It's marriage season again.

Kuirah was lucky enough to slip the net last time. That was back when he was just a guy who followed the crown princess around. That was before he'd taken a bullet to the ribs and saved her life. Back when people didn't take him seriously, in simpler words.

He almost misses it.

The stack of cherry-colored envelopes on the desk is twice as tall as yesterday. The letter opener's getting dull, which is a problem that had not once crossed his mind before this month had rolled in and brought its own kind of hell with it. Guarding Milagra during this time is more taxing than ever, and of course the respite's brief when he comes home to all this. And on top of that, his mentor thinks he's slacking off.

He's tempted to show the old man what slacking really looks like. If it wasn't his best friend's life on the line, he'd probably fake illness until the season had passed.

He sits down and reaches for the letter opener.

Two hours later, his hand's cramping, his eyes won't focus properly, and his temples ache quietly with every heartbeat.

Alright. He's not getting anywhere like this.

He locks the door and clicks off the lights. Pulls on the boots he so recently kicked off.

Then he eases the window up, slips out onto the thin outcrop of shingle below it, and lowers it down again until there's only a slim crack left, barely enough to insert a fingernail.

One might think a grown man would have no need to sneak out, but his parents worry less if they aren't aware. And their worry is the last thing he needs.

His family's home sits cozily snuggled by the forests on the outskirts of Daera-Li. Not a very desirable location for one of their species, but there is the one advantage of a quick way to the surface. Here, above the firs, high into the earthen ceilings, there are tunnels ribbed in the roots of the mountain trees. Tunnels that lead directly up into the wooded slopes. And from there, to the swath of ocean they border.

The faintest of breezes caresses Kuirah's skin. His fingers hook into old grooves in the stone-packed earth. Once upon a time, when he was barely old enough to walk, these grooves had torn skin from the same fingers that now gripped them with the ease of a sniper pulling the trigger on a perfect shot. Once upon a time he'd struggled, fallen, and at last clawed his way to a ledge, and then all the way to the top. Soaked in blood, sweat, and tears the whole time.

Now his flesh itself is armor.

There's something about the climb--which once grieved him so--that settles the restless, hollow burn behind his sternum. Maybe it's the memory of the old man urging him onward, as always, telling him to keep on, or else his dessert will go to his brothers instead. (Not the best motivator, since he always gave his dessert to them anyway.) Maybe it's the familiar stretch and pull of muscles most people aren't even aware they have. Whatever it is, he welcomes it. Whatever it is, he hopes it will last.

The breeze strengthens, heavy with the scent of salty sea and the leaf-mulched forests. A thin pour of moonlight envelopes him. He can hear the songs of the nightbirds, mingled with quiet psithurism. The distant wash of the surf.

All of that's to be expected. It's the tickle of a different smell, a different sound that makes him suppress his breath. The pair of them together tug at his memory--knock around in his mind like a phantom icepick, searching for a crack that'll split loose a recollection of whatever time they were familiar to him. The pair of them together make the somnolent wood feel alive, aware, and hostile.

The pair of them together--the warm, rich scent of blood in overdrive and the rough, hitching scrape of lungs heaving for air--tell him he's not alone.

Still he pulls himself, silent as the currents in the deep of the ocean, from the tunnel.

His neck hurts.

It's the first thing he notices, in the syrup-thick grogginess sleep leaves behind, when he wakes, and it's also what's keeping him from getting the last precious minutes of slumber before his alarm goes off. His blood is loud in his ears, a steady rhythm matching the ache in his temple.

The pain in his neck's not soreness--at least, not the sort that comes from training. It's deeper than that, more concentrated, constant. Why--

A gull cries somewhere, and just like that, Kuirah's wide awake.

Fragments of memory come back. The waves under moonlight. The sand under his feet, loose and shifting and masking the steps that brought him to stand at the head of a man he should never have found collapsed at the line of earth and sea. A man who should never have been alone, in the dead of night, passed out and vulnerable.

Kuirah lifted a hand to the sore side of his neck. At first contact, nothing was amiss. It took a second of seeking with his fingertips before he found the proof that he hadn't hallucinated the events of the past night--two small, rough patches where the blood has clotted and dried. One of them flakes off, the skin below already sealed.

He lets his arm fall back to lay in the wet sand at his side. For a long moment, he stares up into the sky--pale, just starting to show the first blush of dawn blue--and lets the tangle of half-formed thoughts in his mind slowly unravel and leak away.

The first coherent one that comes is that he at least won't have to concern himself with marriage proposals.

The second is that he's just completely wrecked a very important arrangement.

Great.

~*~

It's a little past nine when he shows up for duty. Which is three hours later than he should have, but no one says much on it, maybe because it's the first time he's ever been late or maybe because it's writ large on his face that he's likely to throat-punch anyone who talks to him without a damn good reason. Milagra's already neck-deep in the day's work, which--lucky for him--can all be done from her desk today. When he steps into the room and the other guards leave--one with a sullen glare cast in his direction, as if he's the source of all misfortune for being a few hours late--she flicks a glance up at him and says, "You smell strange."

"I hear that can happen to a person when they're marked." He thought it'd be no big deal to tell her about what happened, which was obviously wrong, because his mood dips sharply as soon as she lifts her head to look at him and he knows he's not going home until the owls are retiring for the day.

She sets down the papers, carefully. Like it might erase the reality that she didn't mishear him. "Come again?"

He unzips his collar, managing not to tear off the zipper, and pushes one side open to reveal the gnarled red knot where he was bitten. Where one wound is still just clinging to the scab. "The worse part is who did it."

Her gaze travels up from the convoluted pattern to meet his, wary and troubled. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

He leans his weight against the sturdy pillar beside the doors. "No, you're not. Especially seeing as you're supposed to marry him in two months."

That hangs in the air for a moment. Then it falls like a wet lead blanket, forcing them both to face the ugly reality.