A cold hand cupped his cheek. He leaned into it, letting out a sigh of relief it felt like he'd been holding in for months.

  Long, delicate fingers slid backwards, cradling his head. It seemed impossible that there could be so much care in them, that such a small gesture could mean so much. But that was what set him apart from the rest, what always made him feel so cherished whenever he touched him — he never did anything lightly. Everything was deliberate. And that made it so easy to read his intentions that it didn’t matter that he could feel nothing other than static, other than the press of skin on skin. He didn't need to feel his emotions. There was no missing what those lips pressed against his own meant. Though they were softer than he'd been expecting.

  He'd been expecting to feel terror. Horror at being left so exposed, with all his clothes stripped away again, so that he could be evaluated, inch by inch, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He'd thought the weight pressing down on him would make him panic. But it didn't.

  It was because there was no taking in it, he realized, as the lips moved lower, to the side of his neck. No demand. There was only giving. The unblinking stare that accompanied it, the one that felt five times heavier than the body pressing down on him, wasn't searching him for faults, for weaknesses. He was only watching to see which touches provoked which responses. Memorizing cause and effect, like he always did.

  That knowledge made it easier to succumb to the heat rising up the length of his spine, the delight that put a shake in his hands and made his toes curl. Being ashamed, hesitation, showing proper restraint, none of it would get him what he wanted. Though he could feel his cheeks burning, he let the sighs and gasps that bubbled up in him slip past his lips freely. He voiced all of his approval, mirrored it with desperate hands pressing down hard on his back, keeping him from pulling away. A gesture to show that closeness was everything he'd always wanted.

  The lips moved lower still. Searching, testing. Tracing clavicle and sternum, seizing on the soft vulnerability of a nipple before skipping down every rib. It was strange that those words that so often eluded him came to him then, when every other last bit of sense had already left him. Maybe it was some unspoken communication between them, the knowledge that those had to be the words he was thinking of when he inventoried his responses. Not out of coldness, but out of accuracy. It was important, after all, to remember exactly which bone he needed to kiss over to draw the first groan up out of his chest.

  He cursed how short his arms were, how much less of him he could reach the lower he moved against him. He made up for it by wrapping his legs around him, by arching up against him. Encouraging. Pleading, the sounds that escaped him growing more desperate as his inexorable descent continued. There was salvation hidden in this, somewhere in between the way he grasped his hips to keep them steady and how carefully, how deliberately, he mouthed at the inside of his thighs. There was a way to forget. A way to begin again.

  An ardent declaration of love would have made his heart race. But the question, almost teasing in its flatness and practicality, made it feel fit to burst. Maddening.

  I assume you’ve washed?

  Yes. Of course. Always, in the delusional hope that something like this might happen every time he crawled into bed alone but woke up in the middle of the night aware of that faint, motionless presence beside him.

  A sharp inhale. Ah. You made use of the good soap.

  Part of him wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, that any man could be in such a position and be thinking of soap instead of a more urgent matter. But most of him wanted to seize him by that senselessly long ponytail of his, somehow still impossibly neat, despite all the pawing he'd done at it, and guide him to what he wanted.

  Diligence...will be rewarded.

  And he was rewarded. Rewarded with what he'd been aching for, what he'd been dreaming of, what he'd tried so hard never to think of but found himself returning to again and again when his mind was left too idle for his own good. It was better than he'd been expecting. He'd been expecting the guilt to overtake him, the shamefulness making it impossible to enjoy what was freely given.

  But instead, there was only relief. Joy in that surrender, of finally letting go. An ecstasy he'd only ever felt before in those who came weeping with gratitude to throw themselves to the floor before the altar in the abbey's church, in awe of the forgiveness, the grace they'd been given by the unknowable.

  Again, he felt a cold hand cup his cheek.

  Wake...up.

  That's what was happening, wasn't it? What had been happening, ever since that cold night in October, when he'd first realized the way things were between them. He was waking up from some slumber he hadn't ever realized he'd been caught in, a blindness to possibilities that had always seemed too distant to be real. He'd never really understood all the emotions he'd felt pass between people before then, carried along by an ardent press of their hands or a certain lingering glance. He'd felt them, but he'd always thought there was something wrong in him, something missing that meant he'd be able to feel those things in others, but never in himself.

  It wasn't that. He'd only been looking in the wrong places. Awake, but still asleep. Eyes closed to where real beauty lay.

  Wake up.

  Beauty was in the unexpected places. In the immaculate regularity of a body he'd memorized every sharp line of, every subtle contour, both inside and out. In the unnaturally slow beat of a heart that opened agonizingly slow, revealing a complexity he knew he'd never be able to completely understand. In a stack of freshly ironed robes and a precisely made bed and a note in a hand so steady and sure it was like print instead of script, laying out for him exactly what needed to be done. There was beauty in all of it. Care in all of it. Though, admittedly, the beauty before him at that very moment, drawing gasps out of him with every press and slide, was much more visceral.

  Now his cheek was being pinched, ever so slightly. It made a grin spread across his lips. Though...weren't there three hands now? Was it some kind of magic?

  Wake up. There are...only eighty minutes.

  Eighty minutes was more than enough time. At least for now. But he was sure they'd find a routine. Certain they'd come back to it. It'd be penciled in, just like the bath and the tea and everything else. It was a little galling for it to be scheduled like that...but if he got eighty minutes, that made up for it well enough.

  Another pinch. I do not wish to resort to magic. Wake...up.

  But if he wasn't using magic, where was the third hand coming from? It had to be the shadows. But it all felt too solid to be the shadows, too real, he could smell his soap as if his body was nearer to his face...

  And then Mirk woke up, just as Genesis asked him to for the fifth time that morning.

  He bolted upright in bed with a sharp gasp, both hands slapping at his own chest. Genesis took a quick three steps back from the bed, frowning. "Are you...well?" he asked Mirk.

  As instantly as the strength had come to Mirk, it flowed back out of him and he flopped backward into the nest of pillows he'd been curled up in. A strange, hazy sort of dizziness lingered, however. He felt distinctly out of sorts as he stared up at the unblemished ceiling of the bedroom. Not just because of the dream, not just because of who had woken him up, but because of something else on top of all that. That same nagging pressure that had been nudging his emotions to their extremes for the past few days.

  Mirk heard the whisper of a single, cautious footstep. "Do you require assistance from the other healers?"

  Mustering his resolve along with the most unconcerned smile he could manage in his half-awake state, Mirk made himself look back over at Genesis. He instantly regretted it. For some reason, Genesis wasn't wearing his ubiquitous bag of a high-collared uniform shirt and loose trousers, or even his odd, foreign sleeping clothes. Instead, he was wearing the same formal uniform — precisely tailored to his thin frame, every irresistible angle and curve of it outlined in silver piping, long legs left fully exposed by its short coat and highlighted in agonizing detail by its tall boots, laced painfully tight and polished to a perfect gleam — that had awakened all this madness in him to begin with.

  Mirk's throat went so dry at the sight of it that his attempt at an excuse came out in a croak rather than with a breezy, unconcerned laugh. "Euh...no, I'm fine, methinks I must have just been very tired...are...is something happening today, messire?"

  Genesis stared down at him from the bedside, confusion plain to be seen in the blankness of his expression. "Yes. It is...the wedding. I am to deliver the guests to the village by ten. In...eighty minutes."

  The wedding. How could he have forgotten? It'd been all anyone had been talking about all week. He really must have been exhausted to have slept so hard that it escaped his mind. Though, it wasn't as if there was much space left in it at that precise moment for anything other than an insistent voice clamoring for him to turn his gaze lower instead of forcing himself to keep it fixed on the slight frown that'd come onto Genesis's face. "Oh! Right...I'd set an alarm..."

  "Yes. You slept through it. Three times."

  "I'll be there in a minute. The clothes should..."

  "Are prepared. As are your usual...materials. The powders and curlers."

  Mirk tried to think back to last night. He'd spent it at the tavern, entrenched at the bar beside Sheila, Yule, and Danu, trying to settle Danu's nerves. Not over the prospects of being married to the love of her life, but over meeting Mordecai's legion of family members for the first time. As the only healer in the Twentieth who had experience with family matters, it'd been up to him to reassure her that Mordecai's relatives would be so happy to have him wed to someone he cared so deeply for that the care would transfer to her as a matter of course. His explanations hadn't quite worked on their own. By the time they'd all parted ways after midnight, even Sheila, whose vampiric metabolism was barely affected by plain liquor, was tipsy.

  Which partially explained the fizzing in his mind. But didn't explain the feeling of tension that was stealing over him, of untapped energy, a need to do and make and, most importantly, cling, despite still being so dizzy that he didn't trust himself to sit up again yet. "Did I...?"

  "No. I thought it prudent to arrange them for you when you ignored your alarm. As we only have...eighty minutes."

  There wasn't any reason for Genesis to be so concerned with punctuality, really. Mirk thought he should have known by then that any time the Easterners gave was the vaguest estimate rather than a definite starting point. But there was no taking that concern out of Genesis. When he was asked to be somewhere, he was always precisely on time, regardless of whether the person who asked him cared whether he was ten minutes or even an hour late.

  It was hopelessly endearing. The same way that there was something marvelously tender in his thinking to arrange his things for him, even if it was only because Genesis hated being late and he'd watched Mirk ready himself for enough meetings and balls to know that he tended to dawdle and forget where he'd put things.

  "Methinks I won't need everything...Danu said it's supposed to be casual...so, euh, methinks you really don't need to, euh, wear that either...if it's too much trouble..." he said, hazarding the barest sideways glance at Genesis and his formal uniform. Mirk felt like if he had to spend all day staring at him in it, he'd combust before the vows were exchanged.

  "K'aekniv told me that it would be...inappropriate for me to wear my normal clothes. This is the only alternative."

  Genesis was right, of course. Mirk cursed himself, silently. He should have seen this coming, should have acted high-handed for once and had the London mage quarter tailor he'd stopped by on Wednesday put together something decent for Genesis to wear too. Something that wasn't grim and black, completely out of place at a wedding. And that was looser.

  "Oh. Well...I suppose..."

  "I must continue taking the others to the village," Genesis said, while Mirk was still grasping for something sensible to reply with. "Will you be prepared in an hour?"

  "Yes! Yes, of course," Mirk said. He sat up, to prove to Genesis that he was serious. "I'm getting up. I just...euh..."

  His body felt all wrong. He could feel the flush burning up his cheeks, his hands were shaking underneath the bedclothes. And though he wasn't about to check outright, not with Genesis still looming over him, he got the impression that it would be a bad idea to throw himself out of bed at that exact moment.

  "The weather is warm," Genesis said, flatly. "If you are already...overheated, I would advise for you to take that into consideration. K'aekniv has voiced his complaints about it. And you share certain...constitutional similarities."

  Mirk wanted nothing more than to disappear down into the mattress, the burning in his face growing worse. "Thank you, messire..."

  Though the commander still seemed wary of his claim that he was about to get up, his dedication to timeliness didn't allow him to linger. "I will return in an hour. I would...prefer if you were ready by then."

  Then he turned on his heel and left. Walking out the door for once, instead of vanishing into the room's shadows. Rather than prudently looking away, Mirk watched him, and was subjected once again to a fine display of Genesis's inhuman grace and proportions, highlighted by that uniform that'd been both the bane and greatest highlight of his existence ever since he'd first set eyes on it. Once Genesis had shut the door behind himself, Mirk groaned and let himself flop backwards into the pillows once more.

  It all made sense now, with the mention of the unseasonably warm weather. It was so obvious that Mirk felt like an idiot for having missed it the past few days. Spring had finally arrived, fully, without any chance of it backsliding into winter once again. And with it had arrived his springtime illness, the inverse of the one that came every autumn and left him trapped in bed for a week.

  The springtime illness had always bothered him much less than the autumnal one. He wasn't left frozen and nearly dead; he was possessed by the earth's energy, overflowing with it, capable of doing and feeling more during that too-short span of a week or two than he was any other time of the year. He was always insufferably hot instead of freezing to death. He could barely sit still, at least once that long first sleep that always started things had passed.

  And then...there was the rest of it.

  That part had never bothered him before, not really. It'd concerned him the first few times, when he'd been younger and unaccustomed to feeling emotions besides his own, and then only those of the older brothers and sisters who'd surrounded him at the abbey. But his first forays into the village closest to the abbey, followed by his return to polite society, had helped illuminate things well enough. Along with Father Jean, who had noticed his worry and had explained what he could away with his usual simple reasonableness.

  God had commanded the Earth and everything on it to be fruitful; humans were no exception. But God had made human bodies long before humans had settled on rules to best manage that command, so the two weren't always necessarily in alignment. A boy of fourteen was far too young for the sober responsibility of a wife and children. There was no harm in expending that excess potential when needed — better to take care of it responsibly, on one's own, than convincing a similarly afflicted girl who was also far too young for those responsibilities to bear them before the time was right.

  It hadn't troubled him then. Mirk had always viewed it as a minor inconvenience, a passing trouble that was more than worth having the ability to get a full month's work done at his studies within the span of a few days or not risk falling asleep in the middle of the endless luncheons and parties that went along with the spring social seasons. It was like having a cold and needing to excuse himself on occasion to blow his nose, or having a stubborn blister that needed to bandaged fresh every morning. Nothing to fret over or feel guilty about. A fact of life, an extra burden for which he'd been amply rewarded by being able to feel both the Earth and others more clearly.

  But things had changed. It didn't feel like something pushed on him from the outside now, like having to lean into a strong wind to make headway or hunching his shoulders against a strong rain. That energy, that insatiable need, was coming from within. And every bit of it, every fiber of his being, was fixed on the attraction he already spent so much of his energy denying. Ignoring. Forcing down, for the good of a place in the world that would allow his family to prosper and a friendship that he couldn't stand the thought of losing.

  Mirk stared up at the ceiling, the burning on his cheeks and in his chest unrelenting, and sighed.

  Providence made no mistakes. This was just another test he'd have to endure as best he could. Meant to teach him something, meant to make him atone for his mistakes. He could get through it. He needed to get through it.

  And he needed to get out of bed and manage himself, before Genesis came back and left him with no choice but to shuffle to the bath wrapped up in half a dozen quilts to hide the condition he was in.

  - - -

  He made it in fifty-five minutes by the time on the clock in the common room bookshelf. Which left him with five spare minutes to try to compose himself further, to try to do something with his hair and double-check the supplies in the satchel he'd bought along with the new coat and breeches and boots. A bag less careworn than what he carried them in when in the City, but not so extravagant that Mirk thought anyone would give it a second glance.

  Exactly five minutes later, Genesis reappeared, right while he was in the middle of refilling his bottle of potion against stomach cramps from the kit on the desk. He managed not to spill it everywhere when he inevitably jumped at the click of the door and the flicker of black and silver in the corner of his eye. Instead, he only laughed, tiredly, as he recorked both bottles and tucked the smaller one back into his bag. "I know, sixty minutes. I'm nearly ready. Methinks this will come in handy for something, anyway..."

  For once, Genesis didn't argue with him. Instead, he surveyed the labels on the other bottles scattered across the desk that Mirk hurriedly piled back into the satchel. "On this, we are...in agreement. I have been informed that there is some manner of...traditional fighting that is involved in all of this. After the ceremonial aspect."

  "Is there? I've never been to this kind of wedding."

  All the weddings Mirk had ever been to were extravagant, sprawling affairs, ones that started in a church and ended with the most luxurious balls he'd ever attended. A prime chance for the new couple to show off exactly what their combined familial wealth could afford. If it hadn't been for the matter of his springtime illness, he would have been looking forward to something more subdued, more heartfelt. More intimate.

  "Nor have I. Mordecai is the first of them. And the last for some time, I anticipate."

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "Oh?"

  "I am only obligated, by tradition, to attend those of my...k'asrat. The basic unit of battle formations. Pavel and Ilya seem disinclined toward engaging in this practice. And K'aekniv is...K'aekniv."

  Mirk couldn't help but laugh again as he turned to face Genesis, slinging his new satchel over one shoulder. "Methinks he'd be more than happy to get married, but...well. Only God knows when the right person will come along."

  Genesis frowned as he surveyed Mirk's new outfit. "That is not your usual finery."

  "Danu said that it wasn't supposed to be formal," Mirk said, smoothing a hand down the front of his waistcoat. He'd borrowed it from the violet suit he'd worn to Lord Kinross's ball. It went well with the casual, short dark green coat he'd chosen from the pile of ready-mades at the tailor's. Most likely the common attire of some guild's servants or apprentices. But a fresh set of crystal buttons — Mirk found he enjoyed them better than metal, watching the light pass through them while trying to think of what to say or listening to a conversation he had no role to play in — and a few alterations said tailor had been more than happy to put in on the spot for a sizeable tip, made it look a little less common, in his opinion.

  Then there was nothing left but finding suitable breeches, a wonderful warm golden brown, and a trip down the street to find the pair of boots he'd meant to buy back in winter, and his casual outfit was settled. Mirk wasn't certain whether the fact that Genesis had noticed the step down and was frowning over it was a good or bad sign.

  "It suits you."

  Mirk's head jerked back up in surprise. The frown hadn't gone, despite Genesis's words. And he was still surveying him, as if searching his coat and breeches for some thread or button that was out of place. Odd. Mirk laughed it off with a shrug, adjusting his satchel on his shoulder. "Methinks if even you like it, messire, then I must have chosen well."

  Breaking off his critical gaze with a dismissive wave of his hand, Genesis headed for the door. "We're meeting the remainder at the South Gate."

  He hurried to catch up, not wanting to be left in the uncomfortable position once more of watching Genesis walk away from him. As he hurried along at the commander's side through the streets of the City, quiet on a Sunday morning, Mirk couldn't help but notice that they were attracting attention. Not that it surprised him any. Genesis usually managed to avoid attention from others by sticking to the shadows and by wearing the clothes of a common fighter. Despite his inhuman height and uncanny grace, as long as he didn't put on any airs, he was more than capable of moving about the City unseen even when he did skirt into the daylight, provided his magic wasn't playing about him in a threatening manner.

  But in the City, like everywhere else, a good set of clothes could do wonders for a man. And Genesis was in too much of a hurry, too distracted by whatever tasks Mordecai and the others had set him to, to bother with keeping himself mostly out of sight. It was probably a good thing that Genesis was too distracted to notice all the men touching their hats as they hurried to get out of his way, or all the women turning a curious eye after him, wondering at who this decidedly arresting Comrade Major could be. After the third time a man swept his hat clean off his head and bowed his apologies to Genesis as he jumped out of his way, Mirk could hold it in no longer. He burst into laughter.

  "...what?" Genesis asked tersely, sparing him only the barest glance.

  "You’re very striking in that outfit, messire. Methinks everyone will be wondering where that handsome officer they all saw on Sunday went when you go back to wearing your usual clothes."

  Genesis hissed his frustration, moving reflexively to draw the shadows to himself. But he cut himself off before he could call them over from the City's alleys and lean-tos, settling for giving one of his snapping and clicking curses instead as he doubled his pace.

  "Is there a reason you can't use your magic?" Mirk asked, now forced to jog alongside him to keep up. Thankfully, spring did wonders for his stamina in areas other than the most inconvenient ones.

  "I've taken two-hundred fifteen people to the village already this morning," he said. "And...several sledges of material besides."

  "But aren't Mordecai's family all teleporting mages? They must have someone they could spare to help."

  "He is testing me," Genesis grumbled. "As if...my dedication is in question..."

  "Mordecai is?" It didn't seem very much like the Mordecai he knew, all jokes and schemes and good cheer.

  "No. His...grandfather."

  Before Mirk could question Genesis further, they'd rounded the last bend before the South Gate. Apparently the danger of invoking Genesis's wrath was enough to make everyone arrive on time for the final transport. There were only Danu's guests left, the other healers, though the lady of honor herself was nowhere to be seen.

  Mirk found himself grinning again at the sight of the trio, out-of-place among the other pedestrians in their wedding finery, such as it was. It was odd seeing any of them in anything but robes and smocks. But what they'd chosen suited them each perfectly — Eva in a plain gray dress and matching bodice, her hands tucked in the pockets sewn into its voluminous sides rather than hidden in the front of her smock like usual, Sheila in a long, belted white garment that was half dress and half shirt, stitched all over with intricate designs in cheerful primary colors. And Yule in the finest set of dark green dress robes Mirk had ever seen him in, tailored tight at the waist.

  He called out a greeting as they approached, breathlessly, scrounging for all the air he could as Genesis came to a sudden halt and scanned the plaza in front of the South Gate, his frown deepening. "Where is...K'aekniv?" the commander asked.

  "How the hell are we supposed to know?" Yule asked, as he crossly tossed his hair, freshly curled and full of a fragrant pomade Mirk could smell even from a distance, over his shoulders. "He's your problem."

  "I thought Niv would have been the first one through," Mirk said, as he managed to get some of his breath back. K'aekniv had been in the thick of the preparations from the very beginning, coordinating supplies and people in every spare moment he could get.

  "He has...been through several times. But he told me he had one more task." Genesis said. He was listening intently. Mirk could tell by the slight tilt to his head that he was opening himself further to his inhuman senses than usual. He and Sheila moved at the same time, turning toward the ring road that ran into the plaza from the east. A few seconds later, K'aekniv appeared, a barrel braced on each giant shoulder, bright red in the face and running at full tilt. A Watch patrol was less than a dozen paces behind, swords drawn.

  "Typical," Yule said with a scoff.

  Genesis sighed. "If you would all...move closer, there will be less chance of you falling into the Abyss."

  "What are the exact odds of that?" Eva asked, as she grudgingly moved close enough to the commander to take hold of his coat sleeve. Both Sheila and Yule followed suit, grabbing onto the barest edges of his fine dress uniform that they could bear. Mirk knew better from experience. He took hold of Genesis's free arm outright.

  "With K'aekniv involved, below five percent. The Abyssals are always...interested in him."

  "Get ready!" K'aekniv shouted out, not slowing down at all as he drew closer. If anything, he found a fresh burst of energy upon seeing them waiting for him and stepped up his pace.

  It seemed to Mirk like Genesis had been through this ordeal several times before. Rather than calling back to K'aekniv, Genesis shifted his stance, pressing it lower and wider, as if preparing to jump. Or bracing for impact.

  That was exactly what happened. K'aekniv barreled across the plaza and straight into Genesis, head on. Before the shock of the impact hit Mirk through the commander's thin body, the world around him dissolved into shadow. There were a few moments of coldness, a familiar hissing static pressing hard against Mirk's mental shields. Then all of it cleared away, leaving them somewhere completely different. A vale full of green and dappled sunlight.

  Mirk was too distracted by what followed their passage through the Abyss to take it all in — the arm he was clinging to went tense, and Genesis stumbled back a few paces, coughing and brushing an annoyed hand down the front of his uniform coat. Eva, like the other healers, had let go of him the instant their safety was assured on the other side of the Abyss.

  "See!" K'aekniv crowed with a triumphant laugh, dropping both his barrels to the ground. "I told you I'd be on time! No problem!"

  "You were...two minutes late," Genesis hissed. He was rubbing at his chest, where K'aekniv had ran headlong into him. Reluctantly, Mirk forced himself to let go of his arm. He always wanted to cling to Genesis a little after the commander moved him through the shadows, leaning against his body and magic to settle his nerves. But that wouldn’t do, not with his springtime affliction making him want to do much more than cling.

  K'aekniv ignored Genesis, instead grinning around at Mirk and his fellow healers. "Look at you! I told Danny it wouldn't matter if she only had five or six people. You healers always look so good that you make all the rest of us count less."

  "I don't need flattery from you," Yule replied with a snort.

  The half-angel ignored him too. Apparently K'aekniv was in such high spirits that every negative comment directed his way bounced off him, just like he had off Genesis's chest. But Mirk decided to at least preserve some semblance of good manners on behalf of the rest of the startled and sullen crowd around him, meeting K'aekniv's enthusiasm with like. That aside, he always found K'aekniv's cheerfulness hard to resist. "You look very nice too, Niv," Mirk said, returning his grin.

  "Ah, this is nothing," K'aekniv said. He was wearing the same sort of uniform as Genesis, something that had most likely come along with him moving into the commander's old position in the division when Genesis had been promoted to major. Only K'aekniv hadn't bothered to take his to the tailor, or hadn't had the spare money for it. His coat was hanging open, too narrow in the chest to accommodate the muscles there, overdeveloped from carrying the weight of his wings. And his breeches were bound to split before the day was over, too small around to contain the thickness of his legs. His boots had already come untied. "For a village wedding, I should have a good kosovorotka. But where am I supposed to get something like that in the City? You make do."

  "It is...supposed to be worn closed," Genesis said, frowning down at K'aekniv's untied bootlaces.

  "It doesn't fit! Next time, get me to whatever mage you got to make his look good, Mirgosha," K'aekniv joked at him, his grin growing wider. "If they can make even him look like he has an ass, then everyone will be coming for me once it fits right."

  Mirk’s awareness of his springtime affliction came surging back at K'aekniv's offhand comment, the heat rising fast on the sides of his face. But K'aekniv was already distracted by a yell from behind him. It was a short man in clothing that put Mirk in mind of the male variant of what Sheila was wearing, albeit looser, more practical and less finely embroidered. He and K'aekniv fell into conversation in a language Mirk didn't understand, debating over the barrels K'aekniv had brought along with him. But the half-angel paused for a second, to give them all orders, before Mirk could activate the vocal translator pinned to the collar of his coat or the standard one he'd put on the inside of his sleeve.

  "Abram says you need to finish moving the benches," he said to Genesis. "And Danny should be over there somewhere, in that big red tent. You should all go see her, I think. She's not used to all this. It'd be nice for her to see more people she knows. We can't go help. Tradition."

  Genesis was moving off, clicking curses to himself under his breath, before K'aekniv even finished speaking. The half-angel and the newcomer followed after him, still arguing over the barrels that K'aekniv had hefted back up onto his shoulders. Which left Mirk and the other healers alone, in a strange valley in the woods, with very little guidance.

  "You come from this part of the world. What do we do?" Eva asked Sheila with a sigh, after casting a reluctant look around at the vale. Its thick vegetation had been beaten back to accommodate the wedding festivities from the look and the feel of things. Mirk had the impression that it'd all be overgrown once more within a week or two. The air was thick with the scent of unseen flowers, tinged with the distant aroma of cooking. And magical potential. Something that blocked the vale off from the rest of the world and encouraged the life within its confines to flourish. It didn't help make the flush that'd come over Mirk’s face fade any faster.

  "I don't know what the teleporting mages do," Sheila said, her nose wrinkling at all the sunlight. She lifted a shawl that was pinned around her shoulders, using it to hide her face and head from it. "They've always been separate. Like us, but not like us. Even the ones who worked in the City back when it was over here didn't live in it."

  "Niv said something about a tent?" Mirk suggested, looking around the clearing Genesis had pulled them into through the shadows. There was a narrow track through the forest that crowded the edges off the vale off to their left. "We should go look, methinks. Danu was so nervous about coming here..."

  "Better than the alternative," Yule said. There was yelling off in the distance in the direction that K'aekniv and Genesis had gone in.

  Together, they squeezed themselves down the narrow path through the woods, Mirk reluctantly taking the lead, as he and Eva were the only ones with vocal translators. And the others agreed, Eva included, that he'd be better at negotiating with whoever they found at the end of it than she would.

  After a walk of only a few minutes, they came to a second clearing, in which a giant red tent had been raised. Though calling it a tent might have been too generous — it was more like a canopy, only its top made of a sturdy canvas, its sides consisting of some kind of light linen that let most of the light and air through. Mirk could hear conversation from inside, though it was much more subdued than he'd been expecting, considering the high spirits the Easterners always got into whenever an opportunity to celebrate presented itself to them. Then again, all the Easterners Mirk had met thus far had been men.

  Mirk approached the narrow opening in the front of the tent, debating how to present himself. There was no door to knock on, no one standing nearby, ready to receive visitors. Would it be right to bow? None of the Easterners seemed to know what to make of bows, not until one of the ones who'd been in the City longer told them it was what you needed to do to impress ladies or get officers to stop bothering them. A smile couldn't hurt, Mirk supposed. And he'd have to trust the vocal translator to morph whatever polite terms of address he used into something Mordecai's family and friends could understand.

  A few feet from the door, a tall woman appeared in front of him. Not from within the tent. She'd teleported in, with that characteristic slap of air Mirk was accustomed to. Although hers was much more subdued than Mordecai's. She folded her arms and blocked the way into the tent, frowning down at him in a way Mirk suspected was meant to intimidate just as much as the cooking knife tucked into her apron did.

  But Mirk kept his wits about himself that time — he'd been subjected to enough disapproving frowns to last a lifetime by then, and from people with things much worse than that knife to use on him. He thought he could feel Danu from somewhere behind her inside the tent, though her mind felt different than usual. More subdued. Worried. "Pardon my rudeness, madame," Mirk said, flicking the vocal translator on as he dipped into a modest bow out of habit. And he switched into French, trusting the translator to make better sense of his deference in his native language than it did his English, in situations where it paid to be polite. "But could we see Mademoiselle Danu, please?"

  The woman studied all of the healers for a moment, then fixed her attention back on Mirk. "Who are you?"

  "We're Mademoiselle Danu's guests, from where she works. Healers. If you'd like introductions, I'd be more than happy to give them."

  "No men are allowed," she said, surveying them all again. There was a note of hesitation in her voice, as if she couldn't decide whether any of the four of them were men to begin with. Thankfully, Yule either didn't catch the slight, or decided not to rise to it, for once.

  "I'm sorry to trouble you," Mirk said, deciding to bow again to try to curry some goodwill, since she hadn't reacted badly to the first. "But Mademoiselle Danu doesn't have much family of her own to support her in this time. We're the closest thing, though we're not all women. I promise, we don't mean any harm. And we're all healers. We know how to respect a woman's modesty."

  The woman opened her mouth to reply, her frown deepening. But before she could, an uncharacteristically weak voice called out from inside the tent, echoing as if it was run through a translator. "Please, Aunt Hannah? Until my mother comes, at least?"

  Her expression softening, the woman looked back into the tent over her shoulder. Another voice from within made the frown vanish, with a tired laugh. An older, lower voice, wheezing slightly. "The boy has a point. It's not her fault she's been given men instead of sisters to heal with. Let them be."

  Grudgingly, the woman stepped aside. Mirk bowed to her a final time before entering, pushing aside the flimsy linen wall to make way.

  Mirk only went a few steps before he was drawn up short by the marvels inside the tent. A multitude of chaises and benches filled it, of all colors and description, some familiar, some doubtlessly from foreign places that only a teleporting mage could get to easily. Most of them were vacant at the moment, but it'd clear they'd once been filled with people. Their handiwork remained in their wake — mounds of sewing, clothes and daily linens, a table full of the enchanted goods necessary for a mage of worth to start a household.

  There was a whole table full of baked goods laid out to rest, covered by more thin fabric to keep off any rogue flies. The product of the stove that'd been hauled into the far corner of the tent, though Mirk wasn't sure how the smoke from it was vented, since he hadn't seen or smelled any outside. All he could smell inside the tent was the baking, the warm odors of cinnamon and nutmeg.

  Danu was at the center of it all, standing as a pair of older women sat in chairs on either side of her worked at the final modifications to the dress she'd been put in. And it did feel more like something she'd been put in, not something she'd chosen. Danu preferred practical things, with only light touches of whimsy. The red gown she wore was crawling with enchantments and spells, all stitched in white, in patterns that bore a passing resemblance to those on Sheila's dress. The main difference being that Sheila's didn't have any magic worked into it. Danu flashed them all a relieved smile, some of the tension going out of her shoulders as the color returned to her face and eyes. The older women adjusted their stitching to compensate.

  "You look wonderful!" Mirk said, snapping out of his daze and going to meet her. He'd have embraced her, if only the women weren't still sewing away on either side. Or if the woman who'd teleported in to block their way hadn't followed them into the tent. She'd doubtlessly disapprove of a man other than Danu's future husband hugging her on her wedding day, no matter what the older woman who had granted them permission thought.

  She wasn't one of the two working on the dress, Mirk realized, when she spoke up again. She was tatting lace in a chair nearby, her plain black clothes standing out amidst all the gaily colored finery in the tent. Mirk was surprised he hadn't noticed her before. Then again, there was so much to look at inside, it was hard to take it all in at a glance. "Hard to believe our Mordka could get someone like her, isn't it? Good thing there's no reason to go to England these days. I've had enough ugliness for five lifetimes."

  Two older women laughed to themselves, but didn't quit their work. Danu sighed, but it seemed to Mirk that she'd grown accustomed to comments like this. Though they still made her a little uncomfortable, Mirk could tell, from the way her face paled and her eyes darkened. At least Danu didn't have to worry about any of them taking offense, though Mirk didn't see how the old woman who was tatting could tell none of them were English.

  Yule approached next, surveying Danu's wedding splendor with his usual critical eye, though there was a softness in his expression that wasn't usually there. "Is everything all right?" he asked Danu.

  She nodded, checking to make sure her hands were free before tapping off the vocal translator worked into the heavy silver necklace she wore. None of the ladies seemed to take offense at her attempt at making some privacy for herself. Mirk was certain they must have noticed. "It's just a lot all at once. I haven't seen Morty or anyone else I know at all yet. Some sort of tradition. Niv brought me before sunup, and I've been in here since."

  "Your parents aren't here yet?" Sheila asked. She was looking at the stitching on Danu's gown — with her inhuman senses and her knowledge of that part of the world, she probably knew what some of the magic was for.

  Danu shook her head. "I wrote a letter to my mother telling her about how to get in. But...well. Da's work is complicated. And Deaths run on their own sense of time."

  At the mention of death, all the women in the tent made some kind of arcane, warding gesture. Danu rolled her eyes, but none of the other ladies seemed to take offense.

  "Death comes for everyone," Yule said, both in an attempt to lighten the mood and in defiance of all the superstition on display. "You're no exception. Unless Mirk's scared him off."

  "I'm sure they'll come," Mirk said, offering her a reassuring smile. "Methinks this place is just hard to get to. It's even been wearing Gen out."

  Danu tried to manage a smile in return. But it came out wan and tired. "I suppose..."

  "Is all of this yours?" Eva asked. She was studying the household utensils on a table nearby, pans and ladles and needles, fascinated by whatever enchantments she could sense on them.

  "It's the household's," Danu said. "That's how things work with Morty's family, I think. When a man gets married, his family gives his wife everything she'd need in advance. Some sort of dower? I don't know. I didn't grow up with any of this. When my parents got married, they just decided, and that was that."

  "Very generous," Eva said, leaning in closer to get a better look at the needles.

  Eva wasn't trying to hurt Danu's feelings, Mirk could tell. She was just a weaker empath, and one who was easily distracted from emotions by arcane matters. But Danu sighed all the same, a quiet, lost sound, as if she didn't know what to do with all the fine things that she'd been burdened with by practical strangers.

  Sheila stepped into the gap, offering her a toothy smile that the two women working on Danu's dress looked askance at. "We'll keep the pretty things and sell the rest off to the washerwomen and the Supply Corps. You'll have enough gold to start your own division."

  The comment startled a laugh out of Danu, brought the life back into her. "The first round will be on me when we get back, then."

  Abruptly, the old woman who'd been tatting in the corner set down her hook, hopping down out of her chair and sweeping the stray fibers off her dress with a few firm pats of her gnarled hands. She was quite short, Mirk noticed, unlike the woman who'd been guarding the door. Or the two women working on Danu's dress. Maybe she was a more direct relative of Mordecai's than the others. Or he took after her more. "You can do what you want now," she said to Danu, as she went over to the fire in the stove to stoke it. "That's your part of the rites. Fair is fair. Half and half."

  A confused look crossed Danu's face. But it cleared away instantly at a sudden crash from the little clearing outside the tent, an out-of-place thunderclap on a warm, sunny spring day. It was followed by a hollow, rattling racket and the jangling of chains, along with a command in a low, haunting voice that made the translation charm on his wrist smoke. Though the words and the tone they were said in were at odds with the shiver that ran, unbidden, down Mirk's spine. "Easy! Take out the tent and you won't get your apple, Gwenn! Be a good lass for uncle, will you?"

  "I don't see the point in all this fuss, Donn," a higher, tired voice retorted. One that the charm didn't resist nearly as much. "We're hours late."

  "I'm always on time! Besides, we have to kick up a fuss, snapdragon! We only get the one chance to impress."

  Forgetting the two women working at her dress, Danu bolted for the door, her face gone white and her eyes gone pitch black. With delight rather than worry that time, her happiness impossible for Mirk not get swept up in for a moment, despite his shields and the weakness of Danu's empathy. "A Dheaidín!" she yelled, ripping her way out of the tent,

  "Sweetpea!"

  Mirk shot a questioning look at Yule. The older healer shrugged, adjusting the shoulders of his robes while the women gathered in the tent all made their usual wards against bad luck, the one in the corner laughing to herself as she kept poking at the fire. "Guess her father found the place after all."

  Curious despite the odd sense of foreboding radiating from out in the clearing, Mirk followed Yule out of the tent to greet Danu's parents.