It was the hands on your arm that woke you up, the hard jerk of them around your too-thin, child's arm. "Wake up! Wake up!" Came the hiss, quiet in the black room.
"What?" You started to ask, coming aware immediately. This wasn't the first time it happened, but you were hoping to stay here a bit longer.
A hand immediately closed over your mouth, keeping you silent and still against your pillow. You knew what it was then.
"You must go," came a second voice in the room, a man's voice. You leave your bed, stumbling, your brother still tugging on your arm to get you to hurry. There was barely enough time for you to slip your feet into a pair of slippers before he's yanking you bodily out of your room.
"They found us." There was no reason to ask who. You know. The man that took everything. The one who wanted you and your brother dead for reasons you didn't know.
The tears don't come as you're forced out the door and into a waiting palanquin. Your brother doesn't join you and you look out the window of the covered litter, watching as he disappeared into a separate palanquin, headed in the opposite direction. Tears started then and you wanted desperately to scream for him, to call him back, you shouldn't be separated, but a woman's hands pulled you back inside. "Shhh, shhh," she said and you wanted to slap her, to tell her to take you back to him, but she clutched you to her side instead and wiped away your tears. "You'll see him again."