TWENTY-EIGHT
THE SORCERESS STOOD AND bent again to take Nothing’s hands and pull her to her feet.
Nothing’s body ached, not from injury, but as if she had a fever; her heartbeat filled her up, tingling in the tips of her fingers as the sorceress stepped near. She brought their folded hands together, clasped between their hearts.
The sorceress tilted her face down, and Nothing parted her lips with anticipation.
Then she closed her eyes as the sorceress’s lips touched hers.
The world was cold and dark, but the kiss pinned Nothing in place.
She was a butterfly embroidered on gauzy silk, bright and fluttering and alive, yet unable to move for the touch of lips to lips.
Nothing breathed in, tasting the air around the sorceress’s mouth, and the sorceress kissed more firmly, opening her mouth to taste Nothing, to lick gently against Nothing’s bottom lip.
Nothing sighed; the sorceress clutched at her hands, black nails cutting, and she pushed Nothing’s mouth open even more.
She tasted a little like blood, and Nothing wondered if she tasted like blood too, because it was smeared on her cheek, because they’d killed the sorcerer of the Third Living Mountain. Together. And Nothing had laughed.
The sorceress let go of Nothing’s hands and put hers on Nothing’s jaw, tilted her head, and kissed her harder, deliberately stroking at Nothing’s lips, at her teeth, and then her tongue.
It did not feel like the sorceress was taking anything. She gave and gave, trying to prove something to Nothing, that they’d known each other for a hundred years, that they used to be married, that their hearts were two pieces of a single heart, that the sorceress would do anything, say anything, to keep Nothing, except actually keep her.
All of it poured into Nothing, and she was holding on to the sorceress too, hands on that slender neck, pulling, tangled in fine hairs, and Nothing whimpered a little bit. There was no need to prove anything—Nothing understood love. It was hot and alive and pulsing. It was a heart. Her teeth sank into the sorceress’s lip and she let go immediately, but the sorceress kissed her back, holding her close.
They slowed, their lips and tongues slowed, their breathing slowed, and the pulse that ricocheted between them.
Nothing did not feel tired any longer. She was filled with this kiss, with goodbye and memories of fire. Tendrils of darkness lapped at her mind, trailing along her scalp, until she shivered in pleasure.
The sorceress let her go.
Nothing dragged her eyes open, swaying as if drunk.
The sorceress was whole, and beautiful.
One evergreen eye and one perfect bone-white eye stared back at her, hungry, from that pale copper face, high cheeks and thin, bowed lips. Her black-brown-lava-red hair piled in rolls and curls on her head, dripping with tiny pink and orange orchids. She had on a lavish black and dark-green dress made of silk and feathers and scales and even wisps of smoke.
“Goodbye, Nothing,” said the Sorceress Who Eats Girls.
Nothing, barefoot in a ragged pink slip, stumbled back into the waiting arms of Sky and Kirin Dark-Smile.
TWENTY-NINE
THE MOMENT THEY WERE alone, Sky leading from a few paces ahead, Kirin took Nothing’s shoulders in both hands and drew her to him.
Softly in her ear, he whispered her true name.
Then he said, “Forget your feelings for the sorceress. And then forget what I just said, including your name.”
Nothing gave the prince an annoyed little frown. “What are you doing?”
He released her. “I’m glad you’re going with us.”
“Of course I’m going with you,” she said, suddenly a little bit cold. She shrugged him away and dashed after Sky.
THIRTY
THEY LEFT THE FIFTH Mountain before the sun set, on a slender barge cradled in the gentle, lapping fingers of the Selegan River.
The sorceress had given them clothing and blankets, food, water, and the boat itself, promising the river would see them south fast. They needed only follow the right fork twice, and at the third, some week hence, disembark on the eastern bank. Beyond there, the Selegan poured over waterfalls no ship could survive. But the travelers could join up with the Way of King-Trees and walk the remaining week to the capital city. More than a month’s journey shortened by half.
Nothing found herself eager to be back home. She missed the quiet smoke ways and Whisper, and the purr of the great demon of the palace.
Esrithalan offered to visit the Court of the Moon immediately and inform the empress her son was safe and shortly to be returning, thus preventing more sorcerers or even an army from being dispatched to the Fifth Mountain in a rescue attempt. Kirin, smiling his dark smile, thanked the unicorn with an air that Nothing understood to mean the favor was more the result of the prince’s conversation with the unicorn than any loyalty to the sorceress.
That was fine: unicorns were avatars of the gods, and nobody’s familiar.
To each of the trio, the sorceress gave a gift:
For Sky she offered a sword. He tried to decline, but she smiled with all the humor of the god of ducklings and insisted. “The Selegan tossed yours into the river, I understand, and this is a magical blade, light as a feather and never in need of sharpening.”
“Light as a feather will throw off my balance,” Sky said plainly.
The sorceress smiled. “You’ll learn.”
For Kirin she had a strand of black pearls to twine with the green and white pearls he’d worn when she captured him. “Are these spelled?” he asked suspiciously.
“No,” the sorceress said. “They were a gift to the spirit of the Fifth Mountain centuries ago, birthed from freshwater oysters in a country so far east even the Selegan could not travel there and back in a year.”
He took them and wound them around his wrist and hand. Kirin inclined his head in polite thanks before allowing Sky to help him step off the small dock jutting out from a low cave mouth and onto the bobbing barge.
When Nothing stood alone on the dock, the sorceress held out a small green speckled pear.
Nothing stared at it.
“Here,” the sorceress said gently.
Lifting her gaze to the sorceress’s face, Nothing frowned. The pear clearly meant something, but Nothing didn’t understand.
Strain pinched at the edges of the sorceress’s mouth; tiny black feathers rippled along her cheekbones and back into her hairline, as if she did not quite have control of her form. These gifts, including the barge, their clothing, and the food, had been conjured in an instant, when the sorceress was exhausted. It had to be the depleted state of the heart in the mountain’s core. Nothing felt a prickle of guilt. But what could she do? She needed to go home with Kirin. Then, after he was safe, find a way to stop the sorceress from killing. “Will you be well?” Nothing asked.
The sorceress hesitated, peering at Nothing as if she could see something beyond the physical world. Then she said, “Go, so that the Selegan can return to me, to find me a new heart for my ailing mountain. Then I will be well enough.”
Nothing crossed her arms. She shivered in the mountain breeze. “You can’t take more hearts. It’s wrong. And you have no excuse that you’re looking for your demon any longer.”
The sorceress did not move except to blink. The pear gleamed in her outstretched palm. “You cannot say what I can or cannot do. What power have you over me?” The way she said it made Nothing realize the sorceress wanted Nothing to have an answer. To claim power over her.