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Light flooded her skin, that eerie illumination, color returning in waves—first to her eyes, then her skin and hair. She sucked in a shuddering breath with the force of it, but that was it. That was all. She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She barely breathed.

“Gwen,” he gasped, crawling towards her. “Gwen, wake up.”

Her fingers twitched, but she remained pale. Eyes open but unaware, lips a tint of blue that could not be safe.

No. He didn’t—he couldn’t have—

“Help!” Orpheus screamed, shaking hands hovering over Gwen before grabbing her and pulling her into his chest. Was she breathing? Was that a pulse? Orpheus held a hand to her nose but couldn’t tell, put two fingers to her throat and—all hells, was that her, or the blood pumping through his own veins? “Somebody, please help! Get Atticus! She—Gwen—Gwen needs help!”

But no response came. The hallway remained empty, the sky beyond his window gray, the city below silent.

“Help!” he shrieked. “Help, please, somebody help me!”

But like the man who never came to his rescue, it seemed no one was coming to Gwen’s, either.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed through his closing throat. “I’m so, so sorry.”

He cried like he hadn’t since that night before he’d gone to his death, wrapped in Fenrir’s arms while they grieved the love they’d discovered all too late, both aching for the second chance they’d somehow, against the odds, been given—just to bargain it away all over again by doing what was right.

He cried like he hadn’t been able to during the weeks locked in a cage, traversing the scar of the world he had closed while—unknowingly—opening a path to a new enemy that would come to finish what Lore had started, and remind him of his place while simultaneously forcing him to confront his lack of it.

And he cried because in the face of it all he had discovered another soul amongst the detritus who hadn’t yet allowed the world to break her. Who saw in him, as Fenrir had, a person worth more than any magic in his veins.

And he’d hurt that person. Taken that trust and shattered it in the same way he’d been shattered. Because he was no better than the hermits who had hurt him, and of all the unforgivable things Orpheus had done in his life, this may be the only one he truly, wholly could not come back from.

In a whoosh of great weight, the door to his cell crashed open.

“What in cold hells have you done?”

Framed in the obsidian doorway, the violet glow of lantern light a halo around his head, Atticus loomed, eyes alight with a fire colder than what had just filled Orpheus’ veins.

Orpheus did not resist when Duluth and Serval descended on him. Atticus dragged Gwen from his hands at the same moment Duluth threw Orpheus into the far wall. His head hit the obsidian with a muffled crack, the lights flickering through his vision second to the air leaving his lungs. By the time it returned Serval had a knife to his throat and Atticus had his bag open, a vial of clear, innocuous liquid held under Gwen’s nose.

She gasped to life a second later, coughed out a sob and then dissolved into tears.

“Hush, my dear. You are okay. You are safe.”

At the center of his sigil, Atticus held Gwen close, and Orpheus realized with a sinking feeling that, whatever came next, this time…he actually deserved it.

“Serval,” Atticus murmured, “hobble him.”

His gut sank when Serval stepped forward with a wide, toothy grin.

“Been waiting a long time for this.” Serval’s boot met Orpheus’ stomach, then his face.

Then his leg.

Orpheus screamed when every inch of healing he’d managed suddenly shattered.

Blow after blow came, kicks turning to stomps turning to a boot crushing his wrist, another aiming for his skull. Orpheus covered his face and shook, beating aching on, what could have been seconds turning into uncountable minutes, the final blow coming down on his twice fractured leg.

Orpheus shrieked while that awful buzzing overwhelmed his brain.

By the time Serval stepped back, Gwen and Duluth were gone. Only Atticus remained, staring down at him while Serval slipped into the hallway, rag in hand, stained red with blood Orpheus understood to be his.

“To think I felt bad for what is to become of you.” Atticus’ shadow fell over Orpheus’ face, both of them bathed in darkness. Then Atticus swept through the door, lock clanging shut behind him, solitude arriving like a lost, lonesome friend.

Orpheus curled up on the cold floor and cried.