Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fourteen years ago…  

Kinn pressed a hand to the gunshot wound in his side, ducking as another bullet sailed over his head. He raised his own weapon to return fire—trying to suck breath through useless lungs, pain flaring—before running again. The Italians gave pursuit.  

He slipped down another alley and dared to glance over his shoulder. They hadn’t seen where he had gone, weren’t yet following him, though they would. The alley was a dead end; the adrenaline rush faded as he realized that he was done. Kinn staggered, going to his knees by a dumpster as the blood soaked through his shirt.  

This couldn’t be it—he was only sixteen. He wasn’t supposed to die this way. But he was unable to run any longer; the Italians would find him soon enough. Kinn checked the magazine of his gun to see how many bullets he had left. At least he would take some of them down with him.  

One of the doors opened into the alley, and a boy holding a trashbag appeared, heading for the dumpster Kinn was (dying) in front of.  

He looked to be a couple years younger than Kinn, too young for any type of job, even taking out the garbage. In this part of town, though, most employers were unscrupulous enough to hire children, pay them—or more likely, their parents—under the table.  

The boy stopped when he saw him, the trash falling to the ground as he came forward.  

“I need you to call the police,” Kinn gasped at him, shoving his hand harder into his side in hopes it would stem the bleeding.  

He’d have to take his chances with the authorities. Hopefully one or two officers would be on his family’s payroll and get him to one of the Theerapanyakul clinics. Kinn didn’t want to think about the alternative—that the responding police officers would belong to the Italians instead. It was a risk he had to take. 

But the boy kept coming toward him, a half-smile on his face, his hand—that had just been touching the trash, disgusting—outstretched.  

“What are you doing?” Kinn asked, falling backwards, pain twisting its way through his ribs as he tried to get away. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t touch you,” the boy replied, kneeling beside him, pulling his shirt up to expose the wound (Kinn looked and then wished he hadn’t). Then the boy winked, the action transforming his thin face. “But it’ll feel better if I do.”  

True to his word, his hand hovered barely a finger’s-breadth above the wound. Warmth bloomed, itchy at first, then turning slick under his skin, like sinking into a bath, the surface of the water sliding over him as heat slid over the wound, leaving painlessness in its wake. Startled, Kinn’s eyes found the boy’s face, his own gaze vacant, focused on the hole in his side.  

And then it was over. 

“What the fuck,” Kinn demanded, pawing at the skin. In the dim light of the streetlamps, the former wound was only a patch of new skin, faintly pink.  

Healer.  

“Do you want the bullet?” asked the boy, offering it to him. Kinn took it from shockingly cold fingers, wondering at the juxtaposition, the warmth of the twisted piece of metal, the chill of the person who’d caused it.   

Shouts ricocheted down the sides of the alley, followed by the tramp of heavy feet. The Italians had found him. Distracted, the boy sprang upright, and Kinn tried to heave himself up, put himself between the healer and the assassins coming after him. He couldn’t be the reason that the healer was found, taken.  

The boy spun back around and pushed him down. “Try not to move for a few more minutes,” he ordered, his face cracking into a mischievous smile. “They’re the ones who should be afraid.”  

Kinn’s head swam as the Italians came into view. His aim had been good enough to reduce the squad of eight to five, but he didn't like the odds of five against two. Particularly when the healer was standing between him and them.  

One of the fighters in the squad took his time, lining up his shot—as Kinn was lining up his, his gun hidden between his hip and the pavement.  

“I can’t believe that one of the Theerapanyakul sons is hiding behind a kid,” he said. “You should come out and die like a man.”  

Kinn tried to obey, gathering his feet underneath him, reaching out a hand to push the boy out of the way, make one last stand, or at least not die sitting down. The new skin pulled as he moved, though, and he found himself sinking back onto the ground, cursing his weakness.  

The boy glanced back at him. “I told you not to move right away,” he said, sounding irritated. “Everything’s still knitting together in there.”  

Oh yes, Kinn was about to die of multiple gunshots to various extremities, but what was important was not straining the freshly-healed wound in his side. Seeing the last of the attackers draw their firearms, he made one final attempt to get the boy to save himself.  

“They’re going to kill us both, if you don’t leave,” he told the boy.  

He looked skeptically at the attackers. “Who, them?” he asked. “They’re not much of a threat. I bet they even drop their guns when I do this—”  

Which was when one of the attackers screamed as the metal of his gun turned red, sizzling into his flesh—Kinn flinched—until at last the man managed to shake the weapon free. Then another man groaned, clawing at his face. 

“You shouldn’t have put metal fillings in your teeth,” the boy told him, and heat began to rise from the pavement. It was pleasant where Kinn had fallen, just warm enough to chase away the nighttime chill. But as he watched the attackers jump and dance, their shoes melting into the street, he suspected their situation was very different.  

At last it was over—the attackers retreated, leaving their weapons behind, the metal in each one melted out of shape, stuck into the bubbling tar of the pavement.  

The boy waited a moment to ensure that they wouldn’t come back, then turned to him. “See? Not much of a threat.”  

Not a healer. He was a fire-bringer.  

Magic was not common, but Kinn had met healers before—been healed before, even. Fabric workers, metal workers, musicians—he knew of them. The Theerapanyakuls didn’t use them, but some of the other mafia families did. There was a thriving black market in new ways to subdue their powers, use them for gain.  

The ones who could be used like weapons were the most valuable, of course.  

He’d only heard of fire-bringers in fucking legends. Kinn couldn’t imagine how much the boy would be worth on the black market. And whoever owned him had made him take out the garbage behind a seedy bar. A senseless waste of power. They didn’t deserve to have him.  

“Come here,” Kinn said, struggling to stand, get a good look at the boy who’d just brought down his enemies. “Who do you belong to?”  

The boy pulled the neck of his shirt down—shivering as he did—revealing bare skin, though hardly anyone used collars to subdue them anymore. He flashed his wrists next, bereft of the cuffs magic-users were required to wear, flaunting his freedom. Kinn frowned as he leaned forward, squinting to see— 

“Are you imagining your mark here? Don’t you want to own me?” the boy asked, a mocking edge to his voice.  

Kinn blinked; the thought of anyone owning the fire-bringer in front of him jarred in its wrongness. He’d been silent too long, though, and the boy nodded as if Kinn had failed his test.  

“That’s what I thought,” he said, before he set himself on fire.  

The heatwave pressed him back against the bricks of the alley; Kinn gasped as the tower of flame sucked the air from his lungs. He saw a dark figure at the heart of the fire, but then the smoke stung his eyes, the white heat left streaks on his vision— 

and then it was over, except the faint smell of soot on the air. The bullet still warmed his hands. The boy was gone.  

Kinn rolled the metal in his fingers, aware of a sense of loss, thinking of the fire-bringer who might have been his, if only he’d been faster to set him free.  

Present day…  

Porsche toed open the bar’s back door, moving slowly enough that the aging metal wouldn’t squeal and announce his presence. He slipped into the stockroom, hid behind a rack of shelving, waiting for the lights to be switched on by… 

“Hia!” Chay gasped when he found him.  

Porsche snorted. “Let me guess. You didn’t see me coming.”  

His brother pressed a hand to his chest, presumably getting over the shock. “I can’t see my own future,” Chay reminded him, voice sing-song from saying it so often. “Or yours. Yours is too close to mine.”  

Porsche glanced back at the door, worried about his brother’s safety. As far as their uncle was concerned, though, Chay was dead, killed in a catastrophic bridge collapse a few  years ago. Porsche was the one their uncle and his men would be tracking—and he wanted them to find him this time.

When he turned around, Chay’s face was arranged in an expression meant to be reassuring.  

“I’m as safe here as I would be at the apartment,” he noted. “Safer, even. At least there’s CCTV here.”  

He was right, Porsche knew. He also knew he would continue to worry for the next few weeks, until the time came to fake his own death. Just as he’d done with the bridge collapse, Chay had seen the destruction of the Costa family, one of the mafia players in town. One night soon—Chay couldn’t tell exactly when or how—Porsche Pachara Kittisawat would (apparently) die...and then they’d both be free. 

Porsche shrugged, as committed to faux-reassurance as Chay was. “How’s the bar working out for you?” he asked instead.  

There weren’t many places in the city willing to hire someone completely under-the-table, no documents, no identification numbers, cash only. There were even fewer employers he’d trust not to feed his brother to the wolves if they ever learned what Chay could do.  

“Oh, Yok is great,” Chay replied. “She hasn’t given me any trouble. And in return—” He smiled. “I’ve kept trouble away from here. There was supposed to be a Safety and Health inspection earlier this week, but the inspector deleted the bar’s information from the database instead. By accident, of course.”  

Porsche refrained from asking how much power it had taken his brother to manage that. He supposed that in the maze of government bureaucracy, any future was possible.  

“It sounds like this place is working out pretty well then,” he said. “Do you need anything from me?”

“You can always help with stocking,” Chay answered, wrinkling his nose as he pointed at one of the boxes on the floor. “Those are too heavy to lift. And the coffee pot is broken.”

Grateful for something to do, Porsche joined his brother in pulling bottles out of the boxes and stocking them on the shelves. He couldn’t lift the boxes either—the scar tissue and subsequent limited range of motion in his back ensured that.  

“What about you?” Chay asked. “How are the Costas spending their final days?” 

“They’ll die as they lived,” Porsche replied, thinking of all the lives the mafia family had destroyed. They deserved whatever was about to happen to them. He flashed his brother the leather-and-metal cuff on his wrist. “They’ve been fine to me, though. No one wants to hurt a healer.”  

Another smile from Chay. “You’re doing what you like best, then. And the cuff doesn’t work on you, right?”

Because Porsche wasn’t a healer. His power was fire, or perhaps over fire: the ability to direct flame, find avenues for the heat inside him. Healing was the one he preferred; burning out infection, cauterizing the wound, increasing circulation with warmth.  

“I’ll be ready, whenever it happens,” he told Chay.  

“In that case,” Chay said, with an air of changing the subject. “Do you feel like winning the lottery tonight? We could use the cash.”  

They could. Porsche wouldn’t be able to withdraw much cash from the bank—their uncle might get suspicious if the account was empty when he died. So he nodded, and Chay plucked at the air, his gaze going vacant as he saw what no one else could, arranged futures until he found the one he wanted.  

“The convenience store, two blocks away from here,” Chay said. “At 9:32 tonight, just after the man in the red shirt checks out, buy the Colossal Cash Scratcher.” 

Having a brother who could change the future (or as Chay said, choose one future out of many) was very convenient when they needed to supplement their income with lottery winnings. After this, they’d need to stick to the smaller prizes, only a few thousand baht at a time, the ones that would require no identification, wouldn’t make the news when they won.  

Chay’s hands stilled then as he saw something else. He looked troubled. “There are always bullets in the dark, but tonight a man has one of yours,” he told Porsche, promptly raising every hair on the back of his neck. And his arms. And probably his legs.  

“Cryptic,” Porsche said, instead of horrifying. “So…is that a no on winning the lottery?”  

He petted his arms as his brother’s gaze went vacant again, willing the hair to go back down.  

“The lottery will be won by whoever buys the ticket at 9:32 tonight. I don’t know whether it’s you or not,” Chay said eventually, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I didn’t even know you had a gun—how would I know who has one of your bullets?”  

Porsche was as perplexed as his brother. Chay emerged from behind his hands, his eyes red-rimmed from effort. He turned away as Porsche reached out, and at last Porsche let his hands drop.  

All power had a price. Porsche’s, at least, was simple enough. But for Chay, changing the future required seeing all possible futures, thousands upon thousands of actions and consequences overlapping each other. Winning a scratch-off wasn’t worth the cost. 

They needed the money, though.  

“You mentioned a coffee pot?” Porsche asked, changing the subject, wiping the sympathy from his face.  

“Behind the bar, yes,” Chay said, looking grateful for the distraction, motioning him through the door and into the front room. This early in the day, they were the only employees in the building. “It brews, but the hotplate under the coffee pot doesn’t warm up anymore,” his brother explained.  

Porsche touched the ceramic plate beneath the coffee pot, cold under his fingers. There wasn’t a lot he could do here—he was the human equivalent of a match and a container of gasoline—but perhaps he could awaken the memory of heat in the material. If it was a very old coffee pot (and given the state of this bar, it was), the memory of heat might be enough.  

Sure enough, warmth flared under his hands, even as the rest of him went cold for a moment—all power had a price, after all.  

“I don’t know how long it will last,” he said when he could feel his fingers again. “And you shouldn’t leave it plugged in once it’s brewed.” Magic and electricity didn't always play nicely with each other. Porsche asked, “Why didn’t you just pick a future where the coffee pot actually worked?”  

It was Chay’s turn to snort. “I could have. But I wanted to see how you solved the problem.”  

The casual observer would have looked at his tousled hair, the lazy smile on his face, the way he sprawled in the booth and concluded that he was just another useless son of a rich family who’d had too much to drink and ended up in a dive bar in the bad part of town.  

Rich family, yes. 

Too much to drink…debatable. 

Useless son, Kim thought not. He owned this sketchy bar, among his other properties. Kim used it when he needed to meet contacts whose faces couldn’t show up on CCTV. The bar’s external cameras were fed an endless loop of minutia; the internal cameras were focused on people’s shoes, not their faces.  

Kim toyed with the whiskey in his glass, the same finger he’d been swirling around for the past thirty minutes, waiting for his contact. Tonight was simple; just a brush pass with one of his people. Then he’d try one of the new bottles he’d ordered for the bar—a 25-year bourbon, just a bit out of his personal price range.  

What was the good of being the useless son of a rich family if he couldn’t falsify business expenses?  

His music career had been the price he’d paid to take over the Theerapanyakul family’s intelligence networks. His one-hit-wonder persona served as the perfect cover, allowing him to drink too much in too many bars and have his hands all over too many people (to get the information they carried, obviously).  

After his brother Tankhun had died in a kidnapping-gone-wrong, Kinn had done his best to shield Kim from the work their family did. Tankhun had been targeted due to his involvement in the family business, Kinn had argued; Kim would be safer if he stayed away. It had worked, for awhile.  

Then his uncle had attempted to take over the major family last year. In mafia parlance, takeover meant kill them all. Now there was no minor family to help with their operations, fewer listening ears to trade information for information, make connections, hold their status among the other mafia families in town.  

The attempted takeover/assassination had sent a message to those families: the Theerapanyakuls were vulnerable. All eyes were on them now–the families were just waiting to see which one of them would make the first move.  

Probably the Costa family.  

Kim caught a glimpse of his contact through the people crowding the bar. He scowled into his finger of whiskey (he didn’t drink until after the job had been completed), waiting for the man to approach him, forcing himself not to look up again until he heard— 

“Is this seat taken?” his contact asked, dropping into the booth much too close to Kim. He forced himself to relax his fingers before he shattered the glass.  

“It is now,” Kim replied, raising his finger of whiskey to his lips, letting the liquid slosh as he set it down again (the casual observer wouldn’t notice that the amount of whiskey in the rocks glass hadn’t changed at all). “Who are you?” 

His contact snuggled closer—his fingers clenched on the glass again—and said, “Just someone who wants to buy you a drink.” Kim felt the man slip a drive into his pocket before his contact drew back, looked him over appraisingly, and asked, “Don’t you want me to buy you a drink?” 

“Sure,” Kim replied, glad to have the handoff completed (and equally glad to have his personal space returned to him).  

The casual observer would have thought that Kim had sent the man to get drinks while he held the table. Instead, his contact would ensure that there were no (less-than-casual) eyes watching before slipping out the back exit.  

The easiness of the mission grated on him. Here he was playing the useless, drunken son of the Theerapanyakul family while the Costas mobilized in the alleys, in the boardrooms, at the parties he was no longer invited to—his one-hit-wonder persona might be popular among the D-list celebrity crowd, but nowhere else.  

Kim drained his whiskey and headed for the bar to retrieve his much deserved 25-year bourbon.  

The work wouldn’t be so bad if only he was getting somewhere. But by the time the information got to him, the opportunities were already wasted, leaving him to apologize (again) to Kinn and his father, resolve to do better—even though he barely knew what he was doing, most of the time— 

How long did it take to get a drink around here?  

Kim drummed his fingers on the bar in disbelief as the moments ticked by. The bartenders at the bar that he owned were preoccupied with other customers. He couldn’t even complain to management about terrible service since that would mean 1) admitting that people had deemed him inconsequential enough to receive terrible service and 2) that he cared enough about it to complain.  

Ah, finally. A bartender was coming his way. Kim knew how to make him stop.  

He waved his credit card in front of the bartender’s face, making the man sway backward in surprise, succeeding in drawing his attention.   

“May I help you?” the bartender asked, as Kim returned the credit card to his phone case.  

“There’s a 25-year bourbon in the manager’s office,” he told the man. “It’s mine.”  

The man’s brows came together, and Kim looked at him—really looked at him—for the first time, the bar’s flashing lights turning his hair blue, the contrast between his smooth skin and dark brows, the way the overhead lights cast his eyes into shadow.  

Not his lips, though. Kim could see those perfectly fine. They were perfectly fine. 

“I’ll have to ask the manager,” the bartender said, and Kim had to relax his hands again before they cracked whatever they were clenched around this time (his phone, in this case).  

“Fine,” he told the man. “Do it now.”  

The man disappeared into the back of the bar as Kim drummed his fingers on the battered wood (the casual observer would have noticed that the Theerapanyakul’s useless son even received terrible service at a hole-in-the-wall establishment like this one and been reassured that he was, in fact, useless).  

But then Yok poked her head out of her office—waved at him—and the bartender came back with his bourbon, sliding the bottle across the bar. Kim gripped the 25-year by the neck, enjoying the heft of very expensive liquor, already thinking about the slide of bourbon over his tongue, the slow warmth that would grow in his chest.  

“Did you want a glass?” the bartender asked, tentatively offering one. 

Kim made a grab for it—he'd left his previous one back at his table—and their hands touched.  

He heard the man gasp as the touch made him look up, the light catching his eyes, throwing into relief the crystalline edges of his features, like the frozen outer rings of a star. The man was frozen too, and Kim was tempted—likely he’d only have to crook a finger to have that beautiful face to himself for the evening, to spend the night making a star fall.  

So many people had beautiful faces, though. And likely Yok would eviscerate him for interfering with one of her employees. Nothing scared that woman, certainly not the Theerapanyakul’s useless son.

Kim went back to his table.  

Time had stopped.  

Just for a moment, as the stranger’s hand had brushed his, all the futures in Chay’s head had fallen away, like the threads had been tugged beyond his grasp. He had breathed in the respite, marveled at whatever power the man had over him. 

Chay was in control of himself again the next moment, the crisscrosses of hundreds of fortunes invading his consciousness. He reached out for the man too late, his hand falling back against the bar as he watched him walk away.  

If Chay looked closely—not that he wanted to look too closely—he could see the threads of the future twined around every person in the bar. Innocuous drunkenness, for most, creeping liver disease for some (he tried not to serve those people). Most people would go home to an apartment they couldn’t quite afford and worry about money until the alcohol did its job.  

The man’s future, though, was as blank as Chay’s own. Chay had to know his name.  

He hadn’t been able to see the credit card the man had (somewhat rudely) shoved in Chay’s face earlier. Chay bit the inside of his lip as he found him again in the crowd, moving toward one of the booths in the back of the bar. He had kept his credit card in a holder on the back of his phone, had he not?  

He might not be able to change the man’s future, but he could change the futures around the man. The threads beckoned, some more possible than others. It was possible, perhaps, for a thief to grab the man’s phone and then pull out his credit card and then drop his credit card and then run away. But arranging that future wasn’t plausible—it would take too much power, draw too much attention. 

Even before Chay had faked his death, he had been cautious about drawing attention. 

So Chay found the tiny thread connected to the man’s phone case. It was both possible and plausible that the adhesive on the phone case would give out. From there, it took only a flick of his fingers to send someone stumbling across the floor. The credit card skittered under a table where Chay could pick it up later.  

Chay kept an eye on the man as he drank his way through a few fingers of whiskey, filling drink orders absently as he wondered what to make of the man who could stop his power. He’d never heard of such a thing before, outside of the cuffs and collars magic-users were required to wear. When at last the man headed out of the bar, Chay trotted over to the table to collect his prize.  

Kim Theerapanyakul.  

He could google the name later; for now, Chay followed Kim down the hallway to the back exit, not knowing what would happen when the man touched him again to retrieve his credit card. Perhaps what had happened before was a fluke, perhaps he’d crossed from foresight into full-blown hallucinations at last. 

But then a different future intruded.   

The two men locked eyes as the bar’s back door opened, waiting for their target to come out. They would back him up against the wall, look for the desperation in his face, the resignation in his voice as his eyes searched for escape. They were so close to finishing the mission.  

No. Chay ran down the hallway, but he was too late; Kim had already slipped through the back door, would already be facing the two attackers, his future rapidly turning to dust—and with it, whatever respite he had given Chay. 

He got to the door in time to peer through the peephole, see the future playing out (as futures did).  

“My family will come after you. You’ll beg for death before they’re done,” Kim threatened, though it didn’t stop one of the attackers from screwing the silencer on his gun.  

It couldn’t end like this. Chay extended his hands, but Kim’s future was blank, an obscurity of warp and weft. Chay looked around him, evaluating his options.  

“Your family will be even smaller after tonight,” one of Kim’s attackers said. “After we kill you and your brother.”  

It was difficult, so close to the present, the threads nearly woven into reality. Chay had to yank to arrange what happened next— 

the attacker’s gun jammed.  

Which was all the opening Kim needed, leaping forward to wrench the gun out of the attacker’s hands, before two quick shots put an end to the assassination attempt. Breathing hard, Kim looked around him, as if sensing his audience. His eyes met Chay’s through the peephole— 

A man staggered against a building, bleeding from a bullet wound in his upper arm, strands of black hair falling across the forehead as he tried to press a hand to the bleeding hole, another to the stitch in his side. He fell to his knees in the alley, but even as his eyes closed, he was satisfied; he had killed the attackers who had pursued him.  

But the vision broke apart as Kim slammed the door open, grabbing him by the arm, dragging him out into the alley behind the club. Chay went tamely, the strange stillness once again descending over him, as he reveled in whatever power was in the man’s touch.  

“I should have known it was a setup,” Kim said, his fingers digging into Chay’s arm, the barrel of his gun jabbing into his heart. “Your partners are dead, as you can see. Do you really want to join them?”  

Chay’s swallow was loud against the sudden silence in his head, the man’s fingers hot against him, his palm sweaty despite his cool expression. Very slowly, hoping Kim didn’t shoot him before he could explain himself, he reached into his pocket.  

“Well?” Kim demanded.  

His hand trembled slightly as Chay held up the piece of plastic he’d threaded a few futures to get, the name he’d needed to know. He looked at the man he’d do anything to see once more.   

“You left your credit card inside,” he said.  

His cousin was screaming again. Tankhun cracked open one eye, glancing at the clock. Before midnight, unusually early for the nightmares to begin. He supposed Vegas hadn’t been able to stay up any longer. They’d both known the nightmares were coming after what Vegas had begun to do.  

He waited for a few minutes, plugging his ears—hoping the episode was short-lived. But as the minutes ticked by with no diminution in the noise, Tankhun gave up and padded toward his cousin’s room.

Despite the lack of sleep for the—he grimaced—third night in a row, he couldn’t hold it against him.  

They’d played the long game with their last guard, and they’d lost. The man had seemed friendly up until they’d suggested that he help them escape the facility, but he’d chosen to think about selling information about them to another mafia family instead. As though his father would even barter anything for either of their lives. Tankhun supposed the Theerapanyakul patriarch might pay their enemies to dispose of them quietly. 

That was the purpose of the facility, actually.  

In any case, they couldn’t let the guard get beyond thinking about it, so he had to be...taken care of.  

A yell—mostly muffled—echoed down the hallway as Tankhun swung open his cousin’s door. In the dim light from the hallway, he could see his cousin twisted into his blankets. 

“Nong,” he said, turning on the lamp by Vegas’s bedside. He couldn’t say that once Vegas was awake (he had no wish to repeat Vegas’s first few months in the facility, where his cousin had lashed out at him because there was no one else to lash out at. He still had nightmares about those nightmares), but Tankhun missed saying nong, missed looking after his brothers.   

“Khun,” Vegas said, half-sobbing his name. He dug his knuckles into his eyes—Tankhun winced—and took another shaky breath as he sat up in bed. “I’ve been locked in this fucking hellhole for almost a year,” his cousin said, staring up at the ceiling. “Where is my brain getting this from?”  

Tankhun had been locked in this fucking hellhole a lot longer than that, ever since he’d come back from that kidnapping attempt broken past the point his father was willing to repair. He could attest that his brain had never run out of horrors to throw at him.  

“How’s it going with the guard?” he asked instead. 

“I need a few more nights with him before he’ll be gone from the island of misfit toys,” Vegas said. “I don’t want him to be able to speak again. Or—” and he paused, then said speculatively, “Perhaps I want him to speak but never be listened to.”  

Okay, Cassandra, Tankhun forbore from saying. He didn’t want to know the details of what his cousin was doing to the man. The nightmares Vegas had sent him during his first few months at the facility still filled him with dread. If Vegas had wanted to rip apart his mind instead of simply bombarding him with his worst fears, he could have.  

The facility was bugged, so they never discussed what Vegas did: dwell in dreams, twist oblivion. The moment Korn learned what Vegas could do (dreamwalk, some of the poems said), his father would take him out of the facility, put him to work manipulating their enemies.  

All power had a price, though, and his cousin was paying for both of them. Better to let Korn think that his nephew was slowly recovering from an extended coma following the failed takeover.  

Vegas squeezed his arms around his pillow, for a moment looking as young as Kim had the last time Tankhun had seen him. Too many years ago, now. At least Vegas had confirmed that his brothers were still alive.  

“We have to start from the beginning again,” Vegas remarked, the bitterness rankling in his voice. “How have you lasted this long, Khun?” 

“I have a rich inner life,” Tankhun said drily. “What do you need me to do when the next guard arrives?” 

“Let’s not play another long game,” his cousin replied. “Get me a focus. Something that belongs to them. Otherwise it will be too hard to find them later.”  

“Ah,” Tankhun noted, instead of high-tailing it back to his room to hide under the bed. Their last guard had worn the black-on-black uniform of the Theerapanyakul family, had kept very few personal items except— 

“Theerapanyakul pin,” Tankhun said.  

“Fuck that,” was Vegas’s follow-up. “I’m not dealing with someone who actually wants to wear this family’s brand on their chest.”  

His cousin had a point. If someone thought the pin belonged to them, then their dreams were likely not a place Vegas would enjoy trampling around in. A fascinating question (albeit for another time), then, whether Vegas enjoyed tramping around in anyone’s dreams.  

“Sorry, remind me who followed his father into a doomed takeover attempt and then got thrown in here with the other Theerapanyakul heir?” Tankhun asked, because it was worth reminding his cousin that people could change, that they could sway a guard to their side.  

They needed to, if they wanted to escape. Tankhun had an appointment to keep with his father. He wondered again, briefly, what Kinn and Kim had been told when he hadn’t come back from that kidnapping. That he was dead, probably.  

Vegas yawned. “You win,” he told Tankhun. “I need to get back to work.”  

Oh. He had hoped that three nights would be the end of the price Vegas paid for using his power. His cousin looked like he’d break if Tankhun looked at him the wrong way, and Tankhun couldn’t imagine he looked much better.  

“I’ll be fine, Khun,” Vegas grumbled, though he didn’t throw anything as Tankhun settled into a chair. “You don’t have to stay.”  

Tankhun hummed, pretending to examine his nails as his cousin buried his head underneath his blankets. Ever practical, he waited until his breathing had evened out before he whispered, “Sleep well, nong.”  

Winning the lottery (or getting a minor prize from a scratch-off, same difference) never got old. The 20,000 baht prize was the last big one they’d earn—the bigger prizes required identification to claim. They now had enough cash to squirrel some away for his impending demise.  

Their cash flow would drop once neither of them could work legal jobs, but perhaps they wouldn’t need to work. They could move to some sleepy town in the middle of nowhere, one where residents would be so grateful for medical care, they wouldn’t ask too many questions about where it came from.  

Only a few weeks to go until they’d both be free.  

Porsche turned the corner, still lost in dreams about his post-fake-death activities. Sleepy towns in the middle of nowhere would have fewer futures for Chay to navigate, though without money or identification, Chay would have to find some way of getting them food and a place to live... 

...when he saw the blood smeared against the side of one of the buildings, then the dark outline of a body in the alley a few steps away.  

Porsche looked determinedly in front of him. He shouldn’t leave the main road. He shouldn’t see if he could help. He should go back to their apartment. He knew the rules, damn it. He was going to have a strong conversation with himself after this, he thought, as he went to check on the unfortunate person in the alley.  

The man was unconscious on the ground, though at least he’d had the sense to fall over on his good shoulder, not the one staining his white shirt dark from the wound underneath.  

Porsche crouched next to him, snapping once in front of his face to make sure he was out—good, he didn’t need the man waking up before he was done—drawing his pocketknife and cutting through the fabric of the man’s shirt sleeve. Ah, bullet through the shoulder.  

His fingers hovered above the wound, seeking out stray bits of metal, then other contaminants: flecks of dust, lint from the shirt, germs that lived on the skin but shouldn’t get into wounds. Porsche burned them all, even as he slid healing through the hole in the man’s shoulder, until the wound was just a memory of what it had been.   

He left the man a bloody scratch instead—Porsche guessed he would be confused if he woke up to a bloodstained shirt and unblemished skin beneath. If he were confused, he might start asking questions, might check the CCTV, might come looking for him.  

A flash of metal around the man’s throat drew his attention; Porsche followed the length of chain down the (over-exposed, though he wasn’t complaining) expanse of chest. The necklace ended in a bullet, battered out of shape from use.  

What had Chay said? That he’d find a bullet in the dark? Porsche touched the piece of metal dangling from the chain, the metal warmer than any human body could sustain. It was his fire, warming his frozen fingers. 

Oh.  

That night had been so long ago. It hurt, to remember who he’d been, the boy who had his freedom. He only vaguely remembered what he’d done to the man’s attackers—melted their guns, probably, as if that would help. As if they would ever stop coming for him.  

“We’re going to have to stop meeting like this,” Porsche muttered, letting the man’s necklace fall through his fingers, slide over the smooth skin.  

As the bullet dropped onto the man’s chest, black eyes opened and locked on his. This was why he shouldn’t have left the main road. He could have been at home with his feet up right now. Now he would have to deal with the man’s inevitable questions. Porsche hoped he wouldn’t recognize him—likely; that night had been so long ago.  

“You’re awake,” said Porsche. “You fell. How are you feeling?”  

“It’s you,” the man replied in an apparent non sequitur, reverent, as though he’d seen something precious. He definitely had a concussion.  

The man’s hand twitched as he touched his fingers to his shoulder, eyebrows coming together as his fingers slid through the blood Porsche had (artfully) left congealing around the scrape. Sighing, Porsche pushed him back down on the pavement. Just because the wound was healed on the outside didn’t mean that his patient could skip away without repercussions.  

The man’s now-bloody fingers caught his wrist, turning the cuff there back and forth to catch the dim light. Porsche saw his jaw clench, one nostril curling up.  

“Costa,” the man said, voice gone flat. He didn’t let go.  

Well, this was a problem.  

“Do you mind if I ask you some questions? To see how bad you’re hurt? Let’s start with your name,” Porsche said, wishing he’d just ignored the fucking blood on the building and continued on his merry way home.  

The man’s fingers tightened around his wrist, sending a leap of panic through him—Porsche hated feeling trapped. But if he burned the man to make him let go, he would know what Porsche could do. He and Chay would barely be able to make it out of the city before the manhunts started. And word would get back to his uncle.  

“You first,” he rasped, glaring up at him.  

“Jom,” Porsche answered, giving him the name of one of Chay’s bartender friends. The man didn’t look convinced. “Now you go,” he prompted.  

“Kinn,” said the man.   

“Just a few more questions, then, Kinn, and then I’ll let you get up,” Porsche said. “Do you remember how old you are?”  

Kinn’s grip around his wrist was unwavering. The man tilted his chin mutinously, the gesture reeking of you first.  

“All right, I see how this goes,” Porsche said. “I’m twenty-eight. And you?”  

“Thirty,” Kinn replied, making an attempt to rise. He fell back against the concrete, but he didn’t let go of Porsche.  

Porsche’s eyes fastened on the (mostly healed) hole in his shoulder. Kinn was going to tear that wound open again with all that movement, and Porsche was not going to stay around to help him. Porsche was going to go home and put his feet up and in the morning talk to Chay about pulling some strings and moving the timeline forward on the Costa plan so they could get the hell out of here.  

“You healed me,” Kinn said, heaving himself into a sitting position at last.  

“Nope, you were like that when I found you,” he said, trying to yank his wrist out of Kinn’s hands. “What did you do to yourself? Stapler accident?” He chuckled weakly.  

“Leave the Costas,” Kinn said in another non sequitur. “Work for me instead.”  

Maybe he didn’t have a concussion. Maybe he was just...like this.  

“No offense, Kinn, but I don’t even know you,” said Porsche. “Why would I quit my job for you? The Costas are...fine.”  

He struggled to say anything more about his current employers, given that they wouldn’t be his current employers in a few weeks. It was a job like any other, the threat of discovery hanging over him, keeping what he was a secret from everyone but Chay, staying alert for the day that his uncle’s men would inevitably find them again.  

Kinn brought his cuffed wrist closer, the warm points of his fingers digging under the leather and metal as he traced the healer’s sigils with his other hand. Porsche tried not to keep the beginnings of fear off his face, not surprised that this was who the boy he’d rescued had become.  

“The Costas sent a team to kill me earlier,” said Kinn in a conversational tone, eyes snapping up to his face to test his reaction. “What do you think they’ll do when they learn you saved me?”  

Fuck. Blackmail. “What do you want?” Porsche asked.  

“For you to work for me,” Kinn replied immediately. When Porsche shook his head, a smirk emerged on Kinn’s face, the expression of someone about to play pocket aces. “You healed me. Which means you must have found a way around the cuffs.”  

His meaning sank in. Powers had to be regulated, could not be used without permission. Once the authorities found out, the manhunt would be nationwide. They’d never be able to escape. The plan shattered in front of him.  

“Fortunately for you, I need a spy in the Costa household,” Kinn continued. “Comings and goings of the main family members, idle gossip, spyware on their computers, that sort of thing.”  

“I can’t,” Porsche protested, a trifle absently, remembering what had happened to the last spy the Costa family had found—well, he only remembered the man being dragged down the halls screaming, but he could assume what happened afterward. “They’ll find out and come after both of us.”  

But he could work with this. He just had to wait a few more weeks until the Costa family was taken out. Porsche would still die in the chaos. His death would even be convenient for Kinn as well—the man wouldn’t even have to silence his mole.  

“I think you know something about keeping secrets,” said Kinn, tapping the insignia on the cuff. He flashed Porsche another pocket-ace smirk. “You’re mine. Say it.”  

The boy he’d been fourteen years ago would have told him where to shove it. But Porsche had been around long enough to know that the mafia always won. Still, he looked around, as if searching for a way out, before giving up and turning back to Kinn, those black eyes awaiting his surrender.  

“I’m yours,” he said.  

Chapter Text

Kinn hit the snooze button on his alarm and full-body stretched, practically writhing in his sheets, which brought to mind a different type of writhing, one he had wanted to pursue for too many years now. He shut his eyes, fisting his hands in the covers, the familiar fantasy licking under his skin.

“Fire-bringer,” he’d whisper, as the man’s touch glided over his skin, the heat melting away the stress he’d lived with for so long.  

“Your fire-bringer,” the man would agree, and Kinn shuddered at the thought of his lover settling on top of him, his feet (Cold feet. That was a new addition to the fantasy. Kinn wondered where they came from) sliding down Kinn’s legs. Above him, the veins in his arms stood out, the skin fine enough that Kinn could see his quickening pulse.

Kinn imagined a warm mouth on his neck, his insides clenching with anticipation at the slow sucks from his lips, the swipes of tongue. “Please,” he’d beg. “I need you.”

His fire-bringer would lean down, breath hot in his ear. “I’m yours.” 

Annnnnddddd his alarm went off again.

Kinn usually woke up frustrated about something, though admittedly sexual frustration was less common. In his fantasies, the fire-bringer had gotten older as he did, teenage gawkiness blurring into lithe lines before finally maturing into lean muscles. Only his face had remained obscure, a mystery of angles and a mischievous smile that had haunted Kinn ever since.

(He hadn’t smiled the other night. Kinn should have expected this. Fourteen years ago, he had set himself on fire rather than spend another moment in his company)

Jom was definitely not his name. Facial recognition from CCTV should have come back by now. Kinn scrolled through his email, smiling as he found Arm’s report, sent at three in the morning. Hard at work as always, that man. He opened the attached file.

“Hello, Porsche,” Kinn said to the pdf on his phone screen. The screen glitched as he zoomed in, as it always did when he read reports on his phone, but those blurry pictures had to be him. 

No healer’s touch burned the way his did. Kinn had done the research. Healers returned the body to its normal, healthy state—there were actually some fascinating articles in disability studies journals that claimed healers were complicit in the ideology of cure, since their profession operated on the idea that normalcy was a fixed state to which all humans were expected to aspire. What Porsche did with his power was…unheard of.

Fire-bringer. With the fucking mark of the Costas on his wrist.

The cuff wouldn’t work on him, Kinn reassured himself. Cuffs were keyed with the sigils to seal a magic-user’s power. The wrong sigils, in Porsche’s case. And thankfully he’d chosen to masquerade as a healer—no one would harm him in that guise. At least he was being cautious. 

Like everyone, Kinn had been raised on legends of fire-bringers who’d died in their own flames, usually standing in solidarity with mankind in some epic last stand against an unbeatable foe. In all likelihood, as the research noted, the generals feared their power and disposed of them the moment they were no longer needed.

Caution might have driven Porsche to choose his healer identity, but he wasn’t being cautious enough, Kinn thought as he read through the file. Porsche had left his footprints—both digital and physical—everywhere in the city. He had (not enough) in a bank account in his name. He had even listed his employer on LinkedIn.

Kinn tossed his phone aside when the screen glitched again. Time to get up, begin a busy day of convincing the other mafia players in town to 1) pay their damn debts and 2) not send any more assassins. The ones who had attacked him and his brother had been professionals. Three guesses which family had the resources and the animosity to send them.

He shoved his arms through a shirt, remembering the gleam of the Costa cuff against the golden skin of Porsche’s wrist. Something didn’t make sense. He had searched for Porsche.

Oh, he’d had to be careful. He couldn’t ask directly, couldn’t risk the mafia players learning that a fire-bringer existed. But Kinn had monitored the black markets for fourteen years, inquiring after magic-users who displayed unusual abilities. There were always whispers, but he’d never found anything.

(His father had gotten the wrong impression from his black market reconnoitering, warning him that the Theerapanyakuls didn’t have magic-users because a little free will goes a long way. His father preferred his cuffs to be of the mind-games variety.)

To find nothing for fourteen years…and now to find out everything, neatly condensed into an eight-page report. Idly, Kinn wondered if he was walking into a trap. He fidgeted with the bullet around his neck. The metal had never cooled.

The day beckoned. Kinn needed to have a pleasant conversation with the Costa patriarch about the assassination attempts. And if his visit to the Costa compound coincided with a certain healer’s working hours, so much the better.  

Kim Theerapanyakul. Kim Theerapanyakul. Kim Theerapanyakul, Chay whispered to himself as he scrubbed the counter of the bar, as though the mere sound would splinter the thousands of threads of the future that wouldn’t let him go. It had been a few days since he’d last been touched by, apparently, his boss’s boss. Chay bit the inside of his lip. He could hardly ask his boss’s boss to touch him. With the way Kim handled a gun, he’d be lucky to only get fired.  

Short of finding the man—and how could he find him when his power didn’t work on him—and clinging limpet-like to his body, Chay would have to think of some other ruse for Kim’s attention. Perhaps his special bottle of whiskey would shatter (though he might shoot someone if that happened). Perhaps Yok would discover something that would require Kim’s immediate presence (he might also shoot someone if that happened). Perhaps, perhaps… 

But all the futures dropped from his hands when Kim walked into the bar.  Chay concealed his suddenly-shaking hands by wringing out the bar towel in the sink.  

“Good, you’re here,” Kim said. “Chay, right? Can I get a cup of coffee?” 

“Of course,” Chay murmured, pouring the hot liquid into a mug and handing it over, brushing Kim’s hand as he did. Disorienting, the sudden silence in his head, the sudden roar as the futures crowded in afterward.

“You didn’t charge me,” Kim told him.  

“It’s just coffee,” Chay replied. “And you own this place, khun Kim.” 

“Just Kim,” he said. “No special treatment. Charge me.”  

Chay tapped the sale information into the card reader and turned it around to face Kim, who inserted his credit card and entered an obscene amount on the tipping screen before looking up.  

“Sorry again,” he said. “For scaring you the other day. I reacted badly.”  

Chay thought his reaction was understandable, considering the assassination attempt. When he’d found the men their uncle had sold Porsche to, his reaction made Kim’s look downright merciful. Threads of death were woven around everyone, all the time. All he’d had to do was choose the most convenient one. Heart attack, stroke, friendly fire—and by then Porsche had recovered enough to…fire the last man himself. Literally.

“You don’t have to do this,” Chay told him, pointing to the tip screen, though that amount of money was groceries for the month.  

Kim took a sip of coffee, wincing from the heat, the steam curling around his lips. “That coffee pot isn’t even plugged in,” he said, brushing aside Chay’s you don’t have to do this with the insouciance of someone who’d never had to worry about money.  

“Oh yeah,” Chay said. “It does that.”  

When confronted with evidence of the impossible, most people hastened to find a perfectly mundane explanation. Chay suspected that was why the most plausible future took the least power. When he’d been running late for work this morning, the easiest way to solve the problem had been to pick a future where his bus hit every green light.   

“Well,” said Kim, presumably accepting the impossible coffee pot. “Uh, I’m sorry. Again.”  

He put his still-steaming coffee on the bar; his shoulder twitched toward the door. He was leaving! Chay couldn’t allow that.  

“Wait,” he told Kim, and his errant shoulder turned back towards him. “The men who tried to kill you the other night. Do you know who sent them?” 

He’d chosen the wrong question to ask, because Kim’s face went remote, his eyes narrowed as he leaned against the bar, picking up his abandoned cup of coffee with one hand while the other went behind his back. The gesture wasn’t lost on Chay.

“How did you know that they were sent?” Kim asked, as if Chay were incapable of recognizing a coordinated attack.

“Because they were,” Chay said patiently. “What did you do to the people who sent them?”

This was also the wrong question to ask, because Kim’s hand clenched around the handle of the mug. His eyes weren’t quite as remote as before; Chay decided there was anger in them. He wondered if that meant Kim’s answer to his question was nothing.

“Who do you work for?” Kim demanded instead.

“Yok,” Chay replied, though the information didn’t cool the frustration in Kim’s face. He added, “Since Yok works for you, technically I work for you as well.”

For a moment, Kim looked like he was considering pulling whatever weapon he had hidden behind his back. Chay sifted futures through his fingers. His power didn’t work on Kim, so he couldn’t make anything happen to him, but—he looked at the coffee cup in the man’s hands—it was possible for a cup to crack and spill nearly-boiling coffee all over the hands that held it. He twirled that future around his index finger in case he needed it.  

“You have two options,” Kim said, his voice dropping even though they were the only ones in the bar this morning. “You can leave this bar and I will forget that you ever existed. Or you can tell me everything you know about the Costas.”  

Oh. Reflexively, Chay checked the Costa family’s impending demise—murky as ever, though he guessed it would happen in a few weeks. This far out, the threads were still slipping into place, the betrayals twining together…

If Kim wanted to strike the first blow to the family, who was Chay to refuse to help him?

“Everything I know, huh,” he mused, slipping a hand beneath the bar so he could pull the futures he needed. “I know that there’ll be a break in the guard rotation at their compound from 11-12 tonight.” He smiled as he tugged a thread loose. “Because the person in charge of the schedule mistyped the times. One and two are right next to each other on the keyboard, you know.”  

All possibilities. Very common possibility layered over very common possibility, resulting in— 

“And the housekeeper will leave the window of khun Costa’s office open. Third floor, the west-facing side of the building. She’ll be distracted by the, um, unexpected fire alarms testing they will do later this afternoon.”  

Kim’s mouth worked for a moment before he found words. “You’re telling me to sneak into the fucking Costa compound. And what do you want me to do, once I’m there?” 

“You can do whatever you want,” Chay told him. “That’s the advantage of free will.”  

For people whose magic wasn’t cuffed, anyway. He repressed a shiver as he braided possibilities.

“The password to khun Costa’s computer is letmein123. He’ll get locked out of his account in an hour and be so irritated by the time that IT gets him back in that he’ll choose the easiest password he can.” Chay stopped, trying to interpret Kim’s stare. “Do you maybe want to write any of this down?” he asked.  

“You must think I’m stupid,” Kim hissed in reply. “This is a trap.”  

In retrospect, Chay could see how he had arrived at that conclusion. Perhaps he’d made it too easy for Kim to succeed. Next time he would have to add some difficulty to allay the man’s suspicions. If there was a next time.  

“There is no fucking way that the password is—” and Kim stopped, the disgust working on him so powerfully that he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He lunged at Chay instead.  

Chay crooked his index finger and Kim’s coffee cup shattered, arresting his momentum as the liquid spilled over his fingers, leaving pink streaks of first-degree burns in its wake.  

“Fuck,” Kim swore, and Chay handed over a bar towel. “How is that so fucking hot? It’s not even plugged in!”  

“It does that,” Chay said offhandedly. “Do you want another cup?”  

But Kim’s lunge was successful this time. The man hauled him halfway across the bar, and time fell away from him once more. Abruptly Chay realized that Kim could be dangerous. He didn’t want to be powerless, just in control. 

Most seers succumbed. They saw things they had no right to see, or caused futures too impossible to comprehend. Once they’d cross that threshold, they stopped being able to differentiate between present and future, lost in a sort of timelessness until they died.

Kim’s thumb pressed into the soft spot beneath his chin, forcing Chay’s head up and back, to meet his eyes.  

“You’re on shift till closing,” Kim said, and Chay nodded. “I’ll be back then. You better have an explanation for how you know all this.”  

“Sure thing,” Chay managed around the pressure of Kim’s thumb under his jaw. 

The man released him then, and Chay staggered backwards as time pressed against him with renewed force. With another dark look at the impossible coffee pot, Kim left the bar, leaving Chay to decide how much he wanted to tell him.

Foresight was rare, but not unheard-of. A seer or fore-teller would probably be able to focus on the weaknesses in a mafia family’s security. Plausible enough—and if Kim tried to cuff him, the sigils wouldn’t work. Chay hoped Kim wouldn’t do that—he took a moment to determine what he’d do if the man tried.

Of course, his power didn’t work on Kim. But Chay had something better than power.

Porsche shouldn’t have been surprised when Kinn Theerapanyakul came to the Costa compound and demanded to meet with khun Costa himself. The man had seemed highly motivated the other night. Porsche’d had to pry his hands from his wrist to make him let go. He’d been tempted to reinforce the lesson—it wouldn’t have been the first time Porsche had set a pair of wandering hands on fire—but Porsche was determined not to give Kinn any confirmation on who he was.

Even so, he hadn’t expected Kinn to show up at the compound of the man who’d sent assassins after him. Kinn didn’t even have the grace to look threatened as he lounged in a chair on the terrace, sipping a julep, trading threats with khun Costa.

Hiding behind a tree, Porsche sneaked a peak at the mafiosos once again.

“I heard you and your brother were attacked the other day,” khun Costa noted, as though he weren’t the one who’d sent the assassins. “I hope you are healing from your injuries?”

Kinn took the sprig of mint from his julep, twirling the leaves between his fingers. “We all live dangerous lives, Stefano. The attackers weren’t particularly skilled. My brother Kim said that the ones sent after him even had faulty weapons. Whoever sent them after us didn’t know much about assassination.”

“I’m sure they will learn,” said the other mafioso, bringing his own drink to his lips.

Then the compound’s fire alarms went off.

Porsche nearly fell out from behind his tree. He was not the only one; the fire alarms also treed two eavesdropping bodyguards and a waiter. Even outside, the racket was deafening. For the first time, Kinn looked perturbed enough to look back toward the compound.

(There was no fire in the compound. Porsche would have felt it.)

After a moment, the alarms ceased and a bodyguard—not the ones who had gone back to eavesdropping—came to whisper in khun Costa’s ear. The patriarch picked up his drink again.

“Just a test,” he told Kinn. “No cause for alarm.”

“Oh,” Kinn acknowledged. He looked chagrined as he admitted, “Unfortunately, it appears that I was…er, alarmed.”

He held up the hand that had been holding his glass, the blood dripping down from several slices in the palm.

“Ouch,” was the first honest remark khun Costa had uttered since Kinn’s arrival. The mafioso extended a handkerchief toward Kinn. “I’ll call a healer.”

Porsche squinted. Were there still glass shards embedded in his palm? Hard to tell with the glare, but he thought there might be. Kinn had crushed a glass into his hand just to see him. Porsche had thought him highly motivated. He hadn’t considered that Kinn might be actually—

“Thank you,” Kinn said. “I heard you had a few healers in the compound. I look forward to seeing what they can do.”

One of the bodyguards got on the phone as Kinn dabbed at his bloody hand. Porsche began to extricate himself from the tree. He was the healer on duty today; he’d need to get to the two men before the bodyguards sent someone to his dorm in the compound and found him gone.

“I’ve heard you don’t have any magic-users in your household,” khun Costa said, and Porsche stopped, because if that was the case, why the hell had Kinn tried to recruit him the other night?

“That’s correct,” Kinn replied. “We don’t have any quarrel with those who do, however.”

“Still, it means that when you’re wounded, you’ll keep bleeding,” and there was no misreading the threat in the Costa patriarch’s words.

“I’ll be sure to remember that,” Kinn said equably, wringing the blood out of the man’s handkerchief before handing it back. “Where’s that healer?”

Porsche hopped onto the sidewalk and jogged to the terrace, arriving just as the irritated bodyguards returned from his empty dorm room, ready to report his absence. He shot them a beatific grin. They did not look amused.

“Ah, here he is,” khun Costa said. “The newest healer in my household. How do you like it so far, Porsche?” He extended a hand for Porsche’s wrist.

Porsche obeyed and the Costa patriarch swiped his hand over the sigils. If he’d actually been a healer, the action would have commanded him to use his powers to whatever extent the man desired. Fortunately, the cuff didn’t work on him, so he felt only a sick swooping sensation as the cuffs tried to harness his magic and failed.

Across from them, Kinn’s brows came together as he saw khun Costa’s attempt to control Porsche’s power. He was probably imagining what he would do to Porsche if he belonged to him instead.

Bowing to khun Costa, Porsche said what was expected: “I’m grateful for any opportunity to serve.”

The skin of Kinn’s forehead creased as his frown deepened. Porsche spared a moment to mourn for the damage to the skin cells—frowning increased the odds of fine lines and wrinkles, and the collagen didn’t last forever. Then he remembered that he didn’t care.

“You see, Kinn?” asked khun Costa. “They like to be used.”

A vicious look flashed across Kinn’s face, too quick for the other mafioso to see. For Porsche’s part, he was glad the Costa patriarch would die in a few weeks. He’d have to talk to Chay and see if the future was any clearer than it had been.

He bowed again. “Khun Kinn, if you would accompany me to the infirmary, I can see to your hand.”

Porsche dared not speak to him as they moved through the compound. But once they were in the infirmary, Porsche spun towards him.

“Khun Costa has more than one healer, you know,” he said sullenly. “You sliced your hand open and there was no guarantee you’d get me.”

He pointed at Kinn’s bloody palm—he’d been right about the shards of glass embedded there. Those would be interesting to remove, since they’d slice the nerves on the way out. He wondered whether he could channel his power through the glass. Glass was made of silica, the product of fire and earth…

“You’re the guarantee, Porsche,” Kinn told him, because khun Costa had said his name earlier. He’d never seemed convinced by the Jom ruse, anyway.  Of course Kinn knew he would come; the future of the plan was in his hands. This was what had become of the boy he’d saved—this menace.

“So how does this spy thing work?” Porsche asked. 

Kinn drew a cell phone out of his pocket. “Everything you have goes on this. Text me when you find something and we’ll meet up. If you can figure out when the Costas plan to attack next, I’d be very grateful.”

Porsche took the phone like it was a scorpion. “How should I know when the Costas will attack?” he demanded, wondering whether he could get Kinn’s hand to heal around the glass and then yank it out.  

“Healer,” Kinn pointed out, as though the answer was obvious. “Costa will lose men in an attack. There will be casualties.”

Which meant there would be bandages and antiseptic and narcotics. Porsche would have to keep an eye on the purchase orders—and the other healers. Most couldn’t do what he could, didn’t have an inferno of power behind every papercut. Speaking of—

“Your hand,” he told Kinn, putting aside the man’s stupid phone and heading to the sink to wash his. When he’d finished soaping and scrubbing, Porsche clarified. “If you walk out of here with half a julep glass still stuck in your hand, I’m dead.”

“Nonsense; they’ll be thrilled if you accidentally kill me,” Kinn replied, but he let Porsche take his hand anyway.

He could channel power through the silica, Porsche found; the glass remembered the heat that had created it, welcomed him in, healed the sliced nerves (and a tendon—the man had no sense of self-preservation) as he extracted each shard. A few minutes later, the procedure was complete, and Porsche fought off the shivers that were the drawback of his power.

Flawless skin slid against his palm. He raised his eyes to Kinn’s. The man blinked a few times, something in his eyes Porsche had trouble reading.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come work for me?” Kinn asked. “We can leave right now. You wouldn’t have to spy for me—you could do whatever you wanted.”

Alternatively, Porsche could wait a few weeks for the Costa family to be destroyed. Once he’d ostensibly died with them, he could do whatever he wanted…away from Kinn, away from his uncle and whoever his uncle had sold him to this time, away from everyone in the world who looked at him and calculated how many people he could burn.

“We’d have to fight our way through the compound,” Porsche pointed out.

“Not a problem,” Kinn replied.

Porsche shook his head.  

That night, Kim oozed through the window on the third floor of the Costa compound. Two out of three so far; there had been a hole in the guard rotation and the window had been cracked as promised. Easy enough for someone on the inside to arrange.

Chay had to have someone on the inside.

But if he had someone on the inside, why couldn’t that person get the information themselves? The risk of exposure was staggering, particularly when he had no intention of sharing whatever he found in the Costa networks.

He surveyed the office, wrapped in shadows this late in the evening, half-expecting a contingent of guards to leap out of hiding and (try to) take him captive. But the room was empty, so Kim directed his most threatening glare at a deeper pocket of shadows in the corner before turning his attention back to the job.

Stefano Costa, the Costa patriarch, had left the laptop atop a haphazardly piled heap of papers on his desk, almost as if that ridiculous story about getting locked out of his computer and giving up in frustration were true. Which it wasn’t. Kim opened the laptop, gritting his teeth as he typed in l-e-t-m-e-i-n-1-2-3. There was no way this was going to work. No fucking mafia lord would use letmein123 as the fucking password to their fucking computer.

Kim hit enter and the man’s desktop appeared a moment later. “Oh fuck,” he breathed, even as he slipped a drive into the computer—his burned hands still twinged from the coffee earlier.

Three out of three; a few minutes later and he was on his way. There had to be a catch, somewhere. Things weren’t supposed to be this easy for him. But as he melted into the bushes around the property and caught a bus back to where he’d left his car, Kim was forced to concede that he’d pulled off one of the most complete reconnaissance jobs of his career.  

How had Chay known?

He’d been different in the light of day—without the blue lights of the bar shining down on him; not the starry-eyed creature who he (thought he) had scared to death when he’d pulled a gun on him post assassination attempt the other night. His eyes this morning had been perfectly earthly, albeit vacant when he’d said—

Wait, what had he said? “He’ll get locked out of his account in an hour.”

In an hour.

Seer, Kim realized. Shit, fore-teller. An uncuffed fore-teller was serving drinks and seeing the future in his bar. The place was going to get ransacked when the other mafia players found out about Chay and came after him—he better not be seeing anyone else’s future—

Kim nearly missed his stop and had to launch himself from the moving bus as it pulled away from the curb. Had the fore-teller known that would happen, too? Damn it, he’d ordered Chay to tell him everything he knew about the Costa family. Everything was a very broad concept for someone who could see the future.

An unlimited concept. Endless, like the possibilities.

Kim yanked open his car door.

“It worked,” Kim drawled later, waiting in the alley as the fore-teller locked up for the night. Chay yelped as he spun around.

“I didn’t see you,” he said reproachfully, but Kim didn’t care.

Chay didn’t resist as Kim went for his wrists, pressing his thumbs into the pulse points, where cuffs should rest, because that’s what people did to magic-users.

“Fore-teller,” Kim said, and Chay’s eyes widened. “I should report you. Or cuff you myself,” he continued. “What am I going to do, do you know?”

“No fore-teller can see their own future,” Chay replied. “But if you report me, I won’t be able to tell you that the Costa family’s head bodyguard is going to overdraw his bank account from his online gambling habit tomorrow night.”

“Oh?” Debt made an employee vulnerable; gambling would make the man even more susceptible to being turned. If the head bodyguard was his, Kim would have enough information about the guard rotation to retaliate for those failed assassination attempts the other night. He could—

Enough. The fore-teller was distracting him. Kim could feel his pulse, too fucking measured for someone who should be pleading with him to spare him. He leaned closer.

“You lied to me, before,” he said. “I told you to tell me everything you knew about the Costas. Now I can make you.”

Blood beat beneath his fingers; Kim expected fear.

He didn’t expect the fore-teller to smile. Kim stopped breathing for a moment, struck by the sweetness of the expression, the limpid gaze, that—soft mouth.

But then those perfect lips parted, and Chay said:

          “Vices return and stormclouds fly;

          moonlight chafes the gloaming spy.

          Approach then! The guardian of the vault,

          but be gentle, ere he find you at fault.”

What.

“Huh?” Kim managed, having no idea how to respond to someone spouting poetry. This was why fore-tellers were put in cuffs in the first place (actually, in the old days, they’d used collars)—in the legends, their cryptic prophecies were the stuff of wars.  

Chay produced a melodramatic sigh, sounding like he’d heaved up the depths of his lungs. “Sure, you can make me to share whatever I see with you. But you can’t make me to give you the information in a usable medium. So, either I stay free and give you intel, or you cuff me and get poetry.”

Tactfully, Kim didn’t mention that his family had ways to make you talk. He could turn the fore-teller over to his father, or Kinn, but—

“What do you get out of it?” Kim asked, because Chay had no reason to draw attention to himself. It was a huge risk, trusting anyone with that kind of secret.

“The Costas have my brother,” answered Chay, the smile dropping from his face. “If you’re going after them, then I want in.”

Ah. Revenge was reason enough to risk exposure. Kim let him go, thinking of his own broken family. It had been easy to leave once they’d learned Tankhun wasn’t coming back, especially with Kinn telling him to get out while you still can. Unfortunately, getting out hadn’t stopped the minor family’s men from coming after him last year.

“Is he like you?” he asked. “Your brother.”

“Something like that,” Chay replied.

Magic tended to run in families. If the Costas had taken Chay’s brother, then no doubt they were looking for him too. A hard decision, then, whether to stay away and save himself, or fight. 

“My brother was taken as well,” Kim found himself saying.

Chay’s eyelids flickered; Kim shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. He wanted to get back to the Costas. The sooner he could take out a few of their men in retaliation for those assassination attempts, the sooner he could turn to the next mafia family and convince them that the Theerapanyakuls would not be an easy target, and then he’d turn to the next mafia family, and then the next. He couldn’t think about Tankhun, not when he had so many other things to do—

“Your brother hasn’t seen the sun in many years now,” Chay said.

Ugh, Kim was done with poetry. “Something like that,” he agreed. “You were telling me about the head bodyguard?”

Eventually he would run out of mafia families to ruin, and one day, perhaps, he’d have a future again. In front of him, the fore-teller’s lips moved as he laid out another plan that should be ridiculous (but now he knew better) involving a debt-ridden bodyguard, an arcade, and a one-way ticket out of the country.

Kim wondered what his own future held, but he didn’t ask.

The man looked around him uncertainly, some part of him aware that he’d moved from one dream to another. But people were so pliable in their dreams, so disinclined to resist. As if they could resist. Vegas clenched his fist around the man’s Theerapanyakul lapel pin. He made sure they couldn’t resist.

“Did you find everything you were looking for today?” he asked the man, the supermarket checker from hell.

The man looked up from putting a bag of citrus on the belt at his check-out register.

“Yes, thanks,” he said, some part of him likely wondering why he was dreaming about a supermarket, of all places.

The supermarket was one of Vegas’s favorite creations. In the beginning, sure, he’d devoted too much head space to crafting the finest slasher-movie nightmares, complete with chainsaws and echoes of evil laughter. The issue with those nightmares, though, is they made his victims want to wake up.

Better to lure them in with an innocuous front. That was the business model of the supermarket, actually.

“Are you sure? You don’t want to take another look?” Vegas questioned, indicating the grab-and-go racks beside the checkout.

In an ordinary supermarket, the grab-and-go racks would be stocked with chips and candy bars and junk newspapers. Vegas’s version had slightly different offerings, more suited to the world they lived in: bags of drugs, stacks of fake passports, neat packages of cash, firearms. The one they grabbed first said so much about them.

Vegas was disappointed when their new guard went for the cash. The last one had chosen the fake passports—hiding something, a mystery to be unraveled. He’d been interesting. The ones who went for the money just…wanted money.

“The credit card is stolen,” the man told him conversationally as he inserted it into the chip reader.  

People always talked like this in their dreams. They held nothing back from him. His power made interrogations much more effective—so long as he was willing to pay the price. The pin bit into his palm.

“How much money do you need?” Vegas asked.

The man looked surprised by the question. He took a moment to think, as the chip reader chimed and a receipt printed out.

“I’ll never have enough money,” the man answered at last, taking his bag of citrus and stack of cash.

Vegas let him leave the supermarket. It was enough for one night. He didn’t want his victim to grow suspicious of his dreams too quickly—another reason to avoid the nightmares for a time. Perhaps tomorrow he would try again, see if the man’s need for money stemmed from a specific circumstance or if it were merely pathological.

The checkout lane beeped at him. Ah yes. Vegas opened his hand, let the Theerapanyakul pin fall from his fingers. All power had a price. Time for him to pay up.

“Did you find everything you were looking for today?” Vegas asked the newest customer, as a picture frame came down the conveyer belt.

“Indeed,” said Korn Theerapanyakul, and Vegas’s head snapped up because no, not again.

He’d known the attack on the major family had failed when he’d seen his father’s body in the hallway. Even so, Vegas had run, trying to buy a few minutes to warn his brother before the guards found him. The gunshots had been wholly expected. The unexpected part had been waking up in the facility a few months later.

“As you can see,” the Theerapanyakul patriarch said, indicating the picture frame he was buying, “I always find what I’m looking for.”

Fuck. Macau.

Sure enough, his brother’s face stared up at him from the picture frame. His brother’s lower lip quivered—except lips couldn’t move in pictures—except they could in nightmares, and Vegas needed to wake up.

“He has nothing to do with any of this,” he told his uncle. “Let him go.”

Despite his exhortation, his knuckles were going white from where he’d clenched them around the frame. Wood splintered; glass cracked, and then a drop of blood landed on the picture, obscuring his brother’s face entirely. More drops fell onto the ruined picture. Vegas looked up to see blood dripping out of the ceiling tiles of the supermarket from hell.

He needed to wake up.

“Is that your blood or his?” asked Korn, unconcerned. He inserted his credit card into the chip reader. “My money’s on him. You left your brother all alone. He was so easy for me to find.”

At first Vegas thought the fraud detection alarms had gone off as the noise shredded his eardrums. But then the noise intensified and he dropped his brother’s picture to the ground as he clapped his palms over his ears, the panic rising inside him as he tried to escape the wailing in his head, the wailing outside his head—

He opened his eyes.  

“Dreaming about daddy dearest again, nong?” came Tankhun’s voice. “I know that scream.”

“He found Macau,” Vegas said, turning his face into his pillow because he couldn’t bear to see Tankhun’s sympathy. Or perhaps it was pity, the way his cousin looked at him as though he was losing his mind. Vegas was in control of himself, he was. “What if he finds Macau?” he asked.

Tankhun sighed. “Your brother was studying abroad when you and Kan attacked,” he reminded Vegas. “You texted him before you were shot. He would have had time to escape.”

Vegas had managed one word to his brother before Korn’s men had shot him by the poolside: Run. He wished he knew whether his brother had.

“The new guard,” he began, emerging from his pillow.

“Ken, yes,” said Tankhun. “The pin worked?”

“It was a very good lift,” Vegas acknowledged.

His cousin did hail fellow well met very well. Within an hour he was hanging off the new guard as the man tried to do his job, touchy-feely and gregarious, the way Vegas remembered his eldest cousin before the kidnapping. The families were closer back then, at least until Tankhun’s purported death, when his father had told him to make Kinn his rival. 

Vegas found himself wondering (again) why his cousin was still here. He was not the best judge of mental fortitude, but surely once his uncle realized that the behaviors that had landed his son in this hellhole had abated, Tankhun would be on his way home.

“He wants money,” Vegas said eventually. “He’s not very interesting.”

“Still, that’s unfortunate,” his cousin replied. “Our cash reserves are rather limited.”

By which he meant nonexistent. They had boring books and movies that were years out-of-date. Nothing to tempt the newest guard.

“We could try to lure him into a waking dream where he agrees to a bribe,” Vegas suggested, though it didn’t sound very plausible to him. Maybe if he still had access to the minor family’s drug stash.

Tankhun looked dubious. “I’m sure a better solution will emerge. You should get some rest.”

He didn’t say nong, but Vegas heard it anyway. “I’ve been resting for hours,” he protested, turning his pillow over to find a cool spot. The action shook free the Theerapanyakul pin his cousin had stolen, and Vegas dropped it on his bedside table with a sharp clink.

They both stared at the emblem of their family.

Porsche crept back to his dorm in the Costa compound, covered in a mirage, the heat waves shimmering around him, preventing him from being seen. It wasn’t a perfect disguise—that thief/hacker/other variety of ne’er-do-well in khun Costa’s office earlier had known something was there.

 But most people found a perfectly normal excuse to explain away whatever they had seen. The spooked ne’er-do-well had even left Porsche the papers on the desk, preferring to copy the laptop’s hard drive or something. Young people. Always so obsessed with technology.

(Porsche had used Kinn’s phone to scan the papers.)

Porsche took the precaution of dragging his ex-roommate’s bed in front of the door before inspecting his haul. His ex-roommate had moved out a few days after Porsche had moved in, after the thermostat had broken and the room had grown unbearably hot. Very strange.

So many notes in khun Costa’s crabbed handwriting. Numbers, dates, locations, to-do lists. Porsche wasn’t sure exactly what Kinn might find useful, but that also wasn’t his fucking problem, now was it? Not for the man who was blackmailing him.

There was one picture he wasn’t sharing with Kinn, ever. Porsche hadn’t read the black market listings for a few weeks. His uncle—and whichever organization his uncle had sold himself to this time—must have picked up his trail by now.

Porsche trailed a finger down the As (good luck finding an atmokinetic—a weather-wizard hadn’t been born in years), the Bs, the Cs (so many mafiosos were looking to pawn off their clairaudists, since listening devices were cheaper), the Ds and Es before finally falling on—

Fire-bringer, believed to be hiding in Bangkok. Reward if found or captured. Approach with caution; he has killed before.

Yup, they knew where he was.

When they wrote he has killed before, what they meant was he killed someone besides the people we told him to kill.

When their uncle Arthee had found them, Porsche had been too naïve (too stupid) to know to lie his power. There were so many uses for fire! He’d thought that his uncle would appreciate his healing or his cooking. Hell, Porsche could even incinerate garbage, though he wasn’t sure about his carbon footprint. His burn your enemies to a crisp function was the least impressive ability he had.

Unfortunately, it was the only one his uncle had been interested in. The only ability anyone wanted.

Porsche deleted the picture. He only had to hold out another couple weeks—he wanted his uncle to find him, he had to remember. Even when Arthee found out where he was, he wouldn’t be able to get into the Costa compound. His uncle didn’t exactly play in the (mafia) big leagues.

Thoughts of the mafia big leagues led to thoughts of Kinn. Was the man preparing for a strike on the Costa family? Porsche didn’t think so, given that he’d sauntered into the compound today and placidly sipped on a julep. Those weren’t the actions of someone plotting mass murder. But…if he could make Kinn believe that taking out the Costas was the right thing to do…

Porsche could still (apparently) die in the resulting chaos.

He unlocked Kinn’s phone again and texted Chay’s number: It’s me. I found a phone. We need to talk.

Perhaps the future was unclear because Porsche had gotten himself involved in it. Chay was going to roll his eyes at him, until Porsche told his brother about khun Costa’s unfortunate “they like to be used” comment, and then his brother was going to find a very convenient, very painful thread to pull to arrange the man’s death.

As Chay often reminded him, those bad nights when the guilt bubbled like tar in his chest, every future ended in death anyway. Whether sooner or later, the end was just another future to arrange. It didn’t make Porsche feel any better, but was a relief to know that Chay wasn’t haunted by their past the way he was.

He texted Kinn: I have what you want. Hum Bar, 11am, a week from today.

He’d need to think of a lie momentous enough to bring about the wrath of the Theerapanyakuls—something more momentous than an assassination attempt on the heir, since all that had done was bring Kinn to the compound. He needed something that would make Kinn furious.

Unbidden, the flash in the man’s eyes when khun Costa had said he’d liked to be used lanced through his sternum. Surprised, Porsche raised his head to find his skin limned in flame, the red of embers impatient to be brought to life.

So it was going to be one of those nights, wasn’t it?

Porsche flung aside his phone before he melted the plastic and gave himself up to whatever fire was inside him, shuddering at the witch-lines of heat racing through his veins, the consuming hunger of the hearth warring with the desire to be consumed.

His phone buzzed with a reply.

“In a minute,” Porsche murmured, as he imagined fire scorching earth, of eyes glowing (black eyes. Those were a new addition to the fantasy. Porsche wondered where they came from) as they fastened on his. “I’m busy.”

Chapter Text

Another week, more stocking to do. Chay stared at the boxes before resigning himself to a few hours of sweat and shredded cuticles from the cardboard. He wondered whether he could arrange a future where the cardboard was gentler on his fingers, but that was asking a bit much for cardboard. It was cardboard. Chay could change the future, not achieve the impossible.

From what he’d been able to learn, reaching for the impossible was where people like him went wrong. Yutana, one of the foretellers of old, had reached so far into the future that he hadn’t been able to come back—his mind couldn’t handle the burden of so many lives, so many deaths, so many possibilities. So Chay was careful. He limited himself to the near future, to events that weren’t too far out of the ordinary. He didn’t intervene.

Often.

Which was why the thought of Kim’s locked-in-an-asylum brother niggled at him, like a cavity in the making. Future after future of thwarted escape, of loneliness, the mental decay of despair. Most people looked forward to whatever was to come. Kim’s brother didn’t.  

Chay didn’t know how to escape from an asylum, what type of futures to thread to give the brother the chance he’d need. The (lack of) knowledge hurt, made him want to break the rules he’d set out for himself, make it happen without thinking through the possibilities.

“Hia,” he said, when Porsche opened the back door.

“Are you here to help with stocking?” Chay asked hopefully as he extricated himself from a too-warm hug.

Porsche calculated the mountain of cardboard boxes on the floor of the stock room. “I’ll get one of my, er, friends to do it,” he said, though he took the box cutter Chay handed him. “What do you know about Kinn Theerapanyakul?”

The name tugged at Chay’s mind, pulling the shadowy outlines of a face into view, the glimmering threads that slipped away from his grasp. He recognized the face, though—he’d seen it before. The better question was what Porsche knew about Kinn Theerapanyakul, that one moment Chay had been able to see the man’s future and the next moment it was as unclear as Porsche’s own.

“This is his brother’s bar,” Chay said instead.

“Oh,” and Porsche’s shoulders hunched in. “Is it a trap, then, do you think? That they’re both coming after us?”

What Chay knew was how very often coincidence was mistaken for fate. He’d never come across one of those fixed, stars-aligned events so common in the legends. Every great event was held together by thousands of filaments, tiny decisions that shaped the whole.

“Why does it feel like a trap?” he asked instead, not mentioning Kim, whose ability to stop his power did seem sort of like a trap. A wonderful trap.

Porsche ripped into another box. “I saved him. Kinn. Years ago, before Arthee found us.” He stuck his tongue out at a bottle of wild berry vodka. “I found him again the other night. He—”

“Wants you,” Chay said, grasping at a last shred of a vision, hands clasped around warm metal, sadness tempered by hope.

“Yeah, but does he want me in the this world is going to burn way, or in the…uh,” Porsche trailed off, opening another box.

Chay didn’t have enough information to answer the question, though it would be the first time someone had laid a honey trap for Porsche, if that was Kim’s brother’s motive. When Chay had still been (legally) alive, they’d tried to use him against his brother. After he’d (legally) died, they’d gone after his friends instead—which was why Porsche no longer had any friends.

They both jumped as someone knocked on the front door of the bar.

“Your, er, friend is here,” Chay said, looking forward to seeing the man in person. Sometimes that helped when the future was unclear. Physical presence gave him something to focus on instead of trawling through every future the roughly ten million residents of the city had to offer. Not that Chay would ever dare to read that many futures at once.  

Instead, Porsche spun him around and pushed him toward the back door. “I don’t want him seeing you,” his brother said. “Not until we know more.”

Chay didn’t protest—at least someone else would have to stock—but he sneaked a glimpse on the way out, noticing how the broken fibers around the man all reached out for Porsche. Coincidence, he reminded himself as he stepped into the alley behind the bar. Not fate.

“Did you have a reason for picking this particular establishment?” Kinn asked, looking down his nose at the boxes littered on the floor of the dive bar's stockroom. “There are better places to have a drink with me. Although—” he disappeared into Chay’s manager’s office. “I think my brother falsified business expenses to get this bourbon.”

He emerged triumphant, one hand wrapped around the neck of a brown bottle.

“I texted you to exchange information, not have a drink,” Porsche protested as Kinn poured lavish fingers into two rocks glasses.

“We’re multitasking,” Kinn told him, tipping a little more into his own glass. “My accountant would send me An Email if I bought this with my own money.”

He was too calm. He should be concerned about the information Porsche was about to give him. He shouldn’t be sprawling out on a stack of boxes, raising his rocks glass to his mouth, unconcernedly putting away whiskey Chay was probably going to be blamed for when it went missing.

“My friend Jom works here,” Porsche said. “If he gets fired because you stole your brother’s bourbon…”

“Was that who you were just talking to?” asked Kinn. “I would be happy to talk to my brother, of course. But what would you be willing to do to make it worth my while?” He lounged back on the liquor boxes, his legs wide apart as he sipped at his bourbon.  

Porsche stared. Innuendo was layered heavy in the man’s voice; his meaning was clear enough that for a moment flames took over his vision. At first they were flames, as Porsche remembered the other night, but then he zeroed in on the exorbitantly expensive liquor the man was sipping. It would be difficult if he could manage it, though very, very clever.

“I’m willing to do a lot for my friends,” Porsche offered, starting forward, moving slowly enough that Kinn’s eyes widened. “But I don’t know what could possibly interest you, khun Kinn. You’re so much more sophisticated than I am.”

“You’ve never called me khun before,” Kinn said, his head dropping back to look up at him as Porsche got closer, standing between his legs to reach for the glass of bourbon Kinn had poured him. “Is this newfound subservience part of saving your friend’s job? Or—”

“Or,” Porsche agreed, as the very expensive bourbon slid over his tongue and down his throat. Kinn’s eyes dropped to his lips, his hands slack on his thighs, the lazy perusal making his chest glow—though that must be from the bourbon. 

Flashpoint: the temperature at which a substance ignited. Porsche set Kinn’s glass on fire. Cask-strength, it burned blue, and quickly.

“Or what?” Kinn asked. “Come closer, Porsche.”

Behind him, his forgotten drink burned itself out, and Porsche took the heat from the liquid, leaving Kinn with a…virgin bourbon. “I don’t know, khun Kinn,” he protested. “What will I have to do to save my friend from being fired because you drank your brother’s bourbon? Why can’t I just have his manager check the security cameras?”

Kinn glanced at the cameras overhead, his mouth quirking up. “It’s Kim,” he said. “There’s no way those cameras are recording our faces. He likes his privacy.”

Porsche stilled. Chay needed some way to see what was coming, even if it was CCTV. Only a few more weeks, he reminded himself, the bourbon still glowing in his chest. He could deal with all this for a few more weeks.

Kinn looked him over, his glass halfway to his lips. “Are we done playing, then?” he asked, then coughed as the virgin bourbon hit his tongue.

“I’m ready to work,” Porsche clarified, backing away as Kinn peered into his ruined drink. “I took pictures of the papers on khun Costa’s desk.”

“That was dangerous,” Kinn told him immediately, setting his glass back down on his cardboard-liquor-box throne. “You could have been caught.”

What a travesty for the Theerapanyakul heir, to learn his latest mole was no more. “If you want the information, then you need to do something for me first. I want money,” Porsche said, the request sticking a bit in his chest. They could always use more cash. It just grated on him to make the request to Kinn.  

Kinn cocked his head to the side. “Most people do,” he acknowledged. “But tell me, is this sudden need for cash because there was an ad in the black market listings for a fire-bringer?”

Shit.

“I should have known you’d read the listings,” Porsche said, pulling two bottles out of one of the boxes and heading to the back to stock them. He’d just put them on the shelf when Kinn joined him, hefting two cases in his arms easily—the show-off.

“I’m glad you’re interested in leaving the Costas,” Kinn said, shoving bottles onto the shelves. “But you don’t have to disappear entirely, if that’s why you’re asking for money. There are other mafia families in the city. Ones who—”

“You’re all the same,” Porsche broke in, reminding himself. No matter how good Kinn looked stretching out on a stack of cardboard boxes, he would change the moment Porsche was in his compound, under his control.

He went back to the boxes, bending to pick one up, biting his lip as the scar tissue in his back twinged from the movement.

“You’re lifting that wrong,” Kinn said, suddenly behind him. “You’ll hurt your back,” and then his hand was on Porsche’s spine, grazing the hard ridges of scar tissue.

Porsche whirled, retreating a few steps as awareness grew in the other man’s face. “Back surgery!” he lied, too quickly. “Brings a whole new meaning to physician, heal thyself, am I right?”

Kinn wasn’t convinced, suspicion eloquent in the faint lines between his eyebrows, the tension at the corners of his mouth. Porsche busied himself with the pile of boxes, resuming his slow bottle-by-bottle progress—there was no more point in hiding the range of motion that the scars had cost him. After a moment, the other man joined him, lifting the boxes easily, as Porsche should have been able to do.

They finished stocking in half the time it would have taken him and Chay.

“How much would it take?” Kinn asked, breaking the silence. “You wanted money,” he reminded him, as Porsche gave him a blank look. “Or would you rather me kill whoever’s coming after you?”

Metal pressed against his shoulders. The bottles behind him rattled, and for a moment they both stilled, looking up to see if any would fall. When they steadied at last, Porsche stopped courting his death via shards of glass, backing up against the wall this time, keeping his power under control—no need to introduce open flame in a room full of flammable substances.

“Is someone coming after me?” he feinted at Kinn. “You’ll have to let me know.”

Kinn shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to put together, Porsche. You can tell me who it is.”  

He was tempted, but trust was a risk he couldn’t afford. The path to Porsche also led to Chay, and he couldn’t allow whichever mafioso his uncle had sold them to this time to get their hands on his brother.

Porsche shook his head. “I’d rather take your money,” he said, trying to breathe. “50,000 baht will be enough.”

“That’s a lot,” Kinn noted, amused. “I don’t suppose you take card?” When Porsche said nothing, Kinn’s amusement widened into an outright smile. “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until I hit an ATM.”

He stacked his virgin bourbon on top of Porsche’s empty glass, left both on one of the stockroom shelves. The movement shook free the chain around the man’s neck, the bullet glinting at its end. Healing was his weakness, his uncle had told him, and he’d been right; the acts of kindness had left him bound to—

“Keep the phone, Porsche,” Kinn said, turning toward the door. “I’ll be in touch.”

Porsche watched him leave. Kinn had never even asked for the information he had on khun Costa.

“Oh good, you’re here,” Kinn said as his brother strode into his office.

“Bourbon,” Kim replied in a dark tone, which was his brother’s shorthand for you stole my bourbon and I am extremely irritated by your continued presence in my life.

Kinn covered his mouth with his hand, wiping away the humor as he said, “You shouldn’t be using your bar’s money to fund your personal lifestyle. Father won’t be pleased.”

“Father will see the information I’ve got on the Costas and not say a damn thing about my personal lifestyle,” said Kim, tossing the drive to Arm.

The compound’s cybersecurity expert plugged it into his laptop, rubbing his eyes as though the friction would reduce the dark circles there. He’d been up till four in the morning, from the timestamps in Kinn’s email. Perhaps when the Costa threat was over, Kinn would give the man a day off.  

“You could have sent me the file days ago,” Kinn noted.  

“I’m not telling you anything important unless it’s in person,” Kim reminded him. “Your phone’s had a weird echo for ages now.”

He shot a reproving look at Arm, whose shoulders slumped even lower.

There was nothing wrong with Kinn’s phone. “Tell me about Jom,” he ordered his brother. “He was working today when I met with my…friend, but he left before I could introduce myself.”

Porsche had shoved him out the door as Kinn came in; he’d only been able to see a younger man, a touch shorter and slenderer than Porsche, the interest clear on the man’s face before the door had slammed in it.

“Jom wasn’t on the schedule to stock today,” Kim said, frowning.

Another dead end, though Kinn wasn’t surprised that Porsche had been protecting someone else. He hadn’t denied that someone was after him, though. “Tell me about whoever was supposed to stock today, then,” he told Kim.

“No,” Kim said. “Employee files are confidential.”

“You just told me that Jom wasn’t on the schedule,” Kinn noted.

His brother shrugged. Kinn should have had Porsche burn off all the liquor in the bottle of 25-year. Kim would have taken it back to his apartment by now, forever out of his reach.

Then Arm’s (exhausted) eyes moved to the door, which was all the warning they had before his father and two of his father’s bodyguards entered the room.

His father looked at Kim first. “I hear you wiped the contents of Costa’s laptop,” he said.

“Yes,” Kim confirmed. His father waited a long minute before deciding that his son was not going to elaborate further.

“Is there anything actionable?” was the question his father directed at Arm.

“I’m scanning it now, khun Korn,” replied Arm, looking about an inch away from death. “So far, I believe khun Kim has retrieved details on their banking operations and some of their attempts to gain overseas contacts.”

Kinn rubbed his forehead. Overseas contacts were always a sign that a mafia organization was attempting to advance in the hierarchy. Fortunately, if they were only attempting to acquire overseas contacts, there was still time to snip the connections before they took hold. He would have to send his people after them before Kim tried to take them out on his own.

“Inform Chan when you have more results,” his father said, indicating the stone-faced bodyguard at his side. “I came in today with a more specific purpose,” he went on. “Since your bodyguards have failed to protect you so far, I’m giving you one of mine. Pete,” and he motioned the other bodyguard forward.

Kim’s disgusted huff was loud enough for everyone to hear. His father’s bodyguard scratched at the turtleneck beneath his standard-issue Theerapanyakul suit. Pete was a spy. Last year, his father had lent the bodyguard to the minor family for a job. Pete had come back with enough information about the minor family’s takeover attempt that they’d been able to mount a defense.

Which should make the man a hero. He shouldn’t be ducking his head innocuously, avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room. Shifty. Spy.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Kinn snapped. “I killed the men who came after me.”

“You shouldn’t have had to,” his father pointed out. “Going into the Costa compound a few days later was reckless. You didn’t even take backup.”  

Yes, because Kinn hadn’t told his father that he’d found the fire-bringer he’d come home babbling about fourteen years ago. His father neither liked nor trusted magic-users; he hadn’t been pleased, then, to know that a fire-bringer existed, uncontrolled, within city limits. He would be less-than-enthused to know that Porsche had resurfaced.

“Nothing happened,” Kinn assured his father. He directed a wink at Kim because he knew it would irritate him. “Besides, Kim went into the Costa compound as well. Maybe I was just scoping it out as a favor to my brother.”

“He was not,” Kim interjected.

“The two of you are overly concerned with the Costa threat,” their father said. “There are many mafia families in the city who want us dead. If you fixate on one, another will come at us from behind.”

He was right, Kinn knew. It was why the minor family’s attack had nearly succeeded last year. But getting rid of the Costas would get him one step closer to Porsche. If the man had no mafia family to hide behind, then perhaps he’d have to turn to Kinn.

Kinn’s scalp prickled; he looked up and met Pete’s eyes, though the bodyguard dropped his immediately.  

“I want updates every hour,” his father directed to Arm, who sprang to his feet mid-yawn and bowed. “And Kinn—you go nowhere without Pete. You’re too valuable to be taken.”

One of Kim’s eyebrows twitched downward—the implication being that he wasn’t. It was going to take months for Kinn to undo the damage of his father’s remark. In the meantime, his brother would probably try to prove his worth by doing something even more reckless than breaking into Costa’s office. Kinn fingered the bullet around his neck as his father and Chan left the room.  

Kim snapped his fingers as soon as they were gone. “Spy,” his brother said, pointing to Pete, who at least had the decency to look abashed.

“Yes, khun Kim,” he acknowledged. “But I can still protect your brother.”

When the man looked at him, Kim stiffened. “You better,” he said, before turning on his heel and striding out of Kinn’s office.

Kinn looked from his workaholic cybersecurity expert to his father’s spy and wondered whether he should follow his brother out.

The fore-teller's door rattled in the frame as Kim banged on it; another couple knocks might have succeeded in knocking the wood off its hinges. Kim had taken the expedient route of discovering Chay's address; rather than trying to convince Yok that he was not interfering with one of her employees, he'd just let himself into the bar one morning and stolen the personnel file.

The personnel file had included an employee timesheet, which was how Kim knew that Chay had been on shift this morning and thus talking to Kinn’s friend.

The Costas have my brother, Chay had said.

He heard rustling from the other side of the door and knocked again. “If you don’t open up right now, I’m going to tell everyone in this apartment building what you are.”

It was the correct threat to use, for the door opened, and Chay brandished what looked like the world’s dullest kitchen knife in his face. Kim took the blade from the fore-teller’s hand, ignoring the muffled whimper of protest.

“Useless,” he pronounced. “Do you know anything about defending yourself?”

“No one ever sees the door,” Chay replied. “No one has ever knocked.”

As defensive strategies went, choosing a place—shithole apartment though it was—that went unnoticed by most of society was a good one. Kim surveyed the studio, noting the sleeping mat and sheets in the corner, the folding chairs that took up the rest of the living space, and the dilapidated sink and hotplate that made up the kitchenette.

“Did you want something?” Chay asked, drawing his attention from the living conditions, from wondering what had occurred to necessitate the living conditions. The apartment screamed runaway. 

“You aren’t at work,” Kim said, before realizing that he sounded like a controlling asshole of a boss. Yok was going to come after him, and unlike Chay, that woman knew her knives.

“I had help stocking this morning, so I came back here and took a nap instead,” was Chay’s explanation, and sure enough, Kim could see the creases on his cheeks from the sheets. He eyed the sleeping mat with disdain; traditional it might be, but his back demanded the 200,000-baht investment of memory foam.

“You met my brother,” he said, but the fore-teller shook his head.

“My brother pushed me out the door before I could meet your brother,” Chay answered.

 Ah. Kim’s suspicions clicked into place. “Your brother did the right thing,” he told him. “You need to stay away from my family.”

He got hit with the full force of the fore-teller’s eyes, eyes that saw too much (a common feature of magic-users, he was learning). “I thought we were on better terms than that,” Chay said sorrowfully. “Am I so shameful that you’re keeping me hidden away?”

Kim wasn’t keeping the magic-user hidden anyway. If he were, he would have chosen a better place than a shithole studio apartment. There was fucking mold on the walls.

“Once you go into my family’s compound, you’re not coming out,” Kim said. “My father will take what you love most to make you do what he wants.”  

Case in point: his music, his autonomy. Kim thought again of Tankhun, how his brother’s death had led Kinn to become the heir that Tankhun had never been able to be. So like his father, to use tragedy to his advantage.

His phone buzzed.

“Speaking of,” he said, and picked up. “Go.”

“I have an engagement tonight,” Kinn said. “But if I leave the compound, I'll have to take the spy.”

(Chay muttered something that sounded like the spy has a name. Kim ignored him.)

“How is this my problem?” he asked, loudly, over the fore-teller’s mumbling.

“I’m offering you the opportunity to go to these kinds of events again, Kim. Think of how much information you’ll be able to obtain after a few hours mingling with the rich and famous.”

Oh, Kim could think about it. He considered the fore-teller. They had enough time to hit his tailor, find him something that fit. (Yok was going to kill him for taking her employee off the schedule for the night.) And as Chay was telling him all the secrets of the city’s mafia players, perhaps he’d slip up and reveal a secret of his own.

“Fine,” he said, the word echoing back, as it always did on his brother’s phone calls. Kim hung up, wondering how many more spies his father would put on them both.

Years ago, after Tankhun had died, Kim had asked why they had to keep defending the Theerapanyakul name, why they couldn’t give up and disappear. Kinn had explained that there was no way out, that the mafia players who ruled the city would keep coming for them until they were dead. It was reason enough to scheme and bribe and murder, to stay alive, to keep all the people who depended on them alive.

“He’s worried, you know, to listen so much and hear so very little,” Chay said, eyes fixed on the phone in his hand.  

Kim blinked. “Don’t we all?” he asked, assuming the fore-teller meant Kinn. “He should learn to fucking deal.”

The flash of a camera blinded Chay as they walked into the event reception. “I thought you said you weren’t famous enough to be noticed,” he told Kim.

The man shrugged. “They’ll take pictures of anyone,” he said. “They’ll only print the ones of famous people. No one’s interested in a D-list celebrity, particularly one whose family will sue them if they publish.”

They were in the lobby by this time, the crowd of people already advanced by this hour. Like all crowds, the possibilities tangled together in a way that took a few deep breaths to sort through, evaluate. Usually, he was trying not to see their futures, the thousand mundane stories that would play out by morning.

“Who do I look at first?” he asked, because there was too much to see at once. He needed something to focus on, some outcome to work towards.

“Is that how it works?” Kim responded, a touch uncertainly. “Don’t you just—see things?”

“I’m sure you’d rather me see relevant things,” Chay said. Though he quite liked drowsy days where he laid in bed and watched futures flit by, none of them consequential enough to matter, all fairy-light, so fragile that he could splinter them with an errant breath.

He had to remember Yutana, in those cases. And Danaisak, and Chakkrit, all seers of legend. Once Yutana had been broken, he’d been collared and locked away in some noble’s country home, a fable from which everyone was supposed to learn that magic-users were weak, untrustworthy, in need of their chains. Or Danaisak and Chakkrit, the Golden Generals, twin brothers who won every battle. (There had been much speculation about how the tides of fortune had turned so often in their favor. Chay knew the answer.) Collared and burned alive, the moment they’d questioned the corrupt king.

Kim poked him. “Focus,” he hissed. “Is anyone here plotting against my family?”

Chay couldn’t see Kim’s future, but he could see the Theerapanyakul compound, the bodyguards on patrol, the fancy cars coming and going. A lot of fancy cars. All in the next few weeks.

“I think the near future is going to go pretty well for your family, actually,” he said. “I don’t even know what some of those cars are.”

“Cars?” Kim questioned, turning to stare at him, jarring the threads of the future in his hands.

But something twanged in his skull, discordant, horrible. Chay looked around the lobby, lifting futures and dropping them, sifting till he found the source—two men near the front of the room, surrounded by a knot of people.

“Who are they?” he whispered, focused on the shorter of the two men, the glittering pendant around his neck.

“Angkan is the taller one. The other is his fiancé, I think? Maybe husband. I don’t get invited to these things anymore,” Kim explained.

“Not husband,” Chay said, seeing nights of dark and pain and fear, of a mind brought low by gemstones, of precious metal that overlaid a terrible secret. “Sorrow has named him.”

Beside him, Kim snorted. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that. I need actionable information.”

All the man’s futures led to despair. Was that actionable enough for Kim, whose own brother faced the same fate; entrapment, yearning, meeting cage after cage after…the man’s pendant glittered under the harsh lights of the reception hall, the gemstones shimmering in a way that left spots in his vision. It was a collar.

Collars weren’t supposed to be used, not anymore, the authorities said, praising themselves on moving beyond the barbarity of the past (eyeroll intended). The same sigils that on a wrist cuff could block a magic-user’s power could, on a collar, entirely subjugate free will. There was no escape for the magic-user at the front of the room. 

“He’s a silvertongue,” Chay said, turning his attention to the man’s owner.

“Huh, I guess that explains why Angkan is at the center of so many alliances, if he lets the silvertongue do the talking,” Kim noted. “Any idea how to get him on our side?”

Chay wasn’t listening, busy with the warp and weft of the rest of the night. The silvertongue’s owner would drink too much at the reception, a very common, very plausible circumstance. Then he would down some sedatives in the car on the way back to the compound, also very common. Except tonight, the combination would be too much for his heart. About an hour after midnight, the silvertongue would be free.

At the front of the room, someone spilled a glass of champagne down the silvertongue’s suit. The man exclaimed in dismay and apologized to the crowd at large, moving towards the bathroom outside the lobby. Which would be closed for cleaning, so the staff would direct him down the hall.

“Be back later,” Chay told Kim, following the man out. Someone had to inform the silvertongue of his sudden change in fate.

Unfortunately, waiting for someone outside the bathroom was very awkward. Made more awkward when the man came out sans suit jacket, saw him, and gave him a very alluring, very fake smile.

“Kim Theerapanyakul’s date, yes? What can I do for you?”

“No,” Chay replied, because Kim wasn’t his date. “I needed to tell you something.”

The silvertongue advanced on him, the sigils of the pendant hurting his eyes, the man’s power moving faster than his feet. “Most people prefer to let me do the talking,” the magic-user said. “But turnabout is fair play. What do you have to say?”

Unbidden, Chay suddenly wanted to say that he’d been waiting for the man so he could make a ridiculous declaration of desire, one that would undoubtedly bring about the wrath of the man’s soon-to-be-late owner. He shook off the silvertongue’s power over his speech.

“Stop that,” he said, sorting out what was real in his head (actually a difficult task given what was in his head) from what wasn’t. “I’m not going to tell you I’m in love with you.”

Behind him, Kim’s what slashed through the air. One side of the magic-user’s mouth curled upward, anticipating the conflict as Kim joined him in the hallway, gun trained on the other man.

“How did you get a gun through the metal detectors?” Chay asked, to which Kim responded with an unimpressed look.

The magic-user’s gaze flicked between them. “My apologies, khun Kim, I was just negotiating a deal with your…associate.”

“What sort of deal?” Kim demanded, and Chay felt a flare of power washing over him. No, he didn’t want to tell Kim that he was selling Theerapanyakul secrets to the silvertongue’s owner. Chay didn’t even have any Theerapanyakul secrets to sell.

“Stop that,” Chay told the silvertongue again. To Kim, he said, “He’s wearing a collar.”

The silvertongue’s lips snapped together; his power drawing inwards as he realized that Chay knew. The sigils on the pendant were subtle, allowing his owner to keep using his power on the rest of the mafia families. And maintaining control over the man, of course. Chay wondered whether his owner had commanded him to sow discord.

“Shit,” Kim said, his eyes raking over the necklace. “I guess the better question is what deal Angkan has ordered you to make with my family. I wonder why it involves harassing my date.”

But Kim wasn’t his date, Chay thought, stealing a look at his long hair, the angle of his jaw, the high lines of his cheekbones, the veins standing out in his arms as he raised the gun. The realization stuck in his throat, and Chay swallowed around it. Across from him, the magic-user raised a knowing eyebrow. Heat began to rise to his face.

“Angkan is going to die tonight. I saw it,” Chay told them both, an ample distraction. The silvertongue flinched.

“Fore-teller,” the man said when he recovered. He turned to Kim, misunderstanding the situation. “You set him free?”

Chay watched indignantly as Kim went with the silvertongue’s assumption, holstering his gun and leaning against the wall with feigned nonchalance. “I sure did,” drawled Kim. “He’s been very grateful.”

Only part of that story was true.

“It’ll happen around one in the morning,” Chay told the magic-user, trying to tamp down his lingering blush. “The sigils on the collar will break and you’ll be able to run. Kim will give you cash.”

“I’ll do what now?” was Kim’s complaint, but he pulled out his wallet anyway.

The sigils were a relic of the old days, when a magic-user could be freed only when their owner was dead. With the advent of the black market, the ownership marks could be changed, but the sigil’s power remained the same. Angkan had to die for the silvertongue to escape.

The magic-user took the money Kim handed him. “The Costas want to join Angkan in a few of our overseas ventures, but he told him that they needed to prove their strength first. They promised to strike against your family—they said they’d bring him your brother.”

Kim inclined his head in thanks. “You should get back to the reception.”

The silvertongue bowed to them both and turned back toward the event. Chay watched the futures around him swivel and change. He whisked away the ones that ended with the man recaptured, though the threat would always be present for people like them. Chay could at least give the man a chance. 

“I think we just committed multiple felonies,” Kim noted. “Aiding in the escape of a magic-user, failing to report a fugitive magic-user to the authorities. Do you want me to kill Angkan for you, too? We might as well add murder to the list.”

Oh, it was already on there. “You’re being dramatic,” Chay told him. “If you’re ever questioned, you’ll just say you were deceived by the evil silvertongue, the old ways were better, all magic-users should wear collars, and so on.”

“Who tried to collar you?” the man sprang on him, and Chay froze, because their uncle was still out there, still looking for Porsche, and Chay couldn’t see him coming. He said nothing, let the silence stretch out.

Kim gave up after a few moments. “We’ll stick to two felonies for the night, then. Let’s go out through the back.”

Still thinking about Arthee, of new ways to foil the future he couldn’t see anyway, Chay followed Kim down the hall. As they made their way into the humid night, Kim pulled a flask from inside his jacket. “I’ll have to put my brother on lockdown after what he said,” Kim began, taking a pull of whatever was in the flask. “Can you see what happens next? What they’re planning?”

Chay shook his head—the Costa future was still vague, and he suspected he knew why. No foreteller could see their own future, after all.

Kim handed him the flask. Chay sniffed the liquor inside. After the last time, Porsche had said he wasn’t allowed to drink anymore. Many times. Emphatically.

“It’s not going to bite you,” Kim told him, and there was some motive in his dark eyes that Chay didn’t want to think about, not now. “Have a drink. It’ll be fine.”

It was not fine.

“Who was the man in the purple fedora?” Chay asked. “Is he on our side or not?”

“Udom. He’s on nobody’s side. But he has some contacts in the tech industry I could use,” Kim replied, pinching the bridge of his nose, stressing the I because there was no our or we or us.

The foreteller should never drink, he thought emphatically. Some people were sad drunks, or cuddly drunks, or sleepy drunks. Chay was a determined drunk, and by determined Kim meant that he’d spent the last thirty minutes outlining the future of everyone he’d seen at that event. After the first four names, Kim had given up texting the information into his notes app and had borrowed a notepad. He flipped onto the eighth page.

“Our fedora friend likes to borrow top-secret prototypes,” Chay half-sung. “What if he lost one?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?” Kim replied, making a note.

Chay flushed redder. “Telling?” he asked. “At the next party you go to, he’ll leave the prototype he’s carrying on the bar where anyone could pick it up.”

Sounded like a good opportunity for extortion, Kim thought, watching the flush on his cheeks, his dilated pupils, wondering if this was the right moment to ask who was after the fore-teller. Too soon, he decided. 

“What’s the next party I’ll go to?” came out of his mouth instead. Kim didn’t usually go to parties; his one-hit-wonder persona wasn’t important enough to warrant an invitation. He looked up from the middle of the eighth page, waiting for some hint of his future, amidst all the others.

Chay finished his plastic cup—there was no glassware in his apartment—of whiskey. “Why should I tell you what you already know?” was his response.

Kim didn’t know; that’s why he was asking. Maybe it was one of those things where he knew, but he didn’t know he knew? He pinched the bridge of his nose again, because fore-tellers. Maybe the legends put seers at the beginning of the hero’s journey because they were insufferable at all other points in the narrative.

He watched the fore-teller walk a little too carefully into the miniscule kitchenette to put his cup on the counter.

“Helping that silvertongue was the right thing to do,” he said as Chay returned, curling himself into the other folding chair.

Truthful, because he could use the information on the Costas. Less-than-truthful, because Kim brought up the other magic-user to get Chay to talk about who he (and his brother) were running from. His reaction to the silvertongue’s collar had been visceral, personal.

“His life just seems so hopeless,” Chay was saying, the s’s slurring together. “All those times he’s thought about escape, but that’s never been a possibility. He’ll be trapped for as long as I can see.”

Maybe reminding him of the silvertongue had been the wrong strategy.

“It’s all about opportunity,” Kim told him, trying to be reassuring. “You saw an opportunity tonight and you took it. There’s always an opportunity for escape.”

He got treated to another wide-eyed gaze, pupils blown, lips apart. One hand floated through the air, fingers tensed, as if they were sliding over metal strings—Kim hadn’t forgotten his guitar days; he knew the gesture.

“How would you escape?” Chay asked.

He hated talking about the kidnappings. But if it would help him learn what he wanted to know…Kim took a healthy swallow of whiskey. Easiest to start with the last time he’d been kidnapped, when he’d gotten out of the zipties in the car, killed the kidnappers en route, and been back at the compound in time for cocktails. But the time before that…

“I dislocated my thumbs to get out of the handcuffs, stood up on the bedpost so I could dislodge the ceiling tiles, and got up into the attic.”

Those kidnappers had been well-prepared, finding every pin he carried on his body to get out of the handcuffs. But they’d made a mistake when they left him alone in the room, and when they’d put him in a location with an unfinished attic. Kim had levered himself up through the insulation and gingerly stepped from joist to joist until he got to the—

Chay looked at him expectantly.

“Right, yeah, once I was up in the attic, I kicked out the vent and escaped through the hole in the roof.”

He’d broken his wrist and sprained his ankle jumping off the roof, but he neglected to disclose the more humiliating details. That he’d been kidnapped at all was disgrace enough, his father had informed him when Kim had finally hobbled through the front door. Kinn had shaken his head behind their father’s back, and, after the medics had taped him up, taken him to his suite, where he’d passed Kim a bottle of liquor and pretended not to see him cry, which Kim was also not telling the fore-teller, or anyone, ever.

Chay’s eyes were rapt as he looked somewhere over Kim’s shoulder. “A roof leak,” he said, the unearthly smile raising goosebumps on his arms. “He’ll know to check the attic because of the dripping ceiling tile.”

That…wasn’t exactly how it had happened. “Close enough,” Kim agreed, getting to his feet and heading to the kitchen sink (dripping itself). He forced himself to admit defeat. Some people held their cards very close to their chests, even when they were drunk. But at least he’d get some water into the fore-teller before heading home.  

Chay was plucking invisible strings when he returned. Not guitar; the posture was wrong, but harp maybe, or even a long-necked lute.

“What are you playing?” Kim asked, casting a longing look at his flask.

“Not playing,” Chay told him, careening to his feet. “It was too difficult to be a game.” He didn’t stay vertical for long, stumbling in the general direction of the mold-festooned wall.  

Kim caught him. The fore-teller sighed in his arms.

“Water,” Kim said. “And bed.”

Obediently—thank fuck—Chay drank the entire cup of water and even managed to brush his teeth while Kim slung back the rest of his whiskey and thought nostalgically about his life before he’d gotten tangled up with a magic-user who was definitely on the run and whose pursuers would definitely come after him sooner or later.

Chay emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, one hand on the wall for balance, heading for the sleeping set-up in the corner. Kim shouldn’t have let him drink all that whiskey. Actually, Kim was never letting him drink again. He had eight-and-a-half pages of notes to parse once he got home.

The cheap microfiber of Chay’s sheets scratched as the cloth dragged against an even cheaper sleeping mat. Kim tried not to look at the dismal excuse for a bed. He turned his attention to the studio apartment instead, the folding chairs in the center of the room, the tiny fridge and hot plate in the kitchenette, the sink that wouldn’t stop dripping.

“People in my world would pay anything for your power,” he started, and cleared his throat. “Why don’t you take it?”

“Better to be free,” Chay told him, curled into the (horrible) sheets. “Turn out the light when you go.”

But Kim wasn’t leaving yet. He watched his breathing slow, the eyelids flicker closed. He had one last chance tonight to get what he wanted; he waited until he was very sure the fore-teller hovered on the brink of sleep to ask—

“Who are you running from?”

“Arthee,” came Chay’s murmur, almost a breath.  

Success made Kim’s lips crack apart. “You got a last name for me?” was his follow-up, but he’d missed his chance. He pivoted toward the door, the name fixing itself in his head.

The lock was so shoddy Kim could have picked it blindfolded, and the sorry excuse for a deadbolt moved under his fingers, the screws coming loose in the old wood of the door frame. The security chain on the door would break away at the first opportunity.

He lodged one of the folding chairs under the door handle for now, which left him with the issue of getting out of Chay’s apartment.

In the end, Kim went out through the window.

He smelled rain as he walked back to his car.

Tankhun woke up when something splashed on his face. At first he wondered if he were crying again—it had been known to happen—but those tears tended to be slower, saltier. Another drop splashed down. It smelled awful.

The ceiling was leaking.

He shot upright in bed (fortunately, for another drop landed right where his head had been) and flicked on a light. Sure enough, the ceiling was leaking. Which meant there was a roof leak. Which meant that there might be a way out. But he dared not think about that—that there might be hope. He’d hoped before.

Those dreams had been the worst, when Vegas had first arrived. Tankhun would escape the facility, find Kinn and Kim, and then they’d all spend the day together at Kim’s favorite theme park (the dream conveniently omitted the detail that Kim would be too old for theme parks by now). They’d walk and ride the rides and eat their way through every fried food the park had to offer, their father nowhere in sight.

And then Tankhun would wake up. Alone. He pinched himself to ensure this wasn’t another one of his cousin’s nightmares. The pain pinched back, even as another drop rolled off the ceiling. Worth investigating, then.

There was one, fail-proof way to call his cousin without alerting the guards. Tankhun tipped his head back and screamed. Part of him was sorry for waking his cousin on one of the rare nights he wasn’t walking through the guard’s unconscious. The rest of him remembered waking up alone and in tears as laughter floated down the hallway, though whether the laughter was real or another dream was a question he’d never asked.

Vegas slouched into his room, his face clearing as he saw that Tankhun was not trapped in the throes of a nightmare. Tankhun pointed at the dripping ceiling. 

“At first I thought this might be one of your tricks,” he explained. “But I think I’m awake.”  

“I’m not,” Vegas complained, but his attention was focused on the ceiling tile. “Why did it have to be the one night I took off this week?”

His cousin measured the ceiling height with his eyes.

“As partial payment for the longlasting emotional trauma you’ve caused me, you can be the one who investigates the water leak,” Tankhun said magnanimously. (Also, his cousin had only spent a year in the facility and still had muscle memory from the Time Before. Tankhun did not say this. Vegas refrained from comment as well.)

 “I’ll need to balance on the headboard to get to the ceiling tiles,” Vegas said, leaping onto the bed. “Hold my ankles. Don’t let me fall.”

“It would be what you deserve for that one dream where I escaped, but when I got back to the compound, Kinn told me this was where I belonged and then the bodyguards dragged me back here,” Tankhun remarked, but he wrapped his arms around Vegas’s legs anyway.

“I had just woken up and found myself in this hellhole,” Vegas noted in his defense, dislodging the ceiling tile, which leaked rainwater all over them. Tankhun wrinkled his nose from the smell. At least his cousin had gotten most of it on his face.

The remnants of the ceiling tile fell to the floor of his room.

“What about that one where Korn killed Kinn in front of me and told me Kim was next if I didn’t come back here?”

Vegas had saddled him with that one for a few weeks. Kinn had died via decapitation. Tankhun hadn’t asked why his cousin had chosen that particular imagery.

“Fuck,” Vegas said in lieu of an apology, pawing through a pile of rancid insulation. “I get it, I’m a bad person.”

Once the insulation had fallen away, Tankhun began to hear the squishy cracks of wet wood. “Finished attic?” he asked, though if his cousin was continuing, the floor of the attic must have rotted away enough that Vegas deemed escape to be an option.

“If I get brain-eating fungi from these splinters, I will use my last lucid moments to murder you,” Vegas threatened, as scraps of wet plywood rained down on the bed.  

“There’s such a thing as brain-eating fungi?” Tankhun asked, momentarily diverted. “Maybe it’s what you deserve after that one nightmare where I escaped and went back to the compound and found their bodies.”

“I’m through the plywood,” said Vegas, ignoring him. “Give me a boost so I can grab one of the joists.”  

Abruptly Tankhun wished he hadn’t spent the last few minutes reminding his cousin of how much he’d hated him when he’d first woken from the coma. He gave Vegas the requested boost, and with a grunt the man disappeared into the ceiling.

He heard shuffling from above his head, footsteps falling further away, and for a long moment he feared that Vegas had left him here, alone, alone the way he’d been for so many years. Tankhun wasn’t sure how he could get up into the ceiling without his cousin’s help—perhaps if he broke the bedframe apart, he might be able to fashion a ladder—but then Vegas’s face appeared in the black space they’d carved out of the ceiling.

“Not a finished attic; just some plywood. I’ve got a present for you,” Vegas remarked, politely ignoring Tankhun’s panic attack. “You think you can hoist yourself up?”

He reached down and Tankhun took his hands, kicking off the headboard for momentum. Vegas cursed above him—there was some awful scrabbling where Tankhun feared they’d both fall to the floor beneath them—and then his cousin hauled him through the rotten plywood.

“Try to stay on the joists,” Vegas warned him, breathing heavily, massaging his shoulders. Tankhun may have been locked in this fucking hellhole with its very small portions of very terrible food for too many years now, but he still had a good couple inches on his cousin.

He knocked on the plywood, locating the joists beneath. Vegas was right; the plywood wouldn’t last if either of them tried to stand on it. Then he looked up at the roof.

“No,” he said, in disbelief. There was an air vent.

“Stand back,” Vegas ordered, though it was more of a shuffle, really, as Tankhun slid over the plywood and hoped he didn’t crash down into the room below.

His cousin took hold of one of the roof trusses, launching a kick at the vent. The first few attempts were fruitless, but then the metal warped in the middle and the nails holding it in place began to loosen. Tankhun crawled forward to help, putting pressure on the nails, and at last the vent creaked free, leaving a hole large enough for him to fit through (though it would leave some scrapes on his shoulders, he thought critically).

They each took a rain-scented breath.

Laughter welled up inside him; the first whoop followed by wild, erratic heaves, followed by a hacking cough, because of the dust in the insulation, but also because it had been so long since he’d laughed, since anything had happened to give him hope. 

“Khun,” Vegas said, resting a tentative palm on his shoulder, and Tankhun had to stop laugh-coughing long enough to gasp in a shuddering breath. His cousin had never touched him.

He stretched out a hand, feeling the humidity pouring through the ruined vent, breath wheezing in his chest. He should make some sort of speech to mark the moment, though the words were calcified somewhere in his head, and there was a line from a movie he’d watched years ago that would work, so what he said was—

“Breathe the free air again, my friend,” he told his cousin.  

“What?” Vegas asked, not getting it, because—

“You are an uncultured cretin,” Tankhun informed him, the laughter coming once more as Vegas’s brows drew together.  

But his hand stayed on Tankhun’s shoulder.

Chapter Text

Vegas lounged in the corner of the man’s very nice corner office, out-of-his-sight, out-of-his-mind (though he was very much in Ken’s mind). Ken frowned down at the game on his phone, tapping the option to buy more moves as a bodyguard came through the doorway.

“Khun Ken,” the bodyguard said, bowing deferentially. “I apologize for disturbing you, but your signature was requested on these documents.”

Ken looked up from his phone, where he’d been sinking his department’s sizable operating budget into the online gaming industry. Not that anyone would notice the missing funds—because they didn’t exist. Neither did the office. It was the perfect dream for him—so idyllic he’d never really wake up.

Vegas had gotten to know the guard very well over the past few weeks. The man was weak; he wanted what all weak people wanted. The trappings of power, unlimited money to spend on whatever they pleased, popularity…

Sure enough, Ken’s phone chimed with a message. Yet another invitation to drinks tonight. Ken smirked, tapping at the screen as he debated which invite (of many) to accept, which person would be the lucky recipient of his company. (There would be no lucky recipient of his company. The corner office was where Vegas had drawn the boundaries of the dream.)

As the first lackey slunk out of Ken’s office, another tiptoed in. Ken looked up from his game with an irritated huff.

“What now,” he demanded of the new interloper.

The man shivered (weak people wanted others to fear them), shrinking back from Ken’s ire. “I’m so very sorry, khun Ken. I know you’re very busy, but an update has been requested on the facility. At your convenience, of course.”

Ah yes, the facility. Ken pondered for a moment, likely wondering why these people were still asking him for updates on that place, when he’d moved to a better, more powerful position within the compound. “No updates to report,” Ken told the man, who nodded and bowed himself out of the room .

The bodyguard went back to checking the status of his lunch order. There was an update notification on his sandwich, letting him know that his VIP status had earned him a free cookie. He sat back in his ergonomic office chair—his secretary would bring him lunch when it arrived—as his phone chimed with another invitation.

Vegas’s work here was done. He’d created the perfect waking dream for the man, one he’d never want to leave, one where he’d reply to all questions about the facility with no updates to report. Ken would buy them some time.

He walked toward the door of the corner office, already dreading what was on the other side of it.

“Hello, uncle,” he said, not even waiting to confirm the man’s identity. Who else would it be? But he was mistaken, for two men waited him outside the office. Fuck. “Hello, father,” Vegas added.

“You’ve been keeping a secret from us,” his father said, blood dripping from the bullet hole in his forehead.

Vegas took a step back into Ken’s office, where the man was crunching his way through a bag of chips as he watched videos on his phone, oblivious to the drama happening just outside the door.

“Did you think we wouldn’t find out?” his uncle added. “You told him to run.”

Macau.

Kan yanked his brother forward. Macau’s face was bruised, his clothing was torn. Vegas steeled himself—just a dream. It was just a dream, and he needed to wake up.

“Hia, I’m sorry,” not-real Macau gasped. “I tried to escape, but I wasn’t fast enough.”

Which had Vegas surging forward, to be held back by the sudden appearance of a phalanx of bodyguards, the same ones who’d come upon him the night of the takeover, who’d surrounded him and disarmed him and then had taken turns shooting him. He’d been surprised, frankly, when he’d woken up in the facility…the facility from which he needed to escape. He needed to wake up.

“Get off me,” Vegas told the bodyguard holding him back. He closed his eyes as Kan aimed a gun at his brother—not his brother—none of this was real—

He couldn’t cover his ears though, so the crack of the bullet made him scream. The man holding him clapped a hand over his mouth. Vegas fought against the hold...

...and punched Tankhun in the throat as he woke up.

“You told me not to let you scream,” his cousin protested when he’d stopped coughing a few minutes later. “And you were moving around so much I thought you’d fall through the joists.”

Weary already, Vegas rubbed his eyes, turning his head to the side to see sunlight pouring through the hole in the roof, the first sun he’d seen in the year-ish he’d been stuck in this hellhole.

“Sorry, Khun,” he told his cousin, the crack of the gunshot still stuck in his ears. “I took care of Ken, so we’re ready to head out now.” He levered himself upright, his arms not looking forward to the ordeal ahead. “Are you sure you don’t want to go first?”

They’d ripped up every cloth in the facility to make the rope ladder that would take them to the ground. Fortunately, Tankhun had not asked where Vegas had learned to tie so many types of knots. The end product might hold their weight. Had to hold their weight.

“You’re lighter than me,” Tankhun said, echoing his thoughts. “If the rope breaks when I go down, you’ll still be able to get away from here.”

He did not want to think about that outcome. “Try not to let me fall,” Vegas said instead, and Tankhun took hold of one end of the rope, pulled over one of the roof trusses. Vegas wrapped the other end around his waist, climbed through the hole in the roof—the edges scraped his shoulders—and jumped

and didn’t move.

“Damn it, Khun, I told you not to let me fall, not to keep me from moving at all,” he said.

“Sorry,” came his cousin’s voice, and then Vegas was rappelling downwards, using his feet to kick himself away from the building. Only three stories to go now. If he fell, he’d only break a leg. Though with no ID, no money, and an uncle who no doubt had spies in the area, breaking his leg would be a nightmare.

He’d put Ken in a waking dream, an idea he’d been turning over in his mind for awhile now. Unlike the last guard, whose mind he’d ripped apart, the waking dream was an idyll from which no subject would want to wake up. Ken’s mind had taken the dream he’d planted and would nurture the fantasy—the trappings of power, the popularity, the no updates to report—for a very long time. Perhaps forever.

The ground came up to his feet, but Vegas resisted the desire to celebrate. He still had to get Tankhun out.

“Ready?” he called up, hopping a bit on the balls of his feet as if that would help. This was the risky bit of the maneuver. His cousin was heavier than he was, so Vegas wouldn’t be able to use his weight as a counterbalance the way Tankhun had done for him.

Hopefully the wood of the roof trusses and the fabric of the rope would provide enough friction to slow his cousin’s descent. Unlike Vegas, Tankhun didn’t kick himself away from the side of the building. His slippers dragged on the walls as he tried to step his way down. The weight almost took Vegas off his feet, so he sat. The wet ground immediately soaked through his sweats. Another thing he had to deal with.

Tankhun reached the ground a few minutes later, immediately dropping to his knees, and experienced the same problem, which distracted both of them from having feelings. His cousin sniffed a few times, but (thankfully) held himself back from the laugh-crying of the other day. As for Vegas, he mitigated the part of himself that wanted to kiss the (muddy) ground with the part of himself that wanted revenge revenge revenge.

His cousin gulped. “So…where are we?”

They both surveyed the empty countryside around them. How like his uncle, to keep them hidden away in some country house in the middle of nowhere. At least, Vegas was assuming that they were still in Thailand. Surely Korn wouldn’t risk having them so far out of his reach.

“We’ll just have to walk until we figure that out,” Vegas muttered, looking at the thin slippers they both wore. They’d need clothes and shoes and a car. And they’d have to make sure the owner of whatever house they stopped at for those things wasn’t one of Korn’s spies. He shot his cousin an attempt at a comforting smile.

“Your face looks wrong when you do that,” Tankhun said. “Where shall we go first? I vote Bangkok.”

Bangkok was a risk, but everything was a risk for them. Ken’s no updates to report story wouldn’t last long if word got back to Korn that two men were stealing cars and clothes in the country. At least in the city, they’d be better able to hide. Better able to assess the situation with the Theerapanyakuls.

And assuming his uncle’s men hadn’t found it yet, he still had a place in the city.

“Bangkok,” Vegas agreed.

Kinn dragged a finger through the condensation on his office window, feeling a perverse urge to rattle the panes as if they were bars. Ever since Kim had come back to the compound last week with the information that the Costas had put out a hit on him, Kinn had been restricted to Theerapanyakul grounds. The wrong decision, in his opinion. He should be out in their territory, showing the mafia families that he wasn’t afraid.

He had been overruled. His father’s opinion had been that the threat would soon shift, that the Costas would fixate on another enemy. The Theerapanyakuls would wait out this storm, as they’d waited out the last family to think they were weak.

Damn it, that wasn’t the way the mafia worked, not anymore. The mafia families only respected ostentatious displays of power, not the quiet diplomacy of decades past. Kinn understood that, Kim understood that—hell, Vegas had understood that better than any of them, not that the knowledge had done his cousin any favors. Kinn had seen his body soon after the takeover attempt, riddled with bullet holes, being carried out of the compound by his father’s men.

A knock came at his door. Kinn stiffened. If this was his father’s spy again, he was going to enjoy inventing a punishment that broke the unusually stoic man. So far, Pete had managed to escape from the chains before drowning in the pool, crawled the length of the bodyguard’s gym with his hands tied behind his back, and even cleaned the compound’s scummy fish ponds without complaint.

After the last feat, Kinn had suggested that he would be a better spy if he showed human weakness somewhere. Pete had bowed his head and apologized, saying “I am sorry for my failure, khun Kinn, and will accept whatever punishment you think appropriate.”

Kinn had sent him off to Tankhun’s old rooms to sort through his brother’s clothes and categorize which ones should be donated versus thrown away. Not that Kinn would get rid of any of them, but it had been a good way to get rid of the spy.

The knock came again, and this time Arm didn’t wait for permission before entering. The dark circles under his eyes looked better today. At least Kinn’s restriction to the compound like a noble in a fairy tale was good for someone.

“I finished decrypting the information on the drive khun Kim brought from the Costa servers,” Arm said, shooing him back to his desk, drawing a chair up beside him. “But there was a video file that I wanted to run by you.”

Kinn took the tablet Arm handed him and tapped play. It was CCTV footage, from an alley that looked vaguely familiar…suddenly very familiar, as Kinn saw himself stagger into the frame and fall to the ground. “This was a few weeks ago,” he told Arm.

“Yes, khun Kinn,” Arm said, watching the video over his shoulder. “It’s what comes next that I wanted to discuss with you.”

Shadows moved across the tablet screen, and Porsche came into view, caution playing across his face as he saw Kinn’s unconscious form. Porsche went down beside him, waved a hand in front of his shut eyes, before cutting off his sleeve.

The CCTV didn’t capture what had happened next, though the video wavered as if picking up the oscillation of power. Porsche’s next movement was to touch Kinn’s chest, and Kinn mirrored the action, his fingers encountering the bullet hanging around his neck. He leaned closer to the screen, trying to read Porsche’s expression, only able to pick up on the mordant humor in Porsche’s face, followed by surprised recognition, and then—as the conversation unfolded—fear.

Porsche was afraid of him.

What had happened to the boy who’d looked death in the face and pronounced it not much of a threat? But Kinn had more urgent questions. The CCTV footage had been recovered from the Costa compound. Anyone who saw it would draw a connection between Porsche and him.

“Can you tell if anyone in the Costa compound viewed this file?” he asked.

“We just have the files, not any of the access records,” Arm explained. “I wanted to check with you before sharing the footage with your father.”

Kinn was already backing away from the tablet. “Destroy it,” he ordered. “And whatever you want—a raise, a week off—it’s yours. I’ll sign off on anything.”

At first the CCTV footage had been grainy enough that no one would be able to prove that the man had done anything other than stop to render assistance, but then Kinn had raised Porsche’s cuffed wrist, and the gleam was unmistakable: magic-user. His father distrusted magic-users. He’d draw the connection between Kinn and Porsche faster than the Costas would. Kinn preferred not to deal with the consequences of his father’s displeasure.  

“I already have an image of your signature,” Arm muttered. “But that’s very generous of you.” He tapped a few buttons on the screen and the tablet went black.

That took care of his father. But someone in the Costa compound could still see the footage, identify Porsche as the man who’d helped the man they’d tried to assassinate. The CCTV would show that they’d had a long conversation before Kinn had let him go—implying that there had been an understanding, an exchange of information.

They’d go after Porsche. Kinn had to get him out of the Costa compound.

He looked at the bars he’d drawn in the condensation on the window. If he tried to leave, the spy would stop him, or worse, report him to his father. If he managed to get away without the spy, he’d still have to reckon with the compound’s cameras, the trackers in his Escalade. He needed an ally.

“Arm, I have a hypothetical here,” Kinn began. “If, hypothetically of course, someone needed to sneak out of the compound for an hour or so, what would you do?”

His cybersecurity expert put his head in his hands.

His apartment door was open, and Chay had not left it that way. He crept up the stairs, straining to see any future, since he couldn’t see his own. How many booted feet would descend the stairs? Would a neighbor hear signs of struggle and call the police? But he saw nothing.

Chay should have assumed that Arthee had figured it out at last, that when he came into the apartment, his uncle (or worse, the men his uncle would inevitably sell him to) would be waiting. But the lure of the duffel bag of cash in the kitchen was too strong. It had taken them years to save up that much money, winning the lottery by trickles and drips.

The door creaked open as he crossed the threshold, and Chay found himself on the business end of a gun. “You’re here,” Kim commented, immediately lowering the barrel.

“I live here,” Chay reminded him.

“For now,” Kim said, pointing at something inside his apartment. Chay followed the accusatory finger to see the aforementioned duffel bag of cash open on the kitchen counter. “Porchay Pichaya Kittisawat,” Kim continued. “You died years ago in a bridge collapse. Your corpse was too badly damaged to be identified.”

Getting the body had been the hardest part of that job, but the opportunity had been too great to lose. Arthee would have never stopped looking for him otherwise, would have kept planting whispers about what Chay really was (not a fore-teller). What he was doing to Porsche was evidence enough, the way he kept stirring rumors about a missing fire-bringer. They should have faked Porsche’s death instead, all those years ago.

“It’s safer if people think I’m dead,” he mumbled, not seeing any reason to hide it. If Kim had meant to capture him, he would have already tried. Chay took in the man’s disordered hair, the frustrated crinkles at the edges of his eyes…the electric drill on the floor…(?)

“I installed a new lock,” Kim said defensively. “You just left the cash on the counter where anyone could find it.”

Anyone who’d broken into his apartment, but Chay decided not to correct him. “I just like counting it,” he said. “Like a dragon looking over his hoard.”

“You’re going to run. Soon,” Kim said, ignoring his attempt at an explanation.

In a week or so. Chay couldn’t tell exactly when the Costas would fall, or what exactly would precipitate the event. But at Yok’s, the tension between the two families was the source of gossip. It would have been the source of a few fights between Costa and Theerapanyakul sympathizers, but Chay had…intervened. No fights allowed during his shift.

“We have to keep moving,” he told Kim, feeling compelled to apologize. But he had nothing to apologize for.

“Your uncle,” was Kim’s response, the man’s arms crossed across his chest, his brows knitted together and turned down in the middle. How had he found out? Chay must have let something slip the other night.

On his own, Arthee wasn’t exactly an issue. Their uncle had a problem, though, with telling powerful people about his nephews. Porsche, the first fire-bringer in a century. Chay…well, there hadn’t been someone like him since the Golden Generals. Or if there had, they’d kept it secret. Fair enough—Chay didn’t want to be in the history books either.  

“He keeps coming after my brother,” he told Kim. “No foreteller can see their own future—there’s no way for me to tell where he is or when he’ll find him. And when he finds my brother—”

“He’ll find you.”

Chay lifted a shoulder in assent, waiting as Kim picked up his electric drill and finished affixing the new deadbolt to the door. Screw after screw went into place, the silence ominous in the clench of Kim’s jaw, the occasional looks he directed in his direction.

Finally Kim tested the deadbolt a final time and nodded his satisfaction. He turned to Chay, the corner of one lip pinched between his teeth, preoccupied by something—

“Have you ever fired a gun?” he asked.

Which was how, an hour later, Chay missed the target again, the bullet disappearing into the woods of the gun range. He’d already looked for futures to pull to get better at shooting—perhaps he’d gotten a gun with perfect sights, perhaps a breath of wind came along at just the right moment, perhaps the bullets wanted to hit the target.

Yeah, he’d really been reaching with that last one. Bullets moved so fast—the future was practically upon him the instant he fired. Chay had to admit defeat. He had no power here.

“Keep going,” Kim told him, with a distinct lack of sympathy, watching his (lack of) progress with a grim expression.  

Chay fired another round and gun jarred against his sweaty fingers. “Don’t you have something with less of a kick?” he complained.

“Oh, I thought you wanted to kill the people who are coming after you,” Kim said. “You’ll learn how to use that caliber. Try again.”

He tried to picture Arthee, then those monsters who’d had Porsche, wondering if the sight of their enemies would activate his murderous impulses. But the bullets continued to go astray. After a few more reloaded magazines, Kim finally let him stop. Chay wrung his hands—his palms still seemed to be vibrating—and removed his ear protectors.

“So, do I get to keep the gun?” he asked.  

“Nope,” Kim said, popping the p in a manner Chay found brutal, returning the firearm to its holster behind his back. “You’re bad enough that they’ll just take it and shoot you. They don’t need your legs.”

Chay winced, reminded of the scars Porsche rarely let him see. His brother had fought the cuffs they’d put on him, and those monsters had hurt him for it. Violence was cheaper than sigils.

“You’re leaving me defenseless, then,” he whined, though he was only defenseless when he was firing a gun. On the other side, he could always jam the bullet in the chamber, or cause the holder’s trigger finger to go numb, or draw a police car to the scene. He went on, “Anyone will be able to point a gun at me and I’ll have no choice but to let them take me.”  

He got a flash of emotion there as Kim looked from him to the unblemished target. He was so difficult to read—Chay wondered how much he depended on a person’s futures to determine the makeup of their soul—but his actions spoke of protection. Which was not precisely what Chay wanted from him, but he found it hard to refuse.

“Have you killed someone before?” Kim asked.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“How many?”

Unsure, Chay stayed silent. Who was to say that the butterfly effect hadn’t resulted in casualties? When he’d pulled his hit-all-the-green-lights trick on the bus today, perhaps he’d caused a traffic accident elsewhere. Or perhaps one of his coworkers would burn themselves on the impossible coffee pot at Yok’s and develop one of those antibiotic-resistant infections. He didn’t have the capacity to calculate all those possibilities, didn’t want to face the knowledge that his power might cause someone’s suffering.  

Except for the deaths he had caused. Unapologetically.

He couldn’t say any of this, so he shrugged and said, “A few. They hurt my brother.”

A razor-thin flash of teeth split across Kim’s face. “So you’ve killed to protect him. Can you kill to protect yourself?”

Chay took a moment to consider, but Kim was right. He’d killed for Porsche, and for others he’d come across here and there, people who needed help. But he’d never killed for himself. If he had, he could have killed Arthee. He could have prevented what had happened to Porsche.

He didn’t have to say anything. Kim concluded, “You shouldn’t pick up a gun until you’ve convinced yourself not to hesitate.”

The man’s phone rang, then, and he turned away to answer it, leaving Chay to wonder how he could view death as a preventative measure, something to ensure his safety. He wouldn’t be able to see Arthee coming, but…he eyed Kim’s tense profile as the conversation turned heated. Perhaps Kim Theerapanyakul wouldn’t be adverse to typing his uncle’s name into a database.

Not now, though, as Kim spat what do you mean you don’t know where he is into the phone. He caught Chay staring.

“Keep trying,” he ordered whoever he was talking to. “I’ll be there soon.” When he’d hung up, he said to Chay, “Tell me what Kinn is doing.”

Foreteller, Chay wanted to remind him, but even Porsche didn’t completely understand what he had to do to wrangle the future into any type of linear sense. Kinn was difficult to see—because he was involved with Porsche (not that Porsche would admit it)—and Porsche’s future was tightly mingled with Chay’s. Still, Chay looked, seeing the back of a man’s head as he walked through hostile halls, the threads that connected him to others, one other, in particular.

“Ettore will soon learn what he’s done,” Chay said.  

“Ettore…” and Kim trailed off, trying to place the name. Then he stiffened. “Fuck, Ettore Costa. The patriarch’s second-in-command,” he added, when Chay blinked. “You said Ettore would learn what he’s done. Tell me.”

Easier to look once he had a name. Chay found the man, the rage that ran below the controlled exterior. His hand glinted as he raised it into the air…

“There’s a brass price,” Chay said out loud, trying to see beneath the gleam of metal.

“Yeah, he likes to use brass knuckles,” Kim acknowledged. “But what’s the connection between him and Kinn?”  

Chay peered into the future once again, tracing strings that ended this time in…nothing, like looking into his own future. This was wrong; they had planned the Costa future like the bridge collapse. The future was supposed to happen to them, not because of them. What had his brother done? He crooked his fingers in frustration, waving aside the blankness of unknowing, when another glint of metal caught his eye—inlaid gold, silver strings vibrating in a base of expensive wood, playing a tune he’d never heard before, though he knew the notes. Chay reached forward—

And Kim’s hands came down on his shoulders, cutting off the vision entirely, leaving him bereft for a moment. “What did you see?” he asked.

“A phin,” Chay said, putting a name to it, one of the country’s folk instruments, a type of lute. He shut his eyes to remember, trying to pluck out the notes of the song. “A golden phin with three silver strings.”

A protracted exhale was Kim’s response. Chay blinked his eyes open as Kim’s teeth clicked together, dark eyes staring into his own. The points of his fingers tensed on Chay’s shoulders.

“Chay, you have to tell me what that means. Do the Costas have Kinn?”

The heaviness of Kim’s hands on his shoulders prevented him from shrugging, so Chay could only look at him helplessly. Kinn Theerapanyakul’s fate had slipped out of his grasp, entangled in the future that had somehow become their own.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen till next week,” Chay said at last as he decided to tell Kim what he knew. His power was no longer helpful, but Kim’s power—mobilizing the forces of one of the most powerful mafia families in the city—might be. “The Costa family were going to be destroyed. It was a good opportunity to fake my brother’s death, like we faked mine.”

“The cash,” Kim noted, still holding him. “I was right. You’re going to run.”  

Chay nodded.

For a moment Kim’s mouth pulled to the side, as though he were considering something unpleasant. Borne out, when he said, “You told me you wanted revenge for your brother. Were you going to use me to take them down?”

“Both of us wanted them gone,” Chay offered, because the answer to Kim’s question was yes, if given the opportunity.

Kim let him go, and a million futures hit him at once, none of them the future he wanted. “I guess we’re back to where we started, then,” the man told him. “Where’s my brother?”

One of Kim’s brothers would soon be slogging through a ditch on the side of the road somewhere in the Chao Phraya watershed, but Chay sensed that now was not the time to bring it up. The golden phin appeared again, just out of reach, one of the strings trembling on a note that hurt his ears, but if he could just control what was played—

“Fuck,” came Kim’s voice. “You’re bleeding.”

Moving too slowly, Chay raised a hand to his face, feeling the trail of blood coming from his nose. He stared at the drops on his fingers. “This hasn’t happened before,” he said dizzily. He pinched his nose shut.

Kim moved too fast for him to comprehend, an arm coming around his waist as he pulled Chay against his body. The dizziness increased, as much due to the proximity as whatever metaphysical phenomenon had just occurred.  

“Tilt your head down,” Kim told him, already tapping out of a message on his phone. A fast swoop answered him, and he said, “I have to go after my brother, but one of my people is going to take you back to Yok’s, where you’re going to stay for at least an hour. If you see anything else, tell her and she can get in touch with me. Understood?”

Chay nodded, still thinking about the gold of the phin against the blankness of his own future.

Kinn surveyed the Costa compound from a block away, hidden behind the blacked-out windows of his Escalade. Not hidden for much longer, he suspected. The patrols were regular, not a hole to be seen in the rotation. How had Kim managed it? The nighttime patrols must be sloppier than their daytime counterparts.

He could turn on his phone to call his brother, but doing so would alert his father, who’d probably direct his men to take him away to some misbegotten country house somewhere until he’d seen the error of his ways. Better to do this on his own. Still, Kinn ground his teeth. Walking into the lion’s den wasn’t his preferred method of solving problems.

The guards at the front gate exchanged nervous glances as Kinn approached—the Costas had put out a hit on him, and he was delivering himself to their front door; he could appreciate that he’d put them in an unexpected situation. Kinn gave them a haughty frown, the same expression he’d turn on his own men if they were too slow to follow his orders.

“Are you here to escort me to the meeting?” he asked, not breaking his stride, so the guards either had to open the gate or let him walk into it. They chose the former, thankfully.

“Meeting, khun Kinn?” replied the head bodyguard on duty, hurrying to catch up with him.

“With Stefano,” Kinn answered. “You didn’t get the email? You were supposed to get the email. About Ettore working for the Yakuza.”

He kept walking as though he hadn’t said anything particularly noteworthy. Ettore was the Costa patriarch’s major domo, the equivalent of Chan. It was his job to know everything that went on in the Costa compound. Or it was his job, until Kinn had told the bodyguards that Stefano Costa thought he was a traitor.

Kinn looked over his shoulder. “Why are the guards still on rotation? It’s an all-hands meeting. We have to move quickly. That’s why Stefano reached out to me.”

“I should clear this with—” and the beleaguered man stopped before he could say Ettore. It was a good plan, until Ettore found out what was happening and came after him. That man had a kill list that rivaled Vegas’s, back when his cousin was still alive.  

“Clear it with whoever you want,” Kinn told the bodyguard. “But the clock’s ticking. Where’s the conference room?”

Distracted, the bodyguard showed him to an empty conference room, clearly wondering how he was supposed to clear Kinn’s orders with the Costa patriarch while Ettore was standing right next to him. The poor man would be lucky to only lose his job after this. Neither the patriarch nor his second-in-command was the type to forgive this variety of fuckup.

Kinn waited until the man and his hangers-on had disappeared down the hallway before heading toward the infirmary, hoping that Porsche was on duty. The ruse would only last for as long as it took for the head bodyguard to dare to approach Stefano and then the entire Costa compound would come after him. It occurred to Kinn that there’d be outright war with the Costas after this.

Well. Going to war over a fire-bringer wasn’t unheard-of. Prince Suradej had done it for his lover, though fire-bringers were called phoenixes in those days. The nobles had delivered an ultimatum to his father the king, demanding the fire-bringer as sacrifice to end a decade-long drought afflicting the country. Despite the advantage of phoenix-fire, Suradej had died in battle; his lover had been captured and murdered, though his blood hadn’t brought rain.

Served them right, thought Kinn, recognizing Porsche’s close-cropped hair, the smooth line of his neck, the straight lines of his shoulders through the open door of the infirmary. He tapped at the door frame, and the fire-bringer jumped, whirled at the noise, as Kinn had known he would.

“The Costas have the CCTV from that night,” he said. “They know you saved me. You have to get out of here.”

Porsche’s fists clenched; for a moment Kinn saw something flicker in his eyes. The next moment, though, he blinked, and the wild look faded. Kinn wondered what had happened to the boy he’d met fourteen years ago, how he’d become someone who backed away from danger. That boy wouldn’t have hesitated—he would have set the compound on fire and run away in the chaos.

Somewhere, Porsche had learned to fear.

“Come on,” Kinn prompted. “We’ve only got a few minutes until the guards come looking for me.”

And you, he refrained from adding.

“I can’t,” Porsche told him, prompting Kinn to take a few alarmed steps forward. His eyes worried, Porsche said, “I left my phone in my room. If they find it, they’ll know—”

“I don’t care if they know about me,” Kinn broke in. “They’ll only find out the meeting location, anyway.”

Kim was going to slaughter him when he found out that the Costas knew about his dive bar, but Kinn could buy his brother a new one. What was more important was leaving now. The bodyguard must have reported him to the Costa patriarch—fuck, Ettore might know by now. If Kinn stayed long enough for the Costa elites to get their hands on him…

“I used that phone to text my brother,” Porsche explained, passing him, checking to make sure the hallway was clear. He motioned for Kinn to follow him as he said, “They’ll know about him if they find it, and no one can know he’s alive.”

Kinn remembered the man Porsche had pushed out the door of the bar. Brother. He understood, or he told himself he did. But they’d barely had time to escape before this detour. Kinn didn’t know how they could escape after his ruse had been discovered. His gun shifted against his back, the weight reassuring.

The fire-bringer opened a door down the hallway and slipped inside. Kinn followed him, shutting the door behind him as Porsche began upending the room in search of the phone. Even alarmed, he was stunning, his cheeks flushed, his eyes wide. But Kinn preferred the easy smile he’d worn fourteen years ago, before he’d fallen into this life. He wondered what he’d have to do to set him free.

By now, the Costa patriarch would know that he was in the compound. If the Costa bodyguards found him in Porsche’s room, they wouldn’t need the CCTV to draw the connection between the two of them. Kinn turned on his phone, ignoring the buzzing that started as soon as he’d pressed the power button.

He didn’t know how they could escape, but he knew how Porsche could.  

Porsche’s breath crashed through his lips as he finally found the phone under his bed. He crawled out from under the furniture to find Kinn perched on top of his desk, a calm smile on his lips, not even trying to hide that he’d been watching him.

“Take the SIM card out and smash it,” Kinn directed him.

He obeyed, tempted to crisp it instead, but Porsche didn’t know how hot a SIM card needed to burn to destroy the data. He settled for grinding the plastic and metal beneath his heel. Kinn’s gaze swept the room.

“Anything else that could give away your identity?” he asked, and Porsche shook his head. He’d packed light for this job, assuming that he’d need a quick getaway when the Costa takedown happened. Now he was running away, and Arthee would know he was running, and the chase would start again. He couldn’t bear the thought.

“This is your fault,” he told Kinn. “All I had to do was keep a low profile for a few more weeks and then I’d be able to disappear. It’s going to take years to find this type of opportunity again.”

“An opportunity to disappear?” Kinn questioned, far too calm for a man about to escape from an enemy compound. He slid off Porsche’s desk to check the broken SIM card on the floor.

“In a week or so the Costas will be destroyed. I was going to fake my death and then disappear into the country somewhere,” Porsche said, thinking longingly of his quiet little country backwater, where the residents would bring him soup and bread and walk away without their arthritis and skin tags and bunions. Everyone would know what he was, but no one would ever breathe a word.

Oh hell, it was a daydream. Likelier that they would find the town and torture the residents until he showed himself. Or worse, they’d make him torture the residents. The scars on his back ached suddenly.

Kinn straightened up from the floor, standing too close to him, and Porsche sucked in a breath. He’d said too much. “What’s going to happen in a week?” came Kinn’s question, followed up by, “You said they will be destroyed. Where did you get this information?”

He was much too close, his black eyes unblinking, hands reaching forward. Porsche felt heat rise inside him, making his hands tremble; one breath and the compound would become a five-alarm fire. He didn’t breathe.

Kinn was very quiet when he asked, “Are you working for someone else?”

“No!” Porsche couldn’t stop the exclamation, even as Kinn’s eyes widened, as his hands finally found Porsche’s. “I don’t want to work for anyone,” he said, no longer fighting Kinn’s hold. “I just want to be free.”

He didn’t need to explain the rest of the plan. Kinn knew as well as he did—the only way he could be free was to be (apparently) dead.

“You know there are people after me,” Porsche went on, squeezing Kinn’s hands until the man’s fingers went cool, bloodless beneath his. “They’re going to find out that I ran and come after me. They won’t stop.”

“Are they the ones who are going to take down the Costas?” Kinn broke in, prompting Porsche to consider. He’d been so obvious, using his real name, adopting the healer title his uncle knew he favored. Chay had said the future was uncertain—perhaps this time Arthee had sold him to someone powerful enough to take on the other mafia family.

He looked at Kinn helplessly.

“If you throw off any more sparks, you’re going to set off the fire alarms,” the man pointed out. “Relax. I pulled the guards off rotation. All we have to do is climb over the compound walls. If you want to disappear after that, I won’t stop you.”

Climb over.

“I can’t climb,” Porsche explained, as escape slipped away. “You felt the scars in my back, last time. I don’t have the range of motion to make it over the wall.”

Kinn’s lips pressed together, and Porsche let his hands fall. His loafered feet tapped the floor a few times as he thought.

“The front gate or not at all,” Kinn concluded, a strange look in his eyes. “I’ll do my best.”

Then he turned and left Porsche’s dorm room, letting the door click closed behind him. Porsche stared in confusion, but didn’t dare follow him out. He heard voices in the hallway, a shout of recognition, and he pressed his ear to the door to listen in.

“Finally,” Kinn was saying. “How does it take this long to assemble the bodyguards for a meeting? I must have arrived twenty minutes ago.”

“Yet you were gone when I got there,” that was khun Costa’s voice, silken today, sounding assured. “We have so much to discuss. Including your allegations regarding my second-in-command.”

Allegations about Ettore? Even in the few weeks Porsche had been in the compound, he knew that Ettore’s loyalty was absolute.

“I see,” Kinn said smoothly. “My apologies for holding up the meeting, then. I’m ready to get started whenever you are.”

“Very good,” the Costa patriarch acknowledged. “Ettore is waiting for us in the basement.”

Porsche dropped to the floor, struggling to see what was happening through the crack between door and ground. He saw only the black leather of the Costa bodyguards; the gray suede of Kinn’s loafers had already passed beyond his sight. His heart fizzed as he realized Kinn had called a meeting with the Costas to give him a chance to get out of the compound.

The buzzing sound continued, until at last Porsche realized it wasn’t coming from inside him. He stared at the phone Kinn had left on his desk.

Whoever was calling didn’t stop. Eventually Porsche stumbled to the desk and swiped to accept the incoming call, his heart still beating too fast, something like gratitude building in his chest as he thought about taking the distraction Kinn offered and walking through the front gates, never to be seen again. Though perhaps, after all this, Kinn could be trusted—a little. Perhaps Porsche would find him again and thank him for—

“Kinn, what the fuck are you doing?” a rough voice grated in his ear, interrupting his thoughts.

“He’s talking with khun Costa,” Porsche replied.

His words echoed and chattered down the line, and the person on the other end asked, “Is that supposed to be a threat? If Kinn isn’t standing unharmed in front of the compound in five minutes, you’ll be under attack.”

“Unharmed,” Porsche said, gratitude slipping away from him as he understood at last: the finality of his pressed-together lips, the opaque look in Kinn’s eyes, the nonchalance as he’d walked away with people who were going to kill him, that Kinn had given him his phone—

which was still chattering in his hand, as someone continued, “Who is this? You know what, I don’t care. Get the phone to someone who can make decisions—”

The voice cut off. Porsche looked down, unsurprised to see molten plastic dripping out of his palm.

Kinn had sacrificed himself for him. Breath whooshed into his lungs, sparked, came out hot, ready, willing. So easy, to throw his head back, turn this whole fucking building to ash. He could burn the whole city like this, the fire in him wanted to burn the whole city, wanted the logistics of destroying so much concrete and metal to disappear amid coruscating, writhing flame.

But so many would die. There were cooks and housekeepers and other magic-users trapped here. The Costas even had a daycare on site for the children of their staff. And Kinn—they’d kill him the moment they realized something was wrong.

Control hurt, like red iron doused in snow. Porsche’s hands shook with effort, forcing power to take the course he chose—to settle for a mirage, to disperse only a tiny tendril of warmth.

He opened the door and stepped into the hallway, no more than a heat wave, something to be seen only in the corner of someone’s eye. More tangible, the metal glowing in the handle of every door as he melted the deadbolts into place, locking people inside. He disabled guns as he passed bodyguards, soldering bullets into the barrels, taking the heat back from the metal. It hummed in frustration.

Fire didn’t care about noncombatants. Too many times Porsche had heard their screams and known the cause, had squeezed his eyes shut against their fear, losing himself in the single-mindedness, the primal hunger of immolation.

Not now. There were children in the building.

His awareness spread throughout the compound; fire always wanted air, after all. Porsche took down the fire alarms—just plastic and bits of cheap metal—no protection at all from someone like him. And he smiled when he found places he could burn: Costa’s office, so full of papers, so desperate for his attention. The armory was more of a challenge, as he worked out how to disable the grenades without announcing his presence.

(Once the person who had owned him had made him find unexploded mines in a no-man’s land of contested territory. Porsche had enjoyed that, actually.)

The smell of smoke reached him as he finished destroying the wiring—no calls, no comms, no electricity. They’d know something was wrong, with the last one. He couldn’t hide forever. The stairs to the basement beckoned, black with scuffs from the feet that had been dragged down. Porsche followed the trail, his footsteps sparking against the concrete.

Khun Costa’s men had turned on flashlights by the time he got to the basement, shouting into useless comms to get the lights back on, fucking now. Their voices bounced around the hard angles of the room, off the concrete floor, a patchwork of hosed-off bloodstains and despair dripping out through strategically placed drains.

Plastic sheeting began to wither around Porsche as he passed; the metal tables hissed in protest but acquiesced to his will.

Will did not come easily to him. Porsche thought of the children in the sealed-off daycare, the cooks in the kitchens, the goldfish in the pond out on the terrace, the orchids in the solarium. Innocents, all. Porsche shivered for the first time as the darkness of the basement closed about him, tired of holding back, weakened.  

The wet impact of metal hitting flesh broke his concentration, and the mirage shifted around him. Porsche found Kinn, on his knees before the Costa patriarch. Ettore stood behind Kinn, one hand threaded through his hair; another hand curled around a set of brass knuckles. A forest of bodyguards surrounded the two. Porsche crept closer.

“Still no comms?” khun Costa asked one of the bodyguards, who shook his head. He looked down at Kinn. “What have you done?”

“I told you,” Kinn managed through swollen lips. “My family will come for me.”

Ettore hit him again, the brass knuckles shining red in the flashlight’s white gleam. Kinn’s head snapped backward but was stopped by the man’s grip in his hair. This close, Porsche heard the tiny, broken noise Kinn made as he tried to breathe.

The brass knuckles fell to the ground, where they quietly melted out of shape. Scorch marks began to spread outwards from where he stood, the ashes preceding death. The first bodyguard swung around, his nose quivering, but Porsche’s power sucked the air from his lungs, and he staggered backward, overcome by the anoxia.

“Kill him,” khun Costa ordered, and Ettore extended a hand to one of the bodyguards, the meaning clear in his open palm. “Nothing else to say?” he asked Kinn as his second-in-command took the knife.

Kinn was silent, though Porsche could see his chest heaving through the tears in his ruined shirt. Silver flashed as Ettore yanked his head back and to the side—

—and then screamed as the knife turned white hot in his hand, hot enough for the sparks to catch, for the fire to devour. Porsche dropped the mirage as the Costa second-in-command became a column of flame, his scream lingering as his power next engulfed the patriarch, then the bodyguards, rolling over them en masse; burning lattices giving way to messy, licking slow-killing embers, enough for what they’d done, what they deserved.

They’d taken it from him, the joy that fire brought, turning his power to awful desire, exaltation of destruction, the crackling whimpers that emerged from blackened throats.

When the fires burned out, he was left facing Kinn, who lurched to his feet—awkwardly; his hands had been cuffed in front of him. Such a small thing, after dealing out death, so Porsche touched a finger to the metal links and the man was free. The coldness of metal hovered about his hands.

“You came for me,” Kinn said, a trickle of blood making its way from his torn upper lip down his chin, his hand pressed into his side.

Porsche extended his hands, seeing beneath the skin. “Broken rib,” he noted, and above him Kinn tried to laugh, his breath jarring as Porsche bound the edges of the bone together again, pulling at the inflammation until the marrow fused, the blood vessels spiderwebbed across the break. The organs were unharmed, though the heartbeat was understandably fast. Kinn had just watched him commit mass murder, after all.

He raised his head, avoiding the black pits of Kinn’s eyes, slanting to the side to…a fractured orbital bone, he thought, putting a hand on Kinn’s face for balance. Porsche was dimly aware that this was one of the more complex procedures he’d attempted, but he was too power-drunk to be concerned. 

“Your hands are cold,” came Kinn’s voice, a long way away, as Porsche busied himself with the fracture, the chipped bones coming together. The orbital nerve was bruised; he teased at the swelling, still evading the man’s gaze, the flecked-ash fear that would surely be there.

Avarice and fear, what he’d learned from his years in cuffs, from his years on the run. Most people were opportunistic enough, cruel enough to use him as a weapon, turn their enemies into bits of bone char. Those who remained feared him, as fire-bringers had always been feared, viewed as abominations, sacrificed by the Mekong kings in exchange for rainfall.

Bloody fingers came beneath his chin, raising his obdurate head to see ardor instead of avarice, reverence instead of fear. Adrift, he sought refuge in Kinn’s gaze, like drowning in night, night without stars, cold and endless, lost in the blackness of earth, until blackness was all he could see, and Porsche fell.

Chapter Text

Kinn caught the fire-bringer as he wavered, let Porsche fall against him instead of to the soot-streaked floor. The cold surprised him—surely no one could be so cold and still live—but he heard the soft drag of breath, felt a pulse beneath frigid skin.

“Porsche,” he said through a split lip and a swelling jaw. But Porsche didn’t move.

Right. All the research agreed that power had a price. Kinn remembered Porsche’s cold fingers when he’d healed him. Perhaps this was the price a fire-bringer paid for incinerating…hm, eight people? Stefano, Ettore, and however many bodyguards the two had brought along to torture him.

Kinn eyed the piles of embers that were all that remained of the men. There might be some bone fragments smoldering in there, but he wasn’t going to paw around and find out. They had to get out of the compound, and Porsche was an ice-cold deadweight in his arms.

Still, Kinn took a moment to smooth Porsche’s hair away from his face. He’d walked away from the man’s room expecting to be caught, but hoping he could talk his way out of the Costa’s plan to torture and kill him. He’d mostly succeeded at avoiding the torture—mostly, he thought, as his back ached and he wasn’t sure how much weight one of his knees would hold. Porsche had healed the worst wounds, though, the broken rib and the black eye Ettore’s brass knuckles had caused.

“I don’t suppose you left me a gun?” Kinn asked, looking around the room. He wasn’t sure what was going on upstairs. By now the Theerapanyakul bodyguards would have figured out where he was, would have surrounded the Costa compound. The tricky part would be slipping away before the Costa men realized that he’d escaped.

Especially carrying the unconscious fire-bringer who’d saved his life twice now. A gun would be helpful.

After kicking through the remains (not those remains—Kinn had limits) of the basement/torture chamber, Kinn admitted defeat. Porsche had left no weapons in working condition. Smart of him to disable their enemies.

Porsche’s cold was beginning to seep into his chest as Kinn began a slow climb up the stairs. He wondered if he could use the fire-bringer as an icepack for the knee Ettore had kicked out earlier. He balanced most of Porsche’s weight between the handrail and his hip. His bad knee held, though it clicked ominously as Kinn navigated the stairs.

When the power had gone out, he’d thought his family was coming to the rescue—Kim was going to kill him for this, though right now his brother probably thought he was dead. But then the air had wavered and Kinn had seen Ettore’s knife turn white hot. The room had turned to conflagration around him and when he’d blinked the smoke out of his eyes, Porsche was there.

Looking afraid. Kinn supposed he could understand why Porsche would be afraid of his reaction after killing eight people in front of him. But Kinn had seen worse. Hell, he’d done worse.

Kim would be doing worse to the Costa men whenever he got out of this damn basement. Ever since the kidnapping that had taken Tankhun from them, his brother had been sensitive about his safety.

At last he reached the top step and tested the door. Unlocked. Kinn looked down at Porsche. He didn’t want to leave him down here, alone in the smoke-choked dark. But Kinn had to admit that the basement was the only location he knew was secure.

So he settled Porsche at the top of the stairs, listening for footsteps or voices or—anything, really, besides eerie silence. At this point, there should be alarms sounding, bodyguards running back and forth, a compound of personnel on high alert. Perhaps the Costa bodyguards had rallied, were advancing on the basement…

Kinn emerged from the basement, his bruised body protesting as he drew himself up to face—

Nothing. He took in the blackened floors and ceiling tiles, the melted wire casing dangling from the ceiling tiles, the heavy smell of hot plastic, the tang of singed metal. There was no scent of burning bodies, though, Kinn realized. Even in the basement, Porsche’s power had reduced them to bone char.

“Fuck, Porsche,” he managed.

Well, this explained why the power had gone out. Porsche hadn’t just killed eight people—the compound looked like the target of a drone strike.

He heard the scuff of a heavy boot and reached for the gun he didn’t have in his belt, relaxing only when he saw the flash of a Theerapanyakul pin on a standard-issue black suit. Their men must have broken through the front gates of the compound. Or perhaps the front gates had been broken for them.

Belatedly, Kinn wondered how he was supposed to keep the fire-bringer’s existence secret when the evidence was everywhere. A drone strike wasn’t a bad idea, actually. He’d pretend that he’d called one in and have Arm cover for him.

“Khun Kinn,” the bodyguard—one of Kim’s people—said. He touched the comms unit in his ear. “I’ve got visual.” The comms unit chattered, and the man winced.  

“Let me guess,” Kinn said. “My brother’s going to kill me.”

“That’s what he said, yes, khun Kinn. Also he asks if you need medical attention?”

Kinn shook his head. He’d head into one of the Theerapanyakul clinics once he’d figured out a safe place for Porsche to recover. If his father was in residence, the compound was out. His father did not trust magic-users and would be most disappointed to learn that Kinn was sheltering one.

“What’s the status of the rest of the compound?” he asked the bodyguard, going for the drone strike theory. “Arm was testing out an experimental drone. He’ll be interested to know the impact.”

The man’s eyebrows went up as he took in the new information. “We’re still working on getting the Costa bodyguards out of their rooms, khun Kinn. Every door in the compound was sealed shut. Melted shut, actually. Like all the weapons in the armory. The noncombatants in the compound appear to be unharmed.”

Doors sealed, weapons melted, noncombatants kept from harm. Kinn thought of the fire-bringer he’d left unconscious on the stairs. From the beginning, he’d suspected that Porsche was not a killer—not in the way he was, or Kim was. The precision of his attack confirmed it.

“Good to know,” he remarked, heading back for Porsche now that he knew the compound was secure. “The drone was designed to limit noncombatant casualties. I’ve confirmed that Ettore and Stefano are dead, though. You can call that in.”

While these takeover attempts were not common, there was an accepted practice for dealing with noncombatants—most of the lower-ranked bodyguards, staff, maintenance people. Much like the police, they’d have their faces scanned and fingerprints taken so that the Theerapanyakuls could keep an eye on them going forward.

Porsche was where he’d left him, slumped on the top step. Kinn touched two fingers to his pulse for reassurance—that he could feel blood beating through his corpse-cold body was a mind-fuck, and hoisted the man into his arms, trying not to put too much weight on his bad knee as he returned to the bodyguard.

His brother was there when he got back.

“What were you thinking?” Kim demanded, as pale as Porsche was, the whites of his eyes giving away his worry. “Do you have a fucking death wish?”

“Dismissed,” Kinn told the bodyguard, whose expression turned to gratitude before he disappeared. “I’m fine,” he told his brother, trying to be gentle. “Stefano and Ettore are dead.”

“What do I care?” was Kim’s response. His gaze swung down to Porsche, fixing for a moment on the battered cuff still attached to his wrist. “Who the hell is he?”

“He’s mine,” Kinn replied. He’d take the cuff off and destroy it as soon as he had Porsche somewhere safe. “His brother works at your bar. Which you knew and refused to tell me about.”

Kim shrugged, shaking his hair into his eyes to hide his expression. He might as well broadcast to the whole compound that he knew Porsche’s brother and was hiding his existence from the family…which meant that Porsche’s brother was also a magic-user. Porsche had also refused to talk about his brother, until he couldn’t keep the man a secret any longer. Powers ran in families, did they not? Kinn wondered what the brother could do.

He wouldn’t get the information out of Kim, though. The silence was getting him nowhere, and Porsche was making him cold.

“Since you’re keeping him from me, please let him know that I have his brother,” Kinn told Kim, who gave him a blank face. “Where’s father?”

Kim gave Porsche another look before answering, “Last minute business trip. He took a plane out of the country as soon as our men went after you.”

So that if they failed, their father would claim that the attack had been their idea, the exuberance of youth. He’d be able to talk to the other mafia elders, perhaps get them released if they’d been captured. Which he had been, until a drone strike had freed him. A drone strike that no one had witnessed.

“What about the spy?”

Kim smiled then, just a flash of teeth, but he was showing emotion. “I sent him on a snipe hunt to the other side of the city, and Arm canceled his bus card and credit cards so he’ll have to walk back. You’ve got a couple hours before he finds you.”

“Thank you,” said Kinn, and his brother’s expression softened for just a moment. “Really,” he went on, redistributing Porsche’s weight so his arms didn’t hurt so much. “I knew I could depend on you if the drone strike didn’t succeed.”

He walked past Kim, heading for the front gates of the compound (that Porsche had presumably destroyed).

Behind him, his brother got on his comms unit and demanded to talk to Arm about the drone strike.

Sure enough, the compound’s front gates were melted out of shape. Kinn continued past them, heading for his Escalade, nodding to his men as he passed as though he always princess-carried people out of torched buildings. He settled his fire-bringer in the back seat, checking his breathing—it chilled his fingers—once more.

A collection of antique texts, including Prince Suradej’s journals, had been auctioned off a few years ago. Kinn had bought them, figuring that the more information he had, the better his chances at finding the fire-bringer who’d saved his life.

A few lines in the journals had detailed how the prince had helped his lover recover after using his powers. Kinn remembered, because Suradej had called the condition burnout.

The woman looked at the dying orchid, a secret blooming in her eyes. She had a green thumb; she could save the flower, nurture it over the coming months, watch as the first tentative blossoms emerged. The knowledge unfurled inside her as she bargained with the street-seller.

Pete liked those secrets. The street-seller’s, of course, was more prosaic. He wanted to see the woman without her clothes.

Typical, though mostly harmless. Pete swallowed around the construction in his throat and continued down the street. Clever of khun Kinn’s men, really, to think of cutting off his credit card and rendering his bus pass invalid. Not the sort of thing khun Kinn would think of—his guess was Arm. But as long as Pete wasn’t looking at the man, he wouldn’t know his secret, wouldn’t know for sure. He could keep speculation from khun Korn, but not secrets.

His shoes had started pinching several blocks ago, but Pete preferred the long walk to what would happen when he found the Theerapanyakuls again. Which bodyguards were gamblers, who drank too much, the secret lovers…Pete saw them all and duly reported them.

To say that he wasn’t liked was an understatement.

Everyone knew he was a spy, but they couldn’t figure out how he knew. Pete tugged at his turtleneck shirt beneath his standard-issue Theerapanyakul suit, the fabric stifling in the hot afternoon. They tried to avoid him, some part of them aware that spending more than a few moments in his company would result in their punishment or dismissal or whatever khun Korn did to the people he sold out.

He checked the map on his phone and turned a corner, heading for the Costa compound. Khun Kim had called him a few hours ago with a pretext—some sign of Kinn on the opposite side of the city. If Pete had been in the room with him, he would have seen it. But over the phone, he had no way of knowing truth from lie. Another mercy, at times.

A black Escalade barreled down the street towards him, and Pete jumped out of the street, catching a glimpse of khun Kinn behind the wheel. The man had been going too fast to see him. He was too late, though, to keep Pete from knowing what he hid. Pete had seen it the first time he’d met khun Kinn, the fire-bringer he searched for, had finally found.

Pete limped through the melted gates of the Costa compound, taking in the smoke rising from the ruined building, the bodyguards escorting the various noncombatants into vans where they’d be driven out of the city and released. He spotted khun Kim amid the crowd and headed toward the man.

“Oh, you’re here,” khun Kim told him when he presented himself, dismissively, looking at him once, then avoiding his eyes. 

Pete watched the secret grow inside the man, the branches extensive, covered in worry. Khun Kim looked down at the man in his arms, his eyes closed, blood running from his nose. The man’s arm trailed limply—khun Kim was afraid to look—

“There’s nothing left for you to do here,” khun Kim interrupted as Pete considered. The secret had the smell of an event that had not yet occurred, hence the man’s worry.

He bowed. “I'm sorry, khun Kim. I would have come faster if you hadn’t sent me to the opposite side of the city and ensured that I had to walk here.”

All power had a price. His own secrets spilled out of his mouth as naturally as breath. All except one.

Khun Kim laughed. Once. “You know you’ll be punished for speaking that way to me,” he noted. “You can walk back to the compound, and we’ll call it even. Dismissed.”

But he was the one who walked away, his secret still unfurling in his mind. Pete wasn’t sure what it meant, yet, so all he’d report to khun Korn was that his youngest son was worried about someone, that holding the man in his arms implied that there was a relationship. The Theerapanyakul patriarch would send his people to find out who khun Kim was seeing.

Secret after secret, data point after data point until khun Korn knew everything.

Pete inputted the Theerapanyakul compound on his maps app and sighed when he saw the distance. “My heels will be bleeding by the time I get there,” came out of his mouth, prompting one of the Theerapanyakul bodyguards to look up at him and then back away when he saw who had spoken.

Too late. The man had an illicit cell phone. Just last night, he’d stayed up late, waiting until his roommate was asleep to swipe through a game. It helped him sleep, because—the secret behind the secret—the bodyguard hated his job.

Pete sympathized with him. He could give the man until khun Korn returned to the country, but no longer.

He didn’t get to keep secrets from khun Korn. The collar he wore ensured it.

He’s mine, Kinn had said, his grip on the magic-user possessive, the condensation on the wrist cuff preventing Kim from being able to see what he was. He could infer, though, given the smoking remnants of the Costa compound, just what sort of magic Chay’s brother could command.

Kim hit the gas pedal as he turned the corner, heading to Yok’s bar where he’d thought the fore-teller would be safe. When he’d left the gun range, Chay’s nose had barely stopped bleeding. Yok would make sure he wasn’t, like, dying or anything before sending him back to his hellhole apartment.

He knew that magic-users had their limits (their weaknesses, the books said). The effort had been clear on the fore-teller’s face when he’d tried to locate Kinn, but Kim had kept pushing him until he’d wavered on his feet. Until he bled.

Fuck.

At first he’d thought the man in Kinn’s arms was dead, but Kim had seen his chest rise and fall, had seen his brother carry off the magic-user like the spoils of war. Chay had warned him, had he not, of what would happen when his uncle found them both. The mafia would cuff them and use them against their enemies. The fore-teller wasn’t capable of destroying the better part of a city block.

(Kim had still made him bleed.)

Arm talked a good game about his experimental missile program that harnessed the affordances of technology to create a cutting-edge response to the multifaceted need for conflict suppression. His proprietary design allowed for targeted enforcement of undesirables while prioritizing strategic organizational goals.

Kim had tried to buy the family’s cybersecurity expert before. He’d taken all the bodyguards to Yok’s, open bar, till they’d all been shitfaced. He’d taken a shirtless Arm aside, suggested that his talents were being wasted itemizing Kinn’s reports.

Surprisingly lucid for someone who’d been doing bodyshots, Arm had refused. He liked the autonomy Kinn gave his people, he said.

(There had been no autonomy in Kinn’s hold on the magic-user.)

Since you’re keeping him from me, let him know I have his brother.

Like hell was Kim passing along that message to the man who’d killed to protect his brother. Chay’s range with a gun might be nonexistent, but all he had to do was blink those starry eyes, keep someone off-guard long enough that they’d never see the danger coming. Ironic, since Chay’s weakness was that he’d never see his own danger.

He found street parking outside Yok’s and badly parallel-parked, his tires half-resting on the curb as he sprang out of his car. No matter. He wasn’t going to be here for long. Kinn knew that the magic-user’s brother worked here, which meant that the location was no longer safe for the fore-teller.  

Kim let himself into the bar, leaving the door unlocked behind him—they’d open in a few minutes, anyway. Yok herself was wiping down the bar. He didn’t bother with a greeting; swiping a bottle of whiskey from behind the bar and yanking out the pourer.

After a long, necessary drink, Kim asked, “Where’s Chay?”

“Baby Chay?” Yok clarified, her eyes glinting. “Curled up in my office. He must have tired himself out running around with you.”

The bottle of whiskey thunked down on the bar a shade too hard, sloshing the liquor inside. He resented the innuendo in her voice. They hadn’t done anything. Except, like Kinn, he’d forced the magic-user to go past his limits.  

“Why the fuck are you calling him baby Chay? He’s taller than you,” was Kim’s comment.

Yok threw her hands in the air theatrically. “His face! His eyes! He brings in so many tips, though we have to protect him when he goes on break. There are monsters in the world who want to eat him alive.”

The glint in her eyes turned into an outright flash. For the first time, Kim wished he’d set up the surveillance cameras to record more than people’s shoes. He could find the offenders and pour their blood in the streets outside the bar and call it street art. People shouldn’t have to worry about sexual harassment in their workplaces, damn it.

“Speaking of monsters,” Yok began, one hand reaching beneath the bar. “There’s one in particular I’ve been wondering if I should warn him about.”

Had the fore-teller’s uncle been sniffing around the bar? Kim had run the man’s name through a couple databases, but he was a ghost. Likely whoever he was working for this time had deep enough pockets to hide someone’s identity. But the Theerapanyakuls had deeper pockets. He’d find him.

“I don’t pay you to think,” he replied. “You’re good with knives. Take them down.”

He had a moment of warning—Yok’s smile was a little too assured—before the stiletto was spinning at his head. Out-of-practice (not his fault; she hadn’t thrown a knife at him for a month now), Kim ended up hitting the floor as he dove out of the way.

Yok laughed as her knife stuck, quivering, in the wall.

“You could have killed me,” Kim protested, but mildly. He’d ducked, hadn’t he?

“You deserve it,” Yok agreed. “Why don’t you come to my office and apologize to baby Chay for whatever you did to upset him? I’ll follow you there,” she motioned.

Great, so she could stick a knife in his back as he tried to figure out how to explain that my brother put a cuff on your brother and forced him to blow up an entire mafia compound and now has him in my family’s compound but please don’t kill him.

Chay’s eyes were closed as he hummed a note under his breath, a note that Kim, who had perfect pitch, couldn’t place. The fore-teller extended a slender hand, like he was searching for a string to pluck.

“You look terrible,” Kim couldn’t stop himself from saying. Chay opened his eyes, dark pools in a face gone star-pale.  

“And whose fault is that?” Yok admonished him.

Kim turned to her—good, no knives—“His. He looked better than that when I sent him to you.” He swung back around to Chay. “I sent you here to rest.”

“I was. Resting,” the fore-teller said, lacking credibility.

Yok took charge of the conversation. “Kim was just going to apologize for interfering with one of my employees,” she said. “Does he need to apologize for anything else?”

“Apologize?” Chay asked, looking between them. “He’s done nothing to apologize for. I heard something at the bar and passed along the information. P’Kim just taught me how to use a gun in case they came after me.”

He’d never called him phi before. Kim didn’t like it. Although Chay had likely just saved him from another stiletto surprise. Yok should add that to the bar menu.

“You’d do better to teach him knives. Easier to obtain and easier to conceal,” Yok said critically. She shot a sidelong glance at Kim. “Have you killed the people he overheard yet, or do I have to do everything for you?”

“Working on it,” Kim said. He nodded at Chay. “I need him to match voices to faces. Can I borrow him for the evening?” When Yok’s hand disappeared behind her back, he added, “I’ll keep him safe.”

Yok began to shake her head, but Chay stood up. “I’m not on schedule for tonight,” he replied.

Good. They weren’t coming back to Yok’s bar, and he needed more information about what Kinn was planning before he deemed Chay’s studio to be secure. But Kim had a house in the city suburbs he’d never told anyone in his family about.  

He still had something to say to Yok, so Kim let the fore-teller go out first. Yok looked at him expectantly.

“What did he overhear?” she asked.

Kim flicked his hand to dismiss the question. “Let me know if anyone comes looking for him,” he ordered.

Including his brother.

Porsche noticed the absence of cold first; the first cracks pierced through the cavern of ice that surrounded his heart. He took a long breath at last, not ready to wake up, as ripples of warmth slid through him.

Feeling returned slowly. Softness beneath his cheek, though the texture left him bemused—loops of thread, like terrycloth. And the air was wrong, cedar-scented, heavy with water.

“Your breathing changed,” came a voice, which Porsche struggled to place. “Are you awake?” the voice continued, and at last a trickle of awareness occurred to him. Black eyes holding his, bloody fingers on his skin. And wreckage behind him, above him, the destruction only a fire-bringer could deal.

“Kinn,” he said, blinking bleary eyes, struggling to interpret the contrast between dark hair, pale skin, white towel. The man raised a bottle of ice water—oh fuck, he couldn’t think about ice—to his lips. A drop trickled down his neck, fell onto his bare chest where it hovered…

Porsche sucked in another humid breath.

“Why are we in a sauna?” he asked, unable to articulate the spaces between words. He levered himself off the stack of towels he was laying on, took stock of the wood walls, the steaming rocks in the corner, before turning his attention to Kinn.

The drop of water still glistened on the man’s chest, a distinct bead among the sweat.

“You were cold,” Kinn said, as though his actions were obvious. He set aside the book he’d been reading and picked up a dark piece of plastic, causing Porsche to flinch away before he realized that Kinn was only pointing an infrared thermometer at his head.

The device beeped and Kinn glanced at the readout. “You’re still cold,” he noted. “According to this, you’re supposed to be dead. Go back to sleep.”

Too easy. Porsche already felt the heat of the sauna pulling him under. He fumbled with the collar of his shirt, suddenly too confining compared to…the towel Kinn was wearing. He squinted, trying to find the drop of water, but it had disappeared.

“Have you been here the whole time?” he managed to ask, because that much time in a sauna could be dangerous for a normal person. Even one drinking ice water and wearing only a towel around his hips.

A towel that shifted as Kinn got to his feet. “I took breaks. Speaking of. I’ll be outside if you need me.”

Softness beneath his cheek once more; somehow his head was already down. Too late, Porsche thought to ask Kinn what had happened, how many people had died, but the door had already shut behind him. He closed his eyes.

He felt better the second time he woke up. Porsche tested his power, still mostly locked away, though after a few moments of concentration he managed to produce a birthday-cake-candle’s worth of flame in his palm that quickly sputtered out.

He wouldn’t be escaping any mafia compounds like this.

Though Porsche wasn’t sure he had to escape. Kinn had seen all he could do and yet he hadn’t woken up with a cuff on his wrist. The fake one the Costas had put on him had even disappeared. He thought of Kinn, stripped down to a towel after a couple hours in a sauna, courting heatstroke so he wouldn’t have to wake up alone.

Porsche wasn’t used to trusting people. Too many times trust had ended when people tried to capture him—or with oddly convenient deaths, when Chay got involved. He’d have to warn his brother. The Costas had been destroyed by fire. His uncle would be coming for him.

He twitched his clammy clothes straight, though there wasn’t much he could do about the streaks of soot on his white shirt. Porsche took a last cedar-scented breath and pushed open the door of the sauna.

Kinn was waiting for him, though he’d exchanged the towel and the perfect quivering drop of water—where had it gone; Porsche had barely taken his eyes off it—for a pair of blue jeans and a navy shirt. His feet were slung sideways over the arm of his chair, while his laptop rested on his chest as he frowned into what looked like a spreadsheet.

“Hi,” said Porsche.  

Kinn gave him a slow once-over before pointing the infrared thermometer at him like a gun. The device beeped. “Better,” he pronounced. “How long does it usually take you to recover from these?”

“This doesn’t happen often,” Porsche said, beginning to shiver as his damp clothes dried. Still, he confessed, “Last time it took a week for me to stand up.”

Last time Chay had killed three of the men holding him, Porsche had killed the fourth, and then he’d lost control. By the time he’d come back to himself, he’d destroyed the men’s base of operations, the fires burning so hot that little crystals sparkled in the concrete afterward. The ensuing lethargy had lasted weeks. Either he was getting more powerful or Kinn’s sauna treatment had worked. From the satisfied tilt to the man’s chin, Porsche guessed the latter.

He shivered again, and Kinn pointed at a thermos on the table. Porsche sniffed—ginger tea—and drank. More warmth. He wondered how Kinn knew so much about fire-bringers, when Porsche was fairly sure he was the first one to be born in a century.

Porsche squinted at Kinn’s laptop screen. “What are you working on?” he asked, figuring he could come back around to questions like where am I and what are you going to do with me.

Kinn handed over the laptop, though he stayed sprawled out in the chair. Porsche looked over the columns and percentages, trying to hide his wince at all the math.

“Charitable donations,” Kinn told him, seeing through the confusion. “We’re a bit shy of our monthly spending goal, so I was considering events to attend. What do you think: diamond auction or art gallery opening?”

He handed over a file with pictures of the diamond necklaces to be sold and the art pieces available for sponsorship—meaning the Theerapanyakuls would buy the piece but donate it back to the gallery for the tax write-off.

“I don’t know what you’d do with a diamond necklace, so I’d go with the art gallery,” Porsche said dubiously, though his attention was caught by a picture of a rectangular red gemstone on the end of a simple silver chain. “This isn’t a diamond,” he commented.

Kinn looked over at the file. “Red diamond. Baguette cut, probably to emphasize the purity of the stone. You have good taste.”

Again, the once-over, this time speculative as Kinn looked from the file to Porsche’s chest. He couldn’t be thinking…no, Porsche couldn’t even think about it. He crossed his arms instead, forcing Kinn’s eyes upward.

“Any chance I can get a shower and borrow some clothes?” he asked.

Kinn snapped the laptop shut. “Let’s go up to my suite,” he said, answering Porsche’s unspoken where am I question and also prompting a flare of anxiety because the last place Porsche wanted to be was yet another mafia compound. “I know, you don’t want to be here,” Kinn went on, correctly interpreting his expression.

Unable to curtail his sudden backstep, Porsche asked, “Why did you bring me here, then?”

Kinn let him go. “My father is out of the country on business, so I’m in charge of the compound. Only a few people know you’re here, and they won’t talk. I wouldn’t have brought you here if it wasn’t safe.”

He took a moment to consider. That he’d set the Costa compound on fire would be a beacon for his uncle, and the protocol for when Arthee found them was to run like hell. But they’d never had the mafia on their side before. No matter who Arthee sold them to, they couldn’t be more powerful than the Theerapanyakuls.

“My uncle knows what I am,” Porsche explained. “He’s sold information about me before to—” and he had to stop before he said people like you. “—people. He’ll find out about the Costa fire and come after me. Or he’ll send someone else.”

“Then I’ll kill them,” Kinn promised, unruffled, getting to his feet. “Better yet, give me your uncle’s name and he’ll be dead by the end of the week. You don’t have to keep running, Porsche.”  

The words stuck with him as he followed Kinn into the elevator.

Vegas propped up his cousin as they straggled up the last flight of stairs. The trip to Bangkok had been rough: they’d broken into a box truck to get away from the facility, not trusting the locals in town (probably spies for his uncle) or the public transit (cameras).

The box truck had brought them close to city limits, where they’d stolen clothes and flip-flops from an outdoor market to replace their facility-issued sweats and slippers. And then, finally, they’d been able to circle the neighborhood where Vegas had his safehouse, an apartment hopefully undiscovered by his uncle.

One of the earliest lessons his father had taught both him and Macau was to maintain a safehouse completely off the family books. To make the lesson stick, Kan had made them find their own money to buy their places.

Macau had once bragged that he’d bought his place by trading bitcoin, which Vegas thought was a waste of his degree in computer science. Vegas had gone the more traditional route of murder for hire. The apartment had come fully furnished, and he’d kept the flowered wallpaper in the living room, the soft yellow appliances in the kitchen. He’d made some changes to the bedroom, though.  

“You’re sure my father didn’t know about this place?” Tankhun asked, using his foot to poke the home is where the heart is welcome mat outside the door.

“Only one way to find out,” Vegas replied, kicking over the (fake) potted plant and sifting through the desiccated soil until he found the key.  

Some people knew about this place, but he usually kept them blindfolded until they got past the living room. And Vegas might be immodest, but he didn’t think he left them in any condition to question their location.

It was a good sign, actually, how long it took him to force the key into the lock. Meant no one had tried the safehouse recently. Tankhun leaned against the wall as he worked, eyes closed with exhaustion. They hadn’t eaten for a few days now, although Vegas had managed to swipe water for them here and there. His cousin wasn’t used to this lifestyle anymore—though Vegas wasn’t used to skipping meals, either.

He thought he had a med kit in one of the cupboards, and all his med kits were stocked with caffeine pills. Hopefully that would keep his cousin going until he could get them food. There was a stack of cash hidden in one of the walls.

Vegas had considered, now that they’d escaped, whether to drop his cousin off somewhere in the countryside and continue on alone. He didn’t want to think too hard about why he hadn’t.

Finally he got the key to click in the lock. The door hinges stuck as they opened—another good sign, and then Vegas smelled the stale air of his safehouse and knew this was one secret he’d kept from his uncle.

Tankhun half-fell through the door and hurled himself into a dusty chair with a sigh. “Sorry, I know I’m holding us up,” he apologized, extricating his blistered feet from the flip-flops they’d stolen from the market.

“This is your revenge, too,” Vegas assured him, a line he’d practiced in his head all the way here in case his cousin asked. He adjusted his own flip-flops so they didn’t rub against the blisters on his feet. “You have more power over Korn than I do,” he noted.

Vegas found the med kit in a creaky cupboard and tossed the container of caffeine pills to his cousin, reserving the bandages for their blistered feet. Buying decent footwear would take a chunk out of their cash reserves. He turned on the faucet, producing a thin trickle of grimy water. They couldn’t have everything they wanted.

“I don’t know what power you think I have over my father,” Tankhun was saying. “He threw me in that hellhole for twelve years.”

Vegas repressed a shudder. “He’d have taken you out the instant Kinn misbehaved, though. He was probably only using me to draw out Macau.”

“Or if Kinn and Kim proved recalcitrant,” Tankhun said meditatively. At Vegas’s look he added, “You were raised as an heir as well. He could have used Macau to turn you.”

The fact that he hadn’t suggested that Korn still hadn’t found his brother. Unfortunately, Vegas also had no way of finding his brother. Safehouse rules were very clear: nothing with a chip (difficult when even toasters had WiFi nowadays). Vegas wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to break those rules. Korn would be looking for them; his people would be monitoring web traffic for any sign of him.

“Sooooooo,” Tankhun said, the word jittering slightly as the caffeine took effect. “Are you going to give me the nickel tour?”

He wished he didn’t have to. “Living room, kitchen—” Vegas pointed. “Bathroom down the hall, but I don’t think the plumbing works. Bedroom at the end of the hall.”

His cousin went to explore. Vegas took a breath to warn him but ultimately decided against it. To Bluebeard or not to Bluebeard, that was the question, and frankly, it was better to get the embarrassment out of the way. It had been a long time since he’d thought about any of that.

In the meantime, Vegas went to the bless this house wall hanging and twitched it aside. He’d dug into the drywall and stashed stacks of cash, small bills, multiple types of currency. He went for the baht, enough for a change of clothes, some shelf-stable groceries, and a large jug of water. That he’d probably end up carrying. So be it. He had to get back in shape sooner or later.

Some of his other safehouses had boasted fancy wall safes (the signals from which had probably been detected by the major family’s cybersecurity expert). Vegas liked the low-tech option. None of his guests had been in a position to wander away from the bedroom, after all.

Tankhun came down the hall an interesting shade of lobster red. “You brought me to your sex dungeon!” was his accusation.

“Technically, only the bedroom is the sex dungeon,” Vegas replied. His cousin didn’t look convinced. “Look, a safehouse is a safehouse,” he reasoned. “You can sleep on the couch if you don’t want to see what the Vegas of over a year ago enjoyed doing in his spare time.”

His loss. The bed was very comfortable.

Tankhun still looked like he was going to throw up, so Vegas waved the stack of baht in his cousin’s face. “Ready for our first meal?” He held the notes out of the way as his cousin made a grab for them. “But you have to promise that you’re not going to stake out the major family compound in hopes of seeing either of your brothers.”

His cousin directed a glare toward the sex dungeon very carefully constructed bedroom that accommodated Vegas’s flings with the benefit of being in an anonymous, secure location. He turned back to Vegas.

“I promise,” Tankhun lied.  

Tankhun froze as his cousin hissed at him, pointing up at yet another security camera.

“This is your fault,” Vegas continued, hauling him back behind a building, out of the camera angle. “We could have been back at the safehouse with groceries by now, but no, you had to stake out the major family’s compound on the off-chance one of your brothers would come out. And have they come out?”

He’d left the compound twelve years ago for what he’d thought was a weekend trip out of the country. Their enemies had bought the pilot on the private plane, so after a couple drugged drinks, Tankhun had woken up in a cell where—

he couldn’t remember much about that part, actually. Tankhun supposed his brain knew what it was doing, skittering away from anything that would hurt him further.

Or maybe it didn’t. “Just a few more minutes,” said Tankhun, peeking out at the compound again, the familiar façade of the building clawing at his memory. “I have another hour or so until the caffeine pills wear off.”

“Fine. But I’m not stopping you if you walk through the front doors,” his cousin said.

Tankhun was tempted. If he returned, what could his father do but welcome him back, the prodigal son? But then he’d be expected to play a part, pretend his father wasn’t responsible for locking him away for twelve years. He’d have to play along—he had no bodyguards on his side to try a takeover—his brothers wouldn’t have enough information to take his side.

He’d wind up re-enacting one of those nightmares, where he was sent back to the facility. They wouldn’t get another chance to escape.

Oh. His hands were shaking.

“We need to get Kinn and Kim out of the compound so my father can’t use them as leverage to make me turn myself in,” Tankhun said, hiding his trembling fingers behind his back. “To do that, we’ll need information.”

His father would know they’d escaped by now; he’d guess that Tankhun would head to the city. Threatening his brothers was the next move, though Tankhun didn’t know what the threat would look like.  

“You’re too sentimental,” Vegas noted, as if he wouldn’t do the same for Macau. “And you know your precious brothers are going to try to kill me the moment they see me.”

They’d probably succeed, not that Tankhun mentioned it. Recovery from multiple gunshot wounds had been slowed by the paltry food supplies in the facility. Vegas would need time to regain his old muscle strength. He would have to stand in front of his cousin and hope that his brothers’ fingers were slow on the trigger. Whatever else Vegas had done, he’d been wronged by Tankhun’s father as well as his own. Tankhun didn’t think he deserved to die.

He felt the first flagging of energy as the caffeine pills began to wane. They still had to hit the grocery store before heading back to his cousin’s safehouse. Just one more look, Tankhun promised himself, peering around the building again. He could always return the next day—

“Kinn,” he whispered, watching his brother get out of a car. So little remained of the boy he’d been—father had at last gotten the heir he wanted—

For a moment the nightmare Vegas had sent him stuck in his throat and he remembered how Kinn had sent him back to the facility himself. But that was a nightmare. Surely his brother would be happy to see him again, wouldn’t feel that Tankhun was supplanting him as the Theerapanyakul heir, would help him get revenge…

“He looks so smug,” said Vegas over his shoulder, sounding disgusted. “Probably done with a long day of sitting on the couch watching his bodyguards beat up people who owe him money.”

Tankhun pressed his lips together in case they decided to betray him (as his hands had) and call out to his brother. Instead he watched the compound doors close after Kinn like a trap. They needed information. They needed someone who could get a message to Kinn. Someone his brother would trust.

“We need a bodyguard,” he told Vegas, who raised an eyebrow.

“To use as a bodyshield for when your father inevitably tries to kill us? I don’t disagree, necessarily, but that’s more of a long-term goal.”

He flapped a traitorous hand at his cousin to get him to stop. Back at the compound, a lone black-suited man approached on foot, walking gingerly, as though he had blisters on both feet. Tankhun knew the feeling.

“Bodyguards have information we need,” he told his cousin, who was watching the man with the beady-eyed intensity of a raptor. Not sure that Vegas was listening, he continued, “If we can turn one of them, they can get a message to—”

Tankhun stopped talking, because he had to wrap both arms around his cousin’s waist to stop him from lunging forward. Vegas fought him, which was unfair, but at least by the time he won he’d regained control over himself.

“Let go of me,” Vegas snarled, depositing him on the ground after poking him in the solar plexus. “I’m not going to kill him here.”

“You could have fooled me,” Tankhun remarked, massaging his aching stomach (and throwing in a ginger pat to his bruised throat from that time Vegas had punched him a few days ago too. The things he put up with.)

“He’s a traitor,” Vegas said. “He used to work for the minor family—my father trusted him. He’s the reason the attack on the major family failed.”

Tankhun nodded sympathetically, though he owed the traitor/bodyguard a pat on the back for saving Kinn’s life. He hadn’t spoken much about this with his cousin, but surely Vegas would agree that Kinn and Kim were worth more than their fathers. As Vegas vibrated with fury, though, Tankhun kept his mouth shut. If Vegas needed to kill a bodyguard to stay on task, well, he supposed he could countenance the act.

“You still want a bodyguard?” his cousin asked, his lips curling back to reveal—Tankhun had never noticed before—comparatively sharp incisors. When he nodded, Vegas said, “I know just the one.”

Ugh, how had he fallen asleep again? The really nice blanket on top of him probably had something to do with it. Despite being able to stand up (barely, considering how often he’d been horizontal in the past twelve hours), Porsche felt the fatigue bone-deep. Not as bad as the last time this had happened, though, where the emptiness inside him had lingered for weeks.  

“Kinn?” his voice was somewhat plaintive. No response.

He kicked the blanket off him, then realized his error because he was still cold, damn it. He wrapped the fabric around his shoulders and picked up the laptop he’d been using. He must have fallen asleep doing his usual search for his uncle. He’d found nothing; Arthee was as good at hiding as they were.

Porsche and Chay had lived on their own for a couple years after their parents died. Even then, Chay’s power had given them enough notice to skip town when someone reported two truant school-age boys. Of course, he hadn’t seen their uncle coming. Thirteen years ago—maybe fourteen.

A yellow sticky note fluttered on the coffee table next to the couch, on top of a new phone. Kinn had written: Running a few errands. Be back soon.

Porsche took the device, dashing off a text to Chay: Costas destroyed. By me.  

The local news had reported something about human trafficking, a smoke bomb delivered via drone strike, followed by a daring rescue by the authorities. Sensational stuff. Drawing attention to himself made his shoulders itch. Porsche wished Kinn had chosen a more mundane coverup.

He texted his brother again: Do you know how well the story in the news will hold up?

He thought a moment more. Kinn’s brother was Chay’s boss’s boss, no? He wondered if Chay had seen enough of the man to form any impression of him.  

One last question: Can we trust the Theerapanyakuls?

Chay didn’t text back. He was probably on shift. When he learned that Porsche had gone after the Costas, he would assume that they’d learned his secret and that Porsche had killed them in retaliation. Porsche should let him know otherwise, but doing so would mean admitting that he had killed to protect Kinn. That he wasn’t sure that he wanted to disappear again.

He put his phone back on the coffee table.

He heard a quiet knock at the front door to Kinn’s suite, and Kinn entered, setting his shopping bags down on the kitchen island. Porsche went to investigate—it smelled like food. Kinn gave him a tentative smile.

“I can get you some warmer clothes,” he offered, and Porsche realized he was still wearing the blanket around his shoulders.

“This is fine,” he refused, though Kinn looked like he wanted to argue. “What’s in the bag?” Porsche asked, not waiting for an answer before pulling out the takeout containers. He wondered what sort of fire-bringer recovery food Kinn was bringing him this time.

The answer came as he cracked open one of the takeout container lids and coughed from the spices. “Are you just feeding me every spicy food and beverage?” Porsche ticked off on his fingers: “Ginger, chili, that one looks like a pepper sauce—what’s next, wasabi?”

Kinn looked thoughtful as he pulled plates out of the kitchen cupboard. “I haven’t read about wasabi. Do you think it will help?”

Only if he were trying to kill him. Next Kinn would probably give him horseradish. “Where did you learn all this stuff?”

Porsche took the container of tom yam, trying to avoid getting a spoonful of chilis.

“Suradej,” said Kinn, digging into his own takeout. At Porsche’s blank look, he added. “Nobility from a couple centuries ago? Have you heard of him?”

Porsche rolled the name around in his head a few times before explaining, “My parents died when I was twelve and I dropped out of school to take care of Chay. Suradej was that one guy who tried to kill his father, right?”

Kinn muttered something that sounded like this is what happens when we let partisans write our history books before wiping his lips with a napkin, clearing his throat, and then saying, “He was an advocate for magic users. His campaign didn’t end well, but his journals detail some of the methods for recovering from burnout.”

At the word burnout, Porsche snickered. That it was a completely accurate term for what had happened to him didn’t make it less funny.

“Just for fire-bringers, or for all of us,” he mused, and then, unthinking, commented, “I don’t think ginger tea and a sauna would work on my brother.”

Kinn’s eyes narrowed with interest, but he didn’t say anything. Still, Porsche floundered, trying to figure out how to distract the man. Chay’s power wasn’t his to reveal. He dove back into his soup, heading for the red bits this time, until he couldn’t tell whether the fire was coming from him or the chilis. He’d have to look up this Suradej guy sometime. His methods might be painful, but—Porsche doffed his blanket—they were effective.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Kinn said at last. “I told Kim to tell your brother that you’re safe.”

Porsche figured, since no one around them had died of conveniently natural causes, though taking down an entire compound might be too much for his brother. Pulling that many futures, each one so close to the present, each one influencing every other future, sounded impossible. Not that Porsche’s method was much better, if it left him like this.

“Thank you,” he told Kinn, who pressed his lips together but nodded.

Porsche went back to his soup. He appreciated that Kinn wasn’t pushing for more. As heir to one of the foremost mafia families in the country, surely he was used to getting what he wanted…and Porsche added up the man’s actions, the bullet around his neck. Kinn wanted him.

He stretched, the sleeves of Kinn’s shirt sliding down his arms as he raised them overhead. Tilting his head to the side, he watched black eyes watch him. Porsche licked his burning lips.

“The chilis were a good idea,” he said.

“I’m glad you think so,” Kinn said, his voice very careful as he set aside his takeout.

The other package Kinn had brought beckoned from the kitchen island. Porsche went to investigate, passing close enough to Kinn that he could see the man lean away from him, his hands flattening on the tabletop.

“What did you bring for dessert? Something with cinnamon, probably. I think that’s the only spice we haven’t consumed today,” Porsche mused, fumbling with the package, trying to catch Kinn’s eyes.

“No,” Kinn said, as the package opened and a red gemstone on a silver chain rolled into his hand.

He hadn’t. Porsche held the diamond up to the light. What Kinn had called baguette cut meant that there were clean lines instead of facets. The color flashed instead of glittering.

Regaining his composure, Kinn said with only a hint of smugness, “The head of the auction house owed me a favor. A couple favors, actually. One of his building projects was being blocked by a local council.”

“Oh, a gentrification diamond,” Porsche replied, shocked out of wanting for a moment.

“And once I helped him smuggle some antiquities into the country,” Kinn noted, as if disrupting a diamond auction because he didn’t want to wait to buy one of the pieces was something he did every day. “They were in a foreign museum. They didn’t deserve to keep them.”

Returning antiquities to their country of origin was better. Porsche looked again at the bullet Kinn wore around his neck. If they came as a matched set, at least he got the better necklace.

“Do you want to put it on me?” he asked.

He didn’t anticipate refusal, but Kinn shook his head, rising from the chair and backing into the living area, toward the couch Porsche had fallen asleep on earlier. Curious, Porsche followed, fastening the pendant around his neck. At last the backs of Kinn’s knees hit the couch; he couldn’t retreat further. Porsche watched him swallow.

“I don’t want you to feel obligated,” Kinn said, though his eyes were fixed on the diamond. Eventually he raised his gaze to Porsche, his expression searching. “I don’t expect anything.”

He enjoyed being the aggressor, he found, advancing on Kinn until he overbalanced and half-fell down into the couch cushions. Propping himself up against the back of the couch, his hands perilously close to Kinn’s shoulders, Porsche leaned over him.

“And what have you done to create expectations?” he asked, just to be sure he knew everything.

Kinn’s eyes went again to the necklace hanging in the air between them. “I just wanted you to have it,” he said, his hands fisting on his thighs.

“Any other obligations that you care to share?” was Porsche’s next question. “What about that time you walked away with people who were going to kill you without telling me that you were making some kind of heroic sacrifice?”

The man shrugged as best he could with Porsche trapping him against the couch. “You said you wanted to disappear. I wanted to help.”

He didn’t want to disappear anymore. Power rose up inside him, just the merest breath of flame, enough for his purposes. Porsche eyed Kinn’s lips, the cut in one of them presenting an impediment.

“And what happened afterward? Am I obligated to touch you because I spent a few hours in your sauna, and you brought me the spiciest soup known to man?”

“The journal said it would help!” Kinn protested, his pupils receding. He sounded sulky. Good.

Porsche climbed up on the couch, trapping Kinn between his knees. He took his time, bracing himself on one elbow, his other hand free for whatever he wanted…and what he wanted was to trace Kinn’s eyebrows, brush his thumb over his cheekbones, use two fingers to lift his chin. He saw the nerves in his eyes, the reticence to act. Porsche knew the feeling—being afraid to act, because action brought the risk of losing everything.

Or gaining—this. “How long have you been looking for me?” Porsche asked.

“Fourteen years,” whispered Kinn.

Porsche kissed him. Both hands around his face now, slanting to find a better angle. Kinn shuddered beneath him—with pleasure, Porsche hoped, but took advantage of his open lips, tongue meeting tongue, the burn of the chilis from earlier masking that of another. He felt Kinn pause, and raised his head.

“You’re warmer,” Kinn said, appearing not to notice that the cut in his lip was gone.

He’d never delved much into the metaphysics of his being, but yeah, desire could do that. “Because of you,” Porsche half-sang, taking one of Kinn’s fists. He pulled the fingers back, putting his palm over the top of Kinn’s hand, lacing their fingers together.

He concentrated, narrowing through skin and muscle and bone so that—

Kinn startled as flames grew out of his palm, flickering as they met the cooler air of the room, reflecting off the diamond; red flashes spiking around his face and throat.  

“It doesn’t hurt,” Kinn said, wondering.

Porsche felt his other hand close around his hip and leaned down to kiss him again.

Chapter Text

They drove in silence at first, Kim’s hands clenched on the wheel. He’d only looked over when Chay’s phone had lit up with a series of texts from a number he didn’t recognize.

Costas destroyed. By me. 

Do you know how well the story in the news will hold up?

Can we trust the Theerapanyakuls?  

Hia. That explained why the Costa future had gone suddenly, inexplicably blank. Chay pulled up the local news, scanning the story about human trafficking and a raid at the Costa compound that had resulted in minimal casualties. He tugged at the threads of the newspapers, checking the headlines for the next few weeks, none of which mentioned the police raid again. That, more than anything, told him it was a coverup.

Then his head hurt, again, as the golden phin flashed in his memory.

He texted back: Are you okay?

Porsche would be safer if one of the papers ran a story naming him as one of the minimal casualties of the raid. The circumstances were suspicious, though, so he wasn’t sure that Arthee would believe it. The future was supposed to happen to his brother, not because of him.

“Where are we going?” he asked Kim. “You said you wanted me to identify someone for you?”

Truthfully, Chay didn’t think he should be using his power again so soon after what had happened at the gun range. He’d rather shut his eyes and try not to see the filaments binding everyone to everyone else, fates strung in a golden lute. He knew what happened to most seers, that they tried to see what they shouldn’t, or caused impossible things to happen. He hadn’t expected that it would be so tempting, to pluck a silver string and coattail on the reverberations of power. The price had seemed worth paying, that moment at the gun range—

But the phin had slipped beyond his grasp.

“I lied,” said Kim. “Needed to get you out of there.”

“My uncle,” Chay assumed, and after a brief pause, Kim nodded. The story in the papers wasn’t fooling anybody, then.  

Chay pressed his fingers into the bones above his eyes, a different type of pain from the headache. All this work for nothing; Arthee would keep coming and Chay wouldn’t be able to see him until it was too late for them both. After what Chay had done to the men holding Porsche those years ago, Arthee would be prepared to deal with his power. He’d be lucky if they only cuffed him.

He texted Porsche: I don’t think he’ll believe what the papers say. Be careful.

“We’re not going to my apartment,” he noted, as Kim took the exit to get out of the city.

“Assume everything is compromised,” Kim told him.

He wasn’t usually so terse. Because Chay’s powers had fallen short when Kim needed them most. Or because Kim had finally realized how much work he’d have to do if he wanted to continue their—well, whatever partnership they had. Basic needs first, of course, but then Kim would have to take on his uncle and whoever his uncle had sold him to this time. After that, Kim would need to decide how best to hide him away from anyone who might find out his secret. And then there was the risk that one day Chay would pull some thread he shouldn’t and end up unable to use his power entirely.

“I understand if—if everything you’re doing is too much,” Chay said. “I can call my brother to pick me up if you’d rather go home.”

Kim should have an excuse to break away now, before Chay got (more) attached.

“Your brother’s with Kinn,” Kim replied, after a long silence. “We’re going to my safehouse.”

Chay nodded, realized Kim couldn’t see him in the dark car, and yet kept silent, not liking the man’s monotone answers, the sparse bits of information he let fall. He rested his head against the window, absently watching the city lights pass by. As long as he didn’t look at the other drivers on the road, he could pretend he was powerless for a moment.

The car pulled onto one of those creepy deserted suburban cul-de-sacs where the houses all looked exactly the same. Perhaps by daylight they’d be equally-proper shades of sad oatmeal, tepid beige, and insular taupe, but at night they all looked like pale copies of each other.

“Here,” Kim announced as he pulled into a driveway that looked like every other driveway. He parked, then tossed the car key to Chay. “Stay in the car while I check the house. If I’m not back in five minutes, get out of here.”

He disappeared through the front door as Chay decided not to stay in the car. These were futures he could manipulate: the quiet of suburban night, punctuated by the hum of air conditioners, the purr of jets overhead, the darkness softened by light pollution from the not-so-distant cityscape. He could at least ensure that the quiet continued, that the people around him slept undisturbed.

A mouse scurried across the driveway, so Chay ensured that the rodent would find something to eat…on the other side of the wide street.

“You were supposed to stay in the car,” Kim said as he joined him in the driveway.

Chay almost said that he could have defeated any attackers Kim came across, but he wasn’t ready to let go of that secret yet. He followed Kim into the house instead, the air smelling slightly stale but cool from the air conditioning.

Kim led him upstairs and opened the first door off the landing. “You can sleep in here,” he offered. “I can get you some clothes.”  

He might be tired, might be reduced to using his power to encourage vermin to congregate in that one house down the street, the one with an offensive flag flying outside. But for all that he liked pretending to be powerless, Chay found himself frustrated by being treated as though he was a weakness Kim had to mitigate.  

“What if I can’t sleep?” he asked, and there was an edge to his voice.

Kim’s eyes cut to his. “There might be some tea in the kitchen,” he began. “Or I could go out and—”

“No,” Chay said, trying to find the words. “I can’t see my own future, so I won’t be able to know when my uncle comes after me, or how he’ll do it. I won’t be able to protect my brother. Again. I don’t want tea. I want—”

What he wanted eluded him.

Kim’s expression was inscrutable. At last he asked, “Do you want to fight?”

“What?”

“Follow me,” Kim instructed, heading back down the stairs. “This house has a gym,” he said over his shoulder.

Of course it did. Though Chay wasn’t sure that whatever was buzzing through him could be called aggression. Still, he followed Kim into the gym, just off the kitchen. The man flipped the lights, revealing a room at least three times as large as Chay’s hellhole studio with exercise mats, a set of weights, and a very dusty treadmill. There was even a sink in the corner, next to a med kit, which was probably due to the—

“Are those knives?” Chay went over to the wall of weapons to investigate. The blades were black and—he reached out—dull.

“For practice,” Kim said, coming out behind him. He pulled one off the wall and extended it toward Chay. He ignored the practice knives for himself, pulling a blade from behind his back. “So you’ve got a knife. I’ve got a knife. What do you want to do?”

Chay didn’t know much about knives, but Kim’s looked pointy. “Uh, not get any closer?”

“Good,” came Kim’s approval. “You’ll be safer if you run away.”

“But I’m supposed to kill you?” Chay questioned, retreating to the exercise mat, forcing himself to think through the options. He couldn’t make anything happen to Kim—but the fire alarm could always go off, or a police car with a siren could drive by outside (less possible this far out in the suburbs), or—

Kim started to approach but stumbled over his untied shoelace. “The hell?” he muttered, bending down to tie it.

Oh right, he was supposed to move now. Chay walked over to Kim, aware that he was probably supposed to be running. And he had no idea how to hold his knife when he was running. He thought running with a knife was a bad idea, actually.

Meanwhile, Kim had finished retying his laces. He watched him approach, lazy smile on his face. “Ah, the surprise attack. You should move faster, though.”

“I don’t know how,” Chay confessed. “What if I trip and fall on the knife?”

Kim shrugged. “Depends on whether you want to be taken alive. Weigh the risks from there.”

“I think my best chance of staying alive is if I run,” Chay said, considering that his lack of ability with guns had apparently extended to knives. “But what if I want them dead?”

“So strike,” Kim told him. At his look of incomprehension, he demonstrated. “Hold the knife angled up your forearm if you need to move quickly. They’re less likely to see it and you’re less likely to hurt yourself. Like this.”

He launched into movement, grabbing Chay’s knife-hand and forcing it wide, away from his body, as his ankle hooked around Chay’s ankle and jerked him off his feet. The practice knife went flying as Chay fell backward, the impact with the exercise mat knocking the breath from his lungs. And then Kim was very close, kneeling over him.  

Deliberately, Kim set his knife down a foot away from his head, extending two fingers instead.

Chay watched as his hand came closer, till it passed out of his vision, and then he watched Kim’s face instead as he felt his fingers brush against his neck. Too brief a touch to make any difference to the futures clamoring inside him. But then Kim’s hands wrapped around his wrists, pressing them into the mat on either side of his head.

Silence. His vision went out-of-focus, adjusting to an endless present.

“Dead,” Kim’s voice came from far away. “Although if they were going to kill you, they wouldn’t use knives. So they’ve got a knife at your throat but they don’t want to kill you. How are you going to get out of this?”

Chay remembered going to a self-defense class with his mother once when he was younger. The women had partnered up in a scenario like this and told to pretend there’s a man on top of you. Then the instructor had said something like okay, ladies, you’re going to bend your knees and raise your hips and buck him off with the power of your core!

He had no power, not with Kim holding him down. But the last few weeks of stocking at the bar meant Chay had a core with which to, um, buck him off. Reluctantly.

He bent his knees. And raised his hips.

For a moment he was pressed against Kim, but then the man hissed and let go of him, scrambling to the side. Chay rose to his knees, trying to follow, but Kim held up a hand to stop him.

“Sorry, sorry!” Chay said. “I saw it in self-defense class!”

Kim’s face was incredulous. “What the fuck kind of self-defense class teaches you to fucking grind on the person who’s attacking you?”

Oh. Chay opened his mouth to say he wouldn’t know, because he’d never fucking ground on anyone before, but was distracted by a sharp pain in his hand instead. He looked down to find that he’d stabbed himself on the knife Kim had left on the mat. The wound started to bleed, and he held up his palm for Kim to see.

Kim closed his eyes, his sigh long and resigned. “Calm down,” he said on his next breath. “Go wash your hand in the sink. I’ll get a bandage on it.”

Chay rose to his feet, wobbling only a bit as he walked to the sink, his heart still beating too fast. Soap stung, but the wound underneath was small. He felt warmth at his back as Kim joined him. Chay offered him his hand, and Kim glanced at the cut. Evidently agreeing with Chay that it wasn’t very serious, Kim reached into the med kit and pulled out a package of antibiotic ointment and a bandage.

“What should I have done instead?” Chay asked, as Kim scraped ointment onto his hand.

“Run away,” was Kim’s reply. He smoothed the bandage into place.

“What if I don’t want to run?”

He was tired of finding new cities, new cover stories for both of them. Under-the-table job after under-the-table job; Yok’s was the exception that proved the rule. Those jobs were just a different type of exploitation, the poor taking the abuse of petty tyrants because they had no other options. Chay had options. He wasn’t powerless. He wanted—

What he wanted eluded him. Kim stood. “We’ll talk more in the morning,” he said unconvincingly, turning toward the door into the kitchen.

…leaving his knife on the exercise mat. “Don’t you want your knife back?” Chay questioned, and Kim stopped, though he didn’t look at the knife. 

“Knife lore,” Kim explained, holding his gaze. “It’s drawn your blood. It’s yours.”

“Found him,” Vegas pronounced, too loudly for the library. A few patrons shot him reproving glares.

Safehouses were supposed to be used for a few days, a week max. The cash he’d stuffed behind the bless this house wall hanging reflected the fact. Meaning that most of it was allocated for guns and ammo. Vegas hadn’t even thought about buying a computer or a phone.

The free computers in the library were better, anyway. He wasn’t putting WiFi in his safehouse. Anyone would be able to intercept the signal. Macau had come home for Spring Break a few years ago and showed him how vulnerable their communications were.

So now the two of them were huddled around the computer screen, opening up tabs from all the gossip sites on Kinn’s whereabouts. Or lack of whereabouts in the past few weeks, though Kim had been spotted at some champagne social with his newest boyfriend. Or whoever he was.

Khun hadn’t been able to hide a half-sob when he’d seen the pictures of his youngest brother.

Vegas gestured to the article:

He couldn’t hide from us forever! Sources tell us that Kinn Theerapanyakul will be attending the opening of the Ochre Night, an exclusive art gallery this weekend … something the bachelors of our city will be sure to appreciate.

The family publicist tells RNX News … “Korn Theerapanyakul is pleased to see that his son is continuing the family’s charitable traditions.”

“That’s a terrible name for an art gallery,” remarked Tankhun, sniffing. “I bet the paintings are bad as well.”

Vegas didn’t disagree with him, but said, “The major family will be on alert this week if anything happens at the gallery. They’ll send a team to investigate the place if they report a break in. We’ll snag our bodyguard then.”

If only he could guarantee that his bodyguard would be there, the one who’d destroyed the minor family. A few months prior to the attack on the major family’s compound, his father had sent Vegas out of the country to shore up their overseas contacts. In his absence, Korn had lent one of his head bodyguards to the minor family to help with training and enforcement, the tasks that Vegas had done.

At first, Vegas had been suspicious of the man who had his father waxing lyrical about the guards trust him and he comes to me with all their secrets. He’d even had his people trail Pete for a few days, take the standard surveillance footage, but they hadn’t discovered any secrets. Clearly there had been one they’d missed, because the attack on the major family had failed, and one year later Vegas saw his bodyguard sauntering through the city streets, the traitor. 

Though—he cast a guilty look at Tankhun—if the minor family had succeeded, his cousin would be dead. If they had found the paperwork that linked Korn to the facility where they’d been held, they would have killed him along with Kinn. If they hadn’t…he would have died when the money ran out. His stomach cramped at the thought of that variety of slow death.

Tankhun tapped the keyboard. “We can separate the guards in the gallery and draw one out, sure, but he’ll try to fight us. Neither of us are fighters anymore, nong. Unless—” he brightened. “Do you want to spend some of our money on drugs?”

One of the librarians looked over at that. Vegas glared at him, and the man quickly went back to cataloging books.

“Drugging a bodyguard is a waste of my money,” he said. “There are two of us. You’ll distract him, and I’ll take him out from behind.”

“How am I supposed to distract him? Tell him I’m Tankhun Theerapanyakul and I have come to my throne?”

Despite the overwrought tone of the words—probably another movie reference—it wasn’t the worst distraction. Anyone who’d seen the family portrait Korn kept hanging in the major family’s compound would be able to recognize Tankhun. Any major family bodyguard would at least lower the gun. And—if they were willing to listen to Tankhun, Vegas might not even need to use force. Perhaps the bodyguard would be naïve enough to follow the returned heir right out to the getaway car.

A fantasy, sure, but useful, because he’d forgotten about the getaway car.

“We’re going to have to push our exercise in breaking and entering back an hour or so,” he remarked. “Our captive won’t be in any condition to walk back. How would you like to practice your distraction skills at the Park and Ride lot?”

Tankhun frowned down at the directions to the art gallery he was copying down onto a piece of paper (the asshole librarian had said that printers were only available to library patrons). “What’s a Park and Ride lot?”

“A hundred cars left unattended,” Vegas replied, but his eyes were on his cousin’s hands.

They were shaking. Again. He should have considered the memories that kidnapping would bring up. But Tankhun was correct; he was in no condition to fight alone. He needed the split-second distraction of Tankhun to give himself a chance to win. Barring that, spending some of his cash on a syringe of goodnight seemed like a much better idea that it had a few minutes ago.

“This is going to work,” he told his cousin. Who hadn’t asked, which meant Vegas was reassuring himself.

Tankhun handed over the chicken-scratch directions to the art gallery. “Let’s go steal a car,” he said, drawing the attention of both librarians at the front desk this time.

Sunlight curled around Porsche’s shoulder, the angle softened by the t-shirt he was wearing. Kinn propped himself up on one elbow, returning to his most-frequently-practiced activity of the last few days: watching Porsche sleep. He kept waking up stronger, though, so Kinn refrained from worry.

He had other worries, though Porsche needed to be awake to discuss most of them.

Kinn looked again at his phone. If Porsche hadn’t been sleeping in his bed, he would have been up for hours by now. One of the organizations they traded with overseas had emailed at 4:30 this morning to change the terms of their contract, and then an event-planner had emailed to confirm a tech showcase he was attending next month, and then one of his spies had emailed to report that a supplier was looking for a new mafia partner, so there was that to consider…

He'd worked from his phone so far this morning, but he had a meeting later this afternoon.

“Porsche,” he said.

“Five more minutes,” Porsche muttered, smashing his face into his pillow violently enough to raise Kinn’s eyebrows.

He touched Porsche’s shoulder, the pads of his fingers at first, before sliding his palm over the cotton of his shirt, enjoying the touch because he could touch. Porsche let him, Porsche wanted him. Kinn had been afraid that Porsche might be acting out of obligation, though the suspicion had been put to rest after the man had set his hand on fire last night. If Porsche hadn’t wanted him, he would have known.

“I’m enjoying my sunbeam,” came a muffled protest from the pillow.

Kinn leaned over him, pressing a kiss to the pulse in his throat. “And I have a meeting in four hours.”

“Which is my problem how?” asked Porsche, though he moved his head to give Kinn more room to work. Kinn took it, nipping at the skin until he heard Porsche sigh. He pulled back to examine his handiwork; the marks barely showed against his skin.

Not a great hardship, but the idyll he’d spent the morning constructing had to end sometime. “Can we talk about what your plans are going forward?” Kinn asked. “Were you planning to stay in Bangkok?”

Another sigh, this time resigned. Porsche withdrew from the pillow, turning to face him as Kinn returned to his prior position on his elbow. “I need to talk to my brother,” he said. “We wanted to find some tiny little village in the middle of nowhere, but that plan only works if Arthee thinks I’m dead.” He grimaced—the first crack in the idyll. “We’re putting the people in the village at risk otherwise.”

“Because the people in the village might give you up?”

Kinn wondered how many people had looked at his fire-bringer and thought to enrich themselves. Used to thinking strategically, he could see the game unfold—short supply and high demand for magic-users would inflate the price to heights that most people couldn’t resist. At the cost of whatever had been done to Porsche.

Porsche paused for a long time before he answered. “Something like that.”

He ran a questing hand over Porsche’s shoulder, seeking out the scar tissue he’d felt before. Back surgery, Porsche had said then, a blatant lie. Evasion was his tactic, Kinn had learned, not outright dishonesty. It was part of his appeal.

Beneath him, Porsche had gone still, though he made no move to stop him.

Kinn made his voice soft when he asked, “Can I see?”

The fire-bringer was quiet; Kinn could see his shoulders rise and fall with his breaths. At last Porsche rose onto his knees, took the hem of his t-shirt into his hands, and pulled it off. After a quick look at Kinn, he turned his head away.

Kinn should have seen the contrast of golden skin against white sheets, the allure of a beautiful man in his bed. Instead he saw scars he recognized, because he’d seen them before. He’d been eight the first time he was old enough to remember one of Tankhun’s kidnappings. When his father had finally gotten his brother returned, there had been three long cuts across his back. He’d been mouthy with his captors, Tankhun had explained, and as punishment—

“They whipped you,” Kinn said.

He reached out to touch one of the welts, the scar tissue giving under his fingers in some areas, pebbly in others. The wounds had healed badly. Enough to inhibit range of motion, Porsche had said. Tankhun had been in physical therapy for a year to prevent that outcome.

When his father had retaliated against the people who had held Tankhun, he’d gone through the records, finding everyone who’d been involved with the kidnapping. Bodyguards who’d done the surveillance, staff who’d brought the meals, IT people who’d monitored the cameras. He’d executed them all. Which was an example to Kinn.

“Give me their names.”

Porsche twisted his head to look back at him. “They’re dead.”

“Everyone who ever had you,” Kinn clarified.

Unless they were dead, too, but Porsche didn’t seem the type. Except Stefano and Ettore and the bodyguards who’d sat in on the torture, there’d been no other casualties from the Costa compound. There had been, after Kim and Kinn were done cleaning up the mess. They couldn’t let everyone live, though he saw no reason to share the information.

“Uncle waited until I was eighteen,” Porsche said. “He told my brother that I’d gone away to college. Instead I went to…hm, Nakhon. He had me find unexploded mines on his land. It wasn’t the worst work. Lasted a few years, till another mafia type raided his compound.”

Kinn stroked down one of the scars as he fixed the name in his mind.

“I got the scars from Somchai,” Porsche went on. “Cuffs can control our access to power, but they can’t control our will. Only a collar can do that. So when I refused to kill for him…”

Which explained the tapestry of marks. Kinn kissed the topmost scar, the one curving up to the point of his shoulder. “Continue,” he said, softening the order by kissing the next scar down, and then the scar after that. He felt Porsche’s muscles shift underneath his lips, the tension easing out of him.

“My brother found me eventually and helped me escape,” said Porsche, though both of them knew the only way a magic-user could escape. Kinn spared a thought for Kim, hoping he hadn’t put his brother in danger when he’d sent him after the man he’d seen with Porsche at Yok’s bar.

His fire-bringer turned. “There will always be more people to kill,” he commented, as if he knew that Kinn was planning to stack up bodies. “You won’t be able to stop them from coming after me.”

Kinn had read about that, too. Some of the research suggested that the power was in the sigils that branded the cuffs and collars. Break the connection between sigils and power, and there would be no more means of controlling magic-users. Though of course it was all theoretical metaphysics, which was why Kinn jutted his shoulder inward, shrugging.

“Most of your enemies are also my enemies. Killing them benefits me as well,” Kinn said in his most reasonable voice.

Porsche laughed. His heart stopped.

Then started again when Porsche pushed him down onto the bed, keeping his hands on his shoulders so that Kinn stayed down. He put up a token struggle, enjoying the flicker in Porsche’s eyes as he held him, the sight of his diamond dangling before the fire-bringer’s chest. When he subsided, Porsche shifted downward, settling himself between his legs.

“Porsche,” he said, cautiously, as Porsche started to push his shirt up and his sweats down. His thumb swiped over Kinn’s exposed hip.

“I want you,” said Porsche, and Kinn could deny him nothing.

Knocking at his bedroom door drew him from his doze. Kinn shifted his armful of fire-bringer over to the side—Porsche pulled a sheet over his head; of course he was going back to sleep—and Kinn withdrew. The morning was over.

“There’s been a break-in at that art gallery you’re visiting this weekend,” Arm said when he opened the bedroom door. “I’ve sent a team to investigate. I also took the liberty of assigning Pete to the team, as the duty seemed consistent with khun Korn’s concern for your safety.”

Kinn nodded. At least Arm had gotten the spy out of the compound. “And?” he asked, when the man didn’t bow himself out of his suite.

Arm said, “Your father wants to see you. He’s waiting in the hallway.”  

“Kinn. I’m glad you are back safely,” said his father, though his eyes were on the takeout containers they’d left piled in the kitchen sink. Not enough to give him away; he could have easily eaten two entrees after getting out of the Costa compound.

“And you,” Kinn replied, moving away from his bedroom door so he wouldn’t appear to be guarding the entrance. “How was your business trip?”

His father dismissed the platitude with a flick of his fingers. They both knew that there had been no business trip; he’d only left the country so he could claim that he’d had no hand in the Costa raid. 

“I was just the bait for the Costa mission,” Kinn went on to explain, happy to give his brother credit for the whole operation. “They forgot about Kim.”

“They won’t make that mistake again,” was his father’s comment. “I wanted to ask though, about the drone that was used to smoke-bomb the compound. One of my friends called me to see if it was available for purchase.”

Oh damn, he really should have thought about the implications of the drone strike he’d invented. Kinn looked at Arm to provide an explanation, but the man was ignoring him, his gaze fixed on the couch. There were plenty of reasons why a drone would be unavailable for purchase, the most viable of which was—

“We’re still testing the prototype, father,” he explained.

Arm finally engaged in the conversation. “And with respect, khun Korn, the initial test did not yield very favorable results. The amount of media coverage was very high for our purposes. I think the smoke was—” his chin tilted just the tiniest bit in the direction of the couch. “—very obvious.”

He was referring to the pair of scuffed standard-issue black dress shoes beneath the coffee table, which in themselves would be unremarkable, except Kinn’s bespoke Italian leather loafers had been kicked off next to them.

“Hmm, yes, smoke bombs are less visible at night,” Korn replied, as Kinn meandered over to the couch. He sank into the cushions and kicked Porsche’s shoes out of sight just as his father finished discussing the relative merits of smoke bombs versus stun grenades.

“Kinn, your accountant called me about a diamond purchase? I assume you couldn’t wait for the auction,” his father said.

Oh, he’d caught the subject change this time. On guard, Kinn said, “He should have called me.”

“You were unavailable,” said his father, and Kinn resisted the urge to rub his eyes. He knew, he had to have figured it out somehow. Now the game was about keeping Porsche out of sight, getting him out of the compound before his father could trap them both.

“I’m going to the art gallery opening instead,” he said, letting the necklace drop, though his hand come up to fidget with the bullet around his neck. “Were there any pieces you particularly wanted to add to our collection?”

Another flick of dismissal. “The accountant will tell you how much to spend to keep up with our charitable contributions. Whatever catches your eye will be fine.”

Some freedom, at last. Kinn hadn’t been to an art gallery for awhile; he hoped the paintings would be good. With a name like Ochre Night, though, he doubted the featured artists would have any particular skill. Fortunately, there was no accounting for taste—he could spend as much of his family’s money as he liked on the ugliest piece in the room. 

“Were you purchasing the diamond for someone in particular?” his father pressed. “Perhaps someone you were hoping to show off to the media at the event?”

He knew enough to avoid that trap. It was a happy thought; to introduce Porsche as his new boyfriend, dress him up in new clothes, ensconce him in his suite all day, come home to him every night. Trap him in the same tower Kinn was trapped in, to serve as leverage over him, live in fear that Korn would report him to the authorities.

“Kim’s going with me,” he offered instead. “The event he attended a few weeks ago went well, so I thought we’d continue to rehabilitate his image.”

The truth. Somehow his brother had ferreted out the information about the Costas from that event, just as he’d managed to break into Stefano’s office. Kinn had thought he’d had the stronger connection to the Costas, through Porsche. Clearly Kim had a contact who had more access.

If he didn’t say something else, his father would probably bring up the ill-fated diamond again. Kinn asked, “Are you planning on joining us at the gallery, father? We could present a united front. I’m sure Arm can arrange for the increased security.”

Arm’s face went remote as he considered how much security would be needed to protect the entire Theerapanyakul family. Which brought to mind—

“Where’s Chan?”

He heard a hint of true irritation in his father’s voice as he said, “Taking care of something,” in a way that did not invite further comment. Something had happened, then, something so important that he’d sent Chan to take care of it.

Chan. The art gallery. The diamond. Kim’s presence.

At least one of those was another trap, his father’s purpose for coming here. Kinn would have to talk to his brother. Another exchange of information, though one more punctuated by obscenities. He comforted himself that Kim was easier to read, especially given his suspicions.

His father stood, so Kinn stood as well. “It’s good to see you again, father,” he said.

“Enjoy the art gallery,” acknowledged his father, and headed for the door.

So the art gallery was the foremost trap, though Kinn couldn’t overrule the other pieces of information his father had dropped. He looked at Arm, who hadn’t moved from his frozen position against the opposite wall.

“I’m not leaving while he’s still in the hallway,” his cybersecurity expert informed him. “Give me two minutes.”

Fair, so Kinn went for his bedroom instead. Which was empty.

“Porsche,” he said, controlling his voice, though he couldn’t control his heartrate. If he kept Porsche here, this was the fear he’d come back to everyday, that he’d mis-stepped and his father had taken the fire-bringer from him. From outside the room, he heard the soft thud of his suite’s door closing.

Porsche appeared to step out of a shadow in the corner. “Mirage,” he said. “Fun trick.”

Unaware of the consternation he’d caused, he sauntered closer to Kinn, his chin tipped in a manner easy to interpret. Kinn kissed him, losing himself in warmth, his pliant mouth, his soft exhales as Kinn moved to his throat, finding the marks he’d left there this morning. Porsche’s hands came around his elbows, pushing him backward into the door.

“I need to make a call,” Kinn interrupted, his voice rasping.

“Boring,” said Porsche, and disappeared again while Kinn dialed.

His brother sounded angry, per usual. “I told you not to call me.”

“You picked up,” Kinn pointed out. “I told father that you were coming to that art gallery opening with me.”

“Fuck that. You’ll have to find me first,” said Kim.  

Not difficult. Kim had refused to tell him about Porsche’s brother but had agreed to tell Porsche’s brother that Porsche was safe. He was in regular conversation with Porsche’s brother, then, and Porsche’s brother was in regular conversation with…

Porsche had reappeared in another sunbeam in his bedroom, laying in the patch of warmth on the floor as he squinted up at his phone.

“Don’t you have a safehouse somewhere?” Kinn asked. “I need to borrow it.”

“No,” Kim said, and the word echoed down the line, punctuated by the clicks and whistles of a bad connection. His brother hung up.

Pete suspected that the team lead had muted his comms channel, because he could hear nothing in his ear. But as long as he didn't look the man in the eyes, he wouldn’t know for sure, would be able to keep his suspicion from Korn. The Theerapanyakul patriarch would show no mercy to those who endangered his son.

Or his hold over his son. Any of his sons.

He had seen the paperwork that maintained the asylum, the reports that said no updates to report. A new wrinkle had marred khun Korn’s forehead when he’d learned that now two guards (independent contractors, disposable) had come out of the place—changed.

Since the asylum had been quiet for eleven years, they could blame the changes on its new inhabitant. Pete had seen the bills for his care, knew the Theerapanyakul doctors had pulled seven bullets out of his body, that four of them had been serious wounds, the prognosis for recovery. Not that he would recover. Pete had seen the food orders and knew no one could regain muscle mass on that diet.

The collar choked him when he swallowed, settled around the base of his throat, always concealed by a high-necked shirt. He was responsible, in a way, for what had happened to the minor family’s heir, for what had happened to the major family’s heir. He couldn’t keep his own secrets, but the sigils binding his power ensured he would keep khun Korn’s.

Pete walked into the art gallery. The Theerapanyakul guards had already been here, judging from the black streaks from their shoes on the floor. And they’d left the lights on. He frowned at the pictures waiting on the walls.

Not subtle, but of the two brothers he’d met, Kinn was also not subtle. Pete wondered when the fire-bringer would stumble across the media coverage of Kinn condoning the treatment of magic-users, wondered how deep a wedge would be driven between the two. Though that was only one of the traps. Khun Korn believed in building redundancy into the system.

He stopped before a particularly violent portrait featuring two magic-users bound in silver chains, surrounded by fire. The title was “Fate, Undisturbed.” Oh, they were being burned alive. At least society hadn’t done that to them for a couple hundred years now.

Not subtle. The fire-bringer would run. Pete would run, if he had the option.

He heard the scuff of a shoe against the wooden floor and pressed the button on his comms unit. Nothing, as expected, but as long as he didn’t know, the team lead was safe. Perhaps he could get the whole squad of bodyguards to leave him behind again—they would enjoy making the spy walk home, and he would have a reprieve from the endless cycle of secrets discovered, manipulated, people turned inside-out to serve as pawns…

Pete opened the door to a room off the gallery, the residual light revealing more portraits wrapped in protective materials. He swatted at the light switch of the storage room, but nothing happened. He backed away, pressed the button on his comms unit as if that would help.

Sigils stung under his shirt. He had to return to khun Korn.

A question came out of the dark room: “Looking for something?” and Pete couldn’t stop his flinch of surprise, though he drew his gun, struggling to see the outlines of a person.

Eventually his eyes adjusted to the dimness—barely, and Pete made out the darker shadow of a man standing in the center of the room. “Hi,” the man said. “I’m supposed to be dead, but—” Pete caught the motion of a shrug. “As you can see.”

It was too dark for him to see.

Though he heard the door swing shut behind him. There were two of them. Pete spun around to meet the new attacker, but wasn’t fast enough to block the impact of a shoe against his hand, kicking his gun free—it clattered on the ground. Hindered by the darkness, Pete kicked out as well, producing a grunt from the second man.

Then he saw a shadowy outline swoop for his dropped gun and Pete followed, managing to get his fingers on the barrel—dangerous—before there was movement behind him, and someone pried him away from the gun, shoving him into the floor. The man’s knee dug into his back, keeping him down, one of his arms pinned underneath him.

Pete felt a hand at his jaw, knew what nerve the man was searching for, and struggled against the inexorable, his free hand pounding on the wooden floor but producing only quiet thumps.

At last the man found the spot beneath his jawline, close to his ear. Fingers dug in; five seconds till he was unconscious, and Pete counted them.

Five.

They didn’t want him dead, or they would have shot him.

Four.

Abduction, then. Did they want him, specifically, or just a bodyguard, any bodyguard?

Three.

Torture, then.

Two.

He wouldn’t be able to tell them khun Korn’s secrets.

One.

When Kim had told Yok to keep an eye out, he’d thought she’d find one of Kinn’s people skulking around, perhaps trying to adjust the security cameras so that they recorded more than shoes. Kim had bought the manual-adjust ones on purpose. Anyone who tried to hack them would find the footage useless.

But no, Yok had captured a different player, a lieutenant from one of the gangs in Nonthaburi. They knew that much from facial recognition. The man had refused to say anything.

Kim slipped through the crowded bar, heading for Yok’s office. The woman waited for him outside the door. She tossed him a bar towel, an informative gesture.

“Do you want me to finish him?” Kim asked, eyeing the minute flecks of blood on Yok’s clothing. He wasn’t above torture, but Vegas had always been adamant that pain didn’t work. After a certain threshold, the person would say anything to make the pain stop—truth, lies, etc. His cousin had used drugs to extract information. 

Yok spun her stiletto between her fingers, a flashy trick. “He told one of the bartenders that Porchay had agreed to meet him before his shift, but hadn’t showed up. He asked what time he would be in tonight.”

Enough to condemn him.

“I was going to call Chay,” Yok went on, “and tell him not to come in tonight. But when I looked for his number in his employee file, the whole file was missing.”

“He doesn’t work here anymore,” said Kim, who’d burned the file two weeks ago. He pushed past Yok to take a look at their captive.

Yok’s handiwork was in evidence—she’d spilled enough blood to send him into shock, which was sometimes enough to loosen recalcitrant tongues. The man’s wrists and ankles were zip-tied to the chair, and he’d been left facing the wall, so he would have heard the door open, heard the footsteps approaching.

Well-trained, then, that he was waiting quietly. Though that could be the shock.

“Facial recognition came back. You’re a lieutenant with the Jao Por,” Kim said. “What facial recognition can’t tell me is why you’re in my bar.”

He walked around the man, getting a good look at his glassy eyes, the slackness of his mouth from blood loss. If he played this right, he might be able to get a few words out of him in this state. 

“I’m Kimhant Theerapanyakul,” he continued. “You might recognize the last name. My family would like to know why the Jao Por is sneaking around in our territory.”

All Kim had to do was tell his father that the Jao Por had sent someone to stakeout his bar, and the Theerapanyakuls would crush the smaller gang, especially whatever base they’d established in Bangkok. They could destroy their compound in Nonthaburi afterward. If the Jao Por were coming after Chay, though, then he couldn’t risk that information getting back to his father.

“We want no fight with the Theerapanyakuls,” the lieutenant rasped. He must be someone with clout, to use the royal we. Which meant they were sending people with clout after the fore-teller.

“Then get the fuck out of my city,” Kim suggested. “I’ll let you go if you gather your people and leave tonight.”

He would, too. He’d also tell Kinn that the Jao Por were sniffing around his precious fire-bringer and give his brother their plate numbers. While Arm might have fed him nonsense about the experimental drone strike, Kim knew that the family had an assortment of drones that were not at all experimental. As soon as the Jao Por were a safe distance away from civilians on the road, they’d be gone.

The lieutenant shook his head. “We’re not leaving until we’ve collected the package.”

“Your funeral,” Kim told him. “But there’s one thing you could help with. Why him?”

One of the man’s eyebrows twitched up, acknowledging that he knew and Kim knew he knew. The question was genuine; Kim had been through the records. Magic-users weren’t common, sure, but last year three seers and two fore-tellers had appeared in the listings. The year before that: no seers, but one fore-teller. If the Jao Por wanted someone to predict the future, they could have gotten hold of a  magic-user to do so.

Why him?

Kim remembered the soft skin of his wrists beneath his hands, the way his eyes had drifted before focusing on him, as if he liked the hold. His heart racing, Kim had watched his lips part—

Enough. He didn’t have enough experience to assess Chay’s power. Perhaps his ability to see multiple futures at once was unique, or perhaps he could capitalize on the futures he saw—though anyone with a brain could figure out how to make the best of a given future. He didn’t think either skill warranted this type of surveillance, the years of pursuit. Even combined with Kinn’s fire-bringer as a package deal, the brothers didn’t offer anything that a missile silo and a decent intelligence network couldn’t replace.

“If you don’t already know, I see no reason to tell you,” said the lieutenant.

“Fine by me,” Kim replied, realizing that he’d never asked Chay why. The fore-teller had never volunteered the information, either. Which meant there was a reason, something Chay didn’t trust him to know.

He took his gun from its back holster, making a show of checking the magazine, enough to show the man what was coming. To his credit, the lieutenant didn’t beg. Well-trained, but that wouldn’t save him.

“Are we done here? Offer’s still open, if you want to leave the city tonight,” Kim said.

“We won’t stop,” said the man, fighting the zipties at last. “He’s a fore—”

Kim put three bullets in his throat.

Snick. Snick. Snick. Then Tankhun had to realign the stalks of celery and start slicing again. Snick. Snick. Snick. He was aware that he shouldn’t be handling a knife when his head was a mess, that every slice on the cutting board brought flashes of memory. He’d started with the carrots, but the harsh chop of knife against wood had made him think—

Nope, he put thinking in a box in his head and taped it shut.

Then he went for the shallots, taking his time to create a perfect dice, till there was a pile of tiny purpley-opaque squares on the cutting board. He’d watched quite a bit of food television in the facility. Tankhun supposed the genre had been deemed innocuous.

He reached for the carrots he’d discarded earlier. Perhaps if he sliced them down the middle first, he could avoid the noise the knife made when it hit wood. The knocking that wouldn’t stop for days, speeding up and slowing down so he couldn’t anticipate its rhythm, couldn’t sleep, until he hadn’t known whether he was awake or dreaming and the words had come out of his mouth…

The door into Vegas’s bedroom/sex dungeon creaked as it opened, then shut, and his cousin came down the hall.

Once they’d gotten their prisoner up into the apartment, Vegas had told him that his help was no longer required, which would have been insulting except for the vaguely dreamy feeling of dissociation preventing Tankhun from having feelings. At least they didn’t have an actual dungeon to put their captive in, and if there were any torture implements lying around, Vegas had been good enough to keep them out of sight.

“You don’t dice vegetables if you’re making stock,” Vegas said, and Tankhun resented the careful pitch of his cousin’s voice as much as he appreciated the concern.

“I told them everything,” Tankhun set down the knife at last. “The last time…” He couldn’t say I was kidnapped, but Vegas nodded. “Everything. Account numbers. Our enforcers on the street. The families we had deals with. Overseas contacts. Politicians we were lobbying. Everything.”

Vegas left the perfect shallots on the board, slicing through an onion instead and throwing the halves in the stock pot. “You were the heir. You knew everything,” he noted as he turned on the burner. “I was fifteen, I think, when you were taken? We knew you had talked. Lots of jobs were blown.” He pointed at the slivers of celery Tankhun had snicked through earlier. “I’m not straining those out of the stock. Put whole stalks in instead.”

His cousin really knew how to make him feel better. Tankhun flinched as the stalks of celery snapped, sounding so fucking human.

“Kidnapping is bringing up some memories for you, yeah?” asked Vegas.

He went for the lentils they’d bought the last time they’d been to the store. They needed to be washed before they could go into the curry. Granted, they wouldn’t put the lentils into the pot for a few hours, until after the stock had finished simmering, and then they’d still start with ginger and chili and garlic and shallot and then spices and then lentils. But the lentils still had to be washed. They would be the cleanest lentils in the history of curry.

“Khun,” Vegas forced him out of his dissociative food network fantasies.

Tankhun poured another cup of water (the sink still didn’t work) over the lentils, getting a hand into the strainer, the orangey disks sliding through his fingers.

“Father came to see me once before he sent me away. He told me I’d failed.”

Tankhun still wasn’t sure why he’d been sent away—because he was damaged, or because he’d talked. He suspected the latter. With as many times as he and Kinn had been kidnapped, neither of them could be considered unbroken, and everyone in their world was twisted around inside. Tankhun had betrayed the family. Not his fault, he knew, but knowing wasn’t knowing.

“My father told me I was a failure at least once a week,” Vegas said. “Although he didn’t put me in an asylum for twelve years. I can’t decide which one of our fathers is worse, but mine is dead, and yours…”

Would be dead. Tankhun had an appointment to keep with his father. If he could keep it. He couldn’t even kidnap a bodyguard.

“He was right, nong,” said Tankhun. “I’ve been a liability to you so far.”

He couldn’t waste water (a precious resource, since they had to carry jugs up three flights of stairs. And by they, Tankhun meant Vegas), so he gave up washing the lentils, though he kept stirring his fingers through them. Round and round and round, not thinking, not thinking, not thinking…

Vegas rapped his knuckles on the kitchen counter. When that didn’t work, Tankhun felt his cousin poke his shoulder. He turned to look, though he kept stirring the lentils.

“I’ve been in a lot of people’s minds,” Vegas began. “I know what a weak one feels like. They’re always concerned about themselves—what other people are going to do to them, how other people perceive them. Your mind isn’t like that. You’re worried about how your actions will impact others, how you can protect your brothers. Do you know why I stopped sending you nightmares?”

No, but he’d been so glad to not fear sleep anymore, especially after what his captors had done to him. “You figured out that hurting me wasn’t getting you anywhere?”

Vegas shrugged, so he wasn’t wrong. “That. And you were dreaming about how to protect me from Korn. You’re nauseating. Absolutely horrific. Stop manhandling the lentils.”

He was lying. He must be. Those first few months after Vegas had arrived at the facility, Tankhun had known his cousin was hurting, but he’d also known his cousin had become a demon. A demon shaped like a nong. Damn it. He set the strainer of lentils on the counter, the remaining water puddling on the counter.

Vegas blinked at the mess and then shoved him out of the way to sop up the puddle with a towel.

“Are you going to torture him?” Tankhun asked as he worked, not sure if he could bear the screams.

“Torture him with what?” was his cousin’s reply. “I don’t have any supplies here. Though I’ve heard you can simulate bleeding with water and a spoon.” When he saw Tankhun’s confusion, he said, “Close your eyes.”

Tankhun obeyed, feeling vulnerable in the darkness. He heard a few clicks from where Vegas had stood in the kitchen, before his cousin took hold of his wrist. Cool metal swiped over the skin, followed by warmer liquid. It felt like… Vegas was certainly capable of causing bleeding without pain…

He opened his eyes, wouldn’t have been surprised to see a bleeding wound. But water had beaded on his skin instead.

“They used sleep deprivation. On me,” he managed to say.

Vegas tossed him the dish towel, somewhat the worse for wear after wiping away lentil-y water. “Nasty but effective. Temporarily effective, anyway,” he amended. When Tankhun looked at him for an explanation, he acquiesced, “They’re dead, and you’re alive.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

His cousin peered into the stock pot at the browning vegetables. Satisfied with what he saw, he went for water to pour over the vegetables therein. They would need to go back to the store for another jug of water tomorrow. More work for his cousin.

“Another difference between the strong and the weak,” Vegas commented when the pot had stopped hissing, though he kept stirring. “You want to protect your family—including your monster of a cousin who sends you nightmares and, given your history, triggers traumatic memories. I just want to kill everyone who ever hurt me.”

Tankhun had seen the searches Vegas had typed into the browser. They couldn’t search for Macau’s name, of course—that information would have been flagged—but his cousin had looked up graduation lists from the university his brother had been studying at, organizations his brother had belonged to, university news articles going back a year. They should have found some trace of him, but Vegas’s brother had disappeared.

“You aren’t weak,” Tankhun protested, but his cousin didn’t reply.

Chapter Text

Cloaked in a heat mirage (Kinn was overreacting), Porsche sneaked up behind him and breathed down his neck. As Kinn twitched in surprise, Porsche said, “I don’t have a key.”

They were clearing out Chay’s studio apartment. Kinn swatted behind him—Porsche had already stepped out of the way—then leaned down to examine the lock. He touched the scratched metal. “This lock can’t have been installed for more than a month. It shouldn’t be this scratched already. Has your brother had any issues with break-ins in this neighborhood?”

Porsche shrugged, remembered Kinn could only see the oscillation of heat in the air, then replied. “He never mentioned. What do the scratches mean? That someone tried to pick it?”

“Someone who wasn’t me,” Kinn said, fishing a set of lockpicks out of his bag. “Props to Kim, though, for installing a lock that someone would need some serious gear to pick.”

Perhaps Kinn hadn’t been overreacting when he’d made Porsche stay invisible whenever he got out of the Escalade. The mirage wasn’t perfect, but it had helped him get out of the Theerapanyakul compound. Shame, though, that he hadn’t been able to wrap the heat waves around Kinn as well. Porsche would have to keep trying.

“Your brother?” he asked, not sure he followed.

Grimacing, Kinn fed a third pick into the lock. “Kim,” he confirmed.

Chay hadn’t mentioned Kinn’s brother much, except to say that the man had dropped him off at a safehouse. This, Porsche thought, watching Kinn struggle to break into the apartment that Chay didn’t even use anymore, indicated more than just a brother doing a favor for his brother. Chay had been keeping secrets.

“Finally,” Kinn mumbled, as the lock clicked and the door swung open.

Porsche reappeared when the door closed behind them. He waited for Kinn to stow the lockpicks in his bag before giving the man strategic, longing eyes and an exaggerated shiver.

“Using so much power made me cold,” he said. Probably pouting.

Kinn held out his arms. “Then come here, darling,” he drawled.

The endearment did something to him, and bending his knees, Porsche did his best to fold his shoulders down into Kinn’s chest. He was successful; he heard an oof from above him and shoved his elbow into Kinn’s abs one more time. Then, innocently, Porsche looked up into Kinn’s face, tilting his head back so that his lips could come down.

He didn’t manage to stay curled into Kinn’s chest for long (they were almost the same height), so Porsche unfurled as the kiss progressed, his hands coming around Kinn’s face as Kinn reached around to pull him closer.

At last he surfaced, a trifle dreamily, and looked around the hellhole apartment. True to his word, Chay had left the duffel bag of cash on the counter. Porsche slung it in Kinn’s direction and went to pick through the rest of his brother’s things. Mostly disposable, the way their lives had to be. But he threw some spare clothes in a bag, cast a cursory look over the bathroom, and returned to the main living area.

Kinn was looking through the empty kitchen cabinets. “This is unacceptable,” he said.

“Welcome to life on the run,” Porsche replied. “It was sloppy of him to leave the cash behind.”

“Unacceptable,” Kinn repeated. He took the other bag from Porsche’s hands and raised his eyebrows in a clear order.

Porsche waited until he was safely wrapped in a heat mirage before heaving an aggrieved sigh. He followed Kinn out the door and down the rickety stairs. Another apartment they’d left behind. Though perhaps that chapter of their lives was coming to a close. Surely Arthee couldn’t hide forever, not with the Theerapanyakuls looking for him as well.

They’d been back on the road for a few minutes when Kinn adjusted his rearview mirror and said, “Get down on the floorboard.”

Porsche obeyed, though a tendril of fire threatened to escape him. He’d (mostly) recovered from burning down the Costa compound. If some mafia thugs thought they could take him, Porsche could give them other things to think about.

“We’re being followed?” he asked from under the glove compartment.

“I’m being followed,” Kinn clarified, swerving into another lane. “Text your brother that we’re going to be late. I’ll lose them and we’ll circle around the city a few times to make sure they’re gone.”

Obediently, Porsche texted Chay, though he omitted the information that he was currently crouched in the passenger-seat footwell of Kinn’s Escalade while the world’s politest car chase happened overhead. He’d thought car chases would be faster, though he guessed that speeding through traffic would make them easier to spot. Then again, an  Escalade was also easy to spot, whether it followed traffic laws or not.

They’d started being followed after leaving Chay’s apartment. Combined with the scratches on the lock…somehow Arthee had figured out that Chay wasn’t dead. Which meant he’d suspect that the story Kinn had planted in the papers was false. He’d be coming for Porsche too. Was coming for Porsche, given the car behind him.

Porsche scrambled out of the footwell and into the backseat, ignoring Kinn’s articulations of discouragement, which seemed to consist of Porsche, what are you doing and Porsche, I told you to stay out of sight and Porsche, they might have guns.

“I just want to see if I recognize them,” Porsche said, peeking out from over the top of the seat. “Let them get closer.”

“Generally that’s antithetical to losing them,” Kinn returned, but Porsche felt the car slow down. “They’re in a gray SUV, last four digits on the plate are 0025. Coming out of the left lane.”

Ah, he saw them. “I don’t see Arthee,” he said, though his uncle had never been the take-action type. All Arthee had to do was confirm that Chay was alive, and the mafia would take over from there. They thought. “Would you still try to lose them if I wasn’t in the car?” Porsche asked, nursing the fire that had been building inside him.

Kinn swerved again. “Probably not, if I had backup. One of our warehouse districts isn’t far from here. I could lure them into our territory and have our people capture them for interrogation.”

Which would mean that they could figure out who his uncle had sold them to this time. “You have me,” Porsche offered. “You know what I can do to them.”

Tilting the rearview mirror so he could meet Porsche’s eyes, Kinn began, “If they see your face…”

It was a question. “You’ll kill them,” Porsche answered, though it made his stomach hurt.

Kinn adjusted the rearview mirror again, focusing on the SUV behind them. “Then get back in the front seat so I can stop worrying about them shooting you. And hold on.”

He waited until Porsche did so before slamming on the brakes, surprising a yelp out of Porsche. Eyes still fixed on the rearview mirror, Kinn kept them nearly stationary for a few seconds (horns blared from around them—the world’s politest car chase was over) before gunning the accelerator and swerving across what felt like three lanes of traffic.

At least his stomach didn’t hurt anymore. Nausea tended to do that to him. Porsche breathed through his mouth.

“Got their attention,” Kinn remarked, smiling into the mirror. He glanced down at Porsche. “They’ll follow us off the highway. Not long now.”

His attention stayed on the SUV behind them as they exited the highway and onto another street. Kinn slowed down, and Porsche began to see warehouses through the window of the Escalade. Kinn braked again and then reversed, backing up between two warehouses. Trapping them in. And the car that was following them.

Kinn’s hand went to the door handle.

“They’ll shoot you!” Porsche said, pretty sure they should stay in the car.

“I’m Anakinn Theerapanyakul,” Kinn replied. “After what just happened to the Costas, they won’t dare.”

“I happened to the Costas,” Porsche grumbled, but he let Kinn get out of the car before wrapping himself in another mirage and easing out after him.

The gray SUV approached tentatively, gravel crunching under the (melting) tires, though Porsche thought the two men inside might not notice. They were perturbed that their quarry had seemed to trap himself between the warehouses, that much was clear. Porsche felt for the bits of metal in their vehicle, the hood of the car, the seatbelt buckles, the battery cable connectors…and their guns.

He deformed the barrels, taking the heat back out of the metal before they registered anything more than a slight burn, and they didn’t seem to notice even that, getting out of their SUV, distracted by the adrenaline of facing down their target.

“You were following me,” Kinn said, leaning back against his Escalade, his arms crossed over his chest. The sight did as much for Porsche as Kinn’s endearment had, earlier.

He could tell the moment the men recognized Kinn.

“Our apologies, khun Kinn,” said one of the men. “We didn’t realize we were intruding on Theerapanyakul territory. If you’ll excuse us, we will retreat, of course.”

Which was a lie, as Porsche saw the other man’s hand disappear behind his back.

Appearing impassive, Kinn promised, “You’re not going anywhere,” and then the guns came out.

Porsche wrapped them in burning ropes for a bare moment, sucking the oxygen from the air around them, filling the empty space with smoke instead. He couldn’t maintain it for long, but the move gave Kinn time to approach them, his gun striking one across the face, while he drove his elbow into the other’s temple. Porsche gave them both another dose of smoke (and accompanying carbon monoxide), and both men dropped.  

“Nice,” was Kinn’s response as he holstered his gun. He meandered around to the trunk of the Escalade and popped the trunk. “There should be zipties in here somewhere,” he said. “We can leave them in the warehouse and have our people pick them up. In a few hours, we’ll know who they work for.”

Porsche shivered as the price of his power caught up with him at last. He didn’t think either man would make it out of Theerapanyakul custody alive, but at least they weren’t dying in front of him, begging him for mercy that wouldn’t be granted. For a moment, Porsche heard screams.

Then Kinn was beside him, holding his frigid hand in his.

Two hours later than expected, Chay watched Porsche and Kim’s brother pull into the driveway. Porsche hadn’t texted anything since his going to be a bit late notification earlier. The two wrestled over the bags before Kim’s brother won, slinging the duffel bag over his shoulder and a plastic bag over his arm.  

“I knew Kim had a safehouse,” Kinn Theerapanyakul said with satisfaction, extending his hand to Chay. “I’m Kinn. Sorry for being late.”

Chay shook his hand. He couldn’t see the man’s future at all, which meant Kinn’s future had become his own. It was the magical equivalent of welcome to the family.

“We were followed from your apartment,” Porsche said, tugging at the plastic bag on Kinn’s arm until the man gave in and let him take it. “It looked like someone tried to break in.”

He handed the plastic bag over to Chay, who peeked inside. Good, Porsche had brought his clothes. While Kim was his height, he was broader than Chay, so his clothes fit haphazardly. Chay didn’t mind the pajamas, but wearing Kim’s jeans made it obvious—he knew Kinn had noticed, from the amused look on the man’s face. His ears burned.

“Kim told me to assume everything had been compromised,” he said, forgetting to call him P’Kim, which only made him blush harder.

“Convenient of him,” was Kinn’s response as he stepped over the threshold and disappeared into the house.

Which was nice of him, Chay realized, as he launched himself into his brother’s arms, the plastic bag with his clothes swinging into Porsche’s side as they hugged. Porsche gave him an extra squeeze before letting him go.

“Good to see you again,” said Porsche.

“And you,” Chay replied. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help more with the Costas.”

Porsche hunched his shoulders. “It’s not your fault. They tried to hurt Kinn. And—” his hands fell, somewhat helplessly, to his sides. Chay knew what he must have done. The very-dead people who’d last held Porsche had forced him to kill. Not just mafia types; civilians as well.

That his brother had killed again, even if he’d chosen to do so, meant there was pain hiding behind his smile. Porsche was very good at hiding it, even from himself.

“Hia,” he said, reminding Porsche that he loved him. He tugged on Porsche’s shirtsleeve and dragged his brother into the house.

…where he found Kinn rummaging through the kitchen cabinets. “I wish I could get a brothers reunion,” he commented, and Chay saw his brother’s face narrowed with speculation, his hand reaching out to touch—

“Aha!” Kinn said, sending the thread slithering off into the ether. He reached into a cabinet and withdrew a familiar bottle of bourbon. “He couldn’t hide you from me forever,” he said, working the cork out of the bottle.  

“Are you sure your brother is okay with Chay staying here?” Porsche asked, studying the high ceilings of the safehouse. “This is way nicer than what we’re used to.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t mind,” Kinn said, catching Chay’s eye.

Oh, he was blushing again, even though he hadn’t seen Kim for a few days, ever since that embarrassing incident in the gym. When Chay had finally retrieved the knife and gone up to his room, a neat pile of clothes was waiting for him by the door. Down the hall, one of the bedroom doors was shut. Chay had heard Kim leave early the next morning. He hadn’t returned, though he’d arranged a grocery delivery.

Chay had been shuffling around the absurdly large house on his own.

“Chay, you were most recently a bartender, yes?” Kinn asked. “Why don’t you make Porsche an old fashioned. He should try this bourbon.”

He nodded, glad to have something to do other than meet Kinn’s knowing gaze. His fixation on Kim must be obvious if even someone he’d barely met had picked up on it. Fortunately, Porsche hadn’t seemed to notice, wandering around the first floor of the house.

Old fashioneds were simple to make, if tedious. Chay muddled the sugar and bitters together, deciding not to add a drop of water—tap water might ruin the cocktail. Better to keep the liquor pure. The city used chlorine to flush its pipes every month—the chemical smell might overpower the notes of sugar and smoke rising from the glass.

When he was ready to finish the cocktail with a slice of orange peel, Chay looked at the knife drawer, but Kinn was standing in front of it, his arms crossed over his chest in a way that said he was disinclined to move.

Kim had left him a back sheath for the knife, so Chay drew it. The blade wasn’t designed for peeling oranges, but he managed at last.

“Would you like one as well, P’Kinn?” he asked, as Porsche came to take his drink.

“No, thank you,” Kinn replied. “I’ll drink it straight.”

“It’s too early in the afternoon to drink at all,” Porsche said, though he took his old fashioned without further complaint.

“Pour yourself a drink as well,” Kinn suggested to Chay. “We’ve got a few hours here before I need to leave for my next appointment. We might as well get to know each other.”

Chay surveyed the bourbon. The last time he’d gotten drunk (with Porsche), his brother had told him that he was never allowed to drink again. But Kim hadn’t said anything of the sort. He’d even sat by his side until Chay was asleep. So perhaps he could relax his rule…

but as he reached for the bottle, he saw it shattering on the floor, and he jumped back from whatever future he’d just seen.

“He’s not allowed to drink,” Porsche said, saving him, though Kinn seemed suspicious. Porsche took another sip of his old fashioned and licked his lips and sent Kinn a look that Chay had no business ever seeing, and then Chay was blushing again because his brother was gross.

Porsche swaggered into the living room, prompting Kinn to follow like a man possessed. Chay bypassed the bottle of bourbon in favor of filling a tall glass with tap water, and then checking his phone, and then taking his bags up to his bedroom, and then very loudly descending the stairs, just in case his brother was doing gross things with P’Kinn on the couch.

His brother was still flushed when he came into the living room.

“I told you, I’m not staying in a safehouse while you go back to the compound,” Porsche told Kinn. “Join us here.”

Chay twisted himself into an armchair. He wouldn’t mind company in the safehouse.

“It’s only a safehouse when I’m not here. Arm can only erase my location data so many times before my father notices,” Kinn explained.

Arm. The name sent a little shiver through his mind, and Chay said, “You never asked, so he never told you. He wasn’t a threat, anyway.”

Kinn looked over at him, so different from his brother, a hint of suspicion back in his face. “What?” he asked.

Porsche shot him a warning look, and Chay shut up. His brother took over the conversation, protesting that he couldn’t possibly let Kinn go to the art gallery (?) all alone, that Kinn should book a hotel (gross) so they could be together. By the time Porsche was done, the clever, considering look had smoothed out of Kinn’s face, and Chay was able to slip upstairs.

The flash of sunlight through his bedroom window took over his vision—gold—for a moment, and Chay smelled the electric heat of lightning, heard a rumble of thunder.

Pete’s shoulders were beginning to hurt; his captors had cuffed his wrists behind his back. After a few hours, the cuffs should have been hurting as well, digging into his wrists, but Pete thought they might be…padded? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know why the kidnappers were using padded cuffs. Or why they’d left him in a bedroom, of all places.

He’d woken up as the door to the room closed behind one of his captors. Pete had only been able to see the outline of the man’s face before he’d been left alone. The cuffs were attached to a hook in the wall behind him, though he’d been left enough room to stand—he thought; he hadn’t tried standing yet.

So he gathered himself into a cross-legged seat and tried not to think about what was about to happen. He couldn’t reveal any of khun Korn’s secrets, but he also couldn’t reveal why he couldn’t reveal any of khun Korn’s secrets, which meant…torture. At least until they found the collar. Then they’d realize that he was useless to them, that he had to return to khun Korn the moment he got free. And they’d kill him.

Experimentally, Pete twisted one of his wrists inside the padded cuffs. He knew how to escape regular handcuffs, of course. Perhaps this was a new, escape-proof model. Pete tried to get a look at them over his shoulder, but only cricked his neck.

The collar seemed to choke him less now that he knew he couldn’t escape.

Pete heard footsteps outside the room he’d been left in. The knob turned. And then he got his first good look at his captor. He’d read khun Korn’s file on his nephew, seen the surveillance footage. He’d had to collate doctors’ notes, guards’ reports. Khun Korn had wondered whether Vegas had formed an alliance with Tankhun, or if he’d taken his son as collateral.

The man before him had not formed an alliance. Vegas wondered if Tankhun might be his friend.

“Khun Vegas,” Pete acknowledged, rising to his feet.

One side of Vegas’s mouth twitched up. “Not khun anymore, thanks to you. Tell me, when you don’t come back to the compound, who will notice that you are gone?”

He couldn’t keep any of his own secrets (except one), so Pete answered, “Arm. He’ll note the absence in my file.” Though after that, he’d probably delete the file from the database. Most of the people in the Theerapanyakul compound would be happy to forget him.

“Ah, my erstwhile cousin,” said Vegas. “I texted him that you went to visit your grandma. And then I destroyed your phone.”

So no one was coming after him. Khun Korn wouldn’t bestir himself to seek his return—the sigils on the collar were clear enough: Pete had to go back.

“My grandma is dead,” Pete told Vegas. As was everyone in his family, because his first owner had killed them when he’d taken him.  

Vegas blinked, too slow not to be feigned. “Does my cousin know that?”

“No.”

“Well then,” Vegas concluded, and Pete conceded the point. “You’ve answered all my questions very nicely so far. Maybe the rest of this won’t have to hurt as much.”

Pete looked around the bedroom, attempted to see what Vegas would torture him with. But the room was clean. He focused on Vegas instead, secrets layered over secrets, requiring lies like a pile of mirrors stacked on top of each other. But one rose to the surface: A man diced vegetables in the kitchen, his tight grip on the knife betraying his anxiety. His fear of what would happen in the room down the hall.

“What a lonely life you have, that no one will care when you don’t come back. Unless you’re lying to me,” Vegas mused, leaning just close enough to him to force Pete to recoil.  When Pete shook his head, Vegas continued, “I assume my dear uncle is searching for me. Tell me how many men he has on the hunt. And where they are.”

But that was khun Korn’s secret, so Pete couldn’t answer.  

Vegas went to the dresser and opened one of the drawers. “I wondered when you’d stop being so good for me,” he said, pausing as if in consideration.

According to his file, the eldest son of the minor family preferred drugs over torture. Pete had never been drugged before, but he doubted a truth serum cocktail would be able to negate the sigils on his collar. A secret was growing inside Vegas, as he wondered if he should wait until he was asleep. For a moment Pete saw himself through someone else’s eyes, his lashes very dark against the moonlit skin of his sleeping face. Before monsters invaded the room, talons reaching out…

“Dreamwalker,” said Pete. Khun Korn didn’t know that. Khun Korn couldn’t know that. His collar seemed to tighten around his throat.

Still hovering over the open drawer of the dresser, Vegas had frozen. His voice was rough as at last he said, “So my uncle knows. Why don’t you tell me what else he knows, hmm?”

And he drew a riding crop out of the dresser.

Pete blinked. That wasn’t a standard torture practice. At all.

He understood when Vegas faced him, the days he’d spent trapped in the back of a cargo truck, his blistered feet, the only safehouse he was sure that khun Korn’s men hadn’t found. And the only available supplies in the safehouse were…

Well, that explained the padded cuffs.

Vegas came closer, and Pete flinched, but his control was good enough that the leather end of the riding crop tapped with as much force as a finger against his cheek.

“Tell me about Macau,” Vegas ordered.

They hadn’t found him yet. By the time khun Korn’s men had gotten to his campus, Vegas’s brother had disappeared. Every so often, a hint of him surfaced somewhere on the internet, but of all the Theerapanyakuls, the youngest had been the only one to escape khun Korn’s control.

He couldn’t tell Vegas that. He could only shake his head.

Another tap of leather against his cheek, gentle as a caress, if leather could caress. The next blow would hurt, would have to hurt.

“If my uncle had him, he would have used him to make me turn myself in,” Vegas reasoned, which was true enough. “Very well. My associate—” as if his associate weren't Tankhun Theerapanyakul, “—thinks that our best chance of killing my dear uncle is getting through to Kinn. How are things between them, do you know? We could always use an ally.”

Khun Kinn might be an ally now, but he wouldn’t be once khun Korn’s plans for fire-bringer came to fruition. Fourteen years ago had been before Pete’s time in the Theerapanyakul household, but the patriarch had taken that time to lay traps for the magic-user—and for his heir.

When Pete shook his head again, Vegas sighed, and leather tapped at the tip of his nose. “You’ll tell me now, or you’ll tell me in your dreams. And your dreams will hurt exponentially more than this.”

“Do it,” Pete said.  

“The dreams?” and Pete nodded. Vegas said, “I suppose I can allow you the choice.”

And the crop moved downward, from the tip of his nose to swipe at his lips, before slipping over his chin, sliding over the fabric of his high-necked shirt, till at last the soft tip of the leather rested over the collar around his throat.

Pete closed his eyes, waiting for Vegas to draw back and leave a whip-weal across his face. But instead the pressure increased as the riding crop pressed inwards. He opened his eyes to find an amused smirk on Vegas’s face.

“Has my uncle added some type of gorget to the standard-issue bodyguard uniform?” he asked, though Pete couldn’t reply.  

Then he transferred the riding crop to his other hand and came closer. “Or perhaps a lover’s token? I wasn’t aware the major family allowed their bodyguards to have relationships. You should have defected to the minor family. We could have found some way for you to be with your lover.”

Vegas pulled the neck of his shirt down, revealing the secret he wasn’t allowed to tell.

The riding crop clattered to the floor as Pete leaned his head back till he was resting against the wall.

The fear of magic-users was familiar to him. Pete knew their secrets on sight, reported them to khun Korn, who…acted accordingly. So when the fear rose in Vegas, the vision of himself in Pete’s place, collared and chained and forced to do his uncle’s bidding, Pete breathed through the sickness, even as he knew he’d be the one who betrayed Vegas to the Theerapanyakul patriarch.

At last Vegas came back to him, getting a finger under the collar, so close to his skin that Pete could feel the heat of his fingers.

“Secret-seer,” Vegas said. “I don’t recognize the other sigils, though.”

Pete forced his head away from the wall.

“You can’t even nod if I’m right?”

He shook his head.

Vegas crossed the room and yanked the door open. “Khun,” he called, though his voice cracked mid-syllable. “I need you.”

Kinn turned away from the crowd in the art gallery, taking advantage of the privacy to down his whiskey. This was terrible. (Not the whiskey—the event organizers had bought a bargain brand, but a couple ice cubes solved that.) The paintings.  

His father knew about Porsche. Had to.

Public sentiment had never been on the side of magic-users, but a few activist groups were starting to raise awareness for their plight. Kinn had made donations, meaning that Arm had channeled the money through a couple shell corporations to anonymize his identity.

Queasily he turned away from the—fuck, two magic-users being burned alive. Who the hell had thought that was good subject matter? Or the abstract watercolor featuring what the placard informed him was “The Madness of the Sage,” which managed to be ableist as well as pretentious.

Anonymous donations weren’t enough. Boycotting events like this wasn’t enough. Playing a game of whispers wasn’t enough. This required a fight.

Albeit: a fight with planning. Policy was the first angle—not that people cared about rules, but sometimes they’d conveniently remember them. Best to have rules on his side. Then money. Heaps of money he could shower on his allies and withhold from his enemies. Maybe some lawyers to file reams of paperwork, bury them in the courts until everyone in this city learned to give him what he wanted. And if they didn’t, he’d destroy them. 

Kinn had learned from the best.

He shook the nervous energy out of his hands and texted Porsche instead: Looking forward to tonight.

Porsche had refused to stay at Kim’s safehouse, had even suggested going back into the Theerapanyakul compound, at which point Kinn had booked a hotel room. One of those middle-class chains, American-owned, a company his father wouldn’t be able to call an old friend and coerce his way into. Kinn had also made a reservation at a fancier hotel as a cover.

Porsche texted back: How much?

Kinn took a picture of the horrible paintings and sent it before he realized that 1) doing so might upset Porsche and 2) he may have implied that Porsche’s company was only preferable to seeing paintings of magic-users being burned alive, when Kinn was sketching plans to take over the city to be with him.

A buzz in his hand: Ew

Kinn knew more about taking over the city than about texting: I am suffering.

Porsche didn’t text back, so Kinn resigned himself to suffering alone. Then he saw Kim enter the gallery. His brother scanned the artwork and then turned on his heel to leave. He couldn’t let that happen. Moving a little faster than socially acceptable, Kinn crossed the length of the gallery and tapped his brother on the arm, moving out of range as soon as he’d made contact. Fortunate, because Kim’s expression was violent as he spun around.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” said Kinn. “You didn’t answer when I called earlier.”

“Because your fucking phone is bugged.”

Not this again. Really, what was anyone going to see when they looked through his phone? An indolent, spoiled mafia heir so coddled by his father that he was barely allowed to leave the compound. Not the worst image to project, all these years. Though it was the wrong image to project now. Maybe he’d have Arm look into it.

“The Jao Por followed me around the city today,” Kinn said. His people had gotten it out of the two men they’d captured.

He was rewarded by his brother’s unwavering attention. “They were after you? How do you know?”

Which indicated that Kim knew the Jao Por weren’t after either of them, but hoped otherwise. Kim was aware of the threat, then, and trying to handle it himself, which Kinn thought sounded like a good way for his brother to get himself killed. Not that Kim would listen to him.

So Kinn smiled ingratiatingly—Kim’s brows came together, and answered, “Oh, you know. They couldn’t handle the heat.” Then he thought of an even better one, and continued, “It was almost like they were playing with fire.”

“You have him torturing for you now as well?” asked Kim, before he shook his head. “I don’t want to know. Do you have a location on their base?”

Kinn cocked his head to the side, not sure what to make of his brother’s throwaway comment: you have him torturing for you. Porsche's actions had been his choice, especially especially when he’d made the connection between the people following them and his brother. 

Kinn was aware that he had to tread carefully—he’d wanted the fire-bringer for so long. So easy, to move too fast (the damn diamond was only one example, though thankfully Porsche hadn’t flung it in his face and run away from the obsessive fuck who’d threatened the organizer of the diamond auction with dismemberment and then dropped a couple million on a necklace). Surely Porsche knew he wasn’t obligated to—Kinn didn’t expect him to—

“I want to,” he’d whispered the other day in his bed, on his knees between Kinn’s legs, and then his head had dropped down…

“You know they’re not after me,” Kinn told Kim, wrenching himself out of his prurient memories. No part of Porsche needed to be present in this gallery. Kinn was pretty sure the painting on the far wall was entitled “Where the Last Phoenix Died.”

Kim sighed, and for a moment Kinn thought he’d made contact with the living being beneath his brother’s mask. He lowered his voice. “Tell me what you know, Kim. I can help protect him.”

He saw Kim’s jaw clench. Kinn waited, watching the motives flicker through Kim’s eyes. Finally Kim drew in breath—he leaned forward.

“He’s gone,” Kim lied. “People like that move on all the time.”

Yes, Chay had moved on into Kim’s safehouse, where Kim had dressed him in his clothes and bought him a kitchenful of groceries. Chay was using Kim’s Fairbairn-Sykes knife to peel oranges.

Enough. Kinn opened his mouth to eviscerate his brother, but Kim was looking over his shoulder, back toward the (horrible) paintings. Eyes still fixed on worst one, the one with the brightest colors, the one that showed two magic-users being burned alive, Kim started forward.

Kinn stepped out of the way and followed his brother, though he paused to swipe another whiskey off a passing waiter’s tray. He deserved it. He was trying to keep the Kittisawat brothers safe. If Kim would only talk to him, they could defeat an upstart gang from Nonthaburi.

The burning-people painting was worse up close. The two magic-users wore golden armor, not that it would save them—they’d been chained back-to-back, facing outward as a wall of flames closed in. Above them hovered some sort of golden lute, hmm, Kinn had taken folk-music classes as a child; he could remember this—it was a phin. Or it had been.

The artist had painted the golden phin snapped in half, its silver strings unraveling into the red-tinted sky.

Kim reached out toward the painting.

“Don’t touch it,” Kinn reminded him, taking a healthy swallow of cheap whiskey. The last thing they needed was one of the photographers wandering around to take a picture of the youngest Theerapanyakul staring at that kind of painting. Porsche might get the wrong idea. 

Speaking of. Kinn checked his phone. Porsche had replied to his I am suffering. text with: well we can’t have that

What did that mean? When Kinn finally returned his phone to his pocket, one of the gallery sales reps was hovering at his elbow. At last, he could buy a damn painting and then go shack up with his fire-bringer in the Best Western.

“Are you interested in this particular painting, khun Kinn?” asked the sales rep.

“Sure,” he replied. “Or my brother is. Why don’t you tell us both about it?”

At this, Kim turned, talc-white but for his red-rimmed eyes.

“You’re looking at ‘Fate, Undisturbed,’” began the sales rep. “It portrays Chakkrit and Danaisak, who you might perhaps know better as the Golden Generals. When they were discovered to be magic-users, King Aditep ordered their execution.”

The sales rep paused expectantly, though Kinn wasn’t sure what he was expected to say after ordered their execution. Still, Kim looked like he was about to commit murder and throw up at the same time, so Kinn set out to distract the gallery rep.

“Sounds like a waste of talent,” he remarked. “You sure it wasn’t because Aditep was jealous of their military prowess and growing popularity?”

Across from him, his brother swallowed, the movement convulsive. His hands fisted at his sides. “Tell me about the phin,” Kim ordered, his voice cracking at the end.

“Folk instrument?” the sales rep questioned, having been hired to make sales instead of discuss art.

“I know what it is,” said Kim, his knuckles stretching the skin of his hands. “Why is it in the painting?”

The sales rep had to look up the answer to his question, scrolling through the gallery notes on his phone. “Ah, found it! At first the Golden Generals were thought to be fore-tellers. But when they played the phin, it was said, the future would change around them.” The man scrolled a little more, then looked up at the painting. “Do you see the silver strings on the instrument, khun Kim?”

His brother was staring at them. “No,” came his whisper.

The sales rep paused, but Kinn gestured at him to continue. The man buried his face in his phone again.

“The silver strings are thought to represent the threads of fate. The Golden Generals changed the future, hence their—” the man darted a glance at Kinn. “—military prowess and growing popularity. Alarmed by this, uh, wickedness—”

Kim left, his stride too long for the gallery, his steps uneven, as though he were holding himself back from running. Kinn only got a glance at his stricken face before he was out of the room.  

“He does that,” Kinn assured the sales rep, taking another whiskey from the tray of drinks that had appeared next to him. “Go on.”

The whites of his eyes showing—Kim tended to produce that effect—the man finished reading the gallery notes. “Uh, King Aditep issued a proclamation for their arrest.”  

“Huh.” Kinn noted. “I don’t suppose there are any special conditions in the sale contract? Once I buy it, it’s mine?” The tray of drinks still hadn’t moved from his side. Kinn turned on the waiter. “Thank you, but I don’t require another—”

The words stuck in his throat. Porsche had come for him. The waiter outfit wasn’t quite right—he must have borrowed clothes from the other event staff. His face was the giveaway, though, in his sparkling eyes, the smile too wide to be deferential.

“You were saying, khun Kinn?” asked his fire-bringer, the tray coming closer, its edges digging into his arm.

Chasing the sale, the rep said, “I apologize for his behavior, khun Kinn. Should I call security to have him escorted out?”

Kinn would like to see them try. But he had other plans for Porsche’s fire. “I’ll punish him myself,” he promised. “You were telling me about the conditions of sale.”

“We are pleased to say that there are no conditions for any of the paintings,” the sales rep informed him, avariciousness writ large in his face. “Are there any that you would like to place an order for?”

“All of them,” Kinn said. He’d charge it to the family account and blow out their charitable spending goal for the next few months. He handed the sales rep his business card. “One of my people will be happy to facilitate the sale.”

Arm would not be happy to facilitate the sale.

Kinn left the sales rep stunned in front of the burning-people-to-death painting that had caused his brother’s flight. He took the drinks tray from Porsche’s hands, returning it to the bar. When he returned, Porsche was surveying the art on display.

“These are terrible,” Porsche announced, beginning to edge toward the door, his smile dropping slightly. “I knew that people thought this about—us—but I wasn’t aware it was this bad.”

“How would you like to burn it all?” Kinn asked, reassuring him.

Porsche looked back at the gallery, a speculative evaluation, as if he were already measuring how much power it would take to destroy the paintings Kinn had just spent a lot of his family’s money to buy (then donate back to the gallery, though after the exhibit was over, they’d be returned to the Theerapanyakuls. Tax evasion was a dance).

“Here?” he asked. “Now?”

“The paintings will be sent to one of our warehouses,” Kinn replied. “Although—if you destroy it in transit, the art gallery’s insurance will have to pay for it, so we’ll get the insurance payout.”

Which he’d use to buy a village for Porsche, if Porsche still wanted a village. Otherwise he’d buy a few politicians, get some laws tweaked so that his fire-bringer would never have to worry about (legal) discovery and capture again.

“Chay’s the one you need if you want to destroy something in transit,” Porsche mused as they left the gallery and the cooler air of the rest of the building rinsed over them.  

Kinn thought back to the burning-people-to-death painting. He bet he was.

“I’ll ask when I next see him,” he said. “Are you ready to go to the hotel?”

But Porsche’s lip was wobbling. “You said you would punish me,” he said, and Kinn wondered how he had managed to misunderstand, what had he done, he’d ruined everything. Just as he was about to apologize for his careless words, Porsche added, “I am ready for your punishment, khun Kinn.”

Oh, he was teasing.  

Kinn lunged for him.

A phin, he’d said. A golden phin with three silver strings.

The coincidences piled in front of him: the jammed gun, the hole in the guard rotation, the ludicrously simple password, the mole he’d turned. Kim had begun to think that the stars had aligned above him, but no, it was one star-like face beside him. 

Kim’s guitar days weren’t so far in the past—he’d seen Chay moving his hands over invisible strings. Threads of fate, the sales rep had said. Their enemies must have already noticed the string of Theerapanyakul luck, their streak of easy wins, that the odds had so-often fallen in their favor. They would have looked for an answer, found it in an uncle willing to sell out his nephews. The Jao Por were after him now, but there would be others.

Not a fore-teller. Fore-bringer.  

He gunned the accelerator, too fast down the exit ramp, his car fishtailing as he merged onto the road leading into the suburbs.

Before, Kim had wondered how Chay had managed to kill people. He was a terrible shot and had no facility with a knife. He didn’t need a gun or knife, though. Not if he could change the future. Or perhaps there were constraints Kim wasn’t aware of—he’d seen him bleed. All power had limits. Chay just didn’t trust him enough to tell him what his were.

Not that Kim blamed him, considering what his brother had done. Chay was right not to trust the mafia, not to trust him.

Kim swerved into the cul-de-sac and slammed on the brakes in the driveway of his safehouse. The lights were on behind the drawn curtains, like every other house in the neighborhood. Lived-in. Safe. Away from the violence of the city, the threat of the Jao Por. He gave a courtesy knock at the door before going in.

He’d never thought of his safehouse as cozy. Given the surrounding neighborhood, Kim would have chosen sterile instead. Bourgeois to the point of invisibility. But Chay had left a lamp on in each room, had left signs of occupancy littered everywhere—a sweater (one of Kim’s sweaters) hanging off the back of the couch, a teacup left on a side table. Kim continued into the kitchen, not quite as clean as he’d left it, a stack of dishes in the sink, a wet dishtowel thrown on the stovetop.

A person lived here.

Kim hadn’t felt human for so long now. Even before the minor family had staged the takeover, he’d felt the mafia closing around him—people had whispered that to oppose his music career was to make an enemy of his family, his father had put surveillance on anyone he tried to date, and Kinn’s attempts to send him out of the country on tour had been nixed by his agent, his label, the insurers—all issuing polite excuses that amounted to the same reason: he wasn’t allowed to escape.

“Chay?” he called, the name echoing through the silent house.

Nothing.

Kim ran up the stairs to the second level. The door to the room he’d given him was standing ajar, the bed unmade, the sheets a little crumpled, the pillows unfluffed. But no Chay.

All the bedroom doors were open, except the room he’d used that first night here, before he’d realized that staying would be too dangerous. That he’d come home every night to—this, fear clamping itself like a fist around his heart. Perhaps this was why seers stayed in their mountains, their only visitors supplicants. A mountaintop would be easier to guard than a house in the suburbs.

Kim knocked at the closed door, not knowing why Chay would be in there, of all places. But it was the last place in the house he hadn’t checked, the only place he could be—

He wasn’t.

Kim breathed out, eliminating the possibilities. They didn’t need surveillance in suburbia; the neighbors were enough of a police state as it was. They hadn’t called the authorities, there weren’t tire tracks in the driveway, there were no signs of struggle in the house. And surely Chay had power enough to defend himself.

"No one ever sees the door,” he’d said. “No one has ever knocked.”

Now Kim knew why.

He heard a sound from downstairs and ran down to the first floor, his hand going to his gun, though he didn’t draw, not wanting to frighten him as he had before.

“I saw your car,” said Chay in lieu of a greeting. He held up a grocery bag. “I needed a few things from the store.”

“You walked,” said Kim.

The smooth sidewalks only lasted within the confines of the neighborhood. After that, Chay would have had to walk along the side of the street. Where anyone could have seen him. Where anyone could have taken him by surprise.

“Well, yeah. I don’t have a car,” Chay explained. “And I don’t know how to drive,” he added, arresting Kim’s fledgling offer to buy him one.

“You shouldn’t go out, if your uncle’s looking for you,” said Kim, using if, not wanting to see fear in those stellar eyes. He wasn’t lying. He didn’t have proof that the uncle was working with the Jao Por.

Chay passed him, heading for the kitchen counter. He unpacked his grocery bag; he’d risked his freedom for a bottle of seltzer, two mangos, and a loaf of bread. Kim should have visited sooner to see if he needed anything. Guilt began to pick under his ribs.

After he put the mangos in the fruit bowl on the counter, Chay asked, “Do you ever wonder why so many of the oracles in the legends were stuck on a mountaintop somewhere?” It was an echo of Kim’s thought from earlier.

“Easier to defend,” he replied.

Chay laughed. “You would say that. But I think it’s that when we retreat from the world, the less our futures mingle with anyone else’s, the more we're able to see.”

The more he was able to do, Kim corrected in his head. He liked the idea of an all-powerful Chay, high on a mountainside, removed from all the sordid wars of the city. Out loud, he said, “Seems like a good strategy.”

“Who wants to live on a mountaintop, though?” came Chay’s next question. “Alone. Your safehouse has been great, Kim, but I can’t be here forever, just waiting for my uncle to find me.”

“He won’t,” Kim promised, taking another deep breath because he couldn’t be leaving yet. He’d seen his room; there were no signs of packing. Nothing to suggest that Kim would lose him. Still, he couldn’t resist a sullen, “When are you going, then?”

Chay’s eyes quirked with humor, his surprise arch when he replied, “Oh, now you want me to go? I meant that I’m tired of waiting. I want Arthee gone.”

“Let me help you,” Kim whispered, instead of stay.

A hiss as Chay uncapped his seltzer. Kim leapt to get him a glass. “You’ve been helping me,” Chay pointed out. “All I need is a location. Then no one will ever look for my brother or me again, and I’ll stop bothering you.”

The future closed around him. Chay would disappear and Kim would be left to fill the role of enforcer Vegas had held. He’d take down family after family until he failed, because to run away now was to let down the people who depended on the Theerapanyakuls for their safety, their livelihoods.

He had to ask: “What’s my future?” It came out as a croak, and Kim followed up with, “What happens to me?”

Chay poured seltzer into a glass and held out the bottle. Kim took it and drank, the bubbles excoriating his throat. He clenched his teeth, refusing to cough, and returned the bottle to the counter.

“What I said earlier,” Chay said. “The more my future mingles with someone else’s, the less I’m able to see of them.”

A horrible limitation, that. The allure of the mountainside must be strong, Kim thought, because Chay could best protect the people he cared about by leaving them behind. The closer he got to people, the less he could see, the less he could keep them safe. Kim watched him drink, his throat moving as he swallowed, the way he’d swallowed a few nights ago, pinned underneath him in the gym, so close.

So.

“What are you saying?” he asked, disbelief running through him. He must have misunderstood.

But then Chay said, “I can’t see your future,” and Kim was moving before the words registered, pressing him up against the counter, taking the glass out of his hands. He waited for Chay to meet his eyes, slant his chin in an invitation, and then their lips met. The angle wasn’t right at first, too shallow, he was only able to kiss the corner of Chay’s mouth before withdrawing.

He returned to flirt with that same corner of his mouth, then kissed him again, open-mouthed, sucking on his lip, then his tongue, then on the broken gasp of Kim that arced between them. Heedless, he moved downward, leaving trails of wetness on Chay’s neck, his pulse sweet between his lips.

Kim’s hands fell to the waistband of Chay’s jeans—not the clothes he’d left him, he noted, pulling away from his mouth—his fingers digging beneath the denim to touch the skin underneath.

Meanwhile, Chay’s head dipped back, his eyelids fluttering, heavy, and Kim was tempted to hold his head in his hands, see how wide his pupils must be. That would mean leaving the smooth skin around Chay’s waist, the points of his hipbones as Kim explored further. He didn't. 

“Kim,” Chay admonished him, wrapping his arms around his neck. “Please.”

He’d be begging himself in another minute. “Sure thing,” Kim said, lifting him up onto the counter.

Steadier now, Chay’s hands traced patterns up his back, the thin fabric of his shirt rucking up between his fingers, because it needed to come off now, but then he'd have to let go of Chay, step away from him. One of Chay’s knees brushed his hip and Kim was lost. The only future he cared about was which one of the three bedrooms upstairs they’d choose.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kim saw his hand come up, unerringly close to his face. He captured Chay’s fingers in his, lacing their fingers together, before raising Chay’s hand to his lips.

Chapter Text

Tankhun blew on his steaming cup of hot water, since Vegas had been too miserly to pay for tea or coffee for the safehouse. He looked at the (former?) bodyguard sitting across from him on the floor of his cousin’s bedroom. Pete still hadn’t touched his own mug.

“It’s not poisoned, you know,” commented Tankhun, taking a sip. “Just tasteless.”

Pete looked up at him. “You don’t have any secrets,” was his conclusion.

“Being locked in an asylum for twelve years will do that,” Tankhun agreed. There was no point in keeping secrets when he had been alone for so many years. Even the secrets he kept from himself had fallen away, prey to the night he’d spent convincing himself that it wasn’t his fault, he’d done nothing wrong, he didn’t deserve to feel this way, he wouldn’t feel this way forever.

As litanies went, his wasn’t the stuff of fear is the mind-killer, but he’d repeated the words enough times that he recognized that they were the truth, even if his recalcitrant mind sometimes decided otherwise.

The chain rattled as the secret-seer his father had collared traced the rim of his hot water mug. Tankhun wondered if Vegas was going to break his extraneous spending rule and buy them liquor at last. From the look on his cousin’s face when he’d left the safehouse, he thought alcohol was a reasonable bet.

“Are you sure you’re going to escape the instant we uncuff you?” he asked, mostly to keep the conversation going. They’d found out that the answer was yes when Tankhun had insisted on freeing him. Pete had gone for the window, would have gone through the window if Vegas hadn’t grabbed him round the waist and held him still long enough for Tankhun to reattach one of the padded cuffs around his wrist. That was how they’d figured out that one of the sigils must be making the secret-seer return to his father, even if he got hurt in the process.

Pete stared at him, which was his way of saying please don’t let me go. At least, Tankhun imagined that was what he was thinking. Vegas had been the one to figure out that the secret-seer wasn’t able to tell them anything about his power or the sigils that bound it.

Hence: The front door of Vegas’s apartment slammed. Footsteps came down the short hallway and Vegas entered, a stack of books tucked into his chest.

“Did you break into the library?” asked Tankhun. 

“It’s not like the librarians will mind,” said Vegas. “Libraries exist so that people can take out books.”

Tankhun wasn’t sure that stealing books was what the librarians intended, but then, he had never been to a public library before the other week.

The stack of books thunked down onto the floor—their neighbors were going to be thrilled, though Tankhun supposed the noise was an improvement over the previous noises emanating from Vegas’s sex dungeon. He handed the topmost book to the secret-seer.

“Why don’t you see if you can accidently-on-purpose leave the page open where there’s information we need to know?” To Vegas’s dubious raised eyebrow, Tankhun retorted, “What? Clearly he can’t tell us anything about the sigils that have been used on him, but maybe he can show us.”

Vegas watched Pete flip through the pages. “Or I can tell when there’s some recognition on his face,” he said, at which point Pete looked up at him before going back to the book. 

Tankhun had seen too many dramas not to recognize what those long looks signified. He hoped his cousin would realize that there were many ways the secret-seer might try to escape. He glanced at Vegas, but his face gave nothing away.

“Did you only go out to steal books from the library?” he asked as a distraction. “I wanted to make tea for our guest.”  

“Khun, we’re on a limited budget,” Vegas replied patiently. “After—” and his eyes flicked over to the secret-seer, seemingly engrossed in the book on sigils. “there’ll be plenty of money for all the tea and coffee you want.”

Yes, the question of what to do with all his father’s money when he was gone, how much was owed to Vegas and Macau for what had been done to them. How much was owed to the people his father had used and broken. Pete turned another page and stopped, running his finger over the words before tapping the page.

Vegas swung his head over to see what sigil he was pointing at. “Return,” he said. “Well, I guessed as much. It’s a good thing those cuffs are padded. You’ll be in them until we get that collar off.”

Pete looked from the book to his cousin, his gaze too-limpid to not be using his power. “Do you think you can kill him?” he asked, the question managing to encompass Tankhun as well.

“Sure,” was Vegas’s reply. “Though it would be easier if we knew how to get around whatever sigil’s keeping you quiet.” He nodded at the book and Pete went back to reading.  

Though the question still hung in the air. “I don’t know if I can kill him,” Tankhun said over the rustle of startled pages. Vegas’s eyes widened as he tilted his chin indignantly toward Pete. Tankhun shrugged. “He sees secrets anyway. Might as well tell the truth.”

It wasn’t because Korn was his father. Even twelve years ago, Tankhun hadn’t been the son his father wanted for heir, someone who could see people as players on a board, sacrifice pieces to gain power, advance on the other mafia families till they had full control of the city, the country, the region. Someone who could pull the trigger. Tankhun had watched enough television to know what would happen when he confronted his father. Korn would keep him talking, twisting his words, twisting his emotions until he relented.

Revenge might be better left in his cousin’s hands. Vegas wouldn’t hesitate, wouldn’t wait to ask why.

The sky began to brighten. Close to dawn, though none of them had slept. Still hunched over the book, Pete’s blinks grew longer, the pages began to turn less often. Finally his head began to nod, hanging down before jerking upright. Tankhun glanced at his cousin, not surprised to find him staring at the secret-seer. Prickles crept up his back, but Tankhun stayed quiet. He waited until Pete was asleep to ask.

“Did I know you could do that?”

“I didn’t do anything,” said Vegas, but he didn’t sound convinced.

“Do magic-users get more powerful over time?” was Tankhun’s next question.

His cousin reached for one of the library books.

Sunrise came at six in the morning these days, which meant Kim woke up too damn early. Always safer to sleep with the blinds open, to catch the flash of headlights before they were turned off at the top of the street, to see the shadows change as attackers swarmed up the driveway. There were drawbacks to the defensive maneuver, though, as he hitched a shoulder upward to shield the man sleeping beside him from the glare.

Old habit, sleeping with the blinds open. A stealth attack was unlikely in the suburbs. This far out in bourgeoisie obscurity, their enemies would probably plaster a police decal on the kidnap van before storming the house. Neighbors would gather on their lawns and gossip about crime rates going up as they were taken away.

Kim had a few surprises waiting for anyone who tried to get into his safehouse, though. Most of them were locked in the walk-in closet he’d converted into a gun safe. And he had some creative ideas for further ways to harden the building, at least until he’d found a way to put the Jao Por on the Theerapanyakul hit list without revealing the fore-bringer’s existence. 

First he needed to take out the men that the gang had sent to the city. Then he’d destroy their compound in Nonthaburi.

Somehow. His father was so fucking placid about the threat from the other mafia families. His ambivalence made it difficult for Kim to stroll into the compound and casually order a strike on a minor gang. He needed a reason.

One of the rays of sunlight broke over his shoulder, lancing across Chay’s closed eyes. Affronted, Chay threw an arm across his face to shield himself from the sun.

“What time is it?” came a slurred question. 

“Just after six,” Kim replied. “I’ll close the blinds so you can go back to sleep.”

“Only if you’re going back to sleep, too,” said Chay, though his words appeared to be more a polite gesture than anything else, since his eyes were already closing.  

Kim finger-combed his hair back from his face as he went in search of his phone, dropped somewhere between the kitchen and bedroom last night. When he found it (just outside the bedroom door), he saw that Yok had texted him. Alongside a blurry video from the streetview CCTV, Yok had written: guess who showed up outside the bar again?

Hell. Kim zoomed in on the men the CCTV had captured. He couldn’t deny hoping that the Jao Por would have taken the disappearance of one of their higher-level lieutenants as a sign. Instead they’d sent more people to spy on the fore-bringer. More people for Kim to get rid of.

He texted back: Copy. I want Mint and One.

Two bodyguards should be enough backup. Mint and One were capable enough to take care of whatever men the Jao Por had thrown at him and neither were the type to carry tales to his brother. Or worse, his father.

Yok replied: They’ll meet you there.

She’d also close the bar for the day, in case clean-up got messy. While some of the employees who worked there were Kim’s people, some were civilians who didn’t deserve to get involved in mafia power games. Which was why they did what they did, after all. Without their involvement, the civilians would be (more) at risk, would have to get involved in the kill-or-be-killed politics that ran the city. 

A year ago, after the attempt at a takeover, right after Kim had ditched his music career for picking through the hand-coded files that were all the records Vegas had left, he’d considered the merits of leaving the mafia altogether. It wouldn’t work. His enemies would kill everyone he cared about (admittedly, a small number), then everyone he had a nominal connection with, and then they’d come after him. He’d never be able to stop running.

Kim looked back at the open door to Chay’s bedroom.

The only way to protect him was to become so strong that their enemies would fear him too much to make an attempt. Kim needed the Theerapanyakul family to continue, to take control of the city. And for that he needed Kinn.

He frowned down at his phone.

Well, he didn’t need Kinn for what he was going to do today.

After gathering up their discarded clothes from the night before, Kim dressed in a fresh set of all-black, perfect for the wet-work he hoped to have completed before noon. Then he was going to get enough groceries to last the two of them at least a week so he could give Chay the morning-after he deserved.

Chay stirred when he re-entered his bedroom, flopping over on his back, though he threw an arm over his eyes to shield them from the rays of sun that made it through the blinds.

“Sneaking out so soon?” Chay asked. “I thought you’d be better than that.”

One side of Kim’s mouth curled up in an involuntary smile. “If I were sneaking out, you’d wouldn’t have noticed,” he replied, making his steps silent as he crept closer to the bed, taking enough time for Chay to relax, burrow deeper into the sheets, let his guard down.

And then he tapped the tip of Chay’s nose, making him shriek as he tried to jerk upright. Tried being the operative term, because Kim had taken his wrists, pinning them against the mattress until Chay squirmed his way out of his hold.

“I didn’t see you,” Chay complained, wrapping his freed wrists around Kim’s neck to pull him closer.

Kim let himself be pulled down. He decided not to mention the Jao Por fighters that he needed to take down. Better that Chay didn’t see what was about to happen.

Pete stood outside khun Korn’s suite in the Theerapanyakul complex, his hand raised to enter the passcode on the door. He keyed in the code, the door beeped, and he turned the handle. For a moment he felt eyes on the back of his neck, but when he spun around, the hall was empty. He continued forward into the suite, needing to report to the patriarch.

He found khun Korn sitting on the terrace, an empty espresso cup at his side.

“Ah, you’re back. Report,” ordered khun Korn.

Pete blinked, unsure what he was supposed to report. The last time he’d seen khun Kinn was when the Theerapanyakul heir was coming into the compound with a few takeout containers. Arm had assigned him to a surveillance detail the next day, where he’d scanned the art gallery for potential danger prior to khun Kinn’s visit. And at the art gallery…

“We found no obvious signs of tampering at the art gallery,” he said, his memory producing the requisite content: he had looked at the paintings in the main gallery, checked each room thoroughly for signs of a break-in. He’d thought he’d seen something in one of the rooms, but—

Wait, he had seen something in one of the rooms. Something had happened in one of the rooms. His back still hurt from the knee that had held him down. Fingers seemed to dig into his pulse.

“Catch me up on our other operations, then,” said khun Korn. “Has Chan found anything on the escapees?”

Khun Korn wouldn’t call them escapees. They’d been very clever, taking advantage of the roof leak to escape, avoiding the people in the nearby countryside. Chan suspected they’d stowed away on a vehicle to get out of the area. They would have to track every vehicle that had passed through the controlled-access highways to figure out exactly where the two had gone.

“Chan suspects they’re in Bangkok,” Pete replied. “We have people at all the hospitals and clinics, as well as the shelters and food pantries. All of Vegas’s known contacts are either dead or under surveillance. We’re monitoring all his properties, though we suspect he has a safehouse.”

Safehouse.

Something flashed in his mind, a room with an enormous bed, a man standing in front of him, close enough his fingers could hook into the leather and metal binding his throat. Khun Korn didn’t know about the safehouse. The safehouse Pete had been in. But now he was back in the Theerapanyakul compound.

He must have escaped, but he had no memory of doing so. No memories of walking through the front doors of the compound, of the elevator ride up to khun Korn’s suite. Nothing before punching in the door passcode, giving away the combination to the person who had been standing behind him.

There hadn’t been anyone standing behind him.

Careful not to turn his head, Pete looked out of the corner of his eye, and yes, there he was. Vegas Theerapanyakul lounged against the wall of the office.

“I see you,” said Pete, still facing the illusion of khun Korn. “Dreamwalker.”

At once the Theerapanyakul patriarch disappeared, leaving Pete with an unobstructed view of the terrace. The empty cup of espresso had refilled—an interesting detail, though he didn’t trust Vegas enough to chance drinking it.

“Well done,” Vegas acknowledged, joining him in looking out at the Theerapanyakul estate. “Thank you for the passcode, by the way. Very useful. And I’ll be sure not to go to—” he paused, and Pete looked over to see that his lips were quirked with humor “—any shelters or food pantries. Though my funds are running low and now I have to feed you as well. You’ll have to earn your keep.”

“I don’t have any money,” said Pete.

There was no point in hiding anything from khun Korn. Oh, he’d thought of schemes over the years, stealing jewelry, misallocating funds, but all required secrets. He had no choice but to be honest—and destitute.

Vegas said, “There are other currencies.”  

“I can’t give away khun Korn’s secrets,” Pete began, and then he clapped his hand over his mouth because he had never been allowed to say that.

The quick motion made him realize that there was no constriction at his throat, and he moved his hand downward to his neck, unmarked by a collar. He hadn’t felt the skin there in so long; now that he focused, the air felt alien—unfamiliar, free.

Vegas looked him over, satisfied. “That seems to solve the problem, doesn’t it? Finally, an easy fix.”

Pete went for the cup of espresso, which at first emitted no steam. But then Vegas rolled his eyes, and he could feel the warmth that should have been there. He still wasn’t sure he wanted to drink it, unsure which was more preferable: dream-espresso or real-life hot water.

“So my uncle was surprised by our escape?” asked Vegas, slinging himself into one of the chairs on the terrace and conjuring a cup of tea into his hand.

“Yes. The contractor had been falsifying maintenance records. The roof was supposed to have been inspected last year.”

Vegas sniffed his tea. “I thought it might be a trap. The roof leak happened right above Khun’s bed. And there was a subfloor that had rotted away enough to break apart in my hands. And the roof vent was one I could kick out. I just couldn’t figure out why my uncle would have gone to that amount of trouble to set a trap. But I suppose we’re owed some luck.” He paused just long enough for Pete to be wary before he asked, “How would you do it, if you were going to kill Korn?”

He’d never dared to think about it. His first owner had laughed at him when the revenge fantasies had spilled from his mouth, the secrets he wasn’t able to keep. Over the years it had become easier to stop thinking about escape.

“He knows everything. Every secret,” Pete reminded him. He’d seen too many people go up against khun Korn and fail. He’d ensured that they’d fail. “He’ll find out what you’ll do to keep your secret from being known. When he learns that you’re a dreamwalker—”

Pete would tell him that his nephew was a dreamwalker. Vegas wouldn’t be the first, or second, or even the tenth magic-user he’d betrayed.

“I can infer,” said Vegas, his flippancy masking the worry Pete saw growing inside him. “Does he have any better collars than the one he put on you? Yours is ugly.”

“The sigils can be set into gemstones,” came out of Pete’s mouth, a secret there was no prohibition on giving away. “You could get a diamond necklace instead.”

He watched the fear take root, a glittering captive trapped inside the Theerapanyakul compound, realizing there was no escape, giving in at last. Khun Korn had always set Kinn and Vegas at each other’s throats, treated them the same way. In this, too, using their secret to wrest control.

Vegas turned his teacup into a glass of red wine, took an artful sip, tipping his head back so Pete could see the vulnerable lines of his throat.

“So the best way to kill Korn is to come at him directly, no secrets, no attempts at subterfuge,” Vegas reasoned.

“Then he’ll kill you,” said Pete, no secret there. Just truth. “Or Chan will.”  

Vegas hummed into his wine, making Pete swallow as thirst registered. He looked at the tiny cup of espresso. “A sniper rifle can be direct,” came Vegas’s rejoinder, though the words weren’t enough to make Pete forget the scratchy feeling on his tongue, the hollow feeling inside him. “I know the windows in the compound are bulletproof, but does he wear a bulletproof vest when he goes outside?”

Pete’s stomach growled when he tried to reply.

“Oh damn,” Vegas commented, as the colors of the terrace began to blur and run together. “I guess we will have to feed you, won’t we…”

Pete woke up, his cheek smushed into the book he’d been using for a pillow, his back contorted into a position he would regret for days to come. The pressure around his throat had returned, worse now that he’d felt what freedom was like. Pete swallowed around the itch in his throat, wishing now that he’d taken that espresso. Or better, the tallest glass of ice-cold seltzer he could imagine.

“Oh, you’re back,” said Tankhun from above him, lounging on the bed. “How did it go?”

“I was hungry,” wasn’t even a secret. “Where’s Vegas?”

“Paying for your dreams,” Tankhun replied, as a low moan echoed down the hallway. The Theerapanyakul heir sighed. “We have neighbors now.”

He slid off the bed and headed into the hall, the door shutting behind him. Pete cringed as the moan choked off, so human, the need to hide suffering. Only when it was hidden did vulnerability become—a vulnerability. As Tankhun could attest, a man without secrets.

A glint of metal from underneath the bed caught his eye, and Pete went to his belly to investigate. The metal looked like—

handcuffs. Real handcuffs. Pete strained to reach the cuffs, slide them towards him. When they were finally in his hands, he wormed his fingers through the metal, arranging them like brass knuckles. He bit his lip as the collar seemed to tighten round his throat.  

He had a weapon now. He could attack. He could escape.  

At least a few hours later, Chay finally kicked aside the covers and got out of bed. He headed down to the kitchen to make coffee—or perhaps some jasmine tea, he thought, wanting to prolong the lazy, sleepy contentedness a bit longer. Even the futures seemed subdued this morning. Perhaps they’d realized what they’d get if they kept bothering him—a whole night where he could see nothing but Kim. Hour upon hour of silence in his head.

(Futures could not realize things. Futures were not sentient. Chay knew this.)

Ingredients appeared on the counter before him: rice, coconut milk, sugar, the two mangos he’d gotten from the store the night before. Chay got a knife from the knife drawer—he’d left Kim’s knife upstairs, and the blade wasn’t really suited for kitchen work, anyway.

(Chay repressed a snicker at the euphemistic thought of Kim’s knife. Euphemisms were beneath him.)

Kim.

He was staying. Even though Chay couldn’t see his own future, he imagined taking all the threads of fate that didn’t include his continued existence in the city, twisting them into a skein of not happening and putting them into a drawer to be forgotten. Removing the outcomes he didn’t want helped him see what he’d have to do.

Porsche had told him that someone had tried the lock on his apartment. Easier to find Arthee if his uncle was looking for him already. Chay wondered if he should draw him out—but he wasn’t the best choice for bait. Hia would be the better choice, able to defend himself enough for Chay (or Kim, or Kinn) to kill him. A blink was all it took to reclaim the futures he’d spent a whole night pretending didn’t exist. One—one he couldn’t see—was Arthee’s. The memory of the phin hovered in his head, the promise of the impossible at his fingertips. One shuddering note to find out where his uncle would be. Chay didn’t even need his power to seal the man’s fate.

He reached out, aiming for the phin’s central string—

The shock left spots in his vision, spots that took a moment to clear, suggesting they weren’t solely magical in nature. Chay blinked as the phin disappeared, leaving his uncle’s location a mystery.

Easy to decide to fight without thinking of how hard it was to fight, how many futures needed to be teased out, how far he could test his power without losing control. Somewhere among all 10 million people in the city limits, among all their possibilities, there’d be darkness where silver strings should be. But he couldn’t see 10 million futures at once. There had to be a better method.

Chay dialed Porsche.

“I want to stay,” he said as soon as he heard his brother’s sleepy voice.

“Why are you up so early?” Porsche muttered, and Chay heard Kinn ask your brother? in the background. Abruptly he saw a housekeeper smile as they picked a stack of baht off the nightstand in the hotel his brother had stayed in. Gross.

“I want to stay,” he repeated, shaking his head to dislodge that particular future. “I’m tired of running.”

Porsche sighed. “Well, that’s lucky. I’m pretty sure Arthee knows where we are.”

Or where Chay was, given that someone had tried to break into his apartment. A camera flashed in his memory—that social Kim had taken him to—he’d said that no pictures would appear in the papers. He’d miscalculated.

“Have P’Kinn figure out where he is,” ordered Chay. “We’ll take it from there.”

Or at least, Chay could. Trucks swerving out of their lanes, trip hazards on every staircase, drug-resistant bacteria on every door handle. He’d turn every future against his uncle until one worked.

“Let me put you on speaker,” said Porsche, and the click indicated that he’d done it. “We haven’t had much luck finding Arthee.”

“Which means he’s working with a group powerful enough to erase records from databases,” Kinn interrupted to explain, and Chay remembered that the two had been followed after leaving his apartment the other day. “What has Kim told you?” was Kinn’s next question.

Kim had told him nothing. Kim had only said—

“He said I shouldn’t go out if Arthee was looking for me,” Chay realized, the if sticking between his lips. “He said if,” Chay continued. Kim had known that his uncle had found his apartment and hadn’t told him. He’d said if, allowing Chay to believe that they still had time.

Kinn cleared his throat. “In his defense, he lies when he’s trying to protect people. What do you know about the Jao Por?”

Nothing—and then too much, too quickly. The vision hit him like a thunderbolt, a heart stuttering to a stop, ribs snapped around a ruined torso, skin cooling as night fell, not this night, but tomorrow night. And morning brought no comfort, just recognition, the grim looks on two men’s faces as their boots made imprints in the congealed blood, as they saw the body.

Chay saw one man fumble a phone out of his pocket, heard him call in the murder. The other checked for a pulse, the head rolling back to reveal a pale neck, strands of long hair sticking in the blood gone black on familiar lips. Lips that had been on Chay’s an hour ago.

Chay found himself on the kitchen floor, his phone buzzing somewhere behind him, as in an alley somewhere in the city, the man gave up on finding a pulse.

There was only one reason why he would see Kim’s future. Because Kim’s future was no longer entwined with Chay’s own. Because Kim was—would be—

“He’s going to die,” said a voice from far away, too calm. Calm before the storm; hands gripped the phone. His hands. “In two days’ time they’ll find his body.”

Silver wound around his fingers, impossible to lose, Kim’s future in his hands. Everything Chay needed to know about where he was, what had happened, who had done this to him. Also in his hands: how he’d make them suffer, what he’d do to bring them down.

“Your uncle?” came Kinn’s question, unclear through the bad connection.

“Chay, who are you talking about?” Porsche asked.

The golden phin appeared before him, missing one of its strings. Chay looked down at his hands, still clenched around his phone.

“Kim.”

“You said the, uh, body was located in an alley. Can you identify any other landmarks in the area? Or perhaps whether the nearest street was busy?” asked Arm, who was buried in the laptop he’d brought from the Theerapanyakul compound.

Porsche watched Kinn surface from his own laptop long enough to swallow convulsively.

Chay had the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. “The men who find him were inspecting cracks in the toll road. The alley is a dead end.” He paused. “I think they moved him. None of the buildings in the area will hold a group that large.”

“Likely,” Arm concluded. “But they wouldn’t have risked the toll road to move him. So they’re on the other side of the river.”

Porsche caught the dubious look the man shared with Kinn. He guessed that Theerapanyakul territory didn’t extend that far. Going from building to building would take too long.

“The workers who find him,” Porsche began. “Could they move the limbs or is he still in rigor mortis? Could help us determine how much time we have.”

Chay staggered backwards until he hit the kitchen counter. When he straightened, two bright spots of color bloomed in his cheeks.

“Fuck, Porsche, you’re talking about my brother,” said Kinn. He went for the liquor cabinet, bypassing the stuff he’d insisted on Porsche drinking last time in favor of a different bottle. He splashed a couple fingers into a glass and handed it to Chay.

Porsche began to say that Chay shouldn’t drink, but then his brother slugged the glass and held it out for a refill, which Kinn provided before pouring for himself as well.

“The construction workers will try to check his pulse,” Chay whispered, the softness in his voice at odds with the hard-edged glint in his eyes. “His head moves to the side.”

Ah, so rigor had gone. They had one and a half days. What they needed was some diversion to draw out the Jao Por who had followed them, make them reveal themselves so that they could swoop in and save Kinn’s brother. Who was connected to Porsche’s brother. Porsche had thought the other day that Chay was keeping secrets. He'd been right. 

Arm’s phone chimed, and they all turned around for the man’s update.

“I sent someone to khun Porchay’s apartment,” Arm said, zooming in on whatever his contact had sent him. “They left a note. They want khun Porchay.”

It was confirmation that Arthee was involved, that he’d sold information about Chay to the Jao Por. He must be looking for Porsche as well. “They didn’t ask for me?” was Porsche’s question, directed at Arm, who shook his head. “So they might think I’m dead,” he offered, walking over to view the ransom note on Arm’s tablet. I can go in Chay’s place and cause a diversion while the rest of you—”

He stopped, because the ransom note had included proof of life, or proof of the injuries that would cause his death, and suddenly it was obvious what Porsche’s role in the rescue would have to be. Porsche surveyed the picture. At least all the limbs were pointing in the right direction. Past that, well—there was a lot of blood.

He looked at Arm, whose eyes went from Kinn to Chay. A tiny head-shake, which Porsche answered with an equally tiny nod. They didn’t need to see this. Arm deleted the picture.

“They’ll be on the lookout for you,” said Chay, drawing his attention across the room. “They know I faked my death. They’ll guess that you faked yours as well.”

And they knew he’d hesitate to kill.

Kinn poured himself another finger of whiskey before crossing the room. “How many people do we have on our side?” he asked Arm. “People who won’t talk. Enough to take them?”

Arm shrugged. “We don’t know how many of them there are, khun Kinn. We just have a location where they plan to meet khun Porchay.”

Which probably wasn’t even the final location. They must know who they had kidnapped, must know that giving away their location would bring down the wrath of the Theerapanyakul family. The Jao Por would have taken steps to mitigate the risk. The drop point couldn’t be too close.

“Enough,” said Chay, stopping their calculations. “They asked for me. They’ll be watching for me. I’ll distract them. You can track my location and find Kim.”

He wasn’t just proposing a distraction, but only he and Porsche knew that. Arthee knew what Chay could do, knew that he’d need to be controlled. He would have warned the Jao Por. “Have you considered what they might do to you?” Porsche asked, though he didn’t see that they had any other options.

“I’m just the distraction,” Chay lied. He asked Kinn, “Assuming you’re tracking me from the moment they take me, how much time do you need to surround their location and attack?”  

Kinn hesitated. “A firefight will put you and Kim in danger.”

Porsche could fix that, even holding most of his power in reserve to heal Kinn’s brother and Chay’s…something. “I can shield them,” he offered. “And the flames will be an added distraction.”

“Five minutes,” said Kinn, looking to Arm for confirmation. The man nodded. “I just need to get into the building. Arm, you’ll stay on comms and make sure nothing gets back to the compound?”

Arm looked disappointed but nodded.

“I can hold out for five minutes. I’ll just scare them,” said Chay, that hard-edged glitter back in his eyes as he downed the remainder of his whiskey. The last time Porsche had seen him this drunk, they’d ended up stealing a body from the morgue to fake his death.

He remembered the look; the confidence of someone who’d stacked the deck, had all their fates in his hands. He wouldn’t once the Jao Por took him.

I’ll scare them, Chay had said. He was right enough, that scared people made mistakes. But scared people also lashed out at those they perceived as threats, thought Porsche, as the fabric of his shirt shifted over the scar tissue in his back. He remembered the picture Arm had deleted and elected to say nothing.

Kim woke up and wished he hadn’t. It hurt to breathe, and it hurt to not breathe. He chose breathing, though it was harder than it should be.

Because after those fucking Jao Por thugs had killed Mint and One, they’d held him down as they’d beaten him. Kim took another careful breath. He’d broken ribs before, but this hurt worse. He tasted blood in his mouth and opened his eyes.

Good, they still thought he was unconscious. No one was guarding him; there were knots of men gathered around the edges of the room. Probably a warehouse, he thought, feeling the concrete floor beneath his shoulder. The gang members stayed away from the center of the room, where two men spoke in quiet voices.

He was starting to lose feeling in his hands, ziptied behind his back. Hours must have passed since they’d ambushed him a few streets away from Yok’s bar. Far enough away that his capture wouldn’t have shown up on CCTV. No one knew he’d been taken.

Definitely not Chay. Chay couldn’t see his future, would never know what had happened to him, which meant he’d be safe. As long as Kim didn’t reveal the location of his safehouse. As long as he stayed quiet. Though staying quiet didn’t mean he couldn’t try to escape. Kim went for the tiny knife he kept in the heel of his shoe. Stabbing pain shot through his abdomen—more than a broken rib—and Kim bit his lip so hard he tasted blood.

The pain in his lip, his head, his chest, his abdomen, his side all joined forces to make him dizzy, and Kim closed his eyes, focusing on the conversation between the two men in the middle of the room.  

“It’s been hours since we left the note,” said one of the men.

“I know my nephew,” said the other. “He’ll come.”

But Chay’s uncle was wrong. Chay was safe in Kim’s house. He’d never find out about whatever note the Jao Por had left—or if he did, he wouldn’t until it was too late. Unless Kim managed to escape. If only he could reach his shoe.

“He’s not going anywhere,” the first man said. “We can afford to wait.” Kim kept his eyes shut for a good minute after he was done speaking, before trying to focus on the two men, trying to get his first glimpse at Arthee.

He was disappointed when it came. The man was short, the scraggly kind of slender, his hair receding around a bony face. Such an insignificant figure to have sent Chay on the run for so many years. But Kim had run with the mafia long enough to know how much could be concealed by a banal veneer.  

Then one of the men said, “We have him,” and Kim shrank back on himself.

How had he found out? How could he not know how hostage situations worked? Chay couldn’t salvage the situation by sacrificing himself. Giving himself up would only result in Kim being killed and Chay being—

His eyes went to the strip of leather and metal hanging from the Jao Por leader’s belt.

The warehouse door opened and two men half-carried him in. Kim shut his eyes, hoping that Chay would think he was dead, or at least past saving. That he would take his last moment of freedom to run. Unless—he had no power over his own future. Had no power to control what was about to happen to him.

Footsteps sounded, scuffling across the concrete floor of the warehouse. Kim heard a muffled whimper and held himself still. Once the collar was around Chay’s throat, the knife in his shoe was their best chance of escape. But for that to happen, the Jao Por had to think him incapacitated.

“Let him go,” came Chay’s demand when it was done.

“Tell me my future,” said the leader. “Or rather, I’ll tell you what future I want, and you’ll make it happen. Isn’t that how your power works?”

Kim dared another look. Chay was unmoved, though he tugged at the collar those monsters had put round his throat. Even from far away, Kim could see his chest heave up and down, though the Jao Por leader had him outmatched, his own chest swelling as the fore-bringer resisted his demands.

The man turned to Arthee. “I thought the collar would control him!”

“Only if you know how to use it,” said Chay, and grimaced as the leader’s fists rose.  

The hit didn’t connect, though. Instead the leader gestured for the other men to let Chay go. “Fine, you want to be commanded,” he said, bending very close to Chay’s face. “There are, what, how many million people in this city? Tell me their futures. All of them.”

Chay fell.

Heedless of the stabbing in his side, Kim lunged for the knife in his shoe. Surely no mind could withstand that much information, that much power. He remembered the paintings in the art gallery, all the stories of the seers who’d seen too much, whose visions destroyed them.

Sweat trickled down his back, soaked the front of his shirt. The warehouse floor was hot beneath him, warmth climbing up into his bones. Kim squinted up at the windows near the ceiling; dark outside, past the time when the afternoon sun would heat the building.

But then the Jao Por leader crouched beside Chay, and the unnatural heat slipped away from him. The man pulled Chay’s head upright, and Kim sucked in a breath at the sight of the blood trailing from his nose.

Still, Chay’s expression was calm despite the grip the man had in his hair, his hands loose in his lap.

“Do you have anything to tell me?” the leader asked, and from his angle Kim could see the knife in his hand, the skin of his knuckles pulling taut around the handle.

He had to move, get between the two of them, give Chay a chance to get out of the building. Kim struggled against the lack of feeling in his hip, the numb nerves indicating a sprain. He could power through this, he thought. Had to power through this, and his breath frothed on his lips.

Chay said, “Good riddance.”

The leader buckled before Kim heard the gunshot—long gun, a sniper in the rafters.

Flames sprouted from the cracked concrete beneath him, weaving together into a wall of fire that couldn’t quite drown out the hail of gunshots. He thought: fire-bringer. Kim heard the bullets find their marks, the grunts and cries of doomed men. For they were doomed. Vegas had been the only sniper who could beat Kinn.  

Chay came through the fire, his neck bare once more. He went to his knees by Kim’s side, his eyes wild in the coruscating light.

“I’m fine,” Kim tried to say, but whatever was wrong with his lungs stopped the words. He wormed his wrists inside the zipties, trying to use his sweaty palms to free himself. Chay drew a knife—his knife—and made quick work of the plastic.

“Hia,” Chay called, the wilderness in his eyes taking over his expression as he looked Kim over. “He’s hurt.”

The rat-tat-tat of gunshots slowed as Kim tried to breathe. His hands and arms worked, though, so he contented himself by raising both to Chay’s face. Who would have believed that the zipties would have protected his hands from injury? But laughing had been a painful idea. The warehouse swooped around him.

Kinn’s fire-bringer was the next one through the wall of flames.

“Shit,” was Porsche’s comment. Then, louder, he yelled, “Kinn, I need to bring down the shields.”

Another sequence of gunshots echoed, and then his brother called, “Go ahead. I’ve got the people in this room pinned down.”

“There are more of them,” Kim managed, trying to prop himself up. The other gang members would storm the room once they heard the gunshots. The fire-bringer needed to replicate his feat at the Costa compound and burn them all.

Explosion of pain in his collarbone as Porsche windmilled him back onto the floor. “Oh, look at that, broken clavicle,” Porsche commented, his fingers digging into Kim’s shirt. “And…hm, two broken ribs, a sprained hip, and a ruptured spleen. I bet you a thousand baht I find more internal bleeding, too.”

“The other people in the building aren’t getting out,” Chay told him, shuffling to the side to give his brother more room to—do whatever he was doing. What was he doing, anyway? He should be at Kinn’s side, killing the gang members.

Kim heard the gunshots change. Kinn had switched from the long gun to his pistol. Above him, Porsche winced but made no move to join his brother. Instead the flames disappeared from around them—

—and were transferred directly into his chest cavity. Kim’s vision turned white-lanced-with-blue, the blaze going through his lungs. In the wake of the inferno, Kim took his first full breath since he’d woken up.

“Bet that feels better,” Porsche told him. “Stay still so I can fix your spleen.”

The fire was gentler this time, waves sliding over him, easing the stabbing pain in his side. At a loss for anything else to do, Kim watched the veins in the fire-bringer’s wrists. Wrists that weren’t covered by leather and metal. Because he wasn’t Kinn’s fire-bringer. Kinn had set him free.

Kim groaned as he realized what the truth must be, prompting a hitched breath and a hissed hia! from Chay.

“Did I miss a rib somewhere, nong?” asked Porsche, but his face crumpled as another gunshot cracked through the air.

Somewhere to the left of him, Kinn called, “Porsche, I’ve got your uncle down, but he’s still breathing.”

Porsche kept his hand on Kim’s shirt, his eyes going distant. He made no move to get up and go to Kinn. At last Chay rose to his feet (clutching his head as he let go of Kim). He passed out of Kim’s sight, heading to the left.

Kim heard three gunshots in close succession.

Chay’s face re-appeared in his field of vision. “It’s done,” he told his brother, settling himself beside Kim once more, appropriating both of Kim’s hands in the process.

The fire-bringer shook his head but resumed doing—whatever he was doing, though the fact that he could breathe again, that he only felt terrible instead of feeling like—well, like he’d passed out after being beaten severely—that spoke for itself.  

“You’re a healer,” Kim managed to say. Chay squeezed his hands.

“Among other things. You’re welcome,” Porsche said, turning his head as Kinn approached.

His brother’s face was carefully blank. “You look terrible,” he said to Kim, who ignored the provocation.

“We can’t call for a clean,” he told his brother, referring to the firefight. “We wouldn’t be able to keep this from father.”

They didn’t have enough people who were loyal only to them to disappear a whole building and assorted gang members—some of whom weren’t dead yet, but they would be, by the time Kinn was done with them. Word would get back to the Theerapanyakul patriarch, who would investigate why Kim had been kidnapped. Which would lead him back to—

“What’s going on?” Porsche asked.

Kinn said, “We need to get rid of the evidence, but if we call Theerapanyakul men, we won’t be able to keep your presence a secret.”

Even with the layer of his shirt between them, Kim could feel how cold Porsche’s hands had become. He inched away from the fire-bringer. Movement didn’t hurt as much as it should, but then Chay frowned down at him, and Kim gave up trying to get off the floor.

“I don’t have enough power to destroy this place like I did with the Costa compound,” Porsche told Kinn.

“I’ll do it,” said Chay. “Go get the car, P’Kinn.”

Kinn didn’t argue with the certainty stamped across Chay’s face. Kim didn’t know what future could be enough to get rid of a building and its inhabitants. The point of a clean was to scrub a place from recognition. The fire-bringer had been right to leave the Costa compound smoking behind him.

“Do what?” muttered Porsche, as Chay let go of Kim’s hands.

Bereft, Kim watched his eyes narrow to pinpoints. Chay extended a slender hand into the air, holding an invisible string in place with one hand, using the other to wind nothing in place round a peg that didn’t exist. Then he tucked the instrument that wasn’t there into his chest, paused for a moment, and plucked out a note Kim couldn’t place.

He wasn’t sure whether the note had sounded or not; he only registered the oscillation as it reverberated through the warehouse, the waves drawing a yelp from Porsche, who rocked away from Kim to clamp his hands over his ears.

Then Chay’s hands were on his again, his face devoid of color as he said, “We should go. If he’s healed enough to walk.”

“I can walk,” said Kim immediately.

“You will not,” Porsche refuted him. “I just got the bleeding to stop. If you rupture anything else, I’m going to make you go to the hospital where it will take you weeks to heal and you’ll have lots of documentation to hide from your father.”

He wouldn’t do it, because documentation would endanger the two of them. Still…

“He can lean on me,” said Chay.

It took the two Kittisawat brothers to get Kim to his feet, one of Porsche’s hands freezing against his shoulder, both of Chay’s arms around his waist. But the numbness in his hip had faded to mere pain, and Kim hobbled out of the warehouse, into a rare, cloudless night, absent even the usual haze of humidity that blanketed the city.

Kinn had pulled the Escalade as close to the door as the vehicle could manage. Kim endured the thoroughly humiliating ordeal of being laid out on the bench seat in the back, because he needed to keep his spine in alignment, as Porsche informed him, and Chay backed him up, the traitor.

He protested when Chay settled on the floorboard beside him. “Seatbelt,” Kim told him, pointing to one of the seats in the row ahead of them. Chay shook his head.

The passenger-side door slammed a few feet in front of him. They were ready to go, except the warehouse still stood. Whatever future Chay had conjured for them hadn’t yet arrived. They had time enough for what Kim needed to say.

“Sorry. I made you all come after me.”

Flash of light from the front seat as Kinn adjusted the rearview mirror, presumably so he could see him as he yelled at him.

“I’m glad you’re all right, nong,” Porsche cut in, muttering something Kim couldn’t hear. Whatever he said, it persuaded Kinn to refrain from yelling.

Then Chay rose to his knees, looking down at him. Chay said, “You didn’t make me do anything. I chose to come after you. I chose to come after you.” He leaned down to kiss him, which Kim didn’t fight, even though he could still feel traces of blood on his lips from whatever had happened to his lungs. “I choose you,” Chay concluded, and—

“Oh fuck,” said Porsche from the front seat.

Distracted, Kim looked away from Chay, which gave him the opportunity to see light flicker through the sunroof. At first, he thought it was a falling star, but its progress through the sky was too slow for a blazing hunk of dust and rock. Too slow for a bolt of lightning.

From a cloudless spring sky.

The lightning stabbed down through the night sky, reaching ever-so-slowly for the warehouse, one tendril striking out of Kim’s sight, at what he could image was the highest point of the building.

The shockwave from the thunder made the car buckle from the close proximity to the hit, and it was his brother’s turn to swear from the front seat.

Chay hadn’t stopped looking down at him, even as the clear night lit with a red glow.

“The structure will burn quickly,” Chay explained. “The fire department will determine that the building can’t be saved. Later, the investigation will find that the building was not up to code. They won’t care enough about an abandoned warehouse to investigate further.”  

Porsche’s whistle hurt Kim’s ears. “Better than I could do.”

“Arm’s already erased the CCTV,” came Kinn’s voice. “We were never here.”

His brother hit the gas and Kim slid against the leather as the car sped forward. Chay steadied him, and Kim bent his knee, using his foot to plant himself against the seat. He licked his lips, clearing them of the blood he’d tasted earlier. Then he tipped his chin up as Chay’s head came down, the kiss skittering like lightning along his veins.

Chapter Text

Kinn woke to an empty bed. He was on his feet and in the hall before he noticed that he was moving, adrenaline rising inside him in tandem with the gun in his hand. Until he heard low voices coming from one of the bedrooms and had to take slow breaths for a long moment, imagining the alarm trickling out of him, slithering down the stairs of the house and out into the street. They were safe here, he reminded himself, returning his gun to the nightstand in the bedroom he and Porsche had claimed before returning to hover in the open door of Chay’s bedroom.

He might have been imagining the faint limning of Porsche’s hands as he worked.

“I’m fine,” Kim complained. “You didn’t need to wake us up.”

“You woke yourself up,” Porsche replied, curling his fingers into the air. From the way Kim hissed and toppled back on the pillows, whatever he’d done had made an impact. “I don’t think you understand what internal bleeding means,” Porsche went on. “Generally it ends with you dying.”

Chay sat up in bed, and Kinn waved away the vague embarrassment that came with realizing that his brother was sleeping with Porsche’s brother.

“Hia,” came Chay’s admonishment. “Just heal him so we can go back to sleep.”

Porsche flicked his brother's forehead. “I see how it is, I save his life and I lose all respect. Next time I’ll just set the building on fire like some people I know. Apparently controlling the elements is the more impressive feat.”

If he was teasing, then Kim really would be fine. Kinn headed for the staircase, then for the coffee pot downstairs. Porsche would need something warm after using his power. Kinn had already held him through the night, Porsche’s shivers keeping them both awake.

Mechanical, the ritual of making coffee, even with an unfamiliar coffee pot. Water, grounds, waiting. Watching the steam rising from the carafe, the white curls streaming into the air, like wings taking flight. Kinn busied himself by rearranging their phones on the charging station. Arm had even left a new phone for Kim before shutting himself up in the remaining bedroom upstairs.

Kinn enabled location tracking on the new device, though he knew Kim would disable location tracking as soon as he woke up. He wished his brother wouldn't. 

Thinking about Kim made him think about Chay. But nope, he was not thinking about the fucking lightning. The first articles had already hit the internet—a rogue strike, they called it, thankfully an actual meteorological phenomenon. Kinn didn’t want to think about what the reaction from the city’s mafia players would be if they knew someone like him existed. They’d come in droves for everyone Chay cared about.

Porsche. Kim.

They needed to take out the rest of the Jao Por, the ones who’d stayed behind in Nonthaburi. Somewhere there would be records, written orders, files, documentation that hinted at Chay’s existence. Everyone would be safer after it was destroyed.

Enough coffee had brewed for a first cup. Kinn filled a mug and headed for the stairs. He met Porsche halfway-up.

“Hey,” said Porsche, wobbling forward to face-plant into Kinn’s shoulder. Kinn let him, holding the coffee at a safe distance as he wrapped an arm around his back. Freezing, as expected.  

At last Porsche sighed, pushing his cold nose into Kinn’s neck. “Kim should be able to walk whenever he wakes up. I’m not sure what’s wrong with Chay, but there were painkillers in the first aid kit. Have you read anything about how to help him?”  

Kinn had read rumors about magic-users who could change the future, rumors that the gallery rep had voiced as well. He didn’t remember reading anything about caring for them. Or fore-tellers, for that matter. Sobering, that no one had bothered to care for magic-users. They’d hunted them, used them up, and cast them aside when they were no longer valuable.

Because they were seen for their powers, not as people.

Porsche’s cold fingers were wriggling beneath his shirt, a fate Kinn accepted but also found unpleasant, especially when he had the means to do something about it.

“I made you coffee,” he said, and transferred the mug into Porsche’s hands. He took a grateful sip and sighed, leaning on the wall in a way that Kinn found unsafe. “Lean on me,” he ordered, and got them back onto the ground floor, where he poured Porsche onto the couch, replaced his now-cold coffee with a warm refill, and finally got a cup for himself.

He turned to find Porsche pulling a blanket around himself. Kinn glanced at the thermostat.

“I’m not sleeping,” said Porsche, though his position on the couch said otherwise.

“Let me start breakfast, and then I’ll join you,” Kinn replied.

Kinn wasn’t the best cook, but he could follow a recipe. He splashed water into a pot and turned on the stove. Then he measured out rice, calculated how long it would take for the porridge to cook. Not yet time to cut up the vegetables in the fridge. He and Porsche had at least an hour before breakfast would be ready.

Though the pot of water was boiling. Already.

“Porsche,” said Kinn, and his fire-bringer blinked innocently.

The painkillers Porsche had made him take were taking effect, like a veil dropping between him and the pain in his head that wouldn’t quit. Though the effects lingered, something wavery about the glow of dawn through the blinds, pressure in his temples. Chay turned his face into his pillow, wondering when the drugs would wear off.  

Kim stopped tracing circles on his hip. “You’re tense,” he observed.

Because Chay had watched him die, but he decided not to belabor the obvious. At first he’d thought the vision had been wrong, that Kim had already died when he saw him on the warehouse floor. Then he’d seen his chest rise and fall, the collar dangling from the man’s belt and known what he had to do.

“You should go to sleep,” said Chay.

Kim’s hair scraped against the fabric of the sheets as he shook his head. “You’re deflecting.”

He withdrew his hand, and the painkillers hadn’t been enough. The future slammed into Chay, every possible outcome clamoring to be set free, as he’d set himself free, albeit to find himself wrapped in a million threads of his own making. Briefly he thought that that Jao Por monster’s curse had found him at last, that he was stuck weaving the timelines of all ten million residents of the city.

Then Kim was cupping his face in his hands. Chay let himself slump.

“I’m calling Porsche,” said Kim.

So that Chay could see more of his brother’s worried looks, the same worry that always lined Porsche’s face when he came face-to-face with what Chay could do. He thought not.

“Hia already gave me painkillers.”

“Yeah, I can see how well they’re working,” was Kim’s sarcastic reply. He pulled Chay into his chest. “Tell me what’s wrong.”  

Nothing, not anymore. Chay couldn’t cling onto Kim forever—but for now, with the present he’d torn for himself, surely he wasn’t weak for tightening his grip on Kim’s shoulders. Straight, now, unlike last night, where even in the uncertain light of Porsche’s fire, Chay had been able to see the contusion marring his collarbone.

“Do you know what happens to most seers? They see too much, or go too far into the future, and then they end up—” Chay didn’t say broken. “So I’ve always been careful. I don’t go too far into the future. I stick to little things, plausible things.”

“You killed that silvertongue’s owner, didn’t you?” Kim asked. “He was already drunk and using drugs. Wouldn’t have taken you much effort.”

Chay looked up at that. They hadn’t yet had the I can change the future conversation, but he wasn’t surprised that Kim had figured it out. Something about calling down a lightning bolt might have given it away.

He sighed. “What I did wasn’t little, or plausible.”

Kim tapped the tip of his nose, one side of his mouth curling up. “You think?”

Not the lightning.

Chay had seen the silver sigil flash through the air. Silver, like the threads of the future, albeit a future he had to destroy. He usually wafted futures aside, or yanked them loose if they proved unruly. He’d never erased a future, splintered the fibers that bound it together, scattered them to the winds, watched as they faded from reality.

The sigil that bound a fore-bringer didn’t exist anymore.

Thousands of futures, contingencies, loopholes. He’d sought them out and destroyed them all, had kept on destroying them even as the (useless) collar had been tied around his throat. Severing the connection between sigil and power had made his head scream, which was perhaps the price he had to pay.

And then that man had yanked him up by the hair.

After that, the lightning strike had seemed like such a small thing. If Chay looked closely, he could see the cords holding together the present, the earthmovers, this one a flood, this one a drought, this one the perfect summer, wafting soft breezes through fields of flowers—

“The power is in sigils,” he told Kim. “Damage the sigils and…”

He traced the crease between Kim’s eyebrows when it appeared. Kim tilted his head to the side, as if waiting for Chay to say something else. Chay stared back, so focused that Kim briefly had a third eye in the center of his forehead where Chay’s finger had been.

Kim asked, “Is this…a theory? Or?”

Oh, Chay had forgotten that part. Maybe the painkillers were working. “I destroyed the collar. I think.”

Because the future wasn’t fixed, that much he knew. No one would find the sigil in a book, no one would see a picture or painting of the sigil and be able to recreate it from sight, no one would remember it, no one would describe it. He’d erased every possibility that could lead to that future.

Chay thought of other magic-users. Not all of them would be able to turn their power against the sigils, find the weaknesses between language and power. What could that poor silvertongue do against the collar that bound him? Persuade it to go away? The thought of going from sigil to sigil, removing each one from existence, made him bury his face in Kim’s neck, bearing him downward into the mattress.   

“What if I made a mistake?” Chay asked, redistributing his weight so he wouldn’t put any pressure on Kim’s healing midsection.

“You’re joking,” said Kim, finger-combing his hair. “You destroyed the only thing that could harm you and you think that’s a mistake?”

Not the only thing.

“Porsche was never collared. They didn’t need one. First they tortured him. When that didn’t work, they tortured people in front of him. He broke eventually.”

Kim’s grip tightened in his hair and Chay couldn’t stop his intake of breath as he tried to duck away, found himself unable to move.

“Sorry, sorry,” said Kim. “Fuck, I noticed that he didn’t like killing.”

Not that Chay liked killing. But he couldn’t deny a sick triumph when Kinn had shot his uncle, three times, point blank. He could kill more easily, now, since he’d removed (most of) the ways people could stop him. Which was the problem: magic-users were people, after all, and people were not universally good. He wasn’t sure he should destroy the only means of controlling them. The only means of controlling himself.

“There’s something else,” he said.

Kim stretched beneath him, a teasing smile creeping up his face as he registered that Chay was on top of him, an expression that would vanish as soon as Chay spoke.

“Enlighten me,” said Kim.  

“At the bar when we first met,” Chay began, shifting so that he could press down on Kim’s shoulders, still his hips with his knees. Chay had seen enough futures to know that Kim wasn’t going to take this well. “I realized then. When you touch me, I can’t feel my power anymore.”

Validation in the way that Kim’s eyes widened. He thrashed beneath Chay, who put his weight behind his hands, holding Kim down on the bed.

“You’re going to wake everyone up,” Chay commented, as though he hadn’t just told the man willing to sacrifice his life to protect him that, in fact, he was his only weakness.

Kim realized he couldn’t get away, but he refused to settle down. “Maybe they should be woken up. You don’t need a fucking collar because you have me, is that what you mean? That I stop your power?”

That was…the wrong interpretation. Chay crawled off him, peering out one of the slits in the blinds. He sat on the bed, tracing threads as they dispersed in a thousand directions. He would have to show Kim what he meant.

“There are two people in the house across the street. One of them hasn’t woken up yet. If he wakes up now, he’ll accidentally knock his phone off the nightstand and the screen will crack. Or if he wakes up thirty minutes from now, he’ll stumble on the stairs. Or if he wakes up in an hour, the coffee pot will have turned off and he’ll have to use the microwave to heat up his morning coffee.”

Chay kept following that future. “That sense of irritation will stay with him throughout the day, so he’ll be rude to the assistant at his office, who will gossip to his boss, who will use the opportunity to write it up in his performance review, which means in six months his contract won’t be renewed and he won’t be able to afford mortgage payments. The money problems will lead to marriage problems, so a year from now he’ll wake up on the couch in the living room and wonder how it came to this.”

The timelines lanced through him and Chay shut his eyes as every braincell squished inside his head. He tugged on the future that took place thirty minutes from now, where, after stumbling on the stairs, the man would take extra care the rest of the day. After that—well, Chay didn’t want to see.

“None of those futures even matter,” he told Kim. “No one should have to see them. Before I met you, there was no respite. Nothing to stand between me and them.”

“Fuck,” said Kim, and then his hands were back on him, the touch better than painkillers. “Weren’t you worried that I would hurt you?” Kim asked, tugging him closer.

No. Though as the future fell away from him, mingled with haziness from the pills, Chay thought it best not to admit that. Kim would probably lecture him about spatial awareness and find some new weapon to train him on.

“You’re not always touching me,” Chay said. “I’ll just break another coffee cup in your hand.”

Kim paused. “I thought you said you had no power over my future.”

His eyes still closed, Chay tipped his head back in an invitation for Kim to kiss him, though his lips remained untouched. “Your coffee cup’s future isn’t your future,” Chay explained as the moments ticked by. Kim had so much to learn about him.

“I see,” said Kim, in a tone that said he didn’t.

When Chay next opened his eyes, Kim saw his pupils were constricted from the painkillers. He pressed a quick kiss to his lips, promising to revisit this conversation when Chay had healed and his house wasn’t full of people who would hear everything. Maybe he needed to buy a new house.

Chay’s hands pushed against his shoulders. “Hia will be disappointed in you if you aggravate your injuries,” he said.

Porsche seemed like the type for long, disappointed looks, yes. Kinn preferred snide comments about his recklessness. He was surprised his brother hadn’t barged into the room and started lecturing him yet. Kim supposed the lecture was waiting downstairs.

“Is that the only reason your brother will be disappointed in me?” he asked Chay, since he thought getting himself kidnapped and forcing all of them to rescue him might result in animosity. Especially because he’d put Chay in danger.

Chay brushed his hair back from his face. “Hia likes healing. He saved your life. You’re stuck with him now.”

Then Chay tried to kiss him again, but Kim turned his face away. Too soon after talking about brothers.

“I can hear them downstairs. Why don’t we get up?”

Chay pouted at him but changed clothes and left before he did, throwing what was meant to be a flirtatious look over his shoulder, the effect slightly muddled when he over-balanced and had to put a hand on the doorframe for stability. Torn between concern and amusement, Kim forced himself out of bed. The humor disappeared as his muscles protested what had been done to them in the last day. All he needed was for Porsche to rush in and insist that he couldn’t get out of fucking bed by himself.

But his body looked normal enough as he dressed and went down to the kitchen, clinging to the handrail as he navigated the staircase.

He must have been quieter than he thought; there was no irate healer/fire-bringer rushing forward to yell at him about overexerting himself when Kim made it to the ground floor. Which was what he wanted, really. He didn’t need to lean on anyone.

“You should never let him cook, P’Kinn,” Chay was saying, as Kim took in the carnage of the kitchen.

Considering last night’s bloodbath, the mangled spring onions, the knife hastily set aside, and the drops of blood on the cutting board hardly signified. The first aid kit was, however, seeing frequent use. Kinn finished wrapping a bandage on Porsche’s finger, planting a kiss on afflicted appendage that made Kim lock eyes with Chay in mutual disgust.

“Why can’t you heal yourself?” Kim asked.

“Because he spent all night healing you,” Kinn replied, his voice a touch too sharp.

Kim took a breath to tell his brother that he’d never asked to be healed, but he swallowed down the rejoinder. He appreciated that he was walking again, but not if he had to listen to Kinn lecture him about keeping himself safe. 

“Healing you was a pleasure, nong,” Porsche protested, withdrawing his hand from Kinn’s grasp so he could put the bloody cutting board in the sink. “You shouldn’t have tried to get down the stairs by yourself. Why don’t you sit down?”  

Gratified Perplexed by the concern, Kim let Porsche usher him onto the couch.

“We had a minor incident with the spring onions,” said Chay, taking another bunch out of the fridge and retrieving a clean cutting board from one of the cabinets. “Can I get you a bowl of jok?”

“No, thank you,” said Kim, as Porsche said, “Yes, and he’ll have two eggs in his as well.”

You’re stuck with him now, Chay had said. Now he was ladling jok into a bowl from the pot on the stove before cracking two eggs into a pot of boiling water, while Kinn took over slicing the spring onions for garnish. It was sickeningly domestic.

“Thank you for saving my life,” Kim told Porsche, who waved away the expression of gratitude, to his infinite relief.

“It’s good to see you again,” Porsche replied. “I wondered who you were when we met in Costa’s office.”

No one had been in Stefano’s office. He’d noted nothing suspicious in the room, except—oh hell, Kim remembered a darker patch of shadow in the corner.

“Heat mirage,” Porsche explained. “Kinn blackmailed me into spying for him, but he never even asked me for the documents I stole. It’s almost like he came up with an excuse to keep me close.”

Kinn used the back of his knife to push the pile of sliced spring onions into a pale green line on the cutting board. He set down the blade before turning around.

“You were going to run away,” his brother said in his defense. “And if I told you the truth you really would have run away.”

What truth? How was he the only one who didn’t know any of the truths they’d been exchanging?

Then Kim saw the pile of phones charging on the counter. They’d been in communication with each other the entire time. He’d kept secrets from all of them and all that silence had meant that he’d ended up alone. Recrimination was a hard road, Kim thought. He was taking this to his grave.   

Chay handed him a bowl of jok. Kim never ate breakfast, but he wasn’t going to turn down something Chay had made him, especially not with Porsche eyeing him as though he were expecting to have to force-feed him protein. Kim cut into an egg as Chay settled in next to him on the couch.

Now there was no room for Kinn.

“The Jao Por,” Kim began as Kinn saw that all the couch cushions were taken and settled himself in an armchair instead, as though that had been his original intention. “Can we take them down without word getting back to the compound?”

Kinn shook his head. “I had Arm start compiling a list of people we can trust. But we have to be careful.”

Kim had even fewer people than Kinn. Less now that he’d gotten Mint and One killed. He’d have to talk to Yok about a cover story for them that his father would believe.

“How many people do we have to incapacitate?” asked Porsche, and of course he’d say incapacitate when this was a kill job. They’d all be safer once all mention of the Kittisawat brothers and their vulnerabilities was scrubbed from existence.

“It’s another compound,” Kinn replied, and Porsche shivered.

“Let’s not do that again,” said the fire-bringer.

Chay’s jeans creaked as he gathered his legs up beneath him, his expression pensive, though his hand stayed on Kim’s arm. He was still plotting, then.

Kinn heaved himself out of his armchair, heading for the cabinet that contained his 25-year bourbon. After considering the merits of telling his brother to 1) get his own damn bourbon and 2) stop drinking at problematically early hours of the morning, Kim opted to say neither. Coping took different forms. Porsche had looked like a corpse when Kinn had carried him out of the Costa compound.

Beside him, Chay flinched as his brother set the bottle on the counter.

“It isn’t even noon yet,” Porsche noted, but without heat as Kinn poured himself a glass.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” said Kim, hoping to nudge his brother into action. “They’ll send another cell soon. Or someone will let the information slip and then we’ll have to deal with two threats.”

Kinn took a slow swallow of bourbon before he replied, “I know. But can we take a moment to come up with a plan?” He skewered Kim with a look. “Before we go racing in and getting hurt.”

“Like you’re one to talk,” Kim retorted before he could stop himself. “How much of a plan did you have with the Costas?”

Kinn sent him a look of reproof, but Kim was right. He got to his feet.

“You would have died if Porsche hadn’t saved you,” he said, ignoring Porsche’s gesture of negation. Kim advanced on Kinn, thinking of all the times he’d uncovered useless intelligence, or gotten to the scene too late to be helpful, or when Kinn had kept him away from danger, not understanding that Kim would rather be in danger alongside him. “I've already lost one brother,” Kim went on. “I can’t lose you, too.”

Kinn scrubbed his hand over his eyes. “Khun was my brother as well,” he pointed out. “What did you think I would do when you were kidnapped? I can’t lose you, either.”

They stared at each other. Then, recklessly, Kim reached out and up, his hand settling on Kinn’s shoulder. He dug his fingers in, hoping the grip would subdue the queasiness rolling in his stomach, the ache he felt in his chest.

The only consolation was that his brother’s eyes had gone watery. Muscles seized under his palm as Kinn tried to reach for him as well, but Kim locked his elbow, keeping his brother at a distance because he suspected he would start crying if he came any closer.  

Kinn broke away first, his steps over-large as he crossed to the kitchen counter to pour himself another glass of whiskey. He left the glass on the counter, though, holding the bottle up to the light instead, ostensibly admiring the color, but also avoiding eye contact. Grateful for the reprieve, Kim bit his lip while he blinked away the evidence.  

Somewhere behind him, Chay cleared his throat. “Sorry, I might have heard wrong,” he started. “Do you think your brother is dead?”

The bottle of bourbon smashed against the floor tiles. Porsche watched both Theerapanyakul brothers turn to Chay, heedless of the wreckage of the expensive liquor.

“Khun was kidnapped and died twelve years ago,” Kinn said, though Porsche could see the painful beginnings of hope in his face.  

Chay looked at Kim. “You told me that he’d been taken,” he said, thick with reproach. “I thought you knew about the asylum.”

“The what,” said Kinn, not a question. He came forward, narrowly avoiding cutting his feet on the shards of glass littering the floor.

“It was a horrible place,” Chay told him. “I’m glad he escaped.”

“Escaped?” asked Kim, while Kinn stared, his hands hanging loose at his sides.

Porsche could avert this disaster. He rose and tiptoed around the glass, heading for the supply closet. When he got back with a broom and dustpan, he found that Kinn and Kim had moved out of the kitchen entirely, Kim back in his place next to Chay on the couch, while Kinn was frozen above the two of them. Porsche began to sweep up the broken glass.

“I don’t understand,” Kinn was saying. “How did this happen? Father said he’d seen his body.”

Kim snapped his fingers, his face settling into the scowl that Porsche remembered from the first time he’d seen the man. Beside him, Kinn’s hands curled into fists.

Chay shrugged, an oasis of peace between the two brothers. “All I know about the past is what people carry with them into their futures. I just knew he was in a place where he didn’t want to be.”

“Where is he now?” Kim asked him, and Kinn leaned forward.

“No idea,” Chay reminded both of them. “But I can tell you where they will be in”—he peered around the room. “—sorry, does anyone have the time?”  

Kinn’s hands were clenched so tightly that Porsche was worried about the integrity of his epithelial layer. He found Kinn’s phone and the new one that would be Kim’s and brought them out of the kitchen/danger zone. After handing over the devices, Porsche finished with the broom and went back to the supply closet for the Swiffer. As he made sure the kitchen floor was free of glass shards, Chay tapped and scrolled on Kinn’s phone, settling on a location.

Then keys were jangling as Kim picked them off the counter, still scattered with the remnants of breakfast. At the noise, Kinn raised his eyebrows, shook his head, and held out his hand. Kim huffed and tossed the keys over.

“We’ll be back,” Kinn promised on their way out the door. It slammed after them, the impact shaking the house and prompting a thump from overhead. Arm must have woken up at last.

“You’ve been keeping secrets,” Porsche observed in the silence that followed the brothers’ departure.

Chay smiled, less an expression of joy than an eerie depiction of triumph. “I know how to get around the collars,” he said.

The front door re-opened as Porsche reached for Kinn’s abandoned glass of bourbon to steady himself.

Kinn appeared in the kitchen. “Earlier,” he said, pointing at Chay. “You said you knew where they would be.”

Tankhun observed the padlocked book drop. “I thought libraries wanted people to return their books,” he said. “Maybe they’ve been having some issues with theft?”

His cousin turned on his heel, going for the library’s front entrance. Tankhun followed. “I hope you stayed off the security cameras the last time you were here,” he remarked.

“What security cameras?” asked Vegas. “This is a library.”

Still, he was frowning as they both took in the empty entranceway and deserted lobby of the building. Tankhun presumed that weekday mornings were the least busy time for libraries, but the apparent lack of people made him suspicious.

Vegas pushed him behind one of the potted trees near the entrance. “Stay here,” he ordered. He lurched in the direction of the circulation desk, stack of books in one hand, gun in the other hand, albeit hidden behind his back.

They’d gotten too confident. Vegas had gotten the magic-user to admit that his father had dispatched Chan to follow them. Just because they hadn’t seen the man didn’t mean that they’d succeeded at erasing their tracks. As Tankhun peeked through the sparse foliage of the potted tree, he wasn’t surprised to hear a stack of books thump to the floor.

He raced forward. If his father wanted him dead, he would have had Tankhun killed years ago. His father’s men might hesitate to kill him now, which would give Vegas time to act. Belatedly, Tankhun wished he’d taken the gun Vegas had bought for him.

He found his cousin in front of the circulation desk, the books scattered around him, his gun up and pointing at—

Kinn.

His brother’s gun was trained on Vegas. Tankhun ran between the two of them, hearing Vegas curse from behind, seeing the barrel of Kinn’s gun drop, his brother’s finger clicking on the safety before he was in Kinn’s arms. The impact made him gasp, but Tankhun squeezed tighter. Kinn matched him, their spines popping under the pressure.

“Kinn,” he tried to say, but his throat didn’t seem to be working. He’d seen this moment in too many dreams—granted, never in a library—and couldn’t stop the juddering fear that one of the dreams would come to pass, that Kinn would think Tankhun was trying to usurp his place in the family, that Kinn would send him back to the facility.

So Tankhun focused on the details that hadn’t been in the dreams. The circulation desk, the stale recirculated air of the library, the faint smell of bourbon wafting from Kinn, his brother’s unsteady breathing.

A scuffle, a gasp, and then someone cursed behind him. Tankhun turned to see—Kim hunched over, favoring his left side. He caught a glimpse of Vegas’s profile as his cousin disappeared out through the front doors of the library. Tankhun spun, blocking Kinn’s view, but his brother was already tucking his gun into his back holster.

Kinn sighed. “That could have gone better,” was his brother’s comment. “Kim?”

And Tankhun spun again—he was dizzy—to see his youngest brother come closer.

“He got my bad side, but I’ll be fine,” said Kim. Tankhun wouldn’t have recognized him if not for the pictures in the gossip articles online. Kim had been so young when he’d been kidnapped. Now he was nearly as tall as Kinn, though a touch thinner.

Tankhun glanced back at Kinn, then held out his arms tentatively. Kim barreled into him, and Kinn had to put a hand between his shoulder blades to keep them both upright. As he regained his balance, somewhere beneath his left ear, Tankhun heard Kim sniff.

“Kim, you’re going to strangle him,” said Kinn, though he kept his voice low.

Then Tankhun would die happy. He took a shallow breath. “Join us?” he offered to Kinn.  

At this, Kim tried to twitch free, but Tankhun held him fast as Kinn’s hand on his back became an arm, his brother’s other arm trapping Kim between them. It was too warm, with too many moving pieces, and tears were sliding down the sides of his nose, salty into his mouth, dripping off his chin. Yet none of them stepped away from the thrum of togetherness, of family.

Until, of course, a droplet of sweat rolled down Tankhun’s back and he broke away before it could soak through his shirt. Kinn stepped back as well, dragging his forearm across his eyes, while Kim tossed his head, his long hair falling into his face in a way that Tankhun suspected was strategic.

“Where did the librarians go?” he asked as a distraction.

Kim coughed, not looking at him. “Kinn bribed them,” he supplied.

“I wanted privacy,” Kinn said. “I’m glad we found you, Khun. We parked a block away in case you want to get out of here.”

Tankhun couldn’t refuse, not when Vegas had left him. He wanted to know how his brothers had found him. Were they aware that their father had done this? They had to know; Vegas had been with him, and their father was the only connection between him and his cousin.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked instead of answering. If they said the compound then Tankhun would have to figure out a way to escape from his brothers, but he didn’t want to think about that. Too late, he wondered if this was one of his father’s traps.

“Kim has a house in the suburbs. We—er, recently moved out of the compound,” said Kinn.

That was a hopeful sign. Tankhun looked at Kinn for an explanation, but Kim beat him to it.

“He’s in love with a magic-user and father doesn’t approve,” said Kim, his head cocked sideways. “Speaking of father.”

Tankhun went still as Kim’s eyes narrowed to slits. He looked at Kinn, whose palms were extended outward, though his expression was just as inscrutable. They’d both turned into the sons that Tankhun hadn’t been able to be—or his father had turned them into these people. The twelve years between them curdled inside him.

“He’s involved in this, isn’t he?” was Kinn’s response, an uninflected question, as though he knew the answer.

Tankhun nodded. “Not here,” he said, moving past them toward the front door of the library. “Which way to your car?”

“Right,” came Kinn’s voice behind him, and Tankhun spied a black SUV in a parking lot down the street. He looked back for confirmation, Kinn nodded, and Tankhun led the way, looking for signs that his cousin had lingered in the area as he did. From behind him, Kinn asked, “Did you text Chay to say that we found them?”

“No,” said Kim.

As they reached the SUV, Kinn said, “Oh, you didn’t text him because you planted your phone on Vegas. Well done.”

Kinn pressed the remote on the key fob and the SUV chirped. Tankhun opened the passenger side door but didn’t get in. He guessed that Vegas would soon discover the phone on him. He’d abandon the safehouse and make a move on his father—a move that would fail, since they didn’t have the information or access they needed to take him down. Tankhun would have to force a reconciliation.

“Vegas saved my life,” he told his brothers. “He helped me escape.”

You can’t kill him, he wanted to say, but Tankhun judged it better to let his brothers come to that conclusion on their own. He swung himself up into the passenger seat as Kinn went around to the driver’s side and Kim took one of the seats in the back.

“How did you escape, Khun?” was Kinn’s question as they began driving toward one of the more populated streets—away from Vegas’s safehouse, Tankhun noted.

He replied, “There was a roof leak that rotted away the subfloor in the attic. Vegas was able to get up into the joists and kick out the roof vent. Then he figured out how to get us safely to the ground.”

Tankhun’s emphasis on his cousin’s role in their escape was spoiled as Kim’s head thunked against the window of the car. Kinn adjusted the rearview mirror to check on him. Tankhun had to twist around in his seat.

Kim pinched the bridge of his nose. “That was weeks ago,” he said, sounding exasperated.

“Yes?” questioned Tankhun, turning back to Kinn for more context.

“He does that,” Kinn assured him. “Where were you and Vegas staying, anyway? We need to find him.”

First tell me what you’ll do to him, was what Tankhun was tempted to reply, but what came out of his mouth was, “He would have gone back to the safehouse. We left Pete.”

Silence.

Then, “I forgot about Pete,” said Kinn.

“Did you think he wouldn't come back and report directly to you?” asked Tankhun, honestly curious. He continued. “Were you aware that he has a collar around his neck?”  

Kinn locked his elbows, his arms straight lines from the steering wheel. “What,” said his brother.

“Yes,” said Kim from the backseat. When Tankhun twisted around again to look at him, Kim went on, “He was wearing a high-necked shirt on a hot day and had—uh, eyes.”

“What kind of eyes?” Tankhun asked, as Kinn watched from the rearview mirror. He hadn’t noticed anything special about Pete’s eyes, except the glimmer of interest in them as he’d watched Vegas.

Kim wouldn’t look at either of them as he replied, “Eyes that see more than they’re supposed to.”

How poetic. Tankhun turned back around to face front (his poor spine hadn’t seen this much movement in years). Beside him, Kinn was smirking as he navigated out to the highway.

“He’s in love with a magic-user and father won’t approve,” Kinn told him, helpfully, before tipping his face up to look into the rearview mirror again. “Kim, I thought we decided that keeping secrets led to you nearly dying last night.”

Tankhun’s back crunched this time when he tried to look back at Kim.

“I’m fine,” said his brother, staring out the window.

“Ruptured spleen, punctured lung, a couple broken ribs, and a sprained hip, I think it was?” Kinn asked. To Tankhun he added, “We have a healer, that’s why he’s still alive.”

Which was as good an opportunity as any to confess: “I didn’t come back in one piece,” Tankhun admitted, and Kinn looked over at him. “After father got me back. I—wasn’t okay.”

He probably still wasn’t okay, but at least now he knew who he was, didn’t see shadows of dead kidnappers in the corners of rooms, didn’t lose minutes and hours and days locked inside his own memories. Tankhun wasn’t as okay as he had been twelve years, but he was alive and wanted to keep himself that way.

Kinn’s hands locked back down on the steering wheel. The SUV slowed; they’d exited the highway and were trawling through one of the horrible suburban neighborhoods Tankhun had seen on TV. All the houses looked the same.

From the backseat, Kim said, “We have to take him down for this, Kinn. And for—”

“I know,” said Kinn, cutting him off. “I know. But we have to be careful. Removing him from power will backlash against all of us. Let’s make sure that we can protect them when that happens.”

Kinn had said them, had interrupted Kim before his brother had finished giving him another reason to go after their father. They pulled into a driveway outside one of the cookie-cutter houses and Tankhun exited the SUV, reasonably sure he was about to meet the them over whom his brothers were prepared to go to war.

Although war looked like a quiet house, most of the blinds closed against the afternoon sunlight. Except one, and sunbeams bathed one of the couches—and the man who slept there—in light. His long legs dangled over the arm of the couch, his cheek was pillowed on one of his arms.

Kinn went to the man as though enchanted, kneeling at his side and whispering in his ear, leaving Kim to roll his eyes.

In a shadier corner of the room, a bespectacled man stood up from behind the three computer monitors that concealed his work station. He surveyed the three of them, apparently gave Kinn up as a lost cause, and turned to Kim instead.

“Khun Kim, I’ve got the personnel lists your brother requested—” but then he stopped as he looked again at Tankhun. Behind the glasses, his eyes were wide.

Ah, someone recognized him. While Tankhun was tempted to use another overwrought line from a movie to announce his presence, he settled on, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

“Apparently,” the man said, and bowed.

Kinn surfaced from the couch, the man beside him blinking his eyes sleepily, his foot twitching back and forth as he watched them. Tankhun guessed this was the magic-user Kinn was in love with, though it wasn’t clear what the man’s power was.  

“Arm is our cybersecurity expert,” explained Kinn. “He’s the only reason anything gets done.”

Arm bowed again. “Khun Porsche was helping this morning as well.”

He wasn’t a bad liar, Tankhun decided, though the magic-user hadn’t been briefed on the lie, from his look of surprise. Kinn looked like he’d fallen for it, though. Tankhun turned to Kim to see his reaction, but Kim was looking up as another man came down the stairs.

“It’s good to finally meet you,” the newcomer said, and now Tankhun understood what his brother had said about eyes that saw too much. “One day you’ll put someone else on your throne.”

Hair rose on the back of Tankhun’s neck. There was no throne in the Theerapanyakul compound, but at least in his day, there had been a chair in one of the attics with scrollwork curling around its legs, filigree gilding the arms. It had belonged to his father’s father, but Korn never used it. Never forget that the power is in the person, his father had told him when Tankhun had asked.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tankhun replied. “Who are you?”

“I’m Chay,” said the man as he reached the ground floor and took the hand that Kim had extended to him. Something in his face relaxed; his gaze refocused.   

“Nong,” agreed Tankhun, scratching his itchy neck.

Kinn had migrated over to Arm’s computer station, leaving Porsche behind in the square of sunlight on the couch. The magic-user propped his head up on a pillow.

“Let’s find out where Vegas has run off to,” Kinn suggested. “Track Kim’s phone.”

As Arm tapped a few keys on the keyboard, Tankhun hoped that his cousin hadn’t yet cleared out of the safehouse. He needed Vegas here.

Pete heard the front door slam, heard tramping footsteps sound from the living room to the kitchen. He thought he heard a cabinet open, shut, the clink of glassware. Just one person, though. He listened closely, but the front door didn’t open again.

“Hello?” he called out, wondering if he’d been wrong, if khun Korn had sent someone to find him after all. After several hours of pulling, the leather pads on the cuff around his wrist had cracked open, leaving his skin vulnerable to the metal beneath.

A vulnerability Pete had abused. He’d kept pulling until his wrist was red and inflamed, the skin rubbed raw. The collar was tight around his throat, and Pete knew that he would have to keep going until the skin split, the blood providing enough slickness for his wrist to slip free.

He bit his lip, was preparing to leap forward, when the door to his bedroom/prison opened and Vegas appeared.

“Vegas,” said Pete, as escape had slipped away from him again.   

Vegas’s attention was focused on his wrist. “Fuck,” he said, coming closer. “It’s the collar, isn’t it? You have to return to my uncle, even if you hurt yourself in the process.”

He couldn’t nod, couldn’t reveal Korn’s secrets if he was awake, so Pete stared straight ahead. Vegas nodded; guessing at what he wasn’t allowed to say.

“Okay, Pete, I’m going to go get the first aid kit,” said Vegas. “Promise me that you won't try to escape when I uncuff you. The wound will get infected and you won’t be able to obey the sigil unless I get some antibiotic cream on your wrist.”

Put that way, his words made sense, soothed the commands that Korn had set into the collar. Vegas disappeared, giving Pete enough time to retrieve the set of real handcuffs that he’d hidden in one of the dresser drawers. He tucked them into one of his back pockets, holding them in readiness.

Vegas opened the door again, holding the first aid kit aloft.

“Wrist,” he ordered, and Pete held his out. Vegas unlocked the cuff with a tiny golden key—Pete tracked its travel, from Vegas’s hand to the keyhole back to the front pocket of his shirt.

The ruined leather had left dark marks on his skin, like shadows of burning fingers. Vegas took a cold pack from the first aid kit and shook it to activate the crystals. He wrapped the coolness around Pete’s wrist, and Pete closed his eyes as the gentle cold replaced the inflammation he’d caused.

“You should sit down,” Vegas suggested.

Pete shook his head. Sitting down meant he couldn’t attack, couldn’t escape.

“Where’s khun Tankhun?” he asked instead, hoping that the Theerapanyakul heir was just delayed by a few minutes, that he could throw him at the collar, persuade the sigils that he couldn’t possibly attack two people.

“An excellent question,” Vegas replied. “My cousin is back where he belongs. Which leaves us…well, wherever we happen to be left. Let me know when your skin stops burning.”

He wasn’t sure what that meant. To the sigils, though, Vegas’s admission meant that all he’d have to do was lash out with the real cuffs in his pocket and then he’d be free…he’d be back in the major family’s compound, telling Korn all of Vegas’s secrets.

“When,” said Pete, and Vegas removed the cold pack from his wrist.

Vegas went for the antibiotic cream next, a cool layer slicked over the burns Pete had left on his wrist. Equally cool, the layers of white gauze he layered over the wound. Vegas tied a neat knot in the gauze roll and clipped off the remainder. He frowned at the cuff Pete had destroyed, but reached for the leather anyway.

“Don’t,” Pete told him. “I’m already trapped. I’ve always been trapped.”

“I’m sorry,” said Vegas, standing too close to him, close enough that Pete could slip his hand into his pocket and pull out the real handcuffs, the metal settling over his knuckles. “When this is over, we can start again,” Vegas continued, assuring him. “Just you and me.”

He wouldn’t get the chance to start again, not when Pete had betrayed him and Vegas wore a matching collar around his throat. A dreamwalker was just as good a pet as a secret-seer, especially when Vegas’s uncle could use him to lure out his missing brother. And after that, Korn would use them both until they broke, the same way he’d broken other magic-users.

Cold metal in his palm, as Vegas leaned closer.

“I want you,” spilled out of his mouth before Pete could stop it, because Vegas wasn’t looking at him like a shameful secret to be locked away, one so many people had chosen to lock away. Pete clenched the handcuffs tighter behind his back. “I’m so, so sorry,” he choked, closing his eyes.

“You’re fine,” Vegas whispered, so close Pete felt breath against his face. He pressed his forehead against Pete’s. “Stay with me.”

And then Pete saw the secret building inside him, but it was too difficult to focus, and Vegas caught him as he stumbled, one hand sliding around to the small of his back as his face wavered, his vision defying him, distorting the room into strange shapes with muted colors.

“You don’t need these,” Vegas told him, taking the handcuffs out of his grasp, and then Pete was falling, or perhaps that was only part of him, as his feet remained on the ground. He sank inexorably toward—

Vegas staggered under Pete’s sleeping weight. He didn’t have the height advantage to get him up into his arms, so he levered him onto the bed instead. Lucky that Pete was asleep, given the complex maneuvering of hands and knees and arms and grunts of effort involved in the operation.  

When Tankhun had asked him the other day, Vegas had been uncertain. He was sure now; he was getting more powerful, like escaping from the facility had opened up more possibilities, more avenues for what he could do. He’d never considered dreams a particularly combative power, but if he could extend what he’d just done to cover multiple enemies at once…

Not that Pete was an enemy.

Vegas had seen the tension in Pete, his hand wooden as he’d reached for him, the other hand hidden behind his back—as if that wasn’t red flag enough. He had been tempted to take what the man was offering. A year ago, he might have. Probably would have, given his history of seizing crumbs of affection as though they were real.

He wondered if they were only crumbs—but that would be a conversation for later, after he’d killed his uncle and set Pete free. (He clipped a padded cuff back onto Pete’s wrist. No need for another escape attempt fraught with emotion.)

They’d kidnapped Pete originally for information.

Now he had better sources, if only they weren’t trying to kill him. With Kinn and Kim on his side, Vegas would be able to find his brother and kill his uncle. He hoped that Tankhun had been able to talk them down since he’d left the library.

Trying to stop himself from remembering Kinn pointing a gun at him, the way he’d done in so many of Vegas’s nightmares, Vegas closed the door to Pete’s room and drew Kim’s phone from his pocket. Likely they already knew where he was, were already advancing on his location.

There were only two numbers in Kim’s contact list, so Vegas took a chance on the one with the local area code. He tapped the number and waited for the call to connect.

“What,” said his cousin, sounding irritated. A year ago, he’d seen Kinn during the takeover attempt at the major family’s compound. Vegas had been at the front of a team of minor family bodyguards invading the major family’s compound. Kinn had run in the direction of his uncle’s suite. Vegas had tried to follow, but the raid had started to turn against them. He hadn’t seen Kinn again before he’d been surrounded, disarmed, and shot.

In his dreams, his cousin’s desperate face that night had given way to mockery as Kinn had taunted him for his failure. Now, the silence on the other end of the line did not bode well. Vegas wasn’t sure what to say.

Finally Kinn’s sigh staticked through the line. “Look, I don’t appreciate that you tried to kill me, but Khun says you helped him escape and you’ve been keeping him safe ever since. I’m willing to call a truce if you are.”

Vegas weighed the false visions of the dreams against what was real: Kinn’s love for his brother, obvious in the way he’d given up the shot at him the moment Tankhun had come between them. Kim had let him go as well, though that might have had something to do with Vegas punching him in the side.

“Yeah, truce,” said Vegas.  

He heard several clicks as soon as he spoke and frowned; the call was so obviously tapped. But so long as Kinn wasn’t using his name, whoever was listening in wouldn’t be able to identify him.

“We’re about ten minutes away from your location,” said Kinn, offering him one last chance to escape, an unexpectedly decent move from the cousin he’d been taught to hate. “Are you ready to go?”

Vegas opened his mouth to say yes, but chatter overwhelmed the line. When the sound cleared, a new voice came out of his phone. “Hia,” said the voice, and Vegas fell into the kitchen table.

The voice continued to come out of his phone. “Hia, he can’t hear us right now. Where are you? Do you need help? Hia?”

Vegas swallowed several times, trying to find words. He only stumbled across one.

“Macau.”

Chapter Text

Vegas rubbed his hip, where the edge of the table had taken its revenge. His mouth had gone so dry that his lips stuck to his gums when he tried to speak, and his parched tongue was no help in getting words to come out of his mouth.

He coughed, managing to repeat his brother’s name. “Macau.”

“Reporting for duty,” his brother replied. “I looked everywhere for you, hia. Why are you calling a truce with Kinn?”

“I told you to run,” Vegas said, not answering the question. He wasn’t sure he’d describe what he had with Kinn as truce, but his cousin was the best chance he had at revenge. To explain that, though, he’d also have to tell his brother where he’d spent the last year. First he wanted to know where his brother had spent the last year.

Macau scoffed. “I did run! A little. Uncle Korn’s power doesn’t extend much out of the country. I bounce around every so often to keep his men on their toes. I’m like, a digital nomad.”

Right, Vegas knew what those were. A couple of his properties in Chiang Mai catered to the budding population of wannabe influencers who wanted to grab some footage and put it on the internet as evidence of their enculturation. He doubted his brother had joined their numbers.

“You’ve been hacking Kinn’s phone?” he asked, putting his phone on speaker so he could pack up their limited supplies before his cousin arrived.

“Yeah?” replied his brother. “And his computer. And pretty much the whole network, for all the good it did me. No one knew anything about you anyway.”

When he’d first woken up in the asylum, Vegas had wondered how much Kinn had known. Good to have confirmation that Korn had kept the information from most people. And off the Theerapanyakul networks, apparently.

“Korn was using me to try to draw you out,” he told his brother finally, saving the I was trapped in an asylum conversation for another day. “I was able to escape and, uh, joined up with our cousins. They just found out that cousin Khun has been alive all this time, so they’re motivated to get revenge.”

At least, he hoped they were, Vegas thought, shoving his limited clothing into a bag. Knowing what he did about Kinn, revenge would be a disappointed conversation with his father over a glass of scotch. He’d have to talk to Kim. Vegas had worked with Kim before; he knew his temper. Kim could be manipulated into seeking revenge on Tankhun’s behalf.  

“Sounds like you can use a spare hacker, hia,” said Macau. “Let me talk to some friends and I’ll be back in the country in a day or so.”

“Korn will have the airports watched,” Vegas warned as he strapped a spare knife around his ankle.

“Not if you fly private,” said Macau, singsong. “I just need a friend whose jet he wouldn’t dare to search. Maybe an oil baron. What does Uncle Korn need most, do you know?”

“A bullet in the heart,” said Vegas.

“An arms dealer! Perfect, hia. Don’t take the battery out of your phone,” Macau instructed. “I’ll find you.”

He hung up before Vegas could tell him to be careful.

A moment later he got a text from a payment app, and suddenly Vegas’s supply of cash had increased somewhat beyond the stack of bills he’d stuffed behind the wall hanging in the living room. His eyebrows went up. Maybe this hacker stuff was more lucrative than he’d given his brother credit for.

A quiet knock sounded on the front door. Vegas left his bag of clothing where it was, flicking the safety off his gun. He swung the door open as he swung his gun up into Kinn’s face.

His cousin sighed as he faced the gun barrel. “Can we just not?” he asked.

Fine. Vegas lowered the gun as Tankhun peered over Kinn’s shoulder. Kim was nowhere to be seen, which either meant that he’d been left behind to recuperate after Vegas had punched him in the side, or that his youngest cousin had broken in through the kitchen window and was even now prowling closer with a knife in his hand.

(Vegas looked over his shoulder, just to be safe.)

“The phone call cut out,” Kinn was saying when he turned back around.  

“Yeah,” Vegas replied, keeping Macau’s existence a secret until he had more information. He might have called a truce with Kinn, but he wasn’t going to show all his cards quite yet. “I assume you’ve decided that your father needs to be deposed? What’s the plan?”

“Kinn’s working on it,” said Tankhun, but he didn’t sound convinced. He shut the door behind him as he stepped into the living room.

Vegas wasn’t surprised. There was a reason that his father had prioritized killing Korn in the attack on the major family—he’d known that Kinn would fold as soon as his father was dead. He made eye contact with Tankhun, who shrugged. So Tankhun didn’t know why Kinn was delaying either.

“We have to take a detour first,” Kinn said. “A street gang in Nonthaburi got too ambitious.”

Also not a surprise. Vegas had regularly assigned his enforcers to break heads in Nonthaburi to keep the peace. “The Jao Por?” he guessed. When Kinn nodded, Vegas followed up with, “Why should I get involved?”

“Because you know the most about street gangs,” said Kinn. “The Jao Por takes priority over my father. They went after Kim a day ago.”

That was why Kim had crumbled so easily when Vegas had punched him. “Okay,” Vegas acknowledged. “But Chan is after us. If I’m recognized, you’ll put Khun at risk.”

Kinn pinched the bridge of his nose. “You and Kim are on wet work,” he said, and oh, it was one of those jobs. “I’ll have Arm wipe the cameras as you go, which should keep your presence a secret.”

If Kinn’s cybersecurity expert couldn’t manage it, Vegas had an inkling of someone who could.

“Since that’s settled, let’s get our secret-seer,” said Tankhun, heading down the hall.

Vegas winced, which Kinn caught. “He’s sleeping,” he told them both. “There was an incident.”

“How badly is he hurt?” asked Kinn, his hand coming up to the bridge of his nose again before he caught the repetitive gesture and brought the offending appendage down again. He closed his eyes in resignation instead, a provocation Vegas couldn’t resist.

He sent a wave of power to wash upon the shores of his cousin’s mind, making Kinn stagger and weave as he tried to follow Tankhun down the hall. There were a thousand uses for this sort of waking control over a person’s consciousness—much more effective in the short-term than the nightmares, which took days to craft and inflict on his victims. Vegas wondered what the price would be for this newfound ability.

“Right, I forgot to mention, said Tankhun hastily, as Vegas lifted the sleep from Kinn’s mind, unable to keep the smirk off his face as his cousin struggled upright. “He’s a dreamwalker.”

Smirk gone, Vegas glanced at Tankhun. His cousin’s eyebrow twitched—ah, Tankhun must have learned something about Kinn, something to make him think that revealing Vegas’s secret was safe. Or else he was frustrated by the Theerapanyakul practice of keeping secrets from each other. Tankhun would have to get used to it. Vegas would wait a little longer to reveal his brother’s presence. If he could shove Macau back onto the arms dealer’s plane—and what the hell was Macau doing, associating with arms dealers—he would.

Kinn pinched himself, an age-old remedy against exhaustion. “When we were younger, our parents forced us to go to one of those awful birthday party sleepovers,” he said, looking over at Vegas. “One of the boys made fun of you. He woke screaming later that night.”

Yeah, Vegas remembered. The boy already had a propensity toward nightmares—most people in their circles did. He’d just exaggerated a few, turned the bully into a shivering lump of childhood.

“I’m more subtle now,” he told Kinn, changing the subject. “Why mess with dreams when I can slit a throat instead?”

Tankhun shook his head. “Not helping, nong,” he said.

But Kinn locked eyes with him. “You must have been scared, growing up with power. I won’t turn you in to my father.”

The—the sincerity—grated on him, made a lump rise up in his throat. Kinn had no right to be so stalwart—he had no reason to be reassured by his cousin’s promise of support/probable death wish. Vegas avoided answering by pushing open the door to the bedroom, effectively ending Kinn’s strange attempt at kindness.

Sure enough, the gentle look fell from Kinn’s face as he surveyed the accoutrements of the bedroom. He huffed, a polyphonic rustle that sounded like subtle.

Pete had turned onto his side, one hand under his cheek, the cuffs already leaving an imprint from being pressed against his face. Vegas had felt his skin under his fingers, knew the marks would turn an angry red, then a dull maroon, rough from the ill treatment. The collar round his neck was an ugly thing in the dying light of the afternoon, the silver sigils hard to see. Which didn’t negate their presence, the fate hanging over them all.

“You aren’t strong enough to carry him, are you?” asked Kinn, sizing him up.

“There wasn’t much food in the asylum,” Tankhun replied from behind him, and Kinn’s face softened as his brother reminded him of what they’d endured.

Without further comment, Kinn hefted the unconscious Pete onto his shoulder as Vegas released the cuffs from the hook in the wall. He let a tendril of power dance into Pete’s mind, just enough to make him sleep awhile longer. They didn’t need the magic-user waking up en route and trying to escape.

“Our bags are in the living room,” Vegas told Tankhun. “Let’s go.”

Chay had discovered a problem with his plan to erase all sigils from existence. He couldn’t find the one that would control a fire-bringer. He frowned into his laptop, hovering too close to the screen as he ran through one of the listings that he’d (okay, Arm had) been able to find.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “We have historical records of fire-bringers being collared, so we know that those sigils existed.”

Without something to focus on, Chay wouldn’t be able to fray the threads connecting the sigil to power, wouldn’t be able to ensure that the sigil would never be used to control Porsche or anyone like him. In the old days, people like Porsche were called phoenixes. Curious, Chay looked into the tapestry of the future, interested to see whether anyone would try to collar a fire-bringer in the years to come. But there was nothing. He subsided.

“What if you’re the last fire-bringer?” he asked Porsche, because that was the only explanation he could come up with. If Porsche was the last fire-bringer, and he couldn’t see Porsche’s future, then of course he wouldn’t be able to see any future for a fire-bringer.

Porsche paused from jotting down notes on the sigils that they’d found, then shrugged, knocking one of the spare pens onto the floor.

“Not such a bad thing,” he replied. At the expression on Chay’s face, he continued. “Really. What have our powers ever brought us?” He looked over at Kim, who was annotating a map of the Jao Por compound on his tablet. “Sorry, nong, but we were the reason you got kidnapped, so healing you doesn’t count.”

“So you’re not healing Kinn’s liver every time he drinks?” asked Kim without looking up from his tablet.  

Porsche ducked his head into his notepad, assiduously returning to the list of sigils they’d been able to find.

Chay got up from his seat, going to sit by Kim on the couch. “If I’m not back in a few minutes, you know what to do,” he said, avoiding Kim’s scowl.

“What does that mean?” he heard Porsche ask before Chay threw himself into the future.

He couldn’t see what would happen to Porsche, or Kim, or even Kinn. Even the faint threads he’d seen emanating from Tankhun and Arm were starting to disappear as their futures twined around his. So Chay looked around them, checking for threats to the Theerapanyakul family. Surely someone would learn Porsche’s secret eventually, would use it to take Kinn down. Chay wanted to see what they would use when they decided to attack.

The crack of a gunshot made him yelp, but Chay flung out a hand to stop Kim as one year, two years, then ten and twenty slithered by him. No patterns of mysterious fires, no quaint little villages in the middle of nowhere which featured unusually long-lived, healthy residents. No ads in the black-market listings. It was as though fire-bringers had been erased from the future, not the sigil that controlled them. Chay kept searching, until suddenly he was teetering on the brink of a century.

Somewhere he heard the twang of a phin-string and Kim brought him back.

Chay blinked scratchy eyes, too many people and plots and pieces of speech spinning in his head. It took him a few moments to remember what words were.

“I can’t find it,” he said eventually. “It’s like the sigil doesn’t exist.”

Kim crushed him into his side as the strings he’d wound around himself loosened and the headache returned. After a long, assessing look, Porsche went to one of the cabinets and pulled out a bottle of painkillers, rattling them at him threateningly. Chay shook his head.

“We’ll figure it out another way,” Porsche said, returning the painkillers to the cabinet. He nodded toward Kim. “What do you think, nong? I don’t suppose your father has a spare cuff lying around?”

Chay closed his eyes, leaning his head against Kim’s shoulder. He felt Kim relax underneath him. “Sorry, I thought we were supposed to be keeping the two of you away from my father,” Kim said. “Now you want him to control you?”

“Only so we can practice,” Chay mumbled.

“Who’s we?” Kim demanded. “You look terrible.”

Chay kept his eyes closed as Porsche’s steps retreated. From the click of the kettle, the clink of mugs, the rustle of paper, his brother was heating up water for tea.

“What does your father have against magic-users, anyway?” asked Porsche.

He could feel Kim shrug, even as his arms held him steady. “He likes to control people. Magic-users are hard to control. And while my family has lots of money, it’s not like my father to stock up on a supply of collars on the off-chance he comes across a magic-user. It would have taken him years to find one, anyway. Better to hand you over to the authorities, or just kill you now. Unless there’s a reason to let you live.”   

Arthee had been after them for years, and he’d managed to get his hands on a collar. One to control Porsche could be out there as well. Chay pressed a finger into his forehead, wondering how his uncle had been able to purchase a collar in the first place. Arthee had been a gambling addict.  

“How much money does the Jao Por have?” Chay asked, pitching his voice to carry to Arm’s workstation at the other end of the living room.  

“Not enough to buy a collar, if that’s what you’re getting at,” came Arm’s reply. “I’ve frozen their accounts, by the way. It will take me a little longer to figure out how to transfer the money into untraceable holdings, but when I do, I suppose you’ll want the money in your name for all the trouble they’ve caused you?”  

Kim snapped his fingers as Chay opened his eyes. Porsche poured hot water into mugs. Strange, the concept of having money. Also the concept of people caring that they had money. Also that people cared about them. He met Porsche’s eyes.

Outside, tires whisked over the pavement of the driveway. Kim rocketed off the couch, gun in his hand. Deprived of his presence, Chay fell sideways before he caught himself and pushed himself upright. Across the room, Arm had also pulled a gun, though he held it casually as he looked at the readout on the cameras he’d installed around the house.

“They’re back,” said Arm, somewhat unnecessarily as the electronic keypad beeped, then the physical key clicked in the lock.

Tankhun came through the door first, followed by Kinn, and then, warily, two men Chay had seen before. In the future, another man stood behind Vegas as he knelt over a long gun, lining up his shot. Not Pete, who apologized as he looked over his shoulder.

“Well,” said Kinn, jerking him out of the days to come. “Meet my cousin Vegas. And my bodyguard Pete.”

The secret-seer’s gaze went around the room, surveying each of them. When his turn came, Chay looked instead at the collar round his throat, the sigils cut deeply into the worn leather.

“Do it,” Pete told him, and Chay had nothing to lose by trying.  

He concentrated on the central sigil in the collar, tracing its future as it wove with others, the same method he’d tried to use with Porsche, untangling the sigil from the magic-users it controlled. In a month the authorities would cuff a middle-aged woman with the sigil; in a year a teacher would report a student for showing signs of the power. Chay whisked those futures away, then focused on the cuts in the leather, the anger of the metal wrought into its folds. He scrabbled at the threads that bound power to the sigil, ripped apart the filaments of possibility.

Tension whined as the fibers split apart; they keened as they were erased. The decibels pressed against his consciousness, but Chay cranked the pressure higher. He could see the splinters starting to form. All he had to do was ignore the high-pitched sounds coming from the sigil—

Impact against his chest; Kim dragged him backward.

The high-pitched sounds he’d heard weren’t coming from the sigil. They were coming from the magic-user wearing the sigil. Pete had fallen to the floor, cuffed hands clutching his throat, blood on his lips, gasping with pain. Vegas was by his side, getting a finger under the collar.

What had he done?

Kim’s whisper tickled his ear. “Are you okay?”

Chay nodded, his headache returning. He wanted to disappear into Kim’s arms, his bed, never come out again. His unfounded theory had hurt another magic-user. He wasn’t even sure how it had happened. Breaking the sigil was supposed to be strenuous for him, not the person he was trying to free.

“I’m sorry,” he said uselessly, as Vegas helped Pete sit upright. “I was trying to break the collar,” he explained to the room at large.

Pete shrugged, as best he was able with his hands still cuffed together. “It’s not your fault,” he said, taking a deep breath, licking a drop of blood from his mouth. “I just bit my lip,” he admitted pre-emptively to Vegas, lifting his chin for inspection.

After a glance downward to check the veracity of his claim, Vegas directed a glare at Chay, who shrank back against Kim. He hadn’t meant to hurt the secret-seer.

Kinn blocked his view. “If he’s not hurt, then you should get him upstairs,” he offered. “We can’t risk him learning all our secrets.”  

“I’ll show you the way,” Porsche said, sending a searching look at Chay. He nodded to Vegas and together they hauled the secret-seer off the floor. They disappeared up the stairs, and Chay slumped back against Kim.

“No doubt Pete’s done some terrible things,” Tankhun commented, wandering over to the table, surveying the sigils Porsche had taken notes on. “I don’t know that he deserves to be tortured more than he already is, wearing that collar.”

The comment was delivered politely, the eldest Theerapanyakul not meeting his eyes, but Chay felt the sting of it anyway.  

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Chay protested, still not understanding what had gone wrong. Kinn’s face was unreadable; Tankhun’s faintly judging. Arm had gone back to his computer. “I was able to change the future to erase a sigil from existence, so it couldn’t be used to harm anyone ever again. I don’t know why it didn’t work on him.”

Porsche’s steps clomphed down the stairs. “He’s fine,” said Chay’s brother. “Just bit his lip, like he said. Vegas is, er, chaining him to the wall of the attic.”

His brother’s words had the benefit of making everyone stop looking at him as though he was dangerous, but they didn’t make Chay feel any better. He’d failed once, unable to find the sigil that would bind a fire-bringer. Twice, unable to free a secret-seer. He’d thought that destroying the only thing that could ever stop him would make him stronger.

Kim squeezed his shoulder, but Chay peeled his fingers away. He wanted to feel the phin’s three strings in his hand, wanted to know that some powers, at least, were his to command.

“Do you want me to open the door for you?” Porsche asked as Kinn parked outside an anonymous, unremarkable building in Nonthaburi.

Kinn savored the look of him, dressed in the standard-issue suit that all Theerapanyakul bodyguards wore, though surely the vest wasn’t supposed to be cinched that tightly around Porsche’s waist. Not that he was complaining, though he hoped his fire-bringer would still be able to breathe.

“We’ve already messed up the entrance because I’m the one driving,” Kinn told him. “Besides, not opening the door for me helps your cover.”

His cover as more-than-Kinn’s-bodyguard. The point was for Kinn and Porsche to take the Jao Por henchmen by surprise while Kim and Vegas swooped in from behind for the wet-work of the mission. Kinn dug the earpieces that Arm had given him out of the center console of his Escalade, holding one out to Porsche. Now they’d be able to hear what the rest of the team was up to.

Kinn put in his earpiece just as Arm, back at the house, said, “I’ve got the cameras, so you two can go in whenever you’re ready.”

“Preferably soon,” came Vegas’s voice, dripping with irritation. “I love hiding behind a gang compound because you’re too afraid to go in.”

The goad hit home, and Kinn swung himself out of the Escalade, jogging around to open the door for Porsche, catching one of his hands, pressing his fingers to his lips, as much for his cover as for his personal enjoyment. Porsche gave him a saccharine smile—theatrics were not his specialty—before spinning out of his hold and heading for the front doors of the compound.

The Jao Por henchmen had the doors open before they’d taken more than a few steps toward the building. Mafia players they were not; they eschewed the suits of the Theerapanyakuls for t-shirts and shorts that even the Minor Family wouldn’t have dared to wear, when there had been a Minor Family.

Kinn used the same technique he’d used to gain entrance to the Costa compound: he walked through the front doors without looking at the gang members on guard, only stopping when one of them (with some degree of trepidation) challenged him.

“I have an appointment with Direk,” Kinn told the offending guard, tucking Porsche into his side. Porsche fluttered his eyelashes at him.

They continued into the compound, one of the guards scrambling to catch up, the other talking into his earpiece, confirming that yes, Kinn had an appointment with the Jao Por leader. (Arm had hacked his calendar this morning.) In his ear, Vegas grunted and then swore, followed by Kim’s low laugh.

“Nong,” came Tankhun’s admonishment through the earpiece, and both his brother and his cousin subsided.

Impressed (and jealous), Kinn waved away the scrambling guard’s excuses as he settled himself into the nicest chair in the conference room, probably the one that Direk sat in. Not that the gang leader would be able to deny him. That Kinn was coming to see him at all was a huge concession—likely gossip was already flying, that the Jao Por must have done some sort of favor for the Theerapanyakuls to warrant such a visit.

Plus, everyone with any type of standing in the gang would be dead by the time he left. Kinn gestured to Porsche to take the seat behind him as the guards left them alone in the room.

“Direk left his office a minute ago,” said Vegas in his ear. “Kim’s working on copying his hard drive, and I’m going through the files.”

“Don’t spend too much time on those,” Kinn ordered. He latched onto the arm of Porsche’s rolling chair and yanked him closer. Porsche raised an eyebrow at him. Kinn retaliated by unbuttoning the top button of his shirt—no more-than-a-bodyguard of his would show off so little chest.

“Of course, khun Kinn,” Vegas snapped at him, drawing him away from Porsche’s physique. “I must have forgotten how to take down a street gang when your father threw me into an asylum.”

Damn it, Kinn knew what his father had done. He had thought that Tankhun and Vegas had understood why they had to eliminate the Jao Por before going after the patriarch. They didn’t have enough personpower to face enemies on all sides. Particularly not when Porsche was still vulnerable to a cuff or collar.

“Do you think your brother can destroy the sigils?” he asked Porsche while they still had the room to themselves.

Porsche nodded. “If he says he can do it, I believe him,” was his reply, and Kinn repressed a shudder at the memory of the lightning strike. “I don’t know what happened with Pete today,” Porsche went on. “Physically, nothing was wrong with him except a bitten lip—but sometimes magic doesn’t result in physical symptoms.”

But Kinn superimposed Porsche over Pete in his mind, saw Porsche fall to the floor, blood dripping from his mouth. He shrank back from the image, wanted to be certain that Chay’s theory would work before risking Porsche’s health, even if the risk meant he’d never have to fear a collar again.

A truncated staccato of breath shot through their comms—the sound of a knife across a windpipe.

“One down,” narrated Vegas. “Kim, your knife-work has improved.”

“Whatever,” Kim replied.

Porsche had gone still at the sound of death. Tentative, Kinn joggled the arm of his chair, the motion making them both sway. At last Porsche swallowed, his elbows coming forward on the conference table as his head dipped forward.

“I’m fine,” Porsche muttered, taking a deep breath. “They’re doing this because of me.”

Opening his mouth to clarify that he was doing this because he cared about Porsche, Kinn was interrupted by the entrance of Direk, the gang leader, and two guards.

“Khun Kinn, I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” Direk said, his loud voice a contrast to his thinning hair. "We’re honored that you’ve come in person." His eyes went to Porsche—and a hint of recognition found its way into his face—he knew who Porsche was. “And who is your companion today?” the gang leader finished.

“My bodyguard,” Kinn replied, reaching over to adjust the red diamond around Porsche’s neck. The facets flashed under the florescent lights of the conference room, registering with the gang leader.

The only way Kinn could have been less subtle was if he had said that Porsche was his. Which—his desire wasn’t a secret, though he hoped he had succeeded in hiding the intensity of his feelings. He didn’t want to burden Porsche with fourteen years of dreams, of longing. Porsche should be free to make up his own mind.

“I had my people schedule this meeting to discuss some potential collaboration opportunities between our organizations,” Kinn told the gang leader. “Regrettably, one of our suppliers made a mistake and is sending some of our product into your territory by rail. We were hoping to make a deal—you give us the product, and we’ll allow your people greater access within the city.”

The Jao Por leader pretended to consider, but it wasn’t a request. If one of the Theerapanyakul suppliers had fucked up badly enough to misdirect product into another territory, Kinn wouldn’t let a word like no stop him from pursuing his property. Not when he was facing down a mere street gang.

A gunshot—silenced, but they could still hear it—crackled through their earpieces. Porsche flinched, pushing his chair back. He caught himself mid-gesture, looked at the Jao Por leader sitting across from him and the two guards who waited by the door, and subsided.

“Another lieutenant down,” came Kim’s voice. “We found the org chart. Only a few more to go.”

“What’s up with him?” asked Direk, though his eyes were on the diamond nestled in the hollow of Porsche’s throat.

“We’re headed out to dinner after this,” Kinn said, one hand coming up to stroke the nape of Porsche’s neck, the distraction taking their eyes away as he drew his gun, though he left the weapon on his thigh for now. “So, might you be willing to overlook the product in your territory? We’re willing to make a sizable payment in exchange for your…er, kindness.”

Even the guards were impressed that a mafia family was offering to pay them to enter their territory rather than taking what they wanted through sheer numbers. The Jao Por leader laced his fingers across his middle.

“Whatever product you’re getting must be valuable if you’re going to all this trouble,” Direk commented. “Of course we’re willing to work with your people, khun Kinn.”

“Much obliged,” Kinn acknowledged, as another pop of a silenced gunshot came through his earpiece, echoed by a strangled sound out of Porsche’s throat. Disconcerted, Kinn looked over at him, but Porsche was already yanking out his earpiece as he got to his feet. The piece of plastic clattered to the table as he strode out of the room.

“Porsche,” Kinn called, but Porsche didn’t look back. The conference room door clicked shut behind him.

“He’s disobedient,” was Direk’s comment. He motioned to one of the guards in the room. “Why don’t you go after khun Kinn’s bodyguard and see if he needs anything?”

If the Jao Por leader had recognized Porsche, then the guards had as well. Kinn hoped they wouldn’t be brainless enough to go after the fire-bringer when Kinn had as-good-as claimed him. Still, if the guard tried to attack, Kinn had no doubts about Porsche’s ability to defend himself for a few minutes until he got there. He said nothing as the guard followed Porsche into the hall.

“I know that you have the people to make this collaboration happen,” Kinn said, swinging his chair to the side so he’d have a clearer shot. “But I’m concerned that your attention is tied up in other projects.”

“Not at all, khun Kinn,” Direk assured him. “We can make the Theerapanyakuls a priority.”

“Perfect,” said Kinn. He brought up his gun and fired.   

From there, he turned the gun on the remaining guard in the room, the silencer keeping the noise from alerting the noncombatants in the compound. Kinn waited for a moment to ensure that the Jao Por leader and the guard were both dead before getting to his feet. He didn’t hear any noises from the hallway, which was—suspicious.

“I’m almost finished here,” he told Kim and Vegas. “There’s just one more guard I need to take care of. What’s your status?”

“Give us a few more minutes,” said Kim. “We’ll meet you out front.”

Kinn was already moving through the doorway into an empty hall. He looked right and then left, before deciding that Porsche would have tried to head outdoors if he wanted to get away. So Kinn went left, heading for the front doors, the only exit Porsche would have known about, listening for signs of a struggle.

He found them halfway down the next hallway—a wall of heat, gasps of pain. Kinn sped up, running the last few steps as he found Porsche standing above the fallen final guard. The guard was curled into a fetal position, wrapped in ropes of fire.

Between the two men, the diamond necklace that he’d given Porsche lay broken on the floor. What had happened was clear from the bloody scratch along Porsche’s neck.

“He thought that the necklace was a collar,” Porsche commented as Kinn started forward.

“You did well to incapacitate him until I got here,” Kinn told him. “Why don’t you wait around the corner while I finish up?”

Killing a man who had already been captured still made his stomach roll, but better him than Porsche. Porsche didn’t move, though, still staring at the guard who’d tried to attack him.

“Why do so many people have to die for me?” he asked, reaching out with his foot to kick the necklace aside, take the broken jewelry out of the path Kinn’s bullet would take. Kinn grimaced—but it was just a necklace.

“You know we can’t let them live,” said Kinn, cautious, reaching out with his spare hand to take Porsche’s cold fingers in his.

Porsche turned to the man on the floor, the ropes of fire still holding him down. His cold fingers twitched in Kinn’s hand, and the man gasped, burns crawling up his skin, the blisters warping, splitting open as the skin blackened around the lesions. Even as the man burned to death in front of him, Porsche’s expression was too composed, his eyes glazed over, something remote in his face.

“Why let people kill for me when I can do it myself?” asked Porsche, low. A choked-off moan came from the man dying on the floor. Porsche cocked his head to the side, making no move to help him.

“Let me do this for you,” Kinn begged. “No one thinks less of you because you don’t want to kill.”

This time Porsche turned to him. “I don’t want to kill?” he repeated.

Poor choice of words. “I’ve seen the scars,” Kinn reminded him. “I know what they did to you. I understand why you hate violence.”

“The scars mean nothing,” hissed Porsche. “I didn’t care what they did to me. But then they figured out that they could torture other people in front of me.”

Ah. Kinn’s heart ached for him, even as the analytical part of his mind acknowledged that harming civilians was likely the only strategy to turn someone as strong-willed as Porsche. His thumb stroked across Porsche’s knuckles, trying to instill some warmth into his freezing fingers. But Porsche didn’t react.

“I know you would have done anything to save them,” Kinn said.

Porsche jerked out of his grip. “How? How could I save them?” he demanded. “There are always more people who can be killed. Better to put them out of their misery. What I did to them was mercy.”  

Kinn had known that Porsche had killed before, had even killed civilians, but he hadn’t understood the circumstances, that he’d done it to save them from a worse fate. Then the man on the floor groaned, and Porsche took the gun from his hand. He didn’t have much gun-handling experience, Kinn thought against his will, as the stock thunked clumsily into his palm, as he lined up the shot.

“You don’t have to do this,” Kinn protested.

The crack of the gunshot was muffled by the silencer, but the bullet sank home. When the dead nerves twitched, Porsche shot the guard again.

“Fire doesn’t care who it kills,” said Porsche, handing the gun back. “Are Kim and Vegas done? We should get out of here.”

He didn’t wait for an answer before heading down the hallway. Kinn looked down at the dead man on the floor, the burns lacing up his arms and face, the bullet wounds garish in his torso. He thought of the boy he’d met fourteen years ago, the casual joy he’d taken in outsmarting his attackers, the easy victory he’d handed Kinn.

And then the man that Porsche had become. Brought about, it seemed, when his uncle had found him and his brother. Kinn had thought that Arthee’s death would bring closure, but now he wondered whether closure was even a possibility for all Porsche had suffered.  

He left the broken necklace where it was as he followed Porsche out of the Jao Por compound.

Activity flurried around him. Chay pressed a cup of tea into his hands; Kim kept sending him long looks. By his side, Kinn was disconsolate, trying to keep an arm around his shoulders. Porsche shrugged it off for the umpteenth time. He was fine.

(He wasn’t fine.)

The horror crawled up into his throat, nestled in the space just beneath his collarbone. Guilt-tinged grief lodged tentacles in his throat. He couldn’t think about Kinn’s pity, or Chay’s sympathy, or even Kim’s silent regard.

For a moment, Porsche saw the man he’d killed. When he’d tried to attack in the hallway, Porsche had dodged his grabbing hands—but the guard had latched onto his necklace, yanking it from around his throat. He’d wrapped the man in burning ropes without another thought, knowing that he was as good as dead. So many people had to die for him.

“Do you maybe want to go upstairs and get some sleep?” asked Kinn. “You look pale.”

Porsche shook his head. “If I leave now and you find out there are more people who know about us, you’ll just have to repeat everything anyway. Better that we’re here for this.”

The attack on the Jao Por had been a surgical strike: Kim and Vegas had killed their way through the org chart, removing everyone with the clearance to know about him and Chay. Kinn had killed the leader. Now they were reviewing the contents of the gang’s hard drives and files to see if they needed to kill anyone else.

So much killing.

To think that he’d once wanted to live in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, a place where he could hide from everyone who wanted him to kill for them, where he could forget that he was a weapon. The dream still lived inside him—all he’d have to do is get on the first bus headed for the countryside. Kinn would let him go.

But his enemies would come after him.

“There are a lot of files,” Arm warned from his workstation in the corner of the living room. Apologetic, he continued, “It will take awhile for me to parse all this information, even if I filter by the files that mention Arthee.”

Kinn tried to wrap an arm around his shoulders again. “Do you want to go somewhere while we wait for Arm to go through the files? It will get your mind off things.”

Porsche trembled under Kinn’s touch. If they went somewhere, Arm would have to wipe the surveillance cameras, adding even more to his workload. Better to stay hidden. Hiding was safe. Hiding meant that no one else had to die. He raised the mug to his lips—blistering hot, just the way he liked it.

From the other end of the room, Vegas started forward, stopping when he reached Arm’s workstation. “If we have to go through the files before we come up with a plan for taking down your father, I have an idea,” he told Kinn, the judgment abrasive in his tone.

“I’m all ears,” Kinn shot back.

Vegas hesitated, and then said, “I know you’re listening in, Macau. Do you want to speed up the timeline for taking down uncle Korn?”

Beside him, Kinn’s head jerked up. Seated next to Arm at the workstation, Tankhun tilted his chair back too far and had to scramble upright. Kim turned his head inquiringly, though he stayed where he was, on the floor beneath the chair Chay had curled up in.

And then a voice came out of the speakers. “I thought you were going to keep me a secret forever, hia. What do you need my help with?”

Looking entirely unsurprised, Arm said, “We’re parsing files associated with Arthee Kittisawat, khun Macau. Might you be interested in sharing one of your programs?”

Kinn rose from his side, ending up standing behind Vegas at the computer workstation. “Wait, what’s going on here? Macau, where are you?”

Interested, Porsche swung his legs up on the couch and watched most of the Theerapanyakuls in the room coalesce around the computer. He shot a look at Chay, who beamed back at him—ah, his brother had been keeping secrets again. Intercepting the look, Kim mock-frowned up at Chay, who leaned down to whisper in his ear.

The man’s voice spoke again. “I’m on a plane from Dubai, asshole. Thanks for trying to have my entire family killed, by the way. You really jumpstarted my career.”

“Career?” asked Kinn, as Vegas warned, “Macau.”

“Fine, I’ll play nice,” said the voice. “Arm, I’m taking control of your computer so I can write a program to scan the files.” Correctly interpreting, even through the speakers, Kinn’s bemused look, the voice—Macau—continued, “P’Kinn, did you ever, like, wonder why there was an echo on your calls? Or did you just know and pretend not to notice? You had to have noticed, right?”

Kinn rubbed his temples, which made something twinge inside Porsche’s chest, but he couldn’t make himself get up. He took another sip of his tea, cold now, so he expended some energy to heat it back to boiling. Which made his fingertips go cold, so he pressed them against the hot mug, which made the mug cool down, and so the cycle continued. He lost himself in the waste of power, letting the assorted Theerapanyakuls (except Kim) at the workstation talk through the files they’d killed people to get. Their low murmurs descended into buzzing sounds, inconsequential. Porsche let his head fall back against the arm of the couch.

Then—“Shit,” came Macau’s voice. “The fucking IP address.”

Arm turned down the volume on the speakers.

“Yeah, I recognize those payroll tags,” said Vegas. “One of Korn’s spies. Going back how long?”

Porsche raised his head. It should have been funny, all the men clustered around the computer, fighting for headspace even with the multiple monitors that Arm had installed. But it wasn’t funny, not with the tension in Vegas, the sick look on Kinn’s face. Even Tankhun looked concerned. Across the room, Chay shifted off his chair.

“The records show payments starting fourteen years ago, though they stopped five years ago,” said Arm.

Fourteen years. Porsche was on his feet.

Kinn came toward him, his arms outstretched before him. “Sit down, Porsche,” he ordered.

The words registered but didn’t make much of an impact. Porsche went around Kinn, heading toward the computer. Vegas saw him coming; Porsche saw him look behind him to Kinn, as if for permission—

“Hia,” Chay had gotten in front of him. Porsche blinked as his brother’s hands extended towards his shoulders. “Hia, you don’t look well. Why don’t you listen to P’Kinn and—” Chay yelped as he made contact with Porsche’s shoulders; his fingers came away a smarting shade of pink.

Minor burn. Porsche took a deep breath, trying to get himself under control. “Tell me,” he asked the three men still left at the computer. But they said nothing, and the room grew warmer. At last, from behind him, Kinn cleared his throat. Porsche turned around.

“Until five years ago, your uncle was on my father’s payroll,” Kinn began, his voice cracking, devastation in his eyes. “The records show that he first started working for my father fourteen years ago.”

Arthee had found them fourteen years ago, not long after Porsche had saved Kinn’s life. Because Porsche had saved Kinn’s life. Kinn’s father had known about him, then. Had sent Arthee after him to—what, destroy him? He’d succeeded, then. This time his breath was shallow, as he tried not to give more oxygen to the fire building inside him.

He found Kinn’s gaze, like drowning in night, lost in the blackness of earth. But earth could kindle flame. Porsche rose and fell with his lungs, gasping around the sparks.

“Everything that happened,” he said, holding Kinn’s eyes. “All those people who died—” and Kinn blanched. “You know what they did to me. Because of your father.”

Kinn’s gaze grew shiny—one of them was crying. Not him, Porsche discovered, as he reached up to wipe his eyes and found them dry, like the sun glancing off desert sand. He tried to breathe again but couldn’t find air. A strangled sound fell from his lips.

“I’m so sorry,” said Kinn. “I came home that day and told him that I wanted to find the fire-bringer who had saved my life.”

A man’s curse came from behind him. Smoke began to rise from his feet; he was so unbearably warm. Kinn’s father had done this to him. Before he’d been a vague figure in Kinn’s recollections, an elderly voice behind the door in Kinn’s suite. But fourteen years ago, he’d sent Arthee after them, condemned them both to this life. Veins glowed red in the backs of Porsche’s hands.

Someone had to pay for what he’d endured. Porsche couldn’t be the only one to bear the price of power. The years of loneliness, of watching the world pass by, not daring to get involved. All the people he hadn’t been able to save, all the times he’d wanted to see Chay but had to remain apart. The constant fear, the hiding, the killing.

Black earth eyes in front of his. Porsche blinked through the waves of heat.

“P’Kinn, you’ll burn yourself if you touch him,” came Chay’s voice.

“I deserve it,” said Kinn, and then his hands were cool against Porsche’s burning palms. “Porsche, look at me,” he pleaded.

But his vision was tinted red, flame-world, a hellscape. All the joy of fire turned to ash, Porsche found himself in the ruin his power had wrought of them both. He’d just begun to love—but love was like an ice-stake in his phoenix heart. He tried to pull away from Kinn, but the man held him fast.

“Let go,” said Porsche, the licks of flame deepening the timbre of his voice. “I can’t control it. I’ll hurt you.”

“Never,” said Kinn, and he’d made his choice.

Torrent of fire, the fury inside human veins, all sacrificed to the inferno he’d become. Lost amid the ashy air, soft like feathers, Porsche threw his head back, his scream lost in the roar of flame. Someone had to pay for what had been done to him, those nights of dark and fear and ice, those days of killing, of turning his power into an aberration.

The ground spun away from him, hazy under his feet. His vision had gone white, white as the heart of any blaze.

Porsche stumbled, and then Kinn was holding him upright, one of his arms wrapped under his shoulders, the other around his waist, earth fueling fire. He sucked in a breath as his white-hot eyesight wavered and resolved into Kinn’s worried face.

Someone had to pay. But not Kinn.

“What happened wasn’t your fault,” Porsche whispered. “You couldn’t have known what your father would do.”

Kinn refused the conciliation. “You saved my life, but I ruined yours,” he confessed.

Not Kinn. He was still too warm, his blood replaced by fire. But what had happened to him hadn’t been the price for meeting Kinn. No universe could be so cruel to demand such a price. Rivers boiled; tears at last made their way down his cheeks.

“I love you,” Porsche told Kinn.

Coolness at last, Kinn’s forehead against his. Porsche closed his eyes, let his breathing settle, hearth-fire banked to embers.  

“I’m going to kill him for what he did to you,” Kinn promised, his vow rinsing over him. “And then I’ll take over this city for you. This country. No one will dare come after you. You’ll be safe.” Breath rattled in his lungs, and then Kinn said, “I fell in love with you fourteen years ago. I’ll do anything to stay with you, Porsche.”

Porsche tilted his head and then Kinn’s lips were on his, the kiss open-mouthed but slow, long pulls at each other’s mouths, long breaths in between. He felt Kinn’s hands worm their way around him, till they were pressed together, Kinn’s body cool beside his. Porsche let him take the heat from his mouth, his heart, till at last the fever had subsided, and Porsche withdrew, dropping his head onto Kinn’s shoulder.

 “Let’s just stay like this,” Porsche suggested. He heard a soft laugh of amusement from above him, and Kinn’s fingers were again stroking through his hair, the soft tugs at his scalp compelling him to keep his eyes closed.

But then Kinn went rigid. Startled, he tried to raise his head, but Kinn forced him back down. Porsche mmph’d into the point of Kinn’s shoulder.

“You’re burning up, Porsche,” said Kinn, his voice calm, though Porsche could feel his racing pulse. “Are you okay?”

“I just lost control for a moment,” said Porsche, taking stock. “I think I’m fine.”

(He wasn’t fine. But maybe, one day, he would be.)

Kinn hesitated. The grip on the back of his head loosened as he let Porsche up. “Then where the hell are we?” Kinn asked.

Porsche blinked up at the hazy stars above them, the hillside around them, the city lights off in the distance. “Oh,” he said, having no idea where (the hell) they were. Or how they’d gotten there. “Uh, Kinn,” he amended, suddenly dizzy. “I don’t think I’m fine anymore.”

Immediately Kinn tugged him to the ground and hauled him into his lap. “It’s okay,” he said. “Just breathe. We’ll figure this out. Let’s see if my phone still works.”

As Kinn produced the device from his pocket and turned on the maps app, Porsche looked around him. This far outside the city, the haze from the stars was brighter; he could almost make out their tiny pinpoints of fire, welcoming him, daring him to try. Porsche reached up.

“Did we fly?” he whispered, even then afraid that the question would be too loud.

“Something like that,” came Kinn’s rejoinder, very dry as he zoomed in on their location. “I suppose the legends about phoenixes had an element of truth. Are you going to live for five hundred years as well?”

“Only if you’re with me,” said Porsche.

“Always,” Kinn told him.

Escaping from the house was easy after all the earlier commotion. Once word had come back that Kinn and the fire-bringer were still alive, everyone had been glad to retire to their respective sleeping places. To calculate the reckoning the Theerapanyakul patriarch would face.

The stairs squeaked as he came down them, innocent of such calculation. But no one came to investigate the noise, so he continued into the darkened living room—a designated common area in the overfilled house—and disarmed the alarm on the front door. A black car pulled up by the driveway, lights off, and he went to join the driver.

“It must be important if you wanted to meet in person,” Yok observed. “Where are we going?”

“Wherever has the most guns,” said Kim, swinging himself into the passenger seat. As they pulled out of the driveway, a flash of light from the attic window caught his attention—they’d put the spy there until they found a way to break the collar.

Chay had been distraught that he’d hurt the magic-user, clinging to him until Kim had left for the Jao Por compound. Even when Kim had returned, Chay had been subdued, void of his usual conversation, the flashes of the future that Kim found amusing. He tried to convince himself that the failure hadn’t been the magic-user’s fault.

They were heading out of suburbia, out of town even, down to the port.

“The drop-shipping warehouse,” Yok explained when she saw Kim looking at the street signs.

Yes, most of the city’s drop-shippers utilized the same cluster of seedy warehouses just outside of city limits. The opportunity had been irresistible. Kim paid them handsomely to give him some space and not ask questions. The warehouses were still collections of random stuff. The random stuff just included the arsenal he’d neglected to mention to his father.

He wasn’t going to kill his father tonight. But soon.

Chay had been hunted for most of his life. Kept apart from his brother, put in situations where killing had been the only option, lived in fear that he’d be discovered, forced to do the bidding of one of the city’s mafia players. Kim couldn’t give back the years he’d lost, the years his father had taken from him. But he could give Chay a future.

Once his father was dead, there would be a power vacuum, something that they’d have to fill. It was what had kept Kim from abandoning the family in the past year, the knowledge that they were vulnerable, that if something happened to his father, Kinn would have a target on his back. Now, though, with Khun and Vegas backing them up, they’d have a chance at defeating Korn. And then—

When he was done with this city, he wouldn’t care who knew about Chay, because they would kill anyone who resembled a threat. And then the crown would belong to—

Fuck, Kim didn’t want to be the Theerapanyakul patriarch. He knew there had to be one. Co-leading the family would work until it didn’t; there had to be someone to make decisions. Someone who had to be visible. Who had to say things and be listened to.

Well, that was for Kinn and Khun to figure out.

Yok pulled up outside one of his warehouses, dark now, the drop-shippers gone home for the day. After he exited the car, Kim keyed in the passcode and pulled back the heavy metal door, breathing in the stale air of the inadequately ventilated space.

“Get some of our people here for transport,” he ordered Yok, pacing past the shelves of…stuff. Behind the final section—an assortment of cheaply made and dubiously useful kitchen appliances—were his items. Kim slung a rifle case over his shoulder.  

He wasn’t sure what they needed yet, but he wanted to be prepared.

“I’m on it,” Yok confirmed, her phone already out as she made arrangements.

As she tapped and swiped, Kim moved through the aisles of shelving. He selected another rifle, a few handguns for the newcomers, and a set each of smoke bombs and flash grenades, though he wasn’t sure that storming the Theerapanyakul compound was the right move. They didn’t have the numbers to win a war against his father.

Speaking of. Kim pulled out his phone and dialed.

“It’s very late,” his father observed when he picked up the call.

“The Jao Por tried to kidnap me,” Kim replied, tonelessly, because to be upset by a kidnapping attempt was to appear weak, as his father had taught him. “Kinn and I were able to take out their people on the ground here, but the bulk of their syndicate is in Nonthaburi.”

Rustles through the speaker as his father got out of bed; footsteps as he left his suite.

After a long silence, his father said, “I’m sending a contingent of our men there now. We should have taken them out long ago, but I never thought they’d move against us.”

Perfect. His father would empty out the compound for this. Security procedures would be disrupted, normal schedules would be changed. Kim had just created a hundred openings where they could slip in, make the kill, and then take over the Theerapanyakul enterprise. His lip curled up.

“Thank you, father,” he said, letting his voice waver for just a moment, highlighting the weakness his father would be looking for.

Sure enough, his father’s voice came strong through the speaker, reassuring. Korn said, “We protect our own.”

Too right. Kim hung up.

“I just bit my lip,” he’d said earlier, when the fore-bringer had tried to destroy the collar. Truth. Pete’s lip throbbed as he twisted the pen he’d stolen from the floor into the locks on the cuffs. They hadn’t been designed to take this abuse; eventually cheap metal clicked against cheap metal, and he was…free.

To go back to the main compound. Where he’d betray them all.

The skylight in the attic had been made for easy cleaning, not keeping prisoners inside. Pete broke the latch and stepped out onto the roof, an easy slope to walk across. He jumped to the ground and jogged across the lawn to the sidewalk. In a neighborhood as upscale as this, the best option for stealth was to hide in plain sight. Pete kept up the slow run as he made his way past all the cookie-cutter homes in the subdivision.

The pair of brothers Korn had found fourteen years ago (and subsequently lost to their uncle’s greed) had resurfaced, very much alive and very much in love with the patriarch’s two sons. The fore-bringer was the one Korn should fear—he had a way around the collars. The fire-bringer had been trapped in his own past, vulnerable to whatever plans Korn had for him.

Pete had seen too many people fall once Korn found what they wanted, the people they loved, the secrets hidden beneath their skin.

Kim already had a plan. Already, Kinn was bowed under the weight of the patriarch’s title, but he believed that taking power was the only way to keep them all alive. Vegas would be on every rooftop with a sniper rifle, until one of his bullets found its way home. Even Tankhun agreed that he should die for what he’d done, though Korn’s eldest son still wasn’t sure he could bring himself to pull the trigger.

The patriarch would not be pleased.

Their betrayal would be worse than when Kan had betrayed him last year. Worse than when of the other mafia families had attempted a coup the year before that. And worse than the incident Pete had heard about, the one that had landed Korn in the patriarch’s chair, so many years ago.

Every time he thought of a way to delay his return—spraining his ankle, misreading the street signs, behaving suspiciously enough that a neighbor called the police—the collar tightened around his throat, forbidding even the smallest attempt at disobedience. Pete got two of his fingers underneath the leather, remembering how Vegas had held him earlier that day, the concern marring his features.

Guilt stuck in his chest. He didn’t deserve Vegas’s concern after what he’d done.

For what he was going to do. Pete looked over his shoulder, back at the silent neighborhood, the house midway down the cul-de-sac.   

“I’m sorry,” he said, before his steps forced him away.

Chapter Text

Porsche stacked all of the pillows behind him so he could laze back and watch Kinn attempt his latest cut-throat negotiation. After a long sip of the best coffee available at mid-range American-owned hotel chains in the city (which meant a malfunctioning off-brand Keurig machine in their room), Kinn crossed his ankle over his knee, affording Porsche a spectacular view of what was underneath his robe (nothing). 

“I’m aware that we have stayed past the checkout time,” Kinn said to the front desk manager’s supervisor on the room phone. “But my…associate and I arrived too late last night to properly acquaint ourselves with the policies and procedures.”

His lover listened to the supervisor for a moment longer, frowning as the diatribe continued. Porsche heaved a dramatic sigh, turning over on his side, the stack of pillows underneath his cheek emphasizing the curve of his waist. He let the covers fall away, felt the cool humidity of the hotel AC brush against the scars on his back. On the other side of the room, Kinn sucked in a breath.

“15,000 baht,” Kinn snarled into his phone, and a moment later the device clattered to the table.

Their late checkout had been obtained. Apparently.

Porsche saw Kinn’s shadow come across the floor, the (very) late morning light casting even his hair into relief. Then Kinn’s hand came down on his back, stroking up and down the scars. He arched his spine into Kinn’s palm.

“Am I only your associate?” Porsche asked, mock-reproachfully, twisting up so he could see Kinn’s reaction to his teasing.

“Anything you want,” Kinn promised, and Porsche continued twisting up until at last he flopped onto his back, though the mid-range American-owned hotel brand bed was so hard that he bounced a nio into the air before settling down.

Kinn leaned down to muffle a laugh in Porsche’s neck.

“Like this is my fault,” Porsche retorted, as the tickle of breath turned into the press of lips, then the rake of teeth. He had to pause while Kinn settled himself on top of him. “We could have gone to any hotel in the city, but you picked this one because—”

He had to pause again as one of Kinn’s errant hands gripped his hip, his thumb digging into the space above the bone, the pressure making him shift. Further upward, Kinn surfaced from his neck.

“As I said last night, shitty hotels are the safest for us right now. It’s not like we could have gone back to the safehouse.”

They could have, but they wouldn’t have had this much privacy. Indeed, they probably would have been conscripted into helping Kim empty every Theerapanyakul family arsenal in the city. His nong had texted them so frequently through the night that Kinn had turned off his cell phone, saying that Porsche needed to rest between revelatory discoveries.

The room phone rang.

Kinn heaved a deep sigh as he glared over his shoulder at the offensive device, too far away for him to reach without getting off the bed.

“Maybe we should ignore it,” Porsche suggested, but the phone continued to ring.

Finally Kinn lifted himself off him, crawling over the mattress. “Do I need to buy the hotel now?” Kinn said into the room phone. Then he cursed and reached for his neglected cell phone. A few moments later, Kim’s voice filled the room. Porsche rolled off the bed, heading for his discarded (somewhat sooty, considering what he’d done last night) clothes. He had tossed them on the floor, but, deeply suspicious of the general cleanliness of the floor, Kinn had insisted on hanging everything in the closet.

Now Arm’s calm tones were coming through the speaker. “We’ve found a place that will work for what you need, khun Vegas. I’ve expedited the paperwork, and you should be able to take possession in an hour.”

“That’s lucky,” was Vegas’s comment. “We’re running out of places to put all the guns.”

Chatter came through the speaker as both Arm and Kim tried to say something at once. Then Kim subsided.

“I’ve directed the bodyguards we can be sure of to await your signal,” said Arm. Anticipating Kinn’s question, the cybersecurity expert continued, “We have enough to support you, but not enough for a full-scale takeover.”

Porsche melted the fire alarm in the room, then flicked a (tiny, really) fireball at Kinn, expending just enough power to keep the flames from burning him as Kinn caught it, then tossed it back at him. Entertainment for the masses. Also a promise of what he could do.

“You don’t have to kill him for me,” he’d told Kinn last night.

“If I don’t, then Kim will,” had been Kinn’s reply. “I’m the heir. I should be the one to do it.”

They hadn’t discussed whether Kinn was still the heir, with the return of his older brother. Porsche had a hard time imagining Kinn as the Theerapanyakul patriarch, the role pressing down on him, crushing the softness from him. If he had to burn another compound to keep Kinn from becoming that person, he would.

Kim and Vegas sparred on the phone, rapid questions answered just as rapidly by Arm. Then Kinn stopped scrolling through his phone.

“I see I missed several calls from father last night,” said Kinn, his shoulders slumping.

“He called me after he couldn’t get you,” Kim replied. “He says that his men found a Jao Por captain when they cleaned up the compound in Nonthaburi. He wanted us to come in for the questioning. I told him that I’d wait for you.”

Porsche finished buttoning his (worse-for-wear) bodyguard uniform from yesterday, except the silk tie, which he left dangling on either side of his neck. Seeing that he was done, Kinn passed him the phone, then continued on into the closet, withdrawing his own clothes.

“If we don’t go, he’ll know we’re planning something,” said Kinn, yanking on his pants. “I’d rather keep him from getting suspicious until Vegas gets in position.”

“And going gets us into the compound,” Kim commented. “Draws attention so that our men can get into position.”

Going also meant that Kinn would be separated from him, limiting Porsche’s ability to protect him. But Kinn would never agree to let Porsche come with them.

Indeed—“Fine,” said Kinn. “We’ll meet you at the bar. Khun—”

“Vegas took the Escalade when he left earlier,” said Tankhun. “We’ll need a ride.”

Porsche took the few steps toward Kinn, batting his hands out of the way, so he could finish buttoning his shirt. Out of tasks to complete, Kinn’s hands came up, taking the ends of the tie, but Porsche stepped back. His neck still felt tender, both from Kinn's ministrations this morning and from what had happened in the Jao Por compound the day before.

“I’ll come back and pick you up,” said Vegas.

The voices on the call lost themselves, became buzzing in his ears as Porsche fixated on Kinn’s buttons, the shine of them too pronounced to be plastic. Kinn hung up, and Porsche took his time, stopping mid-way up the chest, just the way Kinn liked it.

“You shouldn’t be nervous,” Kinn told him, settling his phone in his pocket. He reached for his blazer. “We’ll get into the compound, take out the Jao Por prisoner they have, and then we’ll go after my father. After today, you’ll be safe.”

Porsche didn't respond, though he let Kinn fold him into his arms.

“I’m not wearing that,” Chay protested, backing away towards the stockroom at the Hum Bar. Kim advanced on him, a bulletproof vest dangling from his hands. Even though he and Kim were the same height, Chay could tell that he would swim in the garment. He struggled to find an excuse that would work with Kim. “Won’t it hinder mobility since it’s too big?”

Kim raised his other arm, pointing toward Chay’s chest. Chay looked down but didn’t see anything.

Triumphant, Kim said, “Center of body mass. I could make the shot even if you were running away. Wear the vest.”

“He has a point, Kim,” Vegas remarked, pausing from—whatever he was doing to the sniper rifle clamped in the vice he’d set up on the bar. “I would never let my men wear that model of vest. The Kevlar isn’t reinforced at the back.”

His insult delivered, Vegas returned to tinkering with the side of the rifle. In front of Chay, Kim’s hand clenched on the vest as he glanced over his shoulder at his cousin. Recognizing the look on his face, Chay tried to think of ways to intervene, but he wasn’t fast enough.

Kim said, “You didn’t wear a vest that night.”

Vegas threw his screwdriver down on the bar.

“I could use some help putting this on,” Chay prevaricated, towing Kim into the stockroom before the cousins killed each other. Even as the door shut behind them, Kim was already checking the room, as if expecting his father’s men to be hiding among the bottles of candy apple vodka.

While he prowled through the shelves, Chay put on the vest, judging it best not to provoke Kim further. The heavy material sagged on him—though not so much on his back; the dreamwalker had been correct about lack of reinforcement. Finally Kim tired of checking the shelves for invisible assassins and emerged, coming toward him.

“Sorry,” he said, and he looked it, his face tired from a night spent running all over the city to consolidate their ammunitions. His hair was unkempt, straggling across his face and neck, too shiny at the roots.

He could shower after his father was dead, he'd said, which had touched off the last squabble between him and his cousin, roughly an hour ago.

Chay made light of the situation. “If it makes you feel better, this vest’s future is to be dumped, intact, on the floor of an apartment in an hour or so.” He would likely be the one who put it there. “You can’t expect me to wear a bulletproof vest indoors.”

“I want you to be so far away from this that no bullet can touch you,” was Kim’s response.

Chay didn’t. He wanted to fight. His pulse fizzed in his veins; he couldn’t verify that his heartbeat was regular. Frustrating, to hold the future in his hands and yet not be able to see any of their fates. Except, perhaps, the one that would happen in a few minutes. Already the man’s voice sounded too loud in his head, necessitating another pull of his drink—

—which wasn’t there, he discovered, because he hadn’t made it yet. Chay blinked several times, returning himself to the present.

He crooked a come-hither finger at Kim, who obeyed, pressing his forehead against Chay’s, touch that turned into a kiss, and then multiple kisses, and then Kim’s hand was holding the liquor shelf steady behind him, though he couldn’t stop the bottles rattling.

“At least try not to antagonize him,” Chay said when he was able to find breath.

Their futures had become his future; Chay’s sight had become limited to the next few moments, events so fixed that he could barely tweak them before they would occur. Time might be boiling in his blood, but this was a moment for action, for guns and fire. (And perhaps some computer shenanigans. Chay hadn’t seen enough of Macau to know what his value would be.)

Kim didn’t make any promises, but he took Chay’s hand and led him from the backroom. When they emerged, Vegas was again messing with the side of the rifle. He’d released the gun from the vice, and now he bent over the scope, testing the sight against Yok’s dartboard. Chay squinted.

He could control the gun’s future. He could ensure that the gun hit its mark.

Chay wandered over to the rifle—Kim made a noise of objection, countered by Vegas’s comment that it’s unloaded, asshole—to test his theory. Sure enough, the metal was malleable, could be spun out, woven into a tapestry of certainty, one stained in blood. Or perhaps not. Chay frowned as he saw the future, his hands tightening around the rifle.

He heard Kim’s voice, echoing from far away. “Your father’s men came after me at my apartment that night,” he told his cousin. “I swung over the balcony and held on till they were gone. I followed them and killed them afterward, but I was too late to prevent what happened at the compound.”

The rifle hit its target, yes, but no blood stained the Italian marble of a terrace. Chay followed the scent inside, the evening light casting long shadows against the wall. Two shadows.

Hours before what would happen came Vegas’s reply: “It’s not an excuse, but I told my father that you shouldn’t be killed. You’re not much older than Macau. He disagreed with me.”

“And you still did what you were told,” Kim spat, before Chay heard a gunshot, the report distorted, echoing back through time. The sound made him lose his grip on the sniper rifle, and Vegas swore as the weapon clattered back onto the bar.

Then he was yanked back into the present, Vegas taking the rifle away from him, intent on the sight. Chay blinked, looking at the gun, wondering which one had gone off. With the way the dreamwalker was hunched over the rifle, he wouldn’t see that—

“There’s someone behind you,” he told Vegas, who darted a quick look over his shoulder, before Kim’s hand was on his shoulder, and then he couldn’t see anything at all.

Chay sighed.

“Care to share?” Vegas asked him, heedless of Kim’s hiss of disapprobation.

The heels of his hands dug into his eyes. “The bullet will strike home, but the shadows bleed instead,” Chay answered, walking out from under Kim’s hand, already pulling the bottles from behind the bar. Mechanical movements, the liquor into a shaker, gin and vermouth and Campari. “I need two rocks glasses,” he told Kim, who obeyed.

The rumble of the engine of a muscle car shook the drink for him, and Chay withdrew a can of hard seltzer from the fridge under the bar before returning to his Negroni. He poured twice, once for himself, and then a double pour for P’Kinn, who would inevitably coax Porsche into drinking half of his. Speaking of Porsche…

“Your neck looks terrible, hia,” Chay said, but he was too early. Kinn and Porsche hadn’t arrived yet. He took a drink.  

The muscle car’s noise had intensified.

Kim’s frown deepened. “That’s not Kinn’s car,” he said, and Vegas lunged forward, the sound of the magazine ratcheting through the bar as he fed it into his handgun.

“Safeties on,” Chay reminded them both, as the engine noise cut out, and a moment later Macau came into the bar.

Vegas lunged again, his gun tucked into a back holster by the time he was in his brother’s arms. Chay turned away from them, followed by Kim, whose whispered I love you made him look up, wonder whether what future he’d just seen, but Kim’s eyes were blazing as they met his, and this was no future, this was the present, when Kim had just said—

“This place is a dive,” Macau noted, pulling out of Vegas’s embrace, though he dragged his sleeve across his eyes. Over-casual, he surveyed the drink selection. “I’ll just have a—”

He stopped when he saw the hard seltzer.

Vegas cleared his throat. “Fore-bringer,” he said, both as an introduction and admonition. “Why don’t you try your tricks on a tougher audience? What would I prefer?”

Even that wasn’t a challenge. Chay couldn’t see the man’s future, but he could see the grim twist of Kim’s mouth, and so he poured the dreamwalker a glass of water, because neither of them would drink until the job was done. Not the case, for P’Kinn, though, and Chay took another sip of his Negroni, waiting for the inevitable reverberation of the sedan they’d had to rent after Porsche had gotten the two of them out of the city.

Soon enough, Kinn and Porsche were following Macau’s path through the doors of the bar. Upon seeing the drink that Chay had made for him, Kinn gravitated toward the bar. True to form, he offered the first sip to Porsche, slung back half the Negroni, and then offered Porsche a second sip. Porsche acquiesced this time, though Chay could have told P’Kinn that gin wasn’t Porsche’s liquor of choice.

“So we’re all here,” Vegas observed, after checking his phone. “I need to run back to the house and pick up Khun and Arm. Then we’ll head over to the new location. Macau, you’ll meet us there?”

He had to say his brother’s name a second time, because Macau had pulled a tablet from his bag and was engrossed in another world. Chay knew the feeling. 

“Sorry, that’s the penthouse purchase that Arm just expedited?” asked Macau. Defending himself against their quick looks, he continued, “I can’t help knowing this stuff! Spying on you is a habit. And he hid the transaction really well. No one but me will find it.”

“Make sure,” Vegas ordered, and his brother grumbled but obeyed, tucking his head in close against the screen.

Hia sawed his tie back and forth around the collar of his shirt, drawing a flinch from P’Kinn. The tie came off entirely as Porsche wrapped it and rewrapped it round his wrist. He stole a sip of Kinn’s Negroni.

“I’ll go with Vegas,” he said, waving a hand to cut off Kinn’s protest. “We shouldn’t leave Arm and Khun to move everything out of the house on their own. And who knows? They might need backup.”

Porsche left unspoken why they might need backup, but still Kinn dithered, urging Porsche to reconsider until Vegas snapped at him that his brother was in more danger the longer he kept them talking. Draining his rocks glass, Kinn subsided. 

At which point Chay looked over at Kim, whose eyes were skewering him in turn. Chay shook his head in reply. Hauling piles of ammunition out of the house had no appeal for him, particularly when his mind was clogged with glimpses of the coming hours. A cool, quiet penthouse beckoned, the light dimmed by heavy drapes. But out on the balcony…

“I’ll take him,” offered Macau, and Chay started, wondering what he’d missed. When three pairs of suspicious eyes (Kim, Porsche, and Kinn) landed on him, Macau said, “Talking to him will do wonders for my stock portfolio. Right?”

Chay was saved from having to tell him that a black day was coming for his portfolio by a chime from Vegas’s phone. The man looked down at the message, then raised an eyebrow.

“Khun says that the secret-seer is moving around upstairs,” Vegas informed them. “When we pick them up, I’ll make sure our…guest is fed before we leave.”

Porsche’s gulp was nauseated, Kim’s stare was mocking, Macau’s frown perplexed. And P’Kinn was weighted down as he surveyed a chessboard, defeat glinting around his neck, the facets gleaming even in the dim light…

And then Chay jolted in surprise, losing time again, as Porsche hugged him before heading out the door with Vegas. When he looked again for what he’d seen, the future had vanished.

Tankhun clicked the Buy button, outfitting the new penthouse with approximately a million baht’s worth of accessories. Beside him, Arm’s phone dinged with an account alert, triggered by his exorbitant impulse buy(s). The man flicked off the notification, and the purchase went through.

“Tell me why someone like you is serving as my brother’s accountant,” commented Tankhun, because he didn’t understand how Kinn had mismanaged his personnel quite so badly. Surely his brother could see that Arm needed a challenge, something greater than sitting behind a computer and making up excuses to placate their father.

(Tankhun would have to have a word with Kinn about their father. His displeasure was part of the game, the default control mechanism. Though he supposed that none of them would have a father much longer, so the advice was moot.)

Arm looked over at him, an ironic smile playing over his lips. “Once I thought it was fun to know everything about everyone,” he began. “But then one day I was in khun Kinn’s email and read one with the subject line ‘concern,’ and now I know things I can never forget. Ignorance is bliss.”

“’Tis folly to be wise,” finished Tankhun, because there had been a few books of poetry abandoned in the asylum. He’d spent much of his life without email, but he could appreciate the dark tone in Arm’s voice, even as he wondered what his brothers had gotten themselves into.

He risked a sidelong glance at Arm before playing a hunch. “So you had no idea that Vegas’s brother was snooping around in the Theerapanyakul servers this whole time?”

Ah, he’d gotten a reaction. The faint smile dropped from Arm’s mouth. “I found it preferable not to speculate,” said the man, with dignity. “And khun Kinn never asked, so I did not find it necessary to tell him.”

Fair enough, Tankhun thought, as the confirmation email arrived. The two of them had spent the past hour waiting for Vegas to arrive, time that Arm had used to double-check his access to the cameras in the Theerapanyakul compound. Tankhun had outfitted the new penthouse with only the finest furniture from whatever online-shopping store he'd found. (For security reasons, it was being delivered to a storage facility in the next neighborhood, of course.) Kinn could afford to foot the bill—he’d peeked into his brother’s accounts.

A thump came from a couple floors above them. The secret-seer was definitely awake.

“Where’s Vegas?” Tankhun asked, and a few clicks later, Arm had the answer.

“Top of the street,” the man told him, and soon they heard the roar of Kinn’s Escalade, which Vegas had taken early in the morning as he’d raced out of the house to join Kim in scouring the city for weapons to use in the coming coup.

(Tankhun still had the gun that his cousin had given him, though he wasn’t sure that he could bring himself to pull the trigger. Still, like any Theerapanyakul, the weapon was prudently strapped into a holster he wore against his back.)

Vegas entered the house first, followed by the fire-bringer, a surprise. Just in time, though, for another thump came from upstairs, sounding like someone had tripped and fallen heavily.

His cousin had swooped his sunglasses on top of his head upon entering the dim house, but when he heard the secret-seer, he settled them back over his eyes. This far across the room, the polarization on the blue shades would serve nicely. Tankhun nodded his approval.

“I’ll have a word with our guest and then we’ll head out,” Vegas told him.

“Looking forward to it,” said Tankhun, as Arm packed away his laptop, though he kept his camera exploit open on his phone. Tankhun peered over the man’s shoulder. No sign of Kinn or Kim on the compound’s cameras yet.

Vegas headed up the stairs, leaving Kinn’s fire-bringer wringing his hands, in search of something to do, presumably avoiding Tankhun’s shovel talk, which he’d been practicing for a few days now, though the news that Porsche had been targeted by their father had tempered his plans. They’d both been devoured to preserve the Theerapanyakul legacy, both spent over a decade suffering because of what their father had done.

Still… “We saved the heaviest boxes for someone else to lift,” Tankhun told Porsche, who grimaced.

“About that, phi,” Porsche admitted. “There’s something you should know.” He looked at Arm. “You already know, don’t you?”

Tankhun’s head swung to Arm, who didn’t deny it. “You checked into physical therapy under your real name,” the man told him, ducking his head. “Their office uses digital records.”

Pete had only just managed to sneak back into the attic he’d been locked in when he heard a quiet knock at the door. He fumbled at the cuffs he’d broken the night before, struggling to rework them into something that would convince them that he’d never gotten free, that he hadn’t betrayed them to Korn—

khun Korn, he corrected himself.

The knock sounded again. “Pete?” —it was Vegas. “I’m coming in.”

“That’s fine,” Pete called back, finally getting the mangled lock on the cuffs to click into place. He pushed his sweaty hair from his eyes, half-falling into the bedroll that Vegas and the fire-bringer had laid out for him yesterday.

He told himself that their kindness meant nothing. That if Pete were truly the captive he pretended to be, he would have been hungry by now. That he owed them nothing, that owing them nothing would ease what he had to do. Pete’s stomach growled at him, though he’d drunk a protein shake on his way out of the Theerapanyakul compound.

“Hi,” Pete said, trying to keep the misery from twining into his voice as Vegas pushed the door open. Today khun Korn’s nephew wore blue-tinted sunglasses that obscured his eyes. At last he’d learned to keep secrets, though it was too late for him. For all of them.

Vegas’s eyes might be lost in azure mirrors, but his mouth crooked up as he looked down at Pete. Sensing his amusement, Pete tried to prop himself up in the folds of the bedroll.

“You’re back,” Vegas said, then amended. “I checked in on you last night, but you were sleeping. How’s the bedroll working out? I know it isn’t as comfortable as the bed.”

How could he make jokes when the trap was about to spring shut around them? The unconcern of all of them—the hope that Pete had nurtured, like a rare flower, that they could win. That they could set him free. He fingered the tracking dot in his pocket, forcing a wavering smile onto his face in response to Vegas’s teasing.

“Nothing will ever be comfortable as that bed,” Pete remarked. “You’ve ruined me for all others.”

The words made Vegas’s crooked smile grow till it threatened the symmetry of his face. He advanced on Pete, the slouching stride bringing back the memory of a dream, and Pete pinched himself, wondering if he would wake up back in Vegas’s safehouse, instead of in a house that would no longer be safe—the patriarch’s men were already on their way.

Then Vegas was towering over him, but Pete only had to look up briefly before he was sinking down next to him. The collar pinched as khun Korn’s secrets stuck in his throat.

“The polarization on your sunglasses won’t work up close,” Pete pointed out, though he knew enough of their secrets that one more would hardly make a difference. “Why are you here?” he asked, wanting this farce to be over.

When they’d all fallen into the Theerapanyakul patriarch’s clutches, Pete would go back to the dorm room in the compound that no one wanted to share with him, the room to which he’d return as soon as his duties were finished each day, for fear he’d have to see any of them—have to see the people khun Korn would make them become.

“We’ve got a plan,” said Vegas, unwinding a silky piece of cloth from around his wrist. A garrote, perhaps? “I was hoping for your feedback, actually. Look out the window, will you?”

Obediently, Pete turned his head, wondering if these would be his final moments. They must have decided that leaving him alive was too much of a liability. A laugh formed in his chest—if only they’d made that decision last night—

Then cool silk slid over his eyes, catching him mid-blink, though Pete had enough time to close his lids before Vegas tugged the blindfold tight behind his head.

“You can look back at me now,” was Vegas’s next comment, his voice as smooth as the silk over Pete’s eyes. Pete swiveled around, off-balance even though he was sitting down. The chains of his (somewhat hastily mended) cuffs rattled as he extended his hands, seeking—

Vegas’s hands met his. Sweaty palm on top of sweaty palm; he was not as unaffected as he pretended to be. One of his fingers swooped alongside Pete’s index finger, left then right, as if testing how they’d eventually intertwine. Pete squeezed his hand, putting a stop to the questioning touch.

“Vegas,” he breathed, trying to find away around the sigils on the collar, some way to convey the truth.  

A snicker from above him. “You have to ask for what you want,” was the condescending reply, and Pete tried to draw back, but Vegas held him fast.

He opened his mouth, though his power got the better of him, forcing the truth to his lips, where it was muzzled by the collar he wore. “I want you to kill him,” Pete said.

This close, he could hear Vegas’s breath, the warmth tickling across his face. Pete turned his head, struggling to place the other man, even though Vegas had his hands.

“I assume you are referring to my uncle,” came Vegas’s voice, somewhere to his left, and Pete nodded. Vegas went on, “You were very helpful, you know, when you told me that the best way to kill him is to come straight at him. No secrets, no hidden plots. We’ve already got a plan in motion. After this, I’m going to head out for a few hours, and when I come back you’ll be free.”

Then at least Vegas would be out of the house when khun Korn’s men came. He would have a little more time to run before the Theerapanyakul patriarch found him. And he would find him. Pete kept his hands relaxed as he thought about the tracking dot in his pocket.

Khun Korn would expect him to ask. He would be punished for not learning everything he could, even though he’d been the one who betrayed all of them. Pete licked his lips as he felt Vegas shift beside him. And then a warm finger rested on his mouth, still tacky from his tongue.

“So, I’m killing my uncle,” Vegas noted. “Is that all you want me to do for you?”  

Untruth, not quite a lie. Vegas wouldn’t be killing khun Korn. But he couldn’t say that, couldn’t say how he knew their plan would fail.

“Kiss me,” Pete said instead. And, “Please.”

Truth. He used the truth to mask what he could not say, and he choked on the words as Vegas withdrew his hand from Pete’s, as he felt the heat of him, his palms still sweaty against his face.

Then Vegas laughed and kissed him.

Pete let him deepen the kiss, opening his mouth, ignoring the want growing inside him, tangling his insides. Like some varieties of honeysuckle, desire was syrupy sweet, clinging, alluring—and invasive. It choked out the other plants, exposed birds’ nests, agent of destruction—and yet it was beautiful, which was why it was allowed to proliferate.

Vegas bore him downward into the bedroll, one hand coming behind his head to break the fall, the other at his shoulder, pressing him into the covers, his mouth returning to Pete’s lips, and then his jaw, and then his earlobe, the motion threatening to drag Pete under.

But while he was occupied—

Pete eased the tracking dot out of his clothing, keeping it in his fist as he ghosted his unchained hand down Vegas’s side, searching for a pocket. Vegas hummed above him, in what might have been pleasure but was more likely amusement at his lack of experience. He let Vegas bite down on his lower lip, hard enough that the sting gave way to the ache of an oncoming bruise. The pain inhabited him, making his head roll back on the pillow, threatening to dislodge the blindfold, until Vegas tightened the knot.

And in that moment, Pete slipped the tracking dot into Vegas’s pocket.

Or perhaps he hadn’t. The blindfold prevented him from knowing for sure, gave him hope, a blossom more insidious than honeysuckle.

“Is there anything you want to tell me?” Vegas whispered in Pete’s ear, making him shiver, albeit a shiver stopped by his lips. “You can pretend you’re dreaming. This—” and his fingers brushed against the collar. “This doesn’t have to have power over you.”

Pete wanted, would give anything to return to that moment on the terrace, the illusion of freedom. But if Vegas used his power now, he’d still be in the house when khun Korn’s men came. So Pete stayed silent, letting Vegas kiss him a final time. He pulled away, and Pete missed the warmth of his body.

“Next time I see you,” came Vegas’s promise from above him, before his footsteps padded across the room. The door shut.  

A few shuddering breaths later, and then Pete pulled off the blindfold—actually a tie—squinting in the dim light of the attic. He pawed in the sheets of his bedroll, but couldn’t find the tracker. Disappointment, then, that he’d successfully planted the device. But at least doing so would give Vegas a few hours’ head start.

And in the meantime…Pete curled up in the bedroll, his ear close to the floor, listening for the occupant in the room below his.

The fire-bringer.

Kinn had his seatbelt unbuckled before Yok could put the car in park or push the button to kill the engine. Beside him, Kim extended a hand for his phone; Kinn handed over the device. They weren’t going to bring their phones inside—compromised communications would risk exposure for the others. Instead, the phones disappeared into Yok’s blazer.

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep them safe for you,” the bodyguard assassin? woman remarked, smoothing her hair into a regulation ponytail. She swung herself out of the car, somehow arranging her face into an expression of complaisance by the time she opened the driver’s side rear door of Kim’s car.

“We’ll be done in thirty minutes,” Kim told her, raising his voice so that the eavesdroppers could hear them.

What Kim meant was that if they weren’t done in thirty minutes, Yok should call for backup. If they failed, Vegas was next.

“Of course, khun Kim,” Yok replied, ducking her head too late to conceal the gleam in her eyes.

Another bodyguard—one of his father’s men, not to be trusted—sprang to open Kinn’s door. He jerked his head in an acknowledgement before stepping onto the sidewalk outside the compound. Behind him, Yok floored the accelerator, squalling the tires as she drove away.

“Where did you find her?” he found himself asking as Kim came up behind him.

His brother stared at their father’s bodyguard until the man bowed and retreated into the sliding glass front doors of the compound.

“You know how Vegas kept tabs on your rejected recruits so he could hire them into the minor family?” Kim asked, and Kinn shrugged, though he wasn’t surprised. Kim continued. “It’s a good idea. People with grudges are highly motivated. And loyal.”

Kinn couldn’t disagree. Grudges had caused what was about to happen. What his father had done to Tankhun, to Porsche and Chay. Even to his cousin, though Kinn suspected that Vegas didn’t need revenge as a motive to try to kill his father. He wished it didn’t have to come to killing. He thought of Porsche’s words.

“You don’t have to kill him for me,” his fire-bringer had offered, giving him a way out.

Beside him, Kim took the lead, striding toward the front doors, which slid open before him. The AC washed over him, and Kinn shivered, too used to running warm. Still, he discreetly held his arms away from his body, letting the cool air dry his sweat-soaked suit. Kim, in ripped jeans and a t-shirt, didn’t have the same problem.

They came face to face with the security checkpoint in the compound’s lobby. After the minor family’s takeover attempt last year, they had hardened the building. Everyone went through security screening. Armed as they were, security screening would have posed a threat for both of them, if they hadn’t been the patriarch’s sons.

And standing behind the security checkpoint was Chan.

“Khun Kinn, khun Kim,” said his father’s head bodyguard, his face giving nothing away.

Chan was supposed to be roaming the countryside, looking for Tankhun and Vegas. They had counted on his absence—the lack of leadership would make the bodyguards left in the compound more likely to take direction, more amenable to the coup they were about to execute. His gun grew heavier on his hip.

“Chan,” Kinn replied, keeping his expression as neutral as the bodyguard’s.

Kim side-eyed him, then tossed his head, drawing attention to himself. “Has he talked yet?” his brother asked, vaulting over the checkpoint and flipping off the security camera trained on them as he did. “The Jao Por sent men to kidnap me. I want to know who’s responsible.”

His suit wouldn’t allow him to jump over the checkpoint, so Kinn adopted a dignified step around the equipment, ignoring the affronted bodyguards and the sign that said that everyone had to go through security screening.

“He hasn’t said anything,” Chan told his brother. “But he’s in one of the cells downstairs, in case you want to conduct your own investigation.”

Ah, the basement. Every mafia family had one, a motley collection of cells and interrogation rooms. Kinn hadn’t been back to his family’s since he’d been held in the Costa compound, forced to kneel at Stefano’s feet, Ettore beating his face in. The Theerapanyakul basement held just as much pain, steeped into the concrete from the years of blood spilled there.

“Thank you, Chan,” he managed to say. “We’ll find our own way down.”

The bodyguard didn’t need to see them murder the last member of the Jao Por who knew about Porsche and Chay. After they’d finished off the captain, they’d head for the wing that housed the guards’ dormitories and gather their forces. Before the confrontation Kinn was dreading.

“You don’t have to kill him for me,” Porsche had said.

But his father had to die, nonetheless. More blood upon the Theerapanyakul legacy. Kinn wondered how he could ask Porsche to share that legacy with him. How would he fare, protector and healer as he was, in a world measured by violence? Even after Kinn took over the country for him, he couldn’t imagine Porsche would stay.

“You okay?” Kim asked him, flipping off another security camera that watched them as they took the stairs.

“No,” Kinn replied, remembering the look on Porsche’s face after he’d killed the Costas, after he’d shot the Jao Por bodyguard the day before. Fear, yes, distilled in sorrow, riddled with disgust. Porsche was not a killer. He shouldn’t have to be with one. “I don’t want to be the patriarch,” Kinn concluded.

“Then don’t be,” was Kim’s response. “Someone else will come along. Probably a lot of someones. We don’t have to stick around for it.”

He was referring to the inevitable power struggle if Kinn killed his father but didn’t take his place. The other mafia families would close in on the compound, their people would be captured, interrogated, murdered. The scrupulous families would spare the noncombatants; the unscrupulous ones would not. And in the meantime, their enemies would keep coming after them until they succeeded. There was no retiring from the mafia.

“You’re willing to let that happen?” Kinn asked, and Kim dragged his long hair across his face. He wasn’t quick enough, though. Kinn saw that he had lied.

“I’ll do it, if you won’t,” his brother said, the words strangled. Because the work would kill him, if Kinn were cruel enough to agree.  

The AC struggled to keep up as they descended to the lowest level of the compound. Their prisoners weren’t alive long enough to need it. Kinn took off his blazer, draping the wool over his arm, concealing the gun in his hand. They came to the door between the stairs and the basement—and the guard in front of it.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Kinn told his brother. To the guard at the door, he ordered, “Leave us.”

The man's countenance signaled refusal as he opened the door to the basement. “I’m supposed to remain on duty, khun Kinn.”

“Fair enough,” Kinn acknowledged, extending his hand for the guard to shake. Perplexed, the man stared down at the appendage, a distraction from what was about to happen—

Kim leapt forward, putting the man in a chokehold, his neck in the crook of his arm, Kim’s hand around his mouth. His brother winced as the guard managed to bite him before the lack of oxygen caught up with him. They both counted off the seconds, even after he went limp, making sure the man was out.

Kinn glanced up at the ceiling as Kim let the guard fall. No cameras here.

Kim surveyed the damage. “Didn’t break the skin,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The basement door creaked open, the draft making them both cough. The place smelled like blood, even though Arm had said that the captain should be the only occupant. Too much blood for a living person. Kinn switched his blazer to his other arm, carrying the gun openly now.

Kim had his gun out as well, holding the weapon one-handed as he flipped on the lights.

The familiar sight of holding cells greeted him, the various torture accoutrements hanging in neat, hardly-used rows on the walls. Torture didn’t work, so the sight was meant to inspire fear instead. The real weapons were stored in the locked cabinets behind the weapons: vials of truth serum and cases of syringes.

All the doors were open save one. Though Kinn hardly needed the indicator; there was a trail of blood snaking beneath the closed door, making its slow way to one of the drains in the floor.

“Fuck,” said Kim. Kinn agreed with him, taking the keys down from their spot on the wall. That amount of blood spoke to a vendetta. One of their people must have taken a personal interest in the Jao Por captain. Which meant that someone would be keeping tabs on them. They would have to make this fast.

Kinn unlocked the door to the holding cell, swinging it open to reveal the source of blood—

but there was no body.

He heard the scuffle behind him too late to do more than turn his head. He caught a glimpse of Chan, gun raised, before Kim leaped in front of him. There was no gunshot, no muzzle flash, but his brother reeled back all the same, clawing at his throat, pulling out the tranq dart embedded there. Not fast enough, Kinn knew.

Kinn tried to aim, but his brother stayed in front of him, his movements growing disjointed as the tranquilizer took effect. He struggled to get his gun out from behind his back. Chan fired a second time, and the combined darts were too much for Kim to overcome.

His brother fell backward, into him. Kinn wrapped an arm around him as he pulled out the tranq, letting the dart clink onto the concrete floor. His other arm came up for his first clear shot at his father’s bodyguard.   

“One more dart and he overdoses,” Chan observed before he could fire, his weapon fixed on the two puncture marks in Kim’s neck. “Drop your gun, khun Kinn.”

Kinn’s backup was several floors above him and wouldn’t yet know he was in danger. Kim was a deadweight on his arm, his head lolling to the side. Hemmed in by the sides of the holding cell, he was at a tactical disadvantage. All Chan would have to do is keep firing tranqs until they both dropped.

His father had left Tankhun in an asylum for years. He wouldn’t care if Kim overdosed on tranquilizers.

Thinking of the chess games he’d lost against his father over the years, Kinn clicked the safety on his gun and let the weapon fall to the ground. When Chan tilted his chin in a silent demand, he disarmed his brother as well, kicking both weapons across the floor, the movement sending micro-spatters of blood across the concrete.

“What does my father want?” Kinn asked, as Chan came forward. He took a step back, dragging his brother with him, deeper into the cell.

“Loyalty,” returned the bodyguard, kicking their weapons further away.

Like two pawns swept off the board. Kinn let the door slam shut between them, listening until he heard Chan’s footsteps retreat, the basement door close.

He got them both out of the path of the blood draining out of the cell, pillowing his blazer under Kim’s head. Then Kinn took a seat beside his brother, leaning back against the concrete wall. If they failed, Vegas was next. Kinn closed his eyes.

Porsche shoved his filthy bodyguard suit into the laundry hamper (sans tie, which had gone missing sometime between the bar and arriving back at the house). He went for jeans and a white t-shirt for his change of clothing, though even those simple clothes felt strange against his skin. A Theerapanyakul’s doing, he supposed.

A reflexive flip of his phone revealed no update from Kinn. They had agreed that the two brothers would stay radio silent until they were done at the Theerapanyakul compound. But they should have checked in by now. Porsche turned up the volume on the ringer and tossed the phone on the bed before proceeding to pack.

In only the few days since they’d arrived, Kinn had filled their closet with a staggering amount of clothes. Porsche’s calloused hands caught against the smooth cotton of the shirts, the rough cotton of the jeans. And then the unfamiliar fabrics of the dress clothes.

Clothes for going out and doing things. With people.

Which Porsche had done before. But he’d learned long ago that friends would be used against him—friends would get hurt because of him. Better to drift along, unattached. What Kinn was suggesting, staying by Kinn’s side…

As unfamiliar as the clothing, the life Kinn had sketched for them. Taking over the city, the country. Freeing magic-users. Disappearing their captors, though Porsche didn’t want to think about what that part would require. A new regime. Porsche wasn’t much for history, but he didn’t think a magic-user had ever worked alongside any type of ruler, if Kinn could be considered a ruler.

Except—Kinn had mentioned some prince who’d tried to kill his father over a fire-bringer. Porsche went for his phone, holding his shoulders still against the shiver that threatened them. A few keywords later, and Porsche found the legend.

The name of the fire-bringer had been lost to history (unsurprising, though Porsche still snorted), so the facts centered around Prince Suradej, who’d run away with the man he loved. Porsche’s gaze strayed to the half-full bag he’d begun packing, before going back to his phone, scrolling past the trite lines about the pair’s fairy tale love. That part he knew.

Porsche wanted to know how they’d caught the fire-bringer. Perhaps the poor man had been like him, had cared too much about the troops the prince had summoned to their aid. Perhaps he, too, felt cold pinch his heart when he killed. Though if history had neglected to give the fire-bringer a name, Porsche doubted he would find the man’s feelings on a website called Unlocking the Secrets of the Phoenix, A Mystery Spanning Five Centuries.

Certainly more than five centuries had passed, Porsche thought, scrolling through the speculative paragraphs till he found an acknowledgement that the research project had been sponsored through a grant from a charitable foundation. A Theerapanyakul’s doing, he supposed.

What was known: that in the final battle, Suradej and the fire-bringer had been separated in the fighting. The prince had been captured by a ring of his father’s fighters, but rather than let himself be used to draw out his lover—

He knew what happened next. Noble sacrifice.

The look on Kinn’s face that day at the Costa compound, his lips compressed, his eyes opaque. The visage of sacrifice. Porsche couldn’t unsee the ruin the Costa men had made of his face, the way he’d harnessed each chip of bone around Kinn’s eye and soldered them into place with power.

That story had already been told. Porsche skimmed through the remainder of the webpage, as the author noted that most accounts of the battle were biased, that history was written by the victors. Victors who had murdered the prince and taken advantage of the fire-bringer’s grief to collar him. Porsche tossed his phone back on the bed before he could melt the plastic (again).

Restless, he went back to the closet, pulling down some of the dress clothes Kinn had bought him. When he took his place at Kinn’s side, he should probably look the part, if only because inspiring fear in Kinn’s enemies might dissuade them from going after him.

Because Kinn’s enemies would come after him. The annals of history couldn’t be ignored.

The ceiling creaked above him. Porsche heard Vegas’s steps going down the stairs, the murmur of voices from Vegas and Tankhun from the living room below, and distantly, the slam of a car door. It was time to go.

Though by now he’d forced so many of the clothes Kinn had bought him into the bag that the zipper wouldn’t close. Porsche solved the problem through judicious application of heat, melting the strips of cheap plastic and metal together, wrinkling his nose at the smell. All the more reason not to delay his departure.

Still he waited till his hands had cooled before retrieving his phone from the covers. No update from Kinn. As Porsche locked the screen, a sunbeam flashed across the device, making a sun-dapple wink into existence on the ceiling. Porsche swung his head back to smile at the bright spot, the edges muddled, blue-green to one side, hazy-red on the other.

The bright spot and its blue-green companion disappeared when he turned the phone over in his hand. The hazy-red remained; caused by some other reflective surface in the room. Porsche looked around for its source, found it in a familiar red diamond necklace on the dresser. The bag of clothing dropped by his feet; he went to investigate.

The last time he’d seen his necklace had been after the Jao Por guard had attacked him in the hallway, tearing the chain from his neck. Porsche picked up the necklace, letting the chain sift through his fingers. The bent prongs of the setting had been straightened, the debris left on the stone cleaned away, leaving only the lines of what Kinn had called baguette-cut, the facets so sharp they shone silver, casting variegated patterns on the wall and ceiling.

A Theerapanyakul’s doing, he supposed.

Porsche flipped his phone one last time. No update from Kinn, so he set the device down on the dresser. He fumbled with the clasp, getting the tiny lever under his fingernail so he could close the chain around his neck.  

The diamond thunked into place over his chest. Silver took over his vision.

Sigils crawled around him, constricting his power. Porsche gasped for air but could only take sips of breath around the ice-stakes lodged in his throat, in his lungs. He managed to get ahold of the necklace, but the metal burned his hands—frostnip, first, his fingers turning bright red, then fading to gray as the burn deepened.

He couldn’t get the necklace off. Porsche went for the diamond instead, but he found no purchase against its long facets, its impenetrable surface. All the while sigils beat against his conscious, screaming submit. Porsche’s teeth creaked as he clenched his jaw, one fingernail digging into the burns on his skin, the pain welcome counterpoint. He bore down on the diamond, feeling for the bonds between the elements, willing them to come apart for him.

Sublimation: the temperature at which a solid vaporized.   

The fire was orange at first, but that wasn’t hot enough. White fire failed, too, and then the blue-tipped flames were defeated. At last Porsche turned to star-fire, but even the stars weren’t enough, though their heat had been enough to create the world. The world that had given him power, had given him pain, had given him love.

The sigils were molten around him. Porsche fell from the stars, thinking of Kinn, of fire that needed earth—

And then it was over. Porsche found himself on his knees, carpet blackened beneath him, the stench of burned nylon lingering in the air. He felt for the necklace, the metal freezing on his overheated skin. His fingers came away black with ash.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” came Pete’s voice, and Porsche scuttled around, his gaze starting at the man’s feet and raising to his shoulders, hunched with misery, ornamented by a collar of leather and metal.

He dropped his eyes before he could meet the secret-seer’s.

“What are you going to do to me?” he asked instead.

Pete was silent for a moment, but Porsche wiped his ashy fingers on his jeans as he waited.

“My orders are to take you to khun Korn,” said Pete at last.

Chapter Text

Pete looked down at the fire-bringer. Porsche wiped ashy fingers on his jeans his eyes on the burned carpet. The whole room looked like a warzone; smoke hung heavy in the air. And yet the collar was still around his neck. All his power meant nothing against the sigils which ruled them all.

What Pete had meant to say: your body and mind are no longer your own; from now on your owner will control how you use your power, on whom, when, to what extent. And: the more you struggle, the more you’ll be hurt.

All truths, hardly secrets, so Pete ended up saying, “My orders are to take you to khun Korn,” He looked away, trying to give Porsche privacy, a few moments to collect himself. Pete didn’t need to learn his secrets anymore. Khun Korn had only to ask.

“What happens now?” Porsche questioned, his voice catching. He coughed, his hand going to the gem around his neck.

“Khun Korn’s men will be here soon to take us back to the compound. After that, khun Korn will decide what to do with you,” Pete replied, the man’s flinch burning into his chest. He turned his back on Porsche, unable to bear the way he was looking away from him, the way that everyone looked away from him—even Vegas wore sunglasses rather than risk his power. “I’m sorry,” Pete said again.

He heard the bedsprings squeak as Porsche used the mattress to lever himself to his feet. Pete wiped the sweat from his forehead. The room was stifling, likely because the fire-bringer had exhausted himself against the collar. Pete had fought, as well, when he was taken, though for him the struggle had been physical—his power wasn’t one that could be used as a weapon. He hadn’t thought that secrets could be weapons until khun Korn had taken him.

“He has Kinn and Kim, doesn’t he?” Porsche asked.

“Yes,” Pete acknowledged.

By now khun Korn would have both his sons locked away, would be ordering an attack on their bodyguards. Next he’d send Chan after Vegas and Tankhun. At least, Pete thought he’d send Chan—not himself. Pete didn’t want to see the betrayal on Vegas’s face when the trap sprang shut.

“Let’s go,” he told the fire-bringer, holding the door open so Porsche could leave before him. The red diamond glinted around the man’s throat.

The patriarch had had years to find the sigils that would bind a fire-bringer. There was some benefit in that—that he hadn’t yet found a way to take a dreamwalker as well. Vegas still had time to find the tracker Pete had planted on him, time to run—

Vegas met them halfway up the stairs.

“Porsche, we have to go. Korn’s men will be here soon,” he began, then stopped when he saw Pete over the fire-bringer’s shoulder. “Fuck,” said Vegas, his sunglasses coming back down over his eyes. “Pete, what are you doing here?”

“Why are you still here?” Pete whispered, a question for a question, as he heard muted voices from the living room downstairs. Vegas and Tankhun hadn’t left yet. Pete shook his head. They didn’t have time for this. “You need to leave, now,” he told Vegas.

“Working on it,” Vegas replied, looking from Porsche up into Pete’s face, then back at Porsche. His sunglassed-gaze lowered to the fire-bringer’s neck. He blew out a breath.

Then—“Arm,” Vegas called down the stairs. “Get Khun out of here. I’ll catch up later.”

Then there was silence from downstairs, followed by the sound of the front door closing. Vegas brought a hand behind his back, reaching for—

“Don’t,” said Pete, but Vegas’s gun was already pointing up at him. He hadn’t been given a gun for this mission. The only weapon he had was the fire-bringer. “Drop your gun,” he ordered, descending the stairs so that Porsche was shielding him.

“You don’t have to do this,” came Vegas’s voice from in front of Porsche. “You can come with us, Pete. I’ll find a way to free you.”

Did he not understand that there was no way out for any of them? Vegas’s offer rankled; if he kept delaying them, he’d only end up with a collar around his own neck as well. Pete peered around Porsche as, still aiming the gun at him, Vegas began to climb the stairs again.

Pete made a fist and rested it on Porsche’s shoulder. The fire-bringer startled under his touch; seeing his movement, Vegas froze.

Pete meant to say: I’m sorry. Meant to tell Vegas that you can’t save him, you can only save yourself. But telling Vegas how to save himself was a secret he couldn’t reveal, so instead Pete sucked in air and said: “Stop him.”

The fire-bringer’s lungs swelled under his fist; heat exploded through the stairwell. A fire alarm went off in one of the bedrooms. His skin grew too hot to touch. Pete let go of him, flapping his burned fingers to cool them. In vain, for the heat continued to zing up his fingers into his palms, his arms, then moving into his bones. Sweat ran down his spine. Pete heard Vegas’s cry of surprise from in front of Porsche before the smoke stung his eyes too badly for him to see anything at all. Another fire alarm went off downstairs, and even on the insides of his eyelids he saw flames, yellow and orange bleeding into a deep, familiar red.

Pete flailed, his uninjured hand catching against the fire-bringer’s burning skin. He squinted through the blaze and smoke. Blisters formed and popped on his fingers, but he hung on. Porsche’s shoulders fell as he extinguished the flames, and Pete peered around him to see—

nothing.

Pete pushed past Porsche, taking the empty stairs two at a time. He cast a quick look around the living room and kitchen of the house. The alarms still sounded, but there was no sign of Vegas. No sign except—

he turned back to Porsche. “What did you do?” Pete asked, but he didn’t recognize his voice, smoke-tinged, ash-flecked.

There were flecks of ash streaked along the sides of the stairwell, the white drywall grey from what Porsche had done, cut by darker trails of soot. Pete remembered how Vegas had cried out when the fires hit him. His hand moved slowly, came up before his eyes. Even touching Porsche had blistered his skin. Vegas had been the target of those flames.

“You told me to stop him,” said the fire-bringer, pushing past him at the bottom of the stairs. Porsche turned his head just enough so that Pete could see his profile, the necklace glinting along his collarbone. “I stopped him.”  

Fire, again, but not the fire-bringer’s; anger swept through him as Pete looked again at the black tracks of soot smeared across the stairwell. No one could have survived that wall of flames, and he wanted to lash out, grab the man by the hair, pull his head back until Pete could look in his eyes, see what he had done to Vegas.

What he had done to Vegas, he realized, and Pete’s hands fell at his sides. The blistered skin at the tips of his fingers split, and he watched the first line of blood break through. It should hurt, he thought.

He felt nothing.

“Fine,” said Pete, as blood dripped from his ruined fingers to the white carpet. Khun Korn’s men would arrive any time now. He wouldn’t have to see the fire-bringer after that, wouldn’t be reminded of what he had done.

The collar around his throat choked him when he tried to swallow.

A car horn blared behind him, and Tankhun braked, looking in the rearview mirror for the culprit, until he remembered not to brake on the highway. He hit the accelerator and Kinn’s Escalade lurched forward, coming too close to the car in front of them, so Tankhun braked again. Which resulted in more horns. Tankhun hadn’t driven in twelve years. Even twelve years ago, he’d mostly been driven.

“Why don’t you change into the middle lane?” Arm suggested calmly, though he didn’t look up from the computer he’d plugged into the console. “Let the cars pass on both sides.”

Tankhun put on his turn signal, then white-knuckled the steering wheel as he guided the vehicle into the middle lane. As promised, the honking died away, though Tankhun saw some drivers gesticulate at him as they passed. The asylum-induced myopia had messed with his depth perception, revealed yet another thing he couldn’t do.

“Any sign of Vegas or Porsche?” he asked, directing the question toward the Escalade’s console, where Macau and Chay were listening in.

Vegas, who’d gotten him out of the asylum, kept him safe in a city of people looking for both of them, helped him find his brothers—and then yelled down the stairs to get out of Kim’s no-longer-safe house. They all knew what that meant, that the secret-seer had made his move. They’d figured out another facet of his father’s plan.

Macau’s voice came out of the speaker. “Porsche’s phone is still at the house, but we lost signal on hia’s for a few minutes. It’s just coming back now…er, not at the house.” He paused, then asked. “How the hell did he get there?”

Wherever there was. Macau wasn’t forthcoming. Tankhun felt a prickle of foreboding.

“He’s not at the compound, is he?” he asked, apprehensive, wondering what the secret-seer had done. They’d known that Korn would use Pete to betray them, but surely between Vegas and Porsche, he wouldn’t succeed.

“No, not at the compound,” said Macau, and Tankhun and Arm exchanged a look—a good communicator the hacker was not—before a car horn blared behind him and Tankhun realized that he’d let his foot drift off the accelerator.

“Cruise control,” murmured Arm, and Tankhun turned his attention back to the road. He wasn’t sure whether he was out of practice with driving, or whether traffic had gotten worse in the twelve years he’d been locked away. There was a wall of cars on either side of them now. They weren’t leaving the highway anytime soon, not with them trapped in the middle lane.

Inevitably, Macau’s voice rang out over the speakers. “Get off at the next exit and I’ll get you to his location. Let me call hia and have him meet you.”

(Even over the sound of the call connecting and the tapping of his own keyboard, Tankhun heard Arm sigh.)

“Khun Macau, that might not be possible. There’s a lot of traffic,” Arm commented, looking out at the steady stream of cars out his window. “We’ll let you know what exit it ends up being.”

Macau squawked in protest, but suddenly traffic started to thin as car after car got off at the next exit, leaving the exit lane open for Tankhun to change into. He exchanged another look with Arm, not sure how Macau had been able to wrangle that outcome. Technology had advanced so much in twelve years, but perhaps he had hacked the cars’ navigation systems.

Then a new voice came out of the speaker. “They’re taking that exit,” said Chay, and Tankhun understood.

He eased off the highway, taking advantage of whatever future Chay had bought for him. Arm directed him off the main road, and Tankhun saw a gas station up ahead. As he got closer, he wasn’t surprised to see his cousin waiting on the curb, though the streaks of soot on Vegas’s face were new. As was the smell of burned rubber that followed him as he threw himself into the backseat.

“Khun,” Vegas acknowledged, wiping his forehead, flinging his phone aside. (Arm turned up the AC in the Escalade.) “What’s the status on Kinn and Kim?”

“We saw them go into the basement after that prisoner, but they didn’t come out,” Macau replied. “Their men are still in place, though. Yok has them barricaded in the bodyguard dorms.”

Tankhun threw the Escalade into reverse, looking to Arm for direction as he navigated them back out onto the highway. The brief spate of no traffic had disappeared; merging took some time, though no one honked at his latest attempt.

The speaker crackled, and Chay said, “Hia?”

He could hear the grimace in Vegas’s voice as his cousin replied, “Pete went after him with a collar. He’s taking him back to the compound. It's a good thing Pete ordered him to stop me rather than kill me.”

Silence fell over them, both in the car and on the call. If Kinn thought the fire-bringer had been collared, he’d agree to any terms that their father presented. He’d call off the attack on the compound. He might even give up the location of the apartment, though surely he’d know that doing that would only give their father more leverage.

Macau said, “Chay, I think you need to sit down.”

“I don’t care,” came Chay’s voice.

The smell of burned rubber—what had Porsche done to his cousin—got stronger when Vegas leaned forward, pitching his voice to be heard more clearly on the call.

“You’ll care if you kill yourself without helping your brother. Or Kim,” Vegas said. “They went after Porsche because they need to use him as leverage. They’ll use him to control Kinn—or make you turn yourself in.”

Tankhun hadn’t thought about his father’s horrible chess games in years, but the pieces flashed across his mind now; his hands twitched on the steering wheel. His father had both Kinn and Kim. He’d want to round out the collection. Something Vegas had told him before stuck in his head: He’d have taken you out the instant Kinn misbehaved. If his father believed that Tankhun could be used to ensure his brothers’ compliance…

“Let me call my father,” he said, extending a hand into Arm’s side of the car.

“Khun, what the hell are you doing?” Vegas asked, leaning all the way forward, his sooty elbows staining the console.

Arm handed over a phone with the comment, “Khun Korn doesn’t carry a phone, but you’re calling his secretary.”  

Fine. Tankhun waited for the call to connect, though he got voicemail instead. He said, “I’m calling because I have a package for khun Korn. I hear he’s recently acquired a fire-bringer? He might be interested to know that I’ve got the other half of the set. He may not be collared, but he’s very interested in being reunited with his brother. I’ll drop by this evening to gauge khun Korn’s interest in my proposition.”

He jabbed at the button to end the call, veering halfway into another lane during the process.

“Well, that’ll get his attention,” Vegas commented, sinking back against the seat. They’d never be able to get the soot marks out of the leather. “He’ll be too busy trying to get ahead of you that he’ll hold off on whatever he’s got planned for the others. Which gives me time.”

“They’re going to track the phone,” said Arm, unperturbed as ever, so Tankhun lowered the window and threw out the device.  

A chorus of honks sounded on the repopulated highway. Tankhun squinted into the rearview mirror to find the driver behind him speeding up, laying on the horn—oh, a cracked windshield. He swerved out of the lane, garnering more honking as he got away from the irate driver.

“Next time you throw a phone out the window, Khun, try not to break the windshield of the car behind us,” Vegas said, buckling his seatbelt as Tankhun accelerated.

Tankhun turned back to Arm. “Just get us to the apartment,” he pleaded.

Once they’d found that Kim’s house in the suburbs was no longer safe, they’d purchased an apartment just a short distance away from the Theerapanyakul compound. From the apartment’s balcony, they could even catch blurry glimpses of his father’s terrace and backyard. If they used a telescopic sight, those blurry glimpses became clearer. The apartment balcony was a straight shot down into the terrace of the major compound.

A straight shot within the range of a sniper rifle.  

Kim had been kidnapped before; this wasn’t even the fifth time he’d woken up on unfamiliar ground after getting knocked out by his family’s latest enemy. Two captures in one week had to be a new record, though, and he was getting really fucking tired of the taste of blood in his mouth, of the gritty floor beneath him, of trying to remember what had happened.

“How long?” came crawling out between his parted lips, slurred from his thick tongue. Either the tranquilizers were still in his system, or he’d bitten the inside of his mouth when he’d hit the ground. Both.

Somewhere to his right, Kinn said, “More than two hours, less than three. It’s probably better if you don’t wake up yet. Chan was just here to check on us.”

Because their father wanted to come gloat, was his first thought, but Kim reconsidered. Gloating was a tactical mistake. If their father was coming back, then he wanted something from them. Information, perhaps. Or—

“We’re the only ones who can make our people stand down,” Kim realized, making a valiant effort to roll onto his elbow. He failed, but he still caught Kinn’s nod.

“He doesn’t want a bloodbath,” said Kinn. “Which is what he’ll get if he keeps us in here much longer.”

None of them wanted a bloodbath. Another Theerapanyakul civil war would make them easy pickings for the other mafia families in town; they wouldn’t even last a week before they would have to face another attempt. Their bargaining chip was the contingent of bodyguards who would have barricaded themselves in the dormitories by now, waiting to strike whenever they got word from Kinn or Kim. Though they had to get out of the cell first if they wanted to get them word.  

Their father wouldn’t be coming down to negotiate unless he’d found a bargaining chip of his own.

Kim concentrated on lifting his hand, arranging straggles of his unwashed hair over his face. His brother was right; better that he pretend to be asleep until he found out what their father wanted. His hand shook as he lowered it back to his side. Tranquilizers were the worst.

The rest of them would know by now that something had happened, when neither of them had texted with an update, when the cameras showed that the two of them had gone into the basement and not come out. Chay would know. Chay would do…something when he found out, but Kim’s head buzzed when he tried to think of what.  

Heart attack to one of his father’s guards, a plane entering the no-fly zone above the compound, a politician threatening to crush the city’s mafia players…none of them seemed like Chay’s move. Kim remembered how the fore-bringer had gotten him into the Costa compound that first time.

Vibrations came toward them, and Kim rolled his neck toward the door of the cell, only to have Kinn shake his head warningly at him. His brother rose to his feet, facing the door, peering through the bars. Kinn flashed four fingers at him, twice. Eight guards, then. Even if they could overpower their father and Chan—and no one could overpower Chan—they wouldn’t be able to fight their way past eight guards.

Chay would know how to defeat eight guards. All Kim had to do was watch for some strange coincidence, some subtle sign…

The cell door creaked open, with Chan entering first. The bodyguard murmured khun Kinn to Kinn and bowed in an absurd performance of deference before turning to where Kim lay on the floor. Kim curtailed his breathing, kept his body loose, his skin prickling under the man’s gaze.

Presumably satisfied, Chan stepped out of the cell and their father stepped in.

Kim saw the tips of his father’s shoes twitch in his direction. Then his father said, “Kim’s still unconscious?”

The concerned father act was a fucking riot, considering who had given the order to shoot two tranq darts into his neck, thought Kim, conveniently forgetting that he’d been the one who had taken the first dart for Kinn. He squinted around the tangles of hair over his eyes. Their father looked calm as ever, in contrast with Kinn, whose face was drawn, exhausted.

“Father,” said Kinn, stepping closer to the patriarch, raising his hands in the air to show that he meant no harm. “Kim should be in the clinic, not in this cell. Please, tell me what I can do to alleviate your suspicions—I can remain here while he receives medical attention if you prefer—”

He stopped talking, his gaze fixed over their father’s shoulder.

“Porsche,” said Kinn.

The fire-bringer stepped forward, standing next to the patriarch. Porsche’s hands were loose at his sides, his expression hollow as he took in the cell, Kinn’s hands up in surrender, Kim presumably unconscious on the floor.

Kim blinked, trying to understand. By now the others would have known that he and Kinn had been captured. He was expecting Chay’s interference, or perhaps some sort of electronics failure from their hackers. Hell, Kim would even be grateful for Vegas’s help. But Porsche had come instead.

Perhaps he’d offered himself as collateral for their freedom, perhaps that was the reason for the sadness in his face, the way he seemed to shrink back from Kinn’s regard.

Until his father said, “You can go to him, Porsche,” and Porsche walked into Kinn’s outstretched arms.

Kinn’s right hand curved around Porsche’s back, while his left hand found the red diamond that twinkled at Porsche’s throat.

“No,” Kinn breathed, making a fist around the necklace, and then Kim knew.

He closed his eyes, assaulted by the memories of the Jao Por leader fastening the collar around Chay's neck, Chay's chest heaving up and down, Chay falling...

When Kim next looked, Kinn had shuffled the fire-bringer behind him, face-to-face with their father once more. That wasn’t where Kim would have chosen to put a collared magic-user, particularly one who could immolate them all, but there was no reasoning with the devastation in his brother’s face, his clenched fists.

Kim twitched his foot first as he stopped pretending to be unconscious, then the tips of his fingers. It was no trouble to make a small, helpless noise in the back of his throat, then scrabble beneath him to find purchase against the dirty floor (though Kinn had gotten him out of the blood trail that the cell’s last occupant had left behind). He shook his hair back and found himself on the receiving end of a glance from Porsche. Kinn seemed to register the man’s movement, looking over his shoulder, but Porsche was already facing forward once more.

“What do you want?” Kinn demanded.

His father spared Kim a look, but returned his attention to Kinn. “Your men have barricaded themselves in the dormitory wing,” said the patriarch. “Call them out.”

Kim forced a humorless laugh from his lungs as he rolled onto his side. His brother clocked the noise, though his attention stayed focused on their father. The laugh had made Kim’s opinion clear; no bargaining chip was worth giving up their men.

Kinn asked, “What are you offering in return?”

Their father pointed over Kinn’s shoulder, at the fire-bringer hemmed in by Kinn’s arms. “You can have what you want, Kinn. You can keep him,” he suggested.

Tense-inhale at that, but Kinn’s expression didn’t change. “Take off the collar and then we’ll talk,” he said instead, a counteroffer they all knew their father wouldn’t take.

Indeed, his father shook his head. “I told you before that magic-users are a risk unless they can be controlled,” he noted. “They can be made to hurt you.”

Which meant that the people controlling them were the risk, not the magic-users themselves, though Kim forbore to state the fact. He thought of Chay, casually listing the various timelines faced by their next-door neighbor, of Porsche, who’d rather heal than hurt. The fire-bringer wouldn’t have a choice, now. His father would only ever see the killer he could be.

“I don’t care,” Kinn shot back at their father. “He can do whatever he wants to me.”

Stalemate. Until his father’s eyes flicked in Kim’s direction. Korn said, “They can hurt the people you care about,” and his meaning was clear when Porsche’s head swiveled towards him.

“Porsche,” said his brother, whirling around to intercept him as Kim took in a breath. “Porsche, I want you to fight the collar. Can you do that for me, Porsche?”

For a moment, Kinn’s words seemed to work. The fire-bringer paused, lips parted as he looked at his brother’s desperate face, before his father cleared his throat. Then Kinn was bound in ropes of fire, trapping his arms against his body. His brother overbalanced and dropped to one knee, too close to their father’s feet.

“Porsche,” Kinn managed one last time, his flame-bound hands struggling to reach out as Porsche stepped away from both father and son. He faced Kim for the first time since he’d walked into the cell.  

He winked.

Well fuck, thought Kim, as he staggered to his feet, blood rushing from his head into his feet; he swayed sideways, and Porsche jerked forward as if to catch him before realizing that he couldn’t give the game away now, not with Chan and the other bodyguards hovering outside the open door. At his sudden movement, a faint line appeared between Kinn’s brows.

Kim righted himself, painting defiance on his face, speaking to his father instead of to the fire-bringer. “Do you know what I’ve spent the last year doing, father?” he asked, drawing attention to himself. “Assembling an arsenal. Buying bodyguards. Figuring out how to take over this damn family. It cost a hundred thousand baht. You spent that much to collar some magic-user who doesn’t even look threatening. I made the better investment.”

At his words, Porsche looked back at his father, who nodded, and then the fireball descended on him. Kim cried out involuntarily until he realized that he was wrapped in pleasant warmth, though he wondered how the fire-bringer had conjured the smell of burning flesh, until he saw smoke rising from the dried blood on the floor. Smart of him.

The fire-bringer had even managed to clear out the remnants of the tranq darts slowing his thoughts, making his movements clumsy. His power was strong enough that when the first round of flames faded away, Kim was able to laugh again, buy them time.

“We all know that you won’t kill me,” he told his father.

Still at the man’s feet, Kinn got a hand free of the fire that bound him. “You’ve made your point, father,” he temporized, swallowing as he looked away from Porsche. “But you can see that the men in the dormitory wing are the only leverage we have. Let Kim go, and I’ll send them home.”

Korn took his time, considering the offer, as Kim let his harsh breaths become smooth again. Still facing away from his father, Porsche bit his lip, a tiny fire flickering in his cupped palms. He looked the question at Kim—

who answered with a tiny shake of his head. The fire-bringer would have to kill them all, his father, Chan, all eight of the bodyguards outside if they were to escape that way. Even then, someone would sound an alarm; they’d have to kill their way through the compound to get to the men in the dorms.

Chan tapped at the doorframe, though he made no move to step inside the cell. “Khun Korn, there’s been a development,” he said, holding out a cell phone, which Kim’s father took, holding the device to his ear.

Kim didn’t breathe, straining to hear, though this far away, hearing would be impossible. From the look on his brother’s face, even Kinn, a few steps closer, hadn’t succeeded in learning what type of development could make Chan interrupt.

His father held out the phone for Chan to take. “I see,” said the patriarch. He looked down at Kinn, still struggling against the ropes Porsche had used. Kim hoped his father wouldn’t notice that there were no burns on Kinn’s skin. Or his, he realized.

“We’ll continue this conversation,” their father promised, then followed Chan out of the cell. The door slammed shut—Kim frowned—and the three of them continued to hold their breath as the footsteps of the patriarch and his bodyguards faded away.

The burning ropes around Kinn slithered to the ground, kicked aside by Kinn’s shoes as his brother lunged for Porsche, taking the fire-bringer nearly off his feet. Kim opened his mouth to intercede—Porsche couldn’t have risked revealing himself to Kinn; he had been too close to his father—until he saw Kinn bury his face in Porsche’s neck, disjointed speech breaking from his muffled lips, words like clever and perfect and, worst of all, darling.

When this was over, Kim was going to buy a whole damn mountain for himself and Chay, where they’d have to deal with their gross brothers as little as possible. As he thought of Chay, he looked again at the cell door, an idea scratching at the back of his mind.

“When did you figure it out?” he heard Porsche ask Kinn, and swung around to hear his brother’s reply.

Kinn finger-combed his hair out of his eyes. “I know how powerful you are,” he told Porsche. “Plus, you tried to help Kim when you were supposed to be torturing him.”

True enough. Theatrics weren’t the fire-bringer’s strong suit.

Porsche blinked soft eyes at his brother, which Kim understood, but also, they had two contingents of bodyguards to set loose on the compound. Plus one irate magic-user, even if he wasn’t a killer. Kim was fine with that. He could do the killing for him. The sooner they got to his father, the sooner they would all be safe.

He cleared his throat a touch too viciously, and inclined his chin toward the cell door, remembering the sound of it closing behind his father.

“Right,” Porsche agreed, extricating himself from Kinn’s arms to eyeball the door, then the vent-less ceiling. “I can blast it, then take away the heat from the blast, but oxygen might get low in here.” He paused. “Perhaps if I melt the metal instead of blasting it…”

“We’ll hold our breath,” Kinn reassured him, though Porsche still looked worried as he conjured up a fistful of flame.

And oh, he had it. Kim stalked toward the cell door, prepared to bet his entire trust fund on what he was about to do. His father’s attention had been provoked at exactly the right time. And Kim hadn’t heard something when the cell’s door had slammed shut.  

Subtle coincidences stacking up.

“No need,” said Kim, and kicked open the unlocked door.

Across the street (a couple streets, actually) from the compound, Vegas watched his uncle through the scope of his sniper rifle, lining up the shot. Korn talked to an underling, a flicker of expression visible in the movement of his hands as he spoke. Khun’s phone call must have made an impact. Or his cousins had gotten to the bodyguards they’d stashed in the compound and had begun their attack.

Only a year later, another attempt on the major family’s compound. Even if he succeeded, the other mafia families in the city would smell dissension and come for them. Of course, if he failed, his uncle would probably kill him. Unless he had a collar for a dreamwalker in his collection.

The glass of Korn’s watch flashed in the sun. Vegas made a tiny adjustment to the shot.

In the dream he’d shared with Pete, the secret-seer had acknowledged: the best way to kill his uncle was to come at him directly, no secrets, no attempts at subterfuge. Perhaps the sniper rifle wasn’t how his cousins would do it, but Vegas had no interest in walking into the compound as a wanted man. Er…magic-user.

No, he’d leave that fate to Porsche, who’d smirked at him in a manner meant to be reassuring before turning his world into conflagration. Vegas supposed the fire-bringer would be protection for Kinn and Kim.

Back on the terrace, the underling bowed and walked inside. Left alone, his uncle overlooked the compound’s backyard, the sterile gardens, the empty fountains. Finger on the trigger, he waited for the perfect shot. Korn just needed to turn a touch to the left, leave more of his chest vulnerable to the bullet—

Vegas saw an opening and fired three times, the bullets finding their mark before the sound of the gunshots rippled through the air. On the terrace, his uncle staggered back, his hand going to his chest, but he didn’t fall. Vegas checked through the scope; Korn was shouting something, from the popped-out veins in his throat, resulting in the sudden influx of bodyguards on the terrace. The guards surrounded the patriarch, half-carrying him inside, out of Vegas’s range.

One of Korn’s bodyguards looked out over the terrace, finding the path of his bullets.

Vegas ducked out of sight. Damn, he’d even asked about this, too, in that dream with Pete: “Does he wear a bulletproof vest when he goes outside?” Only now did he realize that the secret-seer had hid that knowledge from him as well.

Even though they were a few streets away from the compound, his uncle would send his bodyguards after them. They’d need to evacuate yet another safehouse, again. Unless Kinn or Kim succeeded where he’d failed.

“Macau,” Vegas called, to be answered with silence. His brother had claimed one of the apartment’s bedroom as his office and set up his computer equipment there. The last time Vegas had checked on his brother, Macau had his headphones on, the music already blasting. “Macau,” he tried again, risking a peek over the apartment balcony. His uncle’s men were pointing in his direction.

Scuff from behind him; Vegas whirled, ready to tell Macau—or Chay, whoever had come—that they had to pack up and leave now, before Korn’s bodyguards figured out which apartment was theirs.

He came face-to-barrel with Pete’s gun.

Vegas backed up against the balcony, the sniper rifle still hot through his shirt. Pete came towards him, his aim point-blank through his chest. There was no escaping that bullet, so Vegas looked up into Pete’s face, his brows drawn, his lashes wet from sweat or—

“You’re alive,” Pete said, and Vegas saw his finger wasn’t on the trigger. Behind him, the sniper rifle nudged against the sheath of his knife. “I thought you were dead,” Pete went on. “I saw you die.”

“I’m hard to kill,” said Vegas, pasting a reckless grin on his face, extending his hands outward to pretend he was unarmed, when he was calculating how he could reach his knife, get the blade through the leather collar around Pete’s throat.

That was when he saw Chay step out on the balcony. The fore-bringer went still as he absorbed the scene, then jerked his chin at Vegas, his command clear. Pete had fooled them all once, pretending that breaking the sigils that bound him hurt too much to bear. Vegas wouldn’t give the collar another chance. (Though he’d give Pete all the chances.)

“Are you going to shoot me?” and Vegas grabbed Pete’s gun before the man could react, pulling the barrel into his ribcage, enjoying the flare of panic in Pete’s eyes—he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. “I don't think you can,” he continued, lowering his voice, making Pete lean in closer, watching Chay’s progress out of the corner of his eye. “And you know why,” he finished.

Pete’s gaze was glued on the gun barrel nudging into his ribs. “When your tracker came back online, he ordered us to capture you,” he said, his fingers loose around the gun stock. Vegas’s grip on the barrel was the only thing keeping the weapon from falling between them, though his fingers went numb at Pete’s words, because what tracker.

He didn’t have time to find out. Vegas let the barrel drop, kicking the gun away from them as he made a grab for Pete’s neck, hauling the man against him, holding his knife against his throat.

In his arms, Pete shuddered once but went still, no doubt believing that the knife was meant for him instead of the collar he wore. Vegas angled the blade into the leather, the collar’s magic holding against the sharp edge, as Chay went to work.

Vegas’s breath stilled as he held Pete, putting weight on the blade, ready to slice through the leather when the fore-bringer was done destroying the collar. In front of them, Chay’s hands twitched on invisible strings, bringing Vegas back to his guitar days—he’d enjoyed playing guitar despite (or because of) his father’s disapproval, until Kim had taken up the instrument, and Vegas couldn’t bear to be seen imitating him.

Perhaps he’d take it up again, he thought, as the knife handle burned under his palm, as a grim smile spread over Chay’s face. If he got out of this alive.

His knife went through the collar.

Pete slumped against him, his hands going to his throat as the leather and metal and magic that had bound him fell away. Vegas felt him breathe, his lungs gathering deep. In front of them, Chay staggered sideways, his own hands pressed against his forehead, a choked gasp cutting through the air. He was close enough to them that Vegas could see the first trickle of blood start from his nose.

“Are you okay?” Vegas asked him (any of them, really), as Pete regained his footing. Vegas let him go, moving toward Chay instead. Kim would kill him if he let anything happen to the fore-bringer.

Wavering to stay upright, Chay blinked bleary eyes at him and rasped, “It wasn’t Pete behind you.” He began to look over his shoulder.

What tracker echoed through his thoughts and Vegas began to turn as well, knowing he’d be too late—

Chan fired four shots into Pete’s chest, forcing the man back a few steps. Pete’s arms fell to his sides before he fell, too, facing away from Vegas. One of his hands twitched before he went still. And then the laser sight of Chan’s gun was hovering over Vegas’s heart.

Chay yelped beside him, drawing the bodyguard’s eyes, though Vegas saw his fingers move.

“Last time this happened, your men were the ones to execute me,” Vegas commented, redirecting Chan's attention. He couldn’t look at Pete, crumpled on his side. “I’m glad you’ve progressed to doing the killing yourself.”

“This time my orders are to take you alive,” Chan replied, looking from him to Chay. Before Vegas could bait him by saying that aiming a gun at him was a poor way of taking him alive, the bodyguard’s gun was moving again, the laser sight flashing across the tile of balcony to center on Chay’s chest instead.

“Drop the knife or I’ll kill him,” was Chan’s next order.

“You’ll kill me anyway,” Chay interjected through a bloody nose. “I can’t be controlled anymore.”

But the laser dot remained steady on his chest. Vegas’s grip went lax around the knife handle. He’d seen Chay’s fingers move—he knew the fore-bringer had a plan—

Something matte black, heavy enough to be a club, slammed into Chan from behind, and his uncle’s bodyguard dropped where he stood. Vegas’s knife dropped as well, glancing off his shoe as Macau unfolded the laptop he’d just used to brain the man, grimacing when he saw that the screen had cracked. Somewhere to his right, Vegas heard the wet crackle of Chay’s cough.

“I really liked this laptop, too,” his brother mourned before letting the heavy-duty piece of plastic fall to the ground beside Chan. “Are you okay, hia?”

Only half of him was listening as Vegas went to his knees beside Pete, turning him over, not looking at his still face, his closed eyes. No, his attention was fixed on the holes in his chest. Bloodless holes. Like the ground beneath them. Bloodless.

Vegas scrabbled behind him for the handle of his dropped knife. When he got the blade back in his hand, he knifed through Pete’s shirt, revealing the bulletproof vest underneath. He sighed, sitting back on his heels. If a bulletproof vest had foiled his plan to kill his uncle, one had saved Pete in return. Not the worst tradeoff, though they needed to warn Khun.

“Next time you get shot, take a deep breath before the bullets hit,” he informed the unconscious man. “You won’t get knocked out from the impact.” He tapped Pete’s cheekbone until he opened his eyes.

Pete struggled to sit up, his hand going to his throat as he said, “Chan! The tracker!”

He stopped when he saw the fallen bodyguard. “Oh,” he realized, propping himself upright. “Is he dead?” came the question.

“Not yet,” answered Vegas. He looked up at Macau. “I thought you were helping Khun and Arm.”  

“I was, but my headphones stopped working and I heard voices,” said his brother, casting a suspicious look at Chay, who was clinging to the balcony with the death-grip of a person about to keel over. “Gross,” was Macau’s remark as he took hold of Chay’s elbow. “There’s a box of tissues inside,” he finished.

Chay gave a blood-thick sniffle before clamping his nose between his thumb and index finger instead, using Macau as a crutch to hobble over to his uncle’s head bodyguard. As a precaution, Vegas deepened Chan’s unconsciousness till he was sure the man wouldn’t wake. The temptation took hold of him, to cross the line between unconsciousness and death. He thought he knew where that boundary was, how to cross it.

“Are you going to kill him?” asked Pete, making the first attempt to get to his feet. Doomed to fail, Vegas could tell, and Pete slumped back onto the concrete, his hand going to his chest.

“Unless you give me a reason not to,” Vegas replied, his eyes on the remnants of the collar he’d cut from Pete’s throat.

The secret-seer said nothing; Chay’s (slightly nasal) voice was the one to demur. “You can kill him after you use him,” he said. “Even with hia, Kim and P’Kinn don’t have enough guards to take over the compound.”

He was right. Vegas returned to the darkness of the bodyguard’s mind, manipulating color and light, stealing sound from the air around him, creating the scene for the dream to come. Strong-willed even in his unconsciousness, Chan fought his power, until a strange oscillation shivered through the air, and Vegas looked at the fore-bringer, the blood drying brown on his shirt, his fingers curved around nothing. Additional power swelled inside him.

“Make sure Khun knows his father’s still alive,” Vegas directed his brother, settling back down against the balcony. This time the bodyguard’s will crumbled under his power, his mind opening to the dream Vegas was creating for him. For both of them.

Before his eyes closed, though, he met Pete’s, letting the man know all the secrets he’d been keeping, unable to keep from smirking at the surprise (and perhaps, something more than surprise) on Pete’s face.

Somehow he’d suspected that it would come to this. Tankhun tried to think of his father’s chess games as little as possible—he’d been taken off the board twelve years ago, relegated to a pawn, thought powerless. An apt thought, considering the company he kept. The last time he’d seen his father had been after Tankhun had woken up in a bed in the family’s clinic. Perhaps he’d been awake. For the first expanse of time—months? years?—he didn’t want to know, Tankhun hadn’t been able to distinguish dreams from reality.

All this to register that when he’d woken up in that clinic bed, seen the revulsion on his father’s face, heard him say you’ve failed, felt the vibrations of his father’s footsteps as he’d walked away—Tankhun could not confirm that the memory was real. For one of those vague expanses of time, Tankhun had hoped he’d imagined it, that the monsters in his head were worse than the monster who called himself father.

“We’re here,” Arm told him as the Escalade came to a stop outside the Theerapanyakul compound. He paused, clearly torn. “I can come in with you,” he offered.

No, because that would tip them off that Tankhun was working with his brothers, rather than the brother-against-brother subplot he had concocted for the voicemail. He thought his father would approve of the treachery. Certainly his father would be expecting some deception, some front-feint to mask an attack from the side.

In those early days (or months. or years), when Tankhun hadn’t been able to stop thinking about chess, when he’d thought that if he could only recover, convince his father to take him back, he’d pored over the pieces, the squares on the board flashing through his mind. He’d been the eldest son, expected to take his father’s place. His was a childhood of strategy, of out-maneuvering the enemy. His father had taught him everything he knew.

Which was perhaps why his brothers, his cousins found themselves out-maneuvered now.

Tankhun opened the car door, unbuckled his seatbelt, and slid down from the high seat. “You know what to do,” he told Arm, not giving the man a chance to argue with him before closing the door again.

The compound’s doors slid open. He stepped through.

No signs of battle, no echoing shouts from his brothers’ contingent of bodyguards. They must have opted for the stealthy approach through the compound—or they were all still locked in that cell. For now, though, the guards at the security checkpoint appeared calm enough. They wouldn’t have been calm if they’d known who he was. Their ignorance was fortunate, Tankhun thought. Or—

“I’ve got an appointment with khun Korn,” he told the men behind the security checkpoint, pre-emptively shucking his jacket, settling it and its contents into one of the plastic security trays to go through the scanner.

One of the guards glanced at the computer and nodded as he confirmed the appointment information. “Of course, khun—er, Tankhun,” he said, looking up in curiosity, before flicking the button to take his jacket through the scanner. “My colleague will wand you down to check for weapons.”

“Wand away,” Tankhun agreed, extending his arms for the oncoming security guard. He looked up into the security camera mounted on the ceiling, his expression the one his father would expect, if his father was expecting him to be the pawn, the feint before the real attack.  

The screening wands were silent as the weapons scan was completed. The scanner spat out his jacket on the other side of the security checkpoint.

“He’s clean,” the guard wanding him down said to the man behind the computer, who took another look at the scanner readout.

“Welcome to the Theerapanyakul compound, khun Tankhun,” said the guard, and Tankhun walked through the security checkpoint. “Do you need an escort to khun Korn’s suite?”

Tankhun shook his head. “I’ve been here before,” he confided to the security guards as he picked up his jacket, draping the fabric over his arm. “And I’ve been waiting a long time for this appointment.”

He had. Once he’d realized that his father had thrown him away, his next plan had been some sort of revenge. But the walls of the asylum had closed in around him, the lack of food weakening his body, the lack of sunlight weakening his mind. Escape had been limited to books and movies, and, until Vegas had arrived, his dreams.

Tankhun had sat through enough of Vegas’s nightmares to know that his cousin clung to reality, came clawing out of his sleep, afraid of whatever demons his power produced. His was the opposite problem; that his dreams were better than reality. Softer, easier to bear. He was awake now, but even so, capitulation was alluring, that he could fade back into a world inside his own head.

An impossibility, now. Not when Kinn and Kim were depending on him. Not when Vegas had missed. All of them were out of position, their vulnerabilities exploited, surrounded by his father’s men. Now his father would see a pawn coming forward, would expect another attack from a stronger piece—the fore-bringer, perhaps.

He passed another security camera, fidgeting nervously before it, as if he were already outmatched by his opponent.

And then Tankhun found himself facing his father’s suite. He knocked at the door, then entered the keycode they’d learned long ago. The electronic lock cheeped at him—his father hadn’t changed the code, which meant his father was expecting him—and the door swung open.

“Hello?” Tankhun asked uncertainly into the silence of his father’s living room, the quiet made more oppressive by the quiet shush of the air conditioning. He tried again: “Father?”

His attention was caught by the bulletproof vest discarded on one of the chairs, one his cousin’s bullets still embedded in the fabric. Tankhun wandered over to look at the damage. If the bullets had been filed to a sharper point, or the vest had been only a touch thinner, they would have struck home. As it was, Tankhun wouldn’t be surprised if his father had bruises from the bullets.

Acid sloshed in his stomach.

“One moment, Khun,” came his father’s voice from another room, and Tankhun jumped, the motion making the jacket slung over his arm threaten to fall to the ground. He grabbed for the cloth, smoothing it with a shaking hand as he turned toward the source of the noise.

In his memory, back in that clinic, he’d heard his father say you’ve failed, seen the flash of metal from his father’s ring as he’d left Tankhun behind. Metal seemed to freeze against his hand as Tankhun wondered whether he was going to fail here, too. The secret-seer hadn’t even needed to elicit that secret from him, that Tankhun didn’t know if he could do this.

“Father,” he said as his shadow, so terribly familiar, passed over the threshold of the living room.

His father came closer, his hair grayer, his face more lined—and there was no revulsion on his features this time—Tankhun swallowed hard. In those early days (or months. or years) Tankhun had hoped that he would wake up one day, that everything that had been done to him would turn out to be a hallucination, that he’d created that look on his father’s face.

“Are you here to kill me?” his father asked, king to pawn, knowing that a pawn was only the feint behind which lay the real attack. But pawns could be played, turned, discarded when they were no longer of use. Tankhun knew that too well.

“Yes,” said Tankhun, and fired through the cloth of his jacket.

Three shots. Close quarters, center of body mass. And the bulletproof vest had been discarded, deemed unnecessary within the bulletproofed windows of the compound. The gunshots forced his father back; the man overbalanced, already dead, unable to right himself. He fell to the carpet before the bullet wounds began to bleed.

For another of those vague expanses of time, there was no blood. Tankhun knew, because he couldn’t look away, couldn’t uncurl his fingers from around the trigger of his gun. He watched the dead nerves twitch, the white carpet darken under his father’s body. A pawn who crossed the board could become any piece, except the king.

Tankhun heaved.

The electronic lock cheeped again. Tankhun swung around at the noise, his gun coming up, even as his jacket fell to the floor. The trigger was freezing against his skin; he would be helpless against whichever guard had come to investigate the noise—

Arm opened the door, going still when he saw the gun pointed at him. “It’s okay. Just me,” the man said, his hands wide and empty. His eyes went to the body on the carpet, the flow of blood slowing now.

“I’m going to throw up,” Tankhun realized. As if saying it had given his stomach permission to do so, he heaved again, then forced the acid back down his throat as he set the gun down on one of the side tables.

By then Arm was at his side, towing him further into the suite toward one of the bathrooms, which smelled like his father’s soap; another convulsive swallow on his part, before pushing him down onto the floor. Tankhun blinked—another strange expanse of time—and then there was a wet washcloth on the back of his neck, keeping the nausea at bay.

“Better?” asked Arm, and Tankhun nodded.

The man crouched next to him. “Okay, Khun,” he said, which made Tankhun look up because Arm called everyone khun except him. “I’m going to push some furniture in front of the door in case anyone tries to get through the electronic lock. Then I'm going to call khun Vegas and khun Macau. And then we’re going to wait here for khun Kinn and khun Kim to finish taking control of the compound. You’ll be safe the whole time, I promise. Can you nod if you understand me?”

But if he nodded, he’d dislodge the miraculous coolness of the washcloth on the back of his neck.

Tankhun said, “I understand.”

Kinn stumbled backward as one of his father’s bodyguards raised his gun—but when the man tried to fire, the weapon clinked dispiritedly, as if it were out of ammunition. Or melted. Fire-bringer, or fore-bringer. Both brothers were on their side today. Porsche’s fires danced around the men defending the compound, Porsche himself was at Kinn’s back, where Kinn could cover him from any stray bullets. His father’s men weren’t aiming at him, or Kim. They were going after the men they’d brought to take over the compound.

They’d avoided the bloodbath so far—most of his father’s men had given up or switched sides when they’d seen how many guards Kinn had to command. But now they were approaching the suite that housed his father’s rooms. The men loyal to his father had renewed their ferocity.

Which was why Kinn held up a hand, stilling Kim’s oncoming violence, the rage writ on his features as his brother shot down those who dared stand against them.

“You don’t have to die here,” Kinn said, panting between words. They’d done so much running, the worst kind of running, stopping and starting as they’d broken down the barriers his father’s guards had left for them, cleared rooms, put up new barriers, then run again. “You can join us,” was his offer.

They’d left the men who surrendered bound in Porsche’s burning ropes, locked in rooms with the doors melted shut. After he got through the door of his father’s suite, faced down his father—killed him—they could go back and start the long process of differentiating the loyal ones from the opportunistic ones.

The guard in front of him seemed to waver. Kinn sighed in relief, until the man dropped the useless gun and raised another. A whisper-thin globe of fire spun around him; he heard a gunshot, then the rattling breath of another man who wouldn’t leave the compound alive.

“Done,” came Kim’s assessment from his side.

His brother strode out from behind Porsche’s shields, gun pointing at the fallen guard. Two fingers on the man’s pulse, and then Kim was back on his feet. The hallway to his father’s suite was clear.

“Kim, get back,” Kinn ordered. He waited for his brother to fall behind the shields again before angling his head over his shoulder. “Blast the door,” he told Porsche.

Porsche pressed a burning palm to his back; Kinn felt the warm lick of his breath against his neck. Then his shields swirled upwards, at first a pillar of flame, but then something caught Kinn’s attention from above, a wide wingspan, of feathers that looked like flames. The illusion—perhaps illusion—of a phoenix wheeled overhead, its eyes pouring down crimson fire, swooping down the hallway to his father’s door.

A gunshot sounded from behind them.

Kinn wheeled to face the oncoming men, shoving Porsche behind him—he heard a bird shriek from above—catching the spare gun Kim tossed him. They’d been so close to taking down his father, they were still so close.

But Chan was at the front of the cohort of bodyguards coming toward them. Smoke rose from Chan’s gun; Kinn could see that the man had fired into the ceiling to get their attention. He traded a wary look with Kim. They wouldn’t be able to talk Chan down, but—perhaps they had a chance to turn the men with him. Kinn didn’t have enough bullets to kill them otherwise.

“Chan,” he said. A declarative and a question.

The head bodyguard bowed, the gesture jerky, as though he were being forced to it. “Khun Kinn, khun Kim,” Chan said as he came upright. Kinn squinted, because there was something wrong with the man’s eyes. “I have ascertained the loyalty of these bodyguards. They will help us find the assassin who murdered khun Korn.”

What.

He glanced at Kim, who looked back at him, then twitched his shoulder in a shrug.

“I apologize for failing to catch the assassin,” Chan said next, and bowed again. “I will conduct you to khun Korn’s rooms so that you can pay your respects and plan the response.” When he resurfaced, Kinn saw that his pupils were fixed pinpoints in his eyes. Like he was in a trance. Or…

Kim cursed beside him.

Kinn nodded at the bespelled man and the line of bodyguards behind him. “Thank you, Chan,” he said formally, though he was floundering to find the meaning of the man’s words. “Your loyalty is commendable. If you could open the door to my father’s rooms, I would be grateful.”

All of them—Kinn, Kim, and Porsche—stiffened as the man approached. Kinn’s grip tightened on his gun; Kim rocked onto the balls of his feet, ready for a grab. Porsche’s phoenix hovered in the air above them, claws outstretched, waiting to dive.

Once out of earshot of the waiting bodyguards, Chan muttered in Vegas’s voice, “Maybe the phoenix isn’t the best idea? Half of them are about to shoot you anyway, no matter what I told them.”

Kinn bit back a gasp. Kim took a step back.

“They can try,” said Porsche, but he waved a hand. The bird he’d conjured dissipated into sparks that fell downward, disappeared somewhere above them. Kinn peered upward but saw nothing, though Porsche’s smile was wider—and mischievous—when he next looked at him.

Chan sighed, his pinpoint-pupil eyes fixed at a point over Kinn’s head. Kinn risked a glance over his shoulder, but all he saw was the line of his father’s bodyguards, the fear on some faces, the awe on others. Both made them dangerous. Still, no one had shot him yet. He turned back around to find Kim giving him the same look as Chan typed in the keycode.

The door began to swing back—but stuck, thunking against what sounded like a piece of heavy wood. Kinn raised his gun, followed by Kim. Vegas had said that his father was already dead. Then who had barricaded his rooms against them—

“Damn it, Arm,” his cousin’s voice hissed out of Chan’s mouth. “Let us in.”

Wood scraped before the door continued its inward swing, revealing Arm. “My apologies, khun Kinn, khun Kim, khun Chan,” began his cybersecurity expert, his bespectacled gaze sweeping over them. “I…er, wanted to preserve the crime scene.”

The man let the door open wide. Kinn could see into the living room in his father’s suite, his attention captured by the bloody carpet, the gleam of freshly-shined shoes, the outline of a body on the floor…

Kim cursed again, and then Kinn felt his brother’s hand against his back, herding him into his father’s suite. Porsche’s fingers wormed their way into his as Kinn stepped forward, his eyes on his father’s corpse, static screaming in his head. Kinn had meant to kill him—if not him, then who—

The door clicked shut behind them and Tankhun stepped out of hiding. His brother’s face was an awful shade of white, garish against the jacket draped over his shoulders.

“I killed him,” said Tankhun, and gulped, before his eyes rose above Kinn’s head yet again.

Kim shot him a significant look, his eyebrows raised. Kinn cleared his throat. “Well done,” he said, disentangling his hand from Porsche’s and holding his arms out for his brother to step into. Tankhun took his offer, and Kinn felt his brother shake against him. “I was going to do it,” he whispered into Tankhun’s ear, too low for Kim to overhear. “I wanted to spare both of you.”

Tankhun’s tears soaked into his filthy shirt. “I’m the oldest,” he said, his voice rough, emerging at last from Kinn’s shoulder. “Protecting my brothers is my responsibility.” Then he looked up and asked, “Kinn, what is on your head?”

Alarmed, Kinn pawed at his hair, but his hands came away empty.

Porsche had been crouched beside his father’s body, shaking his head in response to one of Kim’s questions. On seeing Kinn’s gesticulations, he rose, a familiar, mischievous smile spreading across his face. Kinn had seen that smile before, fourteen years ago. The confidence of a boy who’d whispered to him, so long ago now, that they’re the ones who should be afraid.

“Porsche,” Kinn threatened, and went in search of a mirror. (He heard his cousin ask, “Do you think it comes off?” Kinn ignored him.) He found one in the next room.

There was a crown on his head.

Kinn stared at himself in the mirror, the gold and red and green flames dancing through his hair, rising above his head to outline a bird in flight, a phoenix diadem. The phoenix’s tail trailed sparks, pinpricks of light that danced over his shoulders, dispersed into the dim light of the curtained room.

“I never liked the Crown of Victory,” Porsche remarked, following him into the room. The diamond Kinn had given him winked at his throat. “It’s been fourteen years since I got you jewelry. I owed you something better.”  

Kinn touched the bullet he wore around his neck, the one Porsche had given him so many years ago. Looking back at his reflection, he didn’t disagree, though wearing a magical artifact might stymie the takeover he’d planned. He wasn’t sure that the politicians would take him seriously if he walked into a meeting with his head on fire. Still—that was a discussion for later.

Now. “I love it. And you,” was Kinn’s response. He turned away from the mirror, put his weight into his heels as Porsche launched himself at him.

Their lips met and held, Kinn’s mouth opening beneath Porsche’s. He let Porsche taste him, devour him, his eyes closing as little fires played on the insides of his eyelids. His knees grew weak; Kinn staggered, would have fallen if not for Porsche, who held him upright, cradling his head in two flaming hands.

Kinn opened his eyes as Porsche raised his head, the same knowing smile curving his kiss-bitten lips.

“You’re mine,” declared Porsche, and Kinn burned. “Say it.”

“I’m yours,” said Kinn. 

Chapter Text

One hour later

Unmoored. Chay floated from future to future; from five years to twenty years to fifty years before drifting further, broken strands of warp and weft glinting behind him. He caught glimpses of timelines that might come to pass, bore witness to events that would fade from existence.

A man slumped behind his desk, reduced to slapping the keyboard with one hand, his head resting on his chin. Then the webpage flashed, the words too far away for Chay to make sense of them. Whatever they were, the man rattled to life, diving too close to the screen, then scratching strange symbols on a notepad.

Chay wondered what language he was reading. But then he was caught again, time pulling him along its twisting strands.

Screams rose out of a forest abandoned by anyone who could help. Less than forest; the scrubland Chay saw along regions of the Chao Phraya. Higher than the other voices, a child cried out for parents who were dead, a future with a healer’s sigil bound around his wrist.

For the first time since he’d sat down (he was sitting down, he thought), Chay fought the pull of the future. He could help these people, could stack up the collars that bound them and systematically eliminate their sigils from existence. But the strands slipped through his fingers, elusive in a way that meant he’d gone too far. Threads had to be anchored somewhere, bound to the loom in a way that kept them from becoming pieces of lint borne along the wind.

Unbound as the futures he sought to weave, Chay turned back. Back to where, though? He’d been gone too long. Voices echoed through time—not the magic-users in the forest—voices he knew, a voice he knew. Someone was calling him back.

No one could call him back.

The red shirt bunched at his elbows, an effect of too-small shoulders. The man strode into a bar—and Chay recognized that bar—determined to get information on the fore-bringer who worked there. He didn’t know the sigil to control the magic-user, but there were other forms of control. All he had to do was—

Warmth on his face, the pressure insistent, an anchor dropped, touch dragging him back to the present. For a moment (and he knew what a moment was, now), time resisted, threatening to hold him forever, though Chay wondered if time understood what forever meant. Then he remembered that futures were not sentient.

And then (making order out of chaos, forcing time into a sequence) Chay was back.

He didn’t realize he had opened his eyes until he saw Kim’s constricted pupils, the way his brows curved together, going beyond—oh no, he didn’t want to think about beyond—distress, into abject fear.

“Not as frightened as those on the banks of the Chao Phraya,” Chay mused.

Kim took a long breath, his fingers indenting Chay’s cheeks. Not that Chay wanted him to let go. No one else could have called him back. Only Kim—the future they shared—could have drawn him through time, saved him from…

“I think I’m okay,” Chay continued, trying to alleviate the terror he saw in Kim’s face. He licked his lips, cracked and flaky. His mouth tasted gross. “How long have I been like this?”

For answer, Kim looked behind him, still holding Chay’s face in his hands. They were on the floor of the P’Vegas’s apartment (or at least, it would be P’Vegas’s apartment). Chay was sitting cross-legged; Kim was kneeling before him.

“About an hour,” came Pete’s voice from a few steps away. “He came inside and—”

“Went into weird meditation mode or something,” Macau finished.

Chay winced as their voices rattled around in his skull. He had already been at the limits of his power after destroying Pete’s collar, then (oh look, sequential order again, he should be proud) calling Macau to help with the fight. He shouldn’t have kept on interfering, but he’d been afraid. So he’d helped, guns jamming, orders unheard, misheard. And he’d done something else.

“Talk to me,” Kim ordered him. “Chay. Chay.”

He wished Kim's nose wasn’t so close. He needed a breath mint. “Kim,” Chay whispered. Along with a realization. “I can’t feel my feet.”

“Yeah, that’s what happens when you sit like that and stare at the wall for an hour,” said Macau, unsympathetically.

Kim directed a brief glare somewhere behind him and to the left before re-focusing on him. His hands traveled—trailing prickles of sensation—down Chay’s face, his neck, his sides, his hips—he shifted at that, unable to help himself—before Kim got his hands behind Chay’s bent (numb) knees.

“This is going to hurt,” said Kim as he helped Chay extend his legs outward. He dug his fingers into the back of Chay’s knees, massaging until blood flow returned.

He was right. Chay bit his lip as pins and needles ran down his legs. Balance proved hard, his temporarily-useless legs floundering against Kim as he rotated his ankles and curled his toes. He had no memory of sitting down, no memory past the future he’d called into being, a strand of power curled round P’Vegas—for which he needed to apologize. What he’d done was terrible.

But healing would come, he thought. If he could save those magic-users.

Someone shoved a pillow behind his back. Chay reclined, the nerves in his legs showing mercy at last. He glanced over his shoulder. Pete hovered overhead. Macau had already turned away from them, heading for his brother’s room.

“Better?” Kim asked. When Chay nodded, he drew his hands upward, skimming until their fingers were intertwined.

As long as Kim didn’t stop touching him. After going so far, any other magic-user wouldn’t have been able to come back. Chay squeezed, and Kim squeezed back.

“The fighting’s over, obviously,” said Kim. Chay took another look at him. Sure enough, Kim’s sweat-soaked hair straggled into his eyes; the beginnings of a bruise marred one cheekbone. “What else do you want to know?” Kim asked next.

Macau turned around, still holding onto the handle to the main bedroom's door.   

“I own the cameras,” said Macau. “I know everything.”

“Says the person who hacked my brother’s phone for a whole year and learned nothing,” Kim replied.  

“That says more about P’Kinn than it does about me,” Macau snapped.

“Ow,” said Chay, shifting onto his side. His knees protested, creaking as though they’d endured years of abuse. It had only been an hour. His grip on Kim’s hands tightened as he asked, “Can we go home now?”

Tiny crow’s feet pinched at the edges of Kim’s eyes as he debated how to respond. Ah yes, the past swam before him, of Kim hauling him out of bed at his no-longer-safehouse in the suburbs, half-carrying him to his car, driving him to Yok’s bar, and shoving a gun into his hand with directions to stay here and if you see the secret-seer, shoot to kill. Chay had no plans to tell Pete about that.

One of the futures scratched at him. The bar.

“When khun—when Chan left for the compound, at first we were more concerned about Vegas—khun Vegas, but then we saw that khun Chay wasn’t moving,” Pete told Kim.

Kim gave him another once-over, to which Chay responded with a slight shoulder-shrug, hoping he looked well enough to travel. Not that home, perhaps. But somewhere new.

“What has Vegas done now?” Kim asked, directing the question at both Pete and Macau. “Kinn wants to know whether Chan will ever wake up. A few minutes after we took over, he collapsed. He’s not even breathing.”

Chay had known the answer to that one the moment he’d plucked a future out of obscurity and spun it around P’Vegas. So many possibilities for a dreamwalker at full power.

“You can turn off the ventilator,” said Chay.

“Fuck,” was Kim’s response.

Macau scoffed. “Are you afraid hia will kill you with his mind?”

Though the bravado couldn’t quite conceal his anxiety. Their anxiety, the way their eyes kept darting to the door of the main bedroom, just as Kim’s eyes kept returning to him. Just as Chay kept trying to remember the man behind the computer, the people lost in the scrubland of the Chao Phraya, the villain walking into Yok’s bar…

“He’ll wake up tomorrow,” Chay assured them. “And he’ll be fine,” as long as he kept his phone charged, because constant swipes and taps by tiny fingers would drain the battery, and then he’d start crying. “Healing will come.”

Silence.

“I’ll take you back to my apartment,” Kim decided. “My father’s men knew about the house in the suburbs and we haven’t cleared his loyalists out of the compound. One of them could come after us there.

Pete hung his head, though the tension in his face had smoothed out when Chay had told them that P’Vegas would be fine.

“You can make it up to us by telling us who the loyalists are,” said Kim. “When my cousin bothers to wake up, tell him to drop by the compound.”

Without letting go of his hands, Kim rocked back on his heels before rising to his feet, towing Chay up with him, holding him as the room sloshed back and forth. With a heavy sigh, Kim hooked an arm around his waist. They made their way out of Vegas’s apartment and down the stairs (Kim only looked at him when Chay suggested that they take the elevator).

Kim’s car waited outside, only a few steps from the building, only two slow breaths in the humid air before Kim left him in the passenger seat. He turned, presumably to jog around to the driver’s side, but Chay lost sight of him, sucked into the future once more.

He took a third breath, searching for the magic-users. But he saw a red shirt instead: the man walked into a conference room like all other conference rooms. Where he’d press the mafia family to make a deal. Surely the Theerapanyakuls would pay much for a magic-user who could change the future. 

Chay felt air conditioning wash over him before he felt Kim take his hand, though he knew that the two events must have been the other way round.

“What are you doing to yourself?” Kim asked, pushing the button to start the car. He fumbled to put the car in drive with his non-dominant hand, though he’d evidently had experience with one-handed driving.

“I’m not,” Chay protested. “I just went too far,” he added.

“There’s blood on your face and down your clothing,” Kim noted. “From earlier?”

When Chay nodded, Kim’s knuckles went white around the steering wheel, though his grip on Chay’s hand stayed gentle. Kim’s knee came up to take the steering wheel while he tossed his phone into Chay’s lap.

“I haven’t been back to my apartment in ages. Order whatever we need,” he said.

Chay managed it, one-handed, holding onto Kim with his other hand. He clicked through delivery apps, buying a generous amount of junk food, cleaning supplies, and bedsheets (thinking ahead). As he swiped through clothing options—somehow he didn’t think Kim would complain about buying him a new wardrobe—he wondered how to broach the news of the future he had seen.

“Sorry for worrying you,” he began, but Kim interrupted.

“I just want you to be safe. And not covered in blood.”

He could guarantee one of those, but not the other. They’d never be truly safe, not unless they killed everyone who knew about his existence—and look how well that had ended. All that death and still his secret had gotten out. The thought made his fingers tighten on Kim’s, made the man look away from the road.  

Chay said, “Someone’s looking for me.”

One day later

He needed to wake up.

“Pull the plug,” came his cousin’s voice, from far away—Kim’s, he thought. “Keeping him alive is a liability.”

Khun spoke next, doubt wavering in his throat. “The liability is minimal. He can’t even breathe on his own. The doctors say there’s no brain activity.”

But there was brain activity. Vegas needed to wake up. He struggled against the darkness that had settled over his eyes—unsettling darkness, he decided, letting his breathing speed up so that it raced his heartbeat. He listened for the sound of the heartrate monitor. Surely his cousins would hear the skyrocketing beeps, would realize before it was too late…

“He deserves this for what he did. Let him die,” Kinn concluded, and Vegas had confirmation at last that he wouldn’t be forgiven for his role in the takeover attempt a year ago. Still he tried to move his arms, or even twitch a finger. He had to warn Macau, again, tell his brother to run, that this time there would be no reunion.

Just a flatline, the hollow note of death.

Vegas woke up.

Like the last time this had happened, it was a surprise. A year ago, Chan’s men had gunned him down by the poolside. Vegas’s last memory had been of his uncle’s bodyguard standing over him, crossing his eyes to see the barrel of Chan’s gun as it fixed on the center of his forehead. And then nothing. An interminable period of nothing until he’d woken up in the facility, bedsores littering the skin of his back and thighs, scabbed-over marks from the IVs punched through both his hands.

He raised one of his hands, then squinted up at the ceiling. A different ceiling than the facility.

And Chan was dead. Or he soon would be.

People were most vulnerable in dreams, their minds open to his influence. Creating a dream from which someone would never wake, using a dream to destroy a mind’s understanding of reality…those Vegas had done before. He hadn’t known that he could use his power to possess a mind and body (bodymind). He hadn’t thought he was that powerful, not until he’d locked eyes with the fore-bringer and felt magic pulse through his temples.

Unfortunately (for Chan), Vegas didn’t know how to return sentience once he’d stolen it. When he’d left the man’s body, Chan had dropped to the ground, already brain dead. Vegas again heard the eerie flatline of the heartbeat monitor. He snapped to distract himself.

A few moments later, the door opened. Vegas turned his head on the pillow to see—

“You’re awake.”

Pete.

“For awhile now,” Vegas replied, reaching for Pete’s hand. A shard of fear punctured somewhere behind his lungs when Pete hesitated, looking away from him, before tapping three cold fingers into Vegas’s palm.

“It’s over,” said Pete, unnecessarily, unless he was talking about something besides the attack on the compound, most of which Vegas had seen through Chan’s eyes. And if he was talking about something besides the attack on the compound…

Yeah, that shard of fear was making its way into his heart.

“Look at me,” Vegas told Pete, cataloging the emotions on the other man’s face. Remorse, foremost. A rare emotion in their world. Uncertainty, second. Ah. He continued: “You didn’t have a choice.”

Pete’s hair fell in his eyes as he shook his head. “Maybe one day I’ll believe that,” he replied.

Though he met Vegas’s eyes at last. Vegas felt the soft brush of magic through him, wondered if he had any secrets left to reveal. Then he thought of Chan and the way he’d left the bodyguard a husk of a person. Worse, that he’d felt the moment when what was left of Chan’s mind had given up. What he’d done was monstruous.

“Oh,” said Pete.

At least Vegas didn’t have to say it out loud.

“When did you know you had power?” he asked, curious. The staff who’d taken care of him as a child had figured it out for him, soon after they’d learned that to make him angry was to invite nightmares. Fortunately, they hadn’t told his father.

Pete’s index finger scraped over his palm. “School. The teacher thought I was making up stories about the other students, until I saw she was stealing money from the fundraiser. She reported me to the authorities, but the traffickers got there before they did.”

He had a faint red line around his neck from the strip of leather and metal Vegas had cut away. Vegas tightened his grip, pulled Pete closer, till he was hovering overhead, that terrible uncertainty still frozen around his mouth.

“Were they the ones who collared you, or was that my uncle?”

Pete shook his head. “Someone along the way,” he replied.

“I’m going to kill anyone who’s ever had you,” said Vegas. Then he thought about what he said. He decided he meant it.

Mindful of his knuckles, turning white from his hold on Pete’s wrist, Vegas started to let go. He paused when something wavered in Pete’s face. And he waited for that rictus of uncertainty to fall away, become something definite, intentional.

Pete leaned down and kissed him. And ah, too much time had passed since he’d done this. They did away with that tentative first press of lips, a pleasantry Vegas no longer cared about. He caught the side of Pete’s lip between his teeth, listened for him to signal pleasure, then smoothed his thumb into Pete’s cheekbone, making his mouth open wider.  

A couple hours after Vegas had locked Pete in the attic, he’d returned with food and water to find him gone. Once they knew that the safehouse had been blown, they’d packed up all the weapons and electronics they could carry. Then Tankhun had reported that Pete had come back. It had been a tempting opportunity to press him for information. Too tempting.

Pete drew back from him, putting a hand on Vegas’s chest to hold him down. “You knew,” he whispered.

“You depended too much on your power,” Vegas replied, the secret they’d all kept from him. “That made it easy for things to slip past your perception.”

“It was the only power I had,” said Pete.

Not anymore, Vegas thought, tapping at the crease of Pete’s elbow until his arm bent, lowering Pete’s mouth to his once more.

…until someone knocked on the doorframe. Vegas swept his hand under his pillow, wondering who’d thought to put a knife there. Pete straightened, taking a step back, opening up his field of vision so that Vegas could see his brother knock again.

“I don’t mean to interrupt, but our shitty cousins are here,” Macau announced. “I can cut power to the elevator and trap them in? We can be wheels-up before building security manages to get them out.”  

“They took the elevator?” Vegas confirmed. He’d thought his cousins would have more sense than to trap themselves in an electronic box that his brother controlled. He didn’t think Macau’s threat to lock them inside was a complete bluff.  

“P’Kinn and P’Tankhun,” Macau confirmed. Vegas nodded. They were the type to take the elevator.

He heard a soft, nasal exhale beside him—like an attempt at a snicker. Pete had snickered. Vegas hadn’t even seen him smile yet.

“Let them up,” he told Macau.

The humor faded from Pete’s eyes. He bit his lip and took another step away from the bed, almost out of arm’s reach. Almost.

“Khun Kim said to drop by the compound when you woke up. I thought we’d have more time before they came,” Pete explained.

Vegas didn’t need to read secrets to see what Pete was worried about. But if Kim hadn’t killed him for endangering the fore-bringer, Kinn wouldn’t have him killed either. And certainly Tankhun wouldn’t move against him, another person who his father had harmed.

“No one’s going to hurt you,” Vegas assured him. When Pete didn’t move—didn’t come back to him, damn it—he went on. “You had no choice.”

Someone knocked on the front door hard enough to echo through the apartment. Vegas looked at Macau, who checked the security camera readout on his phone.  

“It’s them,” he confirmed. “You sure you want them here? We can barricade the door and then escape off the balcony. I have a friend with a helicopter who can pick us up off the roof.”

As far as Vegas knew, the apartment building didn’t have a rooftop helipad. His brother shouldn’t have the type of friends who’d be willing to land on an unauthorized rooftop. Those friends tended to have a reason to fly…under the radar, so to speak.  

Sure enough, Pete’s eyes widened. “He is not your friend,” he informed Macau as he eluded Vegas’s grasp altogether and walked out of the bedroom. His footsteps echoed on the tile floor as he traveled the length of the apartment and opened the front door. Vegas heard their cousins’ voices.

“Who’s your friend?” he asked Macau. Outside the bedroom, Pete’s soft voice gave way to Kinn and Tankhun’s louder tones.

Macau shook his head. “More like an acquaintance,” he replied. Then he said, “I’m glad I found you, hia.”

And before Vegas was quite sure what was happening, his brother threw himself at him, knocking an elbow into his esophagus, another palm driving down into his shoulder. He wasn’t certain whether the strange clacking noise in his ear was laughter or sobbing.  

Vegas hugged him back.

When Tankhun and Kinn (Macau had erred, slightly, in calling them the shittiest cousins) finally entered his room—Vegas suspected they’d given him a few moments to collect himself—entered his room, Vegas pushed his brother upright and away. He propped himself up on the pillows, insecurity suddenly pervading his chest. He’d told Pete that nothing would happen to him. He’d told Macau to let them in.

He hadn’t forgotten that he and his father had led the attack on the major family’s compound a year ago. Even though Vegas hadn’t been on the strike time that had gone after Kinn, he wasn’t sure how far his cousin’s mercy would extend. They might need Macau’s dubious helicopter acquaintance, after all.

“Where’s the crown?” Vegas asked, directing the question to Kinn, who blinked.  

Tankhun stepped between them. “We’re here to talk about the future,” he said. “And how much you want to be involved going forward.”

Ah. So they weren’t coming to finish him off. From the corner of the room Macau had backed into, his brother looked up from his phone. That they were giving him a choice at all was unexpected, especially knowing what they knew about him—and what he could do if left unchecked. Vegas thought of the dream from which he’d woken. A truedream. Chan was dead.  

Vegas watched Tankhun’s face, thinking of the bad old days in the asylum, the guards whose minds he’d left broken. Then he twitched an eyebrow at Macau, who crossed his arms (one hand still holding his phone) over his chest.

“We aren’t going back to being the minor family,” his brother informed them all. “You’ll have to respect us this time. Hia will kill you with his mind if you don’t.”  

Ugh, maybe he shouldn’t let his brother speak for him.

Kinn nodded instead of killing him, which was decent of him. “We’re rethinking the org chart,” he replied, prompting Tankhun and Macau to tandem-frown in confusion, though Tankhun’s face cleared when he remembered the lexicon of mafia empires.

Vegas translated for his brother, “We’re not sure who the Theerapanyakul patriarch should be.”

“No one,” Macau replied. “Literally no one, ever.”

Kinn beat Vegas to the rejoinder. “That’s not an effective technique for conflict resolution,” his cousin explained. “When we’re all in disagreement, someone has to make the final decision.”

His brother shot him a look of utter disbelief, but Kinn was right. Vegas returned the stare, until Macau coughed something that sounded like flip a fucking coin and then leaned back against the wall, his expression insolent as he waited for the outcome.

Speaking of. “So who’s it going to be?” Vegas asked.

No one volunteered.  

Three months later

The other mafia families in town had doubted them at first. In their defense, the story about an assassin killing his father on the same moment that the long-lost eldest son returned to the Theerapanyakul compound had been…thin. But mafia families were practical if nothing else; when Tankhun resumed the Theerapanyakul business dealings, they accepted the new regime.

Tankhun had even found his grandfather’s chair in one of the attics. The scrollwork around its legs was a little chipped from its long sojourn. Hours of polish had not restored the filigree to its former brilliance. He thought the dings and dents only made it more appropriate as a throne, showcased the sacrifices they’d all made.

He leaned back in his ergonomic office chair as he admired the effect of the antique chair heading the modern conference table. And he admired the man he’d put on his throne.

Arm looked appropriately gratified by his regard. In that he wasn’t.

“Khun Decha is going to know that I’m not the patriarch,” Arm tried to explain for the umpteenth time. “His suspicion could put this operation in jeopardy.”

Tankhun hummed. “Then you’ll just have to convince him. I know you can be threatening. Remember that incident with the Yakuza?”

The Yakuza had been displeased by the change in leadership. They’d thought to blackmail the Theerapanyakuls into changing the conditions of some of their trade deals. Arm had found the new terms to be detrimental to the family’s interests. So, mid-meeting, he’d opened his laptop and destroyed the Yakuza servers (though Macau had probably helped with that). All copies of the blackmail thus destroyed, Arm had requested that the Yakuza make their best and final offer.

Obligingly, Arm looked threatening as he adjusted his glasses.

Kinn meandered into the conference room ten minutes before the meeting was supposed to start, nodding to Arm as he sat down. The first time he’d walked into a meeting and seen his former cybersecurity expert sitting on Tankhun’s throne, he’d shrugged and said he’s been doing the job for years anyway.

“Where’s Porsche?” Tankhun asked, just to see both Kinn and Arm dive into their devices to look up his location. Arm surfaced first, but he let Kinn answer.

“He’s on his way to the site,” said Kinn.

The meeting was a convenient way to get the trafficker out of his encampment of captive magic-users trapped in the middle of nowhere. Tankhun could confirm that that area of the Chao Phraya floodplain was the middle of nowhere, because his father’s asylum was located nearby. While they were keeping Decha—khun Decha, Tankhun reminded himself—occupied, Porsche would do reconnaissance on the camp.

Khun Decha arrived right on time, which actually meant the meeting started two minutes late as they waited for the man to settle into a chair, his bodyguards inspecting the room before taking their places alongside the Theerapanyakul bodyguards along the wall of the conference room.

Arm cleared his throat when the man finally stopped fidgeting in his chair.

“You asked for this meeting, khun Decha,” he began. “You had a proposition for us?”

But before the trafficker could reply, Vegas entered—three minutes late. Tankhun watched the corners of Arm’s eyes crinkle.

“Who’s he?” Decha asked, because Vegas hadn’t been included in the information about the Theerapanyakul family that his bodyguards had provided for perusal.

By provided for perusal, Tankhun meant that they’d fed the men incorrect information. Amazing how eager the bodyguards were to cut corners. They hadn’t asked questions when the completed background check had appeared in their inbox one morning.

“I asked my, er, cousin to come in and advise on your proposal. Vegas, khun Decha has asked if we have any interest in purchasing a—” Arm checked his notes. Unnecessarily, because he had perfect recall. “Fore-bringer. If there is even such a thing.”

The trafficker bristled, but they couldn’t make it easy for him.

Vegas laid his palms on the table, portraying honesty. “There’s never been a fore-bringer in the black market listings,” he commented. “How have you managed to locate one?”

Appeased by his cousin’s question, Decha replied, “A friend of mine tipped me off. As you might know, I run a…small business. We work with many prestigious organizations to find solutions that meet their needs. I thought that the Theerapanyakuls might be interested in such a purchase, but I can take it to your competitors if you prefer.”

Clever, the way he said nothing illegal. But they were better.

Kinn said, “We might be interested in such an acquisition. Might we have a demonstration of the…product?”

(Kim hadn’t been allowed to attend the meeting, for obvious reasons.)

“Of course, khun Kinn. Now that I know that you’re interested, I’m happy to proceed with the sale,” said the trafficker, rising from his chair, his hand going to his lower back as his spine popped. He complained, “Damn hotel bed. I didn’t sleep well.”

Vegas smirked.

Arm said, “We are always interested in ensuring that magic-users get what they deserve.”

“Of course, khun Tankhun,” Decha replied, bowing to the man on the Theerapanyakul throne.

It was not the first case of mistaken identities that the trafficker would encounter that day.  

Kinn couldn’t stop the smile curling up his face when he turned his phone over. He ignored the alarming number of email notifications in favor of Porsche’s stream of consciousness texts.

flying is fun

the helicopter kind of flying that is

making friends with the pilot

you wouldn’t BELIEVE the stories he has about what people have done in his helicopter

wow

he says that we’re in the wrong kind of helicopter for the mile high club

because the helicopter can’t go that high

A slight vertical space between texts indicated that Porsche and the apparently chatty pilot had spent time doing reconnaissance of Decha’s camp of magic-users. They needed to know the layout of the area and how many guards the trafficker had. They also needed Decha himself. But that was a mission for tonight.

Porsche’s texts resumed, terse and sporadic now that he’d seen the camp.

well we’re coming back

pilot says we’re five minutes out

we landed

I’m going for a swim

Ah. The magic-users among them had taken the news about the trafficker hard. Porsche and Pete had been trafficked before; Chay had spent most of his life hiding from his enemies. Only Vegas had kept his secret and his freedom, though the former probably explained the trail of bodies his cousin left in his wake.

Kinn headed for his suite in the compound. Porsche had moved in after the takeover. The space was too small for the two of them, but they were making it work. Kinn liked maneuvering around Porsche, stepping around him when he fell asleep in a sunbeam on the floor, bringing him tea and snacks as he browsed through Kinn’s collection of books on magic-users, feeling Porsche’s body against his each night.

The last few months had been occupied by securing the compound, reinforcing their place within the city’s mafia hierarchy, and going after the trafficker. Now that the last of his father’s loyalists had been eliminated and the last of the mafia families had been…dealt with, Kinn was looking forward to the next chapter of their lives together. Just one more task to check off his list.

The afternoon sunlight flooded his suite, raising the temperature to an unacceptable degree. Kinn drew the drapes and turned down the thermostat—Porsche would find a way to return the room to swamp-like heat and humidity by the end of the day, but at least Kinn could try—before swinging his blazer over the kitchen counter.

He swapped the garment for a pair of sunglasses and stepped out onto the pool deck, the white concrete dazzling in the bright light of the afternoon. His skin had started to itch the moment he’d stepped out of the hallway and into the barely air-conditioned suite. Now sweat was dripping down his back.

Kinn twitched his shoulders, trying to get his shirt away from his skin before it got soaked.

But all movement stopped when he saw Porsche, who’d commandeered one of the lounge chairs Kinn had bought for the pool deck. Kinn saw flame-red swim trunks, the color contrasting with golden skin and white pool deck and blue water. His mouth went dry.

So he made for the glass on the side table next to Porsche, glistening with condensation and filled with ice and slices of lemon. Kinn took a hasty sip as Porsche turned his head to the side and squinted up at him.

Ah, it was just ice water.

The long lines of Porsche’s body proved irresistible. Kinn flicked drops of water onto his back, the liquid falling across his scars before evaporating. How the water was evaporating was an interesting question on a day as humid as today.  

The answer was always Porsche, who said, “You’re mean,” as he tucked his face back into the lounge chair.

“So are you,” said Kinn, and meant it. Porsche shouldn’t be allowed to wear those swim trunks, not unless it was dark. And if it was dark, he shouldn’t be wearing anything at all. From his vantage point, Kinn could see the windows of the bank building across the street. It wouldn’t do for the poor office workers to see something indecent.

Which was what kept him from tearing off those damn swim trunks. Kinn let more water from his glass fall onto Porsche’s back, prompting him to mmph in discontent and—there, the water droplets began to steam, the air became hotter, a dry sort of heat that did nothing to stop the sweat from rolling down Kinn’s spine.

“How did your meeting go?” Porsche asked, his voice muffled because his mouth was mashed into the back of the lounge chair.

Kinn knelt beside him, stroking down Porsche’s spine, pressing kisses against the scars. Porsche’s skin was only a touch cooler than the concrete burning into his knees. He shivered as Kinn passed over the small of his back, the only varietal thereof since that night where he’d set them both on fire and sent them…somewhere. Kinn wouldn’t call it flying.

He didn’t mind that Porsche no longer needed him for warmth (though sometimes he wished Porsche would stop messing with the thermostat.)

“Decha’s on the hook,” said Kinn, working up to his next question. He’d learned to read between the lines of Porsche’s text messages. He swept his hand upward, towards the middle of Porsche’s back, his breathing making Kinn’s hand rise and fall. “How was your helicopter ride?”

Porsche’s shoulders hunched in.

“We found them. Couldn’t get too close,” he said. “The pilot has the information about how many guards they have. Not as many as we thought.”

“If all of those magic-users are bound to him, then he wouldn’t need many guards,” Kinn mused, smoothing away the worry tensed in Porsche’s shoulders. “We’ll keep him alive until we’re close enough to subdue his guards. Then he’ll be gone, and you’ll have freed all those people.”

The exhale seemed to come from the bottom of Porsche’s lungs.

Kinn traced the outlines of one of the worse scars, the skin gone pebbly around a whip-weal healed badly. Probably an infection, he thought, surveying the scar’s outer ring of smooth pinkish-white skin. Though how Porsche could have gotten an infection when he could set himself on fire confounded Kinn. He rose up enough to get some leverage and pressed his palms into Porsche’s burning shoulders.

“Just a few months ago, I wouldn’t have been strong enough to resist cuffs or a collar,” Porsche murmured. “It could have been me in that camp.”

“Not for long,” Kinn assured him. “The trafficker’s business-minded. He would have advertised you in the black market listings and I would have gotten you out. I’ve been yours since you saved my life all those years ago, remember?”

“Sorry I ran away from you back then,” Porsche muttered, turning his face to the side again. The lounge chair’s rubber slats had left creases across his cheeks. “We could have been together sooner.”

Probably not. Not when Kinn’s father had been the one to ensure Porsche had been taken by traffickers in the first place. Fourteen years ago, Kinn wouldn’t have been able to protect him. And even in the end, Tankhun had been the one to pull the trigger.

But he could protect Porsche now.  

“Are you sure you’re okay with what you’re doing tonight?” Kinn asked.

Porsche rolled over, his swim trunks catching against the lounge chair, pulling down to reveal more-than-a-hint of hipbone. Kinn reached for his abandoned cup of water.  

“Easy. And your nong will be there the whole time if anything goes wrong,” Porsche answered, letting Kinn catch his hand in his own. “I think he’s hoping something goes wrong so he can kill the guy sooner.”

Kim had taken news of the trafficker predictably well. Kinn had seen how many guns his brother was bringing to the raid tonight.

Porsche stretched beneath him, cat-like, hindered only by the scar tissue in his back. As Kinn swiped his thumb against Porsche’s forefinger, he remembered the time Porsche had sliced his hand chopping the spring onions, all those months ago. He’d gone for the first aid kit. Kim had been the one to ask: why can’t you heal yourself?

The legends agreed that all power had a price. Kinn knew what Porsche had paid. Yet he’d never asked. Even when Kim had, Porsche hadn’t replied. He should have been able to heal himself.

“What’s wrong?” Porsche asked, and Kinn softened his expression as he leaned down to kiss him.   

Porsche’s lips tasted like the saltwater pool, acrid against Kinn’s mouth. The sun beat down on him, though fire along his back was nothing to the fire-bringer beneath him. He shifted on his knees, the concrete digging through his pants, frustrated with the angle. That he hadn’t asked. Kinn kissed him till the saltwater gave way, revealed a faint hint of lemon.

“Wow,” Porsche remarked when they broke apart, though the deep breath he sucked in ruined his attempt at nonchalance. “Wow, you’re really sweaty.”

Indeed, Kinn’s shirt was sticking to his back, riding up along the sides. There was no saving it. He’d have to change before his next meeting.

“Is that a complaint?” he asked, scraping sweaty hair out of his eyes. “Because I can leave.”

As he spoke, he peered across the street at the bank building, wondering how many workers were looking up from their desks. Mid-afternoon; probably many, the poor innocents. Kinn found himself calculating how much money the building owners would need to sell. He could turn the building into a second compound—better than Vegas’s tiny apartment, for sure, though he doubted Vegas would take charity. But then his cousin would be the one looking at them. He abandoned the plan.

Kinn caught Porsche’s hands as they snaked toward the buttons of his soaked shirt.

“Nooooo,” Porsche said, the latter part of the sound descending into a moan, low in his throat.

“Porsche,” Kinn threatened. “There are people working in that office building. Who can see us.”

Porsche disappeared into a heat mirage, though Kinn had seen enough of these to know where to grab. Curls of heat twined around his arms as he sought out Porsche’s wrists, but Porsche would never let him burn. At last he got Porsche pinned where he wanted him.

“They’re going to see a man doing wildly inappropriate things to a lounge chair,” Kinn breathed in Porsche’s invisible ear. “They’ll probably record it.”

“I’d watch that video,” Porsche agreed. “But tonight?”

When the trafficker was dead, when all the magic-users were free. When all the office workers had gone home. When Kinn would ask.

“Tonight,” Kinn promised.

They’re hot. So beautiful. So perfect for me.  

Not an unexpected secret, not in a place like this.

The music is too loud. Am I the only one not having fun? There was a secret behind their secret, though: what if I never find someone who loves me? What if I’m alone forever?

“What do you think? Anything interesting?” Porsche asked him, thankfully. Pete tore his gaze away from the disconsolate person in the corner.

“Anodyne,” Pete replied, determined never to reveal those secrets. Those poor, lonely souls. “I’m glad I’m not them,” he added, unable to stop himself.

Porsche pushed a rocks glass in front of him. “To be normal, though,” he mused, and Pete saw truth (not a secret) bloom within him—one they shared. That if they were offered the choice to be normal, to be without power, to never again fear capture or coercion, they weren’t sure they would take it.

Perhaps one day the answer to that hypothetical would be a more emphatic no. But for now, sneaking ambivalence was enough.

“I’m getting better,” came out of Pete’s mouth, against his will. Porsche covered his mouth to hide his laugh. This part of the job had the potential to go disastrously wrong because of him. “Why is my glass empty?”

“Because my nong sucks at pouring and could use the practice.”

Tucked into the corner of the bar, Kim scowled at them both.

“Come on, nong,” Porsche invited him. “Otherwise our target’s going to figure out that you’ve never poured a drink in your life.”

So Vegas’s cousin splashed an over-generous pour of top-shelf tequila into Pete’s glass. Kim was lucky he owned the bar, or else management would fire him for being profligate with the good stuff.

Which he’d said out loud, Pete realized, as Kim snatched his glass away and dumped its contents down the drain. And Porsche was laughing again, suddenly busy straightening the bottles behind the bar, his shoulders shaking.  

“You’re not taking this seriously,” Kim told them both, when Porsche recovered and Pete apologized. “We can’t fail.”

Pete saw the nightmare in his eyes. The fore-bringer’s pale skin, his unfocused stare, the way his words came too slowly. Delicate veins shot through the image; that one day Kim wouldn’t be able to bring him back. Which was why Chay was nowhere near the bar tonight. Not because he couldn’t handle himself, but because Kim couldn’t handle the thought of him near danger.

“He’s coming,” said Porsche, the laughter sliding off his face.

As they’d known he would. Pete didn’t have to look behind him as the man made his way to the bar—the only empty barstool was next to his, the crowd at the bar was thinner at this end, and so the man thought it must be coincidence that finding his quarry was so convenient.

They’d had time over the past few months to sow disinformation, such as what the fore-bringer looked like, his family history (or lack thereof), where he worked. The trafficker must have thought he’d walked into fortune at last, as what he sought twisted into his hands.

The trafficker clambered onto the barstool next to Pete. Decha had changed into a red shirt since his earlier meeting with the Theerapanyakuls. The color suited him, Pete thought critically as he looked over.

“You must be new around here,” he told the trafficker, giving him a reason to put with his sudden once-over. Secrets blossomed in the man’s eyes.

“He would know. He’s a regular,” Porsche added as he finished making a cocktail, whiskey and sugar and orange. Then he set his finger on fire to burn the oils in the orange peel.  

Tucked into his corner of the bar, Kim’s jar clenched as he watched the fire-bringer reveal himself in front of the trafficker who would have done anything to capture him. Porsche was the worst liar, Pete had learned—he couldn’t resist giving away little hints. Hints that Pete had missed, last time. Humiliating, now, to see Porsche’s performance working on another.

Porsche put the Old Fashioned down in front of Pete.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” said Decha. “I couldn’t even see you use the lighter on the orange peel,” he told Porsche, but his eyes were on Kim to test his reaction. “It was almost like magic.”

“Oh no!” Porsche protested as he used his power to caramelize the sugar cube in the man’s old fashioned. “That would be so illegal.”

The trafficker didn’t notice, watching Kim instead. Vegas’s youngest cousin wasn’t a great actor, either, but (somewhat grudgingly) his eyes went wide with alleged fear. He stepped behind Porsche as the fire-bringer finished his second Old Fashioned of the evening. Denied his prize, Decha looked again at Pete.

Who saw: that his bodyguards were waiting in the alley outside the bar to take the magic-user he wanted, that most of his men were guarding the encampment, that his techs were still having trouble finding the sigils to control a fore-bringer. And then Pete saw all the ways the trafficker meant to make him obey, even without benefit of a collar.

Pete’s throat closed up. He took a quick sip of his Old Fashioned as Porsche finished the trafficker’s drink.

“You okay?” Porsche asked him.

“Went down the wrong pipe,” Pete replied, pulling out his phone to text Vegas about the additional bodyguards outside.

A moment later, his boyfriend replied: already took care of them

The trafficker took a drink of his caramelized Old Fashioned. “Your friend doesn’t say very much,” he remarked, pointing at Kim.

“My nong is shy,” Porsche agreed, at which point Kim blinked in confusion. “I keep telling him that he could find better work outside this shitty bar, but he says he hasn’t been able to find better options.”

All three of them—Porsche, Pete, and the trafficker—gave Kim the benefit of their attention. He attempted to look woebegone, though he at least managed to hide the murder in his eyes.

“That’s hardly a secret,” Pete told him, and then everyone turned back to him.

Porsche saved him, saying confidingly, “Uh, hardly a secret that my nong doesn’t have the right papers to work somewhere better! We tell all our regulars to keep an eye out for jobs for him.”

The trafficker’s plan came together. He would lure the magic-user out in the alley with the promise of a new job. His bodyguards would pull their guns, the frightened magic-user would handcuff himself—and Pete had to take another sip of his drink to keep from laughing—or be cuffed, should he prove recalcitrant.

Laughter still felt strange in his mouth. But Pete had seen everything he needed to see. He pushed some bills across the bar to pay for his half-drunk drink and slipped into the crowd of people around the bar, the signal for Porsche and Kim to continue.

Once he was a few steps away, he turned back around to watch.

Kim’s head was downturned as he spoke to the trafficker, a wise decision considering what his eyes gave away. “I think I might be interested. In working for you.”

“Careful, nong,” Porsche interjected. “If the manager sees you collecting business cards, she’ll fillet us all.”

“I’m not afraid of her,” Kim lied—and oh, that was something Pete hadn’t known. To the trafficker, he added, “I’m about to take my break. Do you want to meet me outside?”

Pete caught a glimpse of a nod before the trafficker began to make his way out of the bar. Pete squeezed between two people in the crowd and began to follow him out. They didn’t need four people for this job. Kim would have done it alone—he still wanted to do it alone—but cooler heads had prevailed.

The night air was refreshing in contrast to the close quarters of the bar. Pete paused just outside the alley where the ambush was going down. Waiting for Kim. Or—

Vegas pulled him into the shadows.

“Two dead bodyguards, per your request,” he whispered, minty breath against Pete’s cheek. “Now we can watch the show.”

It wasn’t much of one. The trafficker was on his phone as he approached Kim in the alley, already diminished without the threat of hired muscle behind him. Pete saw the gleam of a streetlight against the muzzle of his gun, but Kim had already wrenched the weapon out of his hands. He sent the gun rattling along the ground (Vegas picked it up). The fight finished when Kim drove his fist directly into the trafficker’s face. Bone cracked. Multiple bones.

Vegas and Pete frowned in tandem. Kim had broken his hand along with the man’s nose.

The trafficker fell backwards, still breathing for now.

“Need some help getting him into his trunk?” Pete asked, because he didn’t think Kim would accept if Vegas offered.

Kim tried to open his fingers. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Before Porsche sees.”

Because Porsche still looked heartbroken when he encountered violence. Pete knew why, but it wasn’t his secret to tell. Novel, now, that he could choose to keep the secrets of others. His newfound reticence meant that he was starting to make friends amongst the men Vegas had hired. Friends. Also novel.

After one failed attempt by Kim to pick up the man he’d knocked out, Pete and Vegas left him to cradle the broken hand in his other. They hauled the unconscious trafficker to his own car. Still alive, for now. Until they got to the encampment of magic-users.  

Just as they’d slammed the lid closed on the man, Porsche came out of the bar, still wiping his hands on his jeans.

“Everything go okay?” he asked, but in the tone of voice that said he didn’t really want to know.

“Your nong broke his hand,” Vegas noted.  

“My hand’s fine,” said Kim, remarkably confident for a man who hadn’t been able to move his fingers a moment ago. Then again, fear was crawling down his back, making it difficult for him to think.

Pete had seen that secret grow inside him, all those months ago outside the wreckage of the Costa compound. He wondered whether the fear was for the fore-bringer—or for the person Kim would become without the man he loved.

“Let me see, nong,” said Porsche. When Kim didn’t move, Porsche added, “Or I’ll call Kinn.”

Grudgingly, Kim held out his hand. Porsche flicked a tendril of fire over it, so quickly he could have been opening a lighter, just as the soon-to-be-late trafficker had suggested inside. The light flashed in the fire-bringer’s eyes, so Pete could see one secret Porsche had been holding back.  

“Now can we go?” Kim complained as he curled and uncurled his fingers.

“We’ll head out first,” Pete told them all. Otherwise Kim would drive fast enough to lose them and try to take out the entire encampment alone, just to assuage the fear he carried that one day he wouldn’t be strong enough to protect him.

Kim’s lip curled up, but he remained silent as he turned and headed for the trafficker’s car. Porsche waved at them and followed, his phone lighting up the dim walls of the alley, likely texting Kinn that they were on their way to the encampment.

“He’s going to tailgate me the whole way there,” said Vegas.

They parked as close as they dared—which was very close. Macau had already knocked out their communications; they weren’t expecting any trouble. This far out in the countryside, no one would trouble them. When Vegas had looked over the file for this operation, he’d noticed that the place his uncle had locked him in for a year was located nearby.

Yeah, he’d shared a long look with Tankhun at that one. They were going to run an audit of this part of the country. Where one patriarch had kept his secrets, others probably followed. They could use some blackmail on the other mafia families in town.

Pete got out of the car first. Vegas popped the trunk and followed. He didn’t think he’d need all the guns Kim had stocked there, but his cousin had been insistent. Perhaps Vegas would have been as insistent, if the trafficker had been after Pete instead. He added a pistol to his back holster, strapped a knife sheath into place against his hip.

When the minor family had attempted to kill his uncle the year before, Vegas hadn’t thought about using his power in the battle. Doing so would mean telling his father, for one—and Vegas had grown up knowing what would happen if his father learned about him. Though maybe if his father had been able to control him, he would have liked him better. Certainly the man had always looked at Vegas though he’d known that something was wrong with him.  

Maybe something was wrong with him.

Porsche was shaking his head as Pete tried to persuade him to take a gun. After what he’d done to Chan all those months ago—after what he was going to do to the guards at the camp—Vegas knew what it was like to fear his own power. The fire-bringer didn’t need a gun; he could level this whole camp if he wanted. Indeed, Porsche would be leveling the whole camp when they were done.

Still, Vegas shushed them. This far out in the country, the sound of voices would carry further than they thought. And he wanted the guards as relaxed as possible, enjoying such a restful, peaceful night. Their last night.

Pete looked back at him, once, before disappearing into the night. He and Porsche were Vegas’s backup in case his power failed to subdue the guards.

“Let me know when you’re done,” said Kim when they were gone. His cousin checked the magazine of his gun for the eighth time since they’d arrived.  

Vegas looked over the weapons in the trunk a final time—decided he had enough—decided to trust his power—and then reached up to pull the trunk lid closed. The metal slammed down on his hand, the bulk of the force concentrating on the joint of his index finger. He hissed, too disciplined to yelp and ruin the operation. But his hand hurt.

Kim glanced over. “You okay?” he asked quietly, and Vegas’s brows rose. His least-domesticated cousin sounded sincere.

His finger was already swelling around the joint, still numb, but in a way that presaged pain to come. But Vegas didn’t need fingers to use his power. More carefully this time, he closed the trunk and sank to the ground beside the car, resting his head against the still-warm metal.

Deep breaths, till he was more asleep than not. The night encircled him—and those he sought—their minds open for the taking. Vegas gave them the carefully-manufactured scent of flowers (there were no flowers here, not amidst the tons of plastic in the Chao Phraya’s polluted waters), the innocent glow of starlight. There was no danger in falling asleep here. The boss was in the city for a few days. Decha would never know if they took a nap on duty.

The weakest among them dropped first (or drooped). Vegas pushed harder. They didn’t know enough to be suspicious of sleep stealing into their minds. Of sleep that could steal life, he thought, as another guard joined his fellows. There was such a fine line between sleep and death.

“Vegas,” Kim whispered.

He could feel Pete’s mind, familiar after months together. Vegas traced along his temples, savored Pete’s involuntary tremor. He left a wide wake around Porsche, the man’s power like a burning ring around his consciousness, leaving heat spots on his eyelids even as he slid around the two of them and back to the guards.

“Vegas,” his cousin repeated. Vegas heard the urgency in his voice, but he was busy—and his hand was starting to hurt.

The last of the guards belonged to him, now. Their breaths came deeper than his; except one, whose sleep problems foreshadowed slow death to come. Brought faster now; Vegas drew their minds around him, carrying them deeper into their dreams, closer to—

“Phi,” said Kim, and Vegas was rocketing to his feet, drawing his gun with his good hand, his knife with his bad one.

He wheeled around, searching out the threat that was bad enough that Kim would call him phi. But he could make out no dim outline of a man, no contingent of guards that their reconnaissance had failed to find.

“Fuck, don’t use a gun,” Kim continued. His cousin pointed. Downward.

So Vegas looked down. And found a child looking up at him.

Uh.

Well.

That was not expected. At all. Vegas fumbled his gun back into its holster, his knife back into its sheath. He had read the report on the encampment. A small number of guards to corral about double their number of magic-users, all of whom were cuffed or collared. To omit the presence of a child seemed like a glaring error. Who had been on reconnaissance for this damn job, anyway? Hadn’t that been—

“Porsche,” Kim was saying into his comms unit. “Come back. We need you.”

When Vegas looked the question at him, Kim shrugged. “Like either of us knows how to deal with a kid? Unless you want to put him to sleep while we take care of everything else?”

No, Vegas wasn’t using his power on a child, not with what he’d just been doing to the guards at the camp. He’d never used his magic to protect, to soothe. He was not taking the risk, out in the middle of nowhere, with a child, that he might lose control.

Kim’s comms unit squawked. The kid’s lower lip jutted out, his little eyebrows furrowing. That was a gesture Vegas knew too well from Macau. The kid had decided that crying was the next step if he wanted to get their attention. And he hadn’t killed those guards yet.

He could do this.

Vegas crouched down, coming to eye level with the kid. “Hi.”

“Hi,” the kid said back to him, his thin voice carrying into the night. He sniffed, but at least his eyebrows had come up again. They were now two steps away from crying.

“He’s going to wake everyone up,” Kim commented.

Not if Vegas could help it. He might not want to use his power on a child, but he had something better than power. He dug his phone out of his pocket, grimacing at the lack of service. But frankly, the lack of service just meant that the kid couldn’t screw anything up too badly. (It occurred to him that he was inviting danger with that sort of thought.)

He held the phone out to the kid, who jerked it from his bad hand, then immediately found the camera app and held down the button to take burst photos. What were people teaching kids nowadays, that he just knew how to do this? And the flash was going to be an issue unless he took care of those guards now.

Vegas sank back to the ground, finding the minds he’d been so gently ferrying to a land from which they’d not return. Within the space of a few breaths he had them again, casting them into dark waters. They sank, leaving consciousness floating on the surface—like scum, he thought—drifting toward white light that waited beyond…

Some research showed that white light resulted from increased cardiac activity just prior to death, but then they were dead anyway.

Vegas opened his eyes. The kid was looking at him again, though his little fingers were still holding down the button on his phone to take constant pictures. His battery was going to be shot after this. And how was he supposed to get his phone back once they found the child’s parents…but that was a problem for when they’d freed the magic-users.

“It’s done,” said Vegas.

Then he had to jump to his feet once again, because his cousin was striding towards the trafficker’s vehicle, his gun pointing at the trunk. Vegas had to run to get in front of him, because they were not killing the trafficker when the kid was still there, watching them with those worried eyes.

“Not with him,” Vegas reminded Kim, pointing at the kid. “Where the—where is Porsche?”

“Here!” was Porsche’s half-song as he approached. When he saw the kid, his attention now captured by something else on Vegas’s phone screen (probably accidentally taking incriminating video which he would accidentally post on the internet, Vegas thought tiredly), Porsche said, “Oh, nong!”

Yes, Kim was right. Vegas did not know how to deal with children. Better to let Porsche take over from here. The kid would be happier with Porsche, who had no nightmarish power to unleash on him. Hell, Porsche could probably take him flying. Vegas assumed that kids liked flying.

“Find his parents, will you?” Vegas ordered. “And get him away from here. We still need to take care of the trafficker.”

Porsche joined him on the ground, scratching the back of his neck, doing his best to look innocuous. The fire-bringer was the worst at acting.

“Chay told me about him,” Porsche explained. “He doesn’t have parents. I wonder what we will do with him, the poor kid.”

Vegas looked again at the child, his wrists too little to hold a cuff, and he would kill anyone who even thought about putting a collar on him. He could do that now: running through minds by night, Pete reading their secrets by day. The kid’s power was safe. Would be safe.  

“Hi,” he told the kid again, tugging his phone out of the tiny hand. “This is Porsche. He’s going to—” and he thought. The kid didn’t have any parents. They weren’t just going to leave a kid in the middle of nowhere. And Porsche wasn’t helping, still blinking limpid eyes at him. “Uh, Porsche is going to…show you something really cool. Do you want to see it?”

(Behind him, Kim muttered something that sounded like oh fuck.)

“Yes,” the kid replied, the y coming out with a faint lisp so the word sounded like less.

“Great,” Vegas concluded, straightening up. He slid his phone and its million selfies back into his pocket. “He’s yours now,” he told Porsche, who already had the kid by the hand, because Kim was right. Vegas had no business being near a child.

Porsche smiled a little too toothily for Vegas to believe him. “You sure about that?” he asked, and then they were gone, a red flash splitting the darkness where they had stood.

Then the night was split once more, by a gunshot this time. Multiple gunshots. Kim fired on the trunk of the trafficker’s car—the racket of metal on metal was deafening—until he’d emptied his magazine. He turned and nodded to Vegas.

Who approached, his own gun at the ready as his cousin opened the trunk and made sure that the trafficker was dead.

After a moment, Kim nodded.

“Time to inform the magic-users of their change in status,” Kim said as Vegas returned his gun to its holster. He paused, then asked, “How’s your hand?”

Oh. He’d forgotten. But when Vegas peered down at his injured index finger, he saw no swollen joint, no signs of bruising—and it had been long enough that signs of bruising should have been there. The pain was gone.

The ranks of magic-users had thinned considerably in the hour since Kim had killed the trafficker and set them free. A few had melted into the night on foot, but most had stolen the guards’ vehicles and headed out to the main road. Kim would have preferred to burn the vehicles along with the rest of the camp, but they hadn’t brought the resources to transport so many people…wherever the people wanted to go.

No one had said where they were going. They didn’t trust them.

Now the three of them looked out over the remnants of the encampment. Trash and clothing and abandoned mementos littered the ground, clear evidence that people had lived here. They’d had a plan for this. Had being the operative word.

“How do we get rid of the camp without Porsche?” asked Pete.  

Kim ordered, “Get Arm on the comms.”

As he waited, he gathered up the last of the broken cuffs and collars. He’d have to dole them out slowly, or Chay would try to destroy all the sigils at once and end up the way that Kim had found him three months, empty-eyed, barely there. The memory pinched inside his chest.

Arm’s voice crackled in his ear. “Yes, Kim?”

Sometime over the last few months, the man had dropped honorifics for all of them.

Kim said, “A couple months ago, you promised me that you had a drone that would—” and his lips cracked apart as he barred his teeth. “—respond to the multifaceted need for conflict suppression in alignment with strategic organizational goals.”

There was a brief pause on the comms before Arm replied, his tone noticeably subdued. “Yes.”

“Deploy it.”

Drone strike thus called in, Kim wrenched his comms unit out of his ear. Vegas drove the car with the dead trafficker closer to the encampment and they all ran a last search—difficult in the dark—for additional material that could trace back to the magic-users. When they’d destroyed as much as they could, and Pete had relayed Arm’s order to get out of there, now, Kim climbed into the backseat of Vegas’s car.

He'd sort of hoped to skip this part of the operation. Sure, after that incident with the underground fighting ring, Kinn had wheedled Porsche into agreeing that he would be more careful about using his power. But Kim had been confident that he could convince Porsche otherwise. Hell, Porsche had been willing to take the kid back to the city.

Kim clicked his seatbelt into place, trying not to feel as though Porsche had left him here. With Vegas and Pete.

“Sorry you’re stuck with us,” said Pete over his shoulder as the car peeled out of the encampment. “We’ll try to get back as fast as we can.”

They waited a safe distance away, until the drone strike lit up the night sky, before Vegas continued driving back to the city. Dark scrubland and darker patches of forest flashed past them. Kim let his head rest on the cool window.

One threat gone. He suspected it wouldn’t be the last. Everyone would come after a magic-user who could change the future. Perhaps they should continue to circulate his picture, let everyone come after him instead of Chay. The Theerapanyakuls probably had the resources to defeat them all. Probably.

But then Chay would look at him with star-lit eyes (that he had no defense against) until Kim broke. It had happened before.

Star-lit eyes melded with pinpricks of stars overhead, the darkness of treetops hard to distinguish from the darkness of the cloudcover as they got closer to the city. Someone in the front seat turned on music, something with a good beat, indie rock. Kim rolled his head a bit against the window, letting the lyrics wash over him, the pulse lull him into…

“We’re here,” Pete said later. Kim jerked awake.

He saw city lights overhead. He swept a finger over his lock screen. He’d been asleep for hours. What the fuck.

Kim did not give his cousin the satisfaction of looking back at him as he got out of the car. He slammed the door behind him, heavily suspecting that Vegas had put him to sleep to have a private conversation with Pete. Still, sleeping through the drive to the city had been an efficient way of passing the time. Kim was awake, now.

Which meant he could—

Run up the stairs of his apartment building. Kim fumbled with the keys (and keycard, and keycode) to his apartment. Eventually he got the deadbolt rolled back. His eyes adjusted to the warm glow of lamps that Chay had left lit. And if Chay had left the lights on—

He was moving before he realized it, the momentum taking Chay off his feet as Kim wrapped his arms around him, squeezing until he felt frantic pats along his shoulders and let go. Kim stepped back, surveying his sleepy eyes, his tousled hair.

“I’m sorry for waking you up,” Kim said.

“But if I was still sleeping, we wouldn’t be doing this,” Chay replied. He poked at Kim’s jacket until Kim produced the bag of collars and cuffs that he’d brought back from the encampment. “Are these for me?”

Feeling like someone had dropped a rock into his lungs, Kim nodded and let Chay take the bag from his hands. Chay peered into it, pulling out a cuff with a sigil he couldn’t recognize—he hadn’t asked when he’d freed the magic-users, and they hadn’t volunteered the information.

“Do you have to do this now?” Kim asked, and fuck, his voice cracked.

Chay looked up. Then he let the bag clank to the carpet.

“No,” he said. “Come here.”

Kim went, finding Chay’s mouth this time. He tasted like toothpaste—understandable—but also like minerals, something distant, some place Kim couldn’t follow, only call him back from. Chay stroked his hair, and Kim withdrew, remembering that he still smelled of the dirt of the camp and the death he’d dealt to the trafficker.

“I love you,” he said, instead of I need to take a shower.

Chay smiled. “You’ve mentioned. I love you, too.”

As they had before, the words made the rocks in Kim’s chest crumble. He cleared his raspy throat.

“You won’t start on those sigils when I’m in the shower, will you?”

Chay kicked the bag of leather and metal aside. “Let’s leave them for tomorrow,” he suggested.

Kim opened his mouth to point out that it was technically already tomorrow, but then Chay took his hand and he was lost again. The future could wait, he thought, as Chay towed him through their apartment. There was always another tomorrow.

Porsche couldn’t fly, not really. Kinn would have to sponsor another research fellowship so that Porsche could find terminology for the way heat rose, that smoke knew the way to spiral upward, that he followed the instinct to turn his face to the horizon and…

end up somewhere in the vicinity of where he wanted to go. Uh, usually. About a month ago, he’d been experimenting and ended up in the middle of an underground fighting ring. Kinn had called in a few favors to his contacts in the media, played it off as a bad batch of psychedelics among the observers. And afterward, Kinn’s eyebrows had come together so sorrowfully as he’d told Porsche how much he had worried about him, to please be careful. Worse, Porsche had believed him. For a while. He wouldn't have taken the kid if he thought there was any danger.

But being careful (and wary of further contraction of Kinn's eyebrows) was the reason Porsche found himself walking back from Pete and Vegas’s new place.

The affluent part of the city swirled about him as he walked. Far away from the seedy studio apartment they’d bought for Chay, from Yok’s bar, from the parts of town where people walked down the center of the street rather than risk the close quarters of the sidewalks. Far away from the charred remnants of the Costa compound, which Kinn had left untouched as a symbol of what would happen if any of the other mafia families in town dared to cross him.  

Porsche shivered once, the gesture involuntary, before remembering that he hadn’t been cold since that night on the hilltop with Kinn, when he’d learned that Kinn’s father had paid Arthee to get rid of him. Perhaps he’d risen from the ashes, though that would lean into Kinn’s constant talk of phoenixes.

The legends all said that power had a price. If so, then maybe Porsche had paid it. But he thought the legends might be wrong. The universe couldn’t be cruel enough to demand what had happened to him.

Perhaps he wasn’t afraid anymore.

The bodyguards on duty waved him through the front doors of the Theerapanyakul compound. Porsche wrinkled his nose as he was swamped by the cool wave of air conditioning. He’d never understood people’s desire to refrigerate themselves all day.

(Kinn looked good covered in sweat. A fact ascertained through much experience. Porsche looked forward to gaining more.)

“Khun Porsche,” said one of the guards who’d helped them take over the compound three months ago. One of Kinn’s men. Kim’s people had disappeared soon after the coup—his nong clearly preferred an army of irregulars.

“Big,” Porsche acknowledged. “How are your ribs?”

A bullet had shattered two during the takeover, searing itself into a blood vessel. The bone shards had punctured his lungs. It had been tricky to heal. Porsche had used the bullet to conduct heat, cauterizing the wounds in the man’s lungs. The medics had taken out the bullet itself.  

“I’m fine,” Big said, only a hint of pleading amid the bodyguard-professionalism of his voice. “Not even a twinge when I work out. Khun Kinn can put me back on active duty.”

Porsche suspected that Big was right. He hadn’t gotten to the man soon enough. The bullet had cut off blood flow and oxygen for too long. Big was always going to have a numb patch of skin on his side. That might even be an asset to a bodyguard.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Porsche replied, and Big bowed him into the elevator.

A few silent seconds later, Porsche got off at Kinn’s suite. He waved at the camera outside Kinn’s door—a concession Kinn had made when Porsche refused to keep bodyguards on duty outside his suite. A waste of manpower, Porsche thought. If danger threatened, he would wrap Kinn in his arms and take him far, far away.

Not that he could fly, not really.

“Kinn?” he called out, his voice echoing through the dark apartment. Porsche conjured up a handful of fire—just an illusion; they’d just gotten around to replacing all the fire alarms he’d melted during the takeover.

The flickering light made the familiar space foreign, the angles of furniture and walls forbidding. The quiet pervaded the suite, felt strange without Kinn’s contented sighs, the rustle of startled pages (Porsche found the amount of mafia paperwork alarming), the scrape of skin against Kinn’s thousand-threadcount sheets.

Tonight, Kinn had said.

So Porsche headed for the pool on the balcony. He found Kinn in the darkness there, lit only by the haze of the city around them.

“I’m back,” said Porsche, closing his fingers on the illusion of fire in his hand.

Kinn leaned his head back on the concrete of the pool deck, nearly upside down as he looked at him. “I heard you gave my cousin a kid. Are you sure that's a good idea?” he asked. “Vegas can kill people with his mind.”

He was the best person to protect a healer, then. Unlike Porsche, whose power was fire, healers had few defensive abilities. The kid would need someone to fight for him. Besides, Chay had been the one to arrange that future.  

Porsche let the tension drain out of his shoulders. “Thank you for helping us tonight,” he said.

“Always,” Kinn promised. He levered his head off the concrete and surface-dove under the water.

Even surrounded by so much water, power was never far from him. Porsche uncurled his fingers and Kinn came up crowned by fire. Serpentine, tonight, twining around his head like he was some naga king. Porsche had been reading too many of Kinn’s books lately. Interesting to learn about fire-bringers of old, to speculate what his powers could be used to do.

“Porsche, I kept the pool deck dark for a reason,” Kinn complained, falling silent as a forked, flame-edged tongue swooped down from his head and hissed at him. He ducked under again, the burning crown spitting and frothing as it vanished in the water.

“Oh?” Porsche asked when Kinn came up again.

He was distracted by the sight of Kinn rising from the shallow pool, slicking his hair back as he approached. Water streamed down his shoulders and torso, formed tributaries down his legs, puddled on the concrete. Not a naga king, he decided, as a firedrake—all illusion, this time—began to paw against the surface tension of the water at Kinn’s feet.

Kinn carefully stepped around the illusion. “So you see, if some worker on the night shift looks across the street and sees a man with his head on fire…”

“Good point,” Porsche agreed, tipping his head back to watch as the firedrake launched itself into the air, wheeled overhead, and disappeared into the night. He wondered whether it would show up on radar.

Vertigo seized him when he swung his head back down, the light pollution of the city overwhelming the attempts of the stars above him. Water lapped at the rim of the pool deck, water splashed around Kinn’s toes. Porsche stumbled, scraping the side of his heel against the rough concrete as he regained his balance.

Not that he needed to regain his balance, because Kinn was already there, his hands beneath Porsche’s elbows, his eyebrows doing that thing where he was concerned and using his concern to make Porsche feel concern as well.

“Ouch,” said Porsche, but meditatively. He let Kinn hold him up as he squinted at his scraped heel in the dimness. The pool deck had got him good, but it would scab over by morning. “Just a scrape,” Porsche concluded.

Kinn didn’t let go. “Heal it,” he said, and then when Porsche went still, he added, “Or do you not think that you deserve to be healed?”

A siren split the air below them, louder and then softer as the vehicle sped down the street. The surprise made Porsche shudder. Kinn adjusted his hold, wet hands sliding up his arms, urging him closer. Porsche swayed forward, caught by black earth eyes, pupils wide in the darkness.

“Not at first,” Porsche confessed, the words crawling out of him. “Not after what I did. And then enough time went by that the scars were permanent—they are permanent,” he warned. Even if he could do what Kinn was suggesting, the most he’d be able to achieve was some improvement in his range of motion.

Kinn nodded, just once, intense enough that Porsche had to look away, tracing a line down Kinn’s chest, still beaded with water from the pool.

“Then it was just easier…not to,” he finished.

“And now?”

Simple enough to tilt his head to the side, let Kinn slant his mouth over his. So easy to lose himself in Kinn’s kiss, the pull of his lips, the threat of his teeth. Fire dripped through him, trailing down to the scraped skin. He had only to cauterize the few places where the concrete had ripped through the skin barrier, send warmth to speed the creation of new skin.

So hard to admit that he deserved healing.

Porsche gasped when Kinn nipped beneath his chin, Kinn’s hand coming up to hold his head. Kinn’s breath played over his neck, the vulnerable place behind his ear. Porsche’s palms slipped against Kinn’s back. He let himself fall, the tiny divots the pool deck had left in his heel closing, strands of new skin forming across the scrape. He let himself believe.

“I love you,” Porsche managed to say when it was over.

“I’ve always loved you,” Kinn replied.

His hands fell to Porsche’s waist, a few fingers hooking into the waistband of Porsche’s jeans. He tugged out and then down, his eyebrow raised in challenge.

“I’ve got this,” Porsche assured him, and Kinn withdrew his errant fingers, mock-innocent. He held up his hands in surrender, backing away, holding Porsche’s gaze as he stepped into the pool. Porsche made to follow: wrestling his t-shirt over his head, shucking his jeans onto the pool deck.

The scars along his back were burning, the fire spreading as the nighttime breeze feathered along his skin. Just for a moment, Porsche wondered if someday, he might really—

But that was a question for another night.

The water steamed as Porsche stepped into the pool.

Kinn was waiting for him.