Kai stood, distressed, and sat again. The officials sitting around the conference table stared at the door in silence. The air of bewilderment was stifling. Finally Kai stood once more, gesturing in a very un-Imperial manner with his thumb to the door.

"Uh- I'm going to- please excuse me." Evading eye contact, Kai shuffled out the door and closed it softly behind him, and then started jogging after Jacin in the direction he'd seen him go. He rounded a bend and found him, staring at the elevator.

"Hey!" Kai called out to the pilot angrily and slowed down beside him, catching his breath with his hands on his knees. "What in the world? What can be so important that you'd abandon that meeting?"

Jacin cast a sidelong glance at Kai. "It seems like a mistake to let me into a conference of that significance. How do you know I'm not spying for Luna right now?"

"That's--" Kai started, opening his mouth, but shut it when he decided couldn't make a good argument that explained exactly why he didn't believe Jacin would sell Luna secrets. "You didn't answer my question."

Jacin sighed heavily, palming his face. His leg jittered uncontrollably as he waited for the elevator. "What do you think, genius? I think I know what's wrong with her Majesty!"

The elevator arrived and the doors slid open with a low hiss. Kai was so stunned he almost forgot to get on, all but forgetting the important tactical meeting on hold back in the conference room. The doors began to close and Kai came to his senses, sliding into the elevator as Jacin ordered the computer to take him to the medical wing. "Are you serious? What? Why didn't you say so sooner!"

Jacin scowled and spun on Kai. "Don't you think I would have if I had remembered before? Things like this don't exactly happen very often, or maybe you were too busy with your dumb crush to catch anything about Lunar physiology."

Kai opened his mouth, ready for a heated objection. "Lunar--" His face went sour. "What's this about a crush, anyway? You should know better than anyone, what with that infatuation of yours with that thaumaturge of Selene's. Thaumaturge Hayle!"

Jacin's face went slack with shock. The pilot suddenly had no sarcasm left to throw at Kai and instead stuttered out, "How-- How-- H-H--"

Kai folded his arms and grinned. "You could stand to be a little more professional, you know. You were part of the thaumaturges' private guard, when they arrived here before, right? You wouldn't stop staring."

Jacin pinkened and avoided his eyes, but Kai's fun was quickly disappointed. Jacin regained his cool composure quickly and scowled darkly, rapping his fingers against his folded arms. "It's not like that has to do with anything. There's a much more pressing matter at hand than anyone's personal feelings. Lunar physiology. Do you know nothing about it?"

The bell dinged, the elevator's soothing mock female voice announcing the medical wing's floor, the doors sliding open. Kai followed the brisk steps of Jacin into the hall. He was annoyed at how quickly the subject shifted away, but he couldn't disagree— it was inarguably not important. He shook his head, dismayed. "Why would I know anything about Lunar physiology?"

"I meant how Lunars are different from Earthens. The ways in which we're a different class of human entirely. There's the bioelectrical manipulation, of course." Jacin manoeuvred around the halls confidently. "The main one. That infamous ability, that gets such a bad rap. There's a host of smaller, insignificant differences, too, but that biggest one is the most important."

Jacin paused at an intersection of halls and took a right. "Bioelectrical manipulation. The ability, lack thereof, and frequency of use. There's so many different factors that contribute to how it works. You know," he paused once more, and slowed down, somewhat thoughtfully, "I always did wonder— her Majesty, she never used her gift. Only on the rarest of occasions. It's not my place to wonder why," he amended himself, "but she must have had a reason, because she poured just in her first year of reign so much research and funding into Lunar sickness that a cure was unavoidable."

Kai had been following, up until Jacin's reflections. "Lunar sickness?"

"Stars above, if you'd just let me finish." Jacin and Kai entered the psych department through an open set of tall double doors, glossy windows carved out into them. Palace doctors and nurses walked quickly past, a few bowing to Kai and others seeming so totally immersed in their clipboards and papers that they didn't even notice him. "Lunar sickness is what happens when a Lunar doesn't use their gift frequently enough for a very long period of time. Years, and years. You start to go... cuckoo. Crazy. Hallucinations, visions so real and so bizarre that you feel like ripping your own spine out to make them stop, I've heard. But just in her first year as queen, her Majesty funded so much palace research on Lunar sickness that they began to understand it as they never had before, along with how to cure it.

"She caught a lot of slack for that at first. Nobody really saw it as a problem. Everyone used glamours. Everybody manipulated everybody, everyday. But a cure came, and all the cases of Lunar sickness that still persisted were eradicated. That way, anybody could use it when they wanted, how they wanted. I've never even seen heard of anyone with Lunar sickness." Jacin slowed as they walked down the hall, toward Selene's room. "I was just a kid when she wiped it out. Fourteen, I think. It wasn't that long ago, but things like this just completely slip your mind when everyone else has forgotten it ever existed."

Kai stopped outside Selene's hospital room door and grabbed Jacin's forearm before he opened the door. "So you're saying— hallucinations, symptoms of psychosis, you think Selene has Lunar sickness? How is that possible, if she was the one who wiped it out?"

"I don't know," Jacin said, shaking his head and looking furiously at the floor. "When I think about it, she has all the right symptoms of a really severe case. The kind of intense hallucinations and infrequent lucidity that would signify that she has months to live at most. But I can't understand— not only did her Majesty receive the cure, but this kind of case would take at least five decades to develop. And there's no possible way she hasn't used her gift in fifty years, because—"

"—she hasn't even been alive for 50 years yet. Right." Kai finished Jacin's sentence and released his arm, his brow furrowed and his head spinning wildly. "How do you know so much about this?"

Jacin opened his mouth and shut it again like a goldfish before shaking his head and turning the door handle. "It doesn't matter," he said, his voice dead, and pushed the door open, starting suddenly as he looked inside.

Jacin ran inside and Kai followed quickly, seeing as soon as he came in what was so startling. Selene was jerking on her bed, back arched, head tilting violently back. Her arms were held up and her fingers were wrapped all the way around her throat, constricting very, very hard. Strangling gurgles erupted from her throat as she throttled herself.

Kai nearly choked on his own breath and rushed to Selene's bedside, grabbing her wrists and trying to pry her flesh and steel fingers off of her throat. "Nurse!" he screamed, Selene's bulging eyes staring blankly at him, her mouth wide open as if she meant to scream but could only manage airless croaks of asphyxiation. A couple of medical professionals rushed into the room and ran to Selene's other side, helping Kai pull Selene's stiff, uncooperative arms away from her throat with much difficulty. One of them shouted, "Anesthesia!" and the other scrambled to hold a mask over Selene's mouth and nose as Kai, Jacin, and the doctor forced her resisting arms to the hospital bed. Eventually they grew limp and drowsy, and Selene stopped thrashing, her eyes drooping shut slowly and her purpling skin returning back to its normal hue. Kai's hands shook as he knelt down beside her bed. He turned his attention angrily to the doctor on Selene's other side.

"What was that? She almost died just now!" He shouted, clutching Selene's hand as if he would lose it any second. "Why in the world was no one watching her? You know how unstable she is right now. Keep her Majesty under 24 hour supervision from now on, or all of you will pay with your jobs!"

The doctor and the nurse bowed very low and apologised hastily, but Kai didn't listen, his distracted gaze repeatedly flicking to Selene's face. He noticed Jacin's stare at his hand, joined with hers, and quickly drew it away.

Lunar sickness. He could see the uncertainty in Jacin's face, the way his mind was spinning. Kai didn't understand it either. The way Jacin described it, it did sound like that's what she had, especially since the Earthen doctors in the palace were more stumped than Kai had ever seen them before. But even if she did have Lunar sickness, despite having the cure, how was it this serious?

Kai's chest constricted as he thought back to what Jacin had said. Months to live. It couldn't be true, could it? If it really was Lunar sickness, and it really was as strangely serious as Jacin observed, then there were only months left? Kai swallowed a heavy lump in his throat.

Jacin almost seemed to read his mind. "If it is Lunar sickness, it'll be all right," he said, sitting back on a visitor's chair against the wall. "I know enough about it to help her for now, I think. And they've already found a cure. I can try to— I can try to contact one of the doctors in the palace, up in Artemisia. I knew him well. He would know."

Kai clenched and unclenches his hands into fists. He hoped that Jacin was right. If he was, there wasn't a moment to lose. They needed to find out what happened to Selene, and fast.