Night Shine

by Tessa Gratton

  It had to be nearly dawn.

  She wasn’t tired.

  Nothing lay there, unsure what to think or feel or do. When her thoughts tilted toward Kirin, she dragged them away before she decided to let him go or forgive him—anything that might please him. Eventually she’d have to do both. But she wasn’t ready to give him the satisfaction. She stared at the obsidian walls, tracing flickers of bluish light along their cups and cliffs, along the razor edges and curving planes. Obsidian was volcanic, she knew, and both strong and breakable, sharp and smooth. It made good blades, but they could shatter. She wondered if she could change it if she tried.

  How did her power work? She’d have to ask the sorceress.

  As she sank deeper and deeper into herself, Nothing stopped fighting the inevitable: she admitted to herself she believed everything. Once she’d been a demon—a great demon—but she’d been reborn a girl in the palace.

  Believing it didn’t exactly teach her what she should do about it, though.

  She still felt small. Maybe not quite nothing, but not strong enough for all this, either.

  “Nothing?”

  The muffled voice came through the door.

  “Come in, Spring,” she said.

  The girl entered, holding another tray of food. “Good morning.”

  Nothing grunted a little, indelicately climbing from her bed.

  Today Spring was in white and red. Her orchids were peach colored, even tinier than before. They cascaded around the crown of her braid. Little black wisps of hair trailed down her long neck, and Nothing wanted to touch them. Touch her neck.

  Then the girl met Nothing’s gaze, with eyes brown and honey gold. The same honey color as Kirin’s eyes. And a scar where a heart should be.

  Nothing gasped. “Sorceress.”

  Spring’s mouth fell open in shock. But not denial.

  “You’ve been lying the whole time,” Nothing said. “What was the point?”

  “I wanted you to be comfortable,” the sorceress said, unchanging. She remained Spring. “How did you know?”

  There was such an echo from the night before, when the sorceress asked how Nothing knew the false Kirin was false. Nothing frowned, unwilling to answer that she just knew. It would suggest a closeness to the sorceress she’d not realized. She said, “Your eyes. They’re just like Kirin’s. It has to be an affectation. I didn’t notice before.”

  The sorceress’s shoulders drooped, but her smile was genuine. “I wanted you to be comfortable,” she repeated. “Kirin makes you comfortable. Even unconsciously, you like these eyes better.”

  Nothing shook her head firmly. “Give me your real eyes, Sorceress. What I need is truth.”

  The sorceress let her honey-brown eyes slowly change: one evergreen, one bone white. Plain black, round pupils.

  “Are these your eyes?”

  “Now.”

  “What did they look like when you were born? Before you were a sorceress?”

  “One green, the other brown and a little bit of rust red.”

  “That green?” Nothing focused on the evergreen eye. It was such a solid color, lacking variation but for a slight grayish outer ring. She liked it.

  “Nearly,” the sorceress whispered.

  They stood facing each other, too near. Nothing caught her breath. “Make yourself as much of yourself as you can,” she said.

  The sorceress’s black brows lifted in simultaneous arcs of amusement.

  It was on Nothing’s tongue to add, please, but she resisted.

  “It’s all real,” the sorceress said. “My body. All the shapes and colors. It’s all me. You are asking for what I was before, when I was not entirely myself. Because when I was only a girl, I was not entirely myself.”

  “But you’re all yourself now?”

  “Missing only a piece of my heart,” the sorceress flirted.

  Nothing’s lashes fluttered before she managed to push down the rush of pleasure. She said, “Then make yourself the you that you prefer.”

  The sorceress smiled and the moon-pale color of Spring’s skin darkened to cool copper, her cheeks rounded out, and her lips thinned. Her nose lengthened. She grew a finger of height. Her hips and breasts and belly swelled so that she was no longer a thin girl, but a willowy and lithe young woman. Her hair stayed braided, but red and brown streaks appeared among the black, and that single bone-white eye remained. It was how she’d appeared to Nothing both nights before, at dinner.

  “Here I am,” the sorceress said. Her red-and-white robes had lengthened and grown embroidered berries in green and gold. She seemed less innocent, more powerful. Not a maiden with a stolen heart but a woman who’d given hers to a cause. “This is more of how I feel today.”

  Nothing remained breathless. She felt young and weak, just a slip of a girl without even muscles, much less breasts, and soft skin and layers of hair silky to the eye and—Nothing stopped herself from touching one of the wisps curling against the sorceress’s throat.

  “Um,” Nothing murmured. “Was Spring your name?”

  “Sudden Spring Frost,” the sorceress answered, wry and still amused.

  “Um,” Nothing said again.

  The sorceress laughed brightly—a real laugh, Nothing thought, pleased. Full of surprise and sunlight. But then the laugh shifted, as the sorceress so easily shifted: the laughter became low, dark, full of promises.

  Nothing shivered.

  Taking pity on her, the sorceress turned to set down the tray of food. She poured tea and offered it.

  “Will you eat with me?” Nothing asked, approaching. There were flaky-looking cakes, pears, thin slices of cold beef, and the pepper cheese.

  The sorceress acquiesced, and they ate.

  Nothing said, “Kirin should be released from the cell. He won’t cause trouble for these three days.”

  “Free him, then,” the sorceress answered. Spring. Or Frost: Nothing thought that might be more appropriate. “Your power responds to itself better and better. See if you can.”

  “I shall.” Nothing licked pear juice from her fingers.

  “And I will show you my library this afternoon, answer whatever questions you like, and then you’ll join me for dinner.” The sorceress paused, as if expecting Nothing to reply.

  So she asked, “Did you tell the truth when you said you bargained for all their hearts?”

  “Yes,” answered the sorceress. “They got something in return. But the result was the same: Their hearts were mine, along with the magic of their choices.”

  Nothing nodded, pressing her fists together in her lap to control the flare of fear. She had to remember, when she felt drawn to the sorceress, that murder kept this mountain alive. Attempting to sound calm, she said, “Twenty-three hearts in less than twenty years seems… inefficient.”

  “Twenty-three!” the sorceress cried. “Twenty-three, that is…” The sorceress’s distress translated quickly into amusement. “I have taken only eleven hearts—but I seem to have been blamed for more vanishing girls,” she drawled.

  “Oh.” Nothing swallowed. It shouldn’t have made a difference. One murder or twenty-three murders—or eleven.

  Laughing softly to herself, the sorceress said, “My heart, I will leave you to your business, to Kirin. But I will find you this afternoon for my turn.”

  Nothing nodded absently, still reeling.

  But after standing alone for a few moments, she marched out of her chamber in her pajamas. She returned directly to the core of the mountain, carefully bypassed the throbbing, dying heart.

  In the obsidian room with its thin bars, Kirin sat, glowering. He did not leap to his feet to see her, but lifted his chin and glared.

  Nothing stopped before the bars, upset both that he was upset and that it bothered her at all.

  Kirin did not move, pretending to be comfortable, in command. She knew the look on his face and the catlike grace of his drooping shoulders. One leg stretched out, the other knee was drawn up and his wrist rested
against it, hand limp. A pose of lazy contentment.

  “Don’t you want out of there?” she asked, trying not to love him.

  He shrugged.

  “I will take you to Sky.”

  He looked away, the line of his jaw tightening.

  “I’m not the one being cruel,” she whispered.

  Kirin pressed his lips together and slowly stood. He walked on bare feet to the bars. Even in his tattered old dress, he was regal. Her eyes were level with his chin, and she glanced down at the strings of green and white pearls wrapping his neck like garlands.

  “I’ve never been cruel to you,” the prince said gently.

  “Come out,” she said, touching the bars. “Let him out,” she said, focusing on the mountain.

  The obsidian melted away.

  His breath caught, and when she looked at his honey-brown eyes, they were filled with something difficult to read. Surprise and wariness and something else. Excitement?

  He stepped out, and before she could move, his arms were around her and he hugged her desperately. His mouth pressed to the crown of her head, his breath hot on her scalp.

  Nothing froze a split second, then allowed herself to lean against him. He smelled terrible, but he was warm and tough in all the places she expected, his long arms familiar. Kirin Dark-Smile, finally home. Or she was home: she belonged with him, because that was her nature.

  “I don’t like this feeling,” she whispered.

  “I do. I missed you.”

  “I missed you too, but I don’t know if it’s real.”

  “Nothing.” His arms tightened. “I was eight years old when I named you, when I bound you, and I didn’t know better. I just liked you and saw you. Sensed you were different, but I thought it was different like I was different. We were the unexpected—together.”

  She believed him. Only, a tiny voice wondered if she believed him because she had to. “I’ll never know myself so long as I’m bound to you.”

  He said quietly, but with force, “I want you to be yourself. I want you to feel your own feelings. Believe that. Even if I tell you your name and the sorceress doesn’t overhear, it won’t free you. You already know it, somewhere inside your memory. If you didn’t, how could it command you? There must be another way to break this… binding.”

  Nothing closed her eyes, hoping it was enough. “You stink,” she said as she pulled away.

  Kirin hesitated. “Should I clean up before—is Sky safe?”

  “He can wait another hour,” Nothing reassured her prince.

  She led him away from the obsidian cell, though the dark tunnel and into the heart chamber. When he slowed down, staring at the curved stairways and the central platform, she took his hand and tugged him on. Kirin followed, though he hummed in slight censure, for he disliked not being the one in charge. It felt good to deny him, just a little.

  “Are you wearing pajamas?” he asked, halfway back to her room.

  She’d forgotten, but she nodded. In her room she pointed to the trunks. “There’s a never-ending, it seems, supply of fine clothing. Choose some, and we’ll go up to the mirror lake. For me, too, if you please.”

  Kirin moved quickly but caught himself up staring at his reflection in several of the mirrors. “Queens of Heaven,” he seethed. “I’ve never looked so terrible.”

  Nothing laughed outrageously. She clutched her stomach and bent over with glee.

  The prince narrowed his eyes at her, staring for a good long moment, before turning sharply. He flung open the largest trunk and began lifting out swaths of silk and sheer linen, embroidered jackets and skirts and slippers in every color. Nothing brought him water when she’d recovered, and he drank, coolly meeting her eyes.

  “Let’s go,” she said, unapologetic.

  Kirin grabbed an armful of clothing and eagerly went with her.

  They climbed up to the cavernous chapel with its alcoves and god-statues. Kirin flicked his eyes around but wasn’t distracted from the promise of sun and a bath. Nothing almost smiled at his single-mindedness as they hurried through the long corridor and out into the cold daylight.

  “Beautiful,” Kirin said, footsteps slowing but not quite stopping.

  The valley was exactly as it had been only yesterday, and Nothing gulped a great breath of fresh air. The sun cut through a cloudless sky to glare off the mirror lake in thousands of painful ripples. Nothing felt the presence of that light slicing through her, and somehow filling her up too. She went after Kirin and reached the bank just as he’d stripped completely and dove into the water.

  “Esrithalan?” she called, looking toward the copse of alders. The unicorn did not seem to be there.

  She knelt against the damp pebble-sand and brushed a petal of a cluster of purple balsam growing in spindly bunches at the edge of the water.

  Out in the lake, Kirin emerged with a yell. He shook his head, flinging hair and water. Nothing smiled, almost deciding not to bathe herself because of the cold. But he lifted an arm and waved at her. “Come on, Nothing!”  Then he sank again, treading water.

  With a little sigh, she stripped and rushed in, better to get the freezing part over with.

  She ducked under the cold waves, scrubbing at her face and hair, spinning to let the water under her arms and behind her knees, to caress her belly and spine and thighs with its icy tentacles.

  Kirin found her, his hands hot compared to the water. He grabbed her waist, then her hand, and they swam together, splashing to the center of the mirror lake.

  Nothing tilted her face to the sky, staring wide-eyed at the vast blue. It was edged with mountain peaks like teeth, and she imagined this lake the throat of the Fifth Mountain, the valley its lips and tongue. It closed its jaws around her and Kirin, and she held tighter to his hand.

  The prince looked up too, wincing at the brightness. “Isn’t it remarkable to be here?” he said, breathless with wonder and exercise.

  “I belong here,” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  She looked at him. Kirin, high cheeks blotchy pink, lips white, eyes wide and somehow just as vast as the sky. His hair hung like black seaweed around his face, drifting against the surface of the water.

  “You belong with me,” he said.

  Nothing thought suddenly of diving deep, dragging him with her until he had to breathe the cold water. She could, she thought. He would die.

  The mouth of the mountain was her mouth, and she could swallow him whole.

  For a moment she wanted it.

  She wanted it like a fire wanted kindling.

  But the lake was too cold and her body numbed, like her skin had diffused out into the water, leaving only her blood and muscles and bones, her heart. Her skin became the lake itself.

  Kirin pushed closer, frowning as he took her face in his hands. The shock of his touch on her face put her skin back where it belonged.

  Nothing gasped and held his wrists. Her legs kicked hard to keep her at the surface, and she felt the swirl of water as Kirin did the same. “Let’s dress,” she said.

  He nodded and let go.

  Was that what it meant to believe she’d been a demon? Nothing wondered terribly as she swam. To so suddenly think murder! Drowning. Kill her oldest friend? Who did she love more than Kirin in all the world? Nobody. Her pulse raced and she was grateful to find the sinking shore with her toes and climb out fast.

  Kirin was right behind her, a hand between her shoulder blades. He offered her a cloth for drying and wrapped one around himself too. He was quiet, but stared at her, studying her with a very knowing gaze.

  They dried and dressed. The prince had brought Nothing a silky blue tunic, black trousers, and a sash to tie it all together. She finger-combed her hair, digging her bare toes into the spiky grass.

  When she looked again, Kirin was buttoning a dark-red robe over his shirt, one with a high collar and full skirts that hung past his knees and rustled like a gown. It hugged his ribs and shoulders, baring his arms. The color made h
is eyes liquid gold, and he twisted his hair into a knot atop his head, tying it with itself.

  “You look cold,” Nothing said, noting the pebbled skin of his arms.

  “I look beautiful,” he replied.

  Nothing’s mouth twitched, and she let herself smile. She thought, The Beautiful Maiden Who Is Also a Prince. “You could be a sorcerer,” she said.

  Kirin tilted his head in dismissal. “I will be the Emperor with the Moon in His Mouth.”

  “But you could leave it, learn magic. The sorceress believes it. You’re like her, she said.”

  “How so?” he demanded, flaring with anger.

  Nothing glared at him for speaking to her like that. She’d never glared at him before.

  The prince smoothed his features. “How so?” he asked more carefully.

  “It’s what you said about us. You’re unexpected. So am I. Not what we seem, and you step fully into that.” Nothing twisted her lips. “That’s where power waits, she said. Potential. Between edges or dualities.”

  “Sorcerers are outsiders. I don’t want to be forced out of society for my… potential,” Kirin said. He lifted his chin in an arrogant pose. The sun cast him in vivid contrast: black hair, white skin, red dress. “I want to be what I am and belong.”

  Nothing nodded. “What else do you want?”

  “Sky. Queens of Heaven, I want him. And I want you at my side too. I want to go home and put on the trappings of men and women, however I like, and I want people to admire me. I want to be myself, I want to show myself to the entire empire, and I want the Moon. I want a vast family, Nothing, and I want to make the empire flourish.”

  “They’ll say you’re not pure if you show them yourself. Take the throne from you.”

  “After the investiture ritual, they can’t. Then I’ll be acknowledged by the Moon, and no priest or witch or courtier will be able to strip me of my ambitions.”

  “The Moon,” Nothing whispered, recalling what the sorceress had said, that the Moon was the great demon, and it was bound to the palace and the empress—and her heir. “That’s the name of the great demon of the palace.”