“You take advantage.”
The sorceress shrugged. “Sometimes, maybe.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it?”
Nothing opened her mouth, but she didn’t know what to say.
The sorceress reached out and put a finger against Nothing’s chest. “Why does it bother you?”
Nothing shook her head. She knew the answer but didn’t want to say it.
“Why?”
“Because it’s supposed to.”
The sorceress’s brows lifted in perfect black arcs.
Nothing crossed her arms stubbornly. “It’s wrong to hurt other people.”
“You helped me kill Skybreaker.”
“He attacked you. I was protecting you, and the mountain, and—and Kirin.”
“So sometimes hurting another is acceptable.”
“Not for selfishness.”
“Was it not selfish to save me? You protect Kirin because you care about him. I take hearts to keep myself alive—to save me. And to find my demon, the other half of my heart. Is that a less noble cause?”
“They didn’t do anything to deserve it. He did.”
“Oh, they were innocent, you mean. Nobody is innocent, tender heart.”
Nothing frowned. “If they were, would you care?”
“Not if it meant finding you again. I would destroy a thousand hearts to find you, again and again.”
At that, it was difficult for Nothing to breathe.
She was excited by the sorceress’s passion—and maybe a little bit afraid. But she wanted more.
The sorceress’s bare cheek flushed, and the wing upon her other cheek flashed with speckles of gold. Her eyes bored into Nothing. She said, “I fell in love with a great demon. Why do you expect me to care for the innocent, the noble, the good? There is no such thing: the world is made of shadows and luck, not good or evil, night and day. Humans pretend. They seek contrast and rules. But the forest knows. The mountains know. The sky knows. Those hearts transformed; they became what they were meant to be. They brought a mountain to life.”
Nothing leaned away, her breath heaving. “No,” she whispered. “Good exists. Evil exists. Maybe—maybe they aren’t opposite, not like day and night, but they’re real. Good and evil are both shadows.”
The sorceress smiled hungrily. “I like that. We’re both shadows, too.”
“The Fifth Mountain should not consume human hearts. I don’t want that. It’s wrong.”
“But you do want it. You keep coming back to me.”
Nothing thrust herself away, shaking her head, dizzy. “I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I am—”
And suddenly she opened her eyes to sunlight and Sky’s worried face. “Nothing,” he said, his hand on her jaw, pressing to wake her. “Nothing.”
“I’m—” she tried to say around his strong hand.
He let go. “Your eyes were open, but you weren’t… aware. And for a…”
Nothing shut her eyes, listening to the echo of the sorceress’s voice. You keep coming back to me.
“You had scales,” Sky said. “Silver-green scales on the left side of your face.”
Her eyes flew open. She stood up, ran to the rail and lifted the pear. Her pulse throbbed in her skull and she was dizzy.
But she did not throw it away. Her arm slowly fell, and her heaving shoulders drooped. She could not do it. Instead, Nothing tucked the pear back into her pocket.
THIRTY-THREE
NOTHING TOLD KIRIN AND Sky about the pear.
The prince was surprisingly quiet on the subject. He merely said, “A better gift than you’d imagined, then,” and started cooking breakfast. Sky, though, studied Nothing with concern.
“What are you doing?” he asked quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“With the sorceress. Is she not your enemy?”
Nothing hugged herself. She didn’t know. She felt weird, unbalanced when she thought of the sorceress. Like she just couldn’t quite grasp something—but she knew what the shape of it was.
“She is the Sorceress Who Eats Girls. She kidnapped the Heir to the Moon.” Sky’s voice remained calm, but Nothing heard an urgency hidden within it.
“I know what she is.”
Sky was silent. He stared at her, unblinking, hard.
Nothing tightened her hold on herself. “I do,” she said weakly.
“Be careful.”
“I’m careful.”
“Nothing.” Sky put his hands on his hips, eyes narrowing as he continued to peer at her. “I do not want you to be hurt. You are a—friend. But Kirin was hurt by her. The empire was. You can’t be on her side.”
“Her side,” Nothing repeated. Something was uncoiling inside her. Night and day, her side, their side.
Sky nodded.
“What do you want, when we are home? Will you be with us? We would like that.”
Nothing caught her breath. She held it, tucking her lips into her mouth to make them disappear. She stared at the line of his collarbone and her vision blurred. Not with tears, but with shadows. She remembered wanting. She remembered wanting to know the sorceress, wanting to be hot magic—but she didn’t seem to want that anymore. Why?
Sky stepped closer to her. He said, so quietly it was more vibration than words, “You should decide, or Kirin will do what he wants instead.”
“What should I do?” Nothing asked before she could stop herself, jerking her chin up to stare back at him. She struggled with her breathing, because her heart threatened to tighten her veins, to make her chest ache in panic. Why did it scare her to think about wanting something? Why was she afraid of what she might choose?
Sky was good. He would tell her the good choice.
“You have to choose what to be.” Sky stopped, clenched his jaw, looking incredibly displeased with himself.
Nothing released a shaky sigh.
He said, “Do you want to be Nothing, as if there has been no change between you and Kirin, between you and the world? Or do you to be a hero who rescued the prince from a sorceress and earned a new name? It will be honored. Or…” Sky stopped.
Nothing continued. “Or do I want to tell everyone where I come from? Do I want to be a reborn demon, first of my kind?” Shaking off his hand, she stepped the final pace between them. She was so close she could feel the chill of his demon-kissed blood. She had to tilt her chin awkwardly to meet his dark eyes. In the sunlight, they did not gleam demon-blue. “Do you think it’s still inside me, Sky? The great demon of the Fifth Mountain? Is it possible? Can I be something so large?”
Sky cupped her face. Holding her gaze without hesitation, he said, “After this summer I can believe anything of you.”
“If I was a demon, can I be a girl at all?” None of the options felt right to her. Something was missing. Another choice. Nothing, a new hero’s name, or her past. Something neither night nor day, neither her side nor theirs. Her own and between it all. A new name, a shadow name, for the person she could become. A name to make her future.
Kirin appeared beside them. He curled his long fingers around Sky’s wrist and pulled that hand away from Nothing’s cheek. “I wouldn’t complain so much as you if I learned my heart had belonged to a demon once.”