The Right to Die | ✓ Amby Winner 2023

5. Straight and Narrow

After the night of the heist, the Caps had fewer men to guard the safehouse. M'yu snuck back in through the window he'd left cracked when he left. The sun finally disappeared as he gently lowered the pane—still unlocked, just in case. It was always good to have a back door.

Voices rose and fell throughout the house, and he used them as guides as he ghosted back to the room Aevryn had left him in. Slipping inside, he leaned against the door with his lip bit. The windowless room was dark, and M'yu rested in the security of the shadows for a long moment.

Aevryn's voice rose down the hall, and M'yu spun back to the door, digging for his lock picks. It was sloppier, louder work than a simple unlock routine from the engineer's linkcard would have been, but M'yu had jimmied it without tools earlier. Making quick work of it, he stepped back, flicked on the light, and dumped the contents of his pockets into the side table drawer.

He had just shoved it closed and stepped away when the door opened.

Aevryn filled the frame, a parcel crooked in his arm. His icy eyes swept the room.

M'yu dropped onto the bed. "Finally. Was starting to wonder if I'd hopped from one jail to another."

Aevryn stepped inside the room and closed the door.

M'yu's throat tightened, but he nodded at the package. "What'd ya bring me?"

"Where did you go?"

"Go?" he cocked his head, feigning ignorance.

The distance between them disappeared in three sharp steps. "Perhaps we should set some things straight between us."

M'yu ducked out of Aevryn's shadow, popping to his feet. "Nothing to straighten."

"Ah? And the bruise on your face is nonexistent as well?"

M'yu reached up to where Dahnko had punched him, and Aevryn caught his wrist, fingers tighter than a skeleton clawing to life. "Let us lay some ground rules, shall we?"

"Let me go," M'yu gritted out.

"Rule One: if you want something from me, you ask it of me. I do not respond to threats or demands." His eyes bored into M'yu's skull. Teeth grit, Myu twisted his wrist but couldn't shake Aevryn loose. "Ah, yes." Aevryn leaned in closer. "I also don't respond well to my House members trying to outmaneuver me. I have been betrayed before. The traitor never gets the upper hand." Brow-raised, he waited.

M'yu sneered. "Please let go of me."

"We'll have to work on that tone." He released M'yu and stepped back. "Rule Two: you do not lie to me. In fact, so far as it does not endanger another person, we do not lie at all."

A scoff escaped M'yu's mouth. Aevryn tilted his head. "Something funny?"

"Just know how straight and narrow all you Caps are."

Aevryn eyed him. "I do not appreciate you impugning my integrity. And if you say 'Caps' at Court, you will never be counted as anything more than as an uneducated, down-slope street thief."

M'yu threw his hands to the side. "I'm sorry. Did you not read that label on my prison file?"

"Are you planning on being this difficult the entire time we work together?"

Everything ached: M'yu's head and mouth and face, his burned skin and growling stomach. The long run had left him shaky; the whole world seemed to be shifting beneath his feet. Control, he demanded, and blew a slow breath out. "No." He dropped back to the bed. "What do you mean, work together?"

Aevryn's gaze searched him. "You should have rested instead of gallivanting around the city."

"I have all night to rest."