It’s not safe, not safe to go back to the circle, to the guards, the corpses and the wounded.
The gunfire hasn’t slowed.
Being out in the open is a death sentence, one that the cold warrior can’t protect me from, because he’s not fucking here.
He’s out there, somewhere in the city.
I need to save myself.
My heart is hammering in my chest, stealing my breaths, and I’m just pressed against the wheel, panting, wide-eyed, and frozen.
The van isn’t safe. Bullets are coming from the other side of the city too, raining down on the bridge from all angles.
The people who are firing at us must be sprinkled around the high-rises that overlook the river.
I’m too exposed.
My gaze swerves around for a place to hide.
The railing of the bridge runs back along into the riverbank. If I can reach the far end of the bridge, and jump down into the sloped soil, then I can take cover under the bridge.
It’s the only safe spot from this organised gunfire.
I roll my weight back onto my boots, and without wasting another breath, I’m shoving myself into a run.
I leap over a fallen bike before a man cuts ahead of me, darting out of sight behind a sedan.
I don’t let it pause me, not even the thunder of bootsteps chasing me slows me down, until whoever it is catches up to me, and something solid hits the back of my legs.
The impact knocks right into me, throws me off-balance. The road is rushing up at me, fast.
My forearms take the brunt of the fall.
The cry brewing in me is coarse, guttural, and it twists my face. I swallow it back and look down at the weight pinning my legs to the cold, wet road.
Desperate brown eyes meet mine.
A man is sprawled over my legs. And there’s a knife gleaming from the bone of his shoulder blade.
I lift my gaze from the hilt to the dark shadows lashing around the light.
Muscular legs, wrapped in leather, cut through the dusty blackness.
I drag my gaze up the leathers to the sharp face of the fae—the one who threw the knife.
The guard advances on us.
“Get off!” My shriek comes before the urgency starts to squirm my legs, as though I can free myself before he’s on us. “Get off, get off—”
The man doesn’t move because I command it in my own panic to get away, he moves for himself. I know that the moment he staggers to his feet and fucking tramples me.
The pain is an instant bolt of splintering ice the moment his damp sneaker comes crashing down on my shin.
The strangled scream rips out of me, wild.
My legs thrash and kick out, the cotton of my sweatpants tugging out from under his flattened sole.
But I’m a fruit fly to him, a mild bother in the face of a panther prowling closer.
