The Gender War (The Gender Game #4) by Bella Forrest (the beginning after the end read novel .TXT) 📕

The large woman reached down almost gently and helped pull me up, dusting my shoulders free from debris as I swayed in her huge hand. “Personally, I always thought you were overrated,” she said conversationally. “That my sister and Desmond were being too alarmist over you.” She grabbed my chin, and my eyes fluttered open wider as she looked deep into them. “Well, I’m sorry for underestimating you,” she said, slowly and clearly, and my mind honed in on it. “I never get to have this much fun in a fight.”

Underestimating me. How could she have underestimated me? I shook my head, trying to sort through the cotton-like fog in my head, and stopped when the movement made the vertigo return tenfold. The woman—Tabitha—patted me on the shoulder and guided me to a wall. “Rest here,” she said kindly, and I couldn’t help but feel the wrongness that accompanied that statement.

She went down to the next landing, picking up an egg-shaped silver case that rested on the floor as if it had rolled there, then looked up to where I sagged against the wall. I focused on the egg, trying to remember something—something important about it. Tabitha cleared her throat, and I glanced up at her through half-lowered lids. I was so very tired.

“I’ve decided I’m going to give you a warrior’s death, Violet,” she announced. “It’s the least I can do. You earned it.”

I watched blankly as she handed the egg off to a guard, exchanging it for a smaller black object. A pistol, my mind provided, as Tabitha leveled it at me. “Any last words?” she asked.

My gaze drifted back to the warden holding the silver egg, moving away down the stairs. The niggling itch in my mind burned, and I focused, pouring every last bit of energy into remembering. Trying to remember.

When it hit me, I felt an insane laughter bubbling up in me, bursting from my mouth so hard that I almost doubled over from the force of it. It was a terrible, dark thing, rolling out loudly onto the landing.

I looked up to see Tabitha’s alarmed expression as she took a prudent step back—bringing back a sudden memory of when I had kicked this woman in the face in the queen’s library. It only made me laugh harder, my hand going to my chest and fumbling with the edge of my pocket.

“Why are you laughing?” Tabitha asked, a nervous edge in her voice.

I met her gaze, and her eyes went wide as she surely saw the madness swirling in mine. Very softly, into the silence, I said, “You forgot to take the explosives off.”

A flood of unbelievable pleasure poured through me at the sight of Tabitha’s alarm morphing into panic as she turned, her mouth opening, presumably to order the guard to throw the egg away.

Then I clicked the detonator—the correct one—that I had slipped out of my shirt pocket, and the world went black.

38

Viggo

The stairs were a blur as I climbed them, following my instincts and the sound of voices on the top level. I was nearing the top, frantic to find Violet, when I was caught in a blast that threw me off my feet and knocked my head against the wall.

When I came to I was lying on the stairs, on my side, with my head pointed down and my arm folded under me. Black smoke filled the air, and I could dimly hear the desperate, agonized screams of people in terrible pain.

Dammit. I pulled myself up, ignoring the angry protest of my muscles. It took a phenomenal amount of effort, but somehow I managed to stagger to my feet. Just like any moment in the fighting ring, I reminded myself—but this time, if I failed, it was more than just one fight at stake.

Then I moved forward, putting one foot in front of the other. Debris was strewn across the steps, and the broken bits of concrete and dust crunched under my shoes. As I climbed, bigger obstacles cluttered my path, and I clambered over broken pillars and slipped on slanted tile.

Before me, my eyes took in a scene of carnage, smoking fires and rubble dispersed across the landing. The bannisters up here had been completely ripped away, and a few of the columns had been blown out of position. Some had fallen in massive, broken pieces to the floor, while others clung tenuously to the ceiling, bereft of their lower halves. The stairs seemed to have retained the integrity of a metal structure beneath the cracked tiles, but they wobbled alarmingly at times.

I took in a sharp breath, then regretted it as I realized there were bits of human bodies everywhere, too charred to fully recognize whom they belonged to. I stepped over the blackened husk of a body, searching, my eyes seeing everything except the one person I was looking for—Violet.

There was no sign of her here, and there were a thousand other places she could be. I looked back at the scorched body and then away again, not willing to acknowledge the possibility that it could be her. I redoubled my effort, moving bits of debris where I could and peering behind other massive ones when I couldn’t.

I found her lying behind a toppled column, on her stomach, her left arm reached out, her right folded under her in an awkward manner. Heart in my throat, I gently turned her over, wincing when I saw her condition.

Her face was covered in grime, and bright red blood trickled from her nose and her ears, as well as from a jagged gash running down her face. Chunks of her hair were gone, the charred ends indicating the heat of the blast was responsible. I could see blisters starting to form on her neck and leading down the left side of her chest, disappearing under the charred remains of her shirt. Her right wrist hung at