Despite the freedoms of his first day, Theo was instructed to stay with me indefinitely, only adding to the ibictors’ theories of his fatherhood. It was impossible, of course, but neither we nor Blood corrected them. The ibictors brought Theo meals. Theo helped with the cumbersome tubes of my own sustenance system. After I’d (quite quickly) put my pride aside, his help with the toilet had been invaluable, meaning I no longer had to call on the ibictors. Raeia, however, still brought me to the showers. Her readings had become less frequent, whether by the obvious drop in our attention or some other influences was unclear. I didn’t have it in me to ask her. 

The stench of blood woke us each day. 

As if buoyed by our theories of being little more than pawns, the soulmaster visited daily, for weeks on end. She brought us into memories connected to each other, orbiting Day and Dion like we were nothing without them. 

Theo’s shed fiasco was followed by several increasingly horrific scenes of the Kestales’ childhoods, which made me unsure how to find any conviction towards killing his brother. Though I was forced to feel Theo’s emotions regarding the Lyvanian hellscape of revolting humans and terrifying ghostly creatures that put challenge to Blood’s ghastliness, I could see too much of myself in Dion to fully commit to opposing his choices. At least, not the choices Theo hated him for. It was clear to me that all he wished to do was protect his little brother. When they were young, he covered the tracks of Theo’s mistakes, earning the dire wrath of Theo’s mother or their teachers and the local police. In the forest compound, he took beatings that he was more than capable of fending off; he brought Theo on all his missions so they could be close; he took the perverse advances of older soldiers with little fight if it meant their eyes strayed from Theo. Giorgos, it seemed, was one of them, but the soldier had gotten greedy and then Dion turned him to little more than pulp. When I broached the topic with Theo, he shut me down almost immediately. 

‘You don’t know him like I do,’ was all he said. His tone had left no room for reproach, and I was too exhausted to try find a crack. By the time we’d waded through too many memories, his hate had become my own and I ceased questioning it.

In return, Theo was invited to my own destructive journey. Where Theo’s memories lacked any kind of intimacy, Blood’s cruelty invited us into some of my most intimate moments with Day. Moments I hadn’t even realised we’d had, but I would have rathered they remain forgotten than have anyone spectate. There was unyielding violence too. Some of the jobs Serafino Conti sent myself and Day on. Our ventures into Vik’s undercity, Subter, taking out a gang of bigots that had terrorised the streets above and belowground. A brief altercation with an assassin from the Murak guild, who spared us because we were on a special list of interest. 

Sometimes we spoke about the memories, other times we ignored them entirely. Sometimes we apologised profusely for bearing witness to things that were best left buried forever. 

Those weeks brought us closer, but there was no choice in our closeness, and I often wondered how quickly we might flee from one another if given the chance. He knew too much of me. I would run if I could.

‘Good morning!’ Blood announced on another incalculable day.

I groaned. I didn’t want to be awake, or to have any interaction with the soulmaster. I had no idea what time (or day, or month) it was, or if it really mattered anymore when everything was always dark. All I did know were the increasing frequency of movements in my womb and the expansive growth of the bump which restricted me more and more. I curled into as tight a ball as my stomach and restraints would allow.

‘Get out,’ Theo said from behind me. He sat up and the dilapidated mattress jostled with him, sending both our chains jingling. His hand found my shoulder, reassuring. 

Blood laughed. It was more of a cackle. ‘It’s a special day, Sapphy! High Rector Augustin would like to give you a gift,’ she said. 

‘I’m okay, thanks,’ I muttered and remained lying on my side, expecting the corners of my conscience to be pulled away into Blood’s power.

Nothing happened.

Veil soon arrived with Raeia and the other cleric woman in tow. My health inspections had only alternated between the two of them. Though she’d introduced herself as Willow, I’d called the other one Dry, because when I’d tried to joke with her, she’d given nothing back. 

Veil ordered both Raeia and Dry into our cell. The door was locked behind them, leaving the two women trapped with Theo and I. The criminals and the clerics. 

‘Is that for me?’ I asked, hearing the jingle of keys brushing together. It came from Raeia’s shaking hand. 

‘It…it’s…’

‘Raeia, what’s wrong?’ I said, concerned for what could have startled her to this degree. It surely wasn’t us. 

‘You know we’re not the monsters,’ Theo said, his voice a secure wash through the cramped space. It was never a space meant for four people. Sound roamed and reacted differently to how I’d become accustomed to in my solitude. It was cushioned. It almost didn’t feel real.

‘I’ve heard of the things you’ve done,’ Dry said. 

‘Do you even know my name?’ Theo asked.

‘Do you know mine?’

I followed their exchange of voices with the growing desire to ask them to kindly shut up so I could return to my semi sleep. Theo and Dry exchanged names and Raeia mumbled her own introduction in an absurd dialogue of discomfort. Theo remained calm. Calm through everything, always. 

‘I’ve come to remove your bindings,’ Raeia said, finally steady. 

I heard the words but didn’t register what they meant. I didn’t respond. I assumed she meant Theo or something else, anything but my own bindings, whatever that might be. But her footsteps neared, then halted abruptly. The slight mumbles between Raeia and Dry made me reassess what Raeia had just said. Could she possibly mean my bindings? My helmet and cuffs? My metal prisons? 

‘It’s time for you to come see the library for yourself, Blue,’ Raeia said. Her quaking had not been fear, I realised. Excitement.

I could barely breathe. It was a trap. Had to be. Veil would not give this as a gift. Blood would not be so excited about something that could benefit me.

‘I’ll do it,’ Dry said.

‘No, I’d rather see Raeia’s face first, thanks.’ Though I’d wanted to speak in snark, my body was shuddering instinctively at the prospect of being able to see again so suddenly, and the vibrations made my voice quiver. I ended up sounding desperate.

Raeia took another couple of steps to me and then knelt beside my cot. ‘You’ll get to read to me soon, Blue.’ 

‘I’ll be too busy gazing at you.’ 

She giggled softly. 

‘Is this the part where I need to sit up?’

‘It would help.’

My ascent wasn’t graceful at all, but I managed to scramble to sitting, all the while feeling the gazes of Theo, Dry and Raeia bearing down on me. Maybe they weren’t watching me at all, but something had me on edge. An instinct, maybe. An ant-like sensation crept along my skin, parading from my hands and feet, up my arms and legs, to my chest and head until my heart and brain felt as though they might be infested. By the time I sat upright, my breath came out in sharp stints, hammering out the small slit that was far too small for its purpose. Most of my breath was propelled back against my face, swarming me, strangling me. Then the hum crept in.

‘Wrong,’ I gasped. ‘Something…it’s wrong.’

‘Blue,’ Raeia said, her voice shaking ever so slightly. ‘Blue, please. I need you to be still while I unlock it. They’ll come and hurt everyone in here if you look like you might threaten us.’

‘Something’s wrong,’ I rasped, unable to stop the trembling that continued to roam every inch of me. The helmet’s hum became a locust’s wave, so patterned and insistent I nearly heard the words I was so convinced were trying to reach me. 

‘I’ve got you. I just need you to trust me and you’ll be free of all of this.’

‘You have one minute, or we do this my way.’ Ivan’s voice hammered my senses as they heightened in my panic. 

‘Please, try and breathe slowly.’

‘I…am…t…,’ I mumbled between haggard breaths. The ants were clawing now, burrowing beneath my skin and setting my blood alight. I wanted to black out. I wanted to switch so I wouldn’t feel every ounce of this hysteric agony, but grey didn’t come for me. I remained reeling inside as I locked my muscles in place and let Raeia begin to unlock my bindings. She started with my feet.

‘Which was your favourite story?’ she asked.

‘What?’ The word came out as little more than a hiss. I barely heard it over the helmet’s cries.

‘Of the stories I’ve told you, which is your favourite?’

‘I…can’t…something’s not...’

There was movement near me, but it wasn’t Raeia, she was busy with the locks. Why was it taking so long? She was still on the first ankle. The bed slouched to my left and the deep hum of Theo’s steady dhaheri jolted through my panicked haze. The pulses his dhaheri radiated thrummed up to the speed of my squirming dread, then gradually slowed back down. The crawling beneath my skin slowed and lessened, the ants retreated until only a soft memory of their writhing colony remained. Theo didn’t put a hand on me, or say anything, but the weight of his presence was enough to bring me back to rationality. The cuff round my left ankle clanked to the floor and Raeia moved to the next.