I step past him, hyperaware of how close we are, how easily he could grab me, hurt me, do anything he wanted.
He doesn't.
You're safe now,he said.
I don't believe him. I can't afford to believe anyone, not after the Hendersons, not after everything.
But when I turn to look at him one more time—really look, past the blood on his shirt and the scar through his eyebrow and the coldness he wears like armor—I'm not sure what I see.
Monster? Savior? Something in between?
I don't know which possibility terrifies me more.
2
Leonid
I've killed hundreds of men.
This one doesn't make me blink.
Senator Walsh crumples to the floor, a neat hole in his forehead, and I feel nothing. Less than nothing. Satisfaction, maybe, that another disease has been cut from the world.
But Lily—
Lily, on her knees, shaking, covered in his blood—
She makes me feel something I haven't felt in decades.
Protective.
The word echoes through me like a warning bell. I've spent fifty years building walls. Refusing attachments. Keeping everyone at arm's length because attachments are weakness, and weakness gets you killed.
My parents taught me that lesson when I was twelve. Watched my father put a bullet in my mother's head, then turn the gun on himself.If you love nothing, nothing can destroy you.
I've lived by that ever since.
And now a nineteen-year-old girl with green eyes and a blood-splattered dress is making me want to tear down every wall I've ever built.
Dangerous.
I tuck the gun back into my holster and crouch in front of her. Slowly. Carefully. The way you'd approach a wounded animal.
"Lily." I keep my voice quiet. "Look at me."
She's staring at the body. At the blood pooling around his silver hair. Her whole body is trembling, and there are tears cutting tracks through the blood on her face.
She's beautiful.
Stop it.
"Lily." I reach out, touch her chin, tilt her face up. Her eyes finally meet mine—wide, terrified, still in shock. "I need you to breathe."
"You killed him," she whispers.
"Yes."
"You just—you just—"
