'Words are needles in skin and flesh.'


Bare feet running, broken seams, missing teeth, brown skin happy- A memory of a childhood.

A broken bone and a hole in a stomach, a bed for a dying man, birds in the sky- A memory of war.

Cracking, bleeding, a face in mud and his pistol aiming, singing, contact of metal breaking a head-

The images pull him awake.

Flames gleam in front of his face. Shining colours but they lack the heat.

Blinking again, he sees they are kept in metal.

A crown on a head on a face on a body-
In shrill crimson and black, a too familiar face has returned. He leans over the bed and the tightly held body in it.

"A bad dream?"

"Less of a dream," he mutters against better judgement. "More of a memory."

The hand touches his again, a phantom pain, faint memory of these very same hands. But with less curled together anger, and not so tainted that he can see it almost like dirt under Mavens nails.

He cannot move his arm. All his numb, impaled, bound hand can do is pull the fingers back and shake. The eruption of the skin shakes Maven's touch.

"I can't stay long today, and you will be sedated in a few hours, just to make sure."

The word "sedated" coils a cord in Thomas throat together. Invasive and disregarding as his hand is, his eyes see the swallow.

"I am not taking any chances. You are all I have left."

The irony in the words is so thick it may as well be spray painted on a white wall behind the bed that Thomas is strapped to. He refrains from giving into a howling laughter.
"Where are you going?"

"I have to rule a country, if you have already forgotten."

Dirt streaked faces, bloody trenches, revolts, shots - bang-

"I said what I wanted yesterday," Thomas answers. "That is all. No more words, King of Norta."

It is so quiet in the room it could be a tomb. Rooms with medical equipment are deathbeds in many of Thomas' buried memories.

The stinging, pungent smell, the pumping blood and beeping of monotonous frequencies-

"I am not going to waste my time asking why you took the new name you were offered." Maven's voice breaks the surface of the thoughts. "My mother can- she could be persuading and her words probably were well chosen and reasonable. I read the record about your injuries. About your station. They said you were quiet but unproblematic. Followed orders."

"I kept the scars because that was all I had left. " Thomas mutters. "Your gift for me. I told you."

Apparently, that's not the question.
The air vent above their head starts to rattle and clatter.

"New Blood rebel Thomas." The way he says that sounds like an insult. Thomas stares at the hands clawing , then folding together. " The irony."

Now he laughs. He laughs so miserable and hoarse he almost chokes on the last remains of spittle. The bed and cannulas with the tubes shake, bags dangling. Maven doesn't laugh along with him.

"I hope you know I am a loner and nothing of value is there to extract from me. They don't risk anything. And they have the more valuable captive back."

Apparently that isn't the question either.

"We'll get to that," he promises instead. "How was it? Deserting after that. You must've been alone for so long."

He takes his time with the answer. "I didn't feel much. I kept it all away. I joined underground cells. I was a good fighter. I could kill. That was all that mattered. Then the world slowly changed around me. It is still hopeless for me. But maybe others can make something from it."

"You mean when you have killed me."

"An eye for an eye," Thomas answers as calm as he can. For a literal sense, for a missing limb on many moving bodies, for a pain of something discombobulated inside, for a fire on a match and a paperclip in a puddle, for blood on a shirt and brain fractures in muddy puddles. For fog and sea serpents and pain. "Death is supposed to be a calm nothing. Do you want to find out with me?"

"You," Maven answers, pale grey creeping up his visible skin like the harbinger of dread. "are going to nowhere. I will take my leave now. Until next time. Sweet memories, Thomas."


Crammed in the perpetual dizzy state of having liquid pumped into his veins, the colors are faded and broken. The world is nothing. Without a sense of what is real, and the longer he is trapped inside, the worse it gets. He is incapable of long strung thoughts that stay calm. They hurl themselves over cliffs into angry waters and ripped toothy maws of memories instead. The Pulls return stronger than ever in his moments of awakening. Someone has to clean him up, but he doesn't even notice. The smell around him changes, the world is tasting a little different.

The constriction of his ribs and chest ache with every breath. Maven returns on time. Or whatever is left of it in this formless reality. No crown again today. No cape or strings or shining. A thin young man in a dark shirt and hair reaching to his neck.

Maven stares down at his disfigured face, one burned corner of a mouth twitch.

"Hello again," Is the only thing he says.

"I kept a picture of you for a while." His voice is merely a formless lull. "When you took the crown. I kept it for weeks. I stared at it when I was alone. Is this really what you had to be?"

The answer is as flippant as it digs under skin at the same time. "Maybe not if you hadn't been gone."

Thomas shakes violently. Then he makes a sound that sounds like a vomited sob. "What makes a good man, Maven? Love? No."

He is too dazed to curl away from the hand on his hair. The fingers brush away a strand from his scars.

"This time, I promise, I promise-" Maven whispers.

Whatever he promises gets lost in a void when the world turns black again, sprinkled on panic.


The next time Thomas wakes up he starts rocking forward as soon as he can feel his body. The muscles move the chest presses against the vicious imprisonment. Slip after slip, wearing them out in the endless neon.

The material squeaks and buckles under every move he makes. The straps don't snap but they move. They keep moving. If anything about having a body that never gives up is supposed to save him, this needs to be the moment as everything rubs over his skin chafing. He still wiggles and fights when his visitor returns.

Maven lets him. "Let's talk about your time with the Guard some more. Where did you make contact after the failed assassination?"

"Do you not get tired of holding people that despise you captive?" Thomas retorts, his tongue feels like a barbed wire against the reeking hole of his mouth. He can smell himself, the slight sheen of sweat that has already formed again, and his breath, a barely clean sting of mint mixed with foulness. "You should have people for this kind of work."

Maven doesn't answer that. He watches his own feet precariously closely. The light above his head flickers in white and draws a sheen over him, making him a vision that resembles a masterful painting by a madman.

Crafted out white as blank bone skin and black sleek lines that grow shadows over his nose, the long line of a cheekbone, down to his thin straight shoulders and arms, hands pressed together.

He is unmoving in a strange, cruel elegance.

"I cannot imagine Miss Barrow was happy being in your presence either," he continues. "Not after all you did."

"I am asking you a question. Not the other way around, Tommy. Stop trying to provoke me."

"Did you ask her questions too? Did she answer them? Did you burn her too? Like you did with me?"

"You were an accident." The words are tossed out into the room. The meaning is incompletely and incoherent in layers.

"I know I was an accident." He tries to smile. And just as the laugh the ghost has not smiled for so long, the gesture is clumsy and eerily wrong, just a strange fleshy imitation without one ounce of real emotion. "Did you burn her on purpose? For what? For fun? To make a point?"

"I told you to stop asking questions."

"That sounds like a yes. How did that feel, Mave? Good?" he whispers. "I have left people behind to die. I saw them die, I killed them. People in pain, they have a language in their shivers, and they beg you to stop, some stronger, some weaker. It is in their eyes. How many people did you make beg the last months, do you think we can compare numbers?"

"Stop." A hiss. Barely more. The room feels hotter, smouldering as a burning sun around their radius of the chair. The feeling of the flames almost lets Thomas go loose of the switch that maintains whatever is left of his control. Instead he fights against the straps again. Something on the bedside aches heavy.

His instincts and body yell at him to stop. His mouth runs like a open tap in a broken sink.

"Careful, silver king, or you will make me an accident again."

With one leap Maven moves. He doesn't move toward the bed this time. He moves away.

Just then, for a blink, another aching millimetre, and with force , Thomas pulls his arm upward. The needles in his skin crunch and dig deep. The pain flares through his body. He pulls his arm upward, a cannula rips out. The rest is a quick leap in a vision filled with red blood stains.

If Maven was fast enough, he would open his mouth to get out any sign of an alarm. Or lift his hand and burn him again.
He isn't and he doesn't.