She tousled his hair.“So, you’ve already said.”
Jin didn’t look happy as she shifted into a crouch.She sent Raider a quick glance.“Ready?”
He burst into a sprint, arrowing away from the wall at an angle and drawing fire.
“Asshole,” Kira spat, taking off a second later.
He could have at least gone on three.
Kira did her best to duck and weave between the trees, her movements hampered somewhat by her wounds.
Pain blazed up her thigh and in her shoulder for the first few moments before gradually numbing under the onslaught of adrenaline.
I’m up.He sees me.I’m down,Kira mentally whispered.
She dove behind the nearest tree, wincing as the movement sent a new lance of agony shooting through her body.
Bark flew as they locked on her position.
Kira controlled her racing heart, taking tiny sips of air while waiting for the next break in their barrage.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Raider break cover.
The bombardment that had pinned her down faded as the pirates’ switched targets.
“Good enough for me,” Kira groaned.
By the Mea’Ave, she didn’t want to do this again.
This time Kira chose a direction that was perpendicular to her earlier one in hopes that she’d be able to circle back to deliver a little justice of her own.
Why should Finn and Dylan get to have all the fun?
There were considerably fewer weapons being fired in her direction this time, allowing her to make a beeline to one of the positions Raider had identified earlier.
She nearly tripped over a body when she arrived.
The human—because it was a human, she could tell by the round tips of their ears—lay face down.Someone had buried a sharp, bladed instrument in their back, going up between their ribs to stab their heart.
Kira whistled silently, admiring the handiwork.She didn’t think she could have done a better job herself.
On silent feet, she slipped through woods that had suddenly gone eerily silent.
There was something about the unnatural hush of a forest.It spoke to the hind brain.That remnant of evolution from eons ago when the first people huddled around campfires in hopes its light would keep away the monsters.That part of her knew what waited in forests like this.Ones where the cries of the dead and dying were swallowed so thoroughly that it was like they had never been uttered in the first place.
Kira resisted the sense of dread that tried to creep over her.She forced herself to move, reaching for theakieriat her waist before remembering that it was useless without her soul’s breath.
Cursing softly, she switched to the short dagger she’d packed as a replacement.
Up ahead, the shadows swirled.
Kira stopped, the muscles in her legs tightening.A stab of pain deep in her thigh reminded her that she wasn’t in the best condition and that maybe, just maybe, this hadn’t been her best idea.
The creak of the trees and the breath of the forest wrapped around her as she waited.Each moment more tense than the one before.
It felt almost anticlimactic when Roderick stepped out of the trees, his flat expression showing confusion to find her standing there brandishing a blade.“What happened to you?”He scanned her body, noting her various wounds with a deep frown.“Does your oshota not do his job?”
Kira partially lowered her weapon.“Roderick, what are you doing here?”
