When he was finally allowed to sleep, Nicholas dreamed of Eden.

It was strange– he hadn't been to this place before, this effusive garden, but he knew at the first stroke of green against his mindspace that it was holy.

It was strange– he hadn't seen the start of the world, but something here was familiar, something in the opalescent surface of the still pond. Was that mist rising from it, or was it boiling? He stretched out a hand to check and found his arm did not exist; he was not here. This was not his story.

It was strange– he hadn't been religious since his parents went up in flames, but he thought he remembered a river in Genesis, not a pond. One river, four headwaters, and two great trees. This was not the garden of Eden.

If this wasn't Eden, then the pair dancing between the oleander bushes wasn't Adam and Eve. The more he observed, the more foolish he felt for even considering it. They were too clothed, and too lewd when they moved together. They couldn't possibly be ignorant.

What would poisonous flowers be doing in paradise, anyway?

Still, they felt bigger than the earth they roamed. Like they existed to mark the start of something, or the end.

In a heartbeat, the woman was before him, or not-him, or whatever he was. She was beautiful in the watery light, and she was terrifying, and she was anything but holy. He had seen her before. Torrents of dark hair fell over her shoulder with the tilt of her head. She had a long neck and a sharp collar, naked and bruised where her lover had pulled down her shirt to mark it. She could nearly be called curious, if not for the black wells within her irises that seemed to already know everything. Her partner danced on, so naive Nicholas could've been convinced he really was Adam if not for the silk robes on his back.

"You are not supposed to be here," she said in a deep, echoing voice too large for her narrow chest. When she spoke again, Nicholas realized it wasn't coming from her chest at all. "So we're doing the impossible now, are we?"

Her words seemed to float off from the pond with the mist– no, steam– no, smoke. The air was turning black with it. Her skin, too. First a small spot at the center of her chest, then a blotch on her cheek, then her fingertips. Patches of necrotic skin spread and started to burn, peeling away at their inception, ember-red at the edges like she was made of paper. The flora around the pond wilted, from the moss hugging the stones to the topmost leaves. Everything except the oleander.

A cry rang out, laden with an anguish so deep Nicholas wished to cover his ears, if only he had any. Her lover raced for her as her hair caught flame, but he was wilting, too (and he seemed more familiar that way), until he was just loose skin sagging over a skeletal frame.

"I didn't think that was allowed, anymore," the woman said. Her lover's hand, now nothing but bone, landed on her shoulder. She reached up to hold it just as her fingers turned to ash, and his to dust. She seemed timelessly sad. "Well, anyway. Welcome."

Nicholas could smell the smoke.

He breathed it in, relieved to have his faculties back. If he had his voice, too, he could ask her for help. She would know how to get him home; she knew everything. But he breathed in too long, and smoke coated his lungs until he was coughing.

He shot upright. It tasted foul and burned his throat. He searched for a source through teary eyes and saw gray-black curling in through the gap under the infirmary door.

His hearing came back to him last, and with it an overwhelming surge of noise. Crashing, breaking, shouting. The crackling of flames was loud and close, right outside his door.

"Fuck," he choked. A window– there was a window on the other side of the infirmary. Its daylight crawled along the floor, beneath the divider. He surged from the bed, or tried too. A punching pain spiked in his left shoulder as his arm pulled taught, bound at the wrist to the bed.

The whole room was hot, so hot his skin was slick with sweat, but he suddenly felt very, very cold.

He was trapped.

He pulled until his wrist was raw, but the cuff and the bed frame were both metal. Desperate, he clambered out of the bed, numb to the twinge in his ankle, to heave with his entire body, clenching his fingers together like he might somehow squeeze through a cuff hardly wider than his wrist.

His breath came in ragged pants broken up by fits of coughing, until a gray haze hung across the whole room and cough was all he could do. He dropped to his knees and keeled forward and managed a clear inhale through his nose. Sweat and smoke stung his eyes. He was vaguely aware of blood dripping over his knuckles. He kept thrashing against the cuffs anyway, and he didn't shout for help. 

The king would probably be thrilled if a tragic accident took him. No point wasting what little clear air he had left.

Distantly, he heard an outraged shout – "Sir!" – right before the door burst open. Flames surged into the room, bringing with them oppressive heat. What a miserable way to go, Nicholas thought, but they hardly got past the door before curling into themselves, retreating like they'd been suctioned out. In their place appeared a person, one he almost didn't recognize at first glance.

Rayan's eyes were frantic as he rushed into the room. They zeroed in on Nicholas, and in an instant he was crouched at the bedside.

"Shit," he muttered when he took in Nicholas' state and the handcuffs trapping him against the bed. Past him, Nicholas could see fire trying to creep into the room, held back as if by an invisible wall. The smoke receded too, wiped away with a sweep of his arm. Nicholas tried to suck in the clean air and wound up choking. "Shit, are you– shit."

Rayan had one hand facing the flames, a flat palm keeping them at bay. The other fumbled over his clothes in search of something. But the king was dressed for sleep, in a white silk shirt and pants. "Shit!"

A gloved hand came down over Nicholas' wrist. Inercium glowed purple as energy hummed beneath Rayan's palm, but it stopped short, and the cuff remained. "Fuck, right– sorry–"

There was an ear-splitting screech. Through the door, Nicholas glimpsed rusty red feathers over an impossibly large form and an arrowhead beak that parted with another cry, spilling fire over the hall outside.

Rayan touched the chain linking the cuffs this time, and they fell apart easily. There was a wounded squawk as the beast in the hallway careened out of view, then a sound like shattering glass. Yasmin appeared in the doorway, face stricken with worry that morphed into an exasperated scowl when she spotted the king.

"Must you insist on making my job so difficult?"

She pressed her palms downward. The floor plunged away beneath them, and Nicholas found himself in free-fall.

The drop was so short that he barely had time to shout. Hands gripped his shoulders hard the instant before he hit the ground, slowing his fall by a fraction of a second. He lashed out on instinct, shoving Rayan back and stumbling away, then barking a curse when he landed too hard on his bad foot.

"I wasn't–" Rayan said breathlessly from somewhere ahead. The room was completely dark. Nicholas couldn't hear his own thoughts over his heart pummeling his lungs, beating out every gasping breath he took. "I was just– your ankle."

Nicholas' back hit the wall. Whatever space they were in, it was small and smelled like earth. So he was trapped in a tight space, probably underground, with a magical villainous king. A magical villainous king he had just shoved.

"Oh god." His body shook with another round of hacking. He rode it out helplessly, clutching his chest. Between the last lingering coughs, he managed, "I am so sorry...I don't...know why–"

"Don't apologize."

Nicholas took hiccuping breaths, forcefully slow, until he managed a full cycle in and out. A flame appeared in Rayan's palm, casting warm orange light. Even up close, he was almost unrecognizable, with color flushing his cheeks and hair falling messily around his face. The longest strands in the back just reached his shoulders. He wore nightclothes even though it had to be mid-day.

It was strange– seeing him like this, picturing him sleeping in until late afternoon. It was a little too human.

At least the gloves were still there, stark against his all-white.

The room they were in wasn't much of a room at all. It was at best a four by four space with nothing in it. The tiles on the floor were the very same as the infirmary, and the stone walls were caked with dirt. The ceiling was too high to make out in the firelight.

"Ask," said Rayan. Nicholas' eyes snapped from the ceiling to his face, but Rayan wasn't messing with him. He couldn't pinpoint exactly how he knew. Now that he'd caught his breath, the king had returned to his careful neutrality, expressionless and inflectionless. It was a far cry from the look on his face when he'd burst into the infirmary. Nicholas could almost believe he'd imagined the wild panic that had blackened Rayan's eyes and the feverish voice that had stuttered curses at his side.

"Where are we?" he asked. He sounded terrible.

Rayan shrugged. "The foundations, if I had to guess. Maybe inside some absurdly thick basement wall. Just...down. You're alright?"

Rayan asked in monotone, but the fact that he asked at all...maybe Nicholas had hit his head during the drop. He was dizzy. And his head hurt from coughing so much, and his wrist felt terrible now that the adrenaline had faded, but he said, "Fine."

"You're bleeding."

"Right. Guess I've been better."

"Why did you do that to your wrist?"

"I was trying to get out."

"You shouldn't have done that."

Nicholas frowned. "I didn't want to just die."

"You would have died anyway. It was unnecessary added pain. Surely you knew it was futile."

"All I knew," Nicholas said evenly, "was that I was going to burn alive because I was handcuffed to a bed." He made a real effort not to snap, but that last part came out caustic.

It met its mark. Rayan didn't counter.

"But...you're right," said Nicholas. "I would have died. So. Thanks."

"Sit. We'll probably be here for a while."

Nicholas slid clumsily down the wall on one foot. Rayan remained as he was, so Nicholas had to crane his neck to see his face. It could have been some sort of power play Nicholas had fallen for, but Rayan wasn't looking down at him at all. He stared at the wall, quiet.

"What's going on?" said Nicholas.

"Attack," Rayan muttered. Nicholas couldn't tell if he was lost in thought or intentionally being difficult. His personal biases leaned toward the latter.

"...Do fire-breathing birds attack your castle often?"

"No. Never."

Rayan's hands clasped at his front. The flame floated before him, lighting his face from below. He fiddled with his rings one after the other – tomite, encaline, vigalis, forcate, and inercium, pinkie to thumb on his left hand. He twisted them around, slid them past his second knuckle and pushed them back down, scraped his thumb against the stones. 

There was nothing else to watch, so Nicholas watched him fidget. Rayan had a pianist's hands. For all Nicholas knew, he was a pianist. Maybe that was another decision the journal had made without him. And while it was at it, hopefully the journal had come up with some explanation as to why Rayan wore gloves under his rings. It never occurred to Nicholas how odd that was until he stared at it for minutes. 

The king was antsy, and doing a surprisingly bad job at hiding it. He was fully taking off his rings now, removing all four before shoving them back on and repeating.

"What is it."

Nicholas raised his head and found Rayan looking at him. "What?"

"Your question. What is it."

"How do you do that?" It hadn't been the question on his mind, but it was now. Rayan's weird little game wouldn't be so bothersome if he wasn't so good at it. "It's like you're reading my mind."

"I can't read minds."

"I know, I know."

"If I could, I wouldn't ask."

"I know, but I don't understand how you...I'm not very expressive. I'm not."

He had been told as much enough times to believe it. Five months into his move from Washington to Montanna, his fourth grade teacher had leaned across her desk to tell his Uncle Sam in that soft, cloying voice adults used because they thought children wouldn't understand the words if they were spoken sweetly enough: There is an apathy to him like I've never seen. He's traumatized, isn't he. Yeah, mm, yeah, thought so. Do you know how hard it is to find an apathetic nine-year-old?

The kids in his middle school homeroom had called him a robot – all three years, a different class each year. His boyfriend had called him a colorless, emotionally-stunted caricature of a human, roughly thirteen months after their first kiss and precisely nine minutes before their end.

"You're not expressionless, either," said Rayan. "You are...how should I say. Deeply fucking repressed."

Nicholas considered Rayan, in all of his calculated detachment, and thought, you, too.

"Did someone tell you otherwise? They weren't looking close enough."

"And why are you looking so close?" said Nicholas. He added, "Sir."

"I'm trying to figure out whether you want me dead."

Right. Naturally. Because Nicholas was allegedly an Interran spy.

"And I don't often find a worthwhile challenge."

Right, naturally. Because Rayan was most definitely an entitled prick.

Nicholas pointedly lowered his gaze to where Rayan was still messing with his rings and said, "Restless."

The king's brows furrowed for a short second, so slightly Nicholas wouldn't have seen it if the fire didn't cast such drastic shadows over his face– "Confused" –before rising. "Surprised. Maybe a little impressed."

Rayan looked at him for so long, Nicholas had time to not only think about his own actions but make a mental list of their possible consequences. Unsurprisingly, choosing to mock the magical villainous king he was stuck underground with yielded a very grave list of outcomes.

Nowhere on that list did Rayan crack a startled smile and say, "Well played, Nico." It was gone as quickly as it came.

He sat down with his back to the wall opposite Nicholas. His legs took up a ridiculous amount of space. "Was that your only question?" he asked. It wasn't, and it bothered Nicholas to no end that he could tell.

"You could fight that thing," Nicholas said. "Probably better than anyone up there. So why...?"

Yasmin couldn't control fire. Cairo had vigalis, but it wasn't his strongest, and he was the worst fighter of the three of them. That wasn't to say he was weak – just that Rayan was very strong, and Yasmin was the only person skilled enough to protect him. Out of all the talented nobles and castle guards, Nicholas was fairly confident Rayan was the best suited to take on a fire-breathing bird.

Rayan tipped his head back, looking up as though he might see through the ceiling to the fight above. He cracked each one of his knuckles. Nicholas hated that sound. But it was telling; the king was agitated. With Nicholas' question, or maybe with the situation – with the fact that he was so far removed from the fight, the only thing he could hear was the echo of his own knuckles popping.

"Yasmin takes her position very seriously," he said. "That is why I hired her."

He could easily leave the room if he wanted to. And he clearly wanted to. Was it respect for Yasmin, then, that kept him here? Nicholas hadn't thought Rayan respected anyone. He wasn't...supposed to.

What was it Cici had said? You don't know your characters very well.

"You think so loudly," said the king. "It's irritating."

Nicholas didn't know what he was supposed to do about that. Was he meant to stop thinking just because His Majesty was uncomfortable? "Sorry."

He had long since accepted his place in the margins, and he didn't mind – he didn't – because when all was said and done, he could escape into himself. His head had always been the one place he could talk freely. Rayan's attention felt like an invasion of his sacred space. Here, especially, it made Nicholas claustrophobic.

"No need to get so angry," Rayan said dismissively. "You'd be less frustrating if you said what was on your mind, is all."

"I'm," Nicholas began, but he came to a sluggish, bemused stop. He didn't have a response for this, for being asked to talk more. It wasn't something people wanted from him often. "Not that kind of guy," he finished lamely.

"I don't believe you," said Rayan. "It amazes me that you've gotten away with that guise for so long."

Before Nicholas could even try to process that (and maybe it was for the best, because what the hell was he supposed to take from that?), the ceiling opened up with a deep scrape. Two figures crouched over the edge to look down at them.

"All clear!" shouted Cairo. Aside from a smudge of ash across his cheek, he looked normal. Yasmin, on the other hand, had soot streaked across her face. It really added to the effect when she glared at him. "Sorry, I got excited. Go ahead."

She sighed. The tips of her hair were singed. "The issue has been neutralized," she said wearily. "Now get your ass up here so we can figure out who sent it."

Cairo elbowed her. She only then seemed to notice Nicholas, like he hadn't been there all along. "Your Majesty," she tacked on.