"The nug doesn't have magic barriers," he points out, but he is somewhat mollified, at least on that front. It's even more gratifying now than it otherwise might be, having Myr reassure him unprompted that he isn't just some dim and clumsy engine of destruction, that he does have judgment worth trusting. It weakens his resolve like water poured onto snow, and he relents, finally and all at once, sitting down on the empty bed with a screech of the mattress coils and offering his hand for the nuglet to sniff.

It's difficult to begin, feeling as though his chest has briefly crumpled in on his windpipe and cut off the words. There is some small mercy in the fact that Myr hasn't asked aloud if Simon's in trouble, with its attendant (to Simon, anyway) implication that the issue is something he's done to himself--but it hurts nonetheless, and more so when he thinks about having to repeat Wren's condemnation to the person whose good opinion matters the most after hers.

"She'll be looking for a new protege," he says, wondering now if it was presumptuous to think he'd ever been her protege in the first place. "Anyone else will do; she said as much, that I might as well be anyone else at all--"

He doesn't mention that he's the one who'd put those exact words in her mouth. It shouldn't matter.