His bedroom door creaked open with a soft groan, and Gael slipped out barefoot.

The hallway beyond was silent. It was the heavy, syrupy sort of silence, thick with dust and old breath and the faint sound of pipes clanking somewhere far beneath the floorboards. He moved quietly like he always did. Past the midnight hours, the Sallow Hearth Orphanage was like a shadow with bones, and there were other children sleeping in the rooms beside his. Any one of them could wake up with the slightest disturbance. Any one of them could report him for sneaking out again.

His fingers brushed the peeling walls for balance, and his shoulder grazed the railings. The bandages around his head were itching again.

It'd been two years since that umbrella-wielding Exorcist dropped him off at the orphanage.

To this day, he still had no clue what really went down in his house. That Myrmur had most certainly come out of his mother, and his father had most definitely been struck down by it—the upper half of his face was sprayed and splashed with its venom, too—but apart from that? It was anyone's guess as to why it'd all happened like that. None of the orphanage's nurses could tell what venom he'd been splashed with, and the Exorcist who said she'd visit and check up on him never did. It was just what he'd expected of a silver tongue.

Life in the orphanage was a constant migraine.

He'd learned, during his two years at the Sallow Hearth, that nights were kinder than days. In the dark, the other children slept and forgot he existed. In the dark, no one stared at the bandages that webbed his brow and cheeks like wasted lace. By day, he was the 'creepy migraine boy' —the one who muttered to himself, who hissed when light hit the raw, half-scarred skin above his eyes—but, by night he was air. A thin, aching draft drifting through corridors warped by age and damp.

Only one creature sought him out willingly: the hound assigned to him by the orphanage director. Every child was given a mongrel to train into a courier or vermin-sniffer. Cheap labour wearing a collar. He named his dog Grimlet. for the way its brindled coat stuck up in miserable slivers. Grimlet never judged. Grimlet only listened, cocking its head while Gael whispered anatomy facts or new ways to distil venom in its ears. Friendship enough.

Human company he rejected. If a child tried to sit beside him at breakfast, he'd move. If they asked about the bandages, he'd tighten the cloth and glared until questions died. Anyone insistent on getting to know more about someone grotesque like him was either foolish or cruel, and he had no spare tenderness for either.

So the headaches were his closest companions: white-hot wires twisting behind the eyes that the Myrmur's venom had half-melted. At first, the sisters dressed his wounds every morning, cooing sympathy, but when weeks bled into months, they handed him linen rolls and said, "You know the routine." He did. He also knew the routine of grinding herbs into powders for the director's 'special tonics', hauling sacks of spider-pod stems, and skimming a few shavings of narcotic bark for himself whenever no one looked.

But skimming wasn't enough tonight.

Tonight, the migraine was beating at his skull like iron hammers, so he snuck his way across the hallway until he stooped in front of the door to the director's office.

Locking it had never worked. Try as the director might to keep him out, he'd picked it three times last month alone. This time, he didn't even need to think. The wire pin in his pocket slid into the keyhole like it belonged there, and with a few simple clicks and turns, the door opened.

Cold air spilled out. He slipped inside the dark office quickly and closed the door behind him. Walking past the cracked spine of the old rug and over to the desk, he pulled the top drawer open.

The top drawer had nothing but a stack of worn paper and some crumpled ration slips. The second drawer was locked. He pulled a chisel out of his pocket and pried it open to reveal a false bottom. Always a false bottom. He ripped it out and grinned to himself.

There it was: a padded case of syringes with amber liquid glistening inside thin glass. The labels were hand-scrawled: Throatshimmer, Opium-resin, Lodestone syrup, Fogmist.

He sat down in the director's comfy arm chair. The leather groaned beneath him, and for a long moment, he just stared at the vials he'd scooped up in his hands.

Then he rolled up his sleeves and began.

The first syringe went into his biceps. A deep breath. Then the second, in the opposite bicep. He kept his hands steady. He knew the depth. Knew how to angle the needle to avoid piercing his important blood vessels. The third… the third syringe went right into the inside of his left forearm, where his nerves always screamed the loudest. That was the spot that made his breath hitch. That was the one that started to wash the pain away.

A slow sigh passed his lips as he slumped back into the chair, jabbing the fourth needle into his other forearm.

The migraine faded. The pressure behind his eyes thinned. The headaches finally started to fall asleep.

He closed his eyes for a moment and let the weight lift.

So this is why grown-ups drink.

A half-smile tugged at his mouth as oil-lantern light came seeping through under the office door, flickering like fireflies caught in a bottle.

He didn't react.

He was too far gone: head swimming in syrup, legs propped up on the desk. The silence was so comfortable, so deep and warm and thick, that he hadn't even heard the footsteps coming down the hall.

Then the door slammed open, making him jolt in his chair.

"Gael!"

The shout cracked like thunder. Gael winced, barely managing to lift his head before the director stormed in, his long coat flaring behind him like an angry crow.

"What in the bleeding depths are you doing!?"

The man's eyes locked on the syringes. On the boy. On the bruised mess of glass, blood, and drugged relief. His face twisted in revulsion.

Before Gael could even lift his hand in defense, the director marched forward, seized him by the ear, and yanked him off the chair. His ribs scraped the corner of the desk as he stumbled, legs too loose to resist.

"Those aren't for children!" the director barked, dragging him bodily toward the hallway. "You're out of your mind!"

Gael hissed through clenched teeth, stumbling after him, one arm shielding his bandaged forehead from the swinging lantern light.

"Can it, you crusted gargoyle," he snapped. "We're the ones who harvest the herbs, aren't we? Me and the others—bleeding fingers and cracked heels, picking fungus off sewer grates just so you can peddle them to your friends. Why can't I get a cut?"

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The director stopped. Turned. His mouth curled in fury.

"You rotten little—"

His hand rose. Gael braced for it.

But the blow never came.

A gloved, unshaking hand caught the director's wrist mid-swing.

Both of their heads turned.

A stranger stood right outside the door, framed by the drifting mist inside the hallway. Tall and rail-thin and cloaked in a thick black mantle that swept down to his boots, the man wore a broad-brimmed top hat that shadowed his face completely.

The air shifted. The director's hip lantern fluttered. The hallway seemed to quiet.

Then the director's arm twitched once before dropping with a disgruntled hmph. He jerked away from the stranger's grip, muttering something under his breath and retreating a few angry steps into his office.

Gael muttered a curse of his own and rubbed his aching ear, glowering at both men with equal contempt.

Then the stranger turned to him.

Slowly, without a word, he lowered himself—one knee down, cloak pooling around him like spilled ink—and knelt.

Gael narrowed his eyes, still rubbing his ear, and leaned slightly to peer around the kneeling man's shoulder. Standing just behind him, dressed in the same funereal black cloak, was a girl. Older than him, maybe thirteen or fourteen, with long golden curls spilling out from under her hood like a garden snake had decided to play princess. Her stance was perfectly still, chin slightly lifted, and her posture was crisp and proud in that Vharnish way Gael recognized instantly.

Upper city brat. Silver tongue. Highborn and polished. He hated her already, so his jaw clenched as the man in front of him spoke.

"What's your name, boy?"

Gael clicked his tongue and scowled. "Gael. Who's asking?"

The man didn't seem bothered. "Your household name?"

"Just Gael."

A pause. The man's eyes didn't move, but his tone shifted ever so slightly.

"No household name?"

"What's it matter to you?" Gael turned his face, letting the bandages catch the lantern-light. "A devoured house is no house at all. "

Silence.

Then, quietly, the man turned his head, glancing over his shoulder at the director's desk cluttered with empty syringes.

"Why were you injecting those into yourself, Gael?"

Gael rolled his eyes. "Because they taste like candy."

The man didn't laugh. "Doesn't it hurt?"

"Barely itches."

The man's gaze drifted down, examining the crisscross of bandages on Gael's arms, legs, and neck like mummy silk.

"How long have you been injecting yourself with toxins for?"

At that, Gael perked up. He stepped back and puffed his chest slightly—like a crow flaunting its feathers.

"I started with diluted mistcap two years ago. Didn't take," he said proudly. "Then nightshade root with burnethil base—made me sick for two days, but I kept my notes. After that, a trace dose of nectarvine with pinchroot. I found out that one sharpens hearing if you counterweight with liver extract. Tried barkspine venom next. Then hollowfly ichor. Got a migraine so bad I started naming the voices it gave me."

The man blinked.

Gael kept going.

"Pyrroot oil, mixed wrong, makes your teeth fall out. Found that out the funny way. After that, I brewed a hybrid between whisperblossom and thornmilk. It clotted my blood for twenty minutes. Grimlet thought I was dying. I wasn't. Just testing—"

The man let out a slow breath. "And you're still alive after all that?"

"After just that?" Gael shrugged. "Easy peasy. Just don't die."

The man's lips twitched. A flicker of something—amusement or maybe awe—passed across his expression. Then he straightened a little and asked, "Can you pronounce 'chlorium acethexide'?"

"Chlorium acethexide." Gael repeated it with crisp enunciation. "Used in skin-melting fog bombs. Mix it with crushed applewort and it burns cleaner."

"And 'oxisyrinx compound-B'?"

"Stop patronizing me. Oxisyrinx in all forms only works when stabilized in glasmire resin," Gael replied. "Otherwise it bubbles and explodes."

The man tilted his head slightly. "Do you know what the base ingredient of redcap venom is?"

"Not unless you tell me the breed," Gael said, crossing his arms. "There's five. Dullcap's a misnomer. That one'll kill you faster."

Ten minutes. Maybe longer. The questions kept coming, and the old man's tone didn't change at first. It was steady, probing, and precise, but his shadow-shrouded eyes… his eyes eventually changed. At first, they simply held curiosity. Then, they bred something darker. Something sharper. It was the kind of look Gael had seen adults give herbs right before cutting them at the root.

The look of someone who'd just found something rare.

Inside the office, the director had grown impatient. The top hat man hadn't acknowledged the old director even once, but now, at last, the director spoke from behind his desk with his arms crossed.

"You wanna know what this boy does all day?" he said dryly. "Doesn't play with the other brats. Doesn't talk to them. Doesn't fight. Doesn't smile. All he does is read and mixes herbs in the central garden like he owns it. He refused to let the twins water the widowseed last week, claiming it needs morning light only."

Gael rolled his eyes. "It does, you fucking gargoyle."

The director gestured like that proved his point. "See? Smart-ass. But he is smart. He takes care of every single plant on the grounds without anyone telling him. Might be a little menace, but he's kept three of our kids from dying of woundrot just this winter."

The top hat man didn't say anything right away.

Then, softly, he stood.

"Wait here."

He turned without another word and swept into the director's office, the door clicking shut behind him with a soft, final thunk.

Gael was left alone in the hall with the silver-tongued statue that was the older girl.

He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, scowling at her from beneath his bandages. She didn't move. Not even to shift her weight. Her cloak was draped to the floor, and her curls caught the lantern-glow like polished wire. She looked like the kind of girl who'd cry if mud got on her shoes—and probably thought the whole slum stank like sin.

Gael narrowed his eyes.

"What, you think you're better than me?"

She didn't blink.

He clicked his tongue and muttered, "You Vharnish types always do."

Still nothing.

Silence stretched, and the drugs began to creep through his body like slow ghosts. His legs got softer. His breaths became deeper. His head swayed gently, like it was floating on swampwater, and everything around him began to lose its edges. The peeling wallpaper. The smell of damp pipe-moss. The sound of muffled voices behind the office door blurred into the beat of his pulse.

Time stopped behaving.

He didn't remember sitting down, but at some point he found himself on the floor, knees pulled up, chin resting on his arms.

Some time later, the door creaked open again.

The director emerged first, grinning like a drunk butcher, a leather pouch clutched tight in both hands. Its seams were bulged with the lumpy weight of coins. The clink alone was enough to sour the air, and he barely even looked at Gael as the top hat man exited the office another second later.

The top hat man looked down at Gael.

"From now on," he said, voice steady, "you'll be living with me and your new older sister."

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