Nicholas didn't normally mind silence, and rarely tried to fill it. But this - sitting handcuffed in a carriage with a woman who glared fire and brimstone whenever he so much as breathed too loudly - was excruciating.

He made the mistake early on of trying to ask where they were going. Yasmin snapped her head his way with hellfire in her eyes, and he decided to cut his losses after the first syllable. She sat as close to the door as she could without pressing her body against it, like Nicholas was diseased or smelled horrible (which, after the day he'd had, was probably true). It was the longest carriage ride of his life. Also the only carriage ride of his life.

The window to his left let in a midsummer breeze. He rested his head and let it kiss the wound on his cheek. It stung a little, but it was warm, and it was gentle. The city passed by slowly, and Nicholas watched it, eyes wide to take in everything he could. It was exactly like he'd imagined, long roads paved with stone and lined by tudor-style houses. He could only see what fell within the shifting circles of orange cast by the streetlights. Atop the posts were magical flames encased in large spherical bulbs. He had never considered, when he drew them, who lit the fires every night. Now he wanted to know badly.

There was a lot he hadn't considered. The Caldora he'd dreamed up was a bustling nation overflowing with magic and bad intentions, all of them aimed at its rival kingdom, Interra, home of his protaginist. But right now, at least, it was exceptionally quiet. Caldora in the dead of night was peaceful.

There was someone living in every one of those narrow homes. Maybe multiple someones. There were personalities and wants and kinships here he hadn't spared a second to dream up. There was life here, outside of his head, all around him. It was too much.

Something light fell onto Nicholas' lap. "When I tell you to, cover your eyes," said Yasmin.

He fumbled with bound hands to pull the knotted cloth over his eyes. The darkness was total, and he was relieved.

"Or do it now."

After a few minutes, the air started to change. It was cooler, a bit wetter. He slipped a finger beneath the blindfold to pull it away from one eye and lost his breath. Through the window at the front of the carriage, so huge and so near he couldn't see the tips of it, was the king's castle. In a way, it resembled its ruler: tall, angular, and grayscale. It was asymmetrical and foreboding. High towers with steep prism roofs scraped the clouds, pointed arches climbed from the ground - looking at it on a page, Nicholas had never noticed the way it seemed to claw for the sky.

The blindfold fell away to hang around his neck as he strained to glimpse Lake Charlatan. It surrounded the castle on three sides and seemed to go on forever. He hadn't known he could make something so beautiful.

"Eyes," Yasmin said as they approached the gates. He was reluctant, this time, to cover them.

The carriage rumbled to a stop on smoother ground. Nicholas could guess where they were; he mourned that he wouldn't get to see the castle from the inside. The door opened and he nearly tumbled out of the carriage. Sharp nails came down on his shoulder, forcing him forward, and he was abruptly reminded that he had bigger things to worry about.

He was led, hobbling on his injured foot, down chilly halls. Yasmin was pitiless. She moved briskly despite the pained huffs catching behind his teeth. He committed the path to memory as well as he could: right turn, right turn, left turn, straight for a while, stop. Nicholas was not one to waste his time on futile hopes, and escaping from a castle manned by powerful mages was the very embodiment of a pipe dream, but he wasn't normally faced with life or death, either.

By the time Yasmin pushed him through a doorway, his forehead was beaded with sweat. She kept going until his thighs collided with something soft. "Sit," she said, and he dropped immediately onto his forearms on what felt like a mattress and took the pressure off his foot. A match was struck, then two locks clicked; first, the door at his back, then the cuffs around his wrists. They dropped away, and Yasmin said, "You may look."

He tugged off the blindfold and beheld bare wooden walls. He could only see a small square of the room, the rest hidden behind a white curtain. The bed he slumped over was surprisingly plain and narrow for how plush it felt beneath his elbows. He hauled himself onto the colorless sheets, turning to sit facing Yasmin, and waited.

But Yasmin did not say anything else. Without looking away from Nicholas, without moving at all save for the waving of her fingers, she rummaged through the only other furniture in the room. The cabinet door swayed open and an assortment of items floated out onto the counter beneath it. Faint glacial blue gleamed from the ring on her pointer finger.

A labelless black bottle and something white drifted toward Nicholas. He scurried away on his hands, but there was only so far he could go. The cap of the bottle twisted away. Clear liquid dripped over a square of gauze. "Wait, what are you doing?" He leaned back as much as gravity would allow. Yasmin took no interest in his terror. "Please, can't we- I don't know, can't we talk, I'm not-"

He was debating the merits of toppling over the bed to get away when the gauze hit his cheek. For an instant, there was a biting sting and a sharp smell - alcohol? Then the gauze dropped, listless, onto the bed beside him.

Yasmin frowned. Lines pulled at her cheeks when she did, the kind she was too young for. She twitched her pointer finger, and the gauze lifted again. Nicholas very bravely resisted the urge to flinch away, but the moment the gauze touched his skin, it fell.

"What are you doing?" demanded Yasmin.

Nicholas blinked down at the gauze. That was his doing?

"I'm not doing anything," he said dumbly. When he looked back at her, the lines on her face had multiplied, carving out the bridge of her nose and the space between her brows. Nicholas foolishly met her eyes and felt something inside him wither, die, and turn to dust. She wanted to crucify him. "I swear," he added in a rush. "I don't have any magic. I don't know how that happened."

He could've sworn she started to glow. "Do you think you are in any position to play games?"

"No! No games, I hate games-"

"This is not my fucking job, I will not be toyed with-"

"No toys, never toys-"

Nicholas watched in horror as the tips of her hair began to rise in serpentine locks, floating around her head like she was about to turn him to stone. She was glowing, a faint red that haloed her entire body and burned from her eyes. The lamp on the counter flickered wildly, plunging the room back and forth between darkness and light, before surging in size, bursting from the lamp's opening.

Nicholas couldn't believe his last thought was going to be, she shouldn't have the magic to do that.

Instead of death came a pained grunt, not from Nicholas, but from just beyond the cracked doorway. The illusion vanished. Yasmin's hair fell back around her shoulders, the halo disappeared, and the lamp dimmed to a warm glow.

If she had looked homicidal before, she was downright bloodthirsty now. Nicholas thanked whatever higher power existed in this world that her bloodlust was directed at the slowly opening door.

"Quit messing around," she hissed.

A curly head of hair butted through, bearing a pained smirk. "You know I like to put on a show. And why do you always have to go for the groi-"

"I locked the door for a reason. Leave."

The door opened further, revealing a young man with thick eyebrows and brown skin. He came in hunched over, holding his gut like he'd been struck, but when he straightened, he loomed over Yasmin by nearly a head. When had Nicholas made them all so tall?

"I just wanted to greet your patient," said Cairo, counselor to the king. His pout faltered, quivering against a snicker. "Lighten up, doc."

"Leave."

Cairo didn't show any sign he'd heard. His attention had snagged on Nicholas. He skirted around Yasmin to approach with his hands clasped behind his back, bending at the waist and tilting his head left and right like he was observing a trapped animal, or maybe a lab specimen. His face was kinder than Yasmin's but just as unsettling. Nicholas couldn't shake the feeling he was going to be dissected.

"You look normal," Cairo said eventually. He was pouting again. He had a soft, young face that wore it well, but it looked out of place when he stood - someone so large had no right to pout. "Why do you look so normal?"

"...Sorry?"

"He isn't normal," said Yasmin. "He uses strange magic."

"I don't-"

"Hmm, yes, I did see that. Mind if I try?"

"I mind that you're here at all."

Cairo ignored her, beckoning with two fingers to the gauze lying limp on Nicholas' lap, humming when it touched his face and fell right back down.

"That is strange. How'd you do that?"

"I didn't."

"You don't say a whole lot, huh?" Cairo chuckled. "Come closer."

Nocholas obeyed, scooting forward until his legs hung off the bed. Cairo lifted the gauze again, this time with his fingers, and Nicholas hissed at the burn of the alcohol against the cuts in his cheek. Cairo studied him keenly as he cleaned crusted blood from the wound. When he was satisfied, he dropped the dirty gauze onto Nicholas' lap.

Nicholas contemplated the sterility of the gauze after so many falls, and how clean Cairo's hands were. Then he contemplated why a counselor and bodyguard to the king were tending his wounds in a castle infirmary devoid of nurses.

"Did you search him?" Cairo asked Yasmin.

"Of course I searched him."

"I don't know..." he sang, pursing his lips. "Sure doesn't look like you searched him."

A scalpel shot from the cabinet, aimed directly at his throat. Nicholas jumped so hard he nearly fell off the bed, but Cairo barely moved except for the flick of his pointer finger. The scalpel redirected upward and lodged in the ceiling.

"Take off your shirt," Yasmin said to Nicholas like she hadn't just tried to end her comrade.

"Excuse me?" Nicholas squeaked. He saw that twitch reappear in her left eye and scrambled out of his shirt, leaving it in a gray pile next to him.

"Both of them."

Nicholas cringed as he pulled away his undershirt. It clung to his skin. He could say with certainty that he had never known true vulnerability until this very moment, sitting shirtless as two of the strongest mages in Caldora circled his infirmary bed with eyes roaming intently over his chest and arms.

It dawned on him that they were looking for arm cuffs. Like the rings on their fingers, the armlets worn by the Interran people carried minerals that concentrated and channeled their inherent magic. As a non-magical, non-Interran, non-spy, Nicholas was just very naked.

"Nothing," said Yasmin. She looked livid. Cairo looked thrilled. "Get His Majesty."

Nicholas thought very rarely about God, and even less often about faith, but in that moment, he closed his eyes and said a prayer that would bring a priest to tears.

"Yes, darling!" Cairo cackled, turning away with a flourish. Before he slipped back out, he blew Yasmin a kiss. It floated through the air, a tiny red heart-shaped light that she dodged with an animalistic snarl. Another scalpel whizzed through the closing door. Nicholas heard it wedge into the ceiling outside.

Yasmin stood extremely still as she waited, poised with her hands behind her back and a certain strength in her legs, in her stance, like she was ready to hop into combat at any moment. Nicholas, for his part, folded his hands awkwardly over his lap and fidgeted with his posture. Was he supposed to bow when Rayan entered? Or was that too sudden a movement? He didn't like his chances if Yasmin went for another scalpel.

She glanced at him. Her face contorted in honestly hurtful levels of disdain. "Dress yourself before the king arrives."

Nicholas was still on the last button of his shirt when he heard the telltale heavy footsteps. He had opted out of putting his sweat-stained undershirt back on; he hurried to force it into a crumpled ball and sat on top of it right as the door opened. Yasmin dropped into a deep bow and didn't rise until King Rayan strode past her, Cairo on his heels. Nicholas hastened to follow her lead, then remembered his bad ankle and the disgusting shirt under his ass and ended up performing a weird aborted hop in place on the bed. Cairo raised an eyebrow. Behind him, Yasmin sighed. Nicholas bent at the neck in a sad excuse for a bow.

"Yo-" His voice cracked. "Your Majesty."

"Raise your head."

It was a trap. Nicholas lifted his chin and was at once shackled in place, powerless to look away. Not because he didn't want to - it went against everything he'd ever learned about survival, looking a wild beast dead in the eye - but Rayan was giving an order, so potent it didn't need to be spoken aloud. Look at me. It was imperial, narcissistic, in every way befitting a king. It said, try and lie to me now.

A square bandage floated toward him. Nicholas couldn't see any movement of Rayan's hand, but he could see the blue glow of his ring. The bandage touched Nicholas' skin and went limp. Rayan considered him for a long moment, and Nicholas sat motionless, hardly even breathing.

A gloved finger touched his cheek, pushing his face to one side. Then, without preamble, Rayan lit a fire in his hand.

Nicholas didn't even have time to react. A cruel gust of heat brushed his wound and stung his eye for a split second as the flame bloomed, and then- nothing. Nicholas jolted too late, a second after the damage should have been dealt, but in place of scorching pain he felt cool silk against his skin. It hurt, but only because the wound was so tender.

"I'll give you this," said Rayan. "You put on a very convincing show."

"Wait..." Nicholas started to say. He had nothing to follow it with, caught up in a disorienting inner clash - the blinding relief that the flame hadn't touched him, pitted against the grim awareness that he might have been better off if it did.

The king said to his most trusted men, "That settles it, then."

"Wait," Nicholas tried again, but Rayan had given him his back.

"We must act without delay," said Yasmin. The three of them stood in a triangle, wholly blocking him out.

"I must act carefully."

Yasmin bristled. "How long will you turn a blind eye? You leave your kingdom at Interra's mercy."

"I have nothing to do with Interra," Nicholas swore. Yasmin talked right over him.

"We're sitting ducks if Adrian has somehow found a way to nullify our magic!"

"No, that's not-"

"Do not forget your station," Rayan warned. Cairo looked back and forth between them, blatantly delighted.

"What is it you suggest, then?" said Yasmin. "You've already given him more mercy than he deserves."

"Execution!" Cairo supplied cheerily.

"Please, just let me-"

"You will unearth the source of his magic," said Rayan. "Through whatever means necessary."

"I don't have any magic-"

"Stoop as low as you must. I have run out of grace."

"Listen to me!"

Three pairs of eyes shot to Nicholas. For a moment, he only stared back, shocked by the sound of his own voice. He couldn't remember the last time he'd shouted. He was routinely spoken over, and he did not force himself to be heard. It scratched his throat. His hand came over his mouth belatedly, like he might somehow catch his outburst and push it back down his windpipe.

"Oho?" Cairo poked his head over Rayan's shoulder, grinning wide.

For a man so intentionally expressionless, it turned out that the king did not hide surprise well. It showed in the slight jump to his shoulder, like no one had ever raised their voice at him before (oh god, maybe no one had), and the jerky way he turned to Nicholas.

"I am so sorry," Nicholas blurted. He bowed as much as his position allowed. "I shouldn't have-"

"You won my attention," Rayan said coolly. A lock of hair slipped out of the tie at the base of his skull as he angled his head downward. "Do not waste it."

Nicholas slowly sat up. He shoved down whatever had surged out of him and reverted back to the rules, born of observation, that had governed most of his interactions up until this point. Pick your words carefully, don't say too much. Talk for too long and they'll stop listening.

"I was born in South Simona to a Caldoran tradesman." Straightforward, concise, carefully neutral. He had been perfecting this for years. "I don't have any ties to Interra."

On the map Nicholas had drawn some ten pages into the journal, South Simona was the second largest city in Caldora and the closest to the frontier.

"Simona, you say," pondered Rayan. "Then I should find some record of you and this tradesman there, yes?"

"He died along with my mom when I was young," said Nicholas. This, at least, he knew was convincing, spoken with the colorless sober conviction only someone who had lived it could wield. He held fast to the king's gaze and let him look as deep as he wished, challenging him to find a lie that was not there. "Not sure how well-kept the orphan records are."

"I suppose you'll tell me there isn't anyone around who can vouch for you, either?"

"I tend to keep to myself."

Rayan reached into his coat and came out with Nicholas' phone. It was cracked so badly he doubted it would ever light up again. "I can't say I've seen such a device in Simona. Or anywhere in Caldora, for that matter."

"My dad collected lots of weird foreign items on his travels."

"Such as these?" This time, Rayan retrieved Nicholas' wallet, flipping it open to reveal his array of credit cards and a whopping four dollar bills. "Oh. Is this the tradesman in question?"

In the clear pocket was a photo of a seven-year-old Nicholas squished between his parents' beaming smiles, red in the face, scowling wistfully off-camera at the students on the playground while his mom held up the plastic gold medal he'd won in a picture book competition. Nicholas reached out without thinking. Rayan moved the wallet away and studied it.

"This image is so lifelike," he mused.

Nicholas knew the feeling of being played with and handled it well enough - he had dealt with mean-spirited classmates and condescending professors and Ava fucking Dubois - but even the lowest of people had never stooped to his family. "Realism has come a long way," he said through his teeth.

Rayan pocketed the wallet and the phone. "What else did your father leave behind for you?"

"Everything burned right along with him in the fire."

The slightest downturn pulled at one corner of the king's mouth. Nicholas had a feeling they were thinking the same thing: tracking down documentation of a single orphan or a decade-old house fire in a huge urban center like Simona would be nearly impossible.

"And your clothing?" the king pressed. He leaned forward, forcing Nicholas to lift his chin to keep meeting that unspoken demand, look at me. It was a calculated, smug move, meant to intimidate. And it did. Nicholas was sweating through his second shirt. But he was fucking peeved, too.

"It's not so different from yours," he said. "A more current fashion, maybe. Must take a while for trends to get all the way here."

He had to fight off a full-body cringe at his own words, just this side of snarky. It was unlike him to be easily provoked. He cursed his mundane life for dulling his survival instincts to the point that he would test the king of mages, of all people. He was not himself, and he blamed it on the hungry ache in his stomach and the pain he felt all over. God, when was the last time he'd slept?

"You're quick," said Rayan. "What explanation do you have for the book? Please, I'd love to hear it."

Nicholas was losing ground. He curled his fingers into the thin sheet but he could feel himself slipping. He tried his best to hide it. Straightforward, concise, carefully neutral. "I'm a writer. It's fiction."

"Fiction in which you've drawn my death at the hands of the next Interran king."

"My- my art is not a reflection of my beliefs."

"So you don't think I'm...what did it say? I think cold, domineering, and detached from my people were on the list?"

Nicholas swallowed. "No, sir."

"And what of your sudden appearance in North Simona? Your strange magic?"

"I don't have any-"

The small flame in the lamp exploded. Glass shattered over the counter, showering the floor alongside dying embers as the room went dark. "Then what do you call it?" the king finally snapped.

Straightforward, concise-

"I don't know! I don't know, I don't know, you hate that I don't know but it's the only answer I have!"

He couldn't do it anymore. His body felt so heavy. He teetered forward, unsteady, finding the king's eyes in the darkness even as everything gushed to the surface. All the anger and all the aching, the paralyzing fear that there was no way out of this. "I swear on my life I am the most confused person here, you can keep hurting me all you want but I have nothing to give you, I just- I need help."

Nicholas wondered what he was doing, begging a merciless man for pity. He wondered if he would die here. The sad truth, the one he'd hoped to one day change with his novel, was that no one would notice his absence. There was something ironic in that. He didn't have the energy to think about it.

"Treat his wounds," said Rayan.

Light spilled in as the door opened, but he turned before Nicholas could see his face.

"Sir!" Yasmin cried, outraged. The door slammed in her face.