I may not always know what's right, but I know I want you here tonight.

Mallos was in some odd state between sleep and wakefulness – unconscious yet somehow vaguely aware of his surroundings – when Croe kissed him. Even without somehow having the general sense that she was in the room, he’d have known it was her. Her kisses usually cut off his ability to think, but this one restored some clarity.

The threat, for some reason, worked even better than the kiss. His eyes were fully open by the time she pulled back, albeit a little glassy. He couldn’t sit up to take the pills, since it felt like a lead weight was resting on his forehead, so Croe had to help lift and support his head. The first pill nearly made him choke, but the water was a sweet relief for his burning throat.

She let him lie back when he’d swallowed the last pill with some difficulty, and he sank almost immediately into unconsciousness.


The blackness was complete. Perfectly so, in the way that a horror movie could achieve perfection by permanently traumatising its viewers. Maybe I’m just asleep.

Mallos shifted his legs experimentally, cold dread dripping down his spine as he felt the rancid water flowing over his lower limbs. He wasn’t asleep. He was back in the hole.

Or had he never left? Panic pressed in, as it was prone to now and then. At least panic broke up the monotony of having nothing to do, see, hear – ever. He’d counted the same two hundred and sixty four tiles within touching distance a million times, solved every maths equation he could think of, composed a lifetime’s worth of music in his head… there was little left to do but wonder, again and again and again, whether anyone would ever find him. Whether anyone was even looking.

No. He had to get out of here.

Mallos knew this was a cycle; knew that panic led to desperation, which led to the pain of attempted escape, which finally led to quiet, dull, hopeless acceptance until the next panic attack. At this stage in the cycle, he didn’t care. He tugged at the cuffs around his wrists, straining against the wall, imagining - wishing - he could hear the chains popping open.

A hand on his shoulder made him start, breath paused, fight against the irons halted. There was a woman behind him, kissing him on the cheek, but that was impossible. He was chained to a wall – or had been. Where the wall had been only a split second before, now he could feel the warm body of another person. She ran her hand down his arm and pulled him onto his feet. The chains had vanished, and his foot hit the ground with a thunk and no longer a splash. Slowly, the darkness receded, dim lights forming around the perimeter of a room which was definitely not his own personal prison beneath the palace.

He twisted around, eyes adjusting to the low lighting, taking in the familiar sights. That was his sofa, his mantlepiece, his four-poster bed. This was his bedroom. The faint smell of citrus from the orange trees wafted in through the open window. Mallos turned back to Croe and quirked an eyebrow, his breathing more regular now but his heartbeat no slower.

“Nice trick,” he remarked, running his hands around her waist. He leant in, and all traces of that hell were forgotten.


Unfortunately for the people of Earth, the first thing Mallos became aware of as he drifted back into consciousness was that it was dark.

Not just dark. Completely black.

Adrenaline surged through his veins, dragging him from the sluggish realm of half-sleep. It was dark. He was in the dark place. He needed light, now.

In his panicked, part-conscious, debilitated mind, the solution was obvious and only marginally intentional. Instinctively, Mallos reached out to the best source of light available: the sun. Divinity joined the adrenaline powering through his blood, albeit with some protest at being diverted from its healing duties. He strained against the sun’s complaints, physically twitching in the bed, back arching, fists clenching. A warm, amber glow around the edge of the curtains highlighted his success. He’d pulled the sun up early.

It also highlighted that he wasn’t, in fact, in the dark place. He was in his bedroom in Granada, and Croe was on the bed next to him.

Mallos had just enough energy to prop himself half-way up onto his elbows, but he couldn’t get any further. His body felt like it was made of lead. He glanced around, noticing the time on the clock on the mantlepiece: 3.12am.

If Croe hadn’t been awakened by his moving about, having a sunrise half-way through the night had done the trick. Mallos reached out and closed his hand around her nearest one.

“Omniety?” He muttered hoarsely. That seemed the most obvious explanation to waking up in purgatory with no memory of how he got there. Another, more frightening thought struck. If someone had been trying to hurt him, then - ? His fingers tightened around Croe’s palm. “The children?”