“Hey, what’s going on? Your door was open and I saw you just…standing there looking down.”

  May doesn’t really react apart from starting initially when I pad my way inside. I go to take a step closer, but she makes a sharp noise, sucking in a breath and holding up a hand over her shoulder. Something I’ve seen some of the Vigil people I’ve fought use to call off attacks when we fight, so I come to a halt instead of pressing on.

  “Just… Give me a couple minutes, Ayre.” Her voice is absolutely ragged, near impossible to make out as her shoulders convulse and a couple sobs leak out from her tense body. But before I can react further, she rushes out of the room and into her house proper through the side door where I hear another door close and lock behind her.

  Should I… go in? She’s never invited me into her house before — not yet anyways. This whole “dating” thing is still pretty alien to me, but… I think she needs support more than I care about decorum right now. The room has a lot of lingering Ignia essence floating around that I can sense, something I’d normally associate with a fight, but with no signs of one, I’m left a little uncertain.

  Whatever. Lilly always taught me to follow my heart. And my heart is currently crying over there. I spent too many years crying alone to let anyone else do it.

  I walk inside after flipping her sign to “Closed” and closing the door to see that she locked herself in what has to be a bathroom, if the little cute shower sign is anything to go by. But when I get closer, I hear wracking sobs from the other side of the door.

  “May? I’m sorry for coming into your house, but… I couldn’t not. Come talk to me, please.”

  “I’m…fine.” I hear a few deep breaths from the other side, clearly trying to arrest her sobbing. “Just…let’s reschedule your appointment for tomorrow, Ayre.”

  I let the silence hang just in case there’s more, but answer after a few moments. “Come out, May. We can talk through whatever’s going on together. I don’t care about my appointment, my wing is fixed anyways.” We both know full well that the continuing appointments were just a silly excuse to spend time together and for her to take some time off during the week.

  I don’t know how to handle this stuff if I can’t touch someone, though. I don’t know how to be a therapist through a door. I just know how to give people hugs, and maybe a kiss in the case of May. So…without her answering, what am I supposed to do?

  I have one idea, but it is something of a threat that I need to be willing to commit to one way or the other. “I’m opening this door in ten seconds. And, yes, I’m aware it’s locked. It’s not going to stop me. I’ll buy a new one.”

  May continues to not respond, so I start counting from ten, steadily calling Ignia up from my core to fill my throat while trying to focus on exactly what I want it to do. But when I get to zero, she hasn’t responded. Which, maybe as a fault of my character, feels a lot like a challenge to my willingness to follow through.

  So, I go through the door.

  It’s very simple, really.

  I just breath heat at the door, something I’ve been getting a better handle on since I started seeing May and she walked me through how aspects of magic work better. I’m still not great at it, admittedly, and the waves of heat are full of licking flames because of it, but it will get the job done. It takes a few seconds, but eventually the heat builds to the point that the door itself is glowing until the exact moment that the entire thing collapses into a pile of ash, the door handle and sign falling free and clattering to the ground with muted thumps in the sea of ash.

  “Ayre…you…annihilated my door?” Her sobs stop with the admission, so that’s a step in the right direction, even if they were replaced with utter disbelief. She might be upset. Probably reasonable, so I aim to explain myself.

  “I warned you I was opening the door. I was considering forcing it open but thought I’d damage the walls, too. This way it’s just the door that suffered.” I give her a significant look, softening as I take her in. She looks like she’s gone through a bout in the ring with me, but emotionally. Beaten up, beaten down, and beaten all around. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”

  Idly, she just nods and begins to pick her way through the ash towards me. I may have gone too far, but it worked, at least. I’m still no good at backing down once I’ve felt like I’ve been challenged. “Let’s go to the kitchen. I need something to sip at, my throat feels awful.” On one step, she accidentally kicks the doorknob and sends it rattling across the floor to zip under the couch. She watches it go and sighs before heading off.

  We make our way into the kitchen and May quietly puts a quick-heating kettle on and makes a couple cups of tea with what little appears to be stored here in the kitchen. The place is absolutely barren aside from racks of medicinal herbs and various equipment to process them. At most, she has a portable stovetop plate, a self-filling water jug, and her little automatic kettle. May is much more into eating out as a rule and assures me she can’t cook worth a whit. It’s one of the main reasons I’ve never come in here before. She’s been over at our place plenty of times.

  I nurse my mug while May sips at hers, drawing in deep breaths of the lavender-scented tea.. “Do you remember a little while ago when I said I had…someone important…that I had fallen out of touch with?”

  I nod, frowning. “Yeah, you never gave me a name, but you said they’d been growing distant.” May mentioned a sort of pseudo-breakup with her last girlfriend — only with the caveat that they failed to actually break up but had instead spent the last few years avoiding one another.

  “Well, I got a chance to talk to her and… I learned why that’s been the case. She was sure to tell me in very specific detail, actually.” Her chuckle is dry and distraught, with a clearly forced and bitter undertone. “Apparently she’s spent these last few years thinking I used her to get ahead to get here.” May continues to glance around as she talks, looking with what almost feels like suspicion at the rest of the room. “And… I definitely didn’t. Am I grateful that being around her got me this opportunity? Sure. But, the way she said that I abandoned her has me torn up. By the end she was screaming mad, on the verge of a breakdown. So I just…told her I never wanted to see her again.”

  She draws in a shuddering breath, “And what’s worse? I meant it. All of these years of me trying to reach out to help her, give her the support I promised her, was worse than doing nothing. Looking back, every interaction wasn’t her being clipped because it’s her nature. She’s just been…trying to get away from me. And I decided I knew better and tried to help anyways. So, at the end, I made the decision for the both of us to stop.”

  “That’s the gist of it all.” She gestures broadly at nothing, sounding overwrought. But she’s stopped crying, so that’s a small blessing. Probably

  For my part, I don’t have much to say throughout, so I just listen attentively and eventually stand to move over to her after she seems like she’s said all she’s going to.

  “I…don’t know how to deal with this stuff, May. I doubt that’s a surprise, though. But… I can be here. I won’t comment on the relationship between you and her, because I don’t think I can, but if she knows you, and thought that you would be capable of that sort of thing, then that’s a her problem. Maybe she has a good reason, but it doesn’t really matter.”

  I draw May into a hug, bending down to ensconce her with my wings and arms at once and push a slow surge of the Breath into her. It’s how my kind would comfort one another — and May has abnormally high Ignia tolerance, so it goes over especially well. “Please believe I say this from the heart, May. Nobody deserves to live lonely. But some people make the choice to. Eventually they have to realize that they’re lonely by choice. It’s not the fault of anyone else.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  We stay like that for a while, her eventually rising to hug me more directly, wrapping herself around me as best she can. May being a full head and some shorter than me — not counting her ears, as she often tries to assert as part of her height — it’s a little awkward sometimes. But something about this just feels right. I don’t like to see anyone sad. Ma and Pa always said our kind are empathetic as a rule even if that empathy doesn’t necessarily help you with emotional intelligence at all.

  But May chimes in while I hold her tight, sounding marginally better. “I’m being a terrible doctor. I’ve spent your entire appointment in self-loathing. So I’m going to fix that by being more selfish.” I cock my head at her, feeling my hair swish around and clearly tickling her nose while she looks up at me with a big smile that highlights her two larger front teeth. “I have no other appointments today, I was hoping you and I could go do something after your session, but I don’t know if I feel like going anywhere. Will you stay here with me? If you have the time, I know you’re busy and—”

  I shush her by putting a clawed finger to her lips, which sees her turn away, but not pull away. Which I’m quite glad for. I’m still really bad at responding to mixed signals and what I’m supposed to do most of the time. “May, I just said nobody deserves to be alone. If you need me, I’ll be here. Lilly and Olly could stand to have some alone time anyways. Eventually one or the other is going to realize something very important and it’s probably better if I’m not there. I’ll stay here as often or as long as you need.”

  Alongside sending regular little pulses of the Breath between us, I agonize for a few moments on something I want to do, but don’t know if I can or should.

  I pause, feeling the most anticipation I think I ever have and over something this simple! I’ve fought life-or-death battles in the last few months since leaving home! It’s not like this is the first time, either, so why is this so hard to commit to?

  Argh!

  Before I can second-guess, I plant a kiss on May’s lips, charging it with the Breath as I pull away to see that she is rapidly turning about as red as my scales — something quite impressive with her darker complexion made marginally darker by the ever-so-slight layer of mostly black fur all over.

  A victory, then. Perfect.

  “Then let’s go sit on my bed. It’s way more comfortable than the couch we normally sit on. I just need to go change over my open sign.” She pulls away after, looking more than a lot embarrassed, something I am probably going to be riding the high of for the next…maybe the rest of my life.

  “You don’t have to. I did when you ran off. I figured it was a good idea.”

  May does something I’ve only really read before. And…usually only in those books that Lilly always told me to read that were cheesy romance things.

  She swoons.

  Am I good at this? I might be good at this. Why am I good at this? Breath Divine it’s hot in here. Sweltering.

  She abruptly takes my hand in her and drags me upstairs and gestures at her bed. For as much as she likes to dress up, I expected her room to be a little more…ostentatious. But it’s all very sleek and clean-looking. She, on the other hand, moves to the opposite side of the room and pulses some essence into runes on a music player and something familiar starts to play, so I start to hum along to distract myself from the weight of expectations weighing heavy in my chest.

  “You know Sterling’s music?” May looks utterly astonished, stopping suddenly to stare at me.

  “I met them after a duel that I won against a freelancer — a demonkyn who called himself Firebrand. They told me that I’d been”their muse” ever since they saw me. I didn’t know what that meant — still don’t — so I tried to be very polite since they seemed nice. I made a point of going to see their show afterwards. They played this one. I don’t know a ton more, I just recognized it.”

  May approaches quickly with a beaming smile that is great to see after everything that’s gone on. “You met Sterling?!”

  “Is it that big of a thing? I get people coming up to me all the time after matches. I thought it was normal. I need to go contact someone who offered to sponsor my fights, actually.” I remember, it’s been on my mind a lot in the last little while.

  “Yes, it’s a big deal! I’ve always wanted to meet them. They’re really popular, and for good reason, I think they’re among the best musicians in the country.”

  “I could introduce you? They asked me to come visit them at some point, but I wasn’t sure about it because of…well…this.” I gesture between the two of us. “Being someone’s muse sounded like it would go places and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that since we’ve been… you know… this?”

  “Oh, you silly girl. A muse is just someone or something who inspires an artist to create art. I doubt they were propositioning you, but even if they were I wouldn’t be bothered in the slightest. I don’t own you.”

  “Isn’t it…a bad thing to see other people during this kind of thing? My books always made it seem like it was frowned on, or at least not”normal”.”

  “You mostly read fantasy stories. Those always have two people being soulmates and such. Two people fated to be together because that’s what the author thought was the best pair. It’s not uncommon at all to see other people as long as everyone understands what’s going on, and nobody’s lying. Cheating is only cheating if it’s dishonest or nonconsenting.” May pauses, giving me time to think about it, I suppose. I was always convinced that it was only normal for people to pair up one-to-one since my parents were that way. My only other example is Lilly, and her father is not really male or female, and both her father and her mother, as far as I understand and how it translates to mortals.

  “Lapin tend to have big families, for example. I…had…” May frowns deeply after pausing. I don’t know a ton about her upbringing, but she did tell me that she was an orphan like most of the people in the order. “I had a total of seven parents, for example.”

  “Seven? How did anyone keep track of everything?” I know I’m wearing utter shock. I only just started to come to terms with the idea of three people being in a relationship. Seven?!

  May smiles at my shock. “Well, there were a lot of kids, and each of my parents had different specialties, I think. Admittedly I don’t remember a lot of the specifics, I just remember it feeling right. We never wanted for love, and that’s what matters. My point being, If you find someone you fancy, I’m not bothered. I would hope I like them too, but if not that’s not the end of the world. Monogamy is nice, but even Nyssa and I were fairly open about that sort of thing.”

  All of the puzzle pieces that fall into place when I hear that name. It hits me like a sack of hammers and I turn aside, closing off my posture by crossing my arms and pulling my wings and tail in closer.

  “Ayre? What’s wrong?”

  Is doing this dangerous? Sure, I like May, and I accepted that she was in the Vigil, if only by technicality since she spends basically all of her time here in her personal practice, and she’s such a helper that I thought it would be okay…but if she’s involved with Nyssa, isn’t she some sort of like specialized Olly murder machine?

  But she’s not involved with Nyssa anymore…

  My thoughts are interrupted when May puts a hand on my shoulder and I flinch. “Look, Ayre, if I said something that made you uncomfortable, let me know so I can avoid it in the future. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.”

  “It’s nothing like that. But it is very complicated. I just…can’t talk about most of it unless I talk to the others first.” Understatement of the millenium. Hey, your ex probably wants to murder my best friend, just mentioning it now. Don’t worry about it.

  “I have to admit that I’ve just dove straight past curious and into interested, but I understand. I won’t pry.”

  I nod in thanks. “The thing I can talk about though, is that I think I actually know the same Nyssa, even if only in passing. Some thugs tried to rob me while I was in Silverbrook and I was in way over my head with them. I’d never fought a person before that, not really, and I froze up. But I was saved from the worst of it by someone interceding in that fancy armor the Vigil wears. Wound up telling me her name was Nyssa, giving me a bunch of things for free to help me hide myself, before leaving in a hurry after something called a calamity.

  “I have to admit, I was pretty smitten at the time, but after hearing about what just happened, I should probably scrub that all from my head. If she’s like that, I really don’t want anything to do with her.”

  “Nyssa is…complicated, but you shouldn’t hate her or even really write her off for what happened between the two of us. You saw the real Nyssa that day, the one that I fell so hard for. She’s a good person, I’ll never say anything to the contrary.” May goes quiet for a little while, clearly considering.

  “Can I tell you about her? I think it might help put me at ease over this whole thing.”

  “By all means, May. Whatever helps, and I have to admit I’m pretty curious about her in general.” Both out of wanting to work out how I feel about her and…maybe more shamefully to learn if there’s anything useful I might glean for my friends…

  The thought makes me feel like an awful person, but with Olly’s condition and the situation, it’s not like I have much other choice than to think that way.

  I don’t like it, but people’s safety comes first. And not just Olly and Lilly’s. If Olly gets pushed too far he could easily become a serious threat to other people and… I’d rather not think about what would need to happen then.

  After May flops onto the bed next to me, and I roll over onto my belly to lay more comfortably on my arms and let my tail and wings drape to either side. “Well, we’ve known one another since we were kids, but it all really started about almost ten years ago when we were on a training expedition together…”