Yeah, speaking of Anti, how's that fire treating him?
“Anti?” comes a tired whisper from behind him.
His voice is flat and dead when he speaks.
“You’re all covered in burns… you and Blue both…”
Trick never receives a reply. Noodle is crying in his arms and he holds his cat close to his chest, stroking his perfect golden ears.
“I’m going to take you and Blue far away to heal.”
They trudge on through the darkness. They give off no signal. With Blue’s magic buried under Anti’s, they are finally hidden.
“Are the others really gone?”
Night birds call from the trees. Insects chirrup and leap around Trick’s legs, following him curiously through the underbrush of the Amazon.
“Even… even Red and Dapper?”
“I don’t know where they are. I can’t feel them close. The magicians must have taken them as well.”
His stomach aches and pulls at him and his legs are sore and eaten up, even though he listened to Dok, and didn’t roll his pants legs up. There is blood somewhere on him, but he can’t seem to focus on where - just knows that he is sticky, and hot, and tired.
But at least he’s not a prisoner.
“Anti?” he whispers, the quietest one yet.
“We’ll get them back,” Anti answers, before he even needs to speak the words out loud. “We’ll get them back.”
He turns around for the first time all night, Blue dangling from his arms. Trick stares up at him in the darkness, his eyes wet.
“Don’t cry,” whispers Anti, leaning in to kiss his hair. “I’m going to make this right again. I’m going to see Blue well again and find the oldest and the youngest. I’m going to get your twin back for you.”
“You promise?” whispers Trick, clinging to his shirt, just for a moment.
“Yes,” whispers Anti. “Yes. I promise.”
He’s made assurances like these before.
Assurances of happiness, and brotherhood, and an end to the pain.
On a beach in Norway, he made promises to the man now lain across his arms.
He regrets, now, that he did not keep them.
But you will never hear him say that out loud.
End Chapter Two: That Which is Stolen
