“I knew he was full of shit before he even opened his mouth,” Maria said, glancing at Oskar, who still hadn’t looked up from his drooling stupor. “I don’t want to go to Germany. My father has that look in his eyes, the one he used to get when Oskar and I were little and the chairwoman called for him.”

The teen kicked the merc leader in the head. “He put my brother in a dog’s cage.”

Tristan pulled her away from the corpse, and she panned her head at the carnage.

So did Lila. Not because she wanted to but because she couldn’t help herself. Blood and bodies and brains spilled over the cement floor. Shaking death throes. Scraping boots and twitching hands. All of it mixed amid the snoring of those who’d been taken out by tranqs and the moans of those who’d been beaten into unconsciousness and hadn’t yet been tranqed.

Tristan picked up a tranq gun, clenched in a dead Italian’s hand, and fixed those who might wake. They finally slumbered with closed eyes while the dead stared back.

Regrets played in her mind. Regrets that were not her own. The regrets of nearly a dozen people, for her hand had dealt death to most in the room. She’d never erase the sight and smell of so much blood. Not the sounds of the fallen. Not the moans of the injured.

The oracle had been right after all. Tristan had dragged her into the mire to drown. She was a killer now. These were her victims.

And she didn’t feel a damn thing.

Lila focused on Maria. She heard her own voice speak from far away, sounding strange even to her own ears. “Where’d you learn to shoot?”

Maria fiddled with the scarf wound around her neck. “One of the blackcoats used to let me play on the range at night when no one else was around.”

“That’s against protocol.”

“He wasn’t thinking with his protocol. I’ve been perfect so many times. I didn’t do well here, not even close. It’s not the same, is it?”

Lila shook her head, and the cloud of numbness carried her thoughts away.

“The assholes deserved it. They were Italian mercs. This was war. We wouldn’t be standing here right now if either of you hadn’t done what you did.”

Tristan pulled his palm from his pocket. “Toxic, tell me you got that.”

“Is everyone okay?” Toxic asked, her voice echoing in the large room.

“Yes, did you get it?”

“I hit record as soon as you dialed.”

“Do you see now why we left you behind? Where are the others?”

Tags: Wren Weston Fates of the Bound Crime
Source: readsnovelonline.net