The click of the latch was the loudest sound Cass had ever heard.
His knees gave out and he slid down the wall, leaving a smear of blood on the plaster, and then he was on the floor crying so hard he couldn’t breathe. His chest heaved with sobs that felt like they were tearing him apart from the inside. Riot left. He looked at him—at all his damage, all his negative energy—and walked away.
Of course he did. Of course. Why would anyone stay? You’re disgusting. You’re broken. You’re everything wrong with—
The door opened.
Cass looked up, gasping and hiccuping, and Riot was back holding a bottle of clear liquid and moving with purpose, and Cass couldn’t understand—he’d left, he’dseen, why was he coming back—?
“Get up.” Riot’s voice was rough. “Come on. Off the floor.”
Cass tried to obey, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. He was shaking too hard, crying too pathetically, and his body hurt too much to push himself up properly. Riot’s hands closed around his arms and lifted him like he weighed nothing. For a moment, Cass was airborne, his feet leaving the ground, and then he was being set down carefully in the chair, Riot’s hands still steadying him.
“This is alcohol,” Riot said, holding up the bottle. “It’s going to hurt like hell, but it’ll clean the wounds and prevent infection.” He took a long drink from it himself—Cass watched his throat work as he swallowed—then held it out. “Pour some on your chest first.”
“Why did you come back?” Cass asked as he took the bottle.
Riot’s jaw tightened. “Just do it.”
Cass tipped the bottle, letting the clear liquid splash across one of the fresh wounds on his chest. The pain burned through him so intensely that he gasped, and Riot’s hands were on his shoulders, holding him still, keeping him from jerking away.
“I know.” Riot murmured. “I know it hurts. Keep going.”
By the time he’d gotten all the chest wounds, he was whimpering. The fever underneath everything seemed to be getting worse, too.
“Okay. That’s enough for now.” Riot redirected the bottle towards his face. “Drink some. It’ll help.”
The alcohol tasted like burning. Sharp and harsh and nothing like the gentle herbal teas he was used to. But it spread warmth through his stomach, chasing away some of the ice and ache that had settled there, and something about that warmth made his body relax.
“This makes my chest feel warm,” he heard himself say between hiccuping. “Like you do.”
The words were out before he could stop them. His face flushed hot with fresh shame. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have—I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t ever apologize for telling me the truth.” He pressed a pill into Cass’s palm. “For the pain. Take it.”
Cass swallowed it without question, chasing it with more of the burning alcohol. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Brother Cyrus’s safety lectures were trying to remind him about accepting medications from people in the Neutral Zone, but that voice seemed very far away right now.
When Riot started dabbing a cloth around the wounds on his chest, his touch was careful. Those hands had been violent earlier—Cass saw the split knuckles and the dried blood. But they were moving so gently now, treating him like something precious, and Cass didn’t understand. He didn’t understand any of this.Why are you being kind to me? I’m broken. I’m failing. I’m everything you should walk away from before I destroy your spirit.
“Brother Matthias says the pain is negative energy leaving my body.” He was desperate to fill the silence. “Making space for divine light to enter.”
Riot’s hands paused. “What do you think?”
The question caught Cass off guard. No one ever asked what he thought.
“I think...” He swallowed a sob. “I think it just hurts. But I’m probably not spiritually evolved enough to understand the deeper meaning.”
Riot didn’t respond. He just went back to cleaning and bandaging the wounds with those impossibly careful hands. And even though Cass was still crying, still shaking, still terrified—something about Riot’s steady presence made it feel survivable. Plus the alcohol was starting to hit him, making everything soft around the edges. The pain was still there, but it felt further away, like it was happening to someone else, and that hollow ache in his belly—the one that had nothing to do with hunger—was getting stronger, pulsing and twisting and pushing even the pain in his hands further away.
When Riot finished with his chest and back, Cass started to stand so he could pull his robes back on. It was over. He could cover himself back up, hide the evidence—
Fresh blood ran down his legs.
He felt it happen—the warm, wet slide of it against his inner thighs—and his whole body went rigid with horror. Dark stains were blooming on his white linen pants, spreading to his robes, and impossible to hide.
No. No no no no no—
Riot’s gaze dropped. “What else?”
