try it. It—it—it does something. Something amazing. You start to be…It lets you see everything.”
“I’m going to take it off you now,” she told him.
“Already? Why?” He looked upset. His hands went to the sides of the helmet to hold it on.
“You’ve been wearing it long enough,” she said firmly. She took his hands from the focal, thankful when he put up no physical resistance, and pulled it off his head.
Immediately Shinobu groaned and collapsed.
“Wait!” Quin said, grabbing him under the arms to prevent him from crushing acupuncture needles deeper into his skin by sitting on them. “Don’t sit. Try to stand.”
He clutched his head, as though it were killing him, and moaned again, but he managed to stay on his feet. Quin plucked every needle from his body as quickly as she could, then helped him over to the bed. He sat heavily on the mattress. A hand went to his stomach and he closed his eyes.
“I’m dizzy…” he murmured.
“Lie back.”
She carefully pushed him flat. What had possessed him to try the focal before she returned? Was it his thrill-seeking nature or simple curiosity? His cheeks were flushed, and his heart rate was fast but slowing down as she felt his neck.
He opened his eyes and looked up at her.
“I’m all right now,” he whispered. “I felt sick for a moment…but it’s gone now.” He noticed her hovering over him, and he smiled a lazy smile. “I see you’ve conveniently gotten me into your bed.”
“Idiot!” she said, pushing his shoulder.
“Oof,” he answered, and pulled her down onto him. “How can you hit me when everything already aches?”
“Idiot,” she said again, more softly. He wrapped his arms around her, but she held him away so he had to look at her. “You can’t just put on that helmet. It’s not a toy. It can probably hurt you if you don’t use it right.”
“It did hurt me,” he murmured. “I got dizzy, and everything aches again. Kiss me and make it better.”
“Shinobu.” She didn’t feel like flirting or joking. She wasn’t sure how many more times she could stand to see him collapse in front of her. “Why did you put it on?”
He looked back at her seriously and finally appeared to have returned to himself. “I was lying in bed all day, bored,” he told her. “It was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“Your mother gave me instructions for using it.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but later. When you’re better. When we can be careful about it.”
“All right. Of course,” he said.
Quin sighed and slowly began to relax.
“I’m no end of trouble and I’m sorry,” he murmured to her. She could hear in his voice that the focal’s influence—whatever it was—had fully worn off. “Will you forgive me?”
“Probably,” she said grudgingly.
He pulled her closer. Now that he wasn’t in immediate danger of damaging himself, Quin became aware of their position on the bed, the way his smile pulled up one side of his face slightly more than the other. He was watching her through half-closed eyes.
“Now you’re going to kiss me, right?” he asked.
“Maybe,” Quin murmured.
And then she did kiss him, because she loved him, even if he was reckless. Half the time, his recklessness saved her life.
The kiss was nice but very one-sided.
“Are you falling asleep while I’m kissing you?” she asked him when she realized that this was exactly what was happening.
Shinobu’s eyes opened with difficulty, then shut again. His painkiller implants had all been removed, so this was real exhaustion. “Of course not,” he whispered. “Kiss me more.”
But in a few moments he was in a deep sleep, so deep that he didn’t respond, even when she shook his shoulder. Quin looked across the room at the focal, which she’d set on her desk. What did that helmet do, precisely, to the person who wore it?
John tended to the fire and their dinner while the Young Dread paced. They were in their little camp inside the workshop on the estate, the same place he’d visited Maud once, the year before, the first time she’d agreed to help him. But now he was living here with her, sleeping restlessly each night on a pile of straw in one corner, wrapped in his cloak, while the Young Dread slept, still and deep, across the workshop from him, cocooned in her own cloak like a small, dark angel carved upon a tombstone.
Their hearth was by the open workshop doors, a large circle of stones filled with the ashes of all their cooking fires. A new fire was