Katie hadn’t gone to dinner. What a waste! What a joke! Why bother? She couldn’t eat a bite of the beautiful delicacies the Matil were sure to set before her anyway.

  Instead, to pass the time—the interminable, impossible swath of agonized time in front of her—she’d decided to do a little recon. She couldn’t sleep, so it must be more productive to do something, right? To get herself ambutory, she’d used a lot more All-Heal than either Fox or Eagle had given her. She didn’t want to OD or anything, but it wasn’t doing what it used to even st night. She’d used gobs on her wrist under the cloth, which was stuffed awkwardly beneath the bracelet in an attempt to shield her flesh.

  So much for that. In a world of snaking white passages, there was nothing to cling to. She felt lost, unmoored.

  Her wrist was her entire reality—the pain was her reality. Every shift of air over the burn was as intense as the st, no relief, nothing but searing. For a minute, she propped her weight against a wall that bowed like the inside of an egg.

  Fox would’ve made it better if he was here. He was the safest thing she could think of, here far from home, but what she really wanted was Daddy, with his warm beard that could tickle the top of her head and his warm enveloping hugs.

  Gods, it hurt, she’d never hurt so much. She’d thought she knew what pain was. Rhyn had taught her—so she’d thought.

  Then she thought, Fuck them all. They don’t deserve to lick my shoes clean.

  It let her chortle hoarsely and lift herself off the wall, which curved just right to cradle her head at the bottom. She’d have to remember that. For now, she let pure spite fuel her down the white, almost featureless passage. Just past open doorways like eggs on their sides, chairs waited empty, and beauticians and masseuses watched TV, filing their nails or staring into space. The only color in the pce was spttered across their faces and dancing on the reflective white wall behind, but she couldn’t make head or tail of it. She swore she saw a fast-food bucket of baby mice, and her stomach swooped extra.

  Dizzy, she ambled down the incline. Whether she’d rather be here or with Rhyn, in the clutches of these Romuns or of Lord High Dickbag, she wasn’t exactly sure, but sawing her arm off at the elbow actually tempted her for a fsh. It couldn’t hurt more.

  She shuffled to a stop at the egg-shaped portal on a wide section dotted by umbrels, booths, and kiosks. The people holding down the fort at each perked up when they saw her, but just as quickly returned to what they’d been doing, which looked like gods-damned fuck-all. Katie rolled her eyes. They were clearly waiting for more people, now that she actually had a chance to look around.

  A little bit of sparkling glitter caught her eye. It drifted in the air, issuing from several of the vents. It might mean something, but she had no idea what. It reminded her of Eagle, all white and blue and green and pitch, pitch bck. Something to tell Fox, she thought fuzzily, if I get a chance.

  Beri would hate Fox. She leaned against the wall on her right side, just before she’d step out into the wider portion, and gathered her strength.

  Fox would hate Beri just as much, probably. They were too simir, but too different to get along. She was proud of herself for knowing it. Maybe she’d even get the chance to find out.

  In a pig’s eye, she thought scornfully. If Beri was the one who rescued her, she’d eat her hat, and she didn’t have a hat. Fox and Liam would get along just fine. They were closer to the same age than Fox and Beri, and Mom might even give him a medal now that she was Queen of Summer. So there.

  As she blinked owlishly out at the room, across the way, a bck and white sign caught her eye. She couldn’t read it, no matter how she tilted her head, but she wasn’t supposed to. Below the legend was a picture of a Matil with a round white head (complete with pointy ears) and a peaked bck cap. The picture was saluting.

  “Heh heh heh,” Katie said in a broken undertone. That was a pce they went, so that was a pce she wanted to see. Simple as that. She shambled forward, trying to snicker, but the effort exhausted her. When she shuffled again, she wasn’t ughing. She’d get over there, and then she’d—

  Something. Whatever. She’d figure it out when she got there. To get there, she had to actually make it across the room. She pitched against a sparkling case of diamond jewelry, thankfully on the right side. The diamonds cut the light into shards. It reminded her again of Eagle, like a Unicode shruggie, but cuter. Sometimes all you can do is spit blood.

  The sign seemed closer. That put heart in her. She straightened again, gring at the astounded Matil behind the counter, who stammered “Miss!” like it was programmed.

  “Fuck you all,” Katie announced to the blurry, doubled person she couldn’t quite focus on, “and your little dogs too.”

  “Of—of course, Miss!”

  Her face pulled into a sneer even Beri would’ve been proud of. “Are you serious? Let’s see it.” Even as she said it, she sort of hoped she wouldn’t. Who knew if these people had equipment she could understand? Finding out wasn’t on her list of things to do. Maybe they could fuck themselves. “On second thought,” she began.

  “Perhaps not, my dy,” someone behind her suggested.

  Her ungainly, defensive spin showed her two versions of the same tall man overpping somewhere in the middle.

  He had pale Sidhe braids—no—they weren’t right for Sidhe braids. Pointy ears, no glow. He looked familiar, but mustering anything about her interaction with him seemed as impossible as living right now. She really would cut her arm off before she let him trap her.

  Why wasn’t Fox here?

  “Your Glory, I must insist you accompany me. Perhaps you’d like to sit down. You look…” The Elfish knight—she remembered him now—gulped like a little boy asking a little girl to dance. “Fatigued,” he decided.

  “Oh.” Clever, clever, something inside her whispered. She could do better. After all, she’d seen him kick ass and take names in the corridor—but what were they doing to him now, that they’d let him walk around? “Well, I guess… if you’re not doing anything,” she said. “I could—I could use a hand. I’m trying to get over there.” She lifted her right hand to point; all it was good for. It was a shriveled cw. The bracelet seemed to have contracted.

  “Ah, what a waste!” Sir Renny cried, completely genuine, enough to make her blink again. “What a pity! That proud Princess Katherine should be brought so low!”

  Genuine or not, he rubbed her the wrong way. “Right,” she said between her teeth. Whether it was pain or annoyance, she couldn’t tell.

  He offered his thick arm without a moment’s hesitation. What else was there to do, wobble across the kiosk section alone? She took it.

  “Princess Katherine, it is on my heart to sincerely atone for my actions of yesterday evening,” Sir Renny began as he half carried her away to the right, the beginning of what Katie was positive would be a speech. “To leave the field in such haste, when you so clearly required assistance, was not a knightly act, and yet I found myself exiting at speed after you made your gracious addition to my poor ensemble.” He stopped.

  He must be expecting something from her, but he was about to go away disappointed. “I puked on you,” was about all she could muster.

  “Yes, as you say, Your Glory.” She couldn’t really make out his face to read it.

  He kept talking, drowning her in words, but she couldn’t make out a single one. Things were getting bad.

  “If you don’t shut up,” she forced out, just to stop his mouth for a moment, “I will barf on you again.”

  He stopped, and stopped walking, a bck hole opening in his face.

  “I seriously, seriously cannot right now. Do you understand?” She waved her withered hand at him. The fingers were stiff, and the shift of air as she moved it around was almost unbearable. “So please—please.” There was nothing left to say. She kept moving, doggedly, and he didn’t say her nay.

  She could paint this whole room with a single Technicolor yawn if he didn’t stop wanting something from her. There wasn’t even enough of her to cover herself. So like a boy, she thought scornfully. Wants me to make him feel better. Well, she wouldn’t, that was all, she just wouldn’t.

  She crabbed over, sweating, as they reached the other side. Sir Renny picked her up and pced her tenderly on the bench.

  “Too much, Sir Renny,” she said roughly. “I didn’t ask you to handle me.”

  Katie wished she could see his stupid dragonsying face better. The bck hole was wide, wide, but it closed. “I believe my dy has drawn the eye of a fell influence; I have been remiss in my duty.”

  “What the hell.”

  “I mean, my dear dy, the malign attentions of Bearach Rev Liedan.”

  She knew enough by now her ears perked up. Even fucked from the iron, I can remember things. It pleased her enough she swung her legs around to sit. Again, she jabbed out with the withered cw. The extra pain was worth it. She hoped someday to be a crone. “Don’t you say shit about my friend. Hope that’s crystal clear.”

  To her surprise, Sir Renny argued, but of course he did. “Can you not see how he’s corrupting you? Bringing you under his sway—”

  “By treating me like any other person!” she spat, and then she did spit. Fuck them all. They could clean it. “Is that what this is about? Because you can move on.” Her voice kept cracking, breaking, but she kept talking anyway. “Maybe you missed it because you ran away, but Fox gave me water and helped me!”

  “To further his dastardly ends, what would that one not do?” said Sir Rennathaisgalloniston, in a voice like thunder in the distance. He narrowed his eyes at her so dramatically she rolled hers.

  Then she spat at him. She didn’t know what made her do it, but she hawked a coppery loogie right into his chest. It sat there, staining his white workout clothes brown and pink, before oozing slowly toward his taut stomach.

  He turned all the colors of a tomato as she watched: first pale and greenish, then blushing faintly yellow, until he was cnging red and ready for harvest.

  At st, she’d mustered the energy for a single, triumphant cackle. If she sounded like this as a crone, it wouldn’t be too bad. The Elfish knight tore ass out of there, running, but trying to look like he wasn’t.

  When he was gone, Katie slumped in a huddle on the bench and took another punch of misery and pain right in the mouth. This really had to stop.

  She didn’t know how much ter it was when she heard it, but the woman’s muffled, angry voice wiggled into her hearing. By now she knew the soundproofing was exceptional here. Why the blind spot here?

  Were there others? Eagle would love to know this.

  Katie was small, even littler than Eagle, even though she wasn’t any shorter. With all his muscles, she’d weigh less, and her shoulders—

  She could fit a lot of pces. A thrill ran through her from the core, even in the iron’s grip. Her arm had withered halfway up her biceps. When she tried to flex, she couldn’t.

  Distantly, she knew she should panic now, if she was ever going to. Last time she used it, she’d wiped the jar of All-Heal clean. In the end, it couldn’t save her from the toxic metal leeching death into her arm—but she’d been told, hadn’t she?

  She burned.

  All she could do instead was try to listen to the quiet conversation on the other side of the wall. Sweating, Katie settled into a minuscule heap and bent every scrap of power she had left on the task. The cwed hand rested close to her chest.

  If she wasn’t too tired to moan, she would have done it. Renewed pain cooked into her chest.

  “So, you don’t think the glitter is connected at all?” said the woman on the other side of the wall. She was at the end of her rope, just like Katie. “Listen, Commander, I’m not in the habit of questioning my superior officers, but in this case—”

  “Oh, I’m well aware of your habits, Ensign Jatus.” Frixm’s cool, high voice, raw meat streaked with solid fat, was completely unforgettable now that she’d heard it. After he beat up Sir Renny, she thought, and there was a split second where she felt guilty, but nah. Catch her wasting precious minutes of life with that motherfucker.

  “Unless you and the captain got quite cozy,” Frixm went on, “you have quite a bit to answer for, Ensign, and I will not call your account clean until you pay very personally. Is that clear?”

  There was a long silence.

  She burned. Fire licked inside her arm and worked its way through her. Someone held a brand to her chest. She was nothing but that, but she knew where she was, and what she was hearing.

  “Yes, sir,” Ensign Jatus said. She went on, and Katie wanted to cheer. Stupid feedback dy might not have been so stupid after all. “But regarding Bearach Rev Liedan, I strongly suggest—”

  “Ensign, surely you don’t think I’ll allow him to go about his business one instant before Captain Itef demands it.”

  Katie pulsed with agony, but she made herself listen. Had to listen. It would be useful, maybe, if she lived through this. Maybe she still would.

  “Commander,” said Jatus, insisted Jatus, “Bearach Rev Liedan is a liability, and so is Princess Katherine. There can be no doubt of it. You must have seen the after-action reports for—”

  “Silence, Ensign, before you get yourself into real trouble. If it weren’t such a pleasure to watch you struggle and fail, I would demote you to hairdresser.”

  Finally, Jatus fell silent, but Katie wasn’t listening anymore. She was riveted by pain, and by something else.

  Beri seemed to grow from the shadows across the way, glow first, outshining the white walls and white kiosks. He stood tall and formal not even ten feet away, in robes so dark blue she couldn’t see his body well, only the outline of him and his glowing head.

  Shaking, she lifted her right hand toward him. His lips were pink and soft; they curved seriously, slightly downward in a frown. “Katie,” he said, like he was surprised to see her there. “Well. You must know by now that no one is coming for you.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said fretfully. “Eagle is going to drag you. He said so himself.”

  Beri cocked his head. “Sir, she’s dying!” he said, but it wasn’t his voice.

  He stepped through her, like she was invisible and intangible, a little old woman in a white dress. As he passed, the deep blue shadows of his robe brushed across her head and swallowed her. There was nothing more.