Uh oh.
I wasn’t sure how it started, maybe with Ettore lunging at the soldier, or Bartosz kicking at the soldier’s head like a madman, but suddenly the boat was in chaos. Soldiers were on Bartosz, and Ettore was scrapping with the bloody soldier. A soldier raised his gun like it was a cudgel and moved to clobber Ettore in the head with it, but suddenly Jin Woo was there blocking the weapon.
I didn’t know how I saw it before Oskar, maybe he was too wrapped up in the action to see it, but while the brawl happened, I saw a soldier taking advantage of the fact that Jin Woo was no longer next to us to creep to the side of us. He was positioning himself so that he could shoot Oskar’s arm, stopping him from holding a knife to Constantine’s neck. However, I knew with a deep, quiet knowledge that had never poured into me before, that with the rocking of the boat, he was going to hit Oskar’s chest instead. He was going to hit Oskar’s chest, and he would bleed and bleed and bleed out, long before we reached the mainland.
I made up my mind before I even knew what I was doing, throwing myself up and to the side, covering the place that the deep knowledge told me that Oskar would be shot, springing up frog-like from the ground.
It was like I had been slugged in my stomach, an awful punch that pushed all the air out of my lungs, and then there was heat, not quite boiling or burning, but unpleasant. The sound of the gun still rang in the air, the sound louder than the waves, the boat’s engine, and the rapid beating of my heart.
The fight had paused, all of the combatants turning towards the noise. I locked eyes with Jin Woo, at the shock and then blossoming horror on his face. Horror? I thought, What had horrified him?
There was something damp in my lap, and I saw a rapidly spreading wet splotch on my shirt, spreading underneath my gaze. I reached down and touched the wet spot, and when I pulled my fingers away, they were shiny and red.
“Oskar,” I whimpered before the pain hit, an electric agony in my stomach, causing me to hunch and keel to the side, gripping my belly. But it wasn’t Oskar who caught me, it was Constantine, his pale blue eyes all I could see, his hand cooled by the cold and the spray coming down on mine over the wound.
“You fools!” he barked, “you utter fools, she’s Renai, you just shot an unregistered female Renai for no fucking reason!”
The agony was a pulsating mess in my abdomen. Everything was too much, the pain and the sharp little wails that wouldn’t stop, they were like nails driven into my ears. It took me several seconds to realize that those wails were coming from me.
Oskar was holding my head. I could smell him, I could smell all of them, and I reached out to them with my free hand, in too much agony to speak, but still wanting them close.
“Floor it, idiot!” came a voice that, and, in my pain, I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, “If she dies, I will kill you, fuck the council.”
There were hands on me, hands that I knew, one against my cheek, another on top of the other two on my stomach, one holding my hair as I tried to wretch. I could taste thick blood and bile in my mouth.
“Ettore,” I said faintly, my vision was going in and out, the edges fuzzing. They peeled and cracked like an old painting, whether my eyes were closed or not.
“Si,salvatrice,what is itamore?” There was something wrong with his voice; it was…was stuffy almost. He was holding my hand. I knew it was him, even if my vision was whited out with pain, I knew those finely boned fingers.
“Am I going to die, Ettore? I don’t want to die.” I felt like a little girl again, a child on a train, rushing to a destination that I wasn’t sure I wanted to arrive at. At least this time, I wasn’t alone; at least this time, someone was holding my hand.
“No,piccola,his voice reassured me. If Ettore said I wasn’t going to die, then I wasn’t going to die. Even as my vision went dark and my world was boiling agony that never abated, only rose in higher and higher waves, the knowledge that I wasn’t going to die kept me grounded. I couldn’t die, right?
Chapter Fourteen
It felt like I had been sleeping for a long time. My mouth was dry and my limbs heavy, but I had the feeling that I needed to wake up now, no matter how tired I was. The room was almost as dark as behind my eyelids; the only light came from the blinking and quietly beeping machines beside me and a singular weak reading light. It half-illuminated a thin semi-circle that was just bright enough that I could see figures arrayed around my bed.
There were four chairs, Bartosz was the only one who was touching me; his arms were flung over my feet and legs. Oskar was on the side of what must be a hospital bed; he slept with his head in his hands, like the statue ‘The Thinker’ if it had been called ‘The Despairer’ instead. Jin Woo was lying in Ettore’s lap, his arm clasped in Ettore’s grip that looked so tight that it couldn’t have been comfortable, yet Jin Woo slept on. Ettore sat straight up in his chair, back so straight, head so straight, I had no idea how he was sleeping, as the way he was sitting looked incredibly uncomfortable. He had a small frown on his face even as he slept, and his dark eye bags stood out starkly.
It made me want to stroke his cheeks, to pull Bartosz up until he was beside me, to feather my fingers through Jin Woo’s hair and pull Oskar’s hands away from his face, and the veil of hopelessness away from him, but my limbs we so heavy and I was so weak, it was a fight keeping my eyes open.
There was a movement near where light shone through the outline of a door. Emerging from the shadows was a man with white hair and eyes so pale blue that they were almostghostly. Constantine, some memory that I was grasping with the very tips of my fingers, told me.
“Don’t move,” he said, his voice low and not sympathetic, but not cruel either, just detached, “you are on huge doses of drugs so you don’t feel it, but your stomach is still a mess.”
“Alright,” I croaked, my voice so quiet that I didn’t think anyone else could hear it, but it seemed like Constantine did, as he nodded and came closer until he was standing in the puddle of light next to me.
I wanted to do so much, to wake up my men and tell them that I was fine, that I cared for them, loved them, but sleep stubbornly pulled on me just as I fought equally hard against it, biting hard into my bottom lip and sucking in harsh, deep breaths. A new light began to flash on the monitor, and an urgent beep began to blare. Ettore started to stir, his brows furrowing.
“Stop that,” came the same sharp voice. Constantine stared down at me with disapproval,
“I am so tired, Constantine,” I said as if by saying his name he would understand me, “I have to tell them that I’m alright, they must have been scared, and I am so worried for them.”
Constantine scoffed.
“Youare worried forthem? Bah!”
Yet, I could feel the tears rise up in my eyes, a sob building up in my chest. I wasn’t quite in control of my body; I was paper-thin, tearable, and fragile. I couldn’t do anything.
