Mendel seemed, at first glance, very much like Oberon: tall, white, with a haunting, expressionless face and wide dark green-gold eyes. His hair was a long silky hank of platinum streaked with mint, tied at his nape in a purple ribbon, but he’d acquiesced to a no-doubt DOR-mandated uniform of charcoal pants and a white cotton button-down shirt. Where the angles and planes of Oberon’s face made him look sinister and mocking, something about Mendel’s slanted brow ridges and curved cheekbones gave him an air of harmless innocence.

Both impressions were probably equally misleading.

Mendel was stroking Oberon’s bare shoulder, and the sight of it made the breath in Ángel’s lungs feel hot. He wanted to tell Mendel to take his hand off Oberon, and at the same time, demand why Mendel wasn’t doing more. Why wasn’t he in bed with Oberon? Why wasn’t he holding Oberon in his arms, why wasn’t he making Oberon better?

He dropped to his knees beside the bed. The emotions Oberon was emitting were scorching his skin, the inside of his nose, gathering bitterly at the back of his throat and making his eyes water. Even if Oberon hadn’t turned the color of skim milk, Ángel would know that he was dying.

“They told me he didn’t want to see me,” whispered Ángel, gently using a fingertip to push Oberon’s hair out of his still, distant face.

“They told us you didn’t want to see him,” said Mendel. “He was doing all right—I mean, he was very anxious, and very sad, but he was not like this, until they told us that you didn’t want him anymore.”

Oh, Oberon. “And—” Ángel looked up at Mendel. “And you can’t do anything? He said— He was so happy when he heard you were coming. He said, with you here, he would be safe. From, from this.”

“I tried. I am trying.” Mendel ran a hand over Oberon’s shoulder, and this time Ángel saw Oberon flinch and shiver. “But we never got a chance to know each other, you know. And he will not permit very much from me.”

The magic of Oberon’s grief was radiating out into the air. Were he surrounded by trusted friends, they would grieve together by touching, and their magic would meld, and change, and sing out for all to feel, and somehow this change would comfort them. But Oberon wasn’t permitting Mendel to share his grief. So Oberon was trapped in this excruciating song. A vicious cycle, he’d called it. A cycle that would just get worse and worse, until someone interrupted it.

Ángel stripped off his shirt, then stood up to toe off his shoes and socks, saying, “Well, I’m not going to give him any choice.” His voice was trembling a little with fear and bravado. “I am not putting up with this passive-aggressive dying-of-a-broken-heart horseshit.”