Masquerading

14. RUN!

CHECKING the fallen Loricai soldiers for anything of use, Kyden felt his anger seeping away quickly. There hadn't been that much of it anyway; in truth, it was mostly hurt. A woman. Leif was a woman. But he supposed maybe he'd been blinded the whole time, and it was easy to see. Leif's beard hadn't grown beyond the shadow he'd sported at the ball—even Tavis had a healthy, if patchy, growth by now. Part of him wanted to leave, out of embarrassment more than anything else. How had he grown so close to the man and not realised?

It was that closeness, and the ache in his chest at the look that Leif had worn when he'd walked away, that made him turn around. Leif stood, as if frozen in place, staring in shock at the wound he'd unwrapped.

"Is it bad?"

Leif stiffened as he approached and whispered shakily, "A bit."

"Might I offer my assistance?" It hurt to be so formal, when a mere short time ago he would have jumped to help without thinking.

It was an awkwardly long moment before Leif nodded and Kyden loosened the laces on the back of the cincher. He resolved to keep his gaze trained solely on the lower half of Leif's torso as he knelt in front of him, but it wasn't hard. He sucked in a sharp breath at the amount of blood that had seeped through the cincher. He'd no sooner undone the remainder of the hooks, when Leif's hands flew up to cover the flesh on his chest. Whether it was embarrassment or for propriety, Kyden didn't know, but he knew from the great tears that plopped down onto his hands, that it pained Leif.

Several bones from the cincher had snapped under the weight of his opponent's boot and poked through the fabric and into the flesh below his ribs. Slowly, and while applying pressure with one hand, Kyden pulled the bones out, and then wrapped his torso with strips he cut from the Loricai soldiers' pants. He tried to work quickly as the tears seemed to come at an ever-steady rate, and he knew Leif well enough to know they had nothing to do with the wound. Sure enough, when he chanced a momentary glance up, a red-faced Leif was staring skyward to avoid looking at him, and his hands splayed over his chest were white-knuckled from pressure.

He realised as his heart lurched for Leif's pain, how he felt about him hadn't changed. Anger and hurt aside, he still ached to comfort him and hold him close. Doing up the bottom hooks of the cincher, he tried to smile as he stood and wiped the tears from Leif's face. Touching his nose briefly to the side of Leif's head, he stepped around him. "I'll tighten the laces after you get it done up. We should get moving, Lei."

Inside the twisted tunnels created by the olm, there was a great possibility of meeting the creatures. Neither one had ever seen one up close, but from the size of the channels the olm dug, they didn't want to come across one. Don't stay long, the orlies had said, and they had done exactly that; stayed too long nursing injuries. Leif stumbled as he attempted to step over rubble that blocked his way. With the rush of fighting the Loricai finally wearing off, he could feel his knee grind with every step he took, and his torso burned uncomfortably.

Kyden's hand wrapped around his, steadying him as he climbed, his voice gentle in the absolute silence. "We'd be out of these forsaken tunnels sooner if you would let me assist, you know." He jumped down from the stones and, before Leif could protest, grabbed him around the waist and carefully set him on the flat ground.

"Thank you." Leif ducked his head to hide the flush on his face and pushed Kyden's hand off his waist. "I can manage though."

"Can you do it fast then, because that doesn't bode well." Kyden's eyes widened as the rocks they'd only just climbed over vibrated and a distant rumbling sounded.

Leif wasted no time looking back, and began running. Or he tried to. He stumbled and hopped as if it would cover enough ground to clear him from the beast's path. Curses and wishes to any feyrie that could hear him spewed out of his mouth as he regained his balance. There were no feyries though, only Kyden who hoisted Leif like a sack of horse feed and ran like he was escaping the netherside.

One last pile of rubble and debris lay before them, and on the other side, Kyden could see their exit. The rumbling was getting closer, almost right on top of them. He slipped on the rocks, and then threw Leif ahead of him.

"Run Leif! Get out, there's not far to go!" Kyden encouraged, looking behind him as the rocks beneath them shifted. He steadied Leif once more, all but pushing him over the rocks.

Leif staggered as he caught himself from being hit by a stone that shot out of the quaking debris. A deafening sound echoed behind him, and he spun, too on edge to care about pain. The heap of rubble they'd just come over was no longer visible—nor was Kyden.

"Kyden!" Leif ran for the hole in the ground.

Kyden held on to the edge on the opposite side. "Leif!" he called, through gritted teeth.

There were too many things to evaluate, and Leif's normally capable mind was not working in the way he needed it to. Nothing made sense—not the hole in the ground, not the trembling bit of earth that Kyden desperately held on to, not the tightening in his chest that made him want to throw himself across the divide.

"Leif!" A pair of arms latched onto him, holding him back from the void he was attempting to find a way to cross. "It's not safe! We can't get to him."

"No!" Leif shoved Killi back and tried to make his mind focus on anything that could help.

"Go, Leif." Tears stained Kyden's face and Leif could feel his own eyes mirror the action as he realised there was no reaching him. "There's nothing you can—"

Leif saw nothing after the earth Kyden held onto crumbled from still heavier vibrations of the beast's movement. His own scream was muffled by Killi's torso as he shielded him from seeing Kyden go down. Killi held him fast, his large arms outmatched Leif's fervent fighting as he dragged him from the cave.

"We can't leave him!" Leif sobbed, desperately clawing at Killi's arms.

"We have to for now. We need to get the Princess to safety. When I heard the rumbling, I left her with Tave to come back for you two."

"Two, Killi, two! You're going back with only one!"

"We'll come back for him," Killi said sternly, but his voice shook and Leif knew he didn't think there would be anything to come back for. "What use are you now anyway? I saw Kyden carrying you out. You can barely hold yourself up."