[CH VI]

"Do you think they're really leaving? I mean, you don't think it's a show or a joke or something?" I said, and Ociir shrugged. I was with him in his rooms at the temple again; I'd gone straight there after Asaed had finished dragging me around per Aleif's instructions. We were sitting on the edge of his floor, facing out into the water garden thing, with our legs over the edge. There were all sorts of jagged rocks and little waterfalls going on in the middle, and this part of the temple had been built around it, all of the walls opened up to it like Ociir's was. I thought the other rooms I could see were also living quarters, which didn't give anybody much in the way of privacy.

"Alan, honestly, I know very little about the military," Ociir said. "I don't really know how they think or act or what they'll do about the information you gave them. If they showed you that they were withdrawing, that's what I would tend to think is truly happening. But that's only my opinion."

"Huh," I said, and kicked a little at the water. "Is there anyone else I could ask?"

"Ahieel would know, better than I do."

I groaned mentally at that. "There's not much I'd rather do less than talk to Ahieel," I said.

"Understandable," Ociir said, "with your history. But, he could provide insight about what might be happening. After all, he was very involved in your world, and he has been part of the army for most of his life. He knows its mindset very well."

"Shit," I said. "Yeah, you're probably right." Not even probably, he definitely was.

"If you want to talk to him now, I won't mind," Ociir said, smiling a little. Which was permission to get up and leave without coming across as a total rude asshole.

"Thanks," I said, scooting back on the floor to pull my legs up off the edge, and reaching for my shoes. "Thanks a lot, man."

#

When I got back to the house, Ahieel was at his favorite gloomy little table in the garden, just like always. Just sitting there, not doing anything at all except staring down at his hands in his lap. I didn't know if the guy was trying to be this depressing on purpose, but he was sure doing a good job of it.

He didn't seem to hear me open the door and come out into the garden, so I cleared my throat to let him know I was there. He jerked, lifting his head like he'd forgotten where he even was, and looked around until his eyes fell on me. And then he looked, as he always had since I'd shown up here, like he wanted me to turn around and get the hell out.

"I need to talk to you," I said, pulling out another chair and sitting down across from him.

"No," he said, which wasn't that unexpected.

I rested my elbows on the table and leaned forwards at him. "Yeah, look, I know. I know that I did this to you and you hate me for it, and I got it. Can't even blame you, really. I didn't know what I was doing and you were trying to kill me and my friends, so I only did what I had to."

Ahieel snorted. "Is that an apology?" he said. "It was a very poor one."

"I'm not apologizing," I said. "I would, if maybe you apologized. But you won't, so neither will I. All I want is to talk to you for about a minute. Then I'll leave you alone, just like you want."

Ahieel looked at me, hard. He looked even worse than usual, creased lines joining the shadows under his eyes, and his skin looked thin and papery. He looked all-around sick and exhausted, and I wondered if he was still feeling the effects of whatever I'd done to him. It looked like it.

"Ociir told me what you came here for," he said. "I assume this is about that."

"Yeah," I said. "I just want to know if there'd be any reason for them to tell me—and show me—they were leaving my world, but not be actually doing it. I mean, I'm just one person and I hardly matter, so they wouldn't even bother to put on that kind of show for me, right?"

"A lot of effort goes into choosing worlds, preparing them. If they are pulling out, it isn't being done lightly, or as a farce. Whatever they showed you was real," Ahieel said. He spoke fast, like he couldn't wait to get this over with and get me gone.

"You know that for sure?"

"Of course," Ahieel said, sounding almost insulted.

"I don't really have much reason to believe anything you say."

"Then why are you asking me?" he said.

"Because there's no one else," I said.

He pushed back a little—I reached across the table and grabbed his arm, holding him in place.

"Hey," I said. "I'm serious. Just answer me, and I'll leave you alone."

"I did answer you," Ahieel said, setting his jaw. "And what I said is all the truth I can tell you. As might be obvious, I am no longer part of the army. But I do know how it works."

I guess I had to be satisfied with that. I let go of him, and leaned back. And my hand came off his arm covered in what looked like ground-up chalk. Fine, goldish-white, dull and powdery. That was…kind of odd. Kind of gross, too.

"Eurgh," I said, brushing it off on my jeans. White clouds puffed up around my legs, an odd sweet-bitter smell in the air. "Ahieel, what the hell is this?"

Ahieel was staring hard at his arm, his face oddly pinched. I could see the gold-white marks on his skin, in a twisting spiky pattern. They looked a little—shimmery. Not normal. After a second, Ahieel lifted his hand and brushed it down from his elbow to wrist. A shift of particles flew into the air like a dusty little cloud. I scooted my chair back automatically. No way did I want to breathe that shit in.

"What the fuck is happening to you?" I said, and Ahieel shook his head. He was looking at his arm now with something like horror.

"I don't—" he said, and gave his hand a tentative little shake. Whiteish-gold dust rained off of it, dissipating into the air.

"Should I get someone?" I said, at a complete loss of what to do. "I mean, shit. What the fuck, man?"

Ahieel put one hand on the table, leaning forward and hunching over a little, lowering his head. I thought he was maybe going to throw up or something, but he just stayed that way for about half a minute, breathing slowly. Then, finally, he lifted his head.

"I—get Ohean," he said. Then he seemed to realize it was me he was asking, and balked a little. "I know you have no reason to—"

"Oh, shut up," I said. "Christ. Of course I'll get her, we don't have to play this stupid game."

Ahieel snapped his mouth shut, looked slightly less sick, and nodded. I pushed back from the table and got up, heading back towards the house.

"Just—stay there," I said, over my shoulder. "I'll find her."

#

Getting Ohean consequently brought Ieta, which got Eleon's attention, and somewhere along the line someone somehow notified Ociir, because he showed up at the house too. And then it was just a giant, stressful family meeting in the garden, a huge argument over what to do with Ahieel now that he was doing something really fucking odd that nobody understood.

Ohean and Eleon thought that they should take Ahieel to a healer or doctor or something equivalent, and Ociir and Ieta both thought that was just about the worst idea proposed in the history of ever. Ociir's argument, which was pretty sound in my opinion, was that nothing like this had ever happened before, and how much help could a healer be for him? The counter argument from Ohean was that maybe they could figure it out this time. This time, which probably meant they'd gone through something like this before, maybe when Ahieel had first come back with this problem of his entities not really working right. But now they were apparently coming off of him, which was a whole new crisis.

Ahieel didn't say much at all during all this. He was just sitting in his chair, in the middle of them all, pulling his fingers through lank strands of his hair and rubbing the whitish dust off against his shirt. He looked half-transfixed and half out of his mind. I couldn't help but think that I'd done this to him, even if had been an accident and he'd really deserved it at the time—I felt a little bad now. Especially because it was so obvious that everyone here, his whole family, cared a lot about him. Even if he was a resentful jerk with weird ideas about ethics. He still didn't deserve to die—if that's what was happening to him.

All I'd ever heard from anybody regarding this stuff, and what I'd witnessed myself, was that; separating the host from the entities killed the former. I'd seen it happen, I'd seen Maedajon die right in front of me in a choking black pool. I knew the punishment for being gay, at least among the oenclar, was being stripped of their oen, and if they were older than a certain age it would kill them. Ociir and Ishan were part of some underground organization that was trying to figure out a way that separation could be done, without death as a result. So it only made sense, now, that Ahieel should be dying from this.

But he didn't look like he was dying. He didn't even look like he was in pain. He looked a little crazy and a little terrified, but that was about it. I slid past Ohean, still deep in argument with Ociir, and hunkered down beside Ahieel. He didn't pay any attention to me, even when I hit his shoulder a couple of times.

"Hey," I said, "hey. Snap out of it, hey. Hey, look at me, a second, okay?"

Ahieel finally started, and looked up, his eyes darting around and not really focusing.

"Shape up," I said, snapping my fingers right in front of his face. "I need to know something."

The flickering, unfocused look turned into something more like annoyance, and he finally focused on my face. "What?" he said, after another moment. His hand paused in his hair, tangled in the pale strands.

"Is this hurting you at all?" I said.

"No," he said, and looked surprised by that answer. "Not anymore."

I squinted at him. "But it was."

"At first. Weeks ago," Ahieel said. He sounded a little more aware now, more tapped into the present. "When you first—right afterwards. It was nothing I can even describe. But now…nothing."

"So, you…wouldn't say you think you're dying, or anything."

"I don't think so," Ahieel said, in an odd voice, as if he'd just realized that's probably what this should have meant. "I feel…all right. Not comfortable. But it's not hurting me."

"I—good," I said. "That's good." As much as I didn't like him, I didn't want him dead.

Ociir and Ieta finally beat down everyone else's argument, and it was decided that they shouldn't take Ahieel anywhere or get anyone to look at him. That, as long as he didn't seem to be dying or hurting, he should just stay in the house and let whatever was happening, happen. And whatever was going on, it was happening fairly fast. Ahieel was still raining that weird, dry dust off of him like someone had rolled him in chalk, and as soon as the family meeting had ended, he slunk off into the house and disappeared into his own room.

And for the next few days, he pretty much stayed there. Ociir and Ishan were at the house a lot more than usual now, spending time with him. I thought it must have to do with their separatist thing, and all the stuff they'd told me about how uniquely I had screwed Ahieel up. They were probably trying to figure out just what the heck was going on with him, and how, and why. And why he wasn't dying. And why his entities seemed to just be…shedding off of him.

Whenever he did leave the room, he still left weird gold-white chalk dust behind everywhere he went, on everything he touched. But he didn't really come out very much. He didn't even go into the garden like he'd used to. It would take him upwards of five minutes to open his door whenever I tried to go around and see how he was doing, if he even let me in at all.

I wasn't even sure why I even cared about how Ahieel was doing. Ever since I'd been here he'd been surly and indifferent towards me, and before that he'd been an overly-suave douchebag and actually tried to kill me—for sure at least once. I guess, maybe, because I'd done this to him. Maybe that was why I cared. And I'd already thought I'd killed him once, and that had been seriously unpleasant. I just really wanted to make sure he wasn't about to die this time. But he seriously didn't seem to be anywhere near dead. He was surviving this. Not pleasantly, not happily, and not gracefully—but he was definitely surviving.

What I did see was that his hair was turning back to what it must have been before, normally. There were huge chunks of it that had become a really dark brown, still streaked through with white-blond in random places. It was a little funny—Eleon had gone blond while Ahieel was doing the opposite. It was weird to see Ahieel's hair dark. It didn't fit him. It was a much darker brown than Eleon's had been, which made me wonder what color Rysa's hair really was. Ahieel was her twin, so. Maybe this same color. It wouldn't make her look much different from right now.

Everyone in the house was on edge about the whole thing. They all seemed to be a little quieter, a little more tightly strung than normal. Eleon, especially, seemed to be really bothered. He spent a lot of time either sitting at Ahieel's usual chair in the garden, or spent hours and hours just gone somewhere, out of the house. Ieta was even more manically into everybody's business—she and Ohean got into arguments almost every single day, and when I could understand them it was always about trivial things. I tried to keep out of the way myself, and I spent a lot of time out of the house. Law was still expertly avoiding me, and every day that went by I felt more and more lonely and out of place.

A few days after Ahieel had started this strange new trick of his, I had been by his room and he hadn't decided to let me in, so I went out in the garden to just waste time. Ohean and Eleon were out there, sitting together at the edge of the garden wall. I actually hadn't really spoken to Eleon in the last few days, not much more than passing greetings. And Ohean had been busy too, not much time for talking.

I sat myself down on the garden wall next to them, and they both glanced up at me.

"Hello, Alan," Ohean said, and Eleon gave me a shy little wave. Ohean had a book on her lap, but Eleon had just been sitting there. I noticed him picking at the braided rope that he always wore around his wrist, and for some reason that reminded me. "What do you want to do?" I said to him, and he blinked a little. "I mean, with your life."

Eleon looked startled. "I wasn't—really sure," he said, picking harder at his rope bracelet. "I thought maybe that I'd try an apprenticeship to a houlbae."

"What's that?"

"They, uh—make the lights," Eleon said, gesturing above our heads. "It seems like it could be interesting work. Maybe, I mean—I don't really know."

"I've told you, you can always come and help in our shop until you make a decision," Ohean said, and Eleon made a face.

"I don't want to weave," he said, sounding a lot more like the little kid that everyone considered him to be. "That's for girls."

Ohean looked unimpressed by that. "Asuon weaves, and he's not a girl," she said, and glanced at me. "An apprentice in our shop," she added.

"I know," Eleon muttered, going pink and twisting his hands into the bottom of his shirt. Ohean seemed to take it for repentance. But he sounded just uncomfortable enough that I thought maybe it was something else—like that maybe Eleon hadn't liked the idea of being around the shop, and Asuon, for other reasons. Or I could have been reading into that too much.

Eleon startled and glanced around suddenly, like he'd just realized where he was. "Oh," he said. "I—I have to go. I'm meeting a friend, I'm sorry."

"It's fine," I said, while Ohean gave him a little wave. "Don't let us keep you."

Eleon gave us both a grateful smile and scrambled to his feet, then dashed off into the house. The door flung shut behind him, and Ohean turned to me.

"Do you know who this new friend is?" she said, and I blinked.

"What?"

She shrugged. "He hasn't said, even a name, and he does talk to you quite a lot. He's just very excited about whoever it is."

"No, I have no idea," I said.

"I thought it might be a girl," Ohean said, and I got about two seconds away from saying definitely not before I realized and clamped down on it. Instead, I shrugged.

"You don't think he's a little young for that?" I said. He wouldn't be, on Earth, but here, ages were all mixed up.

"Not at all," Ohean said, and I decided I didn't want to pry into the appropriateness of sex in this society because that was weird. Not something I wanted to talk about with a girl, either, even one as cool and level-headed as Ohean was.

We sat in a fairly comfortable silence together. I watched the hanging lanterns overhead swing in the breeze, moving gold shadows over the plants and leaves. Ohean kept her fingers in her book, holding her place, but didn't go back to reading it. It was at least a few minutes later that either of us spoke.

"Oh, Alan," Ohean said, reaching for a pocket on her skirt. "By the way."

She drew out something small and red and attached to a thin black strap, and offered it out to me. I lifted my hand automatically, to take it. It was a glass bead on a cord, a deep blood-red and similar to the blue one that she wore around her own neck.

"Whenever you see my sister again. I assume you will," she said, tipping it into my palm. "Please, would you give this to her?"

"Yeah, I—of course," I said, carefully coiling up the necklace and strap in my hand. "You made it for her?"

Ohean nodded, digging her teeth a little into her lower lip.

"I'll get it to her," I said. "Definitely."

"Thank you, Alan," she said, folding her hands together in her lap. She looked a little embarrassed about it, so I just slipped the necklace into the front pocket of my shirt, so I wouldn't crush it. Now I had two necklaces to watch out for.

#

That night, I woke up with another attack of the bizarre chest-pulling feeling, the sense of belonging somewhere that just was not here. I'd been having a good night's sleep for once, and it hit me so hard and fast that I nearly flailed myself out of bed. I hung onto the blankets and just let it go through me, nostalgic and disorienting.

This time, it really got to me. When it passed I felt shaken, unhinged down to my core, lost and reeling. Shit, what was I doing? What was I doing here—why was I still here? Why wasn't…why wasn't I with Keyd? He'd betrayed me, but I'd done the same to him. Repaid one stupid act with another. I just—shit, I missed him. I'd missed him this whole time, but always along with the anger I felt at what he'd done. But I almost didn't feel that anymore.

And I missed Rysa. I missed her incredibly. And, hell, I missed Kir and Darban and Hahd, and I didn't even know them very well. But they'd felt like friends—they'd felt like allies. People who accepted me. I'd never had very many close friends, just from being too introverted or too geeky or even too picky, but I'd felt like all of these people could have been. Good friends, people so much closer to me than anyone else I'd ever known. People who lived in a more dangerous, more immediate world, and knew the value and benefits of being able to trust and rely on others, and of being depended on and trusted in turn. Despite how out of the ordinary they all were, they felt so much realer.

Here, I felt like a burden, a leech off of Ociir's family even if some of them seemed to like me okay. I was out of place and awkward and completely alone. I had to depend on Ociir for pretty much everything and he had to be getting tired of it. I didn't even have a reason to be here anymore. I had already done what I was here to do, and I was already riding the guilt wave about it, as well as the panic about if the results were real or not. But it was all out of my hands now.

I had to get home. That was the first thing, the most pressing and important thing. I had to get out of here, out of this place. And then…and then I had to go back. I had to go back to the oenclar, to Keyd, to Rysa, to all of them, and tell them what I'd done. And I had to do it now.

#

Even through it had to be some ungodly early hour of the morning, I pretty much ran across the city to get to the temple where Ociir lived. There was absolutely no one in the streets, and very few of the globe-lights were lit, everything looked different in the near full dark, and I got lost at least twice. But finally I found my way there and stumbled into Ociir's rooms, making a lot of clumsy bumbling noise that woke him up before I even had to.

"Alan," he said, and I winced as he sat up in bed and turned up one of the globe-light things to a low glow. He blinked in the light, slow and half-confused.

"Shit, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for this," I said. "I—just, fuck. I—need to go home."

"Home," Ociir repeated sleepily. "Where's that?"

"Back to my world," I elaborated. "I need to go back to Earth."

Ociir made an unhappy noise and straightened up a little more. "Right now?" he said, dragging a hand over his hair and pushing it out of his face.

"Yeah. Right now," I said. "Sorry. But I—I just have to go. I can't be here anymore."

Ociir muttered something in his own language that sounded suspiciously like swearing, and included my name. I didn't exactly blame him—I'd been a pretty needy burden to him since I'd gotten here, and he'd been extremely patient with all of it. But this was the last thing I'd need from him. He threw his legs out of the bed and dragged himself up, rubbing at his face and pulling half of the blanket with him until he seemed to realize he was still holding it, and dropped it. He wasn't actually wearing any clothes, at all, and I tried not to look real hard at him.

I noticed the other person sleeping in the bed for the first time. Ishan. And she was naked. Ociir had pulled most of the blankets off her, and she was sleeping on her back, one arm thrown up over her head. And she was naked. Wow, fuck, this felt a little rude. I tried not to stare, but she was right there. Naked. It was almost good to know I wasn't totally immune to breasts, despite going mostly gay recently. She had a really nice body.

Then I remembered she was also engaged, and engaged to a man who was standing right next to me and looking at me.

"Shit, I am sorry," I said, looking away from the bed and up towards the ceiling instead. Ociir had put up with a lot of shit from me but he shouldn't have to put up with me ogling his fiancée. That just wasn't cool. But he didn't seem offended or outraged. He actually seemed kind of puzzled.

"You still…appreciate women," he said.

"Apparently," I said, blinking hard. "Yeah."

He didn't say anything else, but I think he was a little confused by it. Well, fuck, so was I. Maybe, when my life slowed down long enough for me to take a breath and have a few seconds to think, I could try pinning down my goddamn sexuality. But right now, the whole thing was completely irrelevant. Ociir was looking around the room and still blinking slowly.

"Morning," he said suddenly.

"What?"

"Morning," Ociir said again. "You have to wait until morning, at least. I can't send you home myself. It's the middle of the night, there'd be no one to help you."

"Oh," I said. I hadn't even thought about that. "Sure. Right. Damn, I'm sorry."

Ociir waved his hand a little. "It's all right, Alan. Do you want to stay here for the rest of the night?"

"Is that okay?" I said. "I mean—"

Ociir gave me a look like, shut up, I wouldn't have offered otherwise, and I clammed I spent the rest of the night curled up on an extra few blankets that Ociir had, but I kept waking up every few minutes in cold, clenching panic. I didn't know what was wrong with me or why I had to leave here so damn badly all of a sudden, but I just did.

And Ociir must have been aware of or heard my bad time sleeping, because it couldn't have been later than extremely early morning when he shook me awake from a half-sleep I'd managed to fall into, and told me that we could probably go now. He didn't seem very surprised when I said I had to get Law first. I mean, if I was going home, it seemed pretty bastardly to not let Law know, and offer him the same. If he was even still here at all, because the guy had done an expert job of disappearing recently. Maybe he had left. He'd gotten here on his own efficiently, so he was probably perfectly capable of getting back somehow. He was a pretty resourceful guy, apparently.

There were people outside in the street when Ociir and I left the temple, lighting some of the globes and lanterns by hand as we passed by on our way to the laemenna. It was freezing cold, and mist was drifting through the air and beading on my shirt and stupid bare arms. Next time, a jacket, seriously. I'd learn.

The front doors of the laemenna were closed and locked, but Ociir sighed a little bit and touched the bolt. I felt a buzz of energy that gave off a sense of being complicated, and the lock clicked and slid open.

"I really shouldn't do that," Ociir muttered, half to me, as we went inside. The room that was usually housing that one records guy was dark, and empty. "It's abusing my position."

"I won't tell anyone," I said, picking up my pace a little bit down the hall. Ociir fell a little bit behind—he still seemed sleepy and a little out of it—and I got to the room Law was staying in first. I slammed my hand a few times against his door and, when he didn't answer right away, turned the handle and pushed it open.

"Law," I barked at the humped up blankets on the bed, slapping my hand against the globe by the door and zapping some energy into it, blooming it up into warm yellow light. "Law, wake up, we're gonna go h—Jesus Christ."

I lurched to a stop a few steps into the room. There wasn't just one person sleeping under the blankets on the bed. There were two, but they'd just been tangled up so close together in the small space that it had looked like one. One of them, the closest to the door and me, jerked up to an elbow, throwing a clumsy hand through dark, tousled hair. Law.

"What, what?" he said, half in alarm and half still asleep. He rolled over a little, as much as the small cot allowed, dragging the blankets off the other person, who was just starting to stir and sit up. I still wasn't really used to seeing Eleon as a blond, but it only took me a second to recognize him. And also to recognize that he and Law were pretty completely naked.

Ociir picked that moment to catch up with me. I backed up and pushed the door nearly entirely shut, and turned to talk to him through it.

"Stay out," I said, and Ociir looked alarmed.

"What, why—"

"You just want to stay out. Trust me," I said, and shut the door in his face. I wasn't sure how cool he'd be with finding out his brother liked to sleep with other men. And Eleon probably didn't want him knowing. Either way, it was easier if Ociir stayed the hell out.

I turned back to the room, pressing my back against the door just in case Ociir tried to come in anyway. Law was squinting and blinking in the light, and he threw a glance at Eleon as though he had forgotten that the guy was even in his bed at all. But the way that Eleon's arm was thrown over Law's stomach, and the way he had turned his face into Law's shoulder against the sudden light in the room made me think that this was probably not the first time they'd done this. They looked comfortable with each other.

"Sorry to, you know, be totally fucking rude like this," I said, trying to kind of look in any direction but at the bed. What the hell was this anyway, Naked People Day? "But, uh, Law. Ociir's going to send me home. If you want to get out of here, this is probably a good time."

Eleon was getting a little more awake, and he dragged himself up to a sit, eyes wide. He edged away from Law, towards the corner of the bed, drawing his knees up. Law glanced over at him, running his hand through his hair again. Eleon stared down at his entangled fingers, his mouth pinched into a tiny, bitter line. He looked like he absolutely wanted to be anywhere but right here. His face was a bright, humiliated red.

"Uh," Law said. I couldn't tell if he was embarrassed or not. Maybe he didn't even know yet if he was—he still looked too sleepy and startled to be much of anything else. He pushed himself off his elbows, leant up over his knees, and rubbed at his eyes. "Jesus, Alan."

"I know, it's super early, I'm sorry. This is just kind of happening now, so…"

"I think I—I should—I'm going to go, now. Leave, I mean," Eleon said, quietly, and Law startled and looked at him.

"Your brother's right outside the door," I said to him.

"Never mind," Eleon muttered, and drew his knees up tighter against his chest. I had never seen a person looked more miserable than he looked right then. Law seemed to think the same, because he reached out to him and touched his hand. Eleon looked surprised that he had done it—Law looked surprised that he had done it. But he kept his hand there, moving it along the back of Eleon's wrist and down his arm. The whole time, Eleon was just staring at him, eyes wide and mouth slightly open.

This felt like an awkwardly private moment that I really shouldn't be watching, never mind watching impatiently, since Law still hadn't really given me any sort of coherent response.

"Law," I said, feeling like an utter douchebag. Law jerked a little, and looked at me.

"I think I—want to stay," he said, frowning just a little. Like he wasn't quite sure what was possessing him to make this decision. "Here, I mean."

"You're serious," I said.

"Yeah," he said, slowly. "Yeah, I—yeah."

Eleon was staring at him. Completely slack-jawed. They were still touching hands a little. After another moment, Eleon let his slide forward until his fingers laced through Law's. Law let him, drawing his thumb over the back of Eleon's hand. Both of them were just staring at each other carefully.

"Well, uh. Then," I said, really awkwardly. I started backing up, fumbling at the door handle. "I'm gonna—go. Now. Law, I guess I'll—see you around, whenever. You too, Eleon."

Both of them gave me vague nods. I was pretty sure they no longer cared that I was in the room. They'd probably forgotten. Eleon reached out hesitantly for Law's face, and I heard Law saying something along the lines of, "hey, it's okay," to him as I stepped into the hall and swung the door shut behind me. Ociir was leaning against the opposite wall, his eyes drooping like he was about to fall asleep right there, standing up.

"He wants to stay," I said, and Ociir's head jerked up a little bit. "Law wants to stay here. I don't even know—is that allowed?"

Ociir lifted one shoulder. "I honestly can't tell you. We don't get many foreigners here, you might imagine. Our customs are somewhat…vague."

"You'll watch out for him?" I said, piling one more favor onto the already insane mountain of good deeds Ociir had done for me. "I mean, just—make sure no one does anything to him. That's all."

Ociir dipped his head. "That won't be too difficult," he said. I think he was too sleepy to think about asking why Law wanted to stay, which was good. I couldn't have explained that.

#

Unsurprisingly, getting me back home first involved going back to that same central city building. I guess Ociir really had some sway with the government here, or could call in some epic favors, because he had me wait outside in the courtyard, disappeared inside, and came out about ten minutes later with two women in tow. I'd never seen them before, and they both gave me slight head-bows when they came up to me.

"This is Eglea and Unare—they're friends of mine. They'll help get you home," Ociir said to me, and I nodded back at the two women.

Rysa had told me once that she thought Ociir was self-absorbed, only really concerned about himself or people in his family. I didn't think that was true at all. Maybe he'd changed, or maybe after years and years apart she just didn't know him as well as she thought. Ociir had done everything for me, I owed him so much more than I could ever repay him, more than I'd ever done for him, but that he somehow considered a fair trade.

I held out my hand to him. "Thanks, man," I said. "For everything. I mean, everything."

Ociir stared down at my outstretched hand for a moment. I had just remembered that these people didn't seem to do handshakes and was about to drop my arm, when Ociir reached out and carefully matched his hand with mine, closing his fingers around my palm. I felt his energy, strong and humming through his hand and into mine.

"You're welcome, Alan," he said. "I hope that you—that things work out for you."

"Yeah, me too," I said. "Tell everyone goodbye for me—Ohean and Eleon and everything." I felt bad that I hadn't thought about them beforehand, but it was a little late now.

He nodded. "I will. Tell Keyd that I'm sorry about his father." He hesitated. "If you wouldn't mind."

"No, I will," I said. "I think he'll appreciate that." Plus, it was the least I could do for him, for everything he'd done for me.

We dropped hands, and then Ociir pressed two fingers to his collarbone, dipping his head a little. I mimicked him, hoping that was the cool thing to do. Ociir smiled a little, so it seemed like I'd done right.

"I'll see you again," Ociir said, which sounded like a hope and a promise both.

"Yeah. Yeah, I hope so."

Meanwhile, off to the side, I noticed two women putting their palms flat together, started feeling the same current of deep energy that came with the opening of a rift.

"I thought it was illegal to do that in the city," I said, and the two women exchanged a glance.

"Well," one of them said, smirking a little. "We're allowed."

Apparently they were cool and high ranking, at least higher ranking than Asaed. I just stood back and let them do whatever they were doing—until I thought of something else.

"You know where to send me, right?" I said.

"Don't worry, Alan," Ociir said. "They know."

I probably shouldn't have been distracting them while they were doing this, anyway. It only took them a few moments to pull the rift open, while I felt the power of it deep inside my chest. And then, there was nothing really left to do but go through. I gave the women who had opened it a nod, said one final thank you to Ociir, and then….went through.

The women had pretty good aim in making the rift. I came through right at the edge of the grass of the cemetery, beside the parking lot. It was cool early morning, grayish and chilly, although it practically felt warm after the frigid city I'd just come from. Fall leaves skittered over the pavement and everything was otherwise very quiet, cool, and still. I lost the feeling of constant energy which had been omnipresent in Uillad, a pressure that suddenly let up off my chest and let me breathe a little easier.

I stood still for a few moments, just…sort of trying to realize that this was real. I'd done this, gotten back here, in such a damn hurry that it almost felt like a dream or just a really intense bout of imagination. Had I seriously just come back here from another world. Had any of this happened? Standing at the edge of a quiet cemetery in the early morning, it didn't feel like it. I wasn't sure what the last thing I remembered was that didn't feel like a dream. It had been months since anything around me had been normal.

When I finally pulled myself together, I realized that there were only a couple of cars in the lot, and none of them was mine. My car was gone. Of course it was. I'd left it parked in the middle of a public lot for over two weeks. It'd probably been towed. That was just…awesome. That was exactly what I needed right now.

I turned and headed down the road, to find a bus stop or a payphone or anything else I could use to get myself home.

#

I'd found a bus stop first, and though I was completely unfamiliar with the transit system in town, I managed to get myself into walking distance of my apartment after not too many false starts. I let myself in quietly, feeling extremely weird about being back here. It didn't even feel like where I lived anymore, like I was sneaking into a stranger's place. All my and Martin's furniture and stuff was still here, but it just felt completely disconnected and foreign.

The door to Martin's room was closed, so he was probably there and asleep. I hadn't seen the guy in about a month, and I wasn't sure if I could handle it now. I might have had a really weird and inappropriate breakdown. If he didn't wake up before I left again, it was probably for the immediate best. I snuck back to my own room, took the hottest damn shower that I could without scalding my skin off, and then crept back out to the kitchen to see if any of my shelves had food still left.

I found a sad old bag of ramen noodles way in the back of the cupboard, and cooked that. While I was sitting at the table and eating, I finally had a second to slow down and think about what to do next. And at first, I contemplated just…not. Not doing anything, not going back. I wasn't even sure I could find a way to get back in the first place, but I thought about not even trying. Not trying to find Keyd or any of the others. Not telling them what I'd done and that the clarbach knew they were aiming for Clarylon and not Earth. Earth was safe now. It was out of this war and out of the way. I didn't have to…do anything. I could just stay here, and get back to my normal life. Like nothing had happened. Like nothing had happened.

Like Keyd hadn't happened.

And that was really the thing. It didn't matter how much of this war stuff I ignored or got uninvolved with. My life was still different, and it was different because of him. I'd been in a serious—brief, but still serious—relationship with another man. That changed a lot of personal things about me. I could go my entire life without doing that again, but it would never change that it had happened.

If nothing else, I owed him. I owed both of us; if this was going to end because of the decisions we'd made, then both of us deserved to do that face to face. It deserved a definite end. And he deserved to hear, from me, what I'd done, and make his own choices about what retribution my decisions deserved. I'd really betrayed them, an entire race of people, and—that had to have some sort of consequence.

It was just past eight in the morning when I finally balled up enough to do what I had to do. I put a goddamn sweatshirt on, made sure I had Rysa's book in my back pocket and the necklaces from Keyd and Ohean in another, and then I headed down to the park at the end of the neighborhood. It was the only idea I had, right now, to get myself back in contact with the oenclar.

But there was no way the rift that they had kept open there in the park was still functional. There was no reason for it to be. They wouldn't just leave something like that lying around out in the open, even if most people in my world would never be able to even see it, let alone use it. And the oenclar didn't really care about Earth enough to need it open,

Except it was there. I sensed it even before I saw it. And when I got close enough to it I could see it just like always, the weird shifting thin look to the air, with a vague impression of something else behind it. This one, I knew, needed me to have a lot of oen energy. Keyd and Rysa had told me that the first time I'd gone through it. That it needed to sense energy in me or it would just rip me apart.

I'd been kicking around in the clarbach city for about two weeks—nobody had really been using any spells or energy or anything near me for me to absorb, but I'd still been around all of it. I'd drawn some in just by proxy. And it had been a really long time since I'd been around any oenclar. I didn't know what the balance was right now, if it was even safe for me to go through, if I was just walking into death here.

I was going to have to get all this energy out of me, somehow. The only way I'd done that before was—well, when I'd sort of exploded myself at Ahieel and really had no idea what I was doing. Maybe I could do it again, except control it better this time. I was getting a little better at figuring out all this stuff, despite really never having any help with it other than the couple of times Rysa had helped me.

I took a breath, held it, let it out again. Then I knelt down, and grabbed onto a hunk of grass and dirt, just as something to center on, something physical to focus the energy into. Then I shut my eyes, and concentrated. Just on the energy that was light, that felt fundamentally different from whatever leftover oen energy was still in me.

Under my hand, the grass crinkled, warmed, and turned phosphorescent. I kept pushing the energy out of me, down my arm and into the ground. Light spread out under the dirt, in a circle about as big as a manhole cover, shining up around my hand and beneath my shoes. I just kept pushing, shoving everything out of me, down my arm and out of my palm and fingers, pouring it into the ground. And finally, when it felt like I'd run out, I pulled my hand back and stood up. The grass and dirt stayed lit and glowing in a spikey-edged circle for a few seconds, and then it all faded away.

I thought that would be enough. I hoped that would be enough, because it was all I could do. I turned to face the rift again, bit down hard on my jaw, and stepped through.

I found out right away that what I'd done wasn't enough. Going through the rift hurt like a bitch. It felt like my skin had been ripped off and someone had raked over all of my muscles with a saw blade, dragged razors through each of my veins and split them open, and then dumped salt and lemon juice all over me. I staggered a few feet forward, went hard to my knees, and retched into the grass. My arms couldn't even hold my own weight and I toppled over, landing hard on my shoulder and collapsing almost face-first into the dirt. I smelled cool, wet earth and bitter grass, and my stomach rolled again. I couldn't see more than a foot in front of me and everything hurt. I didn't think I could ever get up again. I wasn't dead, but I kinda wished I was.

I had no idea how long I lay there, face to the ground. I didn't even know where I was, although I assumed it was the same valley in Edo that this rift had led to before. Wind rippled my shirt over my back and raised goosebumps all along my skin, and the light and warmth of the sun got slowly, vaguely dimmer and colder around me. My body ached every time I tried to move, so I just didn't.

After a long time, something touched my shoulder. In an automatic, reflexive response, I jerked over, rolling away. Pain spiked through all my muscles, although admittedly not quite as bad as before. There was a person next to me, down on one knee at my side, the setting sun flickering behind their shoulder in an overblown yellow flare. It was impossible for me to see their face or anything about them, other that they were in armor.

"Alan?" the figure said. I lifted my hand, still feeling all the muscles in my arm and shoulder trembling and hurting, to shade against the sun.

"Oh. Hey, Darban," I said. My voice sounded weak and croaky in my ears. It seemed surreal that he was here. I kind of wasn't sure if he was. Maybe I really was dead.

A hand stretched down towards me and I took it, letting Darban haul me up to a sit. My body almost wouldn't support the position, and I had to slump forward and brace myself with my elbows on my knees. My stomach was still churning, and I could taste something bitter and unpleasant at the back of my throat.

"Mrika jinnhe?" Darban asked, and I just stared at him, because it had come out incomprehensible.

"What?" I said, even my mouth hurting when I spoke. "What? Use frequency."

Darban squinted at me. "Ghell rokoka bahn," he said, and then reached out and cupped his hands along the sides of my head, palms pressed to my temples. I felt a bright, high buzz, like someone had just let a wind-up bee fly between my ears, and my vision swung in and out, irising into black and bulging back to color. I lost track of time a little—it could have been two minutes or an hour before everything went normal again.

"Oh god," I said, swaying when Darban took his hands off me. "Why—what—"

"You were unaligned," Darban said, understandable again. "Probably from coming through the rift without enough energy. It staggered you."

"Oh," I said, my tongue feeling thick in my mouth. I felt a lot more than just staggered. This felt like the worst hangover in the world, after maybe six heavyweight boxers had gone a few rounds with my whole body. I wanted to lie down again and never get up.

Darban was still close to me, supporting my head (which felt heavy and wanted to roll to the side) with one hand, the other on my shoulder. I blinked stupidly at him, my eyes wandering pointlessly over his face. He had blue eyes, like Keyd, but a little cooler, a little darker and greyer. And a similar mouth. He looked a little like Keyd, actually. Not much, but a little. Or maybe I was just crazy, and missing Keyd so bad that I was seeing him in other people.

But it was startlingly good to see Darban, too. He was a familiar face, he was someone who had been on the way to being a friend before I'd jumped ship on them all. And I was pretty sure he'd liked me all right, too. I'd been gay rights guy for him and Kir, after all, helped them a lot there.

"I'm glad to see you again, Alan. I almost didn't recognize you," Darban said, with a little grin, and touched a lock of his hair.

He'd never seen me with any other hair color than black, I realized vaguely, and I was back to being browny-blond again. It hardly mattered. I shook my head a little, and tried to make my swimming vision focus better on his face.

"'s good to see you too," I managed.

"What are you doing out here? Where have you been?" Darban asked, and I flinched a little at the guilt that the innocent question conjured up in my stomach.

"I—was looking for all of you guys," I said, deciding to not really answer the second question. "I just—this was the only place I could get to."

"We've almost entirely left this world," Darban said. "Most of us have moved to Clarylon. You're lucky that I even found you here."

"I guess I am," I said.

"Can you stand?" Darban said, and I had to shake my head.

"Not without help," I admitted. At once, Darban held his hand out to me. I took it, and Darban slid his other arm around my back, under my shoulder, and hoisted me up with what seemed like absolutely no effort. Right away my legs buckled and collapsed under my weight. I fell against him, throwing my arms around him as a reflex, and he grabbed back at me, keeping me up.

"I'm really—sorry," I said, mortified, but unable to do anything else but cling uselessly to his side. He was wearing full armor, which gave me a lot of good handholds, even if my hands felt numb and a little clumsy. He chuckled, and I felt it shake through him.

"Don't be," he said. "I can see you barely had enough of our energy in you for the rift to allow you through. You're going to hurt for a while."

"I feel like I'm going to throw up," I said. "I'll try not to do it on you."

Darban laughed again. Already I could feel a little energy from him, soaking into me, and it made me feel a little better. Less shaky and stripped down to my bones.

"Where's Kir?" I asked, to distract myself. The two of them were hardly ever apart, after all.

"He's here," Darban said. "He's with me." The change in his voice when he talked about his partner was so noticeable that it was almost disgustingly sweet. Christ, I was so jealous of them. They'd gone through so much shit and still managed to come out together, still loving each other. They were just—stronger than me, I guess.

"And—how are you?" That question had several layers of meaning, and Darban seemed to get it.

"So far, fine," he said. "It's been manageable. Not always perfect, but we always knew that. But there are some things that have—truly been changed."

I didn't know what that really meant, and I would have liked to know more about it, just—not now. Not when my head was spinning and my stomach rolling and a hard knot of fear and anxiety was slithering around in my chest. Half of it was still from the beatdown the rift had given me, and the rest of it was from knowing how close to I was to being back to everything and everyone familiar here, and how they all had no idea what I'd done. How Darban was still treating me like a buddy he liked, not someone that had betrayed his people.

And I'd be seeing Keyd, probably soon. I didn't know if I was really prepared for that. I'd held myself together for weeks at this point, and pretty well too, considering. But there was more than a slight possibility that when I saw him, I'd completely lose it. The scary part was that I didn't know what I'd do. I'd never been in a situation like this, with a person like him, with a relationship like we had. I couldn't predict myself here.

I looked around, finally, for the first time since really getting back here. We were on the hill that was up above the far end of the valley. And the valley was empty. The grassy plain where all the tents had been was entirely clear, the only remaining hint that anything had been there was the way that the grass was still tamped down flat in a huge uneven square in the middle of the valley floor.

"You really are gone," I said to Darban. "So, everyone—your whole army—is in Clarylon?"

"Not all the forces," Darban said. "We never gather them all in a single place—too dangerous. But the majority, yes. In Clarylon."

"Why are you still here?"

"Last patrol," Darban said. "There's a small team of us here, just monitoring. We'll be closing the rift from here to your world in a few days, and then we'll be gone too."

"So you won't even be going over there, anymore."

"We will, just directly from Clarylon," Darban said. "Edo had already had its part in the war; we'd like to keep it out of the middle of things."

"Thoughtful," I muttered, not really meaning it. But I couldn't really take this out on Darban. He was just a soldier, he did what he was ordered to do. Except…he'd been promoted to being part of Keyd's inner circle, once Keyd had been made agistar. Maybe he had more to do with it than he would have before.

"Can you make the hill?" Darban asked, and I drew in a breath.

"In a minute," I said. "Just give me a minute."

Darban nodded, and I spent a few seconds willing my body to shape up and start behaving itself. I still felt tingly and half-numbed, but at least I didn't hurt as much anymore. As much.

While we stood there, waiting for me to recover a little, something quick and silver darted around in the grass under our feet. A shiny triangular head attached to a long grey body suddenly poked up out of the grass, and I startled just out of reflex. But it was one of those snakes, the ones that purred and didn't have teeth, watching us from the dark eyes on either side of its head. And I could see, along the back of its scales, a black singe mark streaked across its body.

"Hey," I said to it. This was the one that had befriended me, in an odd snake way, when I'd been here before. And I'd nearly zapped it to death once. "I'm sorry. You still mad at me?"

The snake wavered its head back and forth a little bit, like saying it wasn't sure if it was. I didn't blame it, really. And then, just as fast as it had shown up, it dropped back into the grass and slithered away. If that was a precursor to how the rest of this was going to go down, it was a bad sign.

"I never have any food to give that thing," I said, having this insane urge to cry and trying to joke instead, and I felt Darban laugh against me.

I heard quick footsteps behind us then, jangling metal and leather, as someone ran up from our left. I glanced around as much as my aching, unhappy body would let me, and was unsurprised to see it was Kir, also in full armor. He came right up to us, his hand automatically going out and catching my free arm. I must have looked pretty bad for him to automatically assume I needed more help standing. Although, it was easier to keep upright with both of them holding me.

"Alan," Kir said, sounding a little surprised, and bending down slightly to peer into my face. "That—is you, right?"

"s'me," I said, trying to smile at him. I wasn't sure if it worked or not. "How's it going, Kir?"

He didn't really answer. Instead he adjusted his grip on my arm, shifting more of my weight onto himself and off of Darban. Above my head, I heard them speaking to each other, in their own language.

"Kair ghell hout jiibardir?" Kir's voice said, quietly, like he was trying not to disturb me.

"Estaran bahn," was Darban's equally soft reply.

"Jaihn, mrij kohoj—"

"Kujkava."

Leather squeaked and something metal clinked, and I heard a little noise that sounded like a soft kiss, right over my head. It was weird and uncomfortable and cute all at the same time. I pretended I hadn't noticed.

"I don't think he can make the hill," Darban said, still quiet, but now understandable. "Will you—"

"Of course," Kir said, before I could even begin to figure out what Darban wanted him to do.

Kir went off, down the hill and to the right so that he got out of my range of vision pretty quickly. Darban and I stayed in place, and I probably could have made the hill by the time I heard people coming back. More than just Kir—it was at least ten other soldiers, a mix group of men and women, all in armor. They all came up the hillside and clustered around. Darban handed me off to Kir, who gripped me under the arms and held me steady, while he stepped forward to talk to them all. Very fast, confident, and in a very take-charge manner. Telling them all what to do, what to keep doing in this area.

I realized suddenly that Darban was leading this away team, or whatever it was. I'd almost forgotten that Keyd had put him in his gheret, which had bumped his status up a good amount. He was in charge of some things, obviously, now. I wondered if his being gay, and relationship with Kir, was out in the open or if they were still hiding. I remembered seeing them holding hands, the morning that I had left. They weren't doing anything like that now. They weren't even standing near each other.

When Darban was done giving his orders, he came back over to me, gripping my shoulder as if just to make sure I was still good standing.

"Kir and I can take you to Keydestas now," he said, and my throat locked up and my heart beat harder all together. Seeing him—that was all I wanted, but it wasn't going to be the reunion I'd want it to be. I had to tell him what I had done, everything. This was not a reunion between us or our relationship. This was a traitor coming to confess his crimes.

"Yeah," I managed to say. "Good."

#

This, naturally, meant going through another rift. I almost point-blank refused, but Darban and Kir assured me it wouldn't hurt me this time—that only the permanently fixed ones demanded a strong presence of matching energy going through them, and that the temporary one they could make together didn't. If I had been less tired and in far less pain and more coherently able to understand what he had even said, I might have argued more.

As it was, I just held onto Kir's wrist as he took me through the rift that two of their soldiers had made, Darban following, and bumped into his back when he stopped on the other side. I smelled the thick, salt air of the seaside and felt a bitter wet wind rippling my shirt along my back, and managed to lift my head and look around.

The rift had dumped us out at the edge of a dead, dull, depressing fucking city that didn't look anything like Lojt. This place looked far older, huge buildings of crumbling brick and pitted stone. I could hear the sound of the ocean and everything smelled heavy and wet and salty. We weren't on a beach, but we were definitely near it. Wherever we were, we were on a coast. Lojt was on the coast, too, but this definitely wasn't the same city. We were standing next to a large crumbling wall which seemed to be all that was left of the building it had one belonged to. I could see several other buildings nearby, most of them more complete, but obviously just as old and abandoned.

"Where is this?" I asked, as Darban and Kir moved forward with me. I was actually fine to walk on my own now, I barely hurt anymore and I was pretty close to feeling normal. But I didn't mind the support. It felt nice, that at least for right now, they wanted to take care of me.

"Abyah," Kir said. "A very old city—from long before our race was divided. But it has not been inhabited for centuries. It's—well. Mostly ruins, now, as you can see."

I definitely could see that. The building we were walking near to now had all four walls, but no roof, and a lot of the bricks had just collapsed and crumbled in. There were frames of windows embedded in the remaining brick, and I could see the jagged remainders of what looked like colored glass, sticking out in places from the framework. In other places huge pillars stood on their own, with broken off arches reaching towards nothing. Some of the ground was still stone, but in most places grass had grown up through it and dirt had covered it or eroded it away. These weren't like the ruins in Edo, which had been so ancient that they were almost faded completed into the landscape, but they were definitely old and abandoned.

As we walked, I started noticing weird crystal things, growing in spots on some of the old walls. They looked like glass flowers, or like dark glittering gemstones. They were all blackish-purple, glimmering even in the dusky dark of this perpetually dim world. Some of them were huge, as big as a curled up person would be, huge faceted petals unfurled along the stones. I wasn't sure I really wanted to know what they were.

"Why are you here?" I asked. "Why not Lojt?"

"That would be the obvious choice," Kir said. "It would be where the clarbach would expect us to go."

"Are you expecting them to show up?" I said, my throat getting a little tighter and my blood running a little colder.

"No," Darban said. "But there's no reason to not prepare for it."

"Oh, sure," I said, my stomach still clenching unpleasantly. "Right."

"We've set up several different camps, spread out from each other," Darban said. "This is where Keydestas last was, I assume he's still here now."

"I could send ahead to see," Kir said, but Darban shook his head.

We were clearing the last of the ruined buildings now, coming around the curve of a large, rocky hill. I saw the camp right away, set up on the side of a sloping hillside that sat to the left-hand side of the city, if one was looking at it from the direction we were coming from. There was no real way to tell directions here, like east or north, due to there being no sun and no shadows. It didn't look like anywhere near as many tents as had been in that valley in Edo, so I guessed they really had spread out. Maybe that was a war tactic thing.

Right at the start of the line of tents, at the base of the hill, there was a group of people, standing around in a close circle. Not dressed in armor, but definitely in some get-business-done type of clothing, with lots of leather guards and things strapped over vital areas and limbs. I saw Rysa first. She was on the far side of the circle, facing in my direction. Her short hair drifted around her jaw in the breeze, and she looked very serious and determined. Not much different from normal, then. She looked so familiar and normal that I felt this pang go through my chest, like a stab of nostalgia.

I honestly didn't care who the other people were after that, because standing next to Rysa was Keyd. A guy standing across the circle from him had been blocking my view of his face, so I hadn't been able to tell it was him until the man shifted and we'd gotten closer. Keyd was wearing all black, an outfit that even without armor looked battle-ready and dangerous, fitting closely to his body in a really—my mouth went inappropriately dry—damn attractive way. The breeze was pushing at his hair, flicking it around his temples and over his eyes.

I wondered, vaguely, why I hadn't felt him. We had a bond, after all. And Rysa was included in it, too. But I couldn't sense either of them at all through it. But I'd also been keeping all the oen energy in me in a tight little bundle in the center of my chest. After so many days in the clarbach city, it had become habit. But now, I let go of it, not with any aim or refinement, but just to open everything up again. I felt energy curl through my body and push out a little, down the invisible lines of the bond.

Both Keyd and Rysa reacted at the same time. They started, their heads jerking around, and Keyd actually stumbled to the side a little. It was almost like I'd just opened my mouth and bellowed "I'm here!" at them. Keyd clutched at Rysa's arm, and I could see how huge his eyes had gotten even from this distance. He was looking at her in something like panic, completely losing face.

I stopped walking, just because I couldn't make my body respond to the command to keep moving. Kir and Darban just dropped out of my senses entirely, falling to my peripheral vision and then just..disappearing. I had never felt this much terror or anticipation in my life, and definitely not mixed together. I hadn't expected to have to deal with this so soon—I hadn't expected Keyd to be right fucking here.

Rysa saw me—saw me physically—first. I saw her eyes flick over me once and then come back and catch, widening. And through the bond I felt a little kick in her heartbeat, a slight excited acceleration. I saw her mouth open and say one single word, that I couldn't hear or even guess at from here. At her side Keyd's head jerked up, and eyes locked onto me.

It was like the entire world tunneled down to just the two of us. Everyone— everything—else just disappeared. I couldn't have cared about anything else, even if the entire clarbach army had suddenly crashed down on our heads. Keyd stepped forward, nearly shouldering one of the guys he'd been talking with out of the way, and then he really was the only thing I was seeing. Everything else faded out to a dim grey hum until Keyd was the only focus, walking towards me in a stride that started slow and then gained speed, until he was running, nearly sprinting towards me. I couldn't do anything but stand still and let him come to me.

And then it was like every clichéd movie in the world, every stupid romantic reunion scene. Keyd got to me and grabbed the sides of my face, fingers sliding rough into my hair, yanking my head up and kissing me—hard, open mouthed, breathing hot and trembling. His arms closed hard and crushing around me and I grabbed at him back, touching him anywhere I could, feeling the real solidness of him and the familiar lines and angles of his body, finally moving my way up to his hair and clutching my hands into it, keeping him dragged down against me. Christ, this was—this was being home, right here.

Keyd's hands were moving all over me in turn, drawing up the sides of my waist and ribs, sliding around to my back, over my shoulder blades, pressing over my chest. Like he was also making sure I was here, and real. Finally he cupped my face and pulled back a little, pressing his thumbs along my cheekbones. His pale blue eyes were overly bright and watery, which was awful to see. I couldn't stand this.

"You're back," he said, a quiet, reverent whisper. He was shaking, a little. "Alan. You came back."

"Yeah," I said, roughly. Fuck, this was going to be impossible. How could I look him in the eyes and tell him how I'd betrayed him and his entire people? How could I do that—when he was looking at me like this? Like I had just completed his entire fucking universe by showing up here. It didn't take much to see that he'd had just as much trouble with our time apart as I had. Which was both reassuring and fucking awful. Why did we both have to feel shit like this? It made everything so goddamn difficult.

He took my face in his hands and kissed me again, so hard and long that I started seeing spots in my vision, and my chest started to cramp from not breathing. When he pulled back, just a little, I realized that at some point I'd wrapped my arms around him, twisting my hands hard into the back of his shirt. Even after so long, this still felt so natural. It was like I'd never been gone.

"Keyd—" I said, with extreme difficulty. "We have to talk."

"Good." Keyd turned from me, looking back towards Rysa and the others standing near her—all of them, I suddenly realized, were the other members of Keyd's gheret; his uncle and that guy who'd been his father's antshil and another guy I didn't recognize at all. Oh Christ, awkward.

"We're done for today," Keyd said to all of them brusquely, sliding his hand down to mine and entangling our fingers. And without another word he walked off, leaving them all behind and taking me with him. I was so overwhelmed—by this, by him, by everything—that I couldn't even talk, let alone protest, let alone put up a fight against him pulling me along.

Keyd had apparently gotten less reserved in my absence. He'd just made out with me in front of about ten other people, and then unsubtly dragged me off towards his tent without much of a doubt about what he intended. I especially couldn't doubt it, because I could feel what he wanted through the bond. I could feel how fast his heart was going, matching an even pace with the speed mine usually beat at, and I could feel every nuance of his body's arousal.

He pulled me into the tents on the hillside, down a few rows and then into a small and fairly indistinct looking tent, nothing like the one he'd had before. There was almost nothing inside it—I got a glimpse of a little low table and a mess of blankets that was a bed, before Keyd stopped short and turned around. I pretty much stumbled right up against him, and he caught the sides of my face and held me still, the tips of his fingers pushing a little at the roots of my hair. He leaned down until his forehead nudged against mine, hesitantly, and then rested there.

"Alan," Keyd said, so quietly I hardly heard it. There was something shaking and vulnerable in his voice, a sound I'd never heard out of him before. "Alan."

"Yeah," I said, lifting my own hands up to his face, cradling his jaw, feeling his breath on my face. Fuck. Here he was, real and just—real. "Yeah, yeah, I—Christ."

I hadn't realized just how hard this would be. I'd known it would be hard, just not…not like this. I had forgotten how he was, what it was like to be with him, near him, even just like this, in real life. Memories didn't even come close. I held onto him and didn't say anything, because I just couldn't handle it yet. Not yet. I just needed a little of this. Of how familiar he was, his body and the way he smelled and the way his hands felt on my skin and just—everything.

"I was calling for you," Keyd breathed against me. "But I never expected you would feel it."

Calling for me—maybe that's what those intermittent, bizarre and inexplicable feelings of being drawn towards somewhere had been. If he'd been here in Clarylon, the same time I was, even if we were separated by an entire continent or however much land or water, the antshil bond between us would have still worked. I knew it only didn't cross between worlds.

"I did," I said, catching at the back of his neck, palming one hand down the side of his face, hating myself every second that I couldn't tell him why I was really back. "I did."

Keyd made a soft sound deep in his throat, and leaned his head harder against mine. "Why didn't you come back sooner?" he asked, drawing his fingers slowly over my face, smoothing my hair out of my eyes.

Disgusting guilt hit me like a solid punch to the stomach. "I—"

"No." He pressed his fingers over my mouth. "Don't. I shouldn't ask. I—just that you're here now. Alan, I—"

He cut himself off by sliding his hand away from my face and putting his own mouth there instead. I let him. I let him because this would be the last time. I parted my lips and pressed my tongue against his and felt his breath curl into every space in my mouth, his hand firm at the small of my back and his body bending against me. I shoved my hands into his hair and held him against me, tugging him forward and suddenly there was the edge of the low table, bumping against my legs, and I couldn't move back any further. Keyd was overwhelming, everywhere, consuming me with his presence and warmth and touch—and surrendering to it was all I wanted to do.

"Want you," Keyd breathed, already starting to shrug out of his shirt, pulling one-handed at the hem of mine. His other hand was curled hard in my hair, gripping possessively, yanking at it by the roots. "Need you."

Oh, fuck, yes. It was what I wanted, all I needed too. I wanted his familiar body on mine, his hands and his mouth and everything else. I wanted to be touched the way that he touched me, not like Eleon had wanted to or the way Law actually had. I wanted him to fuck me, or to fuck him myself, it didn't matter, as long as we could be together like this. I wanted him with every inch of my being. I wanted him so badly my entire body hurt from it. I hadn't ever known that aching for someone could really be literal until this second.

But it didn't mean I should have him, or that we should do this. In fact, we had to stop. Right now. I couldn't let him do this, think everything was all right, that I'd come back only to him, when none of it was all right at all. This couldn't go further. It was time—time to confess all the fucking stupid things I'd done. And lose him, probably forever.

"Stop for a second," I forced myself to say, trying to pull away from him so I could talk. He ignored me, clutching his fingers into my hair and dragging our faces back together. He pushed me up against the low table and onto it, sliding me back so I was sitting on the edge. He nudged my knees open and stepped in between my legs, pressing up hard and hot against me.

"Keyd, stop!" I bellowed, and shoved him, hard, with every ounce of force I had in me. It was enough to stumble him back a pace, his eyes flickering wide and a little wild.

"We have to talk!" I barked out, already feeling the embarrassing, stupid heat pressing up behind my eyes. "I—I wasn't just at home this whole time, I went to—I didn't just, I did something, I—"

"I don't care," Keyd nearly snarled, lunging back at me. His hands went to my shoulders and pushed me flat back to the table, his body covering mine, pressing down hot and hard and insistent. "It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does, goddammit!" But his mouth closed over mine in the next second and I reacted without meaning to, arcing up into him and letting him run his hands over me, refamiliarizing himself with me, because I'd missed this, and once I told him what I'd done we would never do it again. We would really be over. We wouldn't just break up—we'd have the division of my betrayal between us, a traitor to his people. And that was deeper than any stupid relationship issue.

So I let him take my shirt off. I let him take my jeans off. I let him take everything else I was wearing off, including my glasses, in that strange gentle way he had of sliding them off my face, folding them up, and setting them carefully aside. I let him move us from the wooden table to the bed in the corner, guiding me down to the rumpled mess of blankets. I let him kiss his way over my body, sliding his firm, warm hands over every inch of my skin. And when he said my name, quietly, a soft and almost reverent whisper, I gave up.

I kissed him so that I didn't have to look at his face, into his eyes, see the way he was looking at me with such enraptured disbelief, like he still couldn't believe I was here and real. I took off his clothes with trembling hands, barely able to manage all the buttons and buckles and straps all over them. Keyd watched me do it, his eyes bright, sometimes helping when my hands shook too hard to do it. But he was shaking too, as badly as I was. There was such a low and bitter ache in my stomach that I could hardly breathe.

I pulled back a little then, took the sides of his face in my hands, looked back into his eyes. This close, I could see the strained creases around them, the shadows in his skin and the exhaustion and loneliness etched into every line of his face. It didn't look like being the agistar wasn't going easy for him.

"Keyd," I said to him. "Do anything you want, with me. Anything you want—I'll give it to you."

This would be our last time, and he deserved that. I would do anything he wanted. For one time, I could make it about him, rather than me. Before I tore everything down and destroyed it forever. I would do anything for him.

"I want—" Keyd said, and his throat worked a little. His hand touched the side of my face, and his fingers were trembling. "I want you to do it. I want to feel you, I want—" He made a strange sound in his throat and closed off, falling silent.

"Okay," I said, quietly. I knew what he wanted. "Okay."

I had told him anything, and I meant it, even if I didn't want to. I didn't want to be the one in control, it felt even more like leading him on, promising him that everything was okay when it was so far from that. But I would do it for him, because it was what he wanted, the last thing I could give him. But I couldn't look at him. I urged him over and moved behind him, my chest to his back, wrapping my arms around him and holding so tightly I probably put bruises on him. Like he'd done to me last time. I pressed my forehead to the back of his neck and felt his breathing go faster and rougher, the little sounds me made low in his throat as I lost myself inside him.

It was rougher, more frantic, than any of the other times we'd ever done this. Something strained and unsoftened between us, a desperation of tight muscle and hard bone under skin. Almost like we both knew this would be the last time. His energy went just as wild as it always had, but this time I was able to keep enough forethought to shield from it, with the trick I'd taught myself in Uillad. I kept that protective invisible bubble pushed out from myself, so that Keyd's energy snapped against it and ricocheted away. His unmatched wings had come out, again, stretching wide inside the dimly lit tent and casting strange shadows everywhere, each suspended piece shimmering with every movement.

I mouthed things against the back of his neck, how much I loved him, how sorry I was, unable to say the words outloud but instead confessing them against his skin and hoping somehow I'd be forgiven. I hoped this was what he wanted, I hoped that I was making him happy, for just one last time. And maybe, even if he hated me after he knew what I'd done, he'd still have this memory. Something that he could remember as good. I always would. Keyd was a person I would never be able to forget, not in the course of my entire life.

Afterwards, I rolled off him, turning away towards the wall of the tent, unable to even look at his face. But Keyd took that as an invitation to wrap himself around me, pressing up against my back, breathing hot against my neck, dampening the hair there. His arm slipped over my side and curved around my chest, palm resting flat under my collarbone. I felt warm and safe and protected, and absolutely miserable. I stared against the dimness of the tent wall, heat choking in my throat, hating this, hating myself.

Don't tell him, a part of me was whispering, over and over. Don't. If you tell him, you'll lose him. You'll lose this. You'll never find someone else who cares about you the way that he does—this is once in a lifetime. You've found something truly good, so don't fuck it up. Don't do it.

"Oh," Keyd said, finally, after we'd been lying there for several long, agonizing minutes. His hand absently stroked a little at my collarbone. "You had something you wanted to tell me?"

I couldn't answer for at least another minute, because if I had opened my mouth I might have started screaming or laughing hysterically. Maybe both. And as it was, the only thing that came out when I did finally talk, was a strangled and pathetic, "I'm sorry."

Keyd's hand moved, brushed along the base of my throat, and he nuzzled against the back of my neck. "For what?"

"For what I—did. What I've done."

"What is it?"

Words failed me again; I couldn't say anything. I kept still and miserably silent, staring into the shadowy corner and trying to ignore how the lazy, satisfied feeling of Keyd's body start to sift away through the bond, a nervous tension replacing it. I knew he sensed my own anxiety, and probably even my guilt. The ache in my stomach was physical, and it was strong enough to get through to him.

"Alan," Keyd said, carefully. "What did you do?"

"I—"

Keyd sat up, bracing himself on one elbow. His hand slid along my face and turned me to look at him. There was a sort of quiet concern in his expression, over the uncertainty that I felt through the bond.

"Alan," he said. "What is it?"

"Goddammit," I said, mortifying heat pushing up in my eyes again. I couldn't look at his face; I stared at the canvas ceiling to the left of his head. "I—it was stupid, I know it was, but it was the only thing I—the only option. I had to do something, because you weren't going to, and—"

Keyd's fingers suddenly seized into my shoulders, digging in between muscle and bone, and I grit my teeth together to keep from wincing.

"What did you do?" he asked, very quietly. Very calmly. That was almost worse than anger.

"I went to—I was in Uillad," I said, haltingly, and Keyd's grip got even harder. "I had to do something."

"What," Keyd said, again, even more quietly than before, "did you do?"

"I told them fucking everything, all right?" I snarled, unable to take this calmness from him. "I told them what you were doing; what your real plans were, that you were coming here, not to Earth. I only told them once I had proof they were leaving Earth, and they have been. That was the deal, that was the trade. They leave Earth alone and I tell them what you were doing."

Keyd sat up so abruptly that I almost thought he was pulling back to hit me. Despite the fact that he'd never done anything like that to me before. I flinched, badly, and then felt terrible about it when all Keyd did was look down at me, his eyebrows pulled in just a little. There was a weird blankness in his eyes that I couldn't read.

"Then, they know," he said. Very soft, and still perfectly calm. "That our forces are here, that the effort in your world is a farce. That we've come back to Clarylon."

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, that's what they know."

Keyd got up without another word. Still completely fucking composed. But I felt the bond fade and go quiet between us—Keyd had closed it off on his side. I stayed on the bed, staring at the canvas wall as Keyd quietly, quickly, and methodically, put his clothes back on and then left the tent. I didn't both getting up, getting dressed again. I just stayed in the rumpled bed, watching the ceiling.

I lay there in silence for a pretty long time. It took a good several minutes for my heart to slow down to a regular pace again, and even then guilt and anger and panic was still twisting up in my chest, making it hard to breathe. My stomach ached and I just felt more miserable than I could even explain in words. I'd done it, I'd told him, and now—now it was over. He had, literally, walked out on me. I didn't know what would happen next, but it wouldn't be anything to look forward to.

At least ten minutes passed before anything happened. And then it was two oenclar I'd never seen before, pushing through the tent flap and spacing out to flank each side of the door. Blocking it. One had an oen mark that looked almost like a Celtic knot on his left cheek, and the other had a small scar through his lower lip. They were in half-armor—shoulder plates and chest plates only—and looked pretty serious.

"We're to—place you under arrest," Celtic-knot said, with a hesitancy that was bordering on confusion. Maybe they'd seen Keyd making out with me and dragging me off caveman-style not even twenty minutes ago, and this sudden turn around would be baffling for anybody. Except me. I wasn't surprised, not at all. Hurt, maybe, yeah. But I'd done this to myself and whatever Keyd wanted to do as retribution was fitting. Arresting me was actually the most minor response I had expected.

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, okay. I'm not going to resist, or anything," I added, because both of them were looking like they were afraid to get too near me. Maybe they'd heard about the last time someone had tried to arrest me. I sat up, the thin sheet sliding mostly off me, reminding me that I was still entirely naked.

I glanced up at the two oenclar, who seemed to be fairly unconcerned about it. "Might want to let me get dressed."

#

Several minutes later, I left the tent bracketed by the two clarjja, a pair of actual metal shackles holding my hands behind my back. Celtic-knot guy had been carrying them. They weren't necessary, since I really had no intention of resisting, but it was probably just protocol.

And there were people out here, and more of them than had been at the bottom of the hill. I saw Eldronrhet and some of his Worthy groupies, and got this tight, tense feeling in my chest that had nothing to do with my situation, and everything to do with how much I hated those guys. One of them was talking to Keyd, a little off to the side. Keyd had his game face on—blank, neutral, nodding slightly as he listened. His arms were crossed low on his chest, and he looked unruffled and calm. Like the last twenty minutes hadn't happened at all.

Rysa was standing near him, and as the two clarjja led me past, she turned to him, grabbing the back of his shirt.

"Keyd," she said, in a voice that was reprimanding, pleading, and demanding all at once. He didn't look at her. Or at me. He was staring off into the tents, his mouth pressed into a thin line. He'd closed off the bond—I felt absolutely nothing from him. Not even when I pushed as hard as I could, trying to get through. I could feel Rysa, her pounding heartbeat, her body shaking in dismay. She was furious at Keyd on my behalf, which I knew I didn't deserve.

Celtic-knot and scar-mouth took me to a tent in practically the center of the camp, put me inside, and attached the metal cuffs around my wrists to a plate that was stuck firmly in the ground, via a chain. And then they left. And I was stuck there, bolted to the ground and alone. Until only about a minute later, I felt a movement in the bond, and the flaps pushed open and Rysa strode in.

"Rysa—" I started, but didn't get any further before she swooped down on me, dropping to one knee and catching me into a hard, tight hug.

"I'm so glad to see you, Alan," she said into my shoulder, which stunned me even more than the hug. She kept her arms around me for a few more seconds, and then pulled away, gripping me by the arms.

I blinked hard at her, startled by—well, everything. "You heard what I did, right? I mean, you do know?"

"Of course I know," she said, straightforward. "And yes, I'm angry. But it doesn't mean I'm not glad to see you."

"Oh," I said. I was getting that thick feeling in my chest that usually preceded some sort of stupid emotional breakdown. I held back on it as best I could. "It's good to see you too." My voice came out squeezed and tiny and not at all the casual way I'd meant. "I missed you."

She looked at me, wordless for a moment, then came back and hugged me again. I tried to reciprocate, best I could with only my shoulders and head free to use. Her hair tickled my face and she smelled salty like the sea air, and like leather and pine. Not a girl smell at all, but she was a warrior after all.

"You have to tell me," she said, when she pulled away, "what happened."

"A lot," I said. "A lot happened. But I guess, the most important thing—I talked with their agistar, and I just—told her everything. She's pulling out of my world, in return. It was just—I had to do it."

"You spoke with her," Rysa said, a little flatly. "You spoke with her, yourself. With Aleif."

"Yeah," I said. "I don't even know how I managed that. But I did."

Rysa rubbed at her forehead and looked like she couldn't even believe that I was so crazy.

"Ociir helped me," I said, and she started a little. "He really did a lot for me, I mean—I wouldn't have been able to do anything if not for him. I think he thought it was payment for me helping the two of you. You, mostly."

Rysa just went tight-mouthed and didn't say anything. I felt like I had to say something to fill up the silence, anything at all.

"That book," I said, the first thing I landed on. "That you gave me. It's in my back pocket."

Rysa gave me this look, like that was the last thing she cared about.

"Alan—" she said, closing her eyes briefly.

"I read it," I kept on, because if she tried to say anything about Keyd or what I'd done or this whole damn mess, I was going to fall apart. "Well, I didn't read it, because I can't. But, your sister did."

"My…sister," Rysa said, sounding just slightly fainter.

"Ohean," I said. "I met her. I met most of your family. When I was over there—Ociir really helped me out. I stayed with them, and—I spent time with all of them. Most Ohean, and Eleon. I know you don't actually know Eleon, but—he's a good kid. You'd probably like him."

"Ociir has told me about him," Rysa said. She was looking at the ground, not at me. "I'd hoped someday to meet him. He must be twenty two or three by now."

"Twenty one," I said. "Yeah. He's a nice kid. I mean, they all—your family—they're all good people. I can tell you about them, anything you want to know. Ociir's engaged now, I don't know if you knew that."

"To Ishan?" Rysa asked and, a little surprised, I nodded. "He's spoken of her for years to me. I always thought they might—well. It doesn't surprise me. I'm happy for him."

"Ieta wanted to know if you were married," I said, and Rysa snorted.

"She would," she said. "She always agreed with the idea that no woman is complete without a partner and children.

"Then, uh, why doesn't she? I don't…think she's married."

"Our mother died long ago," Rysa said, glancing away from me and towards the door of the tent. "Ieta…has always tried to take her place, from what Ociir has told me. She has never had time to start a family, because she was playing mother to what was left of hers."

"Yeah," I said. "I guess…yeah. She did kind of act like that."

"It's strange to talk about my family with you," Rysa said, almost smiling. "It's odd that you've seen them, far more recently than I have."

"Ohean—" I started, and then remembered. "She gave me something for you. It's—my front pocket, here." I tried to motion with my chin. "I can't really get it myself, but it's okay for you to grab it."

Ohean's necklace had gotten all tangled up with the one Keyd had given me, and Rysa spent a moment straightening them out. And then, she looked at the square metal disk rather than the red glass bead.

"Yeah, uh, that one's mine," I said. She might not have ever seen it before, since I'd left almost right after Keyd had given it to me.

"I know," Rysa said. "Keyd—"

Whatever she had been going to say about him, it seemed to be too much effort. She broke off, exhaled, closed her eyes, and then slipped the dogtag and broken cord into her own pocket. I didn't even have the energy to protest against it. She could have that one too, if she really wanted it. It wasn't doing me any good. It was time I stopped being so sentimental about it, anyway.

"That other one," I said, nodding my head at the red glass bead. "Ohean made that. That's what she does. She and Ieta, I guess, they have some sort of shop together. You probably knew that."

Rysa nodded once. "I do know some of these things. Whatever Ociir told me of them when we were able to meet each other. But…I appreciate hearing from you, also. It makes it more real, somehow."

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I get that."

Rysa slipped the necklace cord over her head and tightened the knot at the back, so that the piece of red glass rested right at the dip of her throat. Against her pale skin and dark hair, it stood out like a splash of blood. She brushed her thumb against it, and then looked back up at me.

"Then you know what that book is, now," she said, and I nodded. Not really surprised by the topic change—Rysa wasn't a gooey sentimental type of girl, after all.

"Yeah," I said. "And I get it. I get why you gave it to me. It, I mean—it did give me more perspective. On Keyd and—but it doesn't really change anything. I just understand more about him, I guess."

"That's what I wanted," Rysa said. "What I hoped you would. This is the sort of thing Keyd would never have told you on his own—how he grew up, what his life has always been. Even I don't fully know all of it; when we met, he was older, and already mostly who he is now. But I thought if you knew better, what it's been like for him—"

"Yeah," I said. "I do. And it sucks. It sucks that it's like that and it'll never stop. It sucks that he didn't have a choice but to turn into this, but—if he wasn't who he is, maybe I wouldn't even feel the way I do about him. I mean, Christ, it barely makes sense, but—I like him the way he is. Yeah, maybe he's got some issues he could sort out and some emotional stuff to work on, but—I don't really want him to be different."

Rysa just looked at me for a long moment, and I started feeling a little stupid and embarrassed about saying all that.

"I came back because I felt like I should," I said, trying to switch topics a little bit. I could feel exhaustion creeping up fast on me—this entire talk with Rysa had been completely draining. "Because he deserved it, to know what I did, to hear it from me. And I know—Christ, I do know—that we, our relationship or whatever we had, isn't going to survive it. I didn't really come here for that—I want to face whatever it is that I deserve, for doing this."

"Alan, the punishment for traitors is usually execution," Rysa said, dropping her hands to my shoulders and gripping, hard.

"Whatever they decide," I said. I felt so tired suddenly that I hardly even cared. "Whatever Keyd decides. That's what should happen."

Rysa reeled back, and hit me. And not like a girly little slap, either. She broadsided me with the back of her arm, enough to knock me right down to the ground. I couldn't even get up again, both because I was surprised as hell and because my arms were still held immobile behind me. I just had to lie helplessly like an overturned turtle, the side of my face pulsing, gaping at her.

"Don't ever speak like that again, Alan," she said, lowering her arm. Her voice shook, and her eyes were bright and wet. "Don't ever."

"I—I'm sorry," I managed, still utterly stunned.

Rysa looked pretty shocked at herself, and I had a thought that she probably hadn't actually meant to hit me. She'd never done anything like that before, not even close—but we'd never been in this tightly strung and emotional of a situation, either. Maybe it was getting to her, and she didn't know how to react. She wasn't alone in that.

"I—I'm sorry, Alan," she said, stammering a little. She reached out and put her hand to the side of my face, where she'd hit me. I felt a shiver of energy, and then a feeling like something cool and jelly-like being touched to my skin. The pain faded at once. "I'm sorry."

"So am I," I said. I meant for everything, this time.

Rysa helped me back up to a sitting position, since I really couldn't do it on my own. Once I was up again, we just looked at each other for a moment, quietly. Finally, Rysa drew in a little breath. "It isn't Keyd's decision you should be worried about," she said.

"The Worthies," I said, remembering them very suddenly. How had I managed to forget them ever? They had been the biggest problem the first time around, and at that point I'd done absolutely nothing but shack up with their prince. Now, I'd betrayed their entire people. They'd have way more reason, and justification, for anything they wanted to do to me now. "They'll try to kill me again, won't they?"

Rysa sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers. "Alan, Keyd would order his own execution before he would allow you to be killed. I have no idea what lengths he'll go to in order to stop it if the Worthies actually pass that sentence on you. The way he acts, concerning you—it's never logical. I trust every decision he makes, except when it involves you."

"Thanks," I said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. I always knew Keyd was kind of an idiot when it came to doing things that I was involved with, but I didn't know that Rysa had actually stopped trusting him when he made related decisions. Although, considering…maybe it was a wise move on her part. Keyd was stupid about me. A lot of it was, I thought, because he'd never had a relationship before. Not a real one. He didn't know how to limit himself.

"It's not just you, Alan," Rysa said, with a tired smile. "He made unwise decisions about me, too, when Ociir brought me to him. When he has something he can truly care about—he doesn't let go. Whatever, or whoever, it is, he protects it beyond logical effort. Every decision he made to help me back then was a risk. I had just come directly from the enemy of his people, there was no reason to trust me other than I'd been outcast by them myself. I was young, I was terrified, and Keyd did everything for me. He saved me, he protected me, he gave me a new name and a new family and…a new life."

Rysa had never talked about herself this much before, and it was kind of fascinating. I knew how close she and Keyd were, and I knew what he had done for her, but I had never really realized what it had meant. How much she would have been mistrusted here, how alone and friendless she would have been. Keyd had really been everything to her.

"What does the name he gave you mean?" I asked. All their names meant something, and I knew what Keyd's meant, even what my own somehow translated to, but I didn't know Rysa's.

"It means new child," she said. "It was the first word he ever spoke to me. I couldn't even speak his language when we met, and I didn't know how to use frequency yet. But that was what he called me."

"And how was any of this stupid?" I said. "He did it for you—how can you say it was stupid?"

"Because he shouldn't have done any of it," Rysa said. "Being who he was, what he was—he could have destroyed how was he was viewed by his people, suspected of being a separatist or sympathizer. But because Maedajon also accepted me…there was very little resistance. But it shouldn't have worked out like that. Keyd made wrong choices that only became right through luck. He must have had his reasons, for doing what he did, but that is one thing about him I've never understood. Why he did that for me.

"But I know why he would do it for you," she continued, giving me a look. And it's nothing against you that I can't let him do it. You know I love you and Keyd like brothers. And despite everything, I would like…I want both of you to be able to have what you want. But you must know that everything is working against you. And it might always. But Keyd will fight for you far beyond what is rational, and this time there isn't anyone else to help him recover from it. I can't see him destroy his life over you."

"Neither can I, you know," I said. "He probably never told you this, but—back when we first started this, I told him that if you didn't accept me as part of his life that way, I wasn't going to make him choose. I couldn't have come between the two of you like that. And I can't watch him ruin himself over me either."

Rysa sat back a little, her eyes wider. "You told him that," she said. Then she shook her head a little and muttered something I couldn't hear. Then she looked back at me.

"You really are the best person he could have ever found," she said, which startled me. And I could feel myself heating up in the face a little. She'd told me once that she was glad it was me that Keyd was with, but I'd thought at the time that actually meant she was glad he'd finally chosen someone other than Ociir. I hadn't thought she actually meant she was glad it was me, specifically.

She shifted forward a little then, slid her hand around the back of my neck, and nudged her forehead against mine. I wanted to put my arms around her, but I couldn't, because I was still handcuffed to the ground.

"I wish things were easier," she said. "I wish that the two of you could be left alone, to be happy together. It won't ever be like that, Alan. You'll always have to fight."

"I know," I said. "I know, and I was willing to do that. But now it—I mean, after this, there's no way. We have to be together to fight and I just don't think…we can be. This whole thing, the war and—it's so much bigger than us, and I just don't think we can survive it. Not without destroying ourselves. I mean, we almost have already."

"I know," Rysa said, and she sounded a little exasperated now. "I've watched you both do it. Keyd has nearly torn himself apart over what he did. And now here you are, telling me you'd willingly face execution because of what you did. The two of you—" she shook her head, exhaling hard through her nose. "You tend to be a little dramatic. Of course the decisions both of you made were serious, and they affected the entire war, changed a lot of things. But it isn't worth death, for either of you. And both of you are stronger together, which I hope you've realized. Right now, that's what you need."

"Christ, Rysa, he's furious with me," I said. "I'm under arrest, do you remember that?" I lifted and dropped my hands, clanking the chain I was attached to around. "I don't think he wants to be anywhere near me."

"He isn't angry," Rysa said. "He's hurt and confused, but he isn't angry. And, you have to remember that he is expected to treat you as a traitor. He's still the agistar, and you'll have to decipher for yourself how much of his behavior is a result of what he is expected to do, and how much of it he really feels. You need to talk to him."

"Yeah, I'd fucking love to talk to him, except for the part where I'm stuck in this goddamn tent and he'd need to come in here for that," I said.

"He will," Rysa said. "He is meeting with the Worthies now, but I know he'll come speak with you, afterwards."

"Good," I said, terrified of what that conversation would be like. I really didn't know how to explain myself. I had a few excuses, but I wasn't sure if they were really any good.

"I can't tell you exactly what to prepare for, but—just remember this is going to be hard, for Keyd, for both of you. There's so much, so many things, intersecting with the two of you. You have to be strong, for this." Rysa touched the top of my head, not like a pat, but like she was blessing me.

"I'll try," I said to her, wondering if I even could.

#

It was only about ten minutes after Rysa left, that Keyd showed up. I still wasn't prepared for it. I don't think I ever could have prepared for it.

The tent flap snapped open, and he came in like a furious whirlwind. He was wearing that same all-black outfit from before, everything molded just right against his body and his loose hair tossed out of his face—he looked feverishly beautiful and incredibly fucking hot. If the first words out of his mouth had been, "let's fuck", I would have let him in a second. Jesus Christ, he wore righteous anger well. He was just blazing with it, and it scared and aroused the hell out of me.

"Alan," he said, in this hard, steel-edged voice that sounded nothing like I'd ever heard from him. It was cold and unforgiving, and suddenly I wasn't the tiniest bit turned on anymore. It was slapped right the fuck out of me by that petrifying goddamn voice. Rysa had said he wasn't angry at me, that'd I'd have to figure out how much of what he did and said was just part of the agistar routine—but right now, all of this felt genuine. I did know Keyd, I knew how to read him pretty well, and this wasn't an act. He was really this angry.

"How could you have done this?" Keyd said, in that same godawful tone. There was absolutely nothing in his ice-blue eyes—they were steeled, hard, and focused. There was nothing of Keyd in there, not the man I knew, the man who had been my fierce and gentle lover. This was Keydestas, the agistar, a warrior king. And I was terrified of him.

"I had to do something," I heard myself saying, again, my only excuse. In this moment, I knew I meant nothing to him. He was seeing me only as a traitor, someone who had betrayed his people to their enemies. I wasn't Alan to him, anymore than he was Keyd to me. This was a war brought into this room, burned down to the space between us, and in this moment we were enemies.

"You betrayed us," Keyd said. Not me, but us. He was speaking for his entire people, as I'd expected.

"I had no choice." I said. "I had no choice, I had to do what I did. You forced me to it. What would you have done, Keyd? You know what it's like, to lose your world—in my position what would you have done?"

"There is never a reason to turn to an enemy," Keyd said. He was wearing a real sword at his side today, buckled to a belt around his waist, and his hand dropped to the hilt of it. "Never."

"They aren't my enemies! They're yours—they're the enemies of your people and you. Not me."

"You were my lover!" Keyd spat. He had lost a little of the edge to his voice, and sounded much less controlled. Still. A deep chill ran through me at what he'd just said. In past tense. Of course we were over, I knew we were over, but hearing him say it, just like that— "Didn't that mean anything to you?

"Don't fucking talk to me about loyalty," I said, so furious that I could hardly think, and I had no idea what words I was going to say until I was saying them. "You turned on me, Keyd, you turned on me and my race and my entire fucking world! And then you accuse me of disloyalty? How—how fucking dare you. How can you expect me to hold loyalty to you, when you didn't have any for me?"

I think I might have been yelling, but over the roar of blood in my ears it was hard to tell. Everything sounded thick and far away and unreal. I could barely focus on Keyd's face—my vision was hot and jumpy and maybe a little watery but I couldn't even care about that right now.

"It was my duty." Keyd's voice sounded louder too, and horrible in that same unrelenting, ruthless tone. But I could feel energy just coursing off of him, shuddering out in uncontrolled bursts. He was totally losing it, just as much as I was. "To my father and my people and myself. It was what I had to do and I did it—I am doing it. But you might have destroyed everything, any chance we had to get our home back!"

"I don't care about your fucking home! I care about mine!" And you. But that, I couldn't say. Our stupid, tiny feelings had no place here. If Keyd even felt anything for me anymore, besides disgust and contempt.

"They would have figured it out eventually, anyway," I added, more quietly. "They're not stupid, over there. They'd've figured out what you were doing, that you weren't really fighting them on Earth."

"We had an advantage," Keyd said, his voice quiet and strained. "And that's what we needed. The one thing we never had. And now—that will be gone."

"Fuck you," I said, starting to shake again. "Just—Christ, fuck you. You don't even know what I went through—over this, how much fucking stupid angst—it wasn't easy, okay? What I did, it was the hardest thing I've ever—it wasn't as easy as it apparently was for you."

Keyd went silent at this, his hands curled and shaking at his sides. His hair was messy and falling around his face and over his eyes, the ends lifting up with each huffing breath he took. He'd closed our bond on his side, so that even though I could feel his energy boiling and churning hotly around in the air, I couldn't feel anything directly between us.

"I can't even look at you," he said, and fury burned so hard in me that if I could have broken the fucking shackles and gotten to him, I would have punched him in the fucking face.

"Then get out of here," I snarled instead. "I don't want to look at you, either. Why don't you just get the fuck out."

I had no damn business ordering him around right now, but he did what I said anyway. He just whirled around and strode towards the door, but paused just before he reached it, and looked back over his shoulder.

"You will suffer whatever punishment is decided by us," he said, and I didn't know if us just meant him, or him and Rysa, or him and his gheret, or him and the entirety of the clar race. But it didn't matter.

"I know," I said, suddenly exhausted. I was so tired; of this, of him, of everything. "That's why I came back." And I saw, for the briefest of moments, surprise flash across Keyd's face. Then it morphed away, back into flat neutrality. But his eyes burned oddly in the shadow of the tent in the seconds before he turned away and pushed out through the door, the tent flaps swinging madly in his wake.

I realized I was breathing so fast it was nearly hyperventilation. I felt like I needed a paper bag or something. I pulled my knees up and rested my forehead against them, trying to calm myself down. I had known something like this had to happen, I had done this to myself, and Keyd—he had been more hateful about it than I had thought, but his reaction wasn't exactly unexpected. He'd betrayed me, I'd betrayed him, a full circle, and there was no way to undo or even apologize for any of it.

But I didn't think Rysa or I had to worry about Keyd making idiot decisions about me that might compromise his status or livelihood or how seriously anyone took him. After what had just happened, he wasn't going to make any stupid sacrifices on my behalf. I wasn't getting any special consideration from him. I was just a traitor, and a prisoner, and worth nothing.

#

I was alone in the tent for a while after that. I heard the bitter wind scratching around the outside of the canvas, flapping through the door, and once in a while I heard people walking by outside. But no one came in. It gave me time to calm down and try and center myself again. I was reeling pretty hard. There was this constant sick, deep ache in my stomach, and it got worse anytime I pictured Keyd's face. How he'd been looking at me. Fury, with nothing underneath. I hadn't been able to read anything else out of his face. Maybe I was just out of practice, but there'd been nothing. And that scared me more than anything.

At one point I heard a voice, a familiar one, talking outside the tent. Keyd again. In his own language and out of frequency, so I had no idea what he was saying. Under the flap of the tent I could see the shadows of three sets of feet, so it was Keyd and at least two other people. I thought Keyd might come back in, and I braced myself for that, but after a few moments of quiet talking, one of the sets of feet left. The other two stayed by the door, moving to the sides of it and staying still. And didn't look like they were going anywhere anytime soon.

Had he just set people there to guard me? What the hell was the point of that—I was already pretty well attached to the ground. I wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't even going to try. I'd come back here for a reason, and that was to face this, not to fucking run away.

About half an hour after that bizarreness, I heard a mutter of male voices, a brief conversation outside the tent. Then the door flap pushed in, and Darban came inside. He was wearing pieces of armor but not all of it, his hair was rumpled and his eyes oddly raw. I didn't like the look—it was so far from his usual casual, easy-going attitude, where he was always pleased to see me and always friendly. He only took a few steps into the tent before he stopped, an odd tension in his body.

"Why," he said, very simply. That told me, easily, that he was of the same mindset as Keyd. He couldn't understand what I'd done. At this point, I didn't think anyone could. Except Rysa, but she wasn't exactly the same as the rest of them. She had ties to both sides.

"I had to," I said, which was the only explanation I really had. "I'm sorry."

"How could you do this to us?" Darban said, and unlike with Keyd, I had a feeling he talking small scale. And he was, with what he said next. "To the people you've known here—I know not everyone was supportive of you, but weren't some of us good enough? My brother and Kir and Rysa, and Keyd—"

"Don't," I interrupted, "bring him into this. I've had enough talking about him and I'm done, okay? I'm done. I screwed him and you and everyone else over and I can't take it back and I wouldn't. I had to watch out for my own goddamn world and if that threw a hitch in your stupid little war then I'm sorry, but I don't care."

"I thought you were different than this," Darban said. This was almost worse than Keyd, in a way, because Darban didn't sound angry at all. Just utterly hurt and confused and dismayed. Anger was better, because I could get angry back. Darban just sounded…sad.

"I guess I'm not," I said. Right then, there was another garble of loud voices from outside and the tent flap snapped open again. Another familiar face that I hadn't seen yet since I'd come back; Darban's younger brother, Hahd. Two other men were hanging off him a little, trying to hustle him back outside the tent—it was Celtic-knot and lip-scar guy. I guess they were the ones guarding the tent.

"Get off me, I'm his brother, I should be allowed as well," Hahd snapped at them both, still trying to twist away.

"Keydestas didn't say—" Celtic-knot started, but Darban turned and said something to them, either too quietly or in another language, but I didn't hear it. But it made my two guards hesitate, look at each other, and then let go of Hahd and leave the tent. Hahd stepped up right in front of me, and since I was sitting and he was standing and already tall, he loomed over me like fucking doom itself.

"Christ, Hahd," I said. "What—"

"Damn it, Alan," Hahd said, cutting me right off. "What the hell were you thinking?"

Great. So. He was mad at me too. This was just what I needed.

"I don't even know anymore," I muttered. I'd had excuses once, but somehow I'd forgotten all of them. They'd never been very good, anyway. I couldn't regret my decision to save my own goddamn planet, but I couldn't rationalize it to these people, either. They would never really understand.

"How could you do—damn it!" Hahd said. He was shaking a little, breathing hard, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. "What the fuck?"

It always surprised me when I heard any of these guys swear. They apparently had similar words that translated, but they just never seemed to use them. I'd heard Keyd say fuck exactly twice in the entire time I'd known him. Hearing Hahd say it was so startling that I almost laughed, until I figured that wouldn't be a good way to win back any points here.

"I can't justify myself," I said. "Not to any of you. I did what I had to do. You can hate me for it, I guess. I can take that."

Hahd just stared at me, like he wasn't sure where or how hard he should start punching me. Maybe one of the reasons he didn't was because Darban had grabbed onto his shoulder, keeping him in place. Hahd drew in a breath, then took a step back, shook Darban's hand off of him, and stormed back out through the tent doors. Darban watched him go, then turned back to me. He looked like he was going to say something, and I just waited for it, tensed. But after a few seconds, he turned and followed his brother.

I relaxed, but only marginally. Nothing about that had felt good. I was losing people faster than I'd ever been able to gain them, and these weren't people I wanted to lose. But this was my fault, and I couldn't blame them. But I could still feel really fucking awful about it.

#

It was probably an hour or more later that anything else happened.

I felt an energy that wasn't Keyd or Rysa or the two guys guarding the tent, and the tent flap pushed open and someone came inside. I didn't bother to lift my face from where I was resting it on my knees. It was probably just someone else with another stupid lecture for me.

"If you're here to ream me out," I said, exhaustedly into my legs, "don't bother. I've had enough of it today. Come back tomorrow or something."

"No," said a familiar male voice, although one that I couldn't quite place without looking up at the matching face. It was Kir, standing just inside the flaps of the tent, hands behind his back. "I'm not here to do that."

"Really," I said, not believing him much. After all, his partner hadn't been very understanding at all.

Kir came a few steps into the tent, and knelt down next to me. Something about him felt—calm, like his energy was slower and cooler than usual, or something. Whatever it was, it made some of the hard knotted tension in my stomach loosen out a little. I could almost breathe again.

"You don't look very well," Kir said then, taking my face in his hand, tilting me up and peering at me. Of course I didn't. I was mentally and physically wrung out. And I was shackled to a plate in the ground in a prison tent. Of course I looked fucking awful.

"I'm okay," I told Kir, who looked very unconvinced.

"They should treat you better than this," he said. "Keydestas should treat you better."

"Why?" I said. "I'm a goddamn traitor. I betrayed everyone, and that includes you. You shouldn't care either. I deserve this."

"You may have done that, but Alan—" Kir put his other hand to my face. His skin was cool and, just like his energy, his touch was somehow relaxing. "You came back to us. You told us what you'd done. You may have given the clarbach an advantage then—but you've taken it away again. They know of our plans, but now we know of theirs. If you hadn't come back, we wouldn't have known. We're on equal ground, just as before."

"I—" hadn't considered it that way, at all. But I liked the way that Kir thought. It made me feel like less of a piece of garbage.

Kir suddenly reached down, touched the chain that was holding me to the ground. At once, the shackles just fell apart, the metal clattering to the canvas floor of the tent. I pulled my hands around in front of me, my shoulders aching at the sudden mobility, and stared at him.

"You probably shouldn't have done that," I said, rubbing at my wrists.

"Yes, probably not," Kir agreed. "I'll replace them when I leave, but for now…I don't want to speak to you as a prisoner. I don't believe you should be."

I laughed a little. "Well, you're the first."

"I understand what you did, and why," Kir said. "I do."

"…why?" I said, honestly thrown. "Your boyfriend and his brother, they—I think they kinda hate me, now." Not to mention what Keyd felt.

"Darban and I don't agree right now," Kir said. "And neither of them hate you, Alan."

"I hope you're not fighting with him," I said. Over me, because that would be a fucking stupid thing to fight about.

"No," Kir said. "We're just not agreeing."

All right, well, if he wanted to be vague about it. I guess it wasn't my business, the way things went between them.

"You're protective of your world," Kir said. "We all are, of our own. But we—lost ours so long ago, our suffering now only comes from the anger of loss, not the memory of losing. We know what it's like to have our world gone, but we don't remember what it's like to lose it. At least, most of us don't."

"And you do," I said, frankly a little disbelieving.

"What I know, Alan, is that you are a brave and determined man who had to make an incredibly difficult decision alone." Kir reached forward, put two fingers under my chin and tilted my head up, forcing me to look at him again. He had really long eyelashes, and his eyes were a warm gold-brown. "Keydestas may also have had hard decisions, but his were supported by his people, and begun by his father. You made yours by yourself, with no support, with no one to help you decide if it was the right thing to do.

"You did what you had to. The others who have denounced you—I believe if they truly considered what it would have meant to be in your place, they would have done similar things. What you did was not the act of a traitor. You're a loyal man, but that loyalty was divided. Your choices made sense, given the situation you were forced to deal with."

That was the most I had ever heard Kir say at one time and it all kind of stunned and touched me. Kir was not going to make me cry. I wouldn't let him make me cry. I tilted my head back to look up at the ceiling, so all the stupid fucking tears stayed tilted into my eyes and didn't run all over my face.

"Are you all right?" Kir asked.

"Yeah. Fine," I said, and after another ten seconds or so, I was. I lowered my head again, shaking it a few times just to make sure. No, I was fine.

"Darban is upset because he doesn't understand," Kir said. "He's never been forced to make a choice like that, been made to change something important with a single decision. His life had been relatively simple, and easy to follow. The only thing he has ever done that took him from his given path was," Kir glanced away, a little awkwardly, "me. And even then, he wasn't alone, we were together in it."

"Sounds like you've done something like that," I said, and Kir dipped his head a little.

"When I was just a child," he said, "I made a decision that went against everything I had ever been raised into or told, one that changed the course of my entire life. I was not born into or meant for a soldier's life, but I choose it, over what my family and my place in life had planned for me. Because I felt it was what I had to do. And I have never regretted it. It is because of that decision that I am where I am now, and that I even met Darban. That I was able to become the person I am."

"How the hell do you do it?" I asked, suddenly. "How did you do it, you and Darban, for so long? I mean—

I knew how to have a relationship with a girl, sort of. At least I knew how it was supposed to work and generally how things went, what role to play and what was expected of me. I didn't know how to have one with a man, much less a soldier, much less a king. Kir, at least, had two of those same elements in his relationship. He was the only real gay guy I knew who'd been in a relationship for—well, god knew how many years.

"How long have you been together, anyway?" I said.

Kir's mouth twitched, like he was thinking about smiling. "Darban and I have known each other for more than two thirds of our lives," Kir said. "And we've had antshil for fifty-eight years of that time."

"Fuck," I said, completely mindblown. "That's—Jesus, that's a long time." And I was pretty sure that they'd considered that bond like a substitute for marriage. My parents were coming up on their twenty-fifth anniversary—that wasn't even half of how long Kir and Darban had been together. I'd thought twenty-five years with one person seemed long—fuck. Fifty eight goddamn years. "You've been together that whole time, huh."

"Not always as lovers," Kir said, with something of a realer smile. "Until recently—it was just too unsafe."

"Then, how long—" I gestured, vaguely.

Kir's smile grew, but in a somehow sad way. He closed his eyes, a dark sweep of lashes against his skin. "A very short time, compared to how long we've known each other. But, the way things have been changing, I—it might all have been worth it."

"I'm really glad about that," I said. "Seriously, you two are—I don't know, you're amazing. I wish that I could have…I wish I was more like you."

Kir gave me a strange look. "You do have that, Alan. You have—the beginning of what Darban and I do. I can see it, in both of you."

"What? With Keyd?" Apparently, he hadn't heard that Keyd considered me a traitor and a coward and couldn't even stand looking at me. Yeah, that was surely a man I could forge a fifty-eight-fucking-year-long relationship with.

"I think that you and Keydestas are—meant to be," Kir said, which was a really damn odd thing for him to say, even outside of this current shit situation. It sounded like some sort of weird destiny mantra.

"Why the hell would you say that?" I asked, grinding my chin harder against the top of my knee.

"In my religion—"

"You have a religion?" I interrupted him, before I could stop myself. I'd just—never heard these people say one thing or another about religious beliefs, not like the clarbach—who at least had priests and temples of some kind. I'd almost assumed the oenclar just didn't have any.

"Yes," Kir said, with something that was almost a smile. "I'm of a sect called bautan. Within that religion there's a belief, an idea called keppha. Keppha is…the idea of singular people with bound fates. That through all worlds there are those who have destinies tied to other people, inescapable roles in each other's lives. No matter what the circumstances or place of the individuals, the universe will arrange itself to bring them together. I believe that Darban is part of my keppha. And I believe…that Keydestas is part of yours."

I drew in a breath, held it, and let it out again. "I really don't like that idea," I told him.

Kir looked a little startled. "Why not?"

"Because I don't like the idea that Keyd and I aren't in control of our feelings," I said. "I don't want to be destined to be in love with him. It feels—cheap. Too easy." Despite how fucking hard it had been. But I still didn't like the idea that it would have happened with or without all that effort. That we were trapped into this.

But Kir was shaking his head. "Keppha doesn't decree the role that you play to each other," he said. "Keppha only means a fate to meet, to be something important to each other, to play a pivotal and permanent role in each other's lives. What it is that you became…that was from your choices. Keppha could have seen you become very close friends; like brothers. It could have seen you become enemies. But you became lovers."

"…oh," I said. "I—" I thought of the necklace Keyd had given me, engraved with the word that was inside of my name and meant fate. "Is Keyd this…same religion?"

Kir smiled for real, this time. "Not that I know of."

"Because he—" I was heating up a little, "—I think he thinks something really similar."

"He may know of the concept," Kir said. "It's a well-known idea, even outside the sect."

Keyd had said to me once that he believed our meeting wasn't coincidence. That it was fate. If he believed in this thing, this keppha—would mean that these were the important things we were meant to affect in each other's lives. And we had changed each other's lives, irreversibly. Maybe I had been destined to meet Keyd, to take that curse off of him—but I wouldn't have been fated to fall in love with him. We'd done that on our own.

"I guess that's—better," I said. But I still thought he was wrong. Unless relationships in this keppha thing could change. Because Keyd and I were turning from lovers into…something else. Maybe even as far as enemies. I'd never had someone so furious at me as Keyd was right now. It wasn't good and it wasn't promising and frankly, I didn't even think he would stand up to the Worthies for me right now. And if they decided that execution was really the fitting punishment—it might actually happen. I squashed that thought away, fast.

"Thanks," I said instead. "Thanks a lot, I—you actually made me feel better, I don't even know how.

Kir ducked his head in a nod. "I'm glad," he said. "And I hope that—this can all be resolved. That you and Keydestas can find a way through this. Because I can't imagine a better person to stand at his side."

"Christ, I hope so too," I said. This made the second person who thought I was the perfect match for Keyd. But Kir also thought Keyd and I had a destiny. Which was weird and uncomfortable and I didn't really want to think about it. "And, just thanks. It's good to know that not everyone hates me, right now."

Kir didn't stay much longer, and when he left he put the metal cuffs back on me. He apologized for it, but I couldn't hold it against him. It wasn't his fault.

#

I didn't know if it was nighttime or not, but not long after Kir was gone, I fell asleep. Uncomfortably, on my side with my arms still wrenched behind my back. Probably not for very long, but I was so mentally exhausted from all of this that I just needed something to help keep me stable. Sleeping, even for the hour or less that I managed, helped a little.

When I woke up, there was something flat and cold resting against my neck that hadn't been there when I'd gone to sleep. I would have had to be some weird damn contortionist to be able to really look down at it, but I would have bet good money that it was the necklace Keyd had given me. Now with a fixed cord and retied around my neck. Maybe Rysa had done it. She'd taken it from me, after all. And Keyd certainly wouldn't have, not after yesterday.

I didn't even want the thing on me, but there wasn't any way I could get it off, not all tied up like I was. I'd carried the stupid fucking thing around for weeks and weeks while I'd thought that maybe there could have been a chance of Keyd and me…surviving this. But there wasn't, not anymore. And now I wished I'd thrown it away, or hadn't let Rysa take it, or just…just done something else.

I was getting that tight feeling my chest again, where I couldn't really breathe and every second felt like a mounting panic attack. The feeling of completely falling apart that I'd been pushing back and hiding all day long. But now, there was no one around. It was dark and silent outside the tent, only a breeze pushing at the flap of the door. I drew my legs up to my chest, pressed my face to my knees, and barely cared when I couldn't stop myself from crying.

I rushed parts of this, it probably sucks, I think there's lots of mistakes. Boooo.

One more chapter left. That one might be a sane length.