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I will grow big and strong and be his knight.

Ilya

Dark.

Freezing. Black. Crushing.

Where is he?

I force my eyes open against the sting of the water.

Kento has handcuffs on him. Two bullet holes leaking his life into the deep. He is sinking like a slab of iron.

I kick. My legs burn as I dive deeper into the dark.

Five feet down. Ten feet.

Kento is drifting backward through the black while Adrian is gone, lost somewhere in the abyss below.

I grab his lapels with both hands and kick upward with everything I have.

My grip slips on the wet leather. I grab him again, looping my right arm under his armpit, locking my forearm across his chest, right over the jagged hole where Adrian’s bullet punched into his ribs.

Ten feet.

Five feet.

Two.

Gasp.

We break the surface.

“Kento—” I choke, but he doesn’t answer. I roll onto my back, locking my arm tighter around his chest, kicking with whatever scraps of muscle I have left.

“Don’t die,” I rasp.

Eventually, I stumble and fall to my knees in the shallows, dragging Kento with me, then I crawl over him on my hands and knees. “Kento, wake up.”

I roll him onto his back and rip his leather jacket open. It is completely saturated in spreading red.

The first wound is high on his right shoulder, the hole Alya forced my finger to make, but the second is worse.

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I tear at the hem of my own shirt, ripping the cotton into strips with my teeth, then I ball the largest piece up and jam it against the hole in his ribs.

“Look at me.” I lean over him, pressing my ear against his chest.

It is mostly silent. I hear a stuttering flutter beneath his breastbone, like a moth beating broken wings against a glass jar.

Thump… thump… pause.

“No.” I place the heel of one palm over the center of his chest, locking my other hand over it. “You don’t get to leave me here!”

Save me one more time.

“I’m trying,” I sob, pressing both bloody hands down on his shoulders, trying to stop two holes with five fingers while the red just keeps weeping between my knuckles. “I’m trying! Wake up!”