The severance field dropped.
The city noise hit him all at once. Carts. Voices. Birds. Everything that had been cut away coming back simultaneously like someone had thrown a switch.
Arthur's legs gave out.
The stones came up and he let them.
Each breath was a negotiation. In, and his chest said no. Out, and it said worse. He lay on his back and stared at the strip of sky above the alley and listened to himself breathe badly.
The blood pooling under his shoulder was warm.
Then cold.
Then just there.
'HEY.' Vexis's voice hit him from somewhere close. 'YOU DID IT. DON'T SLEEP. WHATEVER HAPPENS DON'T SLEEP—'
So loud.
Green light bloomed at the edge of his vision. Warm and immediate, pressing against the cold spreading through his chest, trying to hold something in place that was very interested in leaving.
Roz's hooves on his collarbone.
The green light doing what it could.
Am I dying again.
He looked at the sky.
I prepared. I planned. I built a whole network and learned a magic that didn't exist and I still ended up bleeding on stones.
Screw all of this.
"Rest well, brat." Roz's voice had gone quiet. "You did good."
The sky went dark at the edges.
Then just dark.
Birds.
Branches moving. The specific sound of wind through leaves that meant outside, that meant morning, that meant somewhere that wasn't an alley with stones under his back.
Am I dead.
A creak from the right. Then footsteps.
His body was so heavy he couldn't place why.
He opened his eyes. Ceiling. White stone. His room.
"Ahh." His voice came out wrong. Rough and low and not fully his. "What—"
A crash from the right. Metal on stone, sharp and immediate.
He turned his head slowly.
Welya stood in the doorway. Both hands over her mouth. A tray on the floor at her feet, the cup still rolling.
Her eyes were wet.
"You're awake."
Her voice broke on the second word.
"Oh." Arthur blinked. "Hi."
She crossed the room in three steps and her arms went around him and the hug was not gentle.
"Five days." Her voice was muffled against his shoulder. Raw in the specific way of someone who had been holding something for a while and had just been given permission to put it down. "You didn't wake up for five days. The healers said— we thought you were—"
"Welya." He exhaled. "You're actually hurting me."
She let go immediately. Stepped back. Wiped her face with the back of her hand and straightened up like she was annoyed at herself for the crying,
"Sorry."
Arthur sat up slowly. His head weighed twice what it should. Every part of him had a specific complaint and they were all filing them simultaneously.
"Five days," he said.
"Full aetheric depletion." She folded her hands in front of her. Back to composed, mostly. "None of the healers had the density to transfuse. They said the losses were too extensive. A standard transfusion would've sent you into shock."
Arthur looked at his left hand. Wrapped. Clean. Someone had taken care of it while he was gone.
"Then how am I alive."
Welya was quiet for a second.
"Father did it."
Arthur looked up.
"He cancelled everything for a day. Stayed in this room." Her voice was even. Just facts. "Transfused his own aetheric blood directly. Stayed until your levels stabilized."
Arthur sat with that.
The marble floor. The blood dripping from his nose. The pressure that had come from everywhere and hadn't stopped until he couldn't hold himself up.
The same man had sat in this room for a day.
He looked at the ceiling.
He didn't have anywhere to put that yet so he left it where it was.
"Anyways, I'm going to bring the news to everyone." Welya moved toward the door. Then stopped and looked back at him. "Don't do something stupid again."
She left.
Vexis appeared by the window.
His face was doing something it didn't usually do. Somewhere between pleased and frustrated, caught between two things that didn't fully fit together.
Arthur looked at him.
Your body's still alive.
'I know.'
A beat.
Thanks. For your eyes in that fight.
'It's my body too.' Vexis looked away. 'Don't read into it.'
Arthur almost smiled.
Yeah. Okay.
"Roz."
No answer.
He looked around the room. At the armrest. The windowsill. The door frame.
"Master Roz."
"Here."
Above him. Roz was on the top edge of the headboard, sitting with his front paws crossed, looking down.
Arthur looked up at him.
"You didn't help me." His voice came out flat. Not accusatory. Just the fact of it. "You said you'd intervene. I was getting beaten into the stones and you stood there."
"I know."
"Then why."
Roz was quiet for a moment.
"I didn't think you'd need it."
Arthur stared at him.
"I was bleeding—"
"I know what I saw." Roz's voice was even. Final in the specific. "I know what you built and what you have. From the beginning of that fight I knew."
A beat.
"That you would win."
Arthur said nothing.
Roz hopped off the headboard.
He landed on Arthur's lap. Both front hooves came up. He held them there, small and pink and steady, and looked at Arthur with those red eyes that had been alive for six centuries.
"I see you," Roz said. "I know what you are."
His mouth pulled into something that on a smaller creature would have looked cute and on Roz just looked ancient.
"You'll be my student. And I'll be my master." A pause. "Officially. No more of this informal arrangement."
Arthur looked at him.
At the bow tie. At the red eyes. At the 599‑year‑old retired bellus sitting in his lap in a room he'd almost not woken up in, telling him he'd known he would win.
Arthur exhaled through his nose.
"Yeah," he said. "Okay, Master."
Roz held his gaze for one more second.
Then he turned around, settled into Arthur's lap, and closed his eyes like the conversation was finished and the matter was decided and there was nothing left to do but rest.