ravaged hearts

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE,

RAVAGED HEARTS | CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  "I HATE HIM so much." Io moaned into her hands as she slowly lowered herself onto the bed. Rhys looked at her sympathetically. "Why would he do that? He could have removed himself from this entire equation with so much ease by just leaving. But no, he runs right back into the den of the tiger with gladness."

  Constanza shook her head. "At least this makes the mission easier."

  Io said, "It hurts my brain."

  "But it also saves us a lot of tracking and searching," Louis murmured. "Balances out the amount of brain cells this ridiculous course of action taken by the prince kills, yes?"

  Rhys shrugged. "It does this make this mission no matter what. We can combine both operations into one, not have to divide our forces. One or two of us are set on keeping the prince in check, making sure he doesn't manage to escape. The rest of us fight the Falcons. Should work fairly simply. Much more straightforward than any other plan we would have needed to come up with."

  The Enrique Zevallos twins and Adoria had already set off for Valencia, with Adoria speeding ahead to pass on the messages as quickly as possible. But it'll still take a day or two  for her to return with agents if not longer. They'll have to make sure the Falcons obediently stay in place for that long.

  Io trusted them to remain in Saria, but not enough for them to remain passive. They might start plotting attacks, start plotting ways out. Because they had to know they were planning a raid. The entire base might be trapped with all manners of danger.

  Damn Falcons. Most agents loathed dealing with them, and for excellent reason. Once upon a time Io had treated them like any other agent, but back then she hadn't been dealing with a few dozen at once. That's just a whole new beast altogether. The last time she'd done so had been during the final raid of the Falcon's headquarters, but there were more than fifty agents in that operation—the largest she'd ever gone on. Teams of ten, going in from every direction possible.

  For the world under the surface of what people usually saw, that one raid had changed the tides of the war. Once the Falcons were shut down, Melique's intelligence service had been so heavily hindered it might as well have fallen apart. With their backbone down, Meliquean forces—which had always been heavily outnumbered anyways, were quickly destroyed and beaten in battle. Soon enough, they'd gotten Meliquean surrender. Treaties were signed quickly, and peace, after more than ten years, finally restored.

  That had been a monumental event. One that barely anyone knew of. Funny, how their work was so crucial, and how important, how much power they held over the world, yet so few people knew of it. Their deeds went unsung. More often than not they were criticised, said to be immoral and wrong, rather than praised.

  It was payless work. Painful work. But they did it anyway. Sometimes Io truly wondered why.

  "So. Our plan is just to attack, then," Constanza murmured, combing back her hair. "We'll scout out some paths."

  "Most likely we'll be divided into groups of... three or four. Find that many ways to infiltrate. Though leave one squad out as distraction, probably." Io glanced at Louis. "How many agents would they send?"

  "Anywhere from a dozen to two dozen. Depends on how many they can spare. Fluctuates a lot. Castrillo?"

  "I'd say around the middle of that, sixteen."

  Rhys nodded. "That makes twenty-three of us in total. Hopefully that's enough."

  Castrillo said, "We only counted around eighteen Falcon. We'll outnumber them. Should work."