The bright summer sun was warm in a way that never got skin deep. The wind rolling along the hill was fierce enough to brush the tips of the tallgrass and rustled the leaves over his head, but never firm enough to caress his hair or wipe the tears from his cheeks. The bark against his back belonged to an oak tree larger than any Ira had ever seen--but it wasn't solid enough to press his unfelt clothes into his skin. Which was fine. Those moments of distance were all Ira had to cling to to remind himself that it wasn't real. That he was inside his own head. 

I am Ira Rule, he reminded himself, eyes wide open no matter how he tried to squeeze them shut against the dreamscape. 

"Aren't you going to look at me today?" The voice taunted from somewhere behind Ira's left ear.

I am Ira Rule. 

"Do you not want to find me?" Melchior asked, his voice garbled like leagues of water was all that kept them apart. "Or maybe you're just forgetting how I sound." 

Ira's palms ached to press into the shell of his ears but they remained open and limp against his lap. 

I am Ira Rule. 

"Look at yourself, Ira. You're in Hell for angelsake! You went all that way to find me and now you won't even look at me." He laughed like he'd said something witty. Ira smiled--maybe really smiled--because his Melchior, the real one who existed in a place far from this one, wasn't witty. He spoke faster than a speedboat could cut water but when the jokes poured out of him, he seemed just as surprised by what he'd said as Ira was. 

"You're not Melchior." Ira whispered. The words fell out of him like pins dropping into the bottom of a metal pot. The echo of them rang across the false hillside. 

"Or maybe I'm just not who you want to see." Melchior said, his voice shrugging for him since Ira still refused to turn his eyes.  

Ira's heart was the only thing that had a feel to it. The banging it radiated through his ribs was comfortably painful, a solid tether that he could cling to. "What is that supposed to mean?" Ira knew better than to ask--so why did the words bubble up out of him like a tidal wave of seafoam and regret. 

"Look at me and find out." He taunted. 

I am Ira Rule. 

Do not look. 

I am Ira Rule. 

Do not look. 

I am- 

Ira looked. Just in time for the flash of silver to slice the air, whistling as it arched towards his face. Ira's fists curled inwards, his arms threw up to cover his face. He saw a flash of gold--a pair of brightly shining eyes behind the sword's length. And then Ira was falling through wind and stillness. His fingers tightened around something solid and cool--he grasped it tighter just to feel something. The ache of it, the there of it. It was his lifeline as he flailed. 

"-ra!" 

And then it was gone, ripped from his stiff fingers. Ira cried out in pain, desperate to find something he could hold on to. His fingers found fabric and twisted, fisting it like a drowning man. His every breath rasped up his throat, forcing a harsh wheeze between his teeth. 

"Ira!" 

The ground dug painfully sharp into his knees, grounding him as much as the fingernails imbedded centimeters into his wrist did. Ira sucked in another lungful. The air was dry, stained by the scent of laundry and dust in equal measure. And, as he took another, the cool throw of ice and the dense wood from the solid floorboards. 

"Are you with me, darling?"

Ira blinked his clouded eyes until they cleared. He tried to control the violent twist of fear in his gut when he found the golden eyes from his dream staring back at him, wide and unyielding. Ira's chest shuddered, shaking to compensate for the violent back and forth of his rasping. His arms slumped. Bezel's claws departed from where he held them together, letting his numb appendaged fall. His fingers spread out, finding balance on what Ira had fallen on top of--which was, much to Ira's horror--the Prince. His legs were parted, caging the Prince at his hips. The Prince, for his part, lifted his hands and laid them at his head so Ira could watch him surrender. The Vestige caught his eye next where it was, on the floor above the Prince's head and glimmering in the orange light. 

"Ira-"

Ira lunged for the sword--the need to be near it, clinging to the remaining Melchior-ness of it. He made it less than an inch before he was tumbling through the air. His spine crashed into the wooden floor, pushing the air he'd fought so hard for back up his throat. Legs barred him at his ribs, hands slammed down on each side of his head. Ira froze like a pinned rabbit. 

"Two attempted stabbings is more than enough for me in one day, thank you very much." Bezel said distantly. His voice was swimming in a place that was somewhere both impossibly far and achingly near. 

"I di-" Ira choked on the dryness of his throat and swallowed down a painful knot to keep talking, "I didn't stab you." Did he? Nothing was making much sense.

"Attempted." Bezel corrected. 

"Twice?" 

"Once." He corrected again.

"You said-" 

"You and someone else." Bezel shrugged casually. 

"Angels," Ira cursed, thumping his head against the floor. "How many people have you ticked off today?" 

"Am I supposed to count?" Bezel mused, quirking up his eyebrows. "Besides, I didn't think you and I were on bad terms."

"We aren't!" Ira rushed out. Bezel glanced at the Vestige, head cocked, and Ira winced. "I had. . . a bad dream." Saying it made it real. The words became thread, sewing together the split in his pounding head. He had been dreaming--until he very suddenly wasn't. This part was the wasn't. He was awake again, safe from the twisted visions his mind always threw at him since he had opened the door in the back of his skull last summer. 

"Ah, I thought you were dying." It was Ira's turn to raise a skeptical eyebrow. Bezel shrugged somewhat apologetically. "I don't know much about Heimrians. I was going to wake you up to ask but then you came at me with the Vestige. Wouldn't have worked--but not something I'm eager to verify." 

"You thought I was dying and your solution was to ask me?" Ira scoffed. 

"Better than not asking?" Bezel suggested. "So, are you dying or?"

"I'm fine." Ira grit out between his clenched jaws. "Wanna let me up now?" 

"Depends." He said. "Planning on stabbing me?" 

"I might if you don't get off me." Ira promised. He anchored his fingers on Bezel's hips and shoved but the demon remained stubbornly in place. Ira whined in quiet unease. As ill-suited as the word was for him, by technicality, Ira was a soldier. And having been bested and pinned in battle would make any dagger-wielder nervous. Even if defeat was a familiar feeling. 

"Question." Bezel said. His voice brokered no negotiation, so Ira tried to look tough from his place on the floor and nodded his chin at him to go ahead. "How many legs did the spiders in the hall have?" 

"What?" Ira coughed up. He narrowed his eyes in utter confusion but the Prince offered him nothing else. Ira sighed and squinted his eyes, his foggy brain rewinding to all the events he'd enjoyed since the Prince had gone on his little shopping trip. He'd curled into an uncomfortable mattress, his heavy eyes drifting shut. Water dripping over his eyelids. Why? Right. He'd taken a somewhat medieval shower--but he'd had soap and that was all that mattered to him. Before that? Finding the room, crossing the creaking wooden hallway. The dusty gray webs and- 

"Eight." Ira answered. "They just looked like house spiders. Really lame." 

Bezel snorted quietly and then his weight was gone and Ira was scrambling up onto his feet, hands working to dust off his clothes. Not that there was any hope of saving them. Ira had rinsed the worst of the blood and mud off in the bronze tub but--well demon king blood stains. Who knew?

"I brought clothes. Go change and then we'll talk." Bezel instructed, gesturing with a lazy roll of his head towards a travel pack dumped by the door of their rented room. 

Ira bit the inside of his cheek to shove down the near instinctual need to argue back, but only because he hated the way his starchy shirt rested on his skin just a bit more than he hated being ordered around. He crossed to the pack and rooted around it indiscriminately, picking up items without sparing them even a moments inspection before he stomped into the washroom and shut the door. 

There was a small portside window carved into the highest point of the wall. Sunlight came in through the frosted glass, just enough for Ira to navigate out of his ruined old Earthen clothes and battle his way into the newer Hell high fashion.  The fabric felt alien against his skin, smooth and cold and slightly scratchy like a brand new towel. The shirt he'd picked was ink black, long sleeved in the same baggy way the Prince's was. The neckline was tighter than the Prince's. At least it covered his shoulders--except for the decorative way it opened down the center of his chest. Not so far that Ira was going to blush about it, but it definitely wasn't an item he would have worn to do his Bishop-ing. He found some ties laying loose and useless around the opened neckline and wove them into the brass loop holes over the slit at his chest, tightening them until he was marginally more covered. For a second anyway, until Ira drew in a breath and the laces loosened to allow it, revealing flashes of the pale skin over his sternum. He tugged them back into place with an annoyed grunt.

The black pants didn't have any flair--thank the angels. Ira pulled them up and tucked in his loose top, fixed the neckline of his shirt two more times, and rejoined the Prince in the bedroom. 

Bezel had taken up occupancy on the ruffled bed. The Vestige was clasped in his steady hands--a sight that plummeted Ira's internal organs down into his clean socks. Ira cleared his throat, praying to each of his angels that the sound was as bossy as he had been aiming for. "Give that back." 

The Prince rolled his golden eyes up, meeting Ira's where he stood. He sat up straighter, his shoulders boxing at the base of his neck. That loose neckline pooled around the divots in his collarbone. "I hope you understand why I can't do that without the need for us to fight over it." 

Ira bristled. The snap of his teeth echoed across the space between them. "You said it yourself! It won't work--it's not my Vestige, remember? Look, okay, fine. That was. . . it was a lot. But that's never happened before. I mean I've never hurt anyone-" the words disintegrated somewhere between tongue and tooth. Washed away by the memory of a night a year ago, when Ira had dug his fingernails into Melchior's helping hands until blood met his keratin. "Angels! Why are you-! It doesn't matter--it isn't my Vestige." 

"Ca-" 

"I swear to every single angel I know if you tell me to calm down right now I will find something capable of chopping your head off." Ira vowed in a snarl. 

The Prince stopped talking and blew a huff of surrender from his frowned lips. "You're right. Mayvalt taught me better than that."

Ira rolled his eyes. 

"I know this Vestige isn't yours, Bishop." The Prince continued. "But we're getting close now and it's. . . shall we say occured to me that we are not allies. You needed me--to open a gate, to aid your passage through--but once you find your wolf-" 

"Melchior." Ira whispered.

"Melchior." The Prince amended gently. Ira's stomach flipped painfully fast hearing Melchior's name spoken with such care. Like it was a prayer, a promise. Or, since this was the Third Prince, like it was the only thing that could keep Ira from launching himself back at the Vestige with a renewed sense of urgency. And he might have been right about that. "Then your need for me will have passed and you will have both a Vestige and a wielder." 

Ira wanted to roll his eyes again but anymore and he was going to get dizzy--so he settled for a admonishing scowl and a click of his tongue. "I'm not going to be the one who breaks the truce, Third Prince." 

Bezel slid from the bed and stood to the full height his tauntly long legs allowed. Ira didn't want to count the inches of difference it put them on--but it was more than enough to make him feel small. He pressed the glass blade back into the sheath Ira had pulled it out of before he'd fallen asleep. An action he now recognized as stupid and dangerous--but maybe he had been chasing something. A reflection in the body of the weapon. A mirror back to that night when Melchior's face had been clear in his mind, his voice cemented in his ears. Not that he would ever admit such things. 

"You think it'll be me." Bezel said--not asked. 

"Yes." Ira agreed anyway.

"What reason have I given you to distrust me?" The Prince's voice was as cold as the wooden floorboards beneath Ira's feet. "Have I not done enough? Have my sacrifices been too petty? I gave up Heimr. I shred myself to my last drop of power. This mission ends with the death of my brother--and I still move forward. What more can I do?" 

Ira laughed like the lash of a whip and gestured with his open palms like the Prince had made his case for him. "That's why! It's too much. Why would you do all of this? For what possible return? I'm looking for the trick." 

The floor creaked as the Prince crept across it. The Vestige hung limp at his side, dangling from his clenched fist. "Why does there have to be a trick?" 

"You're a demon." Ira said, tilting his chin to follow the glowing golden eyes in the dark. 

"You know that's not true." The Prince whispered. Close enough now that it echoed in Ira's ears. 

"Then you're an angel--but not one of mine." Ira amended. He stumbled a half pace back. 

"And your angels are right? They can do nothing wrong? Or is it that you bend in whatever way they push you to make it right?" He demanded. 

Ira's palms flattened on the wall behind him. "You think I don't know that the angels have done wrong?" The laugh Ira sputtered up was bitter and filled with resentment. "I know better than most. I know all about the angels' tricks. I was born into it! Melchior died for it! What right do you possess to tell me that it was for nothing? That the path I'm on now is the wrong one? They told me I could claim a Vestige if I sacrificed for it. And it worked--and maybe not in the way we imagined but maybe in a way better than that. Melchior is still out there. Maybe that's cruel--maybe it's mercy. But what I know for certain is that it's too divine to just be circumstance. So, Third Prince, I don't care what way I have to contort to follow their design. I will. And you? You're just," Ira dragged his palms through the centimeters of air between them, tracing the Prince from the top of his black hair to the bottom of his boots, "you have nothing. No carrot over your head. If you have nothing to keep you on this path--then it only means that you have nothing to keep you from straying it. And I can't trust that. Not because you say so." 

"I'm lacking motivation?" Bezel echoed coldly. "I told you, Ira Rule. I'm doing this because you asked me to. You asked for my help and I'm giving it." 

Ira squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head before the words even had time to settle. "Why me? Please. Just give me a reason." 

"Why do I have to follow an ideal?" Bezel asked, head tilting. "Does it have to be faith based? Factual? Emotional? Why can't I just be here?" 

"Because!" Ira keened like it pained him. "People don't just help! Not without a reason. It doesn't make sense. No creature is completely selfless." 

"I am." Bezel said. "I'm. . . selfless. Empty."

"No one is empty, either." Ira laughed humorlessly. "Even robots have gadgets inside, Bezel." 

"I don't." He promised. "You'll only exhaust yourself trying to find whatever it is you're looking for." 

Ira seemed to be doing the breathing for both of them. His thudding heart drew up his tight lungs over and over, taking all the air in the room and leaving him dizzy.

Bezel eased away, straightening his back to bring himself outside of Ira's reach. Not that Ira had any weapons on him--not that any he did own would do any good.

"Why do you think my brother does what he does?"

"Mammon?" Ira clarified--because Bezel had many brothers, and sisters apparently, some of which Ira revered and others Ira resented. Bezel gave a stiff nod to indicate Ira had named the right Prince. "How could I know what he's thinking? It doesn't matter." 

"He's just evil?" Bezel asked. "Good enough?" 

"He's trying to destroy my home." Ira snapped. "I think evil is a good enough explanation." 

"So if I was evil like my brother, you would simply accept it as an explanation and move along. Why than do you need a reason to believe I'm the opposite?" Bezel said, voice annoyingly steady. Whatever frosted edge he had before, it was already melted. The Third Prince, ever mercurial as he was, had already shifted into something new and harder to name. 

"Things are just," Ira exhaled as forcefully as he could to steady himself, "not naturally. . . good." 

"Don't you think that's rather jaded?" Bezel asked. "Who are you to declare the intentions of every creature across all three realms?" 

"I'm not! I'm just-" 

"Calling them all evil?" Bezel filled in, eyebrow raised. 

"Not--ugh!" Ira sucked in a gasp to slow his shouts to something more legible and dragged his fingers through his hair. "Not evil--just. . . self serving. It's human nature to preserve ourselves. It's how we're wired." 

"I'm not human." Bezel pointed out deftly. Ira winced--he knew that. It had just been a slip of the tongue. "My perception of death, and therefor of self preservation, must be different than yours. I know that my lifesource is nearly eternal. As long as I hold onto the will to keep it burning, keep a little spark of magic to myself to ignite it, I could live forever. So, maybe I'm not all that concerned with getting stabbed in the back. I can spare greater risk every few centuries." 

"And if the blade that found your back was a Vestige?" Ira whispered. "Maybe not so invincible then?" 

The Prince's fingers twitched absently towards the loose neckline of his shirt. The act was lazy enough Ira knew he hadn't meant to do it. The Prince tended to act with intentional flair like his performance had to be grand enough to reach the back seats of the Gershwin theatre. Something so slight was unfitting, like watching an elephant slip into ballet shoes. Yet, understanding the privacy of the action didn't stop Ira's eyes from following the movement, nor did it stop him from studying the jagged pink scar just barely covered by the soft white cotton as the Prince's fingertips ghosted towards it and then sharply away as his fingers were clenched into a fist and dropped to his side. The Prince broke the solemness of the moment by swinging the Vestige over his shoulder, mounting the sheathed sword to his spine. "All the more reason for me to hold on to this." 

"What about your sword?" Ira tried in a final attempt. He pointed at the kris dropped by the door, fit into a new sheath of its own. The flexible leather fit the odd shape of the blade surprisingly well--but Ira could admire the craftsmanship later. 

Bezel did another of his slight gestures--a half shift towards the sword before he fell back into neutrality. "What about it?" He asked carefully. The gooey pink stuff in Ira's skull twitched with alertness--like he'd just found the first piece of a puzzle he hadn't known before he wanted to complete. 

"You can't carry two swords--not those swords. The Vestige is too big." Ira shrugged, playing up the casual gesture like he'd seen the Prince do a hundred times before. "I'll take yours, then. Seems like a fair trade to me. We can call it reassurance that you'll return the Vestige to me when it's time." 

"Some collateral you've got there." Bezel laughed. His eyes rolled like Ira had said something amusing, his lips pulled too far back across his sharp teeth. A mask that any seat in the Gershwin could see. Ira had him. "Like my sister--and you, if I recall--love to remind me that sword is useless." 

"You carried it pretty far for something so useless." Ira countered. He moved across the room as he spoke, approaching the sword where it had been too-casually dropped by the door. "All the way from New York and in your hand--no less. You must have kept it in your grasp through Lake Seneca, through the pits of Hell, through all of Heneth. Awful far to carry something so worthless." 

The Prince edged in closer as Ira swooped down to pick up the kris. "Your Cardinal gave me that. I didn't want to hurt his feelings is all." Bezel said it lightly. Not as a reason that Ira was meant to believe, but as a joke he was supposed to laugh along to. Ira didn't hesitate. His fingers curled around the talon-like handle. "The wolf here is a Silver-Tongued one." 

Ira froze. He wasn't as dumb as a bug in a web--he knew it was a trap, but that didn't make the bait any less sweet. "That's. . ." 

"Rare." The Prince finished. "Yes. Theophania--the devil woman who I bought our gear from--she said she saw them take human form along the edge of the Sikker. Apparently, he's been using a human form to get close to town. Steal food, livestock. It's also, probably, how he's been evading Mahan Raj's crew. Silver-Tongues are rare enough they'd present a new challenge, even to seasoned hounders." 

The Prince spoke quickly, heaping so much on to Ira at once it made his head spin. Within the speech, there were words Ira had to strain his mind to define. Some words he'd learned rather recently but hadn't fully familiarized himself with. Sikker was the dark wooden region surrounding Kett--a place they should want to avoid but, in typical fashion, would have no choice but to enter. Silver-Tongue was fuzzier and not really fully in Ira's vocabulary, but he knew that it described Melchior. A wolf who could freely move between human and animal--because apparently not all of them could. It was about bloodlines and heritage and the content of their angelic blood. The purer wolves could tap into a shred of angelic blessing and force their reality to tilt. Like how angels cast illusions and opened rifts in reality--but different. Or something? All of the rules really confused Ira. He had always been the sort of player who zoned out during the instructions but took up the game after seeing a few rounds. Hounders was new--probably just a dog hunter. 

All of that, none of which mattered, only served as a bright flash of distraction before Ira had to ask his next question. His gut knotted, twisting until all the butterflies inside were crushed into dust. What if the answer was disappointing? What if it wasn't? What if hoping only led to hurting? What if? What if? What- "What did. . . what did she say he looked like?" 

"She didn't really." Bezel answered. Ira exhaled a sharp breath of begrudging relief. No answer was better than a bad one. "Well actually, maybe he had yellow eyes? No, wait."

Ira's heart pounded in the base of his throat until he thought it might trigger his gag reflex and spill across the floor to pound a beat against the floorboards. 

"Green." Bezel nodded thoughtfully. "She said he had green eyes." 

Ira couldn't breath--he could hardly even think, speak. The hope fluttering inside his ribcage was too fragile--too easily extinguished. It wouldn't have survived the shift of his lungs, so he held his breath until black spots curled into the corners of his eyes. When he did finally draw in dust-laced oxygen, he didn't pause to think about what it had done to his little internal flame. Ira grabbed the kris and slung it over his back. He stormed towards the rickety bedside furniture and snapped up his Ossein daggers and holster. He fixed the belt around his hips and adjusted his blades until the weight was settled over the top of his legs. The Prince fell in line behind him, his barrage of questions going unanswered as Ira shoved out into the hallway and leapt down the creaking wooden stairs. 

"Where are you going?" The Prince called, jogging to match Ira's pace. 

The bottom tavern in Hogfly's was practically empty in the afternoon, early evening. The barmaid was still fluttering around, polishing scuffed table tops and replacing burned out candles when she found them. Her wide brown eyes snapped up to find Ira--likely because of the 'my room is on fire' way he burst into the space. He forced his legs to slow, his spine to slouch in a display of nonchalonce. 

"Y'alright, lad?" She asked. 

"We're fine." Bezel answered as Ira breezed by, singularly focused on the door ahead. A goal that was suddenly made impossible by the hand that caught his wrist, halting his progress. "What're the odds of us finding some late lunch here?" 

Ira's eyes fluttered towards the long fingers caging his wrist bone and then up to the Prince's polite expression. Ira narrowed his gaze into something twice as sharp as broken glass but it went wasted. Bezel's own look was trained at the girl he was attempting to charm into sandwiches and more rootwater--and since he was most effective that way, with his golden eyes lit up like fireworks and his fangs glinting from behind a moviestar smile, she nodded and hopped away to the kitchen. His face dropped the moment the door swung shut and stayed that way when he looked at Ira. The Bishop almost wondered if that was insulting or not--and then decided he didn't care. He actually preferred the Prince's almost-blank neutrality. It seemed all of his other expressions came right before or after a trick. 

"You're being reckless." Bezel scolded. 

"I work best that way." Ira half joked, giving a tug of his arm in a failed attempt at escape. 

The Prince tightened his grip and dragged Ira deeper into the belly of Hogfly's. Despite the free lot of tables, he took them back to the corner they had sliced out their first night. Where it was dark and drafty and didn't draw much attention. Bezel ensconced Ira down onto a rickety pile of lumber playing at barstool, waited for a minute--maybe to see if Ira would dare to flee--and then walked across the small circular table to take his own seat. 

"Are you going to tell me what just happened or will I have to guess?" Bezel asked, placing his elbows on the wooden surface between them. He planted his chin in his opened palms and leaned forward. 

Ira sagged back in his own seat, adding distance where he could. "Don't pretend to be dumber than you are, Princess. It's not cute." 

The Prince smirked, shrugging up his shoulders as if in denial. "Your nicknames don't bother me if that was your intention, darling." 

Ira blew a breath from between his teeth and rolled his eyes. "You said that stuff on purpose. To distract me." 

"What stuff?" Bezel asked. His tone was just a little more genuine than before. 

"The eyes." Ira answered. He risked a glance at the front door and plotted his escape route. 

"What about them?" Bezel pressed. The absurdity regained Ira's full attention--momentarily pausing all plans for a getaway. 

"That they're green! That this is a Silver-" he wisely cut that sentence off there, casting a weary nod at the upstairs apartments. 

Bezel nodded in return, just enough to indicate that he was following, before he shrugged again. "So what? Does that sound like Melchior?"

Ira scoffed, hoping it sounded even half as cold as he felt. "What do you even mean? You know what Melchior looks like so stop acting like that." 

The Prince's palms fell away from his chin to slap against the table top. "I do?"

Ira sputtered to express the surface of his bewilderment before his anger could slip into place, hardening down the edges of his expressions. "You were there! The night that he-" Ira couldn't bring himself to finish to story. "You were there." 

"I was there," Bezel nodded, "I was also trying not to die--if you recall." 

"I do." Ira snarled, teeth clenched so tightly they groaned. "Something that Melchior saved you from--if you recall." He parroted bitterly. 

Bezel leaned back, tilting his head up towards the rafters before suddenly snapping back into position, his hands coming together in a clap. "The archer!" 

"Obviously!" Ira snapped back, thrusting his fingers into his hair to yank on the strands. "Who else would we be after this entire time? My mailman?" 

"No--well, maybe?" Bezel scrubbed his hands across his face and shrugged apologetically. "It's not like we were ever formally introduced between my nephew with the Ely-killing-sword and Legion with the invulnerable pigmen." 

"Great, let's get right to that then." Ira urged, slapping his palms to his thighs in a universal signal of dismissal. "We can do our handshakes and ice breaker games just as soon as I find him." 

"Sit back down, darling." Bezel rolled his eyes and waved a lazy flick of his fingers. "It's not dark yet."

"Early birds and all that." Ira countered. 

"You'll only be wasting your energy trying to find a wolf before they've left their den." Bezel lectured.

"Maybe he'll find us instead." Ira suggested.

"That's not the comforting statement you seem to think it is." Bezel groaned into his palms. 

"Melchior wouldn't hurt us--me, I mean. But if I say so, he won't hurt you either." Ira promised.

"Assuming this wolf is your wolf in the first place is far too risky, but secondarily those scars on your sternum beg to differ. Wolf claws, was it?" The Prince pointed coldly. Ira flinched before risking a glance down at his chest. The ties he'd lazily looped just before had come loose in his mad descent down the staircase. The black fabric had shift, revealing just enough of Ira's breastbone for one of his four scars to be visible. They were spaced apart the same width of Melchior's paw and had healed to be jagged, pink, ugly, but altogether comforting. Father Pine had been outraged--Ira had maybe come a little too close to dying--and he'd blamed Melchior for it, but Ira was glad to have them. As twisted as it sounded. It was proof that Melchior had been real, had been there. Besides, Ira had almost melted him so maybe the retaliation eased his guilt. "Seems our little archer has a bit more bite than his arrows." 

Ira yanked the ties of his shirt more firmly closed and bit down his rising blush. "That was an accident! He was hurting and confused--it wouldn't happen again." 

"How can you be sure?" Bezel asked. "Wolves have a reputation, dear. One hard won, written in blood. Their ruthlessness is. . . documented. There is a reason wolves have been kept far from the rest of Avernus for so long." 

"Melchior isn't-" Ira stopped his denial before he could give it voice. Melchior was a Ze'ev, there was no way around it. "He's not a demon. He's a Ze'ev, fine. But he isn't a demon." 

"You draw such jagged lines in the sand--I never know what you'll say next." Bezel laughed mirthlessly and glanced at the kitchen like he was bored of waiting. "Doctrine truly is the highest form of hypocrisy."  

"Melchior is human. I know him. He's not a demon, okay?" Ira bit out. 

Ira knew his Melchior--or, he thought he did. He knew a boy in New York, had loved--still did--that boy in New York, but Melchior had never confessed his secret to him. Had never trusted Ira with it--not even as he was backed into a corner and placed under a mountain of pressure. Afterwards, they'd never found the chance to talk about it. Melchior had never said the words to him. They had never crossed that divide. About the Ze'ev card, about what they really meant to each other. It had always been tomorrow's problem. Until suddenly there was no tomorrow to turn to and Ira had been left alone to gasp in breaths around the weight of what he'd left unsaid. 

The Prince assessed him with too-knowing eyes. If he had the ability to pry apart Ira's skull and watch his neurons bounce back and forth across his squishy pink brain goo, he was using it. 

"You knew him." Bezel corrected in that emotionless way of his. "But whatever he's done down here since you've been apart--I don't think you know him anymore." 

Ira couldn't find the strength in himself to speak, to deny that until he was breathless. So they sat in silence until the He-Goat girl returned with mugs of foamy rootwater and steaming bowls of suspiciously green soup--and then they ate in silence, too. Ira didn't want to be the one to tell the Prince he was wrong. Because, well, the Prince was an angel--even if only on technicality--and if there was only one lesson Ira had learned in his current lifetime it would be that the angels always had a way of making his hope his downfall. Of turning his own words into the killing blow. And Ira Rule didn't know if he could survive that particular outcome. He didn't have what it took to seek Melchior Brisbane but find someone else beneath his green eyes instead.