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She would never cross over.

Fog-laden air dewed upon Fairhrim’s throat, her forehead, her cheek, and netted her with a strange light. She stood between Osric and darkness immeasurable—not only the void of the night sky but the void of death.

Her eyes were wide and gentle. Osric fell into them as one falls into deep waters.

She said, “We can help each other.”

He said, “I know.”

They slipped a bit over the boundary between enmity and partnership then, into a new place of uncertainty.

She said, “We don’t have to like it.”

Osric made no answer. He already liked it. He hated that he liked it.

Her hand in his grew restive. He had held it too long. She pulled it from his grasp and was gone.

He hated that he had come to the waystone whole but left it having lost a piece of himself in two star-brilliant eyes.

None of it mattered. Osricconvinced himself of this the next day, when things were less moon touched. It didn’t matter that—what?—he had watched Fairhrim wander barefoot and seen a pretty ankle in the moonlight?

What cared he about pretty ankles?

Nothing had ever mattered less.

He must take care not to conflate her with what he needed from her. They were different things. He had a desperate need for her healing, nother.

What mattered, really, was that, with this embolus business, Fairhrim had him by the balls. (And why, pray, couldn’t it have been someone gentle? Why couldn’t it have been someone who’d fondle them while they were at it? Why did it have to be Fairhrim and her iron fist?)

As promised, Fairhrim sent her deofol a few days later, with instructions in preparation for the next full moon. After the usual friendly exchange—Osric threatened to turn the deofol into a toilet brush; the deofol advised him that his chin looked like a testicle—Osric received directions to a clinic in the village of Mortehoe, in Dumnonia.

The signs for the clinic informed him that he was suffering from torn nipples.

Fairhrim thought she was funny.

Osric knocked upon the clinic door, intent on advising Fairhrim that she would soon join the other morte hoes in Mortehoe if she wasn’t careful.

He knew that something was wrong when Fairhrim opened the clinic door with a polite “Welcome—do come in” instead of an insult.

On her face was a fixed, triangular smile.

Osric was about to enquire about the mouth trigonometry, butFairhrim pointed at her breast. Osric stared at her breast. He saw no cause for concern. Indeed, he had seen it almost bare before and thought it lovely. Fairhrim pointed at her breast more vigorously, until Osric understood that she was indicating something behind her and trying to be discreet about it.

He looked behind her, where a curtain cut the room in half. Two hairy legs protruded from behind the curtain.

Osric raised an eyebrow at Fairhrim. The eyebrow enquired whether he should proceed to kill this person.

Fairhrim did not immediately shake her head no, which was something of a surprise.

Still in that polite voice, she bid Osric to have a seat in the waiting area. With an expression of professionalism frozen on her face, she disappeared behind the curtain to take care of her patient.

“What do you think of my man udders?” came the patient’s voice.

Osric knew that voice. There was only one man in the world with that voice.

“Please stop flexing your pectorals” was Fairhrim’s reply. “You’ll make it worse.”

Osric leapt to his feet and swept the curtain aside.