“I’m fine,” I say again, stronger this time. At least, I hope it is.
Ash still looks worried. He reaches up and strokes a hand through my silver hair, not getting in the way of Knox’s quiet stitching.
The others are still there, leaning against the wall and lurking in the doorway. No one seems to know what to say. Or maybe there just isn’t anything worth saying in this moment.
“Okay,” Knox murmurs after a few more seconds, and his voice is quieter than I’ve ever heard it before. He pulls the last stitch taut, and aside from the tugging at my skin, I’m barely aware of him finishing up his work on my wound.
He steps back, looking down at me, and the downturn of his full lips gives away his worry. His dark brown irises appear almost black as he narrows his eyes, never tearing his focus away from me.
I feel like I have to do something to reassure them that I’m alright. That they don’t need to hover and worry. So I move to stand up, bracing myself a little on the sink to help me get my balance.
It doesn’t help.
As soon as I’m vertical, there’s a rush to my head, and my vision swims. Dark spots cover my eyes, and before I can try to blink them away, they grow and grow until the darkness is consuming me.
Then it takes over entirely, stealing away my consciousness.
2
Priest
“Fuck,” Knox grunts as River’s legs give out.
It’s a good fucking thing he’s right there beside her, because he manages to catch her before she can hit the floor.
Or hit her head on the sink or something.
He hefts her up into his arms bridal style, and she looks so small there. She’s down to just her underwear since we undressed her, and her skin looks pale. Maybe from the blood loss, maybe from… everything else.
Her silver hair hangs down in a shimmering cascade, and her limbs dangle. If it weren’t for the fact that her chest is clearly rising and falling with her breath, it would be easy to think she was…
No.
I shake my head, not even wanting to entertain that thought for a second.
She looks so small and so vulnerable like this. Like a delicate bird that flew into a window, battered and injured. There’s still dried blood on her, and the same grime and dirt and sweat that the rest of us are streaked with after the fight in the church.
Knox has a hold on her, and I know he’d fight to the death if someone tried to take her away, but he looks lost, like he has no idea what to do in this situation. I can’t blame him for that. He looks to us for guidance, and Gage steps up.
“Put her on the bed,” he says, his voice strained.
Knox nods and carries her back into her room, laying her down gently on the bed. He treats her like she’s something precious, something that might break if he handles her too harshly, which is different from how he usually is with her.
He’s worried.
We all are.
He looks at her arm, checking the stitches, and Gage moves in to help him check her over.
“We didn’t miss anything, did we?” Knox asks, scrubbing a hand over his neck. He lost his suit jacket somewhere along the way, and he’s rolled up his sleeves over his forearms, revealing the tattoos that cover his skin.
But there’s nothing. No hidden, terrible wounds that we didn’t notice in our first check. Nothing that explains why she passed out so suddenly like that. Aside from the shock and the blood loss—but those are harder to fix.
She’s mostly okay physically, aside from the bullet wound and a few scrapes and cuts here and there from the fight.
Gage lets out a relieved breath, and Ash leans heavily against the wall. Her being physically okay is good, since it means that we don’t have to rush her somewhere for more advanced medical attention than just a few stitches, but it doesn’t necessarily mean much for the long run.
I know that better than almost anyone.
There are scars and wounds that will never show, that never leave a physical mark at all, but those injuries to the soul can be just as debilitating as being stabbed or shot.
“What do we do?” Knox asks.
He looks down at River’s sleeping form, flexing his hands in a motion I recognize as him wanting something to distract from his worry for her. He wants to hit something or break someone, but there’s nothing to rail against right now.
“We should let her sleep.” Ash answers before Gage can speak. “She’s probably exhausted.”
We all nod and file out of her room, closing the door gently behind us.
By the usual unspoken agreement, we head downstairs and gather in the kitchen.
It’s evening now, closing in on dinnertime, but I don’t have an appetite. No one else makes any move to find something to eat either, even though the last meal we had was lunch, and that feels like days ago now.
Knox sits at the kitchen table, still flexing his fingers in what’s probably a soothing motion for him. He stares off into the distance for a bit and then presses his palm down on the table.
“Well, fuck,” he says. “That went all to hell, didn’t it?”
His words are almost flippant, the usual devil-may-care tone he takes when it comes to serious shit. But there’s a gleam in his eyes and a tension in his shoulders that tells me he’s serious. Our plan got fucked, and Knox knows how bad it is.
“Fuck,” Gage grinds out, pacing the kitchen floor. “It was a fucking mess from start to finish. We should have known. We should have planned for this.”
“Planned for the plan to go wrong?” Ash asks, lifting an eyebrow as his amber eyes glint behind his glasses. He sounds tired too, but there’s agitation in his body. He’s got a coin in his hand, turning it over and over and over again between his fingers like he can’t be still.
I can feel the same agitation I see in Knox and Ash in my own body.
The anger, the fury that someone hurt River.
“It must have been the cartel that sent the fucker who tried to shoot River the other day too,” I put in, shaking my head. “Their assassin didn’t succeed in killing her, so they picked a different location and ambushed her. Ambushed us.”
“Fuck.” Gage curses again, the scar on his lip curving as he scowls.
“There was no way we could have accounted for the fucking cartel,” Ash says. “We didn’t even consider them.”
“They were in our blind spot,” Knox replies, running a hand through his shaggy dark hair.
He’s right. I was there with River after she accidentally took out the leader of the Cartel, Diego. I killed the three members of their rank who threatened her after they chased her down. I should have remembered they would be a threat.
But there was too much going on. Too many other things to focus on.
We had a blind spot, and it almost got all of us killed.