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Rigo are good, got a portion of squealer meat a few weeks back, Pop’s okay, so’s Mer, got a shuck rat for dinner, everything’s pretty fine, don’t worry one lick about anything.
He’d feel like a real monster telling her all the things that are really going on. All the things he’s feeling.
Hey, Mom, I know you’re trapped inside that thing you call a body, and while I got you here, maybe I could burden you with
my
problems? How’s that sound?
    Today, though, he’s got to hurry off. Got to get Mer to milk the goat and then head to market.
    He kisses his mother on her brow, just where the tumors recede—he’s not grossed out by them anymore, but he hopes she still has some sensation left beyond the cancerous margins.
    Cael leaves the room. But then he hears a creak and a squeak—not from the hallway but coming from inside
his
room. Is Mer in there again?
Damnit, Mer.
    He turns heel-to-toe and marches straight into his room. He’s about to start yelling at her to keep the King Hell out of his room—
    A shadow runs fast toward him. A great darkness falls upon him; and before he knows what’s happening, he can’t see anything, and his hands are tangled. He can’t see; he can’t move.
    Cael
, whispers a female voice.
The Maize Witch has come for your soul.
    And then the darkness is gone again in a rippling flutter of fabric. Gwennie stands before him holding a blanket—his blanket, from his bed, which she clearly has just thrown over his head.
    “Damnit!” he says, and feels the heat in his cheeks.
I’m such a damn donkey.
    Gwennie cracks up. When she finds something really funny, she snorts and doubles over, doing this little stompy shuffle with her feet. “I had you going there, didn’t I? I mean, Maize Witch? Seriously?”
    He folds his arms over his chest. Embarrassment bubbles up inside him. A wind blows into the room, and the edges of the blanket in her hand shift and squirm. The window sits open: Gwennie’s entrance point.
    It’s then that he notices her hair. She has pale cheeks, a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, hair like strawberry water. But her hair is done up—nothing pretentious or showy, not in an Empyrean way or anything, but braided and then wound in a circle, as though it were a wreath of laurels. Like the Lady wore when she was Obligated to the Lord in all the old stories.
    “Stupid, isn’t it?” She picks at her hair like she’s looking for bugs in it.
    He swats at her hand. “Quit. You’re gonna mess it all up.”
    “Oh? You like it?”
    “I might.” Another blush rises to his cheeks.
    “Captain, are you coming on to me?”
    “I…”
    “Do the others know?” she always asks.
    “They do not.”
    “Good.” She laughs then—this time no snort but a happy giggle that calls to mind porch chimes ringing in a slow breeze—and attacks him. Her mouth finds his and his hands find the small of her back, and they backpedal into the room doing the dance they’ve been doing for months now: a clumsy but earnest tango to which nobody else is privy. They tumble onto the bed, hands and fingers seeking.
    “You messed your hair up,” he says. His head is lying on her breast like it’s a pillow.
    “I didn’t like it anyway.”
    “But that’s the way you’re supposed to wear it. For tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow.” The way she says it is laced with poison. “Hell with tomorrow.”
    “Maybe it’ll all work out.”
    “Maybe it won’t.”
    “Lane says we got about a ten percent chance.”
    Gwennie rubs her eyes. “That means there’s a ninety percent chance it could go the other way.”
    “I didn’t think about that.” He didn’t
want
to think about that. “What happens then? If that happens, I mean. Not that it’s going to!”
    “You know what happens. It is what it is. We’re already taking a risk doing what we’re doing. If my parents caught us… if the
Empyrean
caught us? We’d be run out of town on rails.”
    “Nobody knows.”
    “And