" Akos sprinted to my side, bent over me, and wrapped an arm around my waist. Together we ran toward the rope. He grabbed it with one hand, and it jerked up, fast. Too fast for Vas to grab.
Everyone around us was roaring. He shouted into my ear, “I’m going to need you to hold on by yourself!”
I cursed at him. I tried not to look down at the crowded seats below us, the frenzy we had left behind, the distant ground, but it was hard not to. I focused instead on Akos’s armor. I wrapped my arms around his chest and clamped my hands around the collar of it. When he released me, I gritted my teeth--I was too weak to hold on like this, too weak to support my own weight.
Akos reached up with the hand he had been using to hold me, and his fingers approached the force field that blanketed the amphitheater. It lit up brighter when his fingers touched it, then flickered, and went out. The rope jerked up, hard, making me whimper as I almost lost my grip, but then we were inside the transport vessel.
We were inside, and it was deadly quiet.
“You made Vas feel pain,” I said, breathless. I touched his face, ran a fingertip down his nose, over his upper lip.
He wasn’t as bruised as he had been the last time I saw him, cowering on the floor at my touch.
“I did,” he replied.
“Eijeh was in the amphitheater, he was right there. You could have grabbed him. Why didn’t you--”
His mouth--still under my fingers--twitched into a smile. “Because I came for you, you idiot.”
I laughed and fell against him, not strong enough to stand anymore. "

― Veronica Roth , Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark, #1)