“I’d like to show you our healing facilities,” he said, his hand resting on Cass’s good shoulder as they walked—a proprietary touch that Cass didn’t flinch from and didn’t question. “This is where we do our most intensive spiritual work. The resonance chambers, the guided release rooms, the—”
Riot’s stomach lurched.
It came from nowhere—a sudden, violent clenching behind his navel that had nothing to do with the food he’d eaten andeverything to do with something he couldn’t identify. His vision went strange for half a second, the edges of the corridor blurring, and a sensation like ice water filled his chest cavity.
What the—
He stopped walking and pressed a hand flat against the corridor wall. The nausea wasn’t his, it couldn’t be his, he’d felt fine thirty seconds ago, his body didn’t lurch like this without—
Ahead of him, Cass had slowed. His shoulders had drawn up toward his ears in a gradual contraction, centimeters at a time. They were passing white doors, evenly spaced, each with a small golden symbol that Riot didn’t recognize. Cass looked at one of the doors and stopped walking entirely, his hand pressed flat against his stomach, his face the color of the walls.
“Cassiopeia?” Matthias’s voice, behind them. Warm. Concerned. “Are you—”
Riot saw it happen—the full-body convulsion that started in Cass’s stomach and traveled upward, the way his throat worked, the way his hand flew to his mouth. Riot moved before thinking. A woman was passing with a basket of fruit balanced on one hip and he took the basket from her hands, upended the fruit across the floor, oranges and figs rolling against the baseboards, and got the empty basket under Cass’s face in the same second that Cass’s knees hit the ground.
The sound was terrible, a wrenching heave that came from somewhere deeper than his stomach, his whole body folding around the basket, his good hand gripping the woven rim while his injured arm hung useless. What came up was mostly water and bile and a few bites of food, but his body kept trying, heaving in waves that shook his shoulders and made the crystal beads in his braids click against each other like small, bright teeth.
“I’m—” Cass gasped between heaves. “I’m fine. I’m sorry. I’m—” Another heave. His voice broke apart. “I’m okay, I just need—”
Riot knelt beside him, wanting desperately to hold him, but he didn’t. He just knelt there uselessly.
“Take your time,” Riot said quietly. “You’re okay.”
Matthias knelt on Cass’s other side and his hands went to Cass’s hair, gathering the braids and loose strands in both hands, pulling them back from Cass’s face, holding them in a neat bundle at the base of his skull while Cass retched into the basket.
Cass made a guttural, choked noise that started as a heave and ended as a whimper. His body seized, another wave of vomiting tearing through him with renewed violence.
Riot’s vision went gold at the edges. Every muscle in his body locked simultaneously, every fiber of him dedicated to the singular purpose of not reaching across Cass’s shaking body and breaking every bone in Matthias’s hands.
Ceiling panels. Count them. One. Two. Three.
“Perhaps,” Matthias said, his voice soft with concern, his hands still in Cass’s hair, “a session in one of the healing rooms would help settle your energy? We could—”
“No.” Cass gasped, clutching the basket against his chest like a shield. “No healing rooms. I just need to rest. Please. I just—I need to lie down.”
“Of course. Rest is the foundation of recovery.” Matthias’s hands released Cass’s hair slowly, the strands slipping through his fingers one by one. He stood, and for one second—one fraction of a second, a window so brief that Riot would have missed it if he hadn’t been watching with the cold, predatory focus of a beast that had identified its kill and was simply waiting for conditions to change—Matthias’s nostrils flared. Slightly. A subtle widening, the involuntary response of someone processing olfactory information.
He can smell it. Through the processed air, he caught whatever Cass’s body is doing now that it wasn’t before he left.
Then it was gone. The mask settled back into place so smoothly it might never have slipped. Matthias extended a hand to help Cass stand—a hand that Cass took, because Cass trusted him, because Cass had always trusted him and the alternative was a door he couldn’t open.
Riot stood. His legs worked. His face was calm. His hands were open at his sides and they were not shaking and they were not curled into fists and they were not wrapped around anyone’s throat.
Riot followed them, stepping over the scattered oranges and figs without looking down. He kept his hands open and his eyes on the back of Cass’s head, where the braids were mussed from Matthias’s grip. One small crystal bead had come loose and was hanging by a thread.
I am not going to make it.
The thought was clear and calm and absolutely certain.
I am not going to make it through the plan. I am not going to find Honey first. I am not going to wait for the right moment. I am going to kill this man, and it’s going to happen sooner than it should, and it’s going to ruin everything, and I’m going to do it anyway because there is a limit to what I can watch and I have reached it.
The corridor opened outside to a residential path with crushed white stone bordered by low hedges, winding between small houses painted in soft colors. Each one was identical in footprint but differentiated by a palette that someone had clearly spent too much time selecting: sage green, pale yellow, dusty rose. The kind of variety that felt curated rather than chosen, like being allowed to pick their own flavor of the same medicine.
“Brother Cassiopeia, you should rest,” Matthias said as they walked, his hand at the small of Cass’s back. “Your body has been through significant trauma, and forcingspiritual productivity before you’ve recovered would be counterproductive.”
“Yes, Brother Matthias.”
“Sister Honey should be occupied for the evening—she’s been assigned to lead the welcoming ceremony for the female seeker you brought in.” He said it casually, the way someone might mention a coworker’s schedule, but Riot caught the architecture of it: Honey was accounted for. Located. Under observation. Not available for an unmonitored reunion with the person who’d crossed the Static Zone to find her.
