By the start of Danya’s third day at the camp he felt much less exhausted and his wounds were starting to truly heal. In a few more days there would likely be no sign left he had ever been hurt.

He had already read through his book once, and though he was itching to read it all again from the beginning he couldn’t bring himself to touch it until he had done something productive. Maybe Simon didn’t care, but the idea of being a useless layabout was abhorrent to Danya. Even if he couldn’t truly earn his keep, he would do what he was able to.

And what he was able to do was repair Simon’s armour. He took the pieces out of the chest and carefully laid them out in front of him, and then he got stuck into it.

There was a sort of calming rhythm to repairing things. It wasn’t difficult or particularly demanding. Danya could do this kind of work for hours without problem.

Fanner had hated it. He hadn’t been bad at it, but having to sustain his focus had been a constant struggle for him. Simon should have been gifted him instead. For all he lacked, Fanner at least had the beauty and charms to stand a chance of making something of this situation. Perhaps he even could have convinced Simon that he didn’t look so unlike a girl from behind.

Duran was already spoken for, but Danya bet he could have made the situation work for himself as well. He had more sense than sentimentality. He would have already given up on Simon and found his way into Hamish’s bed.

Danya ought to be doing the same, if he had any sense. He wasn’t nearly as beautiful as Duran, but Hamish didn’t seem terribly fussy. But… he couldn’t let go of Simon. He wanted more than sex, more than Hamish could offer him… but more than Simon could, either. He knew he would not win this one.

It was afternoon by the time Danya finally felt he had made enough progress on his task to justify going back to his book. He wasn’t quite as well balanced as he had been going into the task, but it had drained him very little.

The book Slone had given Danya had already become his new favourite, which perhaps wasn’t much of an achievement. They had not been permitted pre-war books at the House, nor much in the way of fiction. This was the first book Danya had ever read where the hero was a mage. It was… odd.

It was almost uncomfortable, in a way, because this was not how Danya had been taught things were before the war. And, certainly, it was fiction, but surely it didn’t entirely lack grounding in reality. Had mages really not always been slaves? Had they once been equal to humans — or at least expected to be treated that way, despite tensions between their kinds? That was how the book made it seem. Perhaps Slone would know. Danya would ask him the next time they spoke.

There had been something that had piqued Danya’s curiosity on his first read through, but he’d been too tired to really think about it. When the main character was training his young apprentice in shielding, the book went into an awful lot of detail on the methods. Was that really how that was done…?

Danya read through the passage again. He knew he shouldn’t try it. He was still recovering and it was illegal and Simon surely wouldn’t approve if he knew. But… what if he needed it one day? Maybe if he’d been able to shield, a vampire wouldn’t have nearly torn his throat out.

There was no harm in trying, right? Just… to see if he could. Nobody would know and it would be fine.

The first step to creating a shield was to externalise his magic, which Danya thought he was used to doing until he tried it and fire burst out in front of him, narrowly avoiding setting the side of the tent on ablaze. So… not like that. 

He could make fire or he could make light, or he could externally apply his magic to something like repair work… but externalising pure magic? That was new.

It was also extremely uncomfortable. Energy was naturally drawn into a mage when it was close to them, so pulling it out of himself and holding it at a distance felt wrong. Like he was trying to turn himself inside out. Every time he managed to make progress, his energy would escape his grasp and suck back into him.

He tried painting it with a glowing light, as the book suggested, and that helped a little bit. It was easier to perceive it as an external object that way and easier to manipulate it when he didn’t have to hold the visual aspects of it entirely in his mind.

He broke the energy up into threads and practised moving them in front of him. At first they moved around without much grace, like cooked spaghetti, but with a little focus he managed to bend them into geometric shapes and then arrange them into patterns. Interlocking hexagons was what the book recommended for a shield.

The hardest part of the whole thing was fighting the reflex to pull his energy back into himself, but once that stopped feeling quite so unnatural the whole thing wasn’t so hard at all. He practised dropping his shield and pulling it back up quickly. It still made his head spin and his stomach churn, but he could do it.

He held the curved, hexagonal grid out in front of him and let himself fall forward against Simon’s armour chest. The chest slid against the ground. The shield held strong. He could do this.

Danya collapsed down on his cot, his head spinning, and let out a long breath. Maybe nobody else would ever know, but he had done it. The power of his ancestors was alive in him. Danya tried to push himself up and immediately dropped back down as the whole world swung to the side.

Panic set in in a strange, throbbing way — too intense one minute and then fading to detached apathy the next. He was out of balance. He had been, increasingly, as he recovered, but the sudden drain on his energy had knocked him completely out of alignment. He felt sick and starving and desperate and absolutely nothing at all, and everything at once, and then — and then some uncertain time later, Simon was back.

“You awake?” Simon asked. His voice sounded weird, like it was warped.

Danya managed to make a sound that was vaguely affirmative.

“You hungry?”

His limbs felt weird as he sat up, like they didn’t really belong to him but he could give them instructions and they would probably obey. More or less.

A chunk of cheese appeared in his hand… somehow. Simon must have given it to him, but the part of his memory where that happened was missing. There were two bread rolls on a sheet of paper in front of him as well.

He shoved the cheese into his mouth and discovered he had forgotten how to chew. He gnashed his jaws repeatedly, letting cheese fall in slobbery pieces down the front of his robe, then swallowed what remained in his mouth.

Simon was talking again, but it didn’t really sound like anything. He was so handsome. Danya reached out to touch his face, and then he was leaning over, throwing up on the floor.

Everyone was very close, and then the world felt a little less tilty. Wait, everyone? Danya reached up and smacked someone in the face, and then an unfamiliar man calmly pushed his arm back down.

“Do the two of you have an intimate relationship?” the man asked Simon, and then pushed Danya’s arm back down when it smacked him in the face again.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Simon said. He was sitting in front of Danya, but not touching. Bad.

“It’s relevant, but I suppose I don’t need your answer. It’s clear enough from the state of him.”

“I didn’t do anything to him!”

“Oh, yes, I can see that.”

“He’s badly out of balance, sir,” Cailan explained. Oh, he was there too, pressed in against Danya’s other side. Hello.

“Thank you, sweetheart, that is more helpful than me getting snippy,” the man — presumably Liam, if he was calling Cailan sweetheart — said. “He should be okay, but you really ought to be more attentive to his needs. This kind of stress isn’t good for his system.”

Danya wanted Simon. He wanted him as close and he could get him and then closer still. Liam and Cailan pressing against him from either side, though, that was helping. Words were at least making sense to his brain again.

“Liam,” Simon said. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Oh, goodness. I should have guessed that was what was going on, but I was too busy being judgemental. Please accept my apologies.”

“Liam.”

“Yes, well — he’s out of balance, you see,” Liam said. “Sweetheart, would you mind explaining how it works? My own ignorance put you where he is now a time or two.”

“Of course. When mages gather energy from the world around us — such as by eating food — it is naturally stored within us in an unstable way. It’s like there is a scale inside of us, and that scale tends to get stacked unevenly if we are left to ourselves. This problem compounds over time, until…” He looked down at Danya. “But through physical contact—” he lifted Danya’s arm “—the magic within us is brought back into balance.”

Danya smacked Cailan in the face this time. He had enough of his senses back to realise smacking Liam was inappropriate.

Simon watched them, his face blank. “He never said anything about any of that to me.”

“Well, they’re taught that’s shameful, aren’t they?” Liam said. “They’re Companions, Simon. If they’re serving their role as expected, this is not an issue that is supposed to arise.”

“I see,” Simon said coldly.

Liam held out his hands in pacification. “But in the real world, of course it does. Cailan was thirteen when my father gave him to me. I was hardly going to bed a child, but if he’d told me he needed me to cuddle him from time to time then I certainly would have done that for him. But, in the end, it took us years to get to a point where he felt comfortable simply communicating his needs to me in an honest and straightforward way.”

Danya smacked himself in the face this time. Everything felt weirdly numb.

“Why don’t you take over holding him now?” Liam suggested. “He seems to be coming back to himself a bit more.”

“Oh — ah — I don’t know.” Simon shifted so that he was leaning away from them slightly. “He seems quite fond of Cailan.”

“Captain Bell, if I have to come back here and do this all over again for the poor boy, I will not be impressed. Now,” he lifted Danya’s under his arms and held him out, “take your slave and learn how to take proper care of him.”

Simon was strong and warm and his energy felt like sunshine. Danya couldn’t even find it in himself to care that Simon was doing this out of obligation, he just wanted more. He let himself be shuffled around until he was sitting in Simon’s lap, leaning back against his chest. He let out a long sigh. This was where he belonged.

“I do outrank you, you know,” Simon reminded Liam.

“I will keep that in mind for any circumstances where it might be relevant.”

Simon let out an amused huff that jolted his chest. “You and Hamish must have had fun drinking together. You’re just as tenacious as he is.”

“He and I both made more than our fair shares of enemies early on. I find it has made me quite good at seeing to the heart of who people are. I saw your face when you were worried about Danya. That told me enough.”

“I hope that anything you’ve gleaned through that superior insight will stay between us.”

“Captain, do you really think I’m this open about my relationship with my slave with just anyone? I know I have a reputation, but this level of open affection would never be tolerated. So, yes, we have an understanding.”

“Thank you. And… thank you for your help.”

“Of course. I’m glad you thought to send for me.” Liam smoothed a hand over the top of Cailan’s head. “I think you two should be fine now, so long as you let him share your bed tonight and have a conversation later about his needs. If there was nothing else…?”

“Yes, of course, it’s getting late.” Simon tried to stand, but quickly gave up when Danya made himself into an immovable lump. “If you’re interested, I’ll send Hamish around tomorrow to talk to you about a potential position in my new unit.”

“Yes, Captain, I think I would be very interested. Goodnight.”

For a long time after Liam and Cailan left, they simply lay together. Every time Danya tried to think about the situation his thoughts would flitter away from him. Eventually he gave up and let himself simply relax and drift off to sleep.