Sometimes, especially in a place like the United States … or pretty much anywhere where capitalism holds sway, we get it into our heads that we have to do things on our own. That certain tasks can only be ours, and that accepting help is a weakness we can't afford to have.

It's our job to do things a certain way, and letting someone else do it is insulting.

Not just to us, but to them.

Suffice it to say, I don't take much stock in that philosophy.


.


As Seto walked through his various suggestions on how to handle a vacation in her parents' home, there was no phrase to describe Kisara that fit her better than caged animal. She was as much a dragon as she'd ever been, hunched over in her seat and . . . not grinding her teeth so much as gnashing them. Lightning sparked in her mouth regularly enough that you could have set a watch to it.

But she wasn't fierce; she wasn't proud.

She was a circus lion: angry and hurt and defeated.

"What're you worried will happen, exactly?" Mokuba asked, gently, after a lull in Seto's presentation. It looked like Kisara was fully ready to launch herself out the nearest window and break for the Pacific Ocean. "Like, okay. Say you don't go. Say you pretend the invitation got lost in the mail, and you just . . . let the day pass. What happens then?"

Kisara grumbled low in her throat, sounding like a tractor engine. Then she said: "My picture would be on national news within the week."

"Did you leave on bad terms?" Seto asked.

Kisara clenched her fists in her lap. "No," she said, "but only because I never corrected anyone on a . . . rather misguided assumption."

Seto quirked an eyebrow. "I see," he said. "That is the part you don't want to confront. You don't know how to break the truth to them."

"For the most part, yes," Kisara said. "I have allowed my family, not just my parents but my aunties and uncles, my siblings, to believe that I've only come here to Domino City for . . . something akin to a sabbatical. They have always expected that I would return to them, that I would finally embrace my proper role in the family." She held up the crumpled invitation she was still holding. "This," she said, "is a notice to me that my time is up. It is time for me to stop making a fool of myself and accept the truth."

Seto's eyes narrowed. "You love your family."

"I do."

"You are stifled by them."

"I am."

"You don't know what to say to them, how to explain to them that these two things are both true at the same time. That the only way for you to maintain a positive relationship with them is to see them on your terms, if at all."

Kisara closed her eyes; she looked guilty. "Yes."

Noa and Mokuba shared looks. Mokuba was ready to chew glass; Noa's face was unreadable, but his eyes were feverish. Seto's gaze was soft and steadfast. The Kaibas were well-acquainted with fraught bonds of blood and history, and were perhaps more sympathetic to Kisara's plight than she was. Seto reached out and put a hand on Kisara's shoulder; she looked up at him.

"I need you to listen to me." He locked eyes with her. "I need you to think, seriously, about the question I am about to ask you. All right?"

Kisara eventually nodded. "A-All right. I can do that."

"Do you want me to handle this for you?"

Fear—honest, bone-shearing, heart-rending—flashed across Kisara's face. This was something the dragon couldn't touch. This was something she'd been nursing for so long that not even awakening to her power could help. In this moment, Kisara wasn't a bodyguard. She wasn't a woman grown, and she wasn't a dragon. She certainly wasn't a force of nature.

In this moment, Kisara was a girl again, unmade by a terror so deep and primeval that words were an insult to it. She wanted to say no. She needed to say no. It was built into her soul to say no, that this was her fight, that this was her responsibility, and that Seto Kaiba had no place here; he would never hold sway here.

She had to handle this herself.

No excuses.

And yet.

Looking deep into Seto's steadfast, but so gentle, eyes; into eyes untouched by fear of any god or man, Kisara's breath shuddered and something in her healed.

She said: ". . . Yes. Please."