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“The trees! The trees!” they yelled from a hundred meters away, pointing.
Lila started off as Dixon landed beside her. His ankle rolled, and he breathed out with a hiss and a groan. Hobbling forward, he cried out, struggling to follow.
“Stay here,” Lila said over her shoulder, rushing off again to follow Olivier, leaving her friend behind. She sprinted into the tree line, hopping over brambles and brush.
Another shot rang out.
Lila ran toward the gunfire, ignoring the little twist in her stomach that told her to turn back. Leaves crunched under her boots. Branches slapped at her face. Still she dashed on, not even trying to walk quietly. If he’d been watching, he already knew where she was.
Purple flashed ten meters ahead, a blur of color tossed into the wind, replaced by a black hoodie. He ran toward the dusty road, toward a gray Cruz sedan, a car very much like her own except in color. The only saving grace was that this car had been parked half on the road, half off. The driver’s seat was empty, and the engine was dead.
He’d need to start it before rushing off. That would buy her some time.
Olivier turned again in the center of a clearing and lifted his gun, facing in a different direction. Several purplecoats had noticed his car. Their faces tight, guns locked in white-knuckled grips, they sprinted toward it. The undergrowth tore at the trains of their coats.
Olivier shot in their direction, and they scattered, diving into a ditch.
Lila hadn’t stopped running. In that moment, she didn’t think. Just as on the mat with Dixon, she charged. She didn’t charge with the composure of a highborn, though. She didn’t charge with thoughts of completing a waltz or preying as a panther. No, Elizabeth Victoria Lemaire-Randolph charged like a bear, filled with every ounce of anger and scorn withheld over the last six weeks. Not as a noble mother bear, either, lunging to protect its cub, but as a bear stung in the ass by a thousand bees, angry and frustrated to find her honey stolen.
Stolen by the man before her.
This was the man who had pointed the mercs at Oskar and Maria Kruger and the oracles. This was the man who had marked three young girls for capture. This was the man who had caused her to enter that warehouse, forcing her to kill to save her friends. This was man who’d caused her to paint the cement with blood.
He was the reason Shaw would stand on a stage in the auction house.
He was the reason she hadn’t had the time to save her father’s career.
Olivier saw her just before she leapt, managing to get off another wild shot before she blundered into him. As they fell, the gun skittered a meter away on the leaf-strewn earth.
Lila grabbed his belt and tugged herself onto his chest,
gripping his collar. She punched his face, pummeling his cheek and his nose and his eyes. Her hand smashed against sharp bone rather than upon a rounded, heavy bag of sand. The crunching only drove her onward, goading her to land blow upon blow.
Gods, she enjoyed the pain. Not the pain she inflicted upon Olivier, but the pain in her knuckles, the pain in her hands, the way it reverberated into her shoulder, the way she felt it in her neck and chest and knees, rolling, like a wave throughout her body.
Lila didn’t stop, not until Olivier punched the side of her belly. She cried out, letting loose a torrent of air that stopped and congealed in her throat. Her eyes reddened, watered, and her bloody fingers opened, letting loose the hold she’d taken of his collar.
Olivier shimmied out from under her and raised his fist.
Lila didn’t wait for the blow. She didn’t rack her brain for the perfect counter. Instead, she just got the fuck out of the way, rolling awkwardly as her heart pumped in her chest.
Olivier abandoned his attack, crawling toward his gun, clawing at the earth and leaves and underbrush to retrieve it.
All at once, he lurched to the side, drunkenly, hands grasping his gun and a fistful of leaves. He turned, swinging his weapon toward Lila, but his arm didn’t rise high enough. He shot twice into the ground and toppled into the dirt, his fingers still wound in the trigger.
Leaves rustled at the edge of the clearing. Dixon huffed and puffed, tranq gun in his hand, mouthing something Lila couldn’t understand as he hobbled to her side.
“I’ve never been happier that someone didn’t listen to me.” She laughed, her side aching.
Dixon did not join her.
Dropping his weapon, he knelt at her side, his hands flying to her belly. He pushed into her side so hard that she thought he might wring her in two.
It wasn’t until then that she spied the blood spreading down her torso, seeping into her coat.
“When did that happen?” she murmured stupidly.
Dixon shook his head, mouthing more words she couldn’t follow.
