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“I wasn’t going to be gone long. You lasted eight days without me and the world is still standing.” Even if it felt like it was all falling apart.

“Do you even know the amount of effort it’s taken not to send the entire Empire into a panic? We were attacked! On our own soil during a celebration! People’s families are dead because of an unknown enemy who came out of nowhere without warning, while their hero general-turned-king is fucking unconscious after almost getting publicly assassinated and losing his arm! And here he is, running off in the middle of the night as if none of that happened!”

By the time Red was finished she was panting, fists clenched hard enough at her sides they’d begun to shake.

“They were worried about you, Fenrir. I was worried. And you want to chase after these ghosts without knowin’ anything about them? Leave the Empire behind while you follow Orpheus’ trail when they could circle back ‘round and attack us all over again?”

“Orpheus can’t be that far away. I can catch up, save him, and be back before anyone notices.”

“So that was your plan, that I wouldn’t notice? You think I wouldn’t notice that my gravely injured best friend went missing after he nearly died?”

“Someone’s got to go after him!”

“Someone’s got to lead the Empire!”

Of all the elephants Fenrir had shared a room with over the years, this was the worst—because Red…

Red was right.

I can’t go. Not because he’d lost his arm or couldn’t ride a horse, but because he’d made a promise—too many promises—and like the storybooks he’d read, when the hero faces a choice between a personal want and the greater good…the greater good wins. Always.

What have I done?

The tears grew hot, then stinging—a swimming veil that he could not pull back.

“I can still do both, Red. I just need—I need him back. I can’t let him go!”

“Fenrir, do you—are you” —it was Red’s turn to cut off. She made a soft sound that had to be a curse, the pad of her steps bringing her close enough she had to see, now. He couldn’t meet her eyes, let alone look at her face. The grief was too uncanny a mirror, the words she spoke in juxtaposition to the solution she offered. Because they both cared about Orpheus. That was the grave, unwavering truth. “You think I’ve given up on Sparks? Is that really what you think is happening?”

“What I think is happening?” Fenrir repeated, not liking how small his voice sounded—the broken edge he couldn’t soften. “What I think is happening is that I actually died on that stage, and this is Hell, because in what world can I not chase after the man I love when I need to the most?”

Red cursed again, then went silent, the stillness of the night turning balmy between them.

“Farris,” Red eventually said, once that balm had grown thick. “Can you take Nightmare back to the pasture?”

“Sure thing, Ms. Red.”

The sound of equipment exchanging hands rattled the quiet, the stars an aura of glares from behind unshed tears. By the time Nightmare’s clops faded, Red was crouched at his side, picking grass from his hair while tears leaked quietly down his cheeks. She only spoke again once his breathing had gone even, the hitch in his chest dampening to a steady, shallow rise and fall.

“Can we talk about this more inside?” she eventually asked, fingers trailing his drying cheek.

Fenrir squeezed his eyes closed and breathed, “Yeah. Sure. Okay.”

In a room far away from the beeps and whirs of the medical ward, Red directed him to sit. There was a pillow and blanket tossed against the arm of the small couch where he and her laptop sat, screen opened to a streak of dead pixels and the code for her new communications tech, clear evidence of where Red had spent the last week while he was lost to a drugged-out coma. The mess was hers in all the ways Fenrir knew her. Organized and intentional, except for one thing.

A large sheet of paper sat half-curled into itself atop the desk in the corner, paper notes pinned to a cork board behind it in all different handwriting, some with pictures, each hand drawn.

“What is that?”

“It’s what I brought you here for.”

Red dragged a low table over to where he sat, then retrieved the sheet. When she smoothed it out atop the table her hands passed over a litter of drawings and notes and names and marks and…and locations, but not of the Empire—rather the massive expanse of the Rim. And through those details, a series of markers wove—white like the cloaks their invaders hid behind—and Fenrir suddenly understood exactly what he was looking at.

A map. Red had made a map of the Rim.

“I was gonna run it by Farris first, then I found you trying to ride off into the sunset.”

“Sunrise,” Fenrir corrected.