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“Gwen,” he breathed, realization striking. “Did you know?”

Beside him, Gwen met his eyes, too wide in the chaos, pupils blown black with a fear only one thing could explain.

Her voice shook when she said, “I didn’t think he’d actually come.”

Another explosion tore through the city, close enough he could feel the heat, and in the split second between when the shell fell and the explosion hit, Orpheus swore he felt something inside him break.

Stone slipped from his fingers, air whooshing past his cheeks. He hit the ground with a deep oomph, dust skittering down from the ceiling to tumble along his side. By the time he rolled onto his knees Gwen crouched some feet away, eyes wide with fear, locked on him.

“Orpheus, please,” she begged, hand lifting like she was going to crawl for him and then hesitating, frozen to the spot while another blast lit the room in wretched violet. “Orpheus, I’m—”

“What, sorry?” he snarled. “You did this!” How could you? “You tricked me!”

“No!” Gwen wailed, finally finding her feet. “They would have made you fix it anyway! And I didn’t think it could be fixed! I didn’t know your spell would work!”

“Of course it worked!” Orpheus shrieked. “I’m not broken!”

Gwen flinched, as if struck.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears setting her pale eyes afire. “I’m so sorry.”

Then she turned towards the wall and leaped for the shadows.

Orpheus lurched to his feet but without his cane his leg gave out, collapsing under his weight and sending him back to the ground. Pain lanced through his leg, a choking wrench, so he crawled instead, dragged himself through the falling dust and smoldering embers, towards where Gwen crouched against a wall.

Get back here! He wanted to scream but he couldn’t move fast enough. The library trembled with the force of another eruption, death knell fading, replaced by a ringing in his ears that would not relent. And across the room, Gwen opened a hole in the wall he could not reach—a mirror to the chasm inside his chest he’d thought he’d closed, releasing all the hurt and pain and betrayal he’d escaped when Fenrir had risen into his sky like a sun at the zenith of a brand new day.

He’s alive. He’ll be okay, he tried to tell himself, another flash of violet flooding the room, another crack of lightning ripping through the fleet. He has to be okay!

But if he isn’t, that voice hissed, there’s still a way…

“I’ll fix this,” Gwen said from across the room, shadows licking at her feet, inky and dark and curling around her like the night was alive. “I’m gonna fix this, Orpheus. Just wait and see, okay? I’ll fix it.”

Then she disappeared into the darkness and he was alone again. Only Orpheus and the world outside the window left behind—a window he couldn’t look out of anymore, because to do so would be to face a world he no longer knew the shape of.

He’s not dead, Orpheus thought through the ringing in his head.

He’s okay, died alongside the next flare of light.

She lied to me, slithered from the darkness.

She used me, closed down like the jaws of a cornered beast.

Interlude

Plans

Conditions don’t get better after the cave in.

Fenrir becomes more vocal about the mine’s safety which merely serves to paint a target on his back. His team is stripped from him, and the title of mine safety foreman bears the uncomfortable tongue-in-cheek weight management seems to favor. He’s sent into dangerous situations day after day, rather than leading a team in their assignment. It would feel like a death sentence if Fenrir didn’t avoid disaster at every turn. Maybe it’s luck, or maybe it’s something else, but the miners grow more loyal to him while the foreman’s insidious plans seem to backfire.

All thoughts of when Vera might return for him have fled, and after his eighteenth birthday comes and goes without his contract ending Fenrir realizes it’s never going to. No matter what some fine print may say.

His is not the only contract rumored to be expired. Miners of all ages whisper of the owner’s refusal to honor terms, most unable to read but those who can hunch over documents yellowing with age looking for the loophole that has shackled them to the mine’s service. Fenrir doesn’t have a copy of his contract. He never had. It’d been handed over to the man in the dark coat who had brought him here. It’s possible his family doesn’t know where he is, let alone still here. Honest people didn’t often clock dishonest men, after all.

In a world where physical wealth is sorely lacking, a man’s word is as valuable as gold. But for the men who already had gold? Dishonesty is the way they kept it.

Fenrir vows to himself to always be an honest man.