For a moment, Howard doesn't breathe. He doesn't know if Aunamee just hit on a deeply secret, hidden truth, or something so painfully obvious that he has no right to be affronted when it's named out loud.

It's true, of course, it's all he's ever wanted was to be safe, in a world that started by throwing bullies on the playground and his cousins at him and has been upping the ante with plague, with abandonment, with mutant animals and death matches and starving and brutal murders without conclusion and the whole goodie bag of Hell's party favors. Nightmares, cold sweats, anxiety attacks, pains in his neck and hands and chest, insomnia, the taste of blood always on his lips, the strips of skin pulled from around his fingernails, bloody noses, bloody mouth, blood soaked into the way he sees the whole world.

The one thing he can never have.

When he does breathe again it's a strange, weak little wheeze that seems more like a rat escaping from the gutter than setting loose the bird of life. He stands for a moment, not so much torn between options as bereft of ones that seem any good, and then he bolts.

He trips on the edge of the curb and scrapes his knees, but he's back on his feet in a moment, sprinting far far away from Aunamee. Far away from here.