Keeping vigil over Corva, Zeke holds his post at her feet. A stupefied shock casts a dull, glazed shadow over the trapped forest-shimmer that normally bounces within her eyes. She remains crumpled and slouched against the stair wall. She hasn’t blinked.

Without checking her pulse, anyone passing might think she’s dead. This is Bule, though; Corva would sooner be looted and cleared off the steps as a corpse than checked and administered first aid. Knowing this, Zeke holds fast. She may not have changed much over the course of all her lifetimes, but that’s no reason to make her life harder than it’s going to be.

Still, his impatience and unease mounts. He needs to get to the bar and look after Jack. The boy can handle himself pretty well, but he exhibits an incredible talent for getting himself planted in the center of all manner of untenable situations. It almost always starts the second he opens his mouth and vomits his unfiltered thoughts on exactly the wrong people. And for the last hundred and fifty years, everyone has been the wrong people.

Vardin put a lot of effort into coaching Jack, and it certainly wasn’t in vain. Zeke can almost hear glimmers of his old friend in Jack’s voice during his attempts to hustle and negotiate. Shaking his head, Zeke silently curses the frailty of the human form. Although Vardin lived far longer than most people in this age, his passing was still far too early.

Since the old barkeep’s death, there hadn’t been much of a counterweight to Jack’s braggadocio and inexperience. Even the best among the miscreants of this town are hardly model examples of decency. Zeke is nothing more than a monkey to Jack, and as a long-rotted carcass, Vardin has—unsurprisingly—become an ineffective mentor.

Zeke looks back at Corva. Physically, she’s not much older than Jack. But as her true self, there’s experience there in spades. He shakes the thought out of his mind. What’s he thinking? Even in the times that she’s worked beyond her natural impetuous bloodlust, she’s been cold, verging on heartless. In those times, people are mere numbers, subjects bent to her own brutal mathematics. Prolonged exposure to that kind of ruthlessness would shrivel even the largest heart.

Her body recovers quickly. She’ll snap out of this state soon enough, but it will take much longer for her mind to fully absorb everything he’s shared with her. Years. Decades, perhaps, if she lives long enough.

He curses to himself again, this time at his own hubris. He’d allowed himself to be goaded into showing too much. Really, he never should have let Jack tend her wounds. She would have died on her own and it would’ve ended there, at least for another generation.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. Instead, she’s learned that she can be activated and now she’s had a peek into her own past. All because of him.

He shakes out the series of what-ifs, should-haves, and could-haves. That’s not doing any good now. There’s responsibility in sharing truth. He can’t open a door and expect her to walk through it alone. But that’s etiquette. There’s no contract. He’s not strictly obligated to go with her. Besides, Zeke promised his old friend that he’d look after Jack, and there’s no recanting that.

Decision made, Zeke snorts an affirmation to himself. When Corva recovers, she’ll need to decide her next move on her own. If she sticks around, he can help. In the meantime, there’s a fourteen-year-old bartender whose mouth is probably already getting him into a heap of trouble.