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I'm sorry, Elisey.

I don't know why I dreamed of those words. I don't know what they were supposed to mean, but when I wake up in the morning, my mind, clouded by a haze of dreams, is somehow sure that I will wake up bound, with bruises and bloodied lips. Somewhere in a stone, gloomy, damp dungeon, such as I've never seen in my life but decided that is where kings and empresses deal with their enemies.

I'm sorry, Elisey.

I'm sorry, tonight you finally fell into the trap of treacherous shamans. You will never become one of us, because you are not our equal. The only thing Loretto can love about you is your death, Maricela reminds me, hissing into my ears and laughing.

Have you not realized by now that you were sheltered under the wing of our care only to be torn into pieces by ancient demons in beautiful robes at the hour of judgment, and you will have no choice here? Your fate was painted long ago. You are a pawn in a game where victory is the throne and failure is death. You fell for the bait of seduction and affection like a blind worm; now your house is on fire, and your relatives are on their knees awaiting execution, while you dream of love.

Naive fool, Montejo, ha! Like all his ancestors, he is greedy for someone else's beauty, because he does not have his own, haha! Well...that's your share, then. Your karma. Your fatal talent.

I'm sorry, Elisey.

A poisonous fear grips my heart before I can fully wake up. My hand clenches into a fist to fight for my life.

"Eli! Fuck...are you gonna rip a piece of my skin off first thing in the morning?" Loretto's voice breaks through the veil of my acrid dreams with enviable boldness. "Very kind of you, thank you. If you pinch like that again, I'll kick you and you'll fall to the floor, where the condom is still lying."

Opening my eyes, I gasp and frown at the light of dawn that streaks across my pupils at the same moment, I realize that so far, only my dreams have betrayed me.

I'm in my room. On my bed. Without bruises and demons. Lo lies next to me and looks at me with a surprised, worried reproach in faer piercing but loving eyes. The morning is early, sunny and serene, and only my hand, clutching Mentor's side, squeezes faer skin, leaving a devilishly red mark.

"I'm sorry." I hurriedly relax my fist. Fear dissolves as quickly as my night vision, and now it seems to be an utter nonsense of elusive whispers and blurred images. "I...had a bad dream, I think. I don't remember."

Loretto squints at me for another split second, as if calculating something in faer mind, but then fae just nods and looks at the ceiling again. Fae doesn't ask me anything, doesn't leave, and doesn't kick me to the floor.

Fae lets faerself be hugged again.

And I do hug faer. For another minute, I'm still trying to figure out who my subconscious was going to fight, but then I discard this idea.

I rub my sleepy face. Stretch--well, or try to. I almost fall off the edge of the bed, where I'm still huddled, and when I wake up fully, I realize that my mouth is dry, and I'm terribly, terribly hungry...But there is no desire to go looking for food at all, because my body, although numb from sleeping without moving, is still blissfully pampered. It's nice.

Loretto and I have our clothes lying untouched on the floor, and my chair is steadfastly propping up the door to my room. The only thing that has changed is the blanket, which fell to the floor at night, but now wraps Lo and me up to our waists. It's warm to be under the blanket together.

It's warm...Fae trusts me with faer warmth. Unlike in my dreams, I remember this perfectly well. Smiling, I turn back to Loretto.

Mentor doesn't look sleepy. My mentor. All mine, look all you like. My beautiful, smart, brave mentor. I don't know if Loretto had the will to get to the shower and comb faer hair at night, but there is clearly no lack of freshness in faer features. There is tenacious vigilance in faer eyes, gazing at the ceiling with thoughtful laziness for some reason. Couldn't sleep?

Only faer reddening, slightly swollen from kisses lips give away our night spent.

Seeing no reason to restrain myself, feeling Loretto's warm body curves along mine, I begin to slowly run my hand over Tayen's beautiful naked chest heaving with measured breathing. I run my palm over all the places I caressed yesterday. I stroke faer collarbones, stomach and navel and lead my fingers down under the blanket...

Lo grabs my hand at the very last moment.

"Not now, Eli."

"Why? I've heard that making love in the morning is good for your health."

Loretto looks at me. "Are you not healthy enough?" After a pause, fae adds, "Your family has been awake for two hours. Someone knocked on our door three times, once even trying to open it."

"So? Are you shy?"

"Not being shy and spreading your legs in public are two different things. Or do you want to spread them yourself this time?"

Embarrassed, I don't answer. I'm probably still sleepy, because I don't understand what the question is about. A joke? Or a frivolous hint that I should spread Lo's legs myself?..

While I'm thinking, I feel my stomach, also waking up, starting to rumble and overshadow my lovely thoughts. It vibrates with hunger, as if wrapping itself in a knot, complaining that I spent every last crumb on kisses and sighs.

I'm about to suggest Lo to breakfast, when there really are footsteps outside our door. And then a knock. Persistent and loud. Impatient. The knuckles of someone's fingers drum on the door five times, and then the door handle immediately begins to turn. It does not give in, of course, it only turns, getting stuck with a nasty screech in the upper crossbar of the back of the chair, as I expected, not allowing the door to open, but the chair is not a latch, it can only postpone the inevitable.

"This junk is stuck again..Eli? Tom? Are you still sleeping there?" The dissatisfied, but disgustingly cheerful Mom's voice rings throughout the house, waking me up completely. "Guys, get up, the working day has almost begun. You'll be late! Do you want the shamans to lock you in the laundry room for an extra month as punishment? Eli? Tom? Eli!!"

My heart sinks.

The door starts to creak, the chair starts to shake. Mom is kind-hearted, but if she's got something in her head, then she's as adamant as a warrior. Another minute, and she will obviously break my structure. She will enter and turn pale in front of the picture: where her modest son and his sweet friend Tom show off their naked genitals from under the blanket.

I don't know what will shock Mom more then: my audacity, which allowed me to bring an object of lust into the house, although even our immoral Kofi does not dare to have fun with his numerous affairs at home? Or my bad manners, which are lying on top of the Loretto, although I had to endure hardships of an old mattress on the floor, and provide a guest with a bed?

"Eli!!"

"Wait!" I jump off the bed as if slapped on the ass. "No!" I exclaim, either to my mother or to Loretto, noticing that Mentor raises faer palm, on which aura flickers, designed to hold the door. But if Mom sees aura too... she'll faint.

Forgetting my hunger, tenderness, and the trembling that seized me at the moment when my bare feet touch the cold floorboards, I rush across the room in a frenzied dance so fast that my head is spinning. I pull on my pants as I run. I throw my pajama shirt at Lo. I put an empty bottle of lubricant and the remaining scattered clothes under the bed.

"Eli!.."

"I'm coming! Wait a minute!" When I run up, the chair has already moved halfway away.

"How many times have I told you, lubricate the hinges," Mom grumbles, while I, pushing back the chair and yanking the door as if it was really stuck, politely open it. "Otherwise they will rust, and one day you will have to walk through the window. What are you doing? Are you really asleep?"

Mom's gaze slides past me to Tom. Her voice immediately softens, "Oh, have you been chatting all night?"

My pulse is pounding in arrhythmic anxiety, but I pull a smile on my lips. Mom doesn't notice me. My parents always wake up at the crack of dawn, and Mom's mind, which has been busy with everyday worries for a long time by now, eventually sees me as nothing more than a tick on the list of completed tasks. Woke him up. Didn't let this fool oversleep. Done.

But Tom is definitely much more interesting to look at. This is a new item in the list, a new tick.

"I brought you carrot cookies for breakfast," Mom continues to tell us much more peacefully, although she now looks exclusively at Loretto when she points at the tray she is holding. On the tray is a dish with carrot cookies and two glasses of milk generously poured almost to the brim. She never brought me breakfast in bed, even when I had a cold. "Eli's brother, Cale, baked cookies in the morning. Not all of them are here, I'll wrap the rest up for you to go. Did you sleep well, Tom?"

In the ridiculously long pause, Tom only nods uncertainly in response. Fae looks at Mom, at me, at Mom again. Lo is in no hurry to get out of bed--there are no pants--but the shirt I threw is on, so that faer shoulders sticking out from under the blanket look quite decent.

I can't say that Loretto is lost, but fae definitely doesn't understand how to react to the situation. Smile foolishly and lie? Confess everything? Tayen is able to conduct dialogues with Her Majesty's advisers and formal conversations with subordinates in the library, silently listen to nonsense arguments at the kitchen table and eat dinner with an appetite, but this morning's bedlam? In the bedroom of someone who, by all the rules, should have remained an ordinary student in your history?

This is something from an unexplored book.

I can see the mute question in Lo's eyes: How much of what had happened at night did Mom guess?

Just don't admit it, I think. Guessed or not, but if we confess, then Mom will tell Ma, and Ma will definitely chastise me. Ma is sure that I'm an idiot, and love is self-deception.

"Thanks, we'll eat everything. And shamans are preparing for a holiday in honor of the Trials." I stretch out my arms to pick up the tray and escort Mom out. "They won't notice if we're late."

"It's better not to take any chances," Mom clucks her tongue. She doesn't give me the tray, but dodges me and goes across the room to put the food on the table. "I'll also give you some fried wings as you leave. From yesterday's dinner. They are very nutritious and for a snack at work-the very thing. And stewed cabbage, of course, because..."

Don't admit it, stupid Montejo...

It's only now, when Mom walks past me, past the mattress, brushing it with the hem of her dress, and my panic subsides, I realize that the trouble lies not only in the power of Loretto's lies and my poker face. I didn't hide everything. Did Mentor threaten to kick me to the floor if I pinched faer? To the floor where our used condom is lying?

And it's not just lying. At night, when I pulled it off and threw it into the darkness, I did not check where, and even more so--I did not think that it would be so visible.

There is a mattress on the floor next to the bed for me, yes, and on it, there is a blanket and a spare pillow. The condom, like a stained sample shriveled from dried sperm, solemnly rests in the middle of this pillow like a royal tiara on a velvet pad. All that remains is to turn on the music. And you can dance around it.

I swallow hard.

I glance at Mom, calmly putting the tray on the desk. Just about ready to turn around to leave and see my tiara.

Or she won't notice? I feel a hot drop of sweat running down the back of my neck. Mom does not expect to see such a thing, and when you do not expect it, your eyes most often do not notice... And if I rush across to kick a pillow under the bed, she will see my haste for sure.

My eyes must have widened so much at that moment that Loretto understood everything without words. So the next moment, Tayen leans over the edge of the bed, picks up the blanket from the mattress and throws it on the pillow, hiding our evidence.

When Mom turns around, Tom is already sitting straight again, casually combing faer hair with faer fingers.

"...you liked the cabbage, didn't you, Tom?" Mom continues. "So I'll give you some more. Eli is always turning his nose up. Does not understand the benefits of such products."

"I really liked it," Tom assures her.

Mom is satisfied. Clasping her hands, giving the two of us a final look and once again instructing us to get ready, she leaves without delay. She doesn't even close the door behind her, but judging by the silence in the house, my sisters are already at school, Cale and Kofi have run away to warm up the urban misfits to the revolution, covering it with the need to personally deliver tailored suits and dresses to customers who don't trust aura portals, and Mom is already going down to the first floor to open the store is with Ma, so once again Loretto and I are alone on the second floor.

In silence.

And peace.

And when I meet the eyes of my mentor, who now looks perplexed by what just happened, I suddenly realize that laughter is rising up my throat. Unrestrained, arrogant and smug laughter.

The last time I spent the night in this house, my most emotional problem was a button that had come off my everyday shirt, and my main dream was aura, which I planned to steal once again from the Tik'al fountains in the coming night.

Now there's a half-naked shaman in my bed. A shaman, aura in its purest form. Invincible and charming, and the emotions that fae provoke in me drive me crazy. And I became a sorcerer myself--I, Montejo, who now plots a counterrevolution against his brothers, dates the protégé of First Blood and defies Her Majesty Maricela Ixchel. It's like I'm a different person! And no one at home sees it. Everyone sees the former flighty Eli living an inconspicuous life, which is not interesting even to its owner, but I am...me.

Yes, people really only notice what they believe in.

Isn't it funny?

And my history began with a broken bike and a hidden condom. Laughter bursts out of my chest. If there is an afterlife, I think Valto is laughing like a madman right now.

"Lo, imagine..." I'm about to voice the hilarious ideas that flashed through my head and suggest that Loretto and I run to the bathroom naked, but I realize that Mentor is looking at me quite seriously. Faer gaze is even kind of...sad. "What's wrong? Don't you want carrot cookies? You love them."

Loretto shakes faer head, still combing faer hair with faer fingers. Fae lowers the corners of faer lips, as if choosing a tasteless formulation, and only then says, "I thought I'd figured you out, Eli. And now I see you with your family. And I realize that I don't know anything about you yet."

Sadness that came from nowhere, fragile and dreary, but also angry, flashes in Loretto's gaze fixed on me frozen in confusion. However, Loretto's anger is not directed at me, but...I'm not sure at what. At something inside Loretto. At a thought. A new subconscious discovery.

"Does everyone break into your room like that?" Tayen suddenly changes the subject.

I blink.

"Well... yeah." Shrugging to shake off the confusion that ruined my moment of joy, I go for cookies, because it's easier to chew than try to decipher Tayen's mood. It's getting more and more out of place, and I have no idea what caused it. What was Mentor thinking about while I was sleeping?

"But this is your territory, Eli. Your private corner. And if you want to be alone? Think, dream, cry? Jerk off, after all?"

"My family doesn't think in such broad categories as you do. You can masturbate in the bathroom. And you don't have to hide from everyone to cry."

"Yes, you do if you don't want to be treated like a weak-willed victim." The last word sounds angry behind my back, almost accusatory.

After swallowing a cookie, I gulp some milk. The knot of hunger in my stomach unties, but it does not help the conversation.

Something has changed between Loretto and I today. There is a new shade of trust, undoubtedly, but the colors that created this shade are strange: they inspire me and discourage Lo.

"This is my parents' house," I say. "I don't make the rules here."

"Then the pants aren't yours either. Your mother sewed them for you. If she says to take it off in the middle of the street, will you take them off?"

"No."

Lo is silent.

I turn around and see that Loretto is now staring at me. Faer lips are pursed, but faer gaze is impenetrable, unreadable as in those moments when danger is near. But there's no danger. I'm not a danger, Mom--even less so. And even Cale, who suspects everyone of everything, is not around. Freedom is more than enough.

Maybe Loretto just doesn't like that my house suddenly has as many rules as the pretentious Great Temple? Did Lo hope to take a day off, without pretentiousness, here?

Tayen has the paradoxical ability to fit into any situation flawlessly like a shadow in the dark of the night, but at the same time, Lo can stand out like a torch burning in that same dark. It is probably this contradiction that partly attracts me to faer, but it also depresses me. Unlike all other skills, Lo seems to struggle with it, it's not playful, not careless. As if, on the contrary, it's dictated by some kind of unconscious anxiety.

Even now, Loretto is sitting on a crumpled cotton sheet--clean, but washed and unsightly faded a long time ago--unpretentiously and modestly, as if faer skin has never got used to Tik'al satin and silk. As if faer doesn't mind being content with the life of the poorest and sleep with me every night on such a small bed.

However, the hardness in Loretto's shoulders, the proud coldness in the corners of faer eyes, the fingers fussily running through faer hair like greedy hands collecting gold...They're from another life. A life where a knife is stabbed in your back, and poison is added to your food; where a lock on the door is needed to give an opportunity to think, dream and cry; where there is no--and by all the laws of logic there should not be!--a safe place on earth. Even at home.

From another life, not yours, Montejo...

Perhaps this Tayen's endless anxiety requiring faer to double-check everything three times is what protected me from the machinations of enemies all this time in Tik'al, while I thought I was just lucky? And now it's also keeping Lo awake. Angry, sad.

But then Mentor was right when fae said that I've been relaxing lately. Next to Lo, I begin to forget what difficulties are, being sure that everything is sweet...but maybe all the burden is on Loretto's shoulders? Maybe I had some stupid dreams today for a reason?

And how many careless nights will Lo stay with me before fae gets tired of taking care of me?

I don't know.

If only I could convince you to tell me something about your past, Lo, I think, gloomy. It would be easier to understand your present. To share the burden on your shoulders.

"Don't be mad at Mom," I say as gently as I can, "she didn't intend to prowl in the private corners of your soul, Lo. She...well, if I say that I want a lock on my room door, everyone in the house will be offended. We don't have any secrets from each other. Or at least we're perfectly fine pretending we don't."

Loretto looks away. Still fiddling with faer hair, which glows golden in the light of the rising sun, fae thinks about something unknown to me and stares into the emptiness. Just a few seconds, although they seem like an unbearable eternity. I'm waiting. If necessary, I will wait all my life. It's worth it.

"I'm not mad," Lo finally lies quietly. "I...you have so many things in your life besides me, Eli. So many people, feelings, expectations, and I just..."

Fae doesn't finish it. Looking up at me and obviously deciding that I wouldn't understand anything anyway, Loretto, albeit feigningly but charmingly, pulls a grin on faer lips. "Give me the cookies. Mom brought them for me too, and as you remember correctly, I love them."

And the warmth in Loretto's gaze, which envelops me the next moment, makes me forget all my worried thoughts.

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Author's note:

Oh, dreams and nightmares...Eli those will drive you insane one day, huh?