"Savalt lived across the hall from us," Luvelt began, "she was a good neighbor to have. Whenever Wenroth got really bad, she'd invite me in."

  The Faun spoke so softly, the sounds almost lost to the gentle hum in the floorboards from the music down below. Bezel had to tilt his head and shut his eyes to fully hear the small whimpering.

  "She always said just to have some Satyrian tea--but I knew she was looking out for me." As Luvelt spoke, they cast nervous glances to the door behind them. As if scared someone would interrupt.

  It was incredibly unlikely. There existed very few Faun foolish enough to knock on his door, and with Mayvalt already inside of the office the chances were even slimmer.

  "That sounds like her." Mayvalt smiled weakly.

  Bezel stared blankly at his hands, twisting his fingers up into odd shapes in a motion that might have seemed driven by boredom--but he wasn't. Well, to be completely fair. He wasn't quite entertained either.

  He simply observed, settling into perfect silence to allow the Faun time to speak around him. For now. Mayvalt often said he spoke too much--and most often when no one wanted him too, but it was hard to tell those sort of things apart.

  Luvelt nodded in gentle appreciation. "Right, so it was strange when she stopped coming by. I mean, it was like clockwork. Everyday. He'd start shouting, and she'd knock and ask me to come try some tea. And then. . . she didn't. I didn't really think something had happened to her. I thought, well, it was never her job to save me. Maybe she got tired of it."

  Mayvalt leaned forward in her seat, placing a gentle palm on Luvelt's shoulder. The trembling Faun smiled softly at the gesture.

  "Well, then even stranger things began to happen." Luvelt continued nervously.

  "Things like?" Bezel pressed. Mayvalt glared at him, but he didn't know why. She should have more reason than him to get to the bottom of this. He offered his surrender in the form of a shrug and she rolled her coffee-warm eyes in acknowledgement.

  "Like. . . noises." Luvelt whimpered. They gasped in small shocks of air around the shaking knuckles they'd pressed against their teeth. "Whispering."

  Mayvalt tilted her head, slicing the shared airspace with her fuzzy antlers. "From Savalt's apartment?"

  "Not at first." Luvelt grew paler than moonlight. "At first it was. . . i-in my head. Or, in the room where I slept. S-something was. . . calling to me at night."

  Bezel creased his midnight black eyebrows over the glimmer of his yellow eyes. "Are you sure?"

  "Boss!" Mayvalt snapped. He scowled, trying to piece together why she'd snapped at him.

  Luvelt sighed, deflating into Bezel's leather chair. "I know. I know how I sound. I thought I was going crazy, too, but then the whispering just. . . stopped."

  "When?" Mayvalt asked.

  Bezel could have pouted, if he cared enough to be bothered. Why was she allowed to ask questions? Maybe they'd begun playing good cop bad cop again.

  No, even bad cops got to interrogate. So maybe they'd begun a round of good cop and paperweight.

  Luvelt twisted up their fingers, clutching at their cloak. "The same night Savalt didn't come."

  "So, you think it might be related?" Mayvalt asked.

  "I didn't! If I had maybe I would have gone to her. I don't know. I might have been able to tell her not to listen." Luvelt swallowed hard.

  A sullen shadow of guilt graced the Faun's fine features as they continued. "The things it was saying were awful. A-about getting my revenge on Wenroth. About hurting myself if I couldn't. It wasn't just words. It was this feeling, too, like being all charred up on the inside."

  Mayvalt glanced at Bezel, her eyes filled with slight recognition. It was hard to pick apart, so deeply tangled into her worry.

  She looked as if she had gone to see a play, but only realized at the final act that she'd heard of it before--and it was barreling towards a tragic ending.

  Inside of her irises, there was something else, too. It was so small, he might have missed it if he wasn't so attuned to fitting into a mask. The corners of her eyes sharped. It tasted as bitter as blame

  He thought he might have had an idea as to why, but for the sake of all of Heimr--he'd better be wrong.

  "Have you ever wanted something so badly you'd do anything to get it?" Luvelt asked. "I mean anything. Steal it, destroy it, kill for it. . .die for it."

  He knew the weight of Luvelt's meaning. He knew that death was a luxury that the immortal soul would never afford. When they died--they simply ceased to be. And still he knew that he would.

  "Yes." Bezel said dully.

  Mayvalt flinched. Her eyes fell to the floor, and they didn't move again.

  "Yes." She whispered.

  And he knew, without even glancing at her, that they were thinking of the same night. The night when the rangale had ripped Bezel's body into two halves. When they had left all of his heart in the wrong side.

  Only now, Bezel didn't know who she spoke for. Was it the bitter child that had wanted him punished or a regretful sinner who wished she could take it all back?

  Luvelt laughed, and it was a sound full of scorn. "You two are very much alike."

  Mayvalt grimaced, but Bezel wasn't particularly offended. It must have stung to be separated from her kind, tossed aside to the uncaring Prince. By his side was a very lonely place to be.

  Luvelt glared down at their hands, "Well, I hadn't. Not until it began whispering to me. It had promised me everything I'd ever wanted--things I hadn't known I wanted. And then it was just gone. And I stayed awake at night, flinching with every creak, hoping that it'd come back because now I'd had done anything to get what I wanted. I was torn apart by this feeling."

  "Greed." Bezel said. "The feeling of greed."

  "Yeah," Luvelt nodded.

  Mayvalt tensed, she stiffened with something worse than fear. It was confirmation. It was watching the curtains peel back from the stage, only to see the actors move into their death throes.

  She shifted on her feet, and a look of blank fretfulness slipped over her expressions. Bezel might have smirked with invented pride. Sometimes, she was better at faking it than he was.

  "You said not at first. So, eventually, the whispers came from Savalt's apartment?" Mayvalt pressed.

  "Not exactly." Luvelt breathed. "At night, when I was waiting, I began to hear something else. These knocking noises. I thought it was just apartment living. We had a new couple move in upstairs, they had a young fawn. I thought it was the baby. . . because of the crying."

  "It wasn't?" Bezel guessed. "You think it was Savalt?"

  Luvelt nodded slowly. "She came after four days. Wenroth had begun screaming, and she knocked. I went out to speak to her-" Luvelt whimpered, placing their face into their open palms.

  "What? Luvelt, what?" Mayvalt pushed.

  "Mayvalt, she. . . she wasn't right. She stared right through me. I kept trying to talk to her, but she never even spoke. She just. . . left. She went into her apartment, and she slammed the door. I didn't see her again. I just kept hearing that knocking--all night. And later I heard these awful whimpering sobs." They said.

  Luvelt rubbed at their eyes where the tears pooled. "I think now that she was asking for help but I didn't help her. After everything she'd done for me, I did nothing."

  "It wasn't your fault, Luvelt. You couldn't have known what was happening." Mayvalt soothed. The corners of her lips twitched, a small muscle in the sharp line of her jaw jumped just beneath her skin. Her throat flexed as she swallowed down her resentment.

  Bezel often thought that contempt looked as pretty as rose petals when Mayvalt smoothed it down deep into the hollow of her chest, containing it there as a live viper. There was something deeply enticing to him about watching others choke on what he could no longer eat.

  "We went to her apartment but she wasn't there. Looked like she hadn't been in awhile. Did you ever see her leave?" Mayvalt asked. She sunk back beneath the soothing tones of her concern. Bezel didn't doubt that it was real, he just knew that it weighed less than her anger.

  "I'm sorry." Luvelt sniffled, wiping at their red nose with the bunched up fabric of their cloak. "I never saw or heard her leave. Her apartment. . . what was it like?"

  "It wasn't pleasant." Mayvalt grit between her teeth.

  "The blood." Luvelt whispered.

  Mayvalt flinched. A thin sheen of sweat broke across her brow. "How did you-"

  "The scent of it was obvious from the moment we arrived in the low-street." Bezel cut in. "I'm sure there's not a single Faun in the place that couldn't smell it. Am I right?"

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Luvelt pulled their cloak tighter around their chest, trembling. "You don't get it."

  Almost as beautiful as the acrobat, is the moment they slip from the tightrope. Mayvalt's performance ground to a definitive halt. Her porcelain mask slipped, shattering against the floor so that she could never pick it back up.

  "No, you're right, I don't," Mayvalt snarled, "how could an entire building of Faun sit by and do nothing? Sap, you all speak of unity but when she needed you--no one was there! You all just sat in your rooms like cowards!"

  Luvelt flinched. The last of the pink in their face drained away.

  "Mayvalt dear," Bezel warned in his hopelessly void tone, "settle."

  They'd get nothing more if they weren't careful. Mayvalt glared at him. She huffed from her nose and paced across the office to the large oval window, staring down at the Hudson with a scowl across her face.

  "We knew, you're right, but what could we have done?" Luvelt deflated, sinking into the mounds of their cloak. "That's why I came. I know I made a mistake, but I want to help now. I'm putting myself in danger by being here. Speaking to the Prince, even if it means helping Savalt, is at great risk to myself. If the rangale knew I was here-"

  "The rangale," Bezel dismissed with an exaggerated scoff, "they'd first have to choke on their hypocrisy. Any Faun in Heimr came because I allowed it. They stepped through doorways I made. They dress with blessings I gave them. There are no true rangale here, merely tantrum-bound toddlers."

  "You have changed the rules with your action, sir. Even the Satyrian clan is beginning to see you for who you truly are." Luvelt murmured, and in cryptically unhelpful Faun fashion began to ramble something as incoherent as Savalt's essay. "You may hide from the rain beneath your metal umbrella, but the lightning will seek you."

  "My action?" Bezel pondered, "no, I still don't get it."

  He riffled through his mind, pushing through the web-coated shelves to several weeks ago when the Faun had begun to slowly disappear one-by-one. On the day Mayvalt had first mentioned it to him, he'd been sitting catatonically in his office, passing the time by blankly staring out the window.

  Mayvalt said it was a creepy hobby to nurture, but he didn't see how it was particularly offensive.

  And before that, it'd been much of the same. Well, maybe there had been something. The failed attempt to open another gate in the Trammel. He tipped his head and frowned. That little episode? It'd just been a hiccup.

  He'd opened several other gates perfectly fine over the course of his centuries. He could almost enjoy the hum of them now, always simmering in the back of his mind as they leached off his energy.

  If they wanted more gates so badly, he could try again at the next full moon. When the barrier between the three worlds would be at its weakest. It was hardly cause for so much complaining.

  "Okay, I give up." He shrugged. "Mayvalt, what'd I do?"

  "Me?" Mayvalt sputtered, she snapped to attention from her place by the window, "how should I know?"

  "You always know!" He protested, "even when you're not there, like that time I told Fenvolt he had no talent for cooking. You were on me within the hour demanding I apologize."

  "He cried!" Mayvalt shouted, waving her hands dramatically through the air. "Remember what I told you, always start apologizing when they start crying--it usually means you messed up."

  "Fauns always look a little teary when I speak to them." Bezel shrugged.

  "Boss." Mayvalt sighed.

  "That's enough!" Luvelt interrupted. "I have no temper to deal with a Prince who takes his actions against us so lightly, he can't be bothered to recall."

  "Does it make it better or worse to say I usually don't remember the things I do?" Bezel asked. Mayvalt wrinkled up her nose and shook her head. So, he fell silent.

  "I came to help with Savalt. I told you all that I know." Luvelt sighed. "I'm sorry it's not enough."

  "It's more than we had." Mayvalt admitted weakly. "It fills in some holes."

  "It does? Which ones?" Bezel puzzled absent curiosity.

  "Her research papers, boss." Mayvalt might have rolled her eyes, but she seemed to be lacking the strength to do so. "They're just nothing. If she was suffering from a crisis it could have been doing untold damage to her mind."

  "That's hardly the golden goose at the end of the trail mix." Bezel remarked.

  Mayvalt blinked. Luvelt tipped their head. The room turned silent. Bezel could sense the thrum in the floor from the music downstairs.

  "What?" Mayvalt finally balked.

  "I was trying to do that riddle thing you Faun do all the time," Bezel muttered sourly, "fine, I'll stick to speaking plainly. I meant, it's really not an answer it's just another idea."

  "We do not-"

  "Wait, a riddle!" Mayvalt cried. "It's a riddle, isn't it!"

  "Is that a question or a statement?" Bezel asked.

  "I'm confused." Luvelt grumbled.

  "Me too," Bezel agreed.

  Mayvalt rushed to Bezel's desk and began peeling through the mess he'd left there. She picked up the papers from Savalt's apartment and triumphantly held them in the air. "What is a mouse? It's not a question--it's a riddle."

  "I hardly see the difference, Mayvalt." Bezel said.

  "If it's a riddle, there has to be an answer." Mayvalt lectured.

  "Que-"

  "No they don't." Luvelt interrupted.

  "Oh, come on! You had no idea what I was about to say." Bezel protested.

  "You were going to say that questions have answers." Luvelt rolled their eyes as if it was a stupid thing to think, "you could fill the rest of your eternal life with pondering the simplest questions asked of us, and still never get it right."

  "Well, I certainly have no answer for the question of why Faun are so bothersome." Bezel agreed.

  "Sure you do, boss," Mayvalt laughed, "it's just in our nature."

  "Well, then, I have no further argument." He shrugged. "Anyway, didn't we know that before? What was all that nonsense you had to spout about prey or praying or whatever?"

  "Sap, boss," Mayvalt groaned. She shook her peach toned curls and sighed. "I was being too literal. I was trying to answer a question instead of solving a riddle."

  "I'll pretend to see the difference." Bezel noted coolly. "You think this is a game? You think Savalt left you with, what, a knock-knock joke to remember her by? It seems just Satyrian nonsense."

  Mayvalt glowered down her nose at him. "I won't need anything to remember her by when I find her." She snapped.

  Bezel paused. She was angry, most likely because he'd stepped outside of their bubble of pretend. Pretending that Savalt was happy, albeit hornless, waiting for them somewhere. He studied the fragile skin of her blinking eyelids, and he saw no tears.

  "Sure," he agreed, "so, what would make this a riddle?"

  "Well, riddles usually come with clues. Sometimes that's just your prior knowledge of the language." Luvelt suggested. "Historical context, I suppose. When is a door not a door?"

  "Before you put the hinges on it?" Bezel asked.

  "When it's ajar." Mayvalt finished. "You're really bad at this, boss."

  "Satyrian senselessness." He muttered.

  "So, what is a mouse?" Luvelt murmured. "It's sort of strange, isn't it."

  "Obviously." Bezel muttered.

  After tossing him a heated glare, Mayvalt turned herself back towards Luvelt. "How so?"

  "Well, it doesn't really follow riddle structure at all. It's just seemingly so direct. It's hard to see what possible puzzle could be made of it." Luvelt hummed, more so to themself.

  "Faunish foolishness." Bezel puffed.

  "So, you think it is just a question?" Mayvalt asked, deflating into her leather jacket.

  "Not necessarily." Luvelt said. "I just feel like, well, something is missing."

  Mayvalt perked up. "We brought more papers. Would you like to see?"

  "May-" Bezel warned.

  "Please." Luvelt finished. Mayvalt rushed to Bezel's desk and pushed his paperwork to the furthest corner. In the space she'd triumphantly cleared, she spread out the essay clippings from Savalt's home. Luvelt joined at her side and stared down blankly at the writings.

  They blinked. Bezel knew they must have been scrambling to detangle the jibberish on the page.

  scilla sik tallis til lilac sta lisk taksicll sill act ikll sikl ticals sakti ilk tiks lis sial scall tilaks--for pages and pages, in countless more combinations. It was giving even him a headache, and he hadn't been able to hold one for centuries.

  Bezel rubbed at the sharp line of his jaw. He'd tried to warn her that it was all nothing and now her last hope was about to be crushed. He turned his blank yellow eyes to the window overlooking the Hudson.

  "Do you have a pen?" Luvelt asked. Mayvalt nodded and gestured at Bezel, who obediently retrieved one from his desk drawer. Luvelt took it from him with a slight tremble in the tips of their fingers. "Have you tried decrypting it?"

  Mayvalt chewed on her bottom lip. "Decrypting it?"

  "Using the letters Savalt gave us to try and finish the riddle." Luvelt answered.

  Mayvalt shook her head, and Luvelt nodded. "Then, let's start there."

  Luvelt pointed with the tip of their pen at each break in the letters. "There's never been a 'word' to exceed eight letters, so whatever the message I think it's safe to assume it's less than that."

  Mayvalt nodded.

  "Okay, we can make it easy first. We can pick out the words that are real. Lilac, tick, stick, tall, tail, calk, task, silk." Luvelt circled each one, and then immediately crossed them off.

  "Hey!" Mayvalt protested.

  "They're just distractions. Whatever is hidden here isn't going to be so plainly written." Luvelt dismissed.

  "Do you solve a lot of puzzles in your spare time?" Bezel asked. "You seem suspiciously adept at this."

  Luvelt turned pink in the tips of their ears. "I wanted to study Heimrian literature, it's why I crossed in the first place."

  Bezel nodded. "Well, good. It seems we're in the presence of an expert."

  "Thank you, sir." Luvelt blushed even further. "Mayvalt, you take the first half of pages and make as many words as you can."

  "What? Me?" Mayvalt sputtered. "I might like an occasional pun, but I can hardly focus on anything but my worry for Savalt."

  "I'm sure the focus will come to you to help her." Luvelt said.

  "You're going to split up the pages?" Bezel asked. "What if the message requires a combination of several papers?"

  "I don't think so. It should still remain beneath eight letters, remember?" Luvelt said.

  "Well, I guess." Bezel agreed. He had never studied Heimrian literature after all.

  Luvelt nodded, "so I'll take the rest, we can-"

  "What about me?" Bezel interrupted.

  "S-sir?" Luvelt squeaked. Their eyes darted to Mayvalt, but she only shrugged.

  "Give me a few pages." Bezel said.

  "You're going to help?" Luvelt asked. They twisted their fingers in their lap.

  Bezel cocked his head. "Have I not this far?"

  "No, not really," Mayvalt agreed unhelpfully.

  "Oh, no, I just meant--you want to keep helping us, sir?" Luvelt asked.

  "No, of course not." Bezel scoffed.

  "Oh, um," Luvelt frowned, confusion heavy in the cut of their brows. They chewed on their lip, and tensed beneath their cloak.

  "It's pointless to grasp him, Luvelt, just toss him a couple of pages." Mayvalt dismissed, waving her hand in the air.

  She took a stack for herself and retreated to Bezel's decorative couch. Decorative, because he hadn't rested for centuries, but that wasn't a problem for the young Faun. She had left antler indents in the soft velvet from her overuse.

  Luvelt stayed where they had been seated, seemingly frozen, and Bezel returned to his desk to dive into more paperwork. He picked off a section from the stack on the table, and Luvelt pulled the remainder into their lap.

  The Faun flipped disheartedly through their own pages. Luvelt's eyes fluttered between the nonsense they'd claimed and Bezel's desk, torn in focus between what they had to look at and what Bezel had begun doing.

  He dismissed it as Faun nerves and turned his attention down into his own gibberish.

  ctsak tksal tsall askl atsllik tkilsa atsl til ilkat cilt ll iatsk ill actlikls .

  What is a mouse?

  Bezel combed over the words, as Luvelt had instructed, and picked apart each fragment. He broke the body of the word into chunks, scrambling it and bashing it back together as kindly as a fitful toddler to an old toy.

  What possible reply could he weave together with this pitiful collection of letters? Savalt had only given him two vowels, a and i, and just by personal preference at least one of them was clearly the worst vowel.

  How many words was he supposed to make? How many could he make? If his word bank was what laid before him, he had only eight letters he could use.

  Bezel froze. A realization as slow as cooling oil came over him.

  He only had eight letters. The same eight letters, over and over, mashed and broken. Bezel ran his finger down the page, resting on the longest pseudo-word he could find. Luvelt had warned them of red herrings, but had failed to calculate that none of it mattered at all.

  It had never been meant to be patched back together. It was only meant to be rearranged.

  tlaickls.

  Bezel picked apart each letter, moving them forward or backwards in their confined space. He stared down at his paper, and he huffed. A small show of amusement.

  Mayvalt perked her head, cutting through the air with her velvet antlers, "Boss?" she called softly.

  "Did you find something? I-I have to admit, I can't focus at all. I'm not getting anything. Luvelt, you?" She chirped anxiously.

  Bezel looked across his desk at Luvelt. They clutched their papers to their chest and stared back at him with pale cheeks and wide brown eyes. Their moon toned skin had taken on a rather sudden sheen of slickness.

  tlaickls.

  What is a mouse?

  "Cat's Kill." He said.

  Luvelt's heart thudded in their chest. Their fingers dug into the papers they held, crinkling it beneath their shaking palms.

  Bezel scoffed in cold amusement, "but you already knew that, didn't you?"