His head hits the ground first.

Raphael looks up, eyes watering, blood pooling in his mouth, bruised throat shuddering as it dilates with each trembling inhale-exhale.

Sébastien. He has to get away, he thinks, tears refracting the light from the doorway into thousands of glittering orange shards, Sébastien’s voice carrying beneath the ringing in Rapha’s ears, low and flaming.

He places his hands into the cool, damp earth and pushes himself to his knees, beginning to crawl.

The first thing Sara notices is how little clothes Raphael is wearing. The second is the blood.

“Rapha?” She calls out, flinging open her window as the dog barks at his return. “What happened?”

Rapha says nothing, grasping the doorframe to catch himself as he struggles to stand. Lupe, growls, teeth yellowing, snapping and straining against his leash.

Sara meets him on the porch, raising a hand, silencing Lupe, who opens his mouth and finds himself barkless. She places her arm around Raphael, and carries him inside, to where the stove is still warm, placing him on the chair in the corner.

“Sara…” he whispers, bringing his head close to the cup of warm milk on the table befire him, not quite trusting his arms to not give out enough to bring it to his lips. “I’m sorry.”

She sighs from the kitchen, preparing a washbasin of cool water and antiseptic. “It’s not your fault, Rapha. Blanca should have come with you.”

Raphael closes his eyes, throat too wrecked to wince when Sara places the cloth to his bleeding chest, head too heavy to turn away. Very rarely does he hate this body, save for times like these, where his chest blooms like a prison and bleeds like a prisoner.

“I knew Rosa was sick,” he says, “Blanca needed to stay. There can’t only be one girl in the house.”

“No,” Sara breathes. “You’re the priority. You’re the prized one.”

Rapha exhales slowly. Señora Blanca is not a cruel madam, not in the slightest. She forbids the girls to be on their own in the house for their own safety. She shuts the rooms at 4am sharp, and keeps them all well-fed, well-rested, clean and healthy.

When Rapha had said his new name in the light, only three years after he had began to work at The Three Soldiers, he was sure he was going to be turned out, and left workless, for where was a former Soldier girl to work beside from the street, where men could do to him as they liked, and pay only in the lack of injury?

He was taken off the floor, but paid just as well, and did house-calls. They may have been riskier, but Blanca never let him go alone, and they paid triple that which he had made working in the house, for there was a novelty to it; a man-in-woman’s body.

“She knows Sebastien is banned from the Three Soldiers after he broke Rosa’s arm,” Sara sighs. Rosa’s arm had never really healed, and infections came back in waves that Sara’s magic could never banish for good. “And she let you do a house-call unaccompanied?”

Raphael looks at her. “I owed him. Off the books. Blanca doesn’t know.”

Sébastien closed the door behind him. Rapha kept his back straight anyway.

“You came alone,” Sébastien said. His voice was lighter than Rapha remembered.

“You asked me to,” Rapha replies.

“Yes,” Sébastien agrees. “Thank you.”

A pause. Rapha lets his eyes adjust to the dimness; shutters half-drawn, a single lamp burning low. There’s a chair in the center of the room. He doesn’t sit.

“You owe me,” Sébastien continues, stepping closer. “You know that.”

Rapha stays quiet.

“You hurt me,” Sébastien says. “You stepped into a situation that was not your business."

“You were going to kill her,” Rapha corrects, quietly.

“You fucked me up good, Raphael,” Sébastien says, “and yet, you walked out of the Three Soldiers untouched.”

Rapha doesn’t answer. Rosa hadn’t.

Sébastien tilts his head. “That place is crawling with my men, Rapha. They were going to kill you for even touching me. I didn’t let them. You owe me.”

Rapha’s jaw tightens. “You hurt Rosa. She didn’t deserve that,” he says.

“No,” Sébastien agrees easily. “She didn’t. But you?” Sébastien’s gaze drags slowly over him. “You made a choice.”

Rapha holds his ground. “I did,” he says.

“And choices have prices.”

Sébastien gestures toward the chair.

“Sit.”

Rapha doesn’t move.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Rapha crosses the room and sits. The wood is cold even through the thin fabric at his back. His hands rest on his knees, steady by force of will.

Sébastien circles him, slow, deliberate. “Do you remember,” he says, “how it used to be?”

Rapha stares straight ahead. “I don’t work the floor anymore.”

“No,” Sébastien says. “You don’t.”

A hand lands on his shoulder.

“Stand up.”

Rapha does.

“Good,” he says. “You still listen.” Sébastien steps back toward the chair, seating himself. “Kneel.”

Rapha doesn’t move this time. “I don’t do that,” he says.

Sébastien exhales through his nose. “Don’t be difficult.”

“I’m not,” Rapha says. “I’ll settle it. Just not like that.”

“Not like that,” Sébastien repeats, a humorless laugh escaping him. “You think you get to choose the terms?”

“No,” Rapha says, more firmly now. “I’m not–”

Sébastien’s hand comes fast, closing around his throat and slamming him back against the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth. Rapha gasps, the air knocked clean out of him.

“There it is,” Sébastien murmurs, stepping in close. “That tone.” His grip tightens. “You think,” heaving now, “you’ve become something else.”

Rapha’s fingers come up instinctively, but fall short of clawing at his neck. He will not afford Sébastien that slippage. “I am something else,” he forces out.

“Say that again.”

Rapha meets his eyes. “I am not one of your girls.”

For a heartbeat, nothing happens. And then all breath leaves him, shuddering and crushed and twisted.

“You were,” he says softly. “You are.” Sébastien’s thumb presses into his throat, right where the bruising will bloom later. “On your knees,” he says again.

Rapha shakes his head. The first blow lands to his ribs. Rapha folds with it, the air he barely had driven out again as his back hits the floor. He tastes blood almost immediately.

“Don’t,” Sébastien says, crouching over him, “make this worse.”

Rapha coughs, turning his head, trying to drag in air through a throat that won’t quite open.

“I came,” he manages. “That’s the debt.”

“The debt,” he says, “is obedience.”

Rapha curls in on himself, arms instinctively trying to shield what he can.

“I won’t—”

The boot catches his side before he can finish.

“You will,” Sébastien says.

Rapha doesn’t answer this time, pushing himself up instead.. That seems to irritate Sébastien more than refusal.

“Stay down.”

Rapha doesn’t. He gets one knee under him, then the other. His vision swims, the room tilting at the edges.

“I said,” Sébastien snaps, reaching again for Rapha’s throat.

This time, Rapha jerks back, not fast enough to avoid it entirely, but enough that the grip slips, turning into fingers digging into the side of his neck instead of closing clean. It’s enough. The door is only a few steps away. A hand catches the back of Rapha’s shirt, yanking him off balance. His head cracks against the edge of the table on the way down. Sound drops out. For a second, he doesn’t feel anything at all. Then everything comes back at once. Somewhere above him, Sébastien is speaking again, but the words blur, stretch, dissolve into tone and cadence.

Rapha doesn’t wait to understand.

He rolls, drags himself, fingers slipping against the floor before finding purchase. He doesn’t remember opening the door.Only the sudden rush of colder air, the ground rising up too fast…and then nothing but impact.

Rosa is propped up on pillows as Sara pushes the door open with her shoulder, Raphael leaning heavily against her side. He walks under his own power, but only just. Each step is careful, measured, like he’s afraid his legs might give out.

Rosa’s eyes widen. “Rapha…”

He tries to smile. It comes out crooked. “I’m fine.”

“You look like you lost a bullfight."

“Would’ve been kinder,” Raphael murmurs.

Sara clicks her tongue. “Sit. Both of you.”

Raphael obeys, lowering himself onto the edge of Rosa’s bed, shifting her blankets aside so he can lean back against the wall. He does, exhaling shakily as the room stops tilting. Sara sets her basin on the nightstand. The water inside is cloudy with herbs; yarrow, comfrey, a pinch of salt from the riverbank. She dips her fingers in and stirs, whispering under her breath.

Rosa watches her. “You’re using the strong mix.”

“You’re both a mess,” Sara replies. “You need it..”

She wrings out a cloth and presses it gently to Rosa’s swollen arm. Rosa hisses, then relaxes as the warmth seeps in.

Raphael watches, eyes softening. “Does it help?”

“A little,” Rosa says. “Takes the edge off.”

Sara glances at him. “Your turn.”

Raphael stiffens. “I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding through your shirt.”

He looks down. He is.

Rosa nudges him with her good hand. “Let her.”

Raphael sighs, defeated. Sara lifts the hem of his shirt carefully. The bruises are already blooming in deep purples, sickly greens, the kind that will stain for weeks. She presses the cloth to his ribs. He flinches, but doesn’t pull away.

Rosa watches him closely. “He did this?”

Raphael doesn’t answer.

Sara does. “Yes.”

Rosa’s jaw tightens. “You shouldn’t have gone.”

“I owed him,” Raphael says quietly.

“No,” Rosa says. “Rapha, no.”

Raphael closes his eyes. “He kept his men from killing me. That’s not nothing.”

“That’s leverage,” Sara says.

Raphael swallows, throat still raw. “I thought… if I went, it would end it.”

Sara snorts softly. “Sébastien is not one to end things for good. Especially with us. Stop talking.” She presses the cloth to his throat now, where the bruising is darkest. Raphael’s breath catches, but he stays still.

“You scared us,” Rosa says. "You left without telling any of us. Marisol worried."

Raphael opens his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re family,” Sara says simply. “You don’t owe us apologies for surviving. You owe us surviving, though.”

Rosa shifts, wincing. “Come closer.”

Raphael leans in. Rosa rests her forehead against his shoulder for a moment, breathing him in like proof.

“You came back,” she whispers.

“I always will,” he says.