Khazmine’s muscles twitched violently as she drew her lips into an angry, hateful snarl. Her glacier-blue eyes, normally cool and exotic, had their pupils constricted to severe vertical slits, giving her an animal-like ferocity that Jaycen hadn’t anticipated. What little ether that still lingered in the outcast’s body was summoned forth to be deployed at a moment’s notice to ward off any aggressive movements from Lieutenant Mevralls.

“Whoa, be easy with me,” Jaycen backed off, spreading his open arms wide to reveal an unprotected torso. The Solanai warrior allowed his hands to lower to his sides, palm-sides facing her, to indicate submission. “I only meant to check you over for injuries as Rida asked, that’s all. I won’t send a spike if you don’t want one.”

“Then don’t,” Khazmine insisted with a voice more tinged with fear than rage, leaving Jaycen even more confused. The outcast rolled up the sleeve on her injured arm without breaking eye contact with the lieutenant. She knew without looking how bad the hit was. Dark purple blotches radiated from the spot where Hallem had struck her, with the flesh inflamed and twinging from being handled again. “There, does that satisfy you?”

In truth, it did not. Jaycen’s expression softened at seeing the damaged limb, and he swallowed hard to try and remove the lump in his throat. Khazmine was hurt, and not just physically. Jaycen dredged through his memories and landed on several possibilities that might have offended the skittish outcast. He hoped that Khazmine could give him a clue to narrow it down even further and waited for her to fill the electrically charged silence with answers.

“You already know I can’t handle your ether, or did you forget?” Khazmine snapped. Her voice was heavy with a lilt of sadness and disappointment. “Besides, why would you waste another spike on some common cut purse anyway?”

Ah, that was it. Jaycen forced air through his nose, as his lips were pursed shut to rein in his emotions.

This was a test.

Khazmine had lashed out at her elder to gauge his response, with a penetrative gaze that soaked up every detail. In spite of their month or so of acquaintance, Jaycen had repeatedly forgotten that the scrappy outcast was not yet an adult. She was a child on the verge of maturity, looking for support and acceptance.

“It’s not a waste to treat you, Khazmine,” Jaycen stated carefully. “And I’m sorry that you can’t hold my ether. I would have recalled the spike as soon as I sent the ping, I swear.”

The outcast remained still, unconvinced and waiting.

“Listen, I knew at once what you were when we first met,” Jaycen continued. “I can see a young half-breed who’d do whatever it takes to survive. Anything else, I’ll find out as we go. It takes time to learn who you are.”

“I’m a thief, though I take no pride in it,” Khazmine confessed as she looked around the room at the expensive equipment strewn around them. It hadn’t occurred to her before that such fine appointments would fetch a hefty price if they were sold off to seedier folk. “I’m a monster that shouldn’t even exist, but I have to live. You people don’t just give jobs or homes to abominations every day, so I had to make a living the only way I knew how, by becoming exactly what you expected me to be.”

Jaycen ran his thumb over the knuckles of his clenched hands. He’d do anything to take back the unconscious gesture to check his purse pouch back at the boarding house. It had clearly left a terrible impression of how he really felt about the young outcast.

“But the Solanai did give you a job, with an honest wage, and a chance to grow,” Jaycen replied, though he still struggled to find purchase for his teetering argument. His throat went dry and scratchy as Jaycen tried to tamp down an uncomfortable wellspring of emotions as he continued. “We want you to join us, to be part of our forces.”

“For how long?” Khazmine choked out her curdled reply. “Until I fail to be of some use to you? You know the initiates hate me—you’ve seen it. And I’m an expensive pet to keep for a fetch-and-carry. You’ll throw me out someday anyway, just like wee Pavo’s parents did to him, just like—”

Now it was Khazmine’s turn to stare at the Solanai in confusion. The warrior’s façade cracked as a trembling hand rushed to cover Jaycen’s wincing face. His breath stuck in his throat, hampered by unspoken feelings that weren’t ready for exposure. Something she’d said had rattled the soldier deeply, just like in the training circle after her spar with Hallem, though Khazmine was at a complete loss as to what might have done it.

The outcast watched Jaycen collect his wits and combat some distressing phantom that haunted him relentlessly. She retraced the words verbatim in her head, found none to be particularly cutting, and waited for Jaycen to find his breath again. To his credit, the lieutenant never broke down entirely, but he did stare strangely at Khazmine twice.

No, not at her, but through her. It was such an odd, sad gaze, as if he were looking longingly at someone else. At the time, Khazmine would have fully believed that Lieutenant Mevralls was a man lost in a moment, tormented by some unknown force or vision she couldn’t understand.

“Lieutenant? Sir?” Khazmine asked with growing concern. Jaycen inhaled deeply once he recognized the half-breed staring back at him and brushed his hair back with trembling fingertips. “Is everything—"

“All right, who’s next?” Rida announced through the newly-opened laboratory door. A nearly spent roll of thick, luminous tape dangled around his wrist as the pint-sized healer smoothed a tiny strip of that same tape over his hand to cover another fresh wound. Rida waited for one of his late-night visitors to chime in, but neither spoke at his offer. “Hello? Are either of you in need of care?”

“Miss Khazmine has an injured arm,” Jaycen gestured before turning around on his heels and reaching for a cloak in the hovel’s entryway. The cloak stretched against its grain to contain the soldier in its shroud and barely managed to fit over Jaycen’s wide frame. “I’m stepping out for a bit. Leave the door unlocked for me, yeah?”

Rida narrowed his eyes at the lieutenant’s hasty departure before raising a single brow at the outcast who remained. Khazmine had turned away as soon as he took off and made for the velveteen chaise to rest. Something was going on between these two, and Rida would bet his last gold stag on it being some sort of secret. “What’s wrong with him then?”

“What’s wrong with you?” Khazmine deflected, pointing to Rida’s fresh tape on his hand. “Another ether spark?”

“No, it was that plucky little patient that Jaycen brought in,” Rida explained as he removed the tape roll from his wrist. Khazmine laid her injured arm on the armrest for the healer to examine as he spoke. “The little brat woke up halfway through treatment and bit me. Can you believe it?”

That’s hardly surprising. Khazmine tried not to shake her head at the healer’s misfortune. “He was probably scared. You’re a stranger, after all.”

“Well, that’s as may be, but he should know better than to go around biting people,” Rida babbled on. A startling injection of greenish liquid flooded Khazmine’s arm from a glass plunger with a metal needle affixed to one end. “Darned fool kids and their angry little teeth…”

“Is he all right?” Khazmine asked.

“Yes, yes, thanks entirely to yours truly,” Rida crowed as he finished wrapping Khazmine’s injured arm with tape and a splint. “It was an angry gash, but it’ll heal quite nicely with some rest. The little blighter fought me the whole time he was awake, and finally calmed down once I let him rest next to Pavo’s bed. I gave them both a mild sedative to help sleep through the night.”

“Thank you, Rida,” Khazmine replied as she placed a whip-burned hand on the healer’s uninjured one. “It means a lot to me, really.”

Rida frowned as his hands found Khazmine’s to gently turn her palms upright. “For goodness’ sakes, miss. Are you trying to experience every kind of pain out there?” The healer clicked his tongue at the friction burns and applied a strange beige powder to both hands and misted it with a spritz from a bottle of water. “There, now let that sit for a few minutes and soak in. Oh, and don’t touch your face with it. Trust me, it hurts.”

The healer busied himself with tidying the haphazard chamber and collecting the papers Khazmine had knocked over earlier. Rida kept idle hands busy and waited for Khazmine to ask questions he didn’t have answers for.

“Rida, you said earlier that Pavo’s parents… must have thrown him away,” Khazmine reminded him, much to the healer’s apparent distress. He flinched at the outcast’s comment, nearly toppling another stack of specimen discs over at his desk. “Do you think that those healers in Holloworth could fix his core, and he could go home?”

“I doubt very much that he has a home to go back to, miss,” Rida replied with his back still turned to Khazmine so she couldn’t see his face. “There aren’t many southerners who stray this far from the homeland, and certainly not half-breeds like Pavo.”

Khazmine’s silence was deafening. It was clear now to Rida what the half-breed had hoped he wouldn’t piece together—little Pavo had Outsider blood somewhere in his lineage and was a true outcast, just like Khazmine. Sure, only his tiny ears had a hint of a point to them, but that was an obvious feature that made Pavo different from the humans around him. With the proper hat or hairstyle, it would be easy for Pavo to blend in. At least he could “pass” for human.

But poor Pavo would never make it to adulthood unless someone stepped in to help him soon.

“So you’re saying… we’re his only hope of survival?” Khazmine asked.

“I know that isn’t what you want to hear, but yes,” Rida sighed. “Even if—and that’s a big ‘if,’ mind you—we found a cure for Pavo’s broken ether core, the chances of finding his parents are almost zero. The lad’s only a child after all. I doubt he could tell us much about them anyway…”

“It’s a sad fact of life, miss,” Rida lamented as he kept anxious hands preoccupied with shuffling more equipment into storage containers. “With no one to take care of him long-term, your little friend won’t reach maturity. Besides, that’s assuming we can produce a cure that wouldn’t bankrupt the lot of us. It would be pointless to waste too much energy and time trying to fill that broken cup…”

Something deep in her heart shriveled and charred at the thought of it. Rida’s comments, though true, were poking at some underlying tragedy of the whole affair. His words were carefully curated to guide Khazmine to a seemingly natural conclusion that she could only ignore through willful ignorance, which she refused to allow.

He's telling me to give up.

“We can make him comfortable,” Rida continued. “And perhaps even prolong his life with medication, but—”

“I won’t do it.” Khazmine interrupted. “I’m not giving up on him.”

“I’m not telling you to—”

“Rida, we’re going to save him,” Khazmine pressed. Perhaps it was the stubbornness of youth, but Rida could hear the sincerity of her voice and confidence in the outcast’s convictions. Khazmine’s insistent tone finally got the healer to turn and meet her fearsome gaze. “I’ll go to Holloworth tomorrow and see what I can find there.”

“Miss, you can’t just waltz through the gates of Holloworth as you please,” Rida protested. “It’s dangerous for, well, someone like you or me to even try to get in. Not to mention, it would bring you awfully close to the holy house’s Grand Cathedral and—"

“He’s SEVEN YEARS OLD, for gods’ sake!” Khazmine snapped back, startling the healer, and prompting him to ensure that the door to his laboratory was closed. Sedative or not, the last thing he wanted was to wake the two boys he’d finished treating and have them bouncing off the walls of his beloved hovel. Khazmine noticed Rida’s quiet motions and lowered her voice to a simmering crackle. “I’m not giving up on either of them… They’re my little brothers.”