The screams continued, and despite herself, Kalanie sent her senses spiking into the trees, searching for the gentle apparition's power source. She was close, somewhere off to Kalanie's left.

The same direction as the detectives.

Snarling, Kalanie shook her head and threw her power into the earth. Iron answered her call, surging from its confines deep below the surface. The detectives would save Yukina. Kuwabara would never let her die. She didn't need Kalanie. She'd be fine.

The soil erupted around her, iron snaking upward in molten streams. It twined about her arms and slid beneath her pants, sheathing her legs in fluid steel. With it came ever more power. Her energy double. Then tripled.

It was no effort at all to clear a crawl space beneath the barrier. One shove of her iron and dirt billowed from a hole. She scrambled beneath it and shimmied her way free.

Free.

Again.

How many times in her life would she flee into the night?

But Yukina was still screaming, and she was drawing closer now. Fast enough that she must have been running.

Why weren't the detectives saving her? What in the three worlds could be more important?

Every stitch of self-preservation in Kalanie's body shrieked for her to flee. This was her chance to get away. She'd never have another. If they caught her, they'd never trust her again. She'd go back in their pit—if the Jaganshi didn't kill her instead.

But a bigger part of her, the part that had been alone for months—or, in truth, for years—held her trapped in place. Yukina's kindness wormed beneath her skin. The basket of food she'd offered when even Kalanie had forgotten her own hunger. The soft, gentle smiles she gave each time they passed in the shrine's halls.

And so Kalanie found herself turning, diving back into the hole she'd carved, scrabbling out on the other side just as the apparition burst from the trees in a flurry of silks. A demon raced on her heels, his arms marred by Sovereign Binds, the ink stark even against his dusky red skin.

"Yukina! Get behind me!"

Her voice caught both their attention, and as Yukina stumbled to Kalanie's side, her pursuer staggered. His large eyes blinked dumbly. "Kalanie?"

She sank into a crouch. Her iron rippled over her skin, an ever-shifting shield. "What are you doing here, Akio?"

"You're supposed to be dead. He said you were dead."

"He lied. He does that."

"But how?" His gaze shifted to her arms, no doubt searching for her Binds. "No one escapes—"

"Akio," she growled. A low warning. The last he'd get. "Why are you here?"

"They came for us. The fox and the Jaganshi. Attacked our camp at the Wailing Waters. He sent us after them."

Us.

She cast her awareness in a wider net. Beyond Akio's warped power and Yukina trembling at her back, she felt her captors, blazing like flames in the night, and all around them, numbering in the dozens, the twisted signals of Masaru's puppets. So many. More than he'd ever controlled at once.

No wonder the detectives hadn't gotten to Yukina in time. They were mired in their own fight.

Her delay had allowed Akio's surprise to settle. She recognized the moment the compulsion seized him, clawing its way back to the surface. She hadn't been the enemy, seeing her had rattled his order, but Akio's gaze had shifted back to Yukina and his consciousness was fading.

"Akio, don't do this. Run. Now."

"Can't."

He lurched into a fighting stance. His eyes glazed over as his energy spilled across his skin. She hadn't recalled his technique, but as electricity sparked between his claws, she remembered.

"Go, Yukina! Back to the shrine."

Akio threw up a hand, lightning arcing from his palm, and Kalanie hurled a wave of iron to intercept it. The metal flowed from her arm, spreading into a thin but impenetrable shield. His attack struck its center. Sparks skittered across the iron, racing back to her.

The shock of them left her gasping but as Akio sprinting after Yukina's fleeing form, Kalanie gaze chase. She called to more iron as she ran. It surged from the earth, spiking in his path, slowing his pace.

Distantly, she was cognizant of the Jaganshi's power breaking off from the fight in the trees, Kuwabara's not far behind, but there was no time to double back and escape. Yukina might not survive that long.

She caught Akio as they hit the clearing before the shrine. Her momentum sent them both tumbling. Electricity popped and crackled between them, shattering through her muscles. Her grip on her iron weakened, but she forced the bit gloving her hand into a knife.

It settled against his throat.

"Do it," he gasped even as his fists pummeled her ribs. "Kill me. I'll never escape if you don't."

An involuntary whimper tore from her lips. The world was spinning, blackening at the edges. His electricity was everywhere. It was destroying her. Killing her—

"Do it!"

She plunged the knife deep, severing his jugular. His blood spurted across her face, burning her eyes, copper against her tongue. He spasmed once, then went still. The electricity coating his skin dissipated.

Panting, she rolled off of him. Iron pooled all around her, growing solid and still as she released her grip on it. Only the pieces sheathing her skin remained fluid.

"Yukina! My love!"

Kuwabara streaked past, his spirit sword blazing in his hand. As his declarations of love boomed through the clearing, a shadow slanted across her. The Jaganshi's eyes were unreadable. Void of anything she might label emotion.

She waited for his katana, for a stab through the heart or perhaps through the jugular to match Akio's corpse. It never came.

Instead, wordlessly, he extended a hand and hauled her to her feet.

"You saved me."

Pulling free of the Jaganshi, Kalanie dragged her sleeve across her face and spat Akio's blood into the grass. She was still braced for a fight, for a new set of spirit cuffs to appear and attempt to shackle her freedom, but it was neither Kuwabara nor the Jaganshi who was rushing toward her.

Having wriggled free of Kuwabara's arms, Yukina reached Kalanie and dipped a polite bow. "Thank you," she murmured.

Kalanie shifted uncomfortably. "Enough souls have perished at his hands. You didn't need to join them." She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could forget the desperation in Akio's voice as he begged for death. "He wanted this—to be free."

"Huh? This was one of those guys like you?" Kuwabara crouched beside Akio's body and poked a finger at his arm. "No marks though."

"They fade. After death. Then he gets his power back."

"Why do you always do that? Enunciate 'he' all weird."

Hiei stalked forward. With a booted foot, he prodded Akio's head to the side, revealing the deep slash Kalanie had torn through his throat. "Idiot. Would you speak your abuser's name?"

Abuser. How aptly put.

"Don't talk down to me, shrimp. I'll kick your ass."

"No. You won't."

Ignoring them, Yukina reached for Kalanie's arm. "Are you hurt? I can heal you. It's the least I can do."

"I'm fine. The blood's his, not mine."

And hell, there was a lot of it. Her clothes were ruined, stained crimson and burnt in places Akio's electricity had scorched. If she weren't on edge, perhaps she'd have thought better of turning Yukina away. Her battered ribs and smarting skin might have appreciated the healing, but she couldn't focus enough to take her refusal back.

She was too certain she'd ruined her chances. They'd glimpsed her power now. Surely spirit cuffs weren't far off. Never mind that they would discover how she'd attempted to leave. Unless they were fools, by morning the barrier would no doubt extend deep into the mountain itself. There'd be no digging her way beneath it.

It was perhaps the Jaganshi's sudden lack of hostility that frightened her most. For days, he'd faced her with outright distrust, violence simmering always just a moment away. Yet now, after she'd shattered her spirit cuffs, directly disobeying their orders, he was offering his hand and fending off Kuwabara's questions.

Something had changed.

But she couldn't begin to fathom what.

In the forest at their backs, Kalanie sensed the last of the puppets fall before an energy blast. A moment later, Yusuke burst from the trees yelling, "She broke her cuffs! You felt that right! The forest is a mess—"

"Hn, quiet fool. We're aware."

Kurama appeared at Hiei's side, leaping down from the branches of a tree. He chuckled softly. "Yes, I'd say you are."

Kuwabara had sidled up to Yukina and looped an arm around her shoulder, but she squirmed free of him yet again. "Kalanie saved me. I was walking in the trees. I shouldn't have been."

"Not true, my love. It's not your fault this happened." Hands on his hips, elbows jutting outward, Kuwabara leaned squarely into the Jaganshi's face. "I'm willing to bet it's your fault, isn't it, Hiei?"

"Both of ours, I'm afraid," Kurama said. He turned appraising eyes to Kalanie. "We thought we might use your insight, gain ourselves an advantage, but it seems we underestimated your warnings."

Kalanie sighed. Her bones felt heavy as lead. Sinking into a crouch, she pressed her fingers over Akio's eyes, shuttering his eyelids. Goodbye, friend. "He must have been there. At the Wailing Waters." She turned to meet the redhead's gaze. "I hadn't seen Akio in a year, but he's always been stationed there. He was in charge of his puppets." She raised a hand, her iron rolling back to reveal her Sovereign Binds. Akio had been her closest ally. One of the few he exerted his influence over as strongly as he did Kalanie. "But for them to follow you back through the portal… He would've needed to be there. To give the fresh order. You must hear his voice for a compulsion to take hold."

"We saw him." Hiei clenched and unclenched his fist absently, his focus somewhere far away. "Weak, wretch of a beast."

"Every time he casts the Binds, a piece of his energy goes with the spell. I've never seen him control more than twenty puppets at a time." She stood and wrapped her arms about her middle. "He must have been stretched thin, controlling as many souls as he was."

"Do you count among that number?" Yusuke asked. "Even though you're here."

"Until these markings are gone, he controls me."

"Hence why you still cannot speak his secrets," Kurama said. He rubbed his chin in thought. "How then do the Binds disappear?"

"Death. Mine. His. Or if he chooses to release someone."

"Yet he's kept hold of you? Rather than take back his energy."

"Whatever drain I cause is a price he'd pay tenfold." The words exhausted her, the broken, haunting truth too much for her to bear any longer. Each movement precise and calculated, she released her arms and extended them straight forward. "Cuff me. Put me back in your hole. Whatever it is you intend—"

Yusuke laughed so hard he started coughing, doubling over and slapping a hand against his knee. "You saved Yukina. Gave us real information on this bastard Masaru. Why in the hell would we imprison you again?" His shoulders still rolling with mirth, he shoved his bloodied hands in his pockets and started for the shrine. "I'm going to bed. We'll get rid of the dead in the morning."

She stared after him, dumbfounded.

Kurama chuckled. "We're not monsters, Kalanie, despite what your initial treatment might suggest."

"Or the bullshit demons say," Kuwabara added. "Bunch of liars." Muttering under his breath, he curled an arm around Yukina and led her toward the shrine.

The apparition looked back over her shoulder. "Thank you again, Kalanie. My offer stands, if you change your mind."

"I'm sorry you had to kill one of your kind," Kurama said once they'd disappeared inside, his gaze on Akio. "I'm sure he understood you in a way we may never. Thank you for choosing our side rather than his."

"Akio had no side. There was your side and there was Masaru's." Speaking his name was like spitting up glass. The Jaganshi's head swiveled to her as she said it, but she ignored his cutting gaze. "Akio had no say."

"Which changes everything," Kurama said, "but also nothing." Bidding her goodnight with a bob of his chin, he strolled toward the temple, the Jaganshi a step behind, and then she was alone once more, nothing but the wind howling in her ears.

The rules of her confinement changed.

The spirit cuffs were gone. Iron was hers once more, whenever she pleased, though Genkai had requested—demanded, really—that she refrain from tearing up the psychic's lands in her quest for more ore.

But cuffs or not, the barrier remained.

Just as she anticipated, they lengthened it. To her face, they said nothing of her escape attempt. In fact, Kuwabara went out of his way to prattle on about the weakness they'd discovered, the opportunity for enemies to sneak beneath their defenses. But she knew better. The barrier's extension was meant to contain her. Whatever trust she garnered wasn't enough. As kind as they acted, she was still their captive.

No amount of smiles or laughter would alter that.

"Perhaps I misjudged you."

"Perhaps you didn't."

The Jaganshi leapt from a tree branch, landing beside Kalanie on silent feet, dirt puffing up around his boots. "You should spend more time with Yusuke. You speak the same stubborn tongue."

Leaning against a thick tree trunk, her boots mere feet from the crackling barrier, Kalanie stared steadfastly through the shield. She refused to look up at the demon. She wouldn't give him that pleasure. "I thought I could trust you to see the truth about me. Maybe it's I who misjudged you."

"Hn. Then don't try so hard to convince me you're a liability."

"What?"

"If you meant us harm, you wouldn't broadcast it so loudly."

Despite herself, Kalanie looked up. His face was an expressionless mask—or at least the side of it she could see was. His focus seemed to have followed where hers had once been, roving beyond the barrier.

"I could be deceiving—"

"You aren't. I'm not a fool. Again, spend time with Yusuke if you're looking for an idiot." He shoved his hands deep into the folds of his cloak as he turned to face her. "What's out there? You're always looking east. Why?"

"I'm supposed to meet someone—or someones, maybe. I don't know the details for sure." She fiddled with the hem of her shirt. In the week since she'd saved Yukina, she'd worked up the nerve to ask for clothing other than secondhand yukatas. The pants and long-sleeved shirts she'd received instead were far less restrictive, even if they did pale compared to the leather jacket the Jaganshi had ruined. "Ten days from now. If I don't—"

A compulsion seized her so violently she retched. Gasping, she grabbed her throat.

The Jaganshi watched her struggle through narrowed eyes. "Secrets?"

She nodded, lips pressed into a thin line.

If I don't, Nomi will be lost forever. That's what she'd wanted to say. Nomi. She hadn't been able to so much as whisper his name for sixteen months. Not since he took it from her, sick of her crying long into the night, waking from nightmares with Nomi's name on her tongue.

"Your master—"

She was on her feet in seconds, iron writhing across her fist as she seized the Jaganshi's cloak. "I have no master."

He stared down the long plane of his nose at her. Calm and unruffled. "You do. You're his dog." His gaze dropped to her iron-coated wrists. "And those marks are your collar. Your leash. Your chain."

She released him with a shove, but he barely moved, one foot sliding only an inch through the dirt. "If I've a master, why the change in your judgment?"

"Hn, I misjudged you, but not the threat you represent."

She nearly laughed. Hell, he was a bastard. "Then you realize you can't let your guard down. Ever. No matter how long you keep me here. No matter how many times I fight his puppets. If he finds me, if he says so much as a single command, none of it matters."

He watched her a heartbeat longer, his gaze unreadable, his features unmoving. Then he turned, his cloak flowing behind him as he walked into the woods. "I'm aware."

Before he disappeared between the trees, she called after him, "I'm getting out of here! In time for my deadline. I'm going to be free. Of you. Of this barrier. Of all of it."

He never turned, but his voice drifted back to her, echoing in her ears long after he was gone. "Even a beaten dog can break its chains."

AN: This chapter was SO MUCH FUN to write. Seriously. Action. The beginnings of trust. Hiei interactions. Fun, fun, fun! I hope it's equally fun for all of you to read!

So far, I'd been updating every other day, but I think I want to slow down a bit. Do something more like twice a week. Maybe Wednesdays and Saturdays? I actually have through Chapter 11 written, but I'm going to be SUPER busy during December, so I have no idea if I'll be able to keep writing really regularly. Slowing down my update schedule will help me make sure I don't need to go on a hiatus.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed! It's such a blast to hear your thoughts!