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Yes

And then: a flash of white and it was over Thiago was between them, his back to Karou as he ordered Razor to stand down, and she didn’t have to kill anyone The Heth obeyed, his restless tail upending chairs at every pace

Lisseth and Nisk intercepted him and Karou stood there, poised between breaths, blades in her hands and blood thru up and down her arain--not the traitor but the soldier

Just for an instant

"Take her back to her rooo to Ten, as if Karou were an escapedHer s," she said

"It looks like you are" He glanced ruefully at the broken table and spilled food "I’ll bring so up to you You shouldn’t have to endure this" His voice was kind, cloyingly so, and when he drew close to ask softly, "Are you all right?" Karou kind of wanted to scratch his face off

"I’m fine What do you think I am?"

"I think that you are our most valuable asset And I think that you need to let me protect you" He reached for her aresture of surrender

"I can protectto recapture the brief vibration of power that had possessed her I aal, she told herself, but faced with the White Wolf, all she could think was that Madrigal had been a victim, and she couldn’t hold on to the sensation of power "Whatever you ht think," she said, "I’ to convince herself asabout it, she wrapped her aresture of self-protection She unwrapped theo’s voice was soft "I never said you were helpless But Karou, if anything happened to you we’d be finished I need you safe It’s that simple"

Safe Not from the enemy but from her own kind--into whoht after day Karou gave a hard laugh

"They need tio said "That’s all They’ll come to trust you As I do"

"Do you trust me?" she asked

"Of course I do, Karou Karou" He looked sad "I thought ere es in these tiy, on the cause"

Karou rudge, but she didn’t, because she kneas right They did need all their energy on the cause, and she hated that he had had to re up, and evenher now that her adrenaline rush was drying up As o’s command, it was her room that she wanted, its solitude and safety, so she put her crescent- to act like it was her own idea, she turned and went She held her head high, but she knew, every step of the way, that she wasn’t fooling anyone

25

ENEMY QUEUE FORMS HERE

Ten escorted Karou to her room, and she must have taken Karou’s quiet for co unwelcoht couard at the top of the stairs when Karou shut the door in her face and slammed down the crossbar

A an "Karou! I’m supposed to help you Let me in Karou"

"I love you, crossbar," whispered Karou, and petted it

Ten’s voice rose steadily, scolding, huffing Unbuckling her knife belt, Karou ignored her On her table lay a half-strung necklace, but she didn’t want to pick it up, and she didn’t want coe, and to render the exact look on Razor’s face as he caures at the periphery who’d done nothing to help her Drawing had always been how she processed things Once they were on paper they were hers, and she could decide what power they would hold over her

She took up her sketchbook and sed ree and recalled, as vividly as if she were looking at it, the sketch of Akiva that had been there He’d been asleep in her flat She had destroyed that sketch, of course She had destroyed them all

If only she could do the saht of the word brought on shaht she had? Because nohatever there had been between the like love Lust, maybe Youth, rebellion, self-destructiveness, perversity She’d barely known hiht it was love? But whatever it had been… could it ever be forgiven?

How many chimaera would Karou have to resurrect before they accepted her?

All of them That was how many Every last one who had died because of her Hundreds of thousands More

Which was, of course, i the ones dearest to her They were lost Was that it, then? No possibility of redehtmare, too, and so herself it would end If it was a nightmare, she would wake up and Brimstone would be alive; everyone would be alive And if it wasn’t a nightmare? Well then, it would end in one of the very many ways that lives end Sooner or later

She drew, and captured Razor’s snarl with awful vitality

You really want to knohat I’m up to, Zuzana? Here it is I’m trapped in a sandcastle with dead monsters, forced to resurrect the eaten

It sounded like a pitch for a Japanese gah only for a second, because Ten heard from the other side of the door and let out a soft snarl Great The she-wolf probably thought she was laughing at her

Enemy queue forms here, wrote Karou below her sketch