Nothing returned to her chamber with the red-and-pink door, needing to be alone in the only space that felt almost like hers. Insistent Tide waited. She clucked her tongue as she helped Nothing out of the thin robe and slip, into wool pajamas. It wasn’t cold enough to need them, but Nothing found their comfort perfect as she curled in the nest. Insistent Tide blew a gentle breath up at the bat-bone chandelier, and the candles snuffed. “Good night,” the old woman said.
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.”