The Gender War (The Gender Game #4)(72)

Ms. Dale shouted something at the man, her mouth angry and her eyes terrified. It was the rawest look of human emotion I had ever seen on her face. I watched, stunned, as she continued to press her hands against his chest.

But I sensed that the grim tidings didn’t stop there. The sounds coming from the room concerned me. Wardens shouldn’t have been in this part of the house. I stepped around them, my limbs feeling like lead, almost tripping on Samuel who was standing at the threshold.

Inside, it looked like the aftermath of chaos. A group of people were sobbing softly, some pressed into the corners of the room, their eyes squeezed shut as they clung to each other. It must have been a communal acceptance of their fate—the fate they became intimately acquainted with after watching several of their own men, women, and—God help me—children slaughtered moments before Ms. Dale’s bullet had ended their assailant.

I opened my mouth, trying to find the words to tell them it was over, when several people cried out in alarm as a door they were pressed against was forced open. Before I could think to reach for my gun, they fell back and King Maxen stepped out, shouting obscenities at anyone who didn’t get out of his way fast enough. He moved toward me, casually stepping over the body of a small boy—his white-blond hair soaked through with blood—to stand before me, mouth turned downward in contempt.

“Your protection is a joke,” the king sneered at me.

I stood frozen. A part of me was roaring in fury, ready to kill this travesty of a leader for his lack of regard for the dead at his feet. But the numbness from earlier had returned to me. All I could do was stare at the small boy right behind him, lying so devastatingly still, as if I had caught him in a moment of waking, and he was surprised by my presence.

This cannot be happening. No; this should not have happened.

So I stared at the king, silently, for a moment longer. Then, without even acknowledging that he had spoken, I moved past him and knelt at the feet of the nearest refugee as she cradled her face in her hands. “Let’s get you all out of here,” I said.





27





Violet





I tossed the bloodied bundle of bandages that the Patrian doctor, who’d been found by one of the refugees, had barked at me to dispose of into a waste bin, and I used the opportunity to slip out of the room. There wasn’t much I could do, and my hands were beginning to shake from exhaustion. Letting Viggo sleep after burying the dead the night before meant that I hadn’t, and though it was only early afternoon, it already felt like this day had gone on forever. This was too much death for a year, to say nothing of a single day.

I didn’t know if I could bear it if another person was added to the list.

Ms. Dale hadn’t left Henrik’s side since Viggo and I had seen her, and my heart was breaking watching her mood swing from optimistic to furious to despairing. This woman had been one of my staunchest supporters since I was young. I’d never seen her so upset, even in The Green, when she, Viggo, and I hadn’t known whether we could trust each other. I’d almost come to believe that she was unflappable. Seeing her in this state felt like the world was really turned upside-down.

And I felt like there was nothing I could do to help. The only thing I had really been doing in the room had been keeping pressure on the wound in Henrik’s chest and hoping that Jeff could get the doctor here quickly.

He was here now, but I wasn’t sure if Henrik was going to make it—he was so pale, even though we had been administering new blood rejuvenation patches every hour, on the hour. He was losing blood faster than we could get him to manufacture it, and if the doctor didn’t manage to stop the bleeding permanently, and soon, he would continue to lose it until his heart literally did not have enough to pump. And then he would die.

We can’t lose Henrik, I thought as I walked down the hall, rubbing my bloodstained hands against my thighs. We’ll lose Ms. Dale too. And then two of the wisest, most capable people around me would have been torn apart, whether physically or mentally, by this war.

When Ms. Dale’s emotions had turned to rage, it had been mostly aimed at herself. Some of the wardens had pressed up her staircase, and she had been forced to fall back. Henrik had heard the gunfire and stepped in to cover her, but caught a bullet instead. Ms. Dale had tried to force them back alone, covering our fallen companion, but one… one had opened fire on the room full of innocent people. Whether it was confusion on her part or just a desire to make our victory hurt all the more, I would never have any idea. All I knew was that there were twelve more bodies to add to the eight from the previous night.

My heart felt like lead in my chest—not just for the dead, but also for the effect it was having on Viggo. I had seen it in his eyes when he’d been digging last night, how he’d retreated from feeling, moving like an emotionless automaton. Today, after the refugees had been killed, I’d seen the same aching hollowness in him. And I could feel, not just sense, his hopelessness and pain, like a swollen, open wound.

It was killing me to see him like this. In some ways, I knew it was taking him back to Miriam—his wife, who had been executed for murder when she’d killed a man in self-defense. Viggo had tried to save her life, but he hadn’t been able to beat the system. I knew he’d always been a protector, and his failure to protect her had left a deep wound in him. He himself had said that wound was only beginning to heal. Now, here he was, surrounded by more people he couldn’t save. Already, the heavy cost of the war was weighing on him.