This, this was the feeling they endured. This was the incontrollable rage that ate at their conscience. This was the terror laced with fury. This was the feeling of powerlessness against your own mind.
This was trauma manifested into destructive rage.
His fingers trembled. His whole fucking body trembled. He was a shaking fucking mess. He shook his head to clear it of the anguished screams. When it worked, he did it again.
He held up his hand to the dark tower before him, palm out. ‘I’m good.’
‘Are you?’
He nodded, then shook his head again. His vision cleared of the swirling darkness and he felt his chest expand. Air. That was good.
‘I’m good enough,’ he replied.
Knight’s eyebrows were two sooty slashes across his brow. Furrows as deep as an abyss were buried between them. He’d aged since he’d last seen him. Euan suspected so had he.
‘I like the eyepatch. It suits you,’ Lily’s husky voice rasped.
She appeared beside Knight, a bloody apron tied to her hips. No longer was there space between them. Knight’s muscled arm wrapped tightly around shoulders that were not hunched. But there was still a reservation behind the eyes of gold that were laced with fervour. Her hands were still chapped, still raw, her brow was similarly creased. But there was passion where there had been despair, there was intensity where there had been despondence. Lily needed more meat on her bones, but Euan got the impression that with time, that would change too.
His panic was set aside but not forgotten. He took the limited steps needed to reach her. After a jerky nod of assent, he snatched her into his arms and held her so very close to his heart. ‘Glad you made it, baby. I’m sorry about your father.’
She smelt of smoke and the toxins that were in that tent where she tended the wounded. Euan breathed in anyway.
Silent, she gripped his clothing in her fists, allowed her body to be embraced intimately. There was no flinch, there was no reluctance. Lily welcomed his hold. From the back of that truck, Lily had witnessed her father’s death, but had also taken control of her destiny. She was still a mouse, but no longer buried in her hollow. Lily had created her own shield and was now brave enough to endure the daylight.
‘Kira?’ she finally whispered into the crook of his neck.
His arms were still tight around her when he said, ‘They have her.’
Lily jerked, a full body shudder. Euan held her through it even if the glance Knight cut his way could have sliced steel.
Everything about this was unbearable. They were in a horror movie, where the heroes died and the evil spread. Euan was a lonely beacon; he knew he was. Even surrounded by people that had fought for goodness, but none would step up. They watched him, waited for him. He was meant to be their fucking saviour. He couldn’t even stand on his own two feet, let alone raise the remainder of the human race above him.
He thought of that tiny shoe.
A single brown eye turned to Knight. One focus. One plan. He gave Lily one final squeeze before he let her go. ‘I need trucks, men, women, anyone who is willing to fight. I need what is left of your weapons and ammunition.’ He threw his arms out wide, circled in his spot as the crowd around him grew. He stopped when he faced a child. Her small, angelic face was marred with soot and grime. One of her shoes was missing. Euan’s voice echoed above them. ‘You want to be saved? Then know this. We fight for love. We fight for survival and we fight for a future that transcends tyranny and cruelty. No more fighting pits, no more flesh for trade. No more stockpiles of weapons. If you give me this, I will see you led. I will bring you from this torture into the light. But you must give me this, you all give me this. And I will save you.’
A prophet’s words. In that moment, he was.
Chapter 19
Kira
The tremor in her hands had nothing to do with the cold. Kira’s body vibrated with a mixture of dread and fear. Her palms were slick. She tasted her own anxiety. A metallic tang that sat on the flat of her tongue. She licked her lips, tasted the blood and endured the sting from a split lip. The wound was softer than the rest, easier to push and worry with the tip of her tongue. It hurt, but the pain was good. It was better than the terror.
They had journeyed to the outskirts of one of the cities. The road had become more and more impossible to navigate the further in they travelled. Abandoned cars, disintegrating and ruined overpasses, overturned trees and rolled trucks formed a maze that they slowly weaved through.
The dawdling pace gave her hope. Too much hope, but it was still there. It swelled in her chest. Blossomed in her throat, held her scathing words at bay. She had to live. She’d seen what the man who drove the vehicle was capable of. She was still covered in the blood of the people he’d destroyed.
The journey had been silent. The two men sat in the front seats. Their eyes never leaving the road. She had been threatened once with that firearm, she didn’t need to be told twice.
They turned off the highway with a shudder and a shake. Warehouses loomed large and foreboding on each side. Their walls were slashed with red paint, macabre paintings to announce ownership. Bricks and mortar, tin sheeting and steel, even the trees were splashed with the brand. A sickening way to claim every facet of this place, to signify ownership that it was all
