bottom lip between his teeth. The holding cell block was just ahead - a low, gray rectangle. It was a twenty foot gap. Taking a deep breath, Kalai straightened his back and strode into the open with purpose, face turned away from the open space. He sensed figures moving in the yard to his right, but didn’t spare them a glance. He’d once read that if a person behaves enough like they belong, the people around them will believe it. It was true. Kalai fought the urge to run the last few steps, then slipped into the shadows of the holding cell block.
So far, so good.
Now, how in the skies was he going to get to the front and through the entrance? A woman laughed nearby, and he winced, inching deeper into the shadows. His heel knocked something hard, and he flinched again. He looked down. The obstacle at his feet was metal bars, protruding slightly from the wall.
Could it be…?
The barred opening was only half a foot tall and a couple feet wide. Crouching, he pressed his cheek to the dusty ground and looked inside.
The room was dark and empty, built in concrete, with a single door in the opposite wall. Kalai’s heart began to race again. Maybe he didn’t need to go through the front at all. He looked up. There were six barred gaps in total. He moved to the next one and peered inside. Empty. The next one was full of stacked boxes blocking most of Kalai’s view. The next one was empty, too, and Kalai tried to push down the fear that Tauran might not be here at all, that he’d carried out this entire, ridiculous break-in attempt for nothing.
The fifth cell was also empty. If they kept Tauran somewhere else, Kalai would have no way to find him.
Kalai crouched in front of the final barred gap and looked inside, eyes wide to see through the darkness.
Empty. His heart sank. He was an idiot. A complete and total fool. He had risked his own safety, abandoned Jinhai and the dragons for far too long to go on a mindless goose chase.
“Fuck,” he whispered, shuffling backward to lean against the wall, eyes screwed shut. He had to get out now, before he got caught.
When he opened his eyes, someone stared straight back at him.
Kalai yelped, then slammed a hand over his mouth to drown the sound.
A face was pressed against the iron bars, hands clutching the metal on either side. A woman. And not just any woman. A woman he knew.
“Catria?” Kalai scrambled forward, shifting onto his elbows.
“Kalai? What in the skies?”
“What?” The sound of Tauran’s voice was both comfortingly familiar and uncomfortably sharp at the same time. Tauran stood from where he must have been sitting against the wall below the gap, the only part of the room Kalai hadn’t been able to see. Of course. Kalai felt like an idiot for giving up so easily.
But the sight of Tauran’s face appearing in the gap rid Kalai of all traces of self pity.
The right side of Tauran’s face was splotched red and blue. His cheekbone was swollen and his eyebrow and lip were both split and had been bleeding, dried blood clinging to his pale skin. Even his throat was bruised in an eerie pattern as if someone had placed a boot there and pressed down.
Kalai’s stomach twisted. “What happened to you?” he asked, at the same time as Tauran asked, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Tauran’s bloodshot eyes shone with fear when he gripped a bar tight with one hand, the shackles around his wrists clicking against the metal. “You’re supposed to be in Sharoani! You can’t be here!”
“The earthquakes aren’t real earthquakes, Tau, they’re…” Kalai groaned. Explanations could wait. “I’m here to get you out. I heard guards say they’re planning to hang you at sundown. That’s…” He glanced at the darkening sky. “That’s less than an hour from n—”
“You have to go.” Tauran reached through the bars, stopped by the shackle, too wide to fit through the bars. His eyes were full of fear. “Fuck, Kalai. Please! Take Arrow and leave Valreus. If Falka catches you—”
“Don’t worry about me.” Kalai cleared his throat to rid it of tightness and stretched out on his front so he could reach through the bars. Gently, he cupped Tauran’s ruined face. All Kalai’s panicked anger seeped out of him. “I didn’t come here alone.”
Tauran released a broken, heart wrenching sound. He pressed his face into