Cassian came back to himself the way a man swims up from a deep pond—first the shiver, then the gasp, then the flailing moment of weight returning. His lashes trembled against Noah's thigh; his breath hitched; a hand twitched as if to catch at something that wasn't there.
"Easy," Noah said, keeping his voice low, the way you spoke to skittish animals and people you were trying very hard not to love. "You fainted. Which, for the record, is extremely dramatic. I'm offended you stole my bit."
Cassian blinked up at the cave's torn-silver light, then at Noah, then at the black glass of the river beyond. Confusion passed over his face like shadow. He pushed himself up, not quite steady, and Noah slid an arm behind his shoulders until sitting was an achievement and not a threat.
"I don't… faint," Cassian muttered, as if the word itself tasted wrong in his mouth. "What happened?"
"You remembered something you weren't supposed to," Noah said. "Then your brain threw a tantrum and pulled the curtains."
Cassian's mouth shaped a huff that wanted to be a laugh. He scrubbed a hand over his face, then winced and pressed his fingers to his temple. "I remember—" He stopped, eyes narrowing at some internal landscape. "I remember bringing you here. Before. And… we talked." His gaze flicked to Noah's mouth and away, quick as a heartbeat. "About music," he said, which was not remotely true and he knew it. "And the water."
"Riveting," Noah said dryly.
Other pieces shifted behind Cassian's eyes—small, unmoored things bumping into one another. He reached for one. "Red ribbons," he murmured. "A cord. Being… tied." A swallow. "But I don't know by whom. Or why." He looked at his wrist as if a shadow of the bracelet might appear if he wanted it hard enough. It didn't.
Noah watched it happen and hated the helplessness of it so much he had to put his hands under his thighs to keep from grabbing Cassian's face and trying to force the world to stay. "That's the Saint," he said, soft but clean. No velvet. "That's him eating out the pieces that make loyalty real and replacing them with his name."
Cassian's head snapped toward him, a reflex of faith so ingrained it was almost beautiful. "No," he said, immediate, automatic. Then, slower, a second no that belonged to him and not the script. "No. He… why would he—" The sentence tore in the middle. He shook his head hard, as if it would rattle sense into place. "Sometimes people forget. Stress. Fights. Hunts. It happens."
"Mm." Noah tilted his head. "And the part where you don't remember having parents but you remember the color of the ribbon that made you his? Also stress?"
Cassian's jaw worked. He looked away, toward the black water, and Noah could almost see the old habit of loyalty assembling arguments and stacking them tidy. He didn't press. He couldn't press. He had already taken one liberty in this cave and it was still hot on his mouth.
"I can put a protection spell on you," Noah said after a breath, careful as a man easing a blade out of a wound. "It would keep what's yours from being—plucked. You'd have to consent. It would hurt. But it would hold."
Cassian's hand fell from his temple. "No."
Noah had expected it and still hated hearing it. "No?"
"It's… normal," Cassian said, and even he seemed to hear the thinness. He forced a crooked grin onto his face like armor. "I forget things when I'm tired. You kiss like a disaster. The river's cold. See? Entire essay." He pushed to his feet, swayed, caught himself. "If I forget again, you know what to do." He tried on a rakish tilt to his mouth and found it didn't fit quite right. "Drag me back. Or kiss me until I faint, apparently."
Noah stood too. "That's not a medical procedure."
"It worked," Cassian said, which was unfair and also accidentally kind. His gaze snagged on Noah's, steadying. The flirt was still there—it always would be—but sincerity had threaded through it like darker cloth. "About earlier," he added, softer. "You said… Abel."
Noah's insides did a small catastrophic spin. "Yes," he said, because lying here felt like kneeling to the wrong god. "Abel."
"Then why did you—"
"To keep you here," Noah said, because his mouth was ungovernable in moments like these. "Because you were leaving. Because you were falling. Because I don't know how to hold anything in this place without using my teeth." His laugh scraped. "Not because it was fair to you."
Cassian's expression shifted, the sharp edges easing. "You're ridiculous."
"Chronically."
"And honest," he added, as if he'd discovered it by accident, as if it mattered. He stepped closer—careful of the slick dark at the water's edge, careful of himself. His hand lifted, hesitated, and touched Noah's cheekbone with two fingers, as light as if checking for fever. "Thank you for—" He gestured at the general ruin of his afternoon. "Whatever this is."
"My pleasure," Noah said, which earned him a low laugh that was actually pleased.
For a breath the world shrank to the span of a mouth and the distance between two foolish people. Cassian leaned in—slow enough to let refusal occupy the space if it wanted, sure enough to say he was not running this time. Noah's body mapped the angle, catalogued the heat, got as far as the ache of yes.
He turned his face and put his lips to Cassian's cheek instead.
It was a small, stupid kindness. It hurt both of them. Cassian's indrawn breath was all the complaint he made. When he stepped back, he did it like a man taking his hand off a flame because he'd remembered what fire did, not because he didn't want the heat.
"Abel," he said again, and it wasn't a question or a reproach; it was a name offered back without blood on it.
"Abel," Noah agreed. The anchor in his skull hummed as if pleased to be called.
Cassian nodded once, masking something complicated under a grin he wore better this time. "Then go," he said. "Before I decide to be an inconvenience."
"You're already an inconvenience," Noah said, affectionate in spite of himself. "Try to avoid the Saint. Maybe don't schedule any private devotional sessions for—ever."
Cassian saluted with two fingers, then ruined it by raking that hand through his hair. "No promises, troublemaker." He bent to grab his boots, slung the rope back over his shoulder, and paused in the throat of the tunnel. "If I forget, make me remember."
"I will," Noah said, and meant it like a vow his magic would have recognized if he'd let it.
Cassian vanished into stone and shadow, footsteps receding into the cave's soft acoustics until Noah couldn't tell if he was alone because the sound had died or because the place swallowed it.
He stayed awhile anyway, because leaving immediately felt like disrespect. The river kept its black counsel. The light shredded itself on the ceiling with the slow patience of something that had never needed to hurry. Noah sat back on his heels and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes until the universe fuzzed.
How do you flip a man built from loyalty? he thought. You don't tell him. You show him. You show him the knife in the hand that feeds him.
But how? The Saint's secrets were carved deep and kept under glass. Even the memories that tried to crawl back up came away headless. He could blue-sky possibilities until he choked: catch the Saint bragging, force him to gloat, make him say it where Cassian could hear. Maybe Noah could bait him, needle him, pull a thread the way he had with Linnea until the veil slipped and the monster looked out. If the Saint would admit it—not to Noah, but to the room—then Cassian would have to choose. Even a trained dog knew a boot when it tasted one.
He huffed a laugh that would have been a sob if he'd let it. "Great plan," he told the cave. "Step one: get an immortal narcissist to monologue. Step two: profit."
The cave, like most of Noah's audiences, was unimpressed.
He dragged himself to his feet when his knees started to complain and made the walk back slow. The corridors warmed by degrees—damp stone to bone to honeyed resin and the clack of charms in the breeze. People moved around him in practiced currents: a woman holding two bowls like prayer, a boy polishing a scent-lantern's lip with a rag, a man pinning knots into ribbon as if tying the light down by hand.
Noah kept his head down and the corners of his mouth bent toward harmless. He didn't look at the palace, though every rib-arch framed it like a lure. He didn't look for Cassian either. If the Saint called him today—and he would; he always did—Noah could only hope the warning stuck long enough to make Cassian hesitate. Sometimes hesitation was all a man needed to live.
Their door's bone charm clicked when he reached it, counting him in the way it had counted him out. The anchor to Abel stirred as his fingers touched the latch—faint warmth, a tug, the sense of a presence at the other end of a line.
"Home," Noah said aloud to nobody, because sometimes you fed yourself scraps of comfort like a stray dog.
Inside smelled like them—leather and dust and the stubborn, clean thread of something that wasn't the Saint's. He let his back hit the door and slid down until the floor caught him.
Hope and dread took turns stepping on his throat. He let them. Then he stood, because standing was the only thing that made any of this go.
"Please don't be done yet," he told the world, meaning Abel, meaning Cassian, meaning himself.
The charm above the door clicked once, like agreement. Or like warning. With this place, it was always both.