This Shattered World (Starbound #2)(49)

The main cavern is silent. The lights are high here, and suddenly the stains on the floor are a garish red; my gaze follows a smear to a bundle of rags dumped on the floor.

The rags have hands, a head, eyes staring at me—it’s a body.

The world snaps into focus. The floor’s slick with blood, and there are bodies—four, six, eight—sprawled near the walls. Some seem to have been moved, leaving bright trails of blood on the floor. Their wounds and clothes are scorched, and the air smells of burning flesh; our guns couldn’t do this. This was the work of military weaponry.

I stagger backward and hit the wall, grabbing at it to steady myself as the world whirls. I can’t drag my gaze away from them, the wounds, the streams of blood. The body closest to me—it’s Mike Doyle, who helped me pull McBride off Jubilee, who had the best singing voice in the Fianna, and the loudest laugh. Then I see it, the way he’s curled around the tiny body beneath him. I see a little hand under his, and as I blink, a small face comes into focus. It’s Sean’s nephew, Fergal.

I stagger toward them and drop to my knees, the pain of the impact shooting up through my hips to my back. “Fergal, please.” My voice is hoarse and trembling as I reach for his small hand. “Talk to me. Please.”

But I know as I touch his face, painting his pale skin with my bloody fingertips, that Mike, still curled over him, couldn’t save him. Fergal’s eyes are blank, unblinking.

“No.” The moan tears out of my throat, horror sweeping through me as my stomach convulses. I push myself away from Mike and Fergal before I throw up, hands pressed white-knuckled against the stone floor. Gulping for air, I lift my head.

And that’s when I see Jubilee.

She’s on her knees toward the back of the room, as still as the dead bodies around her. She’s staring straight ahead, one hand resting against the floor, the other holding her gun, dangling loosely at her side. The grip’s sticky with blood, hers or theirs. Her gaze is vacant. If she wasn’t upright, I’d think she was one of the dead.

Please. Please. The word beats at my consciousness in time with my heart, but I don’t even know what I’m asking for. To wake up from this nightmare. To look again and see it isn’t her. To turn around and see Fergal stand up and run into my arms.

I drag myself away from Fergal, my eyes blurring as I fix them on the trodaire, her bloody clothes, the gun in her hand. My gaze wants to slide away, refusing to see any of it, and I fall to my hands and knees in front of her.

“What have you done?” Grief wrenches the words from somewhere deep inside me, somewhere guttural and raw. “I trusted you. I trusted you.”

Her eyes are blank, the pupils dilated so far they look black. This is their madness, their Fury. She stares at me, frozen like a hunted creature; the soul is gone from her eyes, and I don’t think she sees me.

“Say something!” My bloodied hand grabs her unresisting shoulder, shaking her until she moans, her dilated pupils unseeing and uncaring. My eyes sweep the cavern once more, still pleading for things to be different, searching for a way out—and they fall on the gun. In this moment, all I want is revenge. Grief and fury warring inside me, I grab it from her unresisting hand, my skin recoiling from its sticky grip, and swing the weapon around to point at the unresponsive soldier.

Then her eyes meet mine, and finally, through the shock, through the Fury, she recognizes me. Her eyes scan the cavern, falling on the bodies and the trails of blood. Horror sweeps across her features, as raw and real as pain, before she slumps, catching herself on her palms. Only then does she look down and see the blood coating her hands, gluing them to the cavern floor. Lifting her eyes to mine, she sees the gun pointed at her, its barrel shaking and wavering in my hand. I see it in her eyes, the understanding creeping through her, shattering us both.

The trodaire lifts a trembling hand toward the gun; my mind screams at my unresponsive muscles to pull away before she can disarm me and add my body to those littering the room. But her fingers curl around the barrel, not the grip. She pulls the weapon closer, until the barrel presses against her forehead.

She closes her eyes, holding the gun steady for me—but not before I see her in there, as broken and shattered as I am, begging for a way out. For any way out.

I can’t pull the trigger.

Then pounding footsteps break the silence, and I spin around to face the tunnel. Turlough Doyle is the first into the cavern, and he stops two steps in, so the next man through—Sean—collides with him. McBride’s the last one to appear.

For an instant the five of us are frozen in place. Turlough shatters the stillness with a shout, stumbling forward to drop to his knees beside Mike’s body, grabbing his husband’s shoulder and turning him over. He gives a broken moan, curling over Mike to bury his face against his shirt.

Then Sean sees Fergal. My cousin goes perfectly still, suddenly carved from stone. Even in the dim light of the cavern, I can see it when the blood drains from his face.

When McBride sees Jubilee, he tenses. Turlough’s sobs almost cover the noise of McBride pulling his Gleidel out of its holster. “Move away, Cormac,” he says, his voice low and level, absolutely calm. His face is empty and cold, as though the emotions that ought to be there have fled from the sight in front of him.

If I can’t pull the trigger, McBride certainly can. I want to drop Jubilee’s gun and push past McBride to get to Sean, but my body’s shaking, won’t listen to my orders.