Samick tugs me off his shoulder, not nearly as violently as the first time, when he just yanked me off and I smacked down to the ground on my back, air winded right out of me.
Now, he sets me down on my feet, almost gingerly, like he’s finally accepted what Dare said.
‘They are a fragile kind.’
Samick shifts a bit, like he kicks his heel back for the door—and I hear it thud shut.
It doesn’t slam. It wasn’t booted in, either, before we came inside. And since we could’ve found any apartment, any place to bunker down back in the borough, I realise Arwyn and Samick made a point of getting out of that area. All those shops and cars and buildings, but they kept it moving.
It seems they want to go unnoticed.
The question lingers on my tongue for a beat,are there units coming this way, are there people around—
But I don’t voice those questions.
Not as I’m pulled with Samick into a carpeted room.
The darkness doesn’t hold for long, not with the clammer and clatter that bounces off nearby walls, then a hissing sound that comes the moment a flame is struck on a matchstick.
I home in on the flame in the blackout.
Then I clench my eyes shut, because the flame suddenly bursts into a bright, blinding light.
Arwyn lit the hearth.
My eyes squint against the glare.
Always feels like an attack each time light comes through the dark with so much brightness.
But then again, in the Before, I did hate fluorescent light strips above me, or ‘the big light’ on in the flat. I prefer the lamps, softer and cosier.
And as the seconds pass, and my eyes adjust more and more, the flames in that tall, black Victorian fireplace start to soften, and the light brushes over Mika.
Sweaty and paler than usual, she’s draped over an uncomfortable-looking sofa pushed up against the row of tall, slim windows. Spikes of black stain her veins. It’s a poison spreading up the collar of her leathers and down over her twitchy hands.
Arwyn, still by the fireplace, with his back to me, starts digging through his satchel.
And he’s not careful about it.
His belongings are spilling out all over the hardwood floors—and I realise the floors aren’t carpeted at all, they are covered in too many clashing rugs.
The familiar feeling of frost creeps by me, like a gust of winter wind breezing by.
I turn as Samick moves from the front door to the windows.
The tether dangles from his belt.
With a glance at my cuff, I realise I’ve been released.
Samick barricades us in—or something out.
A worry springs in my gut, a bud of concern, because why the fuck does he need to do that?
Samick feels it.
Senses it.
Lashes low over faint green eyes, he glances at me.
