When I heard the soft coo of Amber’s voice, I remembered where I was. Her bed, her room, but where was she? The arms that’d held me through the night weren’t present nor was there the soft comfort of her chest against my back. My eyes fluttered open in search of her before screwing shut as the morning dawn jabbed its bright fingers into my retina. I let my eyes adjust. First to the darkness behind my eyelids, and then crack by crack allowing in more light until they were open and I found my absent bedmate.

Amber was at her desk, having swapped her billowy oversized sleep shirt for a compact bra and boxers. Backlit by the sun, she looked like a painter’s dream subject—focused, beautiful, and unaware of anyone watching her. As it was all her attention was angled down at the object she labored over drawing and replacing all manner of tools from a rolled out belt that hung off the desk’s edge.

It’s ridiculous to say, but I felt a bit jealous of whatever inanimate thing had lured her away from me. Had gotten her to tie up her raspberry locs and use those long strong fingers to twist and pinch the tools needed for whatever purpose. I wished I was on that desk so strongly that I couldn’t suppress the slight moan that’d escaped from me; betraying my conscious state.

“Temple, you’re up?” Amber asked.

I threw the blanket off myself and made a show of stretching and yawning.

“Only just,” I said. “I’m not much of a morning person.”

“Most wouldn’t be after the partying you did last night.”

I laughed, “Sure, but you’re up early. I drank conceptual cocktails you had Real booze. Shouldn’t this be the other way around?”

“Hmm,” she hummed, “it would be if I wasn’t as experienced as I am. Besides, I have an actual reason to be up early.”

“I take it it’s whatever is on that desk?” I asked.

“You can see it easier beside me than from the bed.”

I blushed at the implication—if it was a real implication at all and not just my embarrassment—that she’d known I was watching, but I pushed it aside and sprung from the bed to take point behind Amber. Allowed myself the luxury of touch as I slung my arms around her neck laying my head on her shoulder.

The object atop her desk was my mask now in two pieces. Though calling it an object at this point felt improper. There was the part of the mask I was familiar with, the faceplate as it were, and it sat politely to the side, its expression mellowed in some way. While the other half of the mask was what captured Amber’s attention and demanded reclassification. It was a mess of muscles cabled across the mask’s other half. While splayed out beneath itself were eight long chitinous legs that made the entire visual remind me of meals involving crab that Dad sometimes acquired from passing traders. The top part of the mask being just another piece of shell to support and protect the dense muscle within.

“Alls below, what is that?” I asked.

“Your little mask,” she said. “It’s actually a pretty interesting piece of sorcerous technology, and—unfortunately for you and your ilk—as sure a sign as any that Nemesis hasn’t let time dull her cruel inventiveness.”

I blinked on the Omensight to better examine the “mask” as it was. Threads of an unknown Court ran throughout its muscles carrying countless signals. Amber, noticing my now active sorcerous sight, took that as her cue to begin her demonstration. She pulled forth a long metal tool that was L-shaped and topped with a weight. Slid it beneath the mask and tilted it up to apply pressure from the inside. The legs immediately shivered and clacked against the desk like impatient fingers. Spiked purple-black threads surged through the mask’s muscles.

“Parasitism,” she lovingly named it. “Not a Court you’d commonly find summoners of outside specific branches of medicine dealing with curses. That being by more socially appropriate channels of course. There’s plenty of Parasitism summoners at the veiled markets.”

I shifted my gaze to her in surprise at the confirmation of innumerable high school horror stories that would be bandied about around holiday bonfires. They’d involve hunters trying to sell restricted entities, assassin summoners contracted for a killing only to extort the client through the Ghost of the slain, and even stories involving a student discovering a strange site on the NewNet that would trap their mind in an infinite mental Labyrinth only to have their now ego-less body kidnapped and sold. They were terrifying tales to share, but they’d only been stories.

“The veiled markets are real?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, very,” Amber said. “Temple, it’s not like every bad person died in the Changeover. See Nemesis as exhibit A for that.”

She directed my attention back to the mask and continued her demonstration. She traded the L-shaped tool for a scalpel which she used to prick the pad of her index finger. Carefully, she squeezed out three ruby beads of blood that made my mouth water as I craved to learn what Amber tasted like. However, I restrained myself and watched as they hit the mask. The carmine hue of Bloodlust surged through every muscle causing the mask’s legs to quiver in ecstasy.

“I’m sure by now you recognize this one,” Amber said.

“Bloodlust.”

“Good, now the last one I can’t really activate the same as the others.”

“Why not?”

“It’s function is to impede function. I’d have to put this through conditions to send it into overdrive or use some kind of code phrase. However, if you observe…”

Amber exchanged the scalpel for a pair of tweezers and a flat metal pick similar to a file. She snagged a bundle of muscles near the “forehead” of the mask and pulled back while using the flattened tool to press down-and-away the muscle cluster right beneath. Revealing a node of sharp red that reminded me of the phonemes that’d failed to capture the lindwurm.

“Bondage,” I said. “It has Parasitism, Bloodlust, and Bondage?”

“Masks as well,” Amber added.

“Why does Nemesis need four Courts to curse someone?”

Amber placed her tools down and I dropped the Omensight.

“She doesn’t,” Amber said, “or at least she didn’t when it came to me and my siblings. Back then it was more like dosing us, and she wasn’t interested in puppeting us at the time. This is evidence to her desires changing. It’s not enough to ruin someone’s life and make them do the unthinkable. She wants control of every little monster she’s making.”

“Thus the Bondage?” I asked.

“So you can’t slip the leash. Whether by frenzy or self-restraint.”

I traced my fingers against my jaw—when I’d ripped the mask off back at the ERO facility I’d felt a resistance to it releasing my skin.

“Bloodlust is for the obvious reason. It’s the curse itself, and apparently when you engage with it it floods the mask and thus yourself with even more of it.”

“So it snowballs out of control.”

“An exponential progression rather than the linear one I went through.”

“And the Parasitism, is that just to be creepy?” I asked.

“No, well, knowing Nemesis that might have been a beneficial feature. The Parasitism is how it hooks into your spirit to pump the curse into you without your body otherwise noticing. That, and it seems to release an enzyme intended to dissolve your face.”

“I thought it just helped hide my identity,” I said, as I clutched my face in a possessive reflex.

Amber grabbed the faceplate and pressed it into place until the mask came together with a click.

“It still does. The portion of the mask using Masks hides your identity and the nature of your Court. A beneficial side-effect while it covers the other ‘features.’”

I moved to the windowsill and leaned it against it—the mask wasn’t on me but I wanted to keep my distance. I’d had enough moments of feeling it bleed in my mind to tempt me into wearing it. My lips pulled back into a snarl as my fingers crossed into the seal for Atomic Glory, winding potential futures around and between them as would be kindling for the spell.

“So what next, we destroy it?” I asked, hoping hard that’d be the solution.

Instead, Amber shocked me as she grabbed the mask and clutched it against her chest. She looked at me and my suggestion with disappointment.

“No, Temple, we’re not going to destroy it. It’s not some evil ring,” she said.

I scoffed, “It’s a parasitic mask that cursed me. Alls below, on principle it should be destroyed.”

“Cause it scares you?” she asked.

“It’s an abomination.”

“So,” Amber said, “it didn’t ask to be made. Just like you didn’t ask to be born. We can blame and hate Nemesis. She’ll die for this, but this little guy is just doing what it’s made for.”

“It’s a ‘little guy’ now?”

“I suppose it is,” she said.

Amber shrugged and smiled gently at the mask in her arms like Mom would do when I’d rush home holding up some elementary school art piece. I shook the spell from my hand.

“You like it that much?”

“No,” she answered. “Its purpose is horrific and reminds me of horrible dark times, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have a little love and sympathy. There’ll be no one to applaud it or praise how well it executes its deeply disturbing functions. But maybe there should be…someone who can show a little love to the abominations of the world. Those beautiful monsters, innocent in their creation and purpose.”

Amber wasn’t looking at the mask when she said this. Her attention was fixed elsewhere—technically at the wall in front of her, but functionally at some higher ideal. Some deep memory that found its way into our shared present moment. The potency of which made me feel ashamed for my haste in the same way I’d felt when Sphinx had made her case about the White Wombs back at the facility.

“Even if they have a tie to your enemy, it doesn’t make them your enemy,” I whispered. “Fine, just keep that thing in storage. I don't want to look at it even if it is innocent in some respect.”

“Thank you, Temple,” Amber said, before slipping the mask into her storage-spell.

Anxious for reasons besides the mask and my curse, I paced back to Amber’s bed dropping down into it with a groan as my thoughts turned to Melissa and what I’d still yet to tell her.

“Did Melissa get home yet?” I asked.

Amber swiveled in her chair to look at me. Her legs crossed glowing in the morning light.

“No,” she said, “is there something you need to tell her?”

“Less of a need, more of a requirement,” I said, thinking of my promise to Melissa.

“Now isn’t that growth,” Amber cooed, “but you’re teasing me, Temple. What’s the big news?”

“You’ll have to wait. I don’t want to tell the same information…four separate times.”

“Four?” Amber asked. “Isn’t this just about Melissa?”

I waved my hand in the air noncommittally. Technically, it was about Melissa as she was a target, but as I lay there thinking it didn’t take the Omensight for me to see the grander web of what was happening. As well as how it affected all of my people whose concerns and safety pressed down on my chest as an insistent reminder.

“She’s the center, but it’s bigger than just her. It touches every—,” I said before my growling stomach cut me off.

Amber stifled a laugh, “Let’s get some food in you before your grand reveal, hmm Temple? We can hash this all out over breakfast.”

My stomach growled again at the mention of hash and breakfast. Amber broke, laughter pouring from her like a tipped cup. While a blush spread across my face fast as ink on paper.

“I’m getting dressed,” I tossed out as I fled her room.

* * *

The place we’d found ourselves was the balcony of an upscale brunch location down near the wharf. Spread out across our table were great plates of pancakes and waffles, bowls of eggs and baskets of fruit, paper-lined tins filled with bacon and slices of ham, while large pitchers of juice stood sentry. All of which was set on a series of concentric wheels to be spun about so no one would be forced to reach across the other.

It was an extravagant spread that I was grateful Amber was paying for, but as we waited I couldn’t help but turn toward the horizon. It’d been so long since I’d looked there—where I’d placed my vengeance—and I considered the feeling that the sight aroused. Bitterness, emptiness, and the sorrowful rage of an abandoned child.

The old self that had haunted me had an anger that burned hot as it immolated itself in an attempt to melt away every concern other than revenge. It wounded me to think this, but I didn’t burn for the loss of Mom and Dad—I’d not had the pleasure to know them. Yet, I felt a pain all the same because I’d never get to know them. There’d be no answer as to if they’d love me—I liked to think they would, because aren’t parents supposed to love their children? The only answer that came was the salt-seasoned breeze of the sea as it rolled past the balcony.

“Temple!” Amber barked.

“Huh, yeah?” I asked.

I turned my head from the horizon to her. She was forking bites of waffle with one hand while reading a text on Parasitism in the other on her sorc-deck. Well, she was, but now she’d fixed herself on me. Anyone could read the concern in her face.

“Anything interesting out there?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“Because I’ve been standing here for five minutes waiting for you to notice,” Lupe said.

I spun around to find Lupe leaning over the back of the chair nearest me in her tight conweave—most likely for today’s test. Her hair rode the breeze in a lazy fashion that matched the lackadaisical unrolling of her smile. Spreading my arms to embrace her, she circled the table and pulled me into a hug in turn—my face pressed into her soft yet firm stomach.

“I didn’t see you at the party last night,” I said, pulling back to see her face, only to find my reflection in the shaded glass of her spectacles.

She tilted her head laughing to a joke I never said. “Didn’t know I was on your mind like that.”

Blushing, I stammered out, “I mean, everyone’s on my mind all the time, ya know? Besides, I figured it was an event no one was planning on missing.” Alls below, not even Piggy—Sinaya—missed it, I thought to myself rather than say out loud.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Eh, not really accessible to me,” she said. “That many people across that many links, all the special effects run on Sorcery—alls below, even the drinks—it’s too much for me. Would mess with my bracelet and just give me back a jumbled glob of silhouettes with functionally no depth.”

“Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t think about it like that,” I said.

She shrugged it off before tousling my head and claiming the chair closest to me.

“You have no reason to,” she said, “but I wouldn’t be opposed to something more private. Speaking of, you were different just now. I mean, you feel different now, but there looking at the horizon…Amber, does she do that a lot?”

Amber raised a brow, “I think so. Yeah, Temple does now that you point it out.”

“I’m a small town girl,” I said, “the horizon’s pretty.”

Lupe looked at me—really, looked at me—her glasses angled down so her clouded could meet my direction and take in my entirety.

“No, that’s not how someone who thinks the horizon’s pretty behaves,” she said. “You had the posture and shift in your spirit like someone pulling out an old knife for sharpening. You know you need it, you’ll use it, but you don’t love it. The process has become a pain and still you just can’t toss the thing.”

Amber and I turned to find Lupe crossing the interior of the restaurant to our balcony. A smile broke across my face at the sight of her—it didn’t hurt she was wearing her conweave for today’s test. She laid her ax in its case against the table and took a seat beside me.

“That’s pretty poetic,” Amber said, “and rather accurate. It’s like you’re more assured, Temple, and this old knife—to use Lupe’s words—might be bringing you down. What changed?”

“Well, I did get laid last night,” I said.

Lupe cracked a smile at the news, and Amber tried to hide her wince. It was a good enough answer for them while being close enough to the truth for me. I’d tell them the full story at some point, but there was enough for me to deal with already let alone the chance that they’d…that things would play out differently with them compared to Sphinx.

“So, is that the big reason you called me out here?” Lupe asked. “I’m not the jealous type.”

It was technically Amber who’d called her. Apparently, while I was unconscious in the hospital everyone had traded addresses to contact the others to let them know when I’d woken up. A necessity as they’d decided to take shifts so everyone could get some amount of sleep, and so I wouldn’t wake up alone.

“Nah,” I said, “it’s a bigger deal than that.”

I spun the table over my way so I could refill my glass with lemonade. Lupe took that moment to steal a few pieces of bacon for herself. She tore off the strips of fat dropping them into a bowl of congee she’d ladled for herself. While the crispy meat bits she tossed into her mouth.

Behind her, I spotted #404 slipping out onto the balcony to join us. They held a finger to their lips, don’t say a word. I chuckled into my drink as I accepted my role as co-conspirator in what ultimately was as much a prank as a chance to spy on people. Taking my laugh as acceptance, #404 took the chair to my left.

Lupe asked, “Is the person you slept with going to be at this little get together?”

#404’s eyes widened at the news I’d slept with someone. Their attention drilled down onto me craving answers to probably a hundred small questions. However, I only had eyes for the empty chair next to Lupe that I knew wasn’t going to be filled.

Last night with Sinaya had been good, so good that we had been too enamored with each other to remember to trade addresses. My gallant butch was out there somewhere in the district, I knew that for sure, but they wouldn’t be here. I only hoped they were thinking about me as well.

“That’s not likely,” I answered. “But again, this meeting is not about someone shoving their dick into me. It’s about serious news.”

“You had a dick in you.” Amber leaned forward in concern, “Temple, did you use protection?”

“Fair point, some girls are pretty nasty,” Lupe said, smirking. “Do you like it nasty, Nadia?”

I rolled my eyes, “He was a virgin. It was probably fine, and I don’t know.”

#404 fell back in their chair in disbelief. Snapped their fingers so that Amber and Lupe could Remember they’d been there the entire time.

Secretary said, “Are you that naive as to just believe some random person saying they were a virgin?”

Lupe laughed, “Oooh, was it pity sex?”

“It wasn’t pity sex,” I said in a bid to defend myself. “He admitted it after. Even got me water and stuff for when I woke up.”

“Woke up?” Amber asked. “It was that good?”

“Yeah,” I said.

The table went silent at that detail. They all shared a look as they performed a quick mental calculus of how to judge the situation. #404 and Amber looked to Lupe to ask one last question.

“Where did you two do it?” Lupe asked.

“Inabathroom,” I mumbled.

Amber said, “What was that?”

“Inabathroom,” I muttered a hair louder.

#404 scowled, “Speak up, little brute.”

“It was in a bathroom, okay!”

They all leaned away from the news like I’d shit on the breakfast spread.

“Temple…”

“A brute indeed.”

“That’s classically nasty.”

“It was my choice,” I pleaded.

Amber said, “You could’ve taken their first time anywhere, but a bathroom?”

I buried my head in my hands. This couldn’t get worse.

“What was in a bathroom?” Melissa asked.

I dropped my head against the table. It’d gotten worse. When I looked up I was taken aback, as there standing on open air was Melissa sitting astride a strange combination of a moose with the head of an amoeba and antlers made of undulating neurons. Behind her was Ina whose arms were wrapped tight around Melissa’s waist.

The two of them slid from the strange entity’s back onto the balcony. While the beast narrowed down to needle-width and injected itself into Melissa’s arm before disappearing—it was her entity. My mouth stretched in surprise and glee, and Amber broke into soft applause.

“You graduated,” I said.

Melissa beamed at my statement—agreement if there was any—and quickly took her seat at the table between Amber and #404. Ina took the still-empty seat, the one I’d rather have filled with Sinaya, and I did my best to stomach the displeasure. Treating her was one of the deals I’d made with Melissa, after all.

“How’d it happen?” Amber asked.

Ina snorted, “Go on Mel, it’s your graduate tale.”

Melissa poured herself a glass of orange juice, guzzled half of it, and then shut her eyes so as not to see her audience as she recounted it.

“So, I’d gotten kind of drunk last night,” Melissa said, “and after getting into some stuff with Ina—”

“I’m stuff,” Ina gloated, and I resisted the urge to throttle her.

“After that, I was kind of feeling myself and decided to graduate right then,” she said. “I didn’t mean to get the entity I did—it’s very atypical for Knitcrofts—but I think it was for the best. Most of my family aren’t out here fighting like we are, and I wanted a way to keep up so everyone doesn’t have to worry about me as much.”

She opened her eyes, looking at me first, before glancing back to her drink in embarrassment.

“Damn, princess, I’ve heard about people graduating in battle, on their deathbed, but drunk that’s a special one,” Amber said. “Any chance we can hear what your pal’s name is?”

“Vind’fulla, He Whose Steps Twist the Familiar,” she said. “Enough about me, what’s this about something in a bathroom?”

Immediately #404, Lupe, and Amber realized they all were just so thirsty that their mouths were too occupied to provide an answer. Traitors the lot of them. I returned to find Melissa staring at me—all four pupils trained on my person. Her brow furrowed in the early stage of annoyance.

“Nadia, we have a deal don’t we?” she asked.

No secrets. I chugged my lemonade for strength and slammed the empty glass on the table.

“I fucked a virgin in the bathroom last night,” I admitted.

Ina bent over laughing as she prepared some barb to skewer me with only for Melissa to speak first, and end me worse than any insult.

“Huh,” she said, “wasn’t our first time in a bathroom?”

“Temple!”

“So you’ve always been a brute.”

“Oh shit, you’re the nasty girl!”

Ina’s mouth fell open in shock. “Mel, really?”

Melissa said, “It was my bathroom.”

I shot up and grappled the reins of the conversation the best I could. “Melissa’s being targeted by assassins.”

It was about as smooth a transition as the gravel that covered sections of my home’s courtyard, but effective was effective. Everyone’s back straightened as they focused on me and the news I’d tossed down before them. I allowed the quiet to stretch into a canvas for me to detail the picture of the conspiracy I’d become privy to.

“I don’t know about everyone else, but yesterday I was brought to an event a circle was throwing,” I said. “They told me about today’s test. How we’d be hunting each other directly as targets for ‘execution’ or capture. But, besides being given specific targets for the test, circles like this one were invested in examinees turning their eyes toward people they’d marked.”

“Why her?” Ina asked. “She hasn’t done anything.”

“That’s the thing, it’s not about Melissa,” I said, as I turned to her. “It’s about your last name. This circle is worried about the Lodge, specifically Nemesis, getting her hands on new members from influential families, collectives, businesses, etc. They want to curtail her power.”

“The Knitcrofts don’t have any power,” she said. “It’s a co-op.”

“I know, I know, but—” I said.

Amber cut in, “You’re the only one taking the exam. If they have a hit list so scattered as to target you then they don’t actually care about stopping Nemesis. Instead they’re just trying to see whose death sticks to the wall.”

#404 said, “Everyone knows the test is dangerous.”

“There’s dangerous,” I said, “and then there’s Nemesis. You’re the one who said she ‘incentivized’ examinees to take more final solutions. If they pin all of this on her…”

“Isn’t that fine for us?” Amber asked.

“Not if it’d mean a bunch of innocent people are killed,” Melissa argued.

“It’d be chaos,” #404 said. “Lodgemaster Khapoor being ousted would jeopardize the entire region. Alls below, for Brightgate she is the Lodge. She’s been running it since the New World began. There’s no one qualified enough to keep it together.”

“Which is our problem because…?” Amber asked.

Lupe groaned, “Khapoor built a Lodge full of people dancing on the edge of madness and civility. If she’s not there to keep them on that edge…”

The silence flowed like a slit wrist as all our imaginations did their best to conjure up the amount of chaos that could engulf not only the district but Brightgate in its peaceful entirety. It was only Amber, myself, and technically #404 who could imagine the true depths of the slaughter that was possible. Amber because of her own familiarity with the curse that Nemesis had implanted in people. While #404 and myself had been privy to a small taste of the madness possible during the wild hunt.

“What’s the plan then?” Lupe asked.

“It’s not a really good one,” I admitted.

Ina said, “Probably not, but your last plan did get us back safely, so lay it on us.”

“Was that a compliment?” I asked.

Melissa patted Ina’s arm, “Aww, you really are trying to be nice.”

I said, “Melissa, you’re going to have to be bait.”

Ina crushed her glass in her fist. “I take it back, your plan does suck!” she screamed.

“I don’t love it,” I said, “but I only got to do a once-over of the list. It’s pretty long, but knowing Melissa is on it means we know who they’ll go for inevitably. They collapse on Melissa and we trigger our trap. We’ll kill who we have to and capture the rest.”

Amber used a napkin to sweep the shards of glass into her storage-spell. She dropped the napkin inside as well, and removed a new glass to hand to Ina. After which, Amber looked up toward me with a pitying expression.

“Temple, your plan has a problem,” she said.

Lupe asked, “What? It makes perfect sense to me.”

“It would, if she wasn’t cursed,” Amber said.

Melissa gasped, “What curse? Shouldn’t her spell resistance melt any before they slip inside?”

“Any curse by normal means, yes,” Amber said, “but this one was pretty special. Wasn’t it, Secretary?”

#404 didn’t look like someone who’d been caught in a scheme. Their eyes narrowed—sharp and gray as the cutlery on the table—in their attempt to discern what Amber was intimating. I laid my hand on their shoulder, felt them stiffen beneath my touch, surprised at how gentle it was. They turned to me for assistance in solving the mystery.

“It was the mask, #404.” I said, “The masks Nemesis gives us dogs are cursed so we develop a fixation—”

“An obsession. A fetish. A compulsion, if you will,” Amber said.

“Compulsion, toward Bloodlust and the violence that feeds into it,” I said.

#404’s face froze as they processed my words. Their throat tensed around the beginning of swiftly aborted sentences, and they swung their eyes away from me so fast that their shoulder bucked my hand. I tried to reach for them, but they shirked my touch sure as a magnet might flee its kindred self. My heart broke as I knew they didn’t know. Just as I knew that they—the same secretary who’d grieve for a death that wasn’t by their hand—had just added a new weight onto the already skewed scales of their conscience.

Melissa said, “That explains everything. You’ve never been the violent type, but a curse that—that’d do it. It’d change anyone. We just have to cure it and you’ll be fixed.”

I resisted the urge to cringe at her hope as it was. The timelines—if she really knew them—didn’t line up like that. It was true that after the mask, the wild hunt, things changed but…I was already changing. When I met her wide hopeful eyes I couldn’t hold her gaze. She yearned for a me that I’d already killed, and was quick to chalk me up to being the product of a curse. A bastard personality to be scoured clean from her beloved Nadia.

“Princess,” Amber said, “we can talk cures later, if there are any. What’s important right now is considering our options regarding Nadia’s condition.”

Lupe said, “What’s there to talk about? Nadia drops out, we protect Melissa, and bust the plot wide open.”

“Sounds good to me,” Melissa said.

“Not for me,” I argued. “I’m not dropping out. Not when you need me. Alls below, I’m one of our best fighters. I’m useful.”

Melissa rose from her chair and walked around the table toward me. She touched my arm in a way she hadn’t since my parents died—gentle, her thumb rubbing circles in my bicep, as she flashed those beautiful eyes of hers.

“Nadia, it’ll be fine. I’m a Baron now, and I don’t need you to set yourself on fire to keep me safe.”

“Temple, let's be serious right now. If you take this test you’ll be surrounded by so much Bloodlust it’ll only be a matter of time before you succumb to the curse.” Amber said, “As you said last night, you’re really good at killing people. If you succumb and your curse advances then this whole plot doesn’t matter. You would be the only thing needed to cause a big enough bloodbath to destabilize everything.”

“Amber—,” I tried to speak, but Lupe cut me off.

“Don’t be selfish, Nadia,” Lupe said, “there’s more than you at stake.”

I looked around the table—they were all in agreement that I should step back, step down. Melissa didn’t want to lose a Nadia who was already gone. Lupe saw the big picture I’d painted, and so I couldn’t blame her for wanting to prevent the worst from happening. Amber…she knew what the curse could push someone to do, and I could tell in her eyes and her voice how badly she wanted me to never go through what she’d experienced. They all cared about me, and that made it hurt even more.

“The little brute might be selfish,” #404 said, “but so are the rest of you!”

The table turned as one to regard the Secretary that we’d forgotten. #404 rose from their chair and pried Melissa off of my arm. Put theirs out in front of me as a bulwark to the group’s demands. They raised their chin and looked down on all of them.

“You see an easy way out of this. Toss her to the sidelines as if she’s a liability—.”

Melissa said, “She is.”

“No,” #404 spat, “she’s your friend. She carries the lot of you as burdens on her shoulder, and the one time she has a burden of her own you abandon her rather than share the weight. The least you could do is believe in the brute’s strength.”

Amber rose like a serpent from the water, eyes narrowed down on #404 like they were a blemish to be wiped from the world.

“I have seen many fall prey to your Lodgemaster’s curse.”

#404 laughed, “Then they were weak, and they were not my brute.”

They tossed a question over my shoulder, “Nadia, are you strong enough to resist the curse?”

Ironic as it was, I smiled and bared my fangs to the table, to my fears, and answered.

“Yes,” I said, “but it’d be easier if I had help. Please, I can’t drop out of the exam. You’ve all been with me long enough to know I don’t go down without a fight. Just, don’t make me fight alone.”

Lupe groaned, “Alls below, it’s not like I’m much of a fighter by myself. Long as you can tell enemies and allies apart, we can make it work.”

I rushed around to Lupe, nearly pouncing on her in a hug. We tumbled from her chair, but I stabilized us enough that we only fell in slow motion. I pressed thankful kisses against her face feeling the warm touch of the Morning sun cause her face to blush.

“L-let go,” she stammered. “I’m helping you with a curse, not joining your damn polycule.”

I couldn’t help but grin at the statement. “I know, but I didn’t know you had your mind on it. I can bring you the paperwork if you want.”

She flipped me off with a bright smile and climbed back into her chair. I stood and looked over the rest of the table to see who else would fight beside me against my curse.

#404 said, “We’re in this together, little brute. Don’t make it look like I picked wrong.”

Melissa’s tongue peeked between her lips as she thought—her hands operating unseen needs of thought as she knit a solution from the yarn of this problem.

“What’s the point of being a Baron if I just give up,” she said. “I haven’t abandoned you yet, and I refuse to let someone like them imply that I ever would. Let’s do this.”

She shared with me a smile that I knew was for someone else, but alls below it’d be one I’d cherish. The steel with which I’d wrap chains of conviction around Nemesis’s stupid curse.

“Amber,” I said.

“What?” she asked.

I circled the table. She circled the other way.

“Amber,” I repeated.

“Temple,” she said, “the curse is very serious. I’m telling you—.”

I leaped onto the table. Skipped over the food and drinks, and launched myself at Amber. Her back was against the railing. If she dodged in either way I’d go sailing over—she never considered dodging at all. Instead, her arms flung open to catch me, and with all her strength she spun the both of us away from the edge and back toward my chair. Amber fell into my seat while I made a cushion of her lap.

“Amber,” I whispered into her ear, “if I fall you’ll catch me.”

There wasn’t a question in my statement. From the beginning she’d been catching me, against the lindwurm, when the wild hunt had come for Melissa, when I’d fucked up my own relationship, and now with this curse. I knew Amber would always catch me.

“Every time,” she said. “I’ll catch you every time.”

I twisted back to look at everyone and felt the moment still as if a Godtime was cast. Around the table were all the people I’d assembled across this weird quest of mine. In all of their expressions were unique shades of love that let them put their trust in me. Lupe called all of us a polycule, but that wasn’t accurate. They were the one thing I never thought I’d have again after Nemesis and her allies killed my parents—a family and a second chance.

“Ready to be tested, little brute?” #404 asked.

“I’m ready to win.”