What if they got caught?
She'd lose the beautiful house with that tender mother and any semblance of safety.
No matter. Escaping meant saving all those Followers whose lives were in danger and no longer worrying about her friends. They could live free and unharmed.
Unless the Phaedra lashed out by attacking the ones she loved in her stead.
He could imprison them as he'd done to Kira and hold them over her head from afar. Was she planting a target on them by leaving?
The doubt slowed her steps enough for her to chastise herself. This man put his life in peril to help her. She couldn't second-guess this decision when it may cost him his life.
Her lungs burned from the journey when they finally slowed down. Leaves clattered together in the wind and shifted the shadows into dancing lines. Leaning against the trunk of the tree, she happily took the time to rest while the masked stranger walked forward slowly.
“Did everything go according to plan?” he asked the darkness.
Quiet met him, but he didn't turn away from the path ahead. After several seconds, a single soldier stepped out in front of him, wearing a black uniform.
“Yes. We confirmed her identity.” The accent was foreign. Kira's exposure to the territories was limited, so she couldn't place the country, but she recognized that he came from the east. While he wore a mask, it didn't change his voice. “Ms. Stiles, we're here to take you home to your mother.”
She bit back her cry, afraid to utter a sound. As she walked forward, she stopped beside this friend whose name she didn't know, but who she trusted. “It's safe?” she asked.
“Yes,” the masked friend said. “I'll stay with you until you're with your mother.”
Long before the Phaedra took her captive, the invisible walls of this empire and city trapped her in place, refusing to let go. That first step toward the foreign soldier sent zaps of electricity through her body. A lifetime of coercion fought to hold her in place. The power of the Phaedra's tower wrapped around her, seizing every cell in her body. It ran so deep.
HE LIES
She walked forward through the terror and every thought screaming of hopelessness. Helplessness.
No more.
With every step, that voice in her head cried loud.
No more. No more. No more.
No more bloodshed and terror.
Kira was allowed to say it. She was allowed to leave. The Phaedra and his people did not own her soul.
The soldier from the east reached his arm out to her, and she walked forward to join his side. The friend kept up with her, not leaving her just like he'd promised.
A few steps toward freedom, and a hand shoved her so hard she didn't have time to catch herself. Hitting the ground hard enough to knock the air from her lungs, her head bashed into the dirt, and pain splintered along her wrist and forehead.
Whizzing noises pierced her ears.
Thuds.
Kira felt someone beside her.
She opened her eyes to the vacant, unseeing stare of a dead man. Blood stained his cheek around a ghastly hole.
If she had the breath to scream, she would have.
A shadow flew toward her, and she made out the man right as he scooped her up against himself, diving over her. They rolled hard and fast through the foliage, his hand clasping her head against the inside of his shoulder.
Quiet pops chirped in the night.
Danger.
