When M'yu woke up, the sun had already gone down, the lights of the neighboring houses shining brightly through the windows. One light shone across his face, and he raised his hand, blocking it off. He looked around, trying to figure out how long he'd slept for. 

Aevryn! He was supposed to have met him for dinner. He stumbled to his feet and raced out of the library, terrified of how late he might be.

His head pounded as he ran, and he paused at the double doors outside the dining hall to catch his breath. His vision swam, and he blinked it into focus. Control, he demanded. Despite waking, though, he still felt half-asleep, like he could be a character in one of the vivid dreams he'd just had.

Drawing a deep breath, he pushed into the room.

It was dark, though, the electric candles that usually set the place to flickering turned off, the hearth dead. He blinked hard, then grabbed hold of the wall as he swayed.

"Master Mykta," one of the maids called behind him. He turned in the doorway, still trying to clear the haze from his vision. "You're awake. I'll go get the prince. Oh, here." She bustled into the dining room, flicking candles on and moving to tend to the fire.

"You don't have to light that," M'yu muttered, slowly taking his seat at the table.

"What was that, sir?"

"It's warm enough." He nodded his chin at the unlit fireplace, and his head swam. He closed his eyes.

She titled her head. "This room has been closed off for hours, sir. Are you sure you don't want...?" She stared at him, brow drawn.

"It's fine," he said, tongue thick. The pain in his cheek radiated hot all across his face, down through his neck and shoulders. It spiked as he talked, and he clamped his mouth shut.

"Al-right then." She stood, wiping her hands on her apron. "I'll just go get Prince Aevryn." The door thudded closed, and M'yu leaned his head back on the chair. Control, he demanded. Aevryn didn't need to know that he hadn't been sleeping well. Or what exactly he'd done not to sleep. They had more important things to discuss.

A giggle sounded from the corner. "You don't look too good."

M'yu turned his head, blurry vision coalescing into an image of Aevryn's daughter. "I didn't see you there."

"I know," she whispered, putting a finger to her lips. "I was hiding."

"You kinda gave yourself away," M'yu muttered, cheek pinging and tingling like needles.

She slipped out of the shadows and across the room. She shrugged, putting her hand on the door. "You can only hide for so long, after all." And then she disappeared too.

Maids came to set the table, laying a cold plate of sandwiches in front of him and a glass of water. As they left, M'yu fumbled for the glass, fingers slipping past its rim and into the cool liquid. Drawing his hand out, he sprayed himself in the face, patted down his forehead and good cheek. The cold woke him up just a bit, and he forced himself to sit straighter. Control.

The door opened, and M'yu squared his shoulders. "Apologies for being late."

"Muttering is a bad habit," Aevryn said softly as he took the seat at the table's head. "And so is apologizing for things that aren't your fault. I let you sleep that long. It seemed like you could use the rest." Aevryn spread his napkin out on his lap, then looked over to the fire. "That's strange."

"What is?"

Aevryn stopped reaching for his linkcard and looked up toward M'yu. The man drew back. "Boy, have you run half around the house? What is the matter with you?"

He reached toward M'yu's bad cheek, and M'yu ducked, slipping Aevryn's reach, but his momentum carried him off balance, and he grabbed the table, hard, to keep from falling over. "Whoa."

"Whoa indeed. Stay still." Aevryn grabbed M'yu's shoulder. His hand was cool against M'yu's forehead. "You're burning up," Aevryn muttered.

He pulled M'yu's chair out until he was standing over him and grabbed M'yu's cheeks in one hand. M'yu jerked and called out.

"Open your mouth," Aevryn demanded.

"I thought we were going to eat," M'yu muttered, blinking past the stars in his eyes.

Aevryn placed a cool hand atop M'yu's head and yanked down on M'yu's jaw with the other. M'yu tried to shake him off, but Aevryn held him steady, grip colder and tighter than winter's grip on the world. Then he pushed M'yu back. "Where is it?"

M'yu stumbled out of his chair, putting it between him and Aevryn, leaning against it. "Where is what? What is what? I thought we were going to—" He gestured vaguely at the food.

"You look like you've been eating plenty of something else instead. When? While I let you into my library?"

"Aevryn, please—"

Aevryn reared up, the half-light of the candles casting wicked shadows across his face. "I told you, boy. You. Do. Not. Not in my house."

"I was going to say yes!" M'yu's hands exploded out, and then he stumbled back, just barely catching his balance. "I was going to help you."

"Right now, I don't care about that," Aevryn growled. "Evriss!" he shouted. "Pull the hover around. Now!"

Aevryn advanced on M'yu. As the boy stepped back, one foot stumbled over the other, and he toppled to the ground. "Aevryn, please," he muttered, pain spreading through his face. "Please, I was going to say I would help—"

"I don't care what you were going to do, I don't care what you were trying to do, I don't care. Where is the witchcandy?" He leaned over M'yu, and M'yu squeezed his eyes shut. "Boy!"

M'yu jumped, and Aevryn growled, backing up. "Search his room!" he called to someone. He pulled M'yu to his feet and strung his arm over his shoulders. "Walk," he growled.

M'yu obliged—or tried to at least. It seemed half his steps ended with his feet twisted around each other, and the world warped and blurred before his eyes. He relished the cold wind as they stepped out into another stormy night. The snow was falling fast, stinging M'yu's cheeks, nose, fingers, ears. "My beanie," he murmured before Aevryn bundled him into the hover and he passed out.

When he woke up, the walls were close and tight around him. The world was dark, darker than dark, and he struck out at the walls. Something tight covered his eyes; something hard pressed inside his mouth, keeping his lips parted wide. He screamed, but the device in his mouth muffled the noise. He thrashed harder, determined to break out, to run, to keep running until he never had to think of the Gloam, of prisons, of linkcards and poverty and death and decay ever again, just run and run until he was free, until he was dead—

The walls slid away, and M'yu stumbled to his feet before collapsing on hard tile floor. A needle jammed into his neck while plastic gloved hands grazed his skin. He called out, but the hands just picked him up, a pair beneath his arms, a pair around his ankles. He fought, kicked, clawed—or he tried to, but his body was heavy, so much heavier than it had ever been before.

They laid him back down on the hard surface and slid the walls back around him. He screamed until he passed out.

* * *

When M'yu came to, he sensed the world more than saw it: the soft bed beneath him, the scratchy sheets atop him, the cool, still air, and the scent of antisceptic. Someone else was in the room, a shadow that breathed and moved over M'yu's field of light.

"Don't try to move too fast," Aevryn rumbled.

M'yu's eyes snapped open. The white-washed walls stared at M'yu blankly, and he shrunk back from Aevryn's tall figure, towering even as he sat near the bed.

"Are you scared, boy?"

M'yu swallowed hard. "Where are we?"

"In the hospital. I had to take you here to get treated for the du'chirep infection that you gave yourself." His voice turned low and gravelly. "It had gotten quite advanced."

M'yu reached beneath the covers for his pockets—his knife, Ruslan's linkcard, anything he could possibly use to defend himself. All he found was his beanie. His fingers curled around the fabric, and he pulled it out, staring at it incredulously.

Aevryn sniffed. "Evriss brought it for you."

"Thank—thank you," he said, staring.

"Don't thank me. I said it was Evriss. Personally, I am quite vexed."

"Aevryn, I—"

Aevryn raised a brow. M'yu's breath caught, and he swallowed down whatever deceitful excuse was about to slip through his lips. 

Aevryn hummed. "How long have you been using?"

M'yu shrugged. "About as long as everyone, I suppose."

"And you didn't think to mention that?" M'yu looked at him sideways, and Aevryn sighed. "I could have had you treated a long time ago. When it wasn't an emergency. Less expensive. And less likely for you to die."

"I could have died?" M'yu felt down his torso, like he was checking to make sure none of him had accidentally decayed away.

Aevryn scoffed. "You gave yourself the Rot. What did you expect, boy?"

"I just had a little," he murmured.

"It was a recent case, I suppose. The doctors said there was a long-standing injury there that made you more susceptible to it." He pinned M'yu with a gaze.

M'yu looked away. "What are you going to do now?"

Aevryn sighed. "I never know what to do with you, child. And we shouldn't be talking here anyway."

M'yu nodded, pulling the beanie closer to his chest. The silence of the hospital room reigned for a while before Aevryn said, "I should be getting to work."

"What about school?"

Aevryn snorted. "What about school? You won't be able to go for the next few days, you'll be even more hopelessly behind than you already were, and you've already shown me you can't handle being left unattended. You're not going back."

As he started to leave, M'yu pushed up. "No, wait. I can handle it. I can go back—today, even. I feel better. Better than..." M'yu probed his cheek, realizing he wasn't actually lying. There was scar tissue in his mouth, but no sore, no white hot pain. His skin almost felt... smooth. Like it had when he was a child. "Better than I have in a long time."

Aevryn hummed. "And are you ready to go back without the du'chirep?"

M'yu tensed. "I'm ready to go back," he said slowly.

"And without the lockpicks?"

"Why do you insist on me being defenseless?"

Aevryn strode to the bedside and took M'yu's hand. "Why don't you understand that I am trying to give you the weapons you need? You, going behind everything I say and doing the opposite, that is what leaves you defenseless." He dropped back into the chair. "I told you, boy. You have to be perfect. If we're any less than perfect..." His eyes flicked toward the cracked door, and he lowered his voice even more. "If we're any less than perfect, then we're no better than they are. And the point isn't for us to win. It's for us to make things better." His eyes bored into M'yu's.

M'yu probed the side of his cheek again. Painless. He couldn't remember the last time there hadn't been a sore in his mouth. "So that's why you hate the du'chirep? Because it's illegal?"

Aevryn sighed. "Child, it's illegal for the same reasons that I hate it."

"And why is that?" he pressed.

"Why don't you tell me?" He raised his brow as M'yu blinked at him. "It's not a rhetorical question. You're a smart boy with big plans, a critical eye. You tell me. Why should it be illegal?"

M'yu's fingers twined around his beanie. His uncle's body rotted in a trash heap, blooming with the crop of witchcandy he used to help grow. That was one good reason. The Magnate's purse grew fat with the profits from the fields. And M'yu had never seen his mother's face without tiny holes in her lips. A sickness grew in his stomach, like a patch of witchcandy spreading out its roots, and he swallowed, gaze dropping.

Aevryn tapped out a soft beat on the arm of the chair. Then the tapping fell quiet, and he gestured to the room with a finger. "This, coming back here, this isn't going to help you, you know."

"Aevryn, it—"

"Don't you dare say it could. Don't you dare." There were embers in Aevryn's eyes, something more sorrowful and immovable than the times M'yu had seen him angry before. Aevryn shook his head. "Whatever it is your 'witchcandy' does for you, it takes even more away."

"Sometimes you have to be willing to lose to win." M'yu's face flushed hot, but his chest was cold and tight. He felt small, like he was watching himself fall farther and farther away, and so he bristled, sitting up straighter, taller, bigger.

The man took his shoulders, and M'yu flinched. "And what if what you lose is your life? Is it worth it then?"

There was something soft and desperate in the man's eyes. His hands, warm on M'yu's shoulders, melted away some of the ice in his chest, and he wriggled out of his grasp, avoiding Aevryn's gaze. "Guess it depends on what you win," he muttered.

The seat cushion sighed. "I'm going to tell you a story." Aevryn's voice lowered, but M'yu refused to turn, gaze on the blank right wall. "My brother fought for our House in the last Washfall Trial. He was desperate to beat the Tsaright, to take back our birthright. He dreamed of a day of justice, of the power to protect the innocent from the wicked. He would have done anything to set things right." The chair shifted, and M'yu peeked over. "So before the Right to Sheath, he used a strain of du'chirep meant to enhance strength."

M'yu paled at the bitterness in Aevryn's voice. "It killed him?"

Aevryn's head shook once. "The other combatants did as he stood there dazed."

The hospital equipment beeped, and feet shuffled through the halls outside. Voices from other rooms wafted through the air and, in the distance, a muffled cry. Blood pounded in M'yu's ears, and he rubbed the fabric of his hat back and forth between his hands.

"We don't get shortcuts." Hunched over his knees, Aevryn flicked his gaze up to M'yu. "Not us. We just don't."

M'yu swallowed, fingers tracing the threads of the beanie. He wondered how long it had taken his mother to sew it for him—how many late nights, how many pricked fingers. Slowly, he nodded, and Aevryn nodded back.

"Do you truly want to go back to school?"

M'yu bit his lip. There was Ruslan to think about, but then there was also Sviya. And if he didn't go back, he'd be at home all day, cooped up in that grand, drafty house with the servants. Still, Aevryn's library was so much more well-equipped than the one at the school. If he really was going to write that virus—but maybe they didn't need that anymore. Maybe, maybe, maybe...

Pros and cons battled in his mind until he dashed them all away by yanking the beanie onto his head. "I want to be where I'm helpful." He nodded again, latching onto the idea. "I want to help, Aevryn. I just... want to help."

The barest hint of a smile tugged the corners of Aevryn's lips. "Do you think you can stand?"

M'yu slid his legs to the side of the bed and tested them. He was a bit wobblier than he would have preferred, kind of like one time he'd recovered from some bug by huddling in an alleyway hole. He was well, just... hollow. "I'll be fine."

"Good. Then let's get you changed."

M'yu's heart skipped a beat, eyes scanning for his coat. The collar peeked up over the post of the bed, and M'yu drew a steadying breath.

"Something the matter?" Aevryn asked.

Had it been searched? There was no way to tell if Ruslan's card was still in it from over here. You won't even need the dumb thing anymore. But M'yu offered a tense smile to Aevryn and shook his head no.

Aevryn hummed. "Well, come on then."

M'yu swung the coat on and followed Aevryn out of the room.