He'd heard the jangle of the fence, loud in the night, and despite his earlier lack of self-preservation, he still slithered down onto the floor of the bus. Now he was barely breathing, trying to listen for footsteps, imagining his death and telling himself again this was what he deserved for his stupidity. While at the same time telling himself it was nothing, it was a dog, it was the wind. No one came here. That's why Tragos had used it as a better place to talk than the house when Kaden first mentioned leaving the city. It was safe here, because it looked so disastrously unsafe.
Yet he'd been found, and by the last person who's voice he had expected to hear. Qebhet. In the surprise of it, his mind said, you've been saying her name wrong. There was a foreignness to the name his mouth couldn't capture, an ancientness. He'd heard Hecate say it a couple of times, but names sounded different with the whispers of a wild city marsh behind it.
He sat up slowly, pulling himself back into a seat to look at her out the hole that was once a window, his face guarded as he took her in. Not far from her was the boy, and Kaden's eyes widened a little more as he looked at him, he'd never been this close before.
The strongest thing he felt though wasn't relief that it wasn't Ares or Apollo, wasn't some wonder about goddesses and ghosts - it was a sharp twist of guilt. He'd been found somewhere he wasn't supposed to be and she was going to tell Hecate who was going to be angry. "Oh," he said, slumping down into a sulking hunch against the seat. "Hey."