Valentina had gotten down behind a rock with two of her nephews covering her. One of the kids cried again, and someone tried to quiet her while keeping their head down. We'd lost at least two people already, maybe more. Bodies lay across the gully, and I couldn't tell who was dead and who was just smart enough to play it.
Patroklos stood on the ridge like he had all day. The sickle stayed on his belt. He just stood there while his men cut us apart from the high ground.
We were going to die here, all of us. We'd made it through the tunnel just to get slaughtered in a gully on the wrong side of the mountain.
Beside me, Eight's breathing changed. The steady rhythm broke, and her chest expanded slow and deep, pulling air like she was loading a weapon. She opened her mouth. She set her jaw, and her whole body shifted from stillness into purpose.
Then a voice cut through the gunfire.
"STOP."
Everything stopped.
The rifles went quiet. My people stopped shooting. Even the kid stopped crying. Everyone turned to look at where the voice had come from.
Eight stood in the open.
She'd come out from behind her rock and just stood there with her hands at her sides, no cover, no weapon.
And they'd stopped.
I started to move toward her, and she looked at me. She just looked at me, and I froze because the expression on her face said trust me as clearly as if she'd spoken it out loud.
She walked forward, through bodies and blood and dirt chewed up by bullets, until she stood right in front of Patroklos.
They stared each other down. The gully went so quiet that every beat of my heart thundered through me.
Then she spoke again. "If I go with you, will you leave them alone?"
Dios mío, no.
I moved before I could think about it, pushed off the boulder, and started toward her. Beni grabbed my arm, and I nearly put my elbow through his teeth before I registered what he was doing.
"Diego, don't." His voice was low and urgent. "If you move, they'll shoot."
He was right. Patroklos's men had their rifles trained on me now, every single one of them. The barrels tracked my chest, and I froze with Beni's hand still locked around my arm.
Eight didn't turn around. She kept her eyes on Patroklos and waited for an answer.
Patroklos studied her for a long time. His face broke for half a second when she spoke, a crack that he sealed back up before it could spread. He looked at Eight the way you look at a mirror you weren't expecting to find. Then he looked past her at my people scattered across the gully, wounded and bleeding and pinned behind rocks that wouldn't stop a second volley. He checked his own men on the ridge, counting how many he'd already lost.
He could kill us all. It would cost him time and bullets and men, but he could do it.
Or he could take what Achilles actually wanted. Leverage on Jasper. A nine-year-old girl who'd just offered herself up to save forty people she barely knew.
Patroklos looked back down at Eight and nodded once.
He reached down, and she took his hand.
My knees hit the dirt. The impact shot through my jeans, and I didn't care. Beni let go of my arm, but I couldn't move, anyway.I just knelt there while a nine-year-old girl volunteered to walk into hell because I'd brought her here.
Behind me, someone cried.
You're the leader now, Diego. Time to lead.
Forty people or one child. My family or a nine-year-old girl who'd learned to kill before she learned to read, who'd sat beside me at the window watching the dark and mapped escape routes in crayon and stabbed a Pantheon Judge in the leg. She had never once asked me for anything except to let her do her job.
I couldn't let her go. I couldn't watch her walk away with that monster and do nothing.
