Without doubt, it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever worn, and Nothing could not even see her full reflection in any of the small mirrors. It shifted against her with whispers like a winter breeze, slipping along her slender body, hiding her lack of curves in a way that made Nothing want to touch her hips, her belly, her breasts to make certain they were there. Instead, she touched her tongue to the back of her teeth, wondering if that was the point. She was being dressed for temptation. For the sorceress.
Maybe she could trade her heart for Kirin.
Insistent Tide pressed her down onto the stool before the table with all the makeup, and the old woman began to fuss with her hair. Nothing stared in the spotty mirror. The collar of the gown rose to her neck, pulling straight along her shoulders to fall down her back, and her throat was a touch too dark or not dark enough to contrast perfectly with the pale silk. Nothing shivered at the touch of Insistent Tide’s hands in her hair. She clenched her jaw against the urge to tear free: only Kirin had touched her hair in years. Ever.
It didn’t take long for Insistent Tide to realize Nothing’s hair was too many layers to braid without wisps or choppy pieces falling free, and too fine to take pins or combs well. With a disgusted scoff, Insistent Tide pinned only a little back from her temples and clipped in a vine of sweet-smelling white flowers with light-orange centers. They were real, Nothing discovered when she touched their petals.
Insistent Tide picked up a pot of moon-white powder, but Nothing said, “No.”
“No?”
“I can do my own.”
The old woman frowned her obvious disbelief but backed away with her hands up. She hobbled over to the chair in which she’d slept when Nothing entered and collapsed back into it. Her dark eyes held on to Nothing, already judgmental.
If this was what it meant to have a grandmother, Nothing thought with a scowl, perhaps she was better off.
Nothing looked at herself in the small oval mirror. She was pretty, but not as pretty as the dress itself. Lightening her skin with the powder would be a better contrast with her hair, and vivid blue on her lips would pull at the dress. That is what a lady of the empress’s court would do.
Taking quick inventory of the available pots of color, the brushes and palettes, Nothing had an idea that made her smile.
She used her fingers and a single dark-blue pencil, slapping green and red in thick streaks against her cheeks and forehead, around her lips, giving herself the appearance of a monster. A goblin with green cheeks and swirling red eyes, a red mouth, and horns pulling away from her brow into her hair. The pencil she used to color her lips a blue darker than the dress. When she finished, it was as if a demon, not a girl, had dressed up in a diaphanous blue dress and put on twilight-blue lips, to have dinner with a sorceress.
Nothing grinned, showing herself her little white teeth, top and bottom rows, and her brown eyes glittered against the makeup, almost red.
Insistent Tide snored in the corner.
“I’m finished,” she declared, standing. The long gown swept around her legs, and Nothing remembered she wore no shoes. She’d keep it that way!
“By the Queens of Heaven!” The old woman groaned. “You’re a disaster.”
“I’m a demon, and you’ll take me to my dinner.”
Insistent Tide cocked her head and peered closely at Nothing, then laughed in a way that was almost a snarl.
It seemed to Nothing that she approved.
Warmth spread in Nothing’s chest, and she let her grimace fade into a smile.
FIFTEEN
THE DINING ROOM WITHIN the Fifth Mountain was a massive amethyst geode, glittering from every angle with facets of livid purple. The bottom had been covered with a crystal floor, translucent and laid against the spearing amethysts to give the illusion of walking across their sharp heads. The table was low, surrounded by gold-thread kneeling cushions.
Nothing entered alone, having been nudged inside by Insistent Tide before the old woman shut the door and it vanished into the crystal.
Immediately, Nothing lost track of the seams and was trapped.
She sighed and looked around.
Each slice of the geode sphere was as lovely and dangerous and purple as the next, like being imprisoned inside some kind of violet star.
Nothing loved it. Just as she’d loved the meadow of flowers and hard black ripples of ancient lava married together in the valley below the mountain.
At the wooden table, Nothing knelt, sniffing at the smell of pine resin and the rich, fatty aroma of whatever broth steamed from the bowls already set. A flask of wine waited too, beside two cut-glass cups in the shape of fish.
“Hello,” the sorceress said.
Nothing spun to face her, mouth open in surprise.
For a moment the sorceress’s mouth dropped open in similar surprise.
Before Nothing could think of why she’d surprised a sorceress, she was captivated by her: a young woman with the appearance of a twenty-year-old: smooth, light-copper skin; black-brown-red-streaked hair pulling straight back from her face to pour down her back like a velvet veil; a gown of sunset pink and crimson, edged in delicate sea green. And her eyes. Oh, her eyes were inhuman. One the brilliant green of summer leaves, the other bone white, and both with vertical red-slit pupils. A monster’s eyes in a perfect face.
Her mouth was unpainted, soft-looking lips ever so slightly darker copper than her round cheeks and elegant jaw. The sorceress smiled to reveal jagged, triangle teeth crowding her mouth.
Nothing gasped. Just like this geode, just like the lava-and-flowers valley, the sorceress was more beautiful because of the threat.
“I thought you were Nothing, but you know otherwise,” the sorceress said, studying Nothing’s face.
“I am Nothing,” Nothing replied in a whisper. She swallowed and said in a stronger voice, “Where is Kirin Dark-Smile?”
The sorceress glided toward one end of the oval table and knelt. Her skirts billowed around her like a pool of blood. “Join me?” When she gestured, the flask of wine rose from the table and poured thin red wine into both fish glasses. As if an invisible hand served them.
“Is that the great demon of the Fifth Mountain?” Nothing asked, unmoving.
“No.”
“Where is it?”
“At home,” the sorceress said with a secretive smile. Her unmatched eyes flicked to Nothing and her shark-tooth smile widened.
Nothing’s stomach fluttered nervously, and she knelt on the firm golden pillow at her end of the table. Out of reach of the sorceress. She took the cup of wine. The glass was cool, its scales pressing sharply into Nothing’s fingers. She drank, a little too much.
The sorceress laughed prettily. Those eyes stared at Nothing, and her lips parted with hunger.
Fear thrilled in Nothing and she cast the cup away with a little cry. The wine arced against the crystal floor; the glass cracked in two perfect pieces. One drop of red splashed the sea-green hem of the sorceress’s gown. Nothing stared at it, panting. “Was it so easy?” she cried. “To take my heart?”
“I don’t take hearts.”
Nothing bared her teeth, suddenly remembering the demon’s face she’d painted upon herself.
The sorceress leaned forward. “I accept hearts.”
“What does that mean?” Nothing put both her hands flat over her chest, but she could not feel her racing pulse through dress and skin and bone.