Page 15

L ogically, Ambrose knew fear of discovery should be his priority. Morcant might realize someone had invisibly observed his guild, and there was no telling what he’d do to an intruder.

Yet the notion of having to spend his second life looking, sounding, and bleeding like a woman felt infinitely worse. Worse than the cold water of the bog, worse than the strangling hold of the arcane collar, his body molting into one he did not recognize made him want to run.

He couldn’t run, not far. His leash prevented it. He could go no farther from Emery than two furlongs before pain would wrench him back.

Morcant’s voice arrested Emery’s progress to the stairs. “What is this?”

Ambrose’s fear and shame compounded. He felt like a naive youth, waking to find his bedroll wet with blood, stuffing his smallclothes with rags and trying to hide it from the castle’s servants by burning his bedding.

The witch king had been furious he’d hidden the truth of his sex from him.

He’d punished him, not for being as he was, but for lying about it.

He’d also cast the spell which stopped the hideous effects of puberty from continuing to wreck him. He’d provided the magic which gave Ambrose’s body its current shape.

Emery stared at the stain for a long moment, eyes squinting in confusion. “Looks like blood, sir.”

“I know it’s blood,” said Morcant. “I’m asking how it got there.”

“How should I know?”

“Because it wasn’t there when Hellebore and I entered the tomb with the initiates,” Morcant said in a tone of infantilizing condescension. “And it’s there now.”

“Maybe one of your tomatoes got squashed.” In the forced nonchalance of Emery’s voice, Ambrose thought he heard a tremor of something else entirely.

Candlelight rendered the gaunt lines of Morcant’s face and deep-set eyes into a skull. For the first time, Ambrose glimpsed the version of him Emery loathed.

“Show me your arms,” Morcant said.

Emery didn’t move.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“It’s not mine.”

“Then you won’t mind proving it.” From his tithe belt, Morcant produced two things: a cat’s whisker and a switchblade. “Given the pranks you’ve pulled on Hellebore with blood tithes, it’s fair of me to ask, little rat.”

Emery’s expression flared with undisguised fury. It was only brief, extinguished when Hellebore snapped, “Just get it over with.”

It was more emotion than Ambrose had yet seen on him, and he wasn’t sure which of the things Morcant had said specifically triggered that depth of response.

Movements stiff, Emery rolled up both sleeves. The skin beneath was an olive tan unspoiled by wounds or scars.

Morcant took Emery roughly by the arm and drew the blade across his wrist.

Ambrose nearly burst out from hiding. He narrowly suppressed the urge to smash Morcant’s skull against the sarcophagus. It consumed him suddenly, without warning, and Ambrose struggled to justify it.

The cut was shallow, and Emery did no more than clench his jaw.

Ambrose stayed his hand, but his blood still pounded. He had to remind himself that this was not the master he’d made an oath to protect all those years ago. Clearly, his old habits had been resurrected with him.

Morcant took the cat’s whisker and used it to wick the blood from the shallow wound. Holding this over the smear of Ambrose’s blood on the sarcophagus, he dropped it, and when the two came together, blue flame engulfed the whisker until it turned to ash.

Morcant made a muttered noise of malcontent or disbelief. “Good of you to tell the truth, for once,” he said. “You may go.”

Emery turned his back. The instant he did, Morcant gave Hellebore a nod. She took something from her pocket—it looked like a bundle of hair coarsely tied into an odd shape—and pierced it with a needle.

Emery flinched, grasping his stomach, then continued toward the exit.

Though they left at Emery’s usual laconic speed, it still felt like they were fleeing.

Transported back to Emery’s home, Ambrose couldn’t leave his apprehension behind. The danger of discovery had passed, so the fear of his own body took over.

It was a paralyzing fear. It pushed out all thought of the strange spell Hellebore cast as they left.

He couldn’t think of a plan. He couldn’t contemplate going to the bathroom to change, to shower, to stuff his underclothes with rags or whatever magic implement modern people used during their monthly cycles.

These were distant abstracts. In the moment, he only wondered if it would be feasible to remain invisible forever.

Emery looked around for him. Evidently, he expected Ambrose to drop invisibility the moment they were safe from Morcant.

Ambrose felt anything but safe.

The sound of their entry hadn’t gone unnoticed. Katzica bounded out of the open bedroom door, greeting Emery with play bows and a wagging tail. Her keen nose picked up on Ambrose, too. She greeted him in the same fashion, mortifying him with the intensity and direction of her sniffing.

“Katzica, come here,” Emery called. Obediently, she came to heel. “That was close,” he said to the otherwise empty room.

Ambrose remained silent, braced for retribution. The fault for their close call was his.

Emery said, “You can shower first. We’ll discuss the botched murder attempt later.”

He rummaged through a storage cupboard and took out a pile of towels, which he set on the back of the sofa, then went into the bathroom, where the sound of running water followed.

He emerged, saying, “If the temperature’s not to your liking, turn the nozzle toward the red for hot and blue for cold, all right? Call on me if you have trouble.”

Before Ambrose could digest this act of decency, Emery disappeared into his bedroom, calling Katzica after him.

Ambrose couldn’t hold off any longer. He took the towels with him into the wash room.

He kept to the security of invisibility as he took his clothes off, but the evidence became visible the moment he shed his pants.

He didn’t know what to do with them. Stomach turning, he put them in the sink to deal with later.

The sight of blood didn’t bother him. What it meant did. He was losing himself.

Drawing back the curtain around the bath, he tested the temperature of the water and jumped at the incandescent warmth of it. Steam billowed from within. He stepped gingerly over the edge of the basin and, after a moment’s trepidation, under the stream.

The concept of a hot “shower” did not properly register until he felt the water soaking his hair, sluicing over his shoulders and down his chest, painting his invisible form in rivers and tributaries from the network of scars where the water caught.

The winch of his tight muscles unwound a fraction at a time. The steam opened his lungs to deeper breaths. He closed his eyes.

He hadn’t realized until that moment how much he’d begun to enjoy this new world, with its delicious food and peculiar technology, but the water washed him in it anew.

He wanted the witch king to experience this. Sweet maple syrup and hot showers. A softer world. If theirs hadn’t been so harsh, maybe things wouldn’t have turned out so—

The thought made him suddenly aware of the acute silence in his mind. This would normally be the time for his words of wisdom and comfort, but as Ambrose waited, no voice came to reassure him that this was a minor obstacle on the path to their reunion.

Had something weakened their bond? If this harrowing moment had somehow separated them, he couldn’t bear it.

He could only handle one problem at a time, and it seemed he had countless. Mortifying as it was, he would have to ask Emery for help.

He stayed in the shower a long while, until the steam fogged the room and clouded over the mirror.

After ensuring he was clean as possible, he wrapped the towel around his waist, glad Emery’s preference for black extended to his linens.

Wiping away some condensation on the mirror, he took a deep breath and released his clenched hold on invisibility.

He looked the same. His face had not reverted to its softer shapes. His brows were still thick, his cheeks still rough with stubble.

He took a deep breath and opened the door.

At the same time, he heard the front door open and shut.

Emery came into sight of the hall, carrying transparent sacks.

He froze, looking at Ambrose. Ambrose was too tense and uncertain how to approach the impending conversation to interpret the way Emery’s eyes stuck to him.

The steam had followed him out of the bathroom, licking his ankles, and he wanted badly to disappear back inside and soak in the shower until the room became so humid he drowned in it.

Instead, he said, “I have a problem.”

Emery gave his head a shake. “I noticed.”

He plunked the sacks down on the coffee table and began pulling boxes from it. Little blue boxes, square crinkly packets, rattling bottles that looked medicinal, and a bar wrapped in gold leaf.

There were also a few vials of liquid, which Emery set to one side.

“I wasn’t sure the delivery boy would find us out here, but he managed.

Though I believe he might have thought it all very haunted, because he’d fled by the time I opened the door.

Regardless, I wasn’t sure of what you’d need, and then I wasn’t sure you’d be sure of what you’d need, so I bought a bit of everything. ”

“What is all this?”

Emery let out a pained sigh. “I really should find someone better equipped to explain it, but it’s not as though I have friends, and Hellebore—”

“No,” Ambrose said with panicked certainty. “Just … tell me what you understand.”

“I understand . I didn’t flunk high school biology or anything, but I’ve not exactly had experience.

Look, these—” He pulled open the crinkly packet, which held several padded square envelopes.

“Sanitary towels. I believe you stick them in your underwear. These ones have wings, which are apparently superior. These ones are tampons. I’m sure if we put our heads together we can figure out the instructions for inserting one. ”

Ambrose nearly fainted as Emery ripped one open, turning the purple tube over in his hands like it was a puzzling ancient artifact, before depressing a plunger on one side and shooting a finger of cotton on a string across the coffee table.

“Ah,” Emery said. “So you’d put it in first, then do that.”

“It goes inside,” Ambrose said numbly.

“I think you use the string to pull it out after.”

Ambrose’s face drained of blood.

“Too much? There were cups, too, but those looked beyond either of us, frankly. These here are just painkillers if you get cramps. Take two.” Emery rattled the pill bottle. “And chocolate, because I’ve heard that helps.”

Ambrose, rendered speechless, tried to absorb it all. Emery didn’t seem fazed by his body’s peculiarities. He was helping, which was a relief. More than a relief. The warming sensation of the hot shower spread through his chest. A balm of gratitude.

Emery didn’t have to offer things like pain medication or chocolate, yet he had.

Still, this was not precisely the help Ambrose meant to ask for. He didn’t want products to aid him through menstruation. He didn’t want to menstruate. Period.

At least this would prevent him from spoiling all his clothes. He didn’t really want to see Emery perform demonstrations with the “tampons,” again, so Ambrose muttered an awkward thank-you, gathered up the things, and took them into the bathroom with something fresh to wear.

He couldn’t contemplate using the tampon after seeing one ejected onto the coffee table, so he opted for the sanitary towel instead, which was at least self-explanatory, though it took him a while to realize he needed to peel the paper off the sticky underside.

After taking an age to wash his hands and swallowing down the two pills dry, he sat on the closed lid of the privy and hid.

He didn’t feel prepared to see Emery. Something about this act of kindness made him sore, like a bruise he’d acquired mysteriously without remembering the cause.

He also didn’t want to find out the hard way he’d used the sanitary towels improperly.

So he lingered, feeling yellow-bellied and ridiculous, until he broke off a piece of chocolate and took a bite.

It broke between his teeth and immediately began to melt against his tongue in a beautiful orchestra of sweet and bitter flavor. It had a similar taste to the mocha he’d had earlier. He had to resist taking a second bite immediately.

He was so enraptured, he almost didn’t notice the way his magic, normally a background growl of discontented hunger, was briefly, briefly quiet.