Page 145 of Born for Silk

“Who did you let in?”

The men lurch upright, Kong and the Guard moving to either side of the window, rifles braced and ready. Discreetly, they risk looking outside.

“I didn’t approve anything,” Han states, his polite smile flattening into a thin line.

My heart races.

A mechanism attached to the Guard’s vest crackles with static and then a word. A word that chills the length of my veins.

Endigos.

“How many?” Rome asks.

“Twenty.” Kong peaks through the window, then leans back, concealing his location. “Thirty.”

Rome shoots his gaze to Han. “Where are the men in your community? Where are they right now? Armed?”

Han swallows over a ball of guilt. “Everyone will be in hiding. The women. Men. They have their own vaults. Secret rooms. We decided as a community to wait out raids. Not to defend. To rebuild. We don’t fight, Sire.”

“Fuck,” Rome bites.

The Guard presses his back to the wall, savouring a moment. “Do you think they followed us from Ruins E? We were careful.”

“We cut off the road. They have Snakes all across the desert.” Kong frowns with a nod. “Perhaps they saw us.”

Suddenly, guns reel off outside the church, one after the other, over and over.

Events throttle faster than my shallow breaths. The girls crawl along the church floor toward the mysterious inside door. Rome has me in his arms, Kong has Tuscany, and the Guard has Ana.

“Let me protect them,” Han begs Rome, pointing toward the room where the other women flock. “There is a chamber—a bunker. Full of our old relics, tombs, everything sacred to us. In case the weather wins. They will be protected down there.”

“Not out of my sight!” Rome barks.

“She will be safe. As God is my witness.”

“Boy,”—Kong warns, using his thick arm to cover the queen’s head as more shots roll from rifles outside the walls— “Listen.”

Han’s expression breaks. Desperate. “Believe in the good. In me. Let me protect the Silk Girls and the queen.”

Rome looks at me. Stares. “I know you care for all. I know you. But…” His voice breaks in a way that snatches air from my lungs. “The piece beneath your feet, Aster. The piece beneath your feet. Protect it for me.”

With a growl of utter defeat, Rome lowers me to the ground, his hands suddenly everywhere, mapping, remembering.

A frightened Tuscany and Ana are both set down, and we are swept away by Han. The throttle of events stops completely when I get to the door.

Grip it.

Turn back…

“Come with me,” I beg.

Now time stalls and everything happens in four heart beats?—

One.

Rome’s eyes score across me, from the fear in mine, to the black strands tousled down my shoulders and back, to the swell at my hips, and the piece of ground beneath my feet.

Two.

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