"From everything I've seen, I hope I'm never in a position to get one."

"We'll need to sit somewhere quiet for a few minutes." She glances at Izaneth. "Do you mind if I put you back to sleep? It's easier to deal with everything if fewer people are awake at a time."

He shrugs. "No problem," he says, sitting down on the floor and leaning up against the wall.

The sparks in her eyes flare slightly, and Izaneth falls neatly asleep.

She looks at Talyr.

"I meant it about the process being unpleasant. Being a captive here was only usually worse, minute-for-minute. But it doesn't take very long. If you haven't picked it up after five minutes I'll stop trying."

"Understood. Go on."

She stares into his eyes, and the world slips sideways.

—creeping clinging darkness sliding under his skin, pulling all his pieces out of place, licking at his bones with long cold tongues—

—and an inarticulable sense of how to make it stop doing that—

It feels like closing a door that someone else is trying very hard to shove open: a long struggle, and then click, and his mind is his own again. He blinks down at her; neither of them has moved while he was fighting the mara. He can't even tell how much time passed. It didn't feel like more than a few minutes, but it's hard to be sure.

"...you're right," he says. "That was unpleasant. Thank you, though."

She nods. There's - something about her, now, an intangible feeling of something huge and powerful and horrible wrapped up tight and compressed down to fit in a space as small as a person. Up close, it's kind of disconcerting.

"You'll know how to lock a mara if it ever comes up. I'm going to leave now. I'll let everyone wake up once we're far enough away."

"My name is Talyr," he says as she turns away. "I never caught yours."

"Raiel."

He waits until he can't hear anyone moving in the hall, and a couple of minutes afterward, before he goes to check on Kemar and Mezeidai. The last thing he wants to do is startle anyone on their way out.

When he looks into all the rooms along the way, the only one still occupied is Nerine's.

"Is everything alright?" she asks when he gets there.

"Slightly surreal, but otherwise yes," he says. "Raiel - that's her name - said she'll let everyone wake up once she and her rescuees are far enough away. I'm not sure how long that'll be."

"Okay." She snuggles in a little closer to Kemar. "...Do you think I made the right decision, staying?"

"...I don't know if it's my place to say. But - I hope we can make it worthwhile."

"I--I don't want to be alone."

He comes over and sits next to her and Kemar and hugs her.

Hugs. "I--I would have thought--

I'm too demonic for the humans. If they had known. I never would have guessed I wouldn't be too human for the demons. But if everyone agrees that I'm a demon, then..."

"The consensus in favour seems to be pretty firm. Although there was one person who tried to argue that half-demons shouldn't count. That was before Raiel showed up to correct our assumptions about humans, though."

Snuggle. "And I don't want to hide anymore--and I want to learn to fly--"

Snuggle. "I look forward to seeing you learn."

Snuggle. "It would be a very different matter if my mother were still alive."

...snuggle. "Yeah, I imagine so."

"I miss her but I'm glad she never had to find out about my getting captured by demons."

Hug.