From the moment he opened the door, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He had long learned to keep a comfortable distance from instincts of self-preservation past this threshold: what happened, happened. Sometimes he slipped. Other times, he drifted in a lofty numb. This was one of those lofty numbs.

He looked down at his buttons. Saw his own fingers. Saw the contrast of a medium-light complexion against wood, against something darker than wood in between the two.

Aslan was weightless, a feather in the wind. His feet weighed nothing; his thoughts, even less.

A silent look exchanged with the maid. It was to his bitten back dismay that she looked to him in relief: she thought he was part of this … and he supposed she was right. Without a word, he touched fingers to a dry part of her arm. How did he tell her he’d be happy to get her out? Write her a reference before Nisa grew wiser and throw whatever he could scrape up at her one-way train ticket?

Mercy. Was he too late? (Was he too soon?) Nisa sounded … happy. Overjoyed, even. What was the cost he was willing to pay to keep her happy?

He silently opened the door. Tasted bile before his eyes even registered the sight before him. His face remained impassive; each muscle deliberate in motion.

Think, Aslan. Think. No – act. There was no time to think.

“Nisa,” he read off from a long-practiced script of Unconditionally Loving Brother. “You’ll hurt your hands,” he improvised.

He stepped in beside her, closing her arms to take pressure off the man’s neck as he took the wooden handles on false pretense.

“This is quite the tool,” he mused with the slightest of forced smiles, like he’d just found a lovely new rosebush instead of a fucking custom killing instrument in his dear sister’s middle class hands. “Where did you get it?”

‘Please, you fucking idiot,’ he prayed. ‘Run!’

Where was all that blood coming from?