Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Hospital room

Riddle woke to sunlight and the sound of someone breathing very carefully.

It took him a moment to place it. The ceiling was the same white panel, and the beep beside his bed had the same slow rhythm, but the light coming through the tall window had changed.

Last night it had been amber and thin. This morning it was pale and clean, the kind of light that follows a snowfall, and it lay across the blanket in a wide bright bar.

He turned his head without lifting it from the pillow.

Lilia was still there.

He sat on the stool at the head of the bed with his coat folded over his knees, exactly where he had been when Riddle fell asleep, though something about the angle of his shoulders suggested he had not moved in hours.

His eyes were open and fixed on the wall beside the bed, where the soft gold glow from Riddle’s wings rose and fell, and he was watching it the way people watch a candle in a window.

He looked as though he had not slept at all.

“Good morning, Lilia-san,” said Riddle.

His voice was scraped and quiet, but it worked, and that was an improvement.

Lilia’s gaze snapped to him. Something in his face loosened all at once.

“Good morning.” He leaned forward. “How do you feel?”

“Stiff.” Riddle considered. “Warm. My back hurts less than yesterday.”

“That is the best answer I could have asked for.”

“You have been here all night.”

“I have.”

“You did not sleep.”

“I dozed.” Lilia’s mouth curved. “Fae do not need very much.”

It was a lie, and a poor one, and they both knew it. Riddle let it pass.

His eyes moved past Lilia to the plastic chair by the window. The seat was empty. A long dark scarf lay across the arm of it, folded with the care of someone who meant to come back, and on the bedside table sat the dented thermos, the paperback, and the little wooden box.

“Where is Trey?”

“The washroom.” Lilia glanced at the clock. “He said he would be gone for a minute. That was a little while ago. I believe he is also washing his face and trying not to cry in front of the nurses, so I have been giving him the time.”

Riddle felt his own mouth twitch.

“That is very like him.”

“It is.”

A cart rolled by outside, and a voice called something about breakfast trays, and somewhere down the hall a door sighed shut.

Riddle’s gaze moved over the empty chairs. Yesterday there had been so many people, voices overlapping, hands reaching, and he had felt it all like weather. Now the quiet seemed enormous.

He remembered them leaving, one at a time, as though each had hoped someone else would be first. Che’nya’s forehead against his hand. Sebek’s stern instructions about the second volume. Malleus’s palm resting on the crown of his head.

“Did they get back to school safely?” he asked.

“Silver sent word at midnight.” Lilia’s smile came and went. “Malleus is in bed. Sebek, I am told, is pacing the corridor in his socks. Silver is trying to make him drink warm milk.”

“I had thought Malleus would stay.”

“He wanted to. He would have sat in that chair until they carried him out.” Lilia rubbed his thumb over the seam of his coat. “But he is a prince, Riddle. A prince does not sleep in a hospital waiting room without it becoming a matter of some interest. The staff were extraordinarily polite, which is how I knew it was becoming a problem. By nightfall, three different people had asked whether the Draconia heir was on the premises, and one of them was holding a camera.”

His voice was dry, but his eyes were not.

“Every hour he stayed, more people would have learned that something had happened to someone he cared about. And then they would have wanted to know who.” His jaw tightened. “They would have found you. Your name. Your mother. The newspapers do love a famous doctor. I did not want that for you. Not yet. Not while you are lying here with a tube in your arm.”

Riddle’s fingers curled slowly on the blanket.

“I see.”

“Silver and Sebek were asked to go with him. They are his retainers, and he cannot go anywhere without the pair of them hovering at his elbows, whatever he may say.” 

Lilia’s smile returned, thinner. 

“They both objected. Silver tried to play pitiful to stay, which was very difficult to resist. In the end I told them that you would want Malleus to eat something and sleep in a bed, and that you would be very mad with all of them if he did not.”

“I would.”

“I know.” Lilia’s eyes warmed. “They said they would come back today.”

Riddle nodded.

“And Che’nya?”

“He went home after much hesitation. From what I heard he didn’t want to worry his grandparents.” Lilia replied.

The silence stretched.

It was not an angry silence, or even a sad one. It was the kind that comes after a great deal has been said and a great deal more is waiting, when two people sit very close together and neither is certain who ought to speak first. 

Lilia fussed with the edge of the blanket. 

Riddle watched the gold light move on the wall.

The little wooden box sat on the table, where the sun had found its dull hinge.

He looked at it for a long time.

He had decided, last night, to wait for the morning. It was morning. His heart was beating so hard that he could feel it in the cast.

“Lilia-san.”

“Hm?”

“Are they the same person?”

Lilia’s hand stopped on the blanket.

“…What do you mean?”

“You know that signature.” Riddle’s voice came out stiffer than he intended. He made himself go on. “You have been looking at that box since yesterday afternoon. You looked at it when you thought I was asleep, and you looked at it again just now. Nobody looks at a thing that way unless he has seen it before.”

“Riddle.”

“You said you would answer everything I asked. Today.” He kept his eyes on the ceiling, because it was easier than looking at Lilia’s face. “So I am asking. The friend you told me about. The one who travelled. The firefly fae who wrote to you twice a year and stopped.” He swallowed. “Do you think my father and your friend are the same person?”

Lilia did not move. He sat with one hand frozen on the blanket and the other curled tightly in his lap, and for a moment he seemed to be somewhere very far away.

“…Maybe,” he said.

“Maybe?”

“I cannot say it for certain. A mark on a box is not proof.” His thumb moved slowly over the blanket. “I mean, there are only so many firefly faes left. They were always few, and most of the old families are gone.”

“I suppose so.”

Neither of them spoke. The monitor beside Riddle had quickened, and he made himself breathe.

“I do not wish to be foolish about it,” he said. “I do not want to make something of nothing. But I have been turning it over since last night, and I cannot make myself stop. If I am wrong, I would rather you told me plainly than let me go on guessing.”

Lilia let out a long breath that seemed to leave his whole body.

“I highly doubt that you are wrong,” he said. “I have been trying not to think about it, because it does not help to hold every little thing up to the light and look at it. But too many things line up for them to be different people. I cannot make them stop lining up.”

“So that means…”

Riddle stopped.

His throat had closed around the rest. It seemed impossible to say, like a word in a language he had not yet learned.

“That means that he…” he tried again. “That the man in the letters, and…”

“Yes,” Lilia said gently. He did not look away. “They are most likely the same person.”

Riddle closed his eyes.

He had guessed it. He had known it was coming since the moment he first looked at the box. But to hear it said aloud, in a calm, level voice, in a warm, bright room, made something in his chest drop like a stone through water.

‘A doctor’, his mother had always said. ‘Away on business. Very far away, for a very long time.’

He had stopped asking by the time he was nine. It had never occurred to him to wonder what sort of business a man could be on for his whole life. It had never occurred to him that travelling might have meant what it said.

“…Who was he to you?” he asked, in a small, steady voice.

Lilia took a long time to answer.

He had risen from the stool and gone to the window, and he stood there with his back to the room and his hands clasped behind him, looking out at the snowy roofs. The light turned his hair white as paper.

“Like a brother,” he said.

Riddle waited.

“We grew up together.” Lilia’s voice was careful. “We were orphans, both of us, and a kind household took us in. There is not very much to tell. We learned the same things from the same teachers, and got into the same trouble. There was nothing remarkable in it.”

“What was he like?”

“Insufferable.” Lilia’s mouth twitched. “Severe. He had a face like a locked door when he was young, and a tongue that could skin a person. He was not kind. He was exactly as cold as I was. Which is to say, we were awful, and we adored each other.”

Riddle tried to picture it, and could not.

“And later?”

Lilia’s shoulders rose slightly, the way a cat’s do.

“Later there was a war,” he said. “Humans against fae. It was long, and ugly, and I would rather not describe it. We were soldiers, he and I, and we were very good at it. We were feared. That is not something I am proud of.” 

He turned a ring on his finger. “We worked together for a long time after that. And then one morning he was gone.”

“He left.”

“A letter on the table, and the bed made. He said he wished to see the world.” A sound escaped him that was not quite a laugh. “I was very angry. I do not think I have been so angry before or since.”

“Did he say why?”

“He said what I have told you.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I believed it for a very long time.”

Riddle did not push.

“And after that?”

“Letters.” Lilia turned from the window. His face was calm, but his eyes were not. “Twice a year, three times if he was in a good mood. They came from every country you could name. He wrote about the food, and the mountains, and the people he had met, and every single one ended with a line about how I ought to leave my stupid forest and come and see for myself.”

“You told me that.”

“I did.”

“You did not tell me when they stopped.”

Lilia’s gaze dropped to the floor.

“No.”

“When did they?”

“Silver was small. Three, perhaps four.” The words came out flat. “I wrote to tell him that I had taken in a child. I thought it would make him laugh. He never answered. Nor the next time, nor the one after. After a year, I stopped writing. I told myself that he had grown tired of me. Or that he had died, and I was too stubborn to be told.”

Riddle lay very still.

Silver was his own age, born only a few months earlier. Three or four years old, then. Riddle did the sum without meaning to, and did not say what it came to.

Lilia crossed back to the stool and sat, and for a while neither of them said anything.

“Did he like anything?” Riddle asked at last. “Besides travelling.”

“Honey cakes.” The smile that crossed Lilia’s face was small and tired. “He ate them until he was sticky to the elbows. He could not abide anything crunchy. Nuts, crusts, burnt toast. ‘Thick, crunchy things,’ he called them, with a face like he had smelled something dead.”

“I put honey in my tea.”

“I know. I noticed on the first day you stayed in my bed.” Lilia’s eyes were bright. “Quite the coincidence both of you enjoy such sweet treats.”

A small, startled laugh escaped Riddle, and it hurt his ribs.

“I was never allowed cake,” he said.

“Then we shall have to make up for it.”

Riddle looked at the gold light on the wall, because it was easier than looking at anyone.

“He could not stand waiting, either,” Lilia added. “And when he was angry, he went red from the ears down. A signal flare with legs.”

“My face does that.”

“I know. I have seen it. Thoroughly.” Lilia’s mouth twitched. “The whole of you goes up like a tomato.”

“I do not have a temper.”

“Of course not.”

Riddle shot him a playful glare at the remark, and it felt, a little, like putting on an old coat.

“May I tell you something?” said Lilia.

“Of course.”

“It has been bothering me since the kitchen.”

“The kitchen?”

“In Diasomnia. Before the winter break.” Lilia folded his hands. “You asked me whether it was possible to hide your wings.”

Riddle went still.

“I told you it would be some time,” Lilia said. “That your body was not ready. And you looked so disappointed that I nearly said something. But I was distracted by Sebek and the soup, and then you were gone.” He tilted his head. “Did you truly think that would have worked?”

“I… was hoping…”

“That you could walk into your mother’s house with a smooth back and say nothing?”

“I thought that if she did not see them, there would be no reason to…”

“Riddle.” Lilia lifted one hand and, with great gentleness, tapped the point of his own ear. “Even if you had been able to hide the wings entirely. Even if they had vanished like smoke. You would still have these.”

Riddle stared at his hand.

“And these.” Lilia drew back his upper lip a fraction with one finger and showed the pointed edge of a canine. “She would have seen your ears the moment you walked through the door. She would have seen your teeth when you spoke. It would not have mattered how well you folded your back.” 

His voice softened. “Your mother notices everything, you told me. Did you think she would not notice that?”

For a moment Riddle did not understand.

Then he did.

The blood climbed into his face so fast it made him dizzy. It poured up his neck, into his cheeks, into the tips of his ears, which suddenly felt as if they were on fire, and he could do nothing about it. His good hand flew up to cover his mouth, and his entire head burned bright red against the white pillow.

“I… did not…”

“No.”

“I was not… I did not consider…”

“I did not think you had.”

“I was thinking about the wings.” His voice cracked on the last word. “They were the largest part. I was focused on the largest part. It seemed logical to address the most conspicuous feature first.”

“It was a very logical plan,” said Lilia gravely.

“Do not laugh at me.”

“I would never.”

“You are laughing.”

“I am not,” said Lilia, whose shoulders were shaking. “I am simply having a very difficult morning, and this is the first thing that has been funny in two days.”

Riddle glared at him over his fingers.

“It is not funny,” he said. “It is a significant oversight.”

“It is a perfectly reasonable one.”

“I am usually thorough.”

“You are always thorough.”

“Then I do not understand how I missed it.”

“Because you were frightened,” said Lilia, gently, and the laughter drained out of his face. “When we are frightened, we plan for the part that frightens us most and forget everything else.” He reached out and rested his hand against the blanket, lightly. “It was not a failure, my dear. It was a child trying to protect himself the only way he knew how.”

Riddle’s flush faded slowly.

He lowered his hand.

“…I should like to retract my last statement,” he said. “It is slightly funny.”

“Thank you.”

They looked at each other.

Then Riddle’s mouth twitched, and Lilia’s did too, and a quiet, helpless sound broke out of both of them at once, small and cracked and a little wet. It was not really a laugh. It was something nearer to relief.

It did not last long.

But it was there.

The door opened without a knock.

Riddle’s body went rigid before his mind caught up, and the monitor shrilled once and settled. His fingers clenched in the blanket. The ache behind his shoulders flared, and the gold light on the wall jumped brighter.

“Sorry,” said Trey, quickly, from the doorway. “Sorry, sorry, it’s us. I should have knocked.”

It was Trey.

He stood in the opening with one hand on the door and the other holding a paper cup of something steaming, and his hair was damp and his eyes were red. He had washed his face. He had clearly not slept well enough. Behind him, in a white coat and square glasses, with a clipboard tucked under her arm, was Dr. Hallam.

“Good morning, Riddle,” she said. “May we come in?”

Riddle’s heartbeat slowed. He loosened his grip on the blanket.

“Yes,” he said. “Please.”

She entered, with Trey at her shoulder, and drew up a plastic chair beside the bed. Trey set the cup on the bedside table, within reach of Riddle’s good hand, and took the seat by the window without a word.

His eyes flicked once between Riddle and Lilia, taking in the pink around Riddle’s ears and the faint smile on Lilia’s face. His eyebrows rose a fraction.

“What did I miss?”

“Nothing,” said Riddle, with great dignity.

“Absolutely nothing,” said Lilia.

Trey looked from one to the other.

“Okay,” he said, and the corner of his mouth tucked up.

Dr. Hallam waited until they had settled.

“I have a good deal to tell you,” she said. “Some of it you will like. Some of it you will not. I am going to be honest about both, if that is all right.”

“It is.”

“And you may ask me to stop whenever you wish.”

“I appreciate the consideration.”

She consulted her clipboard, though Riddle suspected she did not need it.

“Medically, you are doing better than we could have hoped,” she began. “Your core temperature is back to normal. Your heart rhythm has been stable for twelve hours. The compound in your blood is still present, but Dr. Alder and our toxicologist have put together a treatment using the information Lilia gave us, and your levels have started to fall.” Her gaze was steady. “That is the most important thing, and I want you to hear it clearly. You are going to recover from this.”

Riddle’s breath caught.

“…Thank you,” he said. It was all he could manage.

“Now, the practical parts.” She turned a page. “You will be staying with us for some time. A week, most likely. We want to keep you on a heart monitor for at least three more days, because the compound can cause irregular rhythms even after it begins to clear. Your feet will need to be watched for signs of tissue damage. Frostbite can look better than it is, and it often takes several days to know for certain how deep it went. I expect them to heal, but I do not want to promise it until we have seen.”

“Yes.”

“Your arm is broken in two places. It is set, and it will stay in plaster for around six weeks. We will take new images before you leave to be sure the bones are lined up.” She paused. “You also have deep bruising across your ribs and hip, and a strain to the roots of both wings. Dr. Alder has been very clear about those. They need rest, warmth, and time. You must not fly, you must not lie on your back, and you must not allow anyone to handle them roughly, for at least six weeks, possibly longer.”

“I would absolutely take care of them,” said Riddle.

“I know.” Her face was kind. “But I want it said.”

He nodded.

“As for moving about. I am afraid you will not be able to walk for a little while. You cannot put weight on your feet until the frostbite has healed, which could take a few weeks. With one arm in plaster, crutches would be dangerous, and a walking frame is no use either. So for now you will use a wheelchair. A physiotherapist will teach you how to transfer safely, and you will not be alone for any of it.”

“A wheelchair,” Riddle said.

He looked at the shape of his feet beneath the blanket, two bandaged lumps that did not feel like they belonged to him.

“For how long?”

“Three weeks, perhaps four. We will reassess as the tissue heals.” She said it plainly, the way she said everything. “It is temporary. It is also nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I am not ashamed,” said Riddle. “I am merely unaccustomed.”

“That is very reasonable.”

Trey’s hand shifted on the arm of his chair. He did not say anything. But his foot came to rest against the leg of Riddle’s bed, very lightly, a small and steady presence.

Dr. Hallam lowered her clipboard.

“There is something else we need to discuss,” she said. “It is about what will happen as you recover.”

Riddle did not need to ask what she meant. He could feel it in the way Lilia’s hand had stopped on the blanket, and in the sudden careful quiet from Trey’s chair.

“When a child arrives at a hospital with the injuries you had, we are required by law to report it,” said Dr. Hallam. “I do not have a choice about that, and I would not want one. It is not a punishment for you or for anyone you love. It is a safeguard, and it is the only way we can be certain you are protected.”

“Report it,” Riddle echoed.

“To child protective services. A caseworker has already been informed. She will come to see you this afternoon, with a colleague from the police, and she will ask you some questions.” Her eyes did not leave his face. “You are allowed to have someone with you. You are allowed to refuse to answer. And you are allowed to tell the truth.”

“The police.”

“They will not arrest you. You have done nothing wrong. They will want to hear what happened in your house, and they will want to look at the pills, which I understand your friend recovered. It will be a process. It may be a long one. But whatever happens, you will not be sent back to your mother’s home while it is investigated.”

Riddle’s heart was beating very hard.

He did not move. He lay on his side with the cushions behind him and the tube in his arm and the gold light flickering fast on the wall, and he stared at the white blanket until the weave of it blurred.

“She was frightened,” he said.

It came out thin.

“I beg your pardon?”

“My mother.” He kept his eyes on the fabric. “She was frightened. I know that. I could see it. She had been so afraid for days, and she kept trying to put everything back the way it was, and I would not let her. I raised my voice. I said terrible things.” His fingers tightened on the blanket. “I said that I hated her. That I could not breathe in her house. I called her a liar.”

“Riddle…”

“She had every reason to be upset. I was ungrateful. After everything she has done for me, everything she has given up, I stood there and shouted at her.” The words were coming faster now, tumbling over each other. “I know what she did was wrong. I know that. But I made it happen. If I had only been quiet. If I had only taken the pills, and kept my mouth shut, and waited, she would have calmed down. She always calms. I always knew how to make her calm, and I did not do it. I chose not to.”

“Riddle.”

“I should have been…”

“Riddle.”

Dr. Hallam had not raised her voice.

She had leaned forward in her chair, with her hands folded and her eyes level, and there was a stillness in her face that stopped him as surely as a hand.

“No,” she said.

He stared at her.

“No. That is not true, and I will not let you say it. You raised your voice. You told her that you were unhappy. You said that the medication was making you ill. That is not a crime. It is not even rude. It is a child telling his mother the truth.”

“But she…”

“A frightened woman who strikes her son across the face has done something wrong.” 

She lifted one hand and began to count on her fingers. “A frightened woman who breaks his arm has done something wrong. A frightened woman who takes his phone, locks his doors, and makes him swallow poison every morning has done something wrong. None of it is excused by fear. None of it was caused by you. There is nothing you could have said, and nothing you could have refrained from saying, that would have made it your fault.”

Riddle’s eyes burned.

“I do not accept it,” Dr. Hallam said, very quietly. “And neither will anyone else in this building.”

He could not speak. He lay with his face turned half into the pillow and the blanket crushed in his good hand.

He had heard it before. Trey had said it, and Lilia, and Che’nya in his own roundabout way. He believed that they meant it. But it slid off him the way rain slides off a roof, and nothing inside him knew where to put it.

Lilia’s hand came to rest on his shoulder, light as a leaf.

“I know,” Riddle whispered. His voice shook. “Everyone says so. I only cannot make it feel true.”

“That is fine,” said Dr. Hallam. “It will come. Perhaps not for a while. But it will.”

“…Yes.”

“In the meantime, you do not have to carry it alone.”

Riddle nodded, once, jerkily.

On the other side of the bed, Trey wiped his face with the back of his hand and looked fiercely at the window.

Dr. Hallam turned a page of her clipboard and said, more lightly, “There is the question of where you go when you are discharged.”

Riddle looked up.

“I told you that you will not return to your mother’s house while this is being looked into. That is certain. In most cases like yours, the caseworker finds a temporary placement. A relative, if there is a safe one. A foster family, if there is not.” Her voice was careful. “Do you have any relatives you would feel safe staying with?”

“No.”

It came out without hesitation.

He thought of his mother’s family: stiff, polite strangers who sent cards at the proper seasons. He thought of his father’s, which he had never known existed. He thought of the long white corridors of the school and the polished stairs of Heartslabyul, with its rules and its roses.

“I have a dormitory,” he said, slowly. “At school. I would ordinarily return there when the break ends. But it is the holidays, and the dorm will be mostly empty. And I do not think the school will permit me to stay alone in a wheelchair for a month.”

“I would not think so.”

“Then I do not know.” His voice dropped. “I do not have anywhere to go.”

“Yes, you do,” said Lilia.

He had said it without raising his voice.

Riddle turned his head.

Lilia sat with his hands folded on his knee, and his eyes were steady. He looked, suddenly, much older than he ever did, and very sure.

“I would like to take you home,” he said.

Riddle blinked.

“With me. To my house.” He glanced at Dr. Hallam. “If the caseworker permits it. I understand it is not for me to decide, and I will do whatever is required, forms, interviews, inspections. But I would like it to be known that I am asking.”

“Lilia-san…”

“It is a cottage in the forest, in Briar Valley. Silver was raised in it, and there is a room at the back, quite a nice one, that has been sitting empty for some time now.” His voice was gentle. “It is warm. It is quiet. There is a stove, and a garden, and a great number of books. And there is a door that opens from the inside.”

Riddle’s throat closed.

“But…” He swallowed. “Aren’t you staying in the dorms for the holidays?”

“I was.”

“You told Silver that you would. You told me, in the kitchen. You said that you would be at Diasomnia, and…”

“So?” Lilia’s eyebrows lifted. “We can go back home any time we like. It is not a great journey. And I think the dormitory will manage without me for a few weeks.” He smiled, crooked. “Malleus may come and go as he pleases. So may Silver, and Sebek, who will insist. No one will be burdened. I am quite sure of that.”

“I would be…”

“You would be a guest.”

“I cannot even walk. I would require assistance. Constantly.”

“Yes.”

“I would be a great deal of trouble.”

“Riddle.” Lilia’s voice was very quiet. “I raised Silver in that cottage, and I did not do it alone. Sebek’s family was in and out of my door from the first week, showing me what to feed him and how to keep him warm, and they would be glad to do it again. I am not asking you to be easy. I am asking you to let us look after you.”

A sound escaped Riddle, wet and helpless.

He pressed the back of his wrist against his mouth. It did not help.

“I would not have you think of it as a favor,” said Lilia. “Or a kindness, if that is a word you dislike. It is only what I wish to do.” His eyes were suddenly bright. “I have wished for it for some time. I only did not know how to ask.”

Dr. Hallam had taken off her glasses and was polishing them with great concentration on the corner of her coat.

“I will put it in my recommendation,” she said, at last, a little unsteadily. “In writing. The caseworker will make the final decision, and she will want to meet you, and visit the house, and interview everyone involved. It will not be immediate. But I will say that in my judgment this is a safe, loving, and appropriate offer.”

She put the glasses back on. “And I will say it twice, if I must.”

“Thank you,” Lilia said, and bowed his head.

Riddle realized that his own face was wet. He did not know when that had happened. He found, to his surprise, that he was not ashamed of it.

“If she allows it,” he said, in a thick voice. “I would like that.”

“Then we shall ask.”

“Very much.”

“I know,” said Lilia, and his face softened into something so tender that Trey had to look away.

Dr. Hallam left a little while later to see about the caseworker. At the door she told Riddle that breakfast would be along shortly, that he was to eat all of it, and that this was medical advice.

The tray arrived before the door had finished closing behind her. A young nurse with a brisk ponytail carried it in, set it on the rolling table, and looked at Riddle with her head tilted.

“Eating lying down isn’t going to work,” she said. “Let’s sit you up.”

“I can…” Riddle began.

“You can’t,” said the nurse, kindly. “If you think you can, humor me.”

She lowered the bed rail and wheeled the table across, then stacked two pillows on it and patted them flat.

“Nothing touches your back,” she said. “We won’t prop you against the headboard, because of the wings. You’ll lean forward on these instead, and we’ll hold you while you come up. Trey, right? You take his good side. Hand under his shoulder, not his back. Lilia-san, if you could mind the drip.”

Lilia was already on his feet, one hand around the IV pole. Trey came around the bed and slid his arm under Riddle’s shoulders with the care of someone carrying a full tray of glassware.

“On three,” said the nurse. “One. Two.”

Riddle came up slowly, and the room came up with him. His head swam. Something pulled sharply behind his ribs, and the gold light on the wall flared bright and then dimmed. The nurse gathered the trailing edge of his wings into a folded towel so they would not drag against the sheet, and he caught his breath and held it until she let go.

“There,” she said. “Lean forward. Let the pillows have your weight.”

He did. His cast was laid across a cushion, and his bandaged feet stayed hidden under the blanket. His right arm was kept straight on the table for the drip, and Trey’s hand stayed warm and steady at his shoulder until the dizziness had ebbed.

He had not been upright since the snow. It felt like standing on the deck of a ship.

“Don’t lean back,” said the nurse. “If the room spins, say so. Press the bell when you’re done, and I’ll lay you down again.”

She went out.

Riddle looked at the tray. Toast, a boiled egg in a china cup, a small bowl of fruit cut into neat crescents, a pot of tea. His right hand lay on the table with the line taped into the crook of the elbow, and his left was a block of plaster. He did not see how he was supposed to manage any of it.

“I do not believe I can eat that,” he said, carefully. He meant the egg. He was fairly sure it applied to the rest as well.

“Then you needn’t.” Trey whisked the egg away and set it on the windowsill, out of sight. He tore the corner off a slice of toast and set it on the edge of the plate, within reach of Riddle’s fingers. “Toast, then. Or just the tea. Whatever you can manage.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me for toast.”

“I shall thank you for whatever I like.”

Trey’s mouth quirked. He poured the tea, held the cup steady, and guided it toward Riddle’s mouth.

Riddle took a sip.

It was hot and sweet and faintly golden, and he knew what it was before he swallowed. Somebody had put honey in it. He had not asked. Nobody had asked him.

He glanced at Trey, who was busy buttering his own toast with great attention.

“I will go and call Silver,” said Lilia, rising. “Before Sebek breaks something.” He rested his hand briefly on the crown of Riddle’s head. “I will be back in five minutes. The door will be open.”

“I know.”

Lilia went out.

Riddle sat leaning on the pillows with the taste of honey still on his tongue and the little gold light moving on the wall, Trey chewing beside him, and the morning sun climbing slowly up the blanket. 

The caseworker would come in the afternoon. There were forms to fill and questions to answer, and he did not know what he would say to any of them.

But the tea was warm, and the toast was a little burnt at one corner, exactly the way he liked it.

This time, someone knocked.

It was three soft raps against the open door, spaced evenly, polite as a clerk at a counter. Riddle’s body went rigid anyway. The monitor chirped and the ache in his shoulders flared, and the gold light on the wall jumped before it steadied.

He had been lowered back onto his side after lunch, with the pillows rearranged behind him and the blanket tucked around his feet, and he had dozed a little. Not deeply. Trey was in the chair by the window with a book he was not reading. Lilia sat on the stool with his hands folded between his knees, as he had for most of the day.

Dr. Hallam stood in the doorway.

“I am sorry to disturb you,” she said. “Riddle, this is Ms. Haldane. She is the caseworker I mentioned.”

The woman beside her stepped forward.

She was perhaps fifty, small and broad in a grey cardigan, with a lanyard around her neck and a leather folder held against her chest. Her hair was going silver at the temples.

“Hello, Riddle,” she said. “May I come in?”

His mouth was dry.

“Yes,” he said. “Please.”

She came to the foot of the bed and stopped there, which he noticed. She did not go to the side where the others were, and she did not loom. When she lowered herself into the chair Dr. Hallam pulled up, her eyes were nearly level with his.

“Thank you,” she said. “I will not stay long today. I only wish to introduce myself, and explain what happens, and ask you a few things if you are willing. You can stop me whenever you like.”

“Dr. Hallam said the same.”

“Dr. Hallam is a sensible woman.”

Dr. Hallam’s mouth twitched.

Ms. Haldane glanced from Riddle to the two beside him. Trey had set his book down on the windowsill and half risen. Lilia had not moved at all, though his hands had gone white.

“I would like to speak with Riddle alone,” she said, gently. “It is how we always begin. Not because anyone has done anything wrong, but because it is easier to say certain things when no one you love is listening.”

Nobody spoke.

Trey looked at Riddle. Riddle saw the question in his face, and the stubbornness under it, and the plain refusal to leave a person alone in a room.

“We should…” Trey began.

“I’ll be just outside,” said Lilia.

His voice was very even. It cost him something. Riddle could see it in the line of his mouth.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Lilia went on, to Riddle. “I will be on the other side of that wall, and if you want me for any reason, any reason at all, you have only to say my name. I will hear it.”

“I know,” said Riddle.

He found, to his surprise, that his voice was steady.

“It is all right,” he said. “You may go.”

Lilia rose. For a moment he hesitated at the side of the bed, as if he meant to say something else, and then he laid two fingers against the back of Riddle’s good hand, very lightly, and took them away again.

Trey was slower. He collected his book and his scarf and the cold remains of his tea, and at the door he turned and looked back, red-eyed, with his jaw set.

“Door open?” he asked Ms. Haldane.

“Open a hand’s width, if he wishes. A nurse will be at the desk the whole time.”

“Please,” Riddle said.

It came out smaller than he had meant it to.

“Open a hand’s width,” Ms. Haldane agreed, as if it were the most ordinary request in the world.

They went out. The door swung almost shut and stopped, leaving a bright vertical stripe of corridor light across the floor. Dr. Hallam lingered a moment longer, caught Riddle’s eye, and nodded once. Then she was gone too.

The room was quiet.

Riddle lay with his gaze on the stripe of light and his heart beating against the mattress.

“I am going to tell you who I am,” Ms. Haldane said, “and what I am not, so that you do not have to guess.”

She had opened the folder on her knee but did not look at it.

“My work is to make sure that children are safe. That is the whole of it. I am not a judge, and I am not a teacher, and I do not decide whether you have been good or bad. I am not here to take you away from anyone you love, and I am not here to put anyone in prison. I ask questions. I listen. Then I try to find the safest place for a child to be, and I try to make it happen.” She paused. “Do you understand?”

“I believe so.”

“Good. Some things are important for you to know before we begin. Anything you tell me stays between me and the people whose job it is to keep you safe. That includes Dr. Hallam, the police officer, and a few others. It does not include your classmates, or your school, or the newspapers.” Her voice was gentle. “I cannot promise to keep anything secret if it means leaving a child in danger. But I will never repeat it to someone who has no reason to know.”

“I understand.”

“Is there anything you would like to ask me, before I ask you?”

Riddle considered.

“Is my mother here?”

“No.”

“Does she know where I am?”

“Not yet.” Ms. Haldane did not soften it. “She has not been told. The hospital is permitted to wait when there is concern for a child’s safety. I will need to speak with her, in time, but not until I am sure that you are well protected. Not until you and I have talked, and I have decided what happens next.” Her eyes did not leave his. “Nobody will bring her to you. Nobody will tell her which room you are in. I want you to be quite sure of that.”

Something in his chest eased by a hair.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You are welcome.”

“There is a police officer.”

“There is. He is waiting in the corridor, and he will wait as long as you like. If you would rather speak to him tomorrow, or the day after, that is entirely your choice. He has been told. He is a patient man.” She smiled, a little. “I thought we might begin with only me.”

“…Yes. I would prefer that.”

“Then we shall.”

She did not start with the difficult things.

She asked about his school, and which dormitory he lived in, and what he liked to study. Asking about school and what Heartslabyul was like. He answered stiffly at first, in complete sentences, with the precise courtesy of a boy reciting for a visiting inspector. She listened with every sign of interest. When he mentioned the Unbirthday tea parties, she wrote nothing down, only nodded, and asked whether the tarts were good.

“They are exceptional,” Riddle said, and then, surprising himself, “Trey made them.”

“The young man who was here.”

“Yes. He is my vice housewarden. And… my friend.”

“I could tell.” Ms. Haldane’s voice was warm. “He did not want to go.”

“No.”

“That is a good friend to have.”

Riddle’s throat tightened.

He said nothing, and she did not press.

Slowly, without his quite noticing, the conversation moved. She asked what a day was like at home. He told her. Up at six. Breakfast at seven, exactly. Lessons until noon. Lunch. Lessons until six. Dinner at half past six. Study until nine. Lights out at half past nine.

“Every day?” she asked.

“Every day.”

“Even in the holidays?”

“Especially during the holidays.”

“What happens if something goes wrong in the schedule? If you are late, or you make a mistake?”

“I am corrected.”

“What does that look like?”

He opened his mouth to say a reminder of the rules, as he always did. But the words did not come. They seemed to stick in his throat, like a bone.

“…It depends on the mistake,” he said at last.

“Tell me about one.”

“I…” His fingers moved on the blanket. “When I was eight, I went out of the house without permission. I was convinced that playing was considered a form of studying.”

“And?”

“I ate one tart. It was strawberry. I was gone for more than an hour.” He swallowed. “When I returned, she was waiting in the hall. She did not raise her voice. She never does. She said that I had made a mistake, and that mistakes must be corrected, and that she would be very disappointed if I was ever so careless again.”

“What was the correction?”

“I was no longer allowed alone for self study. And…” He stopped.

Ms. Haldane waited.

“And I was not allowed to speak to anyone outside the house, other than my tutors, unless she was present.” He kept his eyes on the cast. “I think she was afraid. I think that is why.”

“That is very perceptive of you.”

“It is only what I observed.”

“I think you have observed a great deal.” She said it kindly. “How did it make you feel?”

“I felt that I had done something wrong.”

“And had you?”

“I had broken a rule.”

“That is not what I asked.”

He looked at her.

“Do you think,” she said, very gently, “that an eight-year-old boy who climbed out of a window and ate just one strawberry tart has done something wicked?”

The question hung in the quiet.

“…No,” said Riddle, slowly. It came out strange, as though he were saying it in a different language. “I suppose not.”

“No,” Ms. Haldane agreed. “I do not think so either.”

She made a note on the folder. Her pen made a small dry scratch.

“I want to ask you about your injuries now,” she said. “You do not have to answer anything you do not wish to. But I would like to hear what happened, in your own words, when you are ready.”

His heart began to race again.

“I fell,” he said.

It came out automatically.

“From a window. At the house. In the snow. I had… I wished to leave, and I opened the window, and I jumped.” The words were running together. “I was not thinking clearly. The bruise on my face is from that. And the arm.”

Ms. Haldane did not argue. She did not frown, and she did not look away. She sat with her pen resting against the folder and her eyes on his face, kind and steady and completely unalarmed.

“Dr. Hallam told me that the bruise on your cheek did not look like a fall,” she said. “I am not trying to catch you out, Riddle. I would like you to know that. I am only telling you what I have been told, so that you are not surprised by it.”

He said nothing.

“If it is easier, we can come back to this tomorrow.”

“No.”

He heard himself say it.

“No,” he said again, lower. “It was not a fall. Not the face. The window was after.”

“I see.”

“She struck me.” The words came out flat, with no weight at all. “At the dinner table. With her hand. I had said that I… that I disliked the pills. And I was crying, and she…”

He stopped.

“Take your time,” Ms. Haldane said.

“I had said that I was ill. That the pills were making me ill. She said that I was overwrought. And she crossed the room, and…” His good hand lifted, of its own accord, to the place on his cheek. “It was only once.”

“Was that the first time?”

“Yes.”

“Has she ever hurt you before?”

He thought about it. He thought very carefully, because it was important to be accurate.

“Not like that,” he said at last. “Not with her hands. She has other ways.”

“Can you tell me one?”

“She is very quiet.” He kept his eyes on the blanket. “When she is displeased. She goes quiet, and her face closes, and she does not speak to me for a day, or two. Sometimes longer. I am to behave as though nothing is wrong. And I am to understand exactly what I did.” His mouth twisted. “I have always found it harder than shouting.”

Ms. Haldane wrote for a moment, in a small, even hand.

“And the arm?” she said.

“We were arguing. It was late.” His fingers curled. “I tried to walk away. She took hold of my wrist and would not let go. I pulled, and I fell, and my arm struck the edge of the table. I heard it break.” He swallowed. “She did not mean it. I truly believe she did not mean it. She looked at her hands as though they belonged to someone else.”

“I believe you.”

He looked up, startled.

“I believe that she may not have meant to break your arm in that moment,” said Ms. Haldane. “I am not going to tell you she is a monster, because I do not think it would be true, and I do not think you would believe it. But I am still going to write down that it happened.” Her voice was quiet. “Because it did. And because a mother who did not mean to hurt her child can still hurt him very badly. And she can still be a person who should not be alone with him.”

Riddle’s eyes burned.

“I know,” he whispered. “I know. I only…”

“You love her.”

“…Yes.”

“That is not wrong.”

“I do not know how to stop,” he said, very low.

“You do not have to stop,” said Ms. Haldane. “You only have to be safe. Both can be true.”

The room was very still.

Outside the door, in the corridor, someone shifted. A faint rustle of fabric. A creak.

Lilia, Riddle thought. Or Trey. They were both there, he was certain of it. They were standing just beyond the wall, with their backs against it, listening to nothing, waiting.

He drew a long, unsteady breath.

“Would you like to tell me about the pills?” Ms. Haldane asked.

He told her.

It came out in pieces, rather than the neat chronological account he would have given if he had been allowed to prepare.

He told her about the years of it, the whole unbroken length of them, since before he could remember asking what they were. He told her what Lilia had said in the lounge, and what he had done afterward, and how he had stopped, and how the stopping had felt like surfacing from deep water.

He told her about the days after he returned home.

He told her about being sick in the bathroom with the taps running.

By the end, his voice was hoarse. His eyes were wet, though he had not noticed when it began. He lay quietly with his hand over his mouth and his gaze on the stripe of light on the floor, and Ms. Haldane sat quietly with him, and did not say anything for a long time.

“Thank you,” she said at last.

It was a simple thing to say. It undid something in him.

“I am sorry that I did not tell you sooner,” Riddle said.

“You told me today. That is the right time.”

“I should have…”

“No.” She said it as Dr. Hallam had, but more softly. “You have told me more in one afternoon than most grown people can. You did it while hurt and frightened, to a stranger, in a bed. That is not a failing, Riddle. That is courage.”

He did not know what to say to that.

“I have a few more questions,” she said. “They are practical ones, and they will be easier. Are you willing?”

“…Yes.”

“Is there anyone you feel safe with? Anyone at all?”

“Yes,” said Riddle, at once.

“Who?”

“Trey. My friends. Lilia-san.” The names came out quickly, all in a rush, as though they had been waiting just behind his teeth. “He has offered to… he said that, if it is permitted, he would take me to his home. In Briar Valley. It is a cottage in the forest. He said that there is a room.” His voice wavered. “He is the vice housewarden of a different dormitory. He has been looking after me for weeks. He has not once been unkind.”

“I will need to meet him,” Ms. Haldane said. “And visit the house. And speak with a number of people who know him. It is not a quick process, and I cannot promise how it will end. But I have heard the offer, and Dr. Hallam has written very warmly of it.” Her smile was small. “I will tell you honestly that it is a good sign that you speak of him as you do.”

“Thank you.”

“Is that what you would like? To go with him?”

Riddle hesitated.

He thought of the stool by the bed, and the cold hand against his hair, and the sound of someone saying the door will be open either way. He thought of a cottage he had never seen, with a leak in one corner and a room at the back.

“Yes,” he said. “I would like that very much. I do not want to go home.”

“Then I shall write that down, in your words.”

She did.

“You will stay here for now,” she said, when she had finished. “Until the doctors say you may leave. No member of your family will be permitted to see you without my permission. A nurse will be told, and the doctors, and the security staff, and anyone else who needs to know. If anyone tries to come in, they will not be admitted, and I will be informed within the hour.”

“And after?”

“After, we will see. There will be a hearing in a few days, quite a small one, where a judge confirms that you may remain somewhere safe while we look into things. I will be there. So will Dr. Hallam, if she is able. You will not have to speak, unless you wish to.” Her pen paused. “And the police officer will need to take a statement, as I said. Not today, if you are tired.”

“Tomorrow,” said Riddle.

It surprised him how quickly it came.

“I think I would like to do it tomorrow. While I still have the courage.”

“That is good.”

“I shall want Lilia-san to be there.”

“We will see what is permitted. I think it is likely.” Ms. Haldane closed her folder. “Is there anything else you would like to say? To me, or to anyone?”

He thought about it.

There was a great deal. A whole life of things, stacked in the dark like unlabeled boxes. But most of them would keep. Some of them he did not yet know how to open.

“…Only that I am not sorry that I left,” he said. “Though I was frightened to. I thought I would be. I find that I am not.”

“No,” said Ms. Haldane, gently. “I would not think so.”

She rose, and tucked the folder under her arm, and stood a moment looking down at him. Up close, he could see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, and the faint silver of the lanyard against her cardigan, and something very tired and very warm behind both.

“You did well today,” she said. “I do not say that lightly. I will see you again tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Ms. Haldane.”

“Rest, Riddle.”

She went out.

The door swung to its narrow stripe again, and he heard her voice in the corridor, low, and then a pause, and then Lilia’s, quick and quiet, and Trey’s cutting across it. The sound of three people trying very hard to speak calmly.

Riddle lay with his eyes on the ceiling.

He felt hollow, and light, and very tired, like a room that had been emptied of furniture. His hand was trembling slightly on the blanket. The monitor beeped slowly beside him, and the gold on the wall rose and fell, and fell, and rose.

I told her.

I told her, and nothing happened.

He had not known that was possible.

The door opened.

Trey came in first, and then Lilia, close behind, and neither of them said anything. Trey crossed the room in three strides and sat on the edge of the bed, as though he had been doing it all his life. He took Riddle’s good hand in both of his. It was warm, and a little damp, and it shook.

“You did it,” he said, hoarsely.

“I believe so.”

“You did so well.”

“That is what she said.”

“She was right.”

Lilia stood at the head of the bed and said nothing at all. His eyes were very bright. After a moment he laid his palm lightly against the crown of Riddle’s head, and held it there, and did not take it away.

Riddle closed his eyes.

“I should like some water, please,” he said, in a very small voice.

Trey laughed, a cracked, wet, helpless sound, and went to get it.