Janus raised his sword, blocking me, but I was moving faster and faster. So each time he blocked me, I would move away and come at him quicker, until I finally found my opening. I drove my blade through his throat, pushing him back against the wall, until I’d pinned him there like a bug in a glass case. Blood poured from his throat, staining the dark fabric of his uniform.
I left him that way and turned back to survey the scene. Astrid stood with her back pressed against the wall, looking rightfully terrified. Linus stood off to the side of Ember with tears in his eyes, and Delilah was sitting with Ember, holding her in her arms as she slowly bled out.
I walked over to them and fell to my knees.
“Why did you do that?” Delilah asked through tears, and brushed Ember’s hair back from her face. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Of course I should have,” Ember said, her voice soft as she stared up into Delilah’s eyes. “You’re alive, and you’re safe, and I love you. There is no greater thing I could do than die to save my true love.”
“Ember, I love you,” she sobbed. “What will I do without you?”
“Fight.” Ember closed her eyes, but her chest was still rising and falling with shallow breaths. “And live. My love will go on with you, so live as long as you can.”
“Allt ?r mitt, och allt skall tagas fr?n mig,” Delilah said, reciting a P?r Lagerkvist poem in Swedish, sounding lyrical and beautiful. “Inom kort skall allting tagas fr?n mig.”
While my Swedish wasn’t as good as it should be, I thought what she said translated to, “All is mine, and all shall be taken away from me, / within moments all shall be taken away from me.”
Then Ember took her last breath. Delilah leaned over and gently kissed her on the lips, and then she laid her head on Ember’s chest and wailed like her heart had just been ripped out of her.
One of my best friends had just died, and I wanted to fall apart the way Delilah was doing, but I knew there wasn’t time. Later, I would mourn for Ember the way she deserved. But now I had to finish things so that she wouldn’t die in vain. I needed to get Delilah safe.
I stood up and pulled gently on her arm. “Delilah. You need to let Linus get you to safety.” I looked back at him. “You do know how to get the refugees out of here, right?”
He nodded, wiping at the tears in his eyes. “Yes. Ember showed me. I know what I need to do.”
“Good. I need you to take Delilah out of here and keep her safe.” I turned back to Delilah, since she still hadn’t gotten up, and I pulled her to her feet. I put my hands on her face, forcing her to look at me. “Listen to me, Delilah. I know this is hard, but Ember died so that you could live. So you need to live. You have to pull yourself together, and follow Linus out of here. Do you understand me?”
She tried to stop her tears and nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.” I took Ember’s sword and handed it to Delilah, since Linus already had his own. “Move quickly and stay safe.” I looked from one of them to the other. “Both of you.”
“I will,” Linus assured me. “I’ll finish what Ember and I started.”
He stood up tall, looking more confident than I had ever seen him before, and I hoped I was doing the right thing, leaving him to protect the thing that meant the most in the world to Ember. But I had trust that she’d trained him right and he could do this.
Linus took Delilah’s hand and led her out the front door, looking for the quickest escape route to the front gate, where Finn could lead them to. And that meant I was alone with Astrid.
I turned back to face her, and she flinched. She hadn’t moved from where she’d been before, with her back pressed against the wall.
“Bryn, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of those things,” she said in one hurried sentence, almost as if it were all one word.
I grabbed the sword from Janus’s throat, which caused him to fall to the floor, and she cringed. I stalked over to her with slow, deliberate steps and Astrid began to whimper.
“Please, Bryn. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Astrid kept right on talking until I pressed the blade to her throat, still warm from Janus’s blood. Then her eyes flew open and her mouth flew shut. I didn’t break the skin—I held the blade just hard enough so she could feel exactly how sharp the edge was.
“I could kill you right now,” I growled. “And I should. But I’m not going to.” I stepped back from her and took the sword from her throat.
“Thank you, Bryn. Thank you so much. I don’t know—”
“But I’m not going to save you,” I said, cutting her off.
Her hand was on her throat, rubbing where the sword had been. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s a war going on, and I just killed your only protection.” With my sword, I pointed to the window, where the fight was coming increasingly closer to the doorstep.