This is fair: it was a big story, and there's no way Pyrrha wouldn't have dragged him over it. He breathes a slow sigh, almost abashed, and with the rag he touches her as gently as he wants to. This soothes something in him. It quiets the creaking tension of his fear, his anger, that he can sit here at her side and she will let him.

Even if he did, more or less, have to kill her first. Even if she lies as still and quiet as though he has.

"I don't think I'm high on the list for prizes," he says, low and frank. "Pyrrha didn't keep me in line, and they're running out of big guns."

Pyrrha did try. He says, like they're catching up on funny gossip, "She shot me in the face. And stabbed me, but I'm not mad about that one, I think a five-year-old told her to. I haven't been polling very high."