“Can you bring me back to whoever hired you in four minutes, then?” Orfeus said. “What a clever little wolf.”

Their eyes were narrow slits of rage. “You won’t go through with it.”

Orfeus met their eyes dead-solid. She murmured subvocally, “Heat,” and the tips of her fingers started to warm. She clicked the fingers of her other hand to disengage her heatproofing, as her normal setup protected her from heat generated by her own Blood.

It hurt. There was the smell of burning hair.

Another moment, two, and Orfeus clenched her jaw against the pain. “Stop,” the Wolf said. Abrupt as something breaking. “Stop.”

Orfeus didn’t stop. The burning wasn’t so bad yet. It just felt like when she’d singed her fingertips as a child, trying that old trick of passing them through a candle. “Stay away from me,” she said. The words came out steady, with no trace of a waver. “Leave. Go tell your client you failed, or that I died, or whatever you want. But you will leave me alone.” They’d mentioned honour. “I want your word on that.”

The Wolf gritted their teeth, as though it were them with the heat pressing at their skull, as though they were in the least amount of danger. Endangering them hadn’t been the right way out of this. This was the right way out of this, Orfeus told herself. Her eyes swam with tears and she held her head steady.

The Wolf snarled and wheeled away, vanishing into the shadows of the night. A moment later there was the quiet puttering croon of the hoverbike engine.

Orfeus jerked her hand away. The night smelt of burning hair, not water, not plants.

She waited for the space of ten seconds and then couldn’t wait any more. “Oh Rising Tide, oh Smog Sky, oh by all the Green, that hurts,” she said in a low croon. “Oh, that hurts.” She held her hand out away from her, as though she could distance it from her body. Her head ached and spun. Everything ached. “Ohh, that hurts.”

Faol had made no promises. They left, but made no promises. Orfeus would trust nothing less from the Wolf than a promise. She limped stiffly back to the dining house fearing any second that a weight would hit into her back and bear her down.