He holds a hand out to me, and what am I supposed to do, not take it? He reels me in close. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Stop.” I’m still crying.

“Agatha, I—”

“Simon, I beg you, please don’t choose now to start talking about your feelings.”

The door to the exam room opens. We both look up—Niamh is stepping out.

“Niamh!” Simon says. “Don’t go. Please.”

“I can give you a moment.” She frowns at us. (That might just be her face; she’s trying to be kind, I think.)

“No,” he says. “I don’t want to lose my nerve.”

“Fat chance of that,” Niamh says. “I’ve seen you in action.”

“Oh?” Simon looks like he’s trying to place her.

“I was at Watford, a few years ahead of you.” She glances at me, as if to say, You, too. “You saved my life once.”

“That’s everyone at Watford,” I say. “And in the whole World of Mages.”

“True enough,” she agrees. She smiles tightly at Simon.

“Please,” he says. “I’m all right.”

Niamh frowns at us more intently, then steps back into the room. She motions towards his wing. “Shall I?”

“Yeah. Just ignore my jumping around, I can’t help it.”

She picks up the iodine and starts again on the inside of his wing. He shudders, but doesn’t pull away. I hold his hand steady.

“Fascinating,” Niamh says—to herself, I think. “It’s like the inside of a lamb’s ear. Covered in fine hair.”

“You look like hell,” I whisper to Simon.

He smiles. “Thanks.”

“When was the last time you slept?”

“I don’t know. Utah?”

“Are you caught up in some new trouble?”

“No,” he says. “I mean, nothing new.”

“Simon…”

“Nearly done,” Niamh says. She must be rushing it. (Which won’t matter at all—she’s just cutting them off. I can’t believe she doesn’t have a spell for this.) She moves to the joint of Simon’s wing, the place where it juts out of his back.

He looks like he wants to crawl out of his skin.

“You’re sure this doesn’t hurt?” I ask.

“It’s more like someone is sticking their finger down my throat,” he says. “Or shoving something wet into my ear. Every instinct I have is screaming, No!”

“I wonder if you’ll have phantom pains when the wings are gone,” Niamh says.

Could she be less helpful?

“What did Simon save you from?” I ask her, hoping for a better topic.

“Paindeer,” she says.

He nods, still wincing. “Oh, right … On the Great Lawn?”

“No, but I was there for that one, too. This was on the lacrosse field. During a practice.”

I remember both those attacks. The Humdrum rarely repeated himself, but he fucking loved paindeer.