✓ | GOLDEN LIAR ↠ Thomas Shelby.

09.

CHAPTER NINE.

               THE SHOCK CAME FIRST. Then the pain that flared up her left leg, and finally the hot, angry, overwhelmed tears that prickled at her eyes and threatened to stream down her cheeks at the slightest provocation.

At the first contact, a hard gasp had escaped from her lips and she found her mind spinning, wondering what on earth had happened. It was only when her hand found the wound and her eyes trailed downwards to meet the bloody injury, before wandering over to where the shell was discarded that she realised what had happened. The bullet had hardly made contact with her, Felicity discovered, because she soon realised that there appeared to be a distinct lack of blood coming from the wound. Bright crimson droplets trickled from the graze, staining the dusty concrete with a small stream of ruby red dewdrops.

The wound wasn't deep. For a moment, Felicity scoffed at the man's apparent inability to fire accurately, thinking to herself how she would have been able to shoot straighter than he had. That was when realisation sunk in - any man was more competent at firing a handgun than Felicity Woods was, and the four years that they no-doubt spent in those wretched trenches would have confirmed that fact. A man would have come out of those tunnels with more than just the night terrors and inescapable hall of horrified memories. No matter what the war did to you, there wasn't a doubt that they left France with the ability to defend themselves from anything that came their way, so that they should never set foot in a war-torn landscape ever again.

And so Felicity's heart sank with doomed realisation.

It wasn't meant to hit her.

It was meant to warn her.

Or at the very least, warn somebody.

Before she could register any of her swirling thoughts, the girl dropped to her feet and fell against the concrete with a force so much harder than she could have ever thought it to be. The tears re-emerged without a single warning.

A crash beside her alerted Felicity to the man that had just hurriedly slammed the door open. Arthur emerged with a scattered look present in his eyes as he scanned the streets before his gaze landed on the girl.

"Felicity?" He said, confusion lining his words.

She raised her hand weakly. "The one and only."

"What. . . what the fuck are you doing down there?"

Felicity smirked, although she sensed that it could just as quickly merge into a wince, and so she softened her expression in the hopes of stopping that from occurring. "Some bastard shot me," she explained, nodding to her leg with disinterest.

Arthur only groaned before crouching down and enveloping the girl's hands in his own. "Let's get you inside, eh?"

The girl sighed before nodding. The pain that had flared up her leg was numbing - whether it in a good way, she wasn't sure, as her ligament no longer felt as though a red hot flame was surging up it, and now it was just a more constant, underwhelming feeling of hurt.

One inside, Arthur helped her towards the armchair that sat in the corner of the room. "Stay here," he instructed, "I'll go get Polly, or someone helpful, at least."