As soon as the guards and the man that Simon assumed was a wizard exited the basement, he pushed the lid of the chest up and sucked in a long breath of fresh air. His back twinged as he straightened it, and the ankle he’d injured as a child ached from being contorted underneath him for far too long. Coupled with the bruises, abrasions, and blisters from his flight from the Hunt, he wasn’t sure where one hurt ended and the next began.

  He had been able to see just enough through the gap under the chest’s lid to spot the firearms the guards bore. The weapons were strange in design, but Simon wasn’t stupid. Though small, they were gun-shaped, so he assumed they went ‘bang’ and shot projectiles. Simultaneously, he’d realized the wizard was deliberately not mentioning Simon.

  There had been a frank discussion of the wizard’s sexuality. It seemed he preferred men. There had been no extreme condemnation or mockery. Simon thought the wizard must have great power if the guards were unwilling to castigate him.

  Simon’s brow furrowed in brief confusion as he considered a wizard from another land might even to bind him with a geas. He had no magical power for the wizard to steal nor any other unusual talents. He had zero political influence. At a scant five feet of height, Simon would make an unusual choice for a bodyguard.

  He know that elves were considered extremely attractive by many humans.

  ... The wizard liked men.

  something whispered into his heart.

  If that was to be his fate, the part of Simon not yet subjugated by the geas wished he’d been caught by the Hunters. A clean death would be preferable. He was no man or woman’s bed slave.

  ~~*~~

  Shana intercepted Casey on the way to the truck. "I locked the store up." She had Avery's enormous key chain in one hand. "I'll drive. We’ll take my car."

  "Uh, I can ..."

  "No, you can't." Her words were stern, but her expression softened. “I’m sorry, Casey. He is such a good friend to both of us.”

  A long time ago, they’d first met when Shana had joined their scout troop. Sticking up for her — and loudly coming out as genderfluid and queer — was the Avery had been kicked out of that troop, and Casey had then immediately quit. Over a decade later, the Scouts now allowed queer kids to join, but it hadn't been permitted then.

  Casey still wasn’t sorry about the choice to leave the troop, even though it meant he’d never become an Eagle Scout. He’d been very close.

  When Shana hugged him, he clung to her for a second, tears streaking down his cheeks. He asked softly, “Where did you learn CPR?”

  She sighed tiredly. “I took a bunch of classes in jail. I wanted to be an EMT, but I couldn’t pass the background check for certification when I graduated. Anyway, let’s go."

  ~~*~~

  Casey truly expected the worst news regarding Avery — but his Gift was giving him no hints. It seemed to think the outcome was entirely up in the air. He supposed that was better than the sickening feeling when somebody died.

  At nineteen, he had woken from an afterschool nap with the awareness that his father and Avery’s dad were gone, and he'd sat for an hour in a huddled, tearful ball in the middle of his bed while his mother, oblivious, had bustled about making dinner. He had not had the heart to tell her the awful news. Finally, the cops had knocked on the door and told them there had been an accident, and they needed to drive to a hospital in the valley.

  He'd never told his mother or Avery that he’d known the outcome from the instant it had happened. He'd let them hope just a little longer. He still didn't know if that had been kind or cruel.

  Now, he rode in silence to the trauma center, temple resting against the passenger window. He could not imagine a world without Avery, his best friend, his chosen brother, the creative, artistic, beloved, often awkward, larger-than-life goofball who'd been a part of his life since his earliest memories.

  At the hospital, they were met by a nurse, who ushered them back to a waiting room. He simply said, "I'm Avery’s brother," which was almost not a lie, and in response, the woman’s expression softened with sympathy.

  "He's in surgery."

  “He’s not dead?” Shana said, head jerking up in surprise.

  Only now did Casey dare truly hope, though that hope was an anxious thing, tinged with fear. It had taken almost nine hours before the authorities told them that both their fathers were dead. He still didn't know why they had waited so long.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Shana, at his elbow, asked, "How is he doing?"

  The woman couldn't tell them much, just that Avery had lost a lot of blood and was in surgery.

  They sat in the waiting room for hours.

  A chaplain brought them coffee and tried to talk. He wasn't in the mood for religion from a stranger, and he was as terse as he had been with the cop. To his relief, Shana said something sharp and irritated, and the man went away.

  Sometime much later that evening, Avery's mother arrived, trailing a cloud of expensive perfume and with streaks of mascara running down her face.

  "Annette," he said, holding his arms open. She launched into them with a sob.

  "I'm glad you're here," she told him, finally leaning back. She continued to grasp his elbows. "Have you heard anything?"

  "Nothing.”

  “He’s still in surgery,” Shana added.

  "Who's this?" Annette turned her attention to Shana.

  Casey blinked. Shana had been back in their lives for almost four years, after they’d lost touch as teenagers. Had Annette never met her? ... Apparently not. Ever since the fiasco that had been his first year of college, Avery had limited contact with his mother at the advice of his therapist. It wasn’t that they didn’t love each other; it was that Avery had his own life to live, and he was done letting her run it.

  Annette known Shana a long time ago when she was a scrawny misfit kid two years younger than Avery. After they’d both been expelled from the scouts, Shana had followed Avery around like a lost puppy for the entirety of a long, hot summer and into the fall.

  Unfortunately, Shana’s mother had caught them both wearing thrift-store party dresses and cheap wigs in Shana’s basement. They’d intended to go to a Halloween party as zombie drag queens and had been trying out their costumes. Shana’s mother had been horrified by the sight of Shana in a dress and had refused to believe, or perhaps not cared to hear, the excuse that it was a costume. She had accused Avery of ‘perving on’ and ‘corrupting’ her thirteen-year-old ‘son’ — an accusation that had reduced fifteen-year-old Avery to horrified tears.

  Neither of them had been interested in the other that way. Shana liked girls, and Avery had considered Shana more like a kid sister in need of a protector and champion than a potential partner.

  Unfortunately, Shana’s parents had threatened to get a restraining order against Avery if he ever contacted her again, and Shana simply disappeared from town. Only much later would they learn that they had sent Shana to a series of conversion camps, boarding schools, mental hospitals, and various ‘wilderness programs.’ The few times she’d been allowed home, they’d confined her to the house to avoid ‘outside influences.’ Then, the day she’d turned 18, they’d kicked her out, in a way that Casey had found especially abhorrent.

  Now, Shana gave Annette a wary look. Casey decided to assure her that Annette would accept her and get her permission to make the connection for the woman. This was not the time. He simply told Annette, "She’s a good friend. She gave me a ride."

  Casey scrubbed at his face with his hands. He was crying again, damnit. He added, "I told the hospital that I'm Avery's brother."

  "Of course," Annette said with firm approval. "You are."

  They shared watery smiles, and then they sat in the uncomfortable chairs, listened to the too-loud TV, and flipped through random apps on their phones. He discovered that his voicemail was now full of messages from their friends, that Avery’s stabbing was already the topic of heated discussion on various local social media groups, and that drama was spilling over into Avery's personal channels. The customers who had been in the store had made a few posts on Facebook, and it had gone downhill from there. Not all the comments were nice. A few of the usual suspects were being especially hateful, and the mods either didn’t care or hadn’t spotted it yet -- from experience, he knew there were fifty/fifty odds which option was true.

  He made a quick post with a status update, then shut his phone entirely off and distracted himself with the dog-eared magazines. Avery probably would have enjoyed the five-year-old more than Casey did, but he didn’t want to see people say things online like, ‘Those freaks should all be arrested for grooming our kids' or ‘one less pedo in the world’ in response to Avery’s rumored death.

  Shana went and got coffee for all three of them.

  Annette went to the bathroom and returned minus her mascara.

  Time dragged on.

  Finally, the doctor appeared.

  Annette remained seated, looking up. She whispered, "How is he?"

  "He is alive and breathing on his own," the doctor said. He pulled a chair away from the wall, straddled it backward, and regarded them with a very tired smile.

  "He needed CPR," Casey said. "I know that's bad."

  “Yes. Credit to whoever started CPR immediately; he would not be with us if they hadn’t.”

  Shana let a small sound out through her lips. He put an arm around her shoulders. He suspected she’d break down later, in private. Shana wasn't someone who showed tears in public.

  The surgeon continued, “He had some significant internal injuries and lost a large amount of blood. I think I've only seen one or two guys with wounds like his survive to reach the operating room, much less live to tell about it. He seems to be very fit, and he is young. Those were factors in his favor. Still, I’d describe his survival as miraculous."

  "He's going to be okay, then?" Casey’s voice rose two octaves, then cracked.

  "The next few days will tell, and I’ll be honest with you — he’s not out of the woods. However, I think so. His odds are definitely better now than when he came in the door."

  Shana burst into tears. He turned to hug her tight. His Gift whispered that it was going to be okay... and that Avery’s survival hadn’t been a miracle; it had been due to something else entirely.

  He remembered the rush of a kind of power he’d never felt before, pulled straight from the earth. The had a kind of strength to it that he could . The book had tapped that, somehow, through him. He could sense the Power. Perhaps it had always been there, on the edge of his awareness, and now that he knew what it was, he could it. Here, in the city, it felt far more roiled and weaker than it did in Sanctuary, too.

  Avery had survived an injury that should have been fatal.

  His Gift whispered that the things were related, somehow: Avery’s survival and the awareness of Power that had woken in him. He just didn’t understand how. He hadn’t done anything after they’d summoned the angry little elf.

  A few moments later, Annette was allowed back to see Avery. Because he was in the ICU, only one person could be with him. Casey hugged her before she left the waiting room and promised to return tomorrow.

  His brother was .

  Once home, he stumbled up the stairs and collapsed into bed, too exhausted to think straight. It had been an incredibly awful day, and now it was only a few hours to dawn.