Mavka was a Corporalnik like no other, a theif like no other, and a little sparrow among a murder of crows.
Her safe haven was with the boy with the cane and the pretty eyes, despite the two seeming like opposite ends of a live wire, and now they h...
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Mavka could only move her hands close enough to latch her fingers around one of his sleeves, the angle she was being pressed against by others keeping her body from turning. Her arm pressed against his side and she listened out for his rough breathing. She pulled at his sleeve as hard as she could.
"Kaz." It was a whisper that barely broke through the seal.
Her fingertips were slipping, and she fumbled for hold of the fabric again, clutching it like a lifeline and pulling.
"Kaz," her voice shook. She almost lost her footing as they rumbled over a bump and metal dug into her throat. She jabbed her knee into his thigh.
"Wake up."
She felt him shudder. She tried again, her heart hammering wildly.
"Take deep breath and wake yourself," her accent turned her words harsher than she meant, but she wanted him to be roused with the same disparity.
He managed a deep breath through his nose and she pulled away from him as best she could to give him space, or what little could be offered in such brutal confines. She did not let go of his sleeve, however.
"Keep talking," he rasped. Her heart jumped in her chest at the sound.
She uttered the word 'what?' barely audible, but he had been listening out, searching for her voice through the waves that threatened to drown him, and had heard it amongst the battering of his heart against his ears.
"Just keep talking."
"We pass two checks," her lips trembled slightly, her throat confining the more she spoke. She had forgotten the word for checkpoint and in any other situation she would have been sorely embarrassed. "We pass gate now."
Her words had seemed to break him through to reality. His senses came back.
The other prisoners murmured to eachother in a variety of languages, some she understood, some she did not. When Ravkan fell upon her ears she almost felt at home, but it was a disjointed feeling. She never truly had a home in Ravka, nor when they moved to Kerch, nor when she ran away. She had a semblance of it, she thought, with those she was surrounded with at that very moment, though. And it was that warmth that spread across her heart that she held onto, focussed her breathing into, for otherwise she would surely end up in a similar vulnerable position that Kaz had been in.
He hated to think that Mavka had seen him this way, that anyone had, but on the heels of that thought came another: better it should be her.
Mavka would never speak of this to anyone, nor think of it, and she wasnt the type to use this against him. She was far different than everyone else in the Barrel, far different from Kaz, who knew how to use peoples vulnerabilities at the turn of a coin, and would do so unashamedly.
And as Kaz thought about it, he knew there was more to it than that. Mavka would never betray him.
Kaz knew it. He felt ill. With the knowledge of it and something else.
