The woods are so big after sitting around doing nothing in the crummy room for so long. I got bored of television so quickly and after that there was only standing on the balcony, which Gillian and Damien do all the time they think I'm not looking. It's really frustrating. Red has been a nag the whole time and Angel is even more of a nag, but what else is new? We should have just kept walking. Adaline just got better one morning with no prompting whatever, and everything was better. That could have happened anywhere, but no, we had to stay in a crummy hotel with elevators, which sound cool but will bite your hand off if you so much as blink.

"I'm glad we're finally out of there," I tell Damien, again, my elbow on his head. Gillian is standing off to the side, looking disgruntled and upset, and Alex is on his phone being antisocial.

Damien nods. "Me too," he says. "I guess."

"You had a good time, didn't you?" I ask.

Damien looks up. "Sort of."

"What do you mean, sort of? You activated your Veritas for the first time, and it was all my fault. Otherwise you could have been empty forever," I shrug. "Have you managed to turn it on again?"

"No," Damien admits, looking at the grass.

"Well, duh, because I haven't helped you again since, and it's been a week. Plus, we didn't even get to see you fight anyone. It was just a bunch of ugly women in those shirts that go up to your neck. Don't you think those are uncomfortable? Why not just wear a scarf?" I ask.

Gillian sniffs.

"What? You have something to say?"

Her eyes are dark. Gillian pushes Damien aside and slugs me in the face.

I grin. I pull myself back up and summon a sword into my open hand, which glimmers in the light of the sun. My Veritas begins to fold open behind me, wings sweeping the ground, and Gillian holds out a hand to halt me. The nerve. She doesn't think she could even if she wanted to, does she?

"You are not in charge of him," she says. "This is not a fight. This is punctuation."

"Gillian, you know blood just makes me hungry."
"That sounds like your problem."

"You're the best problem I've ever had," I tell her.

"Aw. You two are cute together."

Gillian's face draws back into a dragon sneer. I think of the dragon in the book I read being stabbed to death over and over again by a rain of swords, slashing red until there's no part of the dragon's body left to reach out and attack with. The thought dances in my eyes until Gillian and I both calm down.

"Not today?" I ask.

"Not right now," she confirms. "We can stretch our legs later."
"I knew you wanted to fight me," I say.

"Go find Kali and bother her instead." Gillian rolls her eyes. "I am going with the boys to navigate."

The boys. Gillian, they are not your boys. If anything, they would be my boys. "Okay. Damien, want to go find Kali?"

"Kali?" Damien startles. "Not... particularly..."
"C'mon, she's just up ahead. We can save her from Elle or something." I elbow Damien in the side for emphasis. This usually helps him realize that duh, Gillian is the worst, and whatever we're doing will be more fun. He sweeps the area with his hand, gripping the place where I touched him. "Then she can fight me!"

"I guess," he says weakly.

Gillian's face draws up again. Kali said that he was mine. I just have to be assertive.

"Don't look at me like that," I demand.

"You put all of us in danger." Gillian says, slowly. "A few days back. It still has not dawned on you."
Silly, silly Gillian. I'm so many steps ahead of you that it would take you a thousand dawns for you to catch up with me. The city is behind us. The future is bright, shiny, and there are no poe trees in it. We don't need to care about people we will never see again. "Let's go, Damien."

Damien stares right up the whole time we're walking. I follow his gaze upwards but the only thing there is the sky, which is starting to darken like a bruise. I look back ahead, to where the upper kids are. They're just black silhouettes as the light fades out, like tiny, unimpressive trees. I want to cut trees down but I have Damien with me and he can't cut down anything. The sacrifices I make for him. Really.

"Kali," I yell. "Kali."

Kali turns around. There's no light to get in her eyes but there's so much brightness in her pupils. I catch a wisp of smoke leaving her nose. "What."

"I want to fight," I say. "Duh."

Kali's gaze slides sideways to Red. "I have a surprise for you. Go get me some sticks."

Damien shrugs. I can barely make him out as the land keeps getting darker, so I adjust my eyesight to be more like that of a cat. "Let's go," I say, dragging him along the path. There are twigs everywhere, moist and covered in rain, but I'm taking the best ones. Dry, pointed, long enough to impale someone... those are the good sticks. I swing one through the air to demonstrate. Damien has maybe two sticks, max. "Damien. You can't really do this, can you?"

"I'm tired, Mary."

"I don't know how anyone even gets tired. Gillian doesn't get tired. She's like... a turtle. She moves slowly, but turtles don't stop moving."

"Mary, turtles stop moving all the time. They spend most of the day not moving."

I squint at Damien. "Do you even want to hang out with me?"

"You dragged me along," he says. "Yes. I do. I'm just tired."

"Well, Kali probably has a really cool surprise for us," I say. "Group's right there. Let's go back."

Damien follows behind me like a big sad dog while I hand Kali the sticks. Kali twirls a few of them twice in her hand, her mouth twisted up with satisfaction, and then she says, "Get me some rocks."

Damien and I pick rocks out of the earth and I carry them back, practically sprinting.

"Where's Damien?" Angel asks.

Damien comes out of the woods minutes later. He is sad and covered in dirt.

"What do you need me to do?" I ask Kali.

"Set them in a circle," she says. This must be our battleground. "Now take the sticks and light a fire."

"Come on, Dae, hurry up," I hiss, quickly situating my rock circle. When they're all in order, I spark the sticks together, and Kali uses a bit of her own fire to set everything we've got going. She nods with satisfaction. I grin. "Now what?"

"We don't need to fight. I've already gotten things all fired up." Kali says, relaxing in the glow of the fire I made for her. "I bet Red that I could get you to do something useful for once in your life. Thanks for proving me right."

I kick some dirt into the fire, which chokes up. Kali threateningly lights her fingers ablaze, smoke trailing from each blue sphere of light. Stupid. I don't even want to fight her right now.

"Sorry about that," Damien says, sitting down hunched by the fire. "I guess we can relax now, though."

"Well, I kind of just want to fight you."

Damien's eyes glitter in the fire.

"No, no. It's not a bad thing. I want... I want to help you," I tell him, taking his hand. "Come on."

Damien takes a longing look back at the rest of the group, but I have him out in the woods now. His arm is entirely slack in mine, and then I stiuate him across from me. I turn over some earth and rub a few twigs together to get a spark going, then throw some leaves in. It sputters to life, and I look at Damien, across the fire.

"This is how you do it." I tell him. "Focus on the fire and draw something out of you.. It's already there. It just needs a push to wake up."
Damien stares into the fire. His dusty hair is occasionally buffeted by the wind and smoke, and his face is flecked by ash. He looks more frightening than in the daytime, which makes me want to kiss him. He glares harder, and I see the ghost of a flame appear close to his head, but it's just an illusion.

"Mary, I appreciate this, but you don't need to help me with my Veritas. I think I have to work it out on my own."

"Is that what Gillian's helping you with?" I ask.

Damien doesn't answer. Someone is watching us from the trees. I raise a hand, wings pouring out around me, and answer in a layered voice, "What does she know?"
"She just says I need to think deeply about myself, and it will come out," Damien says. "Eventually."

"You're doing it wrong," I say, drawing myself across the fire to him. The air is damp and sticky, and the fire crackles as I touch his skin. "There has to be some way I can help you."

My fingers are in his hair and on his heart. It beats fast, like those of rabbits I've had in my talons when I'm a hawk. It's easy when you don't have to frater-- fraturn-- when you don't have to be around prey. Live with them. Be friends with them. When all you want is a meal, it's easy, but I'm not hungry right now. I just want. Damien's breath grows faster and he ducks his head. I move back across the clearing and sit beneath my side of the fire, grabbing a stick in my hands to break.

"Damien?" I ask.

"Yes?" His voice is soft like rabbit fur.

I poke the fire. Embers fly up from its heart, seizing the air and crackling with pain. "What am I doing wrong?"