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“If he is clever, there are ways for him to provide worth outside of his magic.”

Isn’t that what Fenrir had been telling him for months? “He’s the most clever man I know.”

“Then don’t lose faith,” Daedra said simply, like it really was that easy.

Silence blossomed, calm and contemplative. Fenrir knew better than to believe Daedra was offering him comfort, but that didn’t change the way he felt. For the first time since he awoke in the Labs, he could see a way out of this. Maybe this Atticus was a man of principals. Someone as hurt by Lore as Fenrir and the rest of the Empire was. And maybe the more he got to know Orpheus, he’d realize that whatever help they needed, they didn’t have to take it. They could come to terms peacefully. Unite together in this brand-new world, where human life was too precious to sacrifice to yet another pointless war.

“He’s not a terrible person, you know. Lore was, but Orpheus isn’t.”

“Perhaps Atticus will see that and show mercy.”

Fenrir sighed. “I sincerely hope you’re right.”

He watched Daedra for some time, noting the circles under her eyes had grown darker, her sharp cheekbones more prominent, and he figured it worth asking: “Guards tell me you’re still not eating or drinking anything. Any way I can change that?”

Daedra’s upper lip curled just enough to bare a fang. “No.”

“Everybody needs to eat, though.” Right?

“One eats to survive, yet what purpose does my life now serve?”

“Purpose? Is that really why you came to our world, then? To fight Ohm?”

For a long time, Daedra did not reply. She sat on her cot, a sunspot forging a path across her knee, white hair lifting in the breeze. There was a gray cast to her skin the sunlight should have chased away but instead made plain. He thought of the food she hadn’t eaten and weeks of imprisonment without any attempt to break free, and he wondered what that meant. Why a creature such as her—a warrior, a hunter, a person whose whole identity revolved around her ability to fight—would stop now.

“Daedra—”

“—I came to Earth to kill Ohm,” she said so quietly Fenrir held his breath. “On this plane, he is weak. My kind are as well, but that shared human ancestor gives Myrkur an edge. That was what I needed to kill him, so I believed. That is why I came.”

Fenrir swallowed, unsure what to say. “Sorry second best didn’t live up to your expectations.”

Daedra met his eyes. “You are not what they led me to believe, Ama.”

What could he say to that? Fenrir smiled, hesitant. “So, the Monster of the Rim was a story after all?”

Daedra’s grin was all teeth. “One fit for the whelps.”

Fenrir didn’t linger long after that. He sat in a quiet that felt less claustrophobic than any he’d encountered with Vera, the machinations of the court leagues away here at the top of Daedra’s tower. And she seemed to feel the same. Fenrir watched from sleep-hooded eyes as Daedra returned to her book, turning each page with a carefully crooked finger, birdsong lulling him into an unlikely sleep.

“There is no poison, Ama,” tore him back to awareness. Fenrir blinked awake and met Daedra’s eyes. “Whatever saps your strength has nothing to do with my blade. It is something else.”

“Something else,” Fenrir repeated dumbly.

“Perhaps,” Daedra drawled, eyes dropping back to her book while she turned another page, “you’re simply bored.”

Chapter XXI

The Wall

She came each day, waiting for the guard to slide his evening meal through the door slot before emerging from the shadows, Soot perching upon the window to watch the city sing below. She brought a notebook, settling in while Orpheus ate his meal before hounding him with questions. Sometimes she ate alongside him, offering up a paper-wrapped package of dried meat when Orpheus’ small portion of soup and bread left his stomach grumbling. He didn’t always take it. The unvoiced question of the meat’s source reminded him of Fenrir and the expired meal packs he’d sworn by.

For all the rationing Sanctuary partook in, the city was starving, and the best food seemed to go to Gwen, solidifying his suspicion that she was some kind of chosen one and whatever fate befell him was a matter of when, not a question of if.

Each morning, Atticus brought new tasks while retrieving the repaired items he’d left the day before. He and Gwen managed to fix nearly everything. It was small stuff: a bird-like archanic used to deliver messages; a box that could keep the items inside it cold; another mechanism that could collect drinking water from the tiny particles in the air.

They were simple, useful tools for everyday living, but nothing of the infrastructure Sanctuary surely ran off of. Tests, Orpheus suspected, to gauge his commitment—or perhaps his ability, while doubling as the perfect assignments for Gwen to learn by. And each challenge revealed not a scholar, but a student, one eager to learn—if lacking the tools to do so.

But when a morning came without Atticus’ usual delivery, Orpheus knew something had changed. Without a piece of tech to fix, time passed in the echo of the guard’s footsteps up and down the hall. Sleep eluded him, a vicious drift through his thoughts Orpheus hadn’t experienced in months, a constant what-if that inevitably cycled back to everything that had gone wrong and all the choices he could have made to prevent it.