The absurdity made Nothing laugh.
Sky put the hand Kirin grasped onto Kirin’s face so that the bodyguard held them both. He said, “You’re both demons, and I don’t know if I can keep you both safe.”
“Good thing then that your job is only to keep me safe,” Kirin said with a vicious smile.
Nothing jabbed her fingers into his ribs.
“Oof,” he said, and bared his teeth at her. “Do you believe you’re a demon?” Kirin asked. “You seemed to believe it, when we were at the mountain.”
“I did, when we were at the mountain. All the evidence…” She shook her head. “I’ve always heard the aether, and you compelled me as a child with my name. I could do magic in the mountain, and the flower carved into the mountain is just like my brand. The sorceress would know, wouldn’t she? How can I not believe it?”
“But do you feel it?” Kirin asked lightly. “A heart has many petals. Maybe there is more than one choice. Maybe you are more than one thing.”
Nothing frowned.
Sky’s hand on her cheek was cool, and she lowered her chin, letting his fingers slide into her hair a little bit. She said, “When I was there, I think I did feel it, but since we left… I’m not sure. Sometimes I feel like my heart is a volcano. But maybe that’s what hearts are supposed to feel like.”
Kirin pushed away from both of them. He went to the iron stove and knelt to stir sugar into the boiling grains. He said, “Neither of you has ever asked me how I know I’m not… a man.”
Nothing glanced quickly at Sky, who shook his head at her and went to join Kirin, steps slow with trepidation. “How do you know?” Sky asked.
“I just know,” Kirin said, hot and immediate. He nailed Nothing with a glare. “What do you know? You decide what you are. You.”
“Why don’t you tell everyone you’re a girl, then?” Nothing cried. “If you’re going to act like it’s easy, then really act like it.”
“Because sometimes I’m not a girl,” he said. “Sometimes I am a man. Sometimes I’m both, or neither. I’m something different, in between. There are plenty of mes. Only my body doesn’t change. Sometimes I wish it could. Like the sorceress. I wish I could melt between, because I hate that what I am doesn’t always fit with what people see. Sometimes that makes me feel… distorted. And then some other times I’m perfectly happy with… me. And I love what I am.”
Sky looked away. His cheeks had darkened. He ran his hands back through his hair.
Nothing understood what Kirin had said. On some fundamental level, she understood. She thought about it, about knowing, and realized that she couldn’t trust anything inside herself, any feelings she had or didn’t, any understanding of who she was. Not when she didn’t even know her name and how she felt about it.
She opened her mouth to ask again, to make him tell her. But she stopped. Sky had reached to tentatively put his fingers against Kirin’s jaw and held the prince’s gaze as if trying to communicate when he couldn’t speak in front of witnesses. Kirin’s lips trembled. He was afraid. Her glorious, ambitious prince was afraid of how Sky might react to his confession. He was eager; he was determined. He was so many things, all at once.
A Heart Has Many Petals.
The name uncoiled.
Her name. Kirin’s name for her. How many times had he said it since they’d left the mountain and she’d not noticed? He’d been telling her for days.
Nothing pushed the heel of her thumb into her chest as the world tilted.
But it wasn’t enough. The name was a key, but she had to blast open the door. Nothing had to free herself.
She needed a new name that was all her own. Not what she had been, or was now, or given to her by an accidental sorcerer who was also a prince.
The sorceress had said to her, This is how magic works: you find it yourself.
And, Names can change. That is a magic we all share.
Whirling, Nothing went to the prow of the barge and gripped the rail. She closed her eyes, ignoring Kirin and Sky as they called after her, ignoring the spray of water, ignoring the brilliant crystal sunlight.
The shadows inside her were growing, warming tendrils of darkness reaching, licking, and eager. So very eager.
She thought of what she longed for.
And Nothing gave herself a new name.
THIRTY-FOUR
IN THE DEEPEST CAVERN of the Fifth Mountain, a heart pulsed hard in the prison of smoky quartz, and then the crystal cracked.
The sound echoed sharply throughout the obsidian corridors, skittering along granite floors and pooling around stalactites. The Sorceress Who Eats Girls felt it before she heard it, rather like a flicker of lightning before thunder.
Her own heart had fluttered before, with weakness and skipping, and she thought at first it was only the same such. She paused her reading and slipped the quill between the pages to mark her place before pressing her palm over her chest.
Then the echo reached her library, reverberating through the very stone of the mountain so low, so final, that the sorceress gasped.
She lost control, and sharp feathers sprouted up her cheekbones and down her spine, and her shoulder blades ached with the powerful press of wings. Her finger bones curled and started to crack, but the sorceress breathed again and forced her body to her will.
Standing, she walked at a measured pace, full of dread, through the library hearth and into the heart chamber.
The eerie glow of the mountain had faded quite a lot, but she did not have the energy to spare for a crown of bat-bone light or aether-torch. The sorceress took one of the far spiraling staircases and made her way over an arch and then beneath a perpendicular stair, to the plinth in the center of the cavern.
The smoky quartz had blackened and cracked nearly in half.
That old last heart she’d bargained for sat in a gruesome puddle, congealed and stringy. Dead.
The Sorceress Who Eats Girls did not touch it. She stared, allowing herself a moment to grieve. Not for the girl, or the heart, but for herself. This ending had come faster than she’d expected, and now her choices were two: go find another girl, another heart, and betray her half promise to Nothing, or hold the power of the Fifth Mountain a day, a week, a month if she could, hoping Nothing returned quickly, and in time, before the sorceress was as much a puddle of congealed magic as that dead heart.
She flinched as the heart shuddered, then berated herself for the weakness. To prove she was unaffected, the sorceress grasped the remains of the heart in her hand. It was cold and sticky, only so much spoiled meat.
Lifting it out of its shattered crystal cradle, the sorceress squeezed until globs smeared between her fingers and slithered over her knuckles before plopping to the platform at her feet. One tiny chunk hit the toe of her silk slipper.
The sorceress cast it away with a cry. She flung up her hands and leapt from the platform. Wings unfurled, and she bowed them in wide arcs to slow her descent. She landed on the floor of the cavern in a gentle crouch, black talons gouging the stone.
She strode out, angry enough to go the long way, especially as she should not expend more unnecessary magic traveling through the shadow-ways of the mountain.
She missed the cruel laugh of her demon when she was upset. How it would be amused at her now, judging her for letting it come to this. How can you despise me for loving you? she’d demanded once, and it had answered, Judge me for my weaknesses too, and give me a life of my own to ruin at your side. That is what I want, more than I want to devour the whole world. If that is not love, what is?