But before Aina could respond, Raurie let out a sharp cry, pointing to Teo’s apartment across the alley.

Aina whipped around. The Diamond Guards had burst through the door and aimed their guns at Teo.

Aina nearly shouted at him to get across, one hand flicking to her knives to throw them into the Guards’ throats. But Ryuu’s hand clamped down on her mouth, and he pulled her behind the wall.

She pushed him off roughly, then peered around the edge of the window. Just then, Teo knocked down the plank in one smooth strike. It fell through the air with a sharp whistle and clattered to the ground below.

“Run!” Teo called over before he spun around and fired his gun at one of the Guards, trying to keep Ynes shielded behind him. The sleeping man jerked awake and yelled at them to get out of his apartment.

Ignoring him, Aina hissed, “Shoot them!” at Ryuu. She grabbed his hand that held the gun Teo had given him, but he jerked it back.

“Aina, we have to leave,” he said in a low voice. “You’re the one they want. They’ll keep Teo alive as long as they can—”

A shot rang out. Raurie stifled a scream by biting down on her fist. The world screeched to a halt in front of Aina, and blood chilled in her veins.

Not Teo.

She looked out of the window. In the other apartment, Teo’s mother lay on the floor, blood spilling from a wound on her head. Teo knelt, one hand cradling Ynes’s head, the other arm wrenched behind his back by one of the Guards.

They forced him to his knees, tears coating his cheeks as he watched his mother bleed out. But as he tried to reach toward her again, the Guards jerked him away, handcuffing him and pinning him down.

Aina moved to grab the gun from Ryuu’s grasp, but the moment she touched it, she flinched away as if the barrel itself would burn her fingers. All she saw was her own mother’s head covered in blood, her father’s chest riddled with holes, the gunman’s face hidden by the metal he wielded. She couldn’t move.

One of the Guards shouted, “She’s in the building across!”

A shot fired at the window as Ryuu pulled her behind the wall again. The bullet slammed through the cheap plaster, missing her by inches, but she hardly blinked, hardly even breathed.

“We have to go,” Ryuu said. Though his voice was steady and brave, his hands shook. One clenched the useless gun, the other held her. She peered around the edge of the window once more. Two Guards hauled Teo toward his door, away from his mother who bled on the floor. “Now!”

He pulled her toward the door, Raurie right behind them with the old man’s shouts following. Aina looked back again, but another Guard raised his gun and fired. The bullet smashed into a clock on the wall next to the door. They fled, gunshots ringing in their ears.