Chapter 4

After the shock that came from the first bullet flying through the wall, no one speaks. Not until Honey asks in a trembling voice, “What was that?”

“A bullet, now keep your head down.” Kitten grunts out the last word telling me that she likely pushes Honey’s head back down, and not a moment too soon.

At least ten more bullets are fired through the stone wall. The high-pitched whistling rings through the room causing my breathing to stutter with each shot. I’m worried for me, but I’m also worried for Sai as his body remains on top of me blocking any potential bullets. I feel a hand grip my trembling one and give it a light squeeze. I know that’s Rumi’s way of telling me to breathe, so I do.

There’s a haunting silence in the room after the last bullet pierces through the stone wall. We remain motionless for what’s likely a few minutes just waiting. But another bullet never comes.

Sai is the first one to move. Inch by inch he raises his body pushing up into a sitting position. What are you doing? I mouth the question to Sai who just smiles down at me.

I pull at his sleeve trying to get him to lay back on the ground, but he doesn’t. Instead, Sai turns his eyes to Rumi, and they have a conversation without a single word being spoken.

Just as Sai yanks his sleeve from my hold, Rumi crawls over and takes my Sai’s place protecting my body. I’m about to yell at both of them, but Rumi covers my mouth. I’m using every bit of strength I have to try to get to Sai who’s now peeking out one of the window shutters at whatever’s outside.

Even as another bullet flies into the room, Sai remains calm. When I see red coloring bloom on the fabric of his left shoulder, I fall apart. My scream is muffled, but you can still hear it in the otherwise quiet room

“Shh, he’s alright Blue. He’s fine.” Rumi reassures me, but it doesn’t stop the tears that are streaming out of my eyes.

Sai acts as though he wasn’t just shot as his eyes stay locked on whatever is transpiring outside the window. When he finally stands and brushes off the powder from the stone wall clinging to his gown, his words are nonchalant. “All clear.”

Rumi releases his hold on me. I’m on my feet and running over to Sai before anyone else even moves. I scan his shoulder and then his face searching for any signs that the Divinity of Death is close by.

“It’s just a graze Blue, I’m fine.” Sai rotates his shoulder to prove his point, but it does nothing to appease me. First, he’s still bleeding. Second, he’s bleeding a lot.

Lady Auclair gets up first. She steps out from her hiding place behind the table with Cyra following close behind. One by one, everyone else pulls themselves out from under the tables where they were hiding. Dia creeks open the door, checking over everyone to make sure we’re all alright.

“The soldiers were trying to capture someone. Likely a new recruit that tried to run.” Sai explains as he turns my face so that I’m staring his chest and not the people around us. Then he walks me to the door and hands me over to Rumi who leads me outside the room.

Dia asks if I’m hurt, but Rumi just gives a vague response about me needing a moment to breathe.

In the room, Cyra has recovered and she’s fuming. “They have some nerve shooting at my shop! You guys, go check the gifts. If there’s even a scratch on them, they’re reimbursing us ten times over. Eastsyn come with me, I want to explain to them exactly who they just pissed off.”

“My love, that’s not necessary. I can call someone and get them out here to fix this tonight. We don’t have to bother the soldiers.”

“What was that, Lady Auclair?” Cyra’s chilly tone sends a shiver down my spine. And she wasn’t even talking to me.

Lady Auclair, sensing the danger she’s in after hearing Cyra call her by her last name, changes her stance. “We should absolutely go out to talk to those soldiers.”

“Nh. Dia, for now patch the holes with—”

Cyra’s voice is cut off when the door closes behind us. Once we’re inside the room next door, Rumi guides me to my knees moments before my legs give out.

“Yoo good?” Rumi squats down so that he’s eye level with me.

“No!”

“Sai’s fine Blue. Everyone is.”

“No, we’re not. The voice, it said I’m going to die. After I got the brand, it said that. And then, this.” I fan my hands out to show the room. There aren’t any bullet holes in here to represent what we just went through, but my point remains.

“Blue. We talked about trusting the voice.”

“But—”

“The voice asked yoo to go into the forest multiple times. Did yoo go?”

I lean back so that I’m comfortably sitting on my bum as the adrenaline from earlier leaves me. “No.”

“How about when it told yoo to go find your mom and bring her home even after she threatened to kill Sai?”

“No.”

Having proven his point, Rumi focuses on fixing my tangled hair. “The voice isn’t reliable. So don’t pay attention to it. Focus on what’s in front of yoo. Got it?”

I nod my head because it makes sense. For the number of times the voice has been right, there were other times it’s told me to do some crazy things. Whether the voice is real or not, I can’t let it get to me.

“Got it.” I reach up to brush a loose strand of hair that’s blocking my view when Rumi grabs my wrist. His expression tells me that he’s about to say something that I don’t want to hear.

“What?”

“Now, just breathe. We can fix this.”

“Fix what Rumi?!” The moment it clicks in my brain, my eye go wide in horror. This can’t be happening. Not today!

Unlike me, Rumi’s still calm. He provides me a reassuring smile as he promises once again that he can fix it.

To remove my scales means I’ll ruin my make-up. Ruining my make-up is a problem because, “I didn’t bring any spare make-up with me.”

Rumi scoffs at my end of world problem. “Who do yoo think gave yoo all your make-up? Go over to the wash bowl and remove the scales; I’ll go grab my make-up next door.”

Rumi doesn’t give me time to say anything in response before he slips out of the room without a backwards glance.

For just a moment, I can hear Cyra’s voice screaming outside. “You must be blessed by the Divinity of Life to think I won’t end you here and now for your utter incompetent—”

Yikes.

I waste no time removing the scales and cleaning the blood from my face as delicately yet thoroughly as I can manage. Though Rumi’s going to have to re-do most of my make-up, I should at least salvage what I can. As the last scale in the palm of my hand turns to dust, the door opens. Rumi steps in holding a bag that contains a lot more make-up than I think we’re ever going to need.

Just before Rumi can close the door behind him, I hear Sai voice drift into the room. “I want to see her. How is she?”

Rumi cracks open the door so Sai can see me. I offer him a small smile and a wave that he returns.

“There. Now be useful and keep them busy for twenty minutes. We have to re-do her make-up.” Before Sai can respond Rumi shuts the door on him thus blocking out any other sounds from the hallway.

“Ready?” Rumi holds up the bag as if it can solve all my issues and, who am I to doubt him.

My eyes remain closed as Rumi applies my make-up at an alarming speed.

“Rumi.”

“Huh?” I can tell from his tone that he’s concentrating on applying the eyeliner to my bottom eyelid and not fully listening to what I’m saying.

“You shouldn’t have stopped me. If something happened to Sai—”

Rumi shuts me down before I can even attempt to support my argument. “I will always prioritize your life over his, and Sai would let me. It’s one of the few things we agree on.”

“I’m his older sister Rumi. It’s my job to protect him.”

“And I’m the adult, so what I say goes.” Rumi declares while giving me a, don’t start, look.

I shut up because I’ve never, not once, won an argument against Rumi. And I doubt that’s changing tonight. Rumi doesn’t take the full twenty minutes. In less than fifteen, my make-up is done and honestly, it looks better than what I managed to do earlier.

“I should have just come to you to do my make-up in the first place,” I pout.

“Yoo did really good job though. The lines yoo made with your gold paint were perfect.” Rumi’s being nice and we both know it. But I’ll take the compliment.

“Thanks.”

“I’m just saying perhaps provoking armed soldiers isn’t the best—”

“Best what?” Cyra bites out with a glare that challenges Lady Auclair to finish her sentence.

Switching up her tactics, Lady Auclair offers a solution. “I can pay for this.” An offer that is promptly turned down by her wife.

“I’m aware of that, but that’s not the point. This was unacceptable. What if they hit one of us, huh? Could you pay for us to come back to life?”

Rightfully so, Lady Auclair stops talking. There’s no good answer for that question, and she knows it.

I head back to my table so I can check on Sai. He’s procured Rumi’s vacated seat and to my relief, there’s no blood on his gown.

Sai’s attention, however, is of course not on himself, but me. He points to the skin under his eye and offers the barest of head tilts.

Are you alright? Does it still hurt? His questions don’t need to be vocalized for me to know what he’s asking.

The truth is no. The nerves on my skin are still screaming after I removed the scales. One time, Rumi asked what it felt like. The best example I could give was it feels like I’m ripping off my nails. But, as always, I downplay it for Sai. I don’t want him to worry about something so trivial.

I shake my head letting Sai know that I’m fine, but this little brat. When I try to check his wound, he mimics me and shakes his head. He even scrunches up his nose like I do as he keeps me away from his shoulder. Before I get a chance do or say anything, Doll interrupts us.

“Are you alright Blue?”

“Nh. I smudged my make-up earlier. Thanks for helping Sai. You even got the blood out.”

I know that it was Doll that got the blood out of his gown. She also patched fabric on his shoulder. It’s not perfect, but I can fix it later. Though Doll is a legend when it comes to sewing, she always struggles with infinite cloth. Most people do.

“Ehh. If there’s one thing we have here, it’s gavnovite. In a shop full of women, there’s never a moment when we don’t need it.”

“Can we not talk about cycles right before we eat?” Honey asks as she works to put all my gifts that they moved to the back of the room in some sort of order.

“Yes please. I was hungry before Blue even got here.” Everyone, including me, agrees with Kitten.

It was too late to eat when I got up, so at this point I’m hitting the ravenous point. Only when we all turn our pleading eyes on Cyra does she halt her complaints about the soldiers and lack of compensation.

“You guys sure recover quick.” Cyra mutters as she finds her seat once again.

No one contests her claims as we raise the top of our tables one by one. Inside my hollowed-out table sits three dishes. The cold air that releases from inside makes me shiver, but the heat that comes from Sai’s table warms me back up.

The first dish I remove from mine is the candied fruit. I pass it to Sai so he can send it down the line. Then, I take out the rolls. They’re fresh and it takes everything inside me to avoid taking one before everything is set up. More specifically, it takes Rumi pulling the tray from my clutches.

“I know it’s your day and all, but yoo shouldn’t forget your manners,” he chides.

My cheeks puff out. I’m about to follow-up with an I know, before I feel a light tap against my leg. I wait until Rumi turns away from me to see what Sai wants.

Sai, my lovely kindhearted brother passes me a roll under the table with his eyes still looking forward. Discretely, I grab the roll and stuff a piece in my mouth. It’s good. So much so, I accidentally moan. Whoops.

Rumi’s head swings in my direction, and all I can do is tuck my head down in a show of shame. To avoid drawing any more attention to myself, or at least not to go down alone, I pass the rest of my roll to Sai. He takes it and shamelessly eats it. I can feel Rumi shaking his head in our direction and, fair.

When I pull out my last plate from inside of my table, Honey calls to me, “Lettuce goes down here”.

Honey then takes her time arranging the food into their designated categories, and then additional time making the display prettier. By the time we get the all clear to make our plates, I’m at the last strand of my endurance from the mouthwatering smell of food that fills the room.

I spring up, determined not to be the last one in line, but Sai tells me to sit down insisting he’ll make our plates. If I didn’t plan to snack in line, I would have been happier with the offer. Still, it was nice of him so, I sit down and wait patiently like the adult I’ve claimed to be all night.

When Sai brings me back a plate containing eighty percent meat and twenty percent bread, I consider my life decisions and question how I’ve been raising him all this time. His plate is even worse than mine. He made a clean run of the meat dishes ignoring every other food group.

I go to rub the spot in between my eyebrows that I can feel creasing but stop myself before my fingertips make contact. Make-up.

“What?” Sai asks as he takes a large bite of steak.

Rumi, as if to suggest that Sai’s actions are normal and I’m the weird one, sets a plate of sweets on my table. It literally has only sweets on it. I watch in disbelief as he sets an identical plate on his table.

He notices me staring at him only after he moves on to his second slice of lemon iced cake. “What? If yoo don’t get your sweets first, the best stuff will be gone by the time you’re done eating.”

I’m too hungry to even try to explain the fault in Rumi’s logic. So, I get up and go make three more plates. They consist of an assortment of vegetables, grains, and fruit. To balance everything out, I place some rolls and meat on Rumi’s vegetable plate as he inhales what’s either fudge or toffee.

I swear. I’m not sure who’s worse. The carnivore on my right or the sugar gremlin on my left.

“Enjoy.” I say as I sit back down.

Their faces tell me that they will not enjoy it, but they’ll still eat it. They’re not leaving here until they do. When Sai reaches for some bacon, I point to the carrots on his place. He frowns, but he still eats them. When I check on Rumi, he…

What happened to you being the adult Rumi? Why are you trying to hide your broccoli under the table?