She accepted the drink from him, and as though he could read her mind, Kant followed it with the bottle of pain tablets. She tipped one into her palm and drank it down while Kant wordlessly shook out the layers of blankets on the table against the back wall. The drink was lukewarm, but she was parched, and she swallowed it all in two deep draws.

Kant fished a pillow from one of the higher cupboards and left it on the end of the makeshift bed. He then moved to the windows and began rolling the shutters down.

“I guess those are more than a stylistic choice,” Margot said.

“Mm. This is a place to stay if you find yourself outside during a bad night.” He shrugged slightly. “Not completely safe. No area really is. But people like the shutters. Makes them feel protected.”

“Hah.” Margot filled the mug from the sink and drank that too. As she surfaced, she couldn’t help a grimacing smile. “You’ve had a lot of practice at this.”

“My fair share.” He finished closing the second window.

The room wasn’t perfectly dark—the lines of light under the shutters lent the space a muted glow—but Margot preferred it that way. She didn’t want to have to spend any time in the dark at all if she could help it.

“Rest now,” Kant said as he crossed to the door. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

She waited until he was gone, then curled up in bed. It was hard to slow her mind. The headache was steadily fading, but enough of it remained to be distracting. Every few minutes, someone would pass by near enough to the building that the crunch of footsteps or the murmur of conversation would cause her eyes to snap open again.

But just like the night before, she could only fight her tiredness for so long. Around the time Margot was beginning to think that sleep wouldn’t ever visit her, she slipped under.

When she woke, it felt as though no time had passed. She could have thought her eyes had only been closed for a moment except the light had shifted. Instead of running across the floor, the lines of illumination threaded up the wall.

Kant was back on the bench he’d occupied that morning, arms folded and head rested against the wall behind him. His eyes were closed.

Margot moved carefully, drawing herself up to sitting. A plate of food and a fresh drink had been left beside the table. She reached for them, trying to be quiet so she wouldn’t wake Kant.

He still heard her. His eyes opened, then he shifted in his seat, sitting up properly with a soft groan. “Andrew made that for you.”