Page 39 of Roma Queen
…turning away from the windows before I’ve even registered that they areshattering.
My feet are off the floor.
Pasha’s heart is thundering in his chest—I can feel it through the thick wool of my cable-knit sweater.
A crashing sound bounces around the inside of the loft, and then it’s raining diamonds.
Mimicking the snow that fell on us last night, thousands of tiny glass shards explode into the loft, landing in my hair, catching in my sweater, catching at my skin, and then striking the polished concrete before scattering in every direction.
The moment lasts both a heartbeat and a lifetime.
Pasha’s chest swells against my back as he sucks in a deep breath. He hasn’t moved a muscle, his torso still twisted, his back turned on the city so he could protect me from the projectiles of glass. “Fuck,” he pants. “Are you okay?”
I’m not in any pain. Can’t feel the hot, dull ache of blood pouring from my body. “I…Yeah, I think so.”
Carefully, Pasha sets me down. Cubes of safety glass crunch and grind under the soles of my shoes as I steady myself against the back of the wingback chair by the fire. Pasha’s face is white as a sheet. He turns around, surveying the destruction before him, a jagged slash of a frown carved so deep into his brow that it looks like it’s cut down to the bone.
Everywhere: glass.
Side-by-side, two of the huge, ten-foot-high panels of glass, there a second ago, are now justgone, broken into a million pieces on the floor, and a stiff, foreboding northern wind is snaking its way inside the loft, tugging at Pasha’s shirt. He digs his fingers into his hair, staring down at the broken glass, and then, just like the glass, he explodes.
“FUUUCK!” His brutal roar echoes around the loft, escaping out of the yawning maw where the windows used to be, and blares out into the valley, repeating itself again and again before the mountainside to the left of us captures his furious cry and deadens it.
“What the…fuck just…happened?” I can’t cram enough oxygen into my lungs to get the sentence out all in one go. I realize I’m shaking; my legs feel so fucking weak, I’m concerned they might actually collapse out from underneath me. I sidle around the wingback chair, sitting down on it as I try and make sense of the scene in front of me.
“Something hit the glass,” Pasha says. His voice is flat now. Quiet. If it weren’t for the abject rage on his face, I’d say he was in shock. I’m most definitely in shock. Oh, Christ, I think I’m going to—
I jump to my feet again, hands on my hips, hauling a breath into my lungs, filling them until they feel like they’re about to burst. All the while, I’m pressing down the unsettling feeling that I might be about to faint.I am not going to fucking faint. I’m not going to fucking faint. Don’t you dare fucking faint, you stupid bitch. This is not eighteen ninety-three. Women don’t just faint because they got a shock.
“I saw it coming. White. Out of nowhere. Barely had time to fucking grab you,” Pasha mutters. He steps into the broken glass, kicking through it with the toe of his boot. A second later, he finds what he’s looking for. I see it at the same time, my eyes catching on the tiny pool of red that is slowly spreading underneath the aquamarine of the safety glass.
Not a rock, or a brick. Not a man-made projectile of any kind.
It’s a bird.
Pasha brushes the mess away, scooping the creature up in his hands. He bares his teeth, as if he’s afraid to hurt it, but the poor thing’s dead, of course. The rhythm of my heart is evening out again, normalizing with each deep breath I take. I feel considerably steadier on my feet as I step forward to get a better look, but then one of the bird’s wings shoots out, snow-white and flecked with blood, and I nearly land on my ass, I jump back so fast.
“Ah, Jesus,” Pasha groans. “Hit the window hard enough to shattertwofucking panes, but not hard enough to kill it?”
I clutch at my chest, horror corkscrewing through me as the bird spasms, both its wings now moving as it flails in Pasha’s hands, trying to get away from him. Against my own better judgement, I look closer, and my heart splinters right down the middle when the bird looks up at me. Its eye resembles a glass bead, a beautiful golden color with an obsidian black pupil, unlike most bird’s eyes. A startling level of intelligence stares back at me, and all I see is the bird’s panic. All I see is its pain.
“Oh my god, I can’t.” I turn away, covering my mouth with my hand.
“Stay there. Don’t come outside.” Pasha leaves, glass crunching as he steps out onto the balcony.
When he comes back, his hands are empty, and the bird is gone.
“Did you…?” God, I can’t even say it.
He nods. “Its neck was broken. It was dying anyway.”
That information doesn’t make me feel any better. Not really. “What kind of birdwasthat? That glass is half an inch thick, Pasha. Those windows should never have shattered like that.”
Pasha’s mouth is downturned as he rubs at his forehead; he closes his eyes for a second, breathing out down his nose. When he opens his eyes again, his expression is even more grim. “It wasn’t just a bird, Firefly. It was anowl.”
THIRD
Outside the box, the world is a vivid mess of color.
