All For You

Thirty-one

Isla

I can't think straight.

Whether that's because of the lack of oxygen that's been kept from my desperate lungs, or from the bump forming on the back of my head, or just because I've realized that I'll never truly be free, I'm not sure. Maybe it's all three.

As Nick leads me back through the door I mistakenly ran through to follow Mr. Smith, into the banquet which is no longer filled with the echoing sounds of the perilous battle I left behind, my head seems to clear. Though it invites the unrelenting regret and ferocious hate back into my tired mind, it allows me to cast my eyes around the room. With a heavy sigh, I find the eyes of my father, standing beside my relatively uninjured brothers. It releases the relentless weight of worry from my chest and, though temporarily, keeps the bad thoughts away. The hateful ones. The painful ones. The ones that claw into my mind and blur the path to peace.

Before I can mutter a word, dad pulls me into a bone-crushing, imperative hug. It warms the icy cool touch of shame that was wrapping it's hands around my neck and I sink into his embrace. I feel like I'm ten years old all over again, drowning in the strong, warm arms of my biggest role model. I let my eyes close and, though I don't have the strength to squeeze him back half as tightly as he's squeezing me, I clutch onto the back of his shirt like he's my lifeline. And he is. He's more than that. He's irreplaceable.

When he pulls back to look me in my eyes, he must see the regret there. The pain. The shame. Because he wipes my eyelids with the pads of his thumbs ever-so gently and kisses my forehead, speaking of words I want so badly to believe. "My perfect, beautiful girl. You're so brave, so smart, so kind. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me. Don't you know that? You're my little princess."

I laugh, a breathy, genuine laugh. "I'm not so little anymore, dad."

"You are to me." He points out our height difference, though I'm not that much shorter, with a happy hum. "Are you hurt anywhere?"

"I'm okay," I tell him, and I really am. My back still hurts, and my brains still a bit fuzzy, but I've lived on with worse. Survived harsher conditions with deeper wounds.

Dad's eyes glance over my shoulder, and I suddenly realize how quiet the room is. I turn towards the group of familiar faces I spoke to within the crowd earlier, and my shoulders relax when I see the three of them that were laid to die tonight among them.

We glare at each other, pure suspicion and palpable tension raging between us, and I'm sure everyone around us can feel the heat in our cutting, narrowed eyes as well as we can.

Warner steps between me and the fierce group, an awkward glint in his eyes as he tries to cool down the heat simmering around the room in waves of distrust. "Let's just take a minute to cool off."

"I'm glad you're all alive, but there's no time for a reunion. We have to get moving before the buildings surrounded," I grumble, stepping back in front of Warner. My fellow assassin's keep their practiced glare on my all too familiar face.

"Still a cold bitch, I see," one of the few girls tells me, her face scrunched up in annoyance. I ignore her, and the sudden weight in the air I feel coming from behind me.

"You've got two choices," I tell them, grabbing a gun from the floor and wiping the blood of it onto the suit of a body near my feet. "Option one: come with us. You'll be given a place to live, food to eat, and a job to keep you useful. You'll fight with us against nameless when the time comes if you're able. Option two: you can run. But we all know what happens to the ones who try. It would've been a kinder mercy if I left you to die on those tables."

"Not much of a choice, is there?" The same girl with the scrunched up face tuts, her eyes dark and heavy with exhaust. I'm sure my appearance mirrors hers now.