“Michael, what are you doing up?” Ameena asked as she took a step forward, placing herself between him and the tied up girl.

  He held up his hand and shook a finger back and forth. “Oh no no no. None of that. Where were you, and why are you teleporting back?”

  The girl lay unconscious after Ameena’s swift kick to the skull, and Ellis’s nose was still bleeding as he answered for the both of them. “We got worried that—”

  “‘We’?” he asked, a smile on his face as he stepped toward them.

  As he did so, Ellis noticed a lot of salt caked blood covering Michael’s hands and the front of his shirt. He glanced back at the bodies, and saw they had been moved, a few of the corpses now lacking the salt required to keep the ants away.

  You fool! You need to leave the salt on the corpses if you want to search them!

  “Ellis, buddy? This is not the time to zone out,” Michael said, taking another step forward as Ameena glanced between them.

  Ellis’s hands started to shake. “Sorry! Sorry. Yes, ‘we.’ Going through those underground people might kill us, so we thought it might be better to go around the problem. They’re too dug in at that entrance, but maybe if we used a side door we can flank ‘em. And to do that, we’d need a guide.”

  He gestured at their new prisoner. The need to smooth out her ruffled hair and wash the blood off her split lip jumped through him, since right now she didn’t look nearly as pretty as she did five minutes ago. He just hoped Michael would find her interesting enough.

  Michael took another step toward them, now half way through the room as he studied the blonde haired girl with a cocked eyebrow. “Hmm… Why did you discuss it without me?”

  “We didn’t think you would agree to the plan if you didn’t see proof it could work. I know you want to fight them head on, Michael. But I believe this to be the best course of action. Do you not like it?” Ameena asked, standing aside so that he could see her face better.

  “I don’t like you two talking behind my back. It makes me feel left out, ya know?” he said, patting the sword at his hip.

  She stepped toward him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I understand you wanted a fight, but stealing her required stealth. However… guarding her is something far beyond the boy. Can I ask you to do that when she leads us through the tunnels?”

  Michael glanced at Ellis, who was holding up his hands and nodding his head off in agreement. He hummed and hawed, before rolling his eyes and letting loose a deep sigh. “Fuck it. Fine, fine. I’m in. We kill them, take their stuff and then we can kill those palace guards. That should spook the Archduke into doing something stupid, I suppose.”

  Ameena took her hand off him, her eyes lowering like she would tell the truth, and that nothing he said would come to pass. Ellis almost jumped in front of her to make sure she kept her mouth shut. “Definitely! That’s a solid plan. We hit the hay and take a crack at it at first light—”

  It was as if he splashed a cold bucket of water on her, because her usual contempt for Michael’s antics slid to him. “And what makes you think we can afford that luxury? We leave in the next five minutes.”

  Michael had a huge grin on his face, as Ellis looked at her like she was mad. “Why?”

  “Do you not remember that old woman stopping you? Our descriptions are burning through the city like dragonfire. You and I might be able to sneak through if you wore a hood to conserve my mana, but if Michael came anywhere near a guard we would be finished. We need to leave when she wakes up. So, we leave in the next five minutes.”

  “Remember what I said about patience? This is hasty! If we leave tonight we’d get the same—” he stopped himself as Ameena gestured at the corpses in the corner of the room.

  “Right,” he said, hating himself for forgetting the massacre from earlier.

  Ameena nodded at his understanding. “The fact they haven’t checked on the guards we killed yesterday is a blessing already. But they will notice those men missing, and they will check the last place they were seen. We can no longer stay here, and I am a bit tired of this city. So enough dawdling.”

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  “Please don’t tell me we have to clean the place again,” Michael complained, like Ellis and Ameena hadn’t cleaned almost everything already.

  “We just need to put the stairs back and—”

  “I swear on everything holy if you say we need to salt the bodies, I’m gonna throw someone through a fucking window,” Michael said, pushing past both of them to squat down in front of the girl.

  He picked her up bridle style and carried her out of the room. Ameena followed behind like a mother hen, lecturing Michael not to hit her head against the doorframe as he squeezed through. Before leaving the room, Ellis once again checked over the bodies. He found that the men’s clothes had been ripped, and most of the boots had been peeled off. Maybe Michael had been rechecking the gear? Ellis wasn’t sure.

  Still skeptical, Ellis left the secret room and joined the others. After putting the girl in a chair, Michael had sat across from her at the only table in the lounge, where Ellis and Ameena had had their secret conversation mere hours before.

  Ameena sat close to the girl, so much so Ellis thought the girl might wake up and give her a headbutt as well. He decided that wouldn’t be such a bad thing as he brought up his own chair to sit at the table.

  Michael leaned across the table now, and patted the girl’s head like she was a dog. “Hey… hey… wake up.”

  The girl’s eyes fluttered open.

  “There you are,” he said with a welcoming smile.

  She must have woken up sooner than she let on, because there was no confusion in those eyes, no wariness. Just cold hate as she stared up at Michael’s polite smile.

  “I’m going to take the gag off. Please do not scream. Hitting a woman feels wrong,” he said, holding out a hand to Ellis.

  Ellis handed him a dagger, which Michael used to take the gag off. The girl worked her jaw, cracked her neck and leaned back to scream. Despite the table in the way, Michael’s arm leapt across the distance between them, his hand clamping around her mouth before she had even finished opening it.

  “What is with you people and being impolite? Honestly! How about this? Tell me your name, take us to a different entrance, and I promise I won’t attack your people.”

  A black light tried gouging Ellis’s eye out. He had learned to tolerate the grey and white lights, but the black ones were too much to bear. He smacked a hand over the eye, as Michael drew an X over his chest.

  “Cross my heart, your people won’t ever see me again.”

  The light came again, and Ellis fought back tears as Michael took his hand off her mouth. “My name is none of—”

  He tsked, interrupting her as he slowly rose to his full height. Leaning against the table with both hands, he bent forward until his face was inches from hers. “And before you think of saying no, consider this: the guards finding out about your people, and their little mana sorcery secret.”

  The girl's eyes widened, and Michael looked almost bored as he nodded at Ameena. “My lady talked me out of it. You will talk me into it, if you don’t tell me what I want to hear. Please don’t make me a bad guy, I think we can even be friends if you're nice. Just, you know. Do what I say.”

  The girl held his gaze for a long moment. Shaking her head from side to side, she kept opening and closing her mouth, like the refusal was stuck in her throat. But when Michael didn’t blink for an entire twenty seconds, she shuddered and looked away, her eyes growing misty.

  Ellis had only leveled once from the fight with those guards earlier, but not ten minutes before that fight he had fought these mana users. In the time since he had come to regret that, and wished he had killed far more of their number instead of the guards. He wouldn’t have to feel the ever increasing weight on his shoulders, then. Because it wouldn’t matter. Better than that, in fact.

  He’d be doing the world a service.

  But now Ellis had to keep reminding himself that she is a mana user. Evil. But her nervous swallow and shaking leg made her seem almost… human to his eyes. And despite the circumstances he admired her bravery. Twice she had refused Michael’s directions, twice she had risked her life.

  Had he done the same when he first met the monster? He doubted it. But now here was a mana user, doing what he hadn’t. Protecting her people. Trying her best to make sure they were spared. Leaning back in the chair and crossing his arms, Ellis looked away from her as Michael’s warm smile started to dim.

  “My name is Vanya,” the girl said, closing her eyes as her lip quivered. “And I’ll show you the way.”

  “Fantastic!” Michael said, clapping happily. “Now let’s get you out of those ropes. Wouldn’t want you to cause a ruckus, now would we?”

  She sounded young. And from Ameena’s flinching at the agony in the girl's words, Ellis found himself feeling the same way she did. Vanya was a mana user. But… but she was also just a girl. Someone who didn’t deserve this, and was being punished just because she was in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

  Ellis knew what that was like.

  Which meant he could change it. He could make sure history didn’t repeat itself and that she would get home rattled, but alive.

  The weight on his shoulders lessened. The rightness of that thought coursing through him. She would make it home alive.

  Because he would make damned sure of it.