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Atticus sighed when he finally shoved up from the table, Rim-pale eyes on the bloodied grimoire rather than Gwen who had fallen asleep hours ago.

“Keep it,” he snapped, like this was actually Orpheus’ fault. Maybe it was. He didn’t know. Not anymore. “I know your feelings on blood magic, but better to dance with the devil than be murdered by him.”

“Why do you trust me?” Orpheus blurted before Atticus could change his mind. “Why do you care if I die and the Architects drop Sanctuary onto the Empire and start another war?”

“Because I don’t think the Architects’ spell will work and you’re our best hope at figuring out an alternative. And—” He cut off, hands flexing atop the table so hard his fingertips went white. Whatever Atticus was thinking, he was not sure he should say it. “I don’t actually want war, my unfortunate mage. My wife did not want war. And I don’t believe you and your people want war, either. Am I correct?”

“Of course you are. So why don’t you go after Fenrir? Send a messenger—ask for—”

“For help?” Atticus finished, face darkening. “Don’t you think help would be here, if it were coming? Don’t you think enough time has passed that, if your general lived, he’d have come after you?”

The buzzing in his head returned, driving the thoughts from his mind.

“The reality is, Sanctuary’s out of time. We’re out of time. In ten days, you will either restore Sanctuary’s power, or you will die in the Architect’s efforts to do it themselves, and after that, I do not believe your Empire will welcome us at all, will they?”

Of course they wouldn’t. Red wouldn’t stand for it. Fenrir certainly wouldn’t if he was—was he—he couldn’t be—dead.

You know what to do, hissed through him, the book a shadowed nothing before him, a hole in his peripheral he didn’t want to fill, but had to. He had to. Because survival was all that mattered, even if it cost the lives of the people he loved.

The people he loved…first Fenrir.

And now Gwen.

No. I can’t do it. I can’t hurt her. I won’t.

It should have felt like falling, but instead, for the first time in weeks, Orpheus was free.

I’ll find another way.

Interlude

Cave In

Sometimes, he still thinks of his mum.

He thinks of Dad and Alina every day, but with Mum his head goes a bit strange. He has trouble remembering: her voice, her face, even her eyes though he knows that’s a feature they share. A sickness swells in him each time he tries, heat stinging his eyes worse than the black dust that has turned his hair gray. He refuses to weep, and eventually those feelings morph into blame, occasionally hate.

Fenrir doesn’t want to hate his mum, so he simply tries not to think of her at all. Stops counting the days until she arrives to retrieve him, coming to terms with the fact that she isn’t coming at all when one, two, three and then eight years working in the mine come and go.

“Rawkner, I need you to take charge of section nine, I've gotten reports of a tremor so watch out for cave ins.”

Fenrir throws the senior foreman a thumbs up rather than insist he pull the teams. With the advancement of his age has come an increase in his station. He’s in charge of men now, responsible for their well-being in a way that feels right. He’s not like the other foremen who worry more about results than their team. He keeps his men alive and while that had impeded their progress in the beginning, the lack of turnover in his team has resulted in better output in the long run. He hasn’t lost a man in almost a year while the other foremen are constantly churning through workers. At the end of the day their counts may be the same but he’s not hemorrhaging bodies like the other teams and, for Fenrir, that’s his biggest win.

Mostly, it’s easier to play along with the senior foremen than fight them at every turn. They know what they’re doing and despite Fenrir learning a lot, he also likes that people like him. And truth be told, he thinks there’s something to making change happen from within. One day he’ll figure out what that looks like, but he’s content for now, and it’s nice not having the mine owners breathing down his neck.

He reaches nine’s shaft and pulls a helmet over his mass of unruly hair and heads to work despite his shift ending an hour earlier. He tries to help the other teams when he can, a favor that has turned into an expectation, but he uses that time with the other teams to build relationships with the men. Everyone seems to like him these days and that makes him feel good, particularly when he steps onto the lift and a group of miners he’s unfamiliar with greet him by name.

“Foreman Rawkner,” they say, saluting like he’s some sort of general. It puts a toothy grin on Fenrir’s face that the men return. “Where are you headed today?”

“Section nine,” he says, bracing his shoulder against the lift’s cage by masking it with a casual lean. When the lift begins to move, he remains steady while the other men stumble where they stand. “Reports of some tremors so I’m going to help in case there’s a cave in.”

“Gonna dig em all out like last time?”

If he has to. Although, last time, the cave in hadn’t been nearly as deep underground as this.

He arrives in section nine and encounters something worse than a cave-in: the smell of smoke.

It’s faint, buried under the heady scent of paraffin oil, coming in whiffs rather than waves. But it’s one of the warning signs he’s come to not underestimate, and when he flags down section nine’s foreman he says as much.