"How can you admit that so... so readily?" he babbled, steadying a hand on the balcony's railing.

  "Why should I not?"

  Because it was your back I was leaning against last night, Percy thought.

  "Because... you're the chosen one", he said instead. "You're... supposed to be chaste!"

  Evans stared at him with a peculiar look that Percy was incapable of reading.

  "Am I? That's not written anywhere" Evans had a muted smile.

  "There are lots of things that people expect that aren't written anywhere" Percy countered.

  "But I don't know that they expect that at all. Do you?"

  Evans stood draped in the midday light, handsome, impossible, the reflections from the lake-water jewelling him in liquid gold. The sight of him nearly frightened Percy back into the tent. And the thought of him, wrapped in the fabric of that secret nook as Percy himself had been, his body vulnerable to another, his neck curved as his head weighed back – Percy dug his nails into the skin of his wrist to blood out the thought.

  "That doesn't matter" he responded, not as quickly as he would have wished. "What matters is what they were saying about you. The chosen one can't be seen in that light. All that talk of – how easy you were, and..."

  He knew he was achieving little more than hurtling against a rock wall, over and over, bruising himself bloody for the sake of leaving his opponent exactly as he found him. Evans stepped towards him. Though he had always been taller than Percy, it was the first time that Percy felt Evans looking down at him, his brown eyes steeped in the deep waters of the lake.

  "I know they said I'm easy. And I know they meant it as an insult. But, Percy, I don't feel it as an insult at all. I like bringing ease to people. Why is that so bad? Yes, I know you don't agree. And I'm aware that you think that of me, too. I've heard it often before. They say I am easy. That I am easy to please, and too easy to people, and that I will let anyone near me, or into my bed, with a scrap of flattery and a scraping of respect. And when they say it, they do not mean it as a compliment. They cannot understand why I feel no shame for it. Why is it so shameful for me to want to bring ease to people? To feel proud of it?"

  Evans could hardly have admitted to anything more criminal. Only fools weakened beyond all hope by lacking ambition would admit to being pleased with little, and being eager to please. Percy knew that it was dissatisfaction that drove the world forward. Whether it drove it forward in a good direction, he had never been taught to ask.

  But it was worse still. Evans had consented to being insulted, dragged through the mud while leaving his accusers pristine, when it would have been so easy, so necessary, to muddy them too. It bordered on ridicule, if not profanity.

  Anyone confronted with a senseless sight – a river tripping, a tree bowing, a cloud falling – would be forgiven for thinking: just a trick of the light. That answer came quickly to Percy.

  "I know you don't mean any of that" he said.

  He did not know how to react when he heard Evans gasp. It was a frightful sound, a voice skinned raw. Evans' hand tightened around the railing, the white of his bones rising to the surface of his skin. Percy hadn't yet noticed how closely Evans' body was mirroring his, as though both clung, drowning, to the last scrap of flotsam.

  "Do not dare to presume that" came a sound from a cave, dark, hidden, lonely. Percy had heard it once before. "Why would I not mean it? Percy, speak your most painful truth – how weak do you believe me to be? It's plain that you think me weak, but do you really think me so feeble that I would not mean what I say? Make of it what you will, but I won't have you claim I don't know my own mind. I said I am easy; I did not say I am nothing."

  Percy could almost hear Evans gasp for air as he spoke. Yet it was Percy who felt dragged to speechless depths, his body sinking in a swamp-like, rotten heat.

  "It's not... it's... no, of course you say what you mean and... and mean what you say, and..." he flapped aimlessly.

  Evans stepped closer. For a moment, Percy thought the lake had risen up against him, broad shoulders and broad shores encompassing his littleness.

  "No. I'm not letting you off that easily" Evans murmured. "On my end, I have always trusted that you say what you mean. So why did you say that? Why do you believe you know so well what I do and do not mean, what I should and should not think? Go on, tell me. You cannot make your truth about me without me."

  "But the truth about you is made without you!" a desperate cry ripped from Percy's throat.

  He was driven mad by Evans' inability to see something that was so obvious to him. He closed his eyes, hoping to stop the pulling ache that Evans' closeness caused in him.

  "Listen" he started again. A truly useless word. He knew that Evans would always listen, even to those who did not deserve his attention. "I said you could not mean that because... I care about what happens to you."

  He could have said it in fewer words still, but he doubted he would survive their speaking.

  "If people were aware that you think that, truly think that, they... it would go against the ideas they have of you, the... expectations they have of you. I'm not saying they're right, or wrong, just that they do have expectations, and they... and they can be dangerous when disappointed. I don't want anyone to bring you harm because of that."

  The muddled look on Evans' face made his confusion plain. Who were 'they'? What expectations? What harm? But Percy was intimately acquainted with the answers. He had known that danger from a very young age: a childhood of jealously guarded potential, a graded life, an enshrined youth, a future frozen in amber, the dead-end of assumptions, the traps baited with high hopes, the violence of others' disappointment, the savagery with which they clung onto prophecies, the small daily deaths of preparing a grandiose life. Evans was clearly unfamiliar with all these necessary terrors, and Percy felt a desperate urge to warm him of the dangers ahead. To those who found their idol to be made of the same clay as them, the slightest crack was an invitation to shatter it entirely.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Evans held himself with an ominous stillness. He was reining something in.

  "Percy" said his bridled, tethered voice. "Why are you so certain others expect this or that of me? So certain that they would be horrified to know I am not... chaste" he sounded the word hollow, as though he did not deign to give it any meaning, "or that I do not challenge to duels those who speak their mind about me? That man simply said I was easy; I do not think he is wrong."

  "But he was insulting you!" Percy cried, his fury torn and twisted. "He meant to say you have no self-respect, no worth, nothing of yourself that you have not already given him. And he meant for everyone to hear it, too. And I know what people expect of you because that's what people expected of me when I was – when they thought I was... I know, because those are the stories they tell about the chosen one."

  Evans stepped closer still. Percy gripped the railing. A splinter pierced his skin. His heart beat war-like within him.

  "Percy, that might be your experience, but it is not mine. Who do you know that tells stories about me?"

  "Everyone! Everyone does!" Percy flung his hands up, as though hoping to cling to a branch, but he feared he had broken them all. "Last night, for instance – "

  He knew at once the last branch had snapped.

  "Last night?" Evans repeated. "Who was telling stories about me last night?"

  Percy plunged in his eyes. Not even the sharp pain of the splinter biting into his palm brought him to the surface. He wondered for a long time afterwards why he could not lie then, when he was so practiced at it, and when he knew the harm the truth would do now.

  "I... well, I was, just a little..."

  Evans' body drew itself taut. Panic sharpened his features.

  "You? What were you telling people?"

  There was a frantic fear stirring in him that Percy had never yet seen.

  "Nothing much" he attempted, but even this lie choked out of him at once. "Just... just a few stories of our adventures so far, from when I started riding with you..."

  "What did you say exactly? Did you embellish anything?"

  The accusation rung deafening in Percy's ears.

  "I... there were quite a few people listening, and they were enjoying it, and... you know how it is, you always end up adding something or other, something that might very well have happened, even if it didn't, because that's just how you tell stories, isn't it?"

  For a moment, Evans seemed unmoored. Then, slowly, a frightful focus returned to him. He stood tall before Percy, carved out from the greens and blues of the lake behind him.

  "Yes, I do know how it is" he murmured.

  The sound made no sense; like soft, quiet thunder. Percy fought out a shiver.

  "How could you? Why would you? What could possibly compel you to tell tales about me?"

  "It was not like that!" Percy countered.

  It was a weak lie. He knew he had spun those tales as wildly as it had pleased him to please others.

  "It was just a few stories. Would you believe they knew every useless detail about Tombert's life, but had heard nothing of your exploits? How could that – "

  "Stop deflecting my questions" Evans cut him, a command steeling his voice. "What would compel you to tell wild tales about me, when I gave you no right to do it?"

  Percy looked up at Evans at his own peril. Here was a man who admitted with all ease he was easy, and who now ravaged him with a simple and honest fury, all because Percy was complicated, discontented and cantankerous. A long, straight line of thread, and a useless tangle.

  "You know what compels me!" he cried, stomping a foot on the frail wooden planks of the balcony. A spoiled, inarticulate child; he was certain it fit exactly the image Evans had of him. "To be useful in your quests, to do something, anything, to – matter! Otherwise what good is it me being here? I'm not your squire, I'm not your – "

  Evans threw his hands up and wide, as though flinging a handful of soot in the air.

  "This again?!" he gasped in exasperation. The soot clung to Percy's throat. "We've been through this! Of course you matter to what we do. Of course you help. I cannot spend more time convincing you of your value, when it seems that nothing I say is of any importance to you. How dare you tell stories of me – tall tales, flights of fancy, fables!"

  Percy's fingers dug the splinter deeper into his palm as he curled his fist tightly.

  He couldn't recognize himself right now. There was something unfamiliar. It was not that his words had hurt another, or that he was in the receiving end of anger; this was not new. But every other time it had happened, he had found a way to enjoy his pain. With his father, his tutors, the few friends he had made and then unmade – some quietly, with silent glares, when they did not dare to defy the chosen one; and the rare others, with loud clanking rows – he had always found a way to relieve the sting of being scolded and rebuked. When he was ten, he would tell himself he was being unjustly punished, and that one day he would run away, and he would show them all. When he was fifteen, he would tell himself he was not understood, and that this was a sign of his greatness. And in the neighbourly eternity of just a few months ago, he would tell himself that others did not know better, and that, soon, he would be noble enough to forgive them.

  But now there was only soot, and it made him mute and deaf.

  Evans was trembling lightly. It made him look paper-thin.

  "I don't understand why you're so angry with me" Percy whispered. "I remember, when I asked you a while ago, if you'd rather be told stories to, or be made into stories... you seemed not to mind either way. You said you couldn't stop others from making stories out of you."

  "I said, it depends on the stories they tell. And I remember something else I said, too. I said I just didn't want to be difficult. I'd never admitted that to anyone else. At least, not like that. Do you know why I said it?"

  Evans turned his back to him. Percy had come to learn this was his way of hiding in plain sight. He leaned on the railing, his arms stretched to each side, like a longbow drawn.

  "I said it because... people don't tend to notice what is easy. What doesn't give them a hard time. It just... slips through the cracks of their notice. It's not the kind of things they tell stories about. That's all I want. To be easy, unseen, and with that, I hope, be allowed to live in some ease myself. Do you know what happens when others tell stories about you, with heroic deeds and big promises? What happens when, like last night, you entertain others with wild tales about me that don't match the truth?"

  He lowered his head. There was something morbid in the way his neck stooped and his hair shifted, as though he was submitting to an invisible blade held above him.

  "It creates gaps, Percy. Dangerous gaps. Between what they believe I've done, and what I've truly done. What they expect of me, and what I am in truth willing to do. You think it's dangerous not to fit their expectations, or at least, to appear not to. No – it's these gaps that are dangerous. I know you were trying to protect me, although I suspect that isn't the only thing you were doing. But you just created more gaps. You made it more dangerous. And..."

  Percy looked down: at the wooden planks that creaked beneath his feet, the blades of bright lake that shone between the planks, the shadows that the midday sun melted over the railing; anywhere but at Evans. But Evans' silence pulled Percy's eyes back to him.

  "And... when you notice the gaps in other people, let alone when you create those gaps" Evans murmured, "you hold true power over them."

  Percy stood mute. There were many things he could say to feel better. He could apologise. He could lie, and say he had done no such thing. He could be sincere, and say he would not do it again.

  But right then, he felt steadier in misery, and so he stayed put, and said nothing.

  As Evans stormed past him, Percy caught his scent warmed by the sun. When he turned, Evans was already gone.