Page 596 of Shadowblood Souls
Not that the phoenix strikes me as particularly maternal. But there’s a warmth to her that’s more than just fire.
And she understands.
“If things start to get out of control and it looks like they’re going to escape, I’ll burn the whole place down,” she says. “ButI’m going to do everything in my power to make sure itdoesn’tcome to that, okay?”
“I just…” My mind swims with images from the news over the recent weeks. All the rubble, all the bloody corpses. “This is the best we can do. If it isn’t enough, I’d rather not make it than know we let them go off to kill more people so that we could spare ourselves. So don’t hesitate.”
Sorsha nods solemnly. “They won’t hurt anyone else after today, one way or another.”
She’s the only one who can ensure that, if worse comes to worst. With her phoenix fire, she can turn the entire facility into an inferno and emerge from the flames just fine herself.
It’d only be us shadowbloods who ended up ashes.
I push that knowledge away and heave open the door.
The idea of my potentially imminent death has plenty of other uncomfortable thoughts to compete with. As we walk together down the hall toward the gymnasium where the guys and I spent so many of our days, impressions of the past flit through my awareness, as if I can see our history as well as Andreas can read it out of someone’s minds.
The rap of the guardians’ boots against the tiled floor. The disinfectant tang to the air that still lingers after years of disuse—or maybe I’m only hallucinating it.
Yells and yelps, protests bit back. The gnawing loneliness every time our keepers marched us away from the training rooms and I knew it’d be hours and hours before I got to see the boys I loved again.
Even if our plan succeeds and we can leave this place alive, I think I’ll ask Sorsha to flambee the building once we’re all out. I wish we could burn away every physical trace of the Guardianship’s presence in this world.
But ensuring the damage they’ve done is over with will be enough.
At the end of the hall, two doors stand wide open. One leads into the cavernous space of the gym, the other into a smaller but still sizable room where the guardians sometimes set up a swimming pool like a massive aquarium to test our skills in water.
Andreas is standing in the second doorway. He catches my gaze with a questioning look.
“The guardians Rollick’s people are leading this way should be here in about ten minutes,” I say. “The rogues will be right behind them.”
He offers me a tight smile. “We’d better get into position then.”
He hesitates and then steps forward to slide his fingers along my jaw. If there’s a hint of desperation in the avidness of his kiss and the quiver of emotion that passes through our bond, I’m not going to comment on it. I’m pretty desperate to get us through the next hour myself.
When he eases back, Dominic and Griffin have emerged from the room behind him. Dom tugs me to him for a kiss so ardent I could lose myself in it, both his arms and his tentacles holding me close.
Griffin only brushes his lips briefly against mine, but the fleeting moment seems even sweeter that way. Then he hugs me tight with a waft of love that feels as if it flows right from his heart into mine.
“We’ve got this,” he says. “We’ll handle our part. Don’t spend any energy worrying about us. I’ll see you when it’s over.”
My throat constricts. “Yeah.”
Andreas touches me one more time, to cast invisibility over me with a tingle of his talent. “I’ve already done Jake and Zee. They’re in position.”
I summon all the bravado I can. “Let’s do this.”
After Drey has worked his power on Sorsha as well, the three guys head back into the smaller room. They’ll be the ones taking care of any of the shadowbloods who seem to have enough moral compass left that they might be saved.
I can’t see the phoenix now, but she keeps her grip on my shoulder as we head into the gymnasium. The immense space feels hauntingly empty.
The few bits of goodness we found here—the sofa where we tucked ourselves together to watch a movie or TV show on our occasional breaks, the table where we ate lunch and snacks in companionable conversation—the guardians must have taken with them when they abandoned ship. All that’s left are the pillars along the edges of the rooms and a few odds and ends like dusty exercise mats.
We’ve added our own touch too. Over the past day, we’ve assembled a structure at the far end of the room that looks reasonably weapon-ish. It’s taller than me and twice as long as that, all metal and glass and various controls fused together.
It doesn’tdoanything, but it looks intimidating to me even though I know that it’s really a heap of junk. Hopefully it’ll be convincing enough to the shadowbloods that they’ll take it seriously.
I lead Sorsha over to a pillar where we’ve left a few crates for extra shelter. As she settles into her place, bracing her arms against the boxes, I cross the room to the matching setup on the opposite side.
