“I might be dying! The pain is unbearable!” I announce, falling backwards onto my bed with what will surely be among my final breaths escaping my lips.

  “No, you aren't, Lilly.” My cold caregiver claims. “You have bruised ribs, that's all. Stop evading my question — How did you get hurt?”

  He words his question very particularly. I think Ayre must have been coaching him recently on this kind of thing because in the past his word choices were much more vague and fun to play around with. Such a direct question is… challenging to work around.

  “I got in a fight with a monster.” I respond shortly, with a huff.

  “Okay, so… How? Why?” He pauses and holds up a hand as I begin to speak.” How did you wind up fighting a monster that would leave you in this state? And why were you in a position that left you near a monster to begin with? We're in an inn.”

  After he clarifies, it takes all of my willpower to not pout. I'd had a full elaborate story to tell after he asked “how and why” with no other context applied. Drat.

  I speak slowly, thinking through ways to make this interesting as I do. “I was investigating something that caught my eye and while I was on my way there I got attacked by a beast, it's called a Chewer, I think.” I pause for dramatic effect and see Olly's face looking distinctly unamused. I continue, begrudgingly, “I… Almost got spotted while I was seeking the thing that caught my eye, and when I hid from sight I accidentally entered what was probably the monster’s den.” I let out a long sigh, “You know I hate it when you ask such specific questions, right?”

  Olly rolls his eyes with a slight smile, his mien of grumpiness breaking for a moment. “You'll have to forgive me, I've never seen you wounded before. You're playing it off fine now, but while you were asleep you weren't exactly maintaining a performance.” He frowns again and as I search his face I realize that it's not a look of disapproval or disappointment like Ayre would normally have in such circumstances.

  I feel a lot less like putting on a show about it all of a sudden. Feeling a frown of my own cross my face, I sit up and look at Olly sitting next to my bed, “Okay…yeah, you’re right. It was probably not the best idea, but it made for an interesting story at least, I think. It also might have given us a lead on something to do in Kharbon.”

  Olly makes a rolling motion with his hands, urging me on. So I recount the events of the night very accurately for him. Barely any embellishment.

  “I don’t think there were any lava monsters in the hallways, Lilly. I may not have been around towns or inns before, but ‘fighting a beast of magma atop floating rocks while floating down a river of lava’ doesn’t quite seem likely.” He gives me a heavily lidded stare.

  “Fine, I made that part up. The rest of it up to and after that was true, though.” I stick out my tongue at him. No appreciation for stories. I really need to work with him on the concept “Yes, and”…

  “I didn’t know monsters could be that small, admittedly. I’ve been assuming they’d all be like that rock lizard thing I killed. Bigger, even. “Monster” conjures up a specific sort of feeling in my mind that “about as big as a rat” doesn’t quite tick the boxes for.” He scratches at his chin in thought before standing up and walking over to the bags to pull out some food, continuing talking as he does, “This researcher sounds interesting, too. Seems like the sort of person who might know something about my condition.” He returns and sets down the wrapped meal next to me. As he takes one of the chunks of dried elk he continues. “Figured you’d probably need to eat to help recover, have some.”

  I heft one of the dried berries and look at it with a bit of disdain. “Is it worth using my magic to make this better? Yes. Yes, it is.”

  [Tasty sweets, shining bright, turn this bounty into a feast of delights!]

  I whisper a little incantation and watch as the essence rushes from me to infuse the dried foods before me. The berries plump up, looking like they had been picked in the last few minutes. The biscuits similarly grow less depressing looking, taking on the look of fresh baked little sweetbreads of the same size.

  The meat, however, is untouched. I really have no idea what to do with it, but sweet doesn’t seem right for the meat, so the essence leaves it alone.

  As a final touch, a drizzle of sugar falls over the berries and breads, manifesting out of thin air, and I grab a berry and take a big munch out of it. “Much better!”

  Olly boggles at the change. “I’ve seen you season things before, but this is something else. Doesn’t this use a ton of your magic that you could be using to heal yourself?”

  “Oh, no. This is trivial. The food isn’t actually changing, just the perception of it. Actually synthesizing foodstuffs is really hard. They tend to be really complex, magically speaking.” I explain in between and during mouthfuls. “But tricking the mind is easy. Even works on the caster.” I wave off the question. “I just hate eating boring things. Ayre might be okay eating that stew a thousand times a year, but I certainly am not.” I grab another berry and point at the biscuit for Olly to try it. “Besides, I have something I need to do, and I need to conserve my magic for that.”

  “Another daring starlit escapade?” Olly mentions. He lifts the biscuit up, inspecting it from all sides looking for inconsistencies, but seems satisfied after a moment and takes a bite. He appears pensive at first, and I watch with no small amount of interest.

  After chewing and swallowing, the light behind his eyes and smile falters and falls into a frown that he immediately arrests and puts back on a happy face. Thinking that I wouldn’t notice, of all people. I’m the most observant person in our group!

  “So, what do you have to get up to? Do you need me to come with you?” His voice betrays the emotion as well, and I weigh the options of leaving well enough alone versus bringing it up.

  On one hand, I do have good news to share with him, and after I go check out his assassin-lover-friend-rival, I might have even more.

  On the other, seeing my food make someone apparently sad hurts me on both a visceral and spiritual level.

  I sit quietly for a little while — apparently too long. “Lilly?”

  I startle a bit at the question, having gotten trapped in my head for a bit. I pick option two in a panic. “Why did you frown when you took a bite of the food? Not a fan of sweets?” I ask, feeling a little worried at the possible answers.

  The fa?ade he tried to build comes crashing down, and I regret asking. “I… Okay.” He hesitates for a little while with falling energy. I see him slump his shoulders and want to take it back. “Please don’t say this to Ayre because me liking her stew seemed really important to her.” The deep breath he draws seems to suck all of the air out of the room at once, replacing it with a heavily, stifling, deadness. “I can’t really taste anything. Not in the way you and Ayre do at least.”

  “What do you mean? I’ve seen you eat things and react positively before.”

  “Guess I’m a better actor than I thought.” He responds bitterly. “I don’t taste flavors. I can tell you that that biscuit was composed primarily of Messis, Fabrica, and Terra, and was dosed with something I couldn’t identify. I can tell you that the original version of the recipe was made by a traveling chef named Colto Hurosa. I can even tell you how to make it! But I certainly can’t tell you how it tastes!” He starts to raise his voice near the end. Not at me, but it makes me flinch all the same.

  He sees me draw back and stands to walk away from the bed and meal. He walks over to a full-body mirror with his back to me. Olly goes quiet for a while, and I’m left at a loss as I watch him rub his hands together in front of himself.

  I sit there watching him for too long. I want to say something, but I don’t really know how or what. And deep in the back of my mind, there’s a part of me that’s scared. Being here with Olly, losing a bit of control of himself by myself.

  “I’ll… I’ll be back, Olly. Hopefully, with some good news.” I say it, hating the words as I say them, but I hop off the bed and flutter to the door as quickly as I can, pressing myself through the little crack in the corner the same as last night. As I pass through, I incant a true invisibility spell since I’m well rested. Healing can come later, it’s not actually that bad.

  Passing into the hallway, I quickly fly down the flights of stairs to the second floor where I’d estimated the other half of Olly’s link was. Luckily, my spell just as well hides my essence as it does me, so there’s no risk of someone seeing the steady trail of golden dust that would normally accompany my flight.

  I land atop the same bookcase I’d landed on last night, but tuck myself in the space between two leaning books and sit with my back against the rear wall. The space feels confined, claustrophobic…but safe.

  As I settle, I feel my heart hurting. Hurting bad. Like someone reaching inside my chest and wringing it with a pair of vices. It makes me want to cry, but it also feels so far away. Distant but impossibly personal.

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  It has to be Olly. This is what he’s feeling. The other day, I had to be feeling him while he was losing control before he attacked Ayre and me. The anger, the confusion. This is different. It’s a very different kind of hurt. One I really don’t know how to process.

  “Can I break the link somehow? Spare him from the bond we made? Probably not… he would need to no longer feel the way he does about us saving him…” I feel ashamed as the thought crosses my mind because I know it’s not the actual reason I’m thinking about it.

  Ayre needs to come back. She always makes him laugh and smile. That’s what he needs. Not me constantly making him feel bad. If I can feel him, then he can probably feel me, and he knows he scared me, or how I felt when he almost attacked me. “Maybe he’d be better off if I just kept my distance. I can watch them from a little ways away, avoid interacting too much. That’s a trope, right? The aloof and unapproachable party member who keeps themselves guarded?” The thought brings me a tiny modicum of comfort. Father told me stories where he took on such roles for people he travelled with.

  “Every group of friends and companions needs different things and I always tried to be whatever was needed. Mortals can’t change like we can. They can change the things around them in ways we can’t, sure. But they can’t change themselves like us. So it’s the duty of the fae to be what’s needed, when it’s needed.” His words steel me a bit as I try to beat them into my mind over and over.

  “Be who they need, not who you are. You can change, Lilly. They can’t.”

  I stand up, letting out a shuddering breath and try to force these feelings away for now. I have a task to get done, and the more I wait, the better the odds of it going wrong are. I already messed it up once.

  I wipe away some dampness from the corner of my eyes and step out from between the books with a good bit more determination…I think. It just wouldn't do for anyone to see a princess in such a disheveled state.

  Hopping down and fluttering over to the door directly beneath our own, I see that it, luckily, has the exact same gap in the corner that ours does, which makes the next step of my infiltration trivial — granting me a much-needed win.

  Wiggling through, I come out the other side easily — it had been a little wider gap than our own — and look around. The room is the same size as ours, just with two fewer beds and associated furniture. In their place there’s a comfortable looking, padded, couch. On the opposite side of the room I see a pile of armor plates stacked on a table with a handful of other bits of under-armor and a heavy armored cloak on a coat rack. The armor is weird, in that it’s not a “suit” of plate. It’s a couple dozen individual plated segments, but I don’t see how they would slot together, nor how they would connect to make a greater whole. It’s like stacking a bunch of washed clothes and expecting them to magically turn into a towel. Next to the armor are two braces of throwing knives and two bigger, curved, fighting knives covered in runes.

  I glide my way over to get a closer look and land on the table next to the armor and weapons to get a closer look. The weapons are…moonsteel, I think. They have the characteristic white stone-like texture that father used to describe. The armor, on the other hand is the opposite. Instead of matte and white it’s glossy and black, like a beetle's carapace. As I look closer I realize all of it is heavily runed, and in such detail that I think I’d struggle to etch things that small even at my current size. The cloak, every plate of armor both inside and out, the weapons, the under-garment. Even the backpack is coated in them.

  I recognize the base essentia runes’s energy, but not their runeforms. Those make up only a very small proportion of the ones I can see -- Less than five percent, probably. The rest are compound essentia of dozens of types I’ve never seen. If only I had Ayre here, she might know more. I try to make some mental notes of colors and shapes, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to translate these back to Ayre in a helpful way.

  I hear a sudden noise that makes me jump as I lean, causing me to knock the topmost plate off the table that I’d been inspecting. A soft female voice says the word, or name, maybe? “Serafina…” The voice is tinged with an accent that feels vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it.

  Irrespective, though, I duck behind the armor as the piece I knocked free clatters to the ground with surprising quietness. The impacts are muted as though passing through a heavy blanket.

  The figure in the bed on the other side of the room mumbles indistinctly again before rolling over. All I can make out is a crown of black horns, the rest being tucked underneath a few layers of comforters.

  My breath catches and I feel my heart start to beat faster, temporarily dispelling the ache. “Is she another dragon? That would be perfect! Olly having two dragons, one protecting him, one trying to kill him, fight over him? That’s a way better story! Plus, it would mean Ayre could meet another dragon! I should make sure it’s the right person and that I’m not invading some random strangers’ privacy. Though I suppose I am invading some random strangers' privacy regardless…”

  I briefly incant under my breath to reveal the threads of connection between all things and see the strong connection between this woman and Olly shooting up through the air, though at an angle towards the front of the building. I trace it in my mind and look around her room to get a feeling for where he must be standing and realize that he probably hasn’t moved, since it's pointing right where the mirror would be in her room.

  Well…that dispels most of the positivity I’m feeling to be replaced with more creeping ennui. Sighing quietly and forcing it from my mind, I consider changing size to put the armor piece back where it came from. I decide not to after realizing I’ll need to do the shape changing two more times if I do, and I can’t guarantee I have that in me for now.

  Instead, I opt to glide my way over to the bed, periodically batting my wings a bit to gain height more quietly than full flight. I alight on the bedframe above her head to give myself a better vantage point.

  Balancing delicately, I lower myself to a sitting position to be more comfortable and take her in, waiting for her to roll over or pull the blankets back. I give it, oh, say, about a minute before I start to get bored. She should have pulled the blanket back once I was in a good vantage point, really. Kind of rude to delay the reveal so much, honestly.

  “Hmmm.” I give it some thought. Her face is covered… The mischief in my heart provides me a good solution. Well. A solution, at least.

  I think for a little bit on an incantation, wanting to avoid sharp sounds, while kicking my legs and listening to the gentle breathing of the probable dragon beneath me.

  [With greatest ease, and with this breeze, I bid this behorned sleeper sneeze.]

  I cast a small bit of dust forward which flutters on the natural air currents unerringly towards the sleeper. It infiltrates beneath the blanket and a moment later I hear her take a couple hitched breaths followed by an honestly kind of cute-sounding sneeze as she sits up abruptly.

  Quickly, I look down to make sure I’m still invisible. That being the case, I sit and watch.

  She’s got pale skin, almost like marble. Unnaturally white for most mortal kyn, white hair that matches, high steepled ears, black segmented horns that sweep forward from the rear of her skull to frame her head almost like a crown — the opposite configuration to Ayre and much thinner. She also is absolutely coated in scars everywhere I can see, but see several that would indicate that the places covered by her undergarments are likely just as marked. I lose track trying to count them as she slips out of the bed wordlessly.

  She doesn’t make it far. When her feet touch the ground, she yelps and hops back onto the bed, realizing the ground is cold. She adds socks to her otherwise sparsely clothed ensemble before standing again. I look her over as she walks over to the window with a growing air of panic in her posture. She’s athletic, toned and more muscular than either Ayre or Olly. Honestly, probably more than both put together if I’m being honest. Sorry, guys.

  She turns from the window silently. Clearly not one to think aloud as she moves over to her gear. She stops stock still, though, looking at the fallen piece of armor and her posture snaps immediately from worried and rushing to alert. I see her muscles tense across her body revealing the breadth of her musculature. Definitely better than both Olly and Ayre put together. I… Uh…wow.

  When she casts her gaze around I get my first look at her face and feel my own breath catch when she looks at me. Not because she has any chance of seeing me. No. I see her eyes. They’re luminous and gold, but just as important, her pupils are vertically slitted.

  Horns, vertical pupils, luminous eyes, pointed ears, a spaded tail and a typically impossible skin tone.

  “The person who hates Olly that much is a demonkyn? That’s really not good.” I have to control my breathing lest I give myself away. Father always warned me about the mortals who descended from the Demon King and said that they were… something. I forget what, though. Pitiable, maybe? I feel many things on seeing her and pity definitely isn't any of them.

  In order to add another layer of protection, I flip backwards and lower myself onto the opposite side of the bedframe between it and the wall.

  Golden motes of some kind of essence build around her as she looks around, her jaw drawn as taut as the rest of her muscles, seeming to collect near her legs and the nearby weapons. But after a couple of seconds, maybe after not finding what she thought she might, she relaxes. The essence dissipates almost immediately, scattering away as fast as it came rather than concentrating on her.

  I realize she also didn’t say an incantation, perform any motions or any other similar mnemonic tools. As far as Ayre says, mortals really can't cast spells unassisted like that. Something to ask her about later.

  She sets about armoring and I watch. Her process is mechanical, ordered, and practiced. She moves with the kind of precision I’d read about soldiers having in my stories, and after about fifteen minutes, she’s fully armored. The comparison to a beetle is overwhelming now. With the plates interlocked, it looks more like a carapace than plate. It also sates my curiosity: as each piece of the armor is pressed onto the undersuit I hear a magical fizzle that seems to lock them in place against other nearby sections and the suit itself. Similarly, she moves in the armor more smoothly than any sort of plate I’ve ever seen or heard about and with barely any noise. People overestimate how noisy armor is, but I know it’s certainly not supposed to be nearly silent. In this quiet room, her breathing is louder than the shuffling of the armor, even.

  Every motion she makes is accompanied by a string of runes igniting on that limb or section of her body, seeming to empower the motion. “Ayre would think this is so cool! Aside from this lady probably wanting Olly dead. Other than that.”

  She tosses her remaining things into her much too small backpack with a series of soft whumps. Not unlike Ayre’s trunk, but obviously more advanced. I wonder if the whump noise is part of the magic? The doors make noise when their magic is used, so maybe all storage magic whumps and all door magic tings? All of my magic tends to emit song and music, so it's not too farfetched. I'll have to find out. These things seem common, and it's going to bother me until I know.

  After doing so, she cleans up everything, leaving it like new — maybe cleaner than new, really — and heads out the door with sharp movements while carrying her helmet under one arm.

  I stay there a while, making sure she’s not coming back, but with a feeling of increasing dread and excitement in pretty much equal measure. I need to tell the others as soon as possible.

  I make my way to the door and slip out after a few very boring minutes.