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“It seems Ms. Red’s device has lost its signal.”

“You mean it’s been destroyed.”

Bastion handed the screen back to Fenrir, face wiped clean of any discernible expression.

“She’s dead?” Fenrir asked, voice small, the whole world tunneling. “Bastion, is she dead?”

“I can’t say,” came out so quietly Bastion may as well have said: Yes.

Vera’s footsteps fell like so many bombs when she crossed the room to crouch beside him. “Fenrir,” she said, voice soft, hand reaching out like she meant to—to— “I’m so s—”

“Shut up,” he hissed, rearing away from her touch. Vera jerked back as if stung.

There was hurt in her eyes, mask pulled back to expose the pain she’d always been so good at hiding—to the point Fenrir wondered if she felt it at all. And it was good to see. More truthful than the half-baked efforts reconnecting with him had felt. Because whatever Vera’s reason for being here, whatever aim she had in mind for trying to be…be a mother now of all times, Fenrir wanted nothing of it. Not if this is what it meant. To have the scab of an old wound peeled back to reveal the infection underneath. An infection he’d been fighting his entire hells-damned life that had started the day she’d sold him off and had not even been able to say goodbye.

I’m a fool.

To think he trusted her to ever have his best interests at heart?

“Don’t follow me.” Fenrir found his feet and fled the room without a backwards glance.

Protests chased him—Vera’s—Bastion’s. Fenrir ignored them both, taking to the halls and all but running. Heat stung his eyes, but it was his cheeks that burned hot, the sweep of his path cutting through the gossiping nobles like a well-honed blade. Rage was a curious emotion, born of fear yet not its equal, a reckless gutting that could tear down nations as easily as it could destroy oneself. Fenrir had watched lesser men be eviscerated by rage’s hold often enough. Had witnessed for himself the kind of fallout born of a violent wound left to fester. But never before had he felt it himself. Never, until now, did he understand why some men clung to it like an addiction.

“Don’t let them near,” he snarled, the guards on his heels pivoting immediately to block off the hallway.

Nobles jumped and cowered, eyes dropping to the ground when he met them head on. A threat or a dare—he didn’t know which—only that in this state he grasped control for the first time in weeks. Felt, finally, that something was within his power again. Choice his, even if it was all too hells-damned late.

Fifi, he thought, stalking blinding through the palace, needing to go but confronting the reality that he was already too late. I’m so sorry, Fifi.

It seemed almost fitting, the door that appeared at the end of a long, windowed corridor.

His stalk slowed to a stumble, the nobles nowhere to be seen, the guards too far behind to matter. Somehow his path had taken him to the one place in the Gilded Palace he had actively avoided. A place where memory haunted like a ghost he hadn’t been ready to face before—still wasn’t, despite how his mindless path had brought him here.

Memory of the last time he’d stood at this door slammed home in a rush: Ohm’s looming silhouette, the blue-gray rise of a pre-dawn sun, and a budding sense of hope—opportunity. A light in the darkness of a night he hadn’t even realized had fully arrived, for neither himself nor Orpheus. Then, Fenrir had dragged Orpheus to a safety he’d feared the curse had stolen. And despite the stakes they’d fought through, for a brief moment in time, they’d won. They’d been happy, had been building a future together, even if it’d come at a cost. A cost great enough Fenrir had felt secure in their future because their mistakes were surely fully paid for, which made it feel safe to naively gamble what Orpheus had sacrificed so much for them to have.

You didn’t know. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t responsible.

Fenrir put his palm to the door and pushed.

Shadows spilled like smoke, old air thick with the wet scent of a subterranean cavern. Fenrir breathed it in like it was all he had left. He thought of Orpheus and whether this would be the closest he’d ever get to him again, his fingertips dragging along a wall Orpheus had touched a thousand times over, breathing the same old stale air Orpheus had breathed for two decades. A breath Fenrir held when he stepped past the dungeon’s heavy door, then descended.

Darkness greeted him, his shadow stretching long, his footsteps heavy, his chest tight.

Like a picture out of time, Orpheus’ abandoned desk sat at the center of the room, exactly how they’d left it so many months ago.

I remember…

The desk was a mess. Books covered the surface, the wood itself deeply scarred, whether from Orpheus’ hand or that of the scientists who had preceded him. Sigils stood in sharp relief against the grain, pieces of hastily scribbled notes covering sheets of curling papers, Orpheus’ ornate script instantly recognizable. The little sketches crowding the margins were a peek into the chaotic mind of a man the world had only known as Lore’s pet wizard. Not the man Fenrir had seen. Not the lost, lonely person who had survived a childhood of torture just to fall victim to the one person who was supposed to be his friend.

A pile of archanics sat forgotten and Fenrir ran a finger along one that resembled an Incendiary Beetle, its little carapace half-constructed, the tiny creature more of a toy than the weapons Orpheus had forged.

And beside it sat a knife he recognized, half-buried and nearly forgotten.

He reached for the blade and, suddenly, he could see it; the Brainrotter he’d snatched from Orpheus’ ear. Fenrir jerked his hand back without thinking, the memory flooding his mind like one of those moving pictures his dad loved, but so much worse. Because he could feel it too: Orpheus shivering against him, his body heat bleeding through the weave of his robes, his breath raw with the remains of the tears Fenrir had caught him in. Orpheus hadn’t wanted his help, but in that moment, something had changed between them. What would be the first of many revelations, and the start of a journey to reforge the identity Orpheus had carved from the lies Lore had told him and all those he’d crafted for himself.

And look where it got him. Sacrifices were never easy, but the price Orpheus paid for his role in Lore’s reign had at least left him alive. His magic traded for a peaceful, happy life where he could be the man he chose to be, rather than the person others had turned him into.

So why had it all gone to shit? Why had the world turned on him again now that they’d done the right thing and saved it? How had Fenrir planned for every kind of contingency except this one, where Orpheus was yet again in harm's way despite everything they’d achieved together?