Chapter Ten:

Uragiru

And if you could see

The look in her eyes

The wolf wore the sheep

As a perfect disguise

-The Wolf and the Sheep, Alec Benjamin

[Karai]

His screams stop my feet in their tracks. My heart skips a beat, chased by the raw pain echoing through the hall.

Find him.

I clench my jaw and run, throwing stealth to the wind. His cries will mask any sound I could possibly make. I just don't know if he's alone…

Find him.

The walls melt past me, blood rushing through my skull as my vision narrows on the stairs ahead. I jump, hit the second stair, and leap down the first flight. I can't hear my feet hit the ground past the hammering in my chest. I repeat—run, step, leap—down three more flights. I spring up, sprinting toward the cells. The corridor is dark, but I know it well. I know the cages that lie in wait around the corner, hopeless and cold. And the thought of Leo in one of them sends heat bubbling through my blood.

The weight of my tanto at my side is the only comfort as I blindly run forth. My fingers wrap the handle. I turn the last hallway and stop at the entrance of the cell, my breath fleeting. The darkness is heavy, but I see him, past the open door of the prison, slumped and chained against the wall. His head lifts to my presence, and even in the black, his blue eyes glisten.

"K-Karai?" His chest heaves. "Karai, what's happening?"

His voice has a sound I've never heard before. Laced with fear, quivering, dripping, aching—broken.

He sounds broken.

"I can't move," he pants. "A-and my hands…"

He looks up at me from the red that stains his fingers. Behind my eyes, Roth and Elias are dying all over again, crumpled to nothing on the floor.

He must remember.

"I don't know what's happening—"

I break my trance and finally take a step into the cell. Kneeling in front of him, I try to find some kind of composure that makes sense.

"Leo." Stay calm, stay calm. "It's okay—you're okay. I'm going to help you." I reach for his hand, for the thick chains that wrap his wrists. "But you need to keep quiet—"

"No!" He jerks his head away from me—the only thing he seems able to move. "Don't touch me—stay back, Karai, please—"

I move my hand away, keeping my gaze locked to his.

"I don't want to hurt you," he says, jaw clenched.

I force a smile. "You couldn't if you tried, Leo. Now keep quiet and let me get you out of those chains so you can go home."

His eyes light up at the word. My smile becomes less forced, and I slip a small coin from a pocket I stitched to the inside of my sleeve.

"Your brothers are probably going crazy," I continue, holding my calm demeanor. "Any minute now, they're gonna come busting in here like a bunch of idiots. It's best if we bring you to them before they try to come to us."

"Okay," he breathes. "Okay...just hurry up."

I nod. "Now hold still." He watches with big eyes as I start to unwind a thin wire from the outer part of the coin.

"A wire?" There's a flash in the blue. "That's going to take forever! Are you trying to get us caught?"

There you are.

"I'm trying to be discreet," I quip. "I could chop your hands off if you'd like. I imagine that would be faster."

"Not if you did it with the wire."

My smirk quickly melts away at the sound of shouting somewhere on the floors above. Guess there's no time to be discreet.

I tuck the coin back into my sleeve, get to my feet, and pull out my blade, gripping the handle with both hands. His eyes widen.

"What're you doing?"

"Spread your hands as far apart as you can."

He shakes his head, frantic, with his hands slumped awkwardly in his lap. "I can't move, Karai—"

"Yes, you can!" I snap, knuckles white. "It's your body, Leo."

"But I—"

"Now!"

He clenches his eyes shut, trying to focus, and the effort is so intense that his veins bulge on his neck and forehead. His wrists flex, and slowly he begins to lift his hands and spread them apart.

"Good, see?" I adjust my footing. "Now just try to hold them there."

I swing my tanto at the chains with all of the force I can muster—and apparently, it's enough to bring Leo's entire body down with it. The chains break with a loud snap that echoes through the dungeon and masks the sound of Leo's face smacking the floor.

I kick them aside and quickly tuck my arm beneath his.

"Get control of yourself," I hiss under the weight of his limp body. "Stand up and walk—give it everything you've got."

The sweat on his brow gleams over the freshly forming bruise. "I'm trying."

I half-carry, half-drag his body from the cell. I know he was drugged. I'm sure the effects still have a strong hold on his muscles, but now is the worst possible time to be pulling his sorry ass around.

We're both panting heavily as we round the corner. The muscles around my spine are screaming bloody murder. If we survive this, I'm not going to be able to walk for a week.

"Try harder," I spit. My skin is flushed. The voices are getting louder. My heart sputters in my chest, frantically pumping blood to burning limbs.

There has to be another way…

My eyes catch the glint of a door handle across the hall.

"Karai…" He winces and stumbles. I almost collapse under the added weight.

Screw this.

I lunge forward, yanking him along with me, and snatch the handle. I rip it open and shove his body in there with so much force, something in my shoulder tears.

Damn it—

Leo gasps and barely manages to catch himself on the back wall of the closet space. He quickly slides to the ground with a heaving chest and bulging veins.

"Stay down and shut up." I press my back against the adjacent wall as the door closes on us. I grab my injured shoulder with my other hand and squeeze hard. The pain spreads like lightning, the jolts in sync with my pounding heart.

I want to close my eyes. I want to slip to the floor in a heap of sweat and pain and disappear, but I don't. I keep my gaze locked on the thin light beneath the door and my ears trained on the sound of footsteps closing in. At this angle, if they open the door, I can slit their throats before they touch us. But we're cornered in a small space, growing more useless by the second. My muscles are searing and Leo is fading.

"Stay with me," I whisper sharply.

"Karai..." he mumbles again. "...I killed them."

I swallow the image down, but the sound resonates. "Shut up."

He blinks heavily and draws his gaze to meet mine. "Didn't I?"

My nostrils flare. "It wasn't you."

He groans, barely managing to lift a hand to cover his face. "I…I don't feel good…"

My jaw clenches and I have to close my eyes. Just for a second. The chaos in my head is a million ghosts, screaming at me, cursing me. I should've stayed in my room. I shouldn't have come down here—what the hell was I thinking? I can't get him out, and now we're stuck in a damn closet with no exit in sight. My father's idiots will find us and we'll be dead in no time—

No…no, not yet…not yet…

I can't die yet. My fingers tighten on the handle of my blade. I won't be executed like a damn prisoner.

"Stay with me," I grit. "Don't you fucking pass out, Leo."

"Just go, Karai," he mumbles. I can feel him giving up. "Before they find us...you can still get out of this."

My voice solidifies. "I'm not leaving without you."

The words surprise me. He looks up at me with equal confusion. My face steels over and I focus on the door, ready for it to open.

A silence passes between us. It's thick with emotion that I can't place—that I refuse to acknowledge enough to decipher. I feel it from him, the questions he won't ask, the answers I won't give. It's the draw the games we play always come to. The thing left unspoken.

I close my eyes again, and suddenly, the feeling is gone.

"I don't hear them," he says calmly. He's staring at the line under the door. "Do you?"

I blink, regaining composure to realize that he's right—I don't hear anything anymore. The footsteps, the shouting…it's stopped.

"Maybe they gave up?" he asks quietly.

I bite the inside of my cheek. I'm about to say that it doesn't make any sense, but then again, the Foot soldiers are idiots. Still…

I open the door, slow, steady, blade raised in anticipation. I motion for him to stay where he is, ignoring the fact that he can't get up anyway. The door moves silently until I'm standing in the opening and met with a dark, empty hallway.

There's nothing. They didn't even come to this side of the floor. Were they even looking for us?

My skin prickles as a question comes to mind.

"Leo…why was no one guarding you?"

The world slows then, as the heel of his foot comes down on my lower back. I feel myself falling, my balance ripped from me like the air from my lungs. I hit the ground, elbows first, and the shock licks my bones. His fingers curl around the back of my neck. He lifts my body from the cold cement as if I weigh nothing and throws me backward against the wall. My lungs aren't expanding, my chest restricted by pain and bewilderment and terror. I can't breathe, I can't think or move—all I can do is stare into Leo's eyes—eyes as cold and dead as the farthest reaches of space. The realization freezes my feet to the floor.

I've underestimated my father.