For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Unable to grasp for air, he felt how he suffocated in silence, how something broke and crumbled inside him.

They would kill him if he was caught. Or at the very least demand for him to be expelled from the Order. They would take his home away, his identity, his life. And Telassi would let it happen. Telassi wasn’t sure if they could protect him. Telassi was willing to sacrifice him.

They were supposed to be his family.

Renor’s knees buckled, and he felt Ilya stepping close, supporting him with his own body. Ilya. If he was expelled, if he lost his immortality, so would his companion. He felt Ilya’s coarse fur on his cheek. He could breathe him in. He smelt like rain and dirt and wet horse and eternity. And fear. And pain. No. No, no! They could not ask him to do that. He could not agree to that. For once in his life, the stakes were too high.

He would not see Ilya die.

“Renor? Renor, can you hear me?” Telassi’s voice was at the edge of his world. Fighting, scraping against walls he didn’t mean to erect. But he couldn’t let them in. Not yet, not now, not at all. It meant letting poison enter, he was sure of it.

‘No’, Ilya said. ‘Give them a chance.’ How could he be that strong? That forgiving? Renor could feel the same pain, the same horror beating in his chest. He could feel something else, too: Ilya didn’t want to let go. And he knew, he knew there was a part within him that felt the same, that wanted to cling to this person as long as possible. Beneath all the terror, he wanted to believe that there was a reason. A real reason. It was the same for Ilya, and his companion had decided to believe in that reason for now.

Renor bit his tongue and forced himself to stand up straight. The first breath he drew consciously in made his chest ache and his head spin a little slower. Pretending everything was alright, he fought down all the darkness that threatened to drown him. “I hear you”, he said. He wanted to say. It was only a whisper.

Telassi’s brow knit together. He could see the worry in their face and the determination in their stance at the same time.

“I need you to wake him up”, they said. “I need you to talk to him.”

For a second, Renor wanted to simply walk away. If they were only going to repeat themselves, he could invest his precious time better elsewhere.

‘No’, Lexon said in his mind. ‘Listen to them.’ The horse’s voice was so strained, it almost made him shiver. And it definitely made him stay put.

‘Out of my mind’, he almost hissed.

‘Someone needs to supervise you’, Lexon said.

Renor wanted to push but his attention flickered away when Telassi spoke again. “I know it’s hard to believe and accept, Renor”, they said. Understanding in their tone, that made him want to smack them in the face. “But something is coming. I did a little research in the last weeks, and something big is coming, trust me. And it feels -”

“It feels?”, he interrupted. ‘Trust me’ was hard to stomach from someone who was prepared to throw you in front of a cart. He couldn’t bear that. “You want me to do that because of a feeling? Have you lost your damn mind, Telassi?”

“I have not -”

“But it looks like you have!”, he said. He gestured grandly, knowing and not caring that the movement was lost to their eyes, their ears could never interpret it correctly. Not caring when he saw them tense. “Why would you do this?”

“Let me speak.” There was a forced, strong calmness to their voice. And power. This was a command. He felt his tongue in his mouth going limb. He bared his teeth, a hiss rising in his throat.

“That Moska was part of a life coven on the western edges of the forest. A life coven.”

Renor forced himself to nod. Life covens were covens that focused on children. Witch children in particular but also orphans and runaways. They raised and protected these children and their own. The Moska’s own children were probably a part of that coven, too. Moska was the title the birth-giving parent took on as long as the child wasn’t of age yet. Since that person had not assumed his birth name again, there had to be at least one child of his own blood in his care.

“All the children are gone.”

He couldn’t speak but he felt his eyes practically bulging out of their sockets.

Telassi continued: “They had seventeen children in their care. Four of them dormant witches. And all of these children are one. The head of the coven refuses to talk to anyone about what happened, and the other witches are forbidden to do so.” They paused, and Renor felt his tongue move again. Their grip on his silence was dwindling.

He took the opportunity to fight down the rest of the magic. “So a few children went missing, and you want to go to war over it?” Speaking burned. His tongue ached, the muscles in his throat felt sore and tight. And he was unreasonable, of course. Investigating such a thing was a good cause, a necessary one, too. It did not excuse putting your best friend’s life in danger, however. Not like this.

Telassi crossed their arms but did not reinforce the command. “Don’t be stupid, Renor. Children don’t vanish from life covens.”

“So we have a snatcher out there — still no reason to wake up that Moska before he’s healed.” No reason to kill me. No reason to kill Ilya.

“That Moska was attacked on Wreorgian soil, by Wreorgian soldiers. He woke up a lot of their fields weeks ahead of the season, Renor. Something is going on. And it’s important. I can’t explain it to you, I have no idea what it is. That is why I need you. I need you not just as the only Vandrainor who can do this but as the only friend I can trust with something that important. I ask you, Renor. I will not order you. I will not command you to risk your life. I need you there. You are the only one who can do it. But if you don’t, I’ll find another way.”

Renor ached. He didn’t want to let them down. He didn’t want to make them worry even more. And thinking of children, witch children, in Wreorgian hands made him sick. What kind of price would a witch child fetch with the right buyer?

He shook his head, trying to get everything back in order in his mind. “I need to think about it”, he said at last. The words felt horribly hollow. He wanted to say something else; so much else. He wanted to promise Ilya that he’d never do that. He wanted to swear by his oath that he would not let the innocent get harmed. He wanted to scream at Telassi for letting him choose. He felt betrayed. By them, by the world, by himself.

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They nodded slowly. “I can give you three days”, they said. “I’ll need some time to set up arrangements if you agree. Three days and I still have that.”

He felt his shoulders sacking. Three days. Three days was not as much as he had hoped for. For a second, he wanted to pray to the Shadow, that the damned ongai might wake up in the next two of them. A childish thought. But he had it anyway. “Three days sound good”, he said, his voice still hollow as if a stranger was talking through his mouth.

“Thank you”, Telassi said.

Renor didn’t answer. He didn’t have the strength to do it. He turned around, pulled himself up on Ilya’s back, and let his companion decide where to go. He didn’t feel the rain still pouring down on him.

Ilya carried him back to their quarters, and Renor slid down his back without any elegance or grace. He fell, face down, in the pile of dirty bedding he had put here weeks ago because he preferred to sleep close to Ilya.

He didn’t move. All the mud on his body, all the wetness in his hair and clothes, could not bring him to move. If he just fell asleep strong enough, maybe he would wake up in the right world. In a world where all of this had just been a messy dream. He wanted that. He needed that.

He didn’t want to decide what he would do.

‘What should we do?’, Ilya asked, echoing the horrible chaos of thoughts inside Renor’s mind.

‘You decide’, Renor said. He couldn’t. He could not make that decision. If someone caught them, if someone found out, it would have been his deeds that sealed their fate. He would not endanger his companion’s life without his agreement.

Fragments of Ilya’s mind danced in front of his eyes. A jumble of feelings, ideas, pictures, and words. The sense of flight was strong in all of them.

Renor sat up and put his head against Ilya’s strong, wet, dirty leg. The coarse hair felt almost leathery, coated with mud and a few stray blades of grass. He didn’t mind.

‘Where’d you want to go, hm?’, he asked. ‘Not much left to run to.’

He thought of the sunken continents, of the maelstroms that had replaced them. The icy desert just a few sea miles away from their southern shore. Safe for the Linked Islands, they were alone. And the Islands were too small to hide there, too well connected. Once, there had been nine different continents, maybe more. But they were all gone, all vanished when the Change came. Nowadays, the world was small. So small it might just suffocate him.

He shook his head. That was a heavy thought. A thought he wouldn’t have cared much for on a normal day. Today it rang out loud to him. It underlined the helplessness, the helplessness even the universe experienced, to his tortured mind.

He didn’t want to lose his home. He didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to die.

But he had sworn an oath.

Like every other Vandrainor he had sworn to protect creation, he had dedicated his life — that gift of immortality and power — to the innocent and those who could not fight for themselves. He had sworn to not be cowardly whenever he was called to arms.

He had fought in the last two wars against the Ongai. He had killed in both war— and peacetime. There was blood on his hands, on his soul.

He had broken a law, a dozen laws, during his studies. He had broken his oath during them. He had learned magic he never should have learned, for reasons that were not always noble.

Maybe it was time for him to pay a price. But why Ilya? He had never done anything except not stopping him. Was that enough to be punished all the same? Was that fair?

‘Let me think’, Ilya said. Renor nodded. He forced his mind to detach from Ilya’s. Something they had not done in ages. It felt strange. He could not help but feel at the wall again and again, just as his tongue would with a strange spot in his mouth.

They had had trouble connecting in the beginning, Renor knew that. Just like many other pairs, their connection had not been flawless. For months and weeks, they had been forced to sleep with open minds, embracing each other mentally. Awoken rather harshly whenever they failed. Renor had no first-hand memories of these months without sleep, but Ilya had. And whenever he touched them, they were interlaced with exhaustion, pain, and hopelessness. A grayness he saw only in the memories people’s minds alter on purpose because some things were just beyond comprehension.

He was glad to have no memories of that time. He was glad, that he could not remember a time when he hadn’t been able to tell what Ilya was doing at any given moment; how his mood was when he had eaten last time. The methods for that process were horrible but Renor was glad to not remember the price.

After a while, he brought himself to get up. Ilya was still thinking but even without connection, Renor knew that he needed to rub him dry. And he did just that. He cleaned and dried and combed him. He conjured up a new set of pants and a shirt for himself, discarding the dirty stuff in a corner.

After that, he just sat. These simple tasks had taken up all the strength he had; he could not bring himself to move. Not until Ilya’s mind touched his wall, and it broke down instantly.

Renor looked up and at Ilya. His now clean and dry companion looked at him with his clear eyes. There was no twinkle, no chuckle. And his mind felt just as serious.

And when he spoke, he spoke with a gravitas Renor had never heard before. It made him shutter to his very bones. ‘We are doing this’, he said. And he was afraid. He couldn’t hide it from Renor.

And Renor felt the same. The fear jumping on his shoulders, grinning just at the edge of his vision. But something else, too. Not on his shoulders, but in his mind. Determination.

They would do this. And they would survive. They would survive because Renor would not fuck things up. And even if he did — he knew several ways from stopping people to tell other people’s secrets.

He would do that. And he would keep Ilya safe.