I couldn’t remember much of the day. He was there. Every time I tried, he was there. Sometimes the better memories from years ago. Mostly the ones much more recent.

  …Had I seen him in a hospital bed before?

  So Kaspar wrote the important bits down for me, and I remembered agreeing to them, just not what they were. I ran my thumb down his words. Firstly, they said, if I ever felt bad, I could always come to him and talk. No matter the day nor hour, no matter the topic, he’d be there for me. The next line said he would pay my semester fees to lift that weight from my shoulders, and everything I earned on Ressday would be for my own pocket. I did remember avoiding telling him about Robin, and saying only what he needed to know about Omen. I couldn’t handle complicating things right now. And I really needed Kaspar at my side.

  Finally, and he’d underlined this on the note, was that I ought to be kinder to myself. Stop feeling bad for things I can’t control, and stop trying to do every single thing. I was glad at least the only important part I remembered was a nice one: “If you give all of yourself to everyone else, you’ll have none left to give to yourself.”

  His words wrapped around me like a blanket, and even though I had retired to my own dorm after dinner, it didn’t feel enough. I needed more than his words. Already knew tonight sleep would find me the way hungry owls find mice under the moon.

  A couple hundredtime drifted away behind the curtain of my bed as I tried and failed to get anywhere with the backlog from my classes. Two weeks behind on history essays, transmutation theory work, and our latest case study. History would be the most tolerable but my tense hand kept slipping as I wrote, and even Kaspar’s expensive pens couldn’t stop the ink from staining the paper. I used the blotter but it wasn’t enough to fix my mistakes. Nothing in this world was enough to fix what I let fall apart.

  Holly and Grove weren’t back yet and I was glad for that – glad they didn’t have to sully themselves by being around me. I kept writing because I had to, not because I wanted to. Pen slipped. Twice more. Gave up fixing it. Scribbled it out and wrote it again beside that, then even had to scribble that out too and rewrite again underneath. I squeezed my fist so tight, my claws burrowed into the skin of my palm and I winced as red welled up. Not enough. The paper looked like the scrawl of a madman. I scribbled and kept scribbling and kept scribbling until the entire fucking page was a dizzying mess of ink and rips and stains and I tore it apart, rended the whole thing into worthless little pieces and let them scatter on my bed like the only snow no one would ever want to see.

  I couldn’t take this. I couldn’t cope with being myself much longer. In the robe he’d bought me, I went to his room. Didn’t even bother pulling the hood up anymore. Everyone knew. Who was I hiding from? The faces I passed would stare all the same if it was up or down.

  I trudged in for the second time today, feeling like a ghost in my own body. “Sorry for being like this,” I said. Collapsed face first onto his bed, and I knew he was watching me from the desk. “I knew you were too good for me when we first met. You’re better than this. I shouldn’t have to be such a burden.”

  A floorboard creaked and fingers strayed softly through my hair. “Stop saying sorry. And a burden’s something you don’t want to carry. If I didn’t want this, I would lock my door.”

  “So whaddya call such a weight that you do want to carry then?”

  “Selienaze.” He hadn’t hesitated. “The kind of love that takes work. I believe your phrase ‘a labour of love’ occupies a similar sentimental position.”

  I grumbled into his sheets. “You know we can’t be any more than this, right? You glide through life like a regal swan in flight. I fell out the nest down a cliffside and hit every rock on the way down.”

  “You hold me in a distinctly high esteem,” he said, and I felt him sit on the bed. “I have an older brother. Naturally, he’s the one due to inherit our… let’s call it our family’s interests. He’s the one who gets all the attention, the regard and the edification. So what does that make me?”

  “...Fortunate?”

  “Secondary. He gets first choice of everything. He gets hands in the decisions. He gets the best of what we have. In short, while he gets what he wants, I get whatever’s left over. You see what I’m saying.”

  “No?” I rolled over and faced him, at least showing I was trying to pay attention. I couldn’t bear him being even slightly upset at me on top of everything else.

  “For the first time in my life, I get to choose what I want. I get to have everything I want. Time and again, I keep choosing you. Stop feeling like you’re just here because of convenience or like you’re some pity case.”

  “So why do you keep choosing me?”

  “Because you fascinate me. You have an energy like I’ve never known till I met you. You throw yourself into things because someone ought to do it and you’re willing to take those reins when others aren’t, and while I can’t say I support all of it, not by half. I can admire the intention. The… selienaze. You’ve told me how robustly you support your roommates. How you were willing to trial a trust with Holly even at the start. Shown me how much you keep fighting your corner against the hateful. How you’re studying alongside working in the forest alongside helping the war wounded to go home. Often you talk as if given a way to do it, you’d end the whole war entirely by your own hands, no matter how gargantuan the effort required.”

  “They need to go home…” I mumbled, still laying on my back. “Or somewhere safe.” Because a thought had bounced into my head, that even if they did go home, would they be safe there? What was to stop them being recruited again? A pit cracked open inside me and I knew I’d have to ask to make sure the injured were being sent somewhere safe once they were well enough.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “So we reach the divergence upon which we disagree. You need to make somewhere safe for yourself to be,” he said, “before you can work on other people.”

  “But I’m…” A hundred words rushed at me, and I knew Kaspar wouldn’t accept any of them. “Yeah. I’m tired.”

  He left the bed momentarily, something glugged in the corner, and he returned with a glass of water. “I’ll let you rest but I want you to drink this first.”

  “...Why?”

  “Because until you learn you have to make somewhere safe for yourself, I suppose other people will have to keep showing you how. And also because I saw how you cried before. Quite frankly I wouldn’t have believed a body could hold that many tears, physiologically speaking. I had to put my rug in the laundry chute.”

  “There’s a laundry chute?”

  He blinked above me. “Down the hatch in the bottom of your wardrobe. It works on glyphs so it’s… Tell me, what have you been doing thus far?”

  I groaned, a heat on my cheeks. “Washing everything with body soap in the shower…”

  “Mette somea…” He drew a hand through the thickness of his hair. “Drink your water. Then rest. I have a case study to finish so if you want anything of me, simply ask, and it would be my honour to be the one to provide it for you.”

  *

  Grim half-dreams crawled through my head of an impossibly tall figure dressed all in raven black, a sharp silver beard ending in a vicious point, silver in the eyes as well. Waves of faceless emotion buffeted me, tossing me around like the rapids of a river churning into a cave mouth. The tall figure rode a black carriage, perhaps a hearse, and no matter where I ran on the icy streets of Baronbridge, it found me at every corner. Always there. Always waiting. The horse trotting slow, but always straight towards me. The slow of a predator whose prey was cornered. And when I couldn’t run any further and everything caught up to me, the horse had silver in its eyes.

  A hand reached out for me and took me by the chest and my eyes snapped open and it was late, so late, and Kaspar’s head was slumped on his arm, his fingertips finding my shirt in his slumber. Or really, his shirt. He’d paid for it. Like everything I had.

  I took hold of his hand and it lit me up like it had the first time, way back in class. All the things I’d wanted to do with him. All the things we’d already done. Sometime while I’d slept, he’d thrown a thick quilt over the bed, over the both of us, and I was getting a little warm. I slipped my pants off, trying not to wake him, and the same for my shirt, but when I turned back, his irises peered out, pure black in the low light. “How are you?” he asked in the warmest whisper.

  I drew my lips to the side. “You could make me feel better,” I suggested.

  A steady smile crossed his face. “The thought had pestered me, but I wasn’t sure you were up for it.”

  I took his hand again and brought it back to my chest, brought it down over my stomach, and lower still. “Do I feel up for it?” I asked in my best playful voice.

  “Why don’t I go and see?” he returned. He dove under the sheets and where I’d placed his hand, his mouth took hold and I gasped at the sudden warmth. And he was intense: he took me in like he needed me, his tongue wrapping around me and the heat of his lips almost all the way to my body. I’d barely even dreamed of this with anyone else and I’d been so busy this week, not that it was easy when you shared a room with others, that I had to pull myself back from taking hold of his head and completely debasing myself in his bed.

  One hand found my asscheek and dragged me in close, a desperate movement, keeping me in his grip, not letting me pull out even if I’d tried. His other hand ran round all my sensitive parts, through my legs and finding my tail, playing with the length of it and toying, squeezing, stroking up and down. I’d never dreamed of that and it lit fireworks in my mind, barely a few moments before it sent shockwaves through my chest, clawing at panting breaths and doing my best to at least keep some damned dignity when I moaned his name but I don’t think I managed.

  I swore he knew my body better than I did. And as I twitched and writhed in his grasp, his hand on my ass drew me all the way in and his tongue encircled me, wrapping around everything, not letting me pull away a fraction. I totally lost myself in his mouth, pushing myself as deep as I could, all the aches and weight of the day lifted in an instant, and in that moment there was only him, only us, only this bed and our world and I needed him more than I’d ever needed anything before.

  He emerged from the sheets and drew in and we kissed, and I spat out immediately. “Oh, by the spirits, that’s –”

  “I swallowed what I could,” he said smoothly, licking his lips and holding me so tenderly across the shoulders, “but wow. You really ought to take care of yourself better.”

  “It’s difficult. And stuff’s busy.”

  “Then make use of what I can offer you. The bed’s always free. The room is available to you. Plus it’ll give me a pleasant break between studying sessions.”

  He had an expression like I was his whole world, and I realised he probably couldn’t see me at all in this room, so I made my voice as sultry as I could. “As long as you teach me how I can do that with my mouth too, and I don’t mean the language lessons, pretty boy.”

  “Somea, Gan. Not one of your best –”

  “Gimme the kind of lessons that are all practical, no theory –”

  “I swear –”

  “You won’t have to buy me any clothes for the kinds of classes we’ll be attending –”

  His giggles got so bad he snorted and then drew a hand to his face, a shock of embarrassment on his cheeks. “Skies above…”

  I grinned at him. “Wanna know how you’ll be tested at the end of semester?” His eyes narrowed, daring me on. “An oral exam, of course.”

  It was so dumb, I had no idea why we both ended up laughing so much. I think our foreheads bonked on each other’s in the end and I had to pull away, gasping for air. I guess the awful world never felt that bad with Kaspar beside me. It made me not want to think about anything else. Which worked well since it meant I wasn’t telling him about anything else… or anyone else. “So after that,” he said finally, swallowing down another laugh, “I don’t wanna hear any more moping, agreed? This is… edelmisti. The love of being able to know and be known by someone, on every level.”

  “So this is why you have so many words for it, to analyse me and how I’m doing?” I said lightly.

  “Hmm, not so much. More like connections with someone have many different faces. The ones that take work, yes, and the ones that are worth the work. Every person, every opportunity that passes your street of life, they all take some work to return some worth. So maybe that’s it…” he said, settling down onto the pillow again and yawning. “Figure out which are worth the work for you, and drop the rest. Often it can take a little time though… Often it can change, too. You must be willing to… reassess, as change happens… or does not happen…”

  I found his hand again under the sheets and held it tight. “You’ll always be worth it for me.”

  He smiled sweetly and drew me in again by the shoulder, so close our foreheads touched, much softer this time, and I think he was asleep before me.

  I think he was a lot of things before me.