Because if it was that would mean—

No.

“Kiki!”

Someone grabs my face and turns it away.

I’m not looking at the boots anymore, but every time I blink, I see them. It’s like someone has taken an iron brand and held it to the inside of my skull, burning that image there for all eternity.

But when I open my eyes, all I see is Ana kneeling before me, her face so close to mine it eclipses all else.

There’s something wrong with her face though. She looks … scared?

The expression is so unfamiliar on her face, I struggle to place it. I have never seen it there before. It is foreign. Unwelcome.

I reach out to touch her, to make her face do something different.

My hand floats between us, disconnected from my body. It doesn’t feel like my hand. It feels incidental that it’s attached to my body.

My body.

Body.

The body.

No.

The tips of my fingers brush Ana’s cheek. They come away wet.

“You’re crying.” My voice sounds distant to my own ears, like I’m listening to someone speak in a room on the other side of a large, empty house.

“Kiki, you have to get up.”

I shake my head. “No.”

I try to turn back to the swinging boots, but a strong hand grabs my chin. There are callouses on those fingers, from years of learning to wield a sword.

We used to watch his lessons, I think.

He always made sure to speak louder than was strictly necessary so we could hear, learning the nuances of swordplay by subterfuge.

When his tutor cottoned on to the presence of two little girls hiding behind the hedges in the courtyard, he started speaking louder too. The way they moved was so graceful. It looked like dancing.

“Kiki. Come on.”

Ana’s on her feet now, tugging on my arm to get me to stand. I keep shaking my head.

Did I stop? I can’t remember. My body is operating entirely of its own accord, each segment of it acting independently of the next.

“No,” I say again. “No.”

“Kiki.”

“I can’t leave him.”

The tugging stops.

She kneels down again. Her face is wetter than before. I don’t even need to touch it to tell. Her tears catch the flickering torchlight of the sconces on the garden wall.

“Kiki, you must.”

I shake my head again, too hard, too vigorously. It hurts, like my brain is slamming into the walls of my skull.

“No. No. No, no, no.”

Once I release that single word into the night, I cannot stop it. It repeats, falling off my tongue over and over.

It is all I can think. All I can focus on.

I keep muttering it as Ana pulls me to my feet, her fingers digging into the muscles of my upper arms. Such force, those hands have. They will leave bruises later.