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“Look, sire, I just started.”

“Then find someone who didn’t,” Kato growled, stepping in closer. “I don’t have time to stand here while you fumble through your orientation. Go—”

“He’s in West Two,” said a voice behind him.

Kato turned just in time to see Aiden round a corner between two tents, pulling on healer’s whites over his suit. The mender sagged in relief and took the opportunity to bolt.

“Why the west?” Kato snapped. “Everyone keeps pointing me east—”

“Because the east is overflow, and we’re past overflow. People have been flooding in since Ivain’s announcement—some sick, most just scared. And that’s not even the worst of it.”

Kato’s throat tightened. “What happened?”

Aiden shook his head once, brisk. “I’m not sure yet. All I know is we’ve got two Fey dead from the Curse, and this new variant moves quickly. Taly said she watched it take down a woman within minutes of symptom onset.”

For a second, the noise around them dropped out.

Two Fey dead. Collapsed in minutes. A Curse that moved faster than anyone could track.

And Skye—

Kato didn’t ask anything else. He turned and ran.

He reached the edge of the western block at a near-sprint, dodging past another stretcher team. A cart lay toppled. He vaulted it—and the huddle of menders crouched around it, scooping supplies from the dirt—without slowing.

Tent Two was marked by a number above the entrance flap and a placard that read: Do Not Disturb.

Kato stopped just short of the entrance. His hand hovered near the canvas. He hesitated, only for a moment, then gathered his courage and ducked inside.

The smell was the first thing to hit him.

Antiseptic. Herbs. Blood and vomit.

One bed was empty, the sheets thrown back. And in the other…

Skye was too still. Blankets pulled up to his chest, skin washed out in the dim light. Black lines spiderwebbed across his shoulder, curling toward his throat—delicate, almost pretty, if you didn’t know what they meant.

And what they meant…

Kato’s hands clenched, fingernails pressing into his palms. He stared at Skye’s throat. At the black veins curling like ivy—or a noose.

This wasn’t happening.

Shards, this… this wasn’t fucking real.

For one awful second, he couldn’t see him breathing. He edged closer to the bed, watching Skye’s chest rise—late, too late. The breath came out too sharp, and Kato’s released with it.

Someone had left a chair beside the bed. Not sure what else to do with himself, Kato eased into it. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t imagined this before. Not the part where he sat at his brother’s bedside, trying to remember how to breathe while counting the seconds between heartbeats. But the death? Sure. Or at least the aftermath. The part where his family came crawling back with carefully worded condolences and a freshly polished title.

Skye gone. Kato reinstated. The family finally admitting they were wrong, too late to matter. That was the fantasy, wasn’t it? It had always been easier to imagine vengeance than grief.

But no one had mentioned the part where his hands would shake. Or that looking at Skye like this would feel less like winning and more like punishment. That he would sit here flicking through every memory they had together and find that there were far too few.

He remembered the first time he saw him, his new baby brother: five days old, wrapped tight in a storm-gray blanket, dark hair plastered to a perfect, furious forehead. There had been no instinct toward brotherhood. Just contempt.

Kato exhaled hard, rubbing at the pressure behind his eyes that refused to go anywhere. It was his fault. The fights, the distance, the lack of any real connection. That had all been him. And now… now here he was, sitting beside a brother he barely knew, wondering if the last chance to fix any of it had already passed.

“I really fucked this up, didn’t I?”