At first, he is no one, like everyone is no one when they first wake. There is a moment between sleep and waking where anything can happen and it feels like a person might be wiped clean, their entire life rewritten almost by accident. The boy blinks once, twice, and immediately he is N. E. Endsley, as his eyes settle on my person but not my face. His arms tense into action as he jerks himself up to sitting, legs outstretched. But when he sees it’s me, Nolan peeps out from behind the vulnerable author wrapped in the aggressive shell, and the writer who created worlds between his hands blurs into the boy who is scared of water.

“Hi,” I say softly.

“Hello, Amelia.”

My name on his lips yanks the thread between us, and rather than resist, I lower myself to the ground beside him.

“How is…” He trails off, waving his hand at my ankle.

“It’s not too bad,” I say. “I’ll have to cancel the rock climbing plans I have for this weekend, but that’s fine. Those can be rescheduled.”

“Did you have rock climbing plans?”

“No.” I laugh. He doesn’t smile, but his lips twitch like he considered it.

“Well…” He rakes a hand through his hair and, realizing it’s still wet, runs his hand over the rug to dry it.

“Is Wally here?” I ask, throwing him a line. “He seemed no worse for wear earlier.”

“He’s at home with Alex, the cretin. He’s fine.”

“Good,” I say. “That he’s okay, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

We both look anywhere but at each other, a clock downstairs ticking away our silence.

If I was framing us in a camera lens, I would cut one of us out completely to spare the viewer secondhand embarrassment.

“Was there something else?” I finally ask. “Why are you sleeping here?”

We both watch his palm trail over the rug.

“In Orman,” he says without looking up, “the Old Laws dictate that when someone saves you, you owe them your life until the debt is repaid.”

I blink. “I know. I’ve read them.”

He waits half a beat. “So?”

“So?”

His hand stops moving, and we look at each other, searching.

“How would you have me pay my debt?”

My first thought is of Jenna—of asking what was said in their short encounter, the 101st edition, how she comforted him, all of it.

But asking him would be a betrayal, a queen decapitating her knight as he bows to do her bidding. To ask Nolan Endsley to articulate a traitorously human moment so soon after the lake would be taking advantage. And I want him to want to tell me.

Asking about Jenna could sever the new tie between us, which makes my heart ache to even consider.

I laugh off his offer, give him an out. “I didn’t save your life; I saved Wally’s.”