"Maybe we shouldn't be concerned with who gave her the gun and instead should be grateful that she saved il nostri culi," Salvatore replied sardonically. "That was excellent work, cara mia. Perhaps you should give us lessons."
I felt an arm wrap around me, and under the smell of metal and gunfire, I recognized Alexander's cologne. "I can't believe you gave her a gun," he said, and I didn't know or care how he knew. "She's still a Selected, regardless of your theories." Although he should've sounded pissed, he didn't. Alexander wasn't stupid, and I had a feeling he was thinking that regardless of how theoretical Salvatore's prior statements had been, it had saved their asses.
"And she clearly has more experience with a gun than any of us ever will." Liev's deep voice came out of the darkness somewhere to my right. "Thank you for assisting us, my lady." I could almost picture him doing a little half-bow in the narrow, dark corridor.
"Cassiana," I corrected him without thinking. "And there's nothing to thank me for. I did what I needed to do. I think we should maybe be less concerned with me and more concerned by the lack of guards. They shouldn't have reached us at all."
"Agreed," Mason said. I heard him fumbling around in the dark. "And they wouldn't have, had most of our guards not been killed, tied up, or otherwise rendered incapacitated. That's what those two guards were coming to tell us." I heard a match strike, and a small flame lit up the narrow corridor we were standing in.
"And do you five often stupidly throw yourselves into danger like that? Are you fulfilling some sort of vigilante daydream, or are you just acting without thinking?" I didn't mean to sound so chastising and angry, but I couldn't help it. It had been stupidly reckless of them to throw themselves in the line of fire like that when they were the ones that should have been protected. Did they not realize that most of them were the only heirs to their families' thrones, especially since a few of them were the only men, and their sisters were already promised to princes from other countries? Did they simply not think?
"When the danger is such a direct threat to our families, yes," Alexander replied coolly. "And I hadn't expected you to handle all of this as easily as you are."
Mason lit two candles and passed one to his brother. I opened my mouth to answer, but Salvatore answered first: "This is just a regular day at the office per il nostro capo, sì?"
Five sets of eyes settled on me. My heart threw itself against my ribs before attempting to claw up my throat; I swallowed to force it down. "I wish you would stop calling me that," I said rather than answer. "I don't even know what it means. I don't speak Italian."
"Capo means boss," Liev explained. "The Italians used to use it in their criminal empires as a way of recognizing the person at the top of their hierarchy."
Great. Just what I needed, five princes thinking that I was the queen of some goddamned criminal empire. "Well, it's not fitting, so stop calling me it."
Salvatore laughed. "Said with such certainty, yet what we just watched says the opposite. You're quite a match for our Alexander." He winked at me. I had no idea what he'd meant by his final statement, and quite frankly, I didn't have the patience to even consider asking. I was a few stupid comments away from turning into the irritated, knife-waving leader I was when people were too busy focusing on what didn't matter to discuss the problem at hand. It was more common than I liked to admit, but hey, nothing communicates exasperation quite like an annoyed girl waving and gesturing with a sharp knife.
Alexander nudged him with his shoulder. Most of them, especially Liev, had to stoop down to fit in this hall, and it was an awkward movement. "Leave her be," he chastised.
We followed the corridor in silence, Alexander leading the way and Mason bringing up the rear. We had to walk in a straight line because it was such a narrow space, and I found my vision growing spotted and my skin growing hot. My breaths turned shallower. I blinked to clear the spots and more appeared. It was hard to see Haydn in front of me.
I grabbed the jacket of his suit to steady myself, mumbling an apology as I did. I swayed a little on my feet; Liev placed a hand on my waist to balance me. The two said nothing but helped me stay upright. I felt so hot I wanted to claw at my skin.
The hall opened up and I could breathe again, though it would be a while before my head stopped swimming and my skin cooled. I felt like I was just getting over the flu.
We were in a large room, plenty big enough to fit everyone in it. It had a kitchen, couches and chairs and cots, and stacked wooden boxes of what I assumed were medical supplies and food and water. Liev sat me down as the other princes disappeared from around me, leaving only to return with a cup filled with cold water. I downed it. It didn't cool me off or fix the roiling in my gut, but it was something.
"Are you well?" He asked. "I worried you would faint."
"I might," I mumbled. "Small spaces. Can't handle them." My voice cracked.
Someone else knelt beside me, and another cup was pressed to my hand. I lifted it to my lips and drank. Apple juice. "You need sugar," Aquia's voice said. "You've lost some blood, and you're having an anxiety attack."
Ah, so that was what was wrong with me. I sipped the juice and eventually, my head cleared. I felt like my head was stuffed with cotton, and realized that most people were crowded around a cot, and Salvatore and Liev were kneeling on either side of it. Gia was working around them, wielding gauze and antiseptic and a needle with thick, black thread.
"What happened?" I asked, gesturing with the half-empty cup to the cot.
Aquia's expression was pained. "Clara was shot in the back."
I stood too fast and nearly fell, Aquia helped me sit back down, careful not to touch me too much. "Just stay seated," she said soothingly. "Clara will be okay. Gia said that it isn't serious. She'll be okay."
This calmed me. I settled down and stayed quiet and took another sip of apple juice. The crowd around the cot cleared, and Gia began tending to her brother and the other princes, patching up scrapes and other injuries. She cut away Liev's shirt and jacket, extracting a bullet from the area between his shoulder and his bicep. Alexander and Mason were mostly unscathed, but Salvatore had a cut across his cheekbone from where a bullet had grazed him. Haydn didn't appear injured until he turned his head and I realized that a chunk had been taken out of the top of his ear.
Gia worked quickly and efficiently, and the princes were cleaned up in no time. I was surprised when she then approached me, quickly checking my pulse and then moving on to check me for injuries.
"She just had an anxiety attack," Aquia explained, "and she has some scrapes, but I think she's overall okay."
Gia nodded and continued to examine me. "Well, I'm not even sure that any of them are bleeding. She certainly got lucky. I'm still going to wipe up these scrapes and bandage them." She did, working quickly, and I didn't even notice the sting. "How are you feeling? Hot? Nauseous?"
I nodded. "Both."
"After effects," she told Aquia. "You need more sugar and to lay down. Grab her a soda, will you? The carbonation will settle her stomach."
Aquia rushed off and then hurried back with a can of soda. She opened it and passed it to me. "Sip it, and lay down if you need to. I'll be back around shortly." She hurried off.
I did as told, and I lost track of the time that we were down there. I eventually laid down, and I don't recall closing my eyes, but I found myself drifting off to sleep.
☼
When I awoke, I was in a cot in the small hospital that the palace had. The princes were all sitting up and crowded onto one narrow cot across from me, the doctor scolding them quietly. Clara was in the cot beside me, blue eyes open and spine ramrod straight. Her hair was down, her makeup was gone, and she was dressed in a gown made of white cotton rather than the gray one she'd been wearing earlier. I realized that I was wearing the same thing. Was this normal for hospitals? I wasn't really an expert on the subject.
"How are you?" I asked, my voice sounding awful and dry.
She turned to look at me. "Fine," she whispered. "All healed up. We have good medication that works fast here. And good pain medication. I'll have the stitches until they disappear, but I'm not in pain so I'm okay. How are you? I heard you were brave and you killed a lot of them."
"Fine," I said. "I'm not injured. I had an anxiety attack in the hallway."
"I heard," she said. "Claustrophobic?"
"What?"
"It means you're afraid of small spaces."
"Oh. Yeah. That's...yeah." We were quiet for a minute. "I was kidnapped when I was thirteen. They stuffed me into what was basically a dog crate and left me in a dark warehouse for a few days."
Clara shivered. "I'm sorry," she whispered. There was a brief pause. "Is that why...?" She didn't finish the question, and she didn't need to; we both knew what she meant.
I nodded. "That's how it all started."
The doctor had noticed that I was awake, and she hurried over to check on me. Apparently, my skin had been too warm and I wasn't waking up, so they'd brought me to the hospital wing for the doctor to check on me, but apparently I just put off a lot of body heat and was sleeping more soundly than anyone had expected, so all the worry was for nothing. Honestly, the doctor just looked relieved that she didn't have to deal with any other injured persons. She moved away to go do something, and the princes joined Clara and I.
Haydn and Clara were already engaged in a quiet conversation, using their hands in what looked like a very particular fashion while whispering. I'd seen other Eights do that, including a girl several years older than me that was born completely deaf, and I knew enough to communicate across a room when I needed to be totally silent. Even so, I didn't recognize their hand gestures and realized that they must've been for German. It was strange seeing something that would make you an Eight in the palace.
"Haydn can't hear very well," Mason explained as he sat beside me. The other princes perched themselves on my bed as well. "He's always had difficulty with it. We use German Sign Language to speak with him, even when we speak in English. He can communicate verbally and he can usually understand what people are saying without signing, but sometimes it's harder for him."
"His sister is completely deaf," Alexander added. "She and the French prince fell in love because he taught himself German Sign Language to speak with her."
"That's sweet," I said.
"Have you seen it before?" Liev asked. When I shot him a confused look, he added, "Sign Language."
I nodded. "I've used it. There was a girl that I...worked with. She was completely deaf. She taught us all basic Sign Language so that we could communicate with her, and so that we could communicate when we had to be silent." I shrugged. "It's strange, seeing it here."
"Why?" This was from Mason.
"Because out in the provinces, having any sort of hearing, speech, or vision impairment is grounds to be kicked out of your home and demoted to an Eight. The girl I knew came from Fours, and they kicked her out when she was a toddler because she couldn't hear."
I watched Liev and Salvatore exchange a look, like they both agreed on something. Mason and Alexander had hard looks in their eyes. "More things that need changed," Alexander said. He pulled a small notepad and pen from his pocket and scribbled something down, then tucked it all away again. "I can't believe how messed up everything is."
"I can," I said. "You haven't met the people in power. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what all they fund and promote. We're more like animals than humans to them." I shuddered.
Alexander wrapped an arm around me. The princes all grew silent, their expressions pensive, and I wondered if they were trying to imagine what it was like to be cast into the streets, no money to their names and no family to stand with them, trying to imagine what people would do and how they would treat them. I knew that nothing they could dream up would come close to how it really was. I wondered if they knew that.
Clara and Haydn had finished their conversation, and the German prince left the wing without a word to the rest of us. Liev and Salvatore stood at the same time and moved to sit beside her, discussing how everyone else was and what had happened. After a moment, Mason joined them as well.
I scooted over on the bed and patted the space beside me, and Alexander swung his feet up and leaned against the pillows with me. He wrapped an arm around me, and I snuggled closer to him. "I hate to admit it, but I think you saved us out there," he murmured. "I've never seen anything like it."
I smiled. "Comes with being a capo, I suppose." I tried to mimic the way it rolled off of Salvatore's tongue and failed miserably at it.
"So it's true, then?" When I didn't answer, he added, "It can be our secret. But I'd like to know."
"Don't you already have your answer?"
"I want to hear you say it."
I sighed. "Yes, it's true. Of course it's true."
He smiled. "I'm going to have my hands full with you, aren't I?"
I rolled my eyes. "Please. I'm starting to think that absolutely nothing can shake you. You're like, always stoic. I don't know how you do it."
He shrugged. "I've had practice. Comes with being a prince, I guess. But if we're being honest, nothing has ever terrified me more than when you stepped up to stand with Haydn rather than retreat into the room."
I laughed. "So not only did you have to fight off random gun-waving intruders, but I nearly gave you a heart attack by doing what I do best? Man, this must've been the worst birthday you've ever had."
He chuckled. "Not entirely, no. Seeing you in that dress more than made up for all of the shitty parts of today." And god and hell both damn it, he actually winked at me.
I played it off well and acted like my heart hadn't started racing. "I think I'm going to be the one with my hands full, not you." I didn't admit it, and I probably didn't need to, but it was a good sort of trouble, the kind that I was more than willing to put up with.