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Chapter Text

Growing up I knew there were two main differences between me and my sister: 

The first: She was older by exactly four years. Which meant I was the perfect age to annoy her when she was young, always begging to tag along and never for a moment respecting her space, and she was the perfect age to annoy me when I got older, always giving me her wise and hard earned advice about how to get through high school and what to look for in a college roommate.

The second: She had pointed ears. Which meant she would live longer, (by a few hundred years, but who’s counting) had access to magic, was in general far more resistant to injury and disease, and all of this together meant she wouldn’t get drafted, would be given far more job opportunities, had access to an entire class of people would never so much as look me in the eye, and would by all accounts except her own, have an all around better and more fulfilling life.

The funny thing was, as much as our parents and Bryce loved to pretend that second difference didn’t matter, the world we lived in shoved it down my throat every second it got. Of course, it wasn’t as easy for her as it was for full fae, I would never take that away from her. But while she dealt with dirty looks and getting called half breed once in a while, I got a claw to the gut from a 14 year old shifter because “Look! Humans really don’t have any healing at all! ” to which I, naturally, responded “Yes we do, shit for brains, it’s called blood platelets and an immune system,” before punching him square in the nose hard enough to crunch bone, just as my dad taught me. By the time the cops came they were utterly convinced I had to have started it, because how on the Asteri’s green Midgard could a human mange to break a shifter’s nose unless they attacked unprompted, and didn’t even bother to take me to a hospital before just leaving to bleed out on the sidewalk while I debated calling my dad or an ambulance first. After that my mom said I could never go back to Crescent City. Bryce got to go to college there.

When I was 9 and Bryce was 13, we met her fae side. My mom had to do a lot of convincing and more than a little threatening to get the invite extended to me, the full human, not related to any fancy fae at all, not even normal fae or anything, but somehow she managed. I only saw the Autumn King once face to face. I remember staring into those cold merciless eyes and thinking “Oh, so that’s where she gets it from.” 

Then I met Ruhn, her other half brother. “Nice to meet you,” he told me. I stared at him. He smiled awkwardly. I didn’t. Bryce elbowed me and I hit him with a calm cool “Sup,” to which she elbowed me again. I remember thinking he was huge. Twice my height, roughly seven times my age, covered in tattoos and piercings that said “Look at me, I’m intimidating,” in a way that even as young as I was made me immediately suspicious. Only someone deeply insecure would try that hard to look cool.

At one point, probably sensing I didn’t like him and guessing at the reason, he said to me, “Hey kiddo, don’t worry, I’m not trying to replace you.” Good luck if you were, adult-o. “Look, when you think about it, I might be her brother, but you’re her sister. So she’s got one of each!” Now, dear reader, I will say in Ruhn’s defense, he did not know I was trans. I hadn’t even fully figured that out yet, let alone told anybody, but that made me angry. I didn’t say anything, just scowled at him. “And I mean, sister is way more important than brother.” I kicked him in the shin and went back to my mom.

This little visitation ended when Bryce left his room crying. That asshole made my sister cry. I decided then and there fae weren’t worth the trouble.

I was 13 when I came out to my family. All at once, ripping off the bandaid, I blurted it out at family dinner. “I’m a boy. I want to be called Elliot.” There was a painfully tense moment of silence I tried to break by quietly cutting into my chicken, but my hands were shaking. Then Bryce hugged me, and said to our dad over my shoulder, “I told you, now pay up.” My dad chuckled and said “For the record, I thought you were going to wait until Solstis to tell us, not just a random Thursday.” My mom was silent. When Bryce let go of me I saw she was frowning at me. I started sweating, my poor little 13 year old heart pounding, before she finally said, “You need a middle name. How am I supposed to yell at you without a middle name?”

After much debate we settled on Isaac. Elliot Isaac Quinlan-Silago. Mom cut my hair that night. Bryce took me clothes shopping the next day. We got my name legally changed after a few months and I got hormones from a medwitch after a few years.

Bryce went to college. I started high school.

She graduated, got an apartment with her best friend (a wolf shifter named Danica), and got a job. I knew after that it would be mandatory family dinners once a month and a phone call or two a week, if I was lucky. She had a life. Good for her. It’d outlive mine.

I turned 18. For humans that meant one thing: Standardized testing. A score of 1550 out of 1600 meant an exemption from the draft. Vanir can say what they want about our lifespans, our distinct lack of magic, our pitifully normal strength, but they still need scientists to keep the firstlights on. Even the Asteri don’t want to risk a brilliant mind getting a bullet lodged in it, even if it was human, if it meant losing the next technological advancement. So I spent all of high school studying for a test that would literally determine my value as a person. My mom tested out of the draft when she was my age, and tried to help me study every spare minute she got. My dad scored a 1428, still extremely high and respectable, but not enough to spare him from going to war. “War” was a generous term for what they made us do. The ugly term was “pest control.” My dad called it the reason he couldn’t stand the sound of fireworks. When humans started rebelling against the Vanir, the Asteri came up with the idea that it’s much harder to fight for human rights by fighting human soldiers. It was a plan that worked depressingly well, and left us all scared, one way or another.

A week before I was due to finally take the test, Bryce came back home. I told her I was fine, and she should go back to Crescent City and do her job. “Jessiba will be fine without me,” she said. “Isn’t she terrifying and insane?” I asked her. Bryce shrugged and said “Aren’t we all.” So she helped me with breathing exercises and made sure I was eating well and going to bed at all the right times. The night before test day she took my hands in hers when they were shaking too badly to finish my last practice test.

“You’re ready,” she told me. “You can do this.”

Test day came and it might as well have been execution day. My high school was the biggest in the region, so that’s where testing was held. Every human who was a high school senior in a twenty mile radius walked into the building like it was a funeral march, signed in at the entrance, and was given their room number. By chance I got the room I took history when I was 14. On instinct I sat in my old assigned seat before being told we were to be seated in alphabetical order.

The test was to begin at 10:00 am exactly. I looked at the clock. 9:52. I took a deep breath. Then another. I willed my hands to stop shaking. The girl seated behind me was audibly crying. 9:53. I took a deep breath. I played Bryce’s words over and over again in my head. You’re ready. You can do this. 9:54. All the seats were filled. The testing supervisor collected all our phones. 9:55. He locked the door and passed out a booklet filled with bubbles and the occasional group of lined pages. 9:56. He passed out pencils. HB #2. We each got three of them in case the tips broke. I started fiddling with the eraser. 9:57. He handed out the test itself, the pages sealed shut with a paper sticker that read “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL INSTRUCTED.” We waited for the instruction. I took one last deep breath at 9:59. The clock hit 10:00. The sound of 30 paper stickers being simultaneously ripped open filled my head and my only thought was You think that’s bad imagine how much worse getting bombed must sound. I picked up my pencil and began.

I wish I could explain to you what the test itself was like, but honestly I don’t remember a single thing. From the moment I started to the moment I finished my brain was completely blank, not allowing any room for stress or fear or dread. I had one task to complete: Get as many answers correct as possible, answer none of them wrong. Apparently that left no spare brain power for memory creation. All I can say is, at a certain point the time had run out, and my answer book was filled, so the only thing to do was to trade it in for my phone and go home.

Bryce and my parents were waiting at the kitchen table like they were waiting for a medwitch to come in and tell them I was either ready for visitors or hadn’t made it through the surgery. When I came through the door they all jumped to their feet and silently waited for me to say something. I walked to the cabinet, took my dad’s bottle of gin, and in one quick motion took the top off and drank, my throat stinging in protest before I set it back down, and wordlessly shut myself in my room.

“Elliot,” Bryce said from the other side of the door. I curled into a ball on the floor. “Open the door, please?” It wasn’t locked, but I didn’t move. She could come in, or not, it wouldn’t matter.

I heard her footsteps walk away, then come back. She opened the door, and when she saw I was turned away from her, she sat in front of me and set down the gin between us. I didn’t say anything, so she took a swig from the bottle and handed it to me.

The test would take seven days to score, then the results would be emailed out, and the vast majority would receive the official draft notice in the mail seven days after that. It was the longest week of my life. I barely spoke. My dad didn’t say a single word. The world felt fuzzy and far away, every sound was muffled like I was under water. At a certain point I was so desensitized to fear it became irritating rather than all consuming. The test was done, there was nothing I could do to change what would happen next, and yet my body was still in a permanent state of fight or flight. I wish I could tell it to just calm down and let me sleep, at least then maybe the days would go by faster, but no such luck. All the while Bryce was there. Her boss was still calling her every so often to complain she wasn’t back yet, and Bryce hung up on her every time. Her friends were still drinking and partying or whatever wolf shifters do. And she was home, trying to get me to eat more, and trying to keep my parents some level of functional. She did the dishes when our mom was shaking too badly to do it herself. She tried to get my dad out of bed in the morning, or at the very least made sure the window was open so he could get bit of fresh air on the days he couldn’t. She put JJ on my nightstand for good luck. 

After what felt like decades, the day came. I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop, clicking refresh over and over again. When the notification finally came my heart stopped beating and my stomach fell through the floor. My dad squeezed my hand. Bryce and my mom were hovering over my shoulder. The three of them held their breath as I opened the email and saw the number that determined everything: 1548. Two points off.

I was going to war.

Chapter Text

“Somebody say something,” I said.

Bryce was pacing. My mom was utterly still. My dad still hadn’t let go of my hand. The silence was deafening. I couldn’t take much more of it.

“Please?”

“Two points,” Dad said. “No, no… my son is… two points, two fucking points.”

“Dad-”

“I won’t - I can’t - I can’t let my son go through what I did, I-”

“Randal.”

My mom wrapped her arms around him, and he wept. It was the first time I’d ever seen my dad cry. I looked to Bryce, still pacing back and forth, her eyes filled with a sort of grim determination. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and started dialing a number while running out of the house.

“Bryce!” Our mother called after her, but she didn’t come back. “Bryce Adalaide Quinlan!”  

She closed the front door behind her. I hugged my dad. He held me like I was dying. He wasn’t far off. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m okay, I’ll be okay.” We both knew I was lying, but there wasn’t anything else to say. My mom ran after Bryce, and my dad and I stood in the kitchen silently crying, trying and failing to act brave for each other.

We could hear Bryce and my mom outside. “What do you mean you’re leaving? ” and “I’ll come back Mom, I promise, just-” and “Absolutely not!” My phone started buzzing with a million notifications from every one of my human friends. “Didn’t make it,” and “Them’s the breaks :/” and “My mom won’t stop crying,” and one bold “See ya on the front lines, soldier o7.” I didn’t answer a single one of them and hated myself for it. We were all in the same murder boat, and the least I could do was share in the same futile attempt of comfort, or at least dark humor. After a while Danika came back to pick up Bryce. She was going back to her vanir life, and I was going to start my human one, so it seemed. Our mom was yelling at her until she couldn’t see Danika’s car anymore.

Three days went by. I still didn’t open any messages, but did keep charging my phone. A sort of non-committal only half dissociation from reality. A real coward move, but hey, I only had four days left to be a coward, and then it was off to combat training, and after that the front lines. I was going to milk it while I could. 

In the meantime my dad tried to give me advice. “Always, always, do what you’re told. I know you. You’ll want to rebel. But if you do, they’ll find a way to make you obey. You’re strong, but they will find what breaks you. And they’ll use it. Over and over again. Do not give them a reason to break you.”

“I’m not going to kill for them,” I said with the confidence only someone deeply in denial could muster.

“Yes.” His face was stone. I almost didn’t recognize him. It was the only time in my life I’ve ever been afraid of my father. “Yes, you will.”

“I…” I didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m going for a run.”

Just until you clear your head, I told myself. Yeah, fat chance that’ll happen. Run until you pass out, idiot. I ran one mile. My head still felt full of gravel. Just a bunch of rocks shaking around up there. You’re gonna be a soldier, loser. Better get used to it. This time next year, who knows! Maybe they’ll tell you to burn a toddler or something. I didn’t like that. I shook my head, leaving the thought on the asphalt behind me. Two miles. You could always join the rebellion. Be the burnt toddler instead! Three. I mean, can they really make you do what they want? They don’t have mind control. Four miles. Do they? Five. They have torture. And your parents’ address. I sped up. Six. Soon I was sprinting like I could outrun it. No such luck. I was panting and wheezing embarrassingly quickly. I stopped and sat on the curb, and in what was perhaps not my most dignified moment, I buried my face in my knees and screamed as loud as I could. I would’ve ripped my throat right open if I could, just to have some sort of cathartic release from it all. You could just rip your throat out for realsies. Can’t go to war if you bleed to death first. Unfortunately friends, I was still too deep in my coward era for that one. Pissboy. Little bitch.

And then my phone was ringing. I ignored it. Probably more “Hey bud, we all got drafted, wanna get drunk first?” invites, or “Elliot Isaac Quinlan-Silago, get back to the house right this instant, your father is going to have a heart attack.” I didn’t have the energy for either of those. It rang again. And again. “Gods, fine, I get it,” I said expecting the caller ID to say Mom. It didn’t. It was “The Superior Sibling :P” calling.

“What?” I said into the phone. My voice sounded exhausted and pathetic, a sad wet kitten in low res. 

“Just wanted to say congrats! Sorry for the late call, I only just found out,” Bryce said on the other end, in a sort of faked casualness I was all too familiar with.

I stood up quickly, looking around. No one was near me. “For what?” I asked in an identical rehearsed calm.

“For that whopper of a test score, dude! 1550 on the dot,” she let out a whistle. “That’s impressive. Super, super impressive. I mean, wow. Just made it. Huge relief, huh?”

My eyes widened. I looked around me again. No one. She didn’t. She did. How the fuck. “Yeah, heh. I was worried there for a moment, but you know. All those practice tests really paid off.”

“You studied harder than anyone, that’s for sure.” My head was spinning. It was an actual effort to keep from hyperventilating into the phone. “Hey, how are Mom and Dad feeling about it? They’ve gotta be more proud than anyone. Am I on speaker?”

“No, I’m on a run right now. I uh. I’ll video call you when I get back, okay? You can ask them yourself.”

“Ah, that’s okay. I have to get back to work anyway. Just wanted to tell you I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, before I let you go! You should come visit sometime, okay? You haven’t been to the city in forever!”

I blinked. “Yeah, it’s… been a minute.” Still had the scar from it. “You free tonight?”

“I’ll have Danika pick you up at six. Shoot, I really gotta run. Love you!”

“You too.”

She hung up. I stood there for a long while, staring at the black screen. She got my score changed. She got me exempt from the draft. She got my score changed. In a way where she was now worried someone was listening to her phone calls, in a way she needed to explain to me in person, away from our parents.

Back to Crescent City, then. Fuck it, I thought. We ball.

Chapter Text

Sure enough, when I got home, the first thing I did was check my email. Sitting in my inbox, as threatening as ever, was the dreaded determiner of fates: The Test Score. But instead of 1548, a crisp even 1550 was written in its place. “Must’ve been some sort of mistake,” was the excuse I gave, trying very hard to sound as confused as my parents were about the score change. The why didn’t seem to matter as much as what the number meant. I was safe from the draft. I thought my dad was going to pass out with pure relief. My mom, too. There were tears, there were hugs, there were threats to “Whoever’s in charge,” but mostly there were tears and hugs.

I pretended to call Bryce and tell her the good news. I couldn’t actually, of course. For anyone tapping her phone, me calling her to tell her something she just told me would be far too suspicious. But the fake “Bryce you’ll never believe what happened,” was enough to make my parents believe she wasn’t involved. After that, with six o’clock getting ever closer, I lied and said I was going to spend time with my friends while I still could. ( You should do that, actually. They’re either going to be dead or wish they were soon. My head wouldn’t stop with that. They’ll be fighting and dying to keep the status-quo and you’ll be playing video games or something. Pissboy. Little bitch. ) At 5:55 I was waiting down the street. My parents knew Danika’s car, and I didn’t want them seeing it.

I finally saw her at 6:20. “Hey E,” and “Don’t call me that,” was all we said to each other before driving off in complete silence.

Now. Don’t get me wrong. Danika is fine . She never did anything to me, but did make sure her and Bryce’s apartment was protected with the highest quality wards money could buy. I couldn’t hate anyone who kept my stubborn ass of a sister safe. But shifters? Wolf shifters? Not especially my favorite. The scar on my stomach seemed to burn, even though it was years old, as if to say “Hey bud! Make sure to not get disemboweled again! Wolves can just do that, in case you forgot!” My hands started to get all clammy and my heart rate picked up. Wolves can smell fear. Calm down, this is embarrassing. I took a few deep breaths and it did not do enough. Seriously dude. I kept looking straight ahead. Maybe if you ignore her your stupid little trauma brain will forget she’s there. I glanced over at her at the exact moment she glanced over at me. I flinched ever so slightly and prayed to whatever god would listen she didn’t notice. Doesn’t matter if she did, moron, she can literally smell adrenaline. And even if she couldn’t, you’re sweating bullets over here. Even humans can smell that , good gods. We were still about ten miles out from the city by that point. That plus the time it would take to drive through the city itself? Neverending. The ride was torture. Not to mention the knowledge that once it was over, instead of being stuck in a car with a wolf, I’d be stuck in an apartment with a whole pack. Because of course Bryce had to go and befriend an entire fucking wolf pack. But they were her friends, and wouldn’t hurt me. Or so I tried to remind myself. But they could! If they wanted to they could tear you to shreds faster than you could say “Hey guys! Traffic was awful!” They wouldn’t. But they could! But they probably wouldn’t. But they definitely could! And speaking of Bryce and her friends, where the hell was she? Did she just think “Oh he’ll be fine. Elliot Quinlan-Silago, famous lover of strangers who could kill him for sport. I’m sure he’ll love driving around with my friend, who he barely knows. No reason for me to go too! None at all!”  I shut my eyes tight and tried to focus on breathing. I failed miserably. You’re being a dick, you know. She didn’t ask to be a wolf any more than you asked to be human. That was the only half-rational thought I had that entire car ride. But then we were in Crescent City proper, sitting in traffic. The city buildings seemed to crowd in on me as we slowly crawled through narrow streets, and I wanted nothing more than to get out of there as soon as possible. I looked down at my lap to avoid looking outside, and for just a second I thought I saw blood leaking from my gut again, but nope, just silly goofy trauma brain. Yes yes brain, Crescent City + Wolf = Ouchie. Very insightful.

Eventually the car stopped moving. I barely noticed. “We’re here,” Danica said, and I, being very calm cool and collected, said “Poggers.” She then had to tell me that usually, when you arrive at the place you were going, you’re supposed to get out of the car. I did just that and thanked her for the reminder.

We walked again in silence to Bryce and Danica’s apartment. I stuck close to her like my life depended on it. The irrational part of my brain might have been terrified of her, but the rational part knew that if I did get attacked here again, she would be my best protection. Bryce would be so pissed at her if she let me get killed or something.

And then we were in the apartment. Surprisingly, no wolf pack. (Besides Danika, obviously.) Instead there was something worse! Ruhn Fuckin Danaan, the prince of being a dick or whatever. 

I looked at Ruhn. I looked at Bryce. “What the fuck is he doing here?”

“Nice to see you too, Elliot,” Ruhn said. I gave him my best “shut the fuck up, do not speak words, you’ve lost word privileges” look.

“If we met at his place, it’d seem too suspicious. So I asked him to meet here,” Bryce said.

“No cool, I got that, what I meant was why?”

“Stop being a dick.”

“I don’t-“

“ Don’t say it.”

“Okay well if you don’t want me to make the ‘I don’t even have one’ joke then you should be more careful with your wording.” Danika snorted. It made me immediately like her at least twice as much. “More to the point though, again, why is Prince Edgelord here?”

Bryce crossed her arms. “ Ruhn is here,” she started, over-emphasizing his name and being about six shades too dramatic about it, “because we need to get our story straight before anyone questions you about why your score shifted two points.”

I looked at Ruhn again. I looked at Bryce again. “You didn’t.”

“My roommate, Declan, he’s… good with computers, if you get what I mean,” Ruhn said. I didn’t care about anything he had to say, but he kept going. “I had him hack into the system and alter your score. For all anyone knows, it’s always been 1550. Dec originally thought about altering it as if it was a scoring error, but that was too risky. If someone had checked the original physical test, we’d be screwed.”

“Bryce.”

But Ruhn kept going. “Technically I could have gotten you exempt all together, but I needed my father’s permission for that.” His father, and Bryce’s. But the outside world didn’t know that. For all anyone outside the family knew, Ruhn was some distant cousin, and her dad was some unnamed fae lord. “If I asked him, best case, it’d cause a lot of unwanted attention for me, you, and your sister.” Your sister and not our sister, because Danica was still in the room. “And worst case, he’d say no just out of spite.”

“Shut up a minute. Bryce. ”

Prince Edgelord just kept on saying things. “Basically, two things are important here: One, you tell no one it was originally 1548. I’ll let you figure out how to explain it to your parents. And two, you don’t let anyone even think that Bryce came to me for help. If anyone even suspects foul play, it’d be me, you, her, and Dec liable. Understood?”

“Hm? Oh, nope. Sorry, my stupid human brain didn’t quite catch that. You mind explaining it again, maybe with pictures this time?” I felt my face grow hot with anger, and it took everything in me to keep my voice from being loud enough for any potential neighbors to hear. “But thanks so much, for helping out such a lowly pathetic and weak human such as me, however may I repay you, your highness?”

Ruhn stood there in mute shock. For a moment, an image flashed through my head of a little 9 year old me kicking him in the shin. And then he opened his stupid mouth again. “I never said you were stupid.”

“Right. Just weak and pathetic, right? Helpless? In need of some fae asshole to save me? Well, that’s great for me. Super fantastic. Gods have mercy on us all if you bothered to ask my input while hatching this cute little plan.”

Bryce stood in front of him then, to shield him. What she thought I could do to him was beyond me. “He didn’t save you because you’re helpless . He helped you because I asked him to.”

I laughed. I actually full on belly laughed at that. “Oh don’t worry, I know. And fuck you. ” Bryce had the audacity to look hurt. Danika put herself between us, as if I was going to attack her. It made me even more livid. “How dare you go to him for this.”

Bryce straightened. “I wasn’t going to let my baby brother go to war because he’s too stubborn to accept help. I had an out for you, there was no way in Hel I wouldn’t use it!”

I laughed again. My heartrate was through the roof, and every breath I took felt heavy. “How nice, how nice for you, to go to the fae every time you need a favor. How convenient! When my friends start killing and dying one by one, I’ll be sure to tell them ‘Sorry guys! Should’ve had a fae fix all your problems for you, rookie mistake!’”

Ruhn spoke again, and my fists tightened enough to hurt. “Are you saying you’d rather kill and die with them?”

“ Of fucking course not! ” Danika put a hand on my shoulder, probably a reminder to keep my voice down. But the feel of her hand on me made my entire body flinch as I shoved her away from me. “Do not touch me. Don’t you dare touch me.” Danika put her hands up in a sort of mock surrender as she took a step back. I felt blood pooling on my shirt and didn’t have to look to know it wasn’t really there. I dug my nails into the palms of my hands as hard as I could, just to feel any other sensation.

Bryce said very quietly, “I’m not going to apologize for this. I knew Ruhn could help, and he did.”

“You-” I started, but cut myself off. I was too angry, too wrapped up in my own head. I knew if I kept talking I’d regret it. A moment of bitter silence passed. Then another. And then, every filter, every reasonable part of me evaporated. All that was left was a bitter, petty child. One that wanted to shove in a knife and twist it. “If you’re so eager to keep cosplaying as vanir, why don’t you just save us all the trouble and go the extra mile? Move in with your dad, and leave us worthless humans alone.”

Bryce’s lips pressed into a thin line, and her eyes started to water in that way they did when she was trying her best not to cry. Far away it made my heart shatter. But the cloud of anger muffled the sting of it. “Randal is my dad,” she said, and sounded for all the world like a scared and hurt little girl. Guilt shot through me like lightning, but not enough to stop what I said next. Not enough to stop me from crossing the line by a country mile, even though my whole heart was screaming at me to stop, to calm down, to comfort her.

“Really?” I said. “Is that why you always call him Randal?”

“That’s enough,” Danika said. She was almost unnervingly calm, but her voice demanded submission.

“Yeah. I guess it is.”

I walked out without knowing where I was going.

Chapter Text

Roughly eighteen hours after I told my family I was a boy, male, guy, bro, dude, whatever, I was booking it toward the discount rack with Bryce trailing closely behind me. Our mom had given us a decent amount of money, but I wanted to make it stretch. I had to buy an entire new wardrobe and wanted to do laundry as infrequently as possible. The problem I quickly discovered with discount clothes is that they’re, to put it mildly, ugly as shit. If they were anything resembling wearable they would’ve had resembling wearable prices, but in this one instant, I was heavily favoring quantity over quality.

I held up a button up short sleeved shirt with lobsters on it. I was met with Bryce’s “Absolutely not,” with no hesitation. I muttered a “fair enough” and put it back. I held up a black t-shirt with a math pun on it (“Find x” written over a right triangle, with the x over the hypotenuse, with a blue arrow and handwritten-ish text saying “There it is,” with very teacher-esque cursive saying “See me,” in hilariously judgemental that’s-not-the-right-answer red) that was about two sizes too big for me. I was met with a similar reaction as I draped it over my shoulder. “It’s funny because it’s not funny,” I tried to explain, as Bryce pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head slowly. “It’s incredibly stupid,” was her response, and when I said “Incredibly Stupid is my middle name,” she said “No it’s not, we literally had this conversation yesterday, ” and I suddenly realized that was a huge missed opportunity. I could’ve had a lifetime of my mom yelling “ Elliot Silly Goofy Haha TeeheeMacgee Right Foot In Left Foot Out Shake It All About Incredibly Stupid But Also Incredibly Funny Not To Mention Stupidly Funny And Let’s Not Forget Handsome And Very Cool And Danger For Good Measure Quinlan-Silago! ” but instead I got stuck with boring old Isaac. For no other reason than I thought it sounded cool. 

We ended up leaving the store with a huge quantity of suspiciously cheap t-shirts, some of which may or may not have contained very dumb math jokes, and a decent supply of male pants, mostly jeans. Which, for the record, had unfairly huge pockets compared to female ones. Bryce was immediately jealous, and when I told her all she had to do was change her gender, it’s not that hard, I was met with more eyerolls than the aforementioned math puns earned.

On the way home I became uncharacteristically serious when I said “Thanks, by the way. For being cool about it.” I went to tuck some hair behind my ear but forgot it wasn’t there anymore. I’d never felt anything more freeing than that initial snip as I watched my long hair float unceremoniously to the ground. I ruffled my newly short hair as a sort of hair tucking substitute. I liked it better immediately.

“I mean, you weren’t exactly subtle about it,” she said, which for the record, was news to me at the time, but with hindsight, I was in fact not subtle, just completely obvious to my own thoughts and actions. “But anyway. We’re family. I’m gonna love you no matter what, asshole.”

I was about 8 years old when I started to understand the implications of Bryce having a longer lifespan. Namely, she would live centuries looking no older than 25, maybe 26 if that’s when she decided to take the Drop, and I would grow old and wither away before she would even be considered middle aged by fae standards. But I was always okay with that. It always made perfect sense to me. After all, Bryce was here a whole four years before me, and at the time that was half my life. Of course she would be here after me. As I got older it made sense for a second reason, too. She would be fine without me, but I couldn’t handle ever losing her.

Or, at least, that’s how I used to feel. Because now, apparently, I was a big enough piece of shit to tell my sister to her face I didn’t consider her family. For committing such a crime as not wanting me to be drafted to war against my will. The horror.

But it wasn’t that, was it? It was the how. Because she asked Ruhn Fucking Danaan. And deep down, behind the anger and stupid lashing out, wasn’t that what I was afraid of? One day I’d be an old withered corpse rotting away somewhere, people consoling each other with “He lived a long life,” at my sailing, and Ruhn would still be there. He’d look the exact same, probably still live with his roommates and wearing edgy piercings and shit. Bryce would look the same, too. And she’d tell him “My family is all dead and gone,” and he’d say “Don’t say that, Bryce. You’ve still got me,” and after a while she’d move on from me. She’d go out with her friends and get a phone call, and say “Oops, sorry, it’s my brother, I’ll be right back,” and she wouldn’t mean me. She’d say to her new friends, “Hey, I bet you didn’t know this, but I actually used to have another half-brother,” as a fun little ice breaker, and she’d start saying half- brother every time, to avoid confusion. “The human half,” she’d specify, and then “He died about 100 years back, or was it 150 now? Time flies.” But it would be Ruhn who’d annoy her, Ruhn who she’d worry over, and who’d worry over her, Ruhn who she’d ask for favors, Ruhn who’d tease her about JJ, Ruhn who she’d spend solstice with, Ruhn, Ruhn, Ruhn, fucking Ruhn.

But what exactly was the alternative? What was I hoping for? To get killed in combat in six months, and have Bryce grieving for centuries? For her to be alone? Wasn’t that worse? Did that make me worse than him?

It was at that point I stopped running, and a few seconds later, I realized I’d been running. Off in a random direction, apparently. Which now meant I had absolutely no idea where I was. I took my phone out of my pocket to use its GPS, but the battery was dead. I could try to retrace my steps, but I had no clue where I came from. I could try asking a stranger for directions but that would more likely get me killed. And then I started panicking. I kept circling around, trying to figure out where in Hel I was, and then I saw two wolves running toward me. Undeniably, they were running toward me.  

I started booking it in the opposite direction, but I knew it was pointless. They were at least two, probably three times faster than me, and it was only a matter of time before they caught up. I could try to weave between buildings but I didn’t know this city, and they likely did. I was going to die, then. I was going to get mauled to death, and my last conversation with Bryce would be… fucking that.  

I turned a corner and one was in front of me. I turned around and the other was there. Cornered. No way out. I pressed my back into the building behind me, and raised my hands up half in defense and half in surender, muttering every curse I could think of under my breath. My dad started teaching me self defense when I was 5. Step one was to make yourself look more vulnerable than you are. Catch them off guard. Strike hard, and strike fast, then run. My heart pounded in my ears so loud I could barely hear anything else. The wolf to my left, the one who cut me off, moved closer painfully slowly. Wolf shifters were always huge, but this one was massive . Every cell in my body was screaming at me to run or fight, but I forced myself to cower, to wait for my opening. The bigger wolf shifted, a male apparently, and the other one did shortly afterward, a female. I didn’t look directly at either of them, still trying to look even more pathetic than I already felt, still hiding behind my arms as if they could offer any protection against claws.

Just one step closer. I waited. I didn’t have to fake how much I was shaking. He took that one more step and I took my opening. Last time my mistake was waiting to get hurt and then fighting back. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. I let years of muscle memory take over and used every ounce of strength I had in one kick to the crotch. He started falling forward, and I threw him to the ground and started running in one smooth motion. The second wolf, the female, grabbed my arm before I could make it far. I tried to throw a punch at her, but she caught my fist like it was nothing.

“ HEY! Stop! It’s me!”

“Oh.” It was Danika. “It’s you.” Every bone in my body turned to pudding. Exhaustion caught up with me all at once.

The other wolf, the big one, groaned. “Nice to meet you.” He was still on the ground but gave me a thumbs up. “Good uh. Good kick.”

Chapter Text

“Sorry,” I said a bit pathetically, holding out a hand.

“Ts all good. Whew.” He took it and I pulled him up. I took a step back a bit subconsciously. “Like I said, impressive hit.”

“Thank… you? I think?”

“Yeah, that was a compliment.”

“Okay. But just a heads up for next time, if you don’t want to get kicked in the balls, don’t chase a human down and corner them in an alleyway. Usually that means you’re trying to murder them. You know, fight or flight and all that.” I gave a nod toward Danika. “She wouldn’t let me run, so. Fight it was.” I was trying and failing to not speak a million miles an hour, my heart still beating into overdrive.

“We- I mean, we weren’t really chasing you. Not like that. We were just-”

“Why didn’t you answer your phone? Bryce was worried to Hel and back,” Danika cut in. Apparently she was not a fan of my world famous jovial-in-crisis tone. I held up my phone and showed her it was dead, like a dog embarrassed about the shit on the carpet. (Or was that an insensitive word choice, given the circumstances? Chimera, maybe? Bryce had one at her job, and sent me about a million pictures of Danika petting him.) She sighed as I awkwardly put the useless piece of glass and metal back in my pocket, and she took out her own apparently charged phone and called someone. Presumably Bryce.

I turned my attention back to the male wolf. He at least seemed receptive to me not taking things seriously. Probably because he wasn’t in the room when I was being the biggest asshole on Midgard. I asked him if he was okay, and he reassured me he was. He asked me if I was okay and I gave him an “ehhhh” kind of gesture. Then I asked his name.

“Conor,” he said, extending a hand for me to shake at the exact moment I was putting both of mine deep in my pockets. I didn’t move them. “Aha. Anyway. I’m in the Pack of Devils.”

“Oh. I know you. Holstrom, Danika’s second. Your brother plays sunball.” I looked him up and down. He was exactly how Bryce described, but somehow… notably goofer, despite the fact he looked like he could snap a tree in half as a fun little party trick. “Huh… I thought you’d be taller.”

He made a face of faux offense. “Careful! I’m going to be your brother in law one day, is this how you treat soon to be family?”

“ What. ”

“ Connor. ” Danika snapped. “Stop being weird.” She handed me her phone. “B wants to talk to you.”

“Her name is one syllable, why shorten it?” I muttered briefly before taking it. I swallowed once before saying “...yea?”

Even with just my one word she somehow managed to cut me off.“Where are you, are you hurt?” Her voice was raspy and panicked, she was clearly crying. “You can’t just do that, are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” I did my best to keep my voice even, reassuring. Danika was shooting daggers at me and my heart sank through concrete. “Danika found me, Connor too, I’m sorry for running off but I’m okay.”

“You can’t just do that!” she cried again, and my heart sank lower, adrenaline finally wearing off enough for pure unbridled guilt to take root in its place. “What if something happened, and they didn’t get to you in time? You could’ve been hurt Elliot, this city isn’t safe! I know you’re mad at me but that doesn’t mean you can just… you can’t just do that!”

“I’m sorry.” My voice was barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry, Bryce. I’m really, really sorry.”

She was quiet for a moment, but I could still hear her shaky breathing on the other end. Finally she said, “I know. I know you are.”

Something changed in the way Connor looked at me, then. Some of the humor dissipated. Danika took her phone back and said “We’re heading back now. Yes, we’ll keep him safe. B, I got it. Anyone so much as looks at him wrong, and getting arrested will be the least of their problems.” Connor gave me a look to mean “Yes, she means that, she can get so scary you have no idea.” Danika said “We’ll be back soon,” before putting her phone back in her pocket, and then she was moving. Connor and I followed.

“I am sorry,” I said, having to almost jog to keep up with her. “For putting you through the trouble. And for… you know. Trying to fight you.”

Danika’s eyes narrowed on me, and for a second I was fully convinced she was going to kill me after all. “We’re not talking about this here.” 

Ah. Right. Cameras. Security. Government. Scary. Cool. She turned back forward, walking a few feet in front with Connor and me walking side by side. “I really fucked up,” I muttered before I could stop myself.

Connor gave me the slightest smile, his eyes softening the tiniest little bit, and all at once I forgot he could turn into a furry thing with claws the size of a small car. “Listen. I don’t know what went down with you and Bryce. She seemed hurt, sure. But she obviously cares about you. Otherwise she wouldn’t have asked us to find you.”

I sighed and started fiddling with the strap of my watch. “I told her to go live with her fae side. And leave the human side alone.” It sounded so much worse the second time.

I don’t know what I was expecting him to do. Maybe scream at me, shake his head in disappointment, maybe bite my head off. But I definitely didn’t expect him to laugh. “That’s it?”

I blinked at him a few times, but said nothing. “He made her cry, Connor,” Danika said for me.

“Do you know how many times Ithan threw ‘You’re not our dad, you can’t tell me what to do’ at me? How many times he made me feel like shit, like I was failing him? All the time! I mean, all the time. I still love him to death, and know he does too. Let me ask you something; Did you mean it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “I still-”

He cut me off with a “Bububua! Nope! Not the question! Did you," he left a dramatic pause, "mean it?”

I took a breath. “No, I didn’t.”

“Then there you go. And I guarantee you, she knows that. Point is, family stuff is complicated. Lines get crossed. Little brothers do stupid shit. Sometimes for almost a good reason. At the end of the day, you’re blood. You forgive each other, you see a funny cat video, you send it and you move on.”

Sure. But blood was the problem, wasn’t it? I sat on what he said as the three of us walked in relative silence, and wished for all the world my phone wasn’t dead so I could send my sister a funny cat video.

Chapter Text

Bryce was pulling me into a hug before I had finished walking through the door. Connor was already gone at that point, waving me and Danika off as we entered her and Bryce’s apartment building. Bryce asked me about twelve more times if I was okay, and each time I told her I was, I told her I was sorry, and she told me she knew, and the cycle continued. 

Ruhn was gone by then too. Either he realized I desperately didn’t want to see him, or he fucked off to go do whatever princes do. I was grateful for it either way. Bryce ordered a pizza, which was for what it’s worth way better than the pizza you can get back home, and we played video games until far later than was reasonable. By the end of the night Danika had even stopped shooting daggers at me, which was reassuring. I spent the night on the couch and Danika took me back home the next morning. Bryce had already left for work by then.

Without Bryce as a mediary it was back to tense awkward silence as she drove us through and out of the city. Every time I thought to say something, all the words left my head. 

Eventually it was Danika who spoke up. “You know how hard that was for her? To reach out to him?”

I was so surprised she spoke it took me a minute to register what she said. But it was true, if I was being honest I knew that. She hadn’t talked to him in years. I nodded, but she was looking at the road. “Yes,” I said.

“You’re pissed she went to the fae? But she only did it because she cares about you more than she hates them. More than she hates him. ”

“He didn’t need to be there,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Bryce could’ve explained it to me herself. The only reason I had to hear it from him is because he wanted credit. To get to feel all important for ‘saving’ me or whatever.”

 “Well, he did save you. And maybe wanting credit for that isn’t some horrible thing. It’s a big risk for him, you know that, right? For Declan too, for Bryce. But he did it anyway, without hesitation, because he knows that if anything happened to you, it would destroy her.”

I should have shut up by then. But as usual, I didn’t. “What about everyone else ? That’s the problem with vanir, you care about one human, you ‘save’ one human, and leave the rest of us to rot.”

“I guess I’m included in that, right?” She did look at me then. I shrugged. “I do what I can. We all do. None of us have as much power as you seem to think we do.” Her face was stone cold. Maybe a little bit sad, but I couldn’t quite tell. “Sometimes it’s all we can do to help one person. It doesn’t mean we’re okay with the state of the world.”

I said a bit too quietly, “She could’ve at least asked me.”

“She shouldn’t need your permission to talk to her own brother.”

I stared at her for a moment. She kept her eyes on the road. “You knew? She told you?”

“I’m her best friend,” Danika said simply. “She tells me everything.”

“She wasn’t supposed to- I mean, no one was, but. Fine, whatever, never mind. Did she tell you why they stopped talking? What he said to her?”

“Yes, Elliot,” she stressed. Which was infuriating to me since Bryce never actually told me what he said. Something “not worth repeating,” apparently. Unless your name is Danika. “The point is, at some point in her life, it might be a very good thing for her to have him around. He gave you a peace offering, a really good one, by the way, and practically spat in his face.”

“So, what do you want me to do? Give him a hug, become best friends with the guy, call him every Tuesday and hang out on the weekends?”

There was an extremely brief period of time that almost was the plan. When he and Bryce were the closest thing to friends they’d ever been, right before the fight that changed everything. It wasn’t enough for her that they got along, she wanted us to get along, too. She practically begged me to try to bond with him, and barely knowing what to do, I just started showing him one of my favorite singers, Hozier, fae male from Avallen. My whole family was obsessed with him, actually. I played Movement first, Bryce’s favorite, then Sunlight, because I guessed he would like it, and I was right, then It Will Come Back, my own personal favorite. Trying to be nice, to pretend he took some interest in it, he asked which one was my mom’s favorite. I played Cherry Wine. “A love song,” he said, “It reminds her of your dad, I guess?” I said “No, it’s about domestic abuse,” and then I added, “So it reminds her of your dad, actually.” His eyes darkened and he said “I see,” and I only felt bad about it after years of hindsight, when I was old enough to understand just how shitty it must’ve been to be raised by someone like the Autumn King.

“You don’t have to like him,” Danika said. “But one day you’ll need him. Bryce will need him. The sooner you accept that, the better.”

After that we drove in relative silence again, until I asked her to drop me off down the street to walk the rest of the way. I told her “Thanks for the ride,” and she drove away.

That was the last time I saw Danika in person. She was in the background of the occasional phone call, but I never spoke to her face to face again. Because a year later, she and the entire Pack of Devils were murdered.

Chapter Text

“Mom is going to kill you.”

Bryce snorted over the video call, and stuck her tongue out. “I bet Dad will like it.”

“Yeah, those things aren’t mutually exclusive. What does it say?”

Danika said from somewhere offscreen, “ Through love, all is possible. I picked it out.”

“That is, without a doubt, the cheesiest thing I have ever heard in my life, but it’s inked on you forever, so sure, it’s great and I love it.”

“It’s not cheesy! ” Bryce defended. “It’s unique and special, because it’s written in… ah. Some kind of alphabet. A special unique one. That makes it less cheesy. And! It’s sweet, because I got it with my best friend, who I love.” Danika interjected a quick “awww!” from the background. “And it’s about love. So it’s actually very deep and shit.”

“Uh huh, and how drunk are you right now?”

“Very,” they both said at the same time.

“That is truly wonderful, and I’m very happy for you. But I have to go. I have more homework to do, and-”

“Nerd!”

“ And an early shift tomorrow. I have to be up in…” I looked at the little clock in the corner of my computer screen and groaned. “Fuck me. Three hours.”

“Blink twice if you need help.”

“Bryce. Bryce I will give you twenty marks to kill me now. I still have to write a whole essay and a half-”

“And a half? ”

“And a half!”

“My little baby brother! Drowning in essays and lab reports and coffee grounds!” Her words all slurred together as she mimicked a fainting spell. “How will you go on! Without even the respite of the fun part of college!”

I sighed, then took a deep gulp of room temperature black coffee. “The ‘fun part’ is expensive. Online school is way cheaper, plus you can take more classes at once.” And the added detail that there was no way in Hel my parents would let me go to CCU like my sister. Not in person, anyway. There were barely any decent universities in places my parents deemed safe. But it was a lot easier to not ask. To not prove tangibly how differently they treated us. And to pretend this was all my decision.

Bryce’s face, despite the alcohol, turned a shade serious. “You know you don’t have to pile so many classes on all at once. You could graduate in four years, like a normal person?”

“Yeah, but if I take double the classes, I can pay half the tuition for half as many semesters.” And I’d have a degree in half the time. Two extra years added to my adult life, two extra years to try to make some sort of difference in the world. Bryce might get to live for centuries, but I’d be lucky to make it to 90. And I’d be damned if I wasted a single second. Humans couldn’t afford that luxury.

“Mom and Dad would help you pay if you let them.”

“I like being a barista.” When I didn’t have to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, which was most of the time, but hey. At least there was free coffee. “But seriously. I gotta go.”

From offscreen Danika said “B, let the poor boy sleep.”

She put her hands up in faux surrender. “Okay, okay, I get it. Duty calls. Love youuuu!”

“Bye, loser!”

“You have to say it back!”

I rolled my eyes. “Love you too, you insufferable little worm!”

“Byeeee!” Bryce and Danika said in a horrible attempt of drunk harmony, and hung up.

I managed to write exactly one and a quarter essays before passing out at my desk.

When my alarm went off depressingly shortly thereafter, I drank the rest of my now day old coffee and got ready for work. The day was long, customers were needy, but I at least managed to finish that last quarter of an essay on my phone between lulls of customers, and turn it in minutes before the deadline. My best work? No. But passable? Eh. After my shift ended I went home, managing to at least eat something as I listened to a lecture and got a headstart on another class’s lab report. I logged onto a group video call for two more classes, ones with a small enough class size that we were actually expected to speak regularly, which was the worst because it was late enough in the day all the caffeine was wearing off, and listened to one more lecture before I was officially done with classes for the day. Besides homework. More reading assignments and papers and studying and on and on, so it goes. Days all sort of blended together as my sleep schedule consisted of 30 minute power naps during the weekdays, and 12 hour uninterrupted crashes on the weekends. But that was fine, I could sleep in the summer. Or when I’m dead. Whichever came first.

Days after the tattoo incident, I got a text from Bryce. Just broke up with Reed :P 

Thankful for the excuse to not do calculus, I responded. How’d he take it?

Don’t think he noticed tbh. Dude barely looked up from his phone when I dumped his ass.

Steal his wallet! Eat the rich!

Too late. Gonna go get shitfaced with Fury and June.

Dang. You put up with that asshole for how long, and you didn’t even get compensated?

She sent me a picture of her holding a very, very expensive looking bottle of wine, and wrote I present to you: Compensation.

Nice. And then, Be safe, k?

Thanks, Mom <3

It was hours later when my parents got the call. The entire pack was found dead in Bryce’s apartment. She was hurt but had been treated, and was in the custody of the 33rd. My parents left immediately to get to her, but wouldn’t let me go with them.

For the first time in seven years I called Ruhn, grateful I never did end up deleting his number. He answered on the first ring. “I know,” he said, “I’m on my way to get her.”

“Keep her safe,” I said, blocking out every emotion, every bit of panic. I could deal with that later. There was a murderer out there. And even if she was half fae, she was still half human. There was a very real possibility of it getting pinned on her. “Do not let them make her a suspect.”

“I know,” he said again. “I won’t let anything happen to her. I promise.”

“Let me help you,” I said, feeling immediately stupid for it. Ruhn was the Aux leader for the entire fae division. He had every resource available, and I… didn’t. I couldn’t do anything but wait, and hope they’d do their job.

“You help her. She’s going to need you. I’ll protect her, I’ll find who did this, but I can’t…” his voice trailed off, but he didn’t need to finish. I knew what he meant. “Shit, I have to go.”

“Wait.”

“Yeah?”

I said, maybe too sleep deprived to hold on to that petty, bitter part of myself, “Thank you.”

There was the slightest bit of hesitation before he said, “All part of the job, kid.”

Chapter Text

Ever since I was old enough to form opinions about the world, politics were a point of contention between me and my sister. Every conversation would start as one or both of us saying something seemingly benign, then escalate to screaming at each other, and end with Bryce saying some bullshit about me “not understanding how the world works,” and me saying “I understand plenty, and I hate it.” After that, accepting we were getting nowhere, we both just quietly dropped it.

Phillip Brigs was the subject of a lot of screaming matches between the two of us.

Bryce’s side went like this: He’s bad. My side went like this: He’s inevitable.

She’d say something like, “Both sides are wrong,” and I’d say something like, “Well that’s a massive load of horseshit, because one side is building slave labor camps and torturing and killing people on a daily basis and having public executions if gods forbid anyone with an ounce of power has anything to say about it,” and she’d say “Brigs wants to murder innocent people to create enough outrage to bring the war here . How many millions would die, on both sides?” And I’d say “How many millions have died already? How many are born enslaved because an ancestor died fighting for freedom? How many die in the war that’s already happening, fighting for the side that keeps the status quo, because if they don’t their families will be tortured and killed?” and she’d say “There are other ways.” And I’d say “Like what? Peaceful protesting? Holding up a sign that says ‘Please give us rights pretty please and thank you!’ because historically, at best, that doesn’t work, not on its own, and at worst, you’ll get arrested and tortured anyway!” and she’d say “That doesn’t mean it’s okay to bomb public places!” and I’d say “I never said that was okay! I said that’s what happens when you leave people feeling cornered with no other alternative!” and on and on it would go.

If the fight was bad enough, our dad would intervene and say “You can’t fight the Asteri.” And though I never told him, I could never say it to his face, every time he said that all I could think was I will never forgive them for making you think you’re powerless.

Bryce was home with us during Brigs’ arrest and trial. When the news broke, our mom held her hand and squeezed. Our dad made her chocolate croissants. I ran my stupid fucking mouth. “It wasn’t him.” Mom tried to get Bryce to drink some more water. “It doesn’t make any sense. He just got released on a technicality, why would he immediately resurface? He kills for political gain, to send a message. Not for revenge. If he killed the Pack of Devils he’d say ‘I did it and here’s why,’ he wouldn’t deny it.” Dad gave me a look which meant “Stop talking.” I ignored it. “The trial was too fast. All the evidence was circumstantial. His lawyer was dogshit. Someone’s framing him.” Bryce did drink her water. Mom brushed the hair out of her face. “Someone high up must’ve done it. Waited until Brigs was out, or maybe even released him themselves, killed Danika, and used him as an easy scapegoat.” I thought about what Danika said to me a year ago. I do what I can. We all do. None of us have as much power as you seem to think we do. “Someone really high up. That’s how they got past the wards, and made sure no cameras saw them. Only question is, why? Who did Danika piss off enough to-”

“Elliot,” my dad snapped at me.

Bryce was hyperventilating. Our mom was trying and failing to get her to breathe, to remember where she was, but she couldn’t get through to her. Our dad ran to the freezer, grabbed an icecube, and pressed it into her hand. “You’re safe,” he told her over and over, “It’s okay, you’re safe.” It took half an hour for her to calm down. I apologized about fifty times, then not knowing what else to do, showed her a funny cat video, and silently thanked Connor for the suggestion.

An hour later, when I was far away from the house and therefore had no risk of Bryce overhearing me, (fae have an insanely good sense of hearing, which was very inconvenient when you’re trying to keep from triggering another panic attack from your half fae sister), I called Ruhn for the second time in seven years. 

“Brigs didn’t do it.”

“Huh?”

“Phillip Brigs. He didn’t kill Danika. His motive makes no sense, it doesn’t fit with previous patterns, and his trial was suspicious as shit. I think the real killer is trying to set him up.”

“He had black summoning salt in his apartment. Danika arrested him days before, and was released right before the murder. He wanted revenge, so he summoned a demon in the apartment, and-“

“No he fucking didn’t! The salt was for bombs, like we know he was making! How did he get past the wards to even get close to them? And what kind of demon could kill an entire wolf pack, and be weak enough to be summoned by a human alone? It doesn’t make any sense!”

“Listen, kid-“

“Okay first of all, don’t call me kid, I’m 19, which is a fifth of my lifespan at least, that makes me like 200 in fae years, which makes me older than you, and second-“

“That’s not at all how that works.”

“ Second. Something is off about this.”

There was a long pause. “Phillip Brigs was found guilty. He’s insane, and dangerous, and now he’s somewhere he can never hurt anyone again. The case is closed. There’s nothing I can do.”

“But-“

“Is Bryce okay?”

“No. No, she’s not.”

“Tell her I…” he sighed. “Tell her I’m sorry. And I’m here if she needs me.”

“I don’t think she wants anything at all from you right now.” It was a dick thing to say, I know. He was trying. But I didn’t care. He didn’t get to feel bad for himself because my sister didn’t want his shoulder to cry on. Not now. This wasn’t about him.

Danika left Bryce a two bedroom apartment with better security in a better part of town. Bryce wanted to move into it almost as soon as she found out about it. “I just want things to get back to normal,” she said. Our parents' reaction was to say “There’s no way you’re moving back there by yourself,” which was the perfect opportunity for me to offer to move in with her. And after a lot of convincing, and promising, and convincing again, I got everyone to agree. Under the condition that I’d carry at least a knife on me for self defense, but where I could preferably a gun. And that I wouldn’t try to “mess with” Bryce’s life, whatever that meant. And my condition that I’d get a job and still finish school on the same schedule.

Move in day was weird. “It doesn’t feel right without her,” Bryce said when we picked up our keys. “Without all of them.” I gave her a long hug and found the nearest ice cream shop.

Shortly after that was the text leak. Danika’s texts right before the murder were leaked to the public, and public opinion turned drastically against Bryce. I saw posts ranging from “Maybe if Danika wasn’t so busy texting her slutty halfbreed friend she wouldn’t have let her guard down,” to “If I were Connor I’d want to get murdered too, fuck that bitch.” Every post I saw like that I fought. I threw out every insult I could think of right back. When some shithead posted a music video called I Just Fucked a Stranger in the Bathroom; Don’t Tell Connor, I was the top comment; with their street address, full name, and what company they worked at. Until my account got deleted for doxxing. Until I made a new account to say “Fuck you. Piece of shit. Kill yourself.” Until my account got deleted again for bullying. Until I made a new one again, and wrote “Maybe worry less about a grieving stranger you know nothing about, and worry more about why no one wants to fuck you.” Which was the top comment for about twenty minutes, until someone else wrote “Not her fault! Sluts will be sluts!” which got about 300 more likes than mine. And when I replied to it with that person’s full name and address, my account got deleted for a third time. Bryce had long since deleted every social media account she had, which was probably the more reasonable response. But Hel if I was going to let people talk about my sister and say nothing about it.

In the meantime I kept taking classes online, and found a new cafe to work at in the morning. On more than one occasion, fae males would explain to me what “black coffee” meant. And while I can’t say for certain it was because they were fae and I was human, what I can say is I never once had a human say that in Nidaros, nor had I ever heard anyone say that to my non-human coworkers. So that was fun. Every so often Bryce would order a coffee from me, extra sugar, extra oatmilk, even though we had a coffee maker in the apartment and her job was in the wrong direction. But somehow she always seemed to know when there wasn’t a line. She never once came during rush hour. Which was nice, because putting that much milk and sugar in takes forever. June would come in sometimes, too. She was the only person I told I’d make hers quickly and actually meant it. I wasn’t about to get blamed for her not making principal because I took too long on her godsdamed coffee and made her late. When I wasn’t at work, I’d study at Griffin Antiquities on the days Bryce was bored and I wanted the company. Enough that I befriended Lehabah. She liked me because I constantly agreed with her. Which was easy, because she always had correct opinions.

Time went on and I made my own friends, too. My coworkers, but that basically counted. Besides, you don’t work as a barista unless you’re at least a little cool. I had about three of them I liked enough to consider actual friends, outside of being work friends. Though all four of us were too busy to really spend any time together outside of work, anyway. The first was Sadie, a faun who was training in ballet and utterly obsessed with Juniper as a dancer. The first time June came in and called me by my name, I swear, Sadie almost fainted. Lost her entire mind. Didn’t even work up the nerve to say hi to her. That night I got June to autograph something for her, and she wrote a whole heartfelt note about how great it was she got to inspire another faun to join the dance industry. Sadie cried for the entire shift after I gave it to her, which was fine by me because we were having a slow day anyway.

The second was Aiden, a human, who like me tested out of the draft (I know I technically didn’t, but shut up) and was taking college classes online. We had a depressing little ritual the mornings we worked together where we’d check the list of dead soldiers for names we recognized. One morning he pointed at a name on his phone and said “ That guy was notorious for borrowing pens and never giving them back. Dickhead.” I just sort of stared at him for a minute, not sure if I should’ve been laughing, or offering my condolences, before a customer walked in and I had to put back on my customer service voice. 

And the third, a witch named Bella. (Short for Belladonna, but she hated being called that because it was, and I quote, “too long and pretentious sounding.”) She was a student too, studying to be a medwitch. One morning I apologized for getting to work late, before explaining it was because I got mugged by a fucking vampyr of all things, which was on the one hand fine because I barely had any cash on me, but on the other hand annoying, because he didn’t believe me and fucking bit me, like an asshole. She yelled at me for apologizing about it, healing the bite mark the entire time, even though I told her I was fine, and the bleeding was mostly stopped anyway.

When Bryce got home from work that day she immediately narrowed her eyes on me, and said “Why does it smell like blood?” So I told her what happened, as casually as I could, downplaying at every turn, and told her I wasn’t actually bleeding, there was just blood on my clothes, which was completely different and not concerning at all, and by the way why did she have to go sniffing me all the time? She gave me a lecture about being more careful, and I told her I dropped the money immediately, which was only like five marks anyway, and stabbed the dude with my pocket knife a second after the bite, so really she should be very proud of me. She asked if I pressed charges, and I told her obviously no, and she said it was probably filmed on street cameras, which meant clear evidence, and I said I didn’t care that much about five marks, and look, I’m already healed so what’s the difference, and by the way if she told Mom I’d absolutely kill her. She sighed, and ordered us pizza.

It was a fantastic day. Because she came back to the apartment and smelled blood, even if it was human blood and not wolf blood, and it didn’t send her spiraling.

I stayed up late that night and made her chocolate croissants. Not as good as the ones our dad made, but it was enough.

Chapter Text

“You’re gonna have to tell her eventually, dude.”

“Yeah. But it’s so much easier not to.”

“No balls.”

“I don’t, actually.”

“Wait, really?”

“I told you that already. You said, and I quote, ‘That checks out, Elliot sounds like a name a thirteen year old would pick.’”

“Oh yeah. I always forget about that.” Aiden stopped talking to me long enough to take an order, a medium latte with two pumps of caramel, and picked up the conversation while I started making it. “Anyway, the point is, there’s no use dragging it out. Just rip off the bandaid.”

“What’s a bandaid?” Bella asked as she wrapped a blueberry muffin into a takeaway bag, and placed it on the pick-up table.

“It’s a human thing. It’s like, a piece of tape with a bit of cloth on it, it’s for when you’re bleeding but not bad enough you need stitches or magic,” Aiden explained. “Then when you stop bleeding, you can either rip it off like a normal person, or wait a million years for it to fall off on its own like a little wimpy baby ass little baby.” He said that last part with a pointed look in my direction.

I rolled my eyes. “I just don’t want to hurt her feelings, is that so wimpy baby ass little baby?”

“Yes,” Aiden said at the same time Bella said “No.”

“She’s just been through a lot recently! I don’t want to add to it! I really don’t think it’s that unreasonable!” I put the latte on the pick-up table, and got started on an online order for two chais.

“Recently?” Aiden said, after taking another order for a black iced coffee that Bella got started on. “The Pack of Devils died two years ago . Shouldn’t she be over it by now?” I gave him a “how the Hel did you know that” kind of look, and he shrugged. “Sadie told me. Apparently Juniper dedicated a dance or something to Danika, and had ‘ the most beautiful artistry! I cry every time!’” he said in a horrendously high pitched impression of Sadie, who thankfully wasn’t working that morning to witness. “I looked up Danika and your sister’s texts were like, the second result after the initial news report. Well, the song was.”

“Okay, well, first of all, no, she isn’t ‘over’ having her friends brutally murdered in her apartment, and frankly it’s disturbing you think she would be.” (He interjected with a “Your entire family is a bunch of little wimpy baby ass babies then!” which I promptly ignored.) “And second, I swear to Urd if you bring up that fucking song again I will cut out your eyes and feed them to you.”Aiden grinned wickedly, and Bella paled, mouthing “Please don’t.” A fae female picked up her latte from the table, and gave me a sort of half disgusted, half disturbed kind of look. I smiled and said in my best, most professional customer service voice, “Thank you ma’am, and have a terrific day!” She just continued to stare at me in mild horror before walking out a hair faster than was reasonable.

“I don’t get why you have to move out, though,” Bella said, handing the black coffee to the customer who ordered it. “Can’t you just commute?”

“To the CBD? That’s halfway across the city.”

“I commute from the meadows,” Aiden said. “It’s not that bad.”

“You literally complain about it constantly. And anyway, it’s not just because of the new job. I don’t want to live with my sister in her dead friend’s expensive ass apartment forever.” The chais were done by then, and I put them on the table before heating up a breakfast sandwich. 

Aiden took another order and said, “Well if my sister had a rich ass dead friend, I’d milk that shit as long as she let me.”

“Your sister doesn’t even like you.” Granted, that was because he was a piece of shit (in a fun way, but still) and she was twelve, which makes getting along with your siblings hard.

“What about protection?” Bella said, changing the subject. “Does your new place have good security, good wards?”

I shrugged. “Good enough.”

“So almost none?” she said, pouring more water into the coffee machine.

“Yeah.”

She sighed. “Merciful Cothona…”

“I’m very adept at self defense.”

“You’ve been violently attacked several times in the two years I’ve known you.”

“Wow, okay, way to victim blame! But also, your point is invalid, because I’ve been attacked twice, that’s barely ‘several,’ and I survived twice, plus all the times I haven’t died before you met me, which only proves I’m very good at not dying, and that was in the street, so what good would ward protections be?”

“Aiden, back me up here?”

“Nope. I’m on his side. I don’t have any wards on my place either.”

She sighed. “It’s exhausting being friends with both of you.”

He patted her on the shoulder and handed her the next order at the same time. “Yeah, but you love us,” and gave her the most infuriating shit eating grin he could muster. She rolled her eyes at him and got to work on a caramel latte with oat milk.

“If it’s any consolation, you only have to put up with me for another two weeks. Just put in the official notice to Boss Man.” And by that I meant I texted him. He only showed up when there was a new employee to train or if he wanted to yell at someone. Also, in case you were curious, his name was Alexi and I was only mildly scared of him.

“Solas, dude. And you still haven’t even told Bryce about the new job?” Aiden said, before saying to a customer struggling with their card, “No, you gotta tap it, not hover it three inches above the- there you go, want a receipt?”

“I was waiting to tell her about the apartment! Which I move into in…” I checked my watch. “Four days.” But that sounded bad. “Which means I have like… a hundred hours to tell her, give or take. Which is plenty of time.” A timer went off, which meant it was time to take the next batch of croissants out of the oven. I pulled them out and started laying them in the display case as I said, “Look, I’ll tell her tonight, I’ll tell her it’s in a mostly decent good enough neighborhood, that the rent is within my price range and I budgeted it out like a grown up, I’ll even tell her about the very boring new job description and the weird ass interview and everything.” (Aiden tried to interject, but alas, I did not notice in time to stop talking.) “And, because she’s cool as Hel and loves me very much, she’ll be very chill and normal about the whole thing and won’t freak out, right guys?”

“Who are you talking about, bud?”

I looked up, and there was Bryce.

“Hey girl! Fresh croissant?”

Chapter Text

Job interviews are weird. Job interviews where the CEO’s son is your sister’s ex boyfriend are even weirder.

I wore a tie. I refrained from any and all aspects of my personality, except being smart as hell. I told them I was a “team player” and said I had “a lot of passion and drive” and other corporate bullshit. When I thought it was over, it suddenly wasn’t.

When Reid walked in, I stared at his face and thought, do I know that guy, or is that just one of those guys who looks like a million other guys? Probably don’t know him. He looks super generic. Then he said, “Quinlan-Silago, any relation to Bryce Quinlan?” and my remaining two brain cells clicked into place just long enough to think Oh right, rich dude.

He said “Mind if I sit?” as the other interviewer left, and sat before I answered, which was fair enough with me because what the Hel is the point of asking for permission? After the door closed, he said “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?” I sort of just stared at him with a blank “uhhhhh” expression. He leaned back and crossed his arms, really putting on a good show of it, being just so unreasonably dramatic. “Your sister broke up with me for no good reason.”

“Uh huh. And then her friends all got murdered, guess who had a worse night?” I leaned back in my own chair and mirrored his pose, which I really hope came across as sarcastic mocking and not genuine powerplay moves, because that’s embarrassing. “Now unless I’m in the complete wrong building, I believe this is supposed to be a job interview. Not a villain monologue about a casual relationship that ended two whole entire years ago. So either ask me about my qualifications, or tell me about company values, or kindly shut the Hel up, unless you want me to sue you for unfair application procedures, and generally being a weirdo.”

And then that freak smiled. It gave me the exact same feeling as when someone takes off their shoes in public transport, that sort of “Eugh, gross, put that thing away.” And he said, “I don’t actually give a shit about that.”

“Word.”

“I just wanted to crack you.”

“Gross.”

“Your application is flawless. You graduated top of your class in half the time, with a double major. From a fresh graduate, we can’t ask for anything more.”

“I know.”

“But I don’t want some robot to spout corporate buzzwords at me every time someone asks them for their opinion. I want someone who’s not afraid to tell someone they’re wrong, to speak up when they have a better idea how to run things.”

“Or to threaten to sue you?”

“Exactly”

I stared at him a long minute. “Okay. Can I give you my first piece of advice?” He gave me a “go ahead” gesture. “You’re not a good enough actor to pull off a stunt like this. You look like a college student on their first day at improv class, and trust me, that’s not a compliment. At the very least, come up with a better excuse to rile someone up than ‘Boohoo poor me, a girl broke up with me two years ago.’”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

I sighed. “Am I hired, or not?”

“You are.”

“Cool. Where is the HR department?”

The application process for my apartment was easier. They asked me if I had pets, I said no, I asked them if they’d ever fix that hole in the wall, and they said no, and then I said “Great, I’ll take it,” and we shook hands. Then I proceeded to tell none of this to my sister.

“Elliot is moving to the CBD because he got a job working at Redner Industries.”

“Thanks Bell, thanks so much.”

Bryce stared at me for a long minute. Bella grinded some coffee beans in an attempt to break the awkward silence. I wordlessly handed my sister a fresh croissant, and because she’s not a monster, she took it without question.

“He’s working for your ex-boyfriend,” Aiden added.

“I’m not working for him specifically, just vaguely under him, also they dated for like, thirty seconds, and I regret telling you that.”

Bryce took a bite. “And you were going to tell me about this when exactly?” she said, still half chewing.

“Right now.” I turned to Aiden and said “I’m gonna take my break, be back soon.” He gave me a faux salute as I walked out of the shop, dragging Bryce along behind me.

She took another bite of her croissant and said, “Go ahead. This should be good.”

So I told her everything. I told her about the weird interview, about her ex being weird and creepy, how I went to HR about it immediately even though I knew it’d do next to nothing, but more so just so I could say I could. I told her about the new apartment, how I planned ahead and budgeted everything with my new starting salary, when the move in date was, what furniture came with the place and what I’d have to get, where I planned to get it, and made sure to sprinkle in promises that I’d be super ultra safe and careful, and I wouldn’t be moving away that far, so if she ever needed me, all she had to do was call and I’d be over immediately. And bonus, she was getting a guest bedroom out of it, so she can have friends over if she ever made any. She listened silently, finishing off her croissant in the process, until I was done explaining everything. She asked me if there was good security at the new place, and I told her of course there was, and she said “Okay, and if I go ask Bella, she’ll say the same thing?” And I said no, she wouldn’t, because she was a snitch, but that it was fine because I already planned to install extra locks on the front door, and reminded her of the fact that statistically break-ins were rare, and that I knew how to protect myself just in case. She said “I just worry,” and hugged her and told her it was okay, that I understood why. And because it was getting a bit too touchy feely I told her the real reason I was moving out was that she was messy as Hel and I was getting very sick of cleaning up after her all the time. She laughed, then said “Okay.” And that was that.

The day I moved out we rented a van, because carrying one box of stuff at a time on a scooter felt a little too stupid, plus vans are fun. Bryce helped me carry everything up seven flights of stairs without an elevator, which was really nice of her considering how bad it sucked, but I promised her free coffee for the rest of my time working at the cafe. “What’s my boss gonna do, fire me?” was my justification. If Alexi noticed how much I was giving my sister for free he didn’t mention it, which almost certainly meant he didn’t notice.

As much as I was worried about Bryce being on her own, I didn’t at all prepare for the fact that I’d be on my own, too. The first few nights were weirdly quiet, even with thin walls and loud neighbors. There was noise, but it was empty. Hollow. Unfamiliar. Having the kitchen actually clean and everything put away correctly felt wrong somehow, when I didn’t have a sister to mess it all up. Every morning I’d wake up and momentarily feel confused about where I was. And then, before I knew it, my last day at my old job came. Bella made me promise to call her if I got hurt again, and I told her absolutely, I don’t have health insurance. Sadie gave me a hug and made me promise to visit, and I told her of course, that place had way better wifi than my apartment. Aiden, uncharacteristically, said he’d miss me. I said to calm down, it wasn’t like I was dying. Then he said “You’re right, ok. Fuck off then,” and I gave him a thumbs up.

My first day at my new job was the next day, and I suddenly realized I was missing some paperwork I’d need for it. That and I was missing Syrinx. So back to Bryce’s place I went. We ended up ordering pizza and playing video games for a few hours, just like old times, and because despite my best efforts I was still nervous about starting my Real Adult Job with Weirdo Man Reid, even if I was probably going to see him once every other month at most. So, naturally, distraction. Which worked, for a time. But at some point I saw something outside, in the corner of my eye. And the more time that went on, the more it was freaking me out. Bryce didn’t seem to notice, so I said “Hey Bryce? There’s an angel on a roof outside who’s been staring at us for the past twenty minutes.”

She barely even looked up. “Oh, that’s just Hunt.”

I stared blankly at her.

“Don’t worry about him. He just does that.”

Chapter Text

“He just what, stalks you?”

She shrugged.

I looked out the window. I looked back at my sister. I looked out the window again. “Hang on. Hang on. His name is Hunt? As in Hunt Athalar? As in the Umbra Fucking Mortis? ”

“Umbra Stick Up His Ass is more accurate, but yeah.”

I stood up, walked to the window, gave him a wave, and closed the curtains. Two seconds later Bryce’s phone started ringing. She showed me her screen, with Athalar’s number saved in her contacts. “Yeah, tried to pull that move this morning, he got so pissy about it.” She hit answer and said into the phone, “Yep?” She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, don’t get your pamties in a twist,” then to me, “He says to open the curtains. He wants to see me beat your ass in virtual sunball.”

“Oh, yeah, cool. Awesome. Tight. Can I see your phone for a second?” She put it on speaker and handed it to me. “Hello? Yes, hi, what the fuck?”

“I’m not actually stalking her,” was the first sentence I heard from Hunt Athalar, the Umbra Fucking Mortis himself, and I gotta tell you dear reader, it did not exactly immediately put me at ease. “I’m on protection duty.”

“Glorified babysitting duty, but sure,” Bryce said. “I’m helping him with a case about some lame stolen artifact, I’m like, a ‘specialist consultant’ or whatever.” She used air quotes around the term. But her eyes were aimed at the ceiling, her body language a bit too exaggerated, her voice a bit too loud. I knew what that meant. She was lying. “They’re worried about the thief trying to halt the investigation, but it’s a total overreaction.”

Out of every lie I’ve ever heard my sister tell, this one was one of the worst. The logical throughline was nonexistent. No one, ever, would put the Umbra Mortis on babysitting on an overreaction. I ignored my sister and opened the curtain again. Hunt was still there, in the same place he was before. I forced myself to meet his gaze, which was difficult even with him being so far away, and said “Why does she need protection from the Umbra Mortis?”

“I told you, because of-”

“Because the murders started up again,” he said plainly.

“I’m sorry, the what? ”

Before I could react, Bryce took back her phone from my hand and hung up in one quick motion. “He’s kidding! Dude’s got a weird sense of humor. You should’ve seen your face though, he totally got you.”

“Bryce?”

“Elliot.”

“You are really shit at lying.” She didn’t say anything. “You’re seriously not going to tell me?” She stayed silent. “We used to tell each other things. We used to talk to each other.”

“You mean how you told me about the vampyre attack?”

“Seriously?” I laughed. “You’re using that as a deflection? That was like, four months ago.”

“And about the new job, you moving out?”

“I did tell you about the vampyre attack. And the job. And the new apartment.”

“No, I came home and smelled blood on you, and you had to tell me.” (I said “I could’ve lied,” but she ignored it.) “And then right before you moved out on me, I had to find out from your friends before you actually said anything.”

“I’m sorry about that. Really, I am. But can we just take a minute here to admit that a person infamous for torturing people for the government staring at you through your living room window because of the murders that apparently started up might be a bit more relevant to the current conversation?”

“The murders have nothing to do with me! I just have to help because there’s some stupid artifact they’re not even sure is connected, and they needed an expert. Hunt is a precaution, and unnecessary one, and I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d freak out. Like you’re doing right now.”

“How many people are dead, and what is the artifact?”

“I’m not telling you that.”

“ Bryce. ”

“I’m serious! This is an open investigation, I can’t just tell you sensitive information because you’re being paranoid and overprotective.”

“Can you blame me?” She didn’t answer. I almost left it there, but I didn’t. “I know you’ve improved a lot. A Hel of a lot, actually. And I’m incredibly proud of you for that. But you’re still… I love you, but you’re fragile. You still have episodes, and I know they’re not as frequent as they used to be, but. I just don’t want to watch you go downhill again, okay? That’s why I waited to tell you I was leaving, because I was scared you wouldn’t be okay on your own. And I know you’re an adult, and you can take care of yourself, but you’re still my sister. Which means I’m always going to be worried about you. I’m always going to freak out. But I don’t think it’s ‘paranoid’ to think that being involved with a murder investigation might… bring some shit back.”

She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she opened them again her face shifted into a forced neutrality, the kind of face she makes when she doesn’t want me to know what she’s feeling. “It has nothing to do with Danika. And I’m handling myself.”

“And if that changes, you’ll tell me? You’ll let me help you?”

She nodded. I opened my mouth to say something, but she said “I promise.”

“Okay.” I looked at my watch. It was getting late. “I… have to go.”

She nodded again, and I went home. I didn’t get much sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a big day.

Chapter Text

There were only really two things Redner Industries needed to teach me on the first day on the job. One: Don’t reveal any sensitive information to the public. For obvious reasons like not wanting competitors to copy the hardware or the software they had to invent and refine from scratch. Two: Don’t go to any restricted areas of the building without permission, and as a starting employee, most of it was restricted.

What I learned is that being an entry level employee for a tec company is really fucking boring.

“Send an email.” “Respond to an email.” “Call a person.” “Be called by a person.” “Fill out a spreadsheet.” “Take information from one spreadsheet, and put it into a different, separate spreadsheet.” “Email someone to tell them you did, in fact, take the information from one spreadsheet, and put it into a different spreadsheet.” “Answer more phone calls about the very boring code.” “Sign some random shit.” “Email the person that in order to fill out the spreadsheet they want you to fill out they need to actually send it to you.” “Call another person.” Thank the gods Reid decided to hire a young person with moxie. The only even remotely interesting thing I learned that I didn’t know already was that apparently the archangel Micah was a pretty major investor, according to a very boring budgeting document I had to look at. I mentioned it to one of my new coworkers I didn’t know the name of yet, and he said “Yeah, he really values human run companies. He’s really progressive.” I stared at him for a second and then said, “Doesn’t he own like, several slaves?” And the conversation ended there.

One thing that really stuck out to me though, was floor 32. The whole building was mapped out and organized, showing exactly where different departments were located and what they all did. But floor 32 was entirely blank. Everyone I asked about it either had no idea what was there, or said something vague about it being another research lab, which made no sense to me because the other research labs were all a lot closer to the ground floor. My manager, a middle aged woman named Claire, just said it’s way above my clearance, and I would never need to go there anyway so I shouldn’t worry about it, and by the way there was another NDA I had to sign.

The good news was, I got out of work earlier than Bryce did. So, the second my first day on the job was over, I went straight to Griffin Antiquities to look for an angel.

The guy was not hard to miss. I assumed it was just his wings that made him seem massive, but he was also ridiculously tall and all around massive. And sure enough, he was just sort of lurking around outside. As casually as I could I walked up to him.

He did a double take, and said “Elliot Quinlan…?”

“Quinlan-Silago, nice to meet you.”

“What are you doing here?”

I smiled. There were a lot of ways I could answer that. I could deflect and say “I could ask you the same thing,” I could lie and say “I’m visiting my sister,” I could give a vague non-answer and say “I was just in the neighborhood.” And all of those would lead to their own little manipulations and excuses to get information. But sometimes the easiest way to get what you want is just to ask. So I said, “I’m here for you, actually.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “I wanted to talk about the case.”

“I…” He glanced around my shoulder. To anyone watching it would’ve looked inconsequential. But I knew enough to know that look meant, “Not here.” But he said, “I can’t discuss an open case with a civilian.”

“Mmhmm. Sure, yeah I get that. But off the record, on the DL, Bryce told me everything, so you can fill me in from here on out.”

His eyes narrowed on me slightly. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I’m smarter than I look, you know.”

“I do know, actually. I looked at your file.”

“Yeah, files. Cool. But the real point here is-”

“Look. I know you’re worried about your sister’s safety. Believe me, I understand. But I swear, I’m not going to let anything happen to her, and I’m not going to expose her to anything she can’t handle.”

“No offense, Athalar, but you don’t know her like I do.”

“I know I don’t. But I do know she told me you’d try to get involved, and to not let you.”

“See, you’re proving my point, that’s a perfect example of Bryce lying. See, what happened was, she was worried she’d get in trouble if you found out she told me. But I knew you’d see me as an asset, not an obstacle. And I know that Bryce has a tendency to… leave things out. She’s a bit spacy sometimes. Doesn’t focus on the right details. That’s why I wanted to go straight to you, to fill in the blanks.”

“Oh she’s been doing plenty of lying since I met her. But I highly doubt this is one of those instances.”

“Can you just tell me one thing?” He looked like he was about to say no, so I just asked it anyway. “Is her cousin involved in this?”

“Danaan?” I nodded. He hesitated, but before he could answer, Bryce was storming toward us, ready to raise Hel. “What is wrong with you?” Mercifully, she said this to Athalar, and not me.

“What’s wrong with me? I didn’t do anything!” 

“I told you not to talk to him!”

I interjected, “Dear sister, despite popular belief, you actually don’t get to control who is and isn’t allowed to talk to me. Or him, for that matter.”

“Elliot, go home. ” I did no such thing. Bryce looked like she was about to set me on fire. Her phone started ringing and when she answered I could just about make out Jesiba saying to her, “Quinlan, tell your brother if he distracts you from doing your job one more time, I’m turning him into a toad.” I shot back, “Promise?” loud enough Jessiba could hear me from the other end. Bryce just hung up her phone, pointed at Athalar, and said “You, inside.” Then she pointed at me, and said “Not you.” 

Toads be damned. I followed anyway. Bryce practically shoved me out while slamming the door shut, locking it immediately. Asshole. “I’m a respected client, I’d like to buy something from this fine establishment!” No response. “I know you can hear me!” Nothing. “If you’re going to keep me locked out here I’m throwing JJ in the garbage disposal. I know where you live! I still have the key!” Absolute silence from my piece of shit sister. I should’ve gone with a better bluff. Even at a time like this, she knew I’d never actually threaten Jelly Jubilee. But boy was I tempted. “Fine, play detective with the angel, I’ll just go home and do absolutely nothing.” And then, a single text that read: You better. You still have your location shared with me.

Oh, Bryce. The ways you set yourself up to be easily fooled.

I could’ve just turned my location off. But what was far more convincing; Going home, leaving my phone there, and then finding out what the Hel was going on.

I hadn’t been to Ruhn’s house since I was twelve years old. Getting there without GPS and relying on very old memories from before I knew how to get around a city was not the easiest task. But it was easier than catching a murderer, at least theoretically, so if I couldn’t accomplish it I might as well give up now anyway. Lucky for me a prince’s house isn’t hard to miss, even one that’s meant to say to the world, “Look at me, I’m a normal man-child just like you!” (Fae don’t call themselves “men,” but you get it.) And, lucky for me, stupid-trauma-brain was really coming in handy. All I really had to do was keep going in the direction that made my body want to slip into panic attack territory, and then retrace my twelve-year-old-spite-fueled steps back north, and there I was. At his doorstep in no time.

The last time I was inside that house I was screaming at him. And then I was running out the door, flipping him off behind me. And then I was going south, and then I was near Moonwood, and then I saw some teenagers, maybe a few years older than me. And I thought to myself, Yeah, they look like sane rational people, they seem like more fun than hanging out with an entitled prince who thinks caring about family is exclusive to fae culture, and therefore I could “never understand” his “bond” with her, even though he just showed up in her life, and I’ve known her since the dawn of time. They seem like people that are safe to be around, so I walked up to them, all sense of danger completely out of my mind, and introduced myself. And I tried to act all cool about it, I even leaned my elbow against the wall like I saw all the cool characters do in all the dumb cheesy movies I grew up on, and I told them I was tough and hardcore and everything. And then they started circling me, and I thought I think I’m breaking every single rule Dad told me about talking to strangers, and they told me there’s not usually humans around here, and I asked how they knew I was human, and they said they could smell it, and I said that was gross, and they said they thought it was so weird that humans didn’t have magic, like how did we even live like that, and I said okay rude, and then suddenly knew what intestines looked like. I didn’t even really feel it at first, and my immediate thought was Well, this is embarrassing. And then the one that clawed me said wow, I didn’t have any healing at all, and as I believe I told you before, I hit him back with the greatest comeback of all time, “Yes we do, shit for brains, it’s called blood platelets and an immune system,” and I broke the fucker’s nose. Then the pain set in. Then the panic. Then police. And then I was alone. I called my dad and said “Ambance,” which he must have correctly translated to “ambulance,” and figured out my location, because the next thing I remember was walking up in a hospital.

But like I told you. That was a long time ago. Things have changed.

I rang the doorbell, and after a few seconds the door opened. I was face to face with Ruhn Danaan for the first time since I cursed him out for, in all honesty, saving my life and risking his own. Even if I survived getting drafted and serving, I grew up seeing what that did to my dad. As much as I hated Bryce for going to him for help, he did still help. And wasn’t I being a massive hypocrite, going to him now? Except no, I wasn’t, I was only here because she wouldn’t tell me what was happening, and he was the most likely person to give me actual answers.

Suddenly I was hit with the realization that we were both staring at each other in complete silence. Enough time had gone by that neither of us knew what to say. Someone from inside called out, asking who was there. From the accent I recognized the voice as belonging to Flynn. But Ruhn said nothing. I said nothing. And then, awkwardly, he stepped aside to let me in.

Inside I was hit with a wall of alcohol and myrthroot. “Solas, Danaan. I thought fae were sensitive to smell, you live like this?”

“We’re off duty tonight,” he said. “Sue me.”

Flynn looked me up and down and said, “Alright, and you are?”

For a second I was a bit annoyed he didn’t recognize me. But in fairness, I had only met him a couple times about a million years ago. So I said, “Bryce’s brother.”

Flynn’s eyes narrowed on me as he said, “I thought she didn’t have any brothers. Just a sister.”

I looked to Ruhn. “Seriously?”

He shrugged. “It never came up.”

“Cool,” I said pinching the bridge of my nose. “I didn’t come here to explain gender, I actually have something more important I need to talk to you about. Alone, preferably.”

Flynn just stared at me confused for a second, and then I saw the gears start to turn. “Oh! I get it. I forgot humans can decide their genders. I thought it wasn’t super common, though.”

“That’s not how it works, I didn’t ‘decide’ to- ugh. Never mind, I really don’t have time for this. Ruhn?”

“Fine,” he said, starting to walk toward his room. “Promise not to kick me this time?”

“Alright, I was nine, get over it,” I said as I followed him.

Flynn stayed back without any further protest as Ruhn shut the door behind us. His bedroom looked exactly how I remembered it years ago; 50% aesthetic garbage, and 50% regular garbage. Punk posters taped to the wall at just the perfect angle to look like they were hung haphazardly, cheap furniture half falling apart just enough to give the impression of poor college kid rather than rich prince with an even richer dad, and random cans and bottles of beer strewn about to add to the ambiance.

“It’s about Bryce,” I said, crossing my arms and trying not to touch anything. Every surface looked sticky and I really did not want to know from what.

“Yeah, I figured that.” Ruhn sat down at the end of his bed. “Why else would you want to talk to me, right?”

Of course he’d pick now to be passive aggressive. At least I had the decency to be regular aggressive, not dance around with plausibly deniable dickitry. “How much do you know?”

“About…?"

“The investigation. The one she’s on with the Umbra Mortis.”

“About as much as you do, probably.” Well, that was unhelpful. I was about to call this a dead end, about to walk out and be grateful I didn’t have to spend any more time talking to the embodiment of unresolved daddy issues, when he said, “I mean, she probably wouldn’t have told me if I wasn’t already involved. But yeah. I know everything.”

I kept my face as neutral as possible as rage started building in my veins. “So I don’t have to fill you in. That’s a relief.”

“But to be honest with you, I’m glad you’re here.” I raised an eyebrow at him, and he said, “I wanted to apologize. Even if it’s… a few years late.”

“Apologize for what?” I could hear the blood flowing past my ears and even still, surprise snuck its way past the growing anger. I never thought he’d say those words to me. After years of bitter resentment from me and not even an acknowledgement from him. Not because I got hurt, but because of my mother who blamed herself, for trusting the son of the male who scarred her, and having her child scarred in turn. 

But he said, “You were right. As soon as it happened, you were right, and you told me, and I didn’t believe you. And I’m sorry.”

I blinked and the blood in my head went silent. “What do you mean?”

“About the murderer. The one Bryce and Athalar are hunting. Brigs didn’t kill Danika.”

Chapter Text

I got all the information I could out of Ruhn without letting him know Bryce didn’t tell me. It wasn’t particularly difficult, the man loves to yap. I shut out every emotion, and focused solely on what he was telling me. I could deal with the panic and the anger and the fear later. When there was nothing more I could milk from him, I told him again what I said two years ago. If someone was framing Brigs, it meant they were likely to be someone high up. Which was probably also why there wasn’t any security footage of the horn being stolen. He nodded, and I told him to keep me updated, and that I’d “continue” to do more research on my end. And then I went home, to get no sleep that night.

If I confronted Bryce again about not telling me, it’d just turn into a screaming match. One I didn’t care to fight. Instead I resolved to solve the case on my own, and then go to Ruhn, and let him take the credit, even if the thought of doing so was mildly nauseating. So, I took out a notebook, one left over from college but that still had some extra unused pages in the back, and wrote down all the facts I knew:

1. A vampyre named Maximus Tertian met with Bryce to buy an artifact, and was later found dead.
2. The wounds were identical to the ones inflicted on Danika and the Pack of Devils.
3. Seemingly, the only connection between Danika and Tertian is Bryce.
4. Bryce saw something called a Kristolos demon, who were created to track down the Horn.
5. Danika was investigating the disappearance of the Horn when she died.

Which meant the running theory was, someone with access to security cameras, the ability to bypass Danika’s wards, and the ability to summon the Kristolos, stole the Horn, erased security footage of doing so, and killed the Pack of Devils before they could get caught. Then two years later, they started summoning Kristolos again. But why, if they already had the horn? Unless there were two people at work. The first person stole the horn, the second was trying to steal it from them. But why now? Did the summit meeting have something to do with it? Maybe someone was trying to make Micah look bad, and this whole thing was a ploy, make him look inept. Weaken the government from the inside, tear it down bit by bit, and then strike. Or maybe it was to make him look good. Give him a win, a recent win, just before the summit meeting. I didn’t think my instinct was wrong, that whoever killed Danika also framed Brigs, or had connections to someone who could. But why put Bryce on the case? To those racist dipshits it’d look pretty bad for them if the Umbra Morris needed the help of a half-human to solve the case. Unless he was trying to pull the, “Look at me, I’m so progressive, please ignore my slaves,” card again, to try to gain the admiration of the people and the respect of the Asteri at the same time. I made a list of suspects in my head, most of them high ranking military or government officials. A thousand possibilities swam through my brain at a hundred miles per hour until my alarm woke me up, drooling on my notebook and slumped over my desk, pen still in hand.

I wanted caffeine.

“You look like shit,” Aiden told me as he handed me a large black coffee, free of charge because Boss Man wasn’t around. I put five marks in the tip jar as I flipped him off

“Seriously though, what happened?” Sadie asked me as she refilled the napkin dispenser. 

Oh, sweet dear Sadie. What didn’t happen. “Apparently all nighters are not exclusive to the college experience. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, corporate life.” I did a dramatic bow for emphasis, careful not to spill my coffee. “Also, I lie awake at night, desperately missing burning myself with the hot water and getting covered in flour getting coffees and pastries to people trying to avoid eye contact.”

Aiden rolled his eyes. “Ah yes, thank you for gracing us lowly peasants with your company, your corporate majesty.”

“Anytime.” I took a long sip of coffee, even though it was too hot to drink comfortably. “How have you guys been?”

“Same as we were a couple days ago, but kind of you to check in,” Sadie said, lifting the counter up and stepping back behind it. “Though, I think you’d have a heart attack if you saw the storage closet.”

Aiden chuckled as he shoveled ice into a cup. “Yeah, it only took us like, two shifts to destroy your oh so perfect system.”

I placed a hand over my heart. “You wound me, Aiden. I’m wounded.” In doing so, I saw my watch out of the corner of my eye. “Ah shit, I have to go.”

“Duty calls,” Aiden said, giving me a salute with the ice scooper.

“Don’t be a stranger, Elliot,” Sadie said.

I waved goodbye and started heading to work. Back to the grind. The painfully boring, tedious grind.

I did actually miss being a barista. Sure, customer service sucks. But there was something about the constant influx of customers, the never ending list of tasks to complete, all with their own little timers, that made the day go by so quickly, leaving little room to think about anything you didn’t want to. Working for Redner Industries was a slog. There were things to do, but none of them felt like accomplishing anything. It just felt like moving files around, asking and answering questions, all at a snail’s pace. People would go get water from the water cooler just for an excuse to do something. The day stretched on forever, but well, I was still new, and leaving early seemed like a bad look.

Now. I'm not proud to admit this. But that day, I did something that in hindsight, would end up being the stupidest, dumbest, most dangerous mistake I’ve ever made: I opened up a new file on my work computer, and started writing out every idea and theory I could think of about who stole the Horn, and who murdered Danika.

And… well. Remember when I mentioned I don’t have health insurance?

Chapter Text

Okay, in hindsight when I say it out loud, it seems really obvious. If, gods forbid, you ever find yourself in a similar position as me, I’d highly recommend not writing your suspect list on your work computer, especially if you put right at the top an archangel who happens to be one of the major investors in your company. Maybe it was a lapse in judgment fueled by sleep deprivation. Maybe I just assumed no one would check. Either way, dumb. What’s dumber is that when I got mugged a few days later, I didn’t put the pieces together. Look, it’s not like it was the first time some Vanir saw me walking down the street after dark and thought I’d be a source of some easy money. I didn’t realize it was a targeted attack until later. But in any case, I lost my knife in a wolf shifter’s liver. Normally I’d get it back, but he knocked me pretty hard into a wall, and my head was spinning just enough for me to forget it and take off running. I was bleeding, not badly, but I was more concerned about the possibility of a concussion. So once I thought I was far away enough, I called Bella and asked her if she was busy. Apparently I was slurring my words together enough to make her assume I was drunk. Either way, she was kind enough to do some basic healing for me. I tried to pay her for it, but as always, she refused to take it. I told her I owed her a favor, but if I was being honest with myself, there wasn’t really much I could offer her anyway. She tried to get me to stay, both worried about me getting back home safe, and wanting to monitor me because of the head trauma, but I just wanted to sleep in my own bed. And as much as she protested, we both knew she wouldn’t go so far as to physically stop me. I got home without any trouble, and passed out as soon as I hit the mattress.

At the time, I told myself I would’ve told Bryce had I not been arrested the next morning. We did just have a whole fight about honesty, and I did say I’d be better. In my defense, I was woken up to pounding on my door and threats they’d kick it down, and I didn’t really have time to shoot my sister a “Hey, btw, I got absolutely clobbered last night, thought I’d let you know,” text. But in all likelihood, I wouldn’t have sent it if given the chance. As it was, I was in handcuffs before I had time to wipe the sleep from my eyes.

So there I found myself, in an interrogation room, with a wolf who was glaring at me. She wasn’t saying anything. If this was an attempt at an intimidation technique, I wasn’t exactly sure what the intended outcome was meant to be.

“Can I have a lawyer now, please?”

“I’ll ask the questions here.”

“Wow. Haven’t heard that one before. They teach you that line at cop school, or did you come up with it on your own?” Her scowl grew more intense. “Geez, tough crowd. Can you at least tell me what you expect me to be admitting to?”

“Shut up.”

I mimed zipping my mouth and throwing out the key, but it didn’t quite work seamlessly. I forgot my hands were still cuffed to the table.

“Where were you last night between 7:30 and 8:00 pm?”

“Walking home. From work. Some of us have real jobs.” Okay, in hindsight, pissing off your interrogator is a bad idea. But they woke me up early, and I was tired , I don’t exactly have much respect for authority, and I didn’t want her to assume she had any power over me.

She placed a plastic bag on the table, with my pocket knife inside it. Still had blood on it. “Recognize this?” I didn’t answer. I kept my face carefully neutral. “It has your fingerprints all over it.” She was bluffing. My prints aren’t in the system, and even if they were, that knife was in my pocket twelve hours ago. It takes longer than that to get it tested, doesn’t it? Does it? I dunno, probably.

“What, exactly, am I being accused of?”

She made a show of crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair. “Assault, at minimum. Likely, a hate crime.”

“I’m sorry? A hate crime? Hate against who, exactly, muggers?” I was talking too much. But I was mad. That was always my downfall, if I get pissed I never shut my fucking mouth.

“Is that your story? Self defense? Because I can’t help but notice you being unscathed, and our victim has a stab wound.”

“Your victim bashed my head into a wall. Unprompted!”

“ Again. You look fine to me.”

“I got healed.”

“No hospitals report treating a human matching your description last night. And forgive me for assuming, you don’t have healing magic of your own.”

So that’s why people go to the hospital. Note to self, get health insurance. “I have a friend, she’s in med school. I don’t have insurance, or enough saved for a hospital visit. So she healed me, as a favor.”

She scoffed at me. “Awfully convenient, don’t you think?”

“Having friends? Yeah, it is. You should try it sometime.”

She growled but I didn’t flinch. When she was done with the theatrics, she pulled out a laptop, and opened it up to security camera footage. I recognized the street, but the video was distorted. Unusually so. It kept freezing, then jumping ahead, certain parts of it coming in and out of focus. It showed me, it showed the wolf. A few frames froze, and then it showed me shoving in a knife, and then taking off running. The angle of the camera was just perfectly placed so you couldn’t see the blood I knew was gushing down the other side of my face. Because of course. Just the knife. And me.

“He attacked me first,” I said. My words felt like acid on my tongue. I noticed I was clenching my fists and carefully relaxed them, placing my hands palms down on the table. “The camera glitched out, but that’s what happened in those missing frames.”

“Hmm,” she purred. “Convenient.” It took every ounce of will left in me to not spit in her face. “Well, it’s your word against his. But here’s the facts. He reported it. You didn’t. He has a clean record, and you have a history of violence against wolves.”

“Gee, I wonder why that might be.” I was faking confidence. This was bad. Very bad. She was right, this was far far too convenient. This video must’ve been tampered with, someone was trying to set me up. Someone with access to security footage. Someone who I must’ve pissed off recently.

“You got into a fight some years ago, assaulting a pup. A child, Silago.”

“ Quinlan -Silago. And I was a child too. Guess who threw the first hit then.”

“And then, more recently, you attacked another wolf. Kicked him to the ground, and tried to attack another. Wolves you knew . Connor Holstrum and Danika Fendyr respectively.”

“That was an accident. I thought they- Solas, they chased me down and cornered me, I thought-”

“And again, just last night. Do you see a pattern forming, Quinlan -Silago?”

I glared at her. She glared at me.

“I’d like my lawyer now, please.”

Chapter Text

Suffice to say, I did not, in fact, get my lawyer. I didn’t get a phone call, either. I was told I was to be “in custody” until my court date, and as an added bonus, no one knew what to do with a transgender human with a “hate crime” charge, so I found myself staring at the blank white wall of solitary confinement. With seemingly nothing to do, but wait, and think. There were two explanations for the distorted video footage, and the apparent lack of what are supposed to be given rights. One, I was extraordinarily unlucky, and if a bunch of wolf cops think you’re targeting them, they won’t be very nice to you. Or two, someone with access to security footage and who has power over the police wanted me out of the picture. And the only thing I did recently, that would make anyone bother with that effort, was start researching this case. That meant I must be a threat to them. And if we follow that logic to its conclusion, it means I was onto something. Good news, I was now about 90% sure the murderer was someone on my suspect list. Bad news, they could probably kill me. Would probably kill me. “Fuck around, find out,” I muttered to my empty room. On the bright side, Bella told me to stay away from screens for a few days, given the mild concussion, and this meant I was forced to take her advice. (I was absolutely planning not to.)

What I did not expect was to be let go two days later. No explanation, either. But I will tell you the guards who let me out seemed thoroughly pissed about the whole thing. Which said to me , that whoever made the decision was not someone they respected. Or, at the very least, didn’t give them a satisfactory explanation as to why they were escorting me out and giving me back all my stuff. Which probably meant… ugh. Him again. Oh goodie. Can’t wait for another “you should be grateful your sister’s related to a prince” lecture. And the side effect of that, if someone set me up to get assaulted and arrested, they’d probably be a bit pissed I just got let go out of nowhere, so… I should probably avoid going home.

Lucky for me, my phone had just enough battery left in it to send Aiden a text asking if I could spend the night. I lied and said there was some plumbing problem at my apartment, and that I needed a place to crash until they could fix it. And that I really didn’t want to go to Bryce’s, since the whole “moving out” fight. I never did tell him the added caveat that while Bryce was mad at me for not telling her about the job until the last second, I was mad at her because she didn’t tell me she was on a murder investigation with the fucking Umbra Mortis, because it seemed like a lot to drop on a person. Coincidentally, that meant he took Bryce’s side in the whole thing, and I couldn’t exactly blame him.

As it was, I stood in the hallway in front of his apartment door, in the sweatpants and teeshirt I was sleeping in before getting woken up to handcuffs and mildly excessive force, knocking with only the enthusiasm only someone deeply exhausted could muster. 30 seconds later, Aiden answered, somehow looking even worse than I did. He gave me a weak smile, said he already ordered a pizza, and handed me a beer practically before I was through the doorway.

“Solas, dude. The fuck happened to you?”

He shrugged, and sat down at the edge of the bed that doubled as a couch in his tiny studio apartment. Posters taped behind him just barely not keeping peeling paint out of view. “I could ask you the same question,” he said, before taking a swig of his own beer and lying flat down on the bed, staring at the stained ceiling.

“I told you, gas leak. Should be cleared up soon, probably,” I said, opening my beer and drinking more than was reasonable at once, before laying down beside him and staring at the same ceiling.

“Mmhmm. You said plumbing.”

“Plumbing, gas, same thing, whatever.”

“Must’ve been some leak, if you didn’t have time to pack a bag.”

I drank again. “What are you, a cop?” He chuckled, and I sighed. “Got jumped. Stabbed the guy. I think he’s probably still pissed about the whole thing…? Sooo. Thought I’d stay out of the neighborhood for a few days.” I chugged the rest of it in one go, and crushed the can. “Now your turn.”

He chugged the rest of his too, crushing the can and absentmindedly tossing it across the room. “Phoebe didn’t get into any charter schools, my parents and I don’t make enough to send her to a private, so guess who gets to start public high school next fall!” He did jazz hands for emphasis, but his face was ashen. “And as an added bonus, guess who lives in the worst school district in the city.”

“Shit…” I didn’t know what else to say. Phoebe drove him insane during the best of times, but she was still his little sister. A bad education for a human meant way less of a chance at scoring high enough to be exempt from the draft. Going to a bad high school meant a much higher chance of the rest of the world finding you disposable. Even more than humans already are, by default. “I can tutor her. After work, I mean. I have the time. The test is in four years, Aiden. It’s not a death sentence.”

He laughed, an empty hollow sound that felt entirely out of place coming from my friend’s mouth. “Right, yeah. Since you scored so well. What’d you get again?”

I felt myself start sweating. There was the slightest fraction of a hesitation before I said, as evenly as I could, “1550.”

He hummed. “I would’ve gone with 1552. Sounds a bit less suspicious, I think. But what do I know.” He got up and walked to the fridge, grabbing another beer. He didn’t offer me one and I didn’t ask for it.

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Burning fucking Solas, dude. Come on. Your sister’s dad is a fucking fae noble , her cousin is a prince, and head of the Aux. I’m surprised they made you take it at all, it’s not like you would’ve actually gone if you got drafted.”

I stood up. I could feel my face growing red, equal parts anger and shame. “That fae? Is just some asshole who beat my mom bloody and would’ve done the same to Bryce if he stayed in their lives a second longer. I met him once , and I can promise you he doesn’t give a shit if I live or die. I doubt he even knows my name. Bryce and I have the same dad, and it’s the man, the human man, who raised her since she was three.”

He laughed again, his throat sounding dry and raspy, as he ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, yeah your dad. Randall Silago, ‘Legendary Sharp Shooter.’ That’s the biggest joke on Midgard. He taught you how to shoot when you were what, eight, nine years old? You would’ve been fine. It would’ve been easy for you.”

“It’s not easy for anyone.”

“You know what’s gonna happen in four years? Phoebe is going to turn eighteen, she’s going to take that stupid fucking test, and she’s going to get sent off to war. And she’s not like you, she’s not like me, she’s not fast. She doesn’t pick things up quickly, she freezes under pressure. She’ll be lucky to make it through first training, but even if she does, they’ll see her as bait. Put her on the front lines, label her as an ‘acceptable casualty.’ Doesn’t matter if a bullet gets stuck in her brain, they have thousands more like her, and at least they didn’t lose one of the ‘valuable’ soldiers. They’d gladly lose a million Phoebes if it meant shielding a precious Sharp Shooter, right Silago?”

I said nothing for a long, tense moment. Aiden wept quietly, tears falling down his stone face, no emotion left there but exhaustion and dread. He was right, and I knew it. There wasn’t any defense, any justification I could give him. So, I said weakly, with the most intense shame I had ever felt, “1548. I was two points short.”

He nodded, like that made all the sense in the world to him, then opened a closet door and tossed me a clean towel. “You should shower. You smell like a jail cell.”