Sawdust drifted in the air which the late afternoon light caught, turning them into suspended gold. In the backyard of the cottage, the rhythm of work had settled into a comfortable cadence; the shhh-shhh of Teerom's sanding block against pine, followed by occasional loud cracks as Paley chopped wood with Strength Magic.

  They were building another bed. Rauba, Bacha, and Reben had all begun to grow, their ankles protruding from their blankets, and the rickety frame he slept on had begun to groan in protest every time he turned over.

  "Easy," Teerom murmured without looking up from the joint he was inspecting. "You're squishing the fibers too hard. If it's too dense, it won't flex. It'll snap."

  Paley paused, his hand hovering over the timber that he had been compressing. He exhaled, releasing the tension in his chest, and the faint red glow around his fingers dimmed. He allowed the wood to relax, expanding slightly to its natural state.

  "Is it okay now, or have I messed it up?"

  Teerom ran a thumb over the wood grain, checking for fractures. "It's good. Remember to be gentle, though, yeah? You can beat up monsters with all your might, but stuff like this takes care and control."

  Paley nodded, absorbing the lesson. It was strange; Teerom's understanding of structure and material was a magic all on its own. It was like he saw the world in terms of load-bearing and stress points.

  They worked in silence for another twenty minutes. It was the easy quiet of two people who knew where the other stood without looking. When Teerom reached blindly for the chisel, Paley noticed and placed it in his hand. When Paley struggled to control his force to hold a heavy beam steady, Teerom was there to brace the weight.

  Teerom wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist, leaving a streak of dust across his forehead. He sat back on his heels, eyeing the headboard critically, sifting through ideas in his head.

  "You sleeping any better?" He asked: a casual question, delivered in the same tone he might use to ask for a nail. But the air seemed to still.

  Paley hesitated answering, his fingers tracing the rough edge of a plank. He considered lying - saying he was fine, that the exhaustion under his eyes were just from late-night runecrafting - but lying to Teerom felt wrong.

  "Not really," Paley admitted.

  "The Fulguron?"

  "No... Not the monster." Paley stared down at his hands. They were covered in wood dust, looking pale and ghostly. "I dream about... before. I think. It's not clear. It's just flashes. Red. Hunger. Pain. Sometimes it feels like it's going to swallow me whole from the inside." He swallowed the lump in his throat. "I'm not scared of the monsters, Teerom. I'm scared that... maybe I might be related to them."

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Teerom didn't offer a platitude. He didn't tell him that it was just a dream or that he could just tell Paley was a good person. Instead, he set the sanding block down and leaned back against the half-finished frame, staring up at the orange-bruised sky.

  "You know why I passed out that day?" Teerom asked. "When Amasha got taken?"

  "You remembered a bad day?"

  "Yeah." Teerom picked up a wood shaving, twisting it between his fingers until it snapped. "A Dark Conjurer isn't a mage, Paley. Not really. A mage pulls power from themselves or the world around them. A Conjurer... is just a doorman."

  Paley turned to look at him. "Doorman?"

  "To the Demon Realm." Teerom said the words softly, but they landed with the weight of stones. "Most people think summoning is about chanting words and drawing circles. But for me... it's when my heart is okay with a demon coming. When I'm so angry, or so sad, or so scared that my heart calls a demon to help me."

  "How is that even possible?" Paley whispered. The idea was terrifying - that the hellscape Adimia had described, that a place where the Vamali could come from, was sitting right there, just behind Teerom's ribs.

  "I don't know," Teerom said, a shadow passing over his face, making him look far older than sixteen. "I didn't always know how to lock it. Before Mother found me... I messed up. I let the door drift open."

  He didn't elaborate. He didn't have to. The way his voice hollowed out, the way his gaze drifted to a point a thousand miles away, spoke of a loss so profound it had scooped him out and left him empty.

  "I learned to control it," Teerom said, his voice firming up, though a tremor remained in his hands. "I learned to control it because I promised myself I would never let it take anything else again."

  He looked at Paley then. "We're a bunch of freaks, aren't we?" Teerom let out a dry, cracked laugh. "Think about it. Adimia wants to be a knight but has no mana. I'm a doorway to hell. And you... hahah, you're a Quimnia who eats lightning cats."

  Paley blinked, the absurdity of it hitting him. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "When you put it like that..."

  "I guess out of all of us, though, you're the least freaky," Teerom nudged Paley's shoulder with his own. "You're the hero type of freak. I'm the brother that becomes the main villain type, hahahah."

  "You're not." Paley said, his voice fierce, stripping the humor away.

  Teerom raised an eyebrow. "I summon demons, Paley. I'll always be a danger."

  "You build things," Paley countered. He gestured to the bed, to the cottage, to the safety net that Teerom had woven around these orphans for years right in plain sight. "A bad guy doesn't build things to keep others safe."

  Teerom stared at him. The self-deprecating mask slipped, revealing a raw, startled gratitude. He looked away quickly, rubbing his nose to hide the sudden shine in his eyes.

  "Yeah, well," Teerom cleared his throat, picking up his hammer. "Better get to work - if we don't finish this bed, Reben's feet are gonna freeze tonight."

  "Better get to work." Paley agreed.

  The sun finally dipped below the horizon, leaving them in the blue twilight. They drove the final nails in, the thud-thud-thud echoing. When they stepped back to behold their creation, the bed stood sturdy and level. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it was solid, made with brotherly love.

  Paley ran a hand over the smooth wood of the post. Standing there in the cooling air, shoulder-to-shoulder with Teerom, the nightmares felt a little further away.

  "Does anyone else know?" Paley asked.

  "Just you, Mother, and Jurie..." Teerom smiled painfully, "I couldn't bring myself to tell Adimia and the others. "

  "You'll have the courage to tell them one day. I hope." Paley assured.

  "Yeah. I hope."