Reiko watched his prince and childhood friend walked over with one hand clasped tightly. Cecily wasn't even looking, too focused on the cup in her hand.

Zphyr walked over, kneeling besides her.

Finally, she looked down. Her eyes didn't widen at the sight of the key. She didn't even smile. The only sign of acknowledging the kneeling prince's presence was moving the cup of steamy herbal tea a bit further than her normal diameter.

Maybe it was because she knew this wasn't freedom, this was trust. She had, after all, always been smart. Or, in the short month or so that he'd known her, that's what it'd seemed like.

"I think we're beyond the point of trust, after all this," the guard heard his prince say in his political voice. "You saved all of our lives. The least we can do is trust you not to take them away."

The guard spoke, looking at the healer and the professional assassin, "I don't think anyone has any arguments."

It wasn't a question, it was a statement. They knew what she'd done for them. They didn't doubt she could've found a way to take it off if she really wanted to. In some part of Reiko's mind, he'd always seen the criminals he'd put away as cruel, unjust, untrusting, and stupid. She was none of those things. It was her who made the guard doubt her sentencing.

This girl, this woman, was good.

When the collar fell off of her neck, revealing a red rash forming, more severe due to the shock he'd previously given her, she watched the prince take it away. One of her hands went to her neck where she rubbed at some of the unusually bright redness.

"Um," the saint said, "the swelling might not go down for a few days. Getting shocked that closely, it's...it's not something people normally walk away from as quickly as you did. There's a ninety to eighty-five percent chance that you'll be perfectly fine."

Orion turned to the pure little saint. "What about the other ten to fifteen percent?"

She didn't meet the assassins eyes. "We don't like to talk about that."

An eerie silence settled over the room before Zeph clapped his hands. "Enough about that. We got the next few targets in." The prince glanced up at his small, trustworthy group of friends. "But I vote we take a few days off. There's no way we're getting much done looking like this. So two days of r and r and then we'll take up the next targets."

The others let out a sigh of relief. Even Cecily seemed to relax a little more.

It seemed like the whole of the team was ready to sleep on the couches when Alma stood up.

"Cecily, can I take a look at those burns around your neck?"

The hunter nodded, taking another sip of the tea while watching Alma.

"Uh, in the other room. I wanna make sure your, uh...arm is still okay."

Orion scoffed. "What, are you a mechanic now?"

She glared at him, all the pissy stubbornness hiding under that soft skin put in one look. "All saints have minimal knowledge of prosthetics. More than any of you."

The prince hid laugh behind his hand while Reiko looked the other way. Orion just rolled his eyes.

---

Alma was leading Cecily into their room. She ushered the criminal into the room and sat her on the bed.

"Can you... Your shirt."

Cecily nodded, going for the zipper on the nearly shredded jacket. Alma turned to lock the door. She may have put it above the benevolent prince to peep but not the other two and definitely not the other two.

When she turned back to the criminal, she understood why men looked at her the way they did. Why, when they were walking through a town, she caught men bumping into light poles to watch her. Cecily, never Alma. Cecily had almost everything Alma didn't. She had the confident walk , the sharp features, the wavy hair, and the curves. If Alma was into girls, she would definitely be her type. She was everyones type.

But Alma could never hate Cecily. Because under all that quietness and all the sharp gazes and glares, this criminal was truly a nice person. Cecily was the one who'd come back for Alma, in the end. Cecily was the one who'd saved all of their lives. Cecily was the nicest one of them all.

Alma was still a bit crueler.

The saint kneeled in front of the criminal, holding onto her neck and feeling the burns. They were burns even though they were often confused with some kind of rash. But it wasn't her skin that burned, it was a layer below. That's why theses kinds of thing were often used over normal shock collars. Because they had the potential to burn the lungs so the victim would have trouble breathing without feeling intense burning.

"It doesn't feel like anything was seriously injured, but I knew that from the original checkup. If that collar was used at its full potential, you would've had trouble breathing for maybe two weeks, but you still sound good. Can I see your arm? I wanna make sure the connection is still good."

Cecily nodded, standing up and turning so that Alma had a nice view of a little hatch. She pressed down on it, fitting her nail inside of it. A little control panel lit up the moment it opened.

All the green lights showed everything as good to go, but Alma wasn't quite done.

She took hold of the criminal's arm, her hands brushing down it until she felt the smooth edge where flesh met metal.

"This is a pretty clean cut. Was it amputated?"

There was a silence. Alma was sure she'd already crossed a line before the hunter answered, "Not exactly."

And that was that. For Alma, that was a lot. 'Not exactly.' Amputation, by definition, was to surgically remove a limb. This wasn't something done surgically, it was taken. Not in some violet accident either. There was no scarring around the wound. Alma, with all her years of experience, could only guess that it had been cut off.

"Alright, you're good to go. There's no problem whatsoever."

Cecily nodded, taking hold of her shirt and pulling back on.

"Um, Cecily, there was something I've been meaning to ask you."

The criminal turned around to meet her gaze, jacket clenched in her metal hand.

"Will you teach me how to fight?"

Another lapse of silence. A lapse of Cecily's eyes looking for something, anything.

Something she, apparently, didn't find.

"No."

"But why not? I wanna be able to protect myself in case anything happens like it did yesterday."

---

Cecily looked at the little saint. Why not?

Because she looked like she wasn't the type of person who needed to be faced with the decision of whether to take a life or not. Sure, she made the decision as a saint, but she didn't need to burden her more than that. She wouldn't allow this pure saint to be tainted with death.

"Because I said so. "

There was silence as the hunter walked away from the dejected saint, towards the door.

"I'll tell them about you."

Cecily stopped and looked back at the saint. "Tell them what?"

Alma looked up. "I'll tell them the truth; that you can't read and that you have phonological dyslexia."

Cecily's gaze turned into a glare. Who the hell did she think she was?

"Of course I found out. Did you think I wouldn't? I'm trained, Cecily. You show a lot of the signs, even if you hide it really well."

Cecily just kept staring at her, obsidian eyes boring into her forehead. How dare she.

---

Alma watched as the criminal's tense glare turned into a grin.

"You would never tell them. That's just not something you would do."

And why did Cecily know that? Why did this stupid heartless criminal know that? Just when Alma thought she had the upper hand, that she could blackmail Cecily into teaching her how to fight, being her trainer. She was defeated by the truth.

"But," Alma shifted her gaze away from her feet, "if you're willing to go that far then I guess I don't have much of a choice. Next thing I know, you'll be trying to blackmail the King himself."

Alma couldn't help but smile. She even squealed a little. The saint ran up to Cecily nd tackled her in a bear hug.

"O-okay there," Cecily said, a little awkwardly while her arms flapped besides her, unsure of what to do. Finally an arm came around Alma's back to give her an awkward friend pat.

The saint pulled out of the criminals arms, her hands now on Cecily's shoulders, keeping her at arms length. "It's okay, we'll work on it."