Author: Kitty Unpretty

Karzarul had to take the form of a Rootboar again as the road passed close to a stable and inn. It sat at an intersection that led to three different small villages, and saw a lot of traffic as a consequence. It still felt like an unusually large number of travelers to be passing through.

“Is there a festival?” Minnow called down to a small child running along the road.

“There’s a bard visiting!” the boy called back up. Minnow gasped. Leonas groaned.

“Please tell me it’s not Kavid,” he muttered, rubbing at his eyebrows.

“Is it Kavid?” Minnow asked, leaning half out of the wagon.

“It is I!” Kavid said, bursting forth from the door to the inn, his arms aloft. “Who asks for me?”

Minnow shrieked and leapt down from the wagon, leaving Leonas scrambling to grab the reins and bring the wagon to a stop.

“Starlight!” Kavid greeted as Minnow pounced on him, and he pivoted to sweep Minnow sideways into a dramatic kiss.

“What the fuck am I looking at,” Karzarul asked in a low voice, nearly startling Leonas out of the wagon. Karzarul still looked, for all intents and purposes, like a round and angry little monster.

“I give you the Legendary Travelling Bard, Kavid,” Leonas sighed with a half-assed flourish in the man’s direction. “He writes his own legends, which is convenient for him. Minnow is… a fan.”

Kavid had, it could not be denied, an aesthetic. A cape that looked like orange butterfly’s wings, wings on his boots and paper butterflies in his hair. There was a wing painted over his right eye.

He stood back up and let Minnow go, and she stumbled a little. Her toes pointed inward, her knees wobbly, a goofy grin on her face. “Hi,” she said, half-giggling, pulling her braid over her shoulder and trying to smooth it out.

“What,” Karzarul said.

“It’s bad,” Leonas agreed. “It’s, the worst.”

“She can’t like that,” Karzarul said.

“She clearly does,” Leonas said.

Karzarul said nothing as Leonas worked on finding parking for their wagon. He had to dig through one of Minnow’s bags to find the gold to pay for it.

“Put me in your pocket,” Karzarul said as soon as the horses had been taken.

“What?” Leonas turned around, and nearly screamed.

Karzarul was a Shimmerbat. His tiny body was nothing but white fluff. He looked like a dandelion gone to seed, but with wings. He had a little leaf nose again, angry little eyes, and talons the size of a sparrow’s clinging to the wagon. He’d brought his silvery wings close to his body and hooked his claws in front of him. It looked as if he was wearing a tiny cape and clasping his hands pensively.

“Where does the rest of you even go?” Leonas demanded.

“Away,” Karzarul said. Leonas had to cover his mouth. That voice coming from that body…

“The pants Minnow bought me are too tight for that,” Leonas said.

“Then bring a bag,” Karzarul said. “Otherwise I’ll fly after her on my own.”

“Fine! Fine.”

Leonas found a bandage he could use to wrap around his right hand and cover his sun symbol. He debated leaving his flower crown with the wagon, but decided to keep it. It didn’t look half-bad, in his estimation, and anything was better than looking like he didn’t know how to accessorize. It hadn’t occurred to him before, how strange it felt to be seen with nothing on his forehead. His forehead, it turned out, was fucking enormous. Absolutely nightmareish. Enough time like this and he’d be giving in to the dark temptation of bangs.

Leonas tried not to think about Moonlight Monster King Karzarul hunkering down in his fucking purse. He put on his best ‘pleasantly neutral’ face, and ventured forth toward the inn to try and figure out where the hell Minnow had gotten to.

He didn’t make it far before someone stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Are you here to see Kavid?” she asked him, blonde and breathless and rosy-cheeked.

“My friend is,” he said. “I only came along to be supportive.”

“Oh, my friends wandered off too,” she said. “Maybe it was meant to be, like it was written in the stars that we were supposed to hang out today.”

“I can think of nothing I’d like more,” he lied. “Unfortunately, if I don’t find my friend soon, I fear I’ll find her later with a bucket on her head—you know how it is.”

“Fran,” a black-haired woman said, grabbing the blonde by the shoulder. “Seriously, girl, leave him alone, you’re not his type.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Leonas protested mildly. He didn’t want to seem rude. He wasn’t even sure if he had a type, let alone one that could be identified on sight.

“You’re fine, honey,” the black-haired woman said, waving him off as she dragged away her friend. “She does this all the time, she’s from the country.”

“Okay,” Leonas said as they retreated. “Great.” He scanned the people milling about outside the inn, wandering through the field, looking for a distinctive streak of green hair. He had not considered the challenge posed by her height. She could have been standing behind just about anyone.

There was a man here with witchmarks on his face, bird-shaped and black as the night sky. Leonas accidentally made eye contact. The witch grinned and waved. Leonas gave a polite nod. The witch started to make his way over.

Shit.

“How’d you get your marks to look like that?” the witch asked, gesturing under his eyes.

“It’s genetic,” Leonas lied.

“That’s cool, man,” the witch said. “I’m Harv,” he introduced, loosely bumping the heels of his palms against each other in front of his chest.

“Leonas,” he said, pressing his palms together against his sternum. Harv grinned again.

“Like the Prince?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re from one of those old witch families, right?” Harv asked.

“Something like that,” Leonas conceded. Harv ran his fingers through chestnut curls, and Leonas’ eyes lingered on his wrist. Harv followed his gaze to the small, perfectly round bruise.

“There’s a guy down in Crickshire,” Harv explained with a hook of his thumb, “that pays pretty good if you let him make a spell bottle. The little ones, you know?” Harv held his fingers up to demonstrate the size of a vial. “For folks who wanna breathe fire or summon bees, or whatever people want magic for.” He shrugged. “You’re not supposed to go in the same spot every time, but I think it looks cool.”

“Right,” Leonas said.

“Obviously you’re not hard up for cash, but some of us make do,” Harv said.

“I wasn’t judging,” Leonas said.

“Sure you weren’t,” Harv said, pulling a metal case out of his pocket. “You smoke?” he asked, offering.

“No, thank you,” Leonas said.

“You drink?” Harv asked.

“Often,” Leonas said.

“You want to?” Harv asked.

“To—oh.” Leonas blinked. He looked Harv over again, and Harv let him, hooking his thumbs in his pockets. The black leather armor did have a certain—

Karzarul was still in his bag, listening to this entire conversation. Leonas gripped the strap of his bag tighter when he realized.

“I really would like to,” Leonas rushed to assure him, though he could feel his face warming. “Unfortunately I do very much need to find my friend, and I’m afraid that would take more time than I have at the moment.”

“Yeah, okay,” Harv said. He leaned a little closer. “I think you might be overestimating how long it’d take you to finish,” he said in a low voice, winking. “I’m very good.”

That brought Leonas up short. He felt a bristle of indignation. He hooked his fingers in the neck of Harv’s armor before he could stop himself, pulling him closer. “I think you might be overestimating how quickly I would let you,” he countered. “I’m better.”

He turned on his heel, walking away before he could think about how stupid that must have sounded.

Leonas had never realized how much he counted on being Prince of Astielle to keep people from trying to have a conversation. Having to talk to people as the Prince was bad enough, but at least there was a script for it. People had to be polite, and wait until they were alone to start making implications about his sexual prowess.

He looked for a crowd, under the assumption that people would gather wherever Kavid was. Where Kavid was, he would likely find Minnow. Leonas checked inside his bag to make sure that Karzarul hadn’t slipped away. The Shimmerbat glowered up at him. He closed the bag again.

Kavid brought a coterie of drummers with him to accompany his lyre. Whatever he was singing wasn’t half bad, except that it seemed to be about how he’d saved a small village from an enormous Howler that was secretly Karzarul himself. As Leonas recalled, it was a regular Howler, and Minnow had killed it. This was not impeding Minnow’s enjoyment, and she had thus far coaxed several people to join her in dancing. She leapt on Leonas as soon as she saw him, grabbing him by the hands.

“I finally get to dance with you!” she said.

“This isn’t the kind of dancing I do,” he apologized.

“It’s okay!” she assured him, pulling him along. “It’s the good kind, there aren’t any steps!”

“Yes, that’s the problem,” he said. Leonas lacked any instinctive understanding of where a person was meant to be putting their feet.

“Here,” she said, spinning him in a circle before he could stop her, pulling him close and wrapping an arm around his waist. She practically galloped across the grass with him, and he struggled to follow her lead. It became easier when he gave up on trying to feel whatever it was she was feeling, and just mirrored whatever she was doing instead.

He stopped when he felt scales sliding underneath his shirt, along his bare skin.

“Is everything okay?” Minnow asked, alarmed.

Leonas grabbed her by the hand and pulled her closer. “Take him,” he said through gritted teeth. The body of a Slitherskin moved across his chest, down his arm to where their hands met to disappear up her sleeve instead. Her eyes widened.

“Oh!” she said as white scales disappeared under her clothes. Karzarul’s jeweled head appeared beside her neck, mostly obscured by her hair. He darted his tongues at Leonas. “That’s so smart,” Minnow said, leading Leonas to start moving again. “Now we all get to dance together!”

“I don’t think that counts as dancing,” Leonas said, since Karzarul was wrapped around Minnow’s torso and not moving of his own volition.

“It does,” Minnow insisted, pulling Leonas close for a sudden spin. The song changed to something with stronger percussion, and Minnow tossed her hair, light on her toes. He could practically see her biting her tongue not to sing along. “I can feel it,” she said. “He’s dancing.”

He looked like a regular monster snake, to Leonas. He wasn’t going to ask exactly what it felt like, because he didn’t think he’d like the answer. He also didn’t like thinking about an Impyr wearing a fluttery skirt, covered in bells.

It was for the best that Karzarul had to hide, couldn’t take Leonas’ place this time dancing with Minnow in earnest.

Leonas would try to enjoy it for now. If not the music and the action itself, then getting to watch Minnow, her hair all loose and stars in her eyes. That was one big advantage over royal balls and birthday parties. And unlike those, he could look forward to when it was over. When they could leave, and make camp somewhere quiet. When he could tie up his hair, and wash his face, and curl up in a bedroll that for all its flaws was his own.

When there might be nightmares, but there might instead be a willow tree.

Adventuring wasn’t so terrible, if it could just be this.

“Thank you so much for all your help.”

Karzarul wasn’t listening to the usual offerings of thanks and praise. They’d been asked to help with a bandit problem, and so they had. He’d used his Howler form, for the most part. With large groups of enemies and only one Starlight Hero, there was always the risk that a Tauril might trample the wrong person. How well the fight would have gone without him, he could not say. But if anyone thanked him—if anyone tolerated him—it was only if they could bring themselves to think of him as assisting the Starlight Hero.

He didn’t mind it, though. This was always all he’d wanted.

“Ari, man, pull me up!”

Karzarul reached down to take Jonys by the hand, giving him leverage to pull himself up onto Karzarul’s back. He rode there often enough that he’d started to get a little bowlegged.

“Guess who just got paid,” Jonys said, drumming a quick beat onto Karzarul’s lower set of shoulderblades. Jonys enjoyed putting a weird, intense emphasis on certain words for no apparent reason. His bracers were covered in hazelquartz seeds that rattled when he moved, and he’d tied more of them to his bootlaces.

“Were you paid in money this time,” Karzarul asked, starting to walk, “or fish?”

“What are fish,” Jonys said philosophically, “if not the money of the water?”

“We’re on land,” Karzarul reminded him. “Money is the money of the land. I don’t think you can buy new pants with fish.”

“Aw, and I definitely need new pants, too,” Jonys said, rubbing his nose. “The ladies do not love this pants situation.” They were getting completely worn out again, great big holes in the knees and the thighs. It was cute, to a point, but soon the legs were going to fall off entirely. That would be cute, too, but somehow Karzarul didn’t think Jonys would approve.

“She seemed to like it,” Karzarul said, nodding his head back at the farmhouse behind them.

“Oh, she most definitely did,” Jonys said. “Her father did not. And he was standing right there. Otherwise she totally would have invited us in for dinner. Especially if you’d gone Impyr. Or Abysscale? Babe.” Jonys drummed on Karzarul’s back again. “Ladies love Abysscales.”

“I don’t think that’s universal,” Karzarul said.

“It totally is,” Jonys said. “You’re cool with fish for dinner, right?”

“I wouldn’t want to eat your water money.”

“What is money,” Jonys said, “if not what disappears when I’m hungry?”

“You’ve got me there,” Karzarul said. Jonys started to snap his fingers, drumming on himself, whistling a tune through the gap in his teeth. Karzarul couldn’t see him, but he could feel that he was dancing. As much as it could be called dancing, when sitting on a Tauril’s back. The tempo of his hoofbeats adjusted to match reflexively. “It wouldn’t kill you to sing sometimes,” Karzarul tossed back.

“I am not that kind of instrument, babe,” Jonys said, still drumming. “You wanna be on vocals, you hop in anytime.” He resumed whistling, and Karzarul snorted. When they hit an open stretch of road, Jonys upped the tempo until Karzarul had to gallop to keep up. Not moving to the music wasn’t an option.

They made camp where the road passed close to the river, a clear space along the bank through the forest. Karzarul lit the fire, because Jonys was paranoid about lighting up the grease in his hair. Which was fair. He’d done it seven times since they’d met, and only once deliberately. Karzarul also cooked, because Jonys considered ash a variety of spice.

“Oh, right,” Jonys said, digging through his bags while Karzarul piled up blankets for the night. “I got a letter from Aimon,” he said, holding up a scrap of parchment.

“Burn it,” Karzarul said.

“No can do, my man,” Jonys said. “A Hero always pays his debts,” he said, pounding his fist against his chest once.

“He provably does not,” Karzarul said. “I can take you to bars even now that are hoping you’ll come back to pay Vaelon’s tab.”

“This Hero always pays his debts,” Jonys corrected. “Can’t break a promise, babe.”

Karzarul grumbled. “What does he want this time?”

“Nothing major,” Jonys said. “We just have to swing by real quick so I can help him test some stuff. We can find a Rainbow Door, I’ll pop in and out of it, bam, we’re back to partying. There’s a festival in Dalston in two weeks, you know we’ve gotta be there.”

“I’m pretty sure Aimon wants me dead,” Karzarul said.

“A lot of people want you dead,” Jonys said. “It’s cool! It’s all good. The misunderstandings, those are all in the past. We’re out here fixing your reputation, one adventure at a time. Soon enough we won’t be able to walk into a new town without ladies being all over us. Because of our reputations. Our sexy, not-evil reputations.”

“You don’t think the ladies will find it off-putting that you’re riding me?” Karzarul asked.

“See, okay. This is why you need to do Impyr form. Look at this.” Jonys spread his hands to gesture to Karzarul. “Who could resist this?”

“You don’t think the ladies will find it off-putting when I look like this and you’re riding me anyway?” Karzarul asked. Jonys laughed, jumping onto Karzarul’s back, arms around his shoulders and legs around his waist.

“Okay, you got me there,” Jonys said. “You got it wrong, though. Package deal, that just means BOGO, man. Everyone loves a BOGO. And when you think about it? I’m, like, four-thirds of a normal guy. You’re at least five-thirds. That’s three whole guys for the price of one. That’s a fucking steal, man.”

“Are we going to be charging these hypothetical ladies?” Karzarul asked, looking over his shoulder at Jonys.

“Course not,” Jonys said. “But they gotta buy me dinner first. I got class.”

Karzarul laughed. Jonys let go of his shoulders and fell backward so that Karzarul could swing him around his waist, pulling him up to his chest to kiss him. Jonys let his boots drop to the ground, standing on his toes with his arms draped over Karzarul. Karzarul ran his fingers over Jonys’ jaw. “You’re gorgeous,” Karzarul said.

“Damn right,” Jonys said, running his fingers through his hair to make sure it was still in place. “You tired?” he asked, hooking a finger in the neck of Karzarul’s tunic.

“Have something in mind?” Karzarul asked, taking Jonys’ hand to kiss his fingers.

“You know I love to play you, babe,” Jonys said, “but if you’d rather just hit it, we can do that too.”

Karzarul laughed and untangled himself from Jonys. “I don’t know why you ask,” Karzarul said, “like I’ve ever said no to you.”

“I gotta give you the option,” Jonys shrugged, retrieving a wooden box from the abandoned saddlebags. He pulled it up to the fire and sat down, idly drumming as Karzarul stripped down. Karzarul tossed aside his gloves first, looked at the blank skin on the back of his left hand and the crescent on his right, flexed his fingers. He took his time unfastening his tunic while Jonys found his rhythm, rolled his hips all the way up to his shoulders to shrug his way out of it. He took his hair out of its braid, bells still tied, and let it fan out behind him like a cape.

Jonys found a beat he liked, a thump of skin against wood that met the strategic rattle of hazelquartz shells and the clapping of his hands. Karzarul found the empty spaces to fill with the stomp of his hooves, the ringing of his bells when he twitched his hips just-so. He moved his hands in precise arcs, careful of every turn of his wrists and curl of his tail and toss of his hair. He alternated slow rolling motions with sudden sharp movement, all his silver glinting in the firelight. There was an ease in this perfection, fitting himself to the music, another instrument. Mother Void, please let me be an instrument, and maybe if She listened this could be forever.

There was a man with copper curls in the trees.

Karzarul stopped.

“I’m dreaming,” he said. He looked down at his hands. “I’m dreaming?” The back of his left hand flashed with echoes of stars and suns spiraling outward from the center, down to his wrist.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” Leonas said. “I wasn’t…”

The forest flickered into flames, out of existence and then back again in quick succession. Karzarul spun around. The memory of Jonys was standing, now, sunlight pouring out of his eyes and mouth. It spilled out from between his fingers in a straight line on his throat.

Karzarul turned back to Leonas, and roared as if it had anything to do with him. Leonas disappeared.

Karzarul opened his eyes. Leonas wasn’t on his bedroll, his scarf hanging where it had caught on a low branch. “Shit.” Taking the form of a Shadestalker was faster than standing, better for letting Minnow sleep. The pads of his feet were silent on the ground, chasing the scent of the Prince. He hadn’t made it far. Karzarul stood tall again, grabbed Leonas by the arm. Leonas screamed, clapping his hand over his mouth halfway.

“If Minnow wakes up and sees that you’re gone,” Karzarul hissed under his breath, “she is going to kill me. At least maim. To say nothing of if you manage to hurt yourself out here.”

“It was an accident,” Leonas said, his breath short. “It just happens, I don’t mean for it to happen.” He looked like he was going to hyperventilate.

“Calm down,” Karzarul said, resisting the temptation to slap him. “Imagine a tree again, I don’t know.”

Glowing leaves started to sprout in Leonas’ hair.

“Not like that,” Karzarul said, the sense of panic apparently contagious. He let Leonas go to snatch the leaves out of his hair, and shoved them in his mouth. Leonas froze.

“Why did you eat them?” Leonas asked.

Karzarul swallowed. “I don’t know!” he snapped, patting at the shining spots in Leonas’ hair until the magic seemed to dissipate. “Did you want Minnow to see?”

“No,” Leonas said.

“Okay then,” Karzarul said. “Are you calm? Is this calm?”

“I’ve never been calm before and I’m not about to start now,” Leonas said. Light kept trying to gather in the lines of his palms, and he shook them to make it fade.

“You’ve been without a magical instrument for how many years?” Karzarul asked, annoyed. “And you still don’t have a handle on this?” If her idiot prince exploded because he couldn’t handle his own magic, it wasn’t going to be Karzarul’s fault, but Minnow was still going to blame him.

“I don’t usually have this much,” Leonas protested before pressing his mouth shut. When it opened again it was to cough up an apple blossom.

“For fuck’s sake,” Karzarul said. “Why would you—” He paused. “You do a ritual on your birthday,” he said. Leonas pressed his knuckles to his mouth, shaking his head, but Karzarul ignored him. “You said your birthday is soon, that means it’s almost been a year. Do you—does it use it all? Somehow?”

Leonas coughed up more blossoms, pounding at his chest. “Spell bottles,” he admitted. “Big ones. Enough to keep the Sunshield going for another year. It works out, I couldn’t blow myself up if I wanted to. Most of the time.”

Karzarul started to run his hands through his hair, stopped with his palm against his forehead. “Completely?” he asked. “All of your magic, every year.”

“The Sunshield is warding an entire city, every minute of every day,” Leonas said. The conversation seemed to have distracted him enough to stop blooming. “It uses a lot of magic.”

“It would have to,” Karzarul said. The thought of that much magic being stored, loose, was terrifying. “You should work on… this.” Karzarul gestured to the fallen petals.

“Yes, thank you, I am aware that it would be best if I didn’t risk exploding every time I threw a fucking fit,” Leonas snapped.

“Have you tried throwing fewer fits.”

“Fuck off.” Leonas smacked Karzarul’s arm with the back of his hand, then immediately started shaking it out because he’d hurt himself. “Don’t expect people to behave reasonably under unreasonable circumstances,” he muttered, rubbing his hand. “Was that…” He hesitated. “That was Minnow?” he asked.

Karzarul bristled. “That was the Hero,” he said. “They aren’t interchangable, she’s not—he isn’t less dead.”

“Aimon was me?”

“Yes,” Karzarul said flatly. “A witch and an enchanter, as you are now. You may recognize the name, from your books about ‘meat puppets’.”

“Ah,” Leonas said, looking at the ground.

“That’s the last I say about it,” Karzarul warned. “We will not speak of this again. You saw nothing. We go back to camp, and when Minnow wakes we pretend this never happened. Yes?”

“Of course,” Leonas said, fidgeting with his nails. Karzarul grew impatient with his downcast eyes, pressed his palm over Leonas’ mouth in the process of grabbing his face to turn it toward him. Leonas clawed at Karzarul’s wrist before he’d processed what was happening, his witchmarks flaring.

“Stay in your own dreams,” Karzarul warned, and Leonas stilled. “Make your own willow trees. I’m not here for you.”

Karzarul dropped his hand, and took Leonas by the wrist to lead him back to camp. Leonas didn’t protest.

“The tailor got my order in!” Minnow announced, kicking in the door to her own house. Her arms were overflowing with packages. “Leonas, you won’t have to wear my extra shirts anymore!”

“Oh, thank the Sun,” Leonas said, joining her in the front hall immediately. She dropped everything to the ground instead of trying to hand it off with grace, since they were clothes and couldn’t break. She had been able to coax him a few times now into staying home alone with Karzarul so that she could get supplies. He accepted the necessity more quickly now, if no less sullenly.

“And I got a longer dressing gown to sleep in,” she added. “Even though you look cute in the other one.”

Leonas turned pink and his witchmarks glowed, but he continued looking through the different shirts and trousers she’d bought. Since Minnow was shorter than Leonas as well as wider, she thought the two dimensions evened out reasonably well. Leonas disagreed, and washed his old clothes to keep wearing them as often as possible.

“Ari,” she called, pulling the largest package out of the pile. “I got you a dress!”

“What?” Ari called from the kitchen. He’d been entertaining himself by trying to make the strangest desserts in her recipe collection, consistently resulting in horrors. It kept him busy, and from pestering Leonas, so she didn’t complain.

“I told the tailor it was for a quest,” she said, bringing it with her, “to explain the measurements.”

“I have clothes,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “but they’re always the same clothes? Magical moonlight clothes. I thought it might be fun to get you different clothes. I assumed you wouldn’t be able to wear pants. Was I right that you can’t wear pants?”

Ari was holding a wooden spoon and a mixing bowl full of something purple and gloopy. He looked down at one of his enormous hooves. “That’s accurate,” he said.

“I thought so,” she said. She opened the paper with a touch of hesitation. “You don’t have to wear it,” she said.

“I’ll wear it,” he said, the bowl already set aside, unbuttoning his tunic. She didn’t understand how his clothes worked. They disappeared when he changed forms, and when he came back they weren’t always the way he left them. When he left them laying around, they seemed to disappear on their own. In the morning, he liked to trot around the garden as a Rootboar, sunning himself and rolling around in the grass, leaving the robe she made him wear to bed on the floor. It did not disappear on its own. Then when he took Impyr form again, all his clothes were back and pristine.

She might not have noticed, but Leonas had a secret and angry page of notes about it. She only read them because he hid them, which meant they were interesting.

Ari pulled the dress on over his head, his clothes in a pile on the kitchen floor. Minnow clapped her hands together, biting her lip to restrain excessive gleefulness. He smoothed it out, examining the fabric. It had holes at the shoulders so that she could see their shape, a neckline deep enough to reveal most of the fur on his chest. It flared at the waist and down to his knees, and when he turned it had a swish to it.

“Interesting choice of color,” he observed. She’d picked out something in a deep blue-black, set with tiny chips of gold all over; the skirt gradually lightened to a true blue at the hem.

“It makes sense,” she insisted, fidgeting with her hair. “Because the moon is in the sky.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, because her eyes kept falling to his chest. “So this isn’t, for instance. Marking your territory.”

“No,” she scoffed, too loud and too slow. “I thought, it would look nice on you, is all.”

“In your colors.”

“I don’t own colors,” she said. “They’re just colors.”

“It fits well enough,” Leonas was saying, coming closer to the kitchen, “but the colors—”

He stopped inside the kitchen door. Minnow had to cover her mouth to restrain a shriek at the sight of him. His cravat was a confection of fluffy lace. The sleeves of his shirt were trimmed with more lace at the wrists, longer than was practical, hanging downward. His trousers were fitted tight in deep blue black, and the bottom of his vest matched it, gradually lightening to true blue at the top. It was set with tiny chips of gold all over.

“Ah,” Leonas said, once he’d finished processing what Karzarul was wearing.

“Hm,” Karzarul said.

Minnow couldn’t stop giggling, backing away enough that she could look at them both at the same time. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that she wouldn’t be able to get away with this unnoticed. It was not subtle at all. Her giggling transitioned into a high-pitched sound without any conscious decision on her part.

It was very good to look at.

“Are you okay?” Leonas asked. She nodded vigorously. Leonas looked at the clothes on the floor. “Are you going to pick those up?” he asked Karzarul.

“No,” Karzarul said.

“What are you making?”

“A salad.”

“Right. I’m not wearing this right now.” Leonas turned to leave the kitchen, but Minnow made a sound of protest, grabbing him by the arm. He jumped, startled.

“Please?” she asked. “Just this once? You won’t be able to wear it on the road anyway, it isn’t practical.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why would I be on the road?”

“Oh! Right. We’re taking a trip.”

“We are?” Leonas asked.

“Are we?” Karzarul asked.

“We are,” Minnow said. “That thing you said about the fake Heirs bothered me, so I went and talked to Hettie—she’s out by where the old general store used to be, before they built the new general store—because she’s super-old and she loves scandals. She gets special newsletters in the mail for gossip. It’s horrible, and not usually useful. But she gave me some names and dates that I was able to cross-reference with historical data, and one of the estates is only a few days’ ride from here. According to my maps and journals I’ve even been there already, years ago. I don’t remember it, so it can’t have been interesting, but it’s on my map.”

“Wait,” Leonas said. “I don’t understand what this has to do with anything.”

“Neither do I,” Minnow shrugged, “but, like I said, it was bothering me. Now we’re gonna go look!”

“Were you going to ask how anyone else felt about this?” Leonas asked.

“Why?” she asked. He stared at her. “I know I’m going,” she said, “and if I’m going, then Ari is going.” Ari nodded. “And if we’re both going, then you’re going, because otherwise you’d be alone in a house only a few days’ ride from Fort Astielle, while I was alone with Karzarul.”

Leonas opened his mouth, then shut it. “You have the option of not going,” he said. Minnow shook her head.

“Hero’s intuition,” Karzarul offered helpfully.

“I already added it to my quest journal,” Minnow said.

“That means nothing,” Leonas said. “You can erase it from your quest journal.”

“That’s not how the quest journal works,” Minnow said.

“Respect the quest journal,” Karzarul agreed.

“Don’t say that like it means something,” Leonas snapped at him. “We both know that doesn’t mean anything.”

“We’re going,” Minnow said firmly. “I bought a wagon and two horses, so you can bring books along and keep working as we go. We can get packed up tonight, you can figure out which books you want to bring. We leave first thing in the morning.”

Leonas rubbed at his temple. “I. Okay. I guess.” He gave up on arguing, leaving the kitchen to head back toward the book room. He’d been spending most of his time there since arriving, despite Minnow’s attempts to get him to join her in the garden. It wouldn’t hurt a book to be in the garden.

Now he would have no choice but to work outside in the sunshine. It wasn’t why she was doing it, but it didn’t hurt.

“Should I bring a book?” Karzarul asked.

“If you want,” Minnow said, although he was clearly teasing. She followed Leonas, in case he needed help with something heavy.

“Maybe I’ll bring some of those art books,” Karzarul suggested, following after her. “With the orgy detective.”

“Please don’t,” Leonas sighed ahead of them.

“Have you found the ones with the monsters yet?” Minnow asked.

Karzarul stopped. “What?”

“With the pirates!” Minnow said, and Leonas also hesitated before forging on ahead. “It’s a whole series about this sexy Abysscale, and all the pirate crews that he seduces.”

“Oh,” Ari said.

“Did you really not find it?” she asked. “I thought you were looking through all of those.”

“I browsed,” Ari said. “I didn’t read them all.”

“Here, look,” Minnow said, moving ahead to the proper shelf and pulling out a volume. “The joke is that he’s bad at being a monster, because whenever he attacks a pirate ship, he gets distracted having sex with all the pirates.” She opened it up to a particularly graphic page and held it aloft. “This was the only thing I’d ever seen with a talking monster in it, before I met you,” she said. “I thought they made it up so the pirates wouldn’t be gross perverts doing sex crimes, but these ones are pretty old. Could it be based on a real monster? Since the monsters used to all be able to talk like you?”

“Are you implying,” Leonas said, moving books into different stacks, “that Abysscales used to roam the open seas, seducing human women?”

“And men!” Minnow said.

Ari had taken the book, and was slowly paging through it. Minnow could not interpret the look on his face. She sidled up next to him, rising up on her toes to look along with him. “Is it accurate?” she asked, on a watercolor involving much longer tentacles than the ones Ari had.

“No,” he said, slamming it suddenly shut. “You shouldn’t read these,” he added. “They’re… slanderous.” He held it out of her reach. She squinted at his face.

“Are you glowing?” she asked.

“No.”

“If returning the monsters to their previous state of being,” Leonas interrupted, “means we’re going to be replacing the rampaging murderbeasts with rampaging fuckbeasts, I’m not helping you anymore.”

Leonas sat under the willow tree again, and listened to memories of birdsong.

“These roads are a nightmare,” Leonas said. “That’s the first thing I’m doing when I’m king, I’m fixing these fucking roads.”

“These are actually some of the better roads,” Minnow said, “since we’re close to a village.”

“Sun above,” Leonas said. He was sitting on a pile of the bedding Minnow had brought along, and had given up on being able to take notes on anything. Karzarul was a Rootboar again, sitting in the opposite corner of the wagon.

“It’s less noticeable when you’re on a horse,” Minnow said. She was sitting up front to hold the reins. “I don’t think you have a lot of practice riding, though.”

“I ride in parades,” Leonas said.

“That doesn’t count.” She waved as they passed a merchant carrying a cart. “If we did this on horseback you’d be even less comfortable.” The wagon jolted over a stone.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he grumbled.

“The good part is that I’ve gone through this way a bunch of times,” she said, “so we shouldn’t have to stop too often, unless I see something rare.”

“Hooray,” Leonas said, watching the trees pass them by.

The horses slowed to a stop.

“Okay,” Minnow said, reaching back to find a large wicker basket. “I know what I said, but I only need a minute, this one time.”

Leonas watched her bend over the foliage that edged the road, then turned to see Karzarul watching him watch her. Leonas opened his book, and tried to read as long as they weren’t moving.

Minnow returned with her basket overflowing with wildflowers, daisies and sweet peas and foxgloves and violets. “Here,” she said, holding out her fist and waiting for him to accept whatever she had. Leonas held up his palm, and she dropped raspberries into it. “Most of them weren’t ripe yet,” she said, “but these ones looked good.”

They were small and slightly crushed, staining his skin red. “Thanks,” he said, and she beamed, pulling herself back up onto the wagon with her basket next to her. Leonas found the raspberry that looked most intact, and tentatively placed it on his tongue. It was tart enough to make his mouth water, and the taste lingered.

Karzarul was watching him again, snout twitching. The end of his nose looked like an angry leaf.

Leonas ate another raspberry, then leaned forward to drop the rest onto a trunk strapped down into the wagon between them. He settled back into the pillows, frowning at the stain in the middle of his hand. He licked it before finding a handkerchief to wipe the rest of the residue away. Karzarul snorfled up the offered raspberry remains in an appropriately piggish fashion. Knowing that he could still speak made it weird.

Leonas watched the trees again, and the birds, and the little signs of wildlife. Chipmunks and squirrels and other small things. He leaned over the edge of the wagon to get a better look at a turtle near the side of the road. He considered mentioning it to Minnow, in case it was in danger of being trampled, but thought better of it. She wasn’t the kind of person to not stop for a turtle, if the turtle was worth stopping for.

She dropped something onto his head.

Leonas removed it with great caution so that he could look at it. She’d taken some of her wildflowers and woven the stems together, forming them into a little wreath crown. He sniffed at the sweet peas, and tried to decide if he could pull it off. He’d worn simple black trousers with a white double-breasted shirt, with as small a cravat as he could tolerate. Keeping it simple for the road, and the looming specter of camping. It was basic enough that it was difficult to clash with, so he put the flowers back on. He turned to see that Minnow was still multi-tasking, a loose hold on the reins while she continued to braid flowers.

Further down the road was a commotion in a nearby field. Minnow pulled the horses to a stop again. Karzarul had his trotters up on the edge of the wagon, and looked ready to leap out. “Wait here, I’ll be right back, ” Minnow said, jumping down from the wagon.

It was a pack of Brutelings, descending upon someone who was trying to defend himself with a cheap sword. Leonas looked at Karzarul, but the Rootboar’s gaze was fixed on the Brutelings, snout twitching again. His trotters hit the sides of the wagon impatiently, yearning to ignore Minnow’s directive.

Minnow unsheathed the Starsword, and took the head off the first Bruteling before they’d taken their attention off their target. She skewered another one through the middle, then cut the arm off of one about to hit her with a mace. She split its stomach open, knocked another one down with her foot at the same time and stood on it while she cut the head off another. The torso of the one she stood on seemed to cave inward. When a Bruteling jumped on her back, she grabbed it, flinging it with such force at a nearby tree that they could hear the crack of it from the wagon.

She waved goodbye to the man she’d helped as she returned to the road, hair escaping from her braid again. “Sorry about that,” she said, wiping blood from the flat of the blade onto her thigh. She sheathed the Starsword again, hopping back up into the wagon. Leonas offered her a clean handkerchief from his bag. “Oh! Thank you. Sorry, am I a mess?” She wiped blood from her hands and a splatter from her face. “Did I get it?”

Leonas took the handkerchief back, and dabbed at her forehead. Then he took her by the shoulders to turn her around, and undid her hair so that he could fix it. “You look like shit,” he said.

“I know,” she pouted. He started braiding at the crown of her head instead of at the nape of her neck.

“A lumberjack cutting down trees has more technique than that.”

“It works, though.”

“If you ever have to fight—” He paused. “Anyone important,” he said. “Cutting through them like a thicket is only going to get you hurt.”

“I have techniques,” she said. “Advanced techniques.”

He tied off the end of her braid, and took an orange poppy from her basket to tuck it into her hair. “Running in a big circle around them isn’t a technique.” He kissed the top of her head before remembering that he shouldn’t, recoiling as if he’d been burned.

She huffed and started the horses again, waiting to resume her flower weaving. Leonas sat back down, and tossed his bloody handkerchief over the edge of the wagon rather than have to clean it later.

“We should be far enough out that you can change,” Minnow said.

Karzarul jumped out of the wagon, growing larger while he did so that his hooves were massive by the time they hit the road. The horses protested and tried to pull away from him, but Minnow tugged the reins until she had them under control. Leonas empathized with the horses.

“That’s what he looked like?” Leonas demanded, pointing at Karzarul. “When you met him, he looked like that?”

Leonas had never had the misfortune of seeing a Tauril in person. He’d known that they were large, which was different from riding in a wagon alongside one. It felt unnatural that anything so large could be mobile. The thought of striking up a conversation with such a thing was baffling. It would trigger a fear response even if he didn’t recognize him.

Recognize the Tauril more clearly than he’d ever recognized the Impyr, knew that face and had seen it kill him. Kill him again and again, night after night, more nights than not for years on end.

That was fine. He was over that.

But Karzarul’s tunic had that embroidered moon motif again, full moons on the backs of his gloves, silver crescents along the holes in his earlobes and an impossible silver longbow on his back. Which had, again, a lot of moon imagery. All of which was more obvious due to the sheer size of him.

“We already talked about this,” Minnow said. “He was nice. I thought he might be monster royalty? Like a prince.”

Karzarul snorted.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with being a prince,” she said.

“There’s plenty wrong with it,” Leonas said. “Being a monster prince would also be bad,” he pointed out. Karzarul raised an eyebrow. “In theory. If Karzarul were planning to kill you. Which we’ve decided he’s not.”

Karzarul huffed.

“He isn’t,” Minnow confirmed. “Like how I’m not planning to kill either of you, and you’re not planning to kill either of us. Right?”

“Right,” Leonas said.

“You said the King was planning to kill you,” Karzarul reminded her. Even his voice was bigger in this form.

“Yeah,” she said. “He was, right?” she asked Leonas.

“He strongly implied that you would kill me if I didn’t have the good sense to kill you first,” Leonas said. “You know how he is.”

“I don’t know why he thinks I would,” she said. “It isn’t guaranteed that we kill each other. I know what Leland says, and I know what Ari said before.” Karzarul grunted. “But it seems like it’s mostly Karzarul that gets stuck in a kill-or-be-killed. You and I only kill each other sometimes.”

“If I kill you both first, that doesn’t count as not killing each other,” Karzarul said. “There’s no way of knowing what you might have done if you had the chance.”

“Even still,” Minnow said. “Sometimes the Moonlight Monster is defeated, and the Starlight Hero and Sunlight Heir go their separate ways and it’s fine. You knew it was going to be fine, right? That I wasn’t going to kill you?”

Leonas shrugged. “It was always a possibility.”

“Leonas,” Minnow said, scandalized as if he’d admitted to not washing his hands.

“I’m not saying I wouldn’t deserve it,” he said. “I wasn’t planning to deserve it. No one plans to construct a tax policy so disastrous they become known as a tyrant king. Things happen, mistakes are made, kings are beheaded and sometimes the Hero does it.”

“I wouldn’t behead you because of taxes,” she said.

“You can’t promise that,” Leonas said. “You’ve never even paid taxes. Pay taxes, then see what you’re willing to behead me for.”

“If you need money, I can give you money.”

“It isn’t about the money,” he said. “Taxes are an example. There are a lot of ways to fuck up being a king, that’s why kings are a terrible idea.”

“I think you’ll be a good king,” she said.

“That’s not a thing,” Leonas said. “The best we can hope for is unremarkable. Boring. That elusive middle-ground between conquering and conquered, where there aren’t any wars and everyone’s getting fed but no one’s happy about it. Years later historians focus on what must have been wrong with me anatomically because they’re desperate for something interesting.”

“Should I let people know that there’s nothing wrong with your anatomy?” Minnow said. “So the historians know.”

“Minnow,” Leonas said, “are you suggesting that you are going to approach strangers, say ‘the Prince of Astielle has a normal dick’, and then leave? Because I don’t think that’s going to have the effect you think it will.”

“Oh!” she said. “I thought you meant they’d say you have a secret peg-leg. Because you’re part pirate.”

“… even if piracy were genetic,” he said, “a peg-leg isn’t something you’re born with.”

“Gerry said they were born with theirs.”

“Don’t listen to Gerry.”

“Who’s Gerry?” Karzarul asked.

“They’re a pirate,” Minnow said.

“They bring her quests, sometimes,” Leonas said. He didn’t try to sound catty about it, but he also didn’t try not to. “Given what Minnow’s collection has taught us about the predilections of pirates, I’m sure you’ll get along wonderfully.” Karzarul did not respond, the tips of his ears flicking, which Leonas had not realized they could do.

“You’re part pirate,” Minnow reminded him.

Leonas felt his face warm. “It’s not genetic,” he snapped.

Minnow held out her finished flower creation toward Karzarul, because she couldn’t reach to place it on his head. He took it gingerly, and had to place it behind his horns, hoofbeats slowing as he tried to get it right. He checked that it would stay in place before he lowered his hands. The flowers looked much daintier on the head of a Tauril. Minnow giggled like an arrow straight to Leonas’ heart.

“Where’s yours?” he asked, noticing her basket was already empty. If they were going to be a matched set, it only felt fair that it be all of them. That Minnow wear flowers instead of just blood.

She giggled again. “I don’t have one,” she said. “Heroes don’t need crowns.”

“Use the shampoo bar,” Leonas snapped. Minnow frowned at the bar of soap she was holding.

“It’s fancy soap,” she protested. “It’s got milk in it.”

“I don’t care,” he said. He was sitting at her vanity, whose function she had never entirely understood until now. Since it didn’t have a sink, she hadn’t been able to enjoy watching him shave. He was trying not to look at her while she took a bath.

Karzarul hadn’t been happy about the arrangement, but Minnow refused to have someone waiting to use the good bathroom when they could have both been using it. She also refused to let Karzarul in, though certain forms could be accommodated by the wasteful largeness of the space. Even hesitant willingness to let them speak alone felt like progress.

“Which one is the shampoo bar?” she asked, looking at all the little bars and bottles of things that Leonas had left the night before.

“The one with the gold flecks,” he said. His hair was still in his scarf, and he was rubbing things on his face from little dropper bottles whose function she could not imagine. After each one he would turn over a tiny hourglass he’d set onto the vanity, and wait.

Leonas’ idea of essentials to bring on the run had turned out to be the contents of his bathroom. Since he’d made it unscathed, and she liked looking at his face, it felt rude to judge.

“Will this make my hair shiny?” she asked.

“No,” he said, and she pouted. “You haven’t had a haircut in—I don’t think you’ve ever had a haircut.” She opened her mouth. “If a sword was involved it doesn’t count.” She closed her mouth. “It isn’t even right to call them split ends anymore, your hair is just split.” He took out a bottle of something orange and started spreading it under his eyes with the pad of his middle finger.

“It looks like you got the wrong color,” she warned.

“I don’t tell you how to kill monsters—”

“Yes you do.”

“—so don’t tell me how to make myself fit to be seen in society.” He added lines of green down his nose and onto his cheeks, over his witchmarks. Minnow moved around the bathtub to the edge closest to him, resting her arms on it to watch him. “You barely participate in society. You’re not even thirty yet. I’m old. If the circles under my eyes get any deeper my eyeballs are going to fall out of my fucking skull. Concealer is the only thing holding me together.”

“It seems like a lot of work,” she said.

“Well we can’t all have skin made out of moonlight,” he said, dabbing a sponge aggressively at his face. “Some of us have pores.” When he seemed satisfied, he switched to an enormous brush, patting powder onto his face with an equal amount of fury. She worried for his eyes. “We either take measures, or accept that passing citizens can see them from the street.”

Minnow couldn’t tell what difference all that powder had made, except that his witchmarks looked dusty now. He took a small brush to his eyelashes and his eyebrows, then found the tiniest brush she’d ever seen to dip into a pot of shimmery copper dust. She perked up.

“You should use the big brush for that one,” she said. “More sparkles!”

He ignored her, giving his eyes the barest edge instead. “We are going for subtlety,” he said, “we are going for regality. We are not going for the Sunlight Heir and Prince of Astielle looking like a common whore.”

“What about an uncommon whore?”

“They prefer ‘courtesans’, and they’re doing a new thing where they rip their eyebrows out and draw on new ones with little pictures in them,” he said, leaning closer to the mirror to see better. “Only about three of them can actually pull it off. I am playing to my strengths, which include having eyebrows.”

Minnow ducked under the water to rinse her hair out, sweeping it back out of her face when she came back up. “Some of them were courtesans, right?” she asked. “The ones you had sex with? I feel like some of them were fancy ladies, but other ones were being paid for sex stuff. I’ve never been able to ask before.”

“Some of them were courtesans,” he confirmed. “There is a limit to how many noblewomen even exist within the kingdom, to say nothing of those eligible for marriage. He gave up on most of the ones that wanted courting, and settled for the more mercenary families. Even they weren’t willing to throw their daughters at me for too long. It’s been down to the dregs for a while now.” He dipped a brush in oil, using it to clear the makeup off his witchmarks with sharp-edged precision. “I prefer the courtesans,” he said. “We have an understanding.”

“Does he think it makes it better?” she asked. “Not being able to go out.”

Leonas snorted, drawing slender edges of copper along his witchmarks. “He’d like a grandchild before I’m dead,” he said. “That’s all. Whoever gets there first gets to be Queen.”

“Even the courtesans?”

“Those are a stop-gap measure,” he said. “So I don’t… forget.”

She narrowed her eyes. “How to fuck?” she asked.

“Something like that.” He considered his face from different angles in the mirror. Satisfied, he picked up a bottle, shut his eyes, and sprayed his face.

She stood up in the tub, and started wringing out her hair. Leonas glanced at her, then away. “Was he always listening?” she asked.

“He couldn’t have been,” Leonas said. “It wouldn’t be practical. Either he checked in at irregular intervals, or else he set a trap array to catch words and voices that he thought were important.” Leonas unwrapped the scarf from his hair, and started to untie the ribbons he’d used to keep his curls defined. “I searched that room from top to bottom and never found it, whatever it was. The best I can come up with is that it was the entire room, with enchantments carved into the inside of the walls.”

“Creepy,” Minnow said, wrapping a towel around herself. “Is it nice, being able to say whatever you want while you’re here?” she asked.

He fluffed his curls, still checking his reflection. “Yes, fantastic,” he said. “I’m a middle-aged man who ran away from home, I have no skills outside of theoretical research, no powers, no money, barely have clothes, and I’m cock-blocking a man who already wanted to kill me. But now I can explain the details of my horrible sex life, and isn’t that its own reward, in a way.”

“I have a question,” Karzarul said.

Minnow was helping Leonas to gather books he thought were of interest. He had an elaborate note-taking system involving many more bottles of ink than she would otherwise have considered necessary, as well as rulers. She thought she saw a protractor, once. It was intimidating to watch.

Leonas did not like to leave the desk he’d claimed as his own. He would use the bathroom, make tea if the kitchen was unoccupied, and that was about it. Minnow wasn’t convinced that he’d been in a kitchen before. She had discovered that the best way to make sure he ate was to leave little baskets of savory breads on his desk, and mugs full of soups thin enough that he could drink them without looking up. Plainer foods worked best, as he didn’t always seem to notice he was eating them. It made her feel better about having dinner without him.

Karzarul was sitting on the loveseat again, reading history books. He also had a pen, but was making his notes right on the pages. Minnow had a hunch that most of what he was writing was rude. Sometimes he stared in a way that made her wish she’d worn the kind of dress with a shape to it.

“Okay,” Leonas said, not looking up from his notes.

“How long ago did Elias die?” Karzarul asked. “Every time I come back after dying someone’s changed how years are counted.”

Leonas paused, looking slightly upward to do mental math. “87 years, about. He slayed you nearly 150 years ago.”

Karzarul frowned, doodling on the inside cover of his book. “I never met the Heir that cycle, did she kill him?”

“Elias killed Brennia not long after he killed you,” Leonas said. “Thexikar never fully recovered from the loss of the Princess, Astielle was able to fill the void of power in the aftermath.”

“And how old are you?” Karzarul asked.

“33,” Leonas said. “34 in a few months.”

Karzarul hummed thoughtfully. “That doesn’t add up,” he said. “A resurrection cycle shouldn’t take this long”

“They don’t always match up,” Leonas said.

“Yes, I know,” Karzarul said. “I was there. Tomas was born while Gwenviel still lived, Needle lived long enough to kill me twice. The first Needle. Even when one lives, my own awakening usually coincides with the resurrection of the second. The rest of the time, Heroes and Heirs are born within a few years of each other. And I’ve never taken so long to reform after a resurrection cycle had already begun.”

Leonas had switched to a different piece of paper so that Karzarul’s tangent could have its own page of notes. “How does that work, exactly?” Leonas asked.

“I die,” Karzarul said. “I dissipate into nothing but the core of my being, dormant. Awareness of my counterparts brings me back to myself. I begin to gather moonlight, until I have enough to form a body once more. Once there is enough of me, I awaken.”

“Is there a specific place?” Leonas asked.

“Why would I tell you if there was?” Karzarul asked in return.

“It’s relevant,” Leonas said. “If a location is required, it could have been interfered with in such a way as to cause a delay.”

“Certain locations are preferable, but not required,” Karzarul said. “Whatever soul I have is bound to the Moonbow, which is itself bound to the Moon Goddess. It will outlive the world, same as yours. There is no circumstance that can stop me from from building a body for myself.”

“Is the Moon okay?” Minnow asked.

“We would have noticed if it went missing,” Leonas said.

“I know,” she said defensively. “I only mean, it took him a long time to make a new moonlight body, and all the monsters don’t have moonlight in them.”

“It’s a reasonable question,” Karzarul said. “Under other circumstances, I would say that I would know if something had changed, if the moonlight were being blocked somehow. But I’ve been dead.”

“Does it matter?” Leonas asked.

“Think of magic,” Karzarul said. Leonas frowned at his notes. “Spend long enough in a place where magic is thin, and eventually you stop noticing. It isn’t until you’ve been drenched in it again that you realize how little you’ve had. I cannot give an objective measure of how much moonlight is in the world. I can only tell you that it feels normal to me.”

“Informative,” Leonas said, the nib of his pen gliding over paper. “Not useful, but informative.”

Karzarul growled, but only for half of a second. Minnow considered this progress.

“Are Heirs always the future ruler of a powerful empire?” Minnow asked. “Maybe that was why. None of the countries were strong enough.”

Karzarul shook his head. “They can be Heir to anything, as long as what they stand to inherit has value. A duchy, a fortune, a church. An unusually large boat.”

“It’s an easy mistake to make,” Leonas said. “It goes in the other direction. The presence of a Sunlight Heir can be enough to raise an empire.”

“How lucky,” Karzarul said dryly, “for Astielle.”

“The odds were in her favor,” Leonas said, eyes on his notes. “My father is the King of Astielle, and my mother was the Sea Witch Pirate Queen. That’s three.”

“Two,” Minnow said.

“Three,” Leonas said again. “Cyrnae was the Pirate Queen, and she was also the Sea Witch Queen.”

“I didn’t know you could be the queen of that,” Minnow said.

“You can be the queen of anything,” Leonas said, “if you can kill anyone who disagrees.”

“The King definitely did that on purpose, right?” Karzarul asked. “We all agree he had a child with a queen twice-over to try and have an Heir?”

“Obviously,” Leonas said. “The only question has ever been why Cyrnae would participate. I try not to dwell on it.”

“You did not say, when I called you witch-prince,” Karzarul said, “that you were the Sea Witch King.”

“No one knows for sure if my mother is dead,” Leonas said. “Under the circumstances, the title hardly suits.”

Karzarul added a note to the timeline he’d been trying to construct. “It still doesn’t fit,” he said. “Could there have been another cycle, after Elias died? One that neither of you is aware of?”

“It isn’t as if no one noticed the gap,” Leonas said. “Everyone got very antsy, thinking you might have done something. The nationality of the Hero and the Heir, whether they are the same or distinct, it’s an important historical event. There was a series of scandals involving fake Heroes with tattoos and counterfeit swords. A few ill-conceived attempts to claim the birth of an Heir.”

“You’re certain they were fake?” Karzarul asked.

Leonas sighed. “The Heroes were rather notoriously humiliated when they were found out. As for the Heirs, they were Astian. My father was on his second wife. He had every incentive to claim an Heir for our kingdom if he could do so, even if it wasn’t his true heir.”

“Your dad’s real old,” Minnow said.

“One of the many benefits of being an enchanter,” Leonas said. “Based on how long my grandfather lasted, I could make it to two-hundred, assuming I’m not murdered.”

“Have you found anything interesting yet?” Karzarul said.

“It has been less than one day,” Leonas said. “If what you’re describing is real, it’s an entirely new magical phenomena wherein the fundamental nature of an entire class of creatures has changed. That’s the kind of event that could take years, if not decades, to unravel.”

“Oh,” Minnow said, taken aback. “It’s not all reading, though.”

“Yes, it’s all reading. Practical research comes later.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Minnow said.

“Unfortunately, this is it,” Leonas said. “This is what I bring to the table. So far I’ve found information on tangible illusions, which wouldn’t bleed when Minnow cuts them, or meat puppets, which would require someone to be in active control. They also wouldn’t turn to dust when Karzarul does… whatever it is he does.” Karzarul hmphed. “There’s a certain amount of research into autonomous artificial life, but it requires a prohibitively large amount of magic and usually ends when the researcher is killed by his own creation. Because. Well. Imagine the sort of person that wants to research autonomous artificial life.”

“You’re saying you haven’t found anything,” Karzarul said.

“This is an exploratory literature review,” Leonas said. “A negative result is still a result. I’m looking at moonlight, now. It may be that the monsters have had something happen to their lifeforce on a massive scale. That would require moonlight manipulation of some kind.”

Minnow sighed heavily. “I know this is important,” she said, “but it’s also really boring.”

“If you’d like,” Leonas said, “you could ask Karzarul to scatter my notes in a crumbling castle somewhere, and you can read them as part of painstakingly gathering them back up.”

“Really?” she asked hopefully.

“No.”

It wasn’t that Karzarul didn’t like it when Minnow called him beautiful, called him wonderful, deemed him to be everything he’d worked so hard at being. Intellectually, he enjoyed it very much. Emotionally, it warmed him greatly.

But there was that other thing.

That thing.

It didn’t satisfy the thing inside him that craved her disdain and her desire in equal measure. He wanted her to loathe him, to find him loathsome, to understand that he was loathsome. He wanted her to understand that he was vile, that she was too good for him, that she was lowering herself by allowing him to touch her.

He wanted her to know better, and he wanted her to want it anyway.

She knew he was a monster, even while she flattered him. She delighted in it, was the difference. He’d seen glimpses of it here and there, since the Heir had joined them. Since he couldn’t help baring his fangs, looming, taking up space. Acting like a massive dickhead.

He could see it in her eyes and the catch in her throat, the way her pulse fluttered. Maybe they were the same, that way. Maybe she wanted a loathing he could not give her.

He tried it anyway, while Leonas was busy getting ready for bed. A rare moment alone since the Prince’s arrival.

Karzarul cornered her in a hallway on the other side of the house, and the way her breath caught was enough to make him grin. He ran his thumb along her jaw, let himself feel self-satisfied about it when she leaned into his touch.

Could her prince do this? Make her shiver like this?

“If we were alone,” Karzarul said, “I would have fucked you over that desk already.”

“Oh,” she sighed. He kissed her, could feel her teeth graze his tongue before he kissed a line down to her neck.

“I wanted to fuck you when you woke up this morning, with your hair all sleepy,” he said. “I wanted to fuck you when you were wet out of the bath. I wanted to fuck you over the breakfast table, and at lunch, and every time you stretched your arms over your head in this cute little dress.”

“Like this?” she asked, reaching over her head.

“Like that,” he confirmed, his knee bent between her thighs and his tail brushing her bare skin. He wrapped his fingers around her forearms to hold them against the wall, purring when she seemed to wobble.

“It seems like you want to fuck just, generally,” she said.

“Not generally,” he corrected. “Just you.”

“Oh!” she said. “Here, let me try something.” He let her go when she pulled her arms free, since she wasn’t playing along. She fussed with the buttons on her dress, undid enough of them that she could pull her breasts free of her chest wrap. “How’s that?” she asked, looking back up at him. Her hair was falling wild around her face, her eyes bright, but it was her enthusiasm making the tentacles around his cock writhe. She looked so pleased to be putting herself on display for him.

His answer was a kiss, his hands on her breasts pushing into the softness of her skin, trying not to sink his claws in. She moaned into his mouth, and he wrapped his tail around her leg. He felt her hand slide between them, under his skirt, and his tentacles grabbed reflexively at her. She giggled even as she wrapped her fingers around his shaft.

“If I promise not to bite,” she asked, “can I taste it?”

His tentacles squeezed her hand to tighten her grip. The earnestness of her was going to fucking kill him. Mother Void, forgive me, but of course She never did. “You want that?” he asked, running a fingertip along her lower lip. She licked his finger, wrapped her lips around the digit and sucked. He kept his claws retracted, pushed a second finger into her mouth, his tentacles writhing over her hand while she stroked him. Calloused hands used to gripping a sword, a mouth full of sharp teeth, a fearsome little creature with her tits out and her cheeks hollowed.

He slid his fingers out of her mouth, and she slid down the wall onto her knees. She had to kneel fully upright to reach him, the front panel of his skirt draped off to the side. She ran her fingers over the veins of light, admired it like a treasure. He braced his hands against the wall, looking down at her looking up at him. The glow from his cock reflected off her pupils, made her look starstruck, had him struggling to breathe.

She gave him a preliminary lick, but two tentacles abruptly filled her mouth; her eyes widened with a muffled squeak. She was hot, and soft, and wet, and even the feel of his tentacles pressing into her teeth was not enough to stop him from wanting to fill her too full. His claws dug into the wall as he forced himself to behave, his tentacles to retract. He tried to wrap them around each other to keep them busy as she caught her breath. She pressed his cock against her cheek, and the scale of those two things beside each other did things to him. Terrible, terrible things.

She opened her mouth wide, slid the head of his cock along her tongue and into her mouth, and it was a struggle to keep his tentacles in control. Her hand around the base of him and her lips around his shaft, she was doing her best but she was just too fucking small. It was an absurdity, was what it was, and it delighted and terrified him. He wanted to wrap his tentacles around her face, around her neck, hold her mouth open and sink into her throat.

Since he didn’t want her to fucking die, he would not be doing that.

But Mother Void was it difficult, when she figured out that she could squeeze her own breasts, lift them higher, high enough that the tips of his tentacles could wrap around her nipples.

“Wait,” he said, taking a step back, and she nearly overbalanced and tipped forward. This was all still too new. He could not be trusted with his dick near her face. “Get up here,” he said.

She hesitated. “I’m sore,” she admitted, pressing her thighs together. He would keep to himself how arousing he found this.

“Okay,” he said, joining her down on the floor. She looked surprised when he kissed her, pressed her back into the wall. “We’ll try something different. Turn around.”

Her eyes got big as saucers.

“Not that different,” he amended. “If you don’t like it, you can punch me and we’ll see where that goes.”

It was a touch unsettling how that got her biting her lip, turning herself around and pressing her palms against the wall.

“Just like that,” he said, hiking up her dress with his hands on her hips. “Legs together,” he said, using his knees to press against the outside of her calves, holding them there. He slid his cock along the curve of her ass, between her thighs, heard her whimper as the head of it slid along the heat of her. It was difficult when he couldn’t see what he was doing, but he knew he’d gotten the angle right when she gasped, the head of his cock rubbing at her clit.

He wouldn’t pretend it was as good as being buried as far as he’d fit inside her, but her thighs were thick and well-muscled and soaked with her own arousal. She clenched her thighs tight around him, tighter still when he bent to sink his fangs into her shoulder. She leaned further forward, her forearms pressing hard into the wall to push back into him.

“Look at me,” he said as he lifted his head, “let me see you.” She turned her head, twisted a little so that he could see her over her shoulder. He licked her cheek. He didn’t know why. It felt right in the moment, and like he was a stupid animal in rut immediately afterward. She made a little sound of surprise that was neither mocking nor disgusted, and he didn’t know if that was what he wanted. One of his tentacles started to push inside of her, and the look on her face made him thrust harder against her clit. “Too much?” he asked.

“Good,” she gasped, and the tentacle pushed deeper, “good, it’s good, you’re good—” She clenched around the tentacle pumping in and out of her, her hips rocking. He stopped thrusting for the gratification of feeling her grind her clit down onto his cock, squeezing her breasts to feel her squirm harder. “More,” she groaned, “hands, your hands, I want—” She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, so he shoved two fingers into her mouth. She latched onto them, eyes shut, and he felt her start to spasm around his tentacle. Her strangled cry was muffled by his skin.

Before she was done he thrust harder between her legs, spread his fingers apart to force her mouth open so he could hear her guttural sounds. She looked helpless and messy and slightly ruined, she was too good for him to ruin her entirely but she’d let him ruin her just enough. Beautiful and soft and almost something like his.

He pulled back so that he could watch his cum splatter onto her skin, her ass and the backs of her thighs. Then he pulled her closer before she could stop him, fell back so that he had a lap he could hold her in. She was almost limp, her limbs all trembling, both of them sticky now.

“There’s a less-good bathroom on this side of the house,” she said, a little hoarse. He made a sound of acknowledgement, but didn’t let her go. He resented that he could not fuck her in her bed and then fall asleep there with her. “It isn’t that I don’t like being covered in stuff,” she added. “No, that’s not true. I said that to be nice. It gets sticky and weird after a minute and I don’t like it. But humans have to pee after, or they have problems.” She patted his leg underneath her. “It isn’t anything about you in particular. Okay?”

“Okay,” he lied.

“Really?” Karzarul asked. “Was this really easier than imagining a tree?”

Leonas looked flustered. “It isn’t like I did it on purpose,” he said. “Don’t you need to have been thinking of me, for this to happen?” he shot back, hands on his hips. “You said before that’s how it works.”

“You’re in Minnow’s bed,” Karzarul said. “She has asked me to be polite, which means I can’t have cunt for breakfast until you leave.” Leonas recoiled, turning his back to Karzarul and crossing his arms. “I fell asleep annoyed. It happens.”

“Charming,” Leonas said.

“Here,” Karzarul said, waving a hand. “Have a tree.”

The willow was large enough, its branches long enough, to obscure Leonas from view. He spun around, startled. Then he lifted a branch to look closer at the leaves, the stems and veins and imperfect little brown spots.

“There’s never anything here,” Leonas said. “When I get here.”

“Some of us have the sense to clean up when we have guests.”

Leonas looked down at his feet, at the blades of grass that had spread outward from the trunk of the willow tree. There were wild strawberries blooming, and clover. A very fat bee appeared on one of the blossoms.

He waited for something to happen, but nothing did. Eventually he sat down, his back against the willow tree trunk. He picked a clover blossom, and tried to find a mistake in its petals.

“This is the book room that has your old stuff in it,” Minnow said to Leonas, leading the way. “Most of them I stuck on shelves without sorting, the witchcraft books are the least organized because I never use them. I did use a lot of your animal and plant books, and books about places. I put them back when I’m done but some of them got pretty messed up. I don’t think we need those ones anyway, right? We want magic books, about magic stuff.” She didn’t consider it a library, because a library had a system. She’d seen enough of them to know the difference.

Leonas ran his fingers over leather spines, familiar titles.

“And there’s a whole shelf of dirty books over here!” she said more gleefully, spreading out her arms to indicate.

He choked. “Those ones are not mine,” he sputtered, turning red.

“I think this one was,” she said, pulling out a tattered volume. “It was on the bottom inside of an encyclopedia, but when I found it I noticed it had a number at the corner, so I’ve been trying to find all of them.” She held onto the slim booklet with care. “These were the hardest to find out of everything I have,” she said. “People get so weird about anyone finding out they looked at a drawing of a boob.”

“Good work?” Leonas managed. “I don’t think that’s going to help us right now.”

“I know,” she said. “But since I got the whole series I thought you might want to read them later. I figured it would have been frustrating, never knowing the whole story.”

“I know what happens,” Leonas said. “He has sex.”

“Yeah,” Minnow said, “but he also stops the coup attempt.”

“The what.”

“Yeah!” Minnow said, excited. “See, in the one you had, he has sex with the Baron’s many perfidious daughters, and then also the perfidious Baron.” She opened it to point to one of the pages, which featured a lot of improbable anatomy. “But if you look closer, he’s wearing a little badge, which they don’t explain. In the earlier ones they establish that he’s a detective for the Kingdom of Orgyite—”

“No.“

“—and he’s trying to uncover the head of the rebellion. With his dick.”

Ari looked over her shoulder at the book, and the watercolors on the pages. He pointed at it, looking at Leonas. “This was yours?” he asked.

“… I was thirteen,” Leonas said, turning his attention back to the shelves. “My judge of quality was poor.”

“Hmm.” Ari wrapped an arm around Minnow’s shoulders, resting his chin on her head. Leonas glanced over, then turned his back to them both, focusing on book titles. Ari purred loudly against her hair.

Minnow put the book away, and pulled away from him.

“Karzarul said monsters are supposed to be made of moonlight, and people are sunlight,” she said, wandering between the shelves. She looked them over, but wasn’t actually reading at all. The thought of actually trying to do research made her eyes glaze over.

“Everyone knows that,” Leonas said. She stuck her tongue out at his back.

“Are fairies made of sunlight?” she asked, falling into one of her big comfy chairs. Her legs went over the armrest.

“They’re magical creatures,” Leonas said, taking down a book to check the table of contents.

Minnow bounced her feet. “So there’s sunlight, moonlight, and… magic,” she said.

“I know,” Leonas said. “But it isn’t starlight. Enchanters used to believe magic was starlight, and they fucked up a lot of enchantments that way. Lots of theories that never went anywhere. Treating magic as distinct works best for practical applications.”

“It’s void,” Ari said. He was leaning against one of her bookshelves, and fortunately it was one braced against a wall. If he’d done that on a loose bookshelf it would have tipped.

“Oh, right,” Minnow said. “Karzarul says the Star Goddess isn’t the Star Goddess. She’s the Void Goddess.”

“Hm.” Leonas’ mouth was a thin line, but he said nothing.

“Magic is void,” Ari said. “Potential. It becomes what’s made of it, what’s put into it. Places like the Faewild—it would have been an ordinary forest, once. But for whatever reason magic started to pool and gather there, picking up all the things that people carried into the forest. Their awe, their dread, the things they thought might lurk. It became a forest that felt, in some way, like more of a forest than others. It compounded on itself, drew more magic in, and now it is Faewild Forest. Fairies and pixies born of the things men saw in the corners of their eyes at night, magic as dense as water in an ocean. Heroes have always been drawn to the Faewild; you are the only one I know to have been drawn there young enough to be changed by it.”

Minnow considered the forest she’d grown up in, and how thin the air had felt as soon as she’d left it. “Does that sound right to you?” she asked Leonas.

“Magic is drawn to magic,” Leonas confirmed. “Deep wells of magic are a danger, and the Faewild Forest is one possible consequence. As to the nature of your patron goddess, as well as magic itself, I would want to see citations.”

“I predate your modern understanding of the universe,” Karzarul said.

“That’s not a citation.”

Ari snorted, meandering toward the chair where Minnow had settled herself. He leaned over, bracing one hand against the top of the chair, caging her in. His grin had a little of that sharpness to it, that bite that made her feel all fluttery. She slid out of the chair and away from him before he could kiss her. The look on his face made her feel bad about it, but not much.

Leonas was pointedly ignoring them, and so Minnow ducked through a door and out into the hall. Ari followed, but she was in no mood for the look on his face. “You need to stop,” she said, her voice low.

“Oh?” He reached toward her, but she smacked his hand away, startling him.

“I’m not a weapon,” she snapped. He looked stricken. Her piece said, she moved around him to rejoin Leonas. He grabbed her arm to stop her.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said.

“You didn’t want him to see?” she asked. “You didn’t want it to hurt?”

He shifted, scuffing his hooves against her floor. “I wanted him to see that you like me,” he said. “That it’s mutual. That you’re not ashamed of me.”

“You know that I’m not,” she said.

“I want him to know,” he pressed. “If it upsets him, that’s his problem, not yours.”

“If I go in there and kiss him,” she said, pointing, “would it upset you?”

He averted his gaze, nostrils flaring. “That’s different,” he muttered.

“Because you don’t trust him?” she pressed, leaning and stretching her neck to get in his face. He turned his head in the other direction. “Because you think he’s going to hurt me?” He said nothing. She flicked at his hand on her arm, and he pulled it back, shaking it out like he’d been stung. “Stupid,” she said, and he flinched. “You’re being…” She searched for the word. “Insecure.”

Ari’s shoulders had been rising like hackles, his jaw acquiring a sullen jut. “Why would I be secure?” he shot back. “Of the Heroes not eager to kill me all on their own, the rest were turned against me. Those few Heirs that could not twist my words chose to kill the Hero themselves. What security do I have, when you trust him and turn on me for daring to want to touch you?”

She hummed, giving due consideration to his furrowed brow and bared fangs, the lashing tail and angry ringing of bells behind him.

“Have we done this before?” she asked. “You and I, before I was me. Were we ever together?”

“I…” He wilted. “Once,” he said. “Almost twice.” He rubbed at the spot on his hand where she’d flicked him. “There were times when things were almost different, they could have been different. In the earliest reincarnation cycles, I. Made a lot of mistakes. Later, when we were together, I thought things would change. They didn’t. This is the first time you’ve let me touch you, since.”

“Would it be better if I remembered?” she asked.

“No.”

“What was my name?”

He hesitated. “Jonys,” he said.

She turned the name over in her head. It was familiar, but only insofar as she recognized it as a name. He could have said any name and she likely would have felt the same. “It doesn’t sound like me,” she said, “when you say it.”

“You were tall,” he said, and she got up on her toes. “Black hair. You were very proud of your hair.” She fidgeted with a lock of mossy brown, frizzing as it dried, the ends all split. “Very kind. A little bit stupid.” She scowled and dropped back down to flat feet, and he smiled. “Shoulders are the same, though. And you have tits now, that’s an improvement. I think you would have liked those.”

“I do,” she confirmed. “Have I ever been tall and had tits?”

“When you were Maiete,” he said. “I killed you.”

“Oh,” she sighed. “I was too powerful. What about short, but with a really big dick?”

Ari made a face. “How would I know?” he asked. “Needle was pretty short, I don’t know what your dick looked like. You were called Needle. The first time, when you were a horrible man. The second time you were tall, I don’t know why you called yourself Needle again. You lived a very long time as a horrible man named Needle, I don’t know why that wasn’t enough. You may not even have had a dick the second time, I never asked.”

“That’s fair,” she said. “That would be off-putting.”

“It would,” he agreed.

She’d known intellectually that the Hero was, if not always a man, then usually. Knowing someone who’d known her made it different, made her wonder. How much of herself was muscle memory? Forgetting about personal space and being careful and keeping her shirt on. Not a changeling thing, but a Hero thing, taking his clothes off and cozying up with strangers and no one noticing it enough to mention it?

When they re-entered the book room, Leonas was sitting at her desk, going through papers.

“Are you reading my mail?” she asked.

“Yes,” Leonas said, still reading. “Do you own a farm?” he demanded, holding up one of her letters. “When did you buy a farm?”

“You know I don’t know,” she said, because she’d never gotten much better with time. “I know it was a long time ago, but post-Toast. I saved an old lady so she gave me her farm in Graswick. It wasn’t even a farm, it was a collapsing barn and a field.”

“A collapsing barn and a field wouldn’t make this much money,” Leonas said.

“I didn’t leave it like that,” she said. “I fixed up the barn, and cleared out all the rocks and weeds so I could plant some things.”

“How did you become a farmer without me noticing?” he asked, looking at the letter again.

“I did it between other stuff,” she shrugged. “Find seeds, stick ’em in the ground.”

“That’s not how farming works,” Leonas said, picking up a different letter and frowning at it. “I don’t think that’s how farming works.”

“It didn’t work well,” she said. “It did better after I hired a guy, and then he hired more guys.”

“Why,” Leonas asked, “have I had to intervene multiple times regarding reports of the Starlight Hero stealing pumpkins when this entire time you were some kind of…” He sputtered, waving the letter aggressively. “Lanternmelon tycoon!”

She scratched her nose. “I like free produce.”

“It wasn’t free. You stole it.”

“They left it sitting in a field.”

“Yes. Because that’s where they grow. On the farm. Which you should know. Because you’re a lanternmelon tycoon.” He set the letter down, looking at them spread out in front of them. “I know this winery,” he said. “I’ve had this wine.”

“Is it good?” Ari asked. He’d sat on a loveseat, and was taking up the entire thing with the spread of his knees.

“It’s magical melon wine,” Leonas said. “It’s impossible to fuck it up. Minnow, according to these reports, you have the capacity to single-handedly devastate the economy. Any economy. The core concept of an economy.”

“Oh!” She perked up. “Is that good? Can we use that?”

“No!,” he said. She pouted. “Why would that be good?” He hesitated. “Although if the rumors I’ve been hearing about the negotiations with Perivo are correct—no. This is a nightmare. I don’t understand how I could have not known about this. Do you not pay taxes?” He shuffled through pages again. “Why don’t you pay taxes.”

“Dee is in charge of that,” Minnow said, pointing at the letters. “She sends me the big letters. She says I’m a legal entity.”

“What.”

“The entity is. It’s old. Older than Astielle, and money, and stuff.”

Ari snorted, but made at least a token effort not to laugh outright.

“That can’t be right,” Leonas said. “Your current body was still born in—we don’t know where you were born.” He tapped the first knuckle of his index finger against his lower lip, staring into the middle distance. “Even still, the property itself is… but if you’re the acting avatar of the will of the Star Goddess—”

“Void Goddess,” Ari corrected.

“Whatever,” Leonas said.

“You’re not going to get her to pay taxes,” Ari said, standing. His bells sang as he walked over to the shelf where Minnow kept her rarest, filthiest books, his tail swaying. Leonas flinched.

“I know that,” Leonas said. “Are the bells necessary?” he asked. “Have you considered the merits of not sounding like a low-rent dancing girl?”

“I’ve considered them,” Ari said with a ringing toss of his braid. “I have found them wanting.”

“Great,” Leonas muttered, shuffling through papers without actually reading them. “You’re perfect for each other, you can share bards. She’ll sing, you’ll dance, he’ll take turns. Fun for everyone.”

Ari hesitated in the middle of taking a book off the shelf. “Does she?” he asked casually.

“Hm?”

“Sing.”

Leonas looked up, glanced at each of them in turn before lowering his eyes again. “No,” he said. “Not usually. She’s tried to explain songs to me, but it’s as close as she’s come. Around me.”

“It feels weird,” Minnow said. “Having an audience.”

“Ah.” Ari let the book fall back into the shelf.

“I should get back to… things that aren’t this.” Leonas pulled her letters together into a neat stack on the edge of the desk. “If I keep looking at these I’m going to lose my mind. More than I already have.”

“This room has the best furniture, if you want to use it,” Minnow offered.

Leonas peered in at the ornately carved wood. “What makes it the best?”

“It’s the most expensive,” she said.

“Where?”

“Anywhere. As far as I know. I haven’t been everywhere. When I need to decorate I usually buy all of the most expensive things and that seems to work.”

Leonas looked over the room without entering. Minnow looked at him, looking at the room.

“The door only locks from the inside,” she added.

“Right,” he said.

“Is it that if you think you’re alone, Ari will kill you, or that you think that if I’m alone Ari will kill me?” she asked. Leonas’ mouth flattened. “Both?”

“I’m not leaving you alone with him,” Ari said.

“Okay,” Minnow said. “Technically, everyone can fit in my room.”

“Which one is your room?” Leonas asked.

“The one at the top.”

“So, the tower.”

“… yes.”

“Great.”

“Everyone will just have to stay on opposite sides of the room,” Minnow continued, “and sleep, quietly, on their side. Because the first person to cause problems and wake me up is going to be stabbed.”

“Works for me,” Ari said.

“Fine,” Leonas said.

“Would you feel better if he looked like a Howler at night?” Minnow asked.

“Absolutely not,” Leonas said.

“What about a Rootboar?” she asked.

He frowned. “No,” he said, “that feels stinky.”

“I don’t stink,” Ari said.

“I didn’t say you did,” Leonas said. “I said it would feel stinky.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ari said.

“Not right now, I mean if you were a little, a fat pig thing,” Leonas said. “I’m not implying that you have some kind of perpetual stink aura.”

“Right,” Minnow said. “Ari can stay an Impyr, then, and that’s fine and no one’s going to be weird about it.”

“Sure,” Ari said.

“What do you need before bed?” she asked. He’d brought a small bag, abandoned by the door when he’d gone running. It didn’t seem large enough to hold a change of clothes. “A dressing gown? A scarf? Special fancy face soap?”

Leonas started to turn red, crossing his arms. “I don’t need…” The skeptical look on Minnow’s face spoke volumes. “I brought my own,” he mumbled. “Except for. I might need something to sleep in. If you have something big enough.”

“I was planning to sleep naked,” Ari said.

“He will also need something to sleep in,” Leonas said.

Karzarul wasn’t trying to harass the Prince.

Maybe a little.

Mostly, he was curious. He’d mulled it over, the issue of the travelling through dreams. An Heir unable to access the Sunshield, a witch unable to do magic. If it were a ploy, Karzarul couldn’t imagine to what end. Cultivating an air of uselessness?

If dwelling on how much he disliked the Heir before going to bed was enough to open his dreams, then surely the Heir’s dreams ought to be accessible to him.

A dreamscape was rarely well-defined. Most people had no control over theirs, no awareness. Even still, this was unusually messy. Swimming in disconnected sensory inputs, rapid-cycling fragments of someone else’s half-forgotten memories.

Karzarul found the constructs of himself disturbing. The shapes weren’t exactly correct, fuzzy around the edges with occasional sharp detail. An indistinct Tauril body with vivid hooves, a Howler that was mostly fuzz aside from the teeth. That wouldn’t have been so bad on its own, but most of them seemed to be missing a face. Faceless Taurils, Abysscales, an Impyr that was nothing but a ringing shape. One a little more than a white blur, to the extent that he could not imagine which form it was meant to represent. In each of them were intermittent flashes of something worse, the nonsense-beasts of a child’s nightmares, nothing but eyes and teeth and holes in the world.

Leonas had swords and arrows sticking out of him, clawing at his own face, struggling to breathe.

Karzarul nudged at him with his hoof. Leonas did not respond.

Karzarul crouched down, and snapped his fingers closer to Leonas’ head. “Hey,” Karzarul said. “You’re dreaming.”

“I can’t—I can’t—” Leonas gasped.

“Yeah,” Karzarul said. “I don’t know why you’re doing that. I did drown you, once, but this doesn’t look like that.” He gestured a circle with one finger in the air around Leonas’ face. “This is a different thing.”

Leonas’ eyes finally seemed to focus on him. “Oh,” Leonas said, and he managed to inhale. “You’re real.”

“Yeah,” Karzarul said. He poked one of the arrows sticking out of Leonas. “This isn’t,” he said. “You can imagine this gone.”

He didn’t. “You’re in my head?” Leonas asked.

“Dreamscape,” Karzarul corrected. “I can’t do anything about whatever all this is,” he said, gesturing around them. “This is all you. It was me, to be fair. I did this, before. Killing you. But this, right now, the dreamscape, is you.”

“Why are you here?”

“You were thinking about me,” Karzarul said. It wasn’t entirely a lie. He couldn’t be here if Leonas hadn’t accidentally consented to his presence.

“What?” The arrows and swords disappeared all at once. The flashing fragments changed, constructs of Karzarul from earlier in the day rather than before he’d died.

“You don’t have to put every passing thought you have out here,” Karzarul said. “I can see why you don’t stay in here, if it’s always like this, but you have options. Aside from launching yourself out of your nightmares so hard you land in your nightmare’s dreams. That’s a bad strategy.”

Leonas curled up with his forehead on his knees, covering his head with his arms.

Karzarul scratched at his jaw. “Have you tried imagining a tree?” he offered. He looked at the tree now sitting in the dreamscape. “A better tree, though,” he said. It turned pink. “It doesn’t have leaves,” he specified. “If I look closer it’s blurry blobs. There isn’t bark, either, or roots.”

Leonas sat back up to look at it. His gaze was intense as the tree became more defined.

“If you can think of something more interesting for me to look at than a tree,” Karzarul added, “feel free to imagine that instead.”

Leonas looked at him, still crouched close. The tree abruptly disappeared, cycling through mental constructs instead. Karzarul, Minnow, a progressively less dressed Minnow, Karzarul again but this time his shirt was missing. Leonas looked away from him and resumed trying to make a tree. “Feel free to leave any time,” Leonas said.

“What I don’t understand,” Karzarul said, admiring his claws, “is how you had enough control to leave my dreamscape on your own, when you can’t make a tree.”

“I woke up,” Leonas said. “Same as the first time.”

“The first time,” Karzarul said, “I killed your roaming dreamself, which woke you up. The second time, you left.”

“You were going to kill me again.”

“It didn’t seem to wake you up here,” Karzarul pointed out.

“This is my dream,” Leonas said. “I’m used to it. That was your dream, and it was really you. It woke me up.”

“Hmm.” Karzarul reached out, and pulled on one of Leonas’ curls to see if it would bounce back.

Karzarul woke up. It was still dark, Minnow curled up in the middle of her pillow nest, wrapped around a stuffed toy bear almost as big as she was.

He could hear, on the far side of the room, Leonas’ ragged panting.

Karzarul yawned, rolling over and grabbing a stuffed pig to rest his head on as he fell back asleep.

“I knew it,” Leonas said, and Minnow could tell that he was on the verge of hysteria. “I knew what he was doing, I knew it and I did it anyway. I can take comfort in that when he kills me, that I was right about everything the entire time.”

“Leonas,” she said. She was holding his arms twisted behind his back, sitting on him. She had managed to tackle him only halfway through the garden. He should have been able to outpace her, his legs being as long as they were, but he’d been trying to dodge a tiny rooster. “You need to come inside so I can explain, if you’re yelling out here someone might hear.”

“Minona?” called a voice over the hedge. “I think I saw someone trying to break into your garden.”

“Yes, thank you Suzan,” Minnow shouted back, venomously peevish.

Ari was a Rootboar, sitting in the grass and watching them both. He looked ready to attack at any moment, which was how all Rootboars looked in the wild. It was still funny to see such an angry white orb, snoot twitching.

“Let me go,” he said, though now he was hissing through his teeth to keep his volume down. “Either let me go so I can run, or let him kill me and get it over with.”

“He isn’t going to kill you,” Minnow said.

“I might,” Ari said.

“You’re not helping,” Minnow said, having to hold Leonas still beneath her.

“If he’s been hurting you,” Ari said, “I’m going to kill him.”

“He hasn’t,” Minnow said.

“That you know of,” Ari said.

Leonas was breathing harder. Minnow worried that the circumstances might be enough to throw him into a fit. She bent down to be closer to his ear, though Ari would hear her anyway. “I’m going to let you up,” she said, “but you shouldn’t try to run. You wouldn’t make it far, and I don’t think you want to get caught again.” He stilled. Minnow hoped he was remembering how bad he was at running. She knew he hated to be embarrassed, and getting winded and then tackled right out of her garden gate would be the most embarrassing. “Okay?” she asked.

“… okay.”

She let his arms go, getting up from where she’d been straddling him and sitting on the ground beside him. Slowly Leonas pulled himself up, kneeling in the grass and trying to brush off his shirt. There were green stains on the elbows. His eyes darted around the garden, as if monsters might be lurking in the bushes. They stopped at the statue.

“Why is there a statue of Toast.”

“Why wouldn’t there be?” Minnow asked.

“What have you been doing with her teeth,” Karzarul asked, surprising them both with the face of a Shadestalker snarling practically nose-to-nose with Leonas. Minnow hadn’t been watching to notice him losing shape, reforming so close. Leonas scrambled backward, his witchmarks flaring and dimming irregularly.

“Ari!” Minnow scolded. “Personal! Space!” She pointed at the spot where he’d been sitting before. He growled, but retreated, sitting back down. “Teeth are not the issue here,” she said.

“I disagree,” Karzarul said. The snake of his tail was lashing behind him.

“It isn’t as if she’s using them,” Leonas snapped, rubbing at his chest. “I even replace them, it’s better than if I didn’t take them.”

Karzarul growled again, louder this time.

“Ari,” Minnow said sternly. “Stop assuming Leonas is using my parts for blood magic.” Ari shifted on his forepaws. “Leonas,” she said, turning back to him. “Are you using my parts for blood magic?”

“No,” he said, recoiling from her. “You’ve got—they got remineralized, in the Faewild. That’s why they look like that, it’s why you don’t get any cavities.”

“Any what?”

“She doesn’t even know what a cavity is,” Leonas said in the direction of the Shadestalker, gesturing at her, as if this proved something. “Ordinarily you only find those properties in pixie bones, but those are hollow, so it takes about five pixies to get enough pixie dust to do what can be done with a single powdered tooth.”

“There,” Minnow said, nodding. “You see? An explanation.”

“That he grinds the bones of dead pixies into dust?” Ari asked.

“I don’t,” Leonas insisted, irritated. “I never even did it myself! I bought pixie dust, pre-made, and even that I haven’t done in years.”

“Because you’ve been taking her teeth.”

“Not taking them!” Leonas wasn’t quite yelling, but it was close. His annoyance had overridden his fear to the point that he could address Ari directly, gesticulating in a familiar way that Minnow found reassuring. “I’ve never had to take them, she loses them! All the time, she loses teeth. The fact that they still grow back with as much magic in them as before defies logic. Most of the time she isn’t even fighting when she loses them.” He pointed at her. “She ate a rock,” he said, with that same tone of presenting evidence.

“You shouldn’t let her eat rocks,” Ari said.

“If she wants to eat a rock,” Leonas said, “there is nothing on this or any other plane of existence that I can do to stop her from eating the fucking rock.”

“I spit it back out,” Minnow said. She was regretting ever telling him about the rock. “Can we move on, please? I would like to move on.”

Ari huffed, but didn’t argue.

“Leonas, why did you come here?” Minnow asked. “Why would you leave Castle Astielle?”

He rubbed at his face, raking his hair back with his nails. “Because I’m a fucking moron,” he said, and Ari snorted.

“Okay,” she said. “But you’ve never done this before.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Travelling through dreams is witchcraft, I don’t have books about witchcraft, I can’t request books about witchcraft. Waiting for Karzarul to make a move was bad enough when I thought he was lurking somewhere in secret. But as soon as he was back, really back, he knew who I was and where I was and there was nothing I could do about it except wait. He left me alone while you were with me, but you were out here and he—did you go to the beach?”

This felt like a non-sequitur. “That was where the ruins were,” she said. “That was where I was going the last time you contacted me.”

“Right.” Leonas rubbed at his forehead. “Okay. So that was real, then. Great. Fantastic.”

“You wanted your books?” she asked. “The old Grimoires, and things?”

“I don’t know what I wanted,” he muttered. “It was only that I. I couldn’t. I waited for so long and then he was there. All I needed to do was keep waiting, a little longer. But you were out here, and I just. I couldn’t. I thought it might work, if I… Lilock Village isn’t so far from Fort Astielle. If Karzarul came to kill me, you’d be there. And I could help. I could try to help, instead of waiting.”

Minnow contemplated this, bending forward to idly hug her knees. “Like when you’ve been travelling,” she said, “and you think you can wait, but once you see your house you have to pee immediately.”

Leonas rubbed his face again. “No,” he said, muffled. “Not like that.”

She still thought it sounded like that.

“Heir,” Karzarul said suddenly. Minnow looked, and realized he’d taken his Impyr form, sitting next to her lupines. One of his knees was bent upward to rest an arm on it, the other on the ground, the panel of his skirt falling between them. His tunic was done back up, gloves on his hands and the Moonbow on his back. Minnow was briefly distracted by his calves, the short fur by his knees and the long fur that nearly covered his hooves. “Where is the Sunshield?”

Leonas swallowed, absent-mindedly running a fingertip under his eye to check the state of his face. “Don’t—don’t talk to me.”

“Don’t be rude,” Minnow chided. “We’re having a polite conversation.”

“He has already threatened to kill me at least twice since I got here,” Leonas said through his teeth.

“That was an honest warning,” Minnow said. “If we couldn’t do that, it wouldn’t be a polite conversation, it would be a passive-aggressive one.”

Leonas opened his mouth, then shut it.

Minnow had never thought to wonder about the Sunshield. What would he need it for, staying in his room? He never used the Rainbow Doors, or fought monsters.

“You should have brought it with you,” she said. “Getting here by the roads without having your shield was much more dangerous than if you’d come through the Door right over there.”

Leonas shifted where he sat, looking at his nails. He pushed at his cuticles while Minnow waited. “I don’t have it,” he said finally. He turned red as Karzarul started to laugh.

“Ari,” Minnow warned, turning to look at him. He had a grin on his face that she hadn’t seen before, sharp and infuriating, running his tongue over the tip of his fangs. She felt her face get hot, but she resisted the temptation to hide by curling into a ball this time. Barely. “You. Don’t. Nice.”

That was not a sentence, but her tongue had stopped working right, so she was working with what she had.

Ari looked at her, his expression softening into something she could handle. “I can nice,” he said.

“Good,” she said, her heartrate returning to normal. “Leonas, why don’t you have it?”

He seemed to debate how much he should say. “It’s the ward,” he said. “It’s built into the ward around Fort Astielle.”

“That’s not possible,” Ari said with a frown. “Only the Heir can use the Sunshield. Warding an area like that would require you to be wielding it constantly.”

“Astielle has always been ruled by powerful enchanters,” Leonas said, his eyes on the ground, “each building on the work of the last. My father designed a mechanism that allows the Sunshield to protect the city without my intervention. There is a ritual every year, so that it’s still… connected to me. In a way.” He curled a fist in the grass. “I won’t say more than that,” he said. “Not in front of him. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Minnow chewed on her hair. “But you had your shield,” she said. “When you got me. I saw it.”

“The ward went up on my fourteenth birthday,” he said. “I came to get you while everyone was busy with preparations. I thought that if I could find you, it would fix things. You’d find Karzarul, and I could have my shield back. Things could go back to the way they were.”

“Witch-prince,” Ari said, leaning closer. “What is your magical instrument?”

Leonas started to turn red again. Minnow looked between the two of them. Leonas had a silent set to his jaw. “What am I missing?” Minnow asked Ari. She knew enough to know about magical instruments, the item that a witch bound themselves to in order to channel their power. A big staff with an orb on it, or an interesting animal bone, or a really good stick. However, the relevance was escaping her.

“An Heir who is a witch would usually bind themselves to a sword,” Ari said. “A Hero might choose a shield. Something that complements their legendary weapon. If someone manages to disarm them of the one, they’ll still have the other. A legendary weapon has the potential to act as a powerful instrument—”

“—but that would be a fucking stupid thing to do,” Leonas interrupted, “yes, we get it, it takes a special kind of moron not to predict losing access to his legendary weapon for over a decade. Only a fool would tie the channeling of his magic to a shield literally tied to his soul, as if that means he could not lose it, this is all very funny for everyone.”

Minnow leaned sideways, reached out to touch Leonas’ hand. “Do you need it?” she asked. “Can you do magic without it?” She felt like a witch ought to be able to do magic without an instrument to channel it through. She didn’t know why she felt that way, and had no facts to support it.

“I can,” Leonas said. “I just, I might explode, is all. Is something that happens. To witches.”

Minnow looked at Ari. Ari nodded. “Explode?” she asked anyway. Ari spread out his fingers and wiggled them to pantomime an explosion. She stopped touching Leonas so that she could sit back down. “What the fuck.”

Leonas had a tired resignation about him.

“Leonas,” she said, “can I ask you a question?”

“Clearly.”

“Do you think your dad might be evil?”

Leonas looked at her. He looked at Karzarul. He looked back at her. “Yes,” he said, baffled. “Obviously yes. Of course he’s evil. He’s a king. What do you think a king is?”

“Okay,” she said. “I wanted to make sure we were on the same page.”

“We’re not,” he said, “because you’ve decided to ally yourself with… that.” He gestured vaguely at Ari, who sneered. She added it to her mental list of facial expressions she had trouble looking directly at in mixed company. “Whereas I, personally, still prefer the evil king whose machinations are about saving the kingdom rather than burning it down, as well as—this is key—not murdering me.”

“Oh,” Minnow said.

“Which I also have some questions about, by the way, if we’re sitting here in our little circle in the garden having a conversation before he cuts my fucking head off,” Leonas continued. “Such as: what the fuck. And: when did this happen, exactly?”

Minnow shrank in on herself, wringing her hands in her lap. “It’s complicated,” she said.

“I would never have guessed,” Leonas said. Ari growled like a Shadestalker, though the form was all wrong.

“I only found out who he was the other day,” she said.

Leonas stared at Minnow. He looked at Karzarul. He looked back at Minnow. “Was he in disguise?” he asked.

“He, uh. He was a Tauril, at the time. But he didn’t have any kind of threatening aura? Or try to kill me at all. He wasn’t in a lair, there weren’t other monsters there. I sort of assumed, if I met Karzarul, he would be in a lair surrounded by other monsters and a threatening aura, trying to kill me. And he wears gloves, so I couldn’t see the, the mark.” She pointed at Ari’s gloved hands.

“Okay,” Leonas said. “What I’m asking is, was he, at the time, a moon-white monster, who can talk, wearing a moon-patterned tunic, with moons on his gloves.”

“… what?” Minnow looked at Ari, then back to Leonas. “No.” She stood, walking over to Karzarul and picking up his hand. “This is a circle,” she said, pointing to the back of his glove. “Lots of clothes have circles, this isn’t anything.” She looked closer at the silver embroidery set into the white fabric over Ari’s chest. Ari preened a little, perfectly happy to let her manhandle him to look at his clothes. “This is, like. A cool bug, or a lobster. Abstracted. It’s. Okay. I can see how this might be moons, now that you’ve said something. Like this is the full moon, and these are the crescent moons, and.” She pressed her lips together into a thin line.

It seemed obvious now.

“You met a Tauril,” Leonas said, “who was white, and covered in moon patterns, and he told you he definitely wasn’t Karzarul. And you said, what? Makes sense? Seems fine?”

“Technically I don’t know if he ever told me he wasn’t,” Minnow admitted, still looking at the embroidered moons. She couldn’t actually remember. “You have to be nice to me,” she said before Leonas could respond. “I ate rocks.”

“I told her the truth,” Ari said. “Which is that the monsters she knows, which cannot be reasoned with, are not true monsters. I have no interest in your kingdom. If I want you dead, it is only because I believe you pose a danger to Minnow.” Leonas snorted. “She’s told me some of what you call history. I don’t expect you to believe me. If Minnow wants to protect you, I am willing to tolerate you until such a time as she has realized her mistake.”

Leonas was white-knuckled, his eyes on Minnow’s hands. They were still lingering on Karzarul’s clothes. She pulled back as soon as she realized.

“I think,” Leonas said, “that you’re taking advantage of the fact that she doesn’t remember you.”

“Oh?” Karzarul asked, cocking his head. “You remember me, then?”

“I remember dying,” Leonas said.

“Really.”

“I remember a sword in my back,” he said. “I remember an arrow through my heart, I remember an arrow through my throat,” he counted them down on his fingers as he spoke, “I remember a Howler ripping out my throat, I remember a guillotine—there may even have been a trial, that time, but the only ones there were Brutelings. I remember everything going dark because I couldn’t fucking breathe, again and again—”

“Is that it?” Karzarul asked.

“What?”

“That’s all you remember?” Karzarul asked. Leonas said nothing. Karzarul stood, rose up to his full height with the sound of bells; Leonas, still on the ground, flinched. “How convenient for you,” Karzarul said, “not having to remember the blood on your hands.” Leonas looked away, didn’t bother trying to get up. “Would you like me to tell you what you’ve forgotten?”

“Didn’t I kill you?” Minnow asked. Karzarul froze. “I don’t remember,” she said. “But you didn’t offer to tell me about it. You never seemed this angry with me.”

Karzarul was still glaring at Leonas. “You never asked.”

“What if I did?” She reached out, but Karzarul pulled his arm away.

“Not yet,” he said. “I’ll tell you, if you ask, but not yet.”

Minnow looked between the two men. She sighed. Then she bent down next to Leonas. “I don’t want you to go back to the castle,” she said. “I want you to stay here, with me. With us. I know this wasn’t the plan. It’s just, this feels like something to me. Figuring out what’s happening with the monsters. I want your help. I want to keep you safe. If I promise not to let him hurt you, will you stay? Or do you think I’ll hurt you?”

“Minnow,” Leonas said. “He is going to kill me.”

“I’m not,” Karzarul said. Leonas didn’t acknowledge him. “If it makes you feel any better,” Karzarul said, “she’ll kill me if I do.”

Minnow opened her mouth to deny it, then shut it again. Unless circumstances changed drastically, she supposed she would. She didn’t know what Leonas could do to make killing him feel warranted, if anything. Killing Karzarul?

“That isn’t better,” Leonas said. “I don’t want that, for her.”

There was a pause. One of the hens sang an egg song in the bushes.

“Good,” Karzarul said. “We should get along fine, then.”

“Minona?” Suzan called over the gate. Karzarul was, abruptly, a Rootboar. “We’re getting complaints about the noise levels, if you’re having a party you should have applied for a permit last week.”

Minnow stood wordlessly. She turned on her heel, disappearing inside the house. A moment later she re-emerged, carrying the Starsword.

“Nonononono,” Leonas said, hopping up to his feet and forgetting whatever else he might have said. “Minnow, put the sword down.” He held out his hands, trying to block her path. “We’re not doing this again, just let it go.”

“No judge in Astielle would convict me,” she said, moving left and right but unwilling to push him out of her way.

“That was a one-time thing,” Leonas said, “we’re not doing that again. That’s not going to work if I’m in hiding instead of the acting Prince, okay?”

Ari watched the exchange with interest. Then he trotted over to the wooden gate, and started slamming his trotters against it with loud, angry squeals. Suzan’s scream grew distant. Minnow nearly dropped her sword.

“He can make the sounds!” she gasped with wide-eyed delight. “I didn’t know he could make the sounds!”

“Yes, and now the problem is solved,” Leonas said. “Go put the sword away, and we can all go inside.”

“You’ll stay?” she asked hopefully.

“I’ll stay,” he confirmed. “For now.”

“Oh, good.” She got up on her toes and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “I’ll go put this away, then we can figure out how we wanna do this.”

He didn’t follow her immediately. Instead, he turned, and dropped down to a crouch, blocking Ari’s path into the house. He made serious eye contact with the little white monster and its big silver eyes. Leonas pointed to the memorial statue.

“That,” he said, “is Toast. When Minnow was eleven, she stole a piglet. She refused to listen to anyone who told her why she shouldn’t have a pig. Because it was a regular pig, it became very large. Minnow, as you can probably guess, was very small. I do not, to this day, know how she rode a pig. Pigs as a rule do not tolerate that kind of thing. But she did, and she loved that pig very much. When Minnow was fifteen, Toast was hit with an arrow, and she died. So Minnow butchered her, and ate her.”

Leonas stood. “She’s practical, that way.”

Ari followed him into the house.

“How many times,” Leonas snapped, “do I need to remind you about clothes?”

Minnow looked up from where she was pulling off her shift, having already shed her armor. Ordinarily she would have bathed at home, but Leonas had surprised her with new clothes. She didn’t want to get them dirty, and it wouldn’t be the first time she’d used his bath.

“What,” she said.

“You cannot just take your clothes off around people,” he said. “You’re not a child anymore. You shouldn’t have been doing it when you were a child. There was never a time when pulling your shirt off in public was acceptable.”

“This isn’t public,” she said. “It’s your room.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “With me in it. Who can see you. Along with anyone else who might walk in.”

It was true that sometimes there were other people. She didn’t know if she cared whether they saw her. She still thought of nudity as being a human thing, and still did not think of herself as human. She’d been too long a changeling to consider herself unchanged.

It wasn’t as if the other people were always wearing clothes, besides.

“You’re getting older,” he said, rubbing at his forehead. “That’s why I bought you the clothes, you’re. You’re growing. In ways. Which most changelings wouldn’t need to worry about, but you’re here, so. You need to understand.”

“Leonas,” Minnow interrupted, still half out of her shift. “Are you trying to explain puberty to me?”

He turned bright red under the sudden flaring light of his witchmarks.

“I started bleeding like, three years ago. I think? You’d think it would be easier to keep track but sometimes it doesn’t happen, and other times it happens too much. One time I felt sick for days and then instead of bleeding it all came out as one big blob.” She made a circle with her fingers to demonstrate.

“Don’t tell me about—that can’t be right.” He was immediately distracted from his own displeasure, too puzzled to be repulsed.

“The healer in Lilock says that happens sometimes,” she shrugged. “He says it means I’ll be a terrible mother.”

“What?” Leonas recoiled. “No. Why would that—don’t see him again. That’s not how how anything works. I’m having him arrested for incompetence.”

“That’s not real,” she said.

“I’m the Prince of Astielle,” he said. “If I want him in the dungeon, I can have him in the dungeon.”

“Who are you having in the dungeon?” a woman asked, looking down from his loft, black hair cascading downward.

He refrained from snapping despite the expression on his face. “I wasn’t. Talking. To you.” He sounded like a farmer at the market who hadn’t decided if the sale was worth the customer. Leonas looked back to Minnow, waving her off. “Take a bath,” he said, “I need to get back to my research.”

“Stop breathing.”

“I can’t.” Minnow was laying on a table, her leggings pulled down to right below her belly and her shirt raised only as high as her ribs. Leonas had thrown a sheet over her legs for good measure, and another sheet over her chest. She did not understand the function of the sheets, but if they made him feel better she was willing to put up with it. She’d put up with a lot of things over the course of his two-year quest to fix whatever made her bleed wrong.

“This would be easier if you didn’t move so much,” he said, using his fingers to try and measure outward from her bellybutton. He’d tied his hair back into a twist, wearing a scope over one eye. His leather gloves went all the way up to his elbows.

“I’m not moving,” she said.

“Stop talking.” He tossed the hem of the sheet over her chest so that it covered her face. She sputtered and pulled it back downward. “If this doesn’t work,” he said, “it’s going to be your fault for being difficult.”

“What’s it going to look like?” she asked. “When it’s done.”

“Once it heals it won’t look like anything.”

“I thought enchantments needed symbols.”

“Enchanting works by—you don’t need to know how enchanting works.” He cut himself off before he could launch into a lecture. He set down beside her a series of glass vials, each of them containing a needle and thread suspended in liquid. He held another needle over the flame of a candle. Minnow only looked at this array for a moment before pulling the sheet back over her head. “Suffice it to say that as long as the enchantment is there, it doesn’t need to be visible to human eyes. This ought to work.”

She felt the point of the needle touch her skin, and flinched, her abdominal muscles clenching.

“Minona,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“I have to mark out the spots before I can run the thread through,” he said. “When it’s time to draw the pattern I’ll pinch the skin first. It ought to be obvious. I’m not going to stab it straight into you at random, calm down.”

“I’m calm,” she said. “I’ve been stabbed. With swords.”

“If you’ve been stabbed, it means you’re bad at your job. Learn to parry.” She didn’t have to take the sheet down off her head to know the look on his face. A gloved finger poked at her skin. “The needle is going here,” he said, and this time she didn’t flinch as the point pricked her skin to leave a mark. “And here,” he said, before doing it again. And on, and on, over one side of her stomach and then the other, pointing out every spot before the needle marked it. When he was done, she felt like she’d fallen stomach-first into a rosebush.

“I’m going to start stitching,” he warned, uncapping one of his vials.

“Are you sure this will work?” she asked.

“Obviously not,” he said. “How would I have tested it? If you don’t want it badly enough to risk your experiment failing, you don’t really want it.”

“Fine,” she said, hating most of all the time it was taking. Being on the wrong end of a sharp object was bad, but most of the time it at least had the decency to be over quickly. “If I still get cramps after this, I’m. I’m going to be really mad at you.”

“Get in line.”

Leonas was sitting on the floor of his balcony. She didn’t usually see him on the balcony. From here he could see the city, all the way to the walls of Fort Astielle and out to the mountains and forest beyond. It was a nice view. If it were her, she thought she would have spent most of her time out here.

He was drinking wine out of a crystal goblet. He had the bottle with him.

“I remembered this time,” she said, poking her head outside. She’d seen a flyer at a nearby stable announcing the celebration, and realized that she’d forgotten about birthdays. She didn’t have one, so it had never come up. She thought the occasion warranted using the Rainbow Door. Visiting the night before meant she wouldn’t interrupt the real party.

“Of course you did,” he said. He held up his goblet as if to toast. “Ten years,” he said.

“Of what?’

He drank instead of answering.

“I made you a cake,” she said. “Cakes,” she corrected. “I thought it would be easier to eat if they were little cakes, instead of a big one.”

He turned his head, and his eyes dropped before they rose back to her face. “Did you dress up?” he asked.

“I asked the tailor for a birthday party dress,” she said. It was more fitted in the bodice than her usual fare, all fluffy with fabric around the skirt. She was still wearing her sword. “That’s the other reason I used the Door,” she said. “She tried to give me fancy shoes but I kept falling over.” She knelt down a few feet away from him, and set the tray of small cakes down between them. She slid it closer to him. “Try one,” she said.

He picked up a small cake, with its solid shining glaze and sugar-sculpted flowers. “You made this,” he said.

“I got really into cooking, for a while,” she said.

Something shifted in his expression. “I’m sure that killed some time,” he said. “What’s in it?”

“Mashed potatoes,” she said.

“I’m not eating this.”

“You have to try it,” she insisted. “If you don’t like it we can throw them off the balcony.”

He looked at her for a long time, holding the little cake. Then he turned his head before taking a bite, shielding his face from her view. There weren’t many dignified ways to eat a cake without a fork.

“Is it good?” she asked.

“It’s fine,” he said, licking his fingers.

“Are you allowed to leave for the party?” she asked.

“I’m always allowed to leave,” he said. “The whole castle is warded. The whole city.”

“Oh.”

“It’s better if I don’t,” he said. “That’s all.”

She ran her hands along her skirt, letting it spread out along the floor. “Are you looking forward to it?” she asked.

His mouth pulled at the corners. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“There must be a lot of food,” she said. “And music. Is there a special ballroom?”

“He opens the Folly Gardens to the public,” Leonas said. “They decorate everything in suns for me.”

“Which ones are the Folly Gardens?” she asked with a frown.

“… the big one. It has its own canal, for all the fountains.”

“What! No. I would have noticed that.”

He leaned towards her. “Have you never seen the Folly Gardens? The great big green area on the other side of the castle? As big as the entire rest of the castle?”

She leaned back. “Why would I have?” she asked defensively. “You’re always here.”

He stared at her.

“Should I go see?” she asked. “Before the party, I mean.”

“No,” he said. “You shouldn’t wander around the castle at night.” He looked at his bottle of wine. “I’ll take you,” he said suddenly, setting the bottle down and using it like a cane to push himself upright. “If I don’t take you, you’ll just go on your own. You never listen to me.”

“I listen to you,” she said, helping him stand. He fixed his curls, straightening out his shirt.

“You never listen to me,” he said again. “Stay quiet, we don’t want to wake anyone.”

Minnow tried to imagine how they could wake anyone in a castle this big, with the rooms so far apart. He took away the chair he’d wedged under his doorknob, since his door didn’t have any locks. It was the first time she’d seen him make an effort to keep people from wandering through. Then he took her by the hand to lead her down the spiraling staircase, down and down and down. At the bottom was a large hall, and through that a smaller hall to another large hall. She was sure they were different areas, but she couldn’t tell them apart. Another hall, another hall, a great room–and then out to the back entryway, wide stone stairs down into the Folly Gardens.

There really was a canal, man-made and large enough to boat in. In the middle was a fountain in the shape of the sun, the same shape as the one that marked the Heir. Smaller fountains, still large enough to swim in, marked a series of plazas. Statues of men made it all look smaller than it was, until she realized she wouldn’t reach the knee of any one of them. The trees were all a uniform shape, the hedges sharp lines. Everything was symmetrical in all directions, and she was sure it would look like a sun if she viewed it from the sky. Candles floated in the canal, paper lanterns strung through every tree.

“Oh,” she sighed, and she pulled him along, down the massive staircase into the garden. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

“Can it be beautiful slower?” he asked breathlessly. She let him go, and he put his hands on his knees, bending at the waist and taking deep breaths. “That was a lot of stairs,” he said. “Not all of us chase horses recreationally.”

“I don’t like the trees,” she decided, spinning to watch her skirt flare. “They’re too smooth. I like the canal, and the fountains, and the lights. It’s like the Faewilds, when we’d catch pixies by the waterfalls. Will there be dancing, tomorrow?”

“There’s always dancing.”

“Will you dance.”

“I always dance,” he said. “That’s my job.”

“Who do you dance with?”

“Anyone who asks,” he said. “Who’s allowed to ask.”

“Does he pick them?” she wondered. “Like the girls in your room.”

“… yes.”

“That’s weird, you know. That he does that.”

“I know.” Leonas leaned back against a tree. “He’s hoping one will stick.”

“Do they know?”

He shrugged. “They want to be princesses. Someday queens.”

“I don’t know why anyone would want to be a princess.”

“I know.” He froze. “Go,” he said, pointing with his chin. “If you follow that hedge it will take you to the edge of the garden.”

She didn’t wait or ask questions. She ducked down to hide as soon as he said something, bending down and moving away from him. When she felt sure he couldn’t see her, she stopped, and waited. Listened.

Steps, coming closer. She didn’t know how he’d heard them from so far away. Or had he heard the door?

“Look who finally decided to come out of his room!” Leland sounded as jovial as always. “And all on his own. We ought to mark it as a national holiday. I suppose it already is one, isn’t it, birthday boy?”

“Thank you, Father,” he said.

“Ready for tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t look happy.”

“I’m tired,” Leonas said. “I wanted to see the decorations tonight, that’s all.”

“If you don’t like them, we can take them down. Tear down the whole thing. Would you like that?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Leonas said. “The decorations are lovely.”

“We don’t have to celebrate at all,” Leland said. “It’s all for you. The artisans who made the lights, the decorators who designed it, the servants to put it all out.”

“I know.”

“The chefs, the bakers, the diplomats. All the citizens putting the finishing touches on their new clothes, wanting to look their best. The whole point is for you to like it.”

“I do.”

“Say the word, and we can cancel. Close the castle, lock all the gates. Let everyone know we’re not doing this anymore. I’m sure they’d understand. They don’t need to understand. You’re the prince. You can do what you want.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Leonas said.

“You don’t look happy.”

“I am happy,” Leonas said. “Very happy. The party will be lovely. I’m only tired.”

“I can’t imagine,” Leland said. “It must be very tiring. All your studies. When I was your age, I don’t know if I was ever tired. Not really tired, the way you get when you’re old. I was married to my first wife, then. Trying to hold the kingdom together. It was invigorating, in its way, having so much to do.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Leonas said.

“Would you like to get more involved?” Leland asked. “I’m sure no one would mind, if you wanted to help make decisions. Start advising the advisors, making Astielle in your image.”

“I would not feel qualified.”

“I could understand it if you’d rather be doing something that lets you feel useful,” Leland said. “There isn’t much glory in patience. Learning how to do things the right way.”

“I don’t mind waiting.”

“If you’re sure. I’m sure if I were in your position, I’d want to take my shield and go. Skip the celebration, the ceremony, the ritual. Let the kingdom take care of itself, follow the path of least resistance. Where did the Hero get to, by the way?”

Minnow curled herself tighter against the hedge.

“Left,” Leonas said. “Things to do.”

“Finally wished you a happy birthday, I assume. Is that why you had your door closed?”

“I was rearranging furniture,” Leonas said. “I forgot to move it back.”

“If you want locks, we can get you locks.”

“No,” he said immediately. “That’s fine. I wouldn’t want the room to seem. Uninviting. Because of a misunderstanding.”

Leland hummed. “You have a very big heart,” he said. “Anyone else would try to avoid getting so close, you know. Knowing how things go. It’s very brave of you not to let that bother you. Inviting her in, instead of letting her keep you at a distance. It makes me proud, to have raised a son like that.”

“It’s practical,” Leonas said. “Most Heirs can’t survive without a Hero.”

“Yes,” Leland said, “but there’s always after.”

“I’ve taken it into consideration.”

“I’m sure you have. I hate to see you getting hurt, that’s all.”

“I won’t,” he said. “She keeps me at a distance.”

Leland hummed. “What does a mashed potato cake even taste like?”

“Terrible.”

Leland laughed. “Well, she can’t be good at everything.”

“Can you use this?” Minnow asked, pulling a geode out of her bag.

“Probably not,” Leonas said. “Maybe. Let me see.” He snatched it out of her hand, holding it up to the light streaming through the windows. Then he brought it over to one of his desks, picking up a scope to look at it closer. “This is fake,” he said finally.

“Really?”

“Really.”

She stomped her foot.

“Where did you even get this?” he asked.

“Dolan,” she said, crossing her arms.

“Who?”

“A traveling merchant I met,” she said. “He had a lot of good stories but I think most of them were fake.” She pulled herself up to sit on one of the tables, letting her feet swing above the floor.

“I hope you didn’t let him talk you into anything else,” Leonas said, setting the geode down. “You shouldn’t listen to salesmen.”

“I didn’t,” she said. “Only the rock. We did have sex, but that was unrelated. He was very clear about not giving discounts.”

Leonas froze. “What.”

“It wasn’t great,” she said. “I didn’t want to tell him so, since he seemed to like it. There’s no rule against sex, is there? For magic reasons?” It would be just her luck if that was the reason she couldn’t do any cool sword magic.

“… no.” He stayed where he was, and she continued to swing her feet.

“Good,” she said. “I want to find someone who’s good at it, but I don’t know how you tell. It might be like cookies, where you have to eat a lot of bad ones looking for good ones. I know there isn’t any rule about cookies. You only have sex with some of the girls, right?”

There was a long pause. “Right,” he said.

“Do you only do it if they’re good? How do you tell? Are there parameters?”

“It. Varies.” He drummed his nails against the wood of the table. His witchmarks were sunny. The way he wasn’t looking at her made her fingers itch.

“Is there a book?” she asked. He had so many books.

“It’s. More hands-on.” He drummed his fingers again. “You let him touch you? This merchant?”

“I asked him to, for all the good it did me,” she said. She grabbed her own breasts to demonstrate. “Mostly he did this.” It hadn’t been especially arousing, and still wasn’t. Leonas looked at her again, and it made her feel silly, so she let her hands fall. “Maybe other people like that? I didn’t like it.”

He took a step closer, hesitated before taking another. “Let’s. Test something,” he suggested. He came close enough to rest his hands on her knees. “Another experiment.” Even being close to him was warm. He’d manhandled her often enough, but now he waited, his hands hovering inches from her. “Take my hands,” he decided. “Put them where he had them. We can see where he went wrong.”

She frowned. He was looking at a spot on her shoulder rather than her face. She couldn’t decide if he was serious.

Taking his wrists, she pressed his hands to her breasts, feeling awkward all the while. “It was—no, this isn’t right. I need to stand.” She slid off the table, but he barely made room for her. “He was behind me,” she said, turning around. “That was the other thing I didn’t like, I couldn’t see what he was doing.” This time it was much easier to wrap his arms around her body, pressing his hands under hers. “Like that,” she said, letting him go. He continued holding onto her, his fingers longer than her own.

“So you don’t like this,” he said, much closer to her ear than she was used to. She swallowed, her face turning hot. He was warm, and he smelled like soap, and she’d seen his face enough to be able to imagine it. Clinical, gleaming like a polished coin.

“It’s different when you do it,” she admitted. His hands squeezed, and she made a sound; she felt him closer against her back, pinned between the desk and his hips. She pressed her hands into the wood to brace herself. “That’s, um. I don’t know what’s different.” He caught one of her nipples between his fingers, tugging it gently through her shirt. “Oh,” she sighed. “I like it, when you do it.”

He let her go all at once, leaving her startled and disappointed.

“Is that it?” she asked, turning around.

“Experiment’s over,” he said, already ducking behind a shelf. “I need to get some work done, go away.”

The Slitherskin bite on her arm had begun to ooze purple. Leonas found this fascinating, and was collecting samples into little glass vials. He took notes on the color and consistency, and the faces she made when he poked at different spots around it. He moved her arm around, rotating her shoulder and writing it down when she found an angle especially painful.

His face had been close to hers, but it was still a surprise when he tilted her head and kissed her. Her sound of surprise was muffled by his mouth pressed too hard against her own, clumsy and aggressive. She always felt clumsy and aggressive, so this suited her.

He pulled away, staring at her face. Then he took notes.

Leonas was checking her teeth again. She’d lost three since the last time she saw him. He had the bag of them now, along with the shards he’d taken after her new teeth had grown in. He had a special stick he used to poke around in her mouth, so that she wouldn’t bite him.

“They still grow back sharp,” he muttered, taking the stick away. She stuck her tongue out at him. He rolled the stick between his fingers, thoughtful. “I would like to do an experiment,” he said slowly.

He didn’t usually ask. This made her suspicious. So did the way he averted his eyes. She wiggled closer to the edge of the desk.

“A hands-on experiment?” she asked. Their eyes met, and then he looked away.

“Yes.”

He left, and when he came back he was opening a small jar of honey, his hands bare. His nails were always perfect shining almonds, and she found them distracting.

“Is it magical honey?” she asked.

“We’ll see,” he said. “Open.”

She opened her mouth wide and stuck out her tongue, the same way she always did. He dipped two fingers into the jar, and stuck them directly into her mouth. Without waiting for confirmation that it was what he wanted, she closed her lips around them and started sucking. The involuntary sound he made shot straight to the core of her. She liked that he was looking at her instead of away this time.

“Careful not to bite,” he warned, which annoyed her, so she bit him. He hissed and tried to pull his hand away, but she grabbed his wrist with both hands. She was stronger than he was, so she held him still while she started to lick him instead, running her tongue along his fingers and through the seams between.

“Stop,” he ordered, and she let him go. He rubbed at his wrist. “Your hands are going to be a problem.”

She realized her mistake. “I can be gentle!” she insisted. “We can do another experiment, I can show you.”

“N-no,” he said, blushing under his witchmarks. He took a step backward, turning away from her. It wasn’t fast enough for her to miss the state of his trousers. “That won’t be necessary.”

She looked at her hands, calloused and sometimes blistered, and decided he was right. “You could, uh.” She grasped feebly at straws. “Try it on other places,” she said, “to see if it’s good. Or see if I taste good? Now?”

He stared at her.

“I’ve been good,” she added, “so you should kiss me.”

“You weren’t good,” he said. “You bit me.”

“Not anywhere important!” She slid off the desk and stepped closer to him. “If you don’t kiss me, I won’t do any more experiments. I won’t give you any more teeth, or poison.”

He looked toward the door, then bent to give her a perfunctory peck on the mouth. She grabbed him and dug her fingers into his shoulders, humming as she demanded more. His strangled yelp made her giggle, but didn’t discourage her at all. She let him go when he kissed her back, his tongue in her mouth tasting like bitter tea.

Then he pushed her away, only enough to put some space between them. “Don’t,” he said, loudly enough that she winced. Then he grabbed her hand, held it up like he was examining the star on the back of it. “Not like that,” he muttered under his breath, rubbing the star with his thumbs like it might fall off. “Not twice. Later. You can’t ask for that.”

He tested the joints of her fingers as she tried to interpret what he meant. He wasn’t usually the cryptic type; if there were things he couldn’t say, he simply didn’t.

“I can ask later,” she said tentatively, and he gave a small nod, pushing all her cuticles back with his thumbnail. “For a… treat.” He nodded more vigorously. “But not more than one.”

“Don’t be greedy,” he said at full volume, which was startling when he was still fidgeting with her hand. “If you’re going to treat yourself, you shouldn’t take so much the people start to notice.”

Right. Okay. They were being sneaky. Too many kisses all at once, and someone might notice. Too much of anything? His hands-on experiments never lasted long. It didn’t feel fair, when she knew he’d had other people. It couldn’t be everyone, that it had to be like this. It was something about her.

Because she was dangerous. Because she was supposed to hurt him. Because he let her in anyway.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be good.”

He shut his eyes, and shivered.

“I need you to help me test something,” he said. He clapped a hand over her mouth before she could say anything. “All you have to do,” he said, “is wait here, with your Seeing Stone ready. Okay?”

She bit his hand, and he pulled it back with a yelp. “Okay,” she said.

He pointed a warning finger at her, and then disappeared under the table.

He had, for reasons she did not yet know, built himself a blanket fort. There were at least three heavy down comforters and a quilt, and on top of it all was some kind of embroidered sheet. The patterns were slippery and difficult to look at.

She waited, but nothing seemed to happen.

Leonas poked his head out from under the many blankets. “Did anything happen?”

“No.”

“Excellent.” He pulled out his Seeing Stone, and her own started to chime. “Answer it,” he ordered. She picked up her stone, and held it out so that he’d see himself on it. “Don’t do that,” he said, before disappearing back under the table. She looked at her stone, but there was nothing on it, no image and no sound. The connection was still there, but nothing was going through. As soon as Leonas came out again, he reappeared on her stone.

“Did it work?”

“I think so,” she said, because he hadn’t actually explained what he was doing.

“Good! Good.” He stood up, brushing himself off, and set his stone down on top of the table. “All that’s left is to run the final experiment, and see if it works.” He took her stone out of her hand, and set it beside his. Then he lifted up the edge of the blankets, and gestured underneath the table.

Minnow looked underneath the table. She looked at Leonas. She pointed at herself, and then underneath the table. He nodded. She put her hands on her belt buckle. He nodded faster. Taking off her belt, she left the Starsword next to their Seeing Stones, and ducked underneath the table.

It wasn’t the best blanket fort she’d ever been in. There were only two pillows, which wasn’t enough by far. It needed more decorations, maybe some small glowing stones to make it feel cozy.

Leonas ducked under the table, and before she could react he’d grabbed her face and started kissing her. He was half on top of her, and she pressed her elbows into the floor, trying to brace herself and keep from hitting the leg of the table.

“Ten minutes,” he breathed into her hair, already working his fingers into the waist of her leggings. “I can’t risk more than that. Sound can still get out the normal way so I need you to be quiet if this is going to work, can you do that for me?” She nodded, trying to move to make it easier for him to peel her clothes off. “Good, you’re so good, you’re always so good.”

Everything he said was whispered, frantic. He kissed her again, pulled her up and sat on the floor so that she was sitting sideways on his lap. Her leggings were only down to her knees, otherwise dressed, and she could feel his erection through his trousers. He kissed her again, slid his hand between her legs, rubbed a fingertip too vigorously directly on her clit. She bit his tongue, then pulled back to shake her head. He adjusted, circled her clit instead, too light at first but she kissed him when he found the right tempo.

He buried his face in the crook of her neck. “It will be better,” he murmured. “Next time. This is a trial run.” His fingers moved so that he could slide one inside of her, adjusting his thumb until her hips rolled against him. He was warm, too warm. “I’m going to figure you out, I’ll solve you.” She buried her fingers in his curls. “All the magic in you.” He managed to unfasten his trousers, and she spread her legs enough that his cock could rise up between her thighs. She pressed them together, and he thrust up between them with a groan.

“There isn’t time,” he apologized, leaning back and taking her face in his hands. He stroked his thumbs over her cheeks, watched her eyes. “I need you to do this for me, this one thing. Guide me inside, let me see your face.”

She would have nodded, but he was holding her face still. He was shining bright, lighting up their little hideaway. She reached between her legs, gripped his shaft with one hand and his shoulder with the other. She had to rise up a little before she could lower herself back down. It was hard to get the angle right, but once she did, gravity pulled her down onto him faster than she would have done herself. She nearly cried out, had to bite down hard on her lip to muffle it.

“There,” he said, still holding her, thrusting upward so she whimpered. “Just this once, just so I know.” He moved forward, taking her with him, until she was on the floor again with him above her. She wasn’t entirely sideways, but her hips were still at an angle, her knees bent together underneath his arm. He kissed her, muffled the sound he made when he thrust into her. She pushed against the floor with one arm to keep herself from sliding, the other one gripping his hair.

“Next time will be better,” he promised.

“I like this,” she whispered. “I like you.”

He covered her mouth with his hand, and thrust hard. Again, harder, deeper, his nostrils flaring and nothing but the smothered sound of her grunts and of his cock getting wetter. He worked his hand underneath her shirt, pulled at her chest wrap until he could feel her bare breast against his palm. She arched into his touch, tried to angle her hips but couldn’t manage it. It was good, the pounding and heat and furious intensity of him, but it could have been better. Giving up, she let him go and shoved her hand between her thighs, rubbed at her clit and clenched down on him.

This was much better than touching herself on its own.

Leonas pulled out suddenly, thrust between her thighs instead. He took his hand off of her mouth. “Open,” he ordered, and she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, fingers working furiously at her clit. Heat splattered on the back of her hand, against her thighs. She liked seeing his face, the way his jaw clenched and his eyes shut. It took another few seconds to bring herself to a crescendo, her back arching and her legs twitching, the sudden burst of pleasure all through her skin.

She wished he’d still been inside her. Ten minutes wasn’t that long, when she wasn’t expecting it. They’d need to figure out some kind of signal next time, before she came over. She could bring a dirty art book, and show him all her favorite parts.

He wiped himself down with a handkerchief. “I need to put the cloak away, I can’t…” He hesitated.

“I’m good,” she said, licking the back of her hand. She wrinkled her nose. “You can go take care of it.”

He kissed her one last time, crushed his mouth to hers with his hand in her hair. Then he left her, and she could hear the sound of fabric sliding against fabric.

If his theory of what they could get away with was wrong, would it be better or worse to pretend she’d been masturbating in a blanket fort without his knowledge?

“Who was it?” Ari Karzarul asked. He was a Tauril again, and she didn’t know if she wanted him to be an Impyr. She did, but she didn’t. It was a lot.

“Who was what?” she asked.

“A number of dicks,” he repeated. She scowled. “You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I’m curious, is all.”

“I’m allowed,” she said. “There’s no rule about sex.”

“There isn’t,” he confirmed.

“Traveling merchants, mostly,” she said. “Adventurers. A pirate. A bard. I’d save them, or we’d go on an adventure together, or something.”

“Ah,” he said. “No… long-term companions, then.”

“No?” she said uncertainly. “I don’t think Leonas counts.”

“I should hope not,” Karzarul said. Birds chirped in the trees along the road. “Unless you mean—you don’t mean…?”

“He always calls it an experiment,” she said, “but it’s definitely sex.”

Ari stopped in his tracks.

“It’s okay,” she rushed to assure him, seeing the look on his face. She stopped walking. There was always a certain distance between them while they walked, because if they were too close she couldn’t see his face. “I know it’s sex, and he knows. He has problems, is all.”

“When he does experiments,” Karzarul began.

“Not always,” she interrupted. “He does regular experiments, with magic and frogs and teeth.”

“Teeth?”

“He doesn’t get out,” she said. “The King sends him people, but I don’t know that he likes them. It’s—it is educational. The experimenting.”

Karzarul rubbed at his face.

“Are you mad at me?” she asked. “I would have mentioned it sooner, but I didn’t think it would come up, because I didn’t know that you were planning to kill him or that we could have sex.”

“I’m not mad at you,” he said. “I don’t like that he touched you.”

“I liked it,” she said. “He’s pretty.” Karzarul grumbled and growled and muttered, but it felt important that she be clear. She started walking again. “I know that you hate him, but threatening to kill him while he’s trying to sleep isn’t fair.”

“There were extenuating circumstances,” he said, following after her.

“Like what?”

“I wanted to kill him.”

“Ari.”

“If I told you what he said, you’d understand.”

“No I wouldn’t,” Minnow said, tilting up her head. “He would say it to my face.”

“That’s worse.”

“We have an understanding,” she said. “I don’t expect you to be friends, or like him, or even talk to him. It’s better if you don’t, isn’t it?” Karzarul grunted, but said nothing, so she continued. “You should leave his dreams alone, if we’re going to keep a low profile.”

“He keeps coming into my dreams,” he said. “Don’t complain to me about it.”

Minnow frowned. That didn’t seem right. Leonas’ panic at the thought of sleeping, of dreaming, had been very real. She thought of sleepwalkers, wandering through unlocked doors. “How does it work? Can I see your dreams?”

“Maybe,” he said. “The Starsword gives you a certain baseline amount of magic, even if you can’t draw on it deliberately. It might be enough.”

Minnow did not appreciate the reminder that she still couldn’t do any cool sword magic. “What would we have to do?” she asked. “If I wanted to try it.”

“Focus on each other while falling asleep,” he said. “As long as one person is willing to leave their own dreamscape, it gives permission for them to enter another.” He shrugged. “A traveler has no power in another person’s dreamscape. It’s why most don’t do it, even if they can.”

She mulled it over, kicking a rock down the road. Then she set the thought aside for later. Talking about the Heir irritated him, that much was clear. If this plan was going to work, she was going to have to keep them apart. Better not to tempt fate by putting them in murdering range. No point worrying about logistics now, when everything was still so new and she barely understood anything.

“This has never happened before, with the monsters, right?” she asked.

“I have lived and died for thousands of years,” he said. “I’ve never seen a monster made of anything but moonlight.”

“I don’t know what that means,” she said. “I thought monsters were made of meat, and blood.”

“Yes,” he said. “And the meat and blood is made of moonlight.”

She chewed on her thumbnail. “Humans aren’t made of sunlight, though.”

“They are,” Ari said. “Same as animals. You get it from plants.”

“That sounds fake.”

“What do schools teach now?” he wondered.

“I dunno,” she said. “I didn’t go to school.”

“Hm.”

“I have books, though.”

“Astian books,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “And other books sometimes, in old places. People leave them all over.” She started reciting the history, kicking the same stone. “The Sun Goddess, the Moon Goddess, and the Star Goddess are sisters. The Sun Goddess made the world, and gave it life. The Moon Goddess saw the world, and gave it death. And the Star Goddess saw all the things in the world, and she gave it hope to guide the way. When they fought, as sisters do, the world couldn’t take it. So they vested their power into three chosen heroes. The Sunlight Heir is born to shield a people with all that they inherit, and the Starlight Hero gives them hope. The Moonlight Monster seeks the death and destruction of all things.” She paused. “Is what they say. In books. Which may not be accurate.”

“It isn’t,” he said.

“Okay.”

They walked, and listened to the birds sing.

“She isn’t the Star Goddess,” he said finally.

“What?”

“She is the Void Goddess,” he said.

She looked down at the Starsword on her hip, which was not called the Voidsword. The dark hilt glinted with innumerable points of light, flecks of gold embedded in the fallen stars of its making. “That doesn’t sound right,” she said.

“The things called natural are the realm of the Sun Goddess,” he said. “She is life, thriving. The things called unnatural are the realm of the Moon Goddess. She is life, persisting. The Void Goddess is the nothing in which all things dwell, the home of possibility, all things which could and will not be. She is death, inevitable. Every star in the sky is a dead world, held close to her breast and remembered for all time, awaiting the day we join them. Every fallen star is a dead world’s wish, all its hopes and dreams still seeking out the living who might make them real. The Heir seeks growth, but his shield can only keep him safe; the Sun Goddess knew better than to arm ambition with a blade. The Monster seeks only to be, and so his bow is for hunting, for keeping his enemies at a distance; the Moon Goddess was merciful in her pity.

“The Hero… is the Hero. They do not seek; they are sought. They wield a weapon hammered from dead dreams and wasted wishes, and its price is wanting. Dreamers and their desires stick to the Hero like burrs, and only satisfaction will make them leave. The dreams they wield are so heavy, they cannot bear to carry more for long. They are a vessel for infinity, and if they gaze inward they can lose themselves in it. If they bring hope, it is not the hope of a guiding light or a brighter future. It is the hope of emptiness, of nothingness, of all that might be made to fill it.”

Minnow kicked her rock into a bush, causing a chipmunk to flee.

“That’s a lot,” she said.

“It is,” he agreed.

“How much do you remember?” she asked.

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“As much as anyone would remember, after thousands of years. Big things, important things. I don’t always remember what I had for breakfast.”

“Hmmm.” Minnow didn’t remember anything, or else the things she remembered weren’t things that counted as memories. Like being able to read Quedian. She was glad now not to remember more, not to remember killing him. That would make kissing him awkward.

“We could have sex, you know.”

Minnow choked on air. “That’s—I know that now.”

“In this form,” he said.

She was turning very red. “I have organs,” she said. “And bones. This isn’t an, an out-of-practice situation.”

“That’s not the kind I meant,” he said.

She risked looking back at him, and regretted it when he stuck out his tongue. Her heart skipped and her stomach flipped sideways. She let out an indignant squeal, covered her mouth, then tried to cover her entire face. She shook her head, dropping down to a flat-footed squat that was nearly sitting in the road, hiding her head between her knees. “Ng⟡vit◌!”

Karzarul started to laugh. “Aekhite?” he asked. “You speak Aekhite, still?”

“No,” she said through her hands, still curled up near the ground.

“You just did,” he said.

“That doesn’t count,” she said. “That just happens, sometimes.”

Ari was large enough that when he knelt down she could hear it, and he poked her in the shoulder. “Are you going to do this every time?” he asked. “Should I ask for advice from pirates, and bards?”

“Not! Every time!” She did not, however, look up.

“Twice now,” he said, “you have been made aware that we have options if you would like to pursue them. And both times, you have responded in the manner of an angry hedgehog.”

“No!”

“If this isn’t how you respond to everyone’s advances,” he continued, “I might start to get my feelings hurt.”

“Have you ever been to a meal,” she said, “and someone there sees the meal, and they say ‘oh no get this away from me’, but they don’t mean that they don’t like the meal, they mean that they’ll eat the whole thing and no one else will get any and they’ll make themselves sick?”

She was still muffled by her hands.

“… I’m a meal?”

“I guess,” she said, peering out between her fingers.

Ari had, at some point, become a Rootboar. She screamed. His edges softened, but she grabbed at him. “No!” she said before he could change, suddenly hugging him to her chest, falling backward to sit on the ground. He was very small, and very round, with tiny little branches growing out of his head like antlers. There was a dark crescent in the middle of his forehead. And he had, most importantly of all, a snoot.

“I should have anticipated this,” he sighed. The fact that his voice hadn’t changed was as funny as it was unsettling.

She gasped with realization. “I should take you home!”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t think I could before,” she said, “because my neighbors would notice if I came home with a Tauril and I don’t think they’d be very happy about it. They won’t be happy about a Rootboar, either, but.” She touched her nose to his, and giggled. “I don’t care. I wanna—I wanna go places.”

Minnow was still holding Ari against her chest when she came out through the Rainbow Door behind her house. Instead of stopping to get her bearings, she kept walking with full momentum downhill.

“Minona?” a woman called, but Minnow didn’t slow down. “Is that a pig? You can’t bring another pig here. The Village Council had a vote after last time, remember?”

“It’s not a pig, Suzan!” Minnow snapped, walking faster. Ari didn’t have much of a neck in this form, but he tried to look around Minnow’s arm to see who was talking.

“When are you coming to a Council meeting?” the woman asked, voice sounding closer. “We need to talk about your hedges, the official height limit—”

“I’m a little busy, Suzan!” Minnow interrupted, opening the large wooden gate into the hedged-in garden and immediately shutting it behind her. “I’ll show you the garden later,” she muttered, “if we stay out here she’ll start peeking through the slats in the door.”

Since he didn’t want her nosy neighbor noticing the talking Rootboar, he wiggled all his legs so that Minnow would put him down. He still followed after her, his trotters tapping on the cobblestones, but it was easier to look around this way. There was a large fountain, and flowers from all around Astielle were growing in careful arrangements. Miniature chickens were wandering in a flock, scratching at the grass and pecking at neatly trimmed berry bushes. Tiny orbs of quail stayed underneath the shrubs, where they could find the illusion of safety. There was a log covered in shelf mushrooms, some of which were glowing despite it being daytime.

She had what may have been a memorial statue for a pig, which raised a lot of questions despite the ones it answered.

He bit the head off a dandelion, and chewed it as he followed her into the house.

“You have a lovely garden,” he said, carefully wiping his trotters clean on her welcome mat.

“I got really into gardening for a while,” she said, shutting the door behind him. “They had a gardening competition and I wanted to get first place. I don’t know why, it isn’t like it mattered.” She kicked off her boots to leave them by the door. “They stopped having it after that because they didn’t want to ask me not to enter. I ignore them about the property regulations because I don’t care and there’s not really anything they can do about it. Do you want to see my rock collection? Or we can look for books about monsters. I tried to turn some of my rooms into a library but I didn’t organize it well.”

He stood up, stretching into his limbs and assuming a form less spherical. He appreciated that her ceilings were high enough to accommodate his horns. He balanced on one hoof to stretch the other, knee bent and a hand on his ankle, shoulder rolling as he worked out the kinks. Rootboars didn’t have much in the way of joints.

“Oh,” she gasped, turning around rather than look at him.

Again.

“Minnow,” he warned.

“I know,” she said, and she did sound a touch upset about it. But it was still… irritating. Not in an obnoxious way. More in the manner of a poorly-fitted shirt. “A minute, give me a minute.” She wrung her hands in front of her. “You got your bow back,” she noted. “I wondered, when you were little.”

“It’s a part of me,” he said. “No point having it when I can’t use it.” He stepped closer to her, and his hooves were loud in the quiet room. She froze, but didn’t retreat. He slid his hands onto her waist, and her oh this time was small and high-pitched and wound all through with a yearning he could feel. He bent down until his cheek brushed her hair, and nuzzled until his chin rested on her shoulder. He took a deep breath.

She smelled like dirt, and blood, and sweat. Like moss on a rotting log. Meat, and bone, and dying flowers. His grip on her waist tightened. He wanted to sink his fingers into her skin, he wanted to taste her. She was sweet, and soft, and had earned every kindness he could give her. He was a monster with moonlight skin, a thing that made his home where he was not wanted.

She didn’t remember him. She never remembered him. Not really, not down to his bones, not the sound of his heart. Minnow didn’t remember Elias remembered Tomas didn’t remember Laurela who’d remembered so much she’d remembered—

So many Starlight Heroes. Always the same Moonlight Monster.

One little Minnow, and maybe for a time that was enough.

“Can you use a sword?” she asked breathlessly, as he pressed his lips against the fabric at her shoulder.

“If I need to,” he said.

“Could we spar?” she asked.

“Now?” he asked. He wanted to pull her closer, wrap his arm around her neck.

“I know that might be bad for you,” she said, “since you remember. We don’t have to.”

“Would it help?” he asked.

“It might,” she said. “I have practice swords, it wouldn’t—I wouldn’t hurt you.”

She always hurt him, he always hurt her. That was how it worked.

“I’ll do it,” he said, “if it means you’ll look at me.”

She certainly was looking at him.

He was a monster, was the problem. He was so handsome it hurt. He made her instincts go haywire, and she didn’t know whose instincts. She wanted to kill him, she wanted him, she craved a catharsis that a kiss wouldn’t give her. She didn’t know what she wanted, only that she wanted and it was building up under her skin like a scream.

This was helping.

She was terrible at sparring. She was used to open fields and forests, room to run and give herself breathing room. He gave her none. They’d taken off their true weapons to be sure they wouldn’t hurt each other, not in any way that mattered. His tunic was almost-but-not-quite the one he’d worn as a Tauril, his white gloves still hiding his mark. His skirt fell in long panels down to his calves, open on either side and leaving his legs free; his hooves were silver, and so were his horseshoes. His hair fell in a thick braid down his back, bells in his hair and in the trim of his skirt. His tail was tied with ribbons. Every time he moved, it was a song, graceful and precise.

He was even trying to go easy on her. It wasn’t working. The dull wooden blade hit her forearm, and she cried out. He retreated.

“Again?” he asked.

She laughed in that way that no one ever liked, shaking out her arms and bouncing on her toes. “Again,” she urged, “again, again.”

He moved, and she dodged to block, the both of them spinning in circles around the room. She waited for a tell that never came, a break between movement, couldn’t think about anything but where to move and where he was moving. Couldn’t think, couldn’t think, didn’t want to think.

This, finally, felt right.

Her wooden sword finally snapped, and she let the force of it knock her aside, a shrieking laugh of glee as she hit the ground long enough to catch his tail and yank. He hissed and wrapped it around her arms, turning to grab her by the hair. She groaned, throwing her arms around his neck once they were free and pulling herself close enough to claim his mouth.

“More,” she gasped as soon as she was able. Her feet weren’t touching the ground, his arm around her back, so she wrapped her legs around his waist.

“This was what you needed?” he asked, holding her tighter, his fingers in her hair. She nodded helplessly. “You want a monster?”

“I want you,” she said, so he kissed her again. He started to move, then stopped.

“Where the fuck is your bed,” he said, looking at all the doors visible from where he stood, and she laughed. She pointed to the ladder on the far wall, the one that skipped the second floor entirely and went straight into the turret that jutted from her roof. “You’re kidding.”

“It doesn’t usually matter,” she apologized. “There’s never anyone else.”

He made a guttural sound at that, and abruptly lifted her to throw over his shoulder. She shrieked and kicked her feet, though not at all in protest, watching the floor get further away as he climbed up toward her room.

She hoped she hadn’t left anything embarrassing out.

“Of course this is your room,” he said, letting her fall into her pillows. She’d covered the floor in futons and comforters and as many souvenir throw pillows as she could find, soft toys and animal furs and anything else that seemed nice for sleeping.

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.

“Absolutely nothing,” he said, dropping to his knees with his hands on either side of her head. “Maybe this,” he corrected, picking up a small stuffed toy of a Bruteling and tossing it to where it wouldn’t be watching. She tried to unfasten the clasps on his tunic, getting stuck almost immediately because her hands were shaking. He pulled off his gloves, and as soon as he touched her face she nipped at his thumb. “There’s my girl,” he said, his voice rough.

She took off her belt while he took off his tunic, pulling her own tunic up over her head. Unwinding her chest wrap was more of an ordeal, made her wish she’d brought a knife.

“Perfect,” he said as he shrugged out of his shirt. He descended on her, kissed a trail from her lips to her collarbones. His fingers were long enough to span her breast, dragging a thumb over one of her nipples. She slid a hand down his chest, down his stomach, toward his skirt. He caught her, laced his fingers through hers and pinned her hand above her head instead. “Not yet,” he said. Her sound of protest mingled with her groan, making a token attempt to pull her hand away just so he’d pin it again.

He bent his head, squeezed one breast and licked the other, traced the curve with his tongue before pressing his fangs into her skin. One of his horns grazed her cheek. She arched her back, rocking her hips against nothing. Her muscles all ached, wrung out and weak, and she could feel her pulse in her mouth and all her bruises. His fingertips found a long bruise he’d left on her ribs, and she cried out in more than pain. He kissed her again.

“Did I do that to you?” he asked against her mouth.

“Yeah,” she sighed.

“Did you like it?”

“Mm-hmm,” she hummed, running her leg along his thigh.

“Say my name.”

“Ari,” she said, and he pressed at her bruise so she’d cry out again.

“The other one.”

“Karzarul,” she said, and he let her go to kneel upright. Her worked her leggings off her hips and down her legs, pushing her knees up toward her chest in the process. Then he let them fall onto his shoulders, his hands under her hips. “Karzarul.” He pressed his teeth into her inner thigh enough to leave a mark, and her hips rocked again.

She didn’t mean to grab him by the horns, but once his tongue was inside her she wasn’t sure what else to do. Her heels dug into his back as he thrust his tongue in and out of her, the point of it curling deeper than any tongue had a right to go. Whenever his head moved, she could hear the bells in his hair. His fingers pressed a bruise on her thigh, and she gasped, clenching around his tongue. He nipped at her other thigh as she pulled harder at his horns, tried to grind against his face. Then he dipped his tongue into her again, slid it higher before sucking at her clit.

It was a marvel that she didn’t pull his horns off, all the stars in the void lighting up behind her eyes.

His kiss still tasted like her, and he slid a finger inside of her to replace his tongue. “Good?” he asked, sounding like he knew perfectly well the answer.

“More,” she said, and a second finger joined the first. His hands were large enough that this was already a stretch.

“Tell me what you want,” he said, his forehead touching hers. It was a question with a right answer, which she resented when she couldn’t think. She pressed her head a little harder against his, the ghost of the idea of a headbutt.

“You,” she said. “More. You have to tell me what to say, I don’t know what to say.”

He kissed her, kissed her neck and brought his lips close to her ear. He worked a third finger inside of her, stretching her open as she tried to spread her legs further. His thumb brushed her oversensitive clit, just enough to make her whimper. “I want the Starlight Hero,” he breathed, “to tell me how badly she wants my filthy monster cock.”

“I don’t think you’re filthy,” she protested instead of saying the right thing. “I—I do want to be full of monster cock, though.” She tried to adjust her position enough to look down between them, but then his hand was on her jaw and he was pushing her head back into the pillows. It left her unable to see him at all, looking at a spot above her head while he touched her.

“Don’t,” he warned, his fingers sliding out of her.

“Why not?” she said, though her complaint died when something that could only have been the head of his cock slid over her clit. It felt… different. “I want to see,” she said.

“If I let you see,” he said, with a sound of buckles and shifting fabric, “you’re going to change your mind.”

His cock started to push inside of her, agonizingly slow as he split her open. He let her move enough to see his face, the furrow of his brow and the flare of his nostrils. He pressed his forehead to hers again to keep her there, his eyes locked onto hers. She was trying to interpret what she was feeling, but it was difficult when she was feeling so much. Big, like the rest of him. A shaft that seemed to get thicker, spreading her wider the deeper he drove. Something else, something that wasn’t inside her and wasn’t his fingers. She bucked and cried out when it touched her clit again.

“Karzarul,” she said, reaching up to pull him close, her teeth touching the point of one ear. “Please? I want to see what it looks like when you fuck me.” He thrust hard, too much too fast, forcing all the air out of her lungs. His breathing was ragged, now.

“Okay,” he said hoarsely. He kissed her eyelids as she grabbed at pillows, sliding them underneath her to raise her head to a better angle. He held himself still while she adjusted herself, still impaled on him as far as she could tell. She braced her hands on his shoulders, spreading her knees, and he didn’t stop her from looking down this time as he pulled out of her.

“Oh!” Some of what she’d intuited had been correct. It did get wider at the base, for one thing. It did have more texture to it than was usual for skin, ridges that were almost scales. She hadn’t expected the silvery moonlight pulsing down the length of it, lines in a pattern that reminded her of certain rare flower petals. She had also not expected the tentacles flaring around the base of it. Her nails dug into the skin on his back. “Fuck me,” she said, excited. “I want to see you inside me.”

He thrust all at once, more than looked like could fit though he still couldn’t hilt it inside of her. She bit her lip so that she wouldn’t scream in his face, voice ragged against her teeth, arching up to meet the tentacles grabbing at her body. She fell back against the pillows, satisfied now that she could imagine what was happening.

“You’re beautiful when you fuck me,” she said dreamily, cut off with a gasp when he thrust again. “It’s so good,” she said, “when you do that—that thing, where you fill me up and then keep going and then I bounce. I like bouncing.” She laughed, though it came out sounding choked and strange, because he’d started pounding into her while she spoke. What a delight to be able to do that to him with nothing else but words, when the right words were the thing she had least often.

“You can bounce on my cock as much as you’d like,” he said, a growl though his teeth.

“Oh,” she sighed. “You promise?”

Harder and faster and he’d certainly taken it to heart, making her bounce, but he was still being careful and she could tell that he was. It was good that he was, because he was already deep enough to feel dangerous, the good kind of dangerous but the dangerous kind of dangerous. She didn’t know if he could actually rearrange her organs, but she didn’t want to find out.

“Ari?” she said, which felt like breaking character but she didn’t want to distract him with the sound of his true name. “If you flip me over you could go harder, if that’s, if you don’t mind.” She was worried she’d given him a complex about not looking at his face.

She grunted as he pulled out of her, leaving her feeling both emptier and squishier than would have been ideal. She rolled over, grabbing a pillow to prop under her stomach while pulling herself up onto shaky knees. She kept her head low, resting on her arms. His hands were on her hips, and she tried to look over her shoulder at him. “Good?” she asked, because it seemed like he was waiting for something.

“Good,” he said, kneeling upright where before he’d been leaning back. His hands squeezed her ass and spread her apart, and she realized he was looking at her. She hugged a pillow close to bury her face in it. “Very good,” he said, and then his cock was pushing into her again. She moaned low and raw, louder as she felt tentacles sliding in all directions. Along her ass, up to her clit, spreading her open. She could feel her own arousal dripping down her thighs.

“Your hands,” she managed, struggling to articulate her thought. “My back, I want—push me down, please, Karzarul.” She felt his palm along her spine, his fingers spread wide around her shoulderblades and the pressure of his weight pushing her down into the pillows. “Yes,” she gasped, and he started to thrust, “like that, like that, I like that, I want that.” She trailed off into muffled screams as she bit down onto her pillow, wished it was his arm, wished he had a form like this one with more hands to hold her and fill her and tear her apart.

“Say my name,” he growled as his body pounded into hers, and she thought of his voice in her ear and the words he wanted.

“I w—ah—nt, King Karzarul, t—oh—fill me with his monster cock, I want you, Karzarul—”

He bent to hook his chin over her shoulder, his chest against her back and his whole body pressing her down. His hips slammed into her ass, tentacles rubbing at her, one of them bearing down on her clit until she screamed into her pillow. Her body tried to arch and buck and writhe, but there was too much of him holding her still, holding her open.

He stilled, and she felt his cock twitching inside her, her own inner muscles still spasming around him as he moved. Heat was dripping down her thighs, sweat in her hair and on her back and she didn’t know whose any of it was.

“Thank you,” she breathed, sing-song, and he growled and thrust one last time before pulling out of her. She pressed her legs together before she tipped over, as if they would in any way minimize the mess. He picked up her hand, and started kissing the knuckles of her fingers.

“Pretty little Hero,” he murmured against her skin.

She hummed. “I think if I try to get to the bathroom myself I’m going to fall down the ladder and sprain my ankle.”

“This still seems like an omelet.” Ari was sitting with Minnow at her kitchen table, eating the meal she’d made with the eggs and mushrooms he’d managed to round up from her garden. He thrown his tunic back on, but hadn’t fastened it, leaving the center of his chest still exposed. His skirt was hanging off one hip with the front panel falling between his legs, leaving most of his thighs bare. None of his hair had fallen out of his braid, which offended her.

“Perivo scrambled eggs aren’t an omelet,” she said, taking another bite. Her hair was still wet from the bath, and she’d thrown on a loose dress with nothing underneath it. She had a vague notion that she might be getting naked again soon enough to make dirtying more clothes wasteful.

“I’ve had omelets like this,” he said.

“Maloran omelets, maybe,” she said, scoffing at the very idea. “Maloran omelets are mostly buttered ground mushrooms. Perivo scrambled eggs are eggs, with some tree mushrooms.”

“That sound like something Perivos made up,” he said.

They paused as the back door to the garden opened.

“Did you not lock your door?” he asked quietly, frowning.

“Why would I lock my door?” she asked as she stood. “Everyone knows it’s my house.”

“Your house full of treasure.”

“My house full of me, and my swords.” She froze in the doorway to the kitchen.

Leonas froze in the middle of her sitting room.

She stared at him. He wasn’t wearing his circlet, but he was still dressed like a prince. She thought wearing purple instead of blue might be his idea of a disguise. She could not process the sight of him here, out of his element, out of his room.

He stared at her. He stared, also, at what was clearly Moonlight Monster King Karzarul, King of All Monsters, standing over her right shoulder. He stared at her wet hair. He stared at Karzarul’s gratuitously open shirt.

“Right,” Leonas said, nodding. “Right, okay. Great. Bye.”

He bolted back out the door.

There was a watchtower near the outside of Fort Astielle with a Rainbow Door in it. She wasn’t clear on who in Astielle’s history had put a Door in the tower, or what would happen if the tower fell. Looking at old maps suggested that what was originally a fort had expanded into a city, had expanded outward until it met what was once a distant tower suitable for scouting.

She tapped her Seeing Stone, but didn’t hold it. It was a good way to make Leonas’ stone chime just once, to let him know that she wanted to come in.

He chimed back once, but didn’t actually make contact. That meant he was awake, but it was a bad time. She sighed and went to the watchtower window.

The city had grown so much even since she was young. It had reached the limits of the warding, now, and expanded upward. As monster attacks grew worse, more and more Astians with the means to do so moved out of the villages. There were no wards out there, only passing adventurers and sometimes a Hero. A large enough village or town could withstand it, but not the little lonely places.

Out on the other side of the tower were the farms, farmers who decided they’d rather live in town and travel to their fields than risk the alternative. They were pretty enough, but these days there were guards, and that made it awkward to wander through stealing carrots and the occasional melon. Which was too bad. There’d been a man with muskmelons growing that she very much liked to steal. She’d rather not have someone reporting her melon-theft to the King.

Her Seeing Stone started to chime in earnest, so she picked it up. “You brought tea?” Leonas asked, looking ill.

“I got a jar,” she confirmed.

“Bring it,” he said, severing the connection.

Minnow climbed to the outside of the watchtower and onto the roof, standing at its highest point. Unfolding her glider, she jumped, soaring over the small houses that filled the outer streets of Fort Astielle. Rather than aim straight for the castle, she angled herself to hit the first Sun Shrine she saw. Sun Shrines liked to have spires on top of their domes, which made them good checkpoints for her. And there were enough of them that she could almost reach the castle.

Her usual route was through a specific guardhouse built into the outer walls of the castle. It saved a lot of time over the sneaking through the aqueduct that she used to do.

“Hey, Phil,” she said, passing the guard working on a number puzzle.

“Hey, Min,” he said, not looking up. “Kill the King of all Monsters yet?”

“Workin’ on it,” she said, climbing onto his shelves to wiggle through the window into the garden. From there she could go into the laundry, up one of the chutes, back out, then over a parapet onto the tallest tower. She was intimately familiar with the stones along the outside, which ones made the best footholds and which were too smooth. Pulling herself up onto the balcony, she stayed sitting on the rail, because Leonas was already standing there.

“You didn’t wear the new dress,” he said.

“You said you didn’t like it.”

He paused. “Give,” he said, holding out a hand.

“No,” she said.

“Do you have the tea or don’t you?” he asked.

“I do,” she said. “But you can’t have any until you’ve slept.”

“If I wanted to sleep, I wouldn’t need the tea,” he said.

“The Old Man said you need real sleep.”

“Piss on the Old Man.”

“Gross.”

“Not literally,” he snapped. “Don’t you start with that. You’ve been out of the Faewilds for twenty years, you know good and well when something’s idomatic.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” she said. “Has it?”

“How would you know? You don’t even know what day it is. Is the jar in your bag? It must be in your bag.”

She slid off the balcony railing and past him, avoiding him as he tried to grab her pack off of her. “I’m not giving it to you yet,” she said.

“Then why are you even here,” he said, shutting the balcony doors and following after her.

“I want to make sure you sleep,” she said. “I brought other things, too.” She dropped her pack, digging around until she found a small drawstring bag. She held it out for him, and when he took it he looked inside.

“Is this part of a molar?” he asked. He squinted at her jaw. “What did you even do?”

“I read this soup recipe that said it was traditionally made by taking hot rocks and putting them in a skin so you don’t need a metal pot, and I tried it, but some of the rocks I used were too small and they blended in.”

He stared at her.

“I didn’t swallow them,” she added, in case he was worried.

“Good?”

“I got you these lizards, too,” she said, presenting him with a glass jar full of what initially looked like dried chilis, but were on closer inspection desiccated lizard corpses.

“… the lava lizards?” he asked. She nodded. “I asked for those four months ago,” he said.

“I waited until I was going through the mountains anyway,” she said. “I was being efficient.”

He rubbed at his eyes. “Right. Right. Great.” He took the jar out of her hand, turning his back to her and heading to the desk where he kept most of his current projects.

Minnow wandered through his shelves while she waited, trying to determine if any of his books on magical theory were about monsters. She could ask, but she didn’t want to raise his suspicions.

“Drink,” Leonas said, between the shelves with her and shoving a vial in her hand. She downed it in one shot, having gotten better at pouring it straight down her throat. He held out a handkerchief. “Spit,” he said, and she whined, stomping her foot, because her tooth was still growing back and the root had gone deep. Then she spit blood and bits of molar into his hand. He rolled up the handkerchief and stuck it in his pocket. “Open.”

“Aaah,” she said, sticking her tongue out. He pushed it out of the way with a small copper stick, squinting into her mouth.

“Good,” he said, letting her shut her mouth again. “All better, nothing weird.” Nothing she’d healed with one of his potions had ever turned into anything weird, but there was a first time for everything. He gave her a perfunctory peck on the forehead, but lingered there.

“You’re unwell,” she said, and he sagged, not backing away from her the way he ordinarily would have. “Promise me that if I leave the jar of tea, you’ll go to sleep as soon as I’m gone.”

“You don’t have to leave right away,” he said, not modulating his volume for how close he was standing.

She frowned. “You’re very unwell,” she said, because he was always telling her to leave. Go, and find Karzarul. Go, and kill Karzarul. Get rid of Karzarul, and he could finally leave the castle, leave his tower, go anywhere at all without having to worry about being murdered and leaving the Kingdom without an heir or an Heir.

He came close enough that she was pinned against his shelves, his arms on either side of her. It was, to put it mildly, unlike him. “I want to experiment,” he mumbled against her hair.

“You’re ill“, she reminded him, frowning at his cravat because she couldn’t see his face.

“Sleeping,” he said. “Stay here, while I sleep. I am the Prince of Astielle, and I—I order it. I order you to stay.” He pressed against her, nearly collapsing.

“Don’t say it’s an order, I’ll bite you,” she reminded him, trying to help support his weight.

“Well then what are you even good for,” he snapped at full volume again, standing all at once as if being pulled by a string, turning on his heel and stomping away. She blinked after him. “Leave then,” he said. “It was a stupid idea anyway, it wouldn’t have worked. You don’t know anything. All you have is a sword, you can’t stab dreams.”

“I can stay,” she said.

“I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t want you here. Go away.” He was already heading up the spiral staircase to his loft. “I’ll order better company, you’ll only be in the way.” She followed him, and found him laying over his covers fully-dressed and sideways, staring at his ceiling. It was painted with a mural of the sun. She pulled herself up onto the mattress beside him. “Get your disgusting boots off my bed,” he said.

She carefully worked his circlet out of his curls, while he pointedly shut his eyes rather than look at her. Then he covered his face with his hands. “Go away,” he said again, muffled by his palms. She ran her fingers through his hair to catch it all as she lifted his head, wiggling sideways so that she could set it back down in her lap. She leaned back to rest her head on his too-many-pillows.

“I’m not looking,” she said. She felt him lower his hands, and turn his head.

He was asleep quickly enough that she was sure it had been days. She wondered if she could ask Ari to ask the Moonlight Monster to leave the Prince alone. She doubted it would work. But she could ask.

“What if you stayed?” Leonas asked, looking out the window.

“I did stay,” she reminded him, yawning.

“Longer,” he said. “Our first plan didn’t work. You didn’t find Karzarul in time. There’s no point running all over trying to find him. You might as well stay.”

She gnawed at her lip. The thought of staying in this tower was suffocating, but she didn’t want to say so. He’d slept for so long that it had gone from day to night to day again. It felt like too much time to be here. But he was always here.

He’d curled into his window seat with a cup of lemon tea, no special herbs in this one to keep him awake. His witchmarks were shining again, if not as bright as she was used to. She’d opted to sit on the floor, so that she could be close without being too close. Personal space.

“I can’t stay,” she said.

Leonas stared at his tea. “I can’t sleep,” he said. He drummed his nails against his teacup. “He knows where I am. He knows he can’t come here, the wards are too strong. He’s figured out how to… how to pull me out of my dreams, into nightmares. Not even the usual nightmares, he doesn’t—he does kill me. But mostly it’s, it’s mindgames. Trying to manipulate me into going out, since he can’t come in. Baiting me.”

“Can you put up more wards?” she asked. “Dream wards?”

He sipped his tea. “It would be safer for you to stay,” he said quietly. “I think he might be watching. Through monsters. You need to be more careful.”

She thought of Ari, and swallowed. Was she okay with that, if the Moonlight Monster was watching her through Ari’s eyes?

Through a friend’s eyes?

“Do you have any books about monsters?” she blurted.

He looked at his library, the tall shelves and wall shelves all full. “Yes,” he said. “So do you, unless you’ve gotten rid of them.”

“I think there’s something wrong with them,” she said.

“… the monsters.”

“I’ve found some things, exploring,” she said. This was not technically a lie. “Have you ever heard of monsters talking?”

He tilted his head. There was a grogginess to the motion. “Did you hear a monster talk?” he asked slowly. “Was this before or after you ate rocks?”

“It was one rock,” she said. “I think…” She wrung her hands. “I think monsters used to be people.”

He froze. “Human?”

“Not human,” she said. “People.” He relaxed. “Like, Brutelings throwing each other birthday parties. Bullizards with houses. Taurils that speak Astia, and wear clothes.”

“How would a Tauril even wear pants.”

“I didn’t say pants!” she huffed. “I said clothes. A nice shirt. You know?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Monsters are soulless. They’re weapons, made to destroy. They kill people.”

“I don’t think that’s right, though,” she said. “I mean, it’s right that they kill people. And all the monsters I’ve fought have seemed pretty soulless. I don’t think that’s normal for monsters, though. Some of the stuff…”

She couldn’t say ‘that Ari has been telling me’. That would be a whole conversation she didn’t want to have right now.

“The stuff I’ve been finding,” she said instead. “What if monsters aren’t supposed to be like this? What would that mean?”

Leonas rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never heard anything like that.”

“I’m not making it up.”

“I know,” he said. “If there was a change, it happened a long time ago. Karzarul could be doing something. Or not doing something. No one knows how his resurrection works, how he rebuilds his body. If he recreates himself using the souls of other monsters, that could explain it. An increase in violence as he demands more resources.”

Minnow chewed at her lip. That didn’t sound right, either. If that were the case, Ari would know what was happening. She couldn’t say so. And this was raising even more questions she hadn’t considered. Killing Karzarul might hurt all the other monsters. That wouldn’t be a problem, except some of the monsters were people. Having to lie to Leonas made everything complicated. Who else could she even ask these kinds of questions? She sighed.

“Asking you to stay was a bad idea,” Leonas said suddenly, setting down his teacup. “I’m sure I can find something to help me ward my dreams, I can take care of it now that I’ve rested.”

“You don’t have to do it alone,” Minnow said. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

“You’re annoying me,” he said, standing. “You breathe weird. Your nails are filthy. I don’t want you touching my things. I can figure this out, I just need to think. I can’t think with you here.”

“I’ll try to be better about picking up the Seeing Stone,” she said as she stood, but he waved her off.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, running his thumbnail under nails as he stared into the middle distance. “Go home, don’t eat any rocks or talk to any monsters.”

There were no monsters left inside the ruins at Magdedyne. Minnow could only assume that Ari had been coming back to make sure it stayed emptied. She’d stopped by her house before returning, to drop off some things and swap out her clothes. She’d taken a nap, though not on purpose. It hadn’t been restful, lying in Leonas’ bed while he twitched in his sleep. Napping wasn’t restful either, having woken in a panic trying to remember where she was supposed to be.

It was late now, closer to morning than to evening. The empty ruin was eerie, and the temptation to stop and look at weeds growing through the bricks was high. But she’d left Ari waiting, and she wanted to see him again. To ask him about old monsters, about Karzarul, about souls and dreams. To see if he knew where to start.

By climbing to the top of the ruins, she could glide across the gap in the bridge. Crickets chirped along the road and small animals rustled as she picked through the woods trying to find Ari’s camp. She wracked her brain trying to remember if he’d given any more details, some better way to orient herself.

She stopped to pick one flower, but only one, and only because she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen it before. She didn’t want to waste time checking. Fortunately, she noticed that the forest had gone quiet in one spot. That felt like a sign of something.

She was sure she’d never seen a Tauril sleep before. Ari had rolled onto both of his backs, his hooves curled in the air and one arm under his head, the other draped over his chest. He’d left his tunic hanging in a tree to keep it clean.

Minnow didn’t always notice when people were naked. She forgot that it was a thing, half the time. But Ari, without his tunic, looked… very naked. If this was how other people felt watching her take her clothes off, it explained a lot.

She crept closer, and tried not to think about Taurils with their underbellies exposed, her sword sliding between ribs. She considered how he might react if she touched him without warning. She crept back.

“Ari,” she said, hoping that would be enough.

He yawned, his mouth opening wide enough to see all his sharp teeth.

“I’m back,” she said, and he hummed something that could have been a greeting. He looked warm and cozy in all the ways Leonas’ bed never did. She thought about sleep, and personal space, and the lack thereof.

“Can I join you?” she asked.

He sleepily murmured an assent, the tip of his tail flicking against the dirt.

She kicked off her boots and socks, but thought she’d better keep the rest of her clothes on. Ari was already naked, and it seemed like they ought to take turns. Tentatively, she knelt down next to his upper half, touching his side to see if he’d protest. When he didn’t, she tilted sideways, nestling dangerously close to his armpit so that she could rest her head on his shoulder.

She felt like she was getting away with something. She didn’t know if cuddling meant anything to monsters. It didn’t mean anything to fairies. It didn’t always mean anything to her.

She wanted. If he were human, she’d know what she wanted, but he was a Tauril and that left her frustrated and confused. The wanting made her jaw hurt which made her think that what she wanted was to bite him. Experience said that wouldn’t end well, even if it was satisfying in the moment. She wanted to know what he tasted like, knowing that the answer was ‘skin’, which never tasted as good as she wanted it to but there was something very good about running her tongue over it all the same. She wanted to bite his fingers and the tips of his ears and scratch her nails through the fur on his chest.

What would that mean to a monster? Anything at all?

She sat upright, and gnawed at the knuckle of her thumb. It didn’t help.

She got up and added a log to the fire, poking at it with the Starsword until it was at a full blaze. Then she sat on the side opposite of Ari.

She was feeling precarious.

After more gnawing and pacing and poking the fire, she gave up. She’d missed him, after all. Monsters and kings and dreams aside, they were friends now, and she’d missed him. She was allowed to have missed him, even if she was being weird about it. He didn’t have to know that she was being weird about it. If he noticed, she could blame it on being a changeling. No one knew what was normal for changelings, least of all changelings.

Determined to be bold this time, she nudged the hand on his chest until she could wiggle underneath it. She straddled his stomach and rested her face under his chin, and tried to hear his heartbeat over her own.

He patted her hair. A small sound escaped her before she could swallow it, pressing her fingers into his skin.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice rolling through his chest.

She walked her hands higher until she could touch his beard, raking her nails along his jaw.

“Minnow?”

“Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t stop. She pulled herself higher to sit on his chest, wanting to see his face. He still looked half-asleep. She traced the shape of his nose, and the arc of his eyebrows. She ran her thumbs over his cheekbones, then held his face to bend down and kiss his forehead.

His hand was resting at the small of her back when she sat back up. “Did something happen?” he asked.

Wasn’t something always happening? “No,” she said. “You just smell good.”

“Ah.” He brought his hand out from under his head to touch her cheek. She pressed her face against his palm, her whole brain lighting up when his thumb touched her lip.

It was a lot.

“Did you bite me?” he asked.

“A little,” she admitted, contrite. She licked the pad of his thumb like that was better. She took his wrist in both her hands, because she didn’t want him to take it away. “I want…” Her voice hitched as she struggled to identify something actionable. “To be close to you.” She nuzzled at his palm, and resisted the temptation to bite him again. There was a tightness in her belly that made her want to scream, and sitting here like this she could pretend there wasn’t too much of him for her.

She pressed her palm to his palm, laced her fingers through his fingers and tilted her head to kiss his hand. He tried to pull it away, but too late. She glimpsed a shape on the back of his hand, and froze.

“Minnow,” he said.

She brought his hand lower and tilted it, taking her fingers out of his to better see the black curve of a crescent moon.

“Ari?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She rubbed at it with her thumb, but it didn’t smudge. She held her star next to it.

“Karzarul?” she asked, feeling silly even to say it. “Kari-zari-l.” It couldn’t be right, but it felt right, because hadn’t she thought he was royalty? Hadn’t she already thought he was spying? Hadn’t she decided not to care? Prince Ari, King Karzarul. A white Tauril and a white Howler, not white as snow but as moonlight. It was too big, it was nothing. She was a betrayer or she was betrayed or she was herself. “Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

“I wasn’t planning to,” he said.

She looked at his face, but he was still Ari. They were friends, and he would carry her if she asked. He thought everyone should be nice to her. “That’s wonderful,” she said, and she meant it.

“What.”

“I don’t have to kill Karzarul,” she said, “because you’re Karzarul. We don’t even have to fight. We can just… play nice. And not tell anyone. No one has to know.”

“I have to figure out what’s happening with the monsters of Astielle,” he said.

“I can help,” she said. “Can’t I? We can help each other.”

“Minona,” he said, and she made a face. “We’re going to kill each other.”

“We don’t have to,” she said.

“We do,” he said. “The chosen three kill each other, and the goddesses keep score. That’s how this works. Trying to fight fate makes it worse, when it happens.”

“I’ll kill you when I’m old, then. After we’re done.” His bad attitude was starting to annoy her, when she felt they should have been celebrating. “As long as I’m still planning to kill you eventually, no goddesses can get mad at me, so I won’t trip over your tail into a volcano.”

“That’s not funny,” he said with a frown, and she worried that maybe in some past life she really had tripped into a volcano. It felt rude to ask.

“Karzarul,” she sighed, and he squeezed her hand. “Stay with me? No war, no fighting. Let the world think you’re asleep a little longer. Until I pick one of every flower and eat every edible thing, take a feather from every kind of bird, map the whole world and catch a thousand fallen stars.”

“Is that all?”

“I could,” she said. “I could do it if I had time.”

“I have time,” he said. “I have nothing but time.”

“Then give me some.”

His edges went funny, like the light was falling differently and changing all his shadows. She was still sitting on his chest, but his chest was smaller.

She’d only ever fought one Impyr. That one had been dark red and black-eyed with small horns and a spear. It had been worse for her than fighting a Tauril, because she wasn’t used to fighting things that were people-shaped, that could parry and lunge and strategize. It had driven home the reality that she depended too much on surprise and overwhelming force. Leonas had lectured her for days.

This was not that. This was Ari, the color of moonlight and with a different face than the one she’d known. A much more human face, for all that it was sharp and monstrous.

“Oh, absolutely not,” she said, scrambling off of Ari’s chest and to her feet. Anything else she might have said had left her, along with any thoughts she may have had.

“Minnow?”

“No,” she said firmly, turning in one direction and then the other before giving up and heading for the trees. “You can do that? No.” She braced herself against the other side of a tree trunk, wide enough to obscure her vision. She tried to prepare herself this time before looking back around it at him. He’d sat up, dusting off his shoulders.

That was a man. He may have kept a pair of hooves, but without the second set, he was basically a regular human man. Bigger than she was, but who wasn’t? Plenty of human men were bigger than she was.

She retreated back behind her tree rather than look at him. “This is a lot,” she said. She wanted to run, but she didn’t know where or from what, so she started to climb instead. “This is too much.” She sat on the first branch that could support her weight, and pressed a hand against her sternum like it would slow her heart.

Ari, tall enough again to almost match her, peered around the tree with a familiar vaguely-bovine face.

“Is this better?” he asked.

“No,” she said, pulling up her knees and holding onto the branch so she wouldn’t fall. “Which one is your real face?” she asked.

“They’re all my real face.”

She made a high-pitched whining sound, and regretted it.

“I’m the King of All Monsters, Minnow,” he said. “I’m all monsters. That’s how it works. Defying fate is fine, but turning into a Howler is a bridge too far?”

“No, I—I knew about the Howler. The Howler is fine.”

A white Misthawk perched in a branch across from her. She wanted to pluck one of its feathers.

“You’re a monster,” she tried to explain. “I thought we couldn’t. We wouldn’t fit. So that was why. But if you can be. Then we could. If you wanted. But that’s. I don’t know what to do, with that.”

An Impyr sat in the tree across from her. He had rings in his ears and in his nose, and his face was all sharp angles, and she could see all the muscles in his arms. She was overwhelmed all at once with the kind of attraction that made her want to jump at him so he’d knock her down.

She yelped and pushed herself out of the tree instead, landing with a thud.

He was a Misthawk and then he was a Tauril again, all in quick succession to make his landing more graceful than hers. She glowered at his hooves, which were the size of her head. He reached down to pick her up by the shoulders, setting her back on her feet.

“I’m getting a lot of mixed messages,” he said, and she buried her face in her hands. “How long ago did you leave the Faewild Forest?” he asked delicately.

“I’m not a child, Ari,” she said, dropping her hands in frustration. “I’ve touched a dick before! I’ve touched—a number of dicks.”

“Okay,” he said, holding up his hands in appeasement, which put them far above her cone of vision. “I was just checking. You seemed confused.”

“Not about that,” she said. “I thought…” She gestured at his lower half. “I don’t have to think about this. Nothing is going to happen with this. It can’t. Physically. All I had to think about was this.” She gestured with a swirling motion to her head and torso. “And I did think about it, a lot, and I worked my way all the way up to whatever that was.” She pointed accusatorily back at the spot where he’d been laying by the fire. “Now there’s all of this,” she said, gesturing around her pelvis with the same swirling motion, “and that’s…”

She gestured between him and the spot by the fire and back to him, believing this should speak for itself.

“I liked whatever that was,” he said.

“I bit you.”

“I know.”

“Oh,” she sighed. “Don’t say that.”

He scooped her up into his arms, and she bit back a sound, his one hand at her back and the other under her knees. He bent his head, and caught her mouth with his; immediately she wrapped her arms around his neck and tightened her grip, trying to crush herself against him.

She wondered if he felt the way she felt, but hoped that he didn’t, because if he did he was going to eat her alive.

“This is a lot,” she said, rather than bite him again.

“I know,” he said. “Let’s sleep on it.”

“I guess,” she said, as he set her down on the fur he’d been using as a pillow. He went fuzzy at the edges as he dropped down beside her, a Howler with his snout nudging her cheek. He licked her, tail wagging. “I guess,” she said again, scratching at his ruff. She couldn’t deny that this simplified matters, letting her snuggle close to him without any distractions. He was nothing but a big, fluffy pillow this way.

This was stupid. Men were stupid. Better not to dwell on what that made her. She curled up against him, and tried not to think about it.

Minnow had no memory of a time before Faewild Forest, what must have been eight years or so of normal human life. She couldn’t say how old she was, because she didn’t know how long she’d been there. Later, she would try to estimate a range based on when Elias had died. But while in the Faewild, she never thought to wonder, never considered that she might be different in any way from the other changelings waiting there.

The star on her hand was interesting, but no more than freckles or scars. She liked to climb the highest trees, and find the highest cliffs before jumping into the Lost Lake, but she wasn’t the one and only. They were all changelings, different and the same the way all changelings were, would be forever unless they became fairies. She played in the trees and the rivers and the ferns, her hair growing in green and her teeth turning sharp.

When Prince Leonas came to the Faewild, he seemed impossibly old and strange. They had never seen a witch before, or a prince, and couldn’t remember adults. Fairies looked no older than changelings, after all. The changelings turned it into a game of hide-and-tag, shrieking in delight as the Prince snatched them up and checked their hands before letting them go again.

Minnow had stayed in the trees rather than play after the first, realizing immediately what it was he was looking for. She felt sure the game would end once he’d caught her, and that was no fun. Once she decided it was her turn, she thought it would be fun to bait him into the Maze of Roses. It gave her more opportunities to get almost-caught before dodging through a hidden gap in the briars, giggling wildly and with her heart racing.

When he finally caught her, his grip was painfully tight, and her giggling didn’t stop. He was all blue and copper, the colors of the treeless space above the Lost Lake, his witchmarks the color of sunlight. His copper circlet blended into his curls. The shield on his back gleamed like it was breathing. He was appropriately terrifying, but what was terror to an undying changeling except its own kind of fun?

“Found you,” he said, and she nodded. “I am the Sunlight Heir, Prince Leonas of the Kingdom of Astielle,” he said. All his words had sharp edges. He held up his hand, so that she could see the black shape of a sun on the back of it. She poked at it, and confirmed that it was as much a part of his skin as her own. “You,” he said, “are the Starlight Hero.”

“I’m Minnow,” she said, and he paused.

“Your name cannot be Minnow,” he said.

She tried to remember if she had another name. “Minona?” she said.

“Minona,” he repeated, clearly preferring it. He pulled at the lock of green in her hair, checked the points of her ears and held her chin to see the points of her teeth. “Sun and stars, they really did try to ruin you.” She stomped at his foot, but missed.

“Minnow,” she corrected him.

“You cannot stay here,” he said, and he began to drag her out of the Maze of Roses. “You have an important job.”

“I do?” she said.

“You’re supposed to kill the King of All Monsters,” he said.

She had killed things before, but they were mostly rabbits and fish. The changelings had once banded together to kill a Rootboar that broke into the Faewild, but that was her only experience with monsters.

“Why can’t you do it?” she asked.

“I’ll help,” he said. They were going through the trees, and she began to feel self-conscious about the other changelings watching her. She considered for the first time the possibility that this strange man might take her away.

“We’re not supposed to leave,” she said, trying to pull away from him to no avail. “We can’t.”

“They can’t,” he corrected impatiently. “You’ll be fine. You’re not like them.”

“I don’t want to go,” she said, trying to dig her bare heels into the dirt. His grip on her forearm hadn’t moved since he’d caught her.

He stopped, and his eyes were the cold kind of blue. “Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket to hand her something. “Try this.” She took it cautiously in her free hand. It was a little brown ball, semi-translucent and hard as a rock. “Put it in your mouth.”

She did, because it wouldn’t be the first time she’d put a rock in her mouth for very little reason.

It was the sweetest thing she’d ever tasted, a flavor somewhere sideways of spicy. She’d had a taste like it before, having tried to eat everything in the Faewild at least once just to see, but never sweet like this. It was enough for her to start following along again as he lead her.

“That’s candy,” he said, apparently satisfied by her silent contemplation of the taste. “There is lots of candy in Astielle, once you leave the Faewild. Once you have the Starsword, you can have as much as you’d like.”

“What’s that?” she asked around the candy. She wiped her hand on her tunic, ragged bits of rabbit fur and sturdy dry leaves and beetle shells.

“Do you remember a sword?” he asked. “A bright, shining sword, that sings.” She shook her head, then again when he looked back because she hadn’t responded. “It’s fine,” he said. “You’ll remember.”

The woods around them became unfamiliar, the trees and underbrush less dense. Something about the air felt thinner, lighter. She looked back, and tried to find the spot where it had changed. She’d explored every inch of the Faewild Forest, but she didn’t recognize a single tree. A sense of panic filled her, and she wanted to pull away, to look at the ground and the growing things until she found the seam between what she knew and what she didn’t. She didn’t want to miss anything important that might let her retrace her steps. What if she needed something? The hollow where she kept the best rocks and shells and bird feathers was still back at her tree.

It was even more startling when they left the trees entirely, into an open field. She associated a lack of trees with water, not with grass. It felt unnatural to be able to see so far, to see the horizon and mountains and great big buildings.

“Do you recognize this?” he asked, gesturing to the landscape, to the whole wide world that it felt like she could see. She shook her head again, and he frowned. Bending down, he touched a hand to her forehead, moving her hair out of the way so that he could look suspiciously into her eyes. “You’re supposed to remember,” he said. “Usually you remember.” He seemed less sure of himself.

“I don’t,” she said, before biting down on her candy. It stuck in her molars as she tried to chew.

“Fairies,” he snapped. “I can’t imagine what they were thinking. They should have known better. Did they think they were keeping you safe?”

“They did,” she said, feeling defensive of the fairies. After all: here she was. Safe.

“You’re not meant to be safe,” he said, still not letting her go. He lead her to a blue and copper phaeton behind two white horses; that she shouldn’t have been familiar with these things didn’t occur to her. He finally released her, but only long enough to pick her up and set her into the carriage.

“Where are we going?” she asked him.

“Larksedge first,” he said. “We need to get you equipped before you get the Starsword back from the Ruined Temple. There shouldn’t be many monsters in it, yet.” He pulled out a pocketwatch, frowning at it. “We have time,” he said firmly, putting it away. “We ought to have time.”

In the depths of the Ruined Temple was a Rainbow Door. Now that Minnow had the Starsword on her hip, she could use it the way Leonas had told her to. The prospect made her nervous. The space in the doorframe shimmered with multicolored lights, completely opaque.

Her ribs hurt, and her arms hurt, and she’d lost one of her front teeth. She didn’t know if it would grow back, or if it would be sharp when it did. She knew that losing teeth was a thing that happened to children, but didn’t know if she was that kind of child.

She put her hand on the hilt of her sword, touched the light, and told it where to take her.

She opened her eyes past the blinding light into a library, books from floor to ceiling on every wall. Instead of candle lanterns, there were glowing crystals on the walls. Bells were ringing. She only took two steps before Leonas emerged, curls all loose and witchmarks dim, and the bells stopped.

“Two months,” he snapped, furious. “It has been. Two months. What were you doing?”

Minnow had not left the Faewild long enough to appreciate the optics of his fury at a small and tattered child. She also did not yet fully grasp the passage of time.

“I got the sword,” she said.

“It does not take two months to traverse the Ruined Temple,” he said, “even for a child. What are you wearing?”

She looked down at herself. “I found better armor,” she said. She stolen it from Bruteling scouts, pieces here and there. None of it fit her right, but at least Brutelings were closer to her height. “I didn’t want to miss anything,” she said by way of explanation. She dropped the bag she’d found onto the floor, where it landed with a thud. Then she sat cross-legged in her too-big boots, and started taking things out to take stock of her haul.

There were shiny stones, bits of broken jewelry, regular stones in shapes that made them seem like they’d be useful. There were lengths of rope, and chain, and old rusty daggers. There were arrows with their heads still red, and the shells of various insects. She’d found a small jar, and filled it with smaller fish. There were scrolls, primarily the ones with pictures of animals in them. She’d used thread to tie together as many lizard tails as she could collect, and an assortment of mushrooms. There were coins from countries that no longer existed, and a few tiny animal skulls that she’d found clean and intact.

“Do you at least remember anything?” Leonas asked as she sorted through her pack.

“About what?” she asked.

“Being the Starlight Hero,” he said. “Unlocking the power of the Starsword. Killing Karzarul.”

She shook her head. He ran both hands through his hair.

“You must remember something,” he said. She shrugged. “Here,” he said, reaching down to pick up a small book she’d added to her stack, “what’s this?”

“Beink a Brief Kuide To Trafel Amonkst the Nordern Kindoms,” she read off the cover.

“See?” he said. “There weren’t books in the Faewild. They didn’t teach you to read. This is in Old Astia. How do you know how to do that?”

She pursed her lips, narrowing her eyes at the little book. She hadn’t thought to wonder, when she’d found those few books and journals in the Ruined Temple. But that wasn’t the same as real remembering. “I just do,” she decided, which only seemed to frustrate him.

“You can use a sword, at least,” he said, and she nodded. She had tried to avoid using it, because it was tiring and she wasn’t very good at it. Still, it wasn’t complicated. She hit monsters with the sharp part, and tried to hit them hard and fast enough that they didn’t have time to hit her back. Easy.

“Come here,” he said, picking her up by the back of her armor to pull her to her feet. She set down the rocks she’d been sorting as he dragged her to a desk. “Sit.” She sat. He looked at her eyes, and pulled at her hair, as if he’d been hoping the Starsword would knock the changeling out of her. She remembered this from before the Ruined Temple, the way he’d prodded at her and taken notes in his little book. He found the bruises on her jaw and on her arms, her torn fingernails and her missing tooth, the wounds still healing on her ribs. He poked at all the parts that hurt with his pencil, watching her wince when he did it. She swung her feet in the air while he took his notes, and then he wandered away, muttering.

When he came back, it was with a glass vial of something green that seemed to move. “Drink this,” he said. She did. Then she coughed and sputtered, wishing she hadn’t. It tasted like rotten leaves and dirt. She clapped both hands over her mouth, because she could feel a tooth pushing through her gums, knocking the shards of the old root out onto her tongue. She spit blood as Leonas found a handkerchief, using it to hold her chin without getting his hands dirty so that he could look at her teeth.

“Still sharp,” he sighed. “Ah, well.” He prodded her ribs, and this time she didn’t wince. “All better,” he said, although her bones felt fuzzy. “Most of that is trash,” he said of her treasure hoard, “but I might be able to use the lizard tails.”

“They’re mine,” she said. “You said I could have candy.”

“Would you like to trade?” he asked.

“Maybe,” she said, although she didn’t think she should have to give up her lizard tails for the candy she’d already been promised.

“Give yourself a bath the way they did in Larksedge,” he said, “and then we can talk about candy.” Minnow made a face. She hadn’t cared for Larksedge, or the old ladies who’d scrubbed her skin raw and nearly ripped her hair all out with water that felt almost boiling. “I wouldn’t let a dog in here as dirty as you are,” he added. “You can stay in the courtyard with them, if you’d rather.”

“I should,” she sulked.

He waved toward a door. “The bathing chambers are over there,” he said. “Either use them or leave.” With that he went back to his notes, ignoring her.

When Minnow reactivated a lost Rainbow Door deep beneath the Sunflower Hall, she used it to return to Leonas’ Library at Castle Astielle. He’d given her a Seeing Stone, but she started to ignore it after the first month; her progress never seemed to be fast enough for him. The world was much too big for her to ever know it as well as she had known the Faewild, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t try.

Leonas hadn’t told her she should come here, or even that she could, but her bag was too full to keep carrying. She didn’t have anywhere else to keep things, no tree to call her own or hollows for her treasures. Sometimes she would find a chest, and leave her things in it temporarily with the Starsword resting on top. Ordinary mortals couldn’t lift it, after all.

She’d been eating a lot of lizards, and sunflower seeds.

It was dark, and quiet except for the bells that announced her arrival. Leonas did not appear. She walked through his shelves, sneaking as if this were a dungeon.

She found the prince sleeping at a desk. It was covered in vials and gears and copper wire, pens and ink-splattered pages all over. There were crystals growing in some of the glass, pulsing with faint light. She huffed as she abandoned him there, letting him sleep.

She thought she might be able to use his bed, since he wasn’t in it, but climbing the winding stairs to his loft found a woman there. Her hair was long and blonde, and she had also not woken to the sound of the bells. Minnow had learned better than to crawl into bed with people outside the Faewild. It upset humans more than seemed proportionate. She couldn’t remember ever sleeping alone, but it had felt familiar as soon as it had become necessary.

Trudging back down the stairs, she set her bag down next to a wall of shelves. She was sure that she could find a chair to sleep in, if she looked. The floor was fine, but felt wasteful when Leonas had so many soft things.

The door to the library opened, and she froze.

She had not yet met King Leland, in the months she’d been out of the Faewilds. Leonas had mentioned him, but she had spent most of her time in various ruins and secret places.

She had thought Leonas was thin, but this man was thinner, far thinner than she expected for any living thing. She had thought Leonas was old, but this man was older, with skin like garlic-paper and a heavy beard all white.

“So this is our Hero,” he said, his voice younger than his face. She nodded. “You’re very young, for a Hero.”

That was a thing people said, when they saw her with a sword. She had no frame of reference.

“I thought I ought to meet you,” he said, gloved hand patting her shoulder. It was a forceful sort of pat. “Since you’re the girl who’s going to save the world.”

It was a strange and abstract thought, saving a world. It was too big to think about. It was easier the way Leonas said it. Find Karzarul, and kill him. She knew how to find things. She knew how to kill things. That was a thing she could do. The world was too big, and there were too many things in it.

“It’s a terrible thing we’re asking of you,” Leland said, “and you only a child. A terrible, cruel thing. Terrible enough for Leonas, but you even younger…”

Minnow shifted, and wished he’d let go of her shoulder.

“I would save both you children from this fate, if it were in my power,” he said. “I hope you know that. If the situation weren’t so dire—if monsters were not rising even now—we would never ask it of a Hero so young. We’re only lucky that Leonas managed to find you. My clever boy.”

Minnow wasn’t sure if she should nod.

“Father?” Leonas asked. Minnow and the King turned to where he stood, his clothes rumpled. “Why are you here?” Leonas spotted Minnow. “Why are you here?” he asked.

“I saw that she’d used the Door,” Leland explained. “I thought I should say hello, since I assumed you’d be occupied.”

Leonas flushed, his witchmarks shining. “That wasn’t necessary,” he said. “I appreciate your concern.” He pressed his palms together, and Leland inclined his head. Leonas’ gaze slid back to Minnow. “Did you lose more teeth?” he asked, approaching suddenly and taking her by the chin again.

“Uh-huh,” she said, opening her mouth so he could see.

“Did you keep them?” he asked, and she shook her head. “You need to keep them next time,” he scolded. “Those shards from before were very useful, don’t lose them next time.”

“Leonas,” the King warned.

“I’m helping,” Leonas said defensively, retreating back to his desk. “This is helping her, she needs help.”

Leland squeezed her shoulder. She couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be affectionate.

“Drink this,” Leonas said when he returned, shoving a vial into her hands. It was the same one as before. She shook her head. “Drink it,” he insisted, “or you’re going to lose all your teeth and eat nothing but paste.”

She gave in and drank it.

“Spit into this,” Leonas urged, giving her a handkerchief. “If there are any bits of tooth left, I can use them.”

“You can’t go around asking children for their teeth,” Leland said.

“I’m not,” Leonas said. “I’m only asking her. It’s for magical research purposes, it’s not weird.”

Minnow gave Leonas the bloody handkerchief, which he seemed to regret. He held it at arm’s length as he took it back to his desk again.

“Why don’t I see about finding you a room?” Leland suggested. “We have so many, after all. Would you like your own room?”

Leonas came rushing back before she could answer. “Don’t spoil her, Father.” He gripped her wrist too-tight, yanking her away from Leland’s hand for the first time since he’d arrived. “You’re too soft,” he said, but Leonas wasn’t looking at either of them as he pulled her along. “I have research that’s been waiting for her to get back, there’s no time to waste.”

“You never were patient,” Leland sighed. “There’s a room waiting for you whenever you want it, child,” Leland called.

Though Leonas pulled her to his desk, he didn’t let her go once they were there. He rearranged things on his desk with his free hand, as if preparing. He paused as the door opened, and didn’t move again until long after it had closed.

“Here,” he said, herding her to a window among his shelves. It had a cushioned seat covered in pillows. “You can sleep here,” he said. “Don’t leave this room. You understand?”

She nodded as she sat down.

“Keep the sword with you,” he said. He looked out at the night sky. “Guard the window.”

“I thought I was sleeping,” she said.

“You are,” he said. “You’re sleeping by the window with your sword, so if anything comes in you can wake up and kill it. Okay?” She nodded. “If you leave the room, or let your sword go, I won’t help you anymore. Understood?” She nodded again.

He started to reach toward her, but stopped himself, turning to walk away. “Try to stay quiet,” he muttered.

Minnow managed to avoid Castle Astielle for seven months before Leonas asked her to come back. “There’s a specific kind of frog,” he said through his stone. “It has blue rings on its back, you can find it under Orchid Mountain in cold streams when it’s raining. There can’t be lightning or it won’t be right.”

“Can’t someone else get it for you?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Ordinary people can’t go to Orchid Mountain.”

“Can’t you go get it?” she asked.

“If I leave the castle, I’ll die.”

“What!”

“Not instantly,” he clarified, impatient. “There’s a ward around Fort Astielle but it’s strongest at the castle. Karzarul and his monsters can’t get to me here, until Karzarul is dead it’s the only place I’m safe.”

She thought about this. “You left before,” she said. “When you came to Faewild Forest.”

“That was before, the monsters weren’t as bad then. Stop dwelling on the past.”

“How far can you still go?” she asked.

“Not to Orchid Mountain!” he snapped. “Can you get me a frog, or can’t you?”

“I can try, I guess.”

It had been chiming for fifteen minutes when Minnow finally answered the Seeing Stone.

“You need to pick up your fucking stone,” Leonas said as soon as she touched it.

“I did,” she said.

“How soon can you get here?” he asked.

There was a Rainbow Door in the hill behind her house. She had a house, now. It had been built for someone she’d been before, and they’d kept it. No one in Lilock Village saw any problem with an eleven-year-old property owner. One of her neighbors kept complaining about the state of Minnow’s garden. Maybe she thought Minnow remembered being a middle-aged man, and felt she ought to landscape accordingly.

“Pretty soon,” she said.

“Hurry,” he said, severing the connection.

As soon as she’d come through the Door, he was pushing a heavy trunk at her, sliding it across the floor. “You need to take these,” she said. “All of these, as many as you can.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“I’m cleaning,” he said. “I’m getting rid of my books.”

She looked around, and noticed his empty shelves, books shoved into open and overflowing trunks, stacked into crates.

“Why?” she asked.

“I don’t need these,” he said, fixing his curls around his circlet to look less harried. “These are books about the world. Worldly things. I don’t need that. That’s what advisors are for. I need to make room for books about… magic. Magic things. Alchemy and enchanting. Important things.”

She cocked her head sideways, wrinkling her nose. “You’re a witch,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“Witches don’t need books,” she said. “Only enchanters need books.”

He paused. “Who told you that?”

She shrugged. “Everyone knows that.”

“You’re sure you don’t remember anything?”

“I never remember anything.”

“It’s not as if they’re mutually exclusive,” he said, fixing his cravat. “Witchcraft is messy. A witch’s magic only lasts as long as its user. Enchanting is precise and lasts for generations. Rainbow doors are enchanted, they’ve lasted for eons.”

She opened a book at random, its pages filled with watercolors of different locations on the continent. “You really can’t use these?” she asked.

“They’re trash,” he said.

“Can I keep them?” she asked.

He nodded, small and fast and brief, before pretending he hadn’t and pushing the trunk closer to the door. “I don’t care what you do with them,” he said.

She felt fairly certain that this meant they were not trash, and he wanted her to keep them. It didn’t feel safe to ask. She couldn’t explain why; just a feeling.

Her house had plenty of room. Designed for an adult with an adult life, not a child who wandered through caves. It wasn’t any trouble to keep them all, and anyway, she liked books. He had some books about birds that she’d always thought about stealing.

“I’ll take care of it,” she said. He watched her disappear back through the Door, dragging the first trunk of books. She only moved it enough on her side to make way for more; every time she came back, he had pushed another crate or trunk to where she could reach it. The bells in his room were going off non-stop from all the back-and-forth, but she barely noticed those anymore.

Until she came through, and saw the King. She stopped in her tracks.

“Hello,” he said, smiling at her.

“Hi,” she said, staying where she was.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said. “I thought I’d come see what all the fuss was about.”

“Apologies, Father,” Leonas said, pressing his palms together. “She’s helping me to make room, that’s all.”

“You can ask for help, you know,” the King said. “We have servants for a reason. I’m sure the Starlight Hero has more important things she could be doing than helping you clean your room.”

Leonas swallowed, looking at the floor. “Of course,” he said.

“I’m not angry,” the King said. “I worry, that’s all.”

“I know,” Leonas said.

“I’m very proud of you,” the King said. “It’s not easy to focus on your future. On your Kingdom’s future. To work hard toward making a meaningful contribution, instead of counting on witchcraft and destiny.”

“Thank you,” Leonas said.

Minnow inched toward the Door.

“You can visit whenever you’d like, you know,” the King said, turning to her before she could escape. “I’d love the opportunity to welcome you properly. We’re usually quite generous with guests.”

“She’s busy,” Leonas said. The King looked back at him, then at the box of books Leonas had been moving before he’d arrived. Leland picked up a book, and flipped through it, dust marring the fingertips of white gloves. Leonas rubbed at his fingernails.

“I’m sure it’s hard,” Leland said. “Giving these up.”

“Not really,” Leonas said, running his thumbnail underneath his other nails. “I’ll get new ones. They’re just heavy.”

The King set the book back down, and reached out to squeeze Leonas’ shoulder. “You’re making the right choice,” he said. “I’ll send someone up to help with the rest of these.”

“Thank you, Father,” Leonas said.

“I can get it,” Minnow said.

Leland smiled at her. “That’s very sweet of you, Hero Minona.”

She still couldn’t place what it was about Leland. She thought it might be that he smiled at her. It could have been politeness. But most people didn’t smile when they saw a child with a sword.

Minnow answered her Seeing Stone, but only because Leonas was being persistent. When he only wanted to pester, he gave up much sooner.

“It’s an emergency,” he said before she could speak. “What are you wearing.” He looked a terrible sight even through the poor vision of the stone. There were deep hollows under his eyes, and she could barely see his witchmarks.

“I bought a new dress,” she said.

“Buy a better one next time,” he said.

“What’s the emergency?” she said.

“The Old Man’s Tea, I’m almost out of it.”

On the very top of Old Man’s Mountain to the north, there lived an old man whose only name was Old Man. It was unclear if he’d been the same Old Man for long enough to have a mountain named after him, or if he appointed new Old Men when the time came. He made a special tea from the herbs on his mountain, impossible to find anywhere else. It was also practically impossible to get to, except that Minnow had reactivated a Rainbow Door hidden in a nearby crystal cave.

Since none of Castle Astielle’s servants could use a Rainbow Door, that made Minnow his only source.

“It’ll have to wait,” she said. “I’m at the ruins at Magdedyne, I need to check it for monsters and see if there are any clues about Karzarul.”

This had been her standard excuse for what was almost decades now. She had stopped expecting to find Karzarul after the first few years. She’d started to wonder if he’d ever come back, if he would wait until she was old and tired.

Ari said he was back now, but she still doubted she’d find any sign of him here.

“Oh, him—he’s awake. Alive. I don’t know that he’s awake, he was dreaming when I saw him.”

“You saw him?” she asked, startled. “What did he look like?”

“Ugly,” he said. Riding ahead of her, Ari huffed. “Awful to look at. Angry. Definitely wants me dead. You should kill him soon, but I know you won’t listen. You already took too long to find his lair. It could be that he’s been alive this whole time, getting stronger. I’ve said this would happen for years, but you just kept picking flowers, or whatever it is you do.”

She stuck her tongue out at the stone.

“Don’t start,” he warned. “Try not to take too long, I don’t think this tea is going to last more than a week. Pick up the stone next time it chimes, if Karzarul tries to murder me you’ll be the first to know. Unless you ignore me again, and six months from now you show up all surprised that the King of All Monsters has turned Astielle into his new Moonlight Kingdom. I’ll be strung up on a parapet so passing monsters can hit me with sticks. It will be nice to get out of the castle, at least, I have that to look forward to.”

“I’ll see if I can find a lost Rainbow Door in these ruins,” she said. They looked like those kinds of ruins. “If there is then I’ll try to bring you some tea and come back.”

“Thank you,” he said, and the connection snapped, no image on her stone or sound passing through it.

“He seems to have his priorities in order,” Ari said.

“Did you know?” she asked.

“Know what?”

“That your king had visited the Heir,” she said. “He’s your king, right?”

“I suppose,” he said. He wasn’t looking at her. She didn’t care for that at all. What was he doing, that he thought he was doing wrong? That was usually why men didn’t want to look at her when they spoke.

“Have you been keeping in touch with him?” she pressed.

“When would I do that?” he asked rather than answer.

“I always fall asleep before you do,” she said. “And when I wake up, you’re awake. I don’t know what you do at night.”

“I sleep,” he said.

“Leonas said that Karzarul was dreaming,” he said. “Can he talk to you in dreams?”

“If you don’t trust me,” he said, “we can part ways.”

“It isn’t that,” she said. “I understand if you’re loyal. I can be loyal, too.”

“He is not your prince,” Ari said. “Astielle is not your kingdom. The Hero need be loyal to no one.”

She wasn’t sure why he felt so strongly about it. Unless he was hoping her loyalties would change.

“I’m not just the Starlight Hero,” she said. It sounded more petulant out loud. “I’m Minnow. I like him. And I like you. If he gets hurt because you know about him, when he doesn’t know about you, that isn’t fair.”

Ari said nothing.

“I’m still not going to tell him,” she said. “If you’re worried.”

“I’m not,” he said.

Magdedyne had been a great trading center, once. Nothing in particular had come along to destroy it, only alternate routes and a lack of demand. There were still small villages and farms, stables and shops. There had been a fort, and then a port, and then… nothing. Everyone had left the great stone structure, moved away as it became too expensive to maintain for no good reason. No great event or fall, only a slow inevitable decline.

Now the ruin rose out of the ocean, a single bridge leading from the coastal cliffs to the collapsing structure. Great stone bricks had fallen away, leaving holes in the bridge, the columns crumbling. Someday the whole thing would sink into the ocean. For now, monsters had claimed it for their own, gathered in what were once markets and plazas.

Minnow considered her plan of attack. Ordinarily, she would set up a camp nearby, ducking in and out of the ruin and exploring as much as she could without alerting any monsters. This also gave her a place to leave Piggy, along with any treasures she found. However, that wouldn’t work with Ari, or with her need to figure out if there was a Rainbow Door. She could send Piggy down the road to find a stable, but that would be inconvenient if she did find treasure. Leaving things to retrieve later had a high risk of forgetting where she left it, or that she’d found it at all.

She could also barrel through and kill everything she saw, allowing her to take her time exploring in the aftermath. She’d done it before. But she’d also almost died. Several times. And what if those monsters were people, like Ari?

She pulled Piggy up short near the beginning of the bridge. “I, um. Did you want to come in?”

“If you don’t mind,” Ari said.

“I might have to fight monsters,” she said.

“I assumed as much,” he said.

“If you’re coming in then maybe I could—I don’t think this is safe for Piggy.”

“It’s not.”

“Sending her to a stable means I won’t have my things,” she said.

“Would you like me to carry them?” he asked, and she felt inconsiderate for implying he was a beast of burden.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “I can carry my pack, it’s just. If there’s more. Maybe. I might need help. Only until I can—if there’s a Rainbow Door, I can take it home.”

“I don’t mind,” he said.

She dismounted from Piggy, and pulled her dress off over her head. As tempting as it was to wear it to spite Leonas, it wouldn’t be practical for fighting. She changed into a tunic and leggings she had on hand, shoving the dress into the space where they’d been. Then she reconfigured her primary saddlebag so that she could wear it like a backpack. With all that done, she gave Piggy a smack on the back to set her trotting down the road.

“You’re sure you want to walk?” he asked her. She looked up at his back, and a blush crept over her. The concept of riding a person had not become less problematic.

“I’m sure,” she said, giving a wide berth to a hole in the bridge, braiding her hair behind her while she walked.

“You might not have a choice,” he said, gesturing ahead. She shaded her eyes, but without his height, she couldn’t see as far. She rose up on her toes, but it didn’t help. She bit her lip, and wondered if she ought to ask. Instead she waited, and once they’d walked further, the problem became obvious.

There was a gap in the bridge far too long for her to jump. She chewed at her thumbnail, considering the terrain. There were no mountains or cliffs close enough to glide over it, nothing on their side of the bridge built taller than the other. She stepped closer and then back as a brick came loose and fell to the water below.

“If you throw me upward, I could glide?” she suggested.

“C’mon,” he said, offering his hand down toward her. “Hop up, I’ll take you.”

She sputtered. “I’m—no.”

“You’re making things difficult for no reason,” he said.

“You’re not a horse,” she said. “I ride horses, not…” She trailed off, red-faced, and gestured vaguely to nothing.

“Then I can carry you,” he said.

“Being carried is weird,” she said, kicking a stone down into the water. “How would you feel, if someone carried you?”

“Impressed.”

She stuck her fingers in her hair and scratched at her scalp in frustration, pulling hair loose from her braid. It was hard to explain that she liked it, that it was bad that she liked it. Boundaries were something she struggled with, and she spent too much time away from people to have practice. After all this time she knew just enough to know that it was a problem. She could usually manage, if she could remember about personal space. As soon as anyone came too close, it all flew out the window.

“Personal space,” she said, hoping that would mean something.

He stared at her. “Personal space,” he repeated.

“Right,” she said.

He looked like he was going to say something, but stopped himself. He rubbed at his beard. “Do fairies have personal space?” he asked finally.

She scuffed the ground with her heel. “I’m not a fairy,” she said.

He nodded. “Monsters don’t have personal space,” he said.

“Do they not? They always seem to want a lot of space. Without me in it.”

“Friends are different,” he said. “With friends, we don’t have personal space.”

“Oh.” She wrung her hands together.

Was that the problem? Were humans the same way? What did a regular human person consider a friend? She must have had friends, before. This must have been something she’d known. The rules could have changed since then. Or else the Starlight Hero was always like this. Wandering around stabbing and biting people until they stabbed Karzarul and made all the trouble for everyone worth it.

No one ever mentioned Elias biting people.

“Are we friends?” Ari asked.

“I think so,” she said, shuffling a little closer. It was enough that he could pick her up, holding her against him the way he’d done before. She pressed her ear to his chest again, holding her limbs close to herself so they wouldn’t wander.

Boundaries. No grabbing, or scratching, or biting. Be carried the way a civilized person would be carried. She watched the landscape as he trotted further down the bridge to get a running start, then looked up at him. She wound up looking at his neck, so she thought she’d better not look.

Civilized.

He started to run, holding her closer, and she gripped his tunic to have something to do. He pushed himself off with his back legs, launching himself into the air, and she couldn’t help looking down into the chasm beneath them. It was a long, long drop into the water.

She squealed, and tried not to kick her feet with glee.

He landed hard, continuing his gallop before slowing to a trot and then stopping.

“Fun?” he asked.

“Yes, very much,” she said.

There was a Sun Shrine at the far end of the ruins, and in it, a lost Rainbow Door.

There was also a Tauril.

It wasn’t as big as Ari. It was a shade of dark blue like the nighttime, also less impressive than Ari’s pure white. It wore battered metal armor over its shoulders, but its chest was bare.

Minnow felt a bit awkward about it, watching it from high above on the Sun Shrine’s roof.

Ari was standing right beside her. She hadn’t thought he’d be able to get up high like this, since no Tauril had ever chased her off the ground. But he’d managed it, enormous hooves surprisingly nimble. Like a goat. A large goat, which was also a cow. And a man. And some kind of cat? The fangs and ears and claws seemed like some kind of cat. She didn’t know any cats with little ear tufts like Ari’s. Then again, it felt offensive to treat a Tauril as a collection of other animal parts, rather than a whole monster with all his own parts. Maybe cows had Tauril horns, actually.

“What?” Ari asked, because she was staring at him.

“I was thinking,” she said. She didn’t mention what. “Do you think he’s like you?” she asked.

He shook his head.

None of the monsters had been what Ari called ‘old monsters’. He would step on a Bruteling, and they would dissolve into dust. She wasn’t sure how he did it. She was glad not to have to deal with the gore. Nothing ever turned into dust when she stabbed it. Just bled, and stank.

“Should I kill it?” she asked.

“No.”

She considered what it would be like for him to watch her kill a Tauril. “Right.”

To her surprise, he took his longbow off his back. She’d never seen him use it. She’d seen other Taurils use theirs, but never him. There hadn’t been much opportunity. It wasn’t much use for catching crabs, or fishing.

He took an arrow out of his quiver, and she inched away. Being anywhere near that bow being drawn was uncomfortable. It felt like it could snap and bring the building down. It also seemed, glinting in the light that filtered through the broken roof, like it glowed.

He released it, and the Tauril beneath them was gone.

She blinked. She scooted closer to the hole in the roof, half hanging through it.

It was gone.

She sat up, and inched further away from Ari.

“It only does that for monsters,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, not at all reassured. “Can other Taurils do that?”

“… I’m old.”

A lost Rainbow Door looked like an ornate doorway into nothing, inlaid all around in copper and silver and gold in the intricate patterns of spellwork. Passerby sometimes tried to scratch away the metals, but it never worked. A Rainbow Door, even a lost one, could never break. Sometimes she found them in fields, nothing but a wall and a doorway standing out in the open with nothing around it.

It had a spot like a keyhole beside it, another solid piece of stone. There wasn’t a hole in it, but when she lined up the Starsword just-so with the pattern, she could push it inside until the blade disappeared. She had to lean hard to get the leverage to turn it, and when it clicked there was a bright flash of light and a sound like thunder.

When she pulled the Starsword away, the wall was an opaque ripple of light in all colors.

“Shit,” she said, sheathing the sword.

“Was it not supposed to do that?”

“It was,” she said. “But I hadn’t thought this part through. We’ll have to split up, but you can’t just wait here for when I get back. If you leave I don’t know where we’ll meet back up again. Or when.”

“I can entertain myself,” he said. “There’s a forest between here and the stable where you sent Piggy. I can camp there.”

She fidgeted. “If you’re sure,” she said “If you leave, I’ll understand. Leave a note, if something happens.”

“I will,” he said. Then he leaned down, and patted the top of her head.

She rose up onto her toes, and then pretended she hadn’t.

Minnow had forgotten to dress for a mountaintop blizzard. She usually did. That was the biggest problem with Rainbow Doors. Fortunately there were still Flutterfires at the bottom of her bag, dried out wings crushed from poor handling. She shoved them into her mouth and managed not to gag, choking them down with a handful of snow. Warmth spread from her throat to her fingertips and down to her toes, and her skin turned numb.

The Old Man’s cabin was at the very top of The Old Man’s Mountain. There was always a blizzard, regardless of the time of year. There was always smoke in his chimney and lights through his window, regardless of the time of night. When she opened the door, which was never locked, he was always sitting by the fire with a cup of tea.

“Hello,” she said, pressing her palms together in front of her.

“Forgot to dress for the weather again?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” she said, rubbing snow off her boots on his welcome mat. “May I buy a jar of your special tea?” she asked. “I have…” She tried to remember what in her bag might have objective value. “A necklace?”

“I can’t take that,” he said, without malice. “You’re going to need it.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not so long ago that you were here before,” he said. “Gone through all that already?”

“The Prince likes it a lot,” she said.

“The Prince should get some sleep,” the Old Man said. “You can tell him I said so. Those herbs will only work so long. A body needs sleep, eventually.”

“Oh,” she sighed, sagging a little.

“I’ll still sell you a jar,” he said.

“Oh!” she said, perking up. “Good, that’s good.”

“I’ll take a seashell,” he said. “The kind with a spiral on it.”

She had to set her bag down on his floor to dig through it, slowly emptying the things she’d collected onto the hardwood. He never seemed to mind. Just rocked in his chair, and sipped his tea, listening to the crackling fire. When she found a seashell with a spiral, like he’d asked, she held it up in triumph.

“Bring it here, now,” he said, and she left all her things on the floor to bring it to him. “Very nice,” he said, holding it up to admire it. It glinted green in the firelight. He set it on his tongue, and swallowed it whole.

“Good?” she asked.

“Exactly what I wanted,” he said, nodding his head. “You get yourself a jar out of the kitchen, little fish.”

He kept the jars in rows and rows, a whole wall of nothing but jars. The ceiling was covered in curing herbs, hanging down to dry. The jars weren’t quite identical, so she always took her time to pick out the one she thought would be best. She decided on one with a slim band of green around the rim, and a single purple flower petal visible against the glass.

“Friend of yours?” the Old Man asked, as she tried to arrange the jar into her bag. When she looked up, he tilted his head toward the window. She tried to make out what he was seeing in the blizzard. Unable to see anything, she got back up and went right up to the window.

She could only barely make it out, but there was a Howler out there in the distance, white as snow. She didn’t know there were Howlers out this far, or that their colors changed for the climate. She’d never seen one alone, without a pack. She looked back at the Old Man.

“The. The Howler?” He nodded. “I don’t, uh. Know him?” She’d thought Howlers were ‘its’, but they could be hims.

“Suit yourself,” the Old Man said. When Minnow looked back out the window, she couldn’t see it anymore.

She thought, thinking about it, that there was something familiar about a white Howler. Or else that was before, when she’d been someone else.

Karzarul dreamt of a man with copper curls.

This time, Leonas sat in the nothingness, and shut his eyes without speaking.

“Are you ignoring me?” Karzarul asked, settling into a Shadestalker again.

“Release me,” Leonas said, his eyes still shut.

“I did not bring you here,” Karzarul said, circling the prince, “and I am not keeping you.”

Though he had to admit this was strange. This had never happened by accident before, not with an enemy. He had assumed the witch prince had sought him out deliberately, but now he wondered.

He supposed he had been thinking of the Heir that first time, in an abstract way. Only because he’d been angry, thinking of Minnow as someone else’s experiment. And he supposed he had been thinking of the Heir this time, in a more concrete way. Only because he was angry, thinking of Minnow’s loyalty, running errands like a servant.

Karzarul was the Moonlight Monster, and Leonas was the Sunlight Heir. If the Monster wanted to fall asleep thinking about how the Heir should die, that was his perogative.

But they wouldn’t be here unless the Heir was thinking of him, too. Intently, at that, while his dreamself was out in the world. He must have been trying to find him.

“How do I leave?” Leonas asked.

“I could kill you,” Karzarul suggested, and Leonas fell silent. Karzarul walked away, leaving him where he sat, stretching out his paws and lying down in the nothing. He thought of sand, and spread it outward into a beach. Clear skies and clear waters, but he set a memory of the moon high and bright in the sky.

Who needed the sun, anyway.

He drew another memory out, and he set her in the water. It wasn’t exactly correct; it had been daylight, and her dress hadn’t been that small. Memory was an imperfect thing. It was close enough, the green streak in her hair and the water on her thighs. He watched her splash and hunt for seashells, and remembered, and felt pleased with the dream he’d made.

He glanced over, and saw the Heir had opened his eyes.

“Have you been watching her?” Leonas asked.

“I watch many things,” Karzarul said. The dream-construct of Minnow didn’t notice them at all. Karzarul wanted to remember her giggling, so she giggled, rubbing a seashell with her thumbs.

“This isn’t real,” Leonas said. “You think this is going to upset me. It won’t work.” But he was still watching her, Karzarul’s memory of a girl.

“Has she taken you to the beach?” Karzarul asked.

Leonas said nothing. Karzarul watched his memory, and was careful not to imagine more. What she had been was enough. It wouldn’t be fair to her to ask more. Not on purpose. Not with an audience.

“You can’t have her,” Leonas said abruptly.

“I don’t see why not,” Karzarul lied.

“I’ve invested too much in her,” Leonas said, straightening his back and raising his chin. Defiance, of a type. “She should be mine, if she’s anyone’s.”

“You’re not the first Heir to think so,” Karzarul said.

“And how many of them were right?” Leonas asked. “They killed you, didn’t they? Is this your new strategy? Pretending you’ll steal her with make-believe dreams? It won’t work. I haven’t lied to her. She knows what she is.”

Karzarul stood, and the memory of Minnow disappeared from the water. He stalked closer to the Heir, but to his surprise, he vanished before he could kill him.

He could leave on his own, after all.

Karzarul settled back into the sand, and the dream-construct settled down beside him, pointing out the constellations in his memory of the sky.