Cyrus did not flinch or react when his killer entered the room. More than enough time had passed for him to become accustomed to the blond-haired boy’s presence.

The room was in disrepair, smelling of dust and mold. Morning light bled through windows shattered by vines, and dirt and debris coated every surface. However, the blond boy claimed the ceiling would not collapse and deemed the place suitable to shelter in. The building was in good condition, comparatively. The entire town was abandoned, and according to the assassin, had been left like this for well over a decade.

He sat upon a blanket and wore a second one, wrapped around him like a cloak. Beneath, he wore the clothes he had been captured in, though he had been allowed to wash himself and his outfit several times since then. He felt as ragged and worn as the clothes.

The murderer wore tattered clothing himself, Rags frayed and restitched in patches with off-color material. His features were young, close to Cyrus’s own age, but his expression was mature. He carried himself seriously, never letting his guard drop for even a moment. Even when the young assassin slept, he was always one breath from flipping upright in a sword stance.

Cyrus did feel a momentary chill as the murderer’s blood-red eyes passed over him. He would never get used to that empty look. It felt as though himself and the rotting wooden wall behind him were one and the same to those eyes. At times, it seemed as though the assassin were not even really alive.

The assassin left a spoon and bowl of lentil stew at his feet and wordlessly sat down on the other side of the room. He had eaten this stew several times already. It was full of various finely diced vegetables and some sort of meat, perhaps a substitute. It was seasoned with various spices in order to enrich the flavor. The murderer had quite a talent for cooking.

He was famished, so he ate. It wasn’t poison, and if it was, so be it. He had accepted his end on the day Fauke and Korsak met theirs.

Days ago, the assassin had told him outright. Castitas would be stripped and picked clean by the vultures of the Empire. When the war began, whosoever the Daevans perceived as useful would be separated from the trash and recruited into the war effort. That was the hand fate had dealt everyone he loved. Miserable, traitorous ends.

The war would begin on the twenty-second, he had said. Cyrus would not live to see it. According to the boy, he would be killed on the eighteenth, the longest the assassin could stay in this desolate place.

He did not know why they were here waiting. Only that it involved Luke somehow. His killer refused to speak on the subject— and he had no desire to ask— but the truth was plain on his face, so similar. They were related. Brothers, he thought.

He looked back down when the assassin glanced at him. He stirred his stew and continued eating in silence.

If that were true… did Luke know? Who was he, anyway? Cyrus had only known the boy with red eyes and messy black hair for a short time. He had spent the days here thinking about it, but all he could remember was that Luke had said he encountered a thunderflute during the Purge.

Luke almost certainly meant the Lumina Purge. The final and worst massacre of the entire war. Thousands upon thousands of lives lost in the atrocities, including Zede Ganymede himself. The endless tragedies had broken the country until Wolf’s betrayal forced the emperor back.

Once, he had glimpsed a deep anger painted across Luke’s face, back at the captain’s residence. Perhaps it was a pain he could not hide.

He rose, empty bowl and spoon in hand. He would clean them— he had asked for the duty. His legs had healed enough to permit standing and even walking. He was not allowed to cook, for the assassin did not think he was up to the task of maintaining proper nutrition, and left no room for argument.

He was not bound or chained. He was free to sneak away, run, guzzle the cleaning supplies, whatever he wished. The assassin had said so directly. He also said that no matter where Cyrus went or what he did, he would be found when his time was up.

So there was no point.

———

Luke never had the opportunity to be a patient before. Somehow, years of cuts and scrapes in the vicinity of street grime and rotten food had never managed to bring him down. Thinking back, he suspected it had something to do with that light. How long had it been there?

Thinking of rotting food was somehow more pleasant than the memory of the earlier meal today. He had eaten it all, hungry as he was, but still. He shivered. Weren’t they supposed to cure people in here?

The setting sun had painted the sky a crisp orange by the time he reached a conclusion— being a patient was decidedly dull. There was simply nothing to do. Flocks, stuck in here, he couldn’t watch a paint-drying contest even if he wanted to. And no matter how enjoyable you found cloud-watching, it could only hold your attention for so long.

Nurse Webb was willing to entertain him, but conversations weren’t exactly his forte. Instead, he found himself spending the hours listening to the radio she had brought in. He heard nothing regarding the conflict, and wasn’t familiar enough with any of the broadcasts to tell if they were out of the ordinary. He eventually settled on a frequency where a radio narrator was recounting a science fiction story about life from another world. It was a curious concept gaining popularity in recent decades. Some people, even in academic settings, occasionally voiced opinions that they thought it could be true, enhancing the fiction’s strength. He enjoyed the stories, but he didn’t wonder about the validity as others might. His head was in the clouds, not the stars.

He shifted his body and found his eyes drifting to the unbroken seal of the letter. The narrator continued the tale with skilled delivery as Luke sighed and snatched the envelope from the bedside table.

He hesitated. Was he really about to crack after just a few hours?

Yeah. It was that boring. Bring it on, old man.

He broke the seal and folded open the paper inside, intent on softening Snare’s critique by listening to the story on the radio.

The first thing Luke noticed was that the letter wasn’t from Snare.

Just a few seconds later, he forgot the radio was even on.

Do you still aspire to be a hero, Luke Nixus?

I am in possession of Cyrus Alder.

Meet me in Cherima, alone, before the sun sets on the eighteenth.

I will be clear.

If you do not come, or if you bring this matter to the Ulciscor Guard’s attention, you will never see the boy again.

It is imperative that you listen to what I say.

There are words that must be said to you in person.

A simple indirect letter like this won’t suffice.

The letter fluttered from Luke’s loosened hands.

This… this was from James. There was no signature, but the opening question was unmistakably that of his older brother. James was alive.

Before he knew it, he was crying. A droplet was able to stain an uninked corner before he thought to move the letter away.

He lay there for a time, exulting in the possibility that he wasn’t alone anymore. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for Snare, he did deeply. But this… this was James. He remembered little of his parents, but the times with his brother were vivid, always so vivid.

James was alive. James Nixus was alive! He was…

In possession of Cyrus Alder?

The contents of the letter started to nag at him. He sat up and read it again, carefully. It was his brother, alright. Ever the bossy one. But what did this mean? It almost sounded as if James had taken Cyrus against his will. How did they know each other, and why did he do it?

He remembered suddenly, like a favorite food rediscovered. Only, it held a bitter taste, difficult to swallow. An exchange between his father, Raum, and the blue-eyed man who declared himself an Elite.

Then I’ll work your son twice as hard, the would-be Elite had said.

James and Raum were recruited into the Terra Daevan military, weren’t they? He had just assumed… This changed everything.

Was he still working with them? Probably.

Luke dried his eyes on the blanket and set the letter aside, back in its envelope. He would go, of course.

I wonder if Dad is with him. He didn’t remember much about the man. His parents had done their best, always. He could remember his father’s levelheaded advice that sometimes went right over his head, could picture his mother’s warm smiles, ever reassuring and encouraging.

The first thing he did was call in a nurse. He needed to learn two things: what day it was, and where this ‘Cherima’ was. He’d never heard of the place before, but he needed to be there by the eighteenth.

It wasn’t good news. Not only was it the afternoon of the fifteenth, but what the nurse remarked about Cherima turned his stomach.

“Your grandfather must have been quite the traveler, and so long ago as well,” she said.

It was an older woman, not Webb. He didn’t know her name. Luke had lied— well, half-lied— that Cherima was mentioned in the letter as a place old man Snare had visited once, but he’d never heard of it and was curious to know more about it.

“Yeah. Long ago? Why’s that?”

“Well,” she said, “It doesn’t exist anymore, you see. It’s a town inside the triangle. You know about the triangle, don’t you?”

“The… what?”

“Kids today.” She huffed. “Haven’t you ever heard of the Agreement?”

“Of course I have,” he protested. “Between Ranboc and Munitio.”

She wagged a finger at him. “And Pruina’s prime minister. This is an often overlooked detail. Not many people lived up there to begin with. There’s a single good path through the mountains. The prime minister is the one who urged those two to sit down and talk. She almost entered the Pruinans into the war, you see. So, the three leaders devised a huge triangular area, parked right in front of that mountain path. It’s about the size of modern Altair. No small gourds, no. After that was settled, she withdrew from the talks. Pruina has stayed neutral ever since.”

On any another day, this would have been genuinely fascinating, but he didn’t really care right now. Getting the woman back on track was a chore, but he did eventually manage to find out more. He learned something terrible just before she returned to her other duties.

Cherima was three hundred miles away. Going from Castitas to Ulciscor on foot had taken nearly a full day, and this was ten times the distance.

He doubted even running a horse to death would get him there. Multiple horses, maybe. But if it was as this nurse said, there would be no additional horses to steal inside that abandoned region. A small part of him was glad he didn’t have the opportunity, because he honestly might have done some horses wrong for his own gain.

The greater part of him was mentally scrambling. Three days. What could he do? Was there no way to get there in time? Neither train nor ship ran through central Asundria in a way that worked for him. Was he seriously going to lose his one chance at this?

His ears perked up at the radio, describing a character journeying via automobile. He silently thanked the narrator and finally switched it off.

Right. He could just steal one of those.

He just had to leave the hospital without drawing attention, find a mark, pull off the theft, figure out how to drive, and cross three hundred miles in three days. Also, he was pretty sure the nurse said something about Pruinan military patrols around the perimeter of the triangle.

I can do it, he thought stubbornly. He sat up, and though his legs did protest, he was able to stand steadily. Before Snare, every day was like this.

He slipped the letter underneath the mattress. He didn’t want to rip out the needle stuck in his arm, so he grabbed the machine it was linked to— it was on wheels, thankfully— and made his way to the door. A young man in a Guard’s uniform met him with bulged eyes. He began to say something, but Luke quieted the guardsman by asking him to fetch a nurse.

It took some convincing— fortunately it wasn’t that finger-wagging older woman from before— but he succeeded in permission to take a shower under his own power. It’d been a while since his last one. He could only vaguely remember several mortifying experiences of wet rags while he was stuck in bed. He had been in too much pain to care.

It was a tiny shower, but he was able to stand inside. Halfway through, the guard called out to him from outside and explained that the clothes he had asked for were thrown out on the day he arrived. They were too tattered and bloody to recover. No matter. He’d just have to escape in his… backless gown. He winced at the thought. If everything went well, no one would see him, anyway.

“I’ll tell the cap tomorrow you need fresh stuff. There’s been a lot of stuff on his mind. Nobody knew you were gonna wake up so soon.”

“It’s fine,” Luke said, pausing mid-motion with soap in hand. He’d be long gone by then. Oh well. “That’d be great, thanks.”

He lost himself in the water’s cleansing and found his eyes drawn down toward the shower’s drain. The water spiraled around the drain like a whirlpool before being collected and transported elsewhere.

He stopped the shower and studied his palm, water still streaming down his body. Something felt different. He reached out with his mind. He thought he heard a distant voice. It sounded like his own.

Magenta, that faraway voice said.

A gentle violet-pink light coalesced in his chest, reaching out, stretching itself as a cat stretched its back legs. It coiled inside his palm and, directed by his mind, spun around like the soapy water entering the shower drain.

As he loosened his mental grip on the light that did not glow, it maintained that shape and moved on its own toward his ribs. It swirled there, gently, a whirlpool more beautiful than any water. He felt its touch and knew it was the color of healing. Just standing there, the pain receded slightly.

The cuts and scrapes, the diseases of the streets. Never sick for long. The physical feats he had taken for granted, never really realized were so strange. Leaping from the second floor of a building, fine the next day…

You were protecting me all this time, he thought in wonder. Thank you.

The light did not reply. It just continued to ebb and flow along an unseen current from somewhere beyond sight.

He had a feeling he knew what James wanted to discuss. Lecture him about, more like. Ever the overprotective older sibling.

He slipped into a fresh hospital gown and stepped outside, making careful note of the corridors, the windows, and the general layout of the building as he made his way back to his room. The guard escorting him took up position outside his door again and he settled back onto his bed to plan after slipping the letter out from under the mattress and giving it another read.

A nurse stopped by soon after to affix his IV again. It was the older woman, and she warned him that she’d be keeping an eye on him for pulling this ‘shower stunt.’ She had no way of knowing what he was thinking, so he honestly had no idea what she was talking about. He figured he had replenished enough blood by now, so he watched how she did it and pulled the thing out of his arm the moment she left.

Once he made it past all the guards, doctors, visitors, and hawk-eyed nurses patrolling the hallways, he would deal with the automobile problem. Not knowing how to drive worried him, but you didn’t know how to get the fresh bread out of the display rack until you were on the other side of it. He’d do whatever he had to if it would let him see his brother again.

Luke called the light and it answered eagerly, spilling from his chest like paint across an artist’s canvas. He wreathed his arm in swirling red and clenched a fist. He could feel it. This was the color of power.

He would see James again, no matter who or what tried to get in the way. With this light, he could do it. He could do anything.