Home didn’t make him think of Mythen Thaelas any longer. Home was the apartment, with his abandoned notes and Ashenivir’s mess of books. Home was a leash in the entryway and manacles on the bedframe, his cufflinks and Ashenivir’s hair ties on the nightstand; it was tangled sheets and sunlight glinting on the links of a collar, the mark beneath his hand and Ashenivir on his knees with hungry eyes and an eager smile. Mythen Thaelas without him would never be home at all.

ALT

In which Ashenivir celebrates his birthday.

Time forked - he saw all the way down the not-guilty road in a flash. He heard her voice dripping with smugness, saw himself getting dragged through a trial. Felt the weight of the coming weeks, months, years. He saw himself getting up there and being forced to lay his soul bare in front of hundreds of hungry eyes.  It felt as real as anything, and then her actual voice reached his ears.  “Not guilty,” she said.  Not his imagination. The shocked gasps and the gauche, intrusive popping of cameras; Virginia next to him, making a pained whimper, grabbing his hand. His heart stopped.  But what if she really hadn’t-?  “No, no. Wait.” Electra’s voice cut through the clamor. “Oh, geez. I’m sorry, I meant the other one.”  Virginia squeezed his hand. Riley sat stone-still as ever, her gaze fixed on Electra. The judge banged his gavel and called for silence, for Electra to take the proceedings seriously, and to restate her plea for the record while she looked around the room, feigning alarm through thinly veiled delight.  “Guilty, I swear,” she declared, her voice as loud and clear as it’d ever been. “You have to forgive me, your honor, it’s been a tiring couple days. But I totally did it, hundred percent, guilty of murder in the first degree.”  She articulated the last couple words with pride, a confident student center-stage at a spelling bee. Then she saw him, and locked her eyes on his.  He held her gaze, but it wasn't easy. It only lasted a second before she turned back around in her seat to face the judge again, but not before blowing him a little kiss - just a tiny puckering of her lips and a breath behind it to send it through the air.  The air caught fire and his throat clenched shut and what he wanted to was to run from the room and find a place where no one was watching and no could hear him and just scream. At the same time, an unfamiliar voice told him not to give her the satisfaction. It was a new voice, just born, and it hated her. His skin prickled.  “You realize,” the judge grumbled, “that by pleading guilty, you give up your right to trial by a jury of your peers?”  “Yep.”  “You also know that you forfeit your right to cross-examine your accusers?”  “Yes, I do,” she said wistfully, as if that, of all things, was what she regretted the most. He half-expected her to turn around again. If she had, he might have snapped.  She didn’t. It just went on like that, the judge asking her if she understood this and that. The press continued snapping photos behind them, shifting in their seats to get a good angle between everyone’s heads, but Electra - Electra had clearly grown bored. She cocked her head and answered the questions put to her in a monotone after that, and Simon came back down to the room, to the emptiness of it all.  So vacant: Virginia and Riley next to him, Electra up in front, the judge, the guards, the reporters, everything. A movie with a predictable ending on a flat screen, and he was the only idiot in the audience that didn’t see it coming. Who had expected more for some reason and could only sit there slack-jawed as the credits rolled.  Even when they walked her out, she didn’t look his way again. 

Electra paused a moment and almost looked pained; Riley realized she was probably thinking.

'Heavens, his reputation precedes him,' Edwin sighed. 'I told him I had a meeting today, but I arrived at the stables to find he's gone walkabout—my horse not even saddled.'

A young trans man is offered a new kind of HRT that proves to have devastating dental consequences.