Chapter Fifteen

Lines of white light tore through the room, carving deep holes into the couch and leaving the dining table in splinters. Kurogane tensed, waiting for his eyes to adjust after the brilliant flash. Afterimages dotted his vision.

Curtains fluttered in the wind. The window behind them wasn't smashed, but opened wide.

Seishirou was nowhere in sight.

The kid was lying on the floor, not moving.

The princess was doing the same, but also bleeding from her throat.

"Shit," the ninja muttered, sheathing Souhi. "Mage, take care of the princess."

Fai knelt down beside Sakura, turning her over to expose the thin line of red running down her throat. Her jade eyes opened slowly, tears running down the side of her face. She didn't say a word as the mage lifted one clawed hand up to her throat to examine the cut.

Kurogane went over to the boy, crumpled up next to the tattered couch. When he approached, the kid tilted his head up, his face as pale as the flash of white from his sword technique. "Don't move," Kurogane told him, pushing his head back down and turning him so he was facing up.

"Sakura's hurt," he whispered, tilting his face toward the princess.

"Don't move, I said."

"I'm fine."

The kid didn't seem to be bleeding anywhere, but the ninja knew that the most dangerous injuries sometimes didn't show right away. My fault, Kurogane thought, gritting his teeth. He was still in the way when I swung my sword. He could've been killed. The Hama Ryu-O Jin was meant to slay a monster in a single stroke. Even holding back like he had . . .

"Really, I'm fine. I fell clear of the blast." The kid moved, bracing his arm against the floor and pushing himself into a sitting position.

The ninja stared at him.

"You broke the couch," the boy said with great significance, staring at the cottony bits of fluff sticking out of the top of the couch. Three deep slices marred the top, leaving gouges big enough to fit half a dozen manju buns.

Fell clear of the blast . . . It had been a long time since he'd come that close to killing someone without meaning to. Since the day Tomoyo had met him. I was half out of my mind then. I have no excuse now. Fuck, that was close.

The kid rolled over and crawled across the carpet, not letting his feet touch the ground as he moved toward the princess. "Is she okay?"

How can he be handling this so well? I almost killed him. He wondered if the kid even realized just how close he'd come to dying.

Sakura was sitting up now, dabbing at her bloody neck with a piece of tissue. She wore a vaguely shell-shocked expression, staring off in the distance with a look of distress in her eyes. She turned to the boy, her features shifting just a little bit. When he took her hand, she made the first sound since Seishirou had disappeared: a quiet sob.

The boy said nothing, just holding her hand as if it were some priceless artifact.

I almost killed that kid, Kurogane thought, as Fai stepped into the bathroom and returned with some bandages. "Let's get you taken care of, Sakura-chan."

Fuck, that was close.

She didn't hate him. As he cradled her hand between his fingers, she came to understand that much. His touch was so gentle, so warm. Too gentle to be an act.

Sakura allowed him to hold her hand while the rest of her body shuddered under her sobs. Her legs curled in, protecting her from the rest of the world even now that the danger was over. Fai had to push her knees out of the way to bandage the cut on her neck.

Syaoran said nothing, just holding her hand as if it was a glass figurine. Now and then, his grip would shift a little, reminding her that he was there, but other than that, she was unaware of his presence.

No, she didn't hate him. But he wasn't her Syaoran, and she couldn't respond to him like he was, not even to ask what she was supposed to say to the others. She knew this Syaoran kept secrets, that he knew so much more than he was letting on. She didn't know how much of the confrontation with Seishirou he'd be willing to share.

So she stayed quiet, letting the sobs tear free of her throat. After a while, when it became unreasonable to cry anymore, she told the Fai she wanted to go to bed. The vampire slipped one arm under her knees and the other under her back and carried her like an infant into her room, setting her down on the bed. He draped the top layer of blankets over her. "Don't you worry, Sakura-chan. He won't be back."

She didn't think she had it in her to say anything, so she just nodded and closed her eyes. Fai left, closing the door with a soft click.

Sakura waited until she was sure no one would hear her move, then threw off the blankets and pressed her ear against the wall.

"You sure you're all right, kid?" Kurogane was asking, out in the living room.

"I'm fine," Syaoran answered.

"You were lucky," Fai interrupted, light and casual. More casual than he's been in weeks, she thought, trying to guess the reason for the change.

"That, too," Syaoran said, after a brief hesitation.

Sakura heard feet moving across the living room, then the sound of something small being set up against the wall. Kurogane's sword, maybe?

"What exactly happened?" the ninja asked. Confusion flashed through her before she realized he must be talking to Syaoran.

"I was in my room. When Seishirou came in, I thought it was one of you, coming back. I didn't realize we were in any danger until Sakura screamed."

The words sounded rehearsed, almost mechanical. Had he been concocting a story the whole time he'd been holding her hand, or was he just that unaffected by the invasion?

"I left my room and found him holding Sakura, with a knife to her throat. He told me he wanted me to travel with him. We fought, and he ended up getting a hold of me, which was about when you came back."

Sakura blinked, pressing her ear tighter to the wall. What about all that other stuff? What about the price Seishirou's trying to pay, or the fact that he needs your magic? Her eyebrows came together in a line.

"Why would he want you to travel with him?" Fai asked.

Syaoran must've given some nonverbal reply, because after a moment, Fai spoke again.

"How are we going to deal with this?"

"We've got to kill him," Kurogane said. Sakura winced.

"We don't have the resources," Syaoran responded. "I know I can't fight him. If it were between him and either of you, it'd be an even fight, but with as much as we have to gain from tracking him down, it's not worth the risk."

"I thought we were trying to get the feathers back," Fai said, his voice just a little sharper than before. Don't fight, Sakura pleaded in her head. Please, don't fight.

"We are, but there's no point in dying. My clone was created with the sole purpose of tracking down those feathers; he'd do anything to obtain them, even if it killed him. I'm not that suicidal."

"You agreed to keep looking," Kurogane said, the barest hint of an accusation in his voice.

"I did. And I will. I just think if Seishirou can kill me on a regular day, it might not be a good idea to face him when he's got a feather. At least not until I'm stronger."

"It'll take years of training for you to even stand a chance against him."

"This journey will probably longer than a few years. Given the amount of memories she regains from every feather, plus the health restored to her after each one, there could be anywhere between a few hundred and a thousand feathers scattered throughout all the worlds. Add to that the fact that not every world we visit will have a feather, we have a pretty long road ahead of us."

There was a collective sigh at this, and Sakura sensed this wasn't news to them. It's news to me, she thought. It shouldn't be. I should've thought about that a long time ago. She closed her eyes, pointless in the darkness of her room.

"I guess we've got easier targets to choose from," Fai agreed. "We'll likely run into Seishirou again before our travels are over. Kurogane, you'll have enough time to teach him what he needs to know, won't you?"

"As long as we don't end up in my home world anytime soon. It's been long enough. I have to go back."

Silence followed this statement. Several seconds later, she heard the sounds of footsteps shuffling across the living room. "In any case," Syaoran said. "I need to resume training as soon as possible."

"Tomorrow. Tonight, you rest," Kurogane said with a note of finality.

Sakura withdrew her ear from the wall, feeling a bit lightheaded. It was the same sensation she got every time she went a little too long without a feather. The dizzy spells were becoming a lot less frequent now, occurring only once or twice a week. With all the chaos, it shouldn't have surprised her that she would faint tonight, but the suddenness with which she fell back into bed startled her.

Before she could ponder her poor health any more than that, she was asleep.