Kane heaved, yanking the metal gate open. The chain that had bound the two halves together was easily snapped in two, and they swung wide after he pulled them apart.
He padded forward and knelt as Zoe's feet, bowing his head.
He felt her fingers in his hair, hesitant but firm, and he relaxed.
She was safe.
While he had been fighting for her, she had been so far away from him. Much too far.
He barely held himself back from clinging to her.
She didn't like contact that close, especially not when he was bloody.
Well, she did, actually. But there was something inside her. A trigger that was pulled when he got too close.
So he didn't.
As a defender, his master's ultimate satisfaction and comfort was his goal and his one purpose.
But with Zoe, even he was never sure what that was. Her whims floated about like a leaf on the wind, but unlike a leaf, they never rested long on the same ledge or in the same crevice. One moment she would want one thing, and the next another.
The only thing he knew was that he should stay close, and never, ever leave her.
Kane had heard that there were some masters who wanted their defenders as far from them as possible, or at the very least out of their sight. Zoe wasn't like that.
In fact, she was the opposite.
Zoe awkwardly dropped a large blanket on him, and immediately his mind cleared somewhat.
It was true that the crazier he got, the worse he got at dying, but it would be more accurate to say that the crazier he looked, the stronger he got. It was a peculiar curiosity, the way his power worked.
Based on others' perception of him, he grew more in tune with his master's, Zoe's, desires, and with her core being, which he hoped to someday reach, and therefore he was able to utilize more power.
This very ability was how he had earned the right to have a fourth letter in his name, but unlike many others, he had had it from birth. He hadn't progressed past that, because of how difficult Zoe was to track as completely as he needed to to gain more power for her, but having four letters from birth was in itself a unique trait.
Of course, Luke didn't count. When he was initialized into the naming system at seven years old, he had had three letters, also nearly unprecedented. Then, his name had been Luc.
But while Luke had continued to grow in both his compatibility and his esteem within the families, to the point where nearly no one didn't at least know of him if they didn't know him personally, Kane had stagnated. Too much had been pushed onto him at once, and because of that his power was locked into tiers that he reached individually based on the current circumstances at the moment.
It wasn't even one of those procedures that did it forcefully, as had quickly been performed with Evelyn, reducing her name to just Eve as soon as they could after her first operation to implant it in the first place. Kane's body had done it naturally, and while he was constantly and consistently assured that it was a good thing, and that their science could learn so much from him, it never felt like he actually mattered.
Much like Eve, he was just a failed experiment. He had just failed... not quite as badly.
Or, well, he had failed in quite the same way. He just hadn't fallen as hard, per se, not having wasted so much of the associate families' resources as her.
It didn't really matter. That was something that not everyone had understood.
The procedure had broken Evelyn's brain, turning her into the Eve of today. Even now, she was happily humming, swinging a bloodstained hammer and prowling ahead with a lithe power that wasn't seen in Kane's current trodding pace, though his height allowed him to keep up with the group as they moved into the forest. Her casualness was baffling to him. As he clutched a blanket around himself, afraid that if it slipped even a little he would revert to a more animalistic state, she spun through tall grass and the daises that grew up around her, laughing like the little girl that she was as she crushed the heads of beings that had used to be human.
And Kane wondered if he had really gotten the better end of the deal, with the full support of the associate families, and even being the defender of a senator.
Eve was so... happy.
That word had never applied to him.
And likely never would.