He rarely had nightmares anymore. They had plagued him nonstop in the months after the crash, and almost none at all since, like he'd used up his life's worth when he was seven. Instead, he sometimes dreamed about a chase. Not the common nightmare of being chased, but running after something he couldn't reach. The anxiety when he woke up probably wasn't so different.

As if falling into bed at sunrise hadn't been bad enough, the sky still had that watery morning shine to it by the time Nicholas gave up on good rest. He might as well not have gone to bed at all. At least then, he could have done something productive, rather than roll around in his sheets for a few hours of stop-start sleep.

He was missing something. He didn't know what, he didn't even know where to start, but the certainty of it had woken him in fits and starts. His breakfast came and he picked at his food, stabbing hard into a sausage when his agitation reached a tipping point.

"Now why are we playing with our food?"

Nicholas jumped so hard he canted backward, dumping his breakfast onto the sheets and landing with his head dangling over the edge of the bed. Everything flipped upside down.

"And all of these wasted meals!" There was a girl in the corner of his room. She sat on the floor with a tray of yesterday's food on her lap, snacking on the nuts from his lunch salad. "You're so small to begin with. Haven't you heard that food is fuel, Nicky?"

The wide sleeve of her robe bunched around her shoulder as she flexed one arm, popping a cashew into her mouth along the way. It was a very short, very silky robe, the color of a ripening blackberry.

She gasped. "Don't tell me you don't recognize me. Is it because I'm upside down?"

"You're Mariam," Nicholas said dumbly. He hadn't forgotten the courtesan's sepia skin.

"Oh, goodie. That would have been embarrassing."

"Why are you- how are you here?" He hadn't heard her come in.

"Funny accident," she said, rocking back and forth where she sat. "I just, I knew the library didn't have this wall last time I came exploring. Had to investigate, curiosity and such. I felt just awful for intruding until I recognized your sweet sleeping face, and..." She trailed off at Nicholas' blank expression.

"Oh, did you mean- well! It all happened after the birthday celebration. You could say I caught his eye." She shrugged off one shoulder of her robe suggestively. Nicholas suspected she wasn't wearing anything underneath. "Ever since, I've been...around."

She looked extremely proud of herself. Nicholas rolled onto his stomach. Without the lightheadedness, he caught onto more details - namely, the red marks littering her collar, and the disarray of her inky hair. Her words took a little longer to process. The connection between the marks and the words, even longer.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Exhausted, in the best way. That man is insatiable." She stretched out her legs with a happy sigh. "When I was summoned the first time, I thought he'd be boring at best, selfish at worst - growing up in a castle, and all - but, Nicky! I might just be ruined for all other men. Actually. Well. I wouldn't go that far. But he's so...thorough. And that mouth of his, filthy. And he's gorgeous, of course he's gorgeous, I knew that coming in, but it's a different thing seeing those legs up close- I'm sure you know what I mean."

It finally clicked, and Nicholas felt weak with how quickly his blood rushed to his face.

"We were all just aching to know what happened after the king whisked you away at his party. How lucky that I've found you- and in your own room, no less! You must be in great favor."

Nicholas tried to tell her she had the wrong idea and only managed about every third syllable. Rayan had left the archive a handful of hours ago. And while Nicholas had been tossing and turning, the king had been...

And Mariam thought Nicholas was also...

He threw his hands over his face. Hot to the touch.

"Nicky?"

"That's- you- misunderstanding. His Majesty and I aren't..." he couldn't even say it.

"You don't have to keep the prudish front up when it's just me." Mariam's giggles slowly faded. "...Oh, you're being serious."

He nodded, with feeling.

"But I could have sworn, the way he grabbed you." She squinted. "Are you certain?"

He peeked through his fingers at Mariam, the courtesan Rayan had picked out from a crowd. Full-bodied and strikingly feminine, with plenty of places to...grab. She and Nicholas couldn't be more different.

"I'm his prisoner."

"That doesn't mean 'no.' Dare I say, for some people it's an emphatic yes. What's your charge?"

"I have a job to do."

Mariam waited.

"It's um, complicated. I won't bore you with the details."

She waited some more.

"Just. The usual drama. Inter-kingdom tensions. Witches and journals. Some place called the Muck Moth, allegedly."

She gawked at him. "Boring? Sounds like something out of those stories they tell to scare little children into good behavior. 'Little boys who waste their food are chased out of town by the Evil Witch riding her Giant Evil Muck Moth. And then they starve to death; The End.' Something along those lines."

Nicholas's head shot from his hands.

"You're a genius."

He tore down the stairs and into the pile of books he'd designated Read: Unhelpful. He went straight for the bottom, sending the top layers crashing down, and tossed titles aside until he found it.

Bedtime Stories for the Little Witch.

Mariam knelt beside his hunched form and peered over his shoulder. He stopped on a page with "Hungry Bird" written at the top and a moth drawn at the bottom. Between them, a nursery rhyme.

Hungry bird is on the hunt.

Peck-a three, peck-a four, peck-a five.

Hungry bird, look closer now.

Right there in the muck at your side.

More-a-more-a-more she sings,

and the moth with muddy wings

is left behind.

"I'll leave you to your job, then."

Despite having been forgotten for minutes on end, Mariam's smile was kind. Confused, but kind. Nicholas wanted her to stay.

"Sorry," he said.

"I'll visit again, if that's alright?"

"Please."

She left as silently as she had come in. The spike in Nicholas' energy left with her. Through heavy eyelids, he reread the book front to back.

There was nothing else of any use. But now that he thought about it, he could have sworn he'd seen something about a moth recently, just before the drive to Pondtam.

♛ ♛ ♛

Nicholas practically flew out of the armchair when he heard the telltale grind of the upstairs wall sliding open. He gathered his evidence in his arms, started for the stairs, realized he'd be better off down here in the torchlight, and dropped to his knees right there on the carpet.

Rayan had brought the figurine again. He was uttering the bell charm when he clocked Nicholas at the foot of the stairs, laying three books out in front of himself and flipping to pages he'd marked. The room was a disaster. He only paused for a moment before rushing down, crouching on the other side of the line of books. "What did you find?"

The music started up, a calming melody at odds with Nicholas' urgency as he turned the middle book around. Rayan's eyes roved over "Hungry Bird," returned to the start, roved over again.

He grabbed the next book. It was one of the first Nicholas had read down here, opened to one of its first pages. That was probably the only reason it had stood out as strange. Thinking about how many references there must have been since, how many he'd never made room for in his memory, was torment.

In Plain Sight was a memoir structured as a guide. And right there on the second page, in impossible loopy script:

"The worst defense is to become ugly. He who despises beauty despises ugliness twofold. His eye will pass unseeing over the plain, faster still if said plainness sits itself somewhere his eye would rather not linger. A brown moth lives on from the pile of human excrement dumped atop that poor witch's grave. Learn from its wit and her mistake. She was beautiful."

To find the final passage, Nicholas had poured through several books he'd read just days ago for the line he remembered. This one was short, fictional, and too vague to take anything from - at least, he'd thought so at the time.

"And those faraway girls danced in bliss through the flower field, stopping only to wave their fingers at the butterflies, but to her closest friend she privately said, I prefer the moth in the muck, and they smiled as if sharing a secret in mean spirit."

"Do you think..." said Nicholas.

Rayan read each quote again. Then he was on his feet. "We'll find out," he said. "Come."

So Nicholas clutched the books and scrambled after him. He faltered when Rayan continued out of the upstairs room and into the library.

"That was an order."

He moved purposefully out from between the bookshelves, toward the second story balcony. At first, Nicholas could only see his silhouette in the soft starry glow of the skylight. The torches along the walls sparked to life as they passed, then went back out, illuminating their path. Nicholas tried to subtly catch his breath after keeping up with Rayan's stride on the stairs, then ended up choking on it when he nearly ran into the king's back. Punishable by guillotine, probably.

Rayan had stopped (without warning - it wasn't his head). Holding the torch high, he squinted at an upper shelf. Four thick books drifted down to them.

Nicholas snatched one from the air. Encyclopedia of Arthropods. Rayan was holding Moths and Butterflies of Caldora: Illustrated. He set the other two down right where they were, then set himself down next to them. Nicholas found his way to a chapter titled "Lepidoptera." Distantly, he could hear the music they had abandoned in the archive.

"What do you think about this?" he asked after many minutes.

Rayan leaned over to look. "Sujer moth," he read aloud. "But it lives in sand, not..."

"Muck? Yeah, I was thinking that. But, like, define 'muck'."

Rayan soon took his turn showing a page. Nicholas scooted closer to catch the right light, looked back at the sketch by the nursery rhyme, and shook his head.

At some point, Nicholas slouched with awful posture against the shelves, and Rayan slid fully down to the floor. They both perked up when Nicholas said, "Shit, this could be it!"

The excitement was short-lived.

"That's a butterfly."

They sagged in unison. Nicholas rubbed his eyes and blamed sleep deprivation.

The music had grown too faint to notice passively by the time Rayan sucked in a breath and said, "Look at this." He was on his second book, A Guide to Caldoran Insects.

Nicholas had stretched out next to Rayan when he grew sick of all the leaning and shifting, so it only took turning his cheek to see what had caught Rayan's eye on the page floating open above him.

Parapoynx lamanas. A swamp moth with solid gray-brown coloration that lived out almost the entirety of its short existence somewhere predatory songbirds weren't likely to seek nutrients - heaps of mud and mammalian dung. It was simple camouflage. Nasty, but simple.

"So when are we going?"

Rayan kept on studying the page, so Nicholas clarified, "To the tavern. The Muck Moth."

Still nothing.

"We are going, right? You haven't even mentioned it since we got back from Pondtam."

"Someone is handling it."

"Who is someone?"

"Cairo arranged an investigation."

"And just, what, forgot to put our names on the roster?"

"There are others better qualified for the role."

"And when were they going to tell you about the tavern full of witches who might know something about the journal that currently holds your death sentence?"

"I will pass the information along," Rayan said through gritted teeth.

Nicholas sat up. Rayan avoided his glare. "Why are you running away from this? Why are you writing me out of this?"

"After the recent- incident, Cairo brought it to my attention that this might all be too much for you. He and Yasmin believe you to be...delicate."

"Oh yeah? And what'd they say about you?"

Rayan pressed his lips into a line.

"Whatever!" huffed Nicholas. "It's not like you can be bossed around. Why are you going down so easy? How can you stay holed up in here while...oh."

Alarmed.

"You'd rather be holed up. You don't like leaving. Is it the germ thing?"

"You don't know nearly as much as you think."

"So fill me in! I am trying so hard right now to understand how you can pass this off into someone else's hands. Screw qualifications, what about stakes? Because right now, you and I have got the highest stakes in all this, and that's why we're the ones with half a lead! I made you a king, not a mouse, so act like one!"

"Are you belittling me, or encouraging me?"

"The second one!" It was less likely to get him arrested.

Rayan made a weird strangled sound. He twisted his mouth shut when it wobbled.

"I mean," Nicholas said, because he still hadn't let off all his steam, "Look at what we can do!"

He slammed his finger to the illustration in the guidebook. The subtle wave pattern on the wings was a perfect match for the one in the nursery rhyme.

As soon as he touched it, the floating book came down on his face.

Past the thud of his own upper body hitting the floor, there was another choked-off sound from his left. He lay there, unmoving, until the throbbing from his nose and the back of his head didn't feel quite so critical. Spots winked out of his vision when he shoved the book off.

Rayan had rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in his elbow, muffling short, hiccuping inhales. His shoulders were shaking. Nicholas tipped his sore head back and let out one breathy laugh that tumbled into another.

Like a switch flipped off, the noise at his side stopped. Rayan held himself still for a moment. Then he turned back over, stone-faced.

"That was scary, how you just did that," said Nicholas. He couldn't quell his laughter that fast. It made his voice shake.

Rayan took the guidebook and moved to stand. "There's no time."

"Wait."

He did.

"For what?"

"Nothing, just. Wait a moment."

"Is everything a joke to you?"

"I'm not joking."

"When are you going to get it into your head that I am dying? I don't have the luxury to-"

"Wait," Nicholas said anyway as Rayan shifted again. "Isn't this what you do when you're dying? Indulge in what you don't know, see places you normally wouldn't, see people in ways you normally wouldn't. Make the most of the time you have left, and all that."

"That isn't me. You know that isn't me. It isn't you, either."

"You're right." Nicholas propped himself on one elbow. "But I haven't been myself lately. And, okay, I'm not dying, but my life as I know it is practically over, that counts for something, and I am...so fucking sleepy, and what happened just now was- rare. And I think I'd like to be rare for a second."

He couldn't diagnose what had come over him and didn't really want to. It felt honest. He thought it might spill over and spread, but Rayan had gone stiff.

"You have no sense of good form. Look at yourself."

Nicholas took stock of himself; bearing down on a king like he had any right.

But Rayan hadn't ordered him to back up yet.

"They didn't teach me a whole lot of etiquette on Earth."

Rayan pushed onto his forearms. If he meant to cow Nicholas back, it didn't work. "You have never taken me seriously."

"Is that what you want? You've spent your whole life being taken seriously."

"What's gotten into you?"

"I don't know." He felt both delirious and exceptionally sober. "Maybe I gave myself brain damage when I dropped that book on my head."

It worked. At the reminder, Rayan's face split. He fought it, holding his lip with his teeth, but the grin won out. There was a second of discoloration where he'd bitten his bottom lip before the blood rushed back in. Nicholas had been right when he guessed that the sharp corners of Rayan's mouth would draw a cutting smile. He hadn't predicted the same sharpness in his teeth. Those canines could draw blood. In his delirium, he thought, I created a vampire.

His mind wandered against his will to the indents he'd seen on Mariam's thighs when her robe parted dangerously high.

The smile dropped away. Nicholas only realized he was staring when he had to lift his gaze to return to Rayan's. He hoped he hadn't been caught. But Rayan's eyes were on his, and by the look in them, he had watched the whole thing.

Rayan rose to his feet. He dropped the book and stepped over Nicholas to get to the stairs, taking the closest torch with him, and Nicholas was left in the dark to make sense of the warmth rolling in his tummy and what he'd seen in Rayan's stare. It had looked a lot like, finally.

Nicholas might have been Earth's most chronic overthinker, once. But he wasn't on Earth, and he wasn't himself, so he stood and looked around at the thousands of books, and he didn't dwell. He could read anything he wanted. If he listened hard, he could still hear the music.

He walked in a heady daze down the stairs to the first floor, then up the steps on the podium at its center. The telescope was two meters tall. He looked through the eyepiece.

The library doors opened behind him.

"You could have left."

"Could I?" There were guards at every entrance to the castle, and half of the windows led straight down to Lake Charlatan.

The thought hadn't crossed Nicholas' mind.

"What are you seeing?" Rayan was behind him.

"The secrets of the abyss." The black sky. "The fog of life." A cloud.

"Move."

Rayan twisted a dial around the body of the telescope. Turned a knob and toggled the eyepiece back and forth. He stepped aside, though not by much, and beckoned Nicholas into place.

"Familiar?"

Nicholas was looking at a constellation. Without the sketch lines connecting the dots, the image wasn't so clear, but he could still trace out the figures in his mind. A man and a woman drifting together in space. Nicholas took it in, a drawing in a book that had made it all the way to outer space. He recognized the light years between him and The Lovers, the unimaginable size and heat of each star. A steadiness settled over him, so foreign it took him a minute to name it. Nicholas felt powerful.

Even with the king right at his back.

He glanced over his shoulder and didn't dwell. If he could be confident in anything, it was Rayan's face and how to read it. The warmth in his gut came back, and the steadiness.

Yeah, okay. Especially with the king right at his back.

"A driver is waiting," said Rayan. "We're going to Jacim."

He didn't hang around for a reaction. "I'd prefer to return before sunrise," he called.