Genesis had been missing for the final three days of Mirk’s illness. The whole while that his senses were coming back to him, his body responding in fits and starts to his mind’s commands, he’d been possessed by the thought that something terrible had happened. As usual, his instincts were right.

He'd been able to feel the faintest edges of the pain from out on the infirmary steps. Though he'd hoped for a time that it was a figment of his imagination, some sort of sensitivity caused by his autumnal illness, the further he ventured down the building's winding halls in search of the source of the pain, the more clear it became to Mirk that something was wrong.

He expected to find the long-term ward, where the worst of the unrelenting suffering was coming from, stacked floor to ceiling with dying men. By the time he passed through the barrier onto the third floor, Mirk was breathing hard and wobbling on his feet. He braced himself for the smell of blood, the sight of the half-dead walking wounded. But the ward, like the majority of the floors below, was empty.

Mirk ducked into the first patient room he could stagger to, expecting to be able to reel to the bed and pause for a time to collect his thoughts. But that particular room, unlike th rest of the building, wasn’t empty. He’d inadvertently found where a cluster of healers from the Twentieth had hidden themselves from the pain. Yule, Emir, and Sheila were all huddled together on the room's bed, each of them looking troubled in their own way. Danu stood at the head of it behind a combat healer from the Seventh who Mirk only vaguely recognized. The combat healer had cast a shield over the area around the bed, thick and unwavering, though the man was red in the face from the strain.

Yule, from his place on the bed beside Emir, waved Mirk over. The combat healer weakened the furthest edge of the shield around the bed, just enough for Mirk to slip past. Nevertheless, everyone underneath it twitched or shivered or cursed at the sudden touch of the agony beyond the shield. "What the hell are you doing here?" Yule asked, scowling at Mirk as he collapsed beside him on the bed.

It was nothing personal, Mirk knew. He was still recovering from his autumnal illness, too weak to be anything more than a burden to the other healers in such an empathically-charged situation. Mirk knew he probably should have turned around and gone back to the healers dormitory once he'd felt the pain out on the front steps. But his curiosity, as always, had gotten the better of him.

"I felt better, so I came to see what I could do to help. I hadn't thought..." Mirk trailed off, at a loss for words.

"There's nothing any of us can do," Danu said with a sigh, her arms folded over her chest as she shifted restlessly from foot to foot behind the combat healer. She was supporting him as best she could, allowing him to borrow her potential through a hand on her shoulder. Danu was the weakest empath in the Twentieth, but her lack of skill at summoning shields like the one stretched over the bed, along with the unique abilities granted to her by her Deathly magic, kept her from going out on contract with the men even more than being a woman did. "It's too bad for Dima and I to get close. And it's blacked Sheila out twice."

Sheila shrugged as she modestly studied her fingernails. Or, rather, claws. Thick and black and curved. "At least I won't have to feed for weeks."

"Lucky you," Yule grumbled.

"What's causing all this?" Mirk asked, gesturing off in the gesture the mental agony was radiating from, somewhere near the back of the long-term ward.

"We can't be completely certain, since none of us have been able to get close enough to see the patient. But we did get a note from a friend," Emir said, pulling it out of the pocket in the sleeve of his robe and passing it to Mirk.

Mirk's eyes widened as he unfolded the sheet of mage parchment. The letter was written in angelic, of the everyday, workable sort that angels used for day-to-day correspondence rather than the runes used for Imperial missives. It took Mirk a good five minutes to struggle through the undulating script. Once he got to the end, Mirk felt almost as ill as he had out beyond Dima's shield. "Two angelic children? A boy and his sister? And Un...euh...Aker let them in?"

Emir nodded, grimly. "On the run from Imanael. Which I don't blame them for, though I wish they would have chosen to hide somewhere other than my infirmary. We're treating two thirds of our patients over in the armory because so many of the healers can't stand to be in here with him. Cyrus will be sending Ravensdale and the djinn in to finish the boy off if we don't do something about this mess soon."

The look of disgust on Emir's face when he spoke Imanael's name was the same as the one that overcame his restraint every time he spoke of Ravensdale. Which made sense, considering what Mirk had seen Imanel and his fellows doing on the front steps of Serge Montigny’s manor. Mirk couldn’t help but wonder whether the sick boy down the hall was the same one who’d stood beside Imanael while Serge had been executed. "But the letter doesn't say what's wrong. Is it both of them? Or just the boy?" Mirk asked.

"Just the boy, apparently. But we have no idea what's causing it."

Yule flicked one of his curls back over his shoulder, tilting his head up to stare at the room's pockmarked and stained ceiling, like he always did when he was trying to keep himself from reaching a terminal stage of annoyance. "So much for angels being brilliant. What's the point in writing a whole damn letter if you're not going to even tell us who’s sick? We're not mind readers."

"We make do," Emir replied, his tone flat as he stared across the room at the supply cabinet. The same technique as the one Yule was employing, only with a different focus.

Yule gave a humorless snort. "Oh, right. I forgot. It's standard practice to make us work three times harder than anyone else."

"Complaining won't fix anything," Emir retorted.

"Don't give me that virtuous commander act," Yule said. "You're just as bad as the rest of us."

"How long has this been going on?" Mirk cut in, before the pair could really get going and make the emotional atmosphere under the shield any heavier than it already was.

"Three days," Danu said. "Good thing the Seventh isn't on contract again yet. We're really glad you came to help," she added, uncrossing her arms and patting Dima's hand, reassuring.

Dima's shield strengthened a hair at her touch. "I'd rather be getting shot at," he said, smirking. His English was much better than the majority of the Seventh's. Mirk wondered which English woman he'd settled himself on. It seemed to be the only thing capable of getting most of the men to devote any serious time to learning English.

"That's a long time to be feeling like this," Mirk said, thinking. Three days, unsurprisingly, was also how long it'd been since Genesis had last come to check in on him. Which answered his other question, though he asked it nevertheless. "How do we know it's not an emergency? Full-blood angels are very...euh...determined, but still..."

Yule turned his scowl back on Mirk. "All we have on that is your friend's word. And you know how good of a judge he is for when things are an emergency."

"That's not very nice, Yule."

"...I...did not expect any...gratitude from you."

Mirk's heart leapt into his throat at the sound of the low, hissing voice from the doorway. Genesis. Mirk fixed his eyes down on the floor and started counting the stones to keep himself from looking up at the commander, worried that he might start staring if he so much as chanced a glance at Genesis.

Beside him, Yule groaned and flopped back against the wall behind the bed. "What the hell is wrong with you? Standing behind corners waiting for people to talk about you so that you can jump out at them like the monster under the bed..."

"There would be no point in that. You are all simply...unobservant."

"Even I can't hear him coming with this in the way," Sheila said, nudging the shield separating them from the rest of the long-term ward with the tip of her shoe.

Though he couldn't see it, Mirk could hear it in Genesis's tone — his characteristic pauses were just a touch lengthier than usual, all his words possessing slightly more of a hissing, snapping edge. Genesis had to be frowning at all of them. And he would be deeply, profoundly tired.

Mirk hugged himself, hoping none of the other empaths hiding under the shield would pick up on the guilt that washed over him. How had he not noticed it before then? It wasn't normal to pay so much attention to someone that every nuance of their voice spoke volumes, even if their words remained vague. Yet he was always doing it with Genesis, always searching his blank expressions and precise words for clues to what the commander was feeling. Mirk had been doing it for so long that he'd memorized the meaning hidden in every one of Genesis's different hissing inflections, in every twitch of his thin lips. He thought he did it only to compensate for not being able to feel Genesis's emotions.

Now he knew better.

"Mirk?"

Snapping back to attention, Mirk laughed and looked over at Yule. He must have drifted off while the argument between Yule and Genesis had continued. The older healer was staring back at him with a puzzled expression. "Oh, yes, Yule? Methinks I must still be a little tired..."

"Do you have any idea how we could use him to get the kid to stop projecting for an hour or so?" Yule asked, jerking his head in the direction of the door, where Genesis was doubtlessly still lurking. Mirk didn't feel prepared to look over at him yet.

"Euh...what have you tried so far?"

"Nothing really. He just closed up most of the wounds for us. Supposedly."

"There is no...supposedly involved," Genesis said. His annoyance had grown worse. But he paused before continuing, choosing his words even more deliberately than usual. "The...child does cough blood on occasion. But it has done no harm...save to the sheets."

A heavy silence filled the room. Then all the healers started to talk at once.

"The kid's hacking up blood and all you care about are the goddamn sheets?" Yule asked, clenching his fists at his sides.

"This could be very serious," Emir added.

Danu's voice was cold. Mirk could feel her Deathly magic rising up in her within the confines of the shield. "Why can't you ever tell us anything?"

"Even you have to know that's trouble, Genesis," Dima said.

"You have to help us heal him," Mirk protested, unable to keep himself from looking up at Genesis any longer. The commander was as worn down as he’d sounded, much worse off than he'd been when Mirk had last seen him. His already thin frame had somehow been whittled down even further. And there were black bandages wrapped around his palms, continuing up over his wrists and further on underneath his shirtsleeves. "Is the boy the one that was with Imanael? In Laurent's memory stone?"

A strange expression crossed Genesis's face, something between a rigid smile and a grimace as he nodded and picked, business-like, at some invisible speck of lint clinging to the bandages covering his left palm. Mirk had never seen that expression before. He didn't know what to make of it. It made his worry deepen, both for Genesis and the angelic boy.

"Messire, you have to have some idea of how to help him. You always do," Mirk said, once it was clear Genesis was unwilling to comment further.

"You shouldn't humor him," Yule muttered.

"Stop it," Mirk hissed back at Yule under his breath, despite knowing full well that Genesis would hear him, even with the shield between them.

After a long pause, Genesis sighed. "There is...one thing."

"What is it?" Emir asked, before any of the rest of them could.

From the tenseness in his shoulders, it looked like it was difficult for Genesis to force the words past his lips. "I...may be...capable of...temporarily binding back the...child's magic."

Danu sighed. "It's harsh, but it might work."

"It's less risky than anything else I've thought of," Emir confirmed.

"There is more risk in it than either of you appreciate," Genesis said, the unfamiliar half-smile, half-grimace expression coming onto his face again for a moment, though he quickly forced himself back into his customary blankness. "I will only...bind him for an hour. And I will...require K'aekniv."

Yule scoffed. "K'aekniv? What's he got to do with anything?"

"What, you need him to hold the boy down? I can do that," Dima said.

"I require his...feathers. Fortunately, he...appears to have a near...infinite supply. Due to his...lack of grooming," Genesis said, mostly to himself. Even though Genesis seemed to not like their plan, he was considering it deeply, Mirk knew, by the way his eyes were twitching back and forth as he thought. “Perhaps you will have...more success in removing him from the bar than I have. Mirk."

Something fluttered in Mirk's chest at hearing Genesis speak his name. "Is something wrong with Niv too?"

Genesis snorted. "A...minor complication. In his current...amorous pursuits."

"Oh. I hope it's nothing serious," Mirk said. "Niv really does like Miss Lina very much."

"He has done this...several times. I do not see any difference in the way he...conducts himself with any of these women."

Mirk sighed. If Genesis couldn't understand K'aekniv's relationship with Lina, which the half-angel expounded on in great detail at the slightest prompting, there was little chance of him understanding the thing writhing in Mirk's stomach as he stared across the room at him. Nevertheless, Mirk nodded. None of this was about him. Hopefully. Though the fact that the young angel who had examined Serge Montigny's mind before the commander of the Silver Host had executed him had suddenly appeared in the City wasn't a promising sign. Nor was the fact that Aker had something to do with his appearance, somehow. "I'll talk to him. Methinks if I explain what's happening, he'll come right away."

"I have...attempted to do so on several occasions. K'aekniv seems...determined to continue...drinking."

Yule teetered to his feet, pausing to summon up his own mental shielding before trudging out from under the protection of Dima's shield. He made a pointed, vaguely offensive gesture at Genesis as he pushed his way past the commander and out into the hall. "That's why you're going," Yule said back at Mirk over his shoulder. "You're not an ass."

Mirk felt like he could make a good argument to the contrary. But, considering who he was being compared to, Mirk supposed Yule had a point.

- - -

"We...must be quick."

They were all gathered at the end of the hall that ran down the center of the third floor of the infirmary, just before the junction with the cross-hall that the injured angelic child's room was down. Dima's shields were still holding, but only just. And only because Genesis had constructed part of his spell in advance, which involved sticking a number of K'aekniv's feathers to the walls. The feathers were held in place with long, thin needles that had curled with Genesis's dark magic as the commander had put each in place. Vessels for absorbing the negative emotions, Genesis had explained. The feathers were slowly turning gray. But there were also thin white lines of magic connecting them all, forming a sort of railing that held back the absolute worst of the boy's pain.

"No shit," Yule mumbled from somewhere behind Mirk. No one replied to him.

Genesis was at the front of their huddled and wincing group, out beyond Dima's shield, staring at something around the corner. Much like Genesis's emotions were always hidden from the empathic healers, the boy's emotions didn't reach through to Genesis in the slightest. In contrast, even K'aekniv, with his weak and disorganized empathy that hardly ever picked up on anything beyond the racket of his own emotions, had taken shelter under Dima's shield.

"I will...require only one of you to complete the bindings. The rest will remain here."

Without even turning to look at him, Yule and Danu elbowed Mirk forward. But Emir, at least, was polite enough to ask for his thoughts on the matter. "Do you feel well enough for this, Mirk?"

Not at all. The hour he’d spent away from the infirmary to collect K'aekniv from the tavern hadn't felt like much of a reprieve. Mirk had been expecting K’aekniv to fight him over being dragged away from the bar. But though the half-angel had complained a little, and had first felt the need to expound on the matter of his and Lina's latest disagreement until Mirk had reassured him he’d done nothing wrong, K’aekniv had finished his bottle and thrown a handful of coins at the bartender to cover his tab without hesitation once Mirk had voiced his own worries about Genesis's condition. Altogether, Mirk had only been in the infirmary for a half hour that morning. But he already felt unsteady and achy, like he'd been tending to patients for a full twelve.

Only the way Genesis was picking at the bandages wrapped around the palm of his left hand, clinically, paying no heed to the fact that he'd started tugging off bits of skin as well as lint, made Mirk nod. The boy wasn't the only one who was suffering. Mirk had a feeling that whatever was wrong with the boy was somehow connected to whatever was troubling Genesis. "I'll be fine, Comrade Commander. And methinks it won't be so bad as long as you project something to cover up the rest, Niv."

K'aekniv let out a string of curses, his pain momentarily filling the area underneath the shield and making the healers give a collective wince. Genesis had reached back and pulled a feather off his nearest wing, though he was still staring fixedly around the corner. "You bastard!" K'aekniv shouted at Genesis, making the healers all wince again. "That one was new!"

Genesis didn't reply, disappearing around the corner. Mirk went to K'aekniv's side, shooing away the hand K'aekniv had clamped over the outside edge of his wing. K'aekniv's wings were so poorly tended that it took Mirk a moment to find the shaft of the pin feather Genesis had broken off despite its bleeding. He pulled the remains of the feather out and pressed two fingers over its follicle while it clotted. "You need to take better care of your wings when they molt, Niv. Has anyone ever taught you how to preen yourself?"

"No! He needs to stop pulling out my feathers!"

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

There was a muffled, hissing reply from around the corner. "The spell...requires four more blood feathers."

Before K'aekniv could get too worked up reciting his litany of foreign curses at Genesis, Danu joined Mirk at the front of the group. "Do they have to bleed so much?" she called out to Genesis.

"...preferably."

"You bitch!"

"You're the one crying like one," Yule said, snickering despite the flare of pain caused by Danu carefully breaking off another of K'aekniv's new feathers. She waved it around the corner and a thin, spindly white hand reached out to take it, mindful of the blood on its broken tip.

"Let's pull out your fingernails and see how you like it!" K'aekniv shot back, ducking his other wing so that he could glare over his shoulder at Yule.

Yule rolled his eyes. "Don't be so dramatic."

Grumbling to himself, K'aekniv folded his thick arms over his chest and tried to look stoic as Danu broke off three more of his developing feathers. "It's very kind of you to do this," Mirk offered, in an attempt to cheer him.

"Hah! You think I have a choice."

"There is...always a choice. Some are merely more...rational than others." Again, Genesis extended one hand around the corner. "Your right arm."

Miserably, K'aekniv shuffled within Genesis's reach, allowing the commander to take hold of his arm and pull him off around the corner. Mirk moved up to the very edge of Dima's shield, waiting.

"Euh...let me know when I should come out, messire," Mirk said, after a few minutes of silence had passed.

Mirk could sense when K'aekniv started to project, even with the shield still between them. Whenever an empath asked K'aekniv to project an emotion on command, to make use of the half-angel's already loud feelings to cover up or deflect worse ones, he always thought of the same thing. A song that was simple and catchy and that every one of the fighters from the Seventh knew, no matter where they'd come from.

Mirk didn't understand the words. But the emotion attached to the song was clear and striking, a warm nostalgia that always made Mirk smell salt on the air and think of the bright blue line on the horizon that he could see out his window at home in fine weather. The feeling was reassuring. It helped Mirk keep his mind at a safe distance from whatever terrible thing was happening all around him. After taking a deep breath to center himself, Mirk slipped out past Dima's shield and went around the corner.

Beyond it was a gruesome scene. The walls of the hallway were covered with a maze of symbols written in blood, growing thicker and darker around the doorway to the injured boy's room. There the sigils and runes twisted into shapes that made Mirk's stomach heave. The feathers plucked from K'aekniv's wing were pinned around the doorframe, connected by lines of luminescent white magic to form a five-point star that stood as a barrier between the hallway and the room beyond in place of the open door. Mirk got the impression the white magic wasn't Genesis's. But he also got the impression, somehow, that Genesis's shadowy magic was what was holding the bright magic in place. Mirk had no idea what to make of it.

"It's fine. It does not...bind you. Come...tell me how...close this...angel...child...is to dying."

Only the force of K'aekniv's emotions were keeping Mirk from fainting at the unrelenting press of the agony crushing in on him harder and harder the longer he stood beyond the protection of Dima's shield. The nostalgia wrapped around him like a thick blanket, keeping him warm and safe. Mirk took a few steps closer to the door, though he didn't yet step through.

The angelic boy on the bed was the same one he'd seen in the recording made by Laurent's memorial stone. In his sickness, he looked even more like a child than a man in spite of his height, pale and shivering and worn down to skin and bones. Mirk had no idea what kind of illness could have caused the boy to waste away to nothing in the span of only a few weeks.

Despite that, Genesis gave the impression of being even sicker. His expression was utterly blank as he waited beside the boy's bed, staring down at him, unblinking. He'd neatly folded back his shirtsleeves and unwrapped the bandages from around his forearms. Mirk recognized the odd scars twined around them — he'd sewn them shut enough times by then to have their shapes all but memorized, though he still had no idea what they said or where they'd come from. Mirk had never seen them like they were now. All of them were ripped open and oozing blood, their edges pulled back as if an invisible force was trying to rip off the unbroken skin surrounding them. They had to be terribly painful.

Genesis was unconcerned by them. The boy was the sole focus of his attention, though his constant wheezing and gasping was more an object of fascination for Genesis than a source of worry or sympathy. Mirk noticed then that K'aekniv, who was standing close beside Genesis, wasn't looking at the boy at all. Instead, he was staring at the wounds encircling Genesis's arms, watching them closely, almost as if he expected them to slither off and make a run for the doorway. Somehow, it didn't seem like that strange of a notion.

Trying to control his sudden shaking, Mirk stepped through the doorway. The bands of white magic felt cold as he passed through them but, just like Genesis had said, they were completely harmless. He hurried to the boy's bedside, forcing himself to look away from Genesis and concentrate on his new patient.

Now that he was right beside the child, Mirk spotted more concerning details. His breaths were coming too fast for a full-blood angel, each one too shallow to fill the boy's oversized lungs. And his feathers had lost their luster, now as gray and dingy as K'aekniv's. Mirk could tell that Genesis had been telling the truth about having done his best to help him, though. His superficial wounds had been neatly bandaged, a long gash across his forehead sewn shut with precise, even sutures. Mirk also realized that the boy was younger than he'd thought from what he'd seen of him on the memory stone's recording. He couldn't have been more than a forty-year, the equivalent of a human boy of eleven or twelve. His primaries were barely developed. No wonder the pervasive chill of being separated from the Light Eternal had affected him so strongly. Full-blood angels weren't supposed to leave Heaven until they were eighty-years.

Bracing himself for the pain, Mirk reached out and placed a hand on the boy's chest. The force of his agony was piercing, but now that Mirk was touching him, he could tell exactly where it was coming from. Mirk shifted aside the open-front robe Genesis had dressed him in, feeling his way over the bones of his chest. It felt like there was something wrong there, something extra. Something lodged under his sternum, perhaps. Mirk struggled to think through the pain, trying to remember every last scrap of rumor and gossip he'd heard about Imperial angels.

The words of one of the oldest members of his father's guard, Easil, came to Mirk, along with his tired frown. Talk of being brought to a healer in the Imperial Capital, of cold white rooms and gleaming metal and a healer who had a grin that stretched too wide across his face. The healer had a small chip of glass in a jar that he'd rattled at Easil, as he'd spoken softly of marriage and duty and the importance of providing a good influence for the next generation. Easil had joined Mirk's father on Earth the next day. Better to be forever cast out from the Light Eternal, Easil had said, than undergo purification. Mirk lowered his mental shields as far as he could bear, feeling at the child's sternum again. Underneath bone and flesh, there was a faint dark spot, something that Mirk couldn't hear the voice of. An object, but not one made of any Earthly material.

Mirk coughed as he drew his shields back up and withdrew his hand, hunching over on himself as he glanced over at Genesis. The commander was still staring at the child with an unsettling indifference. And K'aekniv was still staring at the wounds on Genesis's forearms.

"I...he's not meaning to project, messire. There's something stuck in his chest that's making him feel all of this. Methinks...maybe...he was going through purification when his sister brought him here."

K'aekniv tore his eyes away from Genesis's arms for a second, his magic flashing in his eyes as an unfamiliar hardness came onto his face. Genesis, however, was unmoved. "Ah. How...elaborate," Genesis said, with the slightest of frowns.

Though K'aekniv's projection was as strong as when Mirk had first emerged from underneath Dima's shield out in the hall, the force of the boy's misery was pushing Mirk away from his bedside. It was starting to work its way through the nostalgia, shifting it, making Mirk remember things he would have rather left forgotten. In his memory, the bright blue line of the sea turned black. Black like the water had been in the fountain, while the drizzle had been hissing on the cobbles. Mirk shook his head and refocused himself on the present, on Genesis. "We'll have to do surgery, once we can stop him from feeling so much."

Genesis considered this with something that looked like bored, academic interest. As he thought, Genesis picked at one of the sigils on his left arm, making its bleeding worse. Blood had dripped onto the floor all around him, but it was as if Genesis was completely blind to it. Mirk searched out reassurance from K'aekniv, waving to catch his attention. "Will...euh...will he be all right?"

"I'm fine," Genesis said, without hesitation or inflection.

K'aekniv debated Mirk's question, looking back and forth between Genesis and the boy still gasping and wheezing on the bed. "If I'm here, it'll be fine. But you need to go."

"Why?" Mirk asked.

"No," Genesis said, before K'aekniv could reply. "His...presence is required as well. With two sources of angelic potential...hmph. I will be unbound...long enough...perhaps..." Genesis trailed off, thinking. His eyes had gone black. It was all Mirk could do to keep himself from reaching out to Genesis, from trying to shake him out of the strange otherness he'd drifted off into.

K'aekniv growled something at Genesis in Russian, smacking him in the shoulder with his right hand. Yellowy sparks jumped off K'aekniv's arm. Genesis didn't respond. K'aekniv circled around the commander instead, so that he was standing in between Genesis and Mirk. "Don't listen to him when he gets like this," K'aekniv said to Mirk. For the first time, his projection faltered, replaced by a serious feeling, a tenseness that Mirk had never felt from the half-angel before. "I'll deal with this. You stay back."

"I will...require one hand each," Genesis said, still ignoring K'aekniv, unconcerned by him. Unconcerned with everything.

Cursing, K'aekniv wagged a scolding, warning finger at Mirk. He would have thought the gesture comical, had the situation not been so grave. "You listen to me, Mirk! Me, I'll tell you what to do. Him, forget him. He has no...no stopping when he's like this."

Mirk swallowed hard. "What's happening, Niv?"

"Nothing," Genesis said.

"He's...he's going to have one of his...his..." Mirk was uncertain whether K'aekniv was having trouble finding the right English word to describe what was happening, or if he was at a loss for words altogether. "...his things. This is easy for me to stop. But you stay away. Don't listen to him. Not a word!"

The timbre of K'aekniv's emotions more than his words made Mirk decide to step back and nod rather than pressing further. K'aekniv was thinking hard, his emotions so unrestrained and intense that Mirk could only feel a fraction of the boy's pain beyond them. He could even feel twinges of what K'aekniv was doing with his body through his emotions, tensing each of his muscles from shoulders to legs, hard, as if he was checking to make sure they all worked. It made Mirk worried. He had felt K'aekniv's emotions when he was fighting before. They were like that now, only more focused. More real. Like, for the first time since Mirk had met him, K'aekniv was facing an enemy that could truly rival his inhuman strength. One more dangerous than all the rest.

"Go do it!" K'aekniv snapped at Genesis, taking a reluctant step back so that the commander could reach both of them.

"...two angels...hmm..."

Before K'aekniv could bark another order at Genesis, the commander had moved. Too quickly to be stopped, too fluidly to have physically walked around K'aekniv and positioned himself between them. Genesis reached out with one of his overlong arms and seized hold of Mirk's right hand, business-like, pulling him closer.

Something hurt. Something physical instead of mental. Mirk looked down at his hand in Genesis's. The sharp points of the claw-like fingernails that Genesis usually kept spelled away, the one sure sign of his demonic lineage that Mirk had ever glimpsed, were inadvertently digging into Mirk's palm.

Fear boiled up from Mirk's stomach and into his throat. Not a fear of Genesis, but fear for him. This wasn't the Genesis he knew. Something had gone terribly, horribly wrong. And though Mirk couldn't feel any of it, some instinctive part of him understood that the only thing that could have plunged Genesis into such utter disarray was suffering that rivaled the pain the angelic boy was still projecting.

The prayer was as reflexive as the deep breath Mirk took to steady himself. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, pray for him, you wouldn't let this happen, you couldn't—

"Mikael. And...Gaebriel. Stc, it'll do."

Mirk focused on his own pain, the stinging in his palm as Genesis gripped his hand more tightly, to drag himself back to the present. Had Genesis just called him by his father's name? Or was all the uncertainty and pain addling his mind? Mirk didn't have time to think about it. Genesis's spell began quickly, with one hissed and clicked command, and it roared to its full power in seconds. Genesis let go of his hand.

It was like holding onto a rope made of magic, one that was running through Mirk's hands fast enough to rub them raw. Instinctively, Mirk clenched his fists around the feel of the magic. He looked down at his hands with his mind's eye, blinking to clear away reality and highlight the unseen. Mirk was holding onto a rope, a thicker strand of the white magic that had been stretched into a star across the doorway and held in place with K'aekniv's feathers and Genesis's shadows. The magic was fighting against his hold. Mirk gripped it with all his strength, both mental and physical, searching for the end of it.

At its end was Genesis. One loop of the white magic remained around each of the commander's wrists. K'aekniv was holding on to the rope of magic bound to Genesis's other arm, looking down at it with a disgusted expression. It was odd: though the wounds covering Genesis's forearms had been gaping and raw the last time Mirk had looked at him, they had now vanished, save for a band around each of his wrists, underneath where the white magic wrapped around him.

Genesis's voice was even, though his hissing accent had grown so strong it was difficult to make out exactly what he was saying. "Some...slack please. Five hands will be sufficient."

The rope of magic was yanked through Mirk's hands at Genesis's command, burning his palms until Mirk could catch hold of it again. Mirk could barely sense them, but he thought he could see ghostly hands poised over his, gripping the rope along with him. Hands much larger and stronger than his own.

Genesis made a trilling, clicking noise, one that made Mirk shudder. "Better. And...now, the...bindings..."

With a gesture of one hand, Genesis's shadowy magic appeared, great thick tendrils of it, so dark that they sucked in the glow of the room's magelights and the rope of magic clenched in Mirk's hands. Genesis made another gesture with his other hand and the tendrils of shadow swarmed over the injured boy on the bed, obscuring him fully from view. Mirk heard the young angel give a muffled gasp.

Genesis leaned over the bed and held out his hands. Without flinching, he used his claws to slice deep cuts into both of his wrists, just above where the bands of white magic were wrapped around them. Blood ran freely from the gashes, dripping onto the mass of shadows covering the child. The shadows consumed it with a staticky noise that hurt Mirk's ears and made his eyes water. Genesis began to speak in a language that made Mirk taste bile. Though Mirk had never heard such a cursed tongue before, he could still understand it. Maybe that was the point.

"By my blood, your light will be bound by darkness. By my blood, your order will be bound by chaos. By my blood, you will obey."

The injured boy whined — underneath the blanket of Genesis's magic, he was crying.

"You will feel nothing. You will think nothing. You will obey."

Abruptly, the press of the boy's emotions against Mirk’s mind, which had nearly eroded all the protections he had assembled against them, his weak mental shields and the force of K'aekniv's intense focus that was now spiked with frustration, vanished. Their sudden absence left Mirk reeling. The rope of white magic slipped through Mirk's hands, passing upwards and clear through them instead of being yanked out of his grasp.

Tears blurred Mirk's sight. As he tried to blink them clear, Mirk heard another voice, that one distant and amused. And vaguely familiar. It spoke in high angelic.

By my blade, your darkness will be bound by light. By my blade, your chaos will be bound by order. By my blade, you will obey.

K'aekniv was yelling. Mirk was too transfixed by the melodic sound of the other voice to hear what he said.

Destroy them.

"Mirk! Leave!"

You will obey.

Mirk finally thought to swipe at his eyes with his sleeve to clear them. K'aekniv was trying to shove himself between him and Genesis again. Though K'aekniv beat at them with his right fist, the shadows were too thick and alive with potential for him to break through. They'd released the injured child and had surrounded Genesis again. And the ropes of white magic had disappeared. All of the terrible wounds down the length of Genesis's arms had reopened, so deep and so many that his forearms were completely skinned. The commander's body was stiff, all his muscles straining. He snarled at the amused voice, clenching at the sides of his head, hissing his own command back at it. "Get out!"

You will obey!

The strength left Genesis's body, just for a moment. But he caught himself before he could fall, his inhuman grace returning to him. Genesis's head snapped around. His eyes had gone black again, but Mirk felt like they were fixed on him. He seemed pleased by Mirk’s presence, as if his being there had spared him a great inconvenience.

"Yes, you're right...the only way...to keep..." he muttered, gathering his shadows close around himself.

"Gen? Are...euh...are you..." Mirk stammered.

Genesis straightened up, brushing at some speck of dust on the front of his shirt. The gesture only succeeded in smearing blood all over it. "Mirk. Won't you...come here?"

"I..." Mirk looked past Genesis at K'aekniv. He'd drawn one of his swords, the one with the golden hilt that spit flame and order, and was hacking away at the shadows keeping him from reaching both Genesis and Mirk. Though Mirk knew K'aekniv wasn't more than a few paces away, he felt very distant. Mirk couldn't feel any of K’aekniv’s emotions through the interference generated by the shadows.

Genesis raised his arms, sighing and looking them over before fixing his attention back on Mirk. He was trying to smile — as always, it seemed more like Genesis was just baring his teeth. Something had changed about those too, but Mirk couldn't pinpoint what it was. "A healer...is best suited to...tending to this manner of wound. Mirk. Come here."

"What's happening, Gen? What's wrong?”

Genesis ignored Mirk’s questions. "They have...ached...for so long. Won't you...heal them?"

"It's...messire, this isn't like you..."

Genesis's attempt at a smile vanished, replaced by a puzzled expression. "Are you...afraid?"

"I...well, no. I'm just worried..."

It didn't seem as if Genesis believed him. The commander looked back down at his bleeding arms, at a loss for what to do with them. It made Mirk's heart ache. Despite all of K'aekniv's warnings and continued slashing at the shadows beside them, Mirk took a step toward Genesis. If he could calm Genesis some, Mirk hoped he could get to the bottom of things before the situation spiraled even further out of control.

"It's all right, messire. I don't have any bandages, but I'll make do with the sheets, don't be upset—"

"Damn you!"

K'aekniv finally broke through the shadows, hurling his sword aside and lunging forward to strike Genesis with his clenched right fist. Genesis's confusion disappeared, an annoyed look coming onto his face as he made one of his odd hissing noises, one almost like laughter. Genesis neatly sidestepped K'aekniv's fist and lashed out at him, swiping at his neck with his claws.

Genesis gouged K'aekniv's neck, but missed the vital mark. K'aekniv knocked Genesis off-balance by smacking him with his wing, holding it out wide to cut off any avenue for Genesis to draw closer to Mirk. That distracted Genesis enough for K'aekniv to deliver a solid kick to his knee and grab hold of Genesis's neck with his right hand, his whole arm crackling with flames. "Stop fighting!" K'aekniv bellowed.

"No!" Genesis hissed back.

"Yes!"

K'aekniv tightened his hand around Genesis’s neck as he knocked him across the face with his left, now coated in ice. Though Mirk thought for a moment that Genesis might recover and strike back or kick K'aekniv aside, K'aekniv hit Genesis again before he could launch an attack. Genesis's eyes rolled back in his head, the darkness clearing from them, and his body went limp.

The shadows disappeared in a rush. Cursing, K'aekniv gave Genesis a hard shake before letting his unconscious body drop to the floor. "Why do you do this? Every fucking time!" K'aekniv groaned, exasperated and breathless.

All Mirk could do was stare at them both. After a few seconds, K'aekniv got a hold of himself again. He turned to Mirk, crossing the distance between them in one long stride and taking him by both shoulders, gently. Very much unlike how he'd been manhandling Genesis moments ago.

"I said not to listen to him," K'aekniv said. His tone was more relieved than scolding.

"...sorry..."

K'aekniv gave his shoulders a careful squeeze. "Next time, you listen to me. He'll kill you."

The way K'aekniv said it, with total certainty, made Mirk's heart swell with an emotion he couldn't quite place. A mixture of worry and fear and sympathy. "What was that? What's happened to him?"

Shrugging both his shoulders and wings, K'aekniv looked back at Genesis's lifeless body. "The Destroyer. He comes sometimes. And then I beat him until he goes away again. If I get to him before he kills too much, anyway."

Mirk's eyes also fell on Genesis's body. It was hard for Mirk to believe that what had just happened wasn't some pain-induced hallucination. Genesis looked so fragile then, curled on his side and still bleeding profusely from his arms. And now he had a ring of blisters around his neck from where K'aekniv had half-strangled him as well. "I don't understand, Niv."

K'aekniv sighed. "He told you none of this?"

"No, not really..."

"Come. We'll take him to a bed and then we'll talk. The other healers, they can help the little angel."

Too bewildered to protest, Mirk nodded.

"And you," K'aekniv said, turning and glaring down at Genesis, "you owe me a drink. Why can't you tell anyone things…terrible, people-stupid bastard..." K'aekniv stooped down and picked Genesis up, unceremoniously plunking him across one shoulder like a sack full of laundry, then trudged off toward the door. The wood of its frame was blackened. Like it'd been burned.

"What? Are you coming?" K'aekniv asked when Mirk didn't move, still staring at the blood smeared all over the floor from the wounds on Genesis's arms.

Mirk turned away from the blood and the injured boy still whimpering and sniffling on the bed, following K'aekniv to the door. There didn't seem to be any other option. He didn't have enough magic left to help remove the thing stuck in the boy's chest. And he needed to face whatever terrible secret Genesis was hiding from him eventually. No matter what the cost of that was.

"Let me tell Emir what he needs to do to heal the boy. Then I'll...I'll come help with Gen."

K'aekniv snorted. "Why try? There's no helping him. Better off helping someone who gives a shit."

Mirk wanted to protest. But the dull ache in his chest kept him quiet.