The corridor outside the door to the quarters Mirk shared with Genesis was quiet. None of the other rooms along the hall had shielding against empathy, but Mirk still couldn't feel a thing beyond any of them. It set him on edge. Were all the low-born officers still working, out managing the chaos and confusion left in the aftermath of Ravensdale and Percival's deaths? Or had they sensed which way the wind was blowing and had decided to stay as far away from Genesis and all those allied with him as possible? Neither possibility quelled the uneasy prickling along the back of his neck.

  Nevertheless, Mirk fixed the collar of his justacorps, its white stained irreparably with sweat and blood, and opened the door. He needed to use the key. Another ominous sign.

  The common room was dark. Even more silent than the hall. There were signs of life, no restless shadows or books spread open on Genesis's desk. Only that small blue-green light above the door, casting just enough light so that Mirk wouldn't trip over his own feet and go reeling into one of the bookcases. He pried off his shoes, only then feeling the blisters that'd been cut into his heels and toes. They were comfortable enough for a night of dancing, but had been poorly suited to a whole day spent running after casualties. The same as his suit.

  Mirk wavered in the middle of the common room, looking between the shut doors to the bathroom and the bedroom. Good sense told him to head to the bathroom first, to scrub off the detritus of the dead. But his feet and his heart took him to the bedroom, knocking lightly on the door. There was no response. His second sign that he should retreat to the bathroom. But the worry welled up in Mirk, hot and insistent, and he pushed open the door. He did his best to convince himself that if Genesis had wanted to be left alone, he had more than enough magical potential left to keep him out.

  Still, he tried to be respectful. Mirk slipped into the room quickly, closing and locking the door behind himself, plunging the room back into absolute blackness. He knew better than to wait for his eyes to adjust. There was no adjusting to that kind of darkness. Instead, he reached out a hand and made his way to the bed by feel, tracing shaking fingers along the edge of the chest of drawers until Mirk knew from counting his steps that he was beside the bed.

  "Genesis?" he whispered into the darkness. No response. Biting his lip, Mirk tapped the magelight strung around his wrist.

  Genesis hadn't moved from where K'aekniv had dropped him onto the bed. The half-angel had been content to leave him in a heap, but Mirk had fussed over him, arranging his gangly limbs into something approaching his usual order and draping one of his quilts over him. Mirk knew that Genesis couldn't have woken up, considering how the quilt was still a bit uneven.

  His body hadn't returned to normal. Even though the shadows cast by the magelight were motionless and Mirk couldn't hear the tell-tale hissing of the chaos against his mind, Genesis's true form was still laid bare for all to see — the curving black horns, the points of too many teeth just visible beneath his upper lip. Mirk had no doubt that if he pulled the quilt down, the claws would still be there too. Another sign that he hadn't yet woken up. If it took the last shred of his magic, Mirk had no doubt that the first thing Genesis would do, after straightening the bedclothes, was put himself in order.

  Slumping over in a mixture of relief and exhaustion, Mirk retreated to the foot end of the bed, to the trunk Genesis had grudgingly allowed him to keep there. He thunked down onto it and extinguished the magelight. The dark swept in fast to cover the gap.

  There were a thousand things that needed doing and Mirk didn't feel like tending to any of them. Doubtlessly there were injuries hidden underneath Genesis's uniform that needed healing, blood that needed washing off. He needed washing off, needed to take off that suit he'd fretted for hours over and change into something else before he curled up on the other side of the bed and slept. Mirk hugged himself in an attempt to still the shaking that'd overcome him, feeling along the sleeves of his justacorps. All the crystal buttons on its cuffs had been lost. And he could feel countless snags in the stitching, that delicate floral pattern he'd thought up to match the one he remembered so clearly from his mother's favorite gown.

  He couldn't remember her gown at the moment. Couldn't remember her face, or his sister's, or his father's. Even though his father’s blood-flecked armor was still tucked away in the trunk he was sitting on. He couldn't even conjure his godmother's face into his mind, though he'd seen her just last night. All he could see was Alice staring at him from the infirmary steps, the light in her eyes gone for good. Her and the djinn down in the infirmary basement. Only then did Mirk realize he'd forgotten to ask Am-Hazek and Am-Gulat what they should do with their dead.

  The sobs took him by surprise, escaping him in ragged gasps that Mirk clapped both hands over his mouth to contain. It didn't help. They echoed in the small room, breaking the unnatural stillness, rippling through the dark. Mirk cringed at it, at the way he gasped in between them, at how pathetic he was.

  What right did he have to cry? What had he given up? He could buy another suit. He could whisk himself away from the City at any moment, could work his way back in amongst his old family circles in Paris or Nantes, could escape ever having to touch a corpse again with nothing but a short note dashed off to the ghosts' counting house.

  And yet, he cried.

  Something Father Jean had told him once rose out of the depths of his memory. Have a joyful heart, brother, he'd said, clapping a hand on his shoulder as they watched a group of peasants from the village down the hillside from the abbey trudge off with an offering of grain that might only just last them through to winter, if half of them went hungry every other day. It could always be worse.

  Father Jean had sounded bitter then. Mirk had wondered at it, at why a good deed should be met with that tired resignation that didn't match Father Jean’s words. But now he knew. He knew.

  "...Mirk."

  He barely heard Genesis's voice over the racket of his own crying. Mirk straightened up, tearing his hands from his lips and clenching them into fists in his lap, hoping that the bite of his fingernails into his palms might help him get ahold of himself. They put a stop to his gasping, but not to the tears running down his cheeks or the dripping from his nose. "Ah, I'm sorry, messire," Mirk mumbled, once he trusted himself to speak. "I didn't mean to wake you."

  "Who has...died?"

  The question was enough to jar some sense back into Mirk. He swiped at his face with his sleeve, turning to face Genesis though he didn't illuminate his magelight again. "Euh...what?"

  "You are...upset. What have I done?"

  Mirk shook his head. "Methinks I don't understand, Genesis. It's...well..."

  "I do not always remember what happened. After. Certain moments...are lost."

  "It's nothing you did," Mirk reassured him as he stared off into the darkness, at where Genesis had to be looking at him. "I'm only tired, that's all."

  Genesis was silent for a time. His accent was stronger now, in his altered form. In the dark. More hissing, as if he found it harder to wrestle through English words with a mouth full of teeth that weren't meant for it. "I remember...Percival. And the Third's mages. Afterwards, there is a...gap."

  Mirk retraced his steps through the City after the battle on the parade grounds had petered out, the hour he'd spent searching for Genesis by feel rather than sight. "I don't think anything bad must have happened. We...euh, no one came to the infirmary, anyway."

  The K'maneda who'd been brought down by Genesis's magic were impossible to mistake for any other. Unless Genesis had resorted to turning people to piles of black dust while he'd been skulking about on his own. Mirk didn't want to think of it. Both for his own sake, and for Genesis's.

  Genesis let out a long, slow sigh through his teeth. Mustering the last of his strength, Mirk dragged himself back to his feet and circled around the bed, again tracing the dresser to find his way. He leaned back against it, fighting against the urge to wave on a light. "I had just stopped in to see if you were all right," Mirk said, when Genesis refused to speak. "Do you need anything, messire? Otherwise I can go..."

  Go scrub off the remains of the dead, cast his suit down the refuse chute at the end of the hall, put on the first set of robes he could fumble out of the dresser and curl up in Genesis's sullen armchair out in the common room to sleep. Just thinking of it made Mirk want to start crying again, for whatever foolish reason.

  "If it would… be beneficial to you, turn on a light," Genesis said. The flatness of his voice made Mirk wince. "I am aware that you cannot see in the dark."

  Doing his best to work up a smile, Mirk brushed his hand over the magelight on his wrist instead of waving on the one set into the ceiling. Genesis still hadn't moved. Though his eyes were opened into slits against the intruding glow of the magelight. It was hard to tell in the gloom, but Mirk thought they were still black.

  "Are you hurt anywhere?" Mirk asked him, when, again, Genesis had nothing to say. "Methinks I have enough potential left to manage something...or I might have some bandages in the dresser..."

  "This is what I am," Genesis said, after another minute of silence. "You are aware of the extent now. Should you wish to leave...I am certain K'aekniv or one of the others would assist you."

  Genesis's words startled Mirk. He fought against the urge to lean forward, to comfort him, by forcing himself to lean back against the dresser instead. "You've never lied about what you are, Genesis. Even if you've never...euh...been very detailed. It's all right."

  "...is it?"

  "It is a little sad that you never get to be yourself around anyone, though. It must waste a lot of magic, keeping everything..."

  Genesis turned his head toward Mirk, his eyes still narrowed against the magelight strung around his wrist. "This form is...irrelevant. It costs no potential. I was bound at a critical age. It keeps certain things from manifesting. Save for when I draw upon...high amounts of potential."

  Mirk's weary mind struggled to process the words, Genesis's strange way of speaking and the extra hiss put into them by his teeth. "You don't control any of it?"

  "...the teeth. To a degree. And the claws. However, I...learned to manage those when I was younger. They are...inconvenient. Most of the time."

  Somehow, this new bit of knowledge made Mirk feel better about things. He should have known that there was a practical, magical explanation for it all. Genesis was never one to preoccupy himself with the opinions of others. "It does suit you, messire. And methinks everyone knows you aren't all human by now."

  "I am...not human. At all."

  "Your parents were both demons?"

  "No. One was a...servant of the Empire."

  Despite his good intentions, Mirk found himself leaning forward. "An angel?"

  "...yes."

  From the way Genesis confirmed it, with one of his humorless grins that looked more like grimaces, Mirk knew that now wasn't the time to press for more details. But that bit of information did surprise him. He'd poked through the commander's innards countless times, had combed through all the magic Genesis had control of. He'd never seen a trace of angelic lineage in him. He had no grand, sweeping white wings, no nubs along his back where they might have had the potential to grow, no traces of empathic ability. Even half-blood angels slept and ate constantly; Genesis did neither. If one of Genesis's parents was an angel, he must have inherited nothing from them. Aside from being very difficult to kill.

  "Well, it doesn't change my opinion of you, anyway," Mirk said, when Genesis refused to offer any more details. "And as for the rest..."

  "I am a Destroyer," Genesis said, his expression slipping back into its usual blankness. "This is what I am. I cannot...be anything else. All things must end. And so..."

  The commander trailed off, eyes closing as he thought. Mirk edged forward, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, ready to pull back if Genesis protested. He didn't.

  Mirk sighed. "I know that too, Genesis. You can't help that any more than you can the rest of it. You try to do the best you can with it, methinks, but..."

  But there was no changing the reality of what Genesis's magic was made to do: rip and tear and strangle and reduce to neat little piles of black dust. Killing seemed to be as second nature to Destroyers as breathing was to the rest of them. Mirk shuddered to think of what his life would have been like if he'd been burdened with that sort of magic rather than empathy. He could control his urges to reach out, to search the world and people around him for clues with his mind magic, about as well as he could control shivering in the cold or sweating in the heat.

  After another long pause, Genesis spoke again, "I...meant what I said. Before. I am not safe. Had I been...indisposed in a different way, your...attempts at controlling it through alternate means would not have been successful. You would have died."

  And yet, Mirk felt no urge to back away from him, to scramble up from the bed and flee out into the hall, to keep running until he was out of the City and through the Teleporters Guild's portal and back in France. Instead, he leaned in closer, wishing Genesis didn't have his hands hidden away underneath the quilt. "That's why you've always wanted to teach me to fight, non? So that if something happened..."

  Genesis's face remained expressionless, though he opened his eyes fully and locked them on the ceiling. "Yes."

  "It's...I'm not blind, Genesis. Niv's told me about what happens when you get sick. But I still don’t want to hurt you if I can avoid it. And it doesn't mean I'll stop being your friend."

  "...why?"

  Though Mirk searched for a sensible answer, something other than laying the absolute truth of it bare, he came up empty. All he could do was shrug and try to smile, even though Genesis still refused to look over at him. As if he was afraid that the shadows would come back to life if he set eyes on another potential target. "I care about you, Genesis. Even if you are a Destroyer, that's not all you are."

  "...explain."

  That time, Mirk couldn't contain himself. The disbelief in Genesis's voice, the flat coldness of it, was too much for him to bear. Though he had to do it through the quilt, Mirk searched out the lump of one of Genesis's hands laid flat at his sides, pressing both of his down on top of it. "You're a good person. You're kind, and you're thoughtful, and you're clever, and...well. You've never thought less of me because of what I am either. Methinks that it's only fair that I do the same."

  "Fairness...is not an essential quality of existence."

  "I know it's not." Mirk pressed his hands down harder, wishing for once that the wall of chaos around Genesis's mind wasn't so impenetrable, that he could let Genesis see in himself everything that he saw in him. "Tiens. I can't help my magic either. I've felt how cruel people can be. Some people do like hurting others. It's the only thing they can think of, to make themselves bigger so that they don't have to be afraid of being small. Or because they think they're right, or that they're better than other people. You're not like that. You don't enjoy any of this. Even if I can't feel you, I know what it looks like. And I don't mean to be rude, messire, but methinks you aren't good enough at pretending to be hiding something like that."

  Finally, Genesis cast a single, critical glance in his direction. "Intent does not change what has been done."

  Mirk shook his head. "It means everything. Men like Percival and Ravensdale hurt people without a second thought. And even if you do sometimes," he added, cutting off Genesis's protests before he could begin to voice them, "you do it because it's something that needs to be done. I want to believe that some of those people who followed them might have listened if someone explained to them why it wasn't right to do what they did to the djinn. But there was no time for that. They would have killed the djinn. And the djinn didn't deserve any of what happened to them. You did what you did to help them. To help all of us. Most of the officers who followed both of them weren't very kind to the men they were supposed to be looking after either. I'm in the infirmary every day, messire. I see what they do to them. And to their wives."

  Genesis sighed through his extra teeth, a low, dark, frustrated noise. "You will not...concede this point."

  "I'm afraid not, messire." Again, Mirk smiled at him, pressing down on his hand.

  After another long pause, Mirk felt Genesis's hand shift underneath his. He extracted it from underneath the quilt, leaving it palm up beside himself on the bed. An invitation. As Mirk had expected, the tips of his long, slender fingers still tapered into claws rather than fingernails, long, curved black growths similar to the horns above his temples.

  They didn't make Mirk hesitate. Something in him felt better at being able to touch him skin to skin, to feel the coldness that always lingered in his hands, even if all he could feel pressing against his mind was the static of Genesis's magic.

  "I...do not understand this," Genesis said. "But you have made your choice. It would be cayet to refuse you that right."

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  Mirk couldn't remember the exact meaning of that word, the one that always came out in a low hiss, like a curse, but that didn't matter. Not then. "I have."

  "There is...one more thing. However."

  "What?"

  "Perhaps you can answer a question that has been distracting me. My research has...provided few answers."

  "I'm not sure I'll be much help if you can't find it out on your own, messire. You're very clever. Much more clever than I'll ever be."

  "It concerns emotions." Genesis's eyes narrowed, just a hair, as his pitch black eyes fixed on him once more. "And I would be appreciative if you...dropped the act, as it were. You are intelligent. I acknowledge it. There is no reason for you to pretend not to be."

  Mirk knew that Genesis would be able to see the way that the heat rose on his cheeks at his words. All he could do was hope that Genesis wouldn't understand why having a man like him call him intelligent would cause such a reaction. "What is it?"

  "What emotions feel...warm?"

  The question took Mirk by surprise; it left him scrambling for an answer. A way to explain something that was all intuition and feeling to someone who judged everything with reason. "Everyone feels emotions differently. Methinks I can't say for sure which ones feel warm to you. I've never felt yours, after all."

  Genesis's frowned deepened. "This is another thing I do not understand. I have been told by...several empaths that they find their inability to feel me unnerving. It renders me untrustworthy."

  Mirk shook his head, squeezing Genesis's hand. "I trust you."

  "As you have said. Although I...still do not understand your reasoning on that point either. Nevertheless. I was struck by something. When you used your....alternate means to put an end to everything."

  "Oh?"

  "It felt...warm." Suddenly, Genesis's expression shifted into blankness once more. "It always feels warm. Regardless of the situation. I do not understand why."

  Mirk felt as lost as Genesis looked. There was a glimmer of an inkling in the back of his mind, a spark of hope, but Mirk didn't dare to embrace it. It wouldn't be right to mislead Genesis, to give him poor advice on emotions simply to indulge his own misguided desires. "Can you explain a little more? What you mean by warm?"

  "A bath. A...completed spell that works as intended. Warm." Again, Genesis frowned, and Mirk felt his fingers twitch in his hand, like they always did when he was thinking deeply. If the whites had returned to his eyes, Mirk was certain he would have seen them flicking back and forth. "It is...similar to the warmth my nis'yk gave me. And when the others persist despite difficulty. But it is not the same. There is...something else."

  "Something else?"

  The twitching of his fingers strengthened. "Perhaps it is the...different circumstances. It is rational for K'aekniv and the others to remain. Although we have...dissimilar approaches, we have come from similar circumstances. We must work together, or else none of us will survive. You will survive regardless."

  "I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Genesis."

  "I am not ignorant, even if I do not...fully understand. Others do not find me...agreeable. But nearly all people find you agreeable. I don't believe it to be entirely because of empathy. Others...seek you out. For no reason other than to be near you."

  Mirk swallowed hard against the lump that was threatening to choke off his throat. "Do you?"

  Genesis's hand went still. "Yes. It makes things...warm." His voice lowered, his words so quiet and hissing that Mirk could barely hear him. But it still had a certain smoothness to it, the tone it always took whenever Genesis was reciting something he'd either read or been told, something he valued enough to commit to memory. Mirk suspected he was talking to himself, that he wasn't meant to hear. But the silence hanging over them both made it hard not to.

  "An equal makes the unbearable acceptable. An equal will both balance and challenge. Because the chaos will not allow there to be no change, the challenge is necessary, the debate must continue, until the end of all things..."

  As he trailed off, Genesis's gaze drifted upwards once more. The darkness didn't clear from his eyes. If anything, it deepened as they widened, despite the glow cast from the magelight around Mirk's wrist. "I...see. I understand."

  "Euh...I'm glad I could help? Though methinks I didn't really say much of anything..."

  It was as if Genesis didn't hear him, though Mirk was certain he could. His fingers went tight around his hand. "You are an equal. You could be c'aytka."

  Mirk struggled to remember what the word meant. Genesis only ever said it in passing, when he mentioned the man who'd raised him. There had been two there in whatever dark cell of a room he'd been kept in, two men who'd told him everything he knew about how to exist in the world, about people and how they dealt with one another. There was the one he considered his mentor, something approaching his father. And the other, a man he disliked, but that he tolerated because he was important to his mentor. Genesis had never told Mirk his name. He'd only called him his mentor's c'aytka. But the word still meant little to Mirk, not without any other context.

  Then it swept over Mirk, the memory of the night they'd spent together after the Festival of Shades, when Genesis's usual refusal to speak of anything but immediate concerns had been tempered by that paltry, ceremonial glass of liquor. Genesis struggling to explain why people frustrated him, why his gestures and expressions were all so backwards from what Mirk knew by feel, what the ancient dead who'd built the City of Glass considered wrong and right. There was no marriage in the old K'maneda, Genesis had said, no sharp divide between women and men, no deliberate calculation of heirs and potential. Only c'aytka. Which could be negotiated with anyone, whatever that meant.

  Still, Mirk didn't trust his memory, not after nearly two days spent awake and on edge. And not with something so important. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to explain again, messire. I can't remember things as well as you."

  "An equal," Genesis said again. Sharply, as if the word had some second meaning that he thought was self-evident. Mirk must have looked so puzzled then that even Genesis could tell the single word wasn't enough. So he continued, plucking words from his memory slowly, one by one. "On the first level, the meaning of c'aytka is an equal. On the second...it is shadow-half. The things you are not. Your weakness made strength. On the third..."

  Mirk felt dizzy. Felt his heartbeat pounding in his ears, his chest straining as if there was some great weight pressing down on it, one that would crush the life out of him if he couldn't lift it. He wasn't sure if the words Genesis was fumbling for would save him, or end him for good. He felt like he should be praying, but he didn't know what for.

  "...it is impossible to translate," Genesis concluded, after a hiss of frustration. "There are...too many references. But it is...closeness without restraint. A...chain that frees instead of binding."

  "You want that? With me?" It was all Mirk could do to keep from cringing at the way his voice cracked, the way it strained as he forced the words out.

  "You are...the only person I have met...who I have wished to try with."

  It came out of Mirk in a rush, his body responding before his mind could catch up, resorting by reflex to what he'd been taught rather than thinking up something better, something more fitting. He tugged on Genesis's hand, raising it to his lips and pressing a fast, hard kiss to it with a dip of his head as the words rushed past his lips in a jumble of French and English. "Yes, of course, messire, je vous...euh, I mean, I want to...you..."

  "I...did not anticipate that the rituals relating to this among humans would also be so...royalist."

  The words startled a laugh out of Mirk as he looked down into Genesis's face. His brows were pulled together in confusion, the magelight on his wrist highlighting the sharpness of his features, the firm line of his jaw and the narrow length of his nose. But there was something approaching a smile on his lips, an uncertain expression that lost none of its warmth, none of its appeal despite the sharp extra teeth still glinting in it. If anything, that only made the fluttering in Mirk's chest grow. "Maybe you could teach me a better way, messire."

  Genesis's eyes narrowed at the use of the title. He sat up halfway regardless, tugging on Mirk's hands still clasped tightly around his own. Mirk didn't know what he was expecting. Something cold, something distant and composed. Instead, Genesis kissed him once, so light and so fast Mirk wasn't even certain it'd happened, on the side of the neck. Atop where his heartbeat was still hammering away.

  "Oh! Oh...euh..."

  Genesis had retreated before Mirk could even think of reciprocating, lying back down, though his eyes were still locked on him. Dark and bottomless. "Is this considered offensive?"

  Mirk shook his head. "Just different. On the cheek is more..."

  He was still searching for the right words for it, to explain how a peck on the cheek and one on the neck were leagues apart instead of mere inches, when Genesis replied. "That does not have the same meaning. That aside...you are...filthy."

  Again, all Mirk could do was laugh. "I suppose I am. I really should have gone in the bath first."

  "Go now. If you...intend to sleep here."

  "You don't want to use it first? Now that you're awake?"

  "I already have," Genesis said, as he closed his eyes against the magelight strung around Mirk's wrist.

  "You have?" Mirk looked closer at him. He'd been so transfixed by his face, struggling to read all of his expressions and lost in the entrancing way that the transformation that'd come over Genesis suited him well, that he hadn't noticed that he was no longer wearing his formal uniform. Genesis was wearing his odd sleeping clothes instead, the shirt that closed with a befuddling array of ties and buttons. It really should have been impossible to miss once he'd taken his arm out from underneath the quilt. But the appeal of his slender fingers, Mirk's fascination at the way the claws stretched from their tips, how much relief he felt at their cool touch, had blinded him to such mundane things as what Genesis was wearing. "Oh. I...I suppose I just saw the quilt and thought..."

  "The cold...is not as sharp in this form. I didn’t find it necessary to use all of the bedclothes."

  Mirk sighed, extinguishing the magelight on his wrist, telling himself that he did it to spare Genesis's eyesight rather than to hide how flustered he was. He still wanted nothing more than to flop over onto the bed and fall asleep right there and then, but, if nothing else, at least the conversation that'd passed between them had jolted him awake enough to make the prospects of cleaning himself off bearable. And retreating to the bathroom, locking himself into its immaculate stone and glass bathing chamber, would give him the opportunity to try to sort out what all of this meant without Genesis watching him. "I'll be back. There's nothing I can get you, messire? Your arms..."

  "I am not concerned. You are also...too fatigued to wrap the bandages evenly."

  "You're right, of course," Mirk mumbled, with a weak, defeated laugh. There was no arguing against Genesis's ruthless practicality, not when he was so tired. Mirk shoved himself up off the edge of the bed, banging and fumbling his way through the dresser until he found something that felt like a clean chemise and braies, and retreated to the bathroom.

  The shock only wore off when he found the sliver of stray bone in his hair, stuttering out a dismayed prayer for its former owner as he helplessly let it slip through his fingers and spiral down the drain. He'd confessed his dark longings to Genesis. Or at least he thought he'd done it in a way the commander would understand. And rather than being rejected, rather than being hissed at in disgust and backed away from, he'd been accepted.

  Mirk didn't trust himself to believe that it'd really happened, that Genesis hadn't only been placating him, until he made it back to the bedroom and illuminated the magelight on his wrist again. Genesis was still there. Still deathly still but very much alive judging by the faint, staticky hiss of his magic against his mind, right where Mirk had left him.

  His heart ached to look at him. Mirk knew that the joy swelling up in his chest, making his eyes prickle and his hands tremble, wasn't what he should have been feeling. So many people were dead. There was no telling who would take command of the K'maneda in the coming weeks, whether some agreement would be found or if those who found their tactics too close to Ravensdale and Percival's for comfort would decide to haul Genesis out onto the parade grounds and put him beneath the axe. And all of it begged the question of what would become of him, of his family, now that there was truly no chance of him ever marrying. If the other nobles ever learned of who he'd given his heart away to, they would all be ruined. Or worse. He was damned, in every sense of the word.

  But all of that seemed distant then, too vague to worry over. Not when Genesis was still lying in bed waiting for him.

  Mirk left the magelight on just long enough to clamber into bed without banging his aching feet into his trunk or the bedposts, without ending up sprawled on the floor instead of down onto the mattress. He swiped it off as soon as he was on the edge of the bed, sitting on its side and hesitating over what to do about the bedclothes. Lost in the pitch blackness once more, Mirk ran his hands back through his damp hair, tugging at it the same way he worried at his lower lip. Had he misinterpreted things? Had there been yet another misunderstanding between them, some gap between them that words couldn't bridge? Was he supposed to curl up on his half of the bed, facing away from Genesis, the same as always? Or was he—

  A low hiss of a sigh broke the room's unnatural stillness. "Come...here."

  Mirk flopped first onto his back, letting out a deep sigh of his own. Then he hauled the rest of himself abed, scooting closer to the commander than he ordinarily dared, plucking at the quilt that'd been draped over Genesis. He hadn't been thinking when he'd hurried to tuck Genesis's unresponsive body in before heading back to the infirmary. He should have made use of the heated quilt he'd made for Genesis instead of throwing the first one he could find across him.

  "Is everything all right?" Mirk asked him, unable to raise his voice above a whisper, fear gripping him once more.

  "I believe...negotiation is required," Genesis replied, after one of his endless, frustrating pauses. "Come here."

  "You did say something about that before...negotiation..." Mirk mumbled to himself as he wormed his way underneath the quilt. He was cold enough from being drained that he would have appreciated burrowing under all the bedclothes, but he was too uncertain of things to risk it. To chance sending the wrong message with his actions, by keeping extra layers of fabric between them.

  Mirk forced himself past the brink of that fear that'd wrapped him once more in its icy grasp, turning on his side facing Genesis and leaning against his broad, bony shoulder. Against the hollow in it, that one comfortable spot, the one he'd always imagined to be made just for him. If he'd dared to draw closer to Genesis before, he could have known by smell that the commander had gotten to the bath before him. The scent of his soap, of freshly opened lilies, was stronger at the moment than his usual bitter orange cleaning potions.

  Genesis's arm shifted beneath him. A moment later, he felt his fingers in his hair. Though they drew back for a moment at its dampness, Genesis pressed onward. Mirk wondered if he was as afraid of making a misstep as he was, of sending the wrong impression.

  Mirk had a hard time imagining it. He'd never seen Genesis fear anything. Other than himself, and what he was capable of.

  "A negotiation...is only just when both parties are able to debate freely." Genesis paused, the next words coming out low and dark, clicking and hissing through his extra teeth. "I am not free."

  "I'm sorry, Genesis," Mirk mumbled into his shirtfront. "But methinks I'm too tired to understand. You'll have to explain a little."

  "My nis'yk taught me that a...bound Destroyer is dangerous. It makes it difficult to keep control. And I have not...mastered positive emotions in the same way I have mastered the rest."

  Again, the aching spiked in Mirk's chest. He pressed closer to Genesis, wrapping an arm around his thin frame, able to sense in his words what he'd chosen to leave unsaid. Genesis had felt enough pain in his life to know its contours, to have memorized how best to manage it. But pleasure, closeness and warmth, were unfamiliar things. "It's all right," Mirk said, after a moment.

  "Is it?"

  After that admission of weakness, albeit in Genesis's usual, roundabout way, Mirk felt it only fair that he offer up a pain of his own. His own bindings, even though they were of his own making rather than ones forced upon him. "I don't know what to do, not yet." He said into the dark. "It's...I know this is supposed to be a good thing. But...I can't help but remember how it was in Nantes..."

  In Nantes. When everything was taken from him. And though he didn't fear the claws combing through his hair, not in the slightest, he still bore the marks of others across his shoulders. Ones that had been merciless in taking from him what they wanted, without regard for him.

  There was another long pause. But Genesis's hand didn't still as he thought. He didn't draw away. "A...compromise. Until we are both free...there is this. An understanding."

  "An understanding," Mirk echoed, tracing the line of Genesis's shirtfront with his fingertips.

  "I will fight to be free. And...I will wait. As long as is required."

  Mirk felt tears well at the corners of his eyes again, for what felt like the hundredth time on that unending day. "I'll wait too," he said, trying to keep the trembling out of his voice. "I'll help however I can."

  And he would. He would wait until the sun went dark, until all the living and the dead were whisked off to eternal peace at the end of days. He'd felt the first stirrings of it when he'd seen the Death come for Genesis the second time, trapping his soul in his hand with such cold indifference, black and fluttery and faint like a moth beating against a windowpane. Since then, despite his best efforts to tell himself that he was wrong, that it was wrong, everything he felt for Genesis, that certainty had only deepened.

  It was in everything. The meticulous way he folded his clothes, the way he always made the bed, the way he tidied his potion bottles and dishes without resenting him for being the way he was, absent-minded and slapdash. How effortlessly elegant he was, how striking, more captivating than men who'd devoted their whole lives to the art of courtly poise. How Genesis made note of what everything he did meant, all his expressions and gestures, observing cause and effect and storing that knowledge in the vastness of his memory with care that was usually only reserved for the greatest and most complicated spells. Even if he didn't understand, Genesis remembered.

  And most of all, it was in the way he respected him like no one else ever had. In a way that all the gold in all the counting houses of the world couldn't buy, in a way the crowns of every kingdom could never demand.

  He loved Genesis for all of it. For too many things to name, for things that couldn't be named, not in any language he knew. Just like he'd fought that Death for Genesis's soul, Mirk knew he'd fight anyone else who tried to take him too soon, before he had the chance to be free. And barring that, he would go into the dark beside him, so that even if he could never be rid of the bindings on his arms, Genesis wouldn't be forced to bear the weight of them alone.

  "As a matter of course, you are also free to change your mind whenever you wish," Genesis said, breaking into his thoughts. "There is no...obligation. Among the old K'maneda, there was never an end to negotiation."

  "Bien s?r." Mirk laughed a little to himself, as he let himself stroke Genesis's thin chest rather than settling for only tracing the lines of his shirt. "It's a wonder the old K'maneda ever got anything done. There must have been a lot of arguing..."

  "Anything that is worth doing is worth defending in debate."

  Mirk wished he could see Genesis’s face in the darkness. But he settled for resting his palm over his heart, seeking his heartbeat with both his hand and his mind. Impossibly slow. Precise. Even. As if he was at peace. Or at least as close to it as he ever got. "This is," Mirk said, softly, not caring whether Genesis replied or not. "Worth it."

  "Agreed."

  That made a smile return to Mirk's face as he closed his eyes, allowing himself to press a hair closer, hold him a bit tighter, worming one arm underneath Genesis to embrace him fully. The spines along his back had vanished. Maybe Genesis knew what he wanted, even if he had trouble putting it into words. "I'm glad you think so, messire."

  "One would think that title to be...irrelevant. Now."

  "What? Do you want me to think up something else?" Mirk felt his smile shift to a grin. Something about returning to that tired old conversation reassured Mirk rather than annoyed him, made it clear that not everything had changed between them.

  "Is this...common practice among humans? To use such titles?"

  "Hmm, it all depends, really. But I just forget not to. It's hard for me, you know. You should show people who've earned it respect. My mother never stopped using vous with my father. And grand-père never stopped with my grandmother, even after she was gone. Everyone picked on him for it, but he always said that if he didn't show her respect, she'd come back and haunt him."

  Genesis sighed. "Your people are...persistent."

  "It's like you said, Genesis. Good things are worth fighting for."

  And Mirk could think of nothing better than this, than lying in the dark with his forehead pressed up against Genesis's long, slender neck. Than his hand finally falling still, but not drawing away, cradling the back of his head like it was something precious, something he wanted to keep close. Another wave of fatigue washed over Mirk, and he pressed himself as close against Genesis’s side as he could.

  "You should rest..." Mirk mumbled, already losing track of the words, no longer sure what language he was speaking in. "Don't go running off as soon as it's morning..."

  "I will stay," Mirk heard him say, distantly. He wasn't sure if it was a real thing, or something he'd imagined, a misplaced hope. There was so much to be done. And Genesis wasn't one to lounge around in bed when there was work to do.

  But he was still there when Mirk woke up. In that exact same position, as if no time had passed at all. As if he'd be there forever, no matter what else in their lives changed.