“So this is the finish line” Dara says, her crystal smile peaking from her lips.

Jurdan stares at her, then me, then Kier.

He pulls up his guns in the same instant we all do.

We create a circle of aimed arms.

“Wow guys” Kieran comments “we really are tough people”

“Not you” says Dara and shots him a deadly stare, even if she is aiming at me and Jurdan.

“Oh well, look at them” another voice comes out of the stones of the cave, steps hearable now, echoing.

Gavriel, the one we dropped in the sea, is walking towards us with a smile.

“What do you think you are doing?” i ask, he smiles at me.

“Oh, Liliana, what a good day it is now that I can see you again” he comments and I want to shoot at him but I can’t leave my aim at Jurdan, he would shot me as soon as I shot Gavriel.

“Too bad you all don’t trust each other” he says “someone could have killed me by now but...” he sighs shaking his head.

He is beautiful even now, dripping salt water and being a dick. He knows I think about him this way at it is mortifying.

I hate him even more.

“Why are you here?”

“What do you think? To take the prize” he says “you all are so concentrated doing this none of you will follow me am I wrong?”

No one answers and he enters the next room of the cave. The one room.

We all look at each other and then drop our guns and run after him.

What we find are men. So many. All with guns pointed at us. I look at Gavriel who winks at me. Then they shot.

I fall on my knees after a bullet slices across my shoulder, then another hits my thigh.

I’m on my back, breathing for dear life when Gavriel orders to stop shooting. I look around.

All my companions are dead. They have glassy empty eyes and blood is all over.

Some might just be mine.

But I am not dying.

He shot me only in non deadly places. My arm, my shoulder, a thigh.

Im down, but my pain i so real I can’t be going away.

Gavriel walks towards me “now, now” he says caressing my hair. I would shove him off, but my left hand has to hold my right arm.

“Go away from me” I choke out.

He smiles “should this sound like a thank you?”

“No, for fucks sake” I say “why did you do this just kill me!”

He laughs “oh no. I need you”

“What for?”

“I will have many ships now” he says “I need a second, a person that owes their life to me. And Oh, look who does” he says “you”

I hate him so much my skin is burning.

But he is right.