𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐇 𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐒
❝ They're the French Kissers,
that's what they do.
They will lure you in
and then they'll kill you
with a kiss. ❞
━ in which the leader of the french kissers
...
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"What happened?" Rose turned her back on the living inferno behind her, though what she found on Raphael was far from peaceful. Teardrops hung on his lashes; the gentle blue of his eyes faded into hundreds of red vessels, fists so clenched the veins in his arms seemed about to burst from his skin. A brother who had lost a sister. A soul that had lost half of itself. "How did they take her?"
"We were in Portsmouth, on our way to the Channel. I was gone for a minute. A bloody minute and then..." His voice collapsed under the weight of the firemen's shouts. Smoke and smog, violent and pungent, twirled around them to the beat of the bystanders' hustle. "A bunch of men came out of a car and yanked her out of ours. I fucking ran to her, but they were too many. The more I tried to reach her, the more they took her away. I'm a fucking boxer and I couldn't help her, Rose. I just stood there and watched them take her."
"You were outnumbered." Her hands were quick to meet his shoulders, there to show him the way out of the maze. Even though she was there too. Even though all the exits were just doors to something worse. "There was no way you could beat them."
"She's my sister, I should have!" He shouted, long fingers raking through tousled locks. A long cut ran along his hairline. "I told her I'd always keep her safe. And now she's... she's God knows where with those fuckers doing God knows what to her. We need to find her, Rose, we—"
"We will." Her voice was steel, the only thing in her not in ruins. The flames still danced over her shoulders, and to stop them from reaching his, she wrapped an arm around him and pulled him away. But then his gaze collided with the fire. With the darkened carcass of his first home in London.
"What fucking happened here?" He paced back and forth, sturdy hands starting to shake. "Evelyn? Where the bloody hell is Evelyn?"
She glanced away. The way those two would laugh and bicker behind the counter was among the debris. Memories were fireproof, standing tall amidst the embers. She couldn't burn down his world more than it already was, so Thomas shook his head and did it for her. In that solemn, timeless gesture, another part of Raphael's soul got lost.
"Raphael..." Rose reached for his arm, but he turned his back on them and got swallowed by the famished crowd. Thomas' hand pressed against her back, a solid rock that even worn kept her from drowning in the sea of her doubts.
"I can't lose her, Thomas." She stopped, air heavy on her lungs. The cold clutch of death on her neck got tighter. "Putain, her mother should have known, sending her to me is sending her to her death."
