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“Second thoughts?” Bastion asked, noticing his hesitation.

“No, it’s just…”

To accept this, would that acknowledge he’d been missing something? That without his arm he was less the hero he used to be? Less the man? Less the warrior general so many had relied on, turned to so much that they had made him their king? He’d worked hard to not be defined by the loss of his sword arm, training with Mercer to grow strong without its crutch. But that kind of stubbornness had no place where he was headed, not when Orpheus’ life depended on him, and he needed every advantage he could get.

And he couldn’t deny how he wanted.

A new arm—a better arm. Not just a hand to touch and hold and comfort, but a weapon. Wrought from the lost technology of their past, reforged into something that could help protect their future. A future he’d already sacrificed so much for, so why not accept a gift when it was offered? He didn’t ask Bastion to make this arm. Bastion had made it because he saw a possibility where Fenrir had only seen grief.

“Let’s do it,” he breathed, meeting Bastion’s eyes. “How long do you need?”

“Three hours for the surgery, another six for you to fully come out of the anesthesia. Healing will be fast, the organic compound I use accelerates the rate of cellular regeneration to mere days rather than weeks, though I don’t recommend heavy use within seventy-two hours. It will hurt, but your arm will be fully functioning by the time you catch up with Ms. Red.”

“Don’t put me fully under, I can’t lose the time.” Fenrir shucked the cloak off his shoulder and turned towards the makeshift surgical bed Bastion had already prepared. “I’ll heal on the way to Sanctuary.”

“Your majesty, you can’t” —Bastion cut off, eyes meeting Fenrir’s and balking at whatever he saw there— “The procedure is quite invasive. I do not recommend remaining awake.”

“You know me, Bastion.” Fenrir gave him his most dazzling smile, full of teeth and a resolve that wouldn’t waver—all the things that made him him, that Fenrir had nearly lost a hold of once that cursed crown came down over his head.

No. That wasn’t right. If anything, that crown made him realize just what it was he’d been doing wrong with his entire life.

Maybe that’s why Fenrir didn’t flinch when Bastion said, “As you command, my king.”

Shirt and cloak abandoned to a chair, Fenrir sat down on the operating table and listened to his heart beat.

“This is a local anesthesia.” Bastion wiped at Fenrir’s shoulder with a small pad, then fitted a needle into place. “You will…feel some things. A pressure, a pinch of pain. And the sound, there is nothing I can do for the sound…”

“I don’t care.” Except a part of him wished he hadn’t left Vera in his rooms, had asked his mother to come with him, to hold his hand here as she had the day he’d woken up, stripped of so much more than an arm.

“Then lay back and we will start.”

Bastion fitted a mask over his face, the sickly-sweet scent second to the buzzy feeling growing in his body. The fog descended with a quiet aplomb, a dizzying whorl that settled into a fuzzy not-there, room receding into the tunnel of his mind, operatory lights no more than twin suns rising from his horizons, the whine of a blade singing through the haze like birdsong.

Time distended into broken fragments that marked a limitless nothing that he could almost touch end to end. A childhood he’d spent wrapped in the swaddle of his mother’s fleeting embrace. An adolescence spent in the shadows of that mine. And futures he’d only dreamed of, amorphous and changing but for the one element left untouched—Orpheus, standing out like a dark smear amongst all Fenrir’s light, a cool balm to his fire, a gentle press against his unwavering will.

Fenrir reached for him and something broke.

Awareness slammed into him like a shield, suns narrowing into operatory lights, birdsong sharpening into the frantic beeping of a machine. In his peripheral Bastion hunched over his stump, strings of glimmering thread reaching for the wet flesh of his split-open scar from the arm, twisting and coiling as they came together, as alive as his arm was dead, until the moment it was not.

The gilt plates of the titanium descended, invisible pieces spinning, tightening—locking into place. The pauldron closed over his shoulder with a snap, the base of his stump a screw to chew through, a matching pain punching through his shoulder where the titanium fused to his flesh in a shattering of pain that collected in Fenrir’s throat until he couldn’t help but scream.

Fire engulfed his arm, instant and acute—but he could feel it.

An arm. His missing arm. His new arm, that he could sense, see, feel, move—not like the ghost that had haunted its place, but real. There. As painfully present as any arm could be. Should be.

Under the searing lights of an artificial sun, Fenrir moved. Sweat beaded his skin, blood pumping through his arteries in a pulse-beat that thundered in his chest. And despite Bastion’s warning that he be careful, despite the blood staining the sheets and the zing of pain shooting through his chest, Fenrir grit his teeth and lifted the arm. His arm. A metal construct of imperious perfection, as unnatural as it was natural, an extension of him that no sword could ever match.

And he could sense it already: the uncanny precision. An impossible strength. Whatever this arm was, it was far more than the gilt-edged armor or the delicate mechanics underneath. It was a weapon, just like he was. But a weapon that could touch. A weapon that could hold. Protect. Feel.

Heat flared, zipping through his nerves and straight to his heart. Fenrir blinked against the sting of it.

“You’re a genius, Bastion,” he managed through the fog. The pain was still there, bold and aching. But something else too. A sense of completion. The absence of loss. “Thank you doesn’t seem good enough.”

“The only thanks I need is knowing you’ll put it to good use.” Bastion touched Fenrir’s elbow, then the pauldron. “And I know you will, my king. You are one of the few I trust would.”

“Guess I got a damsel to go save, huh?” Laid back on the operating table, chest heaving with effort, eyes prickled with tears, Fenrir smiled. And for the first time in weeks, it felt real.

Beside him, Bastion returned it. “That you do.”