Raven has her good hand clamped over the gash on her arm, her jaw tight, not complaining. She's braver than me. Or better at hiding it. I can feel my heart hammering so hard it's moved up into my throat, each beat pushing against the skin like something trying to get out.
The sounds of the fight reach us muffled and distorted through the ringing in my ears. Gunfire in waves. Men shouting, though I can't make out the words. The crack of something heavy hitting stone. A scream that cuts off abruptly and leaves a silence worse than the noise.
I can't see what's happening. The wall is too high, and I don't dare look over it. All I have is sound, and sound is the worst part because my brain fills in the images. Every burst of gunfiremeans someone is dying. Every shout is William's voice. Every silence is the moment before the worst thing I can imagine.
My stomach turns. I swallow hard, and the taste of bile sits at the back of my tongue. My teeth are chattering. Not from cold. From something deeper, something animal, my body is trying to shake out the terror because there's nowhere for it to go.
"They're holding." Raven's voice reaches me like she's speaking from the far end of a corridor. She's found a gap in the stonework, her cheek pressed to the wall to peer through it. "Headlights on the road. More of our men are coming."
I don't look. I can't make myself move closer to the wall. The sound of engines reaches us, distant, and then more gunfire, heavier now, and Raven nods to herself.
"They're here," she says. "The families. They're here."
The ringing in my ears is fading. Not gone, but thinning. Sounds sharpening at the edges. My shoulder still hurts, but the pain has settled into something steady, something I can push to the side if I don't think about it.
I need to see him. The not knowing is worse than anything on the other side of this wall. I rise onto my knees and press my face to the gap in the stonework where Raven was looking.
The gap is narrow. I can see the garden, part of the stone wall that borders it, and beyond that a section of the house still lit by the fire from the east wing. Smoke drifts across everything in thick bands. Figures move through it, but I can't tell who's who. Dark shapes against orange light.
Then I see him. William. I know his shape, the way he carries himself, even at this distance, even through the smoke. He's at the garden wall. Gun raised. Firing.
A man comes at him from behind a hedge, and William drops him with two shots. Doesn't slow. Doesn't check. Keeps moving.
Something explodes near his position.
The ground where he was standing erupts. Dirt and stone and fragments of the garden wall were thrown high into the air. The blast reaches me as a thud in my chest even from here. Debris rains down through the smoke, and where William was standing, there is nothing—just a cloud of dust and rubble and the orange glow of fire behind it.
I can't see him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Aoife
THE SOUND THAT comes out of me isn't a word. It's something raw and involuntary, torn from the bottom of my lungs. My hands hit the top of the wall, and I'm hauling myself over it before any conscious thought enters my head. There is no decision. No calculation. There is only the space where William was and the space where he isn't, and the need to close the distance between those two things before the worst becomes real.
Raven grabs at my leg. "Aoife, don't! Don't!"
I'm already over. Already running.
The gravel is sharp under my bare feet because somewhere in the chaos, I lost my shoes. I don't feel it. I don't feel my shoulder or my head or the smoke that's so thick I'm breathingmore of it than air. I can taste it, chemical and bitter, coating the inside of my mouth. Bullets snap past me. I don't know how close. I don't care. The only things that exist are the place where the explosion hit and the prayer I'm repeating inside my skull, which sounds nothing like any prayer I was ever taught.
Please. Please. Please.
A shape in the dust. On the ground. Moving.
William is getting up. He's on his hands and knees, his head hanging, shaking it like he's trying to clear his vision. Blood on his face. Dirt in his hair. He pushes himself to one knee and sways, and for a horrible second, I think he's going to go back down.
I reach him. My hands close around his arm, and I'm pulling, dragging him sideways, and he's heavy, so much heavier than I expected, and my shoulder screams back to life, but I don't let go. I haul him behind the section of garden wall that's still standing, and we hit the ground together as a burst of gunfire chews into the stone where he was kneeling a second ago. Chips of rock spray across us. I throw myself over him, shielding his head with my arms, and the absurdity of it almost makes me laugh because I weigh half what he does, and my body would stop nothing.
The firing moves on. Passes over us.
William rolls onto his back. Blinks up at me. His eyes take a moment to focus. Then they lock on my face, and he stops blinking.
"You're bleeding." He sits up fast, too fast, and grabs my chin, turning my head to the side. His fingers find the cut at my temple, and I flinch. "What happened? Where else are you hit?"
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're covered in blood." His hands are moving. Down my arms, across my shoulders. He finds the rightone, and I hiss and pull back. "What is this? When did this happen?"
