“Weak,” Discordia said to herself, rolling the word on her tongue. She played with the knife in her hand; she’d taken it out when she accepted his invitation to stay. She ought to cross his name off her list.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to move. One strategic strike of the knife, and she’d be all alone again, with no one but a father who used her as a weapon and another brother who loathed her as his competition. This one didn’t. This one just wanted another day in this fucking galaxy. Discordia wondered at Xander. Perhaps she, too, slept restlessly. Perhaps some memories of her time at the academy floated to the surface then, negligently spilling over without her permission. No one had ever been in a position to let Discordia know.

The thought unsettled her.

She felt for her firewolf talisman. How ridiculous to draw comfort from a carving. How childish.

With a disgusted noise, Discordia slid her knife into her belt and stood. “Xander,” Discordia called. “Wake up.”

Her brother woke more quietly than he slept. He blinked and stared at her, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real. “You’re still here.”

“I’m leaving.” She should have left hours earlier, when one of the other moons came over the horizon. She snatched the firewolf out of her clothes and held it out. “I only stayed to give you this.”

Xander stared at the carving but made no move to take it. “Why?”

Discordia hated his questions, his probing eyes. Most of all, she hated that he made her doubt everything. “Why what?” she practically snarled.

“You could have given it to me earlier,” he pointed out. “Or left it on your cot. You didn’t have to stay.”

She made some soft noise and looked away. How could she tell him that the unpleasant gnawing in her gut quieted when she saw him or when she felt the rough edges of his carving? That he had done her a kindness, and generosity was not a language she understood? It was as unfamiliar as the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

“You talk in your sleep,” she told him. She had not meant the words to sound so accusing, but they did anyway.

Xander’s lip lifted in a not-quite-smile. “Hear anything interesting?”

She did not answer his question. “We went through the same things, back at the academy. The grueling training, the long hours. I had my fingers broken for painting once. I had seen the gerulae mindlessly constructing a mural, and I marveled at the colors, the detailing. The Oracle had probably fed them the instructions and worked their hands. But I figured that if a husk could create something that beautiful, why couldn’t I? I never picked up a brush again.”