Caution to the Wind (The Fallen Men, #7)

by Giana Darling

I always remembered those hats, obscuring everything from gender to race. A question mark in a cap. My memories of that day were bright and jarring, collected pieces of a shattered funhouse mirror that didn’t make much sense, no matter how hard I tried to fit them back together. But I remembered him. I always remembered him.

Henning Axelsen turned his head slowly to look down at her, his stern-featured face cracking slightly around the mouth to give her that small smile he reserved only for her.

Cleo cast me a sidelong glance, noting that I only had a small doll I’d won at the bottle toss earlier.

Henning caught her gaze, then looked over her head at me with sparkling eyes. “You think maybe I should win this one for Rocky, instead?”

Glory and Rocky. Henning had nicknames for everyone, even his stepdaughter’s best friend. Hearing it from his lips always made something inside me squiggle and squirm.

Rocky because I was scrappy and loyal. He said people were prone to underestimate me due to my slight and dainty build, but they’d inevitably find out some day that I was a champion. Glory because Cleo’s full name was Cleopatra, whic...

Through my twelve-year-old eyes, he seemed as big and mythical as a Viking, his thick muscles rippling under the tight white tee shirt plastered slightly to his torso by the humid summer air. He

I loved the Axelsen family, and they loved me. It was sweet and uncomplicated.

“Your name means elegant pearl, doesn’t it? Like the pearl seen beneath the Chinese dragon’s chin or clutched in its talon.” I beamed at him. “That’s why Grandfather and my parents chose it. Because he wanted me to carry on his legacy and become a dragon.”

“Mong zi sing lung,” I murmured to her. “Parents hope their children will become a dragon among men. That we’ll be special.”

“Can I be a dragon too?” Cleo asked, cocking her head to the side as she considered it. “Or is it only Chinese girls who can be dragons?”

think you can be a dragon,” I told my best friend, and even though I wasn’t usually demonstrative, I reached out to take her sticky hand again. “We’re best friends. Whatever I am, you are, right?”

It was so easy back then, the ties between us all so innocent and bright. I had no idea that only two hours later, everything would change, and nothing would ever be so simple again.

“The marriage line is too long,” she added. “Your reputation or theirs will be affected by this union. You are not very lucky, daughter. Not in love.”

“This is balance. Too much of any one thing is no good. Not even luck. For those whose life comes easy, their character can be weak.”

“But there is an imbalance in you. It is stamped into your face. You must not be too hard and unyielding, too focused on death and the dark.”

“Because there is strength in softness too. There is purity, success, and happiness in finding balance between yin and yang. If you don’t learn this, the tragedies of your life will overtake you.”

I could only hear her next words because I was straining. “Don’t do this. I’ve done everything I was supposed to. Please, I’m here w-with my daughter.” A deep voice, the bass of it lost beneath the murmur of crowd noises outside.

She caught my wrist in a punishing hold when I tried to empty the contents into her hand. Her gaze was narrowed and burning when I met it with my own. “Do not follow trouble,” she warned ominously. “You are a child. Stay one for as long as you are able.”

Something was wrong.

Using my good arm, the one with the broken finger, I pushed myself into an upright seated position, closed my eyes against the dizziness, and then forced myself to take in my surroundings. And immediately, I wished I had not. Because I’d found Kate. After all of that, I’d found her. And immediately, it was clear… I was too late.

Torture equipment hung from racks—axes, spears, huge shears, and multitudes of knives. But some of it, I thought, was already in use. Because Kate Axelsen, a woman who had been like a mother to me for most of my life, hung suspended from iron chains in the middle of the room.

And finally, when the fifth man sliced her open from stem to stern, only a faint, fragile hiss. It was that sound that urged me to gather the last of my strength. I didn’t waste it fighting off any of the men who were certainly older and stronger than me. I used it to scream. Louder than Kate had. More fiercely than I had ever done anything in my life, I gathered air into my lungs, tensed my belly, and bellowed for help.

“I don’t want to leave,” she echoed, her lids dropping closed, her lips moving thickly as if they were numb. “My sweet Cleo. My baby girl.” My chest seized at the thought of Cleo without her mum. My fragile friend, so beautiful and kind with a heart as tender as a budded rose, would not survive this death. Which meant if Kate died, I’d lose them both.

“Promise,” she whispered, barely audible. Blood leaked from the side of her mouth, so dark it was almost black. “Promise you’ll take care of them. ’S not fair to ask you. B-but please.” “Always.” The word was harsh with severity.

“In real life, Dr. Axelsen, white knights rarely get happy endings. Only broken hearts.”

Katherine Kay was admitted to the hospital six more times over the next eighteen months, and that last time required surgery for the removal of her ruptured uterus, a surgery that made her sterile at the age of twenty-five. The day after she was discharged, I made her my wife.

“She’s gonna be okay?” “She is, physically.” Becky Pandey sighed as she looked at Cleo. “But mentally? She watched a woman get murdered, Hen. I doubt she’ll ever recover from that.” “Yeah,” I grunted, rememberin’ the way she’d clung to Kate’s hand as she lay awkwardly on her broken body at her feet. Mei was twelve years old, and she’d witnessed a murder.

Her voice was a ravaged whisper as if her throat was too tight to talk when she spoke. “I don’t think I can survive losing them both.”

She knew there was a possibility that Mei would recover from her physical injuries but not her spiritual ones. That she might rise from this day of death like a zombie, alive but not whole. And my sweet, tender-hearted Cleo couldn’t stand to lose her mother and her best friend at the same time.

“Those people that did what they did to your mum? I’ll find out who they are and make them pay for it,” I vowed

“And Mei? She’s a part of our family, now.

“You won’t be losin’ any more family on my watch, okay?”

The first thing I felt when I woke up was pain.

The second thing was Cleo.

Cleo was curled at my side, salt tracks crusted on her cheeks but otherwise blissfully peaceful in sleep. Henning lay across my feet, his hand on my shin, the other curled around Cleo’s. He had to be uncomfortable with his big body bent in half like that, but I was grateful he was close.

It was hard for my twelve-year-old mind not to tangle him up in the role of hero.

Looking back, that was the start of it for me. Falling in love with him. Ruining his life. They would become one and the same, but right then, it was pure and simple. I loved him the way a child loved a superhero.

“Was keepin’ an eye on Cleo when I noticed you weren’t with her crew anymore. I’d met up with some buddies, and one of them stayed with them while the two of us searched for you.” He paused, eyes shuttering. “Heard you scream from the mouth of that House of Horrors and knew in my bones it was you.”

“In my culture, the koi fish is a sign of strength,” I said softly. “It swims against the currents and when it reaches the end of the long, hard journey upstream, it becomes a dragon.”

“You might just be the bravest girl I’ve ever known.”

“Kate told me to take care of you and Cleo.” I wasn’t sure why I shared that with him.

He made a noise in the back of his throat. “No, Rocky, kids don’t worry about stuff like that. You leave that to me.”

“During difficult times, it’s your family that supports you.”

“How dare you talk to him like that? How dare you make this about me when Henning and Cleo just lost Kate. Wh-when I just lost Kate too. None of this happened to you so just shut. Up! And leave all of us alone.”

“If you want to stay,” I continued, voice shaking now but chin held high as I locked eyes with my father. Talking back to your elders wasn’t done in Chinese households.

“You have to be nice to Henning and Cleo. I don’t know why I have to tell you that when they just lost Kate, but I guess I have to.” I paused, mouth curling under in a pout I was embarrassed to display. “You should be happy I’m alive, and you have Henning to thank for that.”

“If my daughter ever comes to harm in your presence again, Axelsen,” he warned without taking his eyes off my sleeping body. “I’ll end you.”

Florent Marchand wasn’t like Henning. He didn’t know how to kill a man in forty-five different ways or how to save him in just as many. But he did know how to end a man’s life without ever spilling a drop of blood. And five years later, he did exactly what he promised.

Once, some punk kid had made fun of her, but before I’d had to take care of him, Mei had stepped up and hit him in the side of his head with a binder. No one bothered Cleo about it again.