“Once.”
“When?”
Kirin did not speak.
“Kirin Dark-Smile, tell me my name,” Nothing demanded.
He kept his mouth shut.
“See?” Nothing clenched her fists. “It is not a two-way bond. You’re my master.”
“I’m human,” he murmured. “I can’t be compelled. Nor can a sorcerer. But I will tell you,” he added, hands sliding down the obsidian bars. “If you ask me again. But she might hear it and use it. My binding is… amateur. She is a real sorcerer.”
Nothing hesitated. “You didn’t tell her, not to save your life or to save Sky’s. You bargained other things.”
Kirin shook his head. “I told her about you to save my life, and I—I helped her make the simulacrum to save Sky’s. She didn’t want your name. She never asked for it.”
“Would you have given it to her?”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to.”
The truth tucked itself between his words, and Nothing nodded.
“Nothing.”
“Kirin.”
“I love you, Nothing. You’re my best friend.”
“Do I love you back?” she whispered. “Or do I just have to?”
The prince flinched. “I’ve never wanted you to love me because I said so.”
She backed away. “You let me believe for years that I’m nothing.”
“No, I never treated you like that! I didn’t know—”
Nothing left. She ran back down the obsidian tunnel toward the heart chamber.
As she reached it, she slowed, panting. She put a hand over her heart.
“What am I going to do?” she whispered. She was so hot, but melting.
Nothing climbed a set of stairs toward the massive crystal and its trapped heart. The staircase curved over empty air: a ribbon of cut black stone.
She reached the platform. The crystal grew straight, as tall as her chest. It was smoky quartz, perfect gray-brown, and six sided, the tip a hexagonal pyramid. Nothing touched the sharp tip. She traced that finger down the smooth facet. Deep within the crystal, the heart blurred vivid crimson.
Her finger tingled, and she flattened her palm against the facet, welcoming the vibration of power. It slicked up her arm and to her own heart, pulsing into every extremity. Even her tongue tingled, then tasted like lightning and blood. Nothing carefully breathed the burned edge of the cavern air.
The heart pulsed.
Nothing gasped.
She turned and slid down the crystal to sit at its base. It was cold here, but she was warm.
This was the core of the Fifth Mountain. It should have been burning with power. Not cold, not fading. Desperation did not belong.
Anger clenched her jaw, chased by yearning.
It was the yearning that remained when she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the crystal. She’d believed in being Nothing. The prince’s nothing. She’d been content, at least, to exist in his shadows, small and unimportant to the world but intrinsic to him. Nothing would have lived in the palace forever, helping him with her information gathering, a support at his side. Knowing him.
But had she ever even wanted anything for herself?
She couldn’t remember a time she’d wanted at all. Not adventure, not a title, not love or family.
“Nothing.”
The sorceress.
Nothing opened her eyes.
The Sorceress Who Eats Girls waited on the floor of the cavern, far enough down Nothing would break her neck if she fell. Even in the dim, even from the distance, she could see the dark-green eye and the bone-white eye staring up at her.
“I found him,” she said.
“I know. It isn’t the only thing you found.” The sorceress made no move to climb the stairs. She wore a simple black sleeveless robe that fell past her knees and close-fitting black trousers. That was all, but for the bloodred gem that hung at the hollow of her throat. Her hair was still elaborately knotted and braided, wound like tentacles. But no paint darkened her lips or her eyes. She was almost—almost—normal. Beautifully so, at least, with her round cheeks and long nose and wide, black lashes.
The sorceress folded her hands together before her.
Nothing said, “Spring’s heart is dying.”
“When you’re here, I feel stronger.”
“Because I was your demon. I was the great demon of the Fifth Mountain.”
The sorceress nodded. “I know it.” She touched her chest below the red stone. “Here.”
“You don’t know me. You can’t love me.”
“My heart is broken, but you can repair it.”
“What spell did you do?” Nothing stood up. “To make life for your demon?”
“I used my own heart, of course.”
Nothing gasped, hands flying to her chest. She laced them over the hidden flower-brand.
The sorceress said, “With my heart, my demon had to live. No sorcerer that I know of, in all the stories and lore, in all the books, has done what I did. I split my heart, one half to keep, one half to my demon. Mine struggles to beat, to keep all this”—the sorceress spread her arms—“alive with power. I need help. Other hearts to bolster mine. Until I find the missing half of my heart.”
Nothing’s pulse shuddered but remained strong. She slid her hands away, let them fall to her sides. How strange, how thrilling, to be told your heart is half of someone else’s. A gift from a woman who loved you once. But Nothing felt whole. She said, “I’ve never had a broken heart.”
“It isn’t meant to seem broken.” The sorceress smiled tenderly. “Neither is mine. We’re meant to be together. Beating in rhythm.”
That was so close to what Kirin had said! Nothing closed her eyes. “I don’t love you.”
“I don’t love you, either.”
Something akin to offense shocked Nothing into looking again. She stared down at the sorceress.
“Yet,” the sorceress said. Then, “Will you marry me?”
“Are you joking? After…” Nothing scoffed and turned to flatten her hands on the heart-crystal.
“Stay, and I won’t have to hunt another maiden’s heart. Stay with me.”
“Why didn’t you ask for my name? He’d have given it to you, for Sky. Then you could make me stay.”
“I don’t want to be your master,” the sorceress called, sounding almost angry. “I want to be your wife.”
Nothing parted her lips, as if she could taste the edge of the sorceress’s words, the slice of them as they sank into her heart after all. She liked the feeling. She liked the sorceress’s plain seduction. But Nothing didn’t know what she wanted. She never had known. It was the only question that mattered.
She said, “I am going to stay with you for three days. You’ll show me everything. Magic. Power. The secrets of the Fifth Mountain. And then I will take Kirin Dark-Smile and The Day the Sky Opened and return them to the empress. You won’t stop us from leaving. That is all I have to offer; otherwise steal my name and compel me.”
“I accept your bargain,” the sorceress said instantly.
TWENTY-ONE
SHE LEFT KIRIN IN the cell.