“This one,” Lily says in a carrying voice, “has a sting even I might respect. Zidanya, attend me in an hour’s time.” Five steps had taken us to within ten meters of Amber and Zidanya, standing by a table laden with food; two steps more has Lily finally releasing my fist and gently pushing me forward into Amber’s arms.

“Lady Sheid.” I’m aware enough to hear the formality in Zidanya’s voice, and the lack of surprise, but I’m collapsed into Amber with my brain more or less totally turned off. “We must to hie him home,” she says, voice lower, once Lily’s footsteps have taken her far enough away for deniability. “The Magelord is kith to a state of shock.”

“No, I need to get him back to the room, in as much haste as I can manage. You have to answer to Lady Sheid for whatever happened up there.”

“What did Lily do, that he did such a thing?”

At that, I manage to stir a little bit. My arms tighten around Amber and I use that as a way to raise my head, and they wait for me. “She tried to… the orbs, how they work, she wanted it. Charm.” I shake my head, struggling to clear my mind. “She tried to charm how the orbs work out of me. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. Didn’t have the right.”

“An hour’s mulling, she gifts me, to stew on the matter. And such a nice party it was.”

“Food’s good. Adam, take this.”

Following Amber’s pragmatic tone and an emphatic shrug, there’s a pastry in my hands. I put it in my mouth, moving on autopilot, and I find myself biting into a flaky crust with a smoothly rich texture undergirding it that reminds me of avocados. There’s meat inside the crust, meat and beans and carrots, spiced with garlic and onion, with salt and capsaicin and black pepper and more. It’s delicious, it’s gone in seconds and my stomach is audibly rumbling, and Amber just laughs.

I follow her in a mostly-daze as she alternates between shoving food into a basket, and where she got the basket escapes me, and shoving food straight into my hands. The hollow terror and emptiness in me fades under the onslaught of mostly protein and starches, leaving behind a deep weariness that drowns out any anxiety or worry.

I keep glancing around, looking for one specific person, but I can’t manage it. The crowd is a riot of color and shapes, and my eyes stubbornly won’t focus on anything, not even on Amber. It’s not long before we’re passing through the exit, and I pause at the threshold. “Not seeing Sara.” I murmur it to Amber, leaning on her. “She okay?”

“Sara is enjoying the party.” I think there’s a smile on Amber’s face. It shouldn’t be this hard to tell. “I couldn’t tell you whether she was spying, gossipping, or arguing magical theory. All three, perhaps.”

Okay, definitely a smile, it’s showing in her voice. “That’s… good to hear.”

“She’s a woman grown and can take care of herself, my lord.” A little bit of exasperation and more than a little bit of worry is leaking into Amber’s tone. “And now I take care of you, by getting you to bed.”

“Keyhome.” We’re walking again, me leaning on her a little, shivering. There’s not enough heat, I don’t have enough body heat, and my clothes certainly aren’t helping.

“Keyhome,” Amber agrees. “You’ll be safe there.”

It takes me a few moments to parse what that implies, which is a little embarrassing. There’s part of me that wants to protest, wants to ask her to stay with me instead of going back to the party. I throttle that, hard. “Yeah. Woulda liked to parade round the party with you on my arm, though.”

My sally is weak, but the way she pulls me into her shoulder, hugging me just that much tighter, feels great. “To watch you with Lily, perhaps it should have been you on my arm, hmm?”

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

I feel the giggles rising from that hollow place inside me, and it seems like I can’t both walk and laugh so Amber pulls me to the side until the fit passes. “I’d have liked that too, I think,” I manage to say as we keep walking, and I look up to see Amber’s smile.

“I hope you know,” she eventually says, smile gone strange, “that no matter where your path takes you, or who you become, you will not walk it alone.”

“Mmrr.” I reach for words, delicately, deliberately. They’re fuzzy and want to run and hide, but corralled, they cooperate. “Reminds me. Shoulda been nicer to… Maarah. At least said thanks for the offer.”

“I will tell her that, later tonight.” She tilts my head up and kisses me, face unreadable. “Your kindness is a beacon, my lord, but remember that we have lit our torches from it as well.”

We’re at the door, which seems strange. Hadn’t we just left the party? “That sounds nice,” I manage to say, with all the appeal and grace of a thruster gone guttering. “I have… no idea what it means, but it sounds nice.”

She’s smiling, so everything is probably fine, one way or the other. “I think it best if you keep the Home Key inside. Sleep, eat, and if you can, sleep again; when you rise again, we will be here.” She kisses me again, slow and careful like I’m going to shatter, and I try to memorize the feeling of her lips, the taste and the texture and the warmth.

I move on autopilot, slowly, finally relaxing in the warmth and comfort of Keyhome, absolutely secure in the knowledge of its safety. I’m aware enough to take my boots off, and then I’m shuffling into bed, utterly depleted.

It feels like only a moment later that I bolt upright, panting and sweating. There’s a strangled scream on my lips and an outpouring of mana as a couple of orbs come into being, and then I’m rolling over to find a dryer spot in the bed, whimpering.

I don’t remember the dream. I never remember the dream, and I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. There’s only the almost formless remnants of the feelings, like toxic, corrosive tendrils that my mind can’t help but grasp for to try to bring into clearer focus even as I try to chase the thoughts away.

Pain, violence, exhaustion.

I drink water slowly, small gulps and long sips, giving my trembling hands something to hold on to. They stop shaking eventually, and the nausea passes without me vomiting up the pastries from last night, which… no. I shake my head, shoving thoughts of the night to the side.

Sleep, eat, sleep. I’m not alone anymore, not outside of this very specific moment. I can get good advice from someone who’s an O-class’s worth of amazing, hanging around with the shattered remnant that is me; I can follow that advice, too.

Well, too, I’ve had a lot of practice taking care of my body when I’m emotionally shattered, I suppose, and the advice all matches.

There’s a basket of those pastries from the party, and other food besides. It’s sitting in one of the cupboards on top of a preservation rune that swims in my vision, always shifting whenever I try to see or record it; I remember how much that pissed me off at the time, when I was catastrophically short on glyphs I could use and was hoping to scavenge something, anything combat usable from anywhere I could.

Focus. Food, food is a good idea.

I realize that I’m ravenously hungry once the first pastry goes down. I work my way through the whole basket. A kind of cheese pastry, a meat pastry, and one with both; that’s most of the bulk of the box, but there’s more food than that. Balls of rice with something salty and savory laced through them, some sort of breaded and fried thing that tastes vaguely like crustacean, thin cylinders of rice with a salty bite from some kind of maybe-raw fish inside them; there’s a dozen different little things, and it calms me down for more reasons than just being fuel for my body.

There are desserts at the bottom, and after I finish them I feel like I’m either going to burst into tears or drift away in a river of contentment. Both seems overly indulgent and like I can’t make up my mind about what emotions I’m feeling, and for all that there’s nobody there to judge me there’s still me around to judge me, so I focus on cleaning up and let my hindbrain figure out what the emotions of the moment are.

It still hasn’t made my mind up by the time I tuck myself back into bed, having actually this time taken the half-dried, sweated-through clothes off that I’d worn to the gala. I toss and turn fitfully on the dry side of the sheets, knowing that I need the rest but also knowing that I’ll be dreaming again, nightmares whose absence in my memory when I wake is a blessing and curse both, until I grow frustrated enough to try meditation. Contentment, I tell myself, and by distracting myself with thoughts of Amber, the taste of her lips and the kindness of the food selections she made and the way she looked at me earlier in the evening, I start to drift off again, finally.

When I do finally fall back asleep, it’s to the memory of sliding, and of a tail wrapped around my knee.