Genesis had been asleep for three days. He still looked as dead as when Mirk had first seen him after waking up himself.

During those three days, Mirk hadn't left the infirmary, always either asleep in one of the vacant, heavily-shielded long-term rooms on third, eating to recover his strength, or tending to the laborious process of putting Genesis back together. Something had changed in the commander's magic since Mirk had healed him last.

Perhaps it was because Genesis was so deeply asleep, but the shadows were mostly ignoring him. Every so often, when Mirk found himself working at odd hours, around the time he used to force himself awake just long enough to recite Matins, a few tendrils would reach out from under the bed Genesis had been put in and curl around his ankles. It felt less like they were debating the best way to hurl him into the wall and more like they were trying to use him to hold on.

Or perhaps the shadows were leaving him alone because keeping Genesis from dying had consumed so much of Mirk’s life-giving potential that he could barely summon any healing magic yet. Yule had warned Mirk strongly against using any for at least a week, after scolding him for a full half hour about how what he'd done was irresponsible and how easily both him and Genesis could have ended up dead.

Instead of making use of his magic, Mirk was using potions and pastes and poultices to piece Genesis back together. They all required alteration to work on the commander’s body, but Mirk thought he was making good progress. It helped that the gaping hole that'd been in Genesis's chest was gone, leaving nothing for Mirk to see to but flesh wounds and broken bones and bruises. In his more optimistic moments, Mirk tried to think of it as a particularly extended and involved anatomy and potions lesson.

Mostly, though, it just made Mirk frustrated.

According to the pair of Watch members who'd dragged in Genesis's lifeless body, they'd found the commander in a crumpled heap in an alleyway to the north of the Glass Tower. Put together with the kind of injuries Mirk was finding, he could guess at part of what had happened. Genesis must have jumped off the Tower, for some unfathomable reason, probably related to what had torn open his chest, and had missed catching the eave of whatever building he was trying to leap to. Genesis had to have hit the ground hard, considering the mess that’d been made of his legs. He must have used so much of his magic beforehand that he hadn't been able to summon enough shadows to completely break his fall. How exactly such a scenario had come to pass, Mirk didn't know. Genesis had certainly had plenty of magic in him again by the time he'd been brought to the infirmary.

And Genesis wasn't giving him any answers. Not yet, anyway.

Biting his still-sore lip, Mirk gave up on trying to stitch the last of the strange, runic cuts on Genesis's forearms closed and retreated to the chair he'd brought to Genesis's recovery room, flopping down into it with a huff. Three days he'd been working on Genesis, and still no sign of life. That was on top of the day and a half Mirk had been out himself. Mirk wondered if Genesis was doing it on purpose, playing dead until Mirk finished healing him so that he could sneak off without having to explain himself.

Mirk knew the fatigue was making him cross, not himself. But hadn't he earned the right to be a little cross, just for once? He had helped save Genesis's life, after all. In exchange, he felt he was owed some kind of explanation.

He was so lost in thought, arguing with himself over whether it was right to be angry with Genesis, that Mirk didn't notice the commander was awake until he cleared his throat and spoke.

"...ah. Mirk. This is...different than I'd anticipated."

Mirk launched himself out of his chair, back at Genesis's side in an instant, his anger evaporating into relief, relief he felt stupid for feeling. Genesis was staring up at the ceiling, unblinking.

"Gen! Bon sang de bonsoir, c'est...ce n'est pas...votre..."

Laboriously, Genesis lifted one hand, just a fraction, just enough to stem the flow of the diatriable Mirk had been saving up for that very moment. "I...will explain. Momentarily."

For a moment, Mirk was too stunned by Genesis’s nonchalance to respond. Then, half in frustration and half in joy, he seized Genesis about the midsection and hugged him, tightly. It caused flickers of pain to radiate through Genesis's slowly returning magic. Mirk ignored them, for the time being. "You could have died!"

Mirk refused to let him go until Genesis gave him a weak pat on the side, the best he could manage with his still-injured shoulders. "Yes. You...do have a point."

Genesis tried to sit up. Mirk looped an arm around his waist and helped him up, lest Genesis strain himself and break one of the dozens of rows of stitches and spell paper casts that were holding him together. It was easy to move Genesis. The commander had grown alarmingly thin while he'd been away. Mirk could fit his fingers into the grooves between his ribs. The ones he'd spent all of yesterday fixing. "Before you get any ideas, messire, you're not leaving. I haven't even started on your legs, for one thing."

"Yes...fine..." Genesis moved to run a hand over his long, snarled black hair, but came up short, his shoulder unwilling to cooperate with his efforts. Instead, it only made an upsetting popping noise as Genesis tried to force the joint into motion. Genesis must have assumed that since he could bend his arms at the elbow, the rest had to be functional as well.

"Leave it," Mirk said, pushing his hand down, mindful of the fresh stitches on his forearms.

Genesis frowned down at the wounds, hesitating before trying again.

"Tiens," Mirk sighed, gently pushing his hand down once more. "I'll brush it for you. Your shoulders still confuse me, so they're not healed yet. I'll probably need Yule's help, once he decides to stop sulking. But if I'm going to help you, messire, methinks it's only fair that you help me a little. What happened?"

Genesis shook his head. He was still staring at the wounds on his forearms, as if he expected them to crawl away if he took his eyes off of them. "It is complex."

"Well, your hair is a mess. You'll have plenty of time to explain."

Though Mirk turned his back to Genesis when he went to the room's supply cabinet to search for a hairbrush, he could feel that Genesis had shifted his blank stare from his own forearms to Mirk's back. Somehow. "You are...upset."

"Yes! I worry about you, Genesis. Maybe Niv and the rest are used to you disappearing and coming back like this, but I'm not." Finding the brush at the back of one of the bottommost drawers, Mirk snatched it up and returned to Genesis's bedside. The commander seemed deeply puzzled. At least, Mirk had come to understand that was what the odd expression Genesis made on occasion, his eyebrows raised and teeth half-bared, meant.

"You...worry. About me."

"Of course!"

"I...see."

Mirk began to work at coaxing the tie out of Genesis's hair, sitting down on the edge of the bed. It'd take a while — Genesis's hair was thicker than he'd been expecting, matted in places. "You're my friend, Genesis. Everyone else might be too stubborn to say it, but the rest of your friends have been worried about you too. Niv's started losing feathers."

"That is because he's incapable of grooming himself," Genesis muttered.

"See? People depend on you." It wasn't what Genesis had been getting at by complaining about K’aekniv’s lackadaisical approach to taking care of his wings, but Mirk wasn't about to pass up such a good opportunity to emphasize his point.

"Which is...precisely why I've done this."

"Oh?"

"With this, I have...obtained all the necessary credentials to be ranked as a five star assassin."

Genesis's face had taken on another of its more awkward expressions, the one with the furrowed brows and the rigid grin. That meant he was satisfied with whatever it was he'd done. Genesis always had trouble making the right faces to convey emotions he didn't feel often. "That's...good? Did you have to take a test?”

"No. To become a five star assassin, one must...kill another five star."

The commander didn't sound concerned in the slightest by the implications of this. Mirk, however, paused, trying to remember the faces of all the assassins he'd treated with minor wounds. "Who...?"

Genesis made a dismissive noise. "A...horrid man. You wouldn't have met him. He only took healing from the Tenth. Being touched by someone as...impure as a member of the Twentieth would have been unacceptable. Being a wingless angel of pure blood."

Emir had mentioned that there was one full-blood angel in the K'maneda on the first day he'd come to the infirmary. But Mirk hadn't known he was pure blood, a member of one of the elite families that could trace their lineage back to the first of the Western Emperors of Heaven. With that in mind, Genesis's conclusion made sense. His father had a close Northern relative, the matter of Mirk's own mother being human aside. "I suppose not," Mirk mumbled, as he returned to fixing Genesis's hair. The tie was hopelessly stuck in it; Mirk snapped it and picked out the pieces. Genesis didn't comment.

"I believe he was contemplating...eliminating you, in any case. There is no cause for sympathy."

Mirk stopped again, his breath catching in his throat. "Me?"

Again, Genesis stared down at the cuts on his forearms, which he kept stiffly at his sides. "A question. Was your father in any way...related to a certain Gaebriel?"

Mirk used trying to remember the charts in the grand family ledger that his father had kept in the library to settle his suddenly racing thoughts. "Gaebriel...no. The name sounds familiar, but methinks that's just from the mortals using it."

"And another. Imanael."

"Euh...maybe, yes...there was someone with a name close to that on his mother's side, methinks, a few generations back...but that would mean he'd have to be thousands of years old, Genesis. Even angels don't live forever."

"Imanael is...very much alive."

"He must be very powerful, then," Mirk said, slowly, uncertain of whether to press the commander for more information.

"Yes. He is. But that does explain...this," Genesis said, making a vague gesture at his bare chest. "I should not have survived. However, if you…share enough blood with him...perhaps the healing could pass through, even if he was set against it..." Genesis's voice lowered further, barely audible. "...it all goes further than I suspected..."

"I'm afraid I don't follow, messire," Mirk said, sighing as he began to work at brushing out the ends of his hair. He had stopped truly listening the moment Genesis said that he shouldn't have lived. If Genesis was willing to admit the fact, then it had to be true. Unbidden, the memory of the tall, white figure with eyes into the Abyss who'd stood across from him as he'd frantically tried to mend Genesis's dying body came to Mirk. He dismissed it with a shudder, trying to pick up the thread of the conversation. Genesis beat him to it.

"Nevertheless. This was all intentional. Having earned the highest rank, I am now...entitled to the highest paying contracts. They cannot deny me them. Commander Ansel of the Twenty-First is a…practical man. He wants his cut. And we will have ours. It...improves our position as a whole. Ravensdale can only do so much by denying us contracts with this buffer. And if the contracts proceed well...perhaps I can regain my former position in the Seventh."

That had been a sore spot for the commander for months, Mirk had gathered. Genesis wasn't a commander — he wasn't ever one, technically, which was why he'd been so opposed to Mirk’s family calling him that in the first place. But Genesis had been demoted from some kind of middling officer to the rank of little more than a common soldier due to what had happened in Nantes.

Mirk couldn't help but feel responsible for it. Genesis had failed to protect his family; he'd accordingly been demoted. Which Genesis thought he deserved, though he was annoyed by the way the commander of the Seventh had gone about it. Mirk didn't think Genesis deserved any of it. Mirk thought his own powerlessness was as much to blame as circumstance. "I wish I could do more to help you, Genesis," Mirk said, as he tugged harder than he'd meant to at a particularly stubborn knot.

"That is...the other issue. You are under—"

"Snegurochka! You live!"

Genesis let out a string of hissing and clicking curses in his native language, cringing away from the sudden gleeful shout from the doorway. Mirk looked up. K'aekniv was wedging himself through it, his wings catching on the jamb and tearing out clumps of loose, dirty silver-white feathers.

Mirk waved to him, his shoulders slumping in relief. The atmosphere in the room had grown increasingly tense, but it was impossible for things to stay that way with K'aekniv nearby. The half-angel’s emotions filled whatever room he was in, no matter how hard one tried to shield against him. And K'aekniv's good moods were particularly infectious.

"Oh, hello Niv!" Mirk said. "You're lucky, he just woke up."

Unceremoniously, K'aekniv plunked himself down on the half of the bed that Genesis's narrow frame left empty, grinning and taking the commander's face in both hands. Genesis looked horrified.

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"Come! You missed me!"

Genesis shuddered. "...no."

"Bastard!" But K'aekniv said it with a laugh, and accompanied the curse with the obligatory kiss of good health on both cheeks.

Genesis hit ineffectually at K'aekniv with his half-working arms, hissing. "Get...off."

K'aekniv leered back at Genesis. "You want me to get off, eh?"

"That is not—"

Before Genesis could work his way out of his grasp, K'aekniv leaned in and inflicted the final part of the greeting on him, the part that he usually left out in an act of self-preservation: a smack of a kiss on the lips.

"Niv, you'll make him break his stitches," Mirk warned, though he was laughing so hard he could barely get the words out.

"Bah! Who cares? He’ll live," K'aekniv said, though he was wise enough to relent before Genesis could raise his hands far enough to strangle him.

Genesis tried to wipe his face on his shoulder. "I...detest that miserable…eastern folk—"

"But I've been so lonely!" K'aekniv interjected before Genesis could finish. "No one to bitch at me in the morning, no one to make the bed cold at night...do you know how much it costs to have the women stay all night for a month? Terrible!"

"You're terrible," Genesis muttered.

"And you love it! But, anyway, tell me, how did you finally kill that bitch Aeli? We saw them take out his body from the Tower. We all decided it was good luck and took the rest of the day off."

"If you saw the body, then the...cause should be evident."

"Fine, how did you catch him? We've been trying to kill Aeli since we were in the Academy."

"First...it was necessary to locate an Abyssal creature of proper size and proportion, and use the whole of its...blood for the weapons cursing spell. In accordance with the procedure outlined in Ovgeny's Void Magicks Grimoire. The fifth edition, as...the first three are—"

"Whatever," K'aekniv grumbled, leaning with a defeated sigh against the wall the bed was pushed up against. The motion made the bedframe creak and snap in protest. Though K'aekniv and Genesis were the same absurd height, K'aekniv frame was as broad and heavily muscled as Genesis was bony and narrow, save about the shoulders. It was a wonder that the bed hadn't already collapsed with both of them on it. "You're the only person who could make killing someone so boring. Mirk," he said, turning his attention toward him, "how long until he's fixed? Ravensdale put us on some shit contract to get back at us. We need him for it."

"It'll be a little while more, methinks," Mirk said, hesitantly. Though it was hard to tell just from looking at Genesis, by how the commander kept his back ramrod straight and his injured shoulders squared as much as possible, Mirk knew that Genesis was the weakest he'd ever seen him. The fact that Genesis hadn't called to the shadows to pry K'aekniv off of him was clear evidence of that. "If he actually rests, it won't be as long."

"I will not...let him kill any of you."

It was like the room's magelight had winked out: K'aekniv's emotions shifted from carefree to focused, concerned, though the grin on his face didn't change. "He wants to kill us all in those mountains, Ravensdale and his big mages. He thinks we're all idiots, but Iliusha has seen them working. Some trap. But what can we do? Mirk is right. You look like shit. Maybe half of us don't make it if you don't come, but if he gets you too, we're all dead with the way he keeps fucking with us. You have to be smart, Gen. That bitch Aeli almost got you."

Genesis considered this for a time as Mirk returned to brushing out his hair. It made him feel a little less useless, considering the topic of discussion. "I will...make arrangements, then."

"Huh?"

"North has been in my debt for some time now. His men will...accompany you at the proper moment."

Again, the shift in K'aekniv's mood was instantaneous. The half-angel's good cheer returned, though with reduced force, enough so that Mirk no longer risked getting a headache from it. "Hmm, all right. It should be fine. The First has good men, even if they're all Bavarians."

Though there was a certain comfort in listening to the both of them talk about this and that, in the reassuring pattern to their bickering that came from years of friendship, it also made a melancholy feeling steal over Mirk. He wished he understood more of what they were talking about, could put faces to all the names K'aekniv tossed around and that even Genesis seemed to understand. Over the past few months, it had become clear to Mirk that something was terribly wrong inside the K'maneda. He'd sensed it in all the things K'aekniv and the rest talked about, bad contracts and no money. And he'd seen it in the patients who were brought in, how differently they were treated.

All the powerful mages, the robes around their injuries resplendent with gold and silver thread, and the officers in their dress coats fine enough for a noble ball, were seen to without hesitation by the Tenth's healers. They left the infirmary in short order, always in perfect health, without a single scar left on them no matter how severe their injuries had been. The fighters and mages with less potential but who were still high-born, gulidmasters’ bastards and forgotten fifth sons, were treated well enough too, though it took a bit longer for them to recover. As for the rest...

They were ignored. Expendable. Except for when more upright bodies were needed to finish some unnamed war on some distant realm. And Mirk had noticed from watching the healers from the Twentieth that were put on emergency watch that the low-borns, the ones they needed to use translator charms on and who were always frightened and too young and too weak, returned from the transporter with the worst injuries of all. There were hardly ever enough healers to help them all. Too many got sent to the basement.

And then there were the djinn. Ravensdale's, Yule had Emir reminded him, every time Mirk protested their treatment. As Mirk had found out on his first day, they were treated exclusively by the Tenth's healers. But they were handled like clockwork machines — the most powerful healers from the Tenth were summoned to repair them, but that was all they did. They didn't seem to care if the djinn were left in pain, or if they were so drained they rightly should have been kept in bed for a week or more. They were sent out as soon as they could walk again, in their plain, rough black robes, all of them with magic burns around the collars on their necks, to fight again. They were nothing like the djinn Mirk was accustomed to seeing, servants buttoned up in the finest of their masters' cast-offs, always tidy and proud. Too many of the djinn got sent to the basement as well.

Mirk already had wanted to help. But knowing that Genesis and the rest were involved in it too convinced him. He had to do something. Or else the small spark of hope he’d found over the past months, that warm feeling, the sense of having a family again, albeit one that was more odd and rough than the one he’d had before, would be snuffed out.

He was pulled out of his worries by the commotion caused by K'aekniv shoving himself back up onto his feet, stretching his wings and replying to some comment Genesis had made that had finally inspired him to get up and get going. "Enough," K'aekniv said, yawning. "You're making me tired. And it's time for supper, anyway."

K'aekniv turned to Mirk with an easy smile, reaching over and placing his unnaturally large and warm palm atop his head, swiveling Mirk's face upward so he could look him in the eye. It was still disconcerting to Mirk, seeing red eyes set in a face with perfect angelic full-blood coloration. Though the masculinity of K'aekniv's features and his ratty hair helped detract from the uncanniness some. "Keep him from running away, eh? I'll bring you supper. Maybe I should go steal some of the good things from the officers..."

Mirk chuckled as K'aekniv let go of him. "Don't get yourself in trouble on my account."

"Me? Trouble? Who do you think I am?"

Laughing to himself, K'aekniv barged back out into the hall and clumped away. The sudden stillness in the room once he was gone caused an emotional echo, almost. A feeling of emptiness. Blinking a few times to dispel the feeling, Mirk focused back on what he'd been doing. He'd finished brushing out the bottom third of Genesis's hair, but it was clear the commander was getting tired, his prim posture wilting into a defeated slouch. But before he let him rest, Mirk knew he had to get to the bottom of things. If he waited until after Genesis had rested some, Mirk suspected he'd have a much harder time getting anything out of him.

"You need to stop getting yourself into trouble too, messire," Mirk said, fixing his attention on Genesis's hair. "You nearly died. You said it yourself, even."

"...some things must be done. In pursuit of a...larger purpose."

"And what is that, Genesis?" Mirk asked. "I hate to be so direct, but whatever you're doing, you can't keep doing it alone. This is twice in two months that you've left us and come back like this. I appreciate you thinking of leaving me something this time to let me know, but...really, it's not enough. I want to really help. I know that you must have some of your other men helping you already. Let me help too."

Genesis shook his head, once. Though it seemed like even the small motion made him dizzy after sitting up for nearly a half hour. "That was...what I was attempting to explain, before. You have no obligation to stay here. These are not your…difficulties. They were pressed on you without your knowledge or your willing participation. This has all been...too carefully planned," he added to himself, glancing down at his forearms again.

There was something wrong about those cuts too, Mirk thought. But he knew better than to try to pry more than one secret out of Genesis at a time. "Well, I'm willing. So let me know what's happening, Genesis. Please. I can tell something's wrong in the K’maneda. What are you doing?"

"You would be...well advised to retract that willingness until it has all been fully explained. True choice...cannot come without knowledge."

"Well, you're not going anywhere, like I said. So, explain. If you would, please."

Genesis sighed deeply. "The K'maneda is...not what it once was. This...hierarchy. The powerful collaborating with their...own kind across the realms to chain the weak. An inevitable consequence of...certain dispositions common among all people. It can never be entirely destroyed. But it is our duty to resist. It is not our duty to...willingly abet it."

Mirk shook his head. "I'm sorry, messire, but you're being too vague. I want to know what's happening. Here and now. What are all those djinn for? They're always at the transporter whenever the Fourteenth and the Third go out. And they always come back hurt. The same as all the men from the low-born divisions, the First and yours especially. The only ones who don't end up dying are the ones that go with the djinn. It isn't right, messire. Is that what you're talking about?"

"The djinn are...Ravensdale's tools. As you noticed, they are there...to keep those he favors from bearing the brunt of things."

"Who is Ravensdale? Everyone mentions him, but no one wants to explain."

"He is a...miserable profiteer who needs to be...dealt with. But he has claimed the head position in the K'maneda. He is...choosing all the contracts himself. And...dispensing with them as he sees fit."

Genesis didn't need to explain what he meant by dealt with. Mirk knew the commander well enough by then to know that when he used those sort of words, the person they were directed at wasn't long for the world. Though, considering that Ravensdale, whoever that actually was, was still in command, he had to be terribly powerful. "If it'll help all the poor men and those djinn, then methinks I agree with you. Though maybe not in...euh, such a final way."

"With him...there is no other way."

Mirk sighed. "What are you planning, Genesis? What are you getting at? Forgive me for prying, but if you have a plan, I'd like to know about it. You said it yourself. Choice and knowledge."

"There is, as of yet, no...concrete plan. Many things are in motion. However...with Ravensdale...one must strike when there is an opportunity. One can...tilt the odds in one's favor. But the final movement...will come when it reveals itself. Until then...this," Genesis said, gesturing at his still-injured legs.

"Then I’ll keep helping. If you're going to keep doing this, then you'll need someone to heal you. And everyone else who decides to help. I only wish that it didn't have to be so...so violent. But methinks that's the way things are here, as far as I've seen."

Genesis glanced at the cuts on his arms again. "One cannot change what they are. One can only...put it to good use."

"Then let me do that too. I'm not good for much, messire. I can't fight. I'm a healer. And even if I could fight, I can’t leave Earth. So...let me do this. And anything else that I might be suited to."

Genesis sighed. "I don't…understand why you would choose to concern yourself with this."

"Because all I've ever wanted to do is help." Mirk said, pausing to work a particularly nasty tangle out of Genesis's hair as he tried to think of the best way to explain. "I never wanted to be involved in everything that goes on with the guilds and the noble mages. I wasn't suited to it. But my family needed me after Uncle Marc died. Now that they’re all…well, anyway, I'd like to go back to what I was doing before. This isn't the same as the abbey, but it's close enough. And…well, it might sound strange to you, but this place has the same feel. Like I have a family again. And it wouldn’t be right to let my family be hurt. So, if what you're doing can make things better, then I'd like to be a part of it. That's what I'm suited to. Helping. So...let me help. Please."

Genesis glanced over his shoulder at Mirk. His face was a tired mask, without any hint of an expression that could give Mirk a clue to what he was thinking. "You can leave. At any time. As more becomes...clear to you. I do not believe you...fully understand."

Mirk shook his head. "Some things can't ever be understood all the way. Sometimes we have to have faith."

That drew a frown onto Genesis's face, at least. "Faith has nothing to do with it."

"Then I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree, messire."

Genesis muttered to himself under his breath, fidgeting with the thin sheet draped over his lower half. Mirk had gone through the trouble of finding him something to wear that wouldn't hurt too much, and found that the strange, long and loose eastern trousers K’aekniv said the commander chose to sleep in fit the bill. Mirk had the suspicion that Genesis would be more tractable if he didn't wake up to find himself completely naked. "If that is your choice...then it is your choice."

Before he could stop himself, Mirk paused his brushing to put a hand on Genesis's shoulder, on the inside, further away from the injured joint. "You're my friend, Genesis. And you're a good person, no matter how hard you try to get people to think you aren't. So I'm glad to help however I can."

Genesis didn't reply. But his arms twitched at his sides.

"Though," Mirk continued, "I'm going to have to be a little insistent with you, messire. You're in no condition to go running around like usual. You're staying in bed for another week, methinks. At least."

"Idleness is not...conducive to any project."

"Sometimes you have to rest to get better. But maybe I can bring you some books to read, as long as you stay in bed."

Genesis slouched further, muttering to himself. "Hmph...bribery..."

"Here. You've been up for too long. I can tell you're getting tired. Lie back down and I'll keep working on this," Mirk said, tugging lightly on his hair. "Once you're asleep, it'll be easier to see to...euh, the rest." Before Genesis could protest, Mirk put an arm around him, giving him a gentle nudge in the middle of his chest to start him going backwards. It was alarmingly easy to overpower his resistance.

"I am not tired," Genesis said, now left with nothing to glare at besides the ceiling.

"Hmm...methinks we'll just have to wait and see about that, messire."

Before Mirk could even start on Genesis's hair again, after pausing to get an extra blanket from the supply cabinet to cover him with, the commander was asleep again. Mirk hesitated before draping it over him, looking his body over, trying to see all the stitched up wounds and bruises covered in poultices with a healer's eye rather than a friend's.

It was pointless. When Genesis was like that, cold and lifeless in sleep, he looked so fragile. Defenseless. His thin chest barely moved, his long, slender neck bared, his face drained of its characteristic rigidness as Genesis's unforgiving hold on his own emotions was loosened by slumber.

It made it easy to forget that Genesis could shift from dead unconsciousness to vicious attention in the blink of an eye. That, no matter how injured, he could nearly always force himself to snap out a hand the moment he woke and kill most anything within reach. The truth, Mirk thought, floated somewhere in between. He'd seen Genesis cut down opponents on the road to Nantes, one after one, effortless and unrelenting. But he'd also seen him completely disarmed by a handshake, perplexed by smiles and tears and laughs and what he'd done to merit them.

It reminded Mirk of something that Father Jean had told him, as he'd sat beside him in the abbey's main courtyard, watching Mirk work with one of the sisters to shield himself from the emotions he'd suddenly found himself bombarded by. He needed to be careful with shielding, the priest had said. It could be a weakness as well as a strength. The thicker the shielding, the less accustomed the inside became to being touched.

He was being silly. Chiding himself under his breath, Mirk tucked Genesis in up to his chin and started working at his hair again. It was a small thing, but Mirk thought Genesis would appreciate having it back in order as much as he did the rest of his body.