Chapter 7 - Fire and Iron
Julian moved before thought could register.
He spun Dileia behind his back, using his entire body as a human shield, his sidearm rising toward the doorway in a split second.
Standing in the smoldering threshold was Christopher Ward.
Ward was bleeding from a shrapnel wound on his temple, his tuxedo torn, his eyes completely unhinged with madness. In his trembling right hand, he held a small, nickel-plated revolver, pointed directly at Dileia.
"If I'm going down, Julian," Ward rasped, his finger tightening on the trigger, "you aren't keeping your little pet!"
*BANG!*
Two gunshots echoed simultaneously in the tight, smoke-filled shack.
Julian’s bullet struck Ward squarely between the eyes. The traitor dropped backward into the rain like a stone, dead before his body hit the concrete.
But Ward’s bullet had found its mark.
Julian staggered back half a step, let out a low, guttural grunt, and collapsed against the steel wall of the shack.
"Julian!" Dileia screamed.
She caught him as he fell, his massive weight pulling them both down to the soot-covered floor. Her hands frantically searched his chest. When she pulled them away, her palms were slick with bright, warm, crimson blood.
The bullet had struck him high in the right shoulder, just beneath the collarbone.
"Julian! Stay with me! Julian, look at me!" Dileia cried, tears blinding her as she ripped the hem of her ruined silk dress with her teeth, pressing the fabric hard against the gushing wound.
Julian’s face was deathly pale, his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. Yet, his dark eyes remained fixed on hers. He raised his left hand, his trembling, blood-stained fingers cupping the back of her neck, pulling her forehead down against his.
"You're not... hurt?" he coughed, blood speckling his lips.
"I'm fine, you idiot! I'm completely fine!" she sobbed, pressing down harder on the wound, her hands covered in his blood. "Why did you jump in front of it? Why did you do that?!"
Julian let out a faint, bloody smile, his eyes shining with an emotion so deep, so profound, it stole the breath from her lungs.
"Because... without you, Dileia... there is no throne worth having."
His eyes rolled back, and his head slumped against her shoulder.
"NO! Julian! JULIAN!"
Holloway burst through the door, his weapon smoking, followed by two tactical medics carrying emergency trauma kits.
"Move! Let the medics in, Mrs. Hail!" Holloway shouted, gently but firmly pulling Dileia back.
Dileia scrambled backward on her knees, watching with agonizing terror as the medics cut open Julian’s shirt, applied a combat tourniquet, and plunged an emergency needle into his chest to decompress his collapsing lung.
"We have a pulse! Weak and thready! Get the transport rolling to the private facility in Highland Park! Go, go, go!"
They lifted Julian onto a stretcher and rushed him out into the lashing storm.
Dileia stood up, her entire body shaking, drenched in rain, soot, and Julian Thorne’s blood. Holloway appeared beside her, throwing a heavy wool coat over her shoulders.
"Come, Mrs. Hail," Holloway said, his voice unusually gentle, his eyes filled with profound reverence as he looked at her. "He wouldn't want you out here in the cold."
Dileia didn't look down at the blood on her hands. She looked toward the ambulance disappearing through the gates of Pier 42, its red lights painting the night in violent crimson.
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"Take me to him, Holloway," she said, her voice turning from weeping grief into pure, unbreakable iron. "Now."
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