Luga’s blackened fingertips, the paint over his face like a bold daubed distraction from his withered hands. Mordrai saying, The old medic. Quite a piece of work. “Alright,” Orfeus said slowly. The room was spinning, and she closed her eyes. She had to force herself to open them again. Everything felt dizzy and grey. “Significance. What do you want?”

She was bound, blood-drained, helpless. Significance straightened and cleared xyr throat, clasping xyr hands together formally. “I think you could help,” Significance said. Orfeus stared at xem. O’Hallow’s lips tugged up in a shy, uncertain smile. “You’re nothing special, but you could help me.” Xe leaned forward and gripped her armrests, xyr eyes electric blue. “You want to be famous, don’t you? They will tell tales of this for another thousand years. We will never be forgotten.”

Orfeus said unsteadily, “I would rather die nameless and unmourned and have no one ever speak my name again than ever be associated for a moment with you.”

O’Hallow leaned back with a sniff. Probably centuries old, and xe most often acted like a teenager. “Oh, fine.” Xe paced a step, turned sharply in an elegant whirl of fabric, and squatted to peer at her. “A different question, then. Which would you sacrifice first?” Xe smiled. “Your clever tongue or those quick hands?”

She stared at xem blankly. Significance gave her a bracing, slightly sad smile, like this was something xe had no control over at all.

She felt slowed and dried and empty. Xe would need an answer. “Tongue,” Orfeus said. At the end of the day, what she most needed was music.

Significance beamed. “Oh, good,” xe said, straightening. “I can skip straight to the throat tube instead of bothering with intravenous nonsense.”

Xe was halfway to being kin to her. Certainly someone with a lot of similarities, though hopefully not as many as she’d first thought. She had nearly trusted xem at first. It wasn’t the worst betrayal. She didn’t have any true kin left to betray her.

Significance had nearly the same accent as Orfeus’s mother Maylis, with her Éirish roots. Orfeus looked more like Basma, but she took after Maylis, always coming home with dirt on her hands and grass-stained knees, getting into scrapes.

“It’s alright, chérie,” Basma had said over and over again. “Get into as many scrapes as you like, as long as you get safe back out of them. Settle down, now, don’t cry. I’ll tell you another story.”

A smooth, light, lilting voice, nearly familiar, amused. “Wake up, Orfeus.”

Orfeus focused. Significance, with xyr trailing curls. Orfeus wanted to close her eyes and block xem out for a moment, but she might just pass out, and she couldn’t afford to. Linden depended on her.