“Come. Let us get you cleaned up,” Arehal said, stepping closer to him.

D’Argen and Arehal were never that close. And especially not since Arehal ended her relationship with Vah’mor centuries ago. D’Argen was much closer to Vah’mor than Arehal and it was easier to visit the general in Evadia than to go looking for Arehal out in the world. As much fun as it was in the past to try and find her in order to deliver Vah’mor’s sickeningly sweet love letters to her.

She stared at him now, her brown eyes sparkling in the afternoon light and—

Afternoon. D’Argen startled when that thought registered and he whipped around to look out Lilian’s windows. The sun was not visible but it was clearly high in the sky. D’Argen had left Vah’mor’s chambers barely after the general broke their fast. Had so much time passed since he found Lilian? Or had the time passed while he held them down against their will?

D’Argen felt sick. He raised a hand to his stomach and pushed, hoping it would make the nausea go away. He had not eaten anything and there was nothing to throw up other than bile. It would be best to keep himself from getting sick.

A hand on his shoulder startled him and he flinched. When he looked up, Abbot’s hand was shaking in the air between them. The artist looked so scared.

“Sorry, sorry,” D’Argen muttered the apology and looked down at his hand where he was trying to keep his stomach from jumping around. The pressure under his ribs increased and it took him a moment to separate it from the pain he felt earlier.

Lilian’s pain. The mahee’s pain.

He remembered the last time a Never Born died. They all did. They felt it. The mahee was one, even if it was separated into so many bodies. When one of those bodies died, the mahee in the rest of them rebelled. The pain of it was like being run through with a sword. D’Argen knew that comparison was accurate only because when he had felt that pain once, during battle, it had distracted him enough for a sword to sink into his stomach and pierce out the other side.

D'Argen pushed Abbot’s hand away as he stumbled to the corner of the room where a waste basket waited. He collapsed in front of him and heaved. The bile was sour and stung at a cut inside his mouth and his entire body was shaking, contracting, trying to get something out that was not even there.

A warm hand started rubbing his back and the sour stink of bile was covered by a scent that could only be described as desert sands. D’Argen rested his forehead on his arms, crossed over the waste bucket.

It took him a few more heaves before his body finally gave up on trying to expel anything. The warm hand kept rubbing soothing circled on his back. When he looked up, Abbot was fidgeting, fingering the pouch at his belt that held his pipe and tobacco leaves. Yaling was pacing a tight circle behind him, her eyes never straying from D’Argen.

“Fuck me,” D’Argen muttered.

A chuckle behind him had him looking at Arehal. She was smiling but it still looked sad.

“Let us get you cleaned up,” Arehal repeated.

D’Argen nodded stiffly and let her help him stand. “Stay here,” he ordered the two. “I will be back shortly.”

Abbot visibly relaxed, his shoulders dropping and his hand gripping the pouch loosely. Yaling stopped pacing and nodded quickly.

“Call for me if you need me.”

“Of course.”

Arehal waited until their brief exchange was done and then wrapped an arm around D’Argen’s shoulders. She guided him to the doors. When they opened, D’Argen was surprised to see the crowd there. They parted for him and Arehal and the doors closed behind him, but it was their faces that made D’Argen stumble. There was surprise, pity, and even curiosity… but most of them were scared. The fear was so easily etched on multiple features that D’Argen froze on the spot.

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Arehal unwrapped her arms from around him and instead grabbed his arm. The crowd parted as she tugged him away. Her hold was tight and strong and he followed her without thinking. Arehal dragged him barely a few feet down the hall before D’Argen started struggling. He did not want to be too far from Lilian.

He noticed a group of mortals at the end of the hall, leaning and whispering to one another even as their eyes stayed focused on the crowd. They knew something was wrong but not what. When one of them noticed D’Argen looking, she hit her companion lightly. It took a moment before the entire group, a dozen mortals that cleaned the rooms regularly, noticed him and raised their chins. D’Argen ignored them. They scattered.

Arehal’s grip on his arm tightened even more as she dragged him and then stopped. She threw open the doors to a room in the same hall. It was empty and D’Argen could not recall who it belonged to. There was, however, a basin filled with water near the wardrobe.

“You are hurt,” Arehal said as she finally let him go.

“It’s not my blood.”

She reached up and he tracked her hand. Her thumb landed on his cheek and swiped hard. It was painful. When she pulled her hand away, she showed him fresh blood. His own blood. D’Argen felt something inside him squeeze hard. He was hurt. He was wounded. By Lilian. By Lilian’s mahee. That was…

“Impossible, I know,” Arehal said as if reading his thoughts.

D’Argen was numb as she took one of his hands and dipped it in the bowl. She also dipped a cloth and then reached to clean his cheek. It was not the only cut on his skin. While his hand soaked, she cleaned a few more cuts, the water stinging, on his face and neck. His robes were ripped up so he had no argument against it when she told him to undress. She even helped. Once his chest was bare, D’Argen noticed the multiple shallow cuts that littered his torso and arms.

She cleaned them all with quick swipes of the already stained cloth. Most were so shallow that, with his natural healing, they closed up before she was done.

“Switch,” she ordered.

D’Argen followed without thinking, soaking his other hand while she cleaned the first one of the dried blood.

“What are you doing here?” he finally had the energy to ask, trying to focus on something other than the fact that Lilian had not only harmed themselves but also harmed D’Argen.

“Acela asked me to visit. She wanted a report.”

That answered that question and though D’Argen wanted to ask more, he had no idea what.

“You have been hurt by the mahee before,” Arehal started softly. D’Argen’s eyes snapped to her face in surprise, mouth open ready to deny it, but no words came out. She was not looking at him as a bitter smile bloomed on her face. “It was always by accident or not to do harm, but it has happened.”

“What do you mean?”

Arehal shrugged and dropped his hand back in the bowl, picking up the other to clean it too. The cloth was rough and stained.

“When Simeal or the other physicians do their blood tests, they cut you. It is for your own good though and the mahee knows this, so it allows it. When you are practicing or sparring, when you are there as someone is using their mahee and they do not know it… it is an accident. But it happens.”

“The mahee—”

“Mahee calls to mahee,” Arehal interrupted with the saying. “And it does not harm itself. In fact, just the thought is wiped from your mind if it ever even rises. Think now.” Arehal dropped his hand back into the bowl. Her nails were digging into his skin. “I want you to imagine, right now, hurting me. Punching me. I pulled you away from your friend, your friend in need, and—”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” Her grip on his hand under the water was becoming painful. “Am I hurting you?”

“For… for my own good.”

“No. Not really,” she responded and even lifted one shoulder in a shrug. One of her nails broke skin. D’Argen winced. “Come now. You want to hurt me and—”

“No!”

“—you want to get back to Lilian’s side. You want to tell Acela to fuck off—”

“Stop it!”

“—and then throw her out of the room, on her ass, where she belongs—”

“That’s not true!”

“—probably even Simeal. Who knows what concoction she came up with and is going to force Lilian to drink. It could even harm them and—”

“She would never.”

“—and then Lilian will truly be dead.”

D’Argen yanked his hand out with a force that surprised even him, his hand swiping at Arehal where she was leaning too close to him. His knuckles made contact. Arehal threw her head back. D’Argen froze. He looked down at his hand, soaked in the stained water with blood. The crescents from Arehal’s nails were there and two of them were bleeding.

Arehal turned her head and the edge of her lips was red. She prodded the wound visibly with a tongue and then smiled at him.

“Something is wrong with the mahee,” Arehal said and then spat out a wad of blood into the bowl of water.

D’Argen felt a shiver run down his spine and his hands started shaking.