I tilted my head slightly and kept my voice low. “Do you feel that?”
Hiro got to my side and didn’t even blink. His gun remained steady, his focus unchanged. But he nodded once.
“Someone’s watching us,” he whispered back. “Only two. Not more.”
“Two?”
“One’s low, watching from the East. The other’s above us. West side. It feels high. He probably climbed the bamboo.”
I glanced at him for just a second, moonlight cutting across his cheekbones, his face expressionless, but sharp with instinct. He was never just guessing. Hiro knew.
Goddamn.
As usual, my brother wasn’t just confident, he wasspecific. Coordinates. Positioning. Verticality. He’dheardsomething in the pattern of breath.Felta shift in the weight of wind. And let the forest speak to him in code.
Sometimes I forgot how unnerving he could be.
Other times, like now, I remembered exactly why I would never—could never—move through this world without him.
Because I may be the Dragon.
But Hiro was the silence between my heartbeats.
Two watchers. East and high west.
My gaze returned to the forest, scanning the eerie silhouettes of the bamboo stalks. Gritting my teeth against the unsettling sensation of being watched, I put my gaze back on my brother.
What’s the plan, brother?
He was already watching me.
Okay. I see.
Hiro didn’t need to say it. I already saw the plan in his eyes.
“Cut the wind,” I muttered.
He nodded once. “And close the eye.”
That was how we’d always done it. Distract the gaze. Control the air. Let the world think it’s watching you, while death comes from the side.
Hiro didn’t speak.
Just lifted his hand.
Two fingers up. A flick east. A diagonal slice to the west. Then a closed fist.
The Claws scattered.
Kaede peeled left, his bone saw glinting as he vanished behind a thick column of bamboo.
Daisuke pivoted low, hugging the mossy ground, two blades ready in one hand, pistol drawn in the other. Even the damned air seemed to silence itself when he moved.
Toma adjusted his sawed-off and gave a crooked grin—then melted into the shadows with that coiling chain looped around his wrist like it had its own pulse.
The twins didn’t move. Of course they didn’t. One on my left. One on my right. Still as statues. My guards, whether I liked it or not.
I clenched my jaw but didn’t argue.
