The lobby timer hit zero and the world narrowed to a green circle on a map. Kies's fingers found the keyboard like they'd been waiting all day for the permission. Across the room, Lucas's foot started tapping against the desk leg — a metronome for the whole team. Kaelen cracked his neck once, loud in the sudden quiet.

"Mineski bans Puck," Marcus said from behind them, voice flat. "They've watched the Vanguard series. They know what you did to Solitude. Mushi won't let you have it."

"Then I don't play Puck," Kies said.

"You don't play Puck," Marcus agreed. "You play Ember. You play Invoker if it comes. You play whatever's left when they've spent their bans on you, and you make it look like that was the plan all along."

Chloe's chair scraped back. She'd been sitting at the end of the row with her laptop angled so only she could see the screen. "Mushi's draft pattern in the last six months," she said, not looking up. "He prioritizes lane stability over tempo. He'll take a safe mid matchup and trust his carry to out-farm yours. If you can force him into a fight before twenty minutes, you're playing his weakness."

"Noted," Kies said. "Anything else?"

She looked up then. Just for a second. Her hazel eyes held his across the room, and something passed between them that had nothing to do with Dota — the coach room, the pact, the word 'after' sitting in the space between them like a coin on a table. Then she nodded once, closed the laptop, and stood.

"Win," she said. "Then we talk."

Marcus followed her out. The door clicked shut behind them, and the room belonged to the five of them.

The draft began. Mineski first-picked Naga Siren. Kies watched the icon settle into the enemy slots and felt the shape of the game before a single creep spawned — Naga meant lane pressure, meant song setups, meant Mushi was going to make them fight on his terms or not at all. OldMan's cursor hovered over Disruptor, then Chen, then settled. Ren picked Earth Spirit without hesitation. Kaelen locked Mars. Lucas took Morphling.

Kies had Ember Spirit left to him. He clicked it, and the hero's voice line cut through the room — something about ashes and embers — and then the horn sounded and the creeps walked.

The first eight minutes were clean. Kies traded evenly with Mushi's Death Prophet, neither of them giving an inch. Ren rotated at 5:40 exactly, the timing he'd drilled for a week, and they forced Mushi back to base. First blood went to Kaelen's lane, a Mars spear that pinned the enemy carry against the tower and let Lucas free-farm two waves.

Then Mushi did what legends do. He stopped trying to win the lane and started trying to win the map.

At twelve minutes, Mineski smoked three heroes into PRIME's jungle and killed Lucas at his own ancients. At fifteen, they took the bottom tier-one tower without contest. At eighteen, they baited Kaelen into a dive he couldn't survive, and the death timer ticked down while Mineski's Naga split-pushed the top lane to the tier-two.

"They're choking us," OldMan said. His voice was calm, but his hand was white on the mouse. "Every time we show, they take something else."

"Then we stop showing," Kies said.

It didn't work. Mineski had the map wired. Every ward PRIME placed died within a minute. Every rotation they attempted was read and punished. By twenty-five minutes, Lucas was two thousand gold behind his counterpart, and the scoreboard read 4-11 in Mineski's favor.

At thirty minutes, Mineski took Roshan. At thirty-four, they breached the bottom lane. The tier-three tower fell, then the barracks, then the ranged barracks. Kaelen died buying time for Lucas to retreat. Ren died trying to save Kaelen.

"Two lanes of rax down," Lucas said. His voice had gone flat, the sarcasm stripped out of it. "We're in the base. We're in the base and they have Aegis and we have nothing."

Kies looked at the minimap. The green dots were everywhere — Mineski's five heroes spread across the map like a net drawing closed. His own team's dots were clustered in the fountain, waiting for respawns, waiting for the next wave, waiting for the end.

"We have one fight," he said. "One."

"That's not a plan," Lucas said.

"It's the only one we get." Kies's cursor moved to his inventory. Ember Spirit. Battle Fury, Daedalus, Black King Bar, boots, a tp scroll, and a buyback worth more than his remaining gold. "They're going to push mid. Mushi will want to end it himself. He'll be in front."

"You want to kill Mushi," OldMan said.

"I want to kill all five of them."

The silence that followed was the loudest thing in the room. Kaelen's chair creaked as he leaned forward. Ren's hoodie shifted — he was looking at Kies now, not at his screen. Lucas's foot stopped tapping.

"Okay," Lucas said. "Okay. What do you need?"

"OldMan, save the Disruptor ult for their carry. Not Mushi. The carry. If I don't kill him first, none of this matters." Kies's voice was quiet, but every word landed like a stone in still water. "Kaelen, you're the bait. You walk out first and you make them commit. Ren, you're behind him. When they turn on Kaelen, you go in. Lucas, you stay in the fountain until I say."

"Until you say," Lucas repeated.

"Until I say."

Mineski pushed mid. The tier-four towers fell. The ancient stood at half health, then a third, then a quarter. Mushi's Death Prophet led the charge, ghosts swirling around her, and behind her came the Naga, the carry, the two supports, a wall of green health bars and cooldowns.

Kaelen walked out of the fountain alone.

He didn't dive. He stood at the edge of the ancient's range, spear cocked, and waited. The enemy team saw him and did exactly what Kies had predicted — they turned. Every cooldown, every stun, every burst of damage swung toward the one hero standing between them and the throne.

Kaelen died in two seconds. But in those two seconds, Ren was already moving. Earth Spirit rolled through the enemy formation, kicked the Naga into the fountain, and dropped a stone remnant that split the team in half. OldMan's Disruptor ult caught the carry at the exact moment the carry tried to reposition — static storm, kinetic field, the carry trapped and silenced and alone.

And then Kies went in.

Ember Spirit. Sleight of Fist into the middle of five heroes, chains of fire, a Daedalus crit that took the Naga from full health to dead in a single pass. He landed, dropped a remnant, jumped again. The Death Prophet turned to run. He cut her off. The carry was still trapped in OldMan's field, and Kies's second Sleight caught him at the edge of the kinetic field, three crits in a row, and the carry's health bar vanished.

Two down. Three left.

The supports tried to run. Ren's Earth Spirit was already behind them, and Kaelen — Kaelen had bought back, and his Mars spear came out of the fountain like a thunderbolt, pinning both supports against the tier-four tower. Kies's third Sleight finished them.

Five dead. Zero PRIME deaths in the fight. The ancient stood at twelve percent health.

"Push," Kies said. "Push now."

They pushed. Lucas finally left the fountain, Morphling fully farmed, and the five of them walked down mid as a single unit. Mineski's buybacks came one by one — Mushi first, then the Naga, then the carry — but they came scattered, alone, into a team that had already found its rhythm. Kies killed Mushi at the tier-two. Ren killed the Naga at the river. Lucas killed the carry at the enemy's own tier-one, and the throne fell at fifty-five minutes and twelve seconds.

The victory screen bloomed across five monitors. For a moment, nobody moved. Then Kaelen's chair scraped back and he was standing, and Lucas was standing, and Ren was standing, and OldMan was still sitting but his hands were shaking on the keyboard and he was laughing — actually laughing, a sound none of them had heard before.

Kies sat still. His heart was going too fast and his hands were steady and he was looking at the scoreboard, at the 55:12, at the zero next to his name in the deaths column.

"That," Lucas said, "was not a plan. That was a miracle."

"It was a plan," Kies said. "You just didn't like it."

The door opened. Marcus came in first, and Chloe was behind him, and Chloe's face was doing something complicated — she'd watched the whole thing on the coach-room feed, she'd seen the 1v5, she'd seen the buyback counter-attack, and she was trying very hard to look professional and failing at the edges.

"Game two," Marcus said. "Ten minutes. Hydrate. Breathe. Don't celebrate yet."

"Coach," Kaelen said. "Did you see it?"

"I saw it." Marcus's voice was level, but his glasses had fogged slightly, and he didn't wipe them. "I also saw Mushi's face on the player cam when the throne fell. He's not done. He's never been done. That's what makes him dangerous."

Chloe moved past Marcus, toward Kies's station. She stopped at the edge of his desk, close enough that he could smell the coffee on her breath, and looked down at him with an expression he couldn't read.

"You were half a second early on the second Sleight," she said.

"I know."

"If you'd been half a second later, the Naga would have songed and you'd have lost the fight."

"I know."

She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she reached down and straightened the edge of his mousepad, which didn't need straightening, and her fingers brushed his wrist on the way back.

"Don't do it again," she said, and walked back to the door.

The break passed in a blur of water bottles and Marcus's voice. He stood at the whiteboard and drew a single line — a downward slope, steep and ugly — and tapped it with the marker.

"This is Mineski's mental state right now," he said. "They were 98 percent from winning the series. They had two lanes of rax. They had Aegis. And they lost. Not because we out-drafted them, not because we out-farmed them — because one player refused to lose." He looked at Kies. "Mushi has been playing professionally for a decade. He has lost series before. But he has never lost a series like that. Game two isn't a game. It's a formality. If we play clean, they will break."

"And if they don't?" OldMan asked.

"Then we play game three," Marcus said. "But we won't."

He was right. Game two was twenty-four minutes of clinical, surgical Dota. Mineski's draft was hesitant — they banned Ember, they banned Invoker, they left Puck open and Kies took it and punished every greedy creep aggro Mushi's mid tried. Ren's rotations were perfect. Kaelen's dives were timed to the second. Lucas hit his timings like a metronome, and OldMan's vision control turned the map into a cage. Mineski died in pieces — one hero at a time, one fight at a time, one objective at a time — until the throne fell at 24:18 and the series was over.

2-0. Upper Bracket Finals.

The room erupted. Kaelen picked Lucas up off his chair in a bear hug that Lucas tolerated for exactly three seconds before demanding to be put down. Ren's hoodie came off — the first time any of them had seen his face clearly in days — and he was grinning, actually grinning, his messy hair sticking up in every direction. OldMan sat back and closed his eyes and breathed out, slow, like a man setting down something heavy.

Kies stayed at his station. His hands were still on the keyboard, and he was looking at the bracket on the second monitor, at the greyed-out Mineski logo, at the line that now connected PRIME to the next round.

Chloe sat down on the arm of the couch beside him. Her shoulder pressed against his, warm through the fabric of her shirt. Neither of them said anything about it.

"Fnatic won," she said. "Two-zero. No suspense."

"I saw."

"They haven't dropped a game all qualifier. They're the best team in the bracket and everyone knows it."

"I know."

She was quiet for a moment. On the screen, the bracket updated — TNC Pro Team over Boom ID, 2-0, eliminating Reyz and his team from the tournament. Execration over Clutch Gamers in a bloody 2-1 that had gone past seventy minutes in the decider. The lower bracket was a graveyard, and the upper bracket was down to two names.

PRIME. Fnatic.

"One series," Chloe said. "One series between us and Seattle."

Marcus appeared at Kies's other shoulder, arms crossed, glasses finally wiped clean. He looked at the Fnatic logo on the screen — the black and orange, the letters that had been on the front of jerseys for as long as any of them had been watching Dota — and something in his face went still.

"I played against Fnatic once," he said. "In a qualifier, six years ago. We lost in fifty-eight minutes. I remember every second of it." He uncrossed his arms. "They're not just good. They're a machine. They've been a machine for a decade. You don't beat Fnatic by out-playing them. You beat them by making them play your game."

"Then that's what we'll do," Kies said.

Marcus looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded, once, and turned to the rest of the team.

"Sleep," he said. "We draft tomorrow."

The team dispersed — Kaelen and Lucas arguing about the 55-minute fight, Ren already pulling his hoodie back over his head, OldMan moving toward the kitchen with the slow, deliberate steps of a man who'd earned his rest. The room emptied around Kies and Chloe until it was just the two of them, and the Fnatic logo, and the hum of the fiber switch in the corner.

Chloe didn't move off the arm of the couch. Her shoulder stayed against his.

"The 55-minute game," she said. "I want to review it. Tonight. Just us."

Kies turned his head. She was looking at the screen, not at him, but her pen was in her hand and she wasn't twirling it — she was holding it still, which meant she was nervous, which meant she was asking for something more than a replay review.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay," she echoed. And then, quieter: "You were incredible today. I just — I wanted you to know that. Before tomorrow. Before Fnatic. Before all of it."

Kies reached over and closed the bracket tab on the second monitor. The screen went dark, and in the reflection he could see the two of them — his shoulder, her shoulder, the small distance between them that neither of them was closing.

"After Seattle," he said.

"After Seattle," she agreed. But she didn't stand up. And he didn't ask her to.

Kies's hand closed around her wrist and he pulled.

Chloe came off the arm of the couch with a small sound — surprise, not protest — and landed across his lap, one knee braced on the edge of his chair, her palm flat against his chest to catch herself. The chair rolled back half a foot under the shift in weight. Her pen clattered off the desk and hit the floor somewhere behind them.

"Kies—"

"The door doesn't lock," he said. His hand stayed on her hip, thumb pressed into the seam of her jeans. "Marcus is in the kitchen. Kaelen's room is ten feet that way."

"I know where Kaelen's room is." Her voice had gone low and tight, and her eyes were on his mouth, not his face. "That's not what I asked."

"You didn't ask anything."

She was straddling him now, both knees bracketing his thighs, her weight settled against him through two layers of denim. Her hair had come loose from behind her ear and hung down between them. He could feel her breath move the collar of his shirt.

"I'm asking now," she said. "Do you want this, or are we still pretending the pact is a wall?"

He answered by sliding both hands up the back of her thighs and pulling her down against him. She made a sound — a short, involuntary exhale through her nose — and her hips rolled forward before she could stop them, grinding the heat of her against the hard line of him through his jeans. Her hand fisted in his shirt.

"That's an answer," she said, unsteady.

"That's the first one." His mouth found the hinge of her jaw, the soft place under her ear where her pulse was jumping. He said it against her skin: "There are more."

She got her hands between them and worked the button of his jeans open. The zipper came down with a sound that was obscene in the quiet room, and her fingers closed around him through his boxers, and he stopped breathing for a second. She stroked once, root to tip, the fabric dragging, and he felt the wet already gathering at the head.

"God," she said, quiet, almost to herself. "You've been like this all day."

"Since the draft."

"Since the draft." She pulled him free of the boxers and wrapped her hand around bare skin, and her thumb dragged over the slick head of his cock and spread it down the shaft. "You won a fifty-five-minute game with a hard-on."

"I won a fifty-five-minute game," he said, "and then you told me I was half a second early."

She laughed — a real one, low and startled — and the laugh turned into a gasp because he'd gotten his hand between her legs, palm flat against the seam of her jeans, and pressed. She was soaked through the denim. He could feel the heat of it, the give, the way her thighs tightened around his wrist.

"Take them off," he said.

"You take them off."

He got both hands on her waistband and she lifted enough for him to drag the jeans and her underwear down over her hips in one motion. They caught at her knees. She kicked them off the rest of the way and they landed somewhere near the pen, and then she was back down on his lap, bare from the waist down, and the first touch of her — wet, hot, open — against the length of his cock pulled a sound out of both of them at once.

She reached back and grabbed his wrist, brought his hand up to her mouth, and bit the base of his thumb. Hard enough to hurt.

"Quiet," she said against his knuckle. "You said the door doesn't lock."

"Then keep your hand over my mouth and I'll keep mine where it is."

She did. Her left hand came up and covered his mouth, palm over his lips, fingers spread across his jaw, and her right hand reached down between them and guided him. The head of his cock slid along her folds — once, twice, slick and dragging — and then she shifted her hips and pushed down and he was inside her.

Both of them went still.

She was tight and wet and shaking, and she took him in one slow inch at a time, her jaw locked, her eyes closed, her hand pressed hard over his mouth. He could feel her pulse through the walls of her cunt, a fast flutter around him, and her thighs were trembling where they bracketed his hips. When she'd taken all of him she sat there, full, breathing through her nose, and opened her eyes.

Her hand came off his mouth.

"Move," she said.

He moved. His hands found her hips and he lifted her and brought her back down, and the sound she made was swallowed by her own palm slapping back over her mouth. The chair creaked. The mousepad skidded off the desk and hit the floor with a soft slap, and neither of them looked at it.

She rode him with her hand clamped over her own mouth and her eyes on the door, and Kies watched her — the arch of her back, the way her tits moved under her shirt, the sweat already starting at her hairline. He got a hand under the hem of her shirt and pushed it up, and she let him, and he put his mouth on her nipple through the thin cotton of her bra and she bit down on her own knuckles to keep quiet.

"Kies." It came out ragged, muffled. "Kies, harder—"

He gave her harder. Both hands on her ass now, driving up into her from below, and the chair was rolling an inch with every thrust and the desk was rattling and she had given up on her hand and was just breathing through her teeth, a thin, high sound on every stroke. Her cunt clenched around him in a rhythm he could feel building — tighter, tighter, then a flutter that meant she was close.

"Don't stop," she said. "Don't you dare stop."

"I'm not stopping."

She came with her forehead pressed into his shoulder and her nails digging into the back of his neck, and her whole body locked around him — cunt, thighs, the grip of her arms — and he felt the wet gush of it against his balls and the base of his cock. She shook through it in silence, teeth in his shirt, and he kept moving through the whole thing because she hadn't told him to stop.

When she came up for air her face was flushed and her eyes were wet at the corners and she looked at him like she was seeing him for the first time.

"Your turn," she said.

She pushed off him and turned around, and before he could ask what she was doing she'd bent over his desk, both hands flat on the keyboard, and looked back over her shoulder at him. Her jeans were still on the floor. The bracket tab was still dark on the second monitor. She was offering him her back and the long line of her spine and the wet, open shine between her legs.

"Stand up," she said. "And put it back in."

He stood. The chair rolled away behind him and hit the wall. He got a hand on her hip and one on the back of her neck and pushed into her from behind, and she took him all the way to the root in one stroke, and this time neither of them bothered to be quiet.

He fucked her over his own keyboard. Her cheek was on the desk and her hands were braced against the monitor stand and every thrust pushed her forward an inch and dragged her back. The desk lamp wobbled. A water bottle rolled off the edge and bounced and neither of them stopped. He could see the reflection of them in the dark second monitor — her bent over, him behind her, the whole shape of it — and he watched it the way he watched a replay, looking for the seam.

He found it. He angled his hips and drove down into the spot that made her whole body jerk, and she made a sound that was too loud and slapped her own hand over her mouth again, and he did it again, and again, and her legs started to shake.

"There," she gasped through her fingers. "Right there, don't— don't change anything—"

He didn't change anything. Same angle, same rhythm, and he could feel her tightening around him again, the second one building fast and hard on the heels of the first, and his own control was a thin thing now, a wire pulled tight.

"Chloe."

"Inside," she said. "I'm on the pill. Inside."

He came with his hand fisted in the back of her shirt and his teeth clenched and his hips pressed flat against her ass, and he felt himself spill into her in long pulses that kept coming, and she pushed back against him through all of it, working him through it, her cunt milking him until he had nothing left. The room was very loud with both of them breathing. Somewhere down the hall a door opened and closed.

He stayed inside her. Neither of them moved. Her forehead was on the desk and her hand had come off her mouth and she was laughing, quietly, the same low startled laugh from before, and he could feel it through her back.

When he finally pulled out, she straightened up slowly, and turned, and sat back down on the edge of his desk facing him. She reached for him and pulled him forward by the front of his shirt until his forehead rested against hers, and they stayed like that — still, breathing hard, her legs still bare, his jeans still open, the mousepad on the floor and the bracket dark on the screen.

Neither of them said anything for a while. Her hands stayed fisted in the front of his shirt, knuckles against his collarbone, and he could feel her heartbeat where her wrist pressed the side of his neck — still fast, slowing by degrees, the way a fight settles after the last teamfight ends. His own breath was coming back to him in pieces. The room smelled like both of them now, that specific smell, and the fan in the corner was turning its slow circle like nothing had happened at all.

"Well," she said finally, into the space between their mouths.

"Well."

"That was—" She stopped. Started again. "I had a whole speech planned. About the pact. About waiting."

"You can still give it."

"I've forgotten every word of it." She pulled back far enough to look at him, and her face was doing something complicated — flushed, amused, a little wrecked around the eyes. "You're going to be insufferable about this."

"Probably."

"I want it on the record that I was the one who said stop."

"You were." He reached past her and picked the pen up off the floor without looking, set it on the desk beside her hip. "You also said don't stop."

She hit him in the chest with the flat of her hand, no force in it, and he caught her wrist before she could pull it back and held it there, palm flat over his sternum, and she let him. Her legs were still bare and crossed at the ankle where she sat on the edge of the desk, and she had not made a single move to reach for her jeans on the floor. Neither had he, for his.

"Marcus is going to come looking for the draft notes," she said.

"Marcus is in the kitchen with OldMan arguing about the Mineski bans. He'll be there another twenty minutes."

"You know that for a fact."

"I know Viktor. When he gets a draft argument he doesn't let it go until someone concedes."

She laughed again, quieter this time, and something in her shoulders came down. She turned her hand over under his grip so her palm faced his and laced her fingers through his, and looked at their hands instead of his face.

"The pact," she said. "It's still the pact."

"It's still the pact."

"Because if we do this — if this becomes a thing we do, in this house, with a series in two days—" She stopped, and her thumb moved once across his knuckles. "I don't want to be the reason you lose a game. I've watched you for a year. I know what happens to you when something's in your head."

"You've been in my head since the first scrim."

She looked up at that, sharp, like he'd said something he wasn't supposed to say.

"That's not—" he started.

"No. Say it again."

"You've been in my head since the first scrim. It hasn't cost me a game yet."

She held his eyes for a long moment. Then she leaned in and kissed him — slower than the first time in the coach room, no hurry in it, the way you kiss someone when the kissing is not a question anymore. Her free hand came up and her fingers went into his hair at the back and stayed there. He kissed her back and let her set the pace, and when she finally pulled away she was smiling, small and private, at the corner of her mouth.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay what."

"Okay, that's the last one. Until Seattle." She said it like she was signing something. "After that, I'm not going to be reasonable about this. I want you to know that in advance."

"Noted."

"You're supposed to say something back."

"I'm going to hold you to it."

She got off the desk and bent to pick up her jeans, and he watched her do it — the ordinary mechanics of it, one leg then the other, hopping once to get the second foot through — and it was somehow more intimate than anything that had happened in the last twenty minutes. She pulled them up and did the button and looked around for her pen and found it already on the desk, and picked it up, and clicked it twice, a nervous habit he'd watched her do a hundred times across a whiteboard.

"Your shirt's untucked," she said.

"I know."

"And there's a — you've got a mark. Right here." She touched her own collarbone to show him where.

He looked down. A faint red crescent, her teeth, just above the collar line. He pulled the collar up over it and she watched him do it and neither of them said anything about what it meant.

"Mousepad," she said, pointing at the floor.

"Leave it."

"Someone's going to come in here and see a mousepad on the floor and know exactly what happened."

"Someone's going to come in here and see the chair against the wall and know exactly what happened."

She looked at the chair. It was still where it had rolled, up against the baseboard under the window, a good four feet from the desk. She looked at the chair, and then at the desk, and then at him, and her face went through something and settled on trying not to laugh.

"We're idiots," she said.

"We won the game."

"We won the game." She walked the chair back to the desk and sat down in it, testing it, and it creaked the way it always creaked. "There. No evidence."

"Except the mousepad."

She bent and got the mousepad and put it back on the desk, squared it to the edge, and then squared it again when it wasn't quite right. When she was done she sat back and looked at the desk — the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor with the dark bracket tab — and it was his station again, arranged the way it always was, like the last half hour had been a game that got replayed and reset.

Except she was still flushed, and her hair was still loose, and she was still sitting in his chair.

"I should go," she said. She didn't move.

"You should."

"Marcus is going to come back and want to talk about the Mineski draft, and I'm supposed to have the ward timings mapped by midnight." She checked the clock on the monitor, and something in her face tightened. "It's already past midnight."

"Then you're late."

"I'm late." She stood up. She smoothed her shirt down and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and picked up the pen and the notebook she'd left on the corner of the desk, and she was Chloe again — the analyst, the one who twirls the pen and finds the seam — except her eyes kept coming back to him, and every time they did, something in her expression slipped half a degree before she caught it.

At the door she stopped with her hand on the frame. The door still didn't lock. It hung open the way it always did, a two-inch gap onto the hallway light.

"Kies."

"Yeah."

"Fifty-five minutes." She said it quietly, almost to herself. "You held that game together for fifty-five minutes with a hard-on and a pact you were about to break. If you can do that, you can beat Fnatic."

"That's the scouting report?"

"That's the scouting report." She stepped through the gap. Then her head came back around the frame, just her face, and she said, "Don't stay up all night on Fnatic. I need you sharp at ten."

"Ten."

"Ten." And then she was gone down the hall, and he heard her door open and close, and the house settled back into its night noises — the fridge, the fan, someone's keyboard still going in Kaelen's room, the low murmur of Marcus and OldMan still arguing in the kitchen about whether Mineski would ban the Invoker or the Puck.

Kies sat down in his chair. It still smelled like her. He pulled the notebook over and opened it to the page he'd been working on, Mushi's draft patterns, the columns of picks and bans he'd been building all day, and he read the last line he'd written before she'd come in, and he couldn't remember writing it.

He picked up the pen and wrote the date at the top of a fresh page, and under it, one line: Puck first. Make them answer it.

Then he closed the notebook and turned the monitor off and sat in the dark for a minute with his hands on his knees, listening to the house breathe around him, before he got up and went to bed.