This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. This wasn’t the plan. No one was meant to die.
“Down!” Clíona gasped, tugging at her dress.
They hit the ground hard behind the balustrade. The stone was cold beneath her palms. A bullet struck the marble above her head with a deafening crack.
Stone exploded.
Fragments sprayed across her cheek, sharp as glass. She flinched, ducking lower, her heart lurching so violently it might tear free of her ribs.
Her ears rang, a high, relentless whine that swallowed everything else. The world became fragments, shadows moving through smoke, the flash of steel, the dull thud of bodies hitting the ground.
She pressed herself flatter against the marble, dragging in a breath that burned all the way down. The air was thick now, heavy with smoke, harder to breathe and impossible to see through.
Where was Cormac?
The thought cut through everything.
She lifted her head an inch, trying to see over the balustrade. The courtyard had dissolved into chaos. Shapes moved in the smoke. She couldn’t tell who was standing, who had fallen, who was—
Another shot cracked.
She jerked back instinctively, her shoulder slamming into the stone. Clíona’s hand clutched at her sleeve, fingers digging in hard enough to hurt.
“Alton—!” Clíona’s voice broke, raw with panic. “Alton!”
Her stomach twisted violently, heat rising in her mouth as she pulled Clíona in tight.
This is my fault.
A heavy impact shuddered through the balustrade, jolting her back to the present. More stone splintered somewhere to her right. Someone cried out, abruptly cut off.
Time stretched, warped. Each second too long, too sharp, as though she were living inside every instant instead of passing through it. Clíona’s hands gripped her arms painfully tight.
Please.
Make it stop.
Who was she pleading with? The Shee never listened.
The noise thinned as gunshots came less frequently. Shouts broke apart into scattered voices. Steel rang once more, distant now.
Silence fell in its wake.
Aoife didn’t move.
She couldn’t.
Her body locked in place, every muscle taut, waiting for the next shot, the next blow.
It didn’t come.
The ringing in her ears faded enough for her to hear the absence of everything else.
No shouting.
No gunfire.
Only the faint crackle of settling debris… and the soft, terrible quiet that followed.
