“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.