Kayto was quiet, following me without a sound on the padded servants’ stairs, but when I creaked open the door onto the dorms’ corridor, all silent hell broke loose. Kayto dashed around me, peering out of windows and jiggling door knobs before lowering to their knees to peer under the door. I grabbed their hand and pulled them along, ignoring the grin Kayto gave me.

Oh, this was a bad idea.

The last door along the corridor was mine, the window overlooking the canal and dock below. That should keep them busy. I led Kayto inside, closing the door behind me, and felt my way through the dark to my desk. My back muscles shivered, expecting Kayto’s touch at any moment, but I found my flint set first. With only the brief flare of light that the cascade of sparks provided as the damnable clouds had covered the moon again, I lit the candle.

The candle’s halo of light barely extended past my desk, but after so many hours in darkness, it blazed like a bonfire. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Wow,” Kayto said right next to me. I jumped, but Kayto twirled again, hands behind their back, as they bent at the waist to peer at the desk, the wardrobe, and the washstand. “Is this yours?”

I choked on my answer, unsure of what I would have said anyway, whether to apologise for how basic it was, or to grunt at them for their rudeness. A black-furred prehensile tail that flicked behind Kayto. The tail attached itself at the base of Kayto’s spine, just above two perfectly round, golden buttocks.

If Cain had appeared before me and demanded to know what shocked me more, the tail or bare buttocks, I couldn’t have said. I only gargled a response.

“Oh! Is this a bed?” Kayto jumped into my bed, sitting where I’d left my blankets a jumbled mess. “It’s… quaint.”

My jaw opened, attempting speech again, but whatever words I meant to utter were shoved back down my throat again as I spotted the two feline ears gracing the top of their head, nestled in between soft, black curls. Kayto’s grin slipped as he watched me with eyes silver from reflected candlelight.

“Y-you’re…” I threw myself onto my knees and into a deep prostration. Le Chasseur, preserve me in this next moment, for I did not in my wildest dreams ever imagined that one of his former selves’ Blessed Children would grace my presence. And I’d been so… so… insolent! I’d dumped a bucket of water over them. “Forgive me, please, my lord. I didn’t mean — I didn’t know—”

“Seraphin?” Golden feet tipped by claws padded toward me.

“I was insolent. I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t—”

“But you can’t know who I am,” Kayto murmured to themself.

But I heard. I snapped up straight, staring up at them. Getting lost in the moment as I saw Kayto fully bared in the candlelight, a lithe body with firm muscles and golden brown skin. A soft phallus nestled on black fur. Most of him — them, no, I wouldn’t make that mistake again, I wouldn’t, not until Kayto told me what pronouns they preferred — was very human, like their mortal ancestors. But the way they held themself, half insouciant grace and half predatory, revealed the ichor in their blood even without the ears and tail. I shook my head. “Of course I know. Every Fallion knows.”

“They do?” Kayto’s voice grew high and tight.

“Adrian’s Blessed Children, sired by his former self Adrian—”

“Former and current self,” Kayto interrupted.

I nodded. “Who, after his brother Cain died, went mad with grief, becoming the avenging warrior Le Chasseur. And thanks to his Blessed Children, regained himself and forgave the vampires who carried Cain’s blood.”

“True enough.” Kayto cocked their head. “But why are you bowing?”

“You’re—you’re…” I waved my hand over their body. “You have Le Chasseur — Adrian’s divine blood running through your veins.”

“I thought Fallions didn’t care about that.”

I frowned at him, my brow pinched. “Le Chasseur is the head of our pantheon. Why would you think we didn’t care?”

Kayto’s mouth opened, then they bit their lip. “Oh, nothing. Never mind. But you really don’t have to bow. Adrian is sacred. We’re not.”

“But—”

Kayto flopped back onto my bed. “Well, I am having some very sacred thoughts right now.” They leered at me, licking their upper lip.

My eyes bulged. Sex and pleasure were sacred to Adrian, the god of life and love.

Kayto rolled onto their stomach and peeked up at me. “This bed is so cold.”

“Then—then put some clothes on!” I snapped. I wished I could hide my red face, but I could barely move. “You’re the one swimming in the canal at night without a stitch on!”

“That’s better.” Kayto smiled again.

I huffed. Some Blessed Child they were, goading me into insolence. I rose to my feet and marched over to my wardrobe. Upon opening the door, the scent of cedar and herbs from a sachet whooshed out. Only a half-dozen items were hung up. I owned little. I didn’t need more. I had enough underclothes to last between laundries without embarrassing myself, two uniforms, and one outfit of simple wool for the rare perambulation outside the school.

I could have had more. Silks and fine-combed wool. I did have more, technically, though I’d begged Master Leveque to pack them up in a cedar trunk until… until.

I grabbed a set of underclothes and the walking suit and threw them at Kayto. “There. Get dressed.”

Kayto pinched a pair of my smalls to hold up and scrunched their nose. I cringed, awaiting the inevitable insult on the very plainness of the fabric. “But clothes are so uncomfortable! How can you bare to wear them?”

“How can you bear to run around n-naked?” Even as outraged as I was, I stuttered and the back of my neck and ears burned.

What was wrong with me? I never felt like this with anyone. Even when Sole had kissed me, I hadn’t felt more than my stomach cramping. Dearly Departed, the other students called me, or the Old Eunuch, in their less charitable moments.

“Nudity is perfectly natural.” Kayto swept a hand over their body. I raised my eyes to the plastered ceiling. “Clothes just get in the way.”

“In the way of what?” My mouth had a mind of its own.

Kayto laughed.

I clenched my jaw. Right, of course. The thing over which every one of my peers obsessed. And now Kayto laughed at me, just like the other students had when I couldn’t see the bloody obvious.

“J-just.” I stopped, despising the stutter. I turned my back on them, reaching into my wardrobe for a fresh set of underclothes. Not that I particularly wanted to strip in front of them. I should have asked Master Leveque for one of those foldable dressing screens. The gods must know I’d wanted to every time Giovanna snuck into my room and changed, unconcerned if I saw her nude. She never called me an eunuch, only teased the way my cheeks burned like anyone of my fellow foundlings would have. I’d missed our colt’s years, having been chosen and sent to Venezia. I remembered my friends as children on the cusp of adolescence, only beginning to care about kissing. About attraction.

“Mmm?”

I jerked from my reverie. “Just put them on already. You said you wanted to be warm.”

“You could warm me up.”

I froze, and unlike what the novelists wrote, I didn’t merely stop moving. I froze, in the most genuine sense of the world, cold slithering up through my heels, up my legs and through my torso, enveloping me in winter’s embrace.

When I said nothing, even my thoughtless mouth frozen shut, Kayto added, “How about… a kiss in exchange for clothes.”

A kiss. The word thundered through the icy barrens of my mind. My hands shook, fingers spasming, and I dropped my undershirt.

The bed frame creaked as Kayto rose. I squeezed my eyes shut. This was going to be Sole all over again. No. No, I couldn’t bear it. Let me just jump out the window and drown.

Outside, a rubbish collector yelled, their barge bumping into a dock. I cursed. While Kayto had distracted me, the room had lightened, the sky outside a deep twilight blue. The scullery servants must be up in the lower levels, preparing to haul the rubbish out, preparing to light the candles.

And me, with a stranger in my bedroom. I didn’t think it was any less breaking the rules if they were Adrian’s Blessed Child. Possibly more against the rules if they were naked. Nudity might be perfectly natural to Adrian’s Blessed Children, but not in Fallion. People were supposed to be fully clothed.

Nor could I afford the luxury of drowning. I needed to get a fully dressed Kayto out of the school before anyone noticed him, my sensibilities be damned.

I wrenched myself around. “F-fine. One kiss.”

Kayto stepped in close, their grin revealing their sharp canines.

I swallowed and squeezed my eyes shut. It was one kiss. I couldn’t screw that up, could I?

Nothing happened for a long moment, and I resisted the urge to fidget. Was I supposed to kiss them? I definitely didn’t know how to do that.

Then Kayto’s fingers curled around the back of my neck and gently pulled my face down. Oh right. I was taller than Kayto. I bent lower. Then their lips pressed against my forehead.

My lips parted and my eyes fluttered open, stunned.

Kayto stood on his toes, the long line of their throat exposed to me. They released my neck as gently as they’d grasped it, then stepped back, flat-footed again, but equally well-balanced.

“You—” I gasped.

“I only want to kiss people who want me back.” Kayto flashed me another grin, but this one gentler, his lips puckered in a rueful expression.

“You’re not…” I jerked a hand. “Angry?”

Kayto’s eyes widened, his ears swivelling to direct themselves at me. “Angry? Why would I be angry?”

“Because I don’t…” I jerked my hand in a meaningless circle. “I mean, you’re exquisite, even I can tell that, but I don’t… You mustn’t get very many…”

“Rejections?” Kayto’s ears flicked as I cringed. They muttered something more which I couldn’t catch, but it didn’t seem to be fury or hurt. “Blessed Adrian bid us to love and find pleasure where we will, but that’s among those who wish to reciprocate. Why would I get angry with you for something you can’t control?”

It wasn’t something I controlled, Kayto was right. But Sole had been more than angry. They’d been hurt. But I didn’t want to explain that. I didn’t want Kayto to know.

Instead, I lowered my gaze and turned back to the wardrobe, picking up my fallen underclothes. “Let’s get dressed. You need to leave.”

“Already?” Kayto sighed, as if deeply disappointed that they couldn’t stay with someone who wavered between snapping at them and being completely pathetic.

“What do you go by?” I asked, to delay pulling off my banyan and nightshirt a moment longer.

“Kayto, I told you.” Kayto’s voice was tense.

“No, I mean, what do you go by? He, her, they?”

“Oh!” Kayto paused. “I didn’t know they asked such questions in Fallion. No one has so far. He. My insides match my outsides, don’t you think?”

I blushed hard, remembering his outsides. “Me too.” I coughed. “I mean, I go by he.”

“Good to know.” Fabric rustled, followed by a sigh. “How do these go on, anyway?”