CHAPTER 22
THE SOLDIER'S MINUTE
❝ Love is that you are the knife
which I plunge into myself ❞
"What happened?" Rose turned her back on the living inferno behind her, though what she found on Raphael was far from peaceful. Teardrops hung on his lashes; the gentle blue of his eyes faded into hundreds of red vessels, fists so clenched the veins in his arms seemed about to burst from his skin. A brother who had lost a sister. A soul that had lost half of itself. "How did they take her?"
"We were in Portsmouth, on our way to the Channel. I was gone for a minute. A bloody minute and then..." His voice collapsed under the weight of the firemen's shouts. Smoke and smog, violent and pungent, twirled around them to the beat of the bystanders' hustle. "A bunch of men came out of a car and yanked her out of ours. I fucking ran to her, but they were too many. The more I tried to reach her, the more they took her away. I'm a fucking boxer and I couldn't help her, Rose. I just stood there and watched them take her."
"You were outnumbered." Her hands were quick to meet his shoulders, there to show him the way out of the maze. Even though she was there too. Even though all the exits were just doors to something worse. "There was no way you could beat them."
"She's my sister, I should have!" He shouted, long fingers raking through tousled locks. A long cut ran along his hairline. "I told her I'd always keep her safe. And now she's... she's God knows where with those fuckers doing God knows what to her. We need to find her, Rose, we—"
"We will." Her voice was steel, the only thing in her not in ruins. The flames still danced over her shoulders, and to stop them from reaching his, she wrapped an arm around him and pulled him away. But then his gaze collided with the fire. With the darkened carcass of his first home in London.
"What fucking happened here?" He paced back and forth, sturdy hands starting to shake. "Evelyn? Where the bloody hell is Evelyn?"
She glanced away. The way those two would laugh and bicker behind the counter was among the debris. Memories were fireproof, standing tall amidst the embers. She couldn't burn down his world more than it already was, so Thomas shook his head and did it for her. In that solemn, timeless gesture, another part of Raphael's soul got lost.
"Raphael..." Rose reached for his arm, but he turned his back on them and got swallowed by the famished crowd. Thomas' hand pressed against her back, a solid rock that even worn kept her from drowning in the sea of her doubts.
"I can't lose her, Thomas." She stopped, air heavy on her lungs. The cold clutch of death on her neck got tighter. "Putain, her mother should have known, sending her to me is sending her to her death."
"Rose." His voice was a whisper of life; his breath the anchor. He grabbed her face, dry fingers against the softest of skin. Their noses touched; she was of all colors in the blue of his eyes. "Oi, Rose, look at me. We'll find her, aye? I promise ya. We'll bring her back safe."
"I'm not Charles, Thomas." Her mind had no way to grab the anchor, so she let it go. Delicate fingers closed in on his arms, like a snake that bites its own tail to stop her from biting others. She pushed his arms away. She was getting good at it. "Don't make me promises you can't keep."
She let the anchor fall and jostled through the crowd, dodging familiar faces with questions she had no will to answer. A policeman shouted at her; she didn't stop. Then Audrey shouted, and Rose halted.
"Rose, Rose! The café..." She ran to her, teal eyes brimming with prescient tears. "Evelyn...?"
Rose started walking again. She wanted to stop and hug her sister like she deserved to be hugged, but the clock didn't wait for anyone.
"Rose, what happened to Evelyn?"
"She's dead." Her tone was frigid, colder than a gush of wind on a lonely night. She reached for the car door, almost yanking it off the latches. An abyss opened between the lips of all the Kissers gathered at the sidewalk. "Same thing with the distillery workers. Same with my horse. Same with Andrea if we don't get to her fast enough."
An outburst of questions and cries rained down on her; each new one nailed her to the cross.
"What?" Rose froze upon that voice; upon the tatters of the familiar accent that fell from it. "What fookin' happened with Andrea?"
She turned around, to the tall boy coating the sun. The peaked cap dropped from his fingers, the freckles on his skin engulfed by furrows.
"The Saurets have her."
Finn looked from Rose to Thomas and lunged towards the only person he could blame.
"You said she'd be safe!" He towered over his older brother, cheeks red and incensed. Behind him, Isaiah tried to grab him. In front of him, Thomas didn't move. "You fookin' said she would be safe!"
"It wasn't his fault." An ironed voice built a barrier between the brothers. Raphael appeared at the sidewalk holstering a gun, the purple stains on his face raising more brows. "It was mine. Now you can fucking stay here and argue, but I'm going to find Andrea."
Finn clasped the cap from the ground and accepted the gun Thomas shoved into his hand. "Not alone, you're not."
***
Behind clouds of steel, a pale sun rolled languidly towards an invisible ocean when Rose stopped the car at the side of the canal.
"Are you sure it's here?" Renée asked, protective hand over her belly.
"Yes." Rose looked out of the window. She shouldn't have come. None of them should have. "Tavish knows I'll think of this place. He'll be waiting for us. If there is a direct conflict, he'll have the advantage. So, Raphael, we can't barge in. We need to—"
"Save the strategies for Sun Tzu," Raphael said from the back seat, yanking the door open and jumping out. "She's my sister."
"Wait for us, you fucker!" Finn shouted, running after him with Isaiah.
"Merde." Rose stepped out before looking back. "Renée, stay here."
"Rose—"
"Think about the baby."
A nod of assurance from Christopher was all it took for Rose to join Thomas by the canal, their shoes rattling in tune on the damp grass. A silent mist emerged from the water, cradled by a feeble breeze. Down the channel the river flowed slowly, its surface glazed with liquid moonlight, as if the thirty pieces of silver had been melted into it.
Suddenly the boys stopped, eyeing the old bridge that stood between two buildings; a Scottish pub Rose and Steaphan used to visit on one side and a church they never entered on the other.
"What do you think?" Raphael glanced at her. "The church or the pub?"
"I'm telling ya, it's the pub." Finn shifted his weight from one leg to the other. A trembling finger tapped incessantly against the gun in his holster.
"It's the church." She and Thomas said at the same time, and that triggered everything. The boys rushed over there, and from the roof and the bridge, several Scots fired at them. Instantly, Rose and Thomas raised their guns and fired back, the world suddenly blurred by swirls of powder and strokes of reddish rain. Between gunshots, someone shouted her name.
On the bridge, the lion on Callan's neck roared in the wind. He aimed at her. One of the bullets flew over her head, the other winged her ear. Beside her, Thomas was quick to return the favor.
At the church, Raphael and Finn kicked the wooden doors open, with Isaiah sinking bullet after bullet into any Scottish skin he could find.
"Go after them!" Kaya yelled, taking cover behind a car. "Go after the bloody kids! We'll hold them back here."
She didn't need to say it twice; like a tide that cannot be stopped, Rose and Thomas swarmed to the church. Someone shot at them, and faster than Thomas, faster than Rose, Nicolas lifted his pistol and fired, the bullet piercing through a Sauret and blowing out the thistle above the entrance.
Inside, heaven had turned into hell. Three men slept on the pool of their own blood. Raphael had traded the gun for his fists; Rose had never seen him fight like that. Each blow was stronger than the one before, his knuckles raw flesh and blood from others. Near him, Finn and Isaiah had taken off their caps to gouge out the eyes of those that would never see God.
And in the middle of the chaos, Tavish stood against the altar, the sun coming in through the stained glass placing a golden halo around his hair. He smiled when he saw her; she never thought of all places a church would give home to the devil.
Ignoring the rumbling shots, the stifling powder, even the familiar wails of men dying, she burst through the nave with her gun drawn. On either side of her Thomas and Nicolas shielded her; two men in love more lethal than an entire regiment.
"Where is she?" Rose asked, Luger in hand. "Where the fuck is she?"
"Rose... I'm disappointed." Tavish jumped from the altar, standing right in front of her, and the sudden whiff of petrichor made her go back years. Nothing brought ghosts to life as well as scents. And in Rose's case nothing seemed to keep them permanently buried. He was wearing Steaphan's cologne. "You always ask the same questions."
Her finger laced around the trigger, the snake now ready to bite the tail of the viper. "Where is Andrea?"
More shots rang out in her spine. She couldn't look back, see if Nicolas and Thomas were okay. If her family outside was dead or alive. She couldn't do anything that Tavish didn't want her to do. She was the devotee now. And he the priest, holding both the wine and the bread in his hands.
"You had to pass through the cemetery your mother is in on your way here, didn't ye?" He snatched the chalice from the altar and took a sip; a single russet drop dripped from his lips. "Did you pay her a visit? Maybe you can bury that filthy horse of yours next to her."
Her finger came alive; the bullet glided above his head and smashed the colored windows behind him. The glass shattered into thousands of shimmering pieces, falling upon the altar like divine rain. Among the reflections of light, their eyes met. The halo over his head was gone.
"I asked," she moved the gun from his head to his heart, "where is Andrea?"
He clicked his tongue, and the viper bit back.
"In a better place, some might say." Slowly, gaze stuck on her, he made the sign of the cross, the finger in his other hand rubbing the S on his ring. "May God rest her soul."
"You fucker!" Like an animal that's just gotten loose, Raphael broke free from the two men he was fighting, the yell almost tearing his vocal cords out. The veins in his neck were taut like arrows about to be fired. Finn stopped, flat cap shaking in his hands. But before Raphael could throw himself at Tavish and into the hands of death, Finn grabbed him by his lapel and took him down to cover him from the deluge of bullets that poured upon them.
"Let me go!" Raphael said, struggling under his embrace as Isaiah fired back. "I'll kill him! I'll fucking kill him!"
"Stay down, you bloody idiot!" Finn hollered, tears brewing in his eyes. "I'm trying to save your fookin' life!"
Whatever words Raphael said back were swallowed by the whirlwind of people that burst through the church; Kaya led the group, with Arwen and Élodie following behind. Then more Saurets appeared behind them, and the pews were riddled with bullets in seconds, the once immaculate, white walls of the church splashed with molten rubies.
"For fuck's sake, Rose, kill him!" Raphael yelled between bloodied punches.
"Andrea isn't dead." Rose turned to Tavish. Powder rested on her eyelids, and fragments of all colors piled up at her feet. "You always touch your ring when you're lying."
The slightest flash of shock crossed his eyes; if a bloodbath wasn't happening around them Rose might have mistaken it for awe.
"Speaking of lying..." He spun the ring slowly, on purpose this time. "Have you figured out who stabbed you in the back? Your Judas is here, ye know."
Rose looked back; Thomas had his sleeves rolled up, an entire arm covered in blood, sleek hair rumpled and dripping with sweat. Arwen kept all her elegance when she picked up the statue of a saint and slammed it on a Scot's head. And Nicolas had a fistful of hair in his hands, smashing a man's skull against the pew after he had tried killing Jules.
She shook her head. "I don't have a Judas."
"Are you sure?" Tavish smiled, the kind of smile forged in heaven to reign over hell. He gestured to a point behind her and Rose spun on her heels, just in time to see Arwen's husband lurching towards Callan. Then Élodie pushed Callan aside and fired twice.
The man fell on his back with an opened mouth, the scream he never gave erupting from Arwen's lips.
"Élodie... what..." The statue slipped from her fingers and shattered on the tiles. She knelt beside her husband, grasping his lifeless hand. Her eyes became the color of unshed tears.
"My name is Eilidh." She cut, voice gelid enough to send Earth back into the ice age. Rose wobbled. The world didn't make sense. Her back hurt like it had been stabbed, not once, but infinite times. Not by a knife, but by a meteor. "I'm sorry for yer husband, but he was about to murder me brother. And when it comes to our clan, family means blood."
Callan snickered in approval. Tavish kept his eyes on Rose. Plucking her petals one by one, like he had told her he would.
"What..." Arwen shook her head, unable to recognize the sweet hums of French under that cold Scottish accent. "You're my best friend..."
"Am?" Élodie quirked an eyebrow, and her resemblance to Callan became unbearable. "Or was?"
"Élodie..." It was Audrey whispering now, and Sienna and Kaya. In every stare the same betrayal, in every back the same scar.
Rose's throat tightened, her stomach warped around nothing. She looked down, and her eyes stared back at her in the broken shards on the floor.
Glimpses of the shootout at her house came back to her, how Élodie's gun hadn't moved when all others had. And her words at the boutique, long ago. I wanted to be an actress, to star in Broadway.
"I guess you did manage to become an actress after all." Her voice stood out among the debris of their friendship. She had a voice that could drown skies, and it echoed throughout the church as if heaven itself was being flooded. "It makes sense. You entered the gang months after Steaphan died."
"After you murdered him." Élodie glared at her, her knuckles whitening from how hard she was grasping the gun. A gun Rose had given her. Because that was love; a weapon we give to others so they can use it on us.
"You collected the evidence against us. You helped destroy the distillery and the café, you..." A puddle of tears dimmed the rouge of her cheeks. "Evelyn is dead!"
The words fell over the church like a curtain over a final act. Raphael tried getting up again, but Finn pulled him back down. The smallest bud of emotion bloomed in Élodie's eyes. Her cheeks were flushed, stained with invisible blood. But her grip on the gun didn't waver.
"That's on you, Rose. She died because she thought some Kissers papers were worth more than her life."
Before anyone could draw another breath, Nicolas pressed his pistol against her temple. "Give me one good reason not to blow your brains out."
"I'll give you one." Callan said, resting a barrel between Nicolas' curls in turn.
"Don't." Another voice, usually silent, and Jules was moving his gun to Callan from across the room. "I'm sure Steaphan told you I'm a good sniper. It's not just in your fucking clan that family means blood."
"Élodie..." Knelt on the cold tiles, Arwen looked up at her. "How could you? I told you things when I was drunk, in confidence, and you went and report it to them."
"Pathetic." Tavish spat into the chalice. "You're treating her like she's a traitor, but she was never in your side in the first place. Eilidh is a Sauret. Long before she pretended to be a French Kisser."
Élodie's lips twitched up. "Hardest role of my life."
Nicolas released the safety of the gun.
"Nicolas, no." It was the only thing that would stop him, that voice. "I need to know. Why the lies? Of saying you were French and moved to Britain before the war to escape it? Why the passion for peace when you obviously don't have it?"
"Oh, Rose. We knew you'd be more inclined to take me in the gang if I hit you in your weaknesses. I became what you wanted to be."
The Luger on Rose's hand shifted to Élodie.
"I trusted you. I fucking trusted you." Her arm quivered. "I can't let you walk away from this."
"Come on, Rose, you wouldn't kill on holy ground, would you?" Élodie cocked her head. "You might not believe in heaven, but I know you believe in hell."
Rose glanced at Nicolas. He always killed traitors for her. Not this time. She held her breath, finger hovering over the trigger, and bit down on her tongue. Then, shaking, she dropped her arm, the puddles in her cheeks now lakes.
Élodie smirked. Tavish took a step towards Rose.
"Wise choice." His breath looped around her neck like a noose. "Now since we're standing in a place of God, let me send you to hell."
He raised his arm, the knife in his hand glinting in the sun, and buried it deep in her back. A cry of pain broke through her teeth, and she clung to the pew to keep from falling. The blade slit the air again, but before he could stab her a second time, Thomas tackled him, knocking him down.
They rolled on the floor between stray bullets and kaleidoscopic glass, between Romani curses and Scottish swears. Tavish placed a powerful jab to his jaw, making Thomas spit blood in his face. Then Thomas struck him with a wooden cross, snatching the chalice when the cross broke in half.
"Thomas..." Rose mumbled, trying to take hold of his shoulder. Shots, shouts and blows scratched her ears. Blood trickled down her shoulder blade. "Thomas, you can't kill him. Not while we don't know where Andrea is. Thomas!"
He stopped, getting off him and letting the chalice roll away. Tavish groaned, his eyelids fluttering. An S reddened Thomas's skin. His hands were drenched in Scottish blood.
He stumbled over to her, grasping her face. His hand moved up her back, stopping below her cut. She clutched onto his shirt, opened her mouth to speak. But then Tavish grunted, took out his gun and aimed at Thomas' head.
Instantly, Rose threw herself in front of him and took the shot instead. It hit her in her arm, right where a faint scar was.
She staggered. Several people shouted, but only one caught her, his calloused hand pressing against her wound to stop the bleeding. And before anyone could finish what Thomas had started, Tavish stood up, yelling a single order amidst the hail of bullets that followed.
"Fall back!" He rushed to a side door, and faster than the devil broke into people's homes, the Saurets left the church, leaving hell behind them.
***
When her eyes opened, Jesus was looking down at her. Nailed at a cross and bloodied, as miserable as her. Red candles flickered on the edges of her vision, and a heavy scent of rusted iron hung in the air.
"Rose... stay still." Audrey brushed sweaty strands of hair away from her forehead. Beside her, much less gently, Angeline placed a glass between her lips.
"Drink this."
Rose swallowed the laudanum, choking on it. Over the walnut table, the linen cloth became tainted by the droplets that slid down her arm.
An arm she could barely feel, except for a permanent sting, slowly fading into tingling.
"I can't..." Rose tried speaking over the lump in her throat, but the words became foam in her mouth. Behind her, someone pressed a rag to her shoulder blade. "I can't feel it. I can't feel my fucking arm."
"Rose, shh..." Audrey muttered, her tears falling on Rose's cheeks. "Save your breath."
Beside her, Sienna clutched a threatening needle.
"Let me do it." Renée said, taking her place.
"Renée..." Rose tried to sit up, but a jolt of pain shot through her arm and she faltered. Audrey pillowed her head before it hit the table. "I told you to stay in the car."
"I stayed in the car. And then I saw Tavish and the others rush out of it like the devil had come to church. I'm your older sister, Rose, I'm supposed to take care of you. You can't ask me to stay away."
Rose whimpered when the needle threaded through her skin. She looked up, to the dying man on the cross, wondering if there was something wrong with her, wondering why she couldn't feel him, why she never had.
Wondering why he had died for a humanity that was anything but human.
"Why can't I... why can't I feel my arm?" She asked between gritted teeth. In the quick glance her sisters shared, she found the answer.
"The bullet hit a nerve." Renée's calming eyes brewed a storm inside her, a storm that wiped up an entire future. "We took it out but... I can't promise you..."
Rose closed her eyes. I can't promise you you will play again. The world spun, and the sun outside retreated into the night. A knock on the door drowned out her sobs.
"How is she?"
"Nic..." She mumbled, and he opened the door swiftly, the candle lights dancing in his obsidian eyes. He swallowed when he saw her back, and then when he saw her arm, as if the wounds opened on his own skin.
He grasped her hand and answered her questions even before she asked them.
"The Saurets withdrew into the pub. They were running out of ammunition and so were we. They're probably reorganizing, so we should expect an attack soon." His fingers found her curls, weaving through them like flames through burnt twigs. "Let me take you out of here. You need to rest."
"No, I need to... we need to find Andrea. How many... how many Blinders?"
"Five."
She gulped. "And Kissers?"
His grip on her hand tightened. "Seven."
She clenched her fist and looked over her shoulder to Kaya.
"Did it reach the bone?"
"No, luckily the extra layers Sienna sewed into your coat cushioned the stab wound. Still, it tore the skin. The words aren't readable anymore."
"Good." Rose winced when Renée finished stitching her up. "It was time to bury them. Raphael, Jules... Thomas... are they...?"
"They're keeping watch." Nicolas offered her a small smile. It had passed too long since he had. "Christopher almost had a heart attack when he saw them cleaning up their wounds with holy water."
She tried to smile, but her muscles had no strength to.
"Nic... some of the Kissers here, I told them to go to Scotland. Why didn't they?"
He glanced away from her, away from the cross, into the fire that burned in the candles. The fire that burned in his eyes.
"Why didn't they, Nicolas?" She sighed when he offered her silence. "You went against my orders with Joseph and now you went against my orders in this. How can I trust you if you act behind my back?"
He let go of her hand, fingers brushing against her face when he placed a shallow kiss on her forehead. A shallow kiss for the deepest of feelings.
"Trust my love."
She backed away from him as if he had slapped her. The flames still waltzed in the ebony of his eyes. His lips had given her more than a kiss. She knew she had a part of his heart, but not all.
Before she could say anything, someone else knocked. It was Thomas, his face a portrait of himself again, not of the man he turned into when he went back to war. Faint dabs of red adorned his skin, his blue eyes the point to where all other stares converged, idle flames flickering more subtly in them.
They stared at Rose, for the sky in them was only for her. Surprising everyone in the room, Nicolas cleared his throat.
"Ladies, let's check on the boys, shall we?"
One by one, the room emptied, until it was just Thomas and Rose and her heart hammering more and more against her ribs with each step he took towards her.
His hair was ruffled, and if Rose could move her arm, she would have touched it. She would have clutched his face and cried miracles and prayers into his mouth. But she was an atheist, even in love.
"Why did you do it, Rose?" He glanced at her stitched arm, his fingers hovering over her naked shoulder. "Why did you take that bullet for me?"
She pulled a loose thread of linen until it came off. Her arm felt nothing.
"I didn't want Charles to be an orphan."
His thumb skimmed down her cheek, and then he was grasping her jaw and forcing her to dive into the waves that rippled from his eyes.
"You didn't hesitate. You didn't blink."
She sent his waves back to him with a force only nature could master.
"You said it yourself, there are no choices in war. There's no time for it. We just act. The soldier's minute, right?"
He inched closer, shaking his head. His breath twirled on her lips. His heart weighted on hers.
"This is not a war, Rose."
"Everything's a war, Thomas." She clasped his fingers, getting up from the table to stand in front of him. She wavered and he gripped her waist. "Especially this. Between us."
He trailed his hands up her arms, and the shivers she couldn't feel on her right arm doubled on her left. He lifted her chin, a finger venturing further enough to touch her bottom lip. It stayed there.
"Why did you take that bullet for me, Rose?" His voice searched for the cracks in hers, so he could fill them up, so he could deepen them down.
"Because when I'm in the tunnels, you're the one at the end of them. Light is pale in comparison, Thomas. Everything is pale in comparison to you."
His thumb drew a straight line over her lip. "Are you in those tunnels now?"
His eyes flickered to her lips. Her throat went dry. His scent of whiskey and smoke and danger was inebriating, something she wanted to get drunk in.
"If I am," she swallowed, "I don't want to get out."
With the sky in his eyes becoming heaven, he crushed the space between them. The tunnels collapsed under their lips. He clutched the back of her neck, his grip on her waist holding her still when the floor crumbled under her feet.
His closeness was more lethal than the opium in her veins, more healing than the stitches in her skin.
They kissed under the eyes of Christ, soft lips gliding over the other, tongues turning poison into honey. A sinful act in a holy place, and yet a sin Rose wouldn't confess. There were no ghosts there; they didn't dare raise from their graves, for they knew this moment belonged to two humans alone.
When he finally inched back, nose sliding down hers, she inched closer, pulled him towards her, kissing him until her lips were swollen and his breath was ragged, until his fingers were slipping from her neck to her back to her hips and his heartbeat was seized in her hand.
They broke away. The simplest of smiles hung in the air; both their mouths caught it. The stained glass behind them erased the horns on their heads, giving way to a halo instead.
His hand hadn't left her chin when he gazed into her.
"Today."
"Um?"
"Today. A time you kissed someone but didn't kill them." A single finger trailed down her jaw, and then his touch was gone. "Keep it."
"What?"
"This minute. I'll want it back."
He stormed out of the room, leaving heaven behind him. Rose peered at the body on the cross. For the first time in a long time she felt something close to faith. If not in God, in the man that made her feel like one.
author's note
I'm giddy, my babies kissed :')
I'd love to know your thoughts on this chapter!! were you shocked to find out Élodie was the traitor?
also we're just some chapters away from season 4... I promise the other Shelbys will appear soon ;)