Author: Kitty Unpretty

“Did you find anything?” Karzarul asked when he returned in the morning, shifting to an Impyr almost immediately.

“No,” Leonas said.

“Maybe,” Minnow said.

“What?” Leonas asked. “When would you have—let me see your hands.” He grabbed her by the wrists to check under her nails for grave dirt.

“I won’t know for sure until we spend the night at more of the marked spots,” Minnow said, ignoring his inspection.

“What is it?” Karzarul asked.

Minnow shifted her weight with a small purse to her lips. “I don’t want to say until I’m sure,” she admitted. “It won’t be like the dead kids thing,” she added quickly upon seeing their faces. “I would tell you if there was danger like that. This time. I learned my lesson, before.” She took Leonas’ hand in both of hers. “I have an idea,” she said, “and if I’m wrong, I can forget it. But you guys aren’t as good at forgetting bad ideas.”

“Hey,” Karzarul said.

“I don’t want to give you the idea unless it’s real,” she said.

“That… might be good,” Leonas admitted, glancing at Karzarul.

“Don’t look at me like that when you say that,” Karzarul said, putting his hands on his hips. “I know what I can handle.”

Minnow narrowed her eyes at him. He was only able to maintain eye contact for a moment. “You have a lot of stuff you haven’t dealt with,” she said instead of letting him squirm in silence.

“You don’t know how much I’ve dealt with,” Karzarul muttered.

“I know some of what you haven’t,” Minnow said, “which feels like enough to make a judgement call. Like how Leonas won’t let me jump off any buildings.”

“Stairs exist for a reason,” Leonas said.

---

She was crying ^screaming _laughing wailing. There was a cold wind and a hot sun. She was suffocating gasping, the sky was too big. She was wanted ^unwanted bait sacrifice. Upset _resigned defiant. Furious _{and glad}, unforgivable what they’d done ^{and unforgivable what she did} and she would not did not apologize.

The jeweled white snake that slid over her shackles carried sweet temptation on his tongue. He glittered in the sunlight as he promised her salvation. He would save her if she let him. _{He would kill them} if she asked.

He was a weapon he was a test. She was _weak failure failed.

The bliss of freedom, of broken chains. The kiss on her forehead, the wind in her hair, the monster beneath her. Enormous glorious ^terrifying. She dwelled on the lines in his hands, soft skin white as bone. There was something about his hands. The softness size of them.

If she could have stayed there in his hands tracing all the lines of his fortune. If there hadn’t been screaming ^{and blood} and satisfaction. She should have mourned.

They wanted a savior and she was their undoing. He was her savior and her undoing. She could not bear it, what she’d he’d done. Could not bear the reminder ^{of what she was} wanted.

But there were still those moments, long and terrible. Before the screaming, before the blood. Her heart in his hands, and in dreams she could dwell there.

---

Dejii was being kidnapped.

Again.

It happened a lot.

He was a middling prince of a minor kingdom, neither the eldest nor the youngest. Close enough to the throne to be a bargaining chip without being an outright declaration of war. Since coming of age, he had narrowly escaped marriage with five different princesses and two princes.

It was a whole thing. He was getting pretty tired of it.

Most of it blurred together. Rides in carriages and wagons and on the back of someone else’s horse. He remembered the wagon, though. The crude wagon of a landless mercenary kingdom seeking legitimacy. He remembered it was an enclosed wagon because that was why he hadn’t been able to see out of it, hadn’t had anyone to talk to or ask about all the strange noises.

He had been kidnapped a lot. He knew what a successful kidnapping was supposed to sound like. It did not sound like yelling, shouting, cracking wood. Sometimes he thought he remembered a glimpse of it, but it was only imaginings, reconstructed later from the things he’d heard.

Until the wagon had opened, and a great white Tauril had peered in at him.

Dejii remembered the Monster King as glorious. Bedecked in silver and jewels, flowers in his hair dripping petals like spring blossoms. Shoulders as broad as Dejii was tall, as light as he was dark.

The middling prince of a minor kingdom, there was no reason to concern themselves unduly with the fate of the world or the favor of goddesses. Those were matters for greater kingdoms, for places where heroes were born marked.

“Are you here to kidnap me?” Dejii asked. He’d never been kidnapped from kidnappers before.

The Monster King cocked his head. “Would you like me to?” he asked.

Dejii was embarrassed at himself for acting self-important. The faux pas would haunt him for the rest of his life at odd moments. “What do you want?” he tried instead.

“Would you like to go home?” the Monster King asked, offering an enormous hand.

“No,” Dejii said, because he could already imagine being brought home to sit and wait for the next kidnapping until his father could settle on a marriage arrangement that satisfied him. The unreality of the moment drove him to honesty when he ought to have known better.

“Ah,” the Monster King said. “Then you were trying to run away with them?”

“No,” Dejii said again.

“Hmm.” The Monster King looked out at whatever was happening outside the wagon, which Dejii still could not see. “How about I kidnap you for now, then?”

“I don’t think I’m allowed to agree to that,” Dejii said.

“Alright,” the Monster King said, meeting no resistance as he hauled Dejii out of the wagon. It was not the first time someone had swept Dejii off his feet. It felt the safest. Perhaps because of the size of him. Dejii rested his head against the Monster King’s chest. He smelled like apple blossoms and clover.

---

“Hey,” Karzarul said drowsily as Minnow crushed her chest to his, nuzzling hard against his neck. He let his hand rest against her back. “You okay?”

She hummed in the affirmative, dragging teeth over his skin.

“Oh,” he said, less drowsy. “Hello.”

“Sleep,” Leonas ordered without opening his eyes.

“‘m gonna,” Minnow mumbled.

“She’s been sleeping like shit,” Leonas reminded Karzarul. “Don’t enable her.”

Karzarul kissed Minnow’s temple as she huffed in sleepy irritation. “I will,” she muttered. “I just—I want.” Karzarul wrapped both arms around her and squeezed. “Can you lay on me?” she asked.

Karzarul squinted at her hair. “… like a pillow?”

She shook her head. “If I can move I’ll—I’ll—” Her fingers curled, ragged nails scratching at his chest as her fingertips pressed hard into his skin.

“Okay,” Karzarul yawned, rolling over and tipping her off of him in the process. He pulled at the edge of the blanket that had been beneath them, covering her with it. She squeaked in mild protest as he started rolling her over to wrap her in it.

“Are you swaddling our girlfriend,” Leonas asked, still not opening his eyes. Karzarul grunted, rolling her completely over and then settling in on top of her. He slid his arms underneath their pillow beneath her head, letting his chin rest at the crook of her neck.

“How’s that?” he asked in Minnow’s ear.

She sighed and nuzzled her cheek against his.

---

There were wolves in the woods, the nightmare always of the wolves in the woods, the mad howls and gnashing teeth of the wolves in the woods. There was the drought and there was the frost and everything was hungry. Ryul shouldn’t have been in the hungry woods but it was gnawing at him, eating him from the inside.

He did not know how long he ran. It felt like hours, days, eons. His legs and lungs all burning and his heart pounding up into his throat. The wolves in the woods were hunting and if he slowed at all he’d stop, collapse, driven to their mouths by his hunger.

There were Howlers in the woods. He did not know how long he ran to find Howlers in the woods when the monsters all stayed in the deep dark places. He had never been so far as to see monsters. He did not know when it happened, when what had been wolves became Howlers, the same loping gait and so much larger. He did not know what happened to the wolves. Only that they were gone.

Howlers were much faster than wolves.

It was the white Howler that caught him, its paws on his back and the ground hard beneath him. It caught him and it howled, a terrible echoing sound, vast as the night sky. He waited to die and he didn’t. The Howler left him there, and when he looked up he could see the white of its fur. A dark crescent marked the middle of its forehead.

It passed behind a tree, and it was a Tauril that walked around the other side. He wore a crescent crown, his tunic embroidered in silver. Ryul had the sense to grovel. He did not know what monster had found him, but he knew a difference in status when he saw one. This monster was not a man who knew hunger gnawing at his bones.

“You kneel much too easily,” the Tauril said, but Ryul was well past shame. “Why are you in my forest?”

“There were wolves, my lord,” Ryul said, for if it was his forest then it must be a king.

“Yes,” the Monster King said. “I was there for that part. Why were you in their forest?”

“I was hungry, my lord,” Ryul said.

“So were they,” the Monster King said. “Were you planning to eat the wolves? They’ve already eaten most everything else.”

“I didn’t know, my lord.”

“Did you find anything?”

In an overabundance of caution, Ryul emptied everything he’d collected from his pockets onto the ground. Leaves and pine needles, bits of tree bark. He resumed groveling once his pockets were empty.

“Do humans eat pinecones now?” the Monster King asked. Ryul didn’t answer. “Hmm.” Ryul could hear the hooves coming closer, and he screamed when an enormous hand lifted him off the ground.

“Please, my lord, I will leave—”

“Quiet,” the Monster King ordered as he threw Ryul over his shoulder. Ryul covered his mouth with both hands and prayed to the Moon Goddess that She would show some mercy where the Sun Goddess had not. Ryul’s limbs all felt too weak to hold himself. Howlers flanked their king in all directions.

The deep dark of the wood gave way to sunlight where the Monster King set Ryul back down, allowing him to collapse in the grass. Ryul trembled and might have heaved if he’d anything in him to come back up.

The Monster King set a clay bowl of water in front of him. “Drink.”

Ryul stared. He realized he could hear water, though he still could not bring himself to look up to find its source. Slowly he brought the bowl to his mouth with both hands, and in an instant it was gone.

The season had been so cold and dry. Icy as winter, without even the small blessing of snow to melt.

The Monster King was speaking a language Ryul didn’t understand, slippery sounds with sharp edges. Ryul looked up long enough to see a small figure, then quickly turned his head away.

Brutelings were an ill-omen; better not to look at one directly, even here.

Small hands placed a basket in the grass near him, heaped with berries and flatbreads. Ryul stared again and tried to remember if monsters worked according to the rules of the fae. Was a gift a trap, unsafe to accept or to refuse?

“Eat,” the Monster King said, and Ryul needed no more excuse. His empty stomach overruled his head as he stuffed bread into his mouth, too much to chew and nearly swallowing it whole. Handfuls of berries shoveled onto his tongue, blue and black and raspberries but he was eating too quickly to taste.

A hand on his hair stopped him, and he might have recoiled had the touch not been so firm. Ryul looked up and found that the Monster King had changed again, a scaled thing sitting like a snake in the grass, a man still larger than Ryul though he had no legs. He was a thing that belonged in oceans deeper than Ryul had ever seen. He touched beneath Ryul’s chin, tilting his head upward and brushing his thumb along a stray bit of juice. He let Ryul go and licked the spot of red from his hand. The teeth alongside his tongue were sharp.

“Slow down,” the Monster King said. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”

Ryul was already sick. His hands shook.

“This place is not meant for mortals,” the Monster King said.

“I will tell no one,” Ryul promised, lowering his forehead to the ground again.

“Your people are dying,” the Monster King observed. “You would tell them nothing of food? Of water?” There were slippery voices again, those words Ryul did not know. The tone of an argument. “Shall I keep you?” the Monster King wondered, and Ryul looked up. The Monster King had his hand on his chin, considering him with a tilt of his head. Beautiful and terrible and Ryul felt panic clutch his heart.

If he had stayed. What might have become of him, if he had stayed? Would he have kept him? Could Ryul have stayed there, in that place of impossible waterways, that orchard of bountiful fruit? What price would he have asked, that beautiful and terrible king?

He could have paid it. He should have paid it. He should have stayed.

---

“With dreams,” Minnow asked, curling tighter against Karzarul’s chest. “Do they get stronger if you daydream them, too?” She’d become more cautious about her dream-related assumptions.

“Yes,” Karzarul said.

“I don’t know that mine ever did,” Leonas said.

“How often did you daydream about me?” Karzarul teased. Minnow headbutted his sternum as Leonas threw a pillow at him.

---

Ilaya was running from her wedding. A lovely man and she would be lucky to have him, but she wanted something else. She didn’t know what she wanted. She didn’t expect to make it far. But maybe the attempt would speak to the madness of her, and the lovely man would decide he didn’t want her.

She followed the river until it met the mountain, water above spilling over rocks into a wider point like a pond. She stumbled as she tried to stop, and fell sputtering into the water, gasping for air as she came back up.

There were scales in the water, white and glittering as snow. Some great sea serpent misplaced, and she had fallen into its nest. But when she looked up there was a man at the end of it, white-haired and silver-eyed, sharp-featured and shining.

A different kind of lovely man altogether.

“Hello,” Ilaya said, at a loss for anything else.

“Hello,” the monster said, raking claws through his hair the way a maiden with a comb would do. “Who are you running from?” he wondered.

“My husband,” she said.

“Ah,” the monster said. “Would you like me to kill him when he gets here?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head as she realized her mistake. “We aren’t married yet. I don’t want to be married, is the problem.”

“Would you like me to kill him when he gets here?” the monster asked again. Sharp claws, sharp teeth.

“It isn’t his fault,” she said. “It isn’t anyone’s fault but mine.”

“I find no fault with you,” the monster said with a tilt of his head. There were silver rings in the fins of his ears, eyelashes of spun silver.

“I should marry him,” Ilaya explained. “He’s a kind man, with a fine figure.”

“There are many such men,” the monster said. “You can hardly be expected to marry all of them.”

“He would treat me well, and give me a comfortable life,” Ilaya said. “I could learn to love him.”

“Why should you?” the monster wondered. “You don’t want to.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Ilaya said. “It’s ridiculous to give up everything for nothing.”

“There are times when nothing is worth holding on to,” the monster said. “If you are so determined to talk yourself into marriage, I have no interest in talking you out of it.”

“Will you help me?” she asked.

“I already asked if I should kill them,” he said.

“Can you help me get away?” she asked.

“Where do you suppose I would take you?” he wondered.

“You could bring me to the mountain,” Ilaya said.

“The mountain is for monsters,” he said.

“I can be a monster,” she said. “My mother always said so.”

The monster’s gaze was sharp. “Come here,” he ordered, holding out a hand, fingers all ending in sharp points. Her feet struggled for purchase in slick stones under the water. She reached her hand out to take his, but he pulled her closer, a hand in her hair forcing her to bow before him. Her heart thudded hard against her sternum. “Does this look like a monster to you?” he asked. She realized she was looking at her reflection, her face so like her mother’s.

“Yes,” Ilaya said.

He tilted her head back up to look at him, moving his hand beneath her chin. She tried not to make any sudden moves as he considered her.

“I will lead you away from here,” he decided. Her heart leapt. “But I will not show you the way. You may not see where I have brought you, or how you might return. Yes?”

She nodded.

“Close your eyes, then,” he said, “and I will take you as far as you can keep them shut.”

The arms that carried her out of the water did not feel like the arms that had been outstretched to her, but she dared not open her eyes. The back that carried her through the woods did not feel like the back of a man. The hand that guided her when the ground was clear was too large, then too small.

But sometimes they felt the right size. Large, still, but recognizably a man. She wondered what he looked like in those moments, her hand in his. That sharp and lovely man in the water, taking her away.

Ilaya could feel sunshine on her eyelids and smell wildflowers. Something buzzed close to her face, and she stumbled. The arms that caught her felt like a man’s, a man’s chest that she braced herself against. She clung tight to him and told herself she wouldn’t look.

A lovely man, too lovely to be real. All white and silver, carved like ice and snow. His face so close to hers, as pretty as it was, made her breath catch with a sound of surprise.

His brows dipped, and she shut her eyes again. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“I told you,” he said, “that I would take you as far as you kept your eyes shut.”

“It was an accident,” she lied.

“I asked of you one thing,” he snapped, “and even that, you couldn’t give me.”

“It was an accident.”

“Open your eyes, human girl.”

She did so reluctantly and kept her eyes downcast for fear of the look on his face. In the grass, his hooves were silver.

“Look,” he said, and she raised her head in time to see his gesture away from the mountain. The far side of it, opposite her village, stretching out into plains. “Take your pick of human towns,” he said. “Find your way to whichever strikes your fancy.”

Small clusters of buildings in the distance, looking so small from where they stood. Fires were being lit as the sky started to darken.

“It’s too far,” she protested. “It will take days, I can’t make it on my own.”

“You must,” he said, “as I will take you no further.”

“Please,” she said, but where he’d stood a bird had already taken flight.

---

Minnow had spent the night in her oak tree. Leonas, despite many protestations, had slept curled up with Karzarul while he took the form of a Shadestalker.

Hollows had been deepening under Minnow’s eyes for a week, but the night in the Faewild seemed to fade them.

Minnow brought the two of them deep into the Maze of Roses for something resembling privacy. It was impossible to be certain of true privacy where fairies and changelings were concerned.

“Should we be worried?” Leonas asked, sitting in the grass.

“Yes,” Minnow said.

Karzarul didn’t like being an Impyr in Faewild Forest, but he wanted to look like a person, and a Tauril would be too large to avoid the thorns.

“Dreams can be memories, can’t they?” Minnow asked. “That’s normal?”

“Yes,” Leonas said.

“Usually,” Karzarul agreed.

“Okay,” Minnow said. “I don’t have to explain that part. The dead leave their dreams behind, but they don’t always linger. Some are stronger than others. Usually the scary ones, but not always. There’s the ones they dwell on when they’re awake. Lingering dreams are, they sort of.” Minnow made a vague gesture with both hands that meant nothing. “I don’t like sleeping near graveyards or battlefields because so many people die there, they have so many dreams. They’re left with the dead or dropped by the dying, they don’t stay in the places they dream of. It’s not always obvious, though. The places people leave their dreams behind.” She wrung her hands together. “I think the map was marking places I could dream,” she said.

“About the Nightshard?” Leonas asked.

“About Karzarul,” Minnow said, looking at her hands.

“What?” Leonas asked.

“What?” Karzarul asked.

“I must have—he must have—gone to all the places around Monster Mountain. Looking for. Looking for dreams of you. And he marked them down, when he found them.”

“What?” Karzarul asked again.

“You liked to help people,” Minnow said, still not looking at him. “Is what it seems like. They—they dreamed of it. Of you. That’s what the map is. It’s a map of places I can… I dream of you.”

“Oh,” Karzarul said.

“Minnow,” Leonas warned.

“I know,” Minnow whined. “I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t sure.”

“You—he—” Karzarul grasped at a locket he wasn’t wearing. “He made a map of me?”

Minnow nodded miserably.

“He wanted to see me,” Karzarul said as much as asked.

“You’re sure there weren’t other clues in there?” Leonas pressed. “Something else important about the dreams?”

Minnow shook her head. “It isn’t anything else,” she said. “I can tell.”

“What—who were they? The dreamers.”

“I don’t know if you’d remember them,” Minnow said. “I think you must have tried to save a lot of people.”

Leonas rubbed his forehead.

“Saved,” Karzarul repeated. Minnow nodded again. “Okay. That’s—okay.”

Slowly, Karzarul bent forward and covered his head with his arms. Minnow debated trying to hold him, but recoiled when he suddenly burst into a brilliant white light. Blinding light flying out in every direction, and they could hear fairies screaming in delighted terror as it passed through the Faewild. Minnow had to shut her eyes, and it was a long moment before the light through her eyelids faded enough to open them again.

There was a rock where Karzarul had been.

“Uh oh,” Minnow said.

“Should I be worried?” Leonas asked, his voice higher-pitched than usual.

“Maybe,” Minnow said, cupping her hands in the grass to lift the tiny ball of moonlight. Closer, she could see the edges of armored scales. “Karzarul?” she asked gently. “Is that you?”

The lump was unresponsive.

“Should we contact Violet?” Leonas asked Minnow.

“No,” Karzarul said firmly, startling them both. He uncurled in Minnow’s hands, enough to poke a small furry face out from the hard scales covering his body. The ears that popped out from where they’d been tucked were almost as big as the rest of him, his snout slender and pointed. “Give me a minute,” he said, before sticking his snout and ears back into his belly to hide them.

“Okay,” Minnow said, lowering her hands to hold him in her lap.

“What kind of monster is that?” Leonas asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen one before.” Leonas frowned. “I’m sorry about all this.”

“It isn’t your fault,” Leonas said.

“It was my map,” she said.

“Not really,” Leonas said. “What do we do now? That was our only lead on the Nightshard.”

“I’m going to ask the Fairy King,” Minnow said.

“I thought you didn’t want to.”

“I don’t,” Minnow said. “That’s why we’re waiting until Karzarul can provide emotional support.”

“It might be a while,” Leonas said.

“I know,” Minnow said. “It’s that, or you have to be the emotionally stable one for a while.”

“We should wait,” Leonas said.

“Violet,” Karzarul barked, bursting into the room that Violet had set up as a temporary office. “I need you for something, it’s urgent.”

Violet stood immediately, wings briefly arching. They fell again when the mood failed to meet the tone of Karzarul’s voice. Karzarul was in Savagewing form, making the two of them twins in different colors. Karzarul still insisted on wearing a formal tunic, as well as straightening his hair.

He’d always had the benefit of being the most distinct of all of them.

Violet’s feelings were already getting muddled, a vague anxious sense of dread that he only ever felt when Karzarul was near. The wanting, the ache, the desire to please, the resentment. If anyone else made him feel this way, Violet would assume he had a crush. Instead it was Karzarul and all the waves of his internal life crashing against Violet’s shores. Indistinguishable from being anxious, from resenting Karzarul for making him feel this way.

Violet was proud of his ability to untangle that knot, because he knew them too well. He remembered what it felt like to be them. He knew now what it felt like to be himself.

“What happened?” Violet asked with languid suspicion. Karzarul wasn’t upset enough for it to be a serious matter, particularly when he’d come alone.

Karzarul had started to pace already. “Minnow is interested,” he said. He gestured to himself for clarity’s sake.

“Of course she is,” Violet said, pleased beyond measure. “She’s supposed to be.”

Karzarul huffed in annoyed impatience.

Violet hummed thoughtfully. “Did you want practice?” he asked.

Karzarul stopped pacing, flexing his wings. “Kind of.”

Violet laughed, which brought Karzarul’s wings to an angry arch. He couldn’t decide if they were basically the same person or basically strangers, couldn’t decide if this was worth feeling embarrassed about.

Violet remembered as well as he could the awkwardness of it, the clumsy learning of a new body. Unexpected responses in parts of the anatomy that hadn’t previously existed. And Karzarul was still, Violet was sure, lying to Minnow. Pretending that he’d spent his years getting wise and figuring out what the fuck he was doing. A repeat of the first time with Jonys would be difficult to explain.

“Don’t be so fussy about it,” Violet teased, closing the gap between them. “You know I live to serve, Your Majesty.”

“Fuck off,” Karzarul muttered reflexively, gaze sliding from Violet’s. Violet felt a brief flitting sense of shame before remembering it wasn’t his.

“I liked the fucky energy better,” Violet said. He arched his own wings with a slight flare, a purring little growl to test the waters. Immediately Karzarul raised his wings high toward the ceiling, snarling and baring his teeth. Violet had to resist the temptation to spread his wings out and roar at him. “We’re going to have to decide who’s in charge,” Violet warned.

“I am,” Karzarul said.

“Of course you are,” Violet soothed. “Do you want to be?”

Karzarul hesitated, wings falling a little. “… we can figure it out.”

“Only if you want to end up fighting over it,” Violet said. “I don’t know how many of this body’s instincts you keep,” he explained, “but we like to claim what’s ours.”

“Ah,” Karzarul said, with a faint glow.

“I don’t mind being underneath you,” Violet said, “but you’ll have to pin me like you mean it if you want it to stick.” The space between them was gone, but Karzarul’s heels gave him an extra inch in height. He always wore his crown when he came to visit as if there were any risk of confusing him with another monster. Violet wrapped two arms around his shoulders and the others between Karzarul’s sets of arms. “We already know where Minnow’s predilections lie,” Violet said. “But you could go either way. Isn’t it easier if you let someone else do all the work, the first time?”

“Maybe,” Karzarul said, but their bodies were pressed together and when Violet rocked his hips he could tell it was working.

“If it helps,” Violet suggested in his ear, “you can tell yourself it’s vanity when I call you beautiful.”

Karzarul’s feathers fluffed momentarily as he rolled the word over in his mind and tried to decide how he felt about it.

“Too far?” Violet asked.

“Say it again,” Karzarul said.

“Beautiful,” Violet purred. He reached up to stroke one of Karzarul’s antennae, and Karzarul shuddered. “When you’re with Minnow,” Violet said, “you shouldn’t let her touch these.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Karzarul said before Violet caught his mouth in a kiss.

Despite the problems it presented with the other monsters, Violet did prefer when his King was like this. They were getting caught up in each other already, because ‘horny’ was the kind of feeling that didn’t leave room for many others. Violet hadn’t been his own person long enough to have nurtured feelings as big as the ones Karzarul had, so this felt like the only way he could hold his own. Getting turned on by turning on someone else was almost normal.

“Come on,” Violet said as he pulled away, taking Karzarul’s hands. “Let’s find a bed, these floors are unkind to knees.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Karzarul said, following along as Violet pulled him through the halls.

“Oh, rude,” Violet gasped. “I’ll have you know I am being considerate.”

“Uh-huh,” Karzarul said as Violet pulled him into a room with a neatly-made bed, closing the door behind them.

If it were anyone else, Violet would have used this as a learning opportunity about having a smart mouth. But it was Karzarul, and even when he let Violet be in charge there were going to be limits. It took a certain sort of person for Karzarul to willingly submit, and they typically wore stars on their hands. Violet was only a lesser monster, a less-than person.

Karzarul didn’t know he thought about them that way, but Violet remembered. It was a problem they’d need to work on, was all. And in the meantime, there were limits to what Karzarul was willing to submit to.

Violet kissed him again, face tilted upward to meet his extra inch, unfastening his tunic with all four hands. “How do you get this off your wings?” Violet wondered.

“I don’t,” Karzarul admitted, and the garment dissolved into moonlight nothing along with his gloves.

“So it’s a flex, is what that is,” Violet said with an annoyed crinkle of his nose, untying his robe. Of course Karzarul deliberately wore clothes that anyone else would need to be sewn into. Violet didn’t know why he’d expected anything less.

“Little bit,” Karzarul said, and Violet was startled when Karzarul grabbed him to crush a sudden hard kiss to his lips. Violet growled with a flare of his wings, catching his breath as he pulled away.

“Who’s in charge?” Violet asked before Karzarul could respond to the display.

“Ah,” Karzarul said, unsure if he was offended or aroused, naturally inclined toward offense.

“I’m not trying to be a bitch,” Violet said, throwing himself at Karzarul and draping himself over him dramatically. It was silly enough to defuse Karzarul’s short fuse. “I told you,” Violet reminded him, kissing at his neck. “I can’t help it.” He sniffled, but not believably. “It’s not my fault I’m like this,” he reminded him.

“For fuck’s sake,” Karzarul muttered, rolling his eyes, which meant Violet had succeeded.

“Behave yourself, Your Majesty,” Violet said, running his fingertips along Karzarul’s scalp before tightening his grip on his hair. He pulled his head back to kiss his throat. “I know what you like,” he said against his skin. “I’ll take excellent care of you.”

Karzarul hummed as Violet pushed him toward the bed, urging him to sit. Violet straddled his lap as soon as he’d done so, two hands cupping Karzarul’s face to kiss him. Karzarul quickly forgot himself, because he always did when he had someone’s tongue in his mouth. Violet ground against him, and Karzarul groaned in his mouth, nothing but thin fabric between them. Violet dragged his teeth along Karzarul’s throat, and Karzarul shuddered. Violet let his robe fall to the floor, beating his wings once on principle.

“Ah,” Karzarul said. “She likes the wings.”

“Good,” Violet said into his mouth. “Don’t flap them around on purpose, they’ll go on their own near the end.”

“Yeah?”

“You’ll see,” Violet purred. The thumbs of his higher hands brushed over Karzarul’s nipples, lower hands pulling at his tights until his cocks were free. He caught Karzarul’s moan in his mouth. “Your Majesty,” he giggled.

“Don’t,” Karzarul warned weakly. Violet’s feathers fluffed as he resisted the desire to remind Karzarul who was supposed to be in charge.

“My lord,” Violet sighed, and though it was better it didn’t satisfy either of them. “My heart,” he said with greater conviction, though it made Karzarul’s pulse stutter. “It is,” Violet reminded him, pressing his hand against Karzarul’s chest, grabbing one of Karzarul’s hands to press it to his own. “Where else would it have come from?”

“Ah,” Karzarul said. Violet wrapped his thumb and index finger around one of Karzarul’s cocks, the rest of his fingers around the second so that he could stroke them simultaneously.

“You gave us ex-cellent dicks for getting head,” Violet said as he stroked him.

“Did I?” Karzarul panted.

“Oh, yes,” Violet purred. “If they tilt their heads a little you can rub one against the bulge in their cheeks.”

“Fuck.”

“Mm-hmm,” Violet said. “Much less likely to break anything than your other ones.”

“Yeah,” Karzarul said. “Did you want me to—?”

“You’d regret it,” Violet said.

“No,” Karzarul insisted. “I want to.” Violet kissed him again, stroked him harder and pressed his hands against his chest. “Please,” Karzarul added. “I’d make it good for you.”

Violet pressed his lips to Karzarul’s shoulder, trilled involuntarily while grinding through his tights against Karzarul’s cocks. “Do you think I doubt it, beautiful?” he said in his ear, a hand not already occupied tracing a thumb along Karzarul’s mouth. Karzarul licked the pad of his thumb. “Tease,” Violet accused. “Would you kneel?”

“You know I would,” Karzarul said. “Unless you can think of something hotter.”

Violet laughed. “We could bind your wings and arms behind your back,” he suggested, “and lay you down so I could watch my cock make your throat bulge.”

“Fuck,” Karzarul gasped with a buck of his hips. “That’s—”

“—a bit much?”

“Yeah,” Karzarul confirmed. “Later, maybe.”

Violet giggled as he slid off Karzarul’s lap. “We’ll keep it simple, then,” he said, working his cocks out of his tights. Karzarul was on the floor in a heartbeat, two hands on Violet’s thighs and two on his cocks. Violet trilled but didn’t scold him for it. Karzarul ran his tongue along the length of the first before sliding his lips to the base and taking it in his throat, repeating the process for the second. Once they were both slick with spit, he focused the attention of his mouth on Violet’s lower cock. When he took it all the way he could stick his tongue out to lick at Violet’s balls, hand pumping Violet’s higher cock and rubbing it against his face.

Violet groaned a little, running his higher hands through his own curls, lower hands touching Karzarul’s hair. “Oh, I did learn from the best, didn’t I?”

Karzarul hummed an affirmative around a mouth full of dick.

Violet stroked Karzarul’s antennae, and Karzarul faltered, moaning and going briefly slack. Violet used the opportunity to thrust hard into his throat before pulling out entirely. “Isn’t that nice?” Violet asked.

“I like that,” Karzarul confirmed breathlessly.

“I knew you would,” Violet said. “Get your mouth back on me, beautiful, let me do it again.”

Karzarul complied immediately, shuddering and letting out a low sound when Violet started stroking his antennae again. A fortunate oversight that a gag reflex was not something it had ever occurred to Karzarul that he should have. Violet watched him intently, having never been able to see this from the outside before. Silver lashes and soft lips and the odd awareness that it both was and was not his own face. The rhythmic sound of regular thrusts, throat tight around the head of Violet’s cock. As arousing for Karzarul as it was for Violet, or maybe the one simply led to the other. Violet had to stop and pull out for the sudden worry that he’d finish too soon.

“Am I allowed to fuck you?” he asked. Karzarul hesitated. “No,” Violet answered for him. “That’s okay,” he assured him.

“It isn’t like that,” Karzarul said, rising in that too-fast way he sometimes did, momentarily incorporeal. The rest of his clothes went missing in the transition. “I don’t mean it that way,” he insisted, touching Violet’s face. “It isn’t about allowed.”

“It’s okay,” Violet said, trying to get him to lower his hands. Karzarul laced their fingers together instead.

“Leonas has baggage,” Karzarul said.

“I’ll say,” Violet agreed.

“I’m waiting,” Karzarul said. “I haven’t let anyone have me since I came back, you know how it is with that.” The same form but a different form, the same body but a different body. Always the same but after he’d died it always felt new. A fresh start, a clean slate. “If it were anyone but him, I wouldn’t wait.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Violet said.

“I do,” Karzarul said, pressing a hand against Violet’s chest. “I can feel it. I need you to know it isn’t you, it isn’t the way I feel about you. I don’t want to make you feel like me. Never like me.”

“Tough luck,” Violet said, giving in and kissing him again. “Like yourself more.”

“I’m trying,” Karzarul said against his mouth. “I really am. You don’t deserve what I do to you.”

“I deserve many sloppy blowjobs,” Violet countered, and Karzarul giggled as Violet kissed his nose. “All right, dear heart, let’s get in bed and figure out what I can do to you that won’t ruin you for other men.” Karzarul let Violet guide him backward but the digression had thrown them off course, left Karzarul feeling guilty and then guiltier for knowing that Violet could feel it too. “Be a good slut for me and stop thinking so much,” Violet teased.

Even if Violet hadn’t felt Karzarul’s frisson of pleasure, he could see it in his wings and his feathery antennae. He hadn’t figured out how to manage his body language yet, the body too new to him still.

“If you want to get comfy on your back, it’s going to help to stretch your wings out a bit,” Violet advised, pushing Karzarul onto the mattress. Violet took off the last of his clothes while Karzarul struggled to figure out what to do with all his limbs. “You’re so fucking pretty,” Violet said.

Karzarul blinked at him, then grinned. “Yeah?”

“You know you are,” Violet said, detouring to the side table to retrieve a bottle of oil.

“Vain,” Karzarul accused.

“Yes,” Violet agreed. “But I’ll admit you might be a little bit prettier.”

Because he was the color of moonlight, and he glowed, and he was always every inch of him entirely himself. And all the rest of them, in his presence, had to accept the reality that they were copies.

“Are you jealous?” Karzarul asked as Violet climbed into bed with him, and so he must have felt it.

“Hush,” Violet said instead of answering, fanning out his wings above them and letting their limbs get tangled as he kissed Karzarul again. “This position’s going to be awkward,” Violet warned. “If we’re on the bottom we’re usually flipped the other way around.”

“Ah,” Karzarul said.

“It’s okay,” Violet said. “We’ll make it work.” He poured oil into one of his palms to start stroking Karzarul’s cocks with it. “It’s a trial run to work the kinks out, it’s not a rehearsal.”

“Right,” Karzarul agreed, breathless.

“Wings out so I don’t get my knees on them,” Violet warned, nudging at Karzarul’s lower wings until both sets were splayed out on the comforter. “Good boy,” Violet said as he straddled Karzarul’s hips, recalling too late that he ought to be more careful with language. Karzarul didn’t take offense, was nothing but pleased when Violet kissed him again. “This is practice for both of us, because I haven’t tried this with another Savagewing before and it might not work.”

“Oh,” Karzarul said, surprised.

“Don’t look like that,” Violet scolded. “I’ve taken it up the ass, that isn’t what I meant.” Violet wound up using three hands to try and guide one of Karzarul’s cocks inside him without the other one doing anything unexpected. “If I’m not careful your dick is going to spear me in the balls and then we’ll have to wait and try again tomorrow once I’ve recovered.”

Karzarul barked a laugh, then covered his mouth as if he could shove the sound back in.

Violet pressed the slick head of Karzarul’s cock against him, gave way almost immediately as he lowered himself onto it. It stretched him open much too easily for the size of it, and maybe that was an advantage they had, that they were so much the same, that they fit so well. That it felt so good to be sitting on Karzarul with one cock balls-deep inside him and another rubbing against him.

He did manage to avoid getting jabbed in the testicles, but it had been a valid concern. The arrangement left Karzarul’s upper cock poking up between Violet’s thighs, rubbing along the skin of his balls near the base of his cocks.

A little clumsy. Certainly not ideal. But it felt fantastic all the same. Violet ran his fingers through his curls again, rocking his hips to feel Karzarul slide in and out of him. “You feel so fucking good,” Violet sighed. He leaned forward to brace two arms against Karzarul’s shoulders. “You like it?” he purred.

“Yeah,” Karzarul said weakly.

“You going to give me what I want?”

Karzarul nodded.

“Going to let me use you to get myself off?” Violet pressed. Karzarul shuddered, breathing ragged. Violet laced the fingers of his lower hands with Karzarul’s, pinning them to the bed. He kissed Karzarul’s jaw, mouth close to his ear. “I want to treat you like you’re mine,” he murmured. “Would you like that?”

“Yeah,” Karzarul said.

Violet gripped his hands tighter, rocked his hips to bounce a little on Karzarul’s cock and grind against his stomach. “Even if it hurts?”

“Please,” Karzarul breathed.

Overwhelming desire, the best and worst part of them, the feedback loop that made it too easy to finish too fast and just as quick to try again. Violet growled as Karzarul gasped underneath him, thrusting up into him as Violet rolled his hips to encourage it. “You feel so fucking good,” Violet said, capturing his groans in another kiss. “I want to feel you squirm, sweetheart, I want to make you earn it. You don’t get to finish until I’m done.”

“Fuck,” Karzarul gasped. Violet took the hands he’d been pinning and guided them to his hips.

“Fuck me, beautiful, I want you to rail me like you mean it,” Violet ordered. Karzarul’s fingers dug into his skin, pulling him down at the same time he thrust harder into him. “Like that, like that.” Violet rose up with his hands braced against Karzarul’s stomach, adjusting the angle of his hips until Karzarul was hitting the right spot. Violet let himself cry out shamelessly, throwing his head back as pleasure mounted inside him.

Violet stretched out his wings, abruptly dropping his head with an awkward curve to his spine to keep the angle of Karzarul’s cock where he wanted it. He kissed Karzarul’s throat before biting his shoulder with a growl. Karzarul made a sound of surprise as Violet bit down hard, thrusting against Karzarul’s skin and riding his cock. With each thrust of Violet’s hips, his wings beat hard, snarling against Karzarul’s skin.

Violet came hard and noisy, teeth breaking skin, cum splattering across Karzarul’s stomach. Karzarul had stopped thrusting for a moment, and Violet only released the grip of his jaw after his pleasure had crested and crashed. He licked silvery liquid moonlight from his fangs.

“Violet,” Karzarul said, his voice low. Violet hummed, basking in the blissed-out feeling. “You said I have to pin you like I mean it, right?”

“Oh,” Violet sighed. The idea appealed to him more than it ordinarily would have. He seemed to have fucked himself stupid, which was not usually how this sort of thing went for him. Karzarul took the small sound as approval, using his upper hands to push himself upright. He didn’t actually pin Violet down, cupped his face instead to kiss him hard. Violet wrapped his arms around Karzarul, and they were a tangle of limbs and beating wings.

Karzarul pounded into him, didn’t stop kissing him for even a moment as he bounced Violet in his lap. Violet found himself whimpering onto Karzarul’s tongue, couldn’t tell if it was his own pleasure mounting again or if it was Karzarul’s.

“You’re beautiful,” Karzarul said against his mouth. “You’re so good to me, you feel so fucking good Violet.” Both their wings were moving, air cool against hot skin. Karzarul pressed his forehead to Violet’s, and the lengths of their antennae rubbed against each other.

“Karzarul—” Violet descended into loud and incoherent cries, surprised when Karzarul managed to wring another orgasm out of him, making a mess of the both of them. Karzarul’s cocks twitched as he came, spilling out onto Violet’s thighs as well as inside him. Violet’s limbs were all shaky as Karzarul tipped them both sideways.

Karzarul kissed the corner of Violet’s mouth. “I think that worked,” he said.

“Good practice,” Violet agreed, patting Karzarul’s chest.

“Are the baths done yet?” Karzarul asked.

“We have tubs,” Violet said. “Not the baths proper, yet. Don’t make that face, we both know you’re going to shift to a form that isn’t all cummy anyway.”

“I like a bath when there’s nice ones,” Karzarul said. “Did you assign Taurils to herd monsters?”

“Some,” Violet said. “Better to minimize the dead. Particularly when I’m sure you haven’t told Minnow.”

“Courageous Tauril died,” Karzarul said.

“What?” Violet sat upright immediately. “When?”

“Earlier,” Karzarul said. “Astian soldiers, trying to clear out the Howlers Coura was managing. It looked like he was with Temmy?”

“They’re on the buddy system,” Violet said. “Why was this not the first thing you mentioned?”

Karzarul blinked. He was still laying on his side. “I got distracted,” he said. “Temmy seems fine, none of the Howlers seem to have been lost.” He sighed. “I wondered why things were going so well, I didn’t realize you’d set something like that up.”

“It would serve you right if I didn’t bother covering for your stupid lies,” Violet said, poking Karzarul in the sternum. He was still a bit sticky. “I’ll have to check where I had them stationed.”

“I found Drakonis,” Karzarul added.

“What!”

“Yeah, she’s good. She’s having a good time.”

Violet rubbed at his forehead as he processed the fact that Karzarul’s first and foremost concern had been Minnow’s perception of his sexual prowess. “Ridiculous man,” Violet muttered. “Where has she been?”

“With the Moon Cultists.”

Violet pounced on Karzarul, hands on all his biceps. Karzarul was too surprised to respond poorly. “You are going to drive me insane,” Violet said. “I hate this.”

“What?”

“Having to get everything secondhand from you,” Violet said. “I am well aware of how things look when they’re happening versus how you tell it later.”

“I’m not that bad,” Karzarul said.

“You’re awful,” Violet said. “What happened with Moon Cultists? How did we never meet one?”

“You know regular people?” Karzarul asked.

“What?”

“Regular people,” Karzarul said again. “There were always bandits, mercenaries, soldiers, Aekhites, Gaigonians, Sun worshippers. They weren’t regular people.”

“Right,” Violet said slowly.

“But then there were regular people,” Karzarul continued. “The normal… everyone. I guess they call those Moon Cultists, now.”

“That can’t be right,” Violet said.

“You can visit yourself, if you don’t believe me,” Karzarul said defensively. “They’re in Dragon Canyon, you’re the one who figured it out. They ought to call it Drakonis Canyon but she doesn’t seem to mind.”

Violet let Karzarul go to run a hand through his hair. “I’m going to have to visit, I think. I don’t suppose you established any kind of official diplomatic channels.”

“Teacher Zadven was nice enough,” Karzarul said. “You can talk to him. I didn’t notice an official government or anything. They were regular people.”

“Right,” Violet sighed.

“I couldn’t stay long,” Karzarul said. “Drakonis wasn’t the only beast monster there. It was. A lot.” He rubbed a hand over his face. Violet could feel the usual roil of emotions rising up in Karzarul already.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Violet said. “But I already know the worst of you, you know.” He watched Karzarul’s throat bob when he swallowed, still covering his face.

“I almost lost it,” Karzarul admitted. “The whole time I was there, I was losing it. She was so happy, Violet.”

Violet carefully took one of Karzarul’s hands, and Karzarul let him.

“It wasn’t just happy,” Karzarul said. “I don’t know how to explain how… they all felt so… secure. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that. I didn’t even know, until I felt it. Another thing I didn’t even know I was missing.”

“That isn’t your fault,” Violet said.

“All that means is that I can’t fix it myself,” Karzarul said. “I’m stuck like this. And even when Minnow says she wants to fix it, it’s not… she believes it. They all believe it, when they make promises. I don’t know how to pretend to believe it.”

“She’s different,” Violet said.

“They’re all different,” Karzarul said.

“Not like Lady Minnow,” Violet said firmly.

That was enough for Karzarul to peer suspiciously through his fingers. “You’re very defensive,” Karzarul observed.

“I’m just pointing out the facts,” Violet said, letting go of Karzarul’s hand and fluffing his curls.

“Do you have a thing for Minnow?” Karzarul asked, lowering his hands. Violet wished he’d managed to find a different topic to distract him from his own angst.

“I don’t think that’s an appropriate question,” Violet said primly.

“That sounds like a yes,” Karzarul said, sitting up.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t that,” Violet said.

“So what is it?” Karzarul asked.

Violet huffed. “You made us for her, dummy,” he reminded him. “If we have a thing, it’s that we’re hers and we know it. And she likes us. That’s why things will be different.”

Karzarul set his hand on Violet’s this time. “I didn’t mean to make you like her. Just because I have feelings for someone—”

“That isn’t it,” Violet said. “You don’t get it.”

“Is this—the other monsters—”

“Not all of them,” Violet said. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”

“I can see why this is annoying,” Karzarul said. “If this is what I’m like.”

Violet huffed again, blowing a curl off his forehead. “Only some of us were for someone. You have plenty of forms that were as much for you as for anyone. Abysscales were for you. You wanted to get laid. That’s not the same as being for someone.”

“Right,” Karzarul said.

“There’s a lot of Leonas-related confusion here,” Violet said, gesturing to his entire face. “That’s not the same as being for him. I exist to please Lady Minnow.”

“I think before when you kept calling her Lady I assumed you were being a shit,” Karzarul said.

“Good,” Violet said. He reached out to touch Karzarul’s cheek. “You are my king,” he said. “Your heart is my heart. If I thought for even one instant that you were going to do something that would harm Lady Minnow, I would kill you, and you would thank me for it.”

“That’s fair,” Karzarul said.

“I am blessed,” he said, “to have been made with a purpose, and to have had that purpose validated by my Lady’s approval. I plan to live a long and happy life.”

“It will be long.”

“And it will be happy,” Violet said firmly. “I am well aware that you find this indistinguishable from yet another person making promises they cannot keep. But. Even if everything goes to absolute shit. Even if she trips and falls into a volcano.”

“Don’t jinx it.”

“I will be happy,” Violet said. “Because there will always be us. All of us, forever. It would please her to know we could be happy without her, and I was made to please her.” He paused. “I won’t have to, though. She’ll be fine. She’s different.”

---

Violet took his time cleaning himself up after Karzarul left, using it as a chance to reacclimate to being entirely his own self again. He tried to examine his various feelings to establish which were valid, and which were lingering remnants of what Karzarul had carried in.

It was trickier than he expected. He felt a persistent concern that he’d given too much, said too much, revealed what he shouldn’t have. He wanted to blame that on Karzarul, but he wasn’t sure if he could. It was only that it didn’t make any sense for the feeling to be Violet’s. He knew better than to treasure secrets. It shouldn’t have been his. But could it have been anyone else’s?

He dressed and headed for the construction area, where the castle was climbing ever-higher. Brutelings were delighting in finding interesting new ways to make stone defy gravity. Bullizards were excellent at finding shiny things, a skill they’d been using to mine various magical ores that the Brutelings could use in creative architecture. The ability of Bullizards to stick to walls also came in handy when building upward and sideways.

Brutelings had already figured out how to make one tower look like it was drooping outward, and it was only a matter of time before they managed to make one corkscrew. The core structure was that of an enormous hexagon rising upward, but it didn’t take long for it to split off and be surrounded by a variety of experimental towers and spires.

Out in the open air of the level still under construction, Violet could hear a band of Bullizards playing. It was Ecru and Chartreuse and Alabaster today, all on stringed instruments of their own making. The air was thin and cold this high, and a few wispy clouds were visible above the countryside below. The light of cities and towns could be seen in the distance, always giving Monster Mountain a wide berth. Closer, fires were fewer and further between.

Violet remembered roads and imagined there being roads again. He leaned against the half-built wall to look out at the horizon, the sky swirling stars in blues and purples.

A match lit to the right of him.

“Obsidian,” Violet said, snapping open a fan to flutter it. “Come here often?” he asked.

The Impyr was well-suited to blending in with the night sky, though he was darker than either the sky or the shadows. There was a shimmer to his skin, and in the dark of night he sometimes looked like an illusion, the absence of a person. The effect was somewhat tempered by the double-breasted wool vest in grey over a pale linen shirt, calico trousers that buttoned down the sides and ended below his knees. He wore his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, bent forward to lean against the half-wall as he lit a cigarillo. His tail swayed behind him.

Obsidian wore his hair short, lately, and it fell in an enticing mop that contrasted with the neat lines of his beard.

“Sometimes,” Obsidian said, exhaling smoke and shaking the match out. “Sid’s fine.”

“Having trouble sleeping?” Violet suggested, moving closer in a deliberately casual saunter.

“Nah,” Sid said. “Just wanted a smoke.”

“If you wanted to put something in your mouth, I could have found you something better,” Violet suggested.

Sid took a long drag and sighed, smoke billowing out of his nostrils. He drummed his fingers on the stone of the wall. “You should stop,” he said.

Violet stilled. “I beg your pardon?” he asked archly.

“I haven’t been playing hard to get,” Sid said. “If you keep doing this, it’s going to get awkward.”

Violet’s feathers fluffed. “Fine,” he said as he snapped his fan shut, his voice pitched high. “Fine. I’m not—fine. If I’m not your type, you could have said so. Instead of implying that I can’t take a hint.”

“You’re too new,” Sid said.

“Not that new,” Violet said.

“Too much like Karzarul,” Sid said, flicking ash over the edge of the wall.

“Rude,” Violet said immediately.

Sid snorted. “See how offended you got?” he said, and Violet bristled. “You and I, we’ve both got the most memories out of our cohort. I remember this desire, early on. This need to be closer. It feels right, being so close, because you’re him and he’s you. You’ve been a part of him for so long, you want to find a way to be a part of him still. But you know it won’t work, you remember what he’s like. You settle for the next best thing.”

Violet’s wings were drawn in close. “It isn’t like that,” Violet said as Sid took another drag.

“Could be,” Sid said. “It’s different for you. You had a better start, you like yours. Maybe that changes things.”

Impyrs had been for Lynette, after all.

It was a marvel that any Impyr was sane. To be made a mistake, to know that your purpose was doomed from the start. Unable to placate the implacable. The way it must have felt to feel Karzarul’s regret and loathing whenever he was near.

“I don’t know you, Violet,” Sid said. “You don’t know me either. You know me as much as Karzarul knows me, which isn’t much at all. You know all the shit he’s put me through, the things he didn’t notice. The things you think I’ve earned. It could be that I’m wrong. Or else you’re still too much like him. You think of love like a reward you get, a prize you earn. If you keep working hard and letting them hurt you, someone ought to love you at the end to make it worth it.”

Violet turned away from Sid to look out at the darkened landscape again. He clutched his forearms, hidden in his wide sleeves. “You can just say I’m not your type,” Violet reminded him.

Sid took another few drags of his cigarillo in silence. Violet felt as if he’d be conceding something to leave first.

“I’ve been married twice,” Sid said.

“What,” Violet said, dropping his hands and whipping his head around. The faint hint of a smile ghosted over Sid’s mouth. “Bull-shit. To humans?”

“Who else?” Sid asked. “Humans’ll love anything, if you let them.”

“When?” Violet demanded.

Sid shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve lacked for free time,” Sid said. “All those times he sent everyone away, wanted nothing to do with any of us. Didn’t want us together causing trouble. Couple times he died so fucking fast the rest of us couldn’t even get there to try helping. Left us waiting around until he came back again. He doesn’t really think about what we do without him, unless it inconveniences him.”

Violet shifted uncomfortably, knowing perfectly well the truth of it. “What happened to them?”

“They died,” Sid said. “Humans do that. Gigi was already in her forties by the time we met, gave me this habit. She was a weaver. Owen was around fifty, we ran a bookstore for a while. I like people that’ve settled into themselves. They know who they are when they’re not loving me.”

Violet was unable to imagine what either of these hypothetical marriages would have looked like. “You did love them, then.”

“Wouldn’t have married them if I didn’t,” Sid said. “It doesn’t have to be all-consuming passion. It can be easy, if you let it. It hurts when it ends, but not enough that I’d give up the person they made me. I never stop wishing they were here, but it hurts less than it used to. I’ve got good memories and bad habits. I know the difference between feeling loved and feeling useful. I don’t know if you do, yet.”

“I wasn’t asking you to love me,” Violet said.

Sid sighed smoke. “Were you not?” he asked.

“I’m tired,” Violet said, turning on his heel to head for the stairs.

“Sleep well,” Sid said, looking up at the stars.

“It’s not a big deal,” Minnow insisted.

“It’s grave robbing,” Leonas said. “You’re digging up a corpse.”

“It’s my grave,” Minnow said. “And my corpse.”

“That’s not better,” Leonas said. “That’s significantly worse.”

Minnow was using the Starsword to dig at the earth beside the stone marking Elias’ grave. “No it isn’t,” she said. “It’s my stuff. I’m getting my stuff back. That’s all.”

Leonas had given up on telling her that the Starsword wasn’t a gardening tool. “You have fundamentally misunderstood the problem with this situation,” he said.

“I can take care of it, if you want,” Karzarul said. “I’ve handled your corpses before.”

“That isn’t better,” Leonas said.

“Would an Ursbat be better at digging?” Minnow asked, pausing in her stabbing of the ground.

“Anything would be better at digging than what you’re doing,” Leonas said.

Karzarul shifted to an Ursbat as requested, and his claws sank deep into the earth to begin tossing soil behind him. Leonas backed further away to avoid getting hit, while Minnow put the Starsword away.

“I don’t know why I didn’t ask you to do that sooner,” Minnow said. “Habit, I guess.”

Leonas sighed. “You should have been blessed with a Star Shovel.”

“You probably would have preferred that from the start,” Karzarul agreed. He was already far enough down that his belly was below the level of the ground. “Am I close?”

Leonas’ eyes glowed. “No,” he said as they faded. “I’m not sensing anything magic in there, by the way.”

Minnow frowned, watching Karzarul keep digging. “Why bury it so deep, then?”

“I assume they were trying to dissuade grave robbers,” Leonas said.

“Then it’s a good thing we’re not grave robbers,” Minnow said. “We’re thing-retrievers.”

“That isn’t anything,” Leonas said. “That’s nothing.”

“Lost-and-finders,” Minnow suggested.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to make happen, but you should stop.”

“We should have a name, right?” Minnow asked. “Because on my own I’m the Starlight Hero, but when we’re all together it feels like we should have a team name.”

“Absolutely not,” Leonas said. “What possible benefit could that have?”

“It would be faster than listing all our titles.”

“No it wouldn’t,” Leonas said. “The first time you tell someone we’re the Shithead Squad, they’re going to ask what the fuck that is, and then you’re going to have to introduce us anyway. That’s not faster.”

“Not at first,” Minnow said. “You have to give it some time to catch on. Karzarul, what did they call us when we were a team before?”

“Nothing,” Karzarul said. “You were the Hero. Sometimes I was their unusually large dog.”

“Huh,” Minnow frowned. “Don’t like that.”

Karzarul stood, stretching his neck to peer over the edge of the hole he’d dug. “Am I close yet?”

After a brief flash of his eyes, Leonas said, “A little to your right.”

Karzarul’s head disappeared as he ducked back down to keep digging. “Found it,” he called back up after a moment.

“How do I look?” Minnow asked.

“Dead.” Karzarul lifted up the heavy stone chest that contained Elias’ remains to set it above the edge of the hole. Minnow made a small sound.

“Hey,” Leonas said, alarmed, setting a hand on her shoulder.

“You don’t have to do this,” Karzarul said, having already dissipated and reformed as an Impyr by her side.

“No, no,” she said, waving them both off. “I don’t care about the body, it was…” She held out her hands to try to demonstrate. “The li’l fluffy paws, holding the box and putting it up there. The reachy paws.”

Leonas stared at her.

Karzarul shifted back to an Ursbat, rising up on his back paws to reach with his forepaws into the sky like he was trying to touch a cloud. Minnow shrieked. She pounced at him, hugging his waist. “You’re so fluff!” she said at a high pitch. “I wanna touch the beans,” she demanded, reaching upward. Karzarul lowered a paw so that she could poke at his paw pads. “Oh my goodness bears are so cute, I want to pet every bear.” She backed up enough that Karzarul could get back down on all fours, and she rubbed his fluffy round ears. “This is so good. This is a good shape for you to be, sometimes.”

“I thought bears were scary,” Karzarul said.

“The fact that they’re so pettable is part of why they’re so scary,” Minnow said. “It’s like wolves. They look like they should be cuddly because they’re so cute, but they’re actually full of murder. You have a moment of thinking, oh! A friend! and then it sees you and you realize you’re about to die.”

“Exactly like Karzarul the rest of the time, then,” Leonas said.

“I’m not—you think I’m cute?”

Leonas glowed. “Not right now, Minnow is the only one who thinks that.”

“Nuh-uh.”

Karzarul shifted back to an Impyr. “Now?” he asked.

Leonas glowed brighter. “Cute might not be the right—this is not an appropriate conversation to be having when there’s someone’s remains right there.”

“No, this is the best time for it,” Karzarul said. “He would have hated this.” He looked at Minnow. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Minnow said. “I think of you as being more ‘devastatingly sexy’ than cute.”

“Oh.” Karzarul also started to glow.

“Sometimes you get puppy-dog eyes that are pretty cute,” she added.

“I would say that’s all accurate,” Leonas said. “Can we finish grave robbing first and tell our boyfriend how cute he is later?”

Karzarul mumbled incoherently, rubbing his hand over his mouth in a way that made his expression impossible to read.

“Yeah, okay,” Minnow said before pulling out the Starsword and whacking at the seal on the stone coffin. She kicked the lid off, bending to look inside.

Elias’ bones showed clear signs of charring, efficiently arranged and wrapped in ribbons so as not to take up too much space. His skull sat at the top of the stack, atop a small and rotting pillow. Minnow put her sword away, crouching to lift up the skull and look inside it.

“You could try to have a little respect,” Leonas said.

“Why?” she asked. “It’s mine.” She pulled a glittering gold necklace out from inside the cavity where her soul’s brain had once sat. “Do you think this is it?”

“No, because if that were the Nightshard then touching it would have caused problems,” Leonas said. “We’re looking for an artifact that sucks the sunlight out of people, that’s not the time to be grabbing things at random. And I already told you there wasn’t anything magic in that box.”

“Maybe it’s special,” Minnow suggested. “Secret.”

“Overnight I became the most powerful witch on the planet,” Leonas said flatly. “I can detect magic in rocks. Not even interesting rocks. Regular, shitty rocks. If you had a powerful artifact on your person, I would notice.”

“Not if it was a secret artifact.”

“Nothing is that secret.”

Fiddling with the necklace, Minnow’s thumbnail caught the latch and the locket popped open. Rather than photos or a lock of hair, it contained a folded-up piece of paper.

“Treasure map!” Minnow announced.

“We don’t know that,” Leonas said.

Minnow let the locket hang from her wrist as she unfolded the paper. It opened to reveal a map.

“Lucky guess,” Leonas said.

“She is the one that put it there,” Karzarul reminded him.

Leonas frowned. “Hm.”

Minnow looked the map over. It was old, but of course it would be. Rather than one X to mark the spot, there were several, in different sizes and line weights whose significance Minnow could not glean. Rainbow Doors had also been marked, little squares with routes plotted to the nearest marked location.

“The Nightshard is in parts,” Leonas suggested.

“Could be,” Minnow said. “Or else we need to get all the keys to unlock whatever has the Nightshard.”

“Ugh,” Leonas said, nose wrinkling. “Why is everything always so tedious?”

Minnow took a moment to contemplate this. “You never hear trees complaining about that kind of thing,” she said. “And all they do is grow until they die.”

“First of all,” Leonas said, “what the fuck are you talking about. Second of all, that’s only because they can’t. Every tree is bored to tears. Every winter they feel the hope of believing they might finally get to die, and every spring is a disappointment.”

Minnow hummed. “We haven’t had lunch yet, have we?”

“That has even less to do with anything,” Leonas said.

“We haven’t,” Karzarul confirmed.

Minnow reached into her bag to find a small glass bottle and offered it to Leonas. “Have some juice,” she suggested.

Leonas stared at her. “I am a grown man,” he reminded her, though he took the bottle as he did so. “My crow’s feet have graduated to raven’s feet. My ennui will not be mollified by juice.”

“Drink your juice,” Minnow ordered, taking a closer look at the map. “It looks like a lot of these are around Monster Mountain,” she said. She held it sideways so Karzarul could take a closer look.

“The distance is right that there may have been villages there,” Karzarul said. “A long time ago. Some of the monsters liked to go there after they were abandoned. Humans started avoiding them because of it. It may have seemed a safe place to keep things once he’d killed us.”

“Huh.” Minnow took the map back to frown at it. “Really don’t like that.”

“We got better,” Karzarul said.

“Still don’t like it,” Minnow said.

Karzarul patted the top of her head.

“This one looks closest to a Door, should we start there?” Minnow suggested, pointing at one of the marks on the map. “What do you think?” she asked Leonas.

“Seems fine,” Leonas said.

“If we stop over here first, I can get the mushrooms I’d need to make that recipe Zadven gave me,” she added.

“Sounds good,” Leonas said, brushing a curl out of his eyes. “Were you planning to hold onto this garbage?” he asked, holding up the empty glass bottle.

Minnow snatched it away to shove back into her bag. “Always.”

---

Minnow shaded her eyes against the evening sun to squint at Monster Mountain. “It looks like they’re making progress,” she said, pointing at the silhouette of the castle under construction.

“Yeah,” Karzarul said.

“Have you been checking in?” Minnow asked.

“Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t press the issue. “Violet could come down and help while we’re close by,” she suggested.

“He’s busy,” Karzarul said immediately.

“I’m not detecting anything,” Leonas said, his eyes still glowing. His fingers trailed over the crumbling stones that had once been part of a structure. Most of the buildings that had once been at the center of the village were now mere outlines of stone on the ground.

“Not even in there?” Minnow asked, nodding toward the only thing resembling an intact shelter. Passing merchants, adventurers, and other travelers often chose the most intact building to reinforce when seeking temporary lodgings in the ruins of nowhere. It resulted in weird patchwork hovels like that one, standing lonely among empty foundations. Minnow had slept in more than her fair share.

“Nothing but dirt floors and shitty graffiti,” Leonas said. “You can double-check, if you want.”

“There must be something,” Minnow said. “It was marked on a map I kept in a locket. That’s treasure shit for sure.”

A ball of white light shot out of the sky, hitting Karzarul in the chest. His shape wavered before returning back to normal.

“… was that the something?” Minnow asked.

“That was unrelated,” Karzarul said sharply. “It happens. Don’t worry about it.”

“That’s happened before,” Leonas said, his eyes fading. “When we were on Monster Mountain.”

“Yeah,” Karzarul said. “It happens.”

Leonas looked up at the mountain. “Is it because we’re so close?”

“Yeah,” Karzarul said.

Minnow hummed as Karzarul’s hooves scuffed dirt. “You don’t have to tell us if it’s complicated,” she said. “You can say that instead of lying.” Karzarul’s shoulders rose up closer to his ears. “It’s better if we know what we don’t know. You know?”

“You made it confusing,” Leonas told Minnow. “I dislike not knowing. I dislike being given inaccurate information much more. If you’re certain it’s unrelated to whatever Elias left here, I am willing to leave it.” His displeasure was obvious despite that. Minnow squeezed Karzarul’s hand, but Karzarul neither looked at them nor confessed. She wondered if he would ever stop wearing gloves as a matter of habit.

“Do you want to check if you can see anything from above?” Minnow asked Karzarul. “It’s stupid, but every once in a while I find out that there’s a big arrow made of rocks or buildings.”

“I’ll see,” he said, letting go of her hand as he shifted to a Savagewing. He launched himself upward with a heavy beating of his wings. He appreciated the opportunity to escape the conversation and catch his breath. Minnow and Leonas watched him stretch out his wings, circling low.

“Nothing stands out,” Karzarul said when he landed again. “There’s a little cemetary we could check.”

“No more grave robbing,” Leonas said firmly. “If I’d felt any magic over there, I would have told you.”

“We can check later,” Minnow murmured to Karzarul.

“I can hear you,” Leonas said.

“We’ll check later,” Karzarul agreed.

Minnow took Karzarul’s hand, pulling him closer to reach up and touch his face. “I remembered your hair being bigger the first time,” she noted. “Like Violet.”

“I like this better,” Karzarul said. Long straight hair, and at the front slender locks were gathered with silver cuffs. Minnow touched them and wondered where she’d seen the style before.

“It’s looking more like your face to me,” she said. “I know they’re all your face. But your other faces all looked a little like each other, and this one didn’t. It felt like you were wearing someone else. But now I’m getting used to it, and it feels more like you.”

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, tracing a finger over the lower curve of his mouth. “I like your wings. Do you think you would ever…” She hesitated, biting her lip and turning pink. “Want to play with me?” she suggested.

Leonas sighed. “You can say that you want to get fingerblasted by four hands, we know what you’re asking.”

“Shut up!” she shrieked, letting Karzarul go to cover her face. “I didn’t ask that!” Karzarul was already laughing.

“You woke up this morning with his tongue so far up in you I’m surprised you didn’t choke on it,” Leonas pointed out.

“What does that have to do with anything!” she demanded, still covering her face.

“You’re ridiculous,” Leonas said as Karzarul pulled her closer to kiss her hair. “Use your words.”

“No,” she said with a pout. She lowered her hands enough to see Karzarul. “You didn’t answer.”

He bent, head cocked. He flared his wings upward, stretched out toward the sky, doubling his height with the size of them. “You like the way I look?”

Her eyes were on his looming wings. “Yeah,” she admitted.

Karzarul crossed one pair of arms, put one hand on his hip and the other on his chin. “You want me to play with you?” he teased.

She nodded enthusiastically. He usually only fell into posing for Leonas, back when he’d tried to be subtle about flirting. She appreciated him putting forth the effort for her, even though he didn’t need it. He was very good at looking good. “I was worried you wouldn’t want to,” she said, “since you don’t seem to like this form as much.”

“I always want to touch you,” he said, letting his wings fall, reaching out to take her hands. He lifted them up to kiss her knuckles. “I can be whatever you’d like,” he said against her skin.

“I want you to be what feels good,” she said. She did not say that she wanted him to be happy, although she did. She thought that would put undue pressure on him.

Leonas rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Should I set out the bedrolls so you two can go fuck over in the weird shack?” he asked.

“Leonas,” Minnow scolded as Karzarul stifled a giggle. “You’re being rude.”

“We’re trying to figure out why you marked this place out on a map,” Leonas reminded her. “That’s not going to happen while you’re busy making eyes at each other. Unless you think Elias was mapping out romantic getaway destinations, in which case I have questions about the cemetery. We’re going to end up spending the night regardless, because if I don’t sleep you can’t dig up corpses to go through their pockets.”

“We aren’t going to do that,” Minnow said.

“Are we not?” Karzarul asked.

“We’re not telling him that we’re doing it, it’s a secret,” Minnow said.

“I can hear you,” Leonas said. “I’m not going to keep arguing with you, but I am going to insist that we not wait until I’ve already taken my makeup off for the night to start getting frisky. I’m old. I get cranky without my juice and when you make me stay up past my bedtime.”

“I thought that was babies,” Minnow said.

“You are the youngest one here,” Karzarul said.

“It’s old people, too,” Leonas said. “The natural state of humanity is that we want to stay in bed and consume things we don’t need to chew. There’s a brief period in the middle where we pretend otherwise to get laid. I bypassed that by getting extensively laid while never leaving my house.”

“And never getting any juice,” Minnow said.

“I had wine,” Leonas said.

“Wine doesn’t make you less cranky,” Minnow said.

“I mean it,” Leonas said. “Don’t waste my time acting like you’re not in the mood. Otherwise I’m going to wash my face first thing, which means I won’t be able to participate, which means neither of you will have any sex because you’ll feel awkward about it.”

“Mean,” Minnow accused.

“Actually,” Karzarul said, scratching the back of his neck. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like to use this chance to visit Monster Mountain and check in.”

“A King doesn’t need permission to rule his people,” Leonas said.

“Right,” Karzarul said.

“He needs their permission,” Minnow reminded him. “Which they give by not beheading him.”

“You’ve been paying attention to me?” Leonas asked, surprised.

“I like listening to you,” Minnow said.

“I can contact you with Violet’s Seeing Stone if anything comes up,” Karzarul said.

“Do you think you’ll be back in time to not dig up bodies?” Minnow asked.

“I can try,” Karzarul said.

“I’m going to contact Violet and tell him to keep you there,” Leonas warned.

Karzarul bent to press a kiss to Minnow’s lips, not as brief as he intended. He always meant to be gentle, and she always crushed herself against him and made it impossible. “I’ll see you in the morning,” Karzarul said. He hesitated when he turned toward Leonas.

“Come here,” Leonas said impatiently, reaching out to grab him by his tunic and pull him closer. It was a quick kiss that left him nonetheless breathless. “Don’t take too long,” Leonas said.

Minnow sidled closer to Leonas as they watched him go.

“It’s just us tonight,” she said.

“Don’t be too disappointed,” Leonas said, reaching over to give her hair a gentle tug.

“You know I’m not,” she said. She tilted her head, her cheek chasing his fingers until he acquiesced and cupped her face. She sighed, nuzzling his palm.

“I wonder why,” he said.

“I know I can’t miss you, because you’re here,” she said. “But it’s different now than it used to be.”

“Do you wish I were still a special occasion?” he asked.

“No,” she said firmly.

“You could have seen me more often,” he said.

“I couldn’t,” she reminded him. Visiting too often drew attention.

“Did you want to?” he asked.

“I wanted to take you with me,” she said.

“Ah.”

“I didn’t think you would like traveling, or adventures,” she continued. “I thought you could stay at one of my houses, or stay in different houses based on your mood. And I could see you as much as you’d like.”

He turned to face her more directly, the hand on her cheek directing her to do the same so that he could hold her face in both hands. “Is that what I seemed like?” he asked. “Someone to be kept?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching up to place a hand over one of his. “You were always so anxious, was all. Adventuring is dirty. There’s bugs.”

“I’m still anxious,” he said. “I’ll always be anxious. There is no hypothetical future circumstance where I am not anxious, regardless of proximity to bugs.”

“We should work on that,” Minnow said.

“I’m fine with it,” Leonas said. “You’re not anxious enough. Together we’re the right amount.” He brushed his thumbs over her skin. “I don’t miss it,” he said. “Any of it. You were the only good thing that ever happened to me. I would cut my hair off and wear rags if it meant I never had to go back.”

“You don’t have to do that, though,” she rushed to assure him.

“Shallow,” he accused. “What do you miss?” She hummed, waffling. “Spit it out.”

“The way you used to look at me,” she said. “Taking notes.”

“Hmm.” He let her go to tousle her hair. “You’re sure you can’t spy on dreams?”

“Have you dreamed about it?” she asked, delighted.

“Something like,” he said, which was not untrue. “Would you like me to pretend I have a reason again, or can we discard the pretense?”

She tapped her fingertips together. “Can we pretend?” she asked shyly.

“We can fuck, you know,” he pointed out. “We needed excuses before, but I can feel you up for the sake of it now. We’re free to have sex like normal people.”

“I’m not normal people,” she said.

Leonas polished his nails while Minnow worked. She set up their bedrolls so that they overlapped, giving them plenty of space to sit together in the little patchwork structure. Setting her boots by the door-less doorway, she knelt down and immediately started staring at Leonas with an expectant air.

“Am I supposed to set the scene?” Leonas asked. “Shall I introduce myself as Dr. Leonas?”

“I don’t know,” Minnow said, flustered. “It’s not that much pretending. You always looked me over. When you hadn’t seen me. It seems like.” Her lips pursed in a pout.

“Okay,” Leonas sighed, kneeling in front of her. “Don’t make faces. I would have noticed if you’d eaten any rocks, but open your mouth anyway.” Minnow started to protest. “Open,” he ordered before she could, and she stuck her tongue out. His eyes glowed as he used a stick of sunlight to poke around and confirm what he already knew. His eyes returned to normal when it dissolved. “You’ve been sucking too much dick,” he said. She squeaked in alarm, recoiling and covering her mouth.

“You can’t see that!” she said. “You’re making that up.”

“How would you know?” Leonas asked, watching her turn red.

“You would have said something before!”

His eyebrows shot up. “Would I have?” he asked. “Pardon? What were you doing, exactly, that I would have noticed when you came to see me?” She covered her face. “No, no,” he said, taking her wrists and pulling them gently away. “Let me see you, ridiculous girl. You’re here so I can look at you, aren’t you?”

“I changed my mind,” she mumbled without conviction. “You can’t really tell, can you? It hasn’t messed anything up?”

“I’ll check,” he said seriously, placing his hands on either side of her neck and walking his fingertips back and forth. Then he cupped her face in his hands again. “If he broke your esophagus,” Leonas said, “you would notice. You’re fine. I don’t know what you thought could have happened.”

“I don’t know!” Minnow said. “I don’t look down there. Maybe the little dangly thing is gone and that’s why I don’t gag now.”

“That would have happened years ago,” Leonas said.

“Or it could be shaped weird, if it got stretched out.”

“That’s not how that works,” Leonas said. “Nothing you’ve said is a real thing.”

“You started it,” Minnow accused. “And! Ari doesn’t even—he’s too big. Most of the time. You’re the only person who isn’t scared to really go for it. So if anyone was going to break my esophagus, it would be you.”

“I’m good at not breaking what’s mine,” he said, and she shivered. “The only person?” She nodded. “In all Astielle?”

“In anywhere,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s because I’m the Hero, or if it’s because of my teeth.”

“The teeth,” Leonas said.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “You should make sure I’m not sick,” she said, holding out her arms.

“Who’s running this exam?” he asked.

“I am,” she said. “You didn’t even want to do it.”

“Horrible woman,” Leonas said, wrapping his fingers around her wrists. He pressed his thumbs into the spot that would let him feel her pulse, tapping into the flow of energy all through her. Secretly, he did quite delight in this part. He could almost visualize it, the shape of all the blood under her skin. “You haven’t been getting enough sleep,” he said. “Though I don’t know why you’d listen to me, we’ve already established I don’t actually understand how bodies work.”

“I think you’re right, though,” she said. “Do the higher one.”

Leonas sighed again, running his hands up her forearms to press his thumbs into her elbows. He could feel in the beat of her heart the cloud around her spine. “Has your back been hurting again?” he asked. She nodded. He huffed, loosening his grip. “I’m—you see why it’s confusing for me. Trying to sort out what’s real. Why would there be anything wrong with what I was eating when I can take your pulse and figure out what’s bothering you? Why would this work if the rest of it’s fake?”

“Does it work?” Minnow wondered.

“You watched me do it,” Leonas said. “I’ve done it before, I’ve never been wrong.”

“Right,” she said, “but you’re you. Do you know if it works when other people do it? People who don’t have a special magical connection to the animating force of all human beings?”

Leonas narrowed his eyes. “… shut up,” he decided.

“Okay,” Minnow said.

“Lie down so I can fix your back,” he said. She pulled her tunic off over her head immediately.

“Can we have sex after?” she asked hopefully, tipping over and sprawling out on her stomach.

“No,” Leonas said, straddling her waist. She pouted, rested her head on her arms. “I am going to brush your hair, and then I’m going to get ready to sleep. And you’re going to touch yourself while I do it.”

“Oh,” she sighed as his fingertips trailed down her back.

“You’re not allowed to finish,” he added.

“Mean,” she complained, and she gasped when one of his fingers pressed hard into a point to the right of her spine near the small of her back.

This was another thing that had always worked, though Leonas had wondered why his charts had been wrong. If he hadn’t stolen the charts in the first place he might have thought someone had lied to him. As it was he’d needed to make his own charts according to what he could feel.

“No begging,” he said. “Cover your mouth so I can hear you fail to keep quiet.” He pressed his thumb into a spot above her shoulder blade, right beside where her neck ended. She covered her mouth and groaned loud through her fingers. “Yes,” he said, “like that.”

“If I’m good?” she suggested.

“You can be the little spoon,” he said. “I’m not always in the mood. Don’t take it personally.”

“If Ari were here?” she asked.

“I might watch,” he said. Leonas paused with his hands against her skin. “Are you worried I like him better?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “He’s very pretty. I don’t have horns, or a tail. I’m not big. It must be more exciting for you.”

He pressed hard at a point near her hips. She cried out, then moaned as she relaxed. “Idiot,” Leonas said. “If I fuck you more when he’s around, it’s only because I don’t have to. I don’t like feeling obligated. You know that.”

“I know,” she sighed. “I like it, though. When you fuck me.”

“I know you do,” Leonas said. He let sunlight fill his hands as he rubbed her back. She moaned gratuitously. “Be patient.”

---

Raelle had been named for her grandmother. Her grandmother was dead and gone, though she’d outlived Raelle’s parents. All that was left now was Raelle and her siblings, which meant all that was really left was Raelle. Being the eldest left her feeling obligated to hold down the fort, giving them a place to rest when work got too hot.

Which was all well and good until work followed them home.

Evyn hadn’t hidden his tracks well enough when he’d come running back to the farm, and a competing group of bandits had followed him here. Raelle hadn’t raised a pack of bandits without learning to stand her ground, but the numbers weren’t in their favor. She’d run out of crossbow bolts eventually, and they’d be taking torches to the house as soon as they could get close enough. They’d tried throwing rocks with burning rags tied to them already, but they’d all puttered out before striking.

“I’m sorry, Raelle,” Evyn said again, passing her another bolt with the arm he still had. His stump was starting to bleed through the bandages. He ought to have been resting.

“Sorry’s not gonna save our asses,” she muttered, loading the bolt. A noisy whoop came from outside, and she realized she’d taken too long. Already she could smell smoke. “Shit.”

Things were jumbling together. The fire. The blood. Her grandmother baking bread in the kitchen. The house when she was young. The house when it burned. A different house altogether, smaller and quieter, did it burn? Was this where Evyn died? Gasping for air as the smoke rose, the doors barred, couldn’t get out. Couldn’t breathe. Dragging Evyn out onto the roof, though the house would collapse beneath them. Did it collapse? Was that a different house? Evyn was their father before he was Evyn again. Evyn, lines in his face and a hook at the end of his wooden arm. The screaming as the moon fell out of the sky.

This was the part she could never forget, vivid as the moment it happened. A dragon, or something like it, pure white lifting them both from the fire and carrying them away. The world, her whole world, looked so small beneath them. When they landed it felt like being carried on a cloud, until the hands that set them down belonged to a man instead.

A Tauril, but a Tauril could be a man. She remembered him as a man.

“Are you okay?” he asked in a low rumble of a voice. Evyn, already sitting on the ground, nodded. She wavered on weak knees, gripped tightly at the hand he’d offered. White gloves, like a gentleman too fine to have ever entered her home. He caught her before she could fall, sweeping her up into his arms as if she were too good for dirt. Her breath caught.

This was the part where she stopped remembering. Where he would kiss her and steal her away the way monsters were said to do. Steal her away to where none of her siblings would find her, and the world would be small under his wings. He would save her from the fire, from her small life, from men who didn’t deserve her. The memory of his hands blending seamlessly into the idea of what could have been. Painted vivid and real through years of practice, this was the part that she dreamed.

---

Minnow opened her eyes to the ramshackle roof. Leonas was still sleeping peacefully beside her.

“Huh.”

“I warned you,” Zadven said. “You think we’re bad?” he asked. “We’re the classy ones. Those guys over there?” He pointed across the canyon with his thumb. “Newcropolis.”

Leonas remained very still. “Ah,” he said finally.

“You don’t have to be nice about it,” Zadven said with a wave of his hand. “It’s terrible, they’re doing it on purpose, everyone knows.”

“You guys are different things?” Minnow asked, pointing across the way. “Different cities? I thought they were with you.”

“They’re with us,” Zadven said. “Like a boil. Let me clarify, it’s all one city. The rift is purely physical. Metaphorically? One big happy family. That happens to have different sports teams.”

“What do you play?” Minnow asked.

“Ball,” Zadven said. “That’s all we’ve been able to agree on so far. Last year the Neocropolis Tarantulas brought whackball to the field, but the Newcropolis Harvestmen did bowlball. Terrible game, huge waste of dishes, whackball was much better.”

“I see,” Leonas said.

“I don’t,” Minnow said. “I’m confused. Do you take turns?”

“Never,” Zadven said. “Listen, what kinds of sports do you play where you’re from?”

“The normal ones would be, I guess…” Minnow started counting them off on her fingers. “Fencing, racing, rowing, candlepins, handball, ringette, shinty, yak polo, curling, bull-dancing—”

“That’s fine,” Zadven said, cutting her off. “Who decided on the rules?”

“I don’t know,” Minnow said.

“Everyone decides,” Zadven said. “Someone teaches you how to play the way they learned to play. If you don’t like it, you don’t play. If enough people don’t like it, they change the rules until enough people want to play. Our teams spend the year workshopping new games. If they can ever make a game both teams want to play, that’ll be the new game. It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a first time for everything. We almost won with hoopball about two hundred years ago, but I think it’s been long enough to risk trying it again.”

“Why is it a risk?” Minnow asked.

“We could win,” Zadven said. “Then we’d have the play hoopball every year. Can you imagine?”

Minnow nodded. “I get it,” she said.

“Do you?” Leonas asked, head tilting sideways.

“It’s a good system,” Minnow decided.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” Leonas said.

“You called me ‘cousin’,” Karzarul said slowly. He hadn’t moved from where he stood or taken the fan from his face.

“Ah—maybe that’s more familiar than you’d like?” Zadven said, scratching his beard. “You’re Auntie Moon’s kid, so that makes you a cousin. We can stop calling you that, if it makes you uncomfortable. We’ve never had a chance to ask.”

“It’s fine,” Karzarul said.

“Auntie,” Leonas repeated, as if he may have misheard due to Zadven’s accent.

Zadven grinned. “I take it your Temple has a different attitude toward the Aunties,” he said.

“We have no Temple,” Leonas said automatically. “We hold Her Light in Shrines until She allows us a Temple once more.”

“Auntie Sun has always favored harsh truths,” Zadven said sympathetically.

“Which one is mine?” Minnow asked, turning with her hand on the hilt of her Starsword to indicate who she meant.

“Granny Void?” Zadven asked, and Minnow gasped.

“Someone else knows about the Void Goddess!” she said, turning to make sure Karzarul had heard. He didn’t need the validation, but perhaps he would appreciate it regardless.

“Not Mother?” Karzarul asked.

“My mother’s name is Jillhemina,” Zadven said.

“I confess to unfamiliarity with your doctrine,” Leonas said carefully.

“Would you like to learn?” Zadven asked, with a wag of his finger that felt like a warning.

“… usually…?” Leonas said.

“Come on, we’ll find a classroom,” Zadven said, waving for them to follow.

Black Drakonis, who had been watching, made a discontented sound.

“Don’t you start,” Zadven said. “Ignore her, it’s not time for her to eat yet. If we feed her now she’ll pretend we didn’t when the time comes.”

Black Drakonis whined, sticking her head further into the road and twitching her snout at Zadven.

“Go wait downtown,” Zadven said.

Black Drakonis clucked aggressively at him.

“You haven’t earned this,” Zadven said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out something that looked like a muffin. “I shouldn’t be giving you this. It’s not going to work next time. Okay?”

There were loud thumping and scratching sounds as her body moved despite her head staying in the same spot. Zadven reared back his arm and pretended to throw, which got Black to move her head long enough for him to fling the muffin at high speed over the edge of the city. Black disappeared to chase it down.

“Let’s go before she comes back and starts making sad eyes at me,” Zadven said, heading down the road to where it turned into a tunnel. Minnow followed first, with Karzarul trailing behind. Minnow admired the paintings that lined the walls of the tunnel. “No one should be using this one,” Zadven said as he pushed a door open. “Except Crabapple. I don’t know why it’s in here. Who let you in here?”

Crabapple oinked, and Minnow immediately shot into the room by fitting herself in the small space of the doorway beneath Zadven’s arm. She picked up the round pink Rootboar without hesitation, and it oinked in surprise. There were small coins and tokens hanging off its antlers beside the pink crabapple blossoms.

“I love it,” Minnow said without hesitation.

“It’s a sweetie,” Zadven said, moving into the room to check beneath the podium at the front. There were glowing crystals set into the walls to light the room, but the light they made was fluttery. Zadven harrumphed. “It got into the snack stash, the little bastard,” he said.

Leonas’ eye was drawn to the seats all carved into the stone that comprised the room. They all faced toward the center podium, no desks or shelves.

Karzarul lingered in the doorway, watching Minnow hug the well-decorated Rootboar. “How long has that been here?” he asked.

“Longer than Black Drakonis,” Zadven said. “Crabapple watched them carve the first classrooms. And ate some of the first bridges. Be careful talking about fruits around it, if you mention its favorite it’ll go nuts because it thinks you brought it one.”

Crabapple started to squirm in Minnow’s arms.

“You should set it outside,” Karzarul said, stepping clear of the door. “It shouldn’t stay near me.”

“Should it not?” Zadven asked, surprised.

“It should not,” Karzarul confirmed as Minnow carried Crabapple back out to the road. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated as in complex, or complicated as in none of my business?” Zadven asked. Karzarul hesitated. “Say no more,” Zadven said. “The monsters who live here are easy to avoid if that’s what you’d like to do.” He stood behind the podium and gestured for the three of them to sit wherever they liked. “Shall I begin at the beginning, or would you rather guess that part based on context clues?”

“The beginning would be good,” Leonas said, setting his bag in his lap when he sat to dig for a notebook.

“I have to ask that you not take notes,” Zadven apologized.

Leonas stilled. “What?”

“Our truth survives from the mouths of our Teachers,” Zadven said. “It dies in writing.”

Leonas closed his bag with slow suspicion, waiting for Zadven to reveal the punchline to the joke. “The written word can outlive us all,” Leonas said.

“Words can,” Zadven agreed. “The truth does not live in the words of its telling. What you write may be eternal, but we would not call it alive.”

Leonas’ expression was blank in a manner Minnow associated with diplomacy. “That two and two make four does not cease to be true when it’s written,” Leonas said mildly.

“You’re thinking of facts,” Zadven said. “Not truth.”

It would not have been accurate to say that Leonas relaxed, but there was something less tense in the air around him. “How do you draw the line between the two?” Leonas asked.

“The same as any,” Zadven shrugged. “Messily enough that no one’s quite sure where it is.”

“Hm,” Leonas said.

“Truth is a living thing,” Zadven said. “It is changeable, flawed, forgettable. It varies from person to person. Moon Cultists derive important truths from consensus, and it’s those truths that Teachers teach. Whether you accept it as your truth is up to you.”

Minnow was sitting cross-legged with her chin propped on her hands. Karzarul still had not sat, and Zadven accepted that he would not.

“Let’s begin at the beginning,” Zadven said. “Or as close to the beginning as we can get. Auntie Sun and Auntie Moon are lovers born of Granny Void. It’s safe to assume there’s some backstory there, but we doubt it’s comprehensible.”

Zadven turned and used a piece of chalk to draw on the wall behind him. He managed to achieve a surprising amount of depth with very few lines. It didn’t clarify much, but it was fun to look at. The idea of light and space more than the shape of them, and in the breathy glow of magical illumination they almost moved.

“Auntie Sun burns bright, illuminating anything She can be made to reach,” he said, sketching out rays and shadows. “Auntie Moon prefers to mind Her business. The world was made when Granny Void gathered enough things together to take some of that relentless light. It wasn’t that Granny didn’t like the attention, it was only that She found it all a bit much. You know how it is, with family. She made many worlds, made of many different things, so that Auntie Sun could always find something new to look at. But Granny Void provides a canvas, not a work. And Auntie Sun, for all Her energy of observation, was ill-equipped for an empty page.” Zadven wiped the wall clear of chalk with his sleeve.

“It was not creation in the traditional sense, what Auntie Sun did,” he continued, drawing shapes that might have been worlds. “She did not carve men from clay or craft animals by feather and fang. She made rules, instead. Different rules changed the nature of what Her light created, and so She was free to observe without worrying about the details.”

Zadven paused, turning to face his audience. “Have you ever left bread sitting on the counter so long it seems like a shame to kill whatever it’s become?”

Minnow nodded.

“That’s us,” Zadven said, turning back to the wall. “We aren’t the first or only world. All the stars in the sky were once worlds. We take Her light to grow, but no world grows forever. Eventually every world burns.”

“Auntie Moon likes best the worlds with water. It could be that She likes to see Her own reflection, or it could be that She likes the way Her lover’s light looks when She moves the waves. There isn’t a good consensus on that part, yet, so you can pick the truth you like. One Goddess’ favor brings another’s attention. Sunlight, magnified and amplified in our vast oceans, inevitably becomes life. Sprouting and still, changing someday to things more ambulatory, beasts which use more sunlight in the life of them than a simple plant could burn.”

“That’s not how that works,” Leonas muttered.

“Human beings were once beasts, before deciding they would be people,” Zadven continued. “It was a long time before there was a consensus in that regard,” he added. “It was Vaelon who told us of moonlight that decided to be a man.”

Karzarul turned his head so that his fan would cover his face entirely.

“That it happened then confirmed to us that it could easily have happened before. Thus, the truth as we know it: that a human being is an animal that made itself something more, and we are no Goddess’ creation. There is sunlight in our veins, and moonlight in our hearts, and it is from the void that all of us began. They are none of them our mothers, but they are all of them our family.”

“And yet you are Moon Cultists,” Leonas said. “Neither Void nor Sun.”

Zadven dusted his hands off as he turned back around. “Family doesn’t mean we don’t pick favorites,” he said. “Auntie Moon is a goddess of transformative creativity. What is ordinary in the light of day becomes extraordinary in the moonlight. An artist who struggles at noon finds inspiration at midnight. She is a romantic! She smooths out wrinkles and makes kisses taste sweeter. She keeps secrets and colors dreams. If I sound biased, it’s because I am. I’m allowed. I’m a Moon Cultist.”

“What do you know about the Undead?” Minnow asked.

“They predate our first Teachers,” Zadven apologized. “I can’t tell you any truths there, but I can tell you stories. There are stories of a King who lost his children to schemes. There are stories of a village that fell victim to a plague. There are stories of one large family made small through misfortune. There are many stories, and they agree on little. What’s true is that a parent who outlives their child is capable of terrible things. And it’s true that parents who have outlived their children are capable of more. And it’s an unfortunate truth that whatever request was made to Auntie Sun, She would have granted it to the letter and no further. No light shines inside a beating heart, and She is not one for guessing at what She cannot see. The Undead are bodies with locomotion but without souls, animate without sentience. There is light within to move them, and they are always seeking more; what more is a human being to a Goddess? If a soul is something we gave ourselves, what more could She be expected to do when asked to raise the dead?”

Minnow hummed. “I thought you’d have more ideas,” she said, “since you guys cut up bodies.”

“Burial rites,” Zadven corrected. “If you’re going to cut up grandpa, people prefer if you call it burial rites.”

“Right,” Minnow said.

“Rites,” Zadven said.

“It seemed like maybe the Moon Goddess had said something about the dead,” Minnow said.

“She didn’t,” Zadven said. “Goddesses don’t talk to people, as a rule. Saying you’ve spoken to a goddess is usually a sign that something’s gone wrong. Unless you’ve been to the Faewild. Then something’s gone very wrong and you’ve made some mistakes.”

Karzarul couldn’t help a shrug of his eyebrows to acknowledge the validity of the point.

“Our handling of burial rites has nothing to do with Her,” Zadven said, waving a hand to dismiss the idea. “We do it for ourselves, and the souls those bodies once belonged to. Our only special qualifications are that we aren’t precious about meat, and we’ve been doing it for a while.”

“Then you don’t really deal with Undead,” Minnow said.

“Eh.” Zadven wiggled his hand in a so-so gesture. “We find them sometimes. Battlefields, usually. They don’t do much once you’ve got them planted. Would you like to see the Shadow Garden?”

“… where you plant the Undead?” Minnow asked for clarification.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Minnow said.

Leonas narrowed his eyes at Minnow. He leaned closer to her. “Are we not going to ask what the fuck that means?” he asked.

“He’s showing us,” Minnow said. “Showing is a kind of explaining.”

Leonas was unsatisfied with this answer as they followed Zadven out of the classroom, deeper down the tunnel streets.

“Before you came to be here,” Karzarul asked slowly, “what was the name of your country?”

“Didn’t have one,” Zadven said. “Still don’t. Everyone in the canyon falls under a broad umbrella of moon worship, but that doesn’t mean much. It’s convenient for other people to treat us as a singular entity, but we try not to agree on anything we don’t have to. There’s other cities down the canyon, with their own truths and their own sports teams. Try to tell any of them we’re in a country together, it’s not going to go well.”

Minnow listened in the silence for sounds associated with caves, the empty echoes and the far-off drip of mysterious water droplets. She could hear running water somewhere, but it sounded like plumbing and not stalactites. The fluttery glow of the crystals in the walls was growing fainter as the street tilted downward. Leonas’ shield and witchmarks were both brighter than they were. It felt warmer here than in the open air.

“Something about your face reminded me of someone I knew,” Karzarul said quietly. “They called it Mirror Lake, when he lived there.”

“A Moon Cultist?” Zadven asked.

“A Voidpriest,” Karzarul said.

“No one is born a Voidpriest,” Zadven said. “It is a lonely faith made of personal truths. For those to whom the darkness calls, it is the only choice; but it is a choice nonetheless.”

“Ah,” Karzarul said. “Then he might have…”

He shifted abruptly to a Shimmerbat, reforming such that he was already perched on Minnow’s shoulder. Minnow gave his head a cautious pet with one finger. He was impossible to read in this form, and moreso when he was mostly hidden by his own wings.

“Is that normal?” Zadven asked.

“Yeah,” Minnow lied.

“What happens to his clothes?” Zadven asked.

“They dissipate into ambient moonlight,” Leonas said. “They’re made of the same fundamental material as the rest of him.”

“Aaah,” Zadven said, nodding. “Like how your boots are made out of skin.”

Leonas muttered something incomprehensible.

The air was getting dense. There were no longer crystals lighting the way. There were mushrooms instead, glowing and pulsing the way the Sunshield did. Some of the growths sticking out of the walls were as big as Minnow’s head. The smell of fungus was growing stronger.

“Don’t eat those,” Zadven warned.

“We weren’t planning to,” Leonas said.

“I was,” Minnow said.

“You could have just said nothing,” Leonas said.

“Usually,” Minnow agreed.

“Here we are,” Zadven said, as the tunnel opened into a larger cave. “It should be fine as long as you don’t touch anything, but we’ve never had a sunlight witch in here, so who knows? I’d stay up here if I were you.”

“Great,” Leonas said. “Good to know.”

“I can carry you if we have to run,” Minnow assured him.

The tunnel transitioned into stairs going in both directions, with a small overlook into the larger cave that formed the Shadow Garden. Someone had put up a helpful sign which presumably said ‘Shadow Garden’ in whichever language they spoke natively here. It was accompanied by symbols indicating that visitors shouldn’t traipse about eating things. Water ran down the walls of the cave in miniature falls, and the only green visible was lichen.

“Can you see?” Minnow thought to ask Leonas, recalling his trouble with the dark.

“I can,” he said. There were more mushrooms in here, giving off yet more pulsing light. All different varieties, coming up from the ground in domes and coming out of the walls in trumpets, big shaggy masses of mushroom and perfectly round puffballs. There were flowers, but their only colors were red and white. Drooping white flowers in clusters that looked formed from candle wax, tall pillars of red like strings of bells, tall staves of flowers with stems striped like peppermint candy. Spiky, scaly, short lumps of berry-shaped flesh-colored plants.

And beneath them all, wrapped in roots and with mushrooms sprouting out of them, were the bodies. They could only have been Undead, every one of them looking placidly asleep without a touch of decay. Darkness did that to them, made them collapse until the sun shone again. It was never enough to bury them when all coffins rot and soil held so much sunlight. Not enough to dismember them when the touch of light would make them whole again, flesh seeking itself out in vining tendrils of meat and blood.

Yet here they did not move, and the undisturbed growth around them spoke to how long they had remained.

“We take the mushrooms out once they’re big enough to use as fertilizer outside,” Zadven explained. “You could probably eat them, but personally I’d feel weird about it.”

“They’re eating them,” Leonas murmured, his gaze in the middle distance of a memory.

“Fungus is an in-between thing,” Zadven said. “Neither plant nor animal, neither living nor dead. It can eat away at the living and kill it, or eat away at the dead to make life from it. Grown in a poison swamp, they are poison; grown in the Faewild, they are magic. Getting the Undead into the dark is what lets them sleep, but once the spores get into them, it draws the sunlight out faster than they can take it in. It’s enough to bring them as close as they can get to an eternal rest.”

“But it still doesn’t let them die,” Minnow said. “Not really.”

“They can be prevented,” Zadven said, “but they cannot be fixed.”

“I’m worried there’s going to be more of them soon,” Minnow said. “Waiting until nightfall to relocate them all and wait for mushrooms to sprout doesn’t seem ideal.”

“A war?” Zadven asked.

“Something like that,” Leonas said.

“You didn’t hear it from me,” Zadven said, “but you’re not the first Hero to come to the Shadow Garden.”

Minnow blinked. “No?”

“Elias,” Zadven said.

“What.” It was a large voice to come from such a small ball of fluff on her shoulder.

“Did he not consider you heretics?” Leonas asked.

“It was before my time,” Zadven said. “I am made to understand that he made no secret what he thought of us, but his transgressions stopped at being a rude old bat. Age either drove him mad, or else rendered him too sane. The Teachers who spoke to him didn’t know him well enough to say, and it felt rude to ask. I assume you don’t recall?”

“I don’t,” Minnow confirmed. No memories at all, only his house and his garden and the boyfriend he’d murdered. And the soul, of course, but that was as much hers as it had ever been his.

“He said he was seeking the Nightshard,” Zadven said. “An ancient artifact, the magical instrument of a powerful witch imbued with their very soul. The legend goes that anyone who touches it loses every drop of sunlight in their body, so how he was planning to pick the thing up is anyone’s guess. Didn’t exactly report back, so we don’t know if he ever found it. Feel free to report back later, by the way, it’ll make a Teacher’s job easier someday.”

Minnow couldn’t think of anything like that among the things Elias had left her. There’d been a few locked rooms, secret doors, and trapdoors in her house—of course there had. Some safes, a vault. Normal things. There had been artifacts, but they’d been the boring kind that made her better at fighting. A few fallen stars, but that was nothing compared to what she’d found on her own. Mostly it was a lot of papers with names and numbers that meant nothing to her, with all those names dead. He’d kept a list of everyone he thought should be grateful he hadn’t killed them and why, that had kept her entertained for a few days. It was almost entirely petty squabbles with his neighbors and it had gone on for three volumes that somehow never escalated to actual violence.

It had made her feel retroactively a bit guilty about killing Yugo. But he’d deserved it. The judge had even said so after Leonas told the judge what to say.

It was fine. She was allowed to have one thing in common with the person she used to be, even if he sucked. A stopped clock was right about wanting to kill his neighbors twice a day.

“Should it be over there?” Leonas asked, pointing. A Rootboar with blossoms hanging like garlands from its antlers was trotting around the unmoving Undead.

“Wisteria likes to do the rounds,” Zadven shrugged. “The Undead don’t seem to notice monsters. Moonlight means nothing to them.”

Wisteria Rootboar stopped and sniffed at a glowing mushroom before delicately taking it in its snout and tearing it away from the Undead it was sprouting from.

“It’s got a real knack for telling when they’re ready to harvest,” Zadven said with a touch of pride.

Minnow felt the Shimmerbat on her shoulder move closer to her neck, nearly hiding beneath her hair.

“I need to poop,” Minnow announced.

“For fuck’s sake,” Leonas said, rubbing at his face.

“There’s a public privy if you head back where we came from, near the classroom,” Zadven said. “We mark them with little droplet shapes, very tactful. You want I should show you the way, or are you good?”

“I’m good,” Minnow said, heading back to the tunnel. “I’ll meet you guys back at that square when we’re done, okay?” She didn’t wait for an answer as she hurried away, but she also didn’t look for the privy. She ducked back into the empty classroom instead. When she was sure there weren’t any other monsters present, she pulled Karzarul down off her shoulder. She looked down at him, hands cupped to hold him close to her chest. “I’m sorry about all this,” she said. “It seemed like you needed a minute.”

“Yeah,” he said. He reminded her of a dandelion puff wrapped in banana leaves.

“You feel it, right?” she asked. “The other monsters.” He said nothing. “Before I thought you could only sense them, but now I think you must feel it. It explains a lot if you can feel each other’s feelings.”

He still didn’t answer, which she took as an answer.

Little things all adding up. The way he could control the beasts like Shimmerbats but not the people like Brutelings. How agitated he’d been since they’d come close to the other monsters of Neocropolis. How agitated they became. The way Violet looked at him, the way he couldn’t stay on Monster Mountain for long.

Minnow wanted to believe that she’d figured it out, assembled the clues to solve a mystery. It wasn’t enough. It had to be remembering. Another thing she knew without learning, another person she’d been who’d known him. Sometimes she resented the other selves who’d learned these things. He should belong to who she was, and not who she’d been. Little moments of revelation and intimacy that had been stolen from her by herself. Even if she’d somehow remembered all at once the exact circumstances of how her past self had learned this thing, it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t be a moment between Minnow and Karzarul.

“I know it’s going to take a long time,” Minnow said finally. “Because I’m new, and we’re new. And I know you’re still worried about fate making everything go wrong. It might take hundreds of years, or thousands. But someday… it’s not going to be like this. You’re going to get used to it. Leonas and I, we’re both going to make you get used to it. Until you can come to a place like this, with all these old monsters, and you won’t even notice anymore. You won’t get overwhelmed, or surprised, or upset. You won’t even notice, because you’ll be used to always feeling cherished. Like you’re supposed to be.”

She lifted her hands to kiss the top of his head.

---

It had been a while since Leonas had a nightmare. It turned out that meeting his worst nightmare and then facefucking him was extraordinarily therapeutic. Not broadly applicable knowledge, but good to know.

So it came as some surprise to see Karzarul snarling at him, all bells and horns and bared fangs.

“That doesn’t work anymore,” Leonas said, dismissing the dream construct. Or, trying to. Leonas narrowed his eyes at the moon-white Impyr, standing in the hazy void of Leonas’ dreamscape. He still couldn’t get the hang of making things on purpose. “What?”

Karzarul lunged at him.

Leonas screamed. He managed to pull together enough self-preservation instinct to remember that he could do whatever he wanted in dreams. With a flail of his arm, Karzarul was knocked chest-first to the ground, bound in metal around his arms and waist. He roared as the fall knocked the air out of him. Since it was a dream, the metal was only metal; no sunlight shackles, no power tingling in his fingertips. Just Karzarul on the ground, growling.

“What the fuck?” Leonas demanded.

Karzarul, still growling, did not explain.

Despite himself, Leonas still had to suppress his fear in order to get closer to him. Leonas pressed a knee against Karzarul’s back to grab one of his horns, using it to tilt his head backward. That snarling face clarified nothing. “This is actually you, isn’t it?” Leonas asked. “Are you having some kind of episode? I don’t know what this is.”

Karzarul let out an animal roar, nearly giving Leonas another heart attack.

Something about the canyon having an effect on him? The Moon Cultists, the monsters, the presence of the Undead?

“Hm.”

Leonas bent lower, putting more of his weight onto his knee to press between Karzarul’s shoulder blades. He put his hand under Karzarul’s jaw to turn his head awkwardly toward him. Karzarul snapped at the air, but not convincingly.

“You’re not struggling very hard,” Leonas observed. “Do you prefer being down where you belong?”

Leonas could hear the hitch in his breath, the way his growling hiccupped.

“Ridiculous man,” Leonas sighed, letting him go. He tipped sideways to sit directly on Karzarul’s back, admiring the width of his shoulders as he pulled his knees up to sit cross-legged. Leonas stopped halfway, and experimentally pressed the toe of his boot against the back of Karzarul’s head until his horns hit the ground. He could feel the rise and fall of Karzarul’s chest as he breathed, the enormous mass of the man.

Karzarul could have stood if he wanted. He could have tried. It didn’t matter that it was Leonas’ dreamscape. As dreamscapes went, it wasn’t even a good one. They may as well have been inside a cloud.

“I am well aware of Minnow’s predilections,” Leonas said. “I am aware of what it is you do for her.”

Tattered and bruised, gasping and crying out, great pale hands holding her down.

Leonas still wasn’t good enough to keep the vision from manifesting in the dreamscape, but he ignored it and tried to pretend he was doing it on purpose.

“It is not a service I provide,” Leonas said. “For either of you. If you’re hoping to coax me into kicking the shit out of you, you’ve come to the wrong person. Some of us are civilized.”

Karzarul’s snarl was more a huff of annoyance.

“Minnow did tell me,” Leonas said. “She said you feel what the other monsters feel.”

Karzarul quieted but still said nothing.

“I would hate that, personally,” Leonas continued. “I already know I’m a miserable old fuck, I don’t need contrast to drive the point home.” He wiggled his ankle, the vague notion of grinding the sole of his boot into Karzarul’s perfect silky hair. “Were you hoping I’d treat you the way a monster deserves?”

Karzarul sighed in resignation.

“I can try doing for you what I do for Minnow,” Leonas said. “You don’t have to talk. Keep grumbling about it, if you’d like. But you’ll need to sit up and keep your hands to yourself. Try to fight me and I’ll, I don’t know. Put you in a cage or something.” Leonas slid off Karzarul’s back and stood, straightening out his clothes. Karzarul was, as he’d predicted, fully capable of rising to his knees despite the band around his arms. He had a petulant air around him that did indeed remind Leonas of Minnow. His head was bowed, his hair in a slight disarray that looked calculated.

Or else he could look that good by accident. The thought annoyed Leonas, but he knew better than to believe it. He’d had a better glimpse of how much effort the man was willing to put into a good pose.

Leonas circled him, rubbing his hands together in an idle fidget as he thought. He decided a table would work best, and brought it up from underneath Karzarul, lifting him off the ground. Karzarul looked briefly alarmed, which pleased Leonas.

“That’s better,” Leonas said. He could, if nothing else, dream up a table. He added chains to it while he was at it, replacing the band he’d used with thin shackles around Karzarul’s wrists and ankles. He wondered what it said about him that this was so much easier than flowers. “Can I dress you up when you’re here, I wonder?” Leonas traced his fingertips along Karzarul’s jawline while he considered it. Their eyes didn’t meet, didn’t look at each other the way people were meant to look at people. Leonas looked at him in parts, like a problem in need of solving, like a thing.

He was so goddamn pretty already, was the trouble. The little chains that attached the panels of his skirt, the bells in his hair. Leonas touched Karzarul’s tunic to see if he could make it disappear, and he could. He touched Karzarul’s throat to give him a copper collar stamped with an image of the sun, but decided he didn’t like the aesthetics. He’d rather have a pretty picture than stake an ugly claim. He replaced it with silver, all covered in moons. He liked that better. Less like a prisoner, more like a pet.

Was it sweet or sad that Karzarul had come here? Somewhere Minnow couldn’t see, somewhere he could only ever lash out uselessly. Throwing a tantrum. Leonas didn’t know if this qualified as intimacy, being allowed to see him pitch a fit. It might be trust, or it might be that Karzarul didn’t care what Leonas thought of him.

“This is easier with Minnow,” Leonas said, running his fingers down Karzarul’s arms. “She’s usually got some injury or another I can poke at. It’s hard to know where to start with you.” Leonas picked up one of Karzarul’s hands to trace the lines in his palms, then flipped them over to look at his claws. It was odd, the lack of fingernails. Leonas squeezed one of Karzarul’s fingertips and observed the curve and sharp point of the claw that emerged. He kept holding his hand as he reached up to rub the tuft on one of Karzarul’s ears. Karzarul glowed.

“It’s odd,” Leonas said. “That so many humanoid monsters are… cat-like. There aren’t many feline beast monsters. I’ve only ever seen the Shadestalker. You seem to prefer to be a Howler.” Leonas ran his thumb down Karzarul’s cheek. “I like trying to figure it out. Why you make the choices you do about how you’d like to be seen.” He leaned closer, moving his hand to the top of Karzarul’s head and scratching at his scalp with his nails. “Is it supposed to be a secret that you like to be a good boy?”

Karzarul’s tail thumped against the table. He was shining bright as a full moon in summer and he looked miserable about it.

“A good dog is still a dog, you know,” Leonas said. Karzarul shuddered. “I do wonder sometimes what you’re made of.” Leonas ran a fingertip along the cuticle of one of Karzarul’s horns. “Whether there’s muscle and bone underneath your skin.”

“There isn’t,” Karzarul said. It was the first time he’d spoken since he’d showed up.

“Don’t tell me how you know that,” Leonas said.

“The first time I came here,” Karzarul said haltingly. “When you didn’t know it was me. Would you have…”

Leonas touched Karzarul’s chin to tilt his face toward him, meeting his eyes. “Are you asking if I was going to have a wet dream about you?” Karzarul looked so abashed that Leonas couldn’t maintain the distance, leaning forward to press his face into Karzarul’s neck. “Don’t put that idea in my head.”

“Which?”

“You,” Leonas sighed. “Keeping quiet and playing dumb so I’d fuck you.”

“Would you have?” Karzarul asked.

“I don’t know,” Leonas admitted. “I’ve had sex dreams before. Not like that.” He slid his fingers into Karzarul’s hair, wanting to hold him closer but not wanting to be held. “It’s complicated.”

“Yeah,” Karzarul said.

“I’ve had a lot of bad sex,” Leonas said.

“Oh.”

“I’m not used to wanting more than Minnow. I’d never wanted someone the way I wanted you. I didn’t know what to do with it. I don’t know if I could have imagined more. Now I can, but I wouldn’t want to dream it. Not when I could have you.” Leonas kissed the spot beneath Karzarul’s ear. “Am I talking too much?”

“No.”

“I didn’t used to be like this,” Leonas said. “Before Minnow, before the… the fake ward. I wasn’t some lonely waif. I had friends. I could pass for a regular little boy, sometimes. It doesn’t seem that long ago. I don’t know where the time went. I don’t know how it turned me into this, when I don’t even remember most of it. Days passing one after the other and nothing happening, it doesn’t seem like anything happened. I don’t know what happened.”

“Time is like that,” Karzarul said. Leonas realized he was holding him very tightly, his face buried in Karzarul’s hair, while Karzarul’s shackled hands remained neatly on his knees.

“It was years before I realized why he never let me meet with anyone’s sons,” Leonas said. “Always daughters, I didn’t get it until later. I felt. I don’t know what I felt. He never admitted it. I could have argued if he admitted it. I don’t know if it’s like the, the food thing. If other people have that idea. Masculine and feminine, active and passive, giving and taking.”

“We don’t,” Karzarul said. “Or, I don’t.”

“I have too much sunlight in me,” Leonas explained. “Too much the Empress. Too much of the things that killed the Empire. A sickness in my soul making me predisposed to letting men rule me.” He giggled, but it came out sounding wrong. He put his hand on the collar around Karzarul’s neck, though his fingers weren’t long enough to wrap around his throat. “The funny part is. I really believe he would have been fine with it. If he’d known that I was like this. Sadism is all well and good, so long as we’re not allowing ourselves to be sodomized.”

“Oh,” Karzarul said. “When you said giving and taking you meant—”

“Yes.”

“Your dad thought you were a bottom?”

“Please don’t say those words in that order ever again.”

“That’s weird,” Karzarul said.

“I am aware.”

“That wouldn’t have made you like her at all.”

“What?”

“Lynette,” Karzarul clarified. “Not that I ever—she wasn’t subtle.”

“It’s all very stupid,” Leonas said. “When I try to explain it to you. When Kavid was explaining it. I want you to understand, is all. You ask if I would dream a version of you I could fuck, and I hear an accusation. That I would insult you that way.”

“You stepped on me,” Karzarul reminded him.

“It’s different,” Leonas said. “The way a man insults another man, and the way he emasculates him.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Karzarul said.

“Bullshit.”

“Unmanning. I understand that, I don’t know what it means in this context.”

“It’s stupid,” Leonas said. “I told you it’s stupid. I didn’t think that I believed it, I thought I knew better, I don’t like that this idea is in me. Minnow is better than either one of us, I know that.”

“You’re speaking very quickly,” Karzarul said.

“I know.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Your clerics don’t like women,” Karzarul said.

“… yeah.”

“There’s a taboo against treating men like women.”

“Yeah.”

“Which doesn’t extend to head, for some reason.”

Leonas’ fingers twitched. “That’s…” He swallowed. “You’re not supposed to do that to women, either,” he mumbled. “So it’s. It doesn’t count.”

“You lost me again.”

“It’s indulgent,” Leonas said.

“Like chocolate,” Karzarul said. “Did you think it would make you sick?”

“I might be,” Leonas said. “It could be symptomatic. Something you could look back at later and realize it was a sign of something wrong. Couldn’t stop sticking my dick in sharp things.”

“Is that feminine?”

“Giving in to temptation despite the obvious danger?” Leonas asked. “I suppose it would be, at that.”

“Convenient for men,” Karzarul said.

“Isn’t it?” Leonas let his hands rest on Karzarul’s bare shoulders. “I wonder what it meant to be a man, when moonlight decided to be one.”

“I don’t know,” Karzarul admitted. “I wanted to be like him. That was all.” Leonas hummed. “I did wonder. Later. If he would have liked me better. But nothing else fit the same way. I can worship beauty, but I can’t protect it.”

Leonas pulled back enough that he could press his forehead to Karzarul’s. “I don’t know why I thought using the standards of a foreign culture long-dead before I was born would be enough to make me seem less effete, but fuck me I guess.” He cupped Karzarul’s face to kiss him, giving up on the shackles and making them disappear. “I can try to protect you, if you’d like to worship me,” Leonas teased against his mouth.

Karzarul kissed him back, and Leonas didn’t stop him. He still kept his hands to himself. “I’d like that.”

“It wasn’t literal,” Leonas said.

“You guys are always saying that,” Minnow said, unrolling another of her maps into the middle of their picnic blanket.

“The world doesn’t have an end,” Leonas pointed out. “It’s poetic license, it means they chased them extremely far, that’s all.”

“Maybe,” Minnow said, rather than point out the strong possibility that Leonas’ ancestors who drove the heretics from Fort Astielle were actually stupid.

“What if they were stupid?” Karzarul asked. Minnow nudged him with her elbow.

Leonas drummed his fingers against his own crossed arms. “Yes, we have fully established that they were in fact quite stupid, thank you.”

Karzarul moved to pat Leonas on the arm, changing his mind when it was too late to pretend that hadn’t been what he was doing. He patted the air beside Leonas’ arm instead. Leonas huffed irritably, snatching Karzarul’s gloved hand out of the air and lacing their fingers without looking at him. His expression didn’t change. Karzarul’s only acknowledgment was to glow faintly and keep his attention fixed on Minnow’s maps.

“We’re only looking at the big-picture maps, because it can’t be any of the places I’ve already been,” Minnow said. “I would have noticed if there were Moon Cultists there. They cut up dead bodies, right?”

“Sun zealots seem to consider it their defining feature,” Karzarul said. “I don’t know that it’s a tenet of their faith. It could be that they were the only ones willing to do the job.”

“That isn’t less true than it was then,” Minnow said. “I would have noticed if I went somewhere and there were bodies being cut up, is all I mean. I’ve been outside of Astielle before, but I’ve never asked what they do with their corpses. All the ones I make get cut up when I kill them, so if Ocrae has a policy they’ve never mentioned it.”

“Who would have mentioned it?” Leonas asked. “Were you often beheading people in mixed company? Dismembering people in the middle of the market?”

“Not often,” Minnow said. “Not to the point where they thought it was worth asking me to clean up after myself while I was at it.”

“Great,” Leonas said.

“Before we left Monster Mountain,” Karzarul said, “Violet mentioned certain diplomatic missions outside of Astielle. We could ask if he knows anything relevant.”

“Good idea,” Minnow said, digging through her bag to find her Seeing Stone. She paused when she found it, staring at the smooth surface. Her previous Seeing Stone had only been able to connect to Leonas.

“It works like the Doors,” Leonas said. “Focus on the connection you want to make.”

She nodded, touching the etching that let her make contact.

“Lady Minnow,” Violet greeted a moment after the connection had been made, when he was able to see who it was. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“Do you know what other countries are doing with their dead bodies?” Minnow asked.

There was a moment of silence that could easily have been confused for a broken connection. “Did you want some?” Violet asked cheerfully.

“No,” Minnow said. “I’d just do that on my own, if that was all.”

“Of course.”

“Astielle leaves their bodies empty and whole,” Minnow explained.

“That isn’t good,” Violet said.

“Karzarul says Moon Cultists used to be in charge of funeral rites,” Minnow said. “He thought you’d know if they still were, in other places.”

“I can’t say I’d thought to inquire after anyone’s corpses,” Violet said, “but if you’ll give me some time, I’ll ask around and see what I can find.”

“May I see the Stone?” Karzarul asked, and Minnow handed it off to him, careful not to let the connection break between them. Karzarul hadn’t taken his hand from Leonas.

“Hel-lo your Majesty,” Violet said.

«Cut the shit,» Karzarul said in Aekhite. «Did Vaelon ever talk to me about the Undead?»

«Not really?» Violet said. «You’d think he would have, since he was fucking around at the Necropolis without us—you. Do you think it’s fake?»

«No, we saw some,» Karzarul said.

«No shit?»

«They’re under the Ruined Temple, they’ve been there long enough that there’s a Door in there,» Karzarul said.

«That has implications,» Violet said.

«Yeah,» Karzarul agreed. «I know sometimes you have more clarity than I do about memories.»

«Can’t help you on this one, love,» Violet said.

«Were you going to offer Minnow corpses?» Karzarul asked.

«You know I was,» Violet said.

«I can make my own corpses,» Minnow reminded them again.

Karzarul stared at Minnow. Leonas looked between the two of them. “What the fuck are you people saying right now.”

---

Minnow brought them to another nondescript cabin, this one in the middle of a forest. She’d been using it for drying rare herbs and flowers, so they hung from the ceiling like a field growing downward. They set up their bedrolls on the floor, Minnow’s next to Karzarul’s so that she could curl herself sideways into his chest. Ordinarily, she would have been fine draped half on top of him and all tangled together, but this time she liked her forehead against his sternum and his hand pressed against her back. She’d considered asking him to be a Savagewing again, to box her in with soft feathers and the weight of him. Except that Leonas wouldn’t be able to see her if they did that. He liked to keep his bedroll at a distance, but it still felt important not to exclude him.

She felt a brush of air behind her and realized Leonas was rolling out his bed for the night beside hers. She started to pull away from Karzarul so that she could see.

“Don’t,” Leonas warned. She stilled. She felt very aware of his movement behind her as Karzarul moved his hand to rest at her arm. Then Leonas wrapped an arm around her waist, chest against her back and nuzzling at her hair. She couldn’t help a happy hum, pressing back against him and uncurling enough that their thighs touched. “Don’t make it weird,” Leonas said.

“I’m not,” she protested. “I like the way we fit, is all.”

“We don’t fit,” Leonas scoffed. “You’re too fucking short.”

“I didn’t say we did,” Minnow said. “I just said I liked it.”

“Hmph.”

Karzarul wrapped his arm around both of them.

---

When Violet contacted them again, it was to give them a lead he’d found in Vado. Most places did cremation, and Vado was no exception, but they had interesting rituals around war he considered relevant. Because battles made such a dangerous amount of dead, it was considered best practices to travel first to Dragon Canyon. In Dragon Canyon, it was said, the ground was full of ghosts. Shout the time and place of the battle into the empty space, and if the ghosts called it back it meant they’d know to be there. A long-dead ghost was said to be a ward against misplaced sunlight, capable of stealing it for themselves in order to become tangible. Entire battles had been rescheduled due to uncooperative ghosts.

Leonas was not thrilled by the prospect of following a lead from someone who did not understand echoes. Karzarul was more interested.

“They didn’t used to call it that,” Karzarul said.

“What did they used to call it?” Minnow asked. She was sitting on Karzarul’s back again, facing Leonas. Dragon Canyon was too far from any Rainbow Doors to get there easily on anyone else’s feet. She’d pointed out that Mount Saturn was near enough, with a tall enough peak and a steep enough angle to be able to glide down for an hour or more. Leonas had not found this a compelling argument for that mode of travel.

Minnow’s maps only showed one or two roads that passed into or over Dragon Canyon, and none of them were as near as a random Door near a ruined fort. Any trails that had once been taken to this place were gone now, grown over with tall and weedy grasses.

“They called it Spider’s Gorge,” Karzarul said.

“Oh, fuck that,” Leonas said.

“We don’t know why they called it that,” Minnow said.

“The giant spiders,” Karzarul said.

“Fuck that,” Leonas repeated.

“We don’t know if there’s still spiders,” Minnow said. “They could be gone. If they’re spider monsters that means Karzarul can take care of them. Right?”

“Spiders aren’t monsters,” Karzarul said. “Spiders are their own thing. I can’t turn into a spider.”

“Small blessings,” Leonas said.

“Not that I’ve ever tried,” Karzarul added.

“Keep not trying,” Leonas said.

“Do you not like spiders?” Minnow asked.

“There are a lot of things I wouldn’t like if there were enough of them to name a gorge after,” Leonas said, “particularly not when they are also giant. Do you think I’d be happier about the giant quail in Quail Valley?”

“That one would definitely be full of ghosts,” Karzarul said.

“What?” Leonas said.

“Quail love dying,” Minnow explained. “Most spiders are harmless,” she added.

“Most,” Leonas said. “Not all.”

“Do we know why they call it Dragon Canyon?” Karzarul asked.

“I would assume because dragons are said to have carved the world,” Leonas said. “The trails they flew left echoes in all the winds and currents.”

“That would have been equally as true before,” Karzarul said, “when they called it Spider’s Gorge.”

“They needed a new name after they got rid of the spiders,” Minnow suggested.

“We can hope,” Leonas said.

“Maybe,” Karzarul said, unconvinced.

“It’s a big canyon,” Minnow said. “It has a serpentine shape. It’s the most dragon-y landmark I’ve ever seen.”

Karzarul sighed. “That could make sense,” he admitted.

“Have you ever seen a dragon?” Minnow asked.

“I was told…” Karzarul hesitated. “Vaelon told me,” he amended. “That every dragon sleeps eternal. For a dragon to rise would portend the remaking of the world.”

“It’s as likely they all died out long ago,” Leonas said. “If they ever lived.”

“Of course they lived,” Minnow said. “Karzarul says I said so.” The sound of a bell rang in her head, and she jumped off Karzarul’s back without warning him first. He slowed to a stop as she walked in widening circles.

“Another star?” Karzarul asked.

“Yeah,” Minnow said. “I guess I never bothered to come this way before.”

“That’s surprising, considering,” Karzarul said.

“I always meant to,” Minnow said. “It looked like a place that would have interesting things.” She stopped and pulled out the Starsword to dig at the ground. “There used to be a lot of those fake Taurils around here,” she explained. “I could handle them, but I didn’t like to. Every fight was a whole big thing. You know?”

“Real Taurils are stronger,” Karzarul asserted.

“Sure,” Minnow said noncommittally, pulling the fallen star out of the ground and brushing the dirt from it. “I figured I’d wait until I had a reason to go to Dragon Canyon, that way I could get everything out of the way at once. But nothing ever came up.”

“I wonder what he was hiding,” Leonas said, looking toward the canyon in the distance. From so far away it looked like a mark in the ground, could easily be confused for a river. The size and the depth of it would not become obvious until they were closer, where the scale would become harrowing. “To have placed so many Hollow monsters here.”

“Moon Cultists,” Minnow said.

“It was a rhetorical question,” Leonas snapped. “I wasn’t looking for an answer, we don’t even know if that’s true.”

Minnow pulled herself up onto Karzarul’s back, and being reminded how many Taurils she’d once killed in this field made it feel strange again. She regretted not letting him pick her up, which would have been easier to separate from sense memories. She wanted to wrap herself around his torso, nuzzle at his neck, listen to him speak and remember all the ways that he was different. She sat instead, pressing her palms against his velvet beneath her, leaning her back too-forcefully against his. “It’s Moon Cultists,” Minnow said with certainty.

Leonas rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Probably,” he muttered.

“Old timey Astians thought the canyon was the edge of the world,” she added.

“Let it go,” Leonas said.

Minnow looked out at the great expanse of grasslands around them. She imagined seeing the shape of a monster on the distant horizon and knowing it still wasn’t far enough.

“Can you run?” Minnow asked Karzarul, tilting her head back. Her hair might have tangled with his, if his was not always so neat. “I like the way the world looks when you run.”

Karzarul’s hooves pushed harder against the ground, dug into the earth to launch himself forward. The grasses closest to them were a blur of green, the horizon distant enough to almost stand still. It felt like the air was moving fast enough to be visible, the way air become audible when something whipped through it quick enough.

Leonas’ seat in his saddle was perfectly secure, but he still glowed with magic to hold himself tight. Minnow couldn’t see his face through the light of it but could imagine his expression well enough. She almost felt guilty, but not quite. He had curls that ought to be windswept. It was one of many wrongs that they hadn’t been, but it wasn’t her fault if he wasn’t used to it yet.

It was a correction, in a way. Or at least she could pretend it was, to justify it to herself.

Karzarul slowed too soon, not close enough to the canyon and not yet to a point where she felt ready to be done. She might have asked him to go in a big circle for a while if she hadn’t thought Leonas would protest.

“What’s the matter?” Leonas asked, his magic’s light dissipated.

“Give me a minute,” Karzarul said, barely advancing. Minnow leaned sideways to look around him. He was holding his hands slightly outward, palms downward, the way she held her hands when she was looking for a star. She wondered if she’d always done it, if he picked it up from her or if she picked it up from him.

“More Shimmerbats?” Minnow asked.

“No,” Karzarul said. “Dragon Canyon is a misnomer.”

Leonas narrowed his eyes. “Is it spiders.”

Karzarul started to speak, then stopped. He pressed a hand to his head, the spot right behind his horns. “It’s. Weird.” His steps slowed to a stop. “I should. You should wait. Here.”

“No,” Minnow said immediately.

His legs wobbled. “I’m having. A problem.”

Minnow jumped from his back again, and Leonas followed her lead to descend. “What’s wrong?” Minnow asked, running her hand over his foreleg as she circled around him. It didn’t do her much good, because he’d started rubbing his face with both hands. It was a gesture she associated more with Leonas than with him.

There was a great rush of air as a shadow emerged from the ground, growing larger until it blotted out the sun. The canyon it had come from obscured its size until it was closer, inky black and all of it too much. Too-wide wings, too many legs, too many eyes. A sky of black scales.

“Drakonis!” Minnow said, delighted despite herself. She hadn’t seen one until Karzarul took the form. She was glad to have never met a Hollow one. “This is a real monster, right?”

“He can’t sense the Hollow monsters,” Leonas murmured, staying close to Karzarul. If Karzarul’s legs had been steadier, he might have ducked right beneath him. Minnow sympathized. Her own instincts were to run and hide, to find a safe place to observe. Figure out if there was a safe way to avoid it on the way to her goals. Despite what Leonas seemed to think, running headlong at the enemy with sword-first was never her first choice.

Minnow pressed her hand more firmly against Karzarul’s leg as Drakonis swooped toward the ground, wings catching the air to land heavy in the grass. Minnow could make out the shape of it, something she hadn’t been able to do when Karzarul was clutching her in enormous claws. It had a long, stretched-out snout with three eyes on either side of it. Horns erupted from the back of its head in crooked shapes like the branches of a tree in winter. Tusks jutted out on either side of its mouth, pointing upward and downward. When it sniffed the air, its snout moved more than it seemed like a snout should, a nose with aspirations toward being a trunk. It blinked in waves, eyes all down the length of its body blinking one after the other before starting over at the beginning.

Black Drakonis touched its nose to Karzarul, and Karzarul uncovered his face to press his forehead against its snout.

“You’re happy to see each other?” Minnow asked after a moment. Karzarul nodded. He and Drakonis were in silent communion, and she wondered how much he felt.

He couldn’t read the minds of monsters, that much was clear. She assumed his sense of them was something felt, but she did not know how much and hadn’t asked. Even if she did, he might not be able to explain it. She had no powers or magic. She had a sword. Perhaps Leonas would understand it, the way he knew how to dream when she didn’t.

“She has been here,” Karzarul said, “a very long time.”

Minnow noticed the mushrooms growing on Black Drakonis’ horns, the crystals wrapped in wire hanging from them.

“Can we keep going?” Minnow asked. “Or do you need to stop?”

“We don’t have to stop,” Karzarul said.

“If you were small, I could carry you,” Minnow said.

“No,” Karzarul said, shaking his head. “I would rather… I don’t want to do that.” Minnow patted his leg. He let Drakonis go, and she raised her head to turn it around, her body trailing after her like a streamer. Walking ahead with her wings tucked in, she stopped before she’d gone far enough for her body to straighten out. She turned her head back around to look at them, nose twitching.

“We’re coming,” Karzarul said, waving her off. She walked only far enough ahead that her body was a straight line before turning and twitching her nose at them again. She made a rolling sound like a drum clucking. She waited until Karzarul started walking after her to forge ahead, but every few minutes she would turn around to make sure they were still following.

“I know we were joking about Quail Valley,” Minnow said, “but I’m getting a distinct ‘mother hen’ sort of feeling.”

“What sorts of mother hens have you met?” Leonas asked.

“Chickens,” she said.

“Chickens aren’t winged nightmares,” he said.

“Did you not meet my chickens?” she asked.

“When would I have met your chickens?”

“In my yard.”

“Pardon me for being a bit distracted by having left my house for the first time in twenty years to find my girlfriend enjoying post-coital pancakes with the man who was going to kill me,” Leonas said.

“I made eggs,” Minnow corrected. “From my chickens.”

“I stand corrected,” Leonas said.

Minnow walked in a way that brought her closer to Leonas, dangerously close to leaning against him. “You called me your girlfriend again,” she said.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “I like it.”

“I wasn’t going to kill you,” Karzarul said.

“Obviously circumstances have changed,” Leonas said, “but let’s not lie to ourselves. You were fully prepared to kill me. The fact that it would have been due to a misunderstanding, or whatever you want to call it, would not have made me less dead. I am well aware, knowing what I know now, that the situation could have been resolved by my being even the slightest bit diplomatic. Since that was never going to happen, that is not relevant to the facts, which are that you would have killed me.”

Black Drakonis seemed ready to come back for them the next time she turned around, but Karzarul shooed her away. “I wouldn’t have killed you for being rude,” Karzarul said. “… again. That was a mistake. When that happened. I’ve apologized for that.”

“To me?” Leonas asked.

“To someone,” Karzarul said.

“Would you have killed me if you thought I was a danger to Minnow?”

“This isn’t a fair conversation,” Karzarul said, “when you’ve spent most of your life trying to get Minnow to kill me. That’s attempted murder. All I had was intent.”

“My point,” Leonas said, “was that when a person fears for their life, they tend to focus on that. And not chickens. Which were not a threat to my life. Which is yet another difference between poultry and a Drakonis.”

“I think that what this really shows,” Minnow said, “is that you have some fundamental misconceptions about which things in this world want you dead.”

“I don’t know how that’s your takeaway,” Leonas said.

“Spiders want to mind their own business,” she said. “A spider has no malice in its heart. If a spider is trying to kill you, a mistake has happened somewhere. A mother hen will always choose murder.”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better about the enormous monster you compared to a hen?” Leonas asked.

“I wasn’t saying you shouldn’t be scared of her,” Minnow said. “If Karzarul couldn’t control her, we’d all be running in the other direction. You’re worried for the wrong reasons, is all.”

“She’s enormous and can kill me,” Leonas said.

“Lots of things are enormous,” Minnow said. “Lots of things can kill you. You don’t need to worry about most of them.”

“My worries are not limited by such trivialities as objective reality,” Leonas said. “Why would they be limited by needs? I barely even know what it’s like to have needs. I’m a Prince. I want for nothing.”

“You don’t have to say things just because they’re supposed to be true,” Minnow said.

Leonas pressed his mouth into a thin line.

Black Drakonis clucked back at them one last time before descending into the canyon. The three of them followed the trailing tip of her tail, leaning over the edge to see where she went.

“Fuck that,” Leonas said immediately.

“What do you have against canyons?” Minnow asked.

Karzarul narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at Leonas. “Do you have something against canyons?” he asked.

“What? No.” Leonas scowled at them both. “When would I have been to a canyon to form an opinion. I lived in a tower. I haven’t seen a canyon, met a chicken, or developed a fear of heights.” Leonas pointed to the series of ladders leading downward, sculpted vines growing into the stone walls. “That,” he said. “Fuck that right there in particular. That is not safe, you will not convince me that’s safe, and if a contractor in Astielle tried to get away with that I’d have them beheaded.”

“It’s fine,” Minnow said dismissively. “They’re bridge vines. See?” She pointed further down, to where they extended across the span of the canyon. “I’ve used them before, they work great. Karzarul, you can’t climb like that.” She tried to reach upward to unhook one of the leather bags, but she couldn’t reach. Karzarul unhooked them all and set them down on the ground before shifting into a Savagewing. They grabbed the bags they liked to keep with them, and Leonas tossed a handful of soil over the rest. His eyes glowed, and the specks of dirt all flared bright before settling into a disguise. Their items would look like a particularly disinteresting rock until the magic Leonas had used to bewitch the soil wore out.

A surprising amount of magic could fit into dirt. The reasons why were one of the more boring aspects of gardening, which Minnow hadn’t bothered to retain.

Karzarul jumped off the edge of the cliffside to follow after Drakonis, his wings spread wide as he used them to slow his descent. Minnow took the ladder but didn’t lower herself step-by-step. Instead, she eyeballed the distance to the lowest rung she could see and let go, falling through the air and catching a rung before her speed was too great. It pulled at the vine, which made an unhappy sound but didn’t break or tear away from the cliff face.

“Don’t do that,” Leonas called down after her, but she ignored him and did it again. She heard the sound of a bell and made a sound of distress. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a star in here somewhere!” she complained, pressing her ear against the stone on either side of the ladder. It didn’t make sense to do so, because the sound was felt more than heard and didn’t involve her ears. It was still habit.

Leonas didn’t take the ladder at all. His eyes glowed, a platform of sunlight only large enough for his boots lowering him down at a steady pace. His arms were crossed over his chest, his expression bemused. Minnow had already unsheathed the Starsword and was trying to dig at the cliff face with it. The Starsword could go through solid stone, eventually.

“You look like a moron,” Leonas said, touching his fingertips to the stone. She could see light pulsing at his fingertips, but couldn’t make out what he was doing beyond that. A few beams of light emerged from the stone to the right of where she’d been hacking at it. “Try there,” he said finally as it faded. Then he resumed his controlled descent.

Minnow had to stretch her entire body to jam the Starsword point-first into the weak spot he’d found in the stone, and it crumbled away around the blade. She sheathed it again and managed to clear it out enough to find the fallen star, though her fingertips could only barely reach it. She was relieved to be able to shove it in her bag and resume falling. Stretching herself out to reach things was annoying. It felt as if she shouldn’t need to. Muscle memory resented the length of her limbs.

She finally hit a ledge of stone before she could catch another rung of the vine ladder, and the shock of landing reverberated up through her bones.

“Have Karzarul take you next time,” Leonas said.

“It’s fine,” Minnow said, brushing detritus and vine sap off on her tunic. She looked at where Karzarul had been waiting, staring down at the forest and winding river below. Ladders and bridges were a tangle across the cliff faces. He’d given himself another crescent crown. “Oh!” Minnow looked in her bag, but quickly realized she didn’t have anything.

“Did you forget something?” Leonas asked.

“No—kind of.” She pulled a thin vine away from the ladder, young enough not to damage the structural integrity. She wound it into a circle as best she could, leaves still sticking out from it. “Can you make this into a circlet?” she asked Leonas, holding it out to him. “You should have a circlet. I should have made you one when we were at the farmhouse, I wasn’t thinking.”

He took it from her with his fingertips, regarding it with suspicion. He’d gone back to basic black and white for his outfit, and so he matched Karzarul more than he did Minnow’s standard torn-up blues. His eyes flared bright and so did the vines, muttering under his breath. When it faded the vines looked like copper and had an unnatural gleam. He moved the leaves around until they satisfied him, then set it on his hair. “Better?” he asked.

“Much,” she confirmed. She began walking down the ledge, treating it as a path until it opened up. It looked like a large cave carved out of the wall of the canyon, and what hadn’t been visible from above was all the buildings cut into it. Some of the streets lead to tunnels further into the underground, and vine bridges lead to another such structure across the way. “Neat,” Minnow said, looking up at the distant ceiling that had once been beneath their feet.

“One small shake and this whole thing collapses,” Leonas muttered, trying not to look up. It was early morning yet, and they made it all the way down the middle of the street and to a square before they ran into someone. He was a young man, wearing white robes and a thick red belt, long dark curls and olive skin.

“Hello!” Minnow said, waving. “Do you speak Astia? This is going to be awkward if you don’t.”

The young man froze. He looked between the three of them. “… hello?”

“Hi!” Minnow said. “I’m the Starlight Hero. That’s the Prince of Astielle. That’s the King of All Monsters. We’re looking for Moon Cultists. Are we in the right place?”

Leonas rubbed his forehead. “How often do you spend your first night in a new place in jail?” he muttered.

“Oh, all the time,” Minnow said.

The young man looked between the three of them again. Karzarul waved with one of four hands. The young man looked toward the center of the canyon, to the edge of the cliff. Black Drakonis was poking her head up, resting her snout in the street. She clucked.

“I should go get a Teacher,” the young man said finally. He spoke with an accent like he was speaking through the mouth of a glass bottle. “You wait here.” He walked at high speed down the street and into one of the tunnels.

“That was Astia, right?” Minnow asked, in case she needed to translate for Leonas.

“It was,” Leonas said.

“That’s a good sign,” Minnow said.

“No, it isn’t,” Leonas said. “If they’re hostile, he’s coming back with reinforcements. And if they are who we think they are, they have every reason to be hostile.”

“They’re not,” Karzarul said. He had his face turned away from them both, looking to where Black Drakonis was watching.

Minnow took the opportunity to get a closer look at the buildings. There were a reassuring number of pots with plants growing in them, flowers and ferns and leafy bushes. Hollows in the walls had no discernable purpose aside from holding plants and clusters of crystals. Some of the walls had murals, skies in blue and purple and pink. The few impressionistic figures that appeared weren’t hard to identify. One always white, the other always copper.

“Are there other monsters around?” Minnow asked.

“Yes,” Karzarul said. His face was still averted. She wondered why he didn’t make himself a set of fans like Violet had, as long as he was staying in that form. On cue, a moonlight silver fan appeared in his upper-left hand. He held it at an angle that obscured the majority of his face, rather than the lower half. She would have teased him about it if his mood weren’t so tense. She couldn’t identify the feeling from the situation or his body language. An unfamiliar body in an unfamiliar place. He’d seemed delicate since the first moment he sensed the presence of Black Drakonis, but not in any way that Minnow could understand.

Leonas was easier. He had fallen into perfect posture, eyes in the middle distance, hands clasped behind him. This, Minnow understood. It was a diplomatic situation, and there was an emotionally difficult man beside him. He was uncomfortable, but a familiar kind of discomfort that knocked him into an old routine. Smiling politely and swallowing the King’s Folly.

Minnow leaned against his arm chest-first. He tensed, startled. “Heeey,” she said. His eyes left the middle distance to focus on her, and scowled when he realized it was only her.

“Stop that,” he snapped.

“Stop what?” she asked, fluttering her eyelashes at him.

“Whatever this is,” he said. Minnow leaned against him more. He leaned away in imperceptible degrees, unable to overcome his instinct to look presentable in front of hypothetical company. “We are someone’s guests,” he hissed through his teeth. “Behave yourself.”

“I’m behaving,” she said.

“That’s not what behaving looks like,” Leonas said. His witchmarks were shining brighter. She got up on her toes to try to bring her face closer to his. His eyes widened with a sort of frustrated panic. “Heel.”

She sat.

Leonas made a sound like he’d been burned, recoiling from her and stumbling backward. “What is wrong with you,” he demanded, bending down to grab her arms. “Get up, that’s an order.”

Minnow bit his arm.

Leonas shrieked as he backed away from her again, shaking out his arm. “For fuck’s sake,” he said.

Karzarul snorted. At some point he’d shut his fan, and was pressing the back of his hand to his mouth instead. One of his ankles crossed over the other.

Leonas put his hands on his hips. “Well I’m glad you’re having fun,” he said. “Would you like to help me with your girlfriend?” Leonas asked, gesturing to her.

“You need more hands?” Karzarul suggested, and Leonas scowled at him.

“Help me get her—”

“—off?”

“—up,” Leonas enunciated sharply, plosives explosive. “We are in the middle of the street in a foreign city, this is our only chance at a first impression, what is wrong with you two.” His eyes flashed, and his circlet started to grow more copper leaves. “If this is what you two are always like, it’s a miracle I ever don’t want to murder you both.”

Someone cleared their throat.

Leonas straightened and pivoted in the appropriate direction. He pressed his palms together against his sternum. “Apologies.”

The Teacher was an older man who looked much like the younger one, though he had a long and braided beard. The belt tied around his robe was dark blue. “Sunlight Prince of Astielle,” he greeted with a slight incline of his head. “Starlight Hero.” Minnow waved with both hands, but the Teacher was already smiling elsewhere. “Cousin Karzarul.”

Karzarul had the fan out again.

The Teacher yawned loud, with a popping stretch of his back, before shaking his head as if the chase the sleep away. “And what kind of an hour do you call this?” he demanded of Karzarul. “Nobody decent’s awake at this hour, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself if you’re stuck with me.” He beamed, clapping his hands together. “In my official capacity as Teacher Zadven, allow me to first warn you that if you groan that means the ancestors win and you shouldn’t give them the satisfaction.” He was pointing at Leonas when he said this.

“Secondly,” Zadven said, spreading his hands to indicate the city, “welcome to the Neocropolis.”

Leonas groaned.