Everything was a mess.

Mirk had never thought about every step of the process so intensely, had never been forced to do every last bit of it himself. There had always been someone there to help, a valet or a maid or even his mother as a last resort, if something went wrong on the carriage ride to whichever noble house he was expected to put in an appearance at. And the tools needed to make himself presentable had always been at the ready, maintained and restocked by someone else, in a little chest of drawers beside the vanity in the corner of his room. Powder and rouge and perfume and curlers and all manner of combs and tweezers to discipline unruly hairs, all on their own velour cushions inside the modest white box with hand-painted blue flowers.

The sad selection of devices Mirk had been able to scare up that morning before his shift were arranged around the rim of one of the chipped and stained washbasins in the fourth floor bath rather than on delicate cushions. A set of clay curlers with poor enchantments on them that Yule was glad to be rid of. A pan of rouge from Sheila, who wore it more to fit in when she wandered among the mortals of London than out of vanity. A blackened pair of tweezers that Ilya had needed to bend back into shape before handing them over with a best-of-luck sort of shrug.

None of them made Mirk feel more put together. Nor had his own additions to his arsenal helped much: an ivory hairbrush that had lost a quarter of its bristles over the months he'd been in the City, and a perfume he'd concocted himself out of the best-smelling potion components from the infirmary supply closet. But at least it was the nerves making him feel nauseous, Mirk thought, rather than his poor perfumery skills.

Squaring his shoulders, Mirk lifted his head and confronted the sight of himself in the small, dingy mirror hung above the magicked taps. He didn't know whether to be grateful or dismayed by how smudged the glass was. It at least let him cultivate the delusion that he'd managed to make himself look regal. His new suit was doing most of the heavy lifting. It'd arrived in the nick of time that morning, just before he'd left for the infirmary, along with a new shirt and stockings and fresh lace for the falls at his neck and wrists.

Mirk didn't regret leaving the choice of color and cut to the Nasiri twins. The note that'd been sent along with the garments, written in Asim's undulating hand, reassured Mirk that the suit's color was all the rage that season and that everyone who was anyone was wearing it, whether it suited them or not. French lilac, a light purplish color with the faintest undertone of gray. Thankfully, it matched his features much better than last season's, an orangey-red color that he thought made him look like a pumpkin that'd been left in the fields to rot. It brought out the purple hidden in his eyes. Though whether the visual reminder that he wasn't fully human would work in his benefit or not remained to be seen.

As for the cut, Asim had felt the need to apologize for it a bit, but Mirk thought it needed no defense. Every year it seemed like the tilt toward more ornamentation — wider sleeves and voluminous coats, more embroidery with beads strung into it, thicker layers of lace and extra splashes of color — slid further afield from what his short stature could bear up under. Asim and his twin brother Mahir always took the more sensible approach, in Mirk's opinion, and kept things simple. Just enough swish to the justacorps to make it flatter his dancing, and a subtle silver embroidery, done vertically rather than across, to help him look taller. The heels that'd been sent along with the clothes probably helped to cultivate that impression more than the stitching.

But beyond the suit, everything else was hopeless. His hair was the worst of it, but Mirk had already resigned himself to looking out of fashion. He didn’t have the time or patience for maintaining a good wig. Nor was he inclined to shave his head like his grandfather had. Before everything had happened, a maid had always come to weave in extensions on the most formal occasions. His natural hair was unmanageable when it got past his shoulders, mostly because he had a bad habit of sleeping hard and forgetting to brush it.

The clay curlers had been as useless as Yule had said they were, though Mirk didn't see what Yule needed them for. The older healer's hair had a natural, full curl to it that Mirk envied a little, since it was so much in fashion. All the curlers had done was give Mirk’s own half-curls a touch more life, which really didn't compensate much for the rest.

The rest. Mirk hadn't thought that the morning walks to the infirmary had given him much color, but his neck and hands looked dingy in comparison to the lace that framed them. Mirk looked away from the mirror, picking up the bottle of homemade perfume and applying a touch to both wrists. He was so tanned that there wasn't a trace of blue visible there, where his veins were closest to the surface. His mother would have been appalled. Just like she'd been when he'd returned from the abbey. After she'd crushed all the wind out of him with a hug, she'd stepped back, looked him over, and had said that all his honest work in the gardens would doubtlessly be noticed by both the Savior and the women who'd be attending luncheon with them the next afternoon.

Mirk batted the memory away as he set the bottle back down, unable to keep himself from picking at his suit, triple-checking that he hadn't skipped over any buttons. It felt profoundly uncomfortable after so many months of forgiving robes. A good thing, Mirk tried to remind himself. If he came in looking too thin, everyone would think that he'd squandered his grandfather's fortune. He smoothed his hands over the yards of silk, trying to glean some hope from the way the fabric shimmered even in the yellowy and faint magelights of the bath. Under those of Madame Beaumont's ballroom, his new suit would look like it'd been enchanted.

If only he felt like he halfway deserved such finery. Like it wasn't just a farce.

There was no time left to brood over things. He had to be at the far edge of London's mage quarter by half six. Genesis had said he'd meet him there, and the commander wasn't one to tolerate lateness. And his uncle and cousins were waiting for him besides. He had to put on a brave face. A cheerful face. At least until he was forced to raise the ugly specter of what Serge Montigny had done and present it to the other noble mages. Mirk had been searching for the right words, the right approach ever since he'd left Madame Beaumont's parlor weeks ago. And he still felt like the whole plan — to stand before all the assembled mages and make some kind of bold declaration — was hopeless.

But he had to try.

It was too late to turn back then. Dwelling on the matter in the bathroom wasn't going to do anyone any good. All that aside, Mirk really needed to get going before someone else needed to use the baths or privy. Word of who he truly was had spread fast around the infirmary, but Mirk knew it was one thing to hear a rumor, and another thing entirely to see it in the flesh. There wasn't much risk of anyone trying to rob him in the healer's dormitory, at least. Though, to be entirely honest, the thought of having a knife pulled on him worried Mirk less than the prospects of the gossip the sight of him in such finery would spark.

He gathered up his things, tucking them into his work bag, which he'd be leaving behind in his room as he went past on the way to the stairs. Instead, all he'd have to work with was whatever he could secret away inside the pockets of his justacorps and cloak. Mirk went to the latter, which he'd carefully draped on a drying rack beside one of the baths, giving the dark gray wool a quick brush-down before draping it over his shoulders and clipping it at the front to hide his new suit. Then he drew over beside the washbasins once more, to take a final look in the mirror.

Already, things were out of place. He had no pomade for his hair; his curls had shifted into his face, and doubtlessly the wind would only fling them further afield. His nervousness and all his bustling around before the wash basins had put more color in his cheeks than the rouge had. Mirk squared his shoulders yet again, flashing himself the best smile he could muster.

He tried to shove some warmth into it, tried to summon the self-assured kindness that had always made the wrinkles that lined his grandfather's cheeks look more welcoming than homely, the sharp wit that had made his mother's eyes glimmer and her even teeth dazzle anyone she turned them on. Mirk didn't think any of it covered his fear in the slightest. He deflated, shoulders hunching and eyes drifting downward.

But before he could fully look away from the mirror, Mirk caught a glimpse of a flicker of movement off in the gloom behind him, between the narrow metal baths. And he heard the distant tinkling of bells.

Mirk whirled around, his hands flailing for something, anything. They only found his heaving chest. He'd been alone in the baths moments before. Now there was a towering figure, clad from head to toe in blackened bronze armor, its wings curled in tightly around its broad shoulders, braced against the wall opposite the washbasins.

"It's...olaein..."

"Good. You're here. I thought the damn City was going to eat me."

An angel. Towering taller than K'aekniv, or even his father, his features dark rather than flawlessly white. He lifted his head and smiled at Mirk. The genuine warmth in the expression, which Mirk had just been fruitlessly trying to draw up in himself, took away some of the shock that welled up in Mirk's chest at seeing the droplets of blood arced across the angel's cheeks. Mirk bolted across the bathroom and flung himself at his godfather, throwing his arms around him, ignoring whatever muck might get on his fine new cloak from embracing him.

"Aker! Aker, what happened?"

Aker laughed, lifting one arm and giving him a few solid pats on the back. Mirk's alarm grew when he felt that Aker was shaking, just enough to make his armor rattle. His olaein, who would speak for him before the Light Eternal at the end of time, had never been one to be easily frightened. "No time, riaebah,” his godfather said. His English sounded more natural than his own did, making the lone angelic word in the Southern dialect stand out. Some unknowable and timeless Imperial magic, no doubt. “You've chosen a hell of a place to hide in, you know. Could barely wedge my way in."

Mirk drew back, trying to compose himself a little, tucking his hair back behind his ears. "It's only...I thought you'd forgotten about me."

Aker snorted, one corner of his mouth twitching up in a smile without any of the warmth of his last. "Impossible. But you know how things are with us. Everything moves so fast with you people...never understood how Mikael could put up with it..."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Now that his shock had faded a little, Mirk gave his godfather a proper once-over. He wasn't injured, not that Mirk could see. Although there was more blood on him, spattered on the lower half of his armor which, thankfully, Mirk hadn't touched. Despite that, Mirk thought Aker looked haggard, somehow. Worn thin, too hollow about the cheeks for Mirk's liking.

Aker wasn't the same as the rest of the Imperial angels, fair and marble-stoic, ever-graceful, the more pure-blooded among them so fine and uniform that it was difficult to tell the men apart from the women. He was a Southern angel, the only one Mirk had ever seen. A dying breed, Aker had always said, with an expression Mirk could never be certain of, something between bitterness and fondness. They were more bulky than the Western angels, everything about them rich and vibrant browns and golds, more decidedly masculine. And their eyes had a tendency to shift colors with their moods, Aker’s ranging from deep sapphire with rage to glimmering seafoam when delighted. At the moment, they were a muddy turquoise. Mirk didn't know what it meant.

"I had to see you," Aker said, jerking Mirk up out of his thoughts. "These belong to you. I thought I'd be better off bringing them right here instead of trying to catch you when you left the City."

Aker nudged at a chest beside him on the floor with the toe of his boot. Mirk hadn't noticed it before in his shock. But now that he saw it, Mirk recognized it in an instant. White leather with silver bands, the latter inscribed with runes that were already soaking in the dim light cast by the magelights up near the ceiling and glowing faintly. It'd almost always sat empty at the foot of his parents' bed. His father's armor chest. "I...I don't know..."

"I know," Aker said, waving Mirk off. "You're no fighter. And I still think there's nothing wrong with that. But it's owed to you. Father to son, and then on until the end of time, all that rubbish. And before you start complaining, there's no one else I can shove it off on. You're the last of the Western shields. Whether the Emperor likes it or not."

Aker said the last of it with a deep sigh, looking Mirk over with that intensity of his that had always made Mirk feel chagrined, like he'd done something wrong. But there was a painful edge to it then, a deep and frustrated sadness that Mirk could feel whispering against his mental shielding. "Light Eternal, what have the realms come to? Babies having babies...it's enough to make you feel like you've gone mad..."

"I...methinks I don't understand, olaein. What happened?"

Aker shook his head. "Nothing for you to worry about. That's the other reason why I had to come myself." Aker reached out to him again, taking him by both shoulders and staring down at him. "There really is nothing for you to worry about. It took a lot of work, but I made them promise. You don't ever have to think about her again. I have the Emperor's word. They wouldn't let me kill her for it like she deserves, but it's done. You can walk free."

The bottom fell out of Mirk's stomach and he could no longer bear to look up into his godfather's face. His eyes fell on the trunk instead, as he searched for a response. The shame-filled bile that was rising up in his throat made it impossible for Mirk to spit out even a word of thanks. He hadn't thought of it in days. Weeks. But all it took was a vague allusion for it to come rushing back to him, the hiss of drizzle on stone and the sound of snarled demands and the feel of thinner and crueler hands weighing down his shoulders.

"Chin up, riaebah," Aker said, bodily shaking Mirk out of his memories with a solid clap on his shoulders. "We'll get her. Give it time. Everything takes time with us."

Mirk dragged a smile onto his face as he lifted his head again and forced himself to meet Aker's eyes. There was comfort there, reassurance, despite the sadness Mirk could still feel radiating from Aker through his mental shielding. Not reassurance that the figure that'd stalked his nightmares for months would finally be banished, but that he wasn't alone. That he hadn't been forgotten. "I'm glad you came."

"And now, I'd best be going, before this place really does eat me," Aker said, releasing Mirk's shoulder and taking a quick glance around the bath. Mirk didn't understand what his godfather was talking about. He couldn't sense any magical presence in the baths beyond what was usually there: the wards against errant emotions that were on all the rooms in the healers dormitory, the faint hum of the chaos that powered the City's wandering, which Mirk only ever noticed because it made it more difficult for him to connect to the Earth beyond it.

"Will you come back?" Mirk hoped his tone didn't sound too desperate.

"Of course. Can't say when, of course, you humans run on too fast a clock, but I know how to find you. You should get out of this place more, Mirk. A place like this is bad for your health unless you're built for it. That reminds me, everything in here is yours," Aker said, delivering a curt sideways kick to the side of Mirk's father's trunk without glancing down at it. "Don't let any of your friends get their bony hands on it. Not for now, anyway. There's work that needs doing before then."

"I...if you say so, oaelin..it's only that I don't know what good I could do with..."

Before Mirk could finish, Aker vanished, as suddenly as he'd arrived, with the same odd, distant tinkling of bells. And then he was alone in the baths again.

Mirk took a minute to ground himself first, struggling to reach through the stone and magic separating himself from the Earth, drawing in three slow, deep breaths and holding each to the count of eight before releasing them. Once he felt more certain of himself, Mirk stooped down beside the trunk, his fingers searching for its latch. He flipped it up, then lifted the lid. The bile rose up in Mirk's throat again at what was inside.

Sheets of hammered steel, every inch of it covered with enchantments that glowed more brightly than the room's fading magelights. It made something in Mirk crumple to see his father's armor like that, a jumble of pieces that had been pulled off and crammed inside the chest without an ounce of care. His father had always cared for it with the same deliberate patience that he used when he spoke to him, thinking hard before every motion and word, deliberating each choice like it was a matter of life and death.

His father would always polish each and every piece himself as he took them off, ignoring the valets that his mother sent to help him, hanging them on the stand in the corner of the bedchamber he shared with his mother rather than putting them back in the trunk. That way his armor would always be ready to be summoned in an instant. Mirk had always thought of the armor as a strange afterimage of his father, a second imposing wall of metal and magic that stood guard over their manor even while his father dozed away in the solarium.

All the pieces were still streaked with his father's blood. Mirk didn't know why Aker hadn't taken the time to clean it and put it away properly before coming to find him. Doubtlessly, there had to be a good reason. For all of the ways that Aker was different from all the other angels Mirk had met, his father and the members of his personal guard, Aker had always shown the same undue respect to his weaponry that the rest had. They were important in a way that Mirk had never quite understood.

Mirk had always assumed that the armor would pass to his sister rather than him, though there was no doubt in his mind that his father would protest. But his mother had a way of overriding each and every one of his father’s complaints, at least when it came to him and his sister. His father had always said that angelic armor was capable of adapting to the needs of its inheritor, but Mirk couldn't imagine that even the best enchantments would be enough to make it suitable for his needs. Mirk could only imagine someone like Kae, imposing and unyielding, being fit to fill it once his father decided it was time to put it aside.

Mindful of the blood smeared all over it, dried brown-black and flaking, Mirk traced the symbol carved into the center of the armor's breastplate. A six-pointed star, encircled by the fine angelic runes that it hurt Mirk's head to try to decipher. He didn't need to read them to know what they said. A rock against the ocean, a light against the dark, the left hand shield. From beginning to end.

His father never spoke much of his own family, but he had told him and Kae what purpose they would serve in the Empire, should either of them choose to devote themselves to it. His great-grandfather had been the commander of the Western Imperial Host, the Emperor’s shield bearer. The position had passed to another after some horrible battle his father would never speak of, other than in reference to its ultimate result.

Mirk tore his eyes away from the chest full of armor, searching the bath for something to protect himself with. He stumbled back to the basins on the far side of the room, just long enough to snatch up the towel he'd used to wash his face. Biting his lip, he wound the towel around his hand and lifted aside the breastplate, searching his way through the armor underneath it until he found what he'd been dreading, lurking like a snake at the bottom of the trunk. A sword in its scabbard, nearly as long as the trunk itself. Its hilt was silver and completely unadorned, as plain as its white leather and wood scabbard. Like the sight of it burned him, Mirk hurried to let the armor fall back into place on top of it. Then he straightened up, twisting the towel between his hands as he struggled to think of what to do.

The sword wasn't his father's, not truly. It had been entrusted to his father by his grandfather, who had been given it by the Emperor. It was the reason why the Dishoael line had been dismissed from the Western Host and been permitted to do as they pleased, his father had told him and his sister, on a rainy October evening when he'd called them both into his library after their respective training had ended for the day. His father's face had been impassive as he'd stared across the room at it, just like his sister's had. But she'd kept her wing curled around Mirk’s shoulders once she'd noticed how badly the chill in the room had been making Mirk shake.

Their great-grandfather had been one of the most respected angels in the Empire, his father had told him. A man beyond reproach, who had trained for thousands of years to harden his mind against magical influence and had completely eschewed the pleasures and foibles of his physical form. A man who was dedicated without exception to the Empire. A man who lived only to serve. Which was why the sword taken from the traitor, the last angel to have ever stood against the Empire, had been entrusted to him. Whatever magic had corrupted the traitor wouldn't have an effect on such a man, Mirk's father had told them, even if his skin brushed against its hilt. He would never seek to use its power to advance himself. But they were young, still growing, their minds soft and impressionable. They were to never touch the sword bare-handed.

Mirk's father never had either. He had centuries yet to train, he had said. It wasn't something for either of them to be worried about, he'd concluded, turning back around to face them, a slight smile coming onto his face. All they had to know was that the sword was better off left alone. And that they all lived to serve something, though what that would be remained a mystery of the Light Eternal.

Abruptly, Mirk reached out and slammed the lid of the trunk shut. A shiver ran through him, making him hug himself as he vacillated in the middle of the bath, not knowing what to do with himself. Even if Aker had brought him his father's things, Mirk didn't feel as if any of it belonged to him. He'd done nothing to earn it, to deserve it. He wasn't a warrior. He wasn't even good at the one thing that he'd been raised to do, to navigate the world with grace and assurance, making a way for his family with the right words and gestures rather than with a sword and shield.

Hiding in the bathroom wasn't helping anything. There wasn't a clock in the bath, but Mirk was sure he had to be running late by then. He made himself look away from the trunk, returning to the sink and gathering up the last of his things, slinging his bag over his shoulder. Before hurrying away, Mirk paused to look at himself in the mirror again. Everything was still in its proper place. And although he didn't look fine enough to match his new clothes, warm and soft rather than regal and imposing, Mirk supposed it'd have to do.

Just like dragging the trunk full of armor back to his room would have to do rather than carrying it properly. It was so heavily enchanted that Mirk's magic couldn't do anything to it, the fact that it was made of wood and metal and leather from off-realm aside. And he was far too weak to grasp it by the handles on its side and pick it up. The trunk had been meant for people three times his size, people who could lift boulders and cleave apart trees with a well-aimed kick. Mirk was left dragging it by one handle, having to pause every few feet to catch his breath and compose himself, lest he start to sweat and ruin the makeup or deflate the smidgen of extra height the clay curlers had put in his hair.

Mirk was glad Aker had finally come to see him. But he thought it was an inauspicious beginning to his first evening back in polite society nevertheless.