To my blood.
To the knife.
Her throat works.
She doesn’t look away.
Good.
Fear keeps you breathing.Denial buries you.
“Stay behind me,” I tell her.
The words leave me rough, gravel-cut, like stone scraped raw.
It should sound like an order.
It doesn’t.
It sounds like a vow.
Her eyes lift.
For one impossible second, everything else vanishes — the distant gunfire, the shouts somewhere in the tunnels, the city breathing overhead—
Only the tremor in her mouth.Only the fight in her eyes.
She nods.
Small.Shaking.Real.
“I mean it, Pia,” I add, stepping into her space until she has to tilt her chin to keep looking at me. “You don’t pass me. Not once. You move when I move.”
Her mouth parts.
Obedience is not in her nature.She is fiery.
Her gaze flicks to the men on the floor—and whatever settles there kills the argument before it can live.
“Okay,” she whispers.
It scrapes out of her.
Raw.
She reaches for me.
Not clinging.Not dramatic.
I feel that touch harder than I feel the blood drying on my skin.
I step over the corpse.
Her grip tightens.
We move.
The vault yawns behind us—a steel mouth stuffed with secrets and corpses.
