Page 58 of Tasteful Anarchy and Tangled Auras
The splinter cell. They’re in there.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, my mates. I feel Bryn start to head towards the river. But Ossy is still in the forest.
I’m torn, frozen, trying to decide what to do, when a small hand touches my arm. It’s a tiny female leprechaun. I turn to hear her concerns, grinding my teeth as fear pools in my stomach. My eyes scan for Rory. I wish my aura was tied to his, too, so I could find him. I try to focus on the little Fae, who merely wants a blessing from Aine.
After I bless the leprechaun, I feel Bryn is in the buildings. Ossy is still in the woods. Alys is edging towards the forest. What the fuck does she know? Why would she be moving towards an attack? My hand itches for my blade. The air feels heavy. Like a skirmish or a thunderstorm is about to break out.
An arm slipping around my waist makes me jump. It’s Maise, the red Priestess from earlier. Her blue hair is mussed, and she has a dreamy smile on her face. It makes me smile. I’m glad someone is having a good time.
“Sister, how is your celebration going?”
I open my mouth to answer when I see Rory approach.
“Come,” he orders in a gruff voice that isn’t like him.
“What?” I ask incredulously.
He wraps his arm around me and the Minch and starts to usher us towards the Temple. I brace myself. “What is going on?” I can feel myself being pulled away from Ossy, and I don’t like it.
“Come. On,” Rory says again.
And then I feel Bryn’s rage a split second before the blast.
EVERYTHING IS SILENT.
Something, no, someone is pressing me down to the ground, prone on top of me. I push my head up.
Smoke everywhere. Burning in my lungs. And yet the air feels wet. Is there steam too? Then I see the Fae. Or Fae...and the bodies of Fae.
As I struggle to extricate myself, I pray it’s not a dead body on top of me. Spread across the ground nearby is the blue hair of Maise. Oh Goddess.
I panic, grasping for my bonds, for the auras of my mates.
Bryn is there, in the Temple, seething, roiling with anger, and then I’m searching for Ossy. I shove harder at the body, needing to get up, to search. It finally rolls off me, and I realize it’s Rory.
Faintly, moans and crying, begging, begin to filter in. For a moment, I almost wish my hearing wasn’t returning.
I stand shakily and quickly inspect Rory. He’s injured, blood soaking the back of his tunic, but alive. He protected us; I seem to not be wounded. I turn and see Maise’s back rising and falling.
I pull again for Ossy. His aura seems to slide away from me, slipping through my grasp, only to coalesce on itself. I turn and run into the woods.
I’M DODGING WOUNDEDor dead Fae to get to my mate. I can feel Bryn—he’s so mad—but he’s not coming for me and Ossy, and that inexplicably makes me furious.
Near the edge of the tree line, I spot Alys. I don’t slow but I do look. She’s wounded, but not nearly badly enough, I think bitterly. I take the nearest foot path into the woods at a run.
“Osmund!” I’m getting closer yet his aura feels weaker. It makes no sense.
I spot him off the path, in the woods closer to the clearing. I leap over a fallen tree and collapse at his side.
I can barely tell it’s him. He’s destroyed. His hand is gone. That entire side of his body is a wet rumpled mess of skin and blood. My hands are frozen over him. I don’t know what to do or where to touch him.
My eyes search, as if help could come, as if someone could save him. I see the blast zone behind us and I realize he was trying to get the explosive out of here. I’m an idiot. I thought it would be an attack, Fae with weapons and magic. But no, they had resorted to a human strategy: explosives.
I had felt Ossy and Bryn running through the woods and realize, now too late, that they had been trying to remove the explosives.
Fools, I curse, anger shimmering down their bonds. They shouldn’t have risked themselves. I start to cry.
Whether roused by my tears or my bitterness across our auras, Ossy’s ruined face turns towards me. I gasp and put my hands to his cheeks, one hand touching a bloody mush.
