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It hit him suddenly, a sweeping sensation of nausea that made him grit his teeth and swallow hard. They were sitting on the front steps of Hexside, the sun now past its highest point and beginning to fall behind the building, stretching the shadows of the nearby trees. The crowd of students had been thinning out, a slow trickle at first, but now that just about everyone’s parents had been notified, a huge wave of them left at once.
The captain left a few minutes earlier, and then Gus’ dad arrived, looking slightly panicked, but his expression shifted immediately to relief on seeing Gus, who jumped up and closed the short distance between them to wrap his arms around his dad’s waist. Hunter rested his chin on his hands, a small smile tugging at his mouth. A kind of worry had been brewing in his chest the longer it took for Gus’ dad to show up. When the other kids had gone, and only a few remained. Gus and his dad broke apart, and then Gus looked back at Hunter, and he wasn’t smiling. He looked upset, actually, so much so that Hunter forced himself to his feet, even though sudden sparks popped in his vision.
“You okay?” Hunter asked.
“Um. I don’t wanna just leave you here,” Gus said, rubbing one arm. Hunter blinked. Gus’ dad was avoiding looking at him.
“I’m fine. I can take care of myself,” he said quickly.
“But the coven knows you’re here now.”
“Yeah, but I’ll just go somewhere else. I have it handled,” he said.
“Hunter!” a voice cried, and his head snapped up. Darius, of all people, was hurrying towards him, at a pace somewhere too fast to be walking but not quite outright running either. He had drawn himself up to his full height, too, the imposing figure of a coven head in all his glory.
Hunter blinked, and then did the only thing he was good at lately. Bolted. He heard someone cry out after him, but he just kept running, used Flapjack to teleport into the trees, and then took off on foot through the thick woods behind Hexside.
He ran straight into a cloaked figure and backed up fast, staff ready in front of him.
“Hey, hey. We’re on your side,” the figure said. A hand came down on his shoulder from behind. He should have fought–some part of him was shouting out to move , just move , but instead he was frozen in place, as if roots had grown out of his feet, as if his joints had turned to stone.
“Easy, little prince,” the figure gripping his shoulder said.
“Darius?”
“We’re alone,” another voice said, from somewhere in the underbrush. And then Raine Whispers pulled their hood down, and Eberwolf emerged from the shadows.
“W-wait,” Hunter managed to get out.
“Hey, we’re on your side, like I said.”
“No you’re not .”
“We’re the rebels you were trying to arrest when you got mixed up in the spell to enter Belos’ mind,” Darius said. Hunter blinked. What?
“Take a breath,” Raine said, and he realized that he hadn’t–black spots were blooming in his vision.
“I’m sorry we didn’t find you earlier. We had to wait until it was safe,” Darius said. “We have somewhere you can hide, now that you’re wanted.”
“Did you know?” Hunter asked, voice cracking. Raine and Darius exchanged a look that seemed to be more bewilderment than anything else. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they still thought he was a person, even.
“We know Belos is planning something terrible,” Raine said evenly.
“And that the emperor is after you because of whatever you saw in his mind,” Darius added. Hunter said nothing. He let the silence stretch, trying to think. Belos was never very forthcoming about his plans. Maybe they really didn’t know. He half-wanted to say something–maybe they’d have answers. Maybe it would change something. But another part of him ( selfish! stupid! ) wanted Darius to keep thinking of him as… as what? A spoiled brat, maybe. Anything but what he really was.
“We’re going to take you to our safehouse, okay?” Raine said. They reached out as if to touch him, and then stopped at the last second and retracted their hand. It could be a trap. Or an illusion, even. But Hunter felt a wave of crushing exhaustion wash over him. What would Luz do? Trust them, because she was an idiot. But where had all his supposed smarts gotten him thus far?
He gave in. He let the three of them put their hoods back up and lead him out of the forest. Darius at least didn’t seem to actually dislike him. If he had to trust someone, he wanted to trust him.
The safehouse was an actual house on the edge of the night market, a thin building with an unassuming boarded up shopfront. Inside it seemed almost like a normal house, but disused and half-empty. There were… touches about the place that had to have belonged to someone though, hooks for picture frames, a weirdly ornate coatrack, a surprisingly nice purple table runner.
“Is this… was this your house?” Hunter asked, turning to Darius in the kitchen. The others had said goodbye at the door, some business left to attend to apparently before nightfall. The back windows weren’t boarded up. They looked onto an overgrown backyard, and the late afternoon sun was spilling in.
“It was. Before I became coven head and moved into the castle,” Darius said. “I brought most of my things with me. But we needed a place to use as base of operations, and this seemed as good as any other.”
“You lived in the night market?”
“It moves around. This was a nicer part of town, when I lived here,” he said, sighing. “I have some business to attend to as well. I trust that you won’t do anything foolish like leave the house?”
“Where would I go?” Hunter asked. Darius merely raised his eyebrows and sighed softly.
“Make yourself at home. And ah, maybe a shower would be good? There are spare linens in the cupboard at the end of the hall upstairs,” Darius said. Hunter waited until he was out the door, and then collapsed into the wall struggling to draw a breath. He felt like his insides were jumbled up, like someone had taken him apart and put him back together wrong. Maybe they did. Maybe that was how he got made in the first place. Old Golden Guards pieced back into a new one like a piece of broken pottery.
He sat on the floor for a while trying to breathe like a person. When he finally stood up, the light outside was waning. The shadows in the kitchen had grown long.
He went back to the ornate coatrack and hung his cape up. He’d stolen it from the Hexside lost and found, but hopefully no one was missing it. It looked pretty old, and it kind of smelled weird. Upstairs he found a few empty bedrooms and one clearly in use. There were towels in the cupboard at the end of the hall just like Darius had said.
Halfway through showering it hit him that this didn’t seem to be a trap. That was good in a way. It meant he’d made the right choice for once. But terrible in another. He really was a rebel now. There’d never been any going back. Not since the moment he entered Belos’ mind. But it still felt like he kept crossing lines he couldn’t cross back over. It made him feel itchy under his skin.
Out of the shower he felt marginally better, but still just as nauseous as before. Probably the effects of eating out of the trash for several days. Flapjack did their best bringing him food but… still.
He was dressed again, peeking into one of the empty spare rooms when he heard the door open downstairs and froze, heart lodged in his throat. Unable to move, again, even though he was screaming inside his head. Just like when those scouts had caught him back at the school. Just like in the woods. Flapjack fluttered down to rest on his shoulder and chirped once to tell him: Darius is back . His shoulders slumped, and the rest of him almost went down with them. He had to grab the doorframe to stay up.
“Hunter?” Darius’ voice came, from partway up the stairs. He emerged a moment later. “You can take any of the free rooms to use for now,” he said, spotting Hunter at the end of the hall. “I’m going to sleep. I need my beauty rest, and Titan knows I don’t get it at the castle these days. Do you need anything before I turn in?”
Hunter shook his head and quickly retreated into the empty room. There was a bed on the far wall, just a simple cot with plain purple sheets. Suddenly he missed his room at the castle like the absence of a tooth in his mouth. Like the last step going down the stairs, and suddenly the world feels like it’s shifted wrong on its axis. Flapjack nuzzled against his cheek.
“I’m okay,” he mumbled. “I’m good.”
>>------>
In the dream he’s walking down a long corridor. He’d had the same one every night since running from the Owl House. It could be any corridor at the castle, but it seems to stretch on forever. There are portraits on the walls but their faces are all blacked out. He’s running from something. Whatever it is is right on his heels, but each door he tries is locked, every turn is a dead end. Except this night, the dream is different.
This night he turns a corner and instead of the hallway he’s in the throne room looking out from behind his mask. And Belos is looking down at him with that expression of soft disappointment.
“What did you do?” Hunter whispers. Belos looks at him blankly. “Who am I made of?”
No answer. Belos sighs, shaking his head slightly.
“I expected better of you,” he says.
“What even am I? What kind of monster am I going to grow up to be?” he cries, and his voice echoes back off the walls, it sounds warped and distorted, familiar and at the same time like it belongs to someone else. All of him belongs to someone else. It was never him at all. Just a reflection of a reflection, some half-baked idea of a person, but Belos is smiling softly at him, almost lovingly. He puts a hand on Hunter’s shoulder like he’s a fragile thing–something of value.
“Oh Hunter. You’re not going to grow up.”
His eyes snap open but his vision isn’t clear, and his heart is in his throat, hammering so hard it feels like he can’t draw a breath, and before he knows it he’s emptying the contents of his stomach onto the floor, but there’s nothing in there, just bright yellow bile comes up, tasting bitter and making him gag harder.
It takes a few minutes before he can breathe. He squeezes his eyes shut and thinks of Gus with one eye glowing blue, holding up his fingers in the illusion of a bedroom–Gus’ bedroom. With the pictures of Luz, and the Captain, and the Blight girl. He misses his own room. It’s so stupid, with everything at stake. But he feels sick, and he feels somehow more alone than he ever has, which is stupid too. He’s always been alone. He thought he had his uncle, but he really had nobody. So it doesn’t make sense that this feels so much worse.
He blinks. He needs to clean up the mess on the floor. Flapjack is perched on the windowsill, watching him silently.
Get help? They chirp.
“No,” Hunter whispers. “Don’t do that.” He slides out of the bed and goes downstairs, careful not to make a sound on his way. There have to be some kind of cleaning supplies in the kitchen, a rag at least, and he can get some water or something to wipe up with. He can’t repay the rebel coven heads taking him in by making a mess in their house, and the last thing he needs to do is prove to them how utterly weak and useless he is. This is a second chance he doesn’t deserve, and he can’t screw it up now.
But when he gets to the bottom of the stairs, there’s already someone in the kitchen. Raine Whispers is sitting at the table flipping through a spell tome and drinking a cup of tea. They look up at Hunter blankly.
“Need something?”
“Um. I came to get. Uh. A rag,” he says.
“Are you okay? You look a bit… sweaty,” Raine says, frowning.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He crosses over to the sink to open the cupboard underneath, but there’s a swooping sensation in his stomach, and his vision goes dark at the edges, and he has to grab onto the counter to keep standing. There’s a scrape of a chair against the floor and Raine is standing in front of him, still frowning. They reach for him and he flinches, squeezing his eyes shut, but all he feels is them press the back of their hand to his cheek.
“What are you doing?” he asks, eyes snapping open.
“You have a fever,” Raine says. “I don’t think you are okay. I’m gonna get Darius, all right?” They go to move but Hunter grabs their sleeve.
“Nonono, you don’t have to do that,” he says, voice rising to an octave he’d prefer it not to. “I’m seriously fine. I just need a rag to clean up, and everything’s okay.”
“Clean up what?” Raine says, and Hunter can feel it happening again, he’s not breathing right, and the dark at the edges of his vision refuses to ebb back, it keeps encroaching further.
“He almost likes me, so I can’t screw this up, okay?” he cries. But then there’s a sound from the stairs, it’s too late, they woke Darius. He dressed in purple sweat pants, squinting, arms crossed in front of him.
“Whispers, do you have to make a huge racket every time you come back? Oh, Hunter. What are you doing up?”
“Darius, did you even check on this kid when you got back?” Raine says.
“Did I–whoa, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Hunter says. “I’m going to be useful. I’m going to be good, I can still be good, I just have to figure out what that means.”
“I more meant… do you feel all right?” Darius says, and he starts to cross the room towards Hunter and Raine.
“I think he’s going to–” Hunter hears, but it’s distorted like he’s underwater. And then he tips forward, and braces to hit the ground, but the ground never comes. He goes absent for a moment, and then he wakes up and he’s being carried. He blinks, trying to clear his vision. It’s Darius. Darius is carrying him up the stairs.
“Stay still okay?” he says softly. Hunter wants to protest, but he’s too exhausted. He takes a handful of Darius’ shirt and clings on, lets himself forget for just a moment how shamefully childish he must look.
>>------>
Darius is not reading the book rested on his lap, but he has certainly been looking at the same two pages for some time. If any of the words have actually managed to enter his head, they seem to have trickled straight back out. Not for lack of trying, however. He’s certainly been looking at it.
The very first light of dawn is beginning to peek through the window when Hunter stirs, and Darius blinks, shifting in his chair, suddenly feeling quite awake when moments ago he was almost dozing.
“Hunter?” he asks, keeping his voice low. The boy woke up once already since Darius and Raine had brought him upstairs. He had a mild fever, and there’d been a small puddle of vomit beside the bed, sheets soaked in sweat.
“What happened to him?” Raine had whispered, while Darius was laying the kid out on the bed. They’d opted to just switch rooms–laundry and stripping the sheets could wait.
“I–I don’t know,” Darius had to admit. They’d looked for him after the Owl House. But there was no time, they had to report back, and Hunter was nowhere to be found. It was only after hearing about Adrian’s failure at Hexside that Darius realized where Hunter had fled to.
Honestly, the kid didn’t look very well generally. But still, Darius was furious with himself for not realizing how bad it had gotten.
Now, Hunter shifts slightly, brow furrowing. In the thin light of almost-dawn, the bruise-like color under his eyes looks almost blue, and he looks very thin, very small, in the bed.
“Hunter,” Darius says again. He puts a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. Hunter’s eyes crack open, and instantly he shifts, first flinching away, and then shoving himself up into a sitting position.
“Darius!”
“It’s okay. Hey. You’re okay,” Darius says, flipping the book on his lap closed with one hand. “I’m sorry. Whatever you saw in Belos’ mind… I’m sorry you got wrapped up in our mistake. And I’m sorry no one helped you sooner. I should have. I should have known better.”
“I’m not a person,” Hunter says. His voice is rough. The light in the room is dim, but Darius can make out his expression–jaw set. Eyes fixed on some empty point of the room. His palisman is resting on the windowsill, curled up as if sleeping, but it has one eye open, watching them both.
“What do you–”
“I’m a grimwalker. Belos said–I looked like someone. More than the others. You shouldn’t have helped me.”
“I–” Darius stops, because honestly, this is a lot, and he needs a moment to compose some answer. Grimwalkers were extinct, weren’t they? But leave it to Belos to be dabbling in the most illicit and horrific magics while preaching unity and conformity with his other face. He thinks of the last golden guard. The same eyes. That’s what always bothered him about Hunter. Trying to shake the feeling he was looking at someone who was supposed to be dead.
“Ah. Hunter. I know you are a thinking, feeling being. You’re as much a person as any witch or demon I know,” he says. And Hunter seems to sag in on himself, as if this statement has knocked out some internal structure. He blinks, and then he’s crying. Darius sits up straighter, the book falls off his lap onto the floor. “I–sorry. It’s okay!” he tries. “You’re okay.” Titan. What would Raine say? Or the Owl Lady, she seems to pick up strays like it’s no problem. Hunter’s shoulders are shaking. And Darius gets up, shifts so he can sit on the side of the bed. He reaches out, hesitantly, and wraps an arm around Hunter’s shoulders. He can feel the bones through his shirt.
“I’m proud of you, Hunter,” he says. “I don’t know if it means much to hear it from–” Hunter throws his arms around him, and he’s clinging on as if for dear life, face pressed into Darius’ chest, his body wracked by heaving sobs. He’s so small. Titan, was he always this small? Darius just holds him, rocking slightly, and Hunter sobs until he seems too exhausted to go on.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, when they finally break apart.
“It’s okay, little prince,” Darius murmurs. He thinks about blood in the throne room. Someone else’s (a memory). The emperor’s (a hope for the future). Everything is not okay. It’s all very ruinous and difficult. But he tells Hunter that again, because for a moment, something passes over his face. Hope? Or maybe worse, trust.
Outside the sky keeps lightening. The onslaught of day cannot be held back by any force. But just for this moment, perhaps, Darius can shield Hunter from cruelty that the future surely has in it. Just for this moment.