𝕯𝖎𝖆𝖇𝖔𝖑𝖎𝖐 𝕷𝖔𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖘: 𝕯𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝕱𝖆𝖙𝖊

Chapter 32

Kou felt the blood pool around him as he pressed further back up into the wall. "Yuma, is that you?"

A shadow in the back of his cell twitched. He could see some organs fallen apart on the floor, just the basic shapes. Kou didn't want to upset his own stomach by looking too hard for the details of the gore ahead of him. He had been so preoccupied with the stench and the deception of Reiji that he had missed his own brother lying across from him, bashed in and battered. He wanted to smack himself across the face. They had promised to look out for each other, and see what had eventually come to be of their family: chasing after a stupid mission they all knew would be foiled.

Yuma groaned, the sound a low rumble at the back of his throat. Kou could barely see the sprinkling of down feathers over his damaged body, as he inched as close to Yuma as his chains would allow him to. "Brother, what happened?"

Yuma gasped as he turned towards Kou, struggling to breathe to form coherent words. "Reiji... said... the ritual..." He collapsed onto himself, flopping over to a side, a squishy sound erupting from his body. Kou was more than glad he didn't have to see Yuma in such a miserable state. Subaru sighed. Kou didn't know whether the Sakamaki wanted to help them or not, but it was evident that he didn't want anything to do with their personal problems as long as they had been tied and gagged.

"Subaru kun..." Kou started but hesitated, hating the lack of confidence in his voice. He wanted to a be a pure-blood as well, he wanted to have ground-breaking powers and magic as the Sakamakis had, but he had to trade a piece of his soul to achieve that long-forgotten dream of his. "Can you not break out of the chains using your magic?"

Subaru's eyes shined in the darkness of his cell. He knew provoking or misleading Subaru into doing something wasn't the best of what he could conjure up, but Kou's mind had stopped working as efficiently as it used to. His eye failed to recognise whether Subaru's intentions were friendly or not, and he sure as hell didn't want to find out what he wanted to do with them once they were let out.

If they were let out.

"Reiji has marked me with a power suppressing spell." Everything Kou had imagined could go wrong had gone wrong till now, and he didn't have any idea as to why he had expected Reiji to leave Subaru's powers unchecked.

Within the recesses of the cell, they witnessed Yuma softly whisper. At first, Kou couldn't make out what he was saying, the flapping of bat wings and song of crickets louder than his brother's internal musings, but slowly his constant breaths made sense, falling into place all on their own. The realisation hit Kou like a truck. He didn't know how to prepare for this, he didn't know whether Reiji would leave them alive after witnessing such a thing. He hyperventilated, as his brother's whispers grew louder, enough to reach Subaru's cell.

Subaru grew curious. "What the hell is he saying?"

Kou looked at the fair-haired boy from behind his iron bars, unable to understand what had landed them in such a mess. "He's saying that Reiji didn't call upon that person to oversee whatever he had been doing."

Subaru flopped onto his side, his hand supporting his chin. "Our father? But what does that mean?"

Kou could hear more frantic whispering from Yuma, as he pieced together the incoherent blabbering. "His logic is that since that person didn't want any harm upon Yui, and Reiji hasn't sought him out to advise him, he must be either intensely powerful enough to conceal his intentions about harming Eve, or..."

Subaru gasped. "Or he must not be planning to harm Yui in the first place."

Kou hummed a nod of approval. He witnessed Subaru slump down as the harsh reality dawned upon him, that maybe they were all chasing after the wrong goal all along, maybe Yui in fact did not need to be saved.