Nathan was still very quiet when they got back to the house after just an hour. His dark skin had taken on a greyish hue that made Lane wonder just how much pain he was really in. She considered going for another ride – usually, she would have stayed out at least until lunch – but then she went to find the letter in which David had first mused how he might need a second werewolf-hunter in case he ever had to leave Deva.

She had to knock twice on Nathan’s door before he reacted. His voice sounded thick, heavy.

“Oh, it’s you,” he muttered when she opened the door. “C’m’in.” He seemed to notice that he was slurring some of his words, because he added: “Sorry, I just took more of the opium.”

“I thought you might like to see David’s letter,” Lane said, a little uncertain suddenly if this was a good idea. “I don’t want to bother you, though, I can just leave it here?”

“No, please – I can use a distraction,” Nathan said, waving at her to come further into the room. “M’foot hurts.”

“Your – foot hurts?”

“Yeah, my damn foot hurts. The foot that isn’t even there anymore!” he growled, and threw himself back onto his bed. “It’s like someone is shoving an ice pick up my heel, except I don’t have a heel at that side anymore, do I?”

He reached out with his hand to the end of his leg, as if he needed to make sure the foot was really gone. “I’m not crazy,” he muttered. “Or making this up. It really does hurt.”

“I believe you,” Lane said, which seemed to be the right thing to say. He relaxed a little, his head sinking back onto the bed, arms spread wide on both sides.

Lane stood in the middle of his room, feeling very awkward. The only chair was covered in a heap of clothes.

“C’mere,” Nathan muttered. “Don’t just stand there, sit down.” He patted the bedcovers. “I’m not gonna try anything,” he added. “I get it, you like women, hey, I do too!”

Lane couldn’t help it, she laughed, though it wasn’t exactly the first time she heard that. She sat down on the bed as Nathan had indicated and spread out her skirts, mostly to have something to do with her hands.

“You really think I could help David?” Nathan asked.

Lane offered him the telegram slip from this morning. Nathan only glanced at it before handing it back.

“He’s not asking for me,” he said, somewhat sullenly. “Only a werewolf hunter.”

“He’s got no idea you’re recovered enough to sit on a horse,” Lane pointed out. “Of course he’s not asking for you. You know David. He’d rather waste weeks dealing with some half-competent stranger than risking to hurt one of his brothers.”

Nathan chuckled bitterly. “Yeah, you got him figured out.”

He rubbed his face. “So what’re you suggesting? I just ride into Deva and storm his office?”

“You could,” Lane said. “Or you could send a letter first, ask what he would actually need you to do. Maybe stick around here until you can get that peg leg you talked about, since you’ve already got a doctor and healer at hand here.”

“That sounds reasonable. I hate reasonable. Especially if reasonable means I have to sit inside for another month or two.”

“Well, you don’t have to, though,” Lane pointed out “If you feel better later, we can go for another ride after lunch. I’m sure that’ll get Andrew outside, too, which certainly won’t hurt him.”

Lane felt a little bit bad about the last quip – Andrew wasn’t really overweight, and he went for long walks every day, no matter the weather – but Nathan snorted softly in reply, so that was a good thing.

“No promises,” he said.

Lane shrugged. “If you don’t feel up for a longer ride, we can always take the train into Eoforwic.”

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Nathan nodded. Lane could see that he had closed his eyes. “I’m just scared I’ll have that pain forever,” he said, very quietly. “It’s not like there’s any magic to fix something that isn’t even there anymore, is there?”

Lane had no answer to that. Luckily, Nathan didn’t seem to expect one.

“I’ve never been scared of pain before,” he went on after a moment. “But it was always – always a transient thing, you know? Like, yeah, this hunt is uncomfortable, or I broke my arm, but I always knew it would get better. This?”

He rubbed his face. “This won’t get better.”

Lane nodded silently. She couldn’t imagine losing a leg, a foot, a hand – any limb. Nathan sighed and stared at the ceiling. He looked so dejected, Lane bit her lips. She had no idea what to do, but she had to say something, didn’t she? But what did you say in a situation like this?

“I thought the same thing,” she said finally, quietly. “After Morgulon killed my mother and I was suddenly alone with my father – with this crazy fanatic who hated everything I was, everything I represented. I was eight years old and I missed her so much. And I thought there was no way I’d survive, no way my life would ever be anything but miserable.”

She closed her eyes at the memories, forced them back down again.

“Yet here I am,” she went on. “I’d like to claim that I saved myself. That I picked up the crossbow to fight my way out or even that I paid him back. But I didn’t. I never even talked back, I was way too scared for that. All I did was survive it, somehow. I wasn’t a rebel, no matter what people say these days. Even when I started hunting, I did it because it was something he approved of.

It’s funny,” she continued. “To think that the thing – the person who put me into that horrible situation – was the same one who got me out of it. And while she had this huge, terrifying impact on my life, Morgulon probably never spared me a thought.”

She took a deep breath. “Sorry, I’m rambling. My point is – my point is, there was a time in my life – more than one time – when I thought about creeping down to my father’s study and taking his pistol to my temple, because I just couldn’t imagine how things might ever get better. But they did. Somehow, they did. And it wasn’t anything I caused. Earned. Or deserved. It wasn’t that I made a plan, or had some brilliant idea, or did this great, brave deed – it was just Morgulon deciding that she had enough of my father sending hunters after her.”

Lane broke off, staring down at her hands. “People keep saying ‘things happen for a reason,’ and I hate that sentence. Because there’s no plan. Mithras doesn’t actually want people to suffer, no matter what my father said. There’s no point to all the shitty things that happen to people. They just come out of nowhere, and they blindside you, and they hurt like hell. But the good things are the same way: You don’t see them coming. Greg had no idea what he was starting when he protected his railway crew, yet he made this whole revolution possible.”

“Good things come to those who wait?” Nathan asked, not sounding convinced.

“No,” Lane said. “If you can reach it, grab whatever it is you want. If you see a way out of a bad situation, take it. But sometimes we can’t see the solution, the way out. And then it’s enough just to survive, to push through. So that something good that you never wanted and never expected – never imagined – can happen to you.”

“You’re right in that regard at least,” Nathan muttered. “I can’t imagine how this might get better.”

He looked up at her. “Why didn’t you do it?” he asked. “Take your father’s pistol, I mean.”

“I was too scared.”

“Of dying?”

“No. Of getting caught. Of him knowing, somehow. Of hell, too, but mostly of my father.”

She shuddered, and changed the topic quickly: “Where do you think Greg is now?”

For a second, she thought Nathan would stick with the morbid conversation, but then he said: “He’s probably cursing his existence as much as I am right now. I think you had it wrong,” he added: “Fate exists. It just has a really shitty sense of humour and loves cruel irony. Because if Greg’s and my positions were reversed? We’d be both so much better off.”

“Really. You think you’d make such a great werewolf?” Lane teased.

“Screw you, I’d be the best werewolf. I don’t even mind sleeping rough as a human! Can you imagine Greg in the snow up there? On new moon? Hell, I hope Lee knows how to make some decent shelter, because Greg sure sucks at it.”

Nathan sat up abruptly. “And, you know, I bet Greg could find something to do if he couldn’t walk anymore. He’d just, dunno, become a poet, or politician, or something, like Mr. Higgins hoped. I’d risk it,” Nathan added. “Being a three-legged wolf, I mean. They cut off my foot using good old steel, didn’t they? So it might grow back. If the odds were just a little better...” He shook his head. “Scratch that. Fifty-fifty? I’d take that, if it wasn’t David who’d be the one to put me out of my misery if it goes badly.”

Nathan fell quiet, staring out of the window. His expression was less distraught than it had been a moment ago, though. He heaved a sigh and then focused on Lane again.

“I wish I could have gone with Greg,” he said. “But you said you had a letter to show me?”

Lane handed it over, and they talked about it until it was time for lunch. It was probably more than Nathan had talked in the month since the battle at Oldstone Castle, even though he was mostly asking her questions.

“It’s weird that you guys all know so little about what’s going on at Deva Castle,” Lane said when she handed him his crutches.

“Nah,” Nathan said. “That’s just David and me. Andrew has been there for every Season except this last one, and Greg too. David was worried about George Louis ratting him out to the Inquisition, and well, me, I just hate the city. The palace all the more.”

“But you’d still go there now?” Lane asked.

Nathan waved one of the crutches. “Hate feeling useless, too. If David thinks I can be of help, I’ll do it.”