Chapter 185 ~ No Return To Normal

Chapter 185 ~ No Return To Normal
{Daisy's POV}

The air went from tense-and-silent to tense-and-explosive in less time than it took me to finish exhaling.

One second, a standoff. The next, gunfire ripping through the open ground from every direction at once, men dropping, screaming, scrambling. DeLuca and my mother hauled me sideways before I fully registered moving, and we ended up crouched behind what remained of a low perimeter wall, blasted half apart sometime earlier tonight, close enough to the ground that I could feel every impact vibrating through the stone.

I'd never felt anything like what hit me in that moment. Not fear, exactly, though there was plenty of that too. Something closer to disbelief. I'd said words — actual, ordinary words, out of my actual mouth — and the entire world around me had rearranged itself in response. I'd known, in an abstract, someone-explained-it-to-me way, that my decision mattered now. I hadn't actually believed it. Not until it detonated in real time in front of me.

DeLuca's hand found my shoulder.

"You okay?"

"Yes. I think." I looked him over properly, worry crowding out everything else for a second, my eyes catching on the hand still pressed to his side. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." A faint, crooked smile. "Couple of scratches. Nothing serious."

I smiled back, and neither of us believed it. He was hiding the pain for my benefit, and the fact that he didn't get to decide whether I worried about that anyway sat there, unspoken, between us.

An explosion cracked somewhere close, and we all flinched deeper into the wall's shadow.

My decision had done this. I understood that clearly now, turning it over while the ground shook slightly under another impact. I hated chaos. I hated bloodshed even more, genuinely, all the way down. But I'd learned enough tonight to know the difference between the choice I wanted to make and the choice that actually kept people alive. Nico wasn't going to surrender. That much had been obvious before I ever opened my mouth. So the decision, hard and ugly as it was, had been the right one.

A gunshot cracked beside us, and one of Nico's men dropped just past the edge of our cover, wounded but conscious, gun still gripped in his hand, eyes already finding us.

My mother moved before I could.

She knocked the gun from his grip with one sharp motion, grabbed something off the ground — I didn't even see what — and brought it down against his head hard enough to end the fight instantly. Then she leaned back into cover like she'd just swatted a fly.

I stared at her, still not remotely used to this version of my mother, the one who apparently existed underneath the sick, gentle woman I'd known my whole life.

Her breathing, though. That was what caught my attention once the shock passed. Heavy. Labored, in a way that had nothing to do with adrenaline. She'd been running on pure survival instinct for hours now, and I could see, clearly, that the cost of that was catching up to her fast.

All I could do was hope. Hope that the men who'd sworn themselves to me, for reasons I still hadn't fully accepted, could actually finish this and get us out.

The battle raged on around us— shouted commands, more gunfire, bodies falling in glimpses I caught and immediately wished I hadn't. It went on long enough that I finally surfaced from the panic enough to think of something else entirely.

"Tessa. Mabel." My head snapped up. "Where are they?"

DeLuca was already scanning the same way I was, a full step ahead of me as usual.

"Tessa and Mabel, right?" I confirmed.

"Yes. They ran the other way when it started."

I kept searching anyway, catching flashes of horror I didn't want cataloged in my memory — someone falling, someone else's leg buckling wrong beneath them — until DeLuca spoke again.

"We need to move."

"I agree," my mother said.

I thought they were both insane. Bullets seemed to be traveling in literally every available direction, and moving felt like volunteering to become one more statistic in this mess. I opened my mouth to suggest waiting, just a little longer, just until—

Someone dropped into our huddle.

I flinched hard, already swinging a fist-sized stone at the intrusion before my brain caught up to who it actually was.

The hoarse-voiced man. The same one who'd led the others into kneeling.

"Master," he said.

I actually glanced sideways for a second, checking who he meant, before the reality of my own new title landed again.

"We need to get you out of here," he continued. "The fight's getting worse. We'll hold the rest while you get to safety."

Four men stood behind him, weapons up, actively covering our position.

I looked at DeLuca. He nodded, and that was enough for me to trust the plan.

The man rose, pulling the rest of us up with careful, practiced motion, shielding us as we pushed away from the wall and toward a stretch of open ground that led, I assumed, somewhere safer than here.

"Wait." I grabbed his arm as we moved. "Two of the girls are still out there. Please, find them."

"There's a car arranged ahead," he said. "We'll get everyone into it."

"And Aria," my mother added. "Bring Aria too."

He nodded, and the four men fell into formation around us, guiding us forward through the wreckage.

I looked back once, at the chaos still raging behind us, gunfire and screaming and smoke rolling up into the dark sky.

All of it, mine. Every second of it traced back to the words that had come out of my mouth.

The weight of that sat in my chest like something solid.



The apartment we ended up in was quiet in a way that felt suspicious after the last several hours, like silence itself had become something I no longer trusted on sight.

It wasn't even really an apartment. Bare concrete walls, exposed wiring in one corner, half-finished in the way of a building someone had abandoned mid-project years ago and never come back to. Someone had clearly used it for exactly this purpose before; a couple of cots, a crate of medical supplies, the specific, practiced feel of a place built for hiding rather than living. Survival mode, dressed up as shelter.

DeLuca rested on one of the cots, a drip line taped into his arm, fresh bandages wound tight around his side. Watching him like that — still, pale, hooked up to something meant to keep him alive — cracked something open in my chest every time I let myself actually look at him for more than a few seconds. He was healing. He'd be fine. The gunshot hadn't taken an ounce of the danger or strength that lived in him normally. None of that made the sight any easier to sit with.

We couldn't risk a hospital. Not with police still actively searching for us, and not with my name still attached to a fraud charge I hadn't even had the bandwidth to think about in days. So this was what we had instead. Concrete and cots and borrowed time.

My mother rested on the other cot, her body finally allowing the exhaustion to show now that the immediate danger had eased. Whatever illness she'd been holding back through sheer force of will all night had started leaking through the cracks, and I made a private note to corner her later, properly, and get real answers— starting with exactly how she'd learned to fight like that.

Outside, I knew there was a car and two guards standing watch. Two of the men who'd left with us, while the rest stayed behind to finish whatever was still happening with Nico. I had no idea what that status actually was. I just wanted it over. I wanted everyone I cared about breathing, unharmed, and far away from anything resembling a gun.

I wanted, more than anything else, to just go back. Back to ordinary. Back to classes and library shifts and worrying about rent instead of empires and bloodlines.

That was when I heard the engines.

Everyone tensed at once. DeLuca's eyes snapped open, and he was on his feet before I could stop him, nearly tearing the drip line loose in the process. My mother woke and rose just as fast, alert despite everything her body had clearly been through.

I pushed myself upright too, using the rough, cold surface of a support pillar to steady myself, glancing around uselessly for something to defend us with. Stone was all that was available. Stone had already proven itself completely useless against guns tonight. I settled for hoping instead, bracing for the worst while praying it wasn't that.

The door opened.

The hoarse-voiced man stepped through first, a few of his men behind him, and my whole body sagged with relief at the sight of Mabel's furious, disgusted expression right behind them. Not a threat. Just Mabel, looking like she'd personally been insulted by the entire evening.

She stepped inside, scruffy and rattled and clearly still processing everything she'd seen. Tessa followed, in the same rough state.

Then Aria.

I expected that to be the end of it. But then Archer stepped through, battered but upright.

And then, shockingly; impossibly, someone else followed behind him…

Nathan.

I tense at once, and with this, I stared at the odd battered group standing there in front of me while one clear, and unwelcomed thought settled into place, cold and absolute.

Whatever normal used to mean, it wasn't waiting for me on the other side of tonight.