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“Bryant!” Lyla shouts from the second floor, her rifle aimed at the man in the coat. “Tell your people to step away from them.”

Another gunshot cracks from the lower level.

Everyone turns.

The man on top of me goes limp and falls beside me. His eyes meet mine, wide with surprise, before the life leaks out of them. A bullet has opened a hole in the side of his face, dark and wet, blood spilling from his mouth onto the tile.

Leon stands behind him with a gun in his hand.

Jacob stands beside him, shotgun raised, face harder than I have ever seen it.

But I barely see Jacob.

Because Leon is here.

Leon.

His red hair is half loose around his face. His eyes find me through the chaos, green and blazing and so full of rage the air between us feels flammable. Blood streaks one side of his jaw. His shoulders are squared. His gun is steady.

He looks like violence given a body.

I slowly get up, wincing as my whole body screams for me to stop moving. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, taste blood, and glance once more at Russ.

He is staring at Leon now.

Not at me. Not at Poppy.

At Leon.

And for the first time since I saw him again, Russ looks afraid.

Afraid isn’t good enough.

I look back at the man who came for us and force a bloody smile.

“What took you so long?”

THIRTY-FIVE

SHOWDOWN

LEON

They’re alive.

Relief fractures through me, and rage pours through the cracks.

The man I just shot slides off Clair and hits the tile beside her, eyes empty, blood leaking from the hole in his face and pooling near her hand. She pushes herself upright, one palm planted on the blood-slick floor.

Then she stands.

One side of Clair’s face is painted red, blood dripping from a cut near her cheek and tracing down her throat. Her white tank top is soaked through, clinging to her skin in dark, ruined patches that might be hers, might be someone else’s, might be both. Her hair has fallen loose around her shoulders, tangled and wild, strands stuck to her mouth, her neck, and the blood on her collarbone.

She looks hurt. Furious. Beautiful.

My Clair.

Every brutal inch of her says she fought like hell before I got here. Blood on her hands. Blood on her mouth. Blood smeared down her arms like war paint. God help me, I want to cross that open court, put my hands on her face, and make sure every drop of it belongs to someone else.