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He leapfrogs a pew, and then another. I slip in a puddle of blood, hit the floor, throw myself right back up, keep running.
He withdraws a gun from his belt and loads a fresh clip as he keeps moving.
I stumble again. Get up again. A flying elbow catches me in the face, but I shrug off the blow and keep staggering toward Wren.
The whole world has shrunk down to a pinpoint. Wren in a lilac-colored dress and the man in black chasing her down.
When I get the tiniest of opportunities, I raise my weapon and shoot. He ducks just in time to dodge the bullet and plows onward to her.
He’s too fast. I’m too sluggish and wrong-footed and my head feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton.
Another flash in the corner of my eye. This one is white and blonde—my bride, leaping down the steps when she sees where I’m headed.
A foot whips out and catches me around the ankle. I fall again, and this time, I strike the corner of the altar steps on the way down, cracking my skull hard enough to see stars. That foggy, full-of-cotton feeling intensifies. The pinpoint shrinks.
I see Wren.
I see the Irishman.
I see Bee.
I see it all happen, and I’m powerless to stop it.
Bee raises her gun to cut down the enemy. She has a pure line of sight and she never misses—but the gun fails her. As she goes to pull the trigger, her weapon jams.
The Irishman grins in delight. He lifts his own gun and levels it off—not at Bee, but at Wren. His teeth, even from here, are yellowed and broken.
Bee’s jaw drops, then sets with determination. I know before it even happens what she’s going to do. I want to scream to tell her no, stop, don’t do it—but even if I could, it wouldn’t do any good.
She’s never been much good at following orders.
The Irishman redoubles his grip, flicks off the safety, and pulls the trigger. His muzzle sparks and spits. A bullet emerges…
And Bee throws herself in its path.
It’s the sight of red blossoming on Bee’s wedding dress, dead center in the middle of her stomach, that clears the fog in my head. All of a sudden, I can move again. I shove myself upright, leaking blood of my own from the temple, and cross the final distance.
Bee is lying sprawled on her side as the red spreads and spreads and spreads. The Irishman who shot is dead already, killed by God knows who, drooling his last breaths onto the tiled floors. I turn my back on him and kneel in front of my fake wife.
I reach out to touch her too-pale cheek. It’s still hellfire and chaos around me, but all I can think about is how cold her skin is already. Life shouldn’t fade from a human that fast. It isn’t right.
Not like this.
It can’t happen like this.
69
WREN
Aleks drags me backwards as Bee’s name rips its way out of my throat. Of all the things that have been torn from me in this life, losing her like this might hurt the worst.
“The fuck—” Aleksandr gasps as he tries to grab a hold of me.
I’ll be honest: I’m not thinking straight. I’m not thinking at all right now. It makes zero sense to turn back around and run towards the fighting, but that’s precisely what I do. Because all I can think is, My friend needs me.
My friend needs me, and I won’t let her die alone.
I wriggle free of Aleks’s grasp and get a few steps away before I trip on my skirts and go sprawling. At eye level, the red smeared all over the black-and-white tiled floors looks almost unreal. Like spilled paint, not something that just ran in my best friend’s veins.
