The bed was soft. Morphiel did not move.

He lay alone in a silent space, a world encompassed by nothing but the curtains on his four-poster bed. Outside, he could hear the autumn wind blowing. His house creaked lazily with it.

And then, the pain woke up with him. His side throbbed, burning with the tingle of iron-poisoning. He closed his eyes, feeling a shudder travel up his body. He felt his fur stand on end.

Morphiel checked himself. He lay nearly naked on his own bed, only a pair of light, loose short-pants and a wrapping of bandages covered his shaggy form. He wiggled his clawed toes to see if they still responded, and then paused, stalk-still, to hear if there were anyone else in the room to see him in this form. No sound came to his ears except the wind outside.

Was it near dawn, or dusk? He could not tell. He wondered if he should call out, or even if he should try to move.

Someone had to have tended this wound. He prayed it was only Faith and/or Grace. The last thing he needed was any of his rival lords getting wind of what he truly was.

But then, the secret was out, wasn't it? Steuben Trent must have told someone, because even Laszlofi's men were using iron weapons now. How long would it be before someone's hired assassin slipped iron shavings into his food, or planted a bomb packed with iron slag under his bed? County Hinterstrad was already in a weaker political position. Every ambitious noble piss-ant from the southern border to the city of Bucur-Esti would have their eye on this little mining and farming province as another ant-hill for them to piss from.

"Good gods..."

Oh, what Grandfather would have said to this little situation. Of course, the Hinterstrad star had already started to fall anyway. Grandfather was always a sentimental old fool, and that was the only reason he had let Morphiel's mother marry that drunken sot of a bard she had loved so much. And make no mistake, it was love--nothing else would have kept her faithful through nights of his yelling in blind impotent fury, his breath so stinking with the fumes of Tuica, Ouzo, and Caliphate Sabra that if someone had struck a match his mouth and lungs would have burned. It was love that kept her faithful when he would beat Lucien senseless, or humiliate his older sisters. It was love that caused her to beg grandfather to overlook it when the drunken son of a bitch raped her that night.

And it was love that caused her to mourn at his funeral when grandfather did not forgive it. And it was love that caused her to want Morphiel's father to use his fae glamour to take on the visage of that dead excuse for a man for one more night of comfort that gave her Morphiel.

Or so grandfather and Lucien had always told him.

"Whatever else you are, little puiule--" little cub, Grandfather had called him, "--you are a child of love. It may not be the best love, but it is love, and love of even the worst stripe is better than the best of fears and hatreds. Never forget that."

Yes. Their star had already started to fall. An old grandfather, a mother with a reputation unspoken in polite circles, a father who died a shameful blot on the family, a wife, his one chance at an heir, murdered by the Brotherhood of the Lamp, sisters who all married off for better or worse, thankfully only some of them repeating the mistakes of their mother, and an older brother dead in a horse dressage accident. What was one more bastard to the end of this era?

Morphiel closed his eyes. He had hoped at least to be dead before the end of the Hinterstrad family.

The door of his room opened. Under other circumstances he might have bothered to care about the intrusion. Today, he had not the energy.

A hand peeked through the curtains of his bed, followed by the visage of one of his Mirrorfolk paladins. He rolled his head to look at her. He found himself surprised now to be able to tell it was Grace--She kept her hair in a sensible braid, while Faith, the courtly knight of the pair, kept hers in something more suitable to diplomatic court-life. There were also very subtle differences in facial feature, expressions of the eyes--Faith was more reserved, her eyes always studious and careful, while Grace was a quintessential hunter, her eyes always narrow, focussing on the details of things rather than people.

Morphiel said, "Who else knows?"

"No one." Grace smiled. "We did the best we could, but...I didn't let her call a healer. I knew you wouldn't want that."

Morphiel took a moment to think about what she had just said. He wondered if it made any difference at all. Still...he couldn't help but feel some gratitude.

Grace finished pulling the curtain back. "Do you have anything for iron poisoning?"

Morphiel gestured to the wardrobe in the corner. "Hidden panel behind the jewelry box. There's a bottle of red liquid."

Grace squinted, but followed the direction. Morphiel stared up at the canopy over his bed, listening to her move things around. Finally, she came back with a small crystal bottle stoppered by a black cork. A clear, ruby-red liquid like a dark blush wine sloshed in the bottle.

Grace said, "I thought we searched that wardrobe pretty thoroughly." She offered the bottle.

Morphiel took it. "I'll thank you not to go into detail about your ransacking of my house." he unstoppered the cork and started to drink, but stopped, as a sense of dire alarm seized him. He looked to Grace. "You didn't search the cellar, did you?"

"No." She looked confused. "We were looking for something for your iron-poisoning. We didn't think anything like that would be down there."

Morphiel studied her for a moment, then relaxed, drinking the potion.