Nameless

THERE WAS NO SNOW UNDERNEATH.

The dogs hadn’t come after all. Instead, Tor had led her through the maze of Woodsdowne, west toward the core. Not for very long, though—he’d stopped at the intersection of Columbard and Lamancha Avenue. The piles of snow and ice to each side, broken by titon-plows, imitated small mountain ranges. The buildings were tall and dark here, festooned with icicles and whispering with the chill breeze. Any one of the boarded-up windows could have exploded outward, giving birth to a jumble of dog-shapes salivating and snapping their steelstruck teeth.

But it was in the very middle of the crossroads that a round slice of frozen street had silently opened its dark eye—a manhole cover, ice crackling away from its circumference, pushed up by an invisible force. Tor moved her toward it, not ungently, and she’d seen the iron rungs going down.

New Haven’s surface swallowed them, pleating closed overhead and smoothing itself like a freshly-laid sheet.

Tor took her wrist at the bottom of the ladder again, and her coat fell away from his shoulders, landing on a sodden pile of something stinking. It was almost warmer down here, but her breath still came in a cloud and thin traceries of steam. Cami stopped, and he tugged at her arm.

“N-n-n-no.” She tried to peel his fingers away, but they wouldn’t come. “I’m n-not g-g-going to r-r-run.” She would follow me. There’s no point. “H-Here.” Her voice echoed oddly, and she managed to work his hand down so his fingers laced through hers.

We’re Family, too. Every scar on her twinged heatlessly, and she wondered if he had nightmares too. Who held him when he woke screaming?

Did anyone?

A curious faraway look came over his face. There was no shadow of the garden boy there. This was an automaton, stumbling like a broken-stringed puppet through a labyrinth of concrete passageways. Pipes ran overhead and alongside them, some groaning and hissing; the floor kept steadily sloping down. She had to duck to avoid some of the pipes, Tor ducking as well with weird mechanical grace. Icicles dripped down from the infrequent gleams of light above, turning to a crusted seeping on the walls.

He took a hard right, and his fingers tensed. “Hard,” he muttered. “Interference Underneath. Bring her.”

“I-i-it’s a-all r-r-right.” Cami squeezed his hand. You can’t stop this. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I ran away, and everything is falling apart around me. Because of me. I went where I didn’t belong. Cami’s chin raised slightly.“T-tor. It’s ok-k-kay.”

“Don’t wanna.” He shook like a rabbit, but his legs kept going. “Don’t make me.”

Oh. He’s not talking to me. So she simply followed him, going down and down, away from the light.

It never got completely dark, though. Once the glimmers from above faded and the concrete changed color, traceries of pale glowing fungus appeared on the walls. Growing in curves and sharp dots, they looked like decoration—but Cami did not want to brush against them. They smelled. Not of anything bad, just a faint breath of spice and fruit.

And smoke.

Another sharp corner. His skin was cooler now, and Cami had stopped shivering. A faint breeze, warmer than the knifing wind above, touched tendrils of her hair, fingered the walls with their glowing patterns. The fungus was like brocade, fuzzy flower-shapes soft and plush against the roughness. Down and down, and the breeze was redolent of fruit now, a summer orchard with a tinge of perfumed burning. It was warm and moist, and Cami’s skin crawled steadily. Little ant feet crawling all over her—tiny little feet of apprehension, nausea, familiarity.

I know this place.

Stairs, going down. The concrete was ancient here, and New Haven crouched overhead. How deep were they? She had no idea. Her feet ached; her fingers, locked in Tor’s, were slippery with sweat. Her boots slipped a little, and they passed through an archway. S**vAY, it said overhead, except part of it had crumbled.

Dingy tiles that had once been white, cracked and falling. It was a much larger tunnel, the breeze whooshing through it with a low hungry sound. The floor was ancient and filthy, the domed ceiling draped with long shawls and gauzy runners of that pale glowing stuff. Was it a fungus if it hung in sheets like that, intricate glowing lacework?

It reminded her of the shimmersilk scarf and its poking, slashing tassels, but she was past wincing at the thought. Instead, she stared, wide-eyed, and her heart was an insistent drum in her ears.

I am. I am. I am.

Had she stumbled this way before, six years old and terrified, forcing her small legs to pump, smelling smoke and fury? The black hole in her memory would not tell her. It just pulsed, soft slithering sounds coming from its well-mouth.

No, the noise wasn’t from inside her head. Tor halted, a fresh thread of blood soaking into his T-shirt from a ragged slice on his back, and she heard rippling. The gleam on the floor wasn’t the fungus; it was a reflection of the light from the ceiling on slowly moving water.

A canal. And as the breeze chuckled to itself, creeping fringes of perfumed smoke stringing from the left-hand archway where the water disappeared, she heard another sound. A rhythmic splashing.

Oars, dropped into water.

The boat was coming.

Tor stepped to the very edge of the canal. Chips of ancient yellow paint under the crusted dirt leered up at them. She stared at the ceiling, her mouth slightly agape, and as the splashing intensified a sodden gleam appeared.

It was a small flat-bottom boat, its draping of rotting white velvet trailing the scum-laden surface. Dimples showed in the water where invisible oars dipped, disturbing the weird scrim of paleness, probably some algae related to the fungus all around.

The boat was empty—or anyone inside it was invisible, too. It nosed gently up to the side of the canal and halted. Cami’s throat had closed up. Her eyes prickled.

The worst part wasn’t the alienness of Underneath. It was the familiarity. No wonder the house on Haven Hill wanted another girl, a different girl.

This was where Cami—or whoever she was—belonged.

Tor stepped off solid land and onto the boat. Her arm stretched out, their fingers linked, and he glanced over his shoulder at her. The bruises and welts on him showed up garish and hideous in this directionless foxfire light, and the rippling reflection turned him into a monster for a moment. A jack, or a Twist, the bruises peeling skin and the blood on him black.

He’s just . . . he’s like me. Cami stepped forward. He is me. We’re the same. The boat gave a little underneath, swaying, and Tor steadied her. A splash and another lurching, and his arms were around her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The boat almost-spun, righted itself, and drifted for the left-hand tunnel, where the wreathing smoke was incense, and the smell of it filled her head with blind numb buzzing.

The archway swallowed them. Here it was dark, except for the algae’s weaker glow.

“Princess.” His breath was hot against her ear. “I tried. Sorry.”

She shook her head, carefully, hoping he’d understand.

She was the reason he’d been beaten like this. She was the reason the Strep had snapped and started in on Ellie. She was the reason Nico was screaming with blood-madness, locked away. She was the reason Papa Vultusino had Borrowed and come downstairs . . . and transitioned to Unbreathing.

If anyone should be sorry, Tor, it’s me. But her tongue was knotting up, she could feel it.

Book. Candle. Nico. The charm wouldn’t work now. She was going to fix the problems she’d made for everyone. Take the extra piece out of the puzzle, and throw it into the trash where it belonged. Where it had always belonged, no matter how far it had been flung.

THIRTY

WHEN THE BOAT BUMPED AGAINST THE BOTTOM OF A high sweeping flight of stone stairs, she was almost—but not quite—ready for the terror.

The stairs.

They had sharp polished edges, each step mirror-shining. She knew how they bit when you fell down them, stabbing and slicing. She also knew what the fresh red streaks bubbling on the glossy stone were.

She gets . . . hungry.

The doors were tall, made of the same polished black stone. Their carvings shifted with faint scratching noises, apples and dogs and faces with long flowing hair and foxfire-glowing eyes. The bad place in Cami’s head bulged again, and she heard tinkling laughter.

This time she stepped off the boat first. Felt the sharp edges under her bootsoles, and the idea that she might faint and fall on them kept her upright. Tor’s arms dropped to his sides; he hopped with eerie grace to the steps too, balancing.

Her hand flashed out, she steadied him.

He didn’t even look at her.

The doors creaked, a soft musical sound. Tor stepped up once, waited for her. She took a step, and her breakfast rose in a hot acid gush.

She retched, milk-curds and blackcurrant jam splattering on the bright clean steps, and her heart was going to explode. She could feel it tightening before it shredded into useless scraps, her entire chest full of clawed wriggling dread.

The doors flowed outward, and the hounds poured free. They were almost silent, only the occasional yip as they bolted down the stairs and surrounded Cami’s swaying and Tor’s poker-stiff frame. They didn’t press close, and she struggled to stay upright.

Just at the threshold, the man in the tan trench coat stood. Only now he was in leather, different tones of brown matching his wooden skin. The Huntsman’s face was wooden too, blue eyes afire with a different light than the pale diseased glow. That light dimmed as he gazed down, and behind him, like a pale moon rising, was a shadow of white.

“My runaway children,” the White Queen murmured. Dulcet honey, her voice scraped like the smoke and made the bad place in Cami’s head shudder and squeeze down on itself. “Home at last. How I’ve missed you.”

A dog snarled and jumped. Cami let out a miserable vomit-scented little cry and took the next three stairs in a rush. Tor began to climb, and the reek of spoiled honey and rotting fruit was quickly swept under a pall of spiced, numbing smoke. The inside of Cami’s head began to feel very strange—too big, an empty ballroom with nobody to take her hand or start the scratchy ancient Victrola.

The dogs drove her through the door, and as she passed the wooden man he twitched. Not much, but the Queen laughed.

“One happy little family,” she purred, and one broad, soft white hand touched his shoulder for a moment. “Greet your father, little Nameless. After all, he gave his heart for you.”

The warm draft was from tall greasy-white candles with oddly pallid flames, serried ranks of them on either side of the high-ceilinged hall. Blue gouts of incense rose from powdery dishes, veiling the ceiling. The Biel’y—tall spare men and women with blank eyes holding only her reflection, there were no children—wore gray robes, and each throat held a silver gleam. The medallions were eager, avid little eyes too, and Cami, her mouth full of sourness, stumbled miserably up the center of the aisle in the White Queen’s wake.

She was so tall, the Queen. Her parchment hair was piled high and elaborate, ringlets bobbing and bone pins with dangling colorless crystals thrust artfully through. The other women were shaven-headed, the men short-haired, and their feet were bare while the Queen swayed on lacquered sandals with funny wooden blocks on the soles that went tic tic tic against the stone floor. She wore white velvet and silk, but the hems dragged on the dusty floor, little motheaten bits showing.

At the far end, there was a low wide padded bench on a dais, under a great fountaining fall of crystallized glowing fungus. It pulsed and glittered, this colony of light, and its glow bleached the Queen still further.

Cami stopped dead at the bottom step of the dais. Her arms and legs shook, the tremors spilling through her in waves, her bandaged knees and hand throbbing. Every hair on her body was trying to stand up.

Imagining that pale slimness with a baby was . . . Cami’s stomach cramped again. Heaving nausea passed through her and away, an earthquake in numb flesh.

The Queen turned, sank down on the bench, and Cami realized it was her throne. A sigh went through the assembled Biel’y. More were coming, their robes shushing and their bare feet padding.

She knew that sound. The black bulge inside her brain swelled a little more. The faint tang of acridity under the incense’s spice coated the back of her throat, and that was familiar too.

“My newest Okhotnik may approach,” the Queen murmured, and a rustle went through the assembled. The candleflames bowed.

Tor staggered mechanically up the three dais steps. Cami’s hands itched to help, but she was nailed in place. His black hair, still slicked back under a mask of crud, gleamed wetly, and the rags of his T-shirt flapped.

She still could not look at the Queen’s face. Her eyes simply refused. Instead, she stared at the hands, lying folded in the velvet and silk of her lap. The soft fingers, the dimpled knuckles—but there was something wrong.

There were marks on those hands. They had always been plump and soft and young before. Now there were pronounced veins, and shadows of age spots. And a tremor that had never been there before.

“Good boy.” The Queen’s chuckle was soft, but so cold. “You brought My Nameless back to Me. I had my doubts, young one. But you will make Me a fine husband. I will not need another.”

A cracking sound. Cami flinched, whirling. The dogs had crept up the aisle, red tongues lolling and their coats washed pale by the weird directionless light. The wooden man stood in the aisle, slump-shouldered and stiff; another rending cracking noise echoed and he listed to the side. His blue eyes were closed, and a rivulet of splintering crawled through him, crunching and creaking, tiny pieces falling from his face and grinding themselves into dust. The leather of his clothes sagged obscenely, sawdust pouring from sleeves and legs, and collapsed inward.

The memory of Papa’s slow crumbling folded through her brain, slid away.

“Such a strong heart he had, and given so thoroughly.” The Queen sighed, and the Biel’y sighed too, a susurrus passing through candleflames like wind through wheat. “Now, My Nameless. Come here.”

She’s talking to me. Dread choked Cami. Little black spots danced in front of her. The dogs crept closer, on their bellies. One whined, a high nervous sound.

Silence stretched, thin and quivering. The candles hissed, and even the crystalline mass over the throne was making a sound—a felt-in-the-teeth ringing, like a wineglass stroked with a wet finger just before its singing shivers it into pieces.

Until one word broke it. “N-no.” Cami dug her heels into the stone floor. The Queen’s will wrapped around her, pulling her toward the steps, but the sourness in Cami’s throat and the sudden pain from her bandaged left fist, its knuckles throbbing with the feel of glass splintering underneath them, both refused the urge to obey.

I’m here. You can have me instead of Tor. But I’m going to make you work for it.

The silence returned, but changed now. This was the quiet of utter shock.

Cloth moved. The sandals tip-tapped. A draft of clove and numb smoke, the taste of fruit edging into decay, brushed Cami’s hair. The Queen loomed over her, and the shudders went away.

The terror was so huge it could not shake her. Or she had become so small the whole world was aquiver, and she could not tell. The only thing left was to tip her head back and back, her gaze traveling up silk and velvet grown dingy, pinprick holes in its splendor, the subtle silver trimming tarnishing.

The Queen’s ravaged face bent down, a grinning moon. Wrinkles spread from the corners of her eyes, no matter how immobile she kept her expression. Fine lines bracketed her mouth, but they were not Marya’s laugh-lines, or even Gran’s marks of dignity. They clawed at the Queen’s face, and her eyes glared through the cracking paper mask of her skin with utter madness.

Her blue, blue eyes.

The slap rocketed against Cami’s face. Her head snapped aside, her neck giving a flare of red agony. She spilled backward onto cold stone, elbows smacking hard, her left hand crying out and her ass immediately numb. On her side now, all her breath gone, curling protectively around herself. But she wasn’t tiny enough to curl up like a pillbug anymore. The Queen’s wooden sandal caught her just under the ribs, and the black spots became huge blossoming flowers as she struggled to get a breath in.

“Bitch!” the White Queen screamed. “You bitch! You little bitch! YOU MADE ME OLD!”

A merciful blankness descended. The real part of her curled up tightly inside her skull, watching while everything outside rocked back and forth, jerking under the force of the blows. It went on forever, and when it stopped, the gray-robed Biel’y slid forward and the handcuffs clicked, and it was as if she had never left at all.

THIRTY-ONE

THE DARKNESS WAS A LIVING THING, PRESSING DOWN with chill gritty fur. Stone above her, stone below, the clink of dragging handcuffs oddly muffled as her body twitched every once in a while.

This was familiar, too. It was a penitent’s cell, meant to punish those who displeased her. In this deep blackness, the black bulge inside Cami’s skull relaxed, and it was like drawing aside soft ragged smoky veils. Or like torn blue gauze sliding down from a mirror’s unblinking eye, and the reflection beneath coming into focus.

The gray-robed, shaven-headed women cooing as they cosseted and cared for her. They were not allowed to speak—the Queen forbade it. Some of them whispered, though, when the smoke lessened and some focus came back into their eyes. They had sought cessation in the Biel’y, a release from the obligations of Above, and had found it.

Who cared what the price was?

Yet they whispered, and she learned. She was wrapped in discarded pale silk and velvet and played with small things—wooden balls, scrubbed-clean trash brought back by the close-cropped men whose pupils all held pale slivers—for the Queen was all the men saw. They brought the baubles to please Her, and the ones She cast aside the women gathered. The women taught the Nameless to count, and she accepted it as normal. What else did she know?

The voice came filtering through the dark, directionless, a hoarse whisper. It muttered, it teased, it tapped at her ears. What did it say?

She was taken to see the Queen from afar sometimes, and told to love Her. Love pleased the Queen. Heart in mouth, excitement running through her entire body, the Nameless loved the beautiful woman in Her finery, the smoke around Her making all the colors soft and hazy, Her smile meaning all was well with the world. There were other times when the women grew drawn and fearful, and the Nameless understood She was not happy. Those times passed, though, sooner or later, and some of the women disappeared. New ones came.

New ones always came, seeking the drug of forgetting, searching for release.

There were other children, too, but she was not allowed near them. They crept around the edges, scavenging in corners, a feral pack. Sometimes She chose a favorite, and jealousy was rank and rife until the favorite, petted and indulged for a while . . . vanished.

Very familiar. When she moved, pain nipped at her. They had even taken the bandages off, hissing when the fey-charmed cloth spat in their hands. She did not struggle.

And then, a great excitement. The women whispering again—the Nameless was needed. She was called for. She was to be brought.

Scrubbed and dried, her long black hair combed and braided, the women making soft sounds of approval, and then the hall with its mirrors and Her, recumbent on a white-draped bed, the blue of her eyes matching the blue of the Huntsman’s. Of all the men, only his pupils held no pale slivers, and he stood to the side as the long pale loveliness stretched, delicately.

“Here is My Nameless,” the Queen chirped brightly. “Come to Me, child.”

And she did, her heart beating in her throat, her skin alive with joy at the nearness. The incense smoke was thick that day, and the Queen was a haze of beauty, the red-winking gem at Her throat the only color in the world. A white page to be written on, a white bird to nestle in the hand.

The Queen’s broad soft hand touched the Nameless’s slender girl-chest. “Here it is,” She murmured, softly, restfully. “Here is the youth and the living.”

“So it is,” the other Biel’y chorused, and the Nameless was confused. Was this a Ceremony? Were they supposed to speak?

“Do you love Me?” She leaned close, her face filling the Nameless’s world. “Me, and only Me?”

Stunned, the Nameless could only nod.

“Say, yes, Mommy. If you can.”

She struggled to shape the words. “Y-yes, M-Mommy.” Her tongue wouldn’t obey her fully, but She looked pleased.

“Oh, someone has taught you to talk, have they? Well, we will punish for that. But for now . . . ” Her hand tensed, and the Nameless could feel the fingernails, lacquered with white paste and sharpened, through fabric. “Give Me your heart, little Nameless. I want your heart. I will eat it, and grow strong.”

Horror descended. A terrible draining sensation, as the Queen laughed and her fingers flexed. Casually cruel, a cat playing with a mouse before it loses interest. Her jaw snapped, strong white teeth champing just like the dogs’, and the Nameless jerked aside, thrashing and terrified.

Her thin elbow hit something hard and unforgiving, and the gasp of horror passing through the ranks of the Biel’y made the radiance dim. A furious howl arose, for the child, in her struggles, had struck the White Queen in Her lovely, ageless face.

“TAKE IT AWAY!” the Queen screamed. “LOCK IT UP! TAKE IT AWAY!”

And then the pain began.

She shifted, cold stone bruising-hard under her hip, the chill leaching into her bones. The voice was very far away. It didn’t matter. She knew what it was whispering, the same thing it had started whispering after she had done the unforgivable.

“You are nobody,” it breathed, hoarsely. “You are nothing.”

She lay in the stone-closed darkness, the handcuffs biting her wrists, and listened to her heart’s thundering refrain.

I am. I am. I am.

THIRTY-TWO

SHE LAY FOR A LONG TIME IN THE DARK, FLOATING IN and out of her body. The voice kept going, water plinking over stone, wearing away. Her heartbeat was muffled thunder, and the blackness inside her skull was now the softness of a pillow. She could lie still and not think, and everything would be done.

And yet. There was another memory, one that hovered just out of reach. An annoyance, grit in a sandal, the sting of sun on already-burned skin, a poke on an almost-healed bruise.

The Huntsman’s big callused hand trembled on the glass knife’s twisted, ancient handle. His reflections fought too, the mirrors casting back several images of him as he loomed over the little girl on the altar, her eyes rolling with terror, her thin drugged limbs twitching. The smoke was heavy, full of the resinous drug the Queen exuded, mixed with the spices stolen by the close-cropped men and the glowing, harvested fungus. The feral children were all hustled away, and among them was a boy with messy dark hair, the product of an earlier favorite-husband, and so the only one save the Nameless to be unshorn. He was older, and his heart was fine. The Queen said he would make an Okhotnik for Her, one day.

But now, Her husband-Huntsman stood, and the Queen tensed. She was beside him, Her beauty reflecting in each lovingly polished mirror, the great soughing chanting mass of the Biel’y as yet unaware that something was wrong. They bowed and swayed, some of them falling to the floor and gibbering praises of the loveliness overcrowding the mirrors before them, reflected on every wall of this hall, the heart of Underneath where the Queen was the only light.

The crimson jewel at Her throat flashed. Her red, red lips parted.

“Renew Me. Give Me the heart,” she said, and the cry went up.

“The heart! The heart!”

The Huntsman stared at the drugged Nameless. The little girl writhed, twisting on the pale stone of the altar, crusted with the remains of other ceremonies. Unlike the mirrors, the altar was not cleansed until the Great Renewal. The lesser Renewals were left as a reminder, and atop the water-clear mirrors the small skulls grinned down on the ceremony, a few larger ones sprinkled among them. Set in the walls with cement made from the ground-up light-giving fungus, they wept thin trickles of bleaching-clear fluid that must not be allowed to mar the mirrorshine.

The Nameless’s eyes were open a fraction. Blue eyes, so blue. The knife lifted.

“Give Me the heart.” It was unheard-of, for the Queen to have to ask twice, and the first thread of unease went through the ecstatic writhing crowd.

“The heart, the heart!” they cried.

The Huntsman’s lips moved. Why did he hesitate? This one, he seemed to say, but the screams and moans overpowered whatever he would have uttered.

And the drugged girl, sudden desperate strength in her bony bruised and wasted limbs, committed the ultimate sin.

The Nameless rolled free of the altar. She landed on a heap of picked-clean bones, and the gasps and cries of horror began. She scrambled, darting-quick as a cockroach, for a dark gap between two mirrors, and slithered her skinny body through it as the Queen’s fury shook the world.

And later, in the tunnels, as the Nameless wandered sick and shaking, the Huntsman had arrived out of the darkness. “She will have a heart,” he muttered, and pushed her. “That way, go. Run. Run. She will have a heart. RUN!”

And she had run, through a jumble of confusion and terror, the drug working through her and her entire world shattered, to end fallen and limp in the snow while dogs howled elsewhere.

Whose heart had the Queen eaten that night? It was not a Great Renewal, but She had to have eaten something. Dark blood dripping down her white chin, her eyes closed . . . whose heart had She eaten?

And had She thought it was Her daughter’s, until age began to crease Her soft blank skin, and wooden hardness spread over the Huntsman’s skin?

Light, searing her eyes. The murmur went on, a queer atonal chant, and she finally understood it was them, the Biel’y, mouthing their ritual response just like the girls at St. Juno’s murmured Mithrus the Sunlord, watch over us all during chapel every school day.

You are nobody. You are nothing.

Hands on her, she was dragged out limp and bruised and filthy. It smelled horrible. She smelled horrible.

How long was I—

She couldn’t even finish the thought. Smoke billowed. The hall was cramped and dark, cell doors flung open. The coffin-cubes of stone were empty toothsockets, leering as her head lolled and she blinked, weakly. Her heart kept going, her lungs did too, and their hands pinched and poked before they lifted her and bore her on a gray-robed wave. Thirty of them, maybe more, and others in the hall. But the great mass of whispering and movement she remembered from before was absent.

Underneath was curiously small now, and the Biel’y were fewer.

Carried through the twisting corridors, the smoke was so thick she could barely see. The past kept looping over into the present, why did she even keep fighting?

Tor. He’ll live, I guess. Marya, though she won’t miss me for long. Rube and Ellie, poor Ellie. They’ll be okay. Ruby will take care of it. Nico . . . he’ll be fine. They’ll all be fine, really.

She sagged in their hands. The Biel’y began to chant more loudly, a slow ancient tune with the edges of the words rubbed away. Once their choir would have shaken the tunnels with its swelling. Now it was an attenuated cricket-chorus, barely stirring the swirling smoke.

Their hands were cold. Not the bruising chill of the stone, just cold in a different way. Uncaring flesh, forgetting itself. Cami hung, jostled from side to side as the human wave below her marched on bare feet, kicking aside detritus until they came to a more-traveled hall, the fungus dripping clear water as its glow turned to a low punky dimness.

She’s tired. She had to bring me here, she’s eaten too many of them. Her . . . followers. And the hunters have probably been bringing others down here for her to feed on, but not enough. It was like thinking through mud. That’s why she needs me.

Nico needs me too, a small voice piped up inside her. So does Ruby. And Ellie. They all need me.

And yet she’d been nothing but a problem since she’d run out in front of Papa’s car. An extra puzzle piece, a snarl in the yarn, a break in the pattern. Something foreign, alien, forcing its way into other lives.

We are foreigners, Papa’s voice whispered in her memory. Always, we are strangers in all lands.

Finally, she was hazily glad he had transitioned. He wasn’t here to see this. Had he known what she was?

My bambina. It is arranged.

Had Papa known? And if he had, had it mattered to him?

It doesn’t matter. He’s gone, and I’m . . . here. She twisted fretfully, took a deep lungful of the smoke. Would it hurt when the glass knife flashed down? Or would she just feel a spike of pain, and then the deep relief of oblivion?

The doors to the mirrored hall were black iron, their surfaces powdered with dried ghost-moss. They creaked and screamed as the Biel’y pushed against them, each groan and wheeze echoed faithfully through the bars of their song, an eerie mock-grieving. Did she imagine the tremors in their upstretched arms, the drunken swaying as if her weight was too much for them?

Your fat ass, Ellie said, softly, and Ruby giggled in her memory, false-summer sunlight golden over them both.

Missing them was a stone in her throat. The knife would flash down, and they would go on without her being the third wheel . . . but the missing-them was all hers.

Even the Queen couldn’t take that. She couldn’t take the memory of Papa, either, or of Marya’s hugs and scolding, or Trigger carefully showing her how to tie a neat knot, or Nico in all his different moods. Scowling or smiling, angry or relaxed, and yes, even the face he showed when the hunting frenzy had him and she was reminded of just what Family and blood meant.

The Queen couldn’t even take Stevens, or Sister Mary Brefoil conjugating verbs, or Sister Frances Grace-Abiding chiding the girls to lift their knees during calisthenics. Or the cold of snow and the sight of Tor’s scars, just like the Nameless’s own.

The mirrors ran with light. It was not the silvery blaze she remembered. This struggling corpseglow was not magnified by the polished glass. Instead, it fell into the mirrors and vanished. The skulls above were still weeping, and streaks had been allowed to pit the smooth glass surfaces. Cracks and dust showed, and the ceiling was black behind its pall of smoke.

The Biel’y circled the white stone altar, and little things crunched on its surface as they laid her down. It was crusted with layers of filth and dried fluids best not thought about, carapaces of beetles crackling; little things scuttled away from the touch and weight of her flesh. She squirmed, but two of the Biel’y came forward with a long rectangular black velvet box, and when they clasped the silver necklace with its flat not-quite-round medallion around her filthy throat the will to move drained from her. She felt it go, swirling from her toes, the silver stinging as it lay against her vulnerable pulse.

I am, I am, her heart kept saying. Idiot thing. What did it know?

She didn’t even have a name.

They began to sing a little louder, the Biel’y, but it was not the massive thundering sound it had been before. Still, the mirrors caught and reflected it, and the incense smoke darkened.

The Great Renewal of the Queen was ten years late. But now, finally . . .

. . . the hour had come.

THIRTY-THREE

“OUR QUEEN,” THEY MOANED. “GIVE US OUR QUEEN, our light, our life! Give us our Queen! Our Queen!”

Tip-tapping footsteps, mincing, She appeared from behind the largest mirror, the frame of black iron skulls and bones dusty now. Cobwebs had crept between eyeholes and thighcurves that would have never been allowed before.

She lifted her arms, and the sleeves of Her pale silken robes fell back. The skin flopped loosely around Her wasted biceps, and Her fingers were claws. The paste dried on the claw-tips had chipped, and Her face, under a thick screen of bone-white powder, was even more cracked and runneled. Blue eyes blazed, and the red jewel at her throat flashed, stuttering.

“My children!”

The Biel’y moaned, swaying back and forth. They packed into the hall but could not fill it. There simply weren’t enough of them. Maybe fifty, maybe a few more. Without the Great Renewal, they would all slowly fade.

“My children,” the Queen repeated, and they shrieked in response. Her hands spread, She caught the sound and drank at it, Her reedy voice strengthening. “The Great Renewal is upon us!”

“Renew, renew!”

“There shall be a sacrifice!”

“Sacrifice, sacrifice!” Shaven skulls under tight-drawn pallid skin bobbed on scrawny necks.

“My new Okhotnik, My husband-to-be, went Above, and he brought Me a heart!”

“A heart, a heart!”

Tor, she thought, dimly. Everything was very far away. Bringing me presents. Were they really from her? Or did he steal them, thinking she wouldn’t notice? Or did she send them out into the world, into Above, and he was just the way they chose to get to what she wanted?

Did it matter? Everything was falling away, drying up. The things the Queen couldn’t take would go with the Nameless into darkness, and maybe the space in the world Above would be filled by something else. Someone else.

Another thought rose through layers of smoky sponge. How did she find me?

The mirror, maybe. Or, like any charmer, through blood. Had the wooden man been looking for her too? Had he whispered in the Queen’s ear, she’s alive, I saw her? Had he regretted giving his heart in the Nameless’s stead?

It wasn’t like it mattered now.

“A fine heart. A fiery heart. And he will give it to Me!”

“Give it, give it!”

Behind her, Tor stumbled out of the dark hole. He looked even worse, if that were possible—bruised all over, one of his eyes almost puffed shut. He was in leather, like the wooden man, but it didn’t fit him. The fringe quivered as he moved, his soft glove-shoes scraping, and his black eyes were wide and wild.

A faint faraway anger pressed through the girl’s dry-trickling veins. I thought she would leave Tor alone!

Something inside her dilated. Just as she’d seen the Strep beating on Ellie, she caught a glimpse of Torin struggling against the Queen’s control—and the consequences. He had fought, and fought hard.

And the Nameless was suddenly very sure he hadn’t known the pin and the shawl were the Queen’s poisoned gifts. He had tried to escape, just like she had.

It’s all right, she wanted to tell him. We couldn’t get away. But She can’t take everything. She can’t eat everything.

In his left hand, the glass knife glittered. Wicked-sharp and curving, its twisted hilt patterned on a horn of a creature long extinct before the Age of Iron, a thread of crimson pulsing in its heart.

The Nameless’s anger fluttered away, a bird’s heart. Maybe more was needed to make the Queen leave everyone alone. To make Her happy, to make everyone happy.

I hope it won’t hurt much. Her entire body was numb, and cold. Book. Candle. Nico. The old charm, worn and threadbare, soothed the last remaining ache inside her. At least, once this was over, she wouldn’t have any scars.

The White Queen’s arms dropped. The Biel’y chanted and shuffled, their chorus exhausted, as they gasped through the smoke.

“Now.” Her teeth gritted, Her fingers flexing, the old woman in her motheaten white, her parchment hair falling and unraveling, fixed Tor with a piercing blue gaze. “Cut out the nameless heart. Renew Me.”

Tor stepped forward. He blinked, his jaw working. The mirror beside him held his reflection and hers, and the Queen’s, another shape rippling behind the shrinking old woman. She was fading fast, impatient, Her power recklessly spent to bring Her victim here, to force this new Okhotnik to Her ancient, hungry will. The new shape would be slender and tall and young, heartbreakingly lovely, and the Biel’y would resurge, calling those who wished dark surcease down into the tunnels and dripping darkness.

On the altar, the Nameless stared at her own reflection. Long tangled black hair, her eyes half-lidded, her bruised face slack and peaceful, Tor’s trembling evident even in the mirror.

I thought he wouldn’t be hurt anymore. The thought rose, slow as bubbles in the sticky caramel Marya made every Dead Harvest to dip apples into. Red, crunching, juicy apples, and the nuts she would roll them in too, golden and luscious. The smell of the sugar, and Marya smoothing her hair.

My little sidhe, Marya breathed in her memory, and the girl’s heart gave a leap.

The new Okhotnik’s mouth opened. He cried a word that had lost all meaning, and the Biel’y screamed.

“CAMI!”

The glass knife flashed. It sliced, and there was a shattering of glass and a wail.

The world exploded.

THIRTY-FOUR

LOUD BOOMING NOISES. YELLS. FAMILIAR, SOME OF them—Nico, hoarsely screaming one word over and over, Ruby swearing as if they were in gym class and running the fourmile again, Ellie chanting low and sonorous, Trig’s familiar drill-the-security-team tone sharply slicing the chaos, close it up, take them down, find our girl!

She lay, her eyelids heavy, strangely peaceful. The mirror heaved, great cracks spidering across its surface, Tor stumbling back with a horrified cry.

He had driven the knife straight into the mirror, pinning the Queen’s reflection like a butterfly.

The White Queen screamed again, a dry wall of noise impossible from such a small throat. Runnels of decay crawled through her reflection, each echoed by a streak of darkness on the staggering old woman herself. The small skulls atop the mirrors exploding in puffs of white sighing powder, each a small weeping voice lost in the storm, the other glass shattering over and over as the warcries of enraged Family bravos and the chatter of gunfire swallowed the Queen’s cry.

The White Queen went to her knees, her painted claws grasping at empty air, then swiping a stripe of fire across the girl’s thigh. The drugged body on the altar twitched before the black-haired boy grabbed her, yanking her free of the cracking, heaving stone. The crone hauled herself up, scrabbling across the crusted filthy obscenity as it split, its edges grinding. They fell, girl and boy tangled with each other, rolling down the sharp steps away from the thrashing monster as it broke into shards of bleached bone grinding itself finer and finer into caustic dust.

The Biel’y fought, but they were unarmed and weak, and the death of the brooding hungry goddess who had promised them an end to living’s pain made them witless. It was Ellen Sinder and Ruby de Varre who reached the foot of the dais first, Ruby snarling, her coppery hair full of dark dust, Ellen’s chant fading as the charm-chain looped around her slim fingers tugged sharply downward, indicating it had found what she sought. Potential flashed, and Underneath rumbled.

The Family boys, led by Nico Vultusino and a gaunt fierce Trigger Vane with a heavily bandaged head, pushed forward to the dais, the last of the Biel’y shrieking as they found a different oblivion than the one they were promised. They closed around the girls and the wounded boy, and the last thing the drugged nameless girl heard as she spiraled down into the dark was nothing but a dead collection of syllables, repeated over and over from different throats.

Cami? Cami, wake up! Camille, say something! Get her out of here—Cami, can you hear me?

It is comforting. There are soft beeps and boops as machines monitor respiration and heart rate, a cold weight on her throat. Her pulse is sluggish, murmuring instead of thundering. Slow and sleepy, a healing whisper.

I am. I am.

“What do they say?” Ruby, hushed and subdued.

“The drugs, maybe.” Nico. He sounded awful—hoarse, and flatly furious. As if something had gone wrong but he couldn’t fix it, the dull rage of unwanted helplessness. “We don’t know what they dosed her with. Nobody left to ask, either—the Family’s scouring the city, but they can’t find him. How’s Ellie?”

“Dealing, I guess. Her stepmother’s evil.”

“Well, I tried.” Nico sighed. There was a faint noise—was he scrubbing his hands through his hair?

I am, her heart said, slowly. But she was cold, and she couldn’t move. Who am I?

“Yeah, well.” Ruby, restraining herself mightily. She sounded awful tired. “Thanks for, well. You know. Fixing things.”

“It’s the only thing I’m any good at.” Was he giving her that toothy, dangerous smile? “I just wish she’d wake up.”

“Me too. Do you think . . . ” But whatever Ruby was going to ask went unsaid. An electric brush touched numb skin, and the girl on the bed strained to wake, to move a finger, to say something.

Her body lay, inert, only the heart slowly pounding itself along and her lungs rising and falling.

Something changed in the air of the room. Two more breathing presences.

A low growl. “What. Is. He. Doing. Here?”

Ellen, deathly tired as well. “Leave him alone, Vultusino. He saved her.”

“I told you, I’ll—”

“I said leave him alone. You really want to piss me off? You’ve seen me work, Family boy. I’ll charm your guts outside your skin and leave you screaming. Back off.”

Wow. The thought came swimming through syrup. Ellie’s pissed. Better not mess with her.

“I think she means it,” Ruby piped up, not very helpfully. But then, expecting helpful from Ruby was a couple steps too far.

“I—” A cough. A familiar voice. Male, and low. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, sorry.” Nico outright snarled. “Sorry isn’t enough, maggot. You lied your way into my house, you—”

“I thought I was an orphan!” Tor yelled, and her skin tingled with electricity again. Sounds—a thud, sliding against the floor, and Ellie’s sharp shout.

“Cut it the fuck out! This is not going to help . . . wait. Wait just a second.”

Silence.

“Ell?” Ruby, tentative as she never was. “What are you thinking?”

“What’s that?”

Tor choked. “That’s . . . what . . . I . . . came . . . for. To . . . take it . . . off.”

A snap. A sparking. A sting of pain, a numbness ripped away as a chain broke and the silver medallion, not quite round, a not-quite-star of apple pips carved onto its surface, tore free of her skin.

She screamed, thrashing wildly. It was Ruby who flung herself on top of the bed, her arms locking around her friend with preternatural strength. Ellen tossed the necklace aside with a cry of disgust and clambered on the bed too, the machines going crazy with whistles and beeps and sirens. The two girls held the third as she shook and sobbed and screamed, the cries taking shape as they burst free and raced around the room like white birds.

“Mommy no Mommy no Mommy please Mommy noooooooo—”

THIRTY-FIVE

THE THAW CAME EARLY, ALMOST-FREEZING RAIN SOAKING into packed snow until roofs all over New Haven groaned under the weight. Finally, the melt began in earnest, the bay and the storm drains swollen. Some of Simmerside flooded and the core birthed three minotaurs in a week.

The hospital kept her on an IV drip, bandaged and full of antibiotics, charmers visiting every afternoon as well as nurses and a doctor like a ferret, quick and sleek and deathly afraid of the Vultusino name. Trig, his head bandaged, was often just outside the door; if he wasn’t, another member of the security team was. When she tried to apologize, he just shook his head, the white gauze glaring. It happens, Cami-girl. Don’t fret. Get better.

She slept a lot. When she woke, sometimes Ruby was there, humming as she leafed through a magazine. Ellie was in Strep Durance Vile, but Rube reported that the Strep wasn’t hitting her for the moment, since Nico had probably scared the stuffing out of the woman. I hear he threatened to get her Sigil yanked. She probably doesn’t know if he can or can’t, but why take the chance and piss off a Family? Here, look at this—they say it’s the new fashion from the Continent. Ruffles. Can you believe it?

And that was all Ruby would say. Fashion, school gossip, and brushing aside her apologies as well. Don’t be ridiculous. Listen, if I bring my French homework, you think you could give a girl a little help? Sister Mary B is really biting my ass.

Other times, she would wake up knowing she had just missed Nico. She could sense his presence burning in the room’s still-shivering air, as if he’d scorched it in passing. But he didn’t wait for her to wake up.

He was busy, maybe.

Or angry.

The room was pretty, or at least inoffensive, a private hospital suite in pink and cream. Pills to swallow, dark restful sleep to fall into, watching the slant of light through the windows as it lengthened every day.

She was finally allowed to get up. Ruby brought her clothes—jeans that were a little too big, a T-shirt that hung on her like a scarecrow’s jacket, socks and everything but shoes. “Left them in the car, dammit,” Rube cheerfully announced, and tripped out the door to fetch them. The guard—a lanky young mere-human who looked like Trig—glanced in, dropped his gaze. He actually blushed whenever he had to speak to her.

“Ma’am? I gotta visit the little boy’s.”

She tried not to grin. Ruby found this endlessly hilarious. “Go ahead.”

When the door opened again, she turned away from the window, her question and any amusement forgotten when she saw . . . him.

Tor hunched his shoulders. The bruises had faded, but their yellowgreen shadows lingered. His hair, shaken down over his face, was still defiantly messy and coal-black. He’d lost some weight, and his cheekbones stood out startlingly.

Just like hers. Just like his eyes, no longer black but bright starving blue.

“Your eyes,” she blurted, and could have kicked herself. Way to go. That’s nice.

He sucked his lips in for a moment, nodded. “Yeah. Surprised me too.”

They regarded each other. The air was suddenly full of sharp surfaces, pressing against her skin. Each scar on her twitched, and she wondered if his were doing the same.

“I came to apologi—” he began, at the same moment she said, “I’m sorry, I—”

The silence returned.

He wet his lips with a quick nervous flicker of his tongue. “I came to apologize. I stole those presents for you, I didn’t know. You’ve got to believe me. I wanted you to notice. I wanted you to . . . ” He ran out of words, stared at her.

“I wondered about that.” The words came easily now. Still, she used them slowly, carefully, since they could turn at any moment and knot up.

“I was eight when I ran away. I don’t remember a lot, I was too busy staying alive. But she was sending little things Above, trying to find you. I stole the pin from a Twist pawner in Simmerside, and things started happening. I got hired. I saw you. It was like . . . ” A helpless shrug, his hands spreading. “I can’t say what it was like. Then . . . she . . . ” He spread his hands. “She called me down there. Into the dark.” The scuffed, battered leather jacket creaked a little as he moved. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” It probably wasn’t the most helpful thing to say. “You . . . the mirror. You broke it.” You stabbed our mother in the mirror. She couldn’t bring herself to say it. If the Queen hadn’t switched favorite-husbands, Cami might never have been born. And there was no way to know how their fathers came Below, what they had run from, who they had been.

“It was the only thing I could think of. Look, princess—”

“It’s Cami.” It burst out, surprising her. As if she really owned the name. She crossed her arms, defensively. Healing scrapes were rough under her fingertips, and the scars were easily visible. It probably didn’t matter—his were at least as bad as hers. Still, she felt the old prickle. “Don’t call me princess, okay? It’s insulting.”

A ghost of a grin flashing under the healing bruises and scrapes. “No stutter.”

So you noticed. Big deal. “So what are we gonna do? You, and me.”

He nodded, like she’d just said something profound. “You’re safe here. I’ve got to go. That’s also why I came. I’ve got to . . . I killed a Queen. They won’t let me live.”

“There are others?” She went cold all over. God, couldn’t this just be over?

“Stands to reason, doesn’t it? She had to come from somewhere.”

“We had to come from s-s-somewhere.” Dammit.

“I just got a feeling. Plus, with your boyfriend around, it’s not too safe here.”

“Boyfriend?” He means Nico. “He’s not . . . it’s complicated. I don’t even know if he’s going to want me around. Ruby’s grandmother, she said she could send me to another city. Maybe.” Ruby won’t talk about it, but if I can get out to Woodsdowne, well, we’ll see, won’t we? If Cami could walk halfway across the city with the White Queen’s hounds searching for her, what else could she do?

What else would she want? Now that she was alive. It was a puzzle, and one she didn’t know how to even begin piecing together.

“We c-could go together,” she offered, tentatively. “You. And me.”

Tor grimaced slightly. “He’ll want you around, princ—ah, Cami. Trust me on that.” He took a step back, glanced at the door. “I should go.”

Don’t. If he left, would she ever find him again? Her scars ran with pain, and she saw his answering flinch.

He knew what it felt like, because his scars were hers too. “Tor—”

“I don’t belong here, Cami. Not like you do. I wish . . . ” But whatever he wished was left unsaid. He shook his hair down, the glower closing over his face like a mask. Who else would see the fear behind it?

Maybe nobody but her now.

“You b-belong.” Her tongue tried to knot up, but Cami swallowed hard, and all of a sudden the words tumbled out. “You have me. We’re the same.” We have the same scars.

Is it enough? It is.

It has to be.

The silence between them was a thin ringing, but it was no longer stretched over a black abyss. Instead, it was a fragile, delicate thing, like a thin crystal wineglass tapping her teeth. Gentle, and careful, and something inside that quiet stretched between them. A hair-thin line, unbreakable and humming with force.

Blood always tells.

“Family.” Very slowly and clearly, so he couldn’t possibly misunderstand. “Us. You have m-me.”

Torin’s scowl turned into a fleeting grin, and he winked, one blue, blue eye twitching closed for a half-second. “Likewise. Take care of yourself.” And with that, he was gone out the door, his hair flicked back with an impatient toss of his head.

When Ruby came back, a pair of trainers dangling from their laces in one crimson-fingernailed hand, she sniffed deeply and gave Cami an odd look. But she didn’t say anything, and Cami didn’t volunteer.

It was, she reminded herself, a Personal Choice to speak, or not.

The distance inside her, where there used to be a huge black fear, was now just . . . silent.

Empty. A hiding place.

So some things had to stay secret. Even now.

The last of the ice had washed away on a flood of spring rain, and the trees were budding green. Every window on the house was painted gold with late-afternoon sunlight, and the limo pulled to a smooth stop. Trig and two of his scrubbed-clean new security boys were in a black car right behind them, a small fish swimming after the sleek black shark Chauncey piloted.

“Home, Miss Cami,” he said, through the pane of lowered bulletproof glass. “And glad you’re here, if I may say so.”

Me too. She ducked her head, the habit of hiding a blush hard to shake. “Thanks.”

It was Stevens, gaunt as ever, his hair threaded with rivers instead of trickles of gray now, who came down the stairs one by one and opened her door.

“Miss Cami,” he said, and his hand was dry and warm, hard as a stick. “Welcome home.”

She swallowed, hard. Was this home? Or were the dripping tunnels—flooded now, but cleansed by the Family, Trig had informed Ruby in a low tone when he thought Cami couldn’t hear—really home? Would she be shipped off to a boarding school now, sent through the Waste on a sealed train, or—

“Naughty!” Marya shrilled, and Cami was enfolded in a bruising-hard hug, right there on the steps. The feywoman’s cameo dug into her collarbone, and Cami realized with a start that she was taller now. “Naughty little thing! Worrying us to death, naughty little wandering thing, bad little sidhe! And so thin!”

“M-Marya!” It wasn’t the stutter. Instead, it was half a sob, caught in her throat. The dam broke, and she was shaking as the feywoman bustled her into the house past a solemn assemblage of servants all gathered, scrubbed and shining, some of them looking uncomfortable, others looking relieved. The foyer was full, and the stairs too. The maids curtsied, some of them blushing and giggling, and Marya kept scolding Cami, calling her “naughty little sidhe” in between hugs so hard they threatened to steal what little breath she had left. She also produced a blinding-white handkerchief and wiped Cami’s nose as if she was seven and messy again.

Marya all but hauled her up the stairs, since Cami’s legs weren’t quite functioning right. “I have a good dinner for you. All your favorites, and apple tart too.”

It was hard work to suppress a shiver. “That sounds good,” she said, carefully, and blinked away the tears.

The door to the white room had been repaired. So had the hole in the wall where Trig had hit. The broken mirror was gone. Her clothes hung in the closet, and it smelled of fresh lumber and a little bit of paint under the dust-scorch crackle of cleaning charms in an unoccupied room. The window seat was wide and white, and earlier rain still glimmered on the window, throwing little jewels of rainbow reflection onto the carpet.

Nico, straight and dark, sat on her bed. He stared at the wall, as if he just happened to be in here, no big deal, oh well. Absolutely rigid, and the tension boiling off him was a physical weight, colorless but heavy.

THIRTY-SIX

MARYA’S ARMS FELL AWAY. “I GO TO FINISH DINNER,” she announced, rescuing the sodden handkerchief from Cami’s limp fingers. “You, naughty little sidhe, do not run away again. Old Marya will come find you!”

I wish you had. “Okay, Marya. I p-promise.”

Maybe the stutter wasn’t quite gone. Or maybe her heart was just working so hard it shook the words up on their way out.

The feywoman retreated, muttering. Cami stood on nerveless legs. She counted to ten. Then counted again.

He didn’t move. His hands lay on his knees, tense and cupped.

Finally, she set out across the pale carpet. Weaving a little, unsteady, but the doctor had said she was fine, and she’d wanted to get out of there. It smelled like antiseptic and pain, it was uncomfortable, and she’d wanted to be . . .

Well, home. And wherever they sent her, she would call this house home, if only inside her head.

“Say something.” He almost spat it, still staring at the wall. His shoulders were shaking, his black T-shirt stretched tight against tense muscle.

She sank down next to him with a sigh. If he didn’t want her there, he could move.

He doesn’t look the same. Cami examined his profile, trying to figure out the difference. She dug for words, found them. “H-hi. I’m sorry.”

That earned her a single, sidelong, sharp glance. “You? What the hell do you have to be sorry about? Mithrus Christ, Cami, why didn’t you tell me? We were hunting them already. I would have gone down there with the boys, we would have washed all those stinking tunnels clean and scraped them with fire for good measure. How did you find out? Why did you try to fix it?”

Well, at least he’s talking. She smoothed her jeans against her knees. The scabs were falling off, leaving fresh pink marks. The scars would fade into white. They always did. “I didn’t know what was h-happening. To me. I thought . . . I thought I b-belonged there. Not here. I’m n-not . . . ” Saying it now didn’t seem quite so difficult. “I’m not Family, Nico.”

“The hell.” He leaned forward, inch by inch. It took a few seconds for her to realize he was curling up, defensively, and there were tear-tracks on his sharp, handsome face. “The hell you’re not. I never wanted to hurt you. I never want you scared.”

She slid her arm over his shoulder and he leaned into her. Her other arm came up, and she held him. Silent, the wracking shook him. He didn’t let a single sound out, turning to iron as she stroked his hair. The lump in her throat made talking impossible.

That’s what looks different. She finally figured it out.

The anger was gone. And without it, he was . . . this. She could almost wish him furious as usual, instead of hurt. Tor used a scowl to cover his scars; Nico used the anger to cover up the hurts on the inside.

And me? I can’t cover anything up. Which way’s worse? They’re all bad. “It’s okay,” she whispered, finally. “It’s all right.” Over and over again, as if it would help.

Her arms ached after a while, and they ended up lying crosswise over her bed, tossed like shipwreck survivors. Slowly, so slowly, he turned back into flesh instead of cold metal and stone. Her head on his chest, she listened to the thumping under his ribs and the sough of his breath.

I am. I am. I am.

Everyone’s heart, she realized, made the same sound. Except maybe the Queen’s.

Is that why she had to eat everyone else’s? A shudder slid through her, drained away. If there were other Biel’y . . .

The sunlight dimmed. Evening was rising. “Listen to me,” he whispered, finally. “Are you listening?”

She nodded, her cheek moving against his T-shirt. I am, his heart murmured. I am, hers replied.

“I went to the Unbreathing.” He stared at the ceiling. “I told them what to do. I’m the Vultusino now, and I told them if they didn’t want a war, they would give me what I needed.” His left hand came up. There was a red gleam trapped in it, and the fear was a sharp spike passing through her. Then it faded, and there was a dull red stone nestled in his palm. Smooth and lit with its own inner glow, nestling with a soft tremble like feathers against a Family hand. “Do you know what this is?”

Her breath caught in her throat. “N-Nico . . . ”

“It’s a heartstone. My heartstone, now. There’s a price—when I go into Unbreathing you’ll go too. And for the rest of our life, you’ll have to Borrow, but only from me. It’s . . . Cami . . . ”

She reached up. Her trembling fingertip touched warm stone. It pulsed, sensing living, unFamily flesh.

I am. I am.

He took a deep breath. As if she could snatch the stone away from him. Or maybe she could take away something else. Something invisible that had been there between them since the first time she’d screamed You’re mean! Or something that had built up, bit by bit, every time they shared their own private world, their country of two.

“You don’t have to take it. You’re Vultusino either way.” More words, spilling out haltingly as if he was the one who couldn’t speak. “But it’s yours. If you want it . . . Christ, Cami, I’m sorry. I’m a fuckup, I’ve always been, I know, I just—”

“Shhh.” She covered his mouth. A heartstone. A real heartstone. His breath warmed her palm. After a moment, she took her hand away. “Book.”

A long pause. Then, “Book.” The word shook. Maybe his pulse was jolting everything he wanted to say around inside him, too.

“Candle.” Clear and strong, no trace of hesitation or stutter.

“Candle,” he whispered.

“Nico.”

“Cami,” he breathed.

Night filled the window with indigo, fresh rain rolling down, tapping and fingering the walls and roof. When Marya climbed the stairs to call them to dinner, the feywoman found them sleeping like children, her black hair spread in a wave and his profile calm and relaxed. Her bare arms were striped with fading scars, the marks vanishing slowly but surely.

Their linked hands rested against the girl’s chest, Nico Vultusino curled into Cami’s side, and between their interlaced fingers came a strong pulsing that winked out as Marya stepped into the room, the heartstone finishing its slow absorption into Camille Vultusino’s flesh.

A heartstone is nothing but a heart freely given, a heart shared.

The light filled the room for a bare moment as another soul joined the Family. It was a clear glow, and it dyed the whiteness red.

Red as blood.