Every After

by MindfulWrath

Summary:

If it always starts the same way, how could the ending ever change?

Notes:

Trust me.

Chapter 1: Beauty

Once upon a time in a far-off land, there was a duchy with no duke. The people who lived there were simple folk; kind when they could be, polite when they couldn’t, and occasionally, when all else failed, as cruel and as wild as the teeth of a wolf. Once, they had looked forward to the favor of powerful men, for their Duke was next in line for the throne and the King was old and ailing—and if the King outlived the Duke, then the Duke had a son, the King’s nephew, who could not have failed to outlive his uncle and would certainly have showered his old home with riches beyond imagining when he ascended to the throne.

So they convinced themselves. There was no reason not to tell such fairy-tales, and no one left to refute them. Though the sun shone and the crops grew, a fog hung over the duchy without a duke. Though no armies marched through and no bandits haunted the roads, the air was tainted with the taste of fear.

For the duchy without a duke was home to a dark wood, and in that dark wood, there was an old castle, long empty of its masters and all their servants, but not truly empty—no, not truly empty at all. For, as everyone knew, something terrible lived in the old castle now.

For a given definition of “lived.”

---

The bell above the door jingled. The old shopkeeper’s greeting was equally cheery.

“Roxas, dear boy!” His voice was rusty, but not with disuse. “Back again so soon?”

Roxas smiled. “Can’t keep me away.”

The old shopkeeper came out from behind his counter, rubbing his gnarled hands together. “How was that last one, the one with the pirates? Good? Good. Come, come, let me show you my new favorite.”

Roxas followed right on the old shopkeeper’s heels as he pulled out a brand-new book, thicker than Roxas’ thumb, bound in blue suede.

“Here we are. It’s really something special, this one. A poor, lonely girl—”

“Yes?”

“—a terrible stepmother—”

“Yes?”

“—a fated encounter, and—!”

“Don’t spoil the ending!” Roxas cried, clapping his hands over the book as though it was the one speaking. The old shopkeeper’s face creased with a well-worn smile.

“Right you are. You’ll take it, then?”

“I’ll take it, I’ll take it.”

The old shopkeeper patted the back of Roxas’ hand and led him back to the counter. “Anything else, while you’re here?”

Roxas cast about. He caught sight of a familiar name on a slender volume and pointed. “That one. The alchemical one.”

“Right you are.”

The alchemical volume was twice the price of the novel, but Roxas paid without flinching.

“It’s an expensive habit you have, young man,” the old shopkeeper remarked, “keeping that sister of yours in books.”

A winch in Roxas’ heart wound up a little tighter. He swallowed it down, faked a smile. The old shopkeeper was too busy wrapping the books in paper to notice the charade.

“I have to keep her busy somehow,” he said.

“Mm. Better to keep her busy with something else.” He turned a keen, disapproving eye on Roxas. “She’ll never find a good husband with all that inventing business, you know.”

“So I’ve heard. Thank you, sir. Good morning.”

Roxas took the books and scurried out, resisting the urge to clutch them to his chest. He tucked them in the bottom of his basket instead, where the fruits of all his other errands would hide them.

Though it was barely an hour past dawn, the village was already bustling. Farmers’ wives hawked their produce; carts trundled to and fro; shopkeepers chased stray dogs, chickens, and children away from their doorsteps. Where Roxas was noticed, he was tipped a friendly smile or a good-morning, but for the most part, he wasn’t noticed.

After the bookshop—which, as far as Roxas knew, was in business solely because of his patronage—it was on to the baker, the cheesemonger, the butcher. The cobbler was having a late morning, apparently, so Roxas sat himself down on the edge of the fountain in the square and glanced around carefully. The square was, at the moment, mainly filled with sheep. Doubtless, someone would be along to collect them shortly, but until then….

Roxas dipped his hand into the basket. Dismay clenched tight around his heart when he felt stickiness on the paper. He pulled the novel out and found the wrapping stained with blood. Evidently the butcher had done a worse job of bundling her wares than the old shopkeeper.

Hurriedly, Roxas unwrapped the book. Only a little of the blood had seeped through, staining the suede binding dark and the edges of a few pages rust-red. He wetted his sleeve in the fountain and tried to blot off as much as he could, but it was a lost battle already.

Still, while he had it open….

The frontispiece was illustrated with a lavish woodcut, a massive ballroom blazing with light and filled with the most elegant people—ball gowns and diamonds, doublets and capes. A great crystal chandelier floated above, and beneath it, in the center of the crowd, the two most beautiful of all, doubtless a prince and a princess. She was dainty and elegant; he was graceful and strong. The dancers twirled in the eye of Roxas’ mind, light-footed to haunting strains of music half-heard. Her hair was golden, like his, but done up in elegant style, and her gloved hands were small and light—unlike his—and he could almost see the expression on the Prince’s face, the softest smile, the eyes filled with startled admiration. He would be terribly handsome, and his grip would be so firm but so careful, and he would dance like wind on the water, and….

And Roxas didn’t even know his name!

He could wait no longer. He flipped to the first page and bent close.

Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away, there lived—

A hand closed on the book and swiped it out of Roxas’ grasp.

“Hey!” he cried. He grabbed for the book.

Saïx shoved him back casually. He lifted the book high out of Roxas’ reach, pretending to peruse its pages.

“More fairy-tale drivel?” he said, dry as ever.

“Give it back,” Roxas said. He didn’t grab for the book again. He was all-too-keenly aware of the flush in his cheeks, the blurriness in his eyes, the dryness in his mouth that meant he’d been sitting there with his mouth just-a-little-bit open.

Saïx barely spared him a glance. “But these books are for children and women.”

“It’s for my sister,” Roxas lied. “Give it back.”

“For your sister? Then why were you reading it? Men don’t read books like this, Roxas.”

A group of gawkers had turned up at some point, dawdling on the corner and tittering to each other at every word Saïx said—but especially those last ones. Roxas, a month past his sixteenth birthday, was for all intents and purposes ‘a man’ now. But he was still a very young man, gawky and disinclined to physicality, unlike most of his peers.

And much unlike Saïx, who was head and shoulders taller and, though slender, had a sailor’s strength.

“Give. It. Back,” Roxas said through his teeth and the heat rising to his cheeks. “Or you’re a thief.”

Saïx scowled. “Don’t get hysterical, it’s only a book. Have your fairy-tale.”

And he tossed the book over his shoulder without a care in the world.

Roxas lunged for it. Saïx stuck out a foot.

The book and Roxas both face-planted in the mud that had, very recently, been fertilized by a large flock of sheep.

The gawkers laughed and quickly stifled themselves. Roxas’ face burned so hot it was a wonder the mud didn’t sizzle. Tears pricked his eyes and he hated them.

“And let your sister out of the house more often,” Saïx added. “She needs a good husband to make her a good woman. It’s indecent for her to spend all her time locked up with you.”

A sputter of gasps from the onlookers. Saïx walked away, haughty as a peacock. Roxas pulled himself up out of the mud on shaking arms. He kept his eyes and head down. He picked up the book carefully, though the pages were crumpled like a wounded bird’s wings. Through the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears, he could make out the lively whispers of the onlookers. He wiped as much of the mud off the book as he could, but it was a lost battle already.

It might be possible to get the book itself legible again, but the woodcut illustration was ruined. Now the ballroom was dark, the woman filthy, the prince a matted brute. Roxas stuffed the book back in his basket, too furious and wounded to even look at it anymore.

In fact, he couldn’t face anyone, so he hunched his shoulders and ran away back home.

---

The cellar door came to behind Roxas with a comforting weight, shutting out the bustle and the judging glances of the village. Roxas leaned against the door and shut his eyes. Slowly, he slid down to sit on the top step of the cellar stairs. He let out a long breath.

Something exploded.

Roxas threw himself over his basket to protect its contents. Hot shrapnel popcorned against his back. The first explosion was followed by a second, although this latter one consisted mainly of swearing.

“Damn! Blast! You son of a whore, I’ll maul you!!”

Roxas uncurled from around the basket and peered into the cellar, which was now fogged with smoke. Xion stood over the blasted ruins of some contraption, soot-stained and furious but apparently unharmed.

Though Roxas and his sister were barely a year apart in age, in appearance they were day and night. Where Roxas’ hair was gold and coarse as wheat, Xion’s was black and fine as ink; where Roxas was gawky, Xion was slender; and where he was mild as milk, she was a spitfire.

“Cuckold!” she snarled, kicking at the ruined machine. “Inbred louse! Useless dog-fu—”

“Are you all right?” Roxas cut in. Sometimes he wondered where Xion had learned such words.

“How could I be all right?” Xion retorted. She dropped to the floor in a sudden agony of despair. “I’m washed-up. Useless. A total fraud.”

Roxas sidled down the stairs, wary of another explosion. Xion buried her face in her hands and refused to dig it back up, even when Roxas sat down on the floor next to her.

“You’ll figure it out,” he assured her.

“I’m just a stupid girl,” she said thickly. “Why bother starting when I don’t have the brains to finish it?”

Roxas did know where she’d learned those words. It was part of the reason she rarely left the house anymore.

He pulled out the other book, the alchemical volume, and handed it to her. There was only a little bit of blood on the wrapping.

“Here,” he said. “I got this for you.”

Xion cracked her fingers open. One bloodshot eye peered out suspiciously. Roxas unwrapped the book, wiped off the stickiness on one of his few remaining clean patches of clothing, and offered it to her again.

“It’s a new one,” he said. “From—”

“Sir Ansem Sapienti! ” Xion gasped, snatching it from his hands. She had it open and her nose buried in it quick as blinking. “On The Principles of Fosforeſenſe and the ſecret Light of All Living Things—oh, Roxas!”

She clutched the book to her chest and threw her other arm around him, overwhelmed with joy. Roxas flinched, more to put the less-muddy side of him towards her than because the affection was unwelcome. Xion didn’t notice, or at least didn’t care.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! I can’t wait to read it!”

“Sorry it wasn’t something more helpful,” he said.

Xion pulled back, frowning. “Helpful?”

“For—” He gestured to the broken machine.

“Oh, who cares about that old thing,” Xion said. “It’s just an automaton. Phosphorescence, now that’s something worth pursuing. I wonder what it is?”

She had the true inventor’s temperament.

“Maybe you could wait until after lunch to find out?” Roxas suggested.

“I can read and eat,” Xion said. Her face was already back in the book. “Listen to this: All life, or living matter, or once-living matter, even in a state of advanced decay, if distilled to the greatest extent, produces a quantity of light sufficient to be seen by the naked eye, an essence of what the great Greek philosophers called ‘phos’, or the Divine Light, which property I here deem ‘phosphorescence,’ and whose causes and principles I shall herein explicate. What’s that smell?”

“Does it say that?”

Xion punched him in the arm and got her question answered for her. She blinked at Roxas like she hadn’t seen him before that moment.

“Roxas, what happened?”

His cheeks reddened. Shame burned with an oily black smoke in his chest. He looked away and shrugged.

“Tripped.”

“Into what? Never mind. Why don’t you go get cleaned up? I’m all right.”

Sometimes Xion’s mercurial attitudes were a blessing. Roxas took the basket upstairs with him and, after securing its perishable contents in the larder, peeled off his ruined clothes and took a quick, frigidly cold bath. His father—more than a year dead, rest his soul—used to say that such things built fortitude. His mother—already resting in peace ten times as long—used to say that was poppycock, and all it built was sniffling noses.

Their parents had left enough behind for Roxas and Xion to get by for the time being, but their stores were running out. Roxas had landed a tenuous apprenticeship with the local tailor; it was his responsibility, as the older sibling and the man of the house, to provide for them both. Additional windfalls came sporadically when Xion, with Roxas as her intermediary, managed to sell one of her contraptions that accidentally ended up useful (they were never useful for their intended purposes). Still, the two of them wouldn’t be able to survive even a single stroke of misfortune, not unless something changed drastically.

Once cleaned and dressed, Roxas set about trying to launder his muddied clothes. He wasn’t worried about leaving Xion alone in the cellar, nor about bringing her a late lunch. She would read her new book until she got distracted, at which point she might remember to eat all three of the day’s meals at once, and then (if she was on a roll) remember to sleep, and sometime tomorrow or the day after she’d be back at the automaton again with renewed vigor because it was never that easy to pull her off of something, even when it failed catastrophically. The real death-knell was boredom. If she got bored with the automaton, there would be no recovery, and it would be left to rust.

Roxas managed to get most of the mud and some of the smell out of his clothes, and hung them up to dry behind the house. All was quiet from the cellar, which meant Xion was probably thoroughly engrossed in her book. Roxas stopped to feel the sun on his skin, the wind playing in his hair as it played through the dark boughs of the wood at the edge of the village. The path leading out was wild and overgrown.

Truth be told, the whole village was in much the same predicament as Roxas and Xion. With no Duke, the duchy was being carved up and distributed—a process that had been ongoing since well before Roxas’ birth, and which might last until well after his death. The problem was that no one wanted cursed land, and while it was politically foolish to admit to the existence of a curse, everyone knew.

Hence why no ambitious lordling had moved into the Duke’s castle after the untimely demise of the entire lineage, and why the duchy was being carved up, and why, even when all the borders were settled, this village, nearest to the old castle, would likely be left to rot just the same as its masters. While the fates remained fair, it was an attractive enough plot of land; fertile, easily defended, well stocked with commerce and game. But when a hard year came, when the crops failed and the game moved on and the people grew thin and poor, no one would step in to help them. The land was cursed, and so any ill that befell it was surely deserved.

For it to survive even a single stroke of misfortune, something, somehow, would have to change drastically.

---

Roxas woke at midnight to a terrible crash.

He sat bolt-upright in his bed, groped at the curtains until moonlight spilled into the room. Xion’s bed was empty, as he’d come to expect. A series of smaller crashes sounded outside, moving away. Roxas fumbled to light the candle on his nightstand, slid on his too-small slippers, and crept out into the house.

From long experience, he knew to check the cellar first. He found the doors thrown open, admitting the chilly night. His heart leapt into his throat and stuck there.

Both Xion and the automaton were gone.

Roxas scurried back upstairs, grabbed a heavy cloak, transferred the flame from his candle into a lantern, and ran out in his slippers.

From the cellar door, a path of ruin led out. Massive metal feet had stamped unmistakable pools into the soft earth, each holding a mirror-image of the icy moon. In the lantern-light, Roxas could just make out a smaller set of footprints darting along beside.

Both sets cut a staggering path into the dark, wild woods.

With a breathless curse, Roxas followed them.

---

It was a wild night, and the wood seethed. It was one thing to speak of cursed places; quite another to forge into one with nothing but a glass lantern and a woolen cloak.

In slippers, no less.

But the automaton had come this way, smashing through brambles and branches alike, and Xion must have come behind it, though they were miles from the village by now, and must have gotten well ahead of Roxas, to judge by the rims of ice forming on all the automaton’s footprints. Even with such a clear trail to follow, Roxas had nearly gotten lost twice already, and the night was only growing darker. These woods were no place for mortals. They belonged to tooth and thorn, to blood and snow, more ancient than the night and hungrier than winter.

A glimmer of orange light gave Roxas renewed strength, and through the steam of his breath he crashed out of the black undergrowth and into a wrought-iron gate.

Behind it, a castle.

The castle.

Its turrets scraped the sky with broken fingernails; its windows wore the fog of corpse-eyes; its gardens had strangled themselves in bramble and vine and now lay rotting against the precipitous mountain valley that tumbled down behind. Who knew how many years the castle had stood here as both tomb and tombstone, how many weary wanderers had staggered into its cadaverous arms and decided, not unwisely, to better risk their luck in the hungry wood?

The automaton had laid waste to the iron gate, left it bent and twisted. In the courtyard beyond, something lay smoldering, the flicker of orange light Roxas had seen through the trees. With a shriek of pain, the ancient hinges of the gate yielded, and Roxas darted inside the castle walls.

The smoldering thing was the automaton, or what was left of it; after hours of thunderous freedom it had at last succumbed to its nature and exploded again. Scrap and char littered the courtyard, some still smoking, some long gone cold. The metal body was blistered where it was not sundered, blackened where it was not blistered.

Of Xion, there was no sign.

Roxas felt eyes upon him. All the hair on his body stood on end. These eyes were aware in a way the woods were not, cruel in a way the woods were not; these eyes meant him harm not regardless of what he was but because of what he was. He looked to the castle and saw only windows, hundreds of dark, empty windows, shuttered to him by the light of the lantern he carried. Anything could be behind any one of them, seeing unseen.

The castle door stood slightly ajar, letting out the darkness inside. The grounds stretched wide around him. The sounds of the wood were distant, as though afraid to approach. Roxas, certainly, would rather have taken his chances with the wood.

A faint rustle nearby. Roxas whipped around. The lantern clattered in his hand, the flame sputtering.

“Who’s there?” he called.

A sigh through the trees, the scuttle of night-things. A cold wind, bitter with the scent of snow, showed its claws to him. The sound had come, as best he could tell, from a bramble near his feet. The darkness there was somehow darker than the rest. Roxas stretched out his lantern and peered into it, but could see no living thing, only an old pair of gardening shears left out so long that they’d rusted through. His spine prickled. He was still being watched.

“Hello?” he said. “I’m—I’m looking for my sister. I think she came this way.”

“The dungeon,” something whispered. Its voice was a husk, old and reedy. “Look… in… the dungeon.”

Roxas broke out in a cold sweat. He swallowed. The voice had come from the bramble, but there was nothing there. There wasn’t even enough room inside to conceal a child.

Slowly, deliberately, Roxas nodded to the nothing-there.

“Thank you,” he said.

He ran into the castle.

---

The castle was dead, and had been so for many years, but because it was dead it was inescapable that it had once been alive.

Fire had scoured the corpse, once or many times, razing the creature down to its bones. Tatters of grand tapestries, fragments of furniture, and empty gilded portrait-frames were all that remained of its flesh and skin. The stone was stained black with soot—curiously, more on the floors than the walls; and the rafters, which ought to have been utterly devoured, were almost universally intact. Somehow, the castle seemed to have burned upside-down, sparing the structure but destroying, with particular vengeance, its inhabitants and all their luxuries.

But was that so surprising? It was not, after all, the architecture that had run afoul of something in the wood.

Deep beneath the castle proper, slick with mildew and cold as ice, lay the dungeon.

No moonlight reached here, and even Roxas’ lantern struggled against the thickening darkness. There was but one single corridor, muffled behind a heavy iron door, lined with barred cells. Gutters lead out from each cell, collecting the damp and letting it drain into the gloom. The gutters were thick with sludge; it was too dark to see what color, and Roxas had no desire to look closer.

Something moved in the third cell on the left. Roxas’ heart leapt into his throat. He hadn’t dared to speak since crossing the threshold of the castle, feeling eyes upon him at all times. Places like this had a way of taking things, and he felt that if he used his voice here, it would be taken from him—or it would somehow prevent him from ever leaving.

As he approached the cell, the lantern light caught something pale, and a flicker of dark movement. Roxas hurried closer. The lantern light spilled through the bars.

A rat scurried into the gaping jaw of a skeleton.

Roxas cried out and stumbled back. He clapped his hand over his mouth, too late. The cry echoed up and down the dungeon, slipped through the gaps in the stone, pricked the ears of wretched things. Roxas’ own breath was hot and slimy against his palm. He trembled so that the lantern rattled in his hand.

“Hello?”

The whisper was almost too soft to be heard, and sounded as frightened as Roxas felt. It came from even farther down, so far that he couldn’t see its source. He kept his hand over his mouth and crept onward, eyes straining against the dark, heart thundering in his ears, until—

“Roxas!” Xion cried, though her voice was hushed. She reached through the bars with one pallid hand. Roxas dropped to his knees and grabbed her hand in his own; then, at the chill in her fingers, set down the lantern to add his other hand.

“Are you hurt?” he whispered.

Her face was bloodless and smudged with soot. She held her other arm against her chest. Parts of her sleeve were charred black, other parts burned away completely, and the skin underneath was red and angry and starting to blister.

“You have to go,” she whispered to him. “You have to get out of here. It could come back. If it finds you—”

“Is there a key?”

“Roxas, go, please! It—”

The same moment Xion broke off in terror, warmth seeped into Roxas’ back. He spun, ready to fight for his life, and instead collapsed back against the cold iron bars of Xion’s cell.

A column of roiling black smoke stood in the corridor, utterly opaque and spilling a putrid heat all around it. All that could be seen of the beast within, six feet high at least, was a pair of eyes, red as hot coals and burning with malice.

“She’s mine.”

Chapter 2: Beast

Roxas cowered. The beast loomed over him, smoke and cinder and those burning, hateful eyes. Its wicked pronouncement echoed through the dungeon in a voice like escaping steam.

She’s mine.

“Please,” Roxas gasped. He gestured to Xion, locked in the cell behind him with her arm badly burned. No need to guess how it had happened. “I—I just came to get my sister. She didn’t mean any harm, she—we’re very sorry to have disturbed you. Please, just let her go.”

“Just… let her… go?” the beast hissed. It moved closer, and the temperature in the dungeon doubled. Roxas’ body turned slick with sweat while his mouth went dry as cotton.

“It was an accident,” he said. “We—we’ll never come back. We’ll make sure no one else trespasses here. I promise. I swear.”

“I should just… let her go?” the beast repeated, and stepped closer again. The heat was nearly unbearable. “I caught her. She’s mine.”

“Roxas, run,” Xion whispered. “Just run, please!”

Roxas stared up at the beast’s hellfire eyes. Whatever was in that smoke, it was much bigger than him, and probably that much faster and stronger, too. And with the heat what it was at this distance, if it grabbed him….

But it could speak, and if it could speak, perhaps it could reason.

“Then—then take me, instead of her,” Roxas said.

Xion cried out in wordless dismay before clapping a hand over her own mouth. The Beast’s eyes widened, then narrowed to slits.

“Why should I?” it demanded.

“Why shouldn’t you?” said Roxas.

“You’re no use to me.”

“What use is she?”

The Beast glowered. Its smoke swirled and writhed.

“Listen—there’s good reason to trade,” Roxas said. “She’ll be missed. They’ll come looking for her. The whole village. And they’ll be angry, if they find her like—like this. But not me. They won’t care if it’s me who goes missing.”

Xion said nothing. Whether it was because she wasn’t willing to sabotage her chance at freedom or because she knew that what Roxas said was true—he would never know, and though he was glad, for her sake, that she hadn’t spoken, something in him died in the silence.

The Beast watched him closely. If it moved inside its shroud of smoke, its eyes didn’t show it.

“You’re offering,” it said at last, “to take her place. To be… my prisoner. Why?”

“She’s my sister.”

Again the Beast deliberated.

“You must promise to stay,” it said at last. “Stay here. Forever.”

“If I do, you have to promise to let my sister go.”

“I promise,” said the Beast.

“Then… I promise.”

The red eyes turned as though on a heavy head.

“Wait!” Roxas cried. “Where are you—?”

“You wait,” the Beast snarled, a dull orange flicker deep within the smoke.

It moved away, its gait strange and shambling. The dungeon cooled rapidly, and the sweat on Roxas’ skin turned icy. He listened to the Beast’s footfalls on the stone—thin, crackling sounds, with an odd double-time cadence.

Whatever was in there, it moved on four legs.

When the Beast had disappeared into the darkness, Roxas turned back to Xion. She was crying. He reached through the bars of her cell and took her hand, pulling it away from her mouth.

“Once you’re out, go straight back home,” he said. “Take care of your arm first—I know you know how to deal with burns.”

She shook her head numbly, her tears cutting trails through the soot on her face. Her hand was trembling, clammy. He squeezed it.

“Yes, you do. You do it all the time. It’s going to be all right.”

“I’ll—I’ll come back,” she whispered. “I’ll bring everyone, I’ll come back—you have to stay alive until I get back.”

“I will. I’ll be all right, Xion.”

Thin crackling sounds, and a faint breath of warmth. Roxas straightened up and turned, though he kept one hand in Xion’s. The Beast’s red eyes glowed at the end of the corridor.

There was a swish, a clatter and scrape. A key skidded across the damp stone floor to Roxas’ feet. He bent to scoop it up—and with a yelp, dropped it again.

It was burning hot.

The two red eyes turned away. The Beast and its shroud of black smoke disappeared again into the dark. Roxas waited until the sound of its footsteps faded, sucking his blistered fingers, then folded the corner of his cloak over his hand and picked up the key, which fit poorly in the lock but did, at last, turn with a heavy thunk. The cell door ground open, and Xion darted out. She grabbed Roxas’ sleeve and pulled.

“Come on!” she whispered. “Quick, before it comes back!”

“No,” Roxas said.

“What do you mean, no? We have to get out of here!”

“I made a deal.” He pried her fingers off his sleeve. “I have to stay. Or else…. This place is cursed, Xion. That must be the thing that cursed it. I’ve read enough books to know what happens when you break promises to—to things like that.”

Her lip quivered. Her eyes filled with tears again. Roxas took off his heavy woolen cloak and wrapped it around her in an embrace, careful of her wounded arm. Somehow, he wasn’t frightened anymore. The world was made of crystal and there was nowhere to hide anything.

“I’ll be all right,” he lied. “Go.”

“I’ll come back for you,” she promised.

Then she fled.

---

An hour later, Roxas’ lantern burned the last of its oil and snuffed out, leaving him in total darkness. The meager warmth it had provided dissipated quickly, wicked away by the stones of the dungeon. Roxas sat with his knees brought up to his chest. There seemed little point in moving. His nose was running and glimmers of pain winnowed through his fingers and toes and ears. There was nothing in the cell to sleep on, not even a pile of straw, so he was forced to sit on the floor and let it drink his warmth from him, drop by drop.

Though the crystalline clarity had faded, the fear hadn’t yet returned. In fact, all he could think of was his new book, abandoned back home and forever to be left unread. To pass the time, he tried to imagine the story based on the beautiful illustration—unmarred, in his mind’s eye, by mud or shame.

A prince and a princess. A terrible stepmother. A fated encounter. The two were from unfriendly kingdoms, most likely; the ball from the illustration would be a private but well-advertised affair, a show of power or wealth, and the two were not meant to meet. But then, the fated encounter, and how could they help but fall in love, even though—

That was Romeo and Juliet, actually. He’d seen a traveling troupe put it on last summer, and while the story was beautiful, the acting had been questionable at best, and he hadn’t enjoyed it.

Still, his imaginings seemed to be doing him some good; he didn’t feel quite so cold anymore. He wished, briefly, that some dashing prince would come to his rescue, and dismissed the idea out of hand. Girls got rescued, princesses and girls beautiful enough to become them; sweet, dainty, good-hearted girls. Men did not get rescued. And certainly not by princes.

Roxas sighed. He could imagine the puff of white mist that floated away from his face. All his daydreaming, all his books, and where had it gotten him? He was supposed to be mastering a trade, providing for his sister, keeping the household until she was securely married and didn’t need his support anymore. And then he was supposed to find a wife, raise children, good strong boys and good obedient girls, provide for them until they grew up and found their own wives and husbands, live to the end of his days and leave some land and some money and nothing else behind. Not a story, not a song. Real things.

Instead he was here, locked in this horrible place with a horrible creature, staring at his dead and empty lantern by the light of….

Where was that light coming from, anyway?

Roxas’ neck was too stiff to snap his head upright. All he could manage was a creaking lift of the chin. Sure enough, the Beast stood outside his cell, spilling ember-light all around it along with a heat that dulled the teeth of the midnight chill, watching him from within its tower of black smoke with its terrible red eyes.

“You’re… still here,” it said.

“Yes,” Roxas said blankly.

“Why didn’t you run?”

“I made a promise. Were you expecting me to break it?”

The Beast said nothing. A droplet of water fell from the ceiling into the smoke. There was a sizzle, and the smoke flicked to one side like the tail of a horse beset by flies, accompanied by a flare of the dull light inside. Disgust and fear, like milk and lemon juice, mixed in Roxas’ stomach and curdled. He couldn’t help but think of the dead man not thirty feet from here, the rats crawling down his long-silent throat.

“Were you hoping I’d break my promise?” he asked.

The Beast’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s your… cloak?”

Roxas shrugged, curled his knees closer to his chest and stared into the corner. Inside the fortress of his limbs, he breathed a sigh of relief. Had the awful creature caught and killed Xion as she fled, surely it would have noticed Roxas’ cloak on her shoulders.

But evidently, there were rules, and so long as Roxas obeyed them, this thing was bound to them, too.

“Lost it,” he said.

The red eyes tilted down towards the lock. “Why is the door shut?”

Roxas didn’t know how to answer that one; it seemed so obvious that the question must have been some kind of trick or trap. But perhaps not answering was the wrong answer, too, for the smoke moved again—forward.

Roxas pressed himself back against the wall. The Beast, with whatever limb or appendage it possessed, took hold of the bars and rattled them once. The lock held fast, though the rusty metal sparked and crackled under the heat. The Beast looked up at Roxas again.

“It’s locked.”

“Yes,” said Roxas, perhaps more bluntly than was wise.

“Where is the key?”

Roxas shrugged. “Lost it.”

The Beast stared at him for a long moment. Roxas’ heart, sluggish with the cold but warming quickly, thumped in his ears. He’d held still for so long, in the freezing cold no less, that running was beyond him. Fighting was right out. Clarity came again, but this time, rather than displacing Roxas’ fears, it compounded them. If the Beast wished to kill him, it would kill him; and if it left him there, he’d be dead by morning anyway.

With an ease that belied horrific strength, the Beast snapped the heavy iron lock like a croquant with a single tug. Roxas scrambled back into the corner, for all the good it would do—but the Beast did not enter the cell. It stood back to let the bars swing open, then turned away, hiding its hellfire eyes.

“You’re going to be here forever,” it said, as opaque as the smoke surrounding it. “You might as well stay in a real room.”

---

The upper stories of the castle, while drier, were scarcely warmer than the dungeon. Roxas’ feet were filled with pain, as though his slippers were lined with knives. He followed closely behind the Beast, which moved like a man with stilts attached to both feet and both hands. The heat spilling from its body, and the flickering ember-light it shed, staved off the night and the cold. The moon must have set outside, or else every window in the fire-ravaged castle was stained black with soot.

“This is… my castle,” the Beast said stiffly, and apropos of nothing.

They passed across a balcony overlooking a charred foyer. Fine things lay in ruins below. Ash-gray and charcoal-black were the only colors remaining. Snarling gargoyles adorned every banister and balustrade. In the flickering light, they seemed nearly alive, corpse-walking.

“I can see that,” said Roxas.

“Do you… like it?” the Beast asked.

“Do I…?” Roxas cleared his throat. “It’s… very… impressive.”

And so it was, in the manner of a rose bush that had grown to demonic and unkillable proportions. Corridors led to stairs led back to more corridors. Hundreds of closed doors faced Roxas, evidently too old and wizened to burn, or perhaps spared by some unknowable caprice.

“You may go anywhere you want inside the walls,” the Beast said. It paused. “Except the West wing.” Another, longer pause. “It’s broken.”

“Broken?”

“Ruined,” the Beast said quickly. “Fallen into disrepair. If you went there, likely the floor would collapse beneath you, and you would fall to your death.”

It seemed quite pleased about the notion.

Roxas’ knife-shod feet tripped over each other. He caught himself on the wall, paused to collect his balance. The Beast continued on, taking its warmth with it. Roxas bit his tongue and breathed, trying not to scurry after his captor like some desperate waif. The Beast, noticing that he was no longer following, looked back over its shoulder, twin red lamps floating in the dark.

“I—I won’t go there, then,” Roxas said belatedly.

The Beast turned its head forward and resumed its slow, rolling gait. “Keep up.”

They soon came to a large, bifurcated stair and took the right fork. Roxas risked a glance over his shoulder—could that be the West wing up the other set of stairs? It didn’t look ruined from here, but then, he could see very little of it.

At the top of the stairs was a corridor that seemed miraculously untouched by fire, though not untouched by time. The Beast stopped on the threshold and glanced back at Roxas.

“My… servants will escort you from here.”

Alarmed, Roxas looked around, expecting a crawling horde of red-eyed rats or smoke-wreathed devils—but saw nothing, demon or beast. Certainly no human beings.

“Your… servants?”

Something within the smoke gestured broadly. An unlit candelabrum toppled from an alcove of its own accord. A chill swept through Roxas despite the heat coming off the Beast. Not only was the castle cursed, but it was haunted, too?!

The notion sputtered when a broken desk clock waddled over on stumpy metal feet. While Roxas struggled to figure out what sort of specter would have the disposition to play dolls, the candelabrum righted itself and ‘walked’ towards him, too, tilting back and forth on its round base to totter along the faded red carpet.

“These…” Roxas said. “So these are… your….”

The clock and candelabrum arrived. The candelabrum managed a stiff salute with one of its arms. The Beast huffed a great hot breath. All three white candles in the candelabrum ignited.

“They will provide you with whatever you need,” the Beast said. “And you may go wherever you wish. Except the West wing. As discussed.”

“Oh,” said Roxas. “Thank—”

It whirled on him with sudden fury. Smoke and heat billowed over his face. Roxas locked like a bad gear, his eyes stinging, his lungs unable to draw breath. The Beast’s hellfire eyes burned close and bright.

“But remember that you promised to stay,” it hissed.

It leapt past him and loped off down the stairs, trailing a black banner of smoke behind it. Roxas stayed frozen in place, the cold biting ever deeper into his flesh, until something nudged his calf. He screamed and leapt back, but it was only the broken clock—which toppled over in startlement at his sudden cry and floundered like an upturned turtle on the floor. The candelabrum wobbled over, spilling spatters of white wax all over the carpet, and nudged the clock ineffectually.

Roxas mastered himself. He knelt next to the clock—waving off the candelabrum—and gently set it upright.

“There,” he said. “I’m sorry I frightened you.”

The clock’s hands twitched. It managed a stiff half-bow, then turned and trundled off down the corridor. The candelabrum beckoned to Roxas and followed after the clock, spilling more wax all over the carpet.

“Um,” Roxas said. “Excuse me. Candle… candlestick?”

The candelabrum stopped and rolled around on its base, as though looking back at him.

“Would it help if I carried you?” Roxas suggested.

The candelabrum paused, flames flickering, before shimmying over to Roxas and raising its arms in a gesture that said: up, up!

Gingerly, Roxas picked it up by its stem, wary of having hot wax spilled on his hand. The candelabrum wiggled with delight, spilling hot wax all over his hand.

“Ow,” said Roxas. He clenched his hand to keep from dropping the thing on the floor. “Can you please not do that while I’m holding you? It hurts.”

The candelabrum immediately straightened up and held perfectly still. Through the weight and the chill of this terrible night, a small smile crept onto Roxas’ face like water seeping through cracks in a stone wall.

“Thank you,” he said.

The clock hadn’t gotten too far ahead of them, but Roxas hurried after it anyway, wary of losing it in the dark. The room it led him to was only a few doors down the corridor—fortunately, because it would have been a long, slow, cold walk otherwise. The clock indicated that this was Roxas’ intended room by bonking into the door repeatedly until Roxas shooed it off, stifling laughter.

“All right, all right, that’s enough; I understand. Step back, please, I can work the doorknob myself.”

He reached out to do so, then hesitated. He bent down to look at the doorknob, bringing the candle flames close.

“Um,” he said again. “Excuse me. Can you open on your own?”

The door and doorknob remained silent, motionless. The clock ran into the door again. Roxas nudged it away with his foot.

“All right, well, I’m going to open you, then,” he said to the door, and proceeded to do so.

The room within was in even better condition than the corridor. Certainly, there were signs of neglect, but the bed and drapes were free of dust, the carpet was thick, and somehow, a merry fire was burning in the grate. Roxas stared around wide-eyed and slack-jawed for only a moment before the pressure of the chill in the corridor drove him into the room’s warm embrace. The clock hurried in after him before the door swung shut under its own weight.

“Did… did you two do all this, all on your own?” Roxas asked the clock and candelabrum.

The candelabrum quivered in his hand, but remained rigidly upright. The clock rocked back and forth on its feet before waddling over to the nightstand and bonking into it.

“Oh,” said Roxas. “Right. Sorry. Here.”

He put the candelabrum down. It relaxed, rolled around on its base and spilled some wax on top of the nightstand—which bucked at the sudden offense. The candelabrum almost toppled off, but Roxas caught it before it fell (getting yet more burning hot wax spilled on him).

“Careful!” he chided.

The nightstand barreled against his thighs, shoving him towards the fire. In the other corner, a massive wardrobe flexed its doors and drawers and creaked ominously. Roxas backed away from them both, clutching the candelabrum tight. The clock bonked into the nightstand again, then charged over and bonked into the wardrobe, too. Both of them settled down, although the nightstand picked its way over to Roxas on thick, clawed feet and gave him a second, more gentle push towards the fire.

“You—you want me to warm up by the fire,” Roxas said. “Is that it?”

A third nudge, sort of like a large wooden dog leaning against his legs.

“All right,” he said. Then, to the candelabrum: “Where should I put you?”

It shrugged.

“Is the floor all right? That way you can leave on your own without having to fall off of anything.”

This seemed acceptable to the candelabrum, so Roxas set it carefully on the rug before making his way to the fire and setting himself down with the same care. Bracing for the worst, he peeled off his muddy slippers and looked at his feet.

His toes were starting to go white around the edges, but he could still feel pain—a lot of pain—in all of them, so with luck he wouldn’t lose any. Much as he wanted to stick his feet directly into the fire, he instead folded the rug over top of them and settled for warming his hands, which could still accurately judge the level of heat to which they were exposed. While he sat staring into the flames, the furniture slowly gathered around him, wardrobe and nightstand and armchair and bed all creeping up on their wooden feet. Roxas’ shoulders rose and back tightened, but he bit his tongue.

If these things had meant him harm, they would already have harmed him by now. Most likely, they were just curious. It could have been years—or even decades—since any living human had come this way, so Roxas couldn’t blame them for ogling.

The rug underneath him shifted. Roxas started—causing all the furniture behind him to leap back with a multifarious crash—and immediately started babbling while trying to extract his feet.

“I’m—I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—that was very rude of me, I’ll just—I’m so sorry—”

Before he could make any headway getting his feet free, the rug bundled around them. With a great heave, the portion behind him lifted itself up and flopped over his head and shoulders.

One of the other pieces let out an aggrieved groan. Something flicked the rug off his head, and then the wardrobe opened its drawers and dumped several pounds of clothes (and an unsuspecting feather-duster) directly on top of him. The duvet flicked off the bed like a frog’s tongue and landed on top of Roxas, too, taking the rug’s position and doing a better job of it. A squeak of wheels in the corridor was followed by a rattle of the doorknob. A tea service, complete with scones, rolled in and bumped into Roxas’ shoulder. The tea had spilled everywhere, soaking the scones and staining the sugar, and while the teapot sat and steamed like a cat in the snow, the teacups busily tried to scoop the spilled liquid into their hollow heads and the clawed silver sugar-tongs fastidiously arranged the dissolving sugar cubes.

Finally, Roxas lost all composure and broke down sobbing.

---

He fell into a deep slumber sometime before dawn, and was awakened only once—also well before dawn—by the concerted yet clumsy efforts of the furniture to hoist him into the bed. He brushed them all off with groggy assurances and, while he was up, closed the grate on the fireplace. He didn’t trust the dear things not to throw themselves in if the fuel started to run low. Following that, however, he climbed gratefully into the bed and let it snuggle him in blankets, and slept until well past noon, when the tea service came clattering back, bothered the curtains until they admitted the watery autumn sunlight, and served Roxas a breakfast of porridge and tea.

What of it hadn’t spilled on the way up, anyway.

---

For three days, Roxas saw not a glimpse of the Beast.

Following that first disastrous breakfast, he arranged with the tea service that he would come down to the kitchen for meals, rather than the cart hiking up to his room. Even discounting the discomfort of being waited on hand and foot—which was plenty uncomfortable—it gave Roxas an excuse to wander the castle, and, more often than not, because the tea service and one or two assorted knickknacks insisted on escorting him, it also gave him the courage to do so.

But still, three days passed without so much as a wisp of black smoke.

Not to say that Roxas suspected the Beast was gone; quite the opposite. At sporadic intervals, sometimes two or three times an hour, he would be seized upon by the stark sensation of being watched. All his hair would stand on end, the air would thicken and scintillate, his stomach would clench and his eyes would dart, seeking the eyes that were seeing him. Then, seconds or at most a minute later, the sensation would pass, and he would be alone with the furniture again—which, for its own part, never noticed anything amiss.

At first, the Beast’s distance seemed a blessing. Roxas expected Xion to return at any minute, bearing a legion of fierce protectors behind her, an army that could not fail to slay the Beast and release Roxas from his grim promise. But as the first day wore into the second, and the second into the third, hope rotted and became the sludge called dread.

Xion was not coming.

Roxas was wracked by frequent compulsions, storm-tossed by his heart. She was not coming because something had happened to her in the wood, and she was in desperate need of aid; or she was not coming because her wounds had been worse than Roxas suspected, and she had fallen ill, and was in desperate need of aid; or the villagers hadn’t listened to her pleas for help; or they had listened and simply refused; or Xion had returned home and said nothing, given up her only living kin for lost; or the Beast itself had chased her down on that first terrible night and devoured her, bones and all.

The fact remained: she was not coming.

Eventually, Roxas could stand it no longer. He was sick with dread, agonized by anxieties, and, much to his horror, desperately lonely. As much as he loved his retinue of objects—and he did love them, with unaccountable fervor—they were mute, single-minded, and only seemed to understand what he was saying about half the time. He needed someone to speak with, not just at, and the Beast was the only candidate available to him.

So, on the morning of the fourth day, Roxas mustered his attendants and sat them down in front of the fireplace (which, he had concluded, must have been acquiring new fuel by some additional enchantment whenever he wasn’t in the room).

Since no one had forbidden him from using the clothes left in the wardrobe, Roxas had dressed himself more warmly—and certainly more lavishly than he’d ever been dressed before. The fabric was so fine, so rich, and the clothes so well-made and so close to fitting him, that he had few doubts as to whose they were.

The Duke’s son must not have been much older than Roxas when the curse had fallen.

This morning, Roxas wore a white shirt under a blue jerkin, soft red trousers and sturdy—if slightly too large—boots. If he had to venture outside, he had a green woolen cloak and a pair of brown leather gloves. There were finer things in the wardrobe, but Roxas was too self-conscious to touch them, let alone wear them.

“All right,” he said, to the assembled furniture and textiles and knickknacks. “I want to speak with your master. Where do I look?”

The entire group of them got very still, as though they could convince him that they were and always had been utterly inanimate. The way Roxas’ sanity had been teetering these past couple of days, it came closer to working than he would’ve liked.

“Come on, one of you has to know,” he pressed. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll just go on my own.”

The clock and the candelabrum exchanged a motion that could easily have meant: your funeral.

Roxas balled his fists. “Fine. Have it your way, then.”

For the first time since arriving at the castle, Roxas ventured out on his own.

---

While Roxas hadn’t seen the Beast in over four days, he had heard it.

On the second night, hurrying back to his room with the tea service and a feather-duster as the light faded, he’d caught a hint of a voice. He had frozen, but the voice was indistinct, echoing off the bare walls of the castle and reaching him from a great distance—certainly not speaking to him.

Overwhelmed by curiosity, Roxas had crept through the corridors until he could make out what it was saying.

“Why let the girl go?” It was certainly the Beast’s voice, the hiss of steam from a wet log thrown on a fire. “Well, why not? Were any of the others any good to me?”

At the mention of others, Roxas had blanched. He thought again of the skeleton in the dungeon. He’d thought it was a man, but not for any real reason. It might have been a woman, or a girl. It might not have been the only one.

“But she might have been,” the Beast was saying, its tone darker. Whoever it was speaking to, their words were too soft to hear. “Stupid. Foolish.”

All the words were underscored by a low crackling sound, a rhythmic click and scrape. The creature was pacing.

“And so what if I keep the boy?” said the Beast. Roxas stopped breathing. “At least maybe he’ll be good conversation.”

Which was, even for a beast, quite a rude thing to say to someone.

“No,” the Beast said, and no, noagain. “It was stupid. Stupid mistake. I’ll—yes, that’s what I’ll do. Fine. Stupid.”

The echoes all faded from there, and after that, Roxas had heard no voices but his own.

---

At a guess, the one-sided conversation had taken place somewhere near the grand entry. It was a large space, and the echoes would travel quite far, so Roxas started there.

The room looked no better in the daylight than it had at midnight, although the character of its ruination was significantly changed. When Roxas had first crossed the threshold, the room had been filled to brimming with gloom and malice; now it just looked rather sad. The broken furniture and mostly-burned tapestries didn’t stir at Roxas’ approach (perhaps mercifully, for they were in no condition to be animate, and it would’ve broken Roxas’ heart to watch them try). Charcoal dust was smeared all over the stone floor, and the rafters were black with soot. This must have been a popular haunt for the Beast, though there was no sign of the creature now.

Even as the thought occurred to Roxas, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and his stomach clenched up tight. Sweat beaded under his fine clothes. His ears rang with the castle’s frigid silence. Covertly, he surveyed the dark corners of the room, the alcoves and rafters, but as always, no flicker of smoke or hellfire presented itself to him. Even so, he was secure in his conviction.

The Beast was here, and it was watching him.

Chapter 3: Grievance

Unnerved, frustrated, beset by a hostile and prying presence, Roxas forced himself to just breathe. No matter what he felt about being watched, it wouldn’t do to insult the Beast.

“I would like to speak with you,” he said to the air, as firmly and clearly as he could. “If you’re here, please come out.”

Only the echoes of his own voice, and then silence. Roxas took another deep breath. The Beast was master of this castle; he couldn’t expect it to attend on him like its servants did.

But nor could he bear being ignored. He’d been given a guest room, so he was, by careful accounting, a guest.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

He sat down on the bottom step of the grand staircase and laced his fingers. He focused on his breath, on the ash-and-snow smell of the castle. A moment later, the sensation of being watched receded. Roxas dug his fingernails into the backs of his hands, but his rear stayed planted on the stair.

He’d said he would wait, and so, come hell or high water, he would wait.

---

Three times in the next hour, Roxas felt the Beast’s eyes upon him; three times, he waited in vain for it to appear. Still, he remained seated on the stair. He had nowhere else to go, and nothing else to do. He would either get his audience with the ‘master’ of this castle or he would rot right here in the grand entry.

Twenty minutes after coming to this steely conclusion, as his rear was starting to go numb and his mind was turning to a thin soup, without even a prickle of the hairs on the back of his neck, Roxas heard the quiet but unmistakable sound of charcoal scraped against stone.

He looked up sharply. There, at the top of the stair, looking down at him through its ever-present shroud of smoke, stood the Beast. It was no less opaque in the thin daylight.

Roxas stood—rather creakily—but kept his tongue between his teeth. It wasn’t wise to get snippy with curseful beings, even ones that had kept you waiting for an hour and a half.

“I suppose I should feel lucky to be graced by your presence,” Roxas said. Inside his head, he winced.

The Beast’s red eyes narrowed. In a swirl of smoke, it turned to head back up the stairs. Something in Roxas snapped, and wisdom was hurled so far aside it could have cleared the castle wall.

“Did you kidnap me just to ignore me forever?” he called after the Beast.

It stopped in its tracks. The smoke flowed thicker and faster, and glimmers of orange light shone through.

“I didn’t kidnap you,” it said. “You offered to stay.”

“Fine. Did you kidnap my sister just to ignore her forever?”

The Beast continued up the stairs.

“That’s the second time you haven’t answered that question,” Roxas pointed out.

“A wise boy would stop asking,” the Beast sneered.

“I’m not a boy!” Roxas snapped, stamping his foot.

The Beast whipped around. Flame roared to life inside its shroud. It leapt over the banister to cut off the corner of the stair and was on Roxas in two fluid bounds. Roxas scrambled back and fell. The impact with the stone floor went all the way up his spine and cracked his teeth together. The Beast pulled up just shy of engulfing him completely, looming down into his space with its eyes blazing. The flames snapped like banners in a gale. The heat was suffocating, as though someone had grabbed Roxas by the hair and was pushing his face into a bonfire.

“Watch your tongue,” the Beast hissed, “and remember who you’re talking to.”

“How can I?” Roxas said, though his aforementioned tongue was cotton and his voice trembled. “You never told me your name.”

The Beast pulled back. The flames sputtered out, leaving only the hellfire eyes and the black shroud, twisting and flicking in agitation.

“Well—you never told me yours,” it said petulantly.

Names, Roxas knew, were powerful things, especially in the hands of creatures like this one.

“I guess that makes us even, then,” he said.

“I guess it does—”

The Beast broke off. Its shroud of smoke swelled, shuddered, let off a flare of sparks like a raven shaking dust from its feathers. Its eyes narrowed.

“Your clothes,” it said abruptly. “Where did you get them?”

It sounded angry. Roxas recalled, too late, that under no circumstances was one ever supposed to take anything from a curseful being without asking.

“The wardrobe sort of… they were in the wardrobe.” Not a lie, but not blaming any innocent furniture, either. “And I thought, since it was supposed to be my room…. I’m sorry, I—I should’ve asked before—”

“In there?” the Beast interrupted.

“Yes?”

“In there,” the Beast muttered. It paced up the stairs and back down again, long and fluid strides. “How did they get in there? Stupid place to leave them….”

It noticed Roxas watching and stopped pacing. The smoke gathered up, like the thing inside was collecting itself.

“Fine,” it said. “They’re yours.”

Roxas swallowed. This was already going better than expected—did he dare push his luck?

“They don’t… exactly fit,” he admitted.

The smoke billowed out again, accompanied by a flicker of flame. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“Nothing! Nothing. I—I just… wondered if it would be all right if… I did something about it. To them. The clothes. I’m a tailor’s apprentice,” he added, though he wasn’t sure why.

The Beast’s eyes narrowed again. It turned away from him and waved an appendage, somewhere in the smoke.

“Do whatever you want,” it said flatly. For the third time, it started up the stairs, started to leave him alone in this dreadful, empty place.

“I want someone to talk to,” Roxas said.

“You can talk to—no, never mind, terrible idea.”

Roxas was darting up the stairs before he knew what he was doing. “Talk to who?”

“No one,” said the Beast, continuing upward without looking at him, even as he continued to tag along behind it.

“Is there someone else here?”

“No.”

Roxas’ memory lit up. The voice in the garden! He was certain it hadn’t been the Beast’s, and anyway, it had told him where to look for Xion, so it had already proven to be friendly. On the other hand, the Beast had directly stated that there was no one else here. If it was a demon, that meant nothing, but if it was a fae creature, that left some wiggle room.

“Was there someone else here?” Roxas pressed.

“Why do you ask so many questions?”

“Because I don’t have anyone to talk to.”

“Fine!” it snapped, another muted flash of flame. “Fine. Dinner. Tonight. But only if you’ll leave me alone until then.”

“Dinner every night,” Roxas haggled, “but I won’t ask any questions.”

“Done,” said the Beast.

Such a powerful entity couldn’t ever be said to flee—and certainly not from Roxas—but it sure did leave in a hurry.

---

Roxas spent the hours until dinner pacing his room and tearing his hair out.

The request had been impulsive, foolish, and to top it all off, utterly insane. Why would he want to spend more time with the creature that had locked his sister in a dungeon? The beast that had snatched, with both hands, the rest of Roxas’ life and freedom—and possibly the fate of his immortal soul, too, for Roxas hadn’t considered the Beast’s phrasing closely enough before promising to remain here forever. It was a wicked creature and it would try to hurt him if it could; why would he agree to, and furthermore willingly request, more opportunities for it to do so?

His answer arrived in the form of a parched throat and a headache that came on around sunset, at which point he realized he’d been speaking all his anxieties aloud to the animate furniture which, although it couldn’t threaten, bully, trick, or yell at him, also couldn’t encourage, contradict, or soothe him, or, for that matter, add anything to the conversation, of value or otherwise. Speaking aloud was no different than thinking to himself, and the walls of his room, however luxurious, were as tightly confining as the walls of his skull.

Roxas sat down on the bed and put his face in his hands. The bed tossed a blanket over him; he swatted it away. He tried to breathe deeply. Worrying himself to pieces wouldn’t help his situation. Planning might.

In many of the stories Roxas had read, there were ways to wriggle out of bad deals, even with powerful entities. Curses could be undone, or at least broken, and though fae and demons were twisted, wily things, they were also tightly bound by their own adherence to rules. Brinksmanship was a dangerous game, but if you won it, you took your winnings home. The trick was finding the chinks in the armor, the loopholes in the contract—and to find them, what Roxas needed, more than anything, was information.

Unfortunately, he’d already agreed not to ask any questions.

The dinner bell rang itself with a jolly tinkle.

---

Roxas found his dinner—and his dinner companion—not in the great dining room, but in a rather more intimate drawing room off to the side. Since a fire was already going in the grate, Roxas set down the candelabrum at the door and blew out its candles before shooing it off on its way. He straightened up, adjusted the velvet dinner jacket he’d unburied from the wardrobe, and entered.

A large wooden table sat in the center of the room, aged and varnished to a dark mahogany shine. The Beast was at one end, rather more compact than Roxas was used to. He couldn’t see a chair amidst the smoke, and had to suppress a giggle at the thought of the Beast sitting on the floor like a giant dog.

The room was relatively well-kept, especially for one on the first floor. All the rugs had burned, but the furniture was intact and the shelves lining the walls even had some books on them—caked in dust, otherwise none the worse for wear.

Roxas realized he’d been ogling when the Beast said sharply: “Sit.”

At the opposite end of the table from the Beast, a place had been laid with all the care and precision Roxas had come to expect from the Beast’s servants. Roxas gently scooped the solid food back onto the plate—roasted pumpkin, asparagus stalks, and what he hoped was venison—and sat down primly. The soup, whatever it had been, was all but lost. There was a bottle of wine and a glass set out, both fortunately intact.

Roxas gestured broadly to the table; to his end, heavily laden, and the Beast’s end, empty.

“I can wait for yours to come out,” he offered.

“Don’t,” said the Beast.

Roxas shrugged and tucked his napkin into his collar. With great courage, he dug into the (hopeful) venison first. It was somewhat gamy and overcooked, but the taste was fine. His knife and fork clinked against the plate, silver on china. He could feel the Beast watching him, though he never once looked up.

When the dryness of the meat became unpleasant, he uncorked the wine and poured himself a glass, then held out the bottle towards the Beast, raising his eyebrows. The Beast’s eyes narrowed, and its shroud of smoke fluttered with agitation.

Roxas shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He set the bottle down and sipped his wine.

The wine, in contrast to everything else, was astounding. The depth of its flavor and the clarity of its color were unparalleled, especially to Roxas, who had never tasted anything so rich and wild before. He put the glass down deliberately—even a single sip had him feeling a little lofty, and he needed all his wits about him.

Silver clinked on china, and the fire crackled in the grate, and the silence underneath stretched until it hurt itself.

“Are you… enjoying your stay?” the Beast asked.

Roxas turned a stern eye on it. “It’s not fair if you get to ask questions and I don’t.”

“What’s your name?” the Beast said immediately.

An instant retort of what’s-yours leapt to Roxas’ lips, but he swallowed it down. Though he hadn’t made any promises, he had cut a deal, and it was likely that he’d lose his conversation partner, perhaps permanently, if he allowed even a single question to pass his lips.

“I will… tell you my name,” he said, “when you tell me yours.”

“Is your name Roxas?”

“How—” Roxas bit his tongue. Careful. “How… strange. That you’d guess that name, out of all the names that there are.”

“That’s what your sister called you,” the Beast said smugly.

Damn. But all wasn’t lost. Roxas shrugged.

“That’s what my sister calls me,” he said. “But as to whether it’s my name….”

The Beast sat back, nearly purring. “Roxas it is.”

“It’s better than boy, anyway,” Roxas sighed. “I’d like to know what I should call you.”

“I’ll bet you would.”

“Beast it is,” said Roxas, though his cavalier tone was belied by the tremor in his hand as he reached for his wine glass.

True to form, the Beast grew agitated. “Don’t call me that.”

“I don’t know what else to call you.”

The Beast remained silent, glaring at him across the table and, quite literally, fuming. Roxas sipped his wine.

“I hope your servants haven’t forgotten about you,” he said. “They seem to be taking a long time with your dinner.”

“I’m not eating,” said the Beast.

“I hope I haven’t dulled your appetite somehow.”

“You hope, you hope. That’s two-thirds of a question.”

Roxas bristled. “That’s not fair.”

“No? Good. I hate fair.”

Roxas couldn’t think of a rebuttal that wasn’t an insult. Clink and crackle, wine and smoke. Roxas made it all the way through the venison (he was reasonably sure it was venison) and had started on the pumpkin before the Beast spoke up again.

“Why do you care if I eat or not?”

Roxas considered his answer, peeling the skin off a pumpkin slice with his fork. “I’m concerned about what you might eat if you go hungry.”

“Concerned? Why? What do you think I eat?”

“Hmm,” said Roxas. He tapped his chin with the butt of his fork. “Given what I’ve seen, I can only assume that you… eat your guests.”

“How dare you?” The Beast flickered with orange. Roxas’ hand clenched on his fork as a shock coursed down his spine.

He forced himself to relax. There were rules, and so long as he didn’t break them, the Beast couldn’t, either.

“I’m sorry if I’ve caused offense,” he said, as sweetly as he could muster. “But you asked me what I thought, and, though I might dare to speak freely, I wouldn’t dare lie to you.”

“I’m the master of this castle, I don’t eat my guests!”

“That’s very comforting to hear! But I’m not entirely satisfied. It feels rude to be having a meal while my host goes hungry.”

“Eat alone, then,” the Beast snapped, lurching to its feet.

“That’s no way to treat a guest. Especially for someone who’s supposed to be the master of this castle.”

“I’m supposed to be a prince!”

Red flames roared to life within the smoke. Roxas caught a glimpse of something inside, something elongated and emaciated.

Something that might, once, have been human.

The pieces clicked together in Roxas’ head like a clockwork thing. The enchanted objects all too ready to wait upon a guest hand and foot. Whole wings of the castle spared from fire but every last portrait burned out of its frame. The Beast’s petulant pride, its lavish tastes and wild tempers.

And far, far from here, a king whose crown had passed to a distant cousin—not to his brother, nor to his nephew, because his brother and his nephew had died decades ago after running afoul of something powerful in the wood.

Or at least, they’d never been seen again.

“You’re…” Roxas breathed. “Are you the Duke, or his son?”

The Beast’s only answer was to upend the table with a monstrous CRASH. Roxas scrambled back from the explosion of glass and china. The table smoked, too old and dense to catch fire, too much wood and varnish to resist it entirely. The Beast breathed gouts of flame while its shroud of smoke blackened the rafters.

“Get out,” it said.

“I’m—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Get OUT!!”

Roxas fled.

---

Squalls of moonlight splashed across the courtyard, driven by an icy wind. Roxas tumbled out in his boots and his dinner jacket and sprinted for the gate. The wind whipped the white ghost of his breath away and raked its claws across his face. He didn’t feel it.

Neither demon nor fae, essence nor entity; bound by no contract or bargain; the Beast could have killed him at any time, whether or not he broke his promises. Roxas had treated it like it was a fairy-tale, a puzzle to be solved, a maze to be escaped, but it was just a man.

Just a cruel, selfish, miserable man.

The gate was closed, though its encounter with Xion’s automaton had left it twisted, and there was a narrow gap under the lock. Roxas hurled himself into the breach with reckless abandon, wriggling and straining to force his body between the rusting iron bars.

“Wait!” something feeble cried from the courtyard. “Boy, wait!”

“There’s nothing he can do to me out there that he can’t do in here!” Roxas yelled back. With a final heave, he was free. He stumbled away from the gate—but something made him hesitate, tugged his hair and made him look back.

A distant flash of lightning described the castle’s monstrous silhouette. Behind the hollow windows, a glimmer of red life was stirring. A voice carried to him on the gusting wind, hoarse as hissing steam.

Roxas!

Roxas turned and ran for the moonless wood. A single drop of frigid rain struck his shoulder just as he dove beneath the canopy.

Moments later, it was followed by a hundred million more.

Chapter 4: Grace

Roxas was lost.

He should have turned back the moment it started raining, but he’d been confident that his fine woolen clothes would keep him warm enough even when soaking wet—which was warranted—and that the path was short enough and clear enough, and his memory keen enough, that he could follow it back to the village even in the dark.

Which was hubris.

Without lantern or moonlight, pelted by a pouring, frigid rain, he had groped his way down the path Xion’s automaton had left until he bumped into a large tree and had to go around; but on the other side, he found only brambles. Thinking he must have made a wrong turn, he started back up the path—only to miss his footing and go tumbling down a steep bluff to land in the mud. No matter how he scrambled and swore, he couldn’t get back up the slick incline, and so was forced to go around again. He followed the bluff until it shallowed out; climbed up, turned his back to where his front had been facing, and started the trek back, feeling his way along the tree trunks, catching his shins on every shrub and bramble, soaked to the bone and shivering so hard that his teeth chattered.

But no matter how he searched, how carefully he retraced his steps, he couldn’t find the path.

Panic clawed at his throat. His fingers and toes were spikes of pain, trending to numbness, his nose ached, and his lips tingled with every breath. He’d fled in such a hurry that he hadn’t so much as thrown on a cloak, trusting that he would reach home well before he needed one—he’d originally made the trip in his pajamas, after all. The fine clothes now clung to his body like things from the deep oceans, scale and slime and cold, dead weight. He could barely see a foot in front of his face, could barely hear his own breathing over the roar of the rain through the tangled canopy.

Not that it mattered. The wolves were all probably snuggled up in their warm, dry dens, and could pick his bones at their leisure in the morning.

Roxas braced himself on a tree. Icy water drizzled down his face and dripped from his hair. He struggled to breathe, the cold slowly tightening around his chest. All right; he was lost. It was too dark to find the path and even if he stumbled upon it, the freezing rain would kill him before he ever made it back. He would not be going home tonight. So what would he do next?

He needed to get dry and stay dry. So he needed shelter. A fire was out of the question, but if he could just get out of the rain, he might stand a chance of seeing the dawn.

Roxas pushed off the little tree and hunted for a larger one. He couldn’t feel his toes anymore, and his fingers were swiftly following. He needed a big tree. Fallen or upright, it didn’t matter, so long as there was something to get underneath.

Who knew how many minutes later, he found what he was looking for in a glimmer of veiled moonlight—a massive fallen oak with its roots upended, forming a lean-to shelter with a boulder. Roxas crawled underneath, clumsy all over. Exhaustion came upon him with a leaden weight. All he wanted to do was sleep.

He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted iron—he felt no pain. With arms that weighed a thousand pounds, he stripped off his soaked garments. The naked air felt like a down blanket by comparison, though his hair still dripped fragments of shock onto his shoulders and chest. He curled up as small as he could go….

---

…and woke up colder than he’d ever been in his life.

Every inch of his skin was blistered raw. His bones had grown needles of rime ice that stabbed into his flesh with every movement. His teeth hurt.

The storm had passed, and the clearing made by the fallen tree was soaked in moonlight. His clothes lay near him, whitening with frost. Just outside his shelter, there was a blackened stump, still smoking, as if it had been struck by lightning and burned to the ground while he was insensate. Faint heat still radiated from it. A glimmer of awe surfaced in Roxas’ aching chest. This desperate warmth must have been a gift from the Almighty, a smiting angel taking mercy on a poor lost lamb, for without it, Roxas would surely have perished.

But the warmth was nearly gone, and he couldn’t expect two miracles in one night.

Roxas leaned out from his shelter to take stock of his surroundings. Poking above the treeline, limned silver in the moonlight, there was the highest tower of the castle. It couldn’t have been more than a mile away. It occurred to Roxas, faintly, that there was a version of him that would rather have died than go back there.

That version of him was unfathomably stupid.

Roxas crawled out of his shelter and stood up, though the ground was made of knives. He fixed his sights on the high turret. So long as the skies stayed clear and he held his nerve, he would make it. He glanced back at the tree stump with a final grateful prayer on his lips—

And saw it move, ever so slightly.

The world tipped to a dangerous angle. Roxas caught himself on the tree for balance. The steel of his resolve blew apart like so much dust.

The Beast.

Somehow, amidst the rain and the cold and the dark, it had found him. Found him here, alone and senseless, crept close to him and curled its burning body under the pouring rain until the heat of it was nearly washed out. Had not torn out his throat and devoured his flesh. Had not carried him back to its castle in burning hands. Had not left him there to die.

It was bound by no promise, no magical contract. Through all the days Roxas had spent with it, all the times he had antagonized it, it could have killed him whenever it wished.

Roxas limped back to his shelter. He pulled the crackling-cold dinner jacket from the pile of clothes. He threw it around the Beast, who twitched at the sudden touch of ice. Roxas tied the sleeves tight, shoved the Beast over to lie on top of the jacket, and started dragging.

---

Awareness came and went. It was all trees and mud and trees again, and the distant glimmer of silver in the sky, a north star calling him home. A heavy burden behind him.

His feet bled. His arms and back ached. His breath crystallized in the air, vision blurred. Trees. Mud. Trees. One foot after another.

A north star, calling him home.

---

Roxas came to on the floor of the drawing room, sitting near the fire. Someone had thrown a jumble of logs onto the embers, along with several books and what appeared to be the charred remains of a heavy cloak. Despite its haphazard foundations, the fire was burning hot and bright. Roxas’ mouth tasted of blood and pumpkin and asparagus. His hands were greasy and filled with splinters.

A scraping sound caught his attention. Even as he turned to look, a black blur shot across the floor and into the fireplace. A fountain of sparks flew out, logs cracking, embers scattering, smoke billowing. Roxas was too exhausted to do much but lean back. His tired eyes traced the black scuff mark to where his ruined dinner jacket lay dead on the floor—empty.

He turned back to the fireplace, where a pair of red ember eyes stared back out at him.

Something in Roxas’ chest settled. He crawled over to his upended chair from dinner and put his back against it. Sensation was returning to his feet and fingers, and the sensation was pain. He let his eyes fall shut.

“Don’t you dare,” the Beast said.

Roxas cracked his eyes back open, though it was a herculean effort.

Sometime later, the tea service bustled in to fuss over him with too-hot tea and buttery scones and a whistling, burbling indignance. Roxas stomached the tea and choked down the scones, then crawled over to the hearth and threw another log on the fire. Something in the flames moved quickly.

“Careful!” the Beast snapped.

“Shut up,” said Roxas.

“Don’t tell me to shut up.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up. And you—bring more food. And brandy. And clothes. What are we, barbarians?”

The tea service hauled off like a runaway cart. Silence fell on the drawing room, drowning out the crackle of the fire. It reigned supreme for well over a minute.

“You shouldn’t have run off like that,” the Beast said eventually.

Roxas shrugged. He was so tired.

“Even if it hadn’t been the middle of the night,” the Beast went on. “And raining. And why would you take off all your clothes? Those were good wool clothes, they’re made to keep you warm when it’s wet! What were you thinking?”

“I thought you were going to kill me,” Roxas said.

The Beast’s eyes went wide. “You…? So you thought you’d run off into the woods and die out there, instead, is that it?”

“I thought,” Roxas said, “you were going to kill me.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have thought that!”

“You shouldn’t have given me reason to think it!” Roxas retorted.

“You—you—!” The Beast sputtered out. The coals shifted. The eyes pivoted away in something that looked remarkably like a sulk.

The tea service came clattering back in. As instructed, it brought more food—porridge, a mess—and brandy, and a dusty old traveling cloak that was, nonetheless, very warm when wrapped all around Roxas’ naked body. He accepted the food and the brandy, too, and thanked the tea service for its hard work, and threw another log on the fire.

When he sat back against the chair, the ember eyes were turned towards him again.

“That’s my mother’s cloak,” the Beast said quietly.

Roxas cradled the warm bowl of porridge in his ruined hands. He breathed the steam, managed a few mouthfuls, swallowed his stubbornness.

“Thank you for saving me,” he said.

“Be quiet and eat,” said the Beast.

---

By midday the next day, the cold had caught up with Roxas, and by evening he was bed-bound with a racing fever and a chest-cracking cough. The furniture attended to him tirelessly, bringing food and water and willow bark, heaping more blankets on him whenever he so much as thought about shivering, damp cloths laying themselves across his burning forehead. Once or twice, as the fever reached its zenith and his broiled brain descended into delirium, he thought he saw a pair of red eyes watching him from his bedroom fireplace. It might have been nothing more than a hallucination, but in all the time he lay there, sweating bullets, the fire never burned low.

On the second day (or it might have been the third), Roxas’ fever finally cracked, and soon after crumbled away entirely. Clarity returned, and with it, a perennial exhaustion and a clawing hunger. He was too weak to make it down to the kitchens, so the tea service was constantly in and out of his room, wearing its wheels down to the axles to keep him fed and watered.

And the fire never burned low.

Roxas recuperated steadily through the following weeks. Three of his toes never regained sensation, the outer two on his left foot and only the pinky toe on his right. They remained waxy and white while the rest of his toes and all of his fingers swelled to hideous proportions and started sloughing off skin at every turn. Two of his fingernails and five of his toenails fell off. His hands and feet—and his ears, and his buttocks, and the tip of his nose—sprouted huge weeping white blisters. Every afflicted part (save the toes that never regained their color) took turns needling him with pain around the clock, and itched like mad on their off-hours.

After a few days, mercifully, their fervor cooled, the blisters began to heal, and he could conduct himself with a little less misery attendant. He took limping excursions into the castle, a little farther every day, even braving a set of stairs by the end of the week. The chill outside his room made his much-abused fingers and toes ache and sting, so he never stayed out too long.

One of the things he looked for was a good strong knife or chisel, because he’d seen men in the village with cold-killed fingers that turned white and then black, and he would rather risk his luck with amputation than with gangrene. He knew he had some time before surgical intervention was necessary, though he didn’t know how much.

The Beast, for his part, kept a somewhat awkward distance. He couldn’t be said to be avoiding Roxas, exactly, but he never visited Roxas in his room and always seemed to have somewhere else to be if they ran into each other in the corridors. Whenever they did meet, his manner was stiff and formal.

But sometimes, at the touch of a chill draft or a cold dream, Roxas would wake in the night; and more often than not, bleary-eyed and half-asleep, he would see, or think he saw, a pair of ember-red eyes watching him from the fireplace.

For the next fortnight, the fire never burned low.

---

It was some time before Roxas dared to limp outside again, even after the swelling in his surviving toes had abated and his strength had returned. The days were only growing colder, and the drafts that pervaded the castle were enough to make his chest clench, but he had plenty of warm clothes, delivered anew by the wardrobe, cloaks and socks and hats and mittens, and there would occasionally come a day dazzled with sunlight that, by the afternoon, suffused the south-facing rooms with unseasonable warmth.

One such day, though he wasn’t quite ready, Roxas bundled up to great excess, screwed his courage to the sticking place, and ventured out into the main courtyard.

The wind was gentle, only teething, and the sunlight warmed Roxas’ clothes and kissed his face (what of it wasn’t buried beneath a thick scarf). The wood prowled beyond the castle walls as if resenting Roxas’ escape. Roxas chose to ignore it and turned his eyes to the path into the gardens, near the rusting ruins of Xion’s automaton.

He pulled down his scarf just long enough to call out: “If you’re still out here, I would like to talk to you, please.”

The wood bristled with discontent at the sound of his voice. The wind shushed him, trying to shoo him back inside with its cold hands. The castle creaked in the sunlight. Roxas rooted his feet in the ground and kept his eyes peeled.

“Over here!” A hoarse, reedy voice. “Here, boy, over here!”

Roxas’ heart leapt. He looked around, first at head-height, then at knee-height, but there was no one there—no gnome or pixie popping out of a hole in a tree, no feral child peeking from behind the corner of the castle. The voice had come from somewhere in front of him, hadn’t it?

“Down here, boy! Look down here!”

Roxas looked down, near to his feet. A pair of shears lay on the ground, rusted so badly that they stained the earth around them black (no good for amputations, a part of him thought dismissively). As he watched, they twitched.

“Yes, here! Me!”

The hinge squealed with every word, the blades flapping like jaws as the shears, in a voice as thin and rusted as their metal, spoke.

“Hello?” Roxas said. His hands were sweating. He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this. “You’re—you’re the one I heard. Before.”

“Yes!” the shears whisper-shouted. “Yes! I told you where His Grace took your sister.”

“You did,” Roxas recalled. “Thank you. Is there some way I could repay you?”

The shears shivered on the ground. Their handles regarded him like wild, empty eyes.

“Get me away from here!” they pleaded, urgent. “Beyond the castle walls, I’ll be free! Pick me up, throw me over the wall!”

Roxas reached down towards the shears—quickly at first, then with greater care. The shears were black with rust, not red; so they weren’t iron, but might be silver. In the stories he’d read, it wasn’t wise to take things, especially valuable things, that too enthusiastically asked to be taken.

The shears lunged at his fingers. He yanked his hand away just in time, only losing a bit of wool from his mitten. The shears fell back on the ground, laughing hysterically.

“Ha ha ha! Clever boy, clever little boy! Ha ha ha ha!”

“I’m not a boy,” Roxas snapped.

This only made the shears laugh harder. “Haaa ha ha ha ha!”

Roxas crouched down—out of reach of the clattering, squealing blades—and nearly fell over when the dead toes on his left foot failed to balance him. He took a knee instead, though the press of the cold ground against so much of his body sent a shock of terror through his heart. He couldn’t stay too long.

“Why did you try to bite me?” he asked the shears.

“Anyone stupid enough to pick up a talking pair of shears deserves to be bitten!” the shears said, blades snick-snacking on every syllable. “Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!”

Roxas pursed his lips under the scarf, annoyed but also, ever so slightly, proud of himself.

When the shears’ mirth subsided into tarnished giggles, Roxas tried again.

“I want to ask you about this place, and about… His Grace. What price would I have to pay for answers?”

“Price?” the shears asked innocently. “Hee hee hee. Price! Ask me why I’m here, boy.”

“Please call me Roxas.”

“Ask me why I’m here, boy!”

Roxas ground his teeth. “Why are you here?”

“Because the Great Witch of the Wood knew His Grace would never tell the story. Too proud, too mean, too stupid. So she left me, and I tell the story. For nothing. I tell the story to anyone who asks!”

“And bite off the fingers of anyone who reaches for you,” said Roxas.

The shears gave him a vicious smile. “That’s just for fun. But you’ve already learned the trick, clever boy. Pick me up, I’ll show you where His Grace keeps his secrets.”

“I’m not stupid enough to fall for it once; I’m definitely not going to fall for it twice.”

The shears broke out cackling again. Roxas waited for them to laugh it out.

“Please tell me the story,” he requested.

“Hm hm. Hee hee. Once upon a time there was a horrible little boy,” the shears creaked, “who was greedy and cruel and proud and self-important—”

“Is all this important to the story?”

“—and rude, and vain, and shallow, and smelly—”

“Really?”

“—and very very stupid and selfish,” the shears finished. “And one dreadful night, an ugly old woman came to the gates of the castle begging for sanctuary. The butler turned her away, as his masters had asked him to turn away any wretched unfortunates, but she persisted, asking to see the Duke. The Duke was away on business, so she asked for the Duchess. The Duchess was away with her husband, so the ugly old woman asked for the master of the house. The Duke’s son, who was that horrible, greedy, cruel—”

“I get it.”

“He came to the door and saw the ugly old woman, and before she could say a word, he said, Get that horrible creature away from here!

“The ugly old woman said, Please, young master, I wish only sanctuary from the storm; and in return, I will give you this enchanted rose.

“And the horrible little lordling said, Butler, give me Father’s cane; I’ll beat this creature until it flees or dies!”

Even accounting for the possible exaggerations of an unpleasant storyteller with a clear bias, Roxas was forced to agree that the Duke’s son had indeed been cruel, selfish, and very, very stupid.

“The ugly old woman begged him not to, but the horrible boy took up the cane and struck her with it—and the moment he did, she transformed from an ugly old woman into Her Majesty, the Lady in White, She of Shrike and Thorn; the Great Witch of the Wood, most beautiful and terrible. The stupid boy fell to his knees and groveled, but even a crawling worm could not have groveled low enough. He, foolish and self-important, dared to beg for her mercy.

“Mercy? said she; When you showed none?

“Oh, please, please! He sniveled and wept. Great One, Heart of the Forest, Rosy-Fingered Dawn, spare me, spare my worthless life!

“He was right about one thing, at least; that his life was worthless, and the Great Witch of the Wood told him so.

“You beg and grovel and yet still ask my favor! She crushed the cruel cane to dust in her gleaming hand. You sought to wound one who was helpless, and now that you are helpless, you ask not to be wounded. No, I will not spare your life; but nor will I end it. Your punishment must equal your crime. From this day forth, you are cursed.

“And because he was young, and because She is merciful, she also told him how he might break the curse; but she didn’t tell me.

“Then the lordling was consumed by flame, transfigured, driven to ruin, so that the horror of his body matched the horror of his soul; and she gave him a magic mirror, which he must keep forever within the walls of his castle or else be undone, so that he could not escape himself or forget the world outside; and the butler, who had turned the Great Witch of the Wood away, who had handed his master the stick that would beat her, he was cursed, too. Cursed to lie in the dirt and the cold and the snow and the wet, decaying and decaying and telling the story of his own damnation to anyone who asks!”

And here the shears broke out laughing again, peals of laughter so wild that they threatened to unhinge the blades entirely. Roxas sat back on his heel, swallowing the bitter taste in his mouth. When at last the shears subsided, they fixed him with a crazed look.

“Take me beyond the walls, boy,” they said, hoarse and violent. “Throw me out. That’s how my curse is broken. Throw me out.”

“Can you lie to me?” Roxas asked.

“No, I cannot lie. boy.”

They snapped at his feet, but couldn’t reach him. Not even close.

“The other animated objects, inside,” Roxas said. “Were they servants, too? Cursed, like you?”

“Ha ha! Ha ha ha! Furniture is furniture, people are people! The servants fled, all. Left me here, with His Grace. If the dishware took their places, it’s because they’re too stupid to recognize what they serve.”

“What happened to the Duke and Duchess?”

“Came home to find their son a monster. They didn’t like that, not one bit. They were too special, too clean-blooded, too loved by God to have a beast for a child. There was no question of saving the boy. They could have just locked him in an attic like decent people, but nooooo. So they’re dead, burned alive and burned some more, scattered on the wind. The curse saw to them, too.”

Roxas’ skin crawled. “That’s hardly fair.”

“Fair! Curses are the only fair things in this world! The boy acts beastly, so he becomes a beast. The mother and father seek to destroy their son, so their son destroys them. The beast kills or drives away everyone who comes near to it, and so spends its wretched life alone in a burnt-out ruin. Fair! Fair! Fair!”

“But why did the parents deserve to have their son turned into a monster?”

“He was already a monster,” the shears whispered, conspiratorial. “And guess who raised him to be one!”

“And did the servants all deserve to lose their livelihoods?”

This one gave the shears some pause.

“Must have,” they concluded at last. “Take me beyond the walls, boy. Throw me out.”

Roxas sighed. “Will you try to bite me again if I reach for you?”

“Hm hm. Hee hee hee!”

Roxas stood, his knees creaking, his head swimming, his stomach sick.

“One last question,” he said. “Why did you help me, that first night?”

“Help you? Ha ha, when have I ever helped you?”

“You told me where my sister was. Why?”

The shears snarled: “Because anybody stupid enough to go running into a cursed castle deserves whatever they get!”

Then they broke out laughing again, laughing and laughing, shedding flakes of black rust all over the freezing ground. Above, the sun inclined towards dusk over the dark, tangled hair of the wood.

Roxas wrapped his cloak tighter around himself and went back inside.

---

He returned to his room, sat on the bed, removed his boots and his cloak and his mittens. His dead toes had crossed themselves when he wasn’t looking, so he uncrossed them for decorum’s sake. The flesh was cool and waxy, and all three dead digits were starting to turn dark at the tips.

That was a problem for a different day. Roxas took several deep breaths, waved off the tea service that came clattering up to his elbow. He looked into the fireplace, more alive and crackling than he’d left it just minutes ago.

“Your Grace,” he said.

The clock ticked on the nightstand. The wardrobe adjusted its drawers. A measure of soot spilled down onto the flames.

Slowly, almost guiltily, the Beast climbed down out of the chimney and curled up on top of the logs.

“I was just… tending the fire,” he said.

“I talked to your butler,” said Roxas.

The clock stopped ticking. Half-burned logs cracked and crunched. Black smoke choked the fireplace until it obscured everything but the flame-colored eyes, which looked, now, strangely dull.

“Oh,” said the Beast.

Chapter 5: Redress

The candelabrum elbowed the clock, which remembered to start ticking again. Roxas twisted his mittens in his lap like he was trying to wring blood from them.

“How… how did you find the old man?” the Beast asked, a valiant attempt at casual conversation.

“I found him tedious, mean, and completely insane,” said Roxas.

The eyes changed shape, just a little, a curve on the lower edge that indicated a glimmer of mirth.

“That sounds about right.” The glimmer went away. The Beast fidgeted. “Did he…?”

“He told me the story. His version of it, anyway.”

“Right. Of course.”

Another long moment where neither of them said anything. By silent conspiracy, the clock and the candelabrum vacated the room. The rest of the furniture, though it looked like it wanted to follow, was duty-bound to do nothing but shuffle awkwardly.

“Was there… a point to telling me that?” the Beast asked.

“I was wondering if you wanted to tell your version.”

“Why? He has to tell it true.”

“I thought he might have embellished a little.”

“He can’t.”

Greedy. Cruel. Proud. Self-important. Rude. Vain. Shallow. Smelly. Stupid. Selfish.

“Well.” Roxas took a deep breath. “I feel like you’ve been avoiding me because you didn’t want me to find out. But I know now, so there’s no point.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” the Beast said, turning its eyes away. “I just don’t like company.”

“Then why did you ask me to stay here forever?”

The Beast declined to answer.

“So you’ll risk your life to save mine, but you won’t answer a simple question?” Roxas demanded.

The Beast said nothing.

“How many others have there been?” Roxas asked—not sharply, but without mercy.

“You don’t want to know the answer to that.”

“I think you don’t want to tell me the answer to that.”

The smoke flicked, flames fluttered, logs shifted. “Some,” he admitted. “Lots. I don’t know anymore.”

“What happened to them?”

“Some ran. Some stayed and then ran. Some tried to kill me. And then ran.”

“How many did you kill?”

“Roxas—”

“How many?”

The Beast fidgeted, then grew still. The smoke thickened again until only the barest hints of flame could be seen through it.

“One,” the Beast said, very quietly. “It was… an accident. A long time ago. An accident.”

“And you kept kidnapping more people anyway?”

“Girls. And before you ask: because I have to. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

“You can’t, or you don’t want to?”

“I can’t.”

Roxas chewed this over.

“All girls?” he asked.

“Yes, all girls. Until you.”

Something sharp and cold lodged in Roxas’ chest. He twisted the mittens until they creaked. The fire was warm enough. His bed and blankets were at his back. He was safe here.

“If you can’t talk about it,” he said, “then I won’t ask about it again. But I don’t want to be alone here anymore, and I don’t want you kidnapping any more girls. I’ll keep you company if you’ll keep me company. Will you do that?”

“I… guess,” the Beast mumbled. “Fine. Might as well. Since you’re going to be here forever.”

“And please don’t come down my chimney without asking.”

“I was just tending the fire,” the Beast said, and crawled back up the chimney.

---

Dinner was a desperately awkward affair, held, as it was, in a dining room fifty times too large for just two people. Roxas wasn’t about to sit at the opposite end of the table from the Beast, but nor could he sit directly adjacent; and yet he didn’t want to sit too far away, either. He picked a seat about three down the line and felt the entire evening that it was the wrong choice.

Most of the meal passed in silence, Roxas picking at a thick stew and the Beast looking at everything in the room except for Roxas.

“How… are your feet?” the Beast asked at last.

All hints of Roxas’ appetite vanished. He swallowed ashes and dabbed his mouth with his napkin.

“Do you have a surgeon hidden somewhere in this castle?”

The Beast winced. “That bad? And—no. I don’t.”

“It’s not urgent. Yet.”

Fetid chunks of vegetable and strings of gristle floated amongst iridescent circles of oil in Roxas’ stew. He pushed them around with his silver spoon.

“Is… there… something I could do to…… help?” the Beast hazarded.

Can you handle a knife? dangled on Roxas’ lips, but he slurped it back in.

You could let me go home to my sister rose like vomit after it. He swallowed that, too.

“Mostly I just wish I had something to read,” he said.

The Beast snorted. “What, my library isn’t good enough for you?”

Roxas nearly leapt out of his chair. “There’s a library?!”

---

There had to be thousands of books, or tens of thousands. The room was bigger than the village’s town hall, bigger than any single room Roxas had ever seen, and it was filled to bursting with books, books, books!

“And I can—I can come here whenever I want?” Roxas said. He kept his voice low, afraid that if he raised it, all the books would snap open their covers and fly away.

“Do what you want,” the Beast said. “It’s no use to me anymore.”

“Anymore?” Roxas turned, wide-eyed. “You’ve read them all?”

The Beast hesitated. He was standing in the doorway, still holding the key to the library (which he had, sometime in his undisclosedly long past, locked and subsequently forgotten about locking). His shrouding smoke quivered and swirled. The twin red eyes turned away and down.

“I… can’t,” he said, almost with a sense of chagrin. Something slender gestured inside the smoke. A dozen embers rose through the column like rust flaking off a star. “Not… anymore.”

“But you used to,” Roxas pressed.

The Beast didn’t answer. He turned his back and gestured again.

“It’s yours. Do what you want.”

He started moping away. Roxas felt the pull of all the books behind him like a physical force. He gritted his teeth and called after the Beast.

“I could read to you.”

The Beast stopped. The smoke flicked and quivered. When he spoke, his voice was oddly thick.

“I would… yes,” he said. “That’s fine.”

“Any requests?”

The Beast shook his head, wavering the smoke from side to side.

“All right,” said Roxas. “I’ll pick something out.”

“Fine,” said the Beast. He shambled away.

Roxas, finally, permitted himself to dive in.

---

Forever would not be long enough to read every book in the Beast’s library, but Roxas was determined to make a good start. He’d scampered around the shelves like a terrier, snatching up anything and everything that caught his fancy, until the pain and soreness in his feet forced him to sit down. There were several large, dusty tables set about the place, with large, dusty chairs all around them, and it was here that Roxas brought his haul. He created a minor meteorological event dropping all his books on the table but, while coughing and wheezing, spotted something curious.

There was one book already on the table.

Roxas came around slowly, still squinting through the dissipating dust. The book was thickly coated—it must have lain there for years. The pages it had been left open to were blank, as far as he could see. With a few gentle breaths, he blew the dust off.

Although the light in the library was dim, it was possible to make out the faint impressions of old ink. Roxas turned back one page and found the writing there much better preserved.

The text described, in lavish and unpleasant detail, a prince (whom Roxas had never heard of) apparently on a fox hunt, and how the fox had managed to kill the prince’s horse by tricking it into stepping in a fox-hole. Roxas rolled his eyes. More like: an incautious fool had destroyed his poor horse by not watching where he was going. But it wasn’t really the story that was the important part.

Heart racing for reasons he couldn’t quite describe, Roxas took the book in both trembling hands and carefully—oh, so carefully—leafed back to the inside of the front cover.

This book belongs to AXEL of ANJOU

Given to him on his 16^th birthday by his Father

Roxas stood and stared for uncounted minutes, reading the handwritten words over and over again, finding new meaning each time. Sixteen years old. His birthday. Given to him by his Father. The fact that he’d felt the need to write it down. The fact that he hadn’t finished the book. The fact that he’d been sixteen years old and had loved this gift enough to write his name in it.

His name.

His name was Axel.

---

“Ugh.”

Roxas looked up from the book. Behind the fire, a long, low curl of smoke occupied the fireplace in Roxas’ room.

“Something wrong?” Roxas asked.

“No. Nothing.”

“You said ugh.”

“Something stuck in my throat.”

Roxas closed the book on his thumb. A smile played around his mouth.

“You don’t like fairy-tales, do you.”

The Beast made an eloquent, bannersmoke gesture. “They’re fine.”

“But they’re not what you’d choose to read, if you had a choice.”

“I said they’re fine.”

Roxas hadn’t brought up the sixteenth-birthday book. He also hadn’t managed to work himself around to calling the Beast anything other than The Beast. The name, Axel, slid off him like a bubble of oil in a stew would escape a probing spoon. It consistently seemed more likely to be the name of the rug, or the mantelpiece, or the fire-poker.

“What would you read, if you had your pick?” Roxas asked.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I don’t even remember what’s in there anymore.”

“I’ll bring you a list, then.”

The fire spat sparks as it settled. Something long and slender, shrouded in smoke, reached out of the grate and gingerly plucked up another log from the pile. Roxas watched to make sure none of the logs outside the fireplace caught fire.

“It’s just,” the Beast said, “unrealistic.”

“I would hope so; it’s a fairy-tale.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t.”

“Ugh. If you must know, it’s the dancing.”

Roxas cocked his head to the side, bemused. “The dancing?”

“Dances don’t go the way they tell it in those stories. Actual dances are—dull, God, they’re so dull. You’re swapping partners every minute, and when you’re not, there’s nothing to do but talk and all the girls never have anything to say. Most people just stand around and gossip about whoever’s back happens to be turned.”

“So you’ve been to dances before,” Roxas said, excitement mounting. “Real ones.”

“Of course. Even the commoners have dances.”

“Us commoners don’t have ballrooms lying around.”

“Oh,” said the Beast. More coals shifted. “Right. You’re not missing much, anyway. But you do dance?”

“Everyone dances. Just not like—” He gestured at the book. “I’ve… kind of always wanted to learn.”

“Learn what? Dances? Why?”

Roxas couldn’t answer, so he just shrugged.

“I suppose I could teach you, if you really wanted,” said the Beast. “Though it’s really not as fun as they make it sound.”

“It’s not about fun, it’s about… I don’t know. Never mind.”

“All right. Are you going to keep reading, or not?”

Roxas glared at the fireplace. “You’re not supposed to say all right, you’re supposed to say, no no, I want to hear it!”

“But you don’t want to talk about it, otherwise you wouldn’t have said never mind.”

“It—I just—forget about it. Where did we leave off?”

“Now am I supposed to answer that, or annoy you until you say whatever you’re pretending you don’t want to say?”

Roxas looked around for something to throw at the Beast. The only thing to hand was the book, and he’d rather have thrown himself into the fireplace. The Beast’s eyes were curved again, twin crescent moons hanging in the smoke.

“I liked you better when you didn’t talk so much,” Roxas said.

“You’re the one who didn’t want to be left alone. So come on, are you going to tell me whatever it is, or not?”

Roxas sighed. His thumb idly stroked the velvet cover of the book.

“I just… dreamed about it. A lot. About somehow… somehow getting out of that little village, and—and being somebody. Being—being grand, and elegant, getting swept—getting to sweep someone off her feet.”

“It never happens like that,” the Beast said. There was an odd note in his voice.

“I know. I just wanted to be part of it. Even just for a night. Knowing all the right words to say, all the right motions to make, the canapes and champagne, the crystal chandeliers, and the gowns—just imagining it was more beautiful things than I’d ever seen in my life.”

“If it’s gowns you want, my mother had a closet full of them,” said the Beast, seizing, as he often did, on the part of the sentence that gave him something to say, even if it wasn’t the important part.

Roxas grew uncomfortable at the mention of the long-deceased Duchess. He’d always assumed that the Beast had killed the Duke and Duchess, but because it was such an easy assumption, he’d never thought about it much.

That they had been real people, grand and elegant, mother and father to a son they’d tried to slaughter—who, in turn, had slaughtered them, a paradox of patricide now curled up in hellfire in the hearth right in front of Roxas—that was a much thornier truth.

“I’m sure she did,” Roxas said diplomatically.

“They’re probably all still in the West wing,” the Beast mused, only half-listening. “I never did get around to her rooms. Moths could’ve gotten them, though, that’s always possible.” He shrugged. “Anyway, if you want to see them, that’s where they are.”

“That’s not quite—I thought you said the West wing was ruined?” Roxas said. His feelings were pulling him four directions at once, and so left him completely unmoved in the center.

“Oh. Well. As long as you’re careful, I suppose it’s all right.”

“All right,” said Roxas. Something in him was trembling, he couldn’t tell what. His hands sweated onto the book—and he welcomed its reappearance in his sphere of consciousness. “Anyway. Should we pick up where we left off?”

The Beast yawned. A wide diamond of flame opened and closed in the smoke as he did. He shifted around until his eyes rested close to the floor.

“If you want,” he said.

---

Roxas and the Beast didn’t spend all their time together—on the contrary, it was typically only a few hours a day, even in this new truce. The Beast, it seemed, really did value his alone-time, even if, recently, he was tolerant of company.

They arranged that, in addition to eating dinner together and the occasional story-time, the Beast would teach Roxas to dance, starting the following evening.

So, that morning, Roxas bundled himself up and ventured to the West wing alone.

---

Ruined didn’t begin to describe it. Fallen into disrepair was even less apt. Every inch of every corridor was burned black. Many of the rooms had only splinters hanging from the hinges in their door frames and stood filled with drifts of ash. Soot hung perpetually in the air like silt in a slow river. Here, the flames had eaten through the rafters, and in places chewed all the way through the roof to let in the cold and the rain. Wasps and birds had built nests in high corners and abandoned them. Boards had rotted, mortar dissolved, stones shifted. Claw marks scored the walls.

But more than that, the West wing was pervaded by a sense of mis-fitting. Corridors did not lead where they should. Rooms were the wrong size. No animal skitters broke the silence, no wind stirred the suspended soot despite the gaping holes in the structure. Something in the atmosphere made Roxas’ ears ache, as if he were being bombarded by a deafening sound that he couldn’t hear. The place was utterly without smell, a scentlessness that seeped through Roxas’ scarf and coated the inside of his mouth and nose.

The entire wing was, somehow, broken.

---

With significant protest, the door gave way against Roxas’ shoulder, admitting him, begrudgingly, into a room that had indeed been spared the fire. Soot chased in on his heels, eddied around his toes, and settled. The curtains had been left open, and the window had permitted enough sun that a swath of the rich carpet was bleached white, as though a blazing light were constantly flooding through the glass. Immediately under the window was a desk, letters unwritten by the sun’s scouring light, inkwells desiccated, wood blanched and warped.

To the right, there was a grand four-poster bed, silk sheets laid neat and smooth, drapes a riot of cobwebs. A half-burned candle still stood on the accompanying nightstand. A copper bed warmer sat on the heavy trunk at the foot of the bed. A pair of slippers lay tucked up next to the trunk.

Directly across from the bed was the fireplace, long cold, though the ash had never been cleared from it. On the near side of the fireplace was a large vanity, its three mirrors blinded by time. Crystal bottles were arrayed below, some still containing cloudy dregs, along with many tins and compacts, combs and brushes and hairpins. A string of pearls spilled carelessly from an open jewelry box. A night-dress was draped over the back of the chair. Past the fireplace was the wardrobe, much larger than the one in Roxas’ room, shut up tight.

The air here was thick, but not so still as the air in the rest of the West wing. Roxas closed the door behind him—again, to the shrieks and whines of its long-rusted hinges—and detected the faintest whiff of bergamot perfume. He set his back against the door, clutching the knob for balance and breathing as deeply as he could.

In many ways, it would have been better if the room were ruined. It was too easy to see the Duchess here, her excision from the portrait too precise. She had been a small woman (the size of the slippers, the length of the pearl necklace) and prone to chills (the bed warmer, the material of the night-dress), careful of her appearance (the contents of the vanity) but careless with her things (pearls left out, night-dress not put away). And yet, so much was missing that her absence left a physical ache.

Had she been outspoken or meek, witty or dull? Was she vain, or simply politicking in the only manner available to her? To whom had she been writing, and had they cared for her, or she for them? Had she loved her husband? Had she loved her son?

Roxas leaned his head back against the door and shut his eyes, breathing. Just breathing. The thin scent of bergamot slipped under his scarf again and made him sick to his stomach. There was no reason for him to be here, robbing this grave. It would grant him no wishes, bring no dreams to life. What was he here for—to look at a dead woman’s gowns? A noble cause, indeed!

His hand tightened on the doorknob until the cold metal bit his skin, even though his gloves. The cold spread to his chest and soaked in, shallowing his breath and threatening to strangle him with panic. He fought the feeling down.

“I’m safe,” he murmured to himself. “I can go back to my room any time and the fire will be warm. I’m safe.”

The room didn’t contradict him. He managed to take a good, deep breath and sighed it out again. He pried his eyes open. The wardrobe was hardly ten steps away (Roxas’ steps were not so large these days). It would be silly, he thought, to have come all this way just to not look at the gowns. A quick glimpse to shatter the last of his dreams, and then he would go.

Roxas crossed the room, brushing through shades of the Duchess. He laid his fingers on the handles of the wardrobe. The wood was painted pale green, the grain fine beneath. Roxas steeled himself and opened the wardrobe doors.

Two dead moths fell out. Roxas’ throat closed entirely, so tight he couldn’t breathe.

The wardrobe was filled—filled, filled—with gowns more lovely than anything he could have imagined. His eyes were so dazzled that he struggled to pick out individuals from the rush of color and sparkle—yellows and royal blues, rich greens and beetle-wings, pearls and crystals, silk and velvet. His hands reached out to touch of their own accord and Roxas yanked them back as though from a hot stove. He forgot to blink for so long that his eyes welled up with stinging tears. When he remembered to shutter his eyelids, the tears spilled over. He hurriedly wiped them away, feeling like an ass.

What sort of man wept at a bunch of dresses?

Yet he couldn’t unroot his feet from the spot, couldn’t tear his eyes away permanently. The longer he looked, the more the menagerie resolved. There was an orange draping gown patterned with exotic birds and flowers in gold and green; an open-fronted teal gown embellished with hundreds of tiny pink roses, lace on the sleeves; a brilliant yellow gown, soft muslin ruffles falling like wilting flower petals with no petticoat underneath, bell-shaped sleeves and a wide neckline.

Roxas’ hands itched. The material was certainly finer than anything he’d ever touched in his life, even at his apprenticeship with the village tailor. He knew enough about fabric to know that these garments were supposed to move, were made to twirl and twinkle, not droop lackluster in this dreary, endless hibernation. The Duchess was dead, God rest her soul, but these things were not.

He could stand it no longer. He pulled his gloves off with his teeth and gently, ever so gently, picked the yellow dress from the wardrobe.

It flowed like liquid sunlight in his hands, every frill and ruffle exalting at his touch. It was surely more alive than all the enchanted furniture, despite being unable to move on its own, and therein lay the great tragedy. The dress begged Roxas for a dance, just one dance, to twirl her skirts and live again.

Roxas gave the dress a soft shake, sweeping the dust off the air, but that wasn’t enough and he knew it. He turned the dress this way and that, let it catch the light, let the frills flare out. He noticed, as he did so, that one of them had torn halfway off, likely from being caught on a bit of furniture or a carriage door. It would be easy to fix, if he had a sewing kit. He folded the dress against his hip to shush its pleading and looked around, poked through a few drawers until he found embroidery thread and needles by the window. It wasn’t quite what he needed, but he judged that he could make it work.

He picked out a thread that suited the color well enough, sat down at the desk and lay the dress on his knee. It was, as he’d hoped, a relatively easy repair, though the dress quivered with impatience. When Roxas had finished, he stood and lifted the dress up again to admire his work, and it nearly leapt into his arms. He indulged it, at last, by resting a hand on its waist and spinning it around as a partner should, though his steps were clumsy and uncertain.

The dress fluttered like a flag in the breeze. Its empty sleeves drooped, listless. It wasn’t a doll, after all; it was a garment. Even draping on a mannequin would be better for it than hanging like a corpse in the closet.

Roxas held the dress against his chest to soothe its hysterics. He looked around the room, but there really was nothing suitable in here. The dress just barely brushed the ground as it wept on Roxas’ shoulder. The Duchess had, after all, been a small woman.

About the size, perhaps, of a gawky sixteen-year-old.

Suddenly Roxas could feel his pulse in every inch of his body—excepting his three dead toes. His mouth was dry. He looked around the room again. He wiped his sweating hands on his trousers, wary of staining the gown that lay pressed so close against his body. There was a trembling in him that he could not name and, therefore, that could not have meant anything.

It was only a dress.

He looked around the room for a third time. He was utterly alone. His thumb toyed with a ruffle, and his eyes strayed back to the liquid sunlight in his hands.

It was only a dress.

Roxas laid it gently on the bed. He opened the Duchess’ trunk and found her chemises, petticoats and corsets (it was not a dress that could be worn without petticoats and a corset). The dress moaned on the bed, desperate for him to do more than stare.

The chemise slipped on lightly, falling too far from his shoulders, but the chill in the room was too hostile for him to waste any time picking at it. The corset came next, tightened as firmly as he could with his hands behind his back. His cold fingers struggled to fasten the petticoats, a puzzle that had him swearing under his breath while the yellow dress laughed. The cotton and whalebone hid his feet from him, a state of affairs he found more than agreeable.

At last, it was time for the gown itself, leaping into his arms once again, smothering him in kisses. He fought through its ardent affections, wrestled it into place and settled it with soothing words. He tightened the laces at the back—again, as best he could, shifting his weight one way and then the other to try and somehow get a better angle.

But at last the knot was tied. The sleeves were too lovely to crumple, leaving him with his arms lightly raised. The skirt swished as he adjusted his balance, hanging off him by the sturdy frame of the corset. Sunlight spilled through the window, and Roxas pulled the dress into it, one floating step at a time.

The dress glowed, the sparkle on clear water, marigolds nodding in the breeze. Roxas turned to air it out, watched the frills flutter and wave, felt their momentum against his hips like a slow tide. He turned, and then he spun, and the dress came to life—stained-glass fireworks, flocks of first-spring birds, wildflower honey and early-autumn wheat and the buzzing heat of summer, pounding feet racehorce-quick over soft grass and the taste of snowmelt rivers on his tongue—

All the hairs on the back of Roxas’ neck stood on end.

His dead toes caught against the floor and he stumbled, barely caught himself on the dead Duchess’ bedpost until the dress tackled him onto the bed anyway. His stomach knotted, skin went slimy with sweat. He looked down at himself, at the tawdry thing hanging from his misshapen frame, the sporadic hairs on his bared, flushed, scrawny chest, the skirts swelling at his hips, the corsetry digging its whalebone fingers into his pelvis, the dress screaming in agony at what he’d forced into it.

Nausea crawled up this throat. A thick black smoke filled his head, all the names Saïx had ever called him, all the hellfire spat from the village pastor’s kind pulpit. He clawed the laces apart, shucked off the dress, kicked away the petticoats and tore off the corset and peeled the chemise from his sweating skin. With shaking, fumbling hands, he dressed himself again in his proper clothes, so desperate to get out that he could barely see. He was still pulling on his trousers when he staggered out the door. A pang of guilt forced him to look back once, just once.

Then he fled, leaving the dress defiled and disgraced, crumpled and weeping on the floor.

---

Dinner was quiet.

On returning from the West wing, Roxas had made the furniture draw him the hottest bath possible and climbed in, scalded and scoured and scrubbed himself raw until the water was too cold for his fingers and toes to bear. His skin was stained red from the abuse and he still didn’t feel clean. Anything he tried to put in his mouth tasted of mud, so he mostly chased his meat and vegetables around with his silverware, reenacting hunt and harvest in miniature.

The Beast, for his part, had made a few limp attempts at conversation, then quit in a huff when Roxas failed to respond properly. He’d been smoldering at his seat for almost half an hour, for some reason refusing to leave even though Roxas wasn’t upholding his end of the companionship.

“Should I have them bring you something else?” the Beast asked abruptly.

“What?” said Roxas.

“You’re not eating. I can have them bring you something else, if you don’t like it.”

“No. No thank you. I’m just not hungry tonight.”

The Beast’s eyes narrowed; then he shrugged. “If you say so. I suppose there’s no reason to go on sitting here, if you’re not eating and I’m not eating.”

“I suppose not.” With some relief, Roxas laid down his arms of fork and knife.

“And I suppose you’re not feeling well enough to dance, either.”

A jolt of icy terror lodged in Roxas’ chest. He clenched his hands in his lap and bit his tongue hard. The Beast couldn’t have seen him. The fireplace in the Duchess’ room was cold and empty, the window likewise. He would have felt the temperature change at the Beast’s approach. He couldn’t have seen. No one could have seen.

“Not… not tonight, no,” Roxas said. “I’m sorry.”

Another shrug. “If you’re unwell, you’re unwell.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, or the next day, or the next,” said the Beast. He rose, and the smoke swelled in something like a stretch. “You’re only going to be here forever. It’s not like we’ll run out of time.”

Roxas thought of the ugly purplish color creeping down his dead toes, a little farther every day. His chest ached.

“I think I’ll feel well enough by tomorrow,” he said. “After dinner, maybe.”

“Tomorrow evening, then.” The Beast started off across the dining room, but slowed and then stopped halfway to the door. He turned his head until one red eye showed through the smoke. “And… you can wear whatever you want.”

The ice in Roxas’ chest spread through his whole body. His spittle froze solid in his mouth. His stomach churned. The Beast couldn’t know. The Beast couldn’t have known.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—” The Beast gestured broadly. “It’s only you and me in this castle, and I don’t care what you wear, so wear whatever you want. That’s all.”

Roxas couldn’t say anything else. The Beast billowed another shrug through the smoke.

“Good night, then,” he said.

---

‘Tomorrow’ came sooner than Roxas would have liked, and ‘tomorrow evening’ was right on its heels. He spent most of the day agonizing, and the early afternoon in agony. The Beast didn’t know about the dress, couldn’t have known. Even if he had, Roxas couldn’t bear the thought of going back there (couldn’t bear the thought of never going back).

In the end, evening came before he’d made up his mind and chose for him. He only had time to dress from his room’s wardrobe, so he picked the finest things in it: blue breeches with white silk stockings, black leather shoes, a blue-and-gold waistcoat and jacket with ostentatious epaulets. It all fit just fine (it didn’t fit at all) and it looked well enough (it didn’t look right at all), so, lacking any substantive excuses, he headed down to dinner.

Chapter 6: Ruin

Once again, Roxas had no appetite at dinner, but he forced himself to eat anyway so as to avoid having to explain himself. The Beast was fooled; he was in a particularly chatty mood, going on about all kinds of things that, on any other day, Roxas would have been enraptured by, but in a tone so lackadaisical it was hard to take him at his word.

From what Roxas gathered when he was able to pay attention, the Beast had been to many dances as a young (as-yet-uncursed) man, as training for his role in politics and high society; he’d hated all of them. He’d been an unparalleled dancer; yet he’d rarely danced at all and instead amused himself eavesdropping on all the gossip (which he was proud of), harassing anyone too meek or politically savvy to stand up to him (which he showed some chagrin over), getting quite drunk, and— (here he broke off in such a paroxysm of shame that even his glowing eyes vanished behind his curtains of black smoke).

“And?” Roxas prompted, morbidly curious despite (or perhaps because of) his own shameful activities.

“It doesn’t bear speaking about,” the Beast mumbled.

Roxas considered the story told by the cursed butler in the garden, the young man who had been so delightedly eager to beat an old woman to death simply for having the audacity to be ugly in his presence, and decided not to inquire further.

“You don’t have to teach me to dance if you don’t want to,” he said instead.

“The dancing wasn’t the problem. The problem was….” The Beast grew quite still. His eyes closed resignedly, and the smoke fluttered with a sigh. “Truth be told, I think the problem might have been me.”

“Very comforting to hear you’ve figured that out,” Roxas said dryly.

The Beast glared at him.

---

The ballroom was dark as pitch, its outlines only faintly described by the early moonlight picking through the cathedralic windows, which stood at some indiscernible distance from the entry. The Beast led Roxas inside, moving with more surety—either he could see better in the dark, or he knew this room like the back of his….

Whatever sort of paw or claw he had in there.

Roxas watched him cross to the center of the room on long, sure strides, then watched him stretch up—and up, and up, narrowing as he went, until his red eyes floated ten or fifteen feet above the floor. The Beast gave a gentle sigh. With a glint of crystal and a shiver of music, a massive chandelier came alight with the glow of ten dozen candles, and the ballroom was revealed.

Not a stain of soot or smoke marred its perfection, save the line the Beast had drawn across it just now. The floorboards glimmered, patterns laid into the wood in gold and lapis. Silk draperies hung as fresh and bright as the moment they’d come off the loom. The columns shone, the balconies gleamed. An immense heavenly fresco, worthy of any papal chapel, adorned the ceiling. The massive windows reflected it all back in softer light, showing the smoke-smothered Beast easing back into his proper posture and the finery-smothered Roxas standing by the door like a pig in a shirt.

Roxas looked away from the windows before his wonder soured completely.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, mostly to remind himself that it was.

“Modest, as these things go,” the Beast said. “But I’m glad you like it.”

In a darkened corner, a quartet of instruments was waking from a long slumber, creaking and yowling as they stretched their strings back into place.

“Oh, will you be joining us?” the Beast said pointedly. He turned back to Roxas. “Usually we’d hire musicians, and they’d bring their own instruments, but we kept a few on hand in case of accidents. And apparently, they’ve been pretending to be unenchanted for—a long time.”

“Maybe they’re just excited to have a guest,” Roxas said. He crossed the room to greet the instruments personally. “Good evening. Thank you for having us. Take your time.”

“You don’t have to thank them,” the Beast said.

“No, but someone should, and I guessed you wouldn’t.”

The Beast hunkered petulantly. “Do you want to learn to dance, or not?”

Fighting down a smile—and keeping his eyes off the windows—Roxas returned to the center of the room. “All right; I’m ready. Where do we start?”

“Well, first you—hm. You put your—well, first you—um. Hang on. It’s—I’m just remembering. Stay there.”

The Beast turned his back, stood up to his full, towering, reed-thin height again, and sketched out a series of awkward motions while humming under his breath, somewhere in the smoke. Roxas put a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.

“Right, right, that’s how it goes, all right,” the Beast said. He came back down and turned to face Roxas again. “So—look, not to be indelicate, but this will be easier if I lead and you follow.”

“All right. I don’t see what might be indelicate about that.”

“You—oh. That’s right, you don’t. The—typically, um, the… the man leads and the girl follows.”

“So I’ll dance the girl’s part, is that right?”

“No, you’re right; I shouldn’t even have suggested—”

“It’s fine.”

“—would be utterly humili—what?”

“It’s fine,” Roxas repeated.

And it was fine. He searched himself for even a smudge of shame at the idea and found none. Indeed, the whole thing seemed utterly reasonable. It was only the two of them, after all.

“Oh,” said the Beast. He stared at Roxas for a little longer than seemed necessary. “Right. Well, if you don’t mind….”

Roxas put his hands on his hips. “Do you want to teach me to dance, or not?”

---

Place the right hand here, where his shoulder would be; the left somewhat outstretched, also shoulder-high, elbow bent, and pretend the hand is clasped gently with his. Don’t look at the feet, the feet will take care of themselves. Head tipped back ever so slightly, a swan-curve in the neck as if inviting him to kiss at the corner of the jaw—good, just like that. Back straight; he places his left hand on the right hip to guide. Follow as he steps wide to his right (her left), then two small steps in place, one-two-three, then forward-two-three, left-two-three, back-two-three. Travel the whole room by turning on the little steps, one-two-three, one-two-three, the part that makes her dress spin out. Stay smooth and level, light on the feet; a candle clasped between the hands should stay lit no matter the tempo—perfect, beautiful. One-two-three, one-two-three. Follow where he leads, where his hands and shoulders and hips turn the dance, even with eyes closed; sensation, momentum, and instinct, one-two-three, one-two-three, there’s nobody else on the floor two-three, nobody else in the room two-three, nobody else in the whole singing cosmos—

Roxas’ finger touched hot coals.

He yelped and yanked his hand back, fell out of step. The animated quartet squealed and fumbled. The Beast staggered back from Roxas in kind, eyes going wide and wild, gentle voice strangled out in a sharp, wretched gasp. The whirling room spun out and tipped over, too dizzy to stand. The dark windows looked on implacably.

“Roxas?” the Beast choked.

His finger stung. The tip was reddening and starting to swell. The coarseness of his hands, his clothes, his upbringing, all came flooding back into him, filling his chest with a suffocating pressure. His vision blurred, nose filled with nettles, throat closed like a fist.

“Roxas?” There was a note of panic in the Beast’s voice. “Are you all right?”

Roxas’ knees gave out. He landed heavily on his rear and, like a burst dam, broke out into uncontrollable sobbing.

“Oh, God!” the Beast cried. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I—I’ll send for—”

Roxas shook his head, too wracked to speak. The Beast backed off again, paced a tight circle, smoking fit to blacken the entire ballroom.

“This is all my fault. I never should have—stupid, stupid, I knew it was a stupid idea, I never should have brought you—” He turned round red eyes on Roxas. “I never should have had anything to do with you.”

A fresh wave of pain caught Roxas in the chest and pushed a sharp gasp out of him. He curled around it, squeezing his eyes shut, deaf, numb and blind to everything but the intense, sourceless ache threatening to crush him in its grip.

It was the warmth, finally, that pulled him out of it, hauled his head above water long enough for him to float. He looked over to see the Beast lying on the floor, a miserable river of smoke, staring up at Roxas with enormous, mournful puppy-eyes. Roxas had a sudden impulse to scratch him behind the ears, and the absurdity of the notion thumped so hard against his capsizing despair that it set him back on an even keel.

“I’m all right,” he said, though his voice was still thick and snot was still dribbling from his nose. He fumbled out a kerchief and wiped his face. “I’m all right, don’t worry.”

“I hurt you,” the Beast said miserably.

Roxas chuffed. “It’s nothing.”

“How could it be nothing? You—”

“Look,” Roxas said, showing the Beast the tiny red mark on the tip of his finger. “See? It’s nothing. I’m all right.”

The Beast raised his head to look. One of his eyes narrowed.

“All that,” he said, “over that?”

“No,” Roxas said, bristling, “not over that.”

“Then what?”

Roxas couldn’t find an answer, though he ransacked his mind for one. The Beast lay his head back down on the floor. His eyes burned down to low cinders.

“Roxas,” he said heavily, “do you regret promising to stay here?”

An immediate no leapt to Roxas’ lips, and he was startled to find that it was, mostly, true. All his life, he’d been starving for something more, and, though this wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind, it was—or at least it felt like—the more he’d always been searching for. Granted, his life had been endangered what seemed like every other hour, but he’d found within himself an immense reservoir of iron resolve and survived. Roxas had lived more in the last month than the entire rest of his life.

Yet he also couldn’t let go of the fact that it had all come at the cost of Xion, who, with Roxas gallivanting off on these wild adventures, had been left out in the cold, ignorant of the fate of her only living family—and not forgetting that she was a young woman, without husband or father or brother, left to fend for herself in a world that was convinced she was too stupid and weak to even think her own thoughts. Whether or not she’d given up Roxas for dead, Roxas couldn’t do the same to her.

“No,” he said at last. “I don’t regret that promise. But it would be easier if I knew my sister was all right.”

The Beast fidgeted, causing tremors and fluctuations in the smoke. At last, he sighed.

“That can be arranged.”

---

The brokenness of the West wing was no less disconcerting when Roxas was expecting it. The Beast had led him past the Duchess’ old room—a suffocating weight on his chest, invisible eyes glaring accusations from every corner—and into a room so thick with charcoal and ash that it was as though the entire space between the walls had been turned into one immense fireplace. A large, sooty window opened onto a balcony overlooking the front courtyard. The only furniture remaining was a single end-table near the window, upon which sat a black glass case, opaque, and a silver hand-mirror that was so untouched by any sign of fire that it seemed to glow as bright as the moon.

“Is this… your room?” Roxas asked. The remains of unknown luxuries crunched under his boots.

“Such as it is,” the Beast answered sheepishly. “I… wasn’t expecting company. The mirror is all we’re here for, anyway. You can pick it up.”

Idly sucking on his burned fingertip, Roxas picked his way across the room and took up the mirror. Despite the chill in the room, it was warm to the touch. It weighed twice what it should have—or it weighed what it should have, but moved like there was a massive kite attached to the back of it by a mile-long string. Roxas’ ears started hurting again.

“I’m starting to suspect it might be magical,” he said, by way of a joke.

“Oh, sure, it’s a little uneasy the first few times.”

“How do I use it?”

“Just think of the person you want to see,” the Beast said. “Hold them in your mind, then ask to see them.”

Roxas nodded. He looked into the mirror and saw his own face alarmingly clearly—his large, startling blue eyes, his lion’s mane of golden hair, his freckles, the healing blister on the tip of his nose.

The mirror looked back at him from somewhere behind his reflection. It was utterly still and completely alive.

Roxas swallowed. He closed his eyes and thought of Xion—her ink-black hair, her slender frame, her oval face, her wild blue eyes just like his.

“Please show me my sister,” he said.

The mirror fizzed in his hand. A piercing whine emitted from it, loud, but so high-pitched that Roxas could barely hear it. White light sheeted across his eyelids before he opened them. The glass was filled with a snowstorm of light, millions of flecks of white and gray and black. The silver handle grew hot. All the hairs on Roxas’ body stood on end, starting at his wrists and sweeping up to the top of his head. Sounds came through the mirror as though through thick walls, or over great distances; figures began to take shape from the crackling swarm.

Roxas felt a warmth at his back as the Beast peered over his shoulder, but he couldn’t tear his eyes off the mirror for even a moment.

Motion, violent and constrained, sketched itself behind the veil. The distant sounds grew nearer, clearer. The swarming flakes started to turn colors, psychedelic, until suddenly Roxas’ eyes caught the trick of looking and the image resolved.

Xion, bound and thrashing, being dragged by two burly men.

“Let go of me!” she screamed, her voice tinny through the mirror. “He didn’t run! I’m telling you, he was taken!”

Another voice, deeper, from somewhere the mirror couldn’t see: “You see? She’s hysterical. Forever screaming about this so-called ‘beast’ that took her brother, when it’s obvious to anyone that the wretched gadabout simply abandoned her.”

Roxas’ blood ran cold, even as his skin burned with fury.

Saïx.

“Shut your putrid mouth!” Xion snarled, fighting her captors like a tiger. “Coward! Liar! Dog-fucking piss-for-brains—”

“Clearly the poor girl has lost her mind,” Saïx said calmly. “She’s a danger to herself. I have hope that a good husband and a few children will settle—”

Xion screamed so loud and so long that it made the mirror’s image fuzz out. One of the burly men clapped a hand over her mouth.

“But as you can see, she’s in no condition to be married,” Saïx went on. “I hold out hope that the care she will receive at your asylum will place her in a better condition, after which I will happily take care of the rest.”

The thug yanked his hand away from Xion’s mouth with a cry. “She bit me!!”

Xion sucked down an enormous breath and roared: “I’M NOT FUCKING MARRYING YOU!”

“If you can’t shut her up, at least put her away,” Saïx snapped.

The mirror fell from Roxas’ hand. It hit the floor with a heavy thunk and didn’t bounce. The image and the sound cut out.

“I have to go,” Roxas said. He could barely hear himself through the roar in his ears. “I can’t—I have to help her, I’m the only one who can get her out—”

“Go.”

Roxas spun. The Beast stood in the back corner of his room, just a column of black smoke and two dull red eyes.

“I release you from your promise,” he said softly. “Go. There’s a carriage in the stable that can take you. Take the mirror, too; it will help you find her.”

“Thank you,” Roxas said.

He wasted no more time on words; simply snatched up the mirror and ran from the room.

---

Without lights or horses, the carriage flew like a bat out of Hell.

Roxas sat in the driver’s seat, hanging on for dear life as the carriage crashed through the underbrush, jolted over rock and rill and hurled itself around boulders and trees. He would swear that the axles were smoking.

He had to resist the impulse to urge it faster.

“I’m coming, Xion,” he murmured, gripping the mirror tight.

---

The carriage burst out into open air and careened right past Roxas and Xion’s old home. Another wagon was there, drawn by a single swaybacked mare. Beside it stood two thugs, a gnarled old man, and Saïx.

“Here!” Roxas barked at the carriage. It skidded a full half-circle around the asylum wagon on one wheel, terrifying the mare, before crashing back down, its momentum spent. Roxas stuffed the mirror into an inner pocket of his finery and leapt off the wagon before it even stopped rocking. He made a beeline for Saïx.

“Let my sister go!” he ordered.

Saïx’s eyes went wide. He took a step back. The two thugs looked at each other—one had a bloody kerchief wrapped around his hand.

“Sir?” the gnarled old man said to Saïx, peering through thick lenses.

“Ah,” said Saïx. His lip curled. His hand clenched on the heavy pouch in his hand. “Just in the nick of time, it seems.”

Roxas stormed right up to the two of them and whirled on the old man. “My sister won’t be going to your asylum. Let her out of that wagon right now.”

The wagon stayed worryingly still and quiet. Roxas swallowed nausea.

“Aah, and who might you be?” the old man croaked.

“I’m her brother. She’s in my care; let her go.”

“My, my,” Saïx said, sidestepping back into his stride. “Look who ran off into the woods and came back with a spine.”

Roxas ignored him, speaking only to the old man. “I don’t know what this man told you, but he has no claim to my sister. Let her go.”

“Dr. Xehanort, you heard the girl,” Saïx said. “Ranting and raving about monsters in the wood. Regardless of whose charge she is, the asylum is the best place for her.”

“Shut up,” Roxas snapped.

“Indeed, the young woman seems quite unwell,” the old man said calmly. His eyes, Roxas noticed, had not left the pouch in Saïx’s hand. “Such delusions must be treated.”

“I just came here on a carriage drawn by no horses!” Roxas said, pointing furiously to it. The carriage stopped shaking the mud off its footplates and held perfectly still, as if hoping no one would notice it was animate. “And she’s telling the truth. There is a beast living in the old castle. He did kidnap her and prevent me from coming back. I’ve seen it. It’s real.”

“Clearly the boy is familiar with her delusions, and accustomed to appeasing them,” Saïx said. “Whatever his involvement—or lack thereof—he’s no proper caretaker for the poor girl.”

Behind him, the thugs were elbowing each other. One of them leaned in towards Saïx and said: “But he did come in on a carriage what’s got no horses.”

Saïx opened his mouth. He looked at the carriage. He closed his mouth again. Without taking his eyes off the enchanted conveyance, he handed the heavy, jingling pouch to the old man.

“Thank you, Dr. Xehanort, I believe that will be all.”

“It absolutely will not—”

Saïx grabbed Roxas by the shirt and slammed him into the wall of his own house. The impact knocked all Roxas’ breath out.

“A beast, you say?” Saïx oozed. “Living in the old castle?”

Behind him, the old man was climbing into the driver’s seat of the wagon. Roxas kicked Saïx in the shin as hard as he could. Saïx hardly even flinched.

“Let me go!” Roxas snarled. “You rat! You—you dog-fucking piss-for-brains!”

“Where is this castle, precisely?” Saïx asked, unperturbed. “This town has lived under the shadow of a so-called curse for far too long. And now I come to find it’s only a beast?”

The old man flicked the reins. The mare heaved forward, still rolling its eyes at the horseless carriage.

“Stop!” Roxas shouted, struggling with all his strength. “You can’t take her! Stop them! Stop them!”

The carriage continued holding perfectly still. The thugs came up behind Saïx, the gleam of greed in their eyes.

“Gentlemen,” Saïx said, “the way I see it, whosoever frees that castle from the grip of the monster will be the hero of this little town—and whichever lord sees fit to move in afterwards.”

“Sounds good to me,” one thug grunted.

“Me too,” said the other.

“That thing left a pretty good path through the woods,” said the first thug. “You think we oughtta follow it?”

Saïx smiled, holding Roxas’ gaze. “Yes. I think we should.”

“You’re a dead man,” Roxas hissed, so furious he could barely speak. The wagon was retreating into the distance. The carriage just sat there like it had never moved at all.

“I’ll deal with you when I get back,” Saïx said distastefully. He raised his voice to say, “Odd, isn’t it, that empty carriage careening out of the woods like that?”

“Odd, yeah,” said one thug.

“Very odd.”

“And what a shame,” Saïx said quietly, just to Roxas, “that no one ever saw poor dear Roxas ever again.”

“You—!”

Saïx struck him across the mouth so hard that he saw stars. While Roxas reeled, Saïx barked an order. Hinges shrieked. Roxas was heaved bodily off the ground and thrown down a flight of stairs. A door slammed. Darkness clamped down around him. A bolt slid home.

“Now!” Saïx said, muffled and cocksure. “With me. We’ll find reinforcements at the pub. It’s time to put this town back on the map.”

Footsteps crunched away into silence. Roxas tasted blood. The moment his wits returned, he clambered up the pitch-black stairs and hammered on the cellar door, shouting for help, shouting and shouting until his voice went hoarse and no more sound could be squeezed out.

---

Cold rain drummed on the cellar door and dripped through the cracks between the boards. The water trickled down until it met Roxas, slumped at the top of the stairs under the weight of a crushing helplessness.

Even if he got out, where would he go? With the enchanted carriage, he might be able to catch the crooked doctor’s wagon, but what then? Roxas had no money to undo Saïx’s bribe, and no social standing to fall back on—and that was assuming the carriage would even agree to follow his directions.

Not that he could do any good at the castle, either. The approaching mob wouldn’t listen to him, not with Saïx at its head. His fine clothes and foolish bravado would be nothing more than a funny joke. Anyway, the Beast could take care of himself, couldn’t he? Even against an armed mob?

Roxas shifted, and a faint light spilled out from inside his jacket. He had a moment of sublime confusion before remembering—the mirror.

Carefully, he extracted it from his inner pocket. It was miraculously unharmed by all the roughhousing. As before, it was warm to the touch and imbued with a strange inertia. Roxas gripped its handle tight with both hands.

“Show me my sister, please,” he said.

Again, the flare of white light, the crackle and whine, the snowstorm. Roxas first picked out the trundling squeak of wagon wheels, then the wet split-splat of hooves through the mud. The image resolved—faint light swinging through a barred window, and a form lying insensate on a wooden floor. Roxas’ heart stuck in his throat until he could pick out her breathing.

Unconscious. Just unconscious. Roxas didn’t know how far the asylum was, but he had to assume it was quite some distance, seeing as he’d never heard of it before today. There was still time left for Xion. If Roxas could just get out of this damned cellar, he could take the enchanted carriage—or steal a horse, if that failed—catch up to her, and….

Well, and do something. An old man and a horse were not long odds.

“That’s enough, thank you,” Roxas said.

With a sizzle, the mirror reverted to its base state. Roxas could just barely pick out his own face by its crescent-moon glow.

At the insistence of a deep dread in his belly, he requested: “Show me the Beast, please.”

The mirror remained blank.

Roxas huffed out a breath. He closed his eyes, adjusted his grip on the mirror, focused. A column of black smoke. Two ember-red eyes, about six feet off the ground. Slender limbs, somewhere in there.

“Show me the Beast,” he requested again.

The mirror flashed, crackled, filled with snow—and snow, and snow, and snow. Roxas caught glimpses of red light here and there, a hint of a distorted voice through the whine and the noise of the rain, but a full minute later, the image still hadn’t resolved. Roxas shook the mirror—didn’t help—before setting it down. The image vanished.

Roxas wiped his sweating hands on his trousers. Was any of this really necessary? He needed to figure a way out of this cellar so he could go after Xion. Knowing what kind of trouble the Beast was in wouldn’t help him with that. And the Beast probably wasn’t in any trouble at all.

Roxas picked up the mirror again, hastily, and focused on a much less pleasant visage.

“Show me Saïx,” he said.

This time, the mirror responded promptly, and soon Roxas was looking down on Saïx—and the horde of torch-wielding, pitchfork-swinging rabble behind him. Roxas almost laughed—torches? Really?—but the mirth soon dissipated. Several of them, old army men, had swords; some of the hunters had brought their bows and arrows. He even saw a couple of firearms.

And it was starting to rain.

His mouth went dry. He dismissed the image. He screwed his eyes shut again.

Focus. The cavalier attitude hiding immense shame. The incredible selflessness, the unbelievable selfishness. The essence of flame, both warming and burning, both nurturing and destructive; tamed, but never domesticated.

“Show me Axel,” Roxas said.

The mirror crackled to life.

And started screaming.

Roxas’ hands and arms seized, paralyzed in a death-grip on the mirror’s handle. The sound was deafening, the light blinding; the glass of the mirror bowed outward like a fish’s eye. Light and color strobed behind it, as violent and as vibrant as wolves tearing apart a still-living deer.

And the sound—!

Roxas could feel himself screaming, feel it in his throat and chest, yet his voice was lost in the cacophony. He couldn’t tear his eyes off the mirror, barely able to make sense of what he saw: a dozen different pictures all painted at once, rising and sinking and flowing through each other like boiling ink. A slender hand with two cloth rings, a woman plunging towards a blue-green river, a couple at the foot of a four-poster bed, a charcoal creature with an arrow in its shoulder, a boy and a fox, an upraised knife—and a dozen voices, all the same voice, all shouting in a great chaos, unintelligible, until suddenly they converged into a single, desperate crescendo—

Roxas, RUN!

The mirror exploded.

A horrific pain caught Roxas in the left eye. He tumbled down the cellar stairs. The mirror clattered to the ground, somewhere behind the ringing in his ears. The pain sharpened to a red knife-point, boring through his eye and setting the left side of his head on fire. Every muscle in his arms and hands spasmed so viciously that he couldn’t move them, all he could do was lie on the ground and scream while blood ran down his face. The pain in his eye wouldn’t stop, reasserting itself erratically, battering his consciousness, his eye, his eye—

Well, the eye was lost. What next?

It was too dark to see much, especially after the blinding light of the mirror, but the left half of his vision was stained a gruesome red. There were cuts all over his face and neck, a needle of glass lodged in his chest just below the collar bone. It was likely somewhat smaller than the one lodged in his left eye, which gouged at the bone every time his floundering body tried to blink.

Roxas reached up and found the shard with his twitching fingertips, jostling it into another sharp red spike of pain. He gripped it tight and yanked it out. Blood and jelly spilled down his cheek. The pain dulled.

He pulled the other glass shard out of his shoulder. Blood soaked into his fine linen shirt, warm and wet.

Next.

On bruised knees and burned palms, he crawled along the cellar floor until he found the handle of the mirror, still warm. When he picked it up, it came easily, the tie to its distant inertia severed. He crawled up the steps to the cellar door, still firmly bolted against the rain, now porcupined with shards of glass. Roxas jammed the handle of the mirror into the gap in the door, just below the bolt. A splinter of wood chipped off. He wiggled the mirror free and struck again, the world’s worst miner with the world’s worst pickaxe, and knocked out another splinter.

And again. And again. And again.

---

The fifth time Roxas stuffed his fingers through the splintery hole, he was finally able to slide the rain-slick bolt back. His arms and shoulders screeched as he pushed the doors open and rose like the dead into the freezing rain. His vision was bad, and the pain was worse, but he didn’t have time for it.

Next.

The horseless carriage trundled over to him. Roxas grabbed its eaves and climbed on. There was no purpose to anger or blame. In the darkness now permanently clapped over his left eye, the chaos of the mirror reenacted itself until Roxas could pick out something he halfway recognized: a charcoal creature, an arrow buried in its shoulder.

The choice was brutally easy. Whatever else happened to her, Xion would still be alive in the morning.

“To the castle,” Roxas ordered the carriage. “And hurry.”

---

Roxas knew he was too late before his feet even touched the ground. The gate was off its hinges, the grand entry standing open in the rain. The path through the courtyard had been trampled into mud. As Roxas hurried up it, his senses—certainly not his eye—caught on something amiss. A silence where there should have been noise.

A mangled pair of shears lay by the side of the path, smashed into the mud; and beside them, three thick, bloody, human fingertips.

A flash of lightning heralded a roar of thunder. A scraping sound clattered down from high above. Roxas looked up, shielding his wounded eye from the rain. Indistinctly, he could make out two figures scrabbling across the slick shingles.

Next.

He ran inside the castle, past shattered corpses and broken furniture, up the stairs, through the tangled corridors, into the West wing and the Beast’s room where the balcony door stood open. The sheeting rain had washed the soot off the glass case, exposing….

Something. Roxas’ senses couldn’t make sense of it, though it insisted, directly to his mind, that it was a rose. If the West wing was broken, then this, surely, was where it broke.

A clatter from outside finally pried his attention away from the Rose. He darted out onto the balcony, into the pouring cold rain. He caught sight of a spindly black figure clambering over a cornice, trailing only the faintest ribbons of smoke in the downpour. A more familiar figure popped up behind it, took a knee and took aim with a heavy crossbow. Roxas’ stomach dropped.

Saïx pulled the trigger. The bolt shattered a roof tile by the Beast’s clawed foot and clattered away into the dark. Saïx spat something that was swallowed by the rain and hurled the crossbow away. He whipped a dagger out of his belt and vaulted the cornice, half-sliding half-scrambling down to where the Beast was backed into a corner between a sheer drop and a sheer wall. The Beast wasn’t more than ten yards away but Roxas would never make it to him before Saïx did—and anyway, what could he do?

Roxas sucked down a deep breath, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted:“HEY!”

Saïx’s steps faltered as his head snapped up. The Beast lunged with uncanny speed, closing the distance between them in a heartbeat. The knife flashed against empty air before Saïx, with a single ferocious sweep of the Beast’s arm and an unceremonious squeak, was knocked tumbling down the roof and slipped off behind a gargoyle.

The Beast snorted a noseful of steam before turning, eyes blazing and black fangs bared, to face whatever threat was next.

His posture shifted suddenly from animal to man, the light in his eyes growing from sharp pinpoints to warm spheres.

“You came back!” he cried, before delight turned to horror. “Oh God, what happened? Are you all right?”

“I’m—” Roxas choked on the words, shook his head and cleared his throat of them. The pain couldn’t catch him as long as he didn’t think about it. “It doesn’t matter. Are you all right?”

The Beast scoffed, offended. “Doesn’t matter? How can it not matter? Just look at—”

Saïx leapt from behind the gargoyle and plunged the knife into the Beast’s back.

The Beast howled. Roxas screamed. The charcoal skin cracked, showing magma underneath, and the knife glowed red-hot. Saïx cried out and yanked his hand back. His boots slipped on the rain-slick tiles. His burned hand was just a little too clumsy to catch him a second time.

A moment later, the curse saw to him with a grisly crunch.

Roxas was over the balcony’s railing, sliding down the steep roof in blind panic. The Beast collapsed. Roxas reached him just in time, sparing him his own deadly fall by a matter of inches. The knife fell out and clattered away to find its master.

Roxas wrapped his arms around the Beast’s bony chest and dragged him back up to the balcony, over the railing, onto solid ground. He laid the Beast down carefully—stick-thin, a man’s body stretched to fulfill the proportions of a dire-wolf, and a wolf’s skull for a head, all charred black as night. The red-hot cracks were gone. Faint wisps of steam rose from the fissures where they had been.

Only then did Roxas realize that his hands and arms were not burned.

“Your eye,” the Beast said feebly. One tree-branch hand moved as though to touch him before stilling again. His coal-red eyes were dim, even dimmer under the rain. He looked at Roxas like there was nothing else left in the world.

“It doesn’t matter,” Roxas said. His voice shook. His head was full of steam and thunder. “You’re hurt. Tell me how to help you.”

The eyes flickered, the toothy jaw gaped in something that might have been a smile.

“Can’t,” he said.

“Stop it,” Roxas snapped. His voice was thick. There was a pain in his chest sharper than the one in his eye, and there was no running from it.

The smile faded. The Beast touched Roxas’ wrist with one thorn-slender claw.

“Roxas,” he murmured, a strange weight to his fading gaze, “tell me why you came back.”

“Because I love you,” said Roxas.

The Beast’s eyes flickered and snuffed out. Roxas’ heart clenched into a fist. There was a sound of cracking glass.

With a snap, the entire West wing un-broke.

Brambles burst from every fissure on the Beast’s body, from his eyes and his skeletal mouth. The force of them heaved him from the ground and threw Roxas aside. They encased the Beast in an instant, twisting and creaking, swarming over each other like snakes. Their thirsty roots tore through the stone tiles of the balcony and sucked down the freezing rain. A green blush rose from the roots to the twisting thorn-tips, and behind it, a thousand green buds bloomed into a riot of red roses, covering every inch of the monstrous briar. A gust of storm’s breath shivered the roses—then blew the entire bush apart, every stem and leaf turned to a snowstorm of soft red petals.

Through it, Axel fell.

Roxas caught him before he hit the shattered ground. He was tall and well-proportioned, with a shock of fiery red hair that even the rain couldn’t extinguish. He had a delicate, fine-boned face, a hint of cruelty around the mouth, a hint of mischief at the corners of the eyes. His bare chest rose and fell with a shallow breath. A single rosebud remained on his right shoulder, blurred in the corner of Roxas’ halved vision.

His eyes opened, twin emeralds in the pouring rain, and he smiled.

“Axel,” Roxas choked out, half-laughing, half-stunned. The name stuck. The name fit.

“Knew you could do it,” Axel said softly, “princess.”

A thousand emotions flooded through Roxas’ chest, all too swift and tumultuous to be named. A laugh bubbled out of his mouth. He shook his head.

“Do what?”

“Listen,” Axel went on, his eyes half-lidded, fixed on Roxas’ face. “I know a lady—lives right around here, somewhere. Real expert at transformations. Shouldn’t be too hard to find. Just don’t tell her I sent you. Hah.”

“What—Axel, what are you talking about?”

“She said it had to be a girl, but I… didn’t want to rush you. Guess it doesn’t matter now.” His chest stuttered with something like a laugh. The redness in his eyes made the green stand out brilliantly. He reached up a cool, soft hand to touch Roxas’ cheek. “Just… wish I could’ve seen it.”

Warmth seeped through the knees of Roxas’ trousers.

Roxas pried his gaze off Axel’s face and saw the pool of blood spreading out beneath them under the rain. He lifted Axel up and pressed a hand against his back and Axel hissed a breath through his teeth, head lolling.

Roxas’ heart stopped. His stomach churned. A terrible chill soaked all the way through him. The rosebud on Axel’s shoulder was no rosebud at all, but the broken, burnt end of a crossbow bolt, still buried in his flesh, blooming with red blood.

“No,” Roxas said numbly, while blood soaked his glove, no matter how hard he pressed. “No, no, this isn’t—this isn’t right. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”

“Roxas,” Axel sighed.

“This isn’t right! You—you were supposed to be a prince!”

And Roxas was supposed to be his princess. Somehow. His soul ached for it. Somehow. Somehow.

“Perfect,” Axel said, a feebly roguish smile gracing his pallid lips. “Always wanted to… start a civil war.”

“Shut up,” Roxas choked. The world was falling apart. He couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t you… tell me to shut up.”

Roxas clutched him tighter. The bleeding was slowing down, but so was Axel, and it wasn’t right. There was supposed to be more time. He was dying in Roxas’ arms and it was the first time he’d ever looked comfortable.

“You can’t go,” Roxas insisted. “You can’t—I can’t—I can’t do this without you! It isn’t fair!”

“It’s… a curse, princess,” Axel murmured. His eyes were half-closed, unfocused. “Only fair things… in this world.”

“No.” It was the only thing Roxas could force past the river stone in his throat. He understood now how Juliet could plunge that happy dagger into her breast. The hole was already there.

Axel pushed his fingers back through Roxas’ hair with great effort.

“Roxas…”

His hand clenched on the back of Roxas’ head. His green eyes sharpened with sudden clarity. He pulled Roxas closer, taut, urgent. Blood spilled red through his teeth.

“Run.”

The world tilted to a dangerous angle. Tears spilled unheeded from Roxas’ eyes. He couldn’t catch his breath or his balance, head spinning, heart stuttering, ears ringing.

“What…” he croaked, “what did you just say?”

Axel didn’t answer. His rose-red lips hung parted, unattended. Rain drummed on his clear green eyes. Pale knuckles splashed into the cold mud.

Numbness filled Roxas’ body, starting in his hands and flowing up his arms. A low tremor rolled through the castle like the rumble of approaching horses. Thin cracks spidered through the clouds. The rain sputtered in and out. Muted flashes of colored light painted the castle, the wood, the splintering sky.

Roxas bent low over Axel and kissed him, too late. The rumble grew to a roar. Pieces of the sky cracked loose and fell, smashing immense swathes of trees beneath them. Roxas buried his face in Axel’s shoulder, the smell of blood and rain, the supple, cooling flesh. Howling gales hurled dust and splinters over them. The castle shuddered and bucked. Roxas held Axel’s body close. With a deafening CRACK and a calamitous swoon, the West tower tore away from its masonry and—

 

 

THE END

Chapter 7: The Second-Worst Part of Being Dead

Once upon a time in a land far beyond the horizon, there lived a beautiful young woman—but she was not only beautiful. Her mind was as quick as a rabbit, her tongue sharp as a dagger, her hands as clever as crows. She was dandelion-wild and donkey-stubborn. She broke the hearts of those who desired her and the fingers of those who offended her. She had one great love in the world, and it was freedom; she went where she pleased, when she pleased, often entirely alone, and she cared not a whit for what anyone else thought of her.

One day, in the soft spring of the young woman’s twenty-first year, she went out to gather mushrooms in the mountains. The weather was mild, the day bright, and the beasts that lived in those precipitous hills were much shyer than she was—so she walked without fear, singing sweet songs in full confidence that there was no one around to hear.

And there was also no one to hear her scream when she slipped off a cliff; no one to hear her neck break; and no one to hear the timid snuffling of the bear that eventually ate her alive.

---

The second-worst part of being Dead, in Axel’s opinion, was the leash.

It stayed around her neck at all times, rarely visible, always felt, a little choking reminder of the price of her freedoms. Here, it glowed with divine light, draped listlessly across the listless stone floor, up the listless stairs to a listless throne and into the listless hand of a god who was so lacking in lists that Axel couldn’t possibly list all the ways.

The worst part of being Dead was the company.

“And what did we learn?” Xemnas, Lord of the Underworld, intoned.

Axel sighed and rolled her eyes. She draped herself on the edge of the plinth in the center of the room, showing quite a bit of leg.

“That My Lord is a sweetheart?” she suggested.

Xemnas just stared at her with his cold, metallic eyes. She rolled hers. Some people wouldn’t know a joke if it leapt up and bit them.

“Fine,” she spat. She tossed her hair over her shoulder. She left the legs out. “Stabbing range is bi-directional, is that good enough for you?”

“It is,” Xemnas said, “unpleasant to me, to receive you unexpectedly.”

“You think I like landing down here?”

“Perhaps I hoped it was an excuse to visit,” Xemnas said laconically.

Axel was, of course, beautiful, and Xemnas, like his bawdy golden brothers upstairs, had a weakness for beautiful women—that was why Axel was Dead, instead of just dead. Xemnas might have been stuffy, boring, and gloomy, but on the other hand, he was also stern, rigid, and sometimes outright cruel.

There was one rule in the Underworld, and it was this: nobody ever got out.

Except.

Inspired by the triumphant failure of that twit Orpheus, the slippery and ultimately futile twisting of Moron King Sisyphus, and the regular comings-and-goings of Aqua, Queen In Absentia for two-thirds of every year, Axel, languishing in the meadows of Asphodel, had gotten an idea. She watched souls flit upstairs, summoned by blood libations, before fluttering back home again. She spied Great Heroes sneaking through the gates—and some of them even escaping Cerberus’s teeth on the way back out. She people-watched the penitent poor begging for a ferry-ride into her misty prison, and saw several of them hike up their chitons and trek back up the cave-mouth to harass the skinflints who’d failed to pay for their passage.

It wasn’t so much that you couldn’t leave as that you couldn’t get away.

So Axel had waited for summer, when the Queen of the Dead had been gone long enough to make her husband pine for a pretty face, smooth-talked her way past the three judges at the palace gates, and made her case directly to the head honcho—and Xemnas, on a whim or a lark, had agreed. Axel was securely Dead, and secure in all the benefits that came with it. She never got hungry. She would never age. She couldn’t die—not permanently, anyway.

By the sixteenth not-permanently, the shine had pretty much worn off.

Axel put on a smile and dragged a hand up her leg until she was almost out of leg.

“If you want to see more of me,” she said to Xemnas, “you can just ask.”

The Lord of the Underworld had a hell of a poker-face. Axel sucked her teeth, flicked her chiton back down to her knee, and glared out the hollow-eyed window.

Not that things were more listful out there, but at least it was a change of scenery.

“You’re no fun,” she said petulantly.

Xemnas, again, made no reply. She heard the thin slither of the leash against stone and refused to look. Only when it pulled taut did she rise to her feet and go to him—it was that or be dragged (she knew from experience). He drew her all the way up to the second-to-top stair of his onyx throne and then, by whatever godly compulsions he wielded, convinced her body that it would very much like to kneel. With the leash still twined around his fingers, his gold eyes staring into the middle distance, he placed a hand on the back of her head.

Frigid. Freezing cold. Imbued with so much raw unfathomable power that it made her go cross-eyed.

“Since you’re here….” Xemnas said.

---

Some span later—time wasn’t real in the Underworld—Axel exited the palace, jelly-legged and soaking wet, the ghost of her leash unspooling behind her, infinitely long and permanently attached to the foot of Xemnas’s throne. She nodded to the three judges on her way past, gathering her hair into a somewhat more ruly state. The judges made various faces of disgust, exasperation, and pity. They noticed that they were at odds with each other, had a quick-whispered heads-together conference, and came up all three disapproving.

Axel ignored them. They were probably just jealous. It wasn’t any old miserable soul who could drop straight into the Palace of the Dead, have a quick ‘chat’ with the boss, and swan right back out again. Did she wish she could do it without being edged to within an inch of her sanity? Sure. But that part wasn’t exactly on purpose, and she wasn’t complaining. She figured she’d gotten the longest possible end of a very thorny stick.

Calling on gods for help was a loser’s game. Most of the lesser gods were as likely to turn you into a bush as render any actual aid. The mid-tier gods, your Xigbars and Luxords, might help you, but their kind of ‘help’ had a propensity for scrambling the human brain like an egg. Of the ruling family, middle-brother Ansem, with dominion of the sea, was notoriously capricious and in general just kind of a dickhead; and you’d have to be an unadulterated moron to cry out to mighty Xehanort, youngest sibling and God-King of the Heavens (though if you did, you wouldn’t be unadulterated for very long afterwards). While no god in the Pantheon could be called fair, Xemnas, eldest and dullest, was about as close as they came. If he made a deal, he stuck to it. If you crossed him, you were fucked.

Or sometimes you were fucked anyway, because his God-King little brother said he was entitled to fuck you over. Or because his wife didn’t like you. Or it was raining on a Tuesday.

That was the problem with gods. They really could do whatever they wanted.

Axel started up the long road back to the main entrance of the Underworld, sandals kicking up dust, chiton swirling the mist that spilled over from the Asphodel fields. Distant singing rang from Elysium, an eternal taunt only to the specific people who were petty and stupid enough to care about the hierarchy of afterlives. Distant thunder rumbled in Tartarus, like the sound of a very large boulder rolling down a very long hill.

“Aw,” Axel remarked to nobody. “Missed it.”

Farther up the path, she came to a long, slender bridge, rising up out of a shuffling throng. Axel wove through the crowd and mounted the bridge, which was narrow and without parapets. The River Lethe stretched below, its surface mirror-smooth even while hundreds knelt on its banks and drank from its blue-green waters.

Some distance beyond the Lethe (distance, like time, had a habit of slacking off down here), she came to a second river, this one black as night and starry with the gleaming eyes of drowned souls. A wooden boat bumped and clonked against the near shore, where a thickly cloaked figure stood smoldering. No features were visible, but a stink of disdain exuded from the figure as Axel approached.

“Go back,” it croaked, raising a skeletal hand in a halt gesture.

“Put it on my tab,” said Axel. “Come on. How many times are we going to do this dance?”

The Disdain increased. The skeletal hand twitched. “Go back.”

“I have permission,” she said, grabbing her own ghostly leash and shaking it in the ferryman’s face. “Per-mish-shon. If you want to take it up with Xemnas—”

“Spin.”

“Measure.”

“Cut.”

Axel and the ferryman both jumped. On the shore behind Axel stood three girls—one with dark hair, one with light hair, and one with hair the color of ginger root—their six hands eternally working spindle, thread, and shears in perfect synchronicity. They moved at an uncomfortable shuffle, their heads conjoined around a single enormous blue eye.

“Don’t sneak up on people like that!” Axel scolded. She gestured to the ferryman. “You’re scaring Riku.”

The ferryman appeared largely unmoved, except that both gnarled hands were wrapped around the boat’s long wooden oar, ever so gently pushing off from the shore, and the smell of disdain was tempered with bottom-notes of Eau de Don’t-Mind-Me.

“Stay, child of flame,” the right head, the ginger-haired one, said.

“You will hear us,” said the dark-haired left head.

“She seeks the blade,” the blonde center head whispered. “She must not seek the blade.”

The other two pinched and jostled her. “Wait! Hush! Too soon.”

“Look, you three, I have places to be,” Axel said, exasperated (and more than a little uncomfortable—the Fates rarely showed up with Good News). “Can you go be cryptic at somebody else?”

“Measure her thread, sister,” said the ginger head.

The blonde head pulled a string from the air and measured it between her hands. “Too long.”

The dark head went for it with a pair of silver shears. Axel grabbed the slender white wrist.

“Stop it,” she snapped. “I’ll tell you what I told Mr. Stingy over there: if you don’t like it, take it up with Xemnas.”

The single blue eye pivoted to look right at her. Five hands grabbed her arm. With a grating gasp, all three heads spoke together.

“In twenty-eight days and twenty-nine nights the spheres will align and the sky will sunder. Order will become disorder. Truth will become lie. All that is known will be unknown. Do not seek the blade, child of flame. Abandon the enterprise you have not begun. Betray your lover and obey your lord. A great calamity approaches. The thread unravels. Woe and misery befall you. Woe and misery befall you.”

“What the fuck is any of that supposed to mean?” Axel demanded, partially unnerved and thoroughly annoyed.

The hand with the shears pried out of her grip with surprising strength just as the other hands let her go. The single blue eye turned back to the many spinning threads, the six weaving hands. Without so much as a toodle-oo, the entire ensemble turned their back and shuffled away, whispering to each other in three voices, all the same voice.

“Xigbar’s dick, I hate them,” Axel muttered. She settled herself and turned back to the ferryman, who had stopped to watch the proceedings. “Are you taking me across, or what?”

After a moment’s pause, the ferryman beckoned. Axel stepped aboard, and he pushed off. She leaned her elbow on the side of the boat and her chin on her hand, watching the drowned souls of the Styx slip by underneath.

“What blade?” she muttered.

---

The first thing Axel always did upon exiting the Underworld was to bathe. It wasn’t to get clean so much as to get sensation. There was nothing like dunking your whole body in freezing cold spring water to clear out the cobwebs and remind you that you physically existed.

She didn’t worry about anything sneaking up on her. Even birds and insects refused to stray this close to the entrance to the Underworld. The vegetation only grew so lushly because it knew it couldn’t wander in by mistake. The world was silent here, safely silent.

Axel breached the surface and took a nice, deep breath. The pool was only knee-deep, but total immersion was possible and preferred. She luxuriated in the comparative warmth of the air on her bare shoulders and rubbed the water out of her eyes.

And jumped about a foot clear out of the spring.

A tall, extraordinarily muscular woman sat by the side of the pool, wearing a lion’s skin as a cape over a short athlete’s chiton. Golden curls covered her head like flax, and her skin shone like bronze in the sun. She had a sword strapped to her hip and a bow slung over her shoulder.

And what a hip. And what a shoulder.

Axel scrambled to her feet. Her clothes and her dagger were sitting on a rock by the side of the pool. The woman, leaning one extremely buff arm on her extremely shapely knee, gave a friendly wave.

“No no, please,” she said. “I’ll wait my turn.”

“What are you doing here?” Axel demanded.

The woman raised her eyebrows. “About the same as you, I expect.”

“Doubt it.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I’m more than happy to wait.”

Axel took a breath. There weren’t supposed to be any people here, but that didn’t mean the woman was here to hurt her. She didn’t look terrifically bright, all big blue eyes and friendly smile in a place that was so naturally ominous that it could make a hummingbird depressed. Maybe she’d just wandered in.

“I was done anyway,” Axel said.

“Oh! All right, then.”

Axel waded to the edge of the pool and started picking up her clothes, watching the woman out of the corner of her eye. The woman, for her part, dug a water-skin out of a fold in her clothing and waded to the spring’s source to fill it. Even at the deepest part of the pool, the water only came up to her calves.

Such calves.

Axel shook herself and got dressed. Her spirit steadied once she had the dagger tucked against her waist again. Good thing she’d died with it still in her hand, or else it would’ve been kicking around in Pylos somewhere.

The woman waded back to shore, wiping clear water from her lips and tucking her water-skin away. She walked right through the leash—invisible, in the realm of the living. Axel felt only the slightest tug at her throat, and the woman made a face and swatted like she’d walked through a spiderweb.

Well, that was Axel’s cue to get a move-on.

“Say, beautiful woman—”

Axel choked on her own spit and whipped around. “What?”

The golden woman shrugged. “You never told me your name.”

“You never told me yours.”

“I guess that makes us even, then,” the woman said, gleaming like it was an inside joke between the two of them.

And for some reason, it worked. Axel actually cracked a smile. “Guess it does, princess.”

‘Princess’ grinned enormously and stuck out a hand. Enormously. “Roxas.”

“Axel,” said Axel, clasping her hand.

Mercy, she was strong.

Roxas plonked right back down on her rock, rested her elbow on her knee, and fixed Axel with that big friendly smile once again. “So, Axel, I was thinking—you’re clearly an accomplished huntress, maybe you could help me.”

“Huntress?”

“I couldn’t help but notice your dagger. It’s a fine weapon.”

Axel’s hand itched, but she refused to let it go to her hip. The point of having a concealed weapon was that no one else knew where it was.

“It’s for self-defense,” she said.

“Ah, I see.” The perfect brow furrowed. “But if you’re not a huntress, what are you doing all the way out here?”

“What would I be doing out here if I were a huntress?” Axel gestured to the completely silent brush around them. “Nothing to hunt.”

“A fine point.”

Axel headed off further inquiries by asking: “What is it that you need help with, anyway?”

“Well, it’s this way: my friend Pence threw a party some months ago, and his friend Hayner—oh, do you know them?”

Axel knew the pair, all right, and her face must have betrayed it. They were firmly affixed by their bottoms to a rock on the path to the palace, being tormented on the regular by a band of Furies. It was pretty good entertainment if you had nothing else to do.

“The names ring a faint bell,” she said.

“Well, like I said, Pence threw a party and invited me, and Hayner and I—he’s a rascal—we made a bet about who could retrieve Pence’s golden crown from the bottom of the Aegean sea. Oh, I forgot to mention, before that we were having a contest to see who could throw Pence’s golden crown the farthest.” Glowing with pride, she added: “Obviously, I won.”

“Obviously,” Axel said.

“Now, ordinarily I wouldn’t have taken Hayner up on the bet, but someone had to knock some sense into him—he’s always had a touch of hubris—and besides that, Pence was a little upset about the crown, so I’d have to go and get it anyway. Hayner had been drinking, and he bet—well, something considerable.”

Her cheeks flushed, and she coquettishly twirled a ringlet of hair around her finger. Even her fingers were buff.

“Anyway. I won—obviously—and he said that he’d deliver me my prize in the morning. Of course we were all much too hungover to do anything in the morning, so I let it slide, but then a few months went by, and no word from Hayner. I started to think he’d cheated me.”

Here her countenance grew dark, her fists tightened. Axel sat down on her own rock and gingerly crossed her legs.

“Mm-hm?” she prompted.

Roxas brightened again. “Well, so I went looking for him, and guess what I found?”

“What?”

“Both he and Pence—oh, first I should tell you that they’re both looking for wives and it’s been getting out of hand—and I don’t know how Hayner dragged Pence into this—but it turns out they both went to the Underworld to try and kidnap Xemnas’s wife, so Hayner could marry her! You see what I mean about hubris?”

That explained the ass-binding rock and the Furies, all right. If there was one thing that could move the Lord of the Stiffs to extremes, it was Aqua.

“I’m still failing to see where you come into this story,” Axel said.

“Oh, right. Well, Hayner owes me; and besides that, my cousin has ordered me to bring Cerberus to him, so I—”

“What?”

“Yeah, even I thought it was a little unreasonable, but I have to do whatever he tells me to. So I was going to have to find the Underworld anyway, and I thought—do you happen to know where it is?”

Axel just stared at her.

Roxas gestured broadly. “I know it’s around here somewhere. The entrance, I mean.”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, one of my buddies is an initiate of the Eleusian Mysteries. I got her drunk enough to tell me the general area, but she passed out before I could get the specifics, and obviously she wasn’t going to tell me once she sobered up. Or let me take her drinking again. And I think she warned all the other initiates, too. I figured it would be easier to just go look than to try and get initiated.”

Axel struggled to keep up. Hearing one of the most closely-guarded secret societies of the civilized world referred to like a sports club was jarring enough without adding the preceding insane and rambling story on top of it. Add the fact that it was all coming out of the cocksure mouth of a stunningly handsome woman, and it made even Axel’s mind reel.

Not that Axel was thinking much about that mouth.

“Who… who exactly are you?” Axel managed.

Roxas bloomed another immense smile. “I’m Roxas, from Thebes. Currently… servant to my cousin, Vanitas, though only for another year or so. He’s a king, so it’s not as bad as it could be.” Her expression soured. “A king who’s been hiding in a winejar for months, but oh well. I think the lion skin frightens him.”

“Well, now it all makes sense.” Axel rolled her eyes and threw her heavy, wet hair over her shoulder. “And you, Roxas from Thebes, you’re trying to break into the Underworld.”

“Yes.”

“To steal Xemnas’s dog.”

“That’s what my cousin told me to do.”

“And rescue the two morons who tried to kidnap his wife.”

“Oh, definitely. That one was my idea.”

Axel stood up and brushed off her chiton. “Good luck with that.”

“So you won’t help me?” Roxas said, disappointed.

“Wouldn’t even know where to start.” Axel set off down the path, waving over her shoulder. “Good-bye! May your sanity return swiftly!”

“Good-bye, Axel!” Roxas called after her. “Be safe!”

Axel snorted to herself. Be safe.

She hadn’t needed to do that for years.

---

The tavern, like the town around it, was small and obnoxious. It was mostly men, apart from the working girls, and fortunately for Axel, said men talked loudly and at length. She reclined at a small table in a corner, enjoying stale bread, cloudy olive oil, and a cup of watery wine. Only in the land of the living could you find cuisine this crappy.

“Oh, piss off!”

The sudden outburst, followed by raucous laughter, caught Axel’s attention. A group of young men near the center of the room—locals, by the look of them—had surrounded someone who was definitely not local.

“It’s true, I’m telling you,” the not-local said. A merchant, Axel guessed, or at least a salesman. “She must have been a witch. No ordinary consort would dare make an attempt on a king’s life, especially not after sharing his bed!”

“Oh, have you fucked a lot of kings?” a local retorted. The group guffawed, slapping the comedian’s shoulders.

The salesman, stalwart, shook his head. “He doesn’t believe she’s dead. Hasn’t left his house in months. Terrified. What could terrify the son of Ansem?”

“Bastard son,” another local pointed out. “Maybe he’s scared on his mother’s side.”

Guffaws all around.

“I’m just telling you what happened,” the salesman said stiffly.

“Spoke to the king, did you?”

“Look at this very important man, in our little town!”

“Drinks all round!”

They hooted and hollered. The salesman, unwisely, tried to cut them off.

“No, I didn’tpersonally speak to him, but I have it on good authority—”

The rest of his objections were drowned under a flood of jeers and heckles. Not long after, the salesman gave up and sulked off to find a more receptive audience. Axel stayed put, sipping her wine.

Months, huh.

After some hearty mocking of the salesman, the locals’ conversation turned back to more relevant topics.

“Hoy, speaking of—you hear about the maniac who let loose that bull on Marathon? I’d bet good money that’s another half-god.”

“Piss off, you think everybody who can lift one more bale of hay than you is half-god.”

“Alekos was, too! He was!”

“Wait, what did this lunatic in Marathon do?”

“Took some big fuckoff bull out of Crete and set it loose. Heard it’s wrecking havoc.”

“It’s weeking havoc, idiot.”

Axel rolled her eyes.

“Why the fuck would anybody steal a bull from Crete to set it loose in Marathon?”

“Who knows? But you gotta agree it’s not something just anybody could do.”

“You dipshit, people move bulls around all the time!”

“Not like this bull, they don’t. That motherfucker is tearing up whole orchards. I heard it fucked the Cretan king’s wife and—”

“What? What? It’s always the fucking with you! You think the gods are going around impregnating women willy-nilly!”

“You think they’re not? One of ’em fucked my wife!”

This caused such an uproar that it was unlikely the conversation would recover. Axel finished her wine, left a couple coins on the table, and got up.

It was a long way to Marathon. She might as well get going.

---

There was a rhythm to these things. First Axel would go to the site of the latest or greatest feat or wonder, the one that everyone was talking about. People on site often had a clearer idea of what had actually happened, the story less distorted by mouth-to-ear transmission, and more often than not that’s when Axel would find that no true feat or wonder had occurred.

In the event of a genuine Hero, the people on site mostly had an idea of how the given feat and/or wonder had affected them, personally, and rarely knew much about the person who’d done it, or why, or how. They could, however, usually point to one or two other sites where the Hero had been at work, less well known or less recent, rumors of which had been traded over a bar or a vendor’s stall.

One of two things would happen next: either someone would remember where the Hero had come from, or Axel would start to get a sense of where the Hero was setting out from, just based on the locations of the feats and wonders. In this case, it was the latter: she guessed home base was somewhere on the eastern shore. The best candidate was the city of Tiryns. Even if that wasn’t quite right, cities were good places to pick up rumors.

Closer to the epicenter, there would typically be fewer tales, but Axel found it was just the opposite with this particular Hero. The closer she came to the city, the wilder the stories got. Axel had a sneaking suspicion that there were, in fact, two Heroes in or around Tiryns, possibly identical twins. First of all, because no single person, godkin or not, could have done all the batshit-insane things ascribed to this one, and second of all, because nobody could agree on the Hero’s gender; while he/she was a cheerful and well-liked patron of the brothels, Axel got solidly conflicting (and sometimes uncomfortably detailed) information about the parts involved, from both men and women.

Axel also gathered that the Hero or Heroes were non grata with one of the touchier gods; while people would enthusiastically extol the Hero’s virtues and recount with great embellishment his/her feats and wonders, they tended to cast wary looks toward the heavens as they did so and they refused absolutely to mention any names.

Once inside the walls of Tiryns, Axel was sure she was in the right place. The whole city was abuzz with speculation, wondering what the Hero would bring back this time, and what he/she would do next. The denizens all seemed certain that their Hero would be returning soon.

Axel didn’t have anywhere else to be, so she rented a room (her purse never emptied; Xemnas was, after all, also the God of Wealth) and settled in to wait.

---

Two days later, she was still waiting. The timbre of the city’s rumors hadn’t changed at all, leading her to believe she might be in for the long-haul. She considered taking a sabbatical to clean up her mess in Pylos, but it was really too soon—and if there was one thing she had an abundance of, it was time.

So instead, she spent her days exploring the city, browsing the markets, attending the theater when there was something good playing and daytripping down to the warm blue sea when there wasn’t.

On the third day, she was browsing the market, thinking her own thoughts and having no intention of buying anything, when she was rudely interrupted.

“Axel?!”

She turned swiftly, hand flicking to the dagger concealed in the folds of her chiton. What she saw, however, was not an armed guard or a torch-wielding mob.

It was a mop of flax-golden hair, head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd, and a great big earnest grin.

Chapter 8: 'Melancholy' Isn't a Kind of Fruit

Notes:

Heads-up: this one gets raunchy.

“Axel!” Roxas said, wading through the crowd to her side. “What are youdoing here in Tiryns?”

“Could ask the same of you,” Axel said. She casually rested her hand on her hip to hide the fact that it had been resting on her dagger. “Weren’t you supposed to be stealing the guard dog of the Underworld?”

Roxas huffed, annoyed. “You’re not going to believe this, but I couldn’t find the entrance. I went all over that valley, I searched every inch—no sign of it anywhere! You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard to find, but apparently…. How long are you in town for?”

“Oh, uh… don’t know. However long suits me, I guess.”

“Have you been to Tiryns before?”

She shook her head. Roxas brightened.

“Then let me show you around! I’ll take you to lunch, and then we can go and see—”

Roxas started rattling off all the tourist attractions Axel had already explored. She started down the street—not even waiting for a yes or no from Axel—and Axel, despite herself, fell into step beside her. For one thing, it was possible she could pry some more detailed information about the mysterious Hero(es) from Roxas; she certainly liked talking enough. For another, the crowd parted around Roxas like the sea before the prow of a ship, so walking with her was the path of least resistance.

For lunch, Roxas took Axel to a tavern on the western side of the city, where the food was good and the staff were startlingly gracious. Axel started to notice jealous glances cast her way, and, because it was funny, leaned into it hard. As they left the tavern, she draped her arm over Roxas’s, the way a young lover might. Roxas allowed it with a quick wink, then completely lost the plot of her latest rambling tale when a dog slipped its lead and went charging through the streets, pursued by its hollering master, which event immediately became a spectator sport, gambling included.

Roxas likely wouldn’t have talked the whole time if Axel had been more forthcoming—whenever she got to the end of a story, she would ask Axel about herself. Axel always provided the least information possible before redirecting Roxas onto another long-winded exposition. It was still more information than she typically gave away, mostly because Roxas was more interested than anyone had ever been before.

After lunch, it was to the amphitheater, where a couple of philosophers were having a heated (and, from personal experience, doubly wrong-headed) debate on the nature of Phos, the divine light. Roxas treated it like a gladiatorial match, snacking on olives and keeping score. The jealous stares were present here, too, and Axel basked in them. She murmured commentary into the shell of Roxas’s ear and watched several people turn as green as the olives. Roxas, for her part, seemed blissfully oblivious.

The debate eventually came to blows, by which a winner was decisively proclaimed, and the crowd began to disperse. Roxas suggested a jaunt down to the sea followed by dinner. Axel accepted, by then confident enough to start nudging the conversation towards the mysterious Hero.

This, however, proved more difficult than she had expected; while Roxas was happy to expound at length on nearly anything else, any questioning on the supposed feats and wonders of the Hero were met with offhand dismissals. It’s all exaggeration, or it’s not nearly as impressive as people make it sound, or are people still talking about that? It was baffling.

But it was also interesting, so Axel couldn’t let it go. She retreated to regroup and let Roxas’s mouth wander where it wished.

Not that she was thinking a lot about Roxas’s mouth.

After dinner—which was, again, well prepared and well served—Roxas invited Axel up to the king’s gardens.

“And how will we be getting into the king’s gardens?” Axel inquired.

“The walls aren’t that high,” Roxas said.

---

The wall was about eight feet high. Roxas boosted Axel up onto it like she weighed nothing, vaulted the wall herself in a single leap, and caught Axel in her arms when she jumped down on the other side.

“See?” Roxas said, twinkling her big blue eyes and holding Axel in her big strong arms. “Told you it’d be easy.”

In contrast to the rest of Tiryns, the gardens were deserted. Stone paths led through beds of flowers, topiary and statues, fountains and ponds. The sky draped over all, glittering with stars, and the night was cool and humid. Axel linked her arm with Roxas’s again, basking in the heat of her body, and the two of them wandered to the musical chatter of Roxas’s endless stories.

“So I asked him what was wrong, and he said it was just a bit of melancholy. And I said, oh, did it disagree with you? And he just sort of shrugged, then he asked, Do you ever get melancholy, Roxas? And I said no, and he said, never? And I said, well I don’t know if I would like it, and he said, no one LIKES it, and I said, then why does anyone eat it? Long story short, it turns out melancholy isn’t a kind of fruit like I thought. Did you know that?”

Oh, I can’t not fuck her, Axel thought helplessly.

“Why don’t we sit for a little while?” she said, gesturing to a nearby bench under a trestle. “My feet hurt.”

“Oh, of course,” said Roxas.

She led Axel to the bench, let her sit down, then sat next to her. The two of them together filled the space almost exactly—at about a seventy-thirty split.

“You know, I’ve really enjoyed today,” Roxas said. “I don’t often get to do all the touristy stuff. I hope I haven’t been dragging you around.”

“Trust me, if I wasn’t enjoying myself, you’d know.”

Roxas’s eyes crinkled. “I thought that might be the case. Have you decided how long you’re staying?”

Axel shrugged, uncomfortable. She’d kind of forgotten that she was here on business. “Not exactly. But you—don’t you have an assignment from a king?”

“Yeah,” Roxas sighed. “I’m thinking I’ll probably have to go to Athens and get inducted into the Mysteries. I don’t know how long it’s going to take, which is why I was asking. I was wondering if you’d still be here when I got back.”

Something tugged at Axel’s heart, the naivety of thinking admission to a secret society would be a quick gig combined with the sincere and earnest desire to see Axel again.

It was very, very rare for anyone to want to see Axel again.

“Probably not,” Axel said, with more regret in her voice than she meant to disclose.

Roxas laid a hand on Axel’s knee.

“Then are you busy tonight?” she asked.

“Maybe,” said Axel, trying not to look her in the eyes. “Haven’t decided yet.”

“Would you like to be?”

Axel’s heart fluttered. Her stomach did a backflip. Blood rushed to opposite ends of her body with equal fervor.

For all the good it would do. Get a hold of yourself, she scolded.

She shook her head, smiling wryly. “Wish I could. It’d just be frustrating for both of us.”

Roxas frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I….” Axel’s face went hot. She’d known this woman for all of a day, for crying out loud. She turned away. “It doesn’t matter. Forget it.”

The hand stayed on her knee, so strong and so very gentle. “Matters to me.”

Oh, to Tartarus with it. It couldn’t be any worse than her ‘chats’ with Xemnas, and at least Roxas might get a kick out of it.

Axel sighed. “No one has been able to satisfy me for—a while.” Since she’d been Dead, actually. Years, actually. “It’s impossible.”

Roxas took a slow breath. When Axel looked over, expecting disappointment, she instead saw Roxas’s eyes gleaming with a manic, almost frightening intensity.

“Is that a challenge?” she said.

Well, now it was.

“Maybe,” Axel said. She leaned over and rested her fingertips on the inside of Roxas’s intensely muscled thigh, let her breasts press against Roxas’s arm. “Maybe we’ll make it a wager. What do I get if you can’t do it?”

“Hmm,” said Roxas, holding her eyes, utterly cocksure as her hand slid slowly up Axel’s leg. “I’ll be your servant for a month.”

“I like the sound of that. Make it a year.”

“Sure. And if I win, or if you cry mercy, you’ll show me where the entrance to the Underworld is.”

Axel balked. She snapped her hand back and recoiled from Roxas’s touch. “Why would I know that?”

Roxas reached over Axel’s shoulder and made a fist on the air. There was a tightening at Axel’s throat. Her spine pulled taut. Roxas smiled and gave the leash a friendly tug.

“It took me a while to figure out what this is,” she said sweetly. “But then we saw that dog today and it all made sense. This thing always seems to lead somewhere underground, and I found you right near where the entrance is supposed to be, so I guess you probably came out that way, and you’re wearing this—” another tug on the leash— “to make sure you come back.”

Axel was struck speechless. Not only could she see the leash, but she wasn’t a total meathead?!

“So how about it, Axel?” Roxas said, all in good humor, and still with that terrifying intensity behind her eyes. “Do we have a wager?”

“You’re going to lose,” Axel said, though she’d never been less sure of an incontrovertible fact in her life (or her Death).

Roxas grinned. “We’ll see.”

---

Roxas had unleashed a surprisingly comprehensive bag of tricks on Axel right there in the garden, none of which involved any contact with genitalia, until Axel got self-conscious about the noises she couldn’t stop making and pushed Roxas off.

“Giving up already?” Roxas teased. “But we’re just getting started!”

“You wish,” Axel said. It was somewhat undercut by the fact that she couldn’t focus her eyes or catch her breath.

Eternally cheerful, Roxas had just invited her back to her modest villa and had her one servant bring them three amphorae of wine before telling him, very kindly and with remuneration, to get lost.

“Do you expect us to get through all of that?” Axel asked, gesturing to the wine as she reclined on the bed. She was still a little dizzy from the garden, but had recovered some of her wits.

“Us?” Roxas laughed a great big belly laugh. She flicked the cork out of one amphora and drained the whole thing in one long, passionate swill. She turned a wine-stained smile on Axel. “If you wanted some, you should have asked!”

---

Axel was begging within the hour.

---

She was completely incoherent within two.

---

The bed was soaked with sweat (and other things), the night was dark and cool, and Roxas had mandated that it was time for a break. She swilled down another half an amphora of wine, seemingly without effect, and fed Axel water and grapes while letting her rut mindlessly against the hard muscles of her thigh. Axel had considered, in a vague kind of way, begging for mercy, but that would mean losing the wager, and Axel didn’t lose.

When the mandatory break was over, Roxas lifted Axel up—eliciting a whine at the loss of friction—and laid her down in the bed again. She pulled her hair and nibbled her ears, massaging her breasts, until Axel’s breath started fluttering again. Roxas slid her hand down Axel’s belly, then further, flicking across the aching ruby that had been studiously ignored all night. Axel’s back arched on its own. The short break had thoroughly re-sensitized her. One thick finger pushed into her and pressed a moan against the back of her lips. A second finger joined the first and Axel couldn’t hold herself back anymore.

“Good?” Roxas murmured.

“Nnnn-hhn,” Axel said articulately.

“More?”

“Hhhhhn,” she elaborated.

Roxas kissed her ear and pinched her nipple. “Stay there.”

Axel just about screamed as Roxas withdrew. She barely managed the coordination to prop herself up on one elbow and watched the play of the muscles in Roxas’s back as she rooted around for something in the mess on the floor.

“Aha!” Roxas cried, triumphant.

She turned around to reveal a huge wooden phallus in her hand, exquisitely carved. She spread her own legs and placed the base of the phallus between them. With a flare of divine light and a soft pop, it adhered—and as Roxas stroked one hand down its length, it twitched and gave like flesh.

Axel stared, open-mouthed. She struggled to find words. The ache between her own legs was maddening.

“You have… a magic dick,” she said thinly.

“Of course,” Roxas said.

“Of course?!”

“My uncle gave it to me. My uncle Xigbar, I mean, not the other one.”

Axel’s mouth went dry. A chill ran down her spine. Her cunt clenched on the enormous nothing filling it.

“Uncle… uncle Xigbar,” she said. “God of Wine and Madness, Xigbar?”

“That’s the one!”

“Adopted?” Axel said, feebly hopeful.

Roxas shook her head, bemused and smiling and massively, throbbingly erect. Mercy, if anything was going to get the job done, it was that thing.

The leash rested around Axel’s throat like a hand. It wasn’t like she could walk away now, anyway, wager or no. She’d found exactly what she’d come looking for.

“Axel?” Roxas said.

Axel put on a smirk and climbed into her lap. She draped her arms over Roxas’s shoulders, breasts to breasts, and rubbed herself against the Magic Member. Roxas shivered at the contact, though she never looked away from Axel’s eyes.

Hey, work and play had never been mutually exclusive.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Axel taunted.

Roxas had her on her back as quick as a wrestler in the gymnasium. She muffled Axel’s squeak with a kiss—but let the long, desperate gasp play out into the room as she slid into Axel. She nibbled Axel’s ear and neck and shoulder, holding her down with her prodigious weight while Axel squirmed and pleaded. Only when Axel had devolved into wordless, animal whines did Roxas start fucking her in earnest.

Three days, Axel decided muzzily, while her eyes rolled back in her head. She would hold out for three days before she cried mercy.

---

It didn’t take three days. In fact, Axel lost the wager that very night.

Seven, maybe eight times. She lost count.

---

Axel didn’t leave bed for three days anyway, and it wasn’t because of the sex. It was the water and wine brought to the bedside, the companionable chatter over meals, the thoroughly earnest and utterly insane stories to fill the intercoital lulls, the long and lazy mornings, the warm olive oil massages, the decadent grapes fed to her lip-to-lip. She could even claim that it was all in an official capacity, considering the candidates for Roxas’s parentage.

Okay, yes, and it was the sex. She had years’ worth of orgasms to catch up on, and if she could bank a few for the future, so much the better.

Plus, as long as she didn’t leave bed, she didn’t have to get dressed; and if she didn’t have to get dressed, she didn’t have to think about the dagger.

But there did come a point, unbelievable as it was, when she was just… done. She found that, while having her brains fucked out again sounded nice, she might prefer to go for a swim, or get lunch, or go to the theater. The realization came with a certain regret.

Truly, nothing golden could stay.

Draped across Roxas’s chest, Axel sighed. Roxas curled a hand around her waist, almost unthinkingly.

“Roxas,” Axel said, “thank you.”

A small smile turned up the corner of Roxas’s mouth. “Finally admitting defeat?”

“Guess so.”

Roxas heaved a great melodramatic sigh and feigned collapsing in exhaustion, despite the fact that she was already lying down. “Whew! Then I don’t mind admitting, that was one of the toughest trials I’ve ever undertaken. I was almost starting to doubt I could do it.”

“Flattering,” said Axel. She kissed the corner of Roxas’s mouth and laid her head down on her chest.

“So,” Roxas said, with a deliberately casual tone, “tomorrow morning, we can set out, and you can show me the entrance to the Underworld.”

Axel’s throat clenched. This was the part she had been dreading.

“Roxas—”

The hand on Axel’s hip tightened, ever so slightly. Axel was suddenly, intimately aware that this woman could snap her in half. Literally.

“Those were the terms of our wager, remember?” Roxas said, still casually, but with just a glimmer of a warning.

“And I’ll hold to them,” Axel said.

Roxas relaxed. The hand softened. The leash around Axel’s throat was uncomfortably tight.

“But,” Axel went on, “because you’ve been good to me, I can’t take you there without trying to change your mind.”

Roxas looked at her, curious and somewhat wary. “Why not?”

“If you go in, you won’t be able to get back out. And even if, somehow, you get out once, you’ll have to go back when you die, and Xemnas will remember you, and he’ll have spent your whole life thinking up ways to torture you. There’s nothing—nothing—he hates more than people getting out.”

“But you got out.”

“No, I didn’t.” Axel slipped two fingers inside the loop of the leash, pulling on it until the strain made it glimmer. “I’m allowed out. It’s not the same thing.”

“But you’re still out,” Roxas insisted. “That leash can’t be unbreakable, can it?”

“Xemnas spun it from a tendon of his own leg, so you tell me,” Axel retorted, annoyed. “And even if it were breakable, I wouldn’t break it. Not worth it.”

Roxas’s hackles were rising, too. “You’d rather be treated like a dog your whole life than even try to fight back?”

“Maybe I would! You haven’t seen what happens to people who try to wriggle out. I have, and I’m telling you, it’s not worth it. Once you go in there, there is no coming back. Not for me, not for you, not for anybody.”

Those words cluttered the air like a willow-tree of knives. Roxas’s eyes were hard, her jaw tight. She took a deep breath and sighed out the tension in her body.

“Thank you for your warning,” she said seriously. “But my friends are in there and I have a task to complete. No matter the consequences, I have to go.”

“Then at least let me come with you.”

Axel just about bit her tongue off. What on the gods’ green Earth had possessed her to say that? Had she completely lost her mind?!

Roxas considered only a moment before nodding. “You’re right; if I need a guide to find the entrance to the Underworld, I’ll definitely need a guide once I’m inside. What would you ask of me in return?”

Calm down, Axel warned herself. Her heart was pounding, her stomach curdling with dread. The leash was no tighter on her throat than usual, but somehow it was keeping her from breathing right. The warmth of the bedroom had turned to oppressive heat.

“I don’t know,” Axel managed. “I’d have to think about it.”

“All right,” said Roxas. “But you’ll have to make a decision before we go in. I like you, but I don’t do open-ended deals.”

“Smart,” said Axel.

Roxas smiled and leaned over to give her a slow, chaste kiss. Despite everything, Axel melted against her. It was fine. All of this was fine. Axel had weaseled out of worse predicaments. She’d find a way to come out on top.

Speaking of coming on top, Roxas’s kiss was growing steadily less chaste. Her hands, having thoroughly explored Axel’s body for the last three days, were seeking out their favorite spots. Roxas stopped just shy of pushing Axel over onto her back, breaking off to look her in the eye.

“One more for the road?” she asked hopefully.

Axel, surprised but not unpleasantly so, agreed.

---

‘One more’ became several more, either because Roxas was the only person Axel had ever met with a greater sexual appetite than her own, or because she was eager to demonstrate that she hadn’t been fucking Axel just to get the keys to the kingdom. Axel couldn’t help but find both possibilities endearing.

At last, Roxas seemed to reach the bottom of her well; an hour or two after sunset, she fell into a deep, glowing, stertorous sleep. Not even Axel’s tossing and turning could wake her (the Dead didn’t sleep). After another hour, Axel gave up on pretending, wrapped herself in her long-discarded chiton, and wandered out to stand under the villa’s eaves, admiring the moonlight. The night was cool, and the fresh air felt good on her skin. She breathed deep. The leash tickled the hickey-marked skin of her neck.

A patch of shadows and moonlight shifted. Axel’s heart stopped, stomach dropped.

“My, my,” sneered Saïx. “You have been busy.”

Chapter 9: Last Chance to Turn Back

Other people, Axel considered, might have flipped their shit at being visited by the God of Death. The most reaction it got out of Axel was tying a quick knot on the side of her chiton so she could make rude gestures at him with both hands.

“What do you want?” she said.

It was well-known, even among people who weren’t dead, that Saïx, despite being formally recognized as a distinct god, was just Xemnas in a hat, his ‘upstairs clothes.’ Still, as theatrical types liked to say: the mask wears the player, and this particular mask had a bad habit of rising to bait.

“Don’t play dumb with me,” he retorted. His hair, the color and consistency of moonlight, fluttered on the heatwaves of his irritation. “Xehanort’s own daughter sleeps within—” he gestured sharply to the villa— “and yet I find you standing here mooning. Has she domesticated you so quickly?”

A hot flush of anger rolled out under Axel’s skin. “You want to see mooning, I’ll show you mooning.”

“I’ve seen more than enough. You, evidently, have forgotten that you are under contract.”

The leash tightened around her throat until it bit into her skin. She stood rooted in place, clenching her jaw and her fists, keeping her back straight. What else could she do? He was out of stabbing range, and she hadn’t brought her dagger, anyway.

“You’re the one who didn’t specify a time limit,” she said, though every word pressed the taut blue thread tighter into her windpipe.

“Does it amuse you to think you’re getting the better of me?” Saïx asked. “One would think someone who paid so dearly for a little more time on Earth would be more careful with it.”

A cold fish of dread swam in Axel’s stomach. It didn’t matter whether she thought she’d upheld her end of the bargain. Xemnas could yank her back to the Underworld, permanently, whenever he pleased. She didn’t need to be handing him excuses.

“I feel so special,” she said, “being personally harassed by you. Can you let me work? If you wanted this done your way, you should’ve done it yourself.”

“If your cunning plan is to fuck her to death, it doesn’t appear to be working,” Saïx said icily.

“Piss off.”

“Hurry up.”

Then he was gone. Axel made several emphatically obscene gestures at the empty space anyway.

---

The silence of the valley seeped in through Axel’s ears and soaked her brain, making it difficult to hear her own thoughts. Roxas’s valorous attempts at conversation had fallen about half an hour back. The day was gray with scudding clouds, though none of the wind reached the valley.

Through a thicket, across a rocky stream, over a rise, and there it was—a cavernous natural archway formed in the glowering rock, large enough to swallow the city of Tiryns whole. The ground sloped steeply down into it like a tongue into a mouth. The gray daylight couldn’t reach far enough inside to show anything other than rock and darkness. No birds made their nests on the cavern walls, no snakes patrolled the crevices, no breath of wind stirred the oppressive atmosphere. Even the plant life gave it a wide berth.

“Well,” said Axel, making a constrained gesture, “there it is.”

Roxas frowned. “Where—?”

There was a soft sizzling sound as part of Roxas died. That was the bitch of it: there was no trick to finding the entrance to the Underworld. Everyone who’d ever died could do it without even thinking. It was just that only the dead could do it. A few would-be initiates to the Eleusian Mysteries landed in Asphodel each year, killed outright by having the location revealed to them. Some people were just that bad at compartmentalizing.

“Oh,” Roxas said. She didn’t sound too much worse for wear, just a little nauseous. “There.”

“Last chance to turn back,” Axel said, though she didn’t hold out any hope.

Roxas shook her head. “I guess now is the time to settle: what would you ask in return for being my guide in there?”

“I would ask you not to go in,” said Axel.

“Be serious.”

She had been, but she also hadn’t really expected to be taken seriously. Plan B, then.

“I also have a task to complete,” she said. The words tasted metallic. “I would ask you to help me complete it.”

“Done,” said Roxas.

Just like that. And here Axel had thought she was smart.

But with everything settled, there was nothing left to do but head down into the ever-hungry mouth of the earth.

---

There was no hard line between ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ the Underworld. At some point you would notice that the light had stopped fading, though you were a long way from the sky. At some point you would notice a jostling pressure slowing your steps. At some point you would notice the crowd of spirits all around you, shuffling disorderly towards the immense black snake of the River Styx.

And by then, by the time you knew for certain where you were, you’d come too far to go back.

As they descended towards the river, Axel nudged Roxas and pointed to an outcrop overlooking the river. On it was Cerberus, the first (or by some accounting, last) guardian of the Underworld. He lay in a relaxed but attentive pose, all six ears pricked, all six eyes watching, all three noses twitching. He was much bigger than any mortal dog Axel had ever seen—his spotted, muscular shoulder would come up to her navel—but Roxas looked pleasantly surprised.

“He doesn’t look so bad,” she confided in Axel. “The bull was bigger, and the hydra had more heads.”

“How fast were they?” Axel asked.

Roxas took this into consideration.

It was quiet on the near shore of the Underworld, even amid a crowd that was thousands strong—those who couldn’t pay couldn’t cross. The spirits kept to themselves, checking their mouths for the coin that would let them pass or staring around at the immense cavern that stretched before them, all landmarks lost to the haze of distance. The hollow thunk, clunk of the ferryman’s boat knocking against the shore was the only real noise.

“Did you bring money?” Axel asked Roxas, sotto voce.

Roxas checked and came up with two gold obols, one of which she offered to Axel. Axel waved her off.

“I’m covered. Take the next boat after mine.”

Roxas nodded. Axel slipped through the crowd, which offered little resistance. Most people weren’t exactly clamoring to get on with their afterlives.

The ferryman stiffened when he saw her coming. He tried to push off early, but a few spirits weren’t done climbing into the boat, and he was more conscientious than he was an asshole. Axel dropped her coin in the bottom of the boat and climbed aboard.

About halfway across the river, the ferryman ‘accidentally’ hit her in the head with his oar.

Once safely deposited on the opposite shore, Axel sat down to wait while the other spirits followed the path towards the palace, where the three judges would determine whether they went to Tartarus, Asphodel, or Elysium. The ferryman rowed back across the river, and for the first time in a long time, Axel was left alone.

She toyed with the leash, now glowing a faint blue again. It drifted through the air like a strand of spiderweb, leading off in the direction of the palace. Xemnas would know she was back. He might not know that she’d brought Roxas with her—yet. She’d have to think up some excuse for returning, and preferably go offer it to him before he got curious enough to drag her in. Roxas would never get out if Xemnas….

Scratch that. Roxas would never get out, period. Axel shouldn’t want her to get out. It would be trouble all around if she did. Axel had agreed to guide her, so she had to do that, but she didn’t necessarily have to do it well. How would Roxas know the difference?

Axel coiled the leash around her fingers. She felt faintly ill. No telling how strong that physical reaction would have been outside the Underworld.

The clonk of a wooden boat against the shore snagged her attention. She started to rise with a chipper let’s-go on her tongue and froze solid.

There was one passenger in the ferryman’s boat, and it wasn’t Roxas.

Her feet touched the ground lightly, yet the entire cavern shivered. The still air stirred. The chill warmed. he ferryman watched her with such palpable adoration that it wafted off of him in pink smoke.

Winter had fallen outside, and Aqua, Queen of the Dead, had returned to the Underworld.

Axel shrank down against the rock she was sitting on. She bundled the leash in her hands like she could hide it, like it wasn’t trailing off right to the palace. Aqua thanked the ferryman kindly—causing him to collapse into a pink puddle—and started towards her husband’s abode. Spirits and servants were flocking around her before she’d taken two steps, eager to speed her journey in whatever way they could and slowing her down in the process. She laughed at some antic or other, and the entire Underworld rang like a bell. Axel’s leash went slack.

For the first time, Axel allowed herself to entertain the idea that she and Roxas might, just might, be able to pull this off.

Xemnas would be distracted. With all his focus on his wife’s homecoming, Axel and Roxas could slip in and out completely unnoticed, or at least un-cared-about. With the throng currently around Aqua, Axel could sneak away and hide, pick Roxas up later, and—

Aqua was walking right towards her.

Axel leapt to her feet. She hid the bundled leash behind her back. While Aqua continued to approach, the crowd of creatures hung back, giving the two women a wide berth. As Aqua walked, the stern rock turned to fertile soil beneath her feet. The cold air turned hot and humid.

“Axel,” Aqua said warmly. “Good to see you again.”

“Hi,” Axel mumbled. She made an approximation of a curtsy. She couldn’t look Aqua in the face.

“Has my husband been behaving himself?” Aqua asked.

The cavern, somehow, got even hotter. A dozen ‘chats’ came flooding to the forefront of Axel’s consciousness and stained her cheeks red.

“When has he ever not?” she said.

“You might be surprised,” Aqua said. “Thank you for keeping him entertained while I was away.”

You bitch, I’ll maul you, Axel thought, but held her tongue. The arrangement was exactly as Aqua had described it. If Aqua didn’t resent it, that should be counted as a win.

“My lady! My lady!”

A massive gold palanquin was approaching at speed through the mist, laden with every luxury that could be mustered—and, Xemnas being God of Wealth, that was a dizzying assortment—carried on the shoulders of four giants. Aqua smiled fondly before turning back to Axel.

“It seems I’m wanted. Please enjoy your time off.”

Axel said nothing.

Aqua worked her way through the crowd to the palanquin. The moment the silk curtains sighed shut around her, the four giants tore off towards the palace at ludicrous speed. The crowd sprinted behind, hollering the good news to every marsh-pool and stalactite<. Axel sat down heavily on her rock, which was now covered by a vigorous crop of lichen. It would last until spring, when Aqua headed back upstairs and took all her sunshiney warmth with her.

You’d think someone like that would add a spark of interest to the Underworld, but in point of fact, everyone was always on their best behavior when the Queen was around, so winter was, if anything, the most unutterably boring season of the year. Axel would have preferred it if Aqua were jealous and bitter, but no, she just had to be the most mellow-tempered god in the Pantheon.

Not that she didn’t have a cruel streak. Axel’s inability to climax had been a gift from her. It was a gesture that said: My husband can fuck you as much as he wants, but I’ll be damned if you get anything from it.

And Xemnas had decided that it would be an insult to his godly prowess if anyone else could satisfy Axel while he couldn’t, hence: eternal torment.

Until Roxas and her magic dick. Best not to let Xemnas find out about that one. It might cause friction with the gift-giver, and spats between gods didn’t typically end well for mortals.

The boat went clonk on the shore again. Another group of weary souls disembarked—and Roxas was among them. She beelined for Axel, not even trying to be cool about it.

“I’m glad you’re still here,” she said, with seemingly sincere relief. “Thanks for waiting.”

“Not like I had anywhere else to be,” said Axel.

---

Although Axel knew exactly where Roxas’s stupid friends were trapped, she didn’t want Roxas to know that she knew. The two would-be kidnappers hadn’t even made it to the palace when they got caught, but Axel suggested searching Tartarus first, as that was where all the tangible cruelties happened. Roxas agreed without question. Axel furthermore suggested that they take a roundabout route to keep far away from the palace, to prevent them from being noticed. Again, Roxas bought in wholeheartedly.

It felt… bad. It wasn’t that Roxas was stupid or foolish or easily tricked (although she maybe wasn’t the brightest star in the sky). Roxas trusted Axel, trusted her with her life in a place that was actively hostile to every living breath she drew.

At the same time, if Axel revealed that she had lied, or even that she’d diluted the truth, the trust would be gone. Without a guide, there was no way Roxas would ever get back out.

They traveled inward towards Asphodel, crossing the River Lethe at the narrow stone bridge. Roxas stopped on the apex, staring down at the sinuous channel, the mechanically drinking dead, the perfectly smooth blue-green waters.

“What’s the hold-up?” Axel asked.

“What are they doing?” Roxas asked, fascinated.

“Forgetting,” said Axel. “Once they’ve drunk enough, they can go back up.”

Roxas’s brow furrowed. One eye squinted. “I thought you said no one could leave.”

“They’re not leaving, they’re starting over. They only get to go once everything they used to be is washed out.”

Roxas nodded. Her eyes were still fixed on the river. Axel took her elbow and pulled her onward.

“Don’t look too long,” she said.

“Why not?”

“You might see something.”

Roxas kept her eyes forward for the rest of the span of the bridge. Even once they were across into Asphodel, she didn’t look back.

The meadow was large, so it was easy to cut a broad curve through it such that the palace was always obscured by the ever-present mist (and hence, Axel and Roxas were obscured from the palace). With Aqua around, the meadows bloomed—flowers that didn’t know anything about colors, trees reaching for a sun they’d only ever heard of, gray heath and pastel grass springy underfoot.

The dead wandered here and there, or sat under trees and reminisced with each other, or wove baskets or whatever the fuck people with nothing to do ever again occupied themselves with. Roxas stayed a couple steps behind Axel, observing quietly. The oppressive atmosphere—or maybe the bleakness of the afterlife—must have been weighing on her, because every time Axel looked back to make sure Roxas was still there (she was starting to understand how Orpheus could have screwed up so badly), Roxas looked more and more weary.

“We should be getting pretty close to the far edge,” Axel remarked—not because they were that close, but because no one had spoken in a while and she was bored. “After that, we’ll head down into Tartarus and poke around. Won’t be much use asking anyone, they’re all pretty focused on their own problems down there, but we should be able to search—”

“Axel, wait,” Roxas said.

She turned. Roxas was standing with her hands on her knees, gray in the face.

“What?” said Axel. “What happened?”

Roxas shook her head. “We’ve been walking for almost a day and a night. We must have covered… twenty leagues already. I need to rest.”

Axel stared at her. “No way.”

This earned a feeble smile. “I know you have a high opinion of me, but—”

She started to sit down. Axel lunged out and grabbed her before she could.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t? Why not?”

Uh-oh. How to explain without tipping her hand?

“This place… in a way, this place is Xemnas,” Axel said slowly. “You can walk around because you’re wearing sandals, and leather is just dead cows. It belongs here, in a way. But if any part of you touches the ground… you might not be able to get back up.”

Roxas pursed her lips. She nodded slowly. “I understand. But if I don’t rest, I’m going to collapse.”

Axel bit her lip, scouring her mind for solutions.

The easiest would be to let Roxas sit, or lean, or collapse onto something. To let her fall, literally and euphemistically. It wasn’t guaranteed that she would never get back up, but it was a distinct possibility. No risk if nothing happened, no consequences if something did—Xemnas would see to that. It was, in fact, what Axel was supposed to be doing.

“I’ll sit,” Axel decided, “and you can rest on me.”

A glimmer of relief shone in Roxas’s eyes. She took Axel’s chin in her hand and kissed her.

“I’m glad you came with me,” she said.

Axel faked a smile, hiked up her chiton, and sat down on the soft grasses of the meadow, putting her back against a slender tree. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it wasn’t uncomfortable—Asphodel in a nutshell. Roxas settled in Axel’s lap and leaned back, groaning with relief. Upstairs, her weight might have been burdensome, even painful; here it was only half-solid. Axel wrapped her arms around Roxas’s waist and leaned their heads together.

“Take as long as you need,” she said.

“Don’t let me fall asleep,” Roxas murmured.

And though it would have been the easiest thing in the world to betray her, Axel didn’t.

---

It took another full day (by Roxas’s reckoning) to cross out of the Asphodel meadows. Axel was so bad at keeping track of time and distance that it was up to Roxas to call for a break when she needed one—Axel couldn’t tell the difference between an hour and a day, between a few steps and a league. They went unnoticed—or at least unbothered—for the entire journey. Axel started to hope, secretly, bitterly, fervently, that they really could pull this off.

The Asphodel meadows were bounded by the River Acheron, narrow but unfathomably deep, its turbulent brown waters capped with brackish foam. Here, two tributaries flowed together and plunged off a bare rock cliff into the wailing depths of Tartarus. The roar of the falls was deafening, and still couldn’t drown out the screams, the pleas, the crack of whips and breaking bones. Spume filled the air, and the bare rocks on the other side of the tributaries were slick and sharp.

Tartarus was an underworld within the Underworld. It was not a place you were supposed to get out of.

“Let’s rest before we try to cross,” Roxas said. Dutifully, Axel settled herself, and Roxas settled on top of her. “Have you come this way before?”

“No. I’ve looked over the side, but I’ve never gone in.”

“Is the way down steep?”

“Cut a bowl in half and stand it up on its side, and that’s a pretty good approximation.”

“Not terrible, then.”

“We’d be trying to climb down the inside.”

Roxas wrinkled her nose. “Terrible, then. I wonder….”

“What?”

“I wonder if we shouldn’t check more thoroughly up here before trying to head down. From what you told me, it sounds like it’s easy to get stuck anywhere. Maybe they never made it this far.”

Damn. Once again, Roxas proved her not-a-total-meathead status.

“That’s possible,” Axel conceded. “It’s very possible. But Tartarus is a pretty small corner of the Underworld—only Elysium is smaller, and I’m sure they couldn’t have ended up there. It’ll be the quickest place to search, at least for a start.”

“I don’t think we’ll need to check the whole Underworld,” Roxas said. “If I know Hayner, he probably barged right in down the main path, thinking he could take on anything that got in his way.”

Shit. That was exactly what had happened.

“But if he got on Xemnas’s bad side, Tartarus is where he would’ve gotten thrown,” Axel said. “Plus—did he have any god blood in him?”

Roxas looked startled. “He does. We’re half-siblings. We think. And Pence might be my cousin.”

“Yeah, then they’re definitely in Tartarus by now.”

In fact, Axel didn’t know why Xemnas had left them stuck on the main path for so long. It was probably good exercise for the Furies, coming all the way up to torment them. Or maybe Xemnas just liked having them humiliated where he could see it from the palace window.

“Maybe so,” said Roxas, “but it’ll be faster to check the main path first. If they’re not there, we can use the time to figure out how we’re going to get in and out of Tartarus.”

Fuck. How did Axel keep underestimating her?!

“Good plan,” she said. How could she say anything else? “But we’ll have to be ten times as careful. If Xemnas catches you down here, the games are over.”

“I understand. Let’s go.”

---

The main thoroughfare of the Underworld was a broad footpath, wide enough for six horses to walk side-by-side. At first glance, it looked carved into the bare rock—but it wasn’t. It had been worn down solely by the passage of millions of feet.

Roxas had needed to rest twice more since they’d turned back from Tartarus. Her stint in the Underworld was taking its toll. There were heavy bags under her eyes, and the bright bronze of her skin was graying. Even her golden hair had tarnished. Axel guessed she’d been two or three days without sleep at this point. Any ordinary human would be on the verge of keeling over, but of course, Roxas wasn’t an ordinary human. Still, there was no telling how much longer she would last, even when half of her blood came from Xehanort himself. Axel couldn’t make up her mind if it was a good thing or a bad thing that they hadn’t ventured into Tartarus.

Couldn’t make up her mind if she was actually trying to get Roxas out or not.

“Roxas!! Roxas, over here!!!”

Roxas perked up. Down the path, just off to one side, half-obscured in mist, two men sat on a boulder, frantically waving their arms.

Chapter 10: The Arrangement

Roxas sprinted down the path to the two trapped men, all caution thrown to the wind. Axel hurried after, keeping her eyes peeled for trouble. All that hollering could easily have attracted attention—plus, there was no telling when the would-be kidnappers’ daily torments were scheduled to arrive.

“Man, am I glad to see you!” one of the men cried. He was blond and slender and had an eminently punchable face. “I told Pence you’d come to rescue us!”

“Get me out of here,” the other man hissed—dark-haired, fat, and absolutely furious. “This idiot—this idiot—!”

“You agreed to it,” the blond one—presumably Hayner—snapped, elbowing Pence hard in the ribs.

“I had to! We swore oaths to each other! And I told you this was a bad idea, but did you listen? Nooo-ooo!”

“It’s good to see both of you,” Roxas said, grinning broadly. “But how did you end up here?”

“We both needed wives,” Hayner said, “and we figured, hey, we deserve the best. Daughters of gods should be good enough.”

“But Hayner here decided—”

“I know that part,” Roxas butted in. “I meant how did you get here, on this rock?”

Both men blushed.

“Sat down to rest,” Hayner mumbled.

“Got stuck,” Pence added. “Stuck ever since.”

Roxas cast an alarmed but grateful look over her shoulder at Axel.

“All right,” Roxas said. “I’m going to get you two out of here. Sit tight.”

The men groaned. Roxas had a little chuckle. Axel couldn’t find it in herself to laugh.

No sign of the Furies yet, but they’d caught the attention of many spirits, most of whom were already headed in the direction of the palace.

“Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast,” Axel said.

Roxas nodded. She checked the men over for chains or bindings and found none; their butts had simply adhered to the rock like a two-part concrete mixture. Roxas shrugged and stuck a bit of dried meat in Pence’s mouth.

“Hang on to that for me,” she said.

“Whuh ah yoo—”

She grabbed him under the arms, braced her foot against the rock, and heaved.

Pence came loose.

Pence’s ass and thighs did not.

The scream rattled the dinnerware in Elysium.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Hayner begged, while Pence lay face-down on the ground, howling and writhing and bleeding everywhere. “You’re not doing that to me! Find another way!”

“No time,” Axel warned. There was blood on the ground. The dead didn’t bleed. Everyone was noticing the blood on the ground.

“I don’t have any ass to spare!” Hayner babbled, flailing at Roxas as she tried to get a grip on him. “You’ll tear me in half! Roxas, you can’t! You can’t!”

Roxas took a solid hit to the jaw—showcasing impressive strength from Hayner—but simply grabbed him in a bear hug, pinning his arms to his sides. She braced her foot against the rock.

The entire Underworld trembled.

Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling. The vibrations ran up through Axel’s legs and rattled her teeth. All around them, spirits and monsters fell to their knees (or equivalent), cowering outright.

Two things happened simultaneously:

Axel’s leash pulled taut.

A low, tri-tone growl rolled across the misty, barren Underworld.

“Get me out!” Hayner hissed, yanking on Roxas’s forearms like he could tear himself free. “Get me out, get me out, get me out!”

A bulky, four-legged, three-headed silhouette took shape in the mist. It approached at a slow stalk. Nails clicked on stone. A hundred and twenty teeth, dripping with saliva, gleamed in the dim light.

“Roxas please!” Hayner wept. Everything else in the entire Underworld—even the mutilated Pence—had gone still as statues.

Cerberus emerged from the mist, all six hateful eyes focused on Hayner.

“Roxas,” Axel whispered, trying not to move her mouth too much, “move away.”

Roxas looked between the dog and her friends, between Axel and the dog. Calculations flickered behind her eyes. One hand drifted towards her sword, slowly, slowly.

“Roxas, don’t,” Axel insisted. “Move away.”

Hayner was gibbering, clinging to Roxas in abject terror. Roxas’s jaw clenched.

“He earned this!” Axel said. “Don’t earn it alongside him!”

Slowly, so slowly, like a stone learning to move, Roxas pried herself out of Hayner’s clawing, howling, groveling grip. One step back. Two steps back. Three—

Cerberus struck like lightning. One moment he was ten paces away and the next he was on Hayner, jaws snapping teeth flashing blood everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Roxas lunged around the back of the rock and grabbed Pence, hauling him to his feet.

“Run!” she commanded him.

Pence hauled all the ass he had left back up the path. He didn’t look back a single time.

He probably didn’t need to. Hayner’s screams told the story well enough.

When Cerberus got done mauling Hayner, he trotted around the site happily snarfing up all the scattered flesh and entrails. Axel stayed frozen in place, willing Roxas to do the same with all her might. Roxas hadn’t moved since shoving Pence off on his way. She was so pale and waxen that her bronze face had taken on a green tinge. Her fists were clenched white-knuckled on the air.

Cerberus wolfed down one last intestine—snapping at himself over who should get the largest share—and raised his heads. Six ears pricked forward, attentive. Three tongues licked blood from spotted jowls.

One head looked at Axel.

One head looked at Roxas.

One head looked back towards the entrance to the Underworld.

Axel’s heart didn’t keep any beat to skip, but her soul shivered. The leash was still tight around her throat. Phantom pains chased through her body, teeth piercing flesh, tendons tearing from bone, limbs paralyzed, screams unheeded. The dagger was cold against her hip and she didn’t dare reach for it.

As one being, all three of Cerberus’s heads sneezed. The dog shook himself, gave one low woof at Roxas, and trotted off back up the path towards the entrance to the Underworld.

Axel sank to her knees, gasping air she didn’t need and hugging herself as tightly as she could. Roxas let out a thunderous roar and brought both her fists down on the horrible rock with all the strength in her body. It shattered into a hundred thousand pieces and a plume of dust. Roxas stood there shaking, tears running down her cheeks, blood staining her hands.

The leash was tight on Axel’s throat.

Roxas got herself under control first. She crossed to Axel’s side and lifted her up by the arm. There was anger in the gesture, anger and blame.

“We’re going to the palace,” she said.

Axel shook her head. “We need to leave. You need to leave, before—”

“He already knows I’m here.”

She dropped Axel and headed for the Palace of the Dead.

---

The judges were expecting them. They stood aside and gestured Roxas up the stairs. She didn’t even spare them a nod. Axel scurried after. The smug looks on the judges’ faces pricked her like needles.

Inside the palace, Roxas stormed past the uncountable riches and untended bounties, the ores and gems, silk and saffron, dyes and duties. With a jolt, Axel realized Roxas was following the glowing blue line of the leash.

One end attached to Axel’s neck, and the other, to Xemnas’s onyx throne.

Roxas shoved a guard aside and barged right into the throne room, unannounced and unasked-for. Axel ran after her, sick to her stomach, sandals slapping against the stone floor in the silence.

Xemnas was on his throne, one hand propping up his cheek, the other gently clasped with his wife’s. His expression was one of amusement; hers, of pity.

“Lord Xemnas,” Roxas said. Axel winced at the bluntness, the impoliteness of that greeting.

“Welcome, Roxas, daughter of Xehanort,” Xemnas said. However quietly he spoke, the walls hummed with the bass of his voice. “What brings you to my halls in such haste?”

His golden eyes flicked to Axel, and the corner of his mouth turned up.

Roxas wrestled with herself. Belatedly, she offered a bow.

“My Lord,” she said, “I have been set a task by my cousin, Vanitas, king of Tiryns. I am bound to do as he requests.”

“I am aware of the arrangement,” Xemnas said.

A flicker of uncertainty crossed Roxas’s face. It was quickly buried under steely determination.

“He has requested that I bring him Cerberus,” she said.

The other corner of Xemnas’s mouth turned up. “Has he.”

“Therefore,” Roxas barreled on, “and since you are aware of the arrangement, I came here to seek your permission to do so. He’s your dog, after all.”

Xemnas’s eyebrows raised, just a fraction. Next to him, Aqua looked rather impressed.

“I see,” Xemnas said mildly. “Though your cousin’s request is impudent, I cannot blame you for it; and you show me respect by asking my permission. Yes, you may take Cerberus back to your cousin.”

Axel’s stomach sank. Something was up.

Roxas straightened, startled. “I—I can?”

“Indeed. However, as he is my dog, and a very good dog, I will insist on certain restrictions.”

“Of course, My Lord.”

Don’t agree just like that! Axel thought furiously, but she didn’t dare open her mouth.

“First: your cousin may not keep him,” Xemnas said, “and second: you must use no weapons to subdue him and cause him no harm.”

Dread filled Axel like cold, rotten waters. This was a classic Xemnas deal. The best-case scenario was being torn limb from limb. No wonder Cerberus had shown up just in time to maul Roxas’s friends right in front of her face.

Axel looked to Aqua, so often the mellowing influence on her husband’s cruelties—but Aqua said nothing. Evidently, the deal was fair enough for her. She probably liked the three-headed brute.

“Thank you, My Lord,” Roxas said stiffly.

She bowed to Xemnas and to Aqua, then stalked back out of the throne room. Axel followed—not because she wanted to go, but because she didn’t want to stay. The leash pulled taut just as she reached the threshold, stopping her from leaving.

“Unorthodox,” Xemnas said, “but interesting.”

Axel said nothing.

“I hope, for your sake, that it pays off,” said Xemnas.

The leash slackened again. Axel walked out.

---

“Roxas, wait.”

Roxas didn’t wait. Axel hiked up her chiton and ran down the path to catch up with her.

“All right, so it’s not great,” Axel said. “But he used some pretty loose wording in there, so if we just take a little time to think through it, I’ll bet we can find some kind of loophole or—”

“Don’t need one.”

Roxas’s eyes were fixed on the path ahead. She took long, certain strides. She undid her sword belt as she walked, motions rough and reckless.

“You can’t seriously be considering going up against that thing with your bare hands? He’ll tear you limb from limb! You saw what happened to—”

“Yes! I did! Fucking hold this.”

She foisted her sword into Axel’s arms.

“Listen to me, Xemnas is setting you up to die,” Axel said. “But we can find you a way out if we just—”

“Don’t need it. Hold this.” The bow.

“Don’t be stupid! Look, if we work together, we can probably get you past him—”

“Not going past him. These, too.” The quiver of arrows.

“Roxas, please, stop. You’re not thinking clearly. Forget your stupid cousin’s stupid errands and—”

Roxas rounded on her. Axel clutched the various weapons to her chest as if they could protect her.

“My father,” Roxas said, low and furious, “my real father, told me that if I became a true hero, I could join him in Olympus. The Oracle at Delphi told me all I had to do to become a true hero was to serve my cousin for ten years. So that’s what I’m doing. I don’t care if it kills me. I want to go home. If you aren’t going to help me, then get out of my way.”

Axel stared. Bile rose in her throat. The sword bit into her hand as her fingers tightened, and the pain was, frankly, welcome.

“Your father lied to you,” she said.

Roxas struck her. Axel fell in a clattering heap, arrows spilling everywhere, vision full of sparks. A dull, throbbing pain consumed her senses. By the time she got back on her feet and clicked her dislocated jaw back into place, Roxas had disappeared into the mist.

So that was it, then. Gone. Great job, Axel. Expect a medal for meritorious service to Lord Xemnas. Maybe he’ll let you play with his dog.

The wheels in Axel’s head finally caught.

Hasty wording. Condition Two. What Xemnas meant was: no weapons may be used against my dog, and no harm may come to him.

But that wasn’t what he’d said.

Axel dropped all Roxas’s things and ran as fast as she could.

---

The fight was already under way by the time she reached the Styx, bestial snarls echoing across the water. Axel threw rocks at the ferryman until he begrudgingly came to pick her up—not because she was hitting him, but because she was disturbing the drowned souls. There was a clear imprint of an oar on his throat, deeply caved in.

“Very strong woman,” he remarked, when he noticed Axel staring. He gestured to the sounds of snarling on the far shore. “Above my pay grade.”

Axel jumped out of the boat the second it bumped the far shore, splashing up to her knees in cold, black water. She shoved through the crowd of ghosts until she stumbled out into the arena they’d cleared on the steep-sloping floor to the exit.

Roxas and Cerberus were both still on their feet, circling each other like wrestlers at the gymnasium. Roxas’s arm was bleeding. She was nude, her chiton twisted into a white rope. Her arms and legs trembled with exhaustion. Cerberus had all eyes fixed on her, all teeth bared, his growl rattling the ground they stood on.

Axel drew her dagger and watched for an opening.

Cerberus lunged. Roxas caught two sets of jaws on the chiton. The third slipped under but couldn’t reach her, teeth snapping at empty air. Claws raked her thighs and shins, drawing blood. She heaved hard and threw Cerberus off. He landed on his shoulder, scrabbled back upright, and lunged for her again. She leapt out of the way. His teeth missed her by inches. She flicked the soaking wet chiton. The end snapped out with a crack and a burst of mist right in front of one of Cerberus’s noses. He flinched.

Roxas was between him and Axel now. All Axel could do was grip the dagger tighter.

“Try me, you motherfucker,” Roxas growled at the dog, winding her chiton up for another pop.

Bet my obol on the woman, a ghost whispered behind Axel.

You’re on, another whispered back.

Cerberus lunged again. This time, Roxas caught all three sets of jaws on the chiton. Faster than Axel would have believed, she juked around behind Cerberus and tied the chiton tight, binding all of his thrashing heads together. She straddled his back and wrestled him down, elbow planted between his enormous shoulders, snarling abuse into his ears while his claws ripped sparks from the bare stone.

Axel couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Stunned, she took a half-step forward. Roxas’s head snapped up—eyes bloodshot, hair wild, teeth bared.

“You!” she barked. “Come here!”

Axel ran to her side. Roxas grabbed the leash out of the air and wrapped it around Cerberus’s chest three times. One of the heads switched from snarling to whimpering, and the other two weren’t far behind. The whole beast stopped struggling, just lay there panting and whining, tongues lolling out past Roxas’s chiton.

Roxas fell back. Axel braced her up with her shoulder—her hand was still clutching the dagger.

“Outside,” Axel said sternly. “You can collapse outside.”

Roxas didn’t answer, but she did get up. She hoisted Cerberus onto her shoulder and began to trudge up the long, steep slope to the surface. With the leash wrapped tightly around the dog, Axel had no choice about following.

Somewhere behind them, a ghost wailed in stunned, miserable defeat.

The trek back to the surface was longer than Axel remembered. Roxas nearly lost her footing three times, and three times, Axel kept her upright. Cerberus whined and wriggled. Axel kept the dagger in her hand.

But at last, the three of them emerged into sunlight—real, blinding sunlight—and a biting chill, and a breath of wind on their faces and the smell of recent rain. Roxas walked on mechanically until her feet sank into winter-bare vegetation.

Then she collapsed.

---

It was almost a full day before Roxas woke. Axel spent the time daubing cold spring water onto her lips and watching Cerberus. The dog was surprisingly timid outside of his territory. Axel kept one hand on her dagger anyway.

Night had fallen, and Axel was tending a small fire for warmth. There wasn’t anything to eat, the plants all rotting or barren and Roxas’s supplies lost somewhere in the Underworld, so there was nothing to cook. Maybe it was just the smell of smoke that caused Roxas to stir, a flutter of her eyelids and a quiet groan.

“That was some fucking stunt you pulled in there,” Axel said.

Roxas almost smiled. She propped herself up on one elbow, wincing. She looked around the campsite—Cerberus, still bound; the crackling fire; the silent glittering stars above them; and Axel.

“You’re still here,” Roxas said.

“Of course,” said Axel. You tied me to the dog, she didn’t say.

Roxas sat the rest of the way up. Her eyes flicked to Axel’s dagger, then her finger pointed to it.

“You had that inside, too. You weren’t planning on using it, were you?”

Axel shrugged. “He only said you couldn’t harm Cerberus. He didn’t say anything to me.”

“But with a dagger?”

Axel bit her lip. She fingered the filigree on the handle. She sighed, turned the dagger around so Roxas could see the blade.

Could see the faint marbling of the steel and the dark halo along the razor-fine edge.

“This dagger can kill anything,” Axel said. “A small cut is enough for most men or beasts. Something bigger, like that—” she gestured to Cerberus— “I might need to bury it up to the hilt. But only once.”

Roxas stared. Her brow was furrowed and her eyes were wide. Axel shrugged and tucked the dagger against her leg, out of sight.

“What? You’re not the only one who gets presents from gods.”

“Xemnas gave you that,” Roxas said.

“Technically, Saïx. He’s the one who deals with transitions.”

“Isn’t that a little dangerous to be carrying around loose?”

“You forget: I’m already dead.”

Roxas’s eyes flicked up to Axel’s face, only for a moment.

“Thank you for your help,” she said, and rolled over and went back to sleep.

One of Cerberus’s heads showed just the tiniest glimmer of tooth to Axel. Axel made a rude gesture at him.

---

The journey back to Tiryns was long and awkward. Few words were exchanged between the three of them—in fact, Cerberus was probably the most talkative, whining and grumbling and gnawing on the cloth that bound his heads together. Roxas carried him over her shoulder most of the way. He didn’t struggle and never tried to escape, but he also refused to take a single step away from his home of his own accord. He spent his evenings with one head on paw-licking duty and the other two watching Axel and Roxas not talk to each other.

Once they got closer to civilization, Axel tried to convince Roxas to buy new clothes. Roxas declined. The winter chill didn’t seem to bother her, and no crowd would refuse to part before a six-foot-tall nude woman carrying a giant three-headed dog over her shoulder.

Their reputation got to Tiryns long before they did.

Roxas marched through the city streets, steely-eyed and tight-jawed, illuminated with the same manic energy Axel had seen once before in this very same city. She found it more disconcerting than arousing this time around. Crowds cheered and shrieked and whispered and shouted, but they all gave Roxas and Cerberus a very wide berth. Axel trailed along, hoping to go unnoticed by comparison.

The guards let them into the king’s palace without even thinking about stopping them. Their eyes were enormous and fixed on Cerberus, who, for his own part, bounced like a miserable sack of vegetables. Much like in the Underworld, Roxas marched right into the audience hall without asking or announcing herself. It must have been a pastime of hers.

As for Vanitas, King of Tiryns and Roxas’s cousin on her mortal side, Axel saw barely a glimpse of him. The throne was empty, while the large winejar next to it was cracked open, a pair of eyes peeking out.

Roxas walked to the very foot of the throne and dumped Cerberus on the floor. He landed with a sharp yorp! and three betrayed expressions.

“Cousin,” Roxas said, “here, as you requested, is Cerberus, guardian of the Underworld.”

Cerberus whined. The entire audience hall sucked in a breath. The king’s winejar rattled with tremors.

“Gods above!” King Vanitas snarled. His voice echoed thinly in the jar. “You brought it here alive?!”

“His master said I couldn’t harm him.”

“Get it out of here! Now, right now!!”

“You asked me to bring him.”

“I don’t care what I asked! I want it out!”

Roxas put one sandaled foot on Cerberus’s back, eliciting a low growl that suffused the air with putrescence. Several attendants looked sick.

“What will be my next task, cousin?” Roxas asked.

“Your next task is to get it out of here!!”

Roxas shrugged. She unraveled Axel’s leash from around Cerberus’s trunk. Before she could even reach for her knotted chiton, Cerberus bolted, out the door and away in a scrabbling of claws and the blink of an eye. The room brightened, ever so slightly. The king and all his attendants breathed a sigh of relief.

“Now—now go away,” King Vanitas said, flicking a shoo-shoo hand at Roxas out of the winejar. “No more tasks. You’re done. Go away, I want nothing more to do with you.”

Roxas bowed. “It’s been an honor to serve you, cousin.”

There was a single moment of breathless silence, radiating out from Roxas with all the terrible weight of hope. No horns sounded, no chariot wheels clattered from on high. Roxas breathed out through her nose and left the chamber. The tension in the air didn’t ease an ounce. Axel followed Roxas out and found her tension uneased as well.

“No one said it would be right away,” Roxas said, responding to a comment Axel had bitten off on the tip of her tongue. “I still have a task to complete for you, after all.”

“No rush,” said Axel.

A wanting had come over Roxas—not a mooning, puppy-love wanting, not a greedy, covetous wanting, but a skin-and-bones wanting, teeth and fingernails, rasping, gasping, grasping. When she looked up, it was a wonder she didn’t peel the paint off the sky.

“I guess not,” she said. “It’s not like they’re going anywhere.”

---

Few words were exchanged after that. The two of them returned to Roxas’s villa to decompress. While the sex was still great, something had changed. Axel didn’t want to put a finger on why. Maybe the silences between sessions were only there because they understood each other well enough. Maybe they ate from separate plates because they wanted some elbow room. Maybe Axel’s jaw had always clicked like that.

In the morning, they had breakfast in silence, too. The fruit and honey tasted like dirt. The mead was watery, and the water was sour.

“So,” Roxas said at last. “This task of yours.”

Chapter 11: Every Breath a Prayer

Dread pooled heavy in Axel’s stomach. Even though she’d known she would have to disclose the nature of her agreement with Xemnas sooner or later, she’d hoped to have a lot more later to work with.

Why did it always come down to time? She’d thought, being Dead, that she would never run out.

But there was nothing for it now; Roxas had asked, and there was no point in lying to her. Axel finished her halved fig and composed herself.

“There’s a man in Pylos I have to kill,” she said. “I tried once already, and he got me before I got him. Now he’s on his guard, and he knows what I look like. I need help getting in.”

“What did he do?” Roxas asked.

“Stabbed me,” Axel said, rubbing the spot under her left breast where the knife had gone in. “Apparently he—”

“I meant what he did that he needs to be killed for.”

A flare of agitation rose under Axel’s skin, the words don’t interrupt me besieging the walls of her teeth. She ground them to dust and swallowed them back.

“Ansem is his father.”

“And?”

“No and. Xemnas is sick of mortal god-kids waltzing in and out of the Underworld like they own the place, so he’s nipping it in the bud. Hence the kills-anything knife.”

“And this man in Pylos has been waltzing in and out?”

Axel shifted, rubbing her honey-sticky fingers together. “Well… no. Not yet.”

“Then why are you killing him?”

“Because that’s what Xemnas told me to do. I don’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice,” Roxas said coldly.

“Says the woman who spent the last ten years doing whatever the fuck her coward of a cousin told her to,” Axel retorted.

“He never asked me to kill a man!”

Axel grabbed the ethereal leash and pulled it taut, until it glittered in the early morning light.

“What choice do you think I have, huh? What do you think happens to me if I say no thanks? This deal was my only way out. If I break it, my best-case scenario is rotting away in pastel hell forever.”

Roxas’s eyes narrowed. “You agreed to this?”

“I agreed to do whatever he asked if he’d let me out. Just like you agreed to do whatever I asked. I don’t like this job, I don’t enjoy it, but I have to do it, and now you have to help me.”

“No,” said Roxas.

Axel stared. Heat welled up from the pit of her stomach to the top of her scalp. Her lip curled. Her fists clenched.

“We had a deal,” she said.

“I’m breaking it,” said Roxas. Even reclining on her elbow, she was mountainous. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Fuck, you really think you’re gonna get to be a god, don’t you?” Axel spat. “You already talk like one.”

Roxas shot to her feet. Her face was a thunderhead, her fists were landslides. Axel leapt up, too. Her hand found the hilt of the dagger.

One deep wound was all it would take. Even a shallow cut might sap enough of Roxas’s strength to get the mortal blow in. She was unarmed. She was exhausted from her journey through the Underworld.

She’d taken down Cerberus with her bare hands, sure, but maybe that had been a fluke.

“Don’t bring my father into this,” Roxas threatened.

“Your father played you for a sucker,” Axel said anyway.

“The gods turn people into other things all the time!”

“But they don’t turn things into people, now do they?”

“Shut up. Shut up, or I’ll hit you again.”

“We’re dogs to them,” Axel barreled on. “Your Mighty Golden Dad got bored and stuck his dick in a dog, and now the baby bitch thinks she’ll grow thumbs if she’s a good girl. Newsflash, Pup: you’re not going to Olympus! You’re not his daughter, you’re a joke!”

Roxas lunged for her. Plates and bowls clattered to the floor. The dagger flashed.

Everything went still, frozen in tableau.

Roxas: one hand clamped on Axel’s arm, one fist upraised like a blacksmith’s hammer.

Axel: toes barely brushing the ground, leash wrapped around her throat like Xemnas’s fingers, both hands on the hilt of the dagger.

The dagger: touching the seam between Roxas’s left breast and her ribs.

“Do it, then,” Roxas said quietly, still furious. She held Axel’s eyes as tightly as she held her arm.

“Let go of me,” said Axel.

“Fucking do it. That’s your job, isn’t it? Lucky you, today you get to kill somebody who actually broke the rules!”

“Roxas, put me down.”

“Either you kill me, or I kill you. That’s the only way this ends.”

“You’re fucking stupid.”

“Do it!” she snarled, shaking Axel.

The tip of the dagger broke the skin. Exactly one heartbeat later, Axel’s weight settled onto her feet as the strength of Roxas’s arm failed. The bronze skin grayed, the rippling muscles atrophied; the divine light in her extinguished. Her fury remained.

She never looked away from Axel’s eyes.

“Do it,” she said again, and it wasn’t a threat.

Two things happened in such quick succession that an incautious observer might not have known which came first:

Axel let go of the dagger.

The leash ripped her out of Roxas’s grip and clean through the floor.

---

Axel hit the stairs of the onyx throne so hard it broke her back in three places. A single sharp cry escaped her body. She tumbled to the floor and lay there in a heap, blazing with pain, paralyzed.

The only part of her that wasn’t dead shrieked: not again, not again, not again!

“An informative experiment,” Xemnas mused. “But ultimately, a failure.”

She couldn’t turn her head to look at him. Her lungs gasped at breaths they didn’t need, ears ringing, scrabbling at the walls of a prison that was exactly her size. She wanted to scream. She wanted to curse and spit and snarl. She wanted to beg.

She couldn’t.

“Your service has been appreciated,” Xemnas droned on. “Understand that I bear no grudge against you.”

The floor shivered beneath her. The smell of rot wafted into the room. The leash around her neck, her constant companion for uncounted years, snapped like spider silk. She couldn’t move.

Not again.

A low, tri-tone growl.

Not again, not again.

Claws clicking on stone, muzzles snuffling. She couldn’t move. She could hear the smile in Xemnas’s voice.

“Cerberus, on the other hand….”

A shadow falling over her.

NOT AGAIN!

And teeth.

---

Axel regained her consciousness in blood. Axel always regained her consciousness in blood. There was always time to remember before it started again. The waiting was half the torture.

This would be her three hundred and fifty-eighth time being torn apart by Cerberus.

“An interesting proposition,” Xemnas was saying, somewhere above. Business meetings were often conducted over her remains. “Why should I grant you anything? Your very presence is blasphemy.”

The base of Axel’s spine clicked back together. Her guts slithered back into her abdomen like snakes bedding down for winter. An arrow of white pain shot down the back of her left leg and curled her toes. Sometimes she was completely whole before she was mauled again. Sometimes she made it as far as the palace steps. She always ran, if her body was whole enough. She couldn’t stop herself from running.

“I know.” The voice was familiar, hard and blunt as stone. “I’m not asking for my sake. Hasn’t her punishment exceeded the offense at this point?”

“Do not presume to dictate the rules of my realm to me,” said Xemnas.

The middle of Axel’s spine clicked together. Dim sensation suffused the lower half of her body. She curled the toes of her right foot on purpose. Her right arm snuggled back into its socket and her skin wove a tapestry over the wound. Her breath came short and labored. She still couldn’t turn her head, not yet, so all she could see was her own blood on the black marble floor.

“But she’s committed no crime,” said the stone fool.

“She swore an oath. She broke it. She was aware of what the consequences would be.”

“It was a bad oath,” the blaspheming moron insisted. “If the sanctity of your realm was violated, it was your right to hunt down whoever violated it. Not anyone who might violate it. That’s out of bounds.”

“Perhaps. But you violated the sanctity of my realm, and it was you she failed to return to me.”

“Did she? Here I am, after all.”

This gave Xemnas some pause. “So you are.”

“That being the case, I ask you to release her to Asphodel. She’s paid more than enough in pain.”

“Alas, such a request defies her explicit wishes,” said Xemnas, who didn’t sound very alas about it. “She said that anything was preferable to languishing in the eternal boredom of Asphodel. Is that not what you told me, Axel?”

Axel’s whole body went cold. Her scalp stitched itself back on. Her broken neck finally clicked back together. She turned her head just far enough to see who was kneeling at Xemnas’s throne, sandals stained with blood, golden head raised in stubborn defiance.

“Maybe she’s changed her mind,” Roxas said.

Xemnas, cheek resting on his hand, looked unimpressed. Next to him, though, Aqua wore a face closer to pity. She laid her fingers on her husband’s wrist.

“There’s nothing to be learned from eternal punishment,” she said. “If you can’t return her to Asphodel, return her to the earth. When she’s lived a little more, she’ll be content with the natural order of things.”

Xemnas sighed. His eyes stayed fixed on Roxas, sharp and cold.

“Very well,” he said. “I will nullify her oath and permit the end of her suffering—if you take her place.”

For a single instant, Axel was filled head to toe with nothing but blazing, shrieking hope.

In the next instant, she hated herself. For condemning Roxas to it, for thinking Roxas would condemn herself to it, for so much as imagining that anyone could ever love her enough—

“Done,” Roxas said.

Axel was on her feet and running before the word hit the floor. She tore through the palace, charged down the steps, crashed through the judges and tumbled on the bare rock—then up again, feet pounding fit to shatter on the cold ground, the screech of freedom in her ears, fire in her blood, every breath a prayer.

A hand closed on the back of her neck.

Her feet came off the ground, flung out ahead by her arrested flight. She screamed, kicking and thrashing until her violence against that impossible grip threatened to break her neck again. Then she hung still, a godly palm cradling the back of her skull, its thumb and fingers pinching just under her ears.

Gods could be in two places at once. Especially if they had a bespoke avatar lying around.

“There are still rules,” Saïx said.

He strode forward and the mist swirled around them. In three steps they were at the banks of the Lethe. One more step and they were on the zenith of the bridge. Saïx extended his arm and dangled Axel above the perfectly smooth waters.

“You will be permitted to return to the earth,” he said, “the usual way.”

Listlessly, he dropped her.

Time and space didn’t really exist in the Underworld. Axel hung suspended in the air for a hundred years. She fell a thousand leagues. Below her, the Lethe shivered. A single ripple raced across its blue-green surface. Penitent souls scattered in slow-motion. A second ripple, a third, chasing in from all directions, crisscrossing, weaving, buzzing, humming, singing.

The Lethe shattered.

Ten thousand shards of ten thousand memories burst into the air, a hundred million reflections all falling, all screaming, all gasping one desperate breath.

Axel crashed through the glass deluge and sank like a stone.

---

Breath held tight. Eyes squeezed shut. Arms and legs floundering for purchase against cold, diaphanous silks. She would fight. She had to fight.

But clawing at the waters of the Lethe, scratching for the surface, she couldn’t cover her ears, and there the Lethe trickled in.

She heard voices, a great cacophony of voices. Some whispered, some shouted; some wept, some laughed; some mocked her plight and some envied it. A sharp chill filled her skull drop by drop. Her lungs burned. Her heart thundered.

Up. Somewhere there was a surface. Up. Up.

The voices surrounded her, enveloped her. The water inside her head soaked into her brain, displacing her words with its own—clearer every minute. She needed air. Instinct and will played tug-of-war with her breath. Her legs kicked against a raging turbulence.

Up. Fight. Live.

Her head was almost full of water. The voices rang loud and clear as bells inside her skull. Hundreds of voices. All the same voice.

Her fingers scratched bare rock.

All Axel’s voice.

She broke the surface with a wrenching gasp, clawed herself onto the shore in a frenzy. Water sloughed off her body. Water dribbled out her ears, washing all the voices away, leaving only echoes.

Axel knelt on the shore of the Lethe and trembled, coughing and wheezing and retching. Distant snarls found her ears, foes locked in combat. She remembered their names. She remembered the deal.

She remembered where, exactly, she had dropped her dagger.

---

The one benefit to the eternal mists of the Underworld was that the ferryman didn’t see Axel coming until she was almost on top of him. She seized his oar before he could cast off. Annoyance poured off of him in smoky waves. She had to be quick. If he noticed the leash was gone, she was shit out of luck.

“Go back,” he snapped at her, his eternal refrain.

Axel opened her mouth to argue, but the only words in her head were echoes, and only echoes spilled out.

“Bring me back,” she demanded.

Wisps of confusion joined the annoyance exuding from the ferryman. “Go back,” he insisted.

She tried to wrench the oar from his hands. He tried to wrench it from hers. The boat rocked and scraped against the shore.

“She said I would go to the ball!” Axel snarled. Her voice, but not her voice. “The Red Bandit is my master. Mostly yours and mine. Let me down!”

The ferryman’s attention was caught by something over Axel’s shoulder. A tinge of concern—or was it fear?—joined his miasma. Axel snatched her opportunity and shoved with all her might. The ferryman overbalanced. He fell into the shallows of the River Styx with a hoarse cry and a splash.

A dozen drowned hands seized him. Axel leapt into his boat and cast off. His indignant shouts became desperate gurgling as all the souls who hadn’t been able to buy their passage leapt on the chance for payback. The river turned choppy as more and more of them rushed to the feeding frenzy. Axel hunkered down and hung on.

She could only hope that Roxas was doing the same.

---

If Axel had still been Dead, she would have run all the way to Tiryns, past the Underworld’s grimly unguarded gate, across the neighboring wastes, down all the winding roads and straight into the bedroom of Roxas’s villa. She would have bought passage on a cart or a horse with her never-emptying purse. She would have killed somebody and taken their cart or their horse. She would have done any number of things to get there faster, but she was mortal, and broke, and unarmed, and the days ticked by relentlessly, carving notches on her heart.

Why did it always come down to time?

After almost two weeks, the open gates of Tiryns welcomed her in. She barreled through the streets like a madwoman, single-minded, speaking only in echoes. Roxas’s villa was locked up tight, well guarded by several men and at least one dog. Axel hardly dared approach. Her flesh crawled at every click of nails on stone, every snuffle, every growl and bark. She couldn’t tell the guards—Roxas’s friends, loyal servants, admiring public—who she was, why she was there, how badly Roxas needed her. The echoes in her head didn’t have the words. The guards turned her away, or cast her out, or called for the dog to chase her off. Each night she wept bitter tears and cursed their love and loyalty. Each passing day whittled her heart away, notch by notch.

Finally, she could bear it no longer. She needed help, and there was only one place she could think of to go for it.

It was a three-day journey to Athens. Axel prayed—to no one—that the king there would see her.

She found the words for that, at least. Her echoes were well acquainted with desperation.

---

Compared to Athens, Tiryns had been a hole in the ground.

The lights could be seen from several hilltops away. The scars of heavy agriculture marred the land all around. Traffic flowed in and out of the walls day and night. The walls themselves were more like suggestions, with carts, stalls, encampments, and even homes sprawling out on all sides. The city proper was choked with people, all kinds of people, merchants and vendors and artists and traders, prostitutes and gossips, philosophers, athletes, scholars, farmers. Axel was shunted to and fro with hardly a rude word spared—everyone was much too busy to bother. The city was vibrantly, inescapably alive, and it made Axel sick to her stomach.

Still, her utter unimportance to everyone around let her beeline right to the king’s hall, a utilitarian building that was in the process of getting vastly more ornate. She was in luck, too—people queued on the steps, many looking powerfully self-righteous.

An audience was in session.

Axel walked right up the steps, squeezing through when she couldn’t slip by and shoving when she couldn’t squeeze through. A rising uproar traced her wake, but she had no time for it. She barged into the audience chamber, insensate to everything but the man on the throne at the far end of the room.

“Your Majesty!” she shouted. Her echoes had known at least one king.

The room stirred, heads turning, petitions sputtering. The uproar made it through the door, citizens shouting hey and unfair and what the fuck? Guards peeled off from around the room, alarmed by the speed of Axel’s approach towards their king.

“Stop where you are!” one ordered.

Axel didn’t stop.

“Your Majesty! Obviously it’s a problem!” she said. “I guess they only work when they’re together. Help me!”

The guards reached her, seized her.

“What on earth are you gibbering about?” one of them demanded.

She thrashed so violently in their grip that another guard was forced to join the effort of restraining her.

“Let go! Let go! Asshole! Rotten coward! He’s dying! Roxas—he’s dying! We were almost friends!”

“Enough out of you!” one of the guards snarled. “Come on, out! Join the Bacchanal if you want to behave like an animal!”

They dragged her back towards the door. She struggled as hard as she could, shouting, cursing, begging. The crowd hurled insults and taunts and laughter at her. Axel would have torn their throats out with her teeth if she could.

A voice rang through the chamber above the jeers and cheers of the crowd.

“Wait.”

Heads turned, shouts became murmurs. The guards waited. Axel forced herself to stay still, quivering with the effort.

Up on his throne, head unbent even by his heavy golden crown, King Pence of Athens said: “Bring her here.”

Chapter 12: A Blade That Could Kill Anything

The guards exchanged a glance over Axel’s head. The crowd of petitioners was in full gossip, each whispering so fervently that no one was listening to what anyone said. Dutifully, the guards brought Axel to the foot of the throne. King Pence of Athens leaned forward to peer at her. His eyes widened.

“I do know you,” he said. “You were—but how can you be here?”

“Roxas,” she said. “You’re swapping partners every minute.”

King Pence frowned. “What about Roxas?”

“Under the table!” Axel cried. “We’re all just little dolls for Them to play with whenever they want, however they want. Coming from somewhere beyond Faerie. Stupid place to leave them. I need to go home, Your Highness. Something I could do to…… help. Bring me back a shard of its king—”

“I don’t understand. Speak plainly.”

Axel let out a ragged cry, tears of frustration gathering in her eyes. “I can’t! You may speak. I can’t! Bits and pieces, fragments here and there. Please. Help me. Tell anyone. I need to go home. Where’s Roxas. I have some business to attend to.”

“Sire, the woman is clearly mad,” one of the king’s attendants said. “She is better placed with the acolytes of Xigbar than in an audience with you.”

“Shut up!” Axel snarled.

Pence raised a hand to his brow, shaking his head. “She isn’t mad. She’s—cursed, or something.”

“Even worse!” the attendant cried.

“No.” Pence turned back to Axel. “You’re upset. You’re alone. Last time I saw you, you were with Roxas. Did something happen to her?”

Axel nodded emphatically. “He’s just stuck. You’re only going to be here forever. This is all my fault. Help me get the glass out.”

“Stuck. She’s stuck. Where?”

“Under the table!”

“Under the… in the Underworld?”

“Yes!” Why was this taking so long? It was all she could do not to grab him by the shoulders and shake him.

Pence’s countenance grayed. “You’re not asking me to go in there after her, are you?”

“No!”

He sagged with relief. “But you are asking my help. With what?”

“I live in your house,” Axel said, beating her fist on her leg for emphasis. “I don’t know how to get past the castle walls. There’s something we could do to save—Roxas.”

“House… castle walls… save….” Pence scoffed and shook his head. “Are you planning to save her?”

“Yes! Are we allowed? I’m not sure where to start. I want—to go—home—!”

“Allowed?” His face brightened suddenly with comprehension. “You need conveyance? A way to get back to the Underworld?”

“Shall We grace them with Our presence? You and me, together.”

“An escort?”

“You must be very close. Friends! The one who’s going to tell us all the stories!”

“So yes, an escort?”

“Yes!”

“I won’t send anyone into the Underworld.”

“I’m not—going back! I want to go home!”

King Pence mulled it over. Finally, he stood. His long, royal cloak covered the unnatural leanness of his thighs and buttocks.

“Prepare my chariot,” he commanded. As servants scattered, he turned to Axel, imperious and grand and sick with worry. “I assume you can point the way?”

She managed to choke out one more yes before relief smote her into a sobbing mess.

---

King Vanitas of Tiryns tried to receive the neighboring king diplomatically, but Pence didn’t care for him and Axel’s urgency was contagious. Pence plowed right through the welcoming committee, and soon enough caught on that Axel was directing him towards Roxas’s villa.

“Why there?” he asked, steering the horse through the narrow streets on the assumption that everyone would get out of the way. Most did.

“He turned wicked and tried to stab me with a silver sword,” Axel said. “I have a problem and you two are gonna help me with it.”

“I don’t know why I bothered asking,” Pence sighed.

The chariot at last pulled up to Roxas’s villa, and the guards on duty immediately recognized Pence. They hailed him as a friend making an unexpected visit, breaking into broad smiles as they approached.

The moment the chariot’s wheels stopped, Axel leapt off and ran for the villa. The guards shouted in alarm, but Pence shouted right back at them.

“Let her go! Roxas is in trouble. We’re—”

Axel was inside the villa before the rest of the explanation could reach her. She shoved past the single alarmed servant and into the bedroom.

A maelstrom had hit it since she’d been gone. Clothes and bedding were strewn everywhere, every jar and amphora smashed, every box upended, every bag turned inside-out. Curly chips of cedar wood sprinkled the floor like late snow. The servant stepped in behind Axel, and the sputter of indignation on his lips turned to a wail.

“Gods above! What’s happened in here?!”

A leaden weight settled in Axel’s stomach. Someone had been looking for something. Who could have slipped past all those guards unseen, ransacked the room unheard? Who could have stained the wood with dry rot, moth-eaten the textiles, corroded the bronze goblets?

Who else could have known that there was something worth looking for, other than the one who had given it to Axel in the first place?

Saïx hadn’t just dumped her in the Lethe and gone back into whatever hibernation he stayed in when he wasn’t in use. Xemnas had sent him here to recover the dagger. Axel sank to her knees, desperation finally turning to despair. She couldn’t imagine he hadn’t found it. It would have just been lying on the floor.

“What a mess, what a mess!” The servant flitted around like a bird who’d found its nest destroyed. “Who would do such a thing? The crime in this city—look at this, they didn’t even take the coins! Just threw them all over the floor!”

A glimmer of light shone through the gloom.

Why ransack a room for something that was sitting in plain sight?

Axel turned fresh eyes on the carnage. Every container had been smashed open, no stone left unturned—and then things that couldn’t possibly contain the dagger were also destroyed, as if in a fit of frustration.

As if Saïx, with all his godly powers and knowing that the dagger was here, still hadn’t been able to find it.

“Oh, Roxas will be furious,” the servant lamented. “Gods, where to even start?”

“Get out,” Axel said. The echoes made the words harsher than she wanted, but they also carried a credible threat of violence.

The servant stiffened. Without a word of argument, he hurried out of the room.

Slowly, Axel got back on her feet.

Roxas couldn’t have taken the dagger with her. If she had, there would have been no sounds of struggle from the Palace of the Dead as Axel left. Roxas could subdue Cerberus with her bare hands. With a blade that could kill anything, she would have dispatched him quick as blinking. So it was here. It had to be here.

Hidden in a place where even a god couldn’t find it.

Axel turned a slow circle, eyes wide as dinner plates, breath coming short and frantic, hands tingling.

Dishes scattered. Amphorae smashed. Sheets all over the floor. Bits of whittled wood—

No. Hidden in a place where another god couldn’t find it.

Axel tore into the strewn textiles like someone was drowning in them. Every curl of cedar, every haft and handle, made her heart leap and bruise its knees on landing. She searched with such a single-minded fervor that she hardly noticed Pence coming into the room.

“What the fuck happened in here?!” he cried.

Axel flipped the bed over. The mat of rushes squashed some half-rotten food. Nothing there. She bundled the sheets in her arms. Nothing fell out. She threw them aside.

“You’re looking for something,” Pence said. “What are you looking for?”

Axel ignored him. It wasn’t in the remains of a shattered amphora, not concealed under an upended chest, not hiding in the goosefeathers of a gutted pillow. She dropped to her knees to paw through a pile of discarded laundry. Her hand caught on something solid.

With a cry of triumph, she brandished the Magic Dick in the air.

“Xehanort’s mercy,” said Pence. “Please don’t tell me that’s what we came here to find. I mean, I know technically speaking it’s a divine instrument, but I don’t see how it’s going to help.”

With shaking hands, Axel turned the phallus over. A gold sphere, about the size of a cherry, protruded from the base. The ghost of a laugh escaped Axel’s lips. Roxas really was no meathead.

Axel gripped the gold bead tight and unsheathed the dagger.

“Uh?” Pence squeaked, milk-white. “Has that—has that always been in there?”

Axel set the phallus down gently and turned to him.

“We’re taking the bypass. Under the table,” she said, as slowly and clearly as the echoes would let her. “He’s dying. My master could save him. Do you understand?”

“I—I don’t know. Something about saving? That knife, it’s what we need to rescue her?”

Axel nodded. She wanted to explain how it was going to work, that he didn’t need to be alarmed, that she had it all handled from here—but she just didn’t have the words.

“Thank you for getting it back for me,” she said. “I couldn’t tell you precisely. You wait. You had questions. You can talk to—Roxas. Back so soon.”

“You’re… welcome?” Pence guessed. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“That’s fine,” said Axel. “Get out. Please.”

“Out? Are you sure? You don’t need me for anything else, or—?”

“Get out.”

Reluctantly, Pence nodded. “I’m trusting you. Please bring Roxas back safely.”

“I promise,” said Axel.

Pence nodded, and left her.

Kneeling alone in the ruins of Roxas’s room, Axel finally held still long enough for doubt to catch up to her. Sure, the dagger had always come with her before, so long as it was in her hand—but was that because of the dagger, or because of the leash she no longer wore? It would take her weeks to get back to the Underworld as a living woman—but could she risk taking a shortcut if it meant arriving unarmed? She’d spent all her luck on her first escape. There wouldn’t be a second.

How long could Roxas hold out against Cerberus? How many times had she been torn apart already? The number would double if Axel returned on foot—and there was no telling when Xemnas might get tired of the spectacle and decide to stop putting her back together.

Time and certainty were both luxuries Axel no longer had.

She considered the dagger. The slender, sickly-sharp blade glimmered, the filigreed handle sparkled. It had no crosspiece. All together it was a little shorter than the distance between her wrist and her elbow. It was a precious thing, a dangerous thing, and agents of the Underworld were looking for it. She needed to hide it, hide it in a place she’d never hidden it before. The point of a concealed dagger, after all, was that no one else knew where it was.

Axel tipped her left hand back like she was carrying an invisible platter. She set the tip of the dagger against the base of her palm, careful not to break the skin. She took one last—truly, truly last breath—and plunged the dagger up to the hilt between the bones of her forearm.

Exactly one heartbeat later, the blinding pain dulled. Her corpse collapsed out from under her.

But the dagger stayed sheathed in her spirit’s arm.

Unbound from such trifling mortal concerns as blood and breath, she bolted, hell-for-leather, for the Underworld.

---

The crowd of ghosts stretched nearly to the cave mouth, and they were unruly. Axel shoved through, the fingers of her left hand curled over the hilt of the dagger to hide it. A war must have broken out somewhere. She couldn’t care less where or between whom—she was just grateful for the cover.

Up on the ledge overlooking the Styx, there were now two dogs with five heads between them. Next to Cerberus, the other dog was gawky, puppyish, with the fidgety sternness of a carefree but earnest soul who was taking a newfound responsibility very seriously.

That gave Axel some hope. It meant—or at least it might mean—that a spare guard was needed to watch the gates while Cerberus did other things.

All right, it was a gruesome hope, but there wasn’t any other kind available.

Axel finally shoved to the front of the crowd, right on the bank of the river, and was startled to find that neither ferry nor ferryman were anywhere to be seen—not on the near shore, not on the far shore, nowhere. Eight or nine spirits nearby were grouped up, some shouting out over the waters, others shaking their heads with folded arms.

“What’s that?” Axel asked one of the quiet ones.

“Fucking idiot thought he could row across,” the spirit spat. “Oh, look at me, I’m as good a boatman as fucking Riku, that’s why I fucking drowned. Absolutely asking for it. Sank the damned thing.”

They gestured angrily out over the river. If Axel squinted, she could just make out the keel of a wooden boat, bobbing forlornly in the middle of the river. Her fingers clenched against the hilt of the dagger.

“Alekos swam out to get it,” the spirit went on. “Hasn’t been dragged under so far, but we figure it’s only a matter of time.”

That was time Roxas didn’t have. Cerberus could clear the Styx in a single bound—the ferry meant nothing to him. For all Axel knew, it could have taken her the better part of a day to push through the ghostly crowd, and the beast would be back to his grisly business any moment.

A splash, a cry, the whack of something semi-solid striking wood. The spirit next to Axel straightened up.

“Well, blow me down,” they said. They cupped their hands around their mouth and shouted: “Alekos, now bring it back! Come on, come on!”

The crowd took up the shout, cheering and shaking their obols in the air. Axel looked out across the choppy black waters.

If the ferryman wasn’t in his boat, he was still in the river. If the ferryman was still in the river, all the drowned spirits were holding him there. Axel hadn’t been the best swimmer while she was alive, but she could swim. And it wasn’t like she could get more dead.

She hiked up her chiton, tied it at her hip, and forged into the River Styx.

The shallows were rubbled with slick, sharp rocks. The current was fierce. Two steps in, hardly shin-deep, and it was already threatening to rip her legs out from under her.

She reminded herself that she didn’t need to breathe and dove in.

The cold shocked her to the core of her spirit, unbuffered by flesh. Her limbs tightened. The current swept her away and dragged her under. The raw noise hammered at her ears, an infinite chorus shrieking DROWN, DROWN, DROWN.

But her head and ears were occupied, claimed. The blue-green echoes of the Lethe held the line, and Axel remembered that she didn’t need to breathe.

The Styx hurled her through darkness uncharted, striking her against rocks, jamming her into eddying alcoves filled with the detritus of drowned souls. Axel took her beatings, crawled her way back out only to be ripped from the chasm walls by the strength of the current.

The Styx ran a perfect circle all the way around the Underworld’s infinite edge. It never dumped out anywhere, never slowed or meandered. Those it swallowed became part of it, silver fish with grasping, hungry hands and gaping, toothy mouths.

The Styx was the second—or the second-to-last—guardian of the Underworld, and it was very good at its job.

But it wasn’t infallible.

Axel’s head broke the surface, buoyed on a wild turbulence. She refused to gasp for breath—to do so would be to acknowledge that she needed to breathe. The current vindictively bashed her against the nearest solid surface, a bank of razor-sharp rocks in the shallows. Axel grabbed on and hauled herself out of the main force of the river, refusing to acknowledge that she could be exhausted. The Styx tried to yank her hands and knees out from under her, but it had thrown her too far up the bank. At last, after an unknowable time mired in whirling darkness, she dragged herself onto dry land and opened her eyes.

The western wall of the Palace of the Dead stood before her, just at the edge of discernible in the mist.

Axel curled her fingers around the hilt of the hidden dagger.

---

The palace wasn’t guarded. It had never needed to be. The dead had no use for theft or rape or murder, and the other gods didn’t come here. It was only ever occupied by the Lord of the Dead, whatever few servants he permitted to amuse him, and, for one third of every year, his wife. The halls, cluttered with wealth beyond imagining, were abandoned—but far from silent.

Spring wasn’t coming anytime soon, but from the sound of things, Aqua was.

Axel moved quickly under the cover of the noise, her bare feet tapping on the marble floors. If Xemnas had noticed she was back, he didn’t care, saw no threat from her. And why should he? The gods could do whatever they wanted. Everyone knew that, mortal and god alike. Promises made to dogs weren’t binding.

But in all likelihood, Xemnas hadn’t even noticed her arrival. He spent most of every fall and winter very much preoccupied. It was remarkable that the Palace of the Dead wasn’t filled with hundreds of little godchildren, swarming like rabbits.

Axel slipped into the throne room, unheeded by any of its occupants—Aqua, in the throes of pleasure; Xemnas, intent upon his work; and Roxas.

In bloody pieces on the floor, slowly knitting herself back together.

Axel gripped the dagger’s hilt with her right hand.

She moved more slowly than any living being could, taking not a single breath, placing her feet so carefully that the stone didn’t notice their touch and never thought to make a sound. A low vibration rolled out from the throne where Xemnas and Aqua sat entangled, growing more intense the nearer Axel came. The fruits of extended lovemaking spilled down the front of the throne. They must have been at this for hours already. Hours with Roxas’s dismembered, bloody corpse on the ground in front of them.

One hair’s breadth at a time, Axel began to draw the dagger from the sheath of her arm.

The lovers’ passions reached a climax that sent dust trickling down from the ceiling. Xemnas lifted Aqua up as if she weighed nothing, turned her around to press her back to his chest, and continued on relentlessly. The dagger was halfway out of Axel’s arm. She was three steps from the stairs that led to the throne. She could pick out the beads of sweat on Aqua and Xemnas’s skin. The vibrations in the floor reached a bassy hum that made the pool of spilled blood dance and shiver.

Closer, and closer still. Another climax, protracted, full-throated. Three-quarters of the deadly blade exposed to the muggy air. She could see the hairs on Xemnas’s arms, the hard points of Aqua’s nipples. A constant snowfall of dust swirled in the air, shivered loose by the ever-magnifying vibrations.

A third climax, helpless and whining. Axel’s foot slid onto the first step at the foot of the onyx throne. Just the tip of the dagger left inside her arm now. Shifting her weight onto the stair. Xemnas sinking his teeth into Aqua’s shoulder. Debris clattering down from the ceiling.

Aqua’s eyes fluttered opened.

She screamed.

With a wordless roar, Axel lunged up the last steps and slashed with the dagger. It caught both gods across the shins. Aqua screamed again. Xemnas shoved her away and lurched to his feet. Godly power rattled the Underworld. He lashed out towards Axel.

And struck her just slightly more than one heartbeat later.

The blow made her ears ring and laid her out on the steps—but she refused to acknowledge that she could be stunned. She threw herself upon Xemnas, catching him in the midriff, slamming him back into his throne. The dagger nicked his arm. He cried out in pain, genuine pain.

Axel saw red.

She raised the dagger high above her head and plunged it into his chest, up to the hilt. He howled, struggled. Axel ripped the knife out in a fountain of blood, and blood gushed down his chest. She raised the knife again.

Two hands caught her wrist and hauled her off of Xemnas. She tumbled down the stairs in Aqua’s grip, insensate to the pleading words spilling out of her mouth. She whirled in fury, ripping free and slicing Aqua’s wrist open. Aqua cried out in pain, in horror, as dull red blood poured from the wound, empty of divine light. Axel pounced on her and drove the knife into her face, once, twice, three times, until bone crunched and the screaming stopped.

A wretched keening rolled down from the throne. Xemnas staggered down the stairs towards his wife, agony spilling from his mouth. Axel leapt on him and buried the dagger in his throat, bowled him over and stabbed him, stabbed him, stabbed him.

The dead didn’t get tired.

Finally, the red haze faded from her vision. The two gods lay still and gray, their preternatural beauty destroyed, their mortalized bodies cooling. Axel got to her feet. Blood soaked her chiton. Blood gloved her hands up to the elbows. She left the dagger pinned in Xemnas’s chest. The Underworld still trembled around her.

She crossed to Roxas and stood over her.

“You can move again, if you’d like,” she said, not unkindly.

Roxas didn’t move.

Axel nudged her with one bloody sandal. “Come on, you’re better than this. I have to go. Where there’s one, there’s bound to be more. You wouldn’t need to strike me down, then, would you?”

Roxas didn’t move.

Her body was whole, or nearly. It was impossible to tell how much of the blood on the floor was hers. Her blue eyes were open, staring. Her body was still, still, still.

“Get on!” Axel snapped, kicking her.

Roxas did not get up.

A great crack of breaking stone. The vibrations became rolling tremors, waves of escalating violence threatening to rip apart the foundations of the world. Axel lost her balance and fell to her knees. The screams of the dead echoed through the Underworld. Shockwaves wracked the palace, smashing pottery, toppling statues, rattling coins and gems, spurring the three bodies into a terrible dance. Axel grabbed Roxas and shook her.

“We—are leaving—this fucking—town,” she snarled. “Now! Roxas, run!”

A deafening BOOM sounded outside, millions of tons of rock striking rock. Brilliant lights flashed through the shuddering, splintering columns. Axel heaved Roxas up in her arms. It couldn’t end like this. She hadn’t come all this way to let it end like this. They were getting out of here, together, before the palace collapsed on top of them, they—

 

 

THE END

Chapter 13: Minuet Ordinaire

Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away, there lived a prince who was gracious and kind, handsome and charming, humble and beloved by all. The prince’s father was a solid and practical man, although he was not always kind. He thought of the future of his kingdom first and above all, and so, even when the prince was young, he was laying plans to ensure his bloodline’s future.

So it was that in the prince’s twentieth year, the king conspired with his duke and hatched a plot. Before the year was out, the prince would marry whether he liked it or not. Still, the king hoped—and left space in his plot for hope—that the prince would like it; for though the king was sometimes cruel, he was rarely wicked.

The prince knew nothing of the plot. When it was hatched, he was, as he often was, ignorant of all but the pleasures of his life.

---

Four fine men on four fine horses traversed a wide and windy field, a fine haul of small game hanging from each saddle, the forest behind them, the lodge ahead. They rode abreast, which Roxas liked—his friends were the only people in the world who would treat him like an equal even if, in truth, he was their better.

“I can’t believe today is our last day,” he lamented, squinting at the sapphire sky.

“I can,” said Pence, who was the son of a marquis, and whose cup for adventure was rather shallower than the others’. “I miss sleeping in a real bed.”

“Soft,” Hayner accused. He was a duke’s son, and would have lived wild in the woods if he’d been allowed. “Getting softer every year. Soon I’ll be able to use you for a mattress.”

“It’ll be partridge season soon enough,” said Oliver, viscount’s son, bookish and ever cheerful. “He likes hunting partridges.”

“Only because he doesn’t have to chase them,” said Hayner.

“Pardon me for finding it nerve-wracking, barreling headlong through brambles and foxholes on my best girl,” said Pence, stroking his mare’s neck. “You’d hunt boar if we had any.”

“It’s a shame we don’t.”

“Madman. Lunatic. Someday you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“And I suppose you’re going to live forever?”

“I think it will be nice to go home,” Roxas sighed. “I could do with a real meal again.”

“Don’t be too hasty,” Hayner warned. “Any day now, your father’s going to find you a wife, and then it’s all over.”

“I can still take hunting trips with you after I’m married,” Roxas objected.

“You could, but you won’t,” Pence said. “Leaving the poor woman all alone in that great big castle for weeks at a time? You’d never be that bad of a husband, no matter what your wife was like.”

Hayner laughed. Roxas shifted in the saddle.

“Well—I could bring her with me,” he said.

“Unless you’re planning on marrying one of us, I don’t think so,” said Oliver.

“Hey, he could marry you!” Hayner rejoined. “You’d make a fine princess, Oliver!”

A raucous round of laughter from everybody but Oliver.

“Unless he’s capable of incubating grandchildren, I don’t think my father would allow it,” said Roxas. “I wish he would’ve just arranged a marriage with someone. At least that way I wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

“Woe is you, having to pick out your own girl to marry,” said Oliver. “Is it because you’re spoiled for choice? I can’t imagine there’s a single girl in the kingdom who’d turn you down.”

“That’s the whole problem. How can yes mean anything when no doesn’t?”

“You’re overthinking it. You just need to meet some actual girls,” Hayner said.

“I try not to,” said Roxas.

“Why?” Pence asked.

Roxas sighed. “Because they’re always trying to marry me.”

---

“Roxas.”

Roxas resisted the urge to flinch. He put on a smile and greeted the king warmly.

“Hello, Father,” he said. “I’m back.”

“Come here, let me have a look at you,” said the king, as stern and humorless as ever. His golden hair was graying, slicked back over his regal skull, and his eyes were the gray of an overcast sky. He turned Roxas this way and that, catching the light spilling through the great windows of the entrance hall. “Acceptable. These trips of yours have a habit of damaging the merchandise.”

“Just some mud on my boots this time,” said Roxas. “Does it matter?”

“Matter? Certainly, it matters. It would reflect poorly on you to appear scuffed at your own homecoming party.”

“Homecoming party?”

“Yes. It’s to be quite the event. Three nights of dancing, music, feasting. Quite a contingent of guests, too.”

Roxas stifled a sigh. He loved his excursions, but they were exhausting. He liked parties well enough, too, but they were also exhausting. Throwing the two back-to-back was asking a lot.

His feet hurt, and he wanted to be alone.

“It’s nice to be welcomed so joyously,” he said to his father. “I hope I’ll have time to freshen up beforehand.”

“Of course,” said the king. “The party doesn’t begin until seven.”

Roxas choked. “Seven? Seven tonight?!”

“Did you not return today?”

“What if I had been late?”

“I doubt you would have disappointed me so. Now come, the tailor is waiting for you. You will be expected to look your absolute best—and attain a better best for each night. Afterwards, a bath. You certainly need one. Following that—”

Roxas resigned himself to his father’s steering grip and relentless scheduling, gently coercing himself into enjoying the festivities. It was nice to be welcomed home. He did like dancing and spectacle and surprises—and feasting, oh yes, he was always up for a good feast. He hadn’t even been asked to participate in the planning of it, which was his least favorite part.

If he suspected that there was an ulterior motive to the festivities, he kept those suspicions folded close against his chest.

---

Roxas finally managed to steal a moment alone when it came time to bathe. The servants ran him a piping hot bath, all the soaps and perfumes he could want, and he—ever gracious and humble—sent them away with a promise that he would call out if he needed anything.

Only once they were gone did he let the exhaustion weigh down his body, sigh and rub at his face like the polite smile was a stain on his visage. He walked right past the bath and poked his head out the window, checking for errant gardeners or groundskeepers. The only witness present was a peacock, strutting aimlessly across the lawn, so Roxas climbed out the window.

He darted around the castle in a practiced half-crouch, silent-footed, until he reached the east tower, with its tall rose trellis and many ornamentations. With the ease of habit, he scaled the trellis, climbed from gutter to gargoyle, until at last he reached the balconet and the French window beyond. The window appeared to be locked, but Roxas jimmied the handle just so and it swung right open.

Exhilarated from the escape and flushed from the climb, Roxas at last entered his own room.

The servants had freshened it up for him already; the floors were swept, rugs beaten, pillows fluffed, everything dusted. Roxas crossed the thick-pile rug to the side of the four-poster bed, leaned down and kissed the cheek of the portrait on his nightstand.

“Hello, Mamá, I’m home,” he said. He flopped down into his bed’s comforting embrace, sprawling across the mattress with only his boots hanging off. “It was a wonderful trip, but I’m glad it’s over. You know, you can get tired of anything if you do it for long enough.”

He stretched, long and luxurious. Roxas wasn’t vain, but he enjoyed living in a beautiful body just as much as he enjoyed living in a beautiful castle, in a beautiful country.

“I wish you could’ve talked Father into putting off this ball for at least a day,” he went on. “I don’t blame you, but I wish you could have. I haven’t even had time to catch my breath, let alone rest. Speaking of which, I can’t stay long. The bath will be getting cold.”

And after the bath would be a fitting for his new clothes, all three sets, and then a review of the guest list to make sure he didn’t insult anyone by forgetting their name or their father’s name, then maybe a quick bite to eat to keep him from passing out, then off to get dressed and combed and perfumed before it was off to the ball!

“Oh, hell,” Roxas sighed, which was the kind of language he only felt comfortable using around his mother. She didn’t mind. “Everyone’s going to want to dance with me.”

---

It was popularly acknowledged, even on the very first night, that the king had really outdone himself.

Red carpets bedecked every set of stairs. The floors, walls, windows, and ceilings had been polished to a mirror-shine. No alcove went undraped, no plinth undecorated. So many candles had been put into use that several whales must have died just to supply them, and a small army of servants was required to keep up with replacing them. Champagne flowed freely, hors d’oeuvres ran wild—shrimp, crab, lobster, cucumber, meat pies, fruit pies, pastries, puffs—and the groaning tables were laden with enough food to feed the entire county twice over. A thirteen-piece orchestra occupied a marble-white bandstand in the ballroom, each supplied with their own bottomless food and drink. Everyone who was anyone had been invited, and every last one of them had been encouraged, entreated, or extorted into bringing along every unmarried noblewoman in their family from the age of twelve to twenty-nine.

Roxas felt it was all a bit much.

As guest after guest, lady after young lady, was announced to the ballroom and brought forward to offer a curtsey and receive a bow, he cast sidelong glances at his father, who was seated in a private box in the ballroom’s galleries and conspiring with the duke, their heads so close together that they formed a bit of jewelry, platinum blond against silver grey. Roxas was no stranger to the king’s machinations, and while he generally found them harmless, he frequently found them aggravating.

By the time the dancing started, he’d figured out what this one was about.

Being the prince, of course, Roxas was expected to be on everyone’s dance card. To leave anyone off would have been an insult, and Roxas tried, whenever possible, not to insult people who’d done him no wrong. Yet he couldn’t deny that the evening, extravagant as it was, glamorous as it was, was boring him. He hardly had time to snatch a few bites to eat between dances, and was at all times besieged by flocks of young women who seemed unaccountably certain that he, personally, had invited them to the party. Some chattered endlessly about themselves while they danced; others were more demure, but no less intent; some were outright standoffish, as if daring him to try and get along with them; others gazed at him with undisguised lust or greed or some combination of the two. A few of the older women looked like they might eat him alive if he turned his back for too long, and there were several lingering touches that he had to—ever so politely—pry off of his person.

This must be what a pig at market feels like, he thought helplessly; then also thought, my feet hurt.

The night wore on regardless, and though Roxas had a great deal of practice at being mannerly when he was grouchy and uncomfortable, he also had a great deal of practice at being slippery when he was wanted.

It started with the food. By nine o’clock he was so hungry that he couldn’t think straight, let alone dance, and so he let a flock of women back him into a corner, pointed over their shoulders to some great distraction, and leapt behind the drapes. The women saw through it instantly, of course, and ferreted him out from behind the drapes and wanted an explanation. He admitted, with much chagrin, to his piteous hunger.

As these were women aiming to make wives of themselves, they simply could not help but form a protective whalebone wall around him and ferry him to the buffet table, where they immediately occupied themselves with preventing any other women from getting anywhere near him or (so they thought) him from escaping to any other women.

Roxas grabbed a few of the better-constituted hors d’oeuvres and slipped under the table when no one was looking.

The peace, however momentary, was rapturous. For one sweet moment, it was just him and the cucumber sandwiches, sheltered in a fortress of tablecloth and petticoats, with the weight taken off his aching feet and settled on his princely bottom. For one sweet moment, there was nobody looking at him—

Except for the girl who was also hiding under the table.

Roxas stopped, mouth full of cucumber sandwich. The girl was staring at him, crouched like a feral kitten trying not to be dragged from its den. Her hair was pulled back in an elegant bun and might have been any color except pure black or sunshine blonde—it was hard to tell in the dim cave-world under the table. Her pearl-white gloves were tucked into her sparkling bodice, fingers stained with crumbs and creams.

Roxas swallowed and offered a shy wave.

“Um,” he said—quietly, so as not to be discovered. “Hello.”

The girl recovered from her shock. Her mouth curled into a smile that was more mischief than sweetness.

“It’s a bit… much, out there,” she said, “isn’t it.”

“More muchness than I’ve ever seen before,” Roxas agreed. “Hardly a second to breathe, let alone eat.”

The girl nodded. From behind the glimmering folds of her skirt, she produced a plate laden with hors d’oeuvres.

“You can have some of mine, if you want,” she said.

Roxas grinned. “You’re an angel.”

The two of them fell upon the plate of food like children, cross-legged and eating with their hands, watching carefully every pair of boots and slippers that stepped up close to the tablecloth, whispering their conversation like patrons of a polite theatre.

“Thank God no one watches where they’re putting their feet,” the girl remarked. “Imagine if somebody found us!”

“I didn’t expect anyone else to be down here,” Roxas said. “Thought I was the only one who knew the old get-under-the-table trick.”

“I have a lot of practice at getting under tables. Although… I’ve never been to a ball before.”

“Never been—? Well, I hope you don’t spend the whole night down here. They’re really quite a lot of fun.”

“I wasn’t planning to. I just needed a moment. That’s all.”

“Believe me, I understand,” Roxas sighed. “I hope you won’t tell anyone you saw me down here.”

“What, and give away the old get-under-the-table trick?” She smiled, and her eyes sparkled. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

It wasn’t too long before a well-dressed arm plunged through the tablecloth. Roxas gave a silent farewell salute to the girl and stuck his biceps into the path of the grasping fingers. Riku, Duke of Umber and right hand of the king, hauled Roxas out from under the table, hissing threats and warnings at him, but Roxas didn’t mind.

“Count yourself fortunate that I didn’t just run for the hills,” he told the duke with a wink.

“Your father would flay you alive,” said the duke.

“He wouldn’t.”

“Your father would flay me alive.”

“That, he might do.” Roxas smiled. “Cheer up, Your Grace. I’m sure there’s someone here I’ll like enough to marry.”

“Ha! I’ll tell you what I told your father: not bloody like…ly….”

Roxas’s smile grew a little less fond. “In on it together, were you?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“You could at least have told me.”

“Ah, the next dance is starting,” said the duke, with palpable relief. “I’d better leave you to it.”

At which point the women descended on Roxas again, and he had no choice but to be passed from hand to hand like a bucket in a fire brigade.

---

The night wore on, and the duke prowled the dance floor. Whenever it seemed Roxas might get to slip away, another young woman was passed or twirled or occasionally shoved into his arms, and it wasn’t her fault, so he couldn’t let his gallantry slip. He vowed to himself that he would find some way to take vengeance on the duke. Thumbtacks in his boots, perhaps. Or maybe Roxas would just sneak away from the party and not come back, not ever come back, and leave the duke to the tender mercies of the king. It was like his mother used to tell him: a kept dog will roam and come home; a caged dog will run.

His conversation suffered from these idle fantasies. Many of the women and girls parted from their dance close to tears, not because he had been cruel to them, but because they could tell that he wasn’t interested. He would have been mortified, had he known; but typically he only noticed them when they were shoved unceremoniously into his arms with a little squeal of protest—like this one, just as the waltz was about to begin.

She landed so heavy that he actually had to catch her. Bright red hair in an elegant bun, a glittering gown that was all colors and none, and eyes that were the clear, stunning green of emeralds. Her mouth was nervous, and little crumbs were still caught at the corners. Unaccountably, Roxas’ heart grew lighter.

His friend from under the table!

“Ups-a-daisy, there you are,” he said. He straightened her out and helped her get her hands in place—one on his shoulder, one clasped with his upraised hand. He rested his free hand on the glimmering slip of her waist. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“Do—do you?” she said. Her smile was bright and her eyes were wide. Her fingers trembled as they settled on his shoulder and in his palm.

Poor thing.

“Nervous?” he asked conspiratorially.

“I can’t dance,” she whispered, breath hitching with a tittering terror, “and I’m wearing glass shoes.”

Chapter 14: Waltz

Roxas glanced down at his dancing partner’s feet. Sure enough, they were encased in slippers made of clear crystalline glass. He looked back to the woman’s striking eyes and held her a little closer.

“Luckily,” he whispered, “I dance well enough for two.”

She laughed, but there was an edge of hysteria in it. He winked at her.

“Just follow my lead,” he said.

The music started playing. The ring of dancers all stood to attention. The woman tucked her chin so far down she almost hit Roxas in the nose with her bun.

“Don’t look at your feet,” Roxas said. “Look at me.”

She looked up again, perhaps more startled than following instructions.

“The feet will take care of themselves,” he promised. “Now hold yourself like you used to be a swan. Back straight, chin up. Look at me. Watch my eyes. I’m not going to step on your feet. We’re going to your left first.”

The waltz kicked off. Roxas stepped right, sweeping the girl along with him. Her feet faltered on the upbeats. Roxas held her eyes like their lives depended on it.

“Good, now you step back,” he told her.

She gripped his hand in terror. He slid his boot along the floor so he couldn’t possibly step on her foot. When she didn’t receive a sole full of glass, she finally took a breath. Again, the upbeats were messy, but her skirts hid the worst of it.

“Now to your right,” said Roxas, and right-two-three they went. “Now forward, good, you’re a natural! It’s just those four steps over and over.”

“That’s not so bad,” she said, fragilely hopeful. “I—I think I can do that.”

“Of course you can. Now listen: the music goes one-two-three one-two-three. Take big steps on the one, little steps on two and three. You’ll never miss your footing. Back-two-three, right-two-three, see how it works?”

Her eyes brightened, some confidence pulled her shoulders back. “I think so.”

“Good, because we’re about to start traveling. No, watch me. I’ve got you.”

And back-two-three, and now they turned, the whole ballroom a windswept flower swirl of skirts and sashes as the dance spun into motion, a great clock of silk gears and crystal springs. The woman laughed in earnest this time, a silver bell of unbridled delight as she and Roxas skated circles around the marble lake.

“You’re perfect, you’re beautiful,” he told her. Her joy was contagious. “Try to stay level-two-three as we go-two-three—imagine there’s a candle-two-three in our hands and you don’t-two-three want to let it go out-two-three.”

And she got it, just like that, slipped into the movement like it was made for her, dancing with him, wherever his hands and shoulders turned her. She could have done it with her eyes closed, but she was watching him.

“We’re about to change partners-two-three,” he told her, not without regret.

“No,” she said, her grace faltering, her eyes sharpening with panic.

“You’re fine, you’re going-two-three to be fine.”

But she wasn’t, and both of them knew it. On the next back-step his boot bumped her slipper and she almost broke his fingers with the tightening of her grip. Her eyes welled with frightened tears.

“All right-two-three,” he said. He cracked a gallant smile. “People will talk-two-three, but I’m selfishly going-two-three to keep you for myself-two-three. Hang on.”

When the moment came, he turned just so, and the two of them slipped from the circle of dancers on a new arc of their own. Skirts whirled all around them as women passed from one partner to the next and there they were, the two of them dancing all alone in the center with no way to slip back into line.

“People are staring,” the woman whispered to him.

“You wouldn’t know that if you were looking at me like I told you to,” Roxas answered cheekily—but he, too, could feel probing gazes prickling against his back.

The woman focused her eyes on his again, but her steps were still faltering.

“They’re whispering,” she said.

“Who’s whispering?” he asked. “I don’t see anybody in this room but you and me.”

She smiled, and there was more mischief in it than sweetness, and Roxas felt a sharp pang in his chest, a harp string or a bow string, plucked, released, singing.

And for a time, a minute or only a moment, there really was nobody else in the room.

With a trill of the melody and a resolving chord, the dance swirled to a close. The woman in Roxas’ arms failed to let go for a count of two-three, still staring into his eyes, before she remembered herself. She stepped back, her smile turned shy and her swan’s grace exchanged for a gosling’s nerves. Roxas watched with dismay as the flock of young women, even in the absence of the duke, started to close on him afresh while the orchestra picked out the next dance. Roxas took his partner’s still-trembling hands and smiled at her.

“I could use some air,” he said. “Would you like to come with me?”

“Yes,” she said, overflowing with relief. “Please.”

---

Away from the hundreds of bodies and thousands of candles in the ballroom, the spring night was cool and clear. Roxas led the girl out into the gardens and was a little surprised to find that no one pursued them past the threshold of the ballroom. The girl was walking on air, light as a feather. Now that she was away from prying eyes, she couldn’t stop dancing.

“Oh, it was wonderful,” she gushed—seemingly forgetting that she’d been terrified more than half the time. “It felt like flying. I never dreamed I could dance like that. And you—you were wonderful, too! If I was bird, you were the sky, and it was—it was—”

“Wonderful?” Roxas guessed.

“Oh, I don’t know how anyone goes home! I wish I could stay forever!”

“And you haven’t even seen the gardens yet,” Roxas said mildly.

She turned to him with enormous eyes, their color all but washed in the tide of the moonlight. “Are we allowed?”

“Of course.”

He offered his arm. With a luminous grin, she took it. Her crystal shoes chimed like little bells on the white stone walkways.

“May I ask you a question?” Roxas said. “It may be a little impertinent.”

“Oh, I don’t mind.”

“Have you really never danced before?”

She gave him an odd look. “Did I say I’d never danced before?”

“You told me you couldn’t dance.”

“Exactly. How would I know I couldn’t dance if I’d never tried?”

Roxas had to concede that this was fair. “You dance remarkably well for someone who can’t.”

“It was all you. I’m utterly graceless. My stepmother’s tried to train it out of me, but it hasn’t fixed anything.” She sighed, then brightened. “I’ve never been to a castle gardens before. Are they very grand?”

“The grandest I’ve ever seen,” said Roxas, mostly because it was clear the girl wanted the subject changed. Privately, he thought that this stepmother was either blind or, perhaps, stupid.

The two of them walked through the gardens arm in arm, Roxas providing the listening ears and the girl providing a running commentary of how wonderful, beautiful, delightful everything was—interspersed by offhanded and jarring remarks showcasing the lack of anything wonderful, beautiful, or delightful in her ordinary life. Roxas began to suspect that something was very, very wrong.

“Do you mind if we sit?” he asked, when they came upon a stone bench under a trellis blooming with moonflowers. “My feet hurt.”

“I’d love to,” she said. “Now that you mention it, my feet hurt, too.”

They sat, the girl arranging her glimmering skirts just so, Roxas reluctantly releasing her arm.

“I can’t imagine those glass shoes of yours are particularly comfortable,” he said.

“Oh, the shoes are fine,” she said. “It’s just that my feet always hurt, so I’ve stopped noticing. What’s the point in noticing if I can’t do anything about it?”

“Always? Have you seen a doctor?”

“No, no. My stepmother wouldn’t—if I needed a doctor, my stepmother would have called one. Pain is the soap that scours the soul, as they say. I can manage.”

Yes, something was wrong, all right, and Roxas was beginning to suspect what it was.

“I’ve never heard anyone say that,” he said.

“You haven’t? It makes sense, though, doesn’t it? God makes us suffer so our souls will be cleaned and ready for Heaven. Some people need to suffer immensely because their souls are naturally filthy.”

“Oh? Which people?”

She grew uncomfortable, looking away from him and fiddling with her gloves. “Just… some. You can tell by looking, I think. Isn’t—isn’t it a lovely night? I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a lovelier night.”

Gently, Roxas took her hand and kissed her gloved knuckles. “The loveliest I’ve ever seen.”

She smiled coquettishly, blushing. “I’ve enjoyed spending it with you.”

“And I, with you. Will you be back tomorrow?”

She hesitated. The smile faded, and she looked away. “No. I wish I could, but—no.”

“Why not?”

“Speaking of impertinent questions,” she accused—playfully, but accurately. Roxas bowed his head.

“I’m sorry. But if you’re not coming back to the ball, when can I see you again?”

She smiled that mischievous smile of hers and touched his thigh in a most unladylike manner, spurring him to some extremely un-princely thoughts.

“If I had to make a wager,” she said, “I’d wager tonight is all we have.”

“Impossible,” Roxas said, because he couldn’t allow himself to believe it (because what unmannerly things would he do, alone with a stirringly beautiful woman, if he did believe it?). He took her hands to occupy them more appropriately. “I must see you again. I’ll do anything to make it happen. If—if you want to see me, that is.”

“Of course I would want to,” she said. “You’ve been almost a perfect gentleman.”

“Almost?” Roxas cried in dismay.

“Have you forgotten that I met you under a table? And even after that, you made no attempt at a proper introduction. Why, you never even told me your name!”

Roxas’ mouth fell open. He stared at the woman with fresh eyes and a tremendous feeling welling in his heart. A laugh fell out his unattended mouth.

“Well—you never told me yours,” he rejoined.

“I guess that makes us even, then,” she said.

“I guess it does,” he said, “princess.”

She laughed that bright silver laugh, and the stars tinkled like crystal. “You flatterer! Have you forgotten that you met me under a table? I’m no princess.”

“Maybe not tonight,” said Roxas. “But I think you’d make a fine one.”

“But that would mean marrying a prince, and I—I couldn’t possibly do that.”

“Why not?”

She shook her head. “I just couldn’t. And aside from that, I’m sure he’s not as—as princely as everyone thinks. You always imagine a prince to be a gallant and charming creature, but more likely, he’s an absolute brute.”

Roxas was stung. He wanted to object, to set her straight—but he also never, never got to hear anyone speak to or about him so unguardedly.

“What makes you think so?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, pensive. “I suppose… I suppose I just imagine that growing up with no one ever telling you no… it didn’t do my sister any favors, anyway.”

“I imagine the prince gets told no often enough to keep him civil, and anyway, you seem to have turned out all right.”

She shook her head. “My father raised me. My stepmother raised my sister. He tried his best to temper her, and it might have worked, if….”

She grew quiet, and her eyes were distant. Her slender throat worked at words she couldn’t say. Roxas squeezed her hands.

“I’m so sorry,” he said gently.

“I miss him so much,” she said, in a voice so small that the words must have been pressed down deep inside her for a very long time. A pair of tears slid down her cheeks. The sensation startled her, blinking her back from the edge of despair.

“Here,” Roxas said, offering his kerchief.

“Oh,” she said. “Thank you.” She blotted her face. “I’m so sorry. We’ve barely met and here I am….”

“It’s all right,” Roxas said. And it was.

The night breathed. The girl folded her hands in her lap, still holding Roxas’ kerchief. The stars twinkled, and the dress was their mirror. The scent of the moonflowers dusted down around them, perfume from twirling white skirts. Roxas waited for the girl to speak again, but her jaw was clenched tight to prevent it.

“I lost my mother when I was young,” Roxas said at last. “I was going to have a younger sibling, but… we lost them both. I barely remember her. She used to tell me: all you need in this life is kindness and love. That so long as you’re kind and keep love in your heart, everything else will work itself out.”

“She sounds like a wonderful woman,” said the girl.

“She was. My father… he talks a lot about the brother I might have had, but he doesn’t talk about my mother. I don’t think he loved her very much. I can’t… I can’t imagine how anyone could not love her.”

“You must miss her dearly,” said the girl.

It was like taking a knife to the chest.

“I do,” Roxas admitted. “Every day. I do.”

The girl sniffled. Her damp eyes wandered over the kerchief. When she spoke, she spoke to it and not to Roxas.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“I’ll take it to my grave.”

She cracked a smile. She leaned in close. Her hands and voice trembled as she whispered: “I don’t understand how my father could have loved my stepmother.”

That cinched it. In many respects, while the king was alive, Roxas was merely an apprentice; but there were powers he could exercise, especially here, especially tonight.

“Are you going home to this stepmother?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Is that where you want to go?”

“There’s nowhere else I could go.”

“That’s not true,” said Roxas. “You could stay here.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Unless the prince decided to marry me—”

“I think he could be convinced.”

A glimmer of the old mischief suffused her face. “I suppose you have his ear?”

“Both of them,” Roxas confirmed.

“You must be very close.”

“Couldn’t be any closer.”

“It’s a wonderful gesture, and a very kind offer, but I couldn’t. No prince could ever marry me.”

Anger boiled in Roxas’ chest. He kept a lid on it. In the distance, the clock began to toll the hour.

“I could,” he said.

“And if you were a—”

All the blood drained from her face. She shot to her feet.

“What’s wrong?” Roxas cried, alarmed.

“I have to go,” she said.

She picked up her skirts and ran, crystal shoes ringing on the stones as the clock tolled. Roxas scrambled to his feet and chased after her.

“Wait!” he cried. “Wait, please! What’s the matter?”

“I have to go!” she shouted over her shoulder.

Manners caught up with Roxas before he caught up with the girl. What was he planning to do, grab her? It was bad enough chasing her through the gardens.

But why was she running? And what from, or where to? And how was he going to find her again?

In his moment of hesitation, she’d put significant ground between them. Roxas picked up the chase again.

“Your name!” he called. “Please, at least tell me your name!”

“You were wonderful!” she called back. “I’m sorry! Goodbye!”

She darted out of the gardens in a flash. If someone saw him run after her, the things they might say, the assumptions they might make…. The princely thing to do would be to let her go. Her carriage would be waiting below, and she would climb into it and race out the gates and disappear into the night and that would be the end of it.

But would it be the right thing to do?

“I say!” a voice echoed from without the garden. “Dear lady, where are you running off to?”

The duke.

The girl said something too quiet to hear, or maybe just pushed past the duke without a word. He hollered after her, not kindly, and then he started hollering: Stop her! Guards, guards!

Roxas broke from his indecision and into a sprint. Damn the gossips, damn the duke, and damn his father. No one was putting that sweet starlight bird back in a cage.

Roxas crashed out of the garden to see the duke on the veranda, yelling orders and pointing furiously to the fleeing figure of the girl. Roxas ran up behind him on silent feet and plowed into his back shoulder-first. The duke went sprawling ass-over-teakettle into a topiary. Roxas fled down the grand stairs after the girl. She’d never make it out the main gate, not unless her carriage had wings, but Roxas knew other ways out of the castle walls. He rounded the corner of the grand stairs, taking a breath to call out—

When he recalled the moment later, he would recall it happening very slowly, as if the entire castle were a mile deep beneath clear waters, through which sound itself labored to swim.

The girl, fleeing down the last of the steps, her gown unraveling into spider-silk around her, catching her glass shoe against a wrinkle in the red carpet. Her balance, lost. A precipitous fall and tumble down the last stairs. The shoe remaining behind. The last toll of midnight shivering across the grounds. The last of the dress dissolving like candy-floss in the rain.

Roxas stood at the corner of the stairs and stared down in wonderment, in horror, at….

A clamor of boots and regalia from above—the guards were almost there. He didn’t have time for understanding.

Roxas darted down the stairs. His would-be princess flinched and tried to run but couldn’t get up in time. Roxas grabbed an arm and tucked both of them in the shadows behind the stair.

“Can you climb?” he hissed.

Not a word, not a whisper, nothing. The emerald eyes were wide, terrified.

Roxas squeezed. “Can you climb?”

A shivering nod.

“Go to the east tower. Climb the trellis to the balconet. The door will be unlocked. Hide inside. Go. Go!”

He gave a hard shove in the right direction before leaping back out of the shadows.

“The gate!” he yelled to the guards, waving frantically. “She’s gotten into her carriage, close the gate!”

The call went out—close the gate!—and guards poured from the castle, on foot and on horseback. The gates rumbled and began to swing closed, but not before a dozen horsemen had charged through like bats out of Hell. The courtyard swarmed like an anthill. The duke stomped down the stairs and seized Roxas by the arm, hard.

“Who is she?” he demanded, more harshly than he’d ever dared to speak to his prince before. “Where will she be going?”

“I don’t know,” said Roxas.

“If I don’t bring her back, it’s my head on a platter! Who is she? Where is she going?”

“I told you, I don’t know!”

The duke shook him. “What did you do to make her run off? Hm? What gallant stupidity have you pulled off this time? Everything was going perfectly, how could you ruin it?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“And there’s the problem,” the duke sneered. “Couldn’t you at least have had the indiscretion to knock her up?”

Fury turned Roxas’ vision red.

“Get your hands off me,” he said coldly.

The duke’s lip curled before he suddenly remembered himself—and remembered that the king wasn’t the only one who could order his head on a plate. He released Roxas’ arm and took a step back.

“No matter,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll bring her back here, you’ll marry her, that will be the end of it.”

“Supposing I don’t want to marry her?” Roxas said.

“There’s still two nights of party left. If you haven’t chosen a fiancee before the end, your father will choose one for you. So if you like this girl, I would recommend, Your Highness, that you contribute to the efforts to find her.”

Roxas seriously considered breaking the man’s neck. He clenched one fist behind his back and pointed up the stairs.

“Her shoe fell off,” he said. “Perhaps, if she escapes the guards, you could use that to find her.”

The duke glanced over his shoulder. He looked back to Roxas with an indulgent smile.

“Wise decision,” he said. He mounted the stairs, scooped up the glass slipper, and hurried back inside.

Roxas stood stock-still on the steps until his head cooled. He considered going back to the party—would it be expected of him?—and threw the idea out. He was all out of grace for the night, his hackles raised, his head spinning.

His feet hurt.

Before anyone came back for him, he slipped away into the dark.

---

Roxas’ room was quiet, dark, lit only by the moonlight spilling through the closed French window. Roxas lit the candle on the table by the door, the one with the reflector behind it, and a warm glow spread throughout the room. Still, Roxas stayed where he was, his back to the door, his ears and eyes pricked.

The room looked empty, and he couldn’t decide if he hoped it was. Everything was as it should be, nothing stolen, nothing ruined, nothing out of place, except….

Except a faint glint of light under the curtain by the window.

“It’s all right,” Roxas said, though it was anything but. “It’s me.”

A pale figure emerged from behind the curtain, wrapped in Roxas’ least-best dressing gown; more thin than slender, more ghostly than ethereal, but still red-headed, still green-eyed, still wearing one glimmering glass slipper.

Still impossibly, incredibly, indubitably—a boy.

Chapter 15: Passacaille

Roxas sank into the chair by the fireplace. His mouth was dry. He couldn’t take his eyes off the boy. There was no doubt he was the same person with whom Roxas had danced and talked all night—yet there was no doubt, either, that some great enchantment had lifted. The lips were thinner, the jaw squarer, the shoulders broader. The chest, hairier. The span of the glittering ballgown had hidden the hips, but the way this boy moved spoke to their narrowing.

“I think, at this point,” Roxas said, “you might as well tell me your name.”

“Axel, Your Highness,” the boy croaked. His voice was the final giveaway.

“I think we can dispense with the titles, too,” said Roxas. “We were doing fine without them.”

Axel said nothing. His hands—larger, coarser, or maybe that was just the absence of the gloves—were clenched on the robe, holding it tightly shut. Roxas sighed and rubbed his face.

“God grant me the strength to work out what the hell is going on,” he muttered.

Silence reigned. It was Axel who deposed it.

“What are you going to do with me?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Roxas said. He shook his head, ran a hand back through his perfectly coiffed hair and ruined it. “I genuinely don’t know. I think—I think I would like an explanation. I think that’s fair recompense for getting you away from the guards.”

Axel let out a shivering breath. Roxas glanced up to find him hugging himself, standing as though he was trying not to touch the air in the room.

“You can sit,” Roxas said, more gently. “Please.”

Axel picked his way over to the stool by the vanity and eased himself down. He still carried himself with the same grace, like he was eternally balancing several large books on his head. He swallowed three times before he managed to speak.

“I’m not sure where to start,” he said.

“Well, how did you come to be a girl for the evening? Let’s start there.”

“Magic shoes,” Axel said, indicating the one remaining. “I guess they only work when they’re together.”

“Magic… all right. And where did you obtain magic shoes?”

“My—my fairy godmother gave them to me.”

If Roxas hadn’t seen the transformation with his own eyes, he might have put less stock in this explanation.

That, and he’d been deep enough in the woods to know that there were things out there older than trees and wilder than foxes.

“I see,” he said. “For any specific purpose, or just to have them?”

“I wanted… I wanted to go to the ball,” Axel said, and then the words spilled out of his mouth all in a great rush. “I wanted to go so badly, but my stepmother and stepsister tore my clothes to rags so I couldn’t and after they’d gone I ran out into the garden and I thought I was going to drown myself in the fountain but then she was there. She said she was my godmother but I didn’t see how, and she asked why I was crying and I told her and she said it wouldn’t do. She said I would go to the ball, but I couldn’t go as I was. I couldn’t be who I was, but I didn’t have to be who I wasn’t. I didn’t understand but I said I’d do anything to go and she said that wouldn’t be necessary, she was my godmother and I was hers to help as she pleased. So she made a carriage out of a pumpkin and horses out of mice and a coachman out of our swaybacked mare and a footman out of our dog. She wove the dress out of starlight and made the shoes from my tears. She said the dress and the carriage and the horses and the footman would last until midnight, but she didn’t know how long the shoes would last, maybe only the night or maybe forever because there’s no accounting for grief.”

Axel finally paused for breath. His cheeks flushed, and he looked at his knees, thinly veiled by Roxas’ least-best dressing gown.

“I just wanted a night off,” he mumbled. “I never…. I was afraid I was eating too much, so I hid. I didn’t want to dance but someone shoved me in. I never meant—you were just so kind, and it’s been so long since I’ve had anyone to talk to, and—I’m sorry. I’ve told you a horrific lie. It’s a poor repayment for your kindness.”

“First of all, my kindness is given, not bought,” said Roxas. “Second of all—I may have been fooled, but I don’t feel as though I’ve been lied to. The things we spoke of, were they true?”

“Well,” said Axel, “yes. Barring the fact that I failed to mention I’m not a girl.”

“It was me who failed to ask.” Roxas paused, considering. “Are you a girl?”

“No,” said Axel; but then: “maybe. I don’t know. I was one, and I didn’t hate it.”

“If you got the other shoe back, would you want to put it back on?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know. Why are you asking me all this?”

“Because if you were a girl—all the time—I could ask you to marry me,” Roxas said.

“Don’t be absurd,” Axel snapped.

“I’m not. Look, it’s the only way I can think of to keep you from having to go back to your stepmother. And it would finally stop my father harassing me—and every eligible woman in the kingdom. I’m not suggesting we fall in love. I just think it’s a solution that could very neatly solve both our problems.”

“Neatly,” Axel said, giving him a flat look.

Roxas fidgeted. “Well. It was—it seemed neat. Right up until the shoe came off. But as long as we can get the other one back—”

“I said I didn’t mind being a girl; I didn’t say I wanted to spend the rest of my life as one.”

“Why not?” Roxas asked, startled.

“Would you?” Axel shot back.

Roxas recoiled from the question, an instant and decisive no.

“I wouldn’t know; I’ve never tried being one,” he said diplomatically. “Will you at least consider the offer?”

Axel, to his credit, considered.

“I didn’t come here to be rescued,” he said at last. “I just wanted a night off. I need to go home, Your Highness.”

And that, really, was the rub, wasn’t it. Roxas could have asked Axel to stay. But Prince Roxas couldn’t ask for anything, not really, not from anyone except his father.

“All right,” said Roxas; then, as concession to his aching heart and smarting conscience, he added: “Will I see you again?”

“I don’t know. I would like… I would like my other shoe back.”

“I think the duke has it, but I may be able to get it back from him. If I get hold of it, how do I return it to you? I imagine you don’t want me showing up on your doorstep.”

“No, God, no,” Axel said, horrified. His brow furrowed as he thought. “Is there… a way I could come back here, unseen? I know how to get to this room now, but I don’t know how to get past the castle walls.”

“There are ways. I can show you. But—I need to ask something of you, too. Not in return for this, but in addition to it.”

“What is it?” Axel said warily.

Roxas braced himself. “I have to choose someone to marry by the end of the ball. On the evening of the third day, I’m going to ask you. So please, use this time to decide whether you’ll accept. Will you do that?”

“What happens if I turn you down at the end?”

“You return home, and my father chooses someone for me to marry.”

“I’ll think about it,” Axel promised.

“Thank you,” said Roxas. “Speaking of home—I must insist that we dress you properly before you go. If you’re caught out like that, you’ll be arrested. I am sorry for the delay; I know it’s already very late.”

Axel shrugged. “My stepmother will have locked the doors by now anyway. It makes no difference when I get home.”

Roxas considered—not for the first time, but for the first time seriously—what strings he would have to pull to have someone beheaded.

---

Morning came much too soon, though Roxas slept through most of it. He was finally roused at half-past ten when a servant brought his breakfast to him, along with a card from the duke.

Must talk. I will be in the Conservatory until midday. At your convenience.

Roxas had never received such a note before, and so resolved to actually show up, regardless of the fact that he was halfway being ordered to. If nothing else, it would be a good chance to formally (but discretely) reprimand His Grace for his utterly graceless remarks the night before.

After breakfast, he dressed, completed his toilette, and crept down to the Conservatory, wary, for no reason, of being caught by his father.

The Conservatory was a large room in the west wing of the castle, glass-roofed and filled with botanicals, a tile floor, and intricate metalwork furniture. In the spring and summer, it was often sweltering, even with all the doors open, and it was trending that way this morning. Roxas found the duke standing near an open door under the date palms, fanning himself with his kerchief.

“Your Grace,” Roxas said.

“Your Highness,” said the duke, giving a perfunctory bow. “Good of you to join me. Will you sit?”

He indicated a small breakfast table with two chairs. Roxas sat, and the duke sat across from him.

“Your father, as of this morning, has issued a proclamation,” said the duke. “He is pleased that you’ve shown interest in a girl; rather less pleased that she has disappeared. Though we do not have her name, her title, or her place of residence, we have her shoe, and the king has deemed that sufficient. I am to scour the kingdom, visiting the household of every eligible maiden and having each in turn try on the glass slipper. Whoever fits the shoe, that is who you shall marry.”

“Whoever?” Roxas cried, while privately despairing over the imminent departure of the slipper. “But there might be two dozen women in the kingdom who could fit it! Or—or even a child with big feet!”

“Yes,” the duke said patiently, “but that was your father’s command. Every eligible maiden in the kingdom must try on the slipper; and whosoever fits it, you must marry. He did not specify, however, the order in which the search was to be conducted. Perhaps you have a suggestion?”

It was a remarkably gracious, perhaps even dangerous gesture, and completely useless; the duke was throwing Roxas a lifebuoy when he was lost in the woods. The shoe’s proper owner wouldn’t even be allowed to try it on, and certainly wouldn’t be permitted to marry Roxas. And with the shoe being toured around the kingdom, slotted onto the foot of every eligible maiden, the odds that Roxas could get it back before the three-day deadline passed….

“The ball!” Roxas cried suddenly.

“I beg your pardon?” said the duke.

“The last two days of the ball will still happen, won’t they? She might come back. You could start by trying it on every woman at the ball.”

The duke raised an eyebrow. “I suspect, Your Highness, that such an event would rapidly become a bloodbath. Certainly, the party would come to a screeching halt.”

“But every eligible woman in the kingdom has already been invited. So it’s the best place to start. Even my father would agree it’s the most economical way to go about it. Isn’t it?”

“Ye-es,” the duke said slowly, eyeing him. “I suppose it is. Would you not recognize her if you saw her again?”

“I would, but I also must abide by my father’s wishes. Mustn’t I? He wants every woman in the kingdom to try on the slipper, so they should. There’s no need for you to take it all over the countryside. Not yet, anyway. After the ball is over—”

“Your Highness, I must remind you: if you haven’t chosen a bride by the time the ball is over, your father will choose one for you.”

“What? But I have chosen! Isn’t that the point of trying the slipper on everyone? Were you supposed to get through every woman in the kingdom in the next—”

“Your father is not convinced the girl exists,” the duke said.

“Stop interrupting me,” Roxas said sharply.

The duke inclined his head. “Of course. My apologies, Your Highness.”

Roxas took a moment to compose himself. He knew the duke didn’t think very much of him; it came part and parcel with being the king’s right-hand man, because the king didn’t think much of Roxas, either. Perhaps even less than the duke did.

It was convenient for the prince to be happy. It improved the function of the kingdom and promised well for its future. Roxas suspected that, had torturing him produced better results, he would have been locked in a dungeon since his mother died.

“Has my father given the command for you to begin scouring the kingdom?” Roxas asked the duke.

“My men are currently delivering letters of notice to all the noble families of the kingdom,” the duke said. “I have recommended he permit one day for them to actually be read.”

Roxas’ stomach sank. “And did he agree?”

“Oh, yes,” said the duke. “He has no objection to you marrying for love; but as I said, he is not convinced the girl exists. I believe he has already picked out what he considers to be a suitable match for you. He will not be disappointed if he gets to see it through.”

Roxas ground his teeth. Years of wishing his father would just arrange a marriage, and it happened now. His fist clenched hard enough to crack his knuckles.

“I won’t marry her,” he said. “Whoever she is. I simply won’t.”

“You will if you want to stay a prince,” said the duke.

Roxas’ stomach lurched. “What do you mean?”

“You are not the only one in line for the throne,” the duke said quietly, and his eyes were sharp as broken glass. “Your father is tired of catering to your whims. He never saw the girl with his own eyes—”

“But you did! You know she was real!”

“I saw a girl,” the duke said. “I do not know who she was or if she was even eligible to marry you. I have been set an impossible task on purpose. The king knows very well there is little chance of finding the correct girl, even with the slipper in hand, in the span of two days. It is a pantomime designed to placate everyone who saw you slip off with that girl last night. You may rest assured that the bride your father has picked out for you will fit the slipper, one way or another, and you will be expected to tell the people she is indeed your true love. That’s the story that will keep our kingdom running.”

“And if I refuse to tell it?” Roxas said, hot with anger, cold with dread.

“A different tale may be employed. One of a faithless, reckless boy, a liar, a brute. The girl will still be correct; you will be the only one who says she is not, despite the fact that she is with child—and you may rest assured that that, too, can be arranged. You will be a disgrace to your father and your kingdom. When you are stripped of your titles and disowned, you may then feel free to marry whomever you wish, provided you do so as a commoner in some other kingdom, and your father will—with great sorrow, of course—simply pass the crown to the next in line.”

Roxas recalled, with the clarity of horror, the many noble family trees he had studied on his father’s knee, tangled webs, severed threads, cousins once and twice and thrice removed. The people who the king was careful to keep informed, involved, and invested in the running of the kingdom. The first of them was Roxas, and the next was….

“You,” Roxas said numbly.

“I don’t particularly want to be king, Roxas,” said the duke, and the name tolled from his lips like a death-knell. “But I will not catch you if you fall.”

---

Once again, Roxas found himself set upon by servants in preparation for the second night of the ball. After the upset with the ‘mysterious woman,’ the king had decided that the ante must be upped for the second night; everything aggrandized, most especially Roxas, meaning his costume must be more extravagant and his manners even more impeccable. He considered running off to find Axel right away, but without the slipper, it would do him no good. As soon as he had it—as soon as he could present Axel, in proper form, as the girl he wanted to marry—the farce would end for good. Until that time, he had to play along.

So long as he stayed kind, and kept his loving heart, everything else would work itself out.

The problem was, he had no idea when he was going to snatch a moment to steal the slipper. He’d managed to delay its departure, but he still had to get it before the ball began, otherwise it would spend the whole night being tried on feet it might fit. As the hours ticked on towards seven, Roxas began to grow nervous, then outright frantic.

It was six o’clock when his knights in shining armor rode in.

“What did I tell you!”

Roxas’ head snapped up from where it had been bowed over a renewed guest list. A wide grin broke across his face as he beheld who was striding in through the parlor doorway.

“Hayner! Pence! Oliver!” Roxas leapt to his feet to clasp their arms. “I’ve never been happier to see you. What are you doing here?”

“Gloating!” Hayner said.

“We heard you finally found a girl,” Pence said.

“And what did I tell you?” Hayner repeated. “As soon as you actually met some. I’m always right.”

“We wanted to congratulate you,” Oliver said.

“And bail you out of whatever your father’s sunk you in,” Pence whispered, mindful of the lurking servants.

Roxas sobered. Hope made him giddy and cautious in equal measure.

“I’m glad to hear it, because I need you to do something for me,” he said. “Something… odd. Possibly dangerous.”

Hayner’s eyes lit up. He clasped Roxas’ shoulder.

“Count me in.”

---

One by one, the carriages began to arrive. Roxas held onto his composure by the skin of his teeth, grateful for the gloves that hid how much his hands were sweating. He had no appetite to speak of. He had a flute of champagne to calm his nerves. Once again, he was introduced and cornered and passed around—but this time, he was too distracted to make much of an effort. His eyes repeatedly drifted back to the duke, who observed the proceedings with an attentive but uncaring eye.

Less than an hour into the ball, a waxen servant scuttled up to the duke and whispered into his ear. The duke’s face hardened. He nodded and followed the servant out of the hall.

More hours passed. No call was put out to have anyone try on a slipper. More and more servants winked out of existence. Armor and boots clattered outside, slipping in through lulls in the music.

Roxas prayed for the safety of his friends, for the secrecy of his back-doors into the castle grounds, and kept himself afloat on champagne. He didn’t remember the name or face of a single woman who danced with him—but he made sure to treat each one kindly.

Midnight came and, perhaps to draw attention away from the abrupt end of the festivities last night, the champagne and hors d’oeuvres stopped flowing, the carriages were mustered on the drive, and Roxas was shuttled off by a servant.

“Say,” Roxas said casually, “where’s the duke gone? I haven’t seen him all night.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know, Your Highness,” the servant answered, obsequious. “Something very important drew him away, it seems.”

“Oh well,” said Roxas. “I suppose I’ll ask him tomorrow.”

“Very good, Your Highness.”

“You don’t have to escort me all the way to my room, you know. I do know the way.”

“Yes, Your Highness. As you say, Your Highness.”

Roxas waved off the servant’s bows and tottered his way up the stairs, his head full of fog, his heart thundering in his chest. The moment he was sure he was out of sight, he broke into a run, unable to contain himself any longer. The corridor was deserted, his door as locked as he’d left it. He fumbled out the key, let himself in, shut and quickly locked the door again.

In the silence of the room, there was a soft rustle, and the chime of a little bell.

Roxas turned. His heart leapt. There, wearing rough-spun workman’s clothes and moonlight and a beautiful smile, more mischief than sweetness, hair loose and eyes alight—there stood Axel.

“Took you long enough,” she said.

Chapter 16: Chaconne

“Axel,” Roxas sighed. He darted across the room and swept up her hands in his, giddy with delight. He swore on his heart that the moment he was king, he would heap land and titles aplenty on Hayner, Pence, and Oliver. “You’re here! It worked!”

“I’m here,” she said, smiling. “It worked.”

Roxas was so overwhelmed with joy that he couldn’t speak. He squeezed Axel’s hands instead. Axel winced, ever so slightly, and Roxas, for the first time, looked down at the hands he was holding.

At the same moment that his stomach curdled, his blood boiled.

Her hands were absolutely raw, calloused and blistered, bleeding around the fingernails. They were a washerwoman’s hands, a servant’s hands—and a poorly kept servant at that. Roxas clenched his teeth and loosened his grip, until Axel’s palms were simply resting on his.

“I’m glad you made it back,” he said.

Her lip quivered and, quite unprompted, she threw her arms around his neck and embraced him.

“I wish I’d never left,” she whispered.

Roxas’ head was hot and fizzy with champagne, his body singing like a plucked string, and she was beautiful, everything about her, eyes and mouth and the press of her body against his, uncorseted and unpetticoated, wild and lithe as an animal under the man’s clothes she wore. Roxas stepped back from her, holding her at bay while he tried to recover his wits. It almost worked—might have, if his hands hadn’t been resting on her hips.

“I—I’m sorry I’m late,” he managed to say. “Have you… been waiting long?”

“I would have waited longer,” she demurred. “Thank you, Roxas. Thank you for getting it back for me.”

“Oh, well. Of course.”

He couldn’t think of anything but the way her breasts had pressed against his chest when they’d embraced. The rough-spun cloth of shirt and trousers might as well not have been there, for all he could feel the shape of her waist and the give of her flesh, more human and alive than any woman he’d ever touched before.

Her fingers brushed the back of his neck, triggering a frission that ran through his whole body. Her lips were ruby-red. Her eyes were enormous, staring into his with an almost playful concern.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I…” said Roxas. No, he was not all right; he was insane. If he didn’t have her then and there, he was going to die.

“You…?” she teased.

“I think… I would like to kiss you.”

Without a word or even a moment’s warning, she kissed him. Roxas crushed her body against his, drunk on the heat of her breath, the heat of her body. Before he knew what he was doing he had gotten his hand under her shirt to touch the skin of her back. She broke off the kiss and caught his eyes and took his face in her worn, trembling hands.

“Yes,” she said, breathless.

“Yes? Yes what?”

“Everything. Yes.”

It was all he could do not to throw her on the bed upon the instant. “Are—are you sure?”

“I might not get another chance. Not like this.”

His mouth was dry. He ached. She was so close and so warm and he could still taste her on his lips.

Roxas bit his tongue hard, sharpening his ears to the clamor of religious shame in the back of his mind.

“But….” he said.

“Aren’t we going to be married anyway?” she said.

His heart leapt. “Then—you—!”

“I already said, didn’t I?” said Axel. “Yes.”

She tried to kiss him again. Roxas held her at bay, though it took every ounce of his strength.

“No,” he said weakly. “Not yet.”

“What does it matter?” she said, a tinge of rust in her voice.

“Until we’re married, it’s still a sin. I… I couldn’t do that to you.”

“My soul’s already black as night, Roxas. You don’t have to worry about ruining me.”

The words sobered him like a bucket of ice-cold water dumped on his head.

“Who told you that?” he said quietly.

With sudden ferocity, she shoved him back. She gestured to her whole body.

“Look at me,” she snapped. “Look at what I am. Do you think God made me this way? I’m a wicked, grotesque thing. And you’re worried about adultery?”

“You’re not wicked or grotesque,” Roxas said. He insisted: “Who told you that?”

“I figured it out myself! How can you not see it? Why do you refuse to see it?”

“Why are you so determined to accept it? All I see is a beautiful woman—”

Without breaking eye-contact, Axel kicked off one of the slippers. The transformation was instantaneous, seamless. Roxas took an involuntary step back. Axel’s eyes blazed with raw fury, red-rimmed.

“Tell me again,” he said hoarsely, lip curling.

He couldn’t ball his ruined hands all the way into fists.

Roxas braced himself against his spine, shoved down his instinctive disgust. With measured steps, he crossed to Axel; took his face in his hands; looked him in the eyes.

“You are not wicked,” he said softly, “or grotesque.”

“But I’m no beautiful woman, either,” said Axel. He never looked away from Roxas’ eyes, though it seemed to be causing him pain.

“So?” said Roxas.

“You can’t marry me,” Axel said. “You could lie with me, here, tonight, but you could never marry me.”

“I hate to play this card, but I am a prince. Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?”

“You can’t,” Axel insisted. “I don’t want you to destroy yourself over me. If anyone ever found out—and my stepmother and stepsister would see to it that everyone did—”

“Your stepmother and stepsister will be lucky to keep their heads attached to their shoulders,” Roxas growled.

Axel pulled out of his grasp again, stepping back. He looked ill.

“Don’t say things like that,” he said quietly, eyes averted.

Roxas was flabbergasted. “You can’t care about them.”

“Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?” Axel said, with a touch of wry humor. He wrapped his arms around himself and shrugged. “Yes, they’ve been cruel to me. No, I don’t hold any affection for them. But they’ve kept me fed and clothed and housed, and whatever else they are, they are my family. And Saïx wasn’t always so cruel. We were almost friends, while my father was alive. She might still come back from what my stepmother’s made her into. To condemn her so easily… that wouldn’t be very kind or loving, would it.”

Roxas wasn’t sure whether to be impressed by Axel’s grace, or depressed by it. Lacking any firm resolution, he instead picked up the discarded glass slipper and brought it to Axel.

“I won’t lie with you tonight,” he said, “but I will stay with you. And I will tell you again: you never have to go back to that place if you don’t want to. Tomorrow night, I’ll ask you to marry me. I would appreciate it if you didn’t make up your mind based only on what you think is best for me.”

“Three days isn’t long enough to get to know someone,” Axel said.

“Well, if you marry me, I think we’ll have quite a bit longer.”

---

The night was late, and the room was gently cooling. Roxas and Axel sat on the foot of the four-poster bed, half in each other’s laps, some uncounted number of kisses between them. Shame, creeping on the feet of habit, was finally catching up to Roxas, shading the glow.

As gallant a figure as he’d cut that evening, he couldn’t honestly say he was comfortable with the entire affair. Axel-as-a-woman was perfection personified, and he loved her absolutely. Axel-the-man, however, was different, undeniably different. Roxas couldn’t put a finger on exactly how or why; he only knew that thinking about it too much soured the heady warmth of their canoodling.

He tried not to think about it too much. Axel as she was now, half-asleep in his arms, was all he could ever imagine needing in the world. If, occasionally, she took it upon herself to turn into a boy, well, that was her business, and Roxas wouldn’t begrudge her for it. In a few days, he could marry her right and proper, and then, with the kindnesses out of the way, they could get to work on the love. Perhaps, in time, she wouldn’t want to take the shoes off. Or at least wouldn’t object to keeping them on long enough to produce an heir.

The thought sent a shiver through him. He laid a gentle hand on her belly. He’d never particularly wanted children, never thought about it enough to want it, but the idea of watching Axel bloom and swell….

Roxas was stalwart in his convictions, but it was enough to make him want her all over again.

He pulled her close and kissed her. She sighed against his mouth, put a hand against his chest, gently pushing him off.

“Enough,” she murmured. “I’m exhausted.”

“I thought you weren’t sure if you’d get another chance.”

“I’m not getting a chance tonight, am I. You’re a horrific tease.”

“If you agree to marry me, I’ll have you every night until we’re both old and gray.”

She snorted, rolled her fantastical eyes.

“Do you think you’d want children?” Roxas asked. “If we are married.”

She took her time to consider, eyes down, a pretty frown on her mouth. Either the warmth of the room or the consideration itself was bringing a flush to her cheeks, a ruby redness to her lips.

“Maybe,” she said. “It seems an awfully long time to stay in one pair of shoes.”

“But think of how good it would feel to take them off at the end,” he suggested, though he himself couldn’t honestly imagine what that might feel like.

“But I’d have to be so careful, the whole time. If one slipped off, even for a moment, the baby….”

“We’d just have to try again,” he said. He took her hand, kissed her knuckles. “I’m asking now because my father—my father is somewhat adamant about having an heir. It’s sort of a… a requirement of the post, if you accept it.”

“Well,” she said. She didn’t sound overly enthusiastic. “Thank you for telling me now, rather than later.”

Roxas couldn’t help but feel he’d added a tally mark to the wrong column of his own ledger.

Outside, the clock began to toll, its sonorous bells buzzing the window glass against its leaded seams.

“It’s getting awfully late,” Axel sighed, leaning her head against Roxas’.

“Mm.” He kissed her cheek. “Too late for a young lady to be running around alone.” He kissed her ear.

“Then much too late for a young lady to be spending time unescorted with a strange man,” she said, tipping her head back in slow ecstasy.

Roxas, obligingly, kissed down her neck, peppering his words between.

“Strange? Am I—that strange—to you?”

“People will talk,” she breathed.

“People—” he kissed her collarbone— “won’t—” and the cloth-covered curve of her breast— “know.”

She shivered, tangling her hand in his hair. He slid off the bed and onto his knees, held her hips and kissed down her belly.

“You’re killing me,” she moaned.

“I’m making promises.” He moved his thumb aside to kiss her hip. “I intend to keep them.”

“Roxas—”

“Don’t go back there, Axel,” he said bluntly. “Please. There’s no need for you to go back.”

“I—I thought you weren’t going to ask me to—to marry you until tomorrow,” she said, breathless and swaying.

“I’m not,” he said. “But I can hide you here until then. Don’t go back, Axel.”

Her clothes might have hidden the bruises from his eyes, but they hadn’t hidden them from his hands; though Axel was practiced at ignoring her pain, Roxas wasn’t and didn’t intend to be.

“I’ll—I’ll think about it,” Axel said. “Assuming… well, it would be easier if I had a good reason to stay.”

Roxas smiled, kissed his way down her thigh, her calf, determined to love every inch of her that he could. She watched him with half-lidded grace, frustrated but indulgent. When he kissed her ankle, he could hear a faint ringing coming from the glass slipper, a bell eternally struck.

“You’re beautiful,” he told her.

She rolled her eyes and smiled, flexed her foot to tap his temple with her toe.

“Liar,” she accused.

Roxas pulled his attention from her foot to glower at her.

It was the luckiest thing he ever did.

Every bit of glass in the room—every window, every ornament, every lens and goblet—shattered violently.

Axel screamed. A blinding pain caught Roxas in the left eye. He fell back clutching his face, pulled his hand away and saw it covered in blood—

And not covered in blood.

His vision swam. The pain sharpened and dulled, flickering like a candle flame, and its light played over his left hand, showing the stain only where it touched. He blinked rapidly, shaking his head, and in a moment, the pain and the blood were both gone. Roxas touched his left eyelid with trembling fingers.

Whole. Uninjured. He let out a breath.

When he opened the eye, though, something was still wrong. Thin black lines splayed across the left side of his vision like veins. No matter how he blinked or rubbed his eye, they wouldn’t go away.

A quiet, pained gasp drew his attention. Axel was still on the bed. His eyes were shut, knees drawn to his chest, hands clutching his ankles.

Feet riddled with shards of glass.

“Oh fuck,” said Roxas, hurrying to Axel’s side. “Stay still, I’ll—I’ll call the doctor—”

Axel shook his head. His face was bloodless. Silent tears crawled from his eyes. His breathing was quick and ragged. His feet dripped blood onto the thick rug.

“It’s going to be fine,” Roxas said. “He’s very good, he’ll be able to—”

“How—will you—explain?” Axel choked out between gasps.

Roxas opened his mouth. No words came out. The darkness veining the left half of his vision made the walls sit poorly and disjointed the bedposts.

“Then… but we can’t just leave it like this!” he said.

Axel shook his head again. His hands were white-knuckled around his ankles, arms shaking from the force of his grip. He sucked a sharp breath through his nose, then another, and hissed them out through his teeth.

“I have—a fairy—godmother,” he said.

“Of course! How do we get her here?”

Axel didn’t answer right away, tight-lipped and pallid.

“Help… help me get the glass out,” he said thinly.

Roxas cast about for some kind of tool to help. He landed on the wash basin; stood, brought it over to catch the dripping blood.

With the most careful fingers he had, he pulled each shard of glass from Axel’s feet. There must have been some strong magic at work, because each wound fleshed over the moment the glass was removed, leaving tender pink skin behind. That didn’t stop the process from hurting, as evidenced by Axel’s muffled whimpers and gasps.

Roxas devoted himself entirely to the work. It was easier to deal with Axel’s mangled feet than with the rest of him—the square jaw, the hairy legs, the tenor voice—and a hideous shame welled in Roxas because of it. He knew, in his thinking head, that the boy in front of him and the girl of his dreams were one soul, one mind, one person, and he wanted desperately to believe it with his beating heart. But his heart insisted to him that this could not be the case; though they might grow to be the closest and dearest of friends, given time, and love each other as brothers, they could never love each other differently than that. Roxas could feel God’s hateful eyes upon him every time he touched Axel’s feet.

The shame rising in his chest was joined by a creeping dread, a question he didn’t want answered: if Axel wasn’t a girl now, had he really been one when Roxas had kissed him? Had wanted him?

If he hadn’t been, what did that make Roxas?

It took some time, with chilly winds blowing through the shattered window and rattling the glass on the floor, but at last all the shards had been removed from Axel’s feet. Axel checked them over once, brushing off the last grains and splinters. Roxas stepped out onto the balconet to empty the bloody shards and water from the wash-basin. He noticed a commotion in the yard below, a sparkle all over the grass.

Whatever had happened, it must have blown out every window in the castle.

Roxas came back inside, refilled the wash basin with fresh water, brought it and a washcloth to Axel.

“Here,” he said.

Axel accepted and set about cleaning himself up. While he worked, Roxas went and sat in his armchair and failed to think of what to do next. The idea of the fairy godmother spun endlessly in his head, but he couldn’t find anything to do with it. He shut his eyes and rubbed them, futilely trying to get rid of the thin black veins that now seemed to be a permanent part of his vision.

“Thank you,” Axel said quietly.

Roxas looked up. Axel was mostly clean of blood, though still disheveled, still marked by the abuses of his step-family and the slippers. Roxas swallowed and looked away.

“I don’t know what just happened,” he said, “but we’ll find a way to fix it.”

“Fix it?” Axel said. “Roxas, I don’t think….”

Roxas looked up. There was a sadness on Axel’s face, a resignation, that made Roxas grind his teeth.

“You don’t think what?”

Axel shrugged. “She told me there was no way of knowing how long they’d last. That there was no accounting for grief. Maybe I… I just got to the end of my grief. Maybe that’s all I was ever supposed to get.”

“No,” said Roxas—and as he said it, a pulse of faint light chased through the black veins in the left half of his vision. “No. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“How do you know?”

Honestly, he hadn’t the slightest idea—he just knew, bone-deep. He gestured to the shattered window, to the scurrying sounds of a hundred bleary-eyed servants beginning the bewildered process of cleaning up an acre of broken glass.

“And besides,” he added, “the dress didn’t cut you to ribbons when it went. Would your godmother really have hurt you so?”

Axel thought, but it wasn’t the honest consideration Roxas wanted. Too soon, Axel shook his head.

“I need to go home,” he said softly.

“Absolutely not.”

Axel stood—and immediately fell back on the bed, hissing in pain and clutching at his feet.

“You see?” Roxas said. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere.”

“But I… I can’t stay here,” said Axel, with the first flutterings of panic in his voice. “Not like this.”

No, Roxas realized; no, he couldn’t. If Axel was found here, in Roxas’ room, his feet bare and his clothes disheveled and his lips so recently kissed….

Well, feet full of glass would be the least of his worries.

“How do I find your godmother?” Roxas asked.

Axel’s eyes went wide as dinner plates. “What for?”

“She made you one pair of shoes; she can make you another. This couldn’t have been her design for you. If you can’t call her, then we have to find her; and since you can’t come with me, you have to tell me how. Don’t give up hope yet.”

Axel chewed his cheeks. His eyes, dewy and distant, sharpened. He nodded to himself.

“She said all I had to do to find her was to get lost enough,” he said.

Easy enough. Roxas steeled himself, crossed to Axel, and took his hand.

“Stay here,” he said. “Hide if you have to. I’m going to fix this, Axel. I promise.”

“Thank you,” Axel said hoarsely. “And… Roxas?”

“Yes?”

Axel hesitated, fidgeted, and said: “Please hurry.”

As Roxas climbed down the trellis and darted across the glass-strewn grounds, he noted that the dark veins in his vision were ever so slightly thinner.

---

Roxas was lost.

The woods that bordered the castle were small enough in the daylight; so small, in fact, that Roxas had to go far abroad for his trips, because nothing worth hunting lived here. Yet in the dark, they seemed to go on forever, blacker than midnight, teeming with things that rustled and skittered and buzzed. He kept seeing—or thinking he saw—black shapes darting into the brush, kept hearing—or thinking he heard—the laughter of children, kept feeling—or thinking he felt—the first drops of cold rain falling on his shoulder.

Strangely, it was only the latter two that frightened him.

He might have been walking for ten minutes or an hour; might have gone only a few hundred yards from the castle or many miles. He wouldn’t have thought the woods were large enough for him to travel so deep into them. He wished fervently that he’d brought a light and was inexplicably glad he hadn’t. Though he was exhausted, every time he looked at a spot where he might rest, it seemed to flicker with graveyard mist, urging him onward. Though frustration made him long to call out, the thickness of the dark warned him to keep his voice to himself.

The vision in his left eye was worse than in his right, swimming with phantoms, and eventually it took its toll. He thought he saw a foxhole, stepped around it, and planted his foot directly in a briar that he hadn’t seen. An involuntary hiss of pain escaped him. He caught himself on a tree and managed not to overbalance, but by the time he extracted his foot, his trouser leg was shredded and he was bleeding. He rubbed his left eye hard, hoping to scrub out its visions.

He noticed how quiet the woods had gotten.

Roxas straightened up slowly. His pulse throbbed in his hands and face, in the wounds on his leg. A deep instinct told him to put his back against something solid. He gripped the belt at his hip where his sword, however ceremonial, would have hung—if he’d brought it. He was well enough acquainted with the woods to know what silence meant.

Of all the beasts that wandered here, Roxas was the least equipped to know when a predator was nearby.

Through the pounding of pulse and rush of breath in his ears, a new sound cut through. A thump, a rattle and squeal, a slow scrape, and again—thump, rattle and squeal, scrape; thump, rattle and squeal, scrape. It was a distinctly unnatural, industrial sound. When Roxas turned his head towards it, he caught a glimmer of light through the trees.

But only in his left eye.

Lacking any other direction, however, he headed towards it.

The trees and brush seemed to yield to him, clearing an easier path. The industrial sounds grew louder, yet they were still the only sounds. The air grew thick, a sense of fire without heat or a storm without wind. Roxas’ sense of being preyed upon didn’t diminish in the least.

At last, he stepped out into a clearing, lit as if by candles but without a single candle to be seen. In the center sat a figure, weaving the night itself out of fine black thread on a four-post loom. Her hands were small, deft, confident about their work. She wore a draping dress the color of fresh-spilled blood, and her cascading hair was like burnished copper.

She couldn’t have been more than twelve years old.

Chapter 17: Courante

Roxas swallowed three times before he spoke.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m… looking for someone.”

“Oh?” the weaving girl said, tilting her head to the side. Her voice was small, almost playful. It made Roxas’ hair stand on end. She kept her eyes on her work, and Roxas couldn’t say why, but he was glad.

The wood was utterly silent around them. The only sound was the thump, rattle, squeal and scrape of the girl’s midnight-weaving loom.

“Yes,” Roxas said. “Maybe you could help me find her.”

“Maybe.”

Roxas checked himself before his plea leapt off his tongue. “What would you ask in return for your help?” he said instead.

“I’d like to know who’s asking,” said the girl.

Roxas was finding it difficult to look at her for too long. Through his right eye, she was as she was—young, petite, weaving peacefully. Through his left, eye, though….

He had few words for what his left eye saw, twisted and jagged, gnarled around the ever-present black veins. The figure insisted to his mind that it was still a girl, but his eye didn’t believe it. If he had to pick a word to describe her—and he would only dare to pick one—that word would be: real.

The thing sitting in front of him was to Roxas what Roxas was to a character in a play. His understanding of the world was boxed into a tiny stage, an ephemeral afternoon fantasy, and his existence nothing more than a performance, skin-shallow, that could be cast off at a moment’s notice and disappear without even leaving a corpse.

Roxas closed his left eye before the sight drove him mad. The girl—for to all appearances, that was now all she was—had been patiently awaiting his answer. Roxas decided to hedge his bets. It wasn’t wise to give one’s name to something that could rewrite it.

“I’m a prince,” he said, “and a friend to Axel. I’m looking for her godmother.”

The girl smiled, eyes still on her work. “Then, thankfully, I can help you. You’ve found her.”

But you’re so young! the right-eye part of Roxas wanted to cry. The left-eye part strangled the words before they reached his lips.

“Godmother,” he said, “you honor me with your presence. Will you hear my plea?”

“You wouldn’t have found me otherwise. Tell me, prince.”

“Something terrible has happened,” Roxas began.

“Correct,” Axel’s godmother said immediately, and in a much darker tone than he would have expected.

Roxas’ left eye fluttered open by accident, and he saw the black veins again—riddling the air, offsetting the clean lines of the tree trunks, breaking the patterns of leaves on the ground, shattering the true image of Axel’s godmother into a kaleidoscopic nightmare, faint flickers of light chasing through them.

No, not through. Behind. Beyond. Because they weren’t veins at all.

They were cracks.

“But tell me,” Axel’s godmother went on, “why you came looking for me.”

Roxas steadied himself. He had bigger things to worry about.

“The enchanted slippers you gave Axel have shattered. I—I don’t know why. I don’t see how it could have been any fault of hers. I came to ask you—to beg you—to make her another pair.”

“Why?” Axel’s godmother asked.

“I want to marry her,” said Roxas.

“A selfish desire.”

“It’s not. It’s for her sake that I want to marry her, so she doesn’t have to go back to her stepmother and stepsister.”

“Yet you could still rescue Axel from that torment,” she pointed out. “You simply couldn’t remain a prince if you chose to do so. Selfish. It doesn’t move me.”

“Then for Axel’s sake, so she can always be herself.”

“Axel is Axel, shoes or no shoes, and it’s not Axel’s heart that led you here. Try again.”

“Because—because it isn’t fair!” Roxas blurted in frustration. “If she broke a rule, it’s a rule she wasn’t told. We weren’t—she wasn’t finished with them. She wasn’t ready. It isn’t right.”

“You aren’t the arbiter of such things,” Axel’s godmother said, “and more, it’s not what you mean to say. Say what you mean, prince.”

Roxas’ fists clenched. The cracks in his vision now glowed with a faint but ever-present flickering light, running through everything, slowly, ever so slowly, slipping. When he spoke, the words rang from the depths of his soul and resounded with a strange and glassy echo through the midnight woods.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”

At last, Axel’s godmother laid down her weaving and looked at him. In her eyes, he beheld a starless infinity, as of daylight breaking through the depths of an impossible ocean into which he was sinking and through which, if he kept looking, he could see all the secrets of everyone who had ever lived unravel before him like loose-spun thread.

He did not look more than a moment. He bowed his head. He knew now in whose presence he stood, and his soul trembled at the knowledge. Something far older than trees, far wilder than foxes. This was no child, and no mere fairy godmother.

This was a Great One, a witch of the woods, a creature named a thousand untrue names to escape ever having to speak the true one; Roxas knew her as the Lady in Red.

“That,” she said, “is truer than you know.”

“I want to make it right,” Roxas said to the ground at her feet. “Will you help me?”

She shifted, facing him fully. His left eye watered.

“Come here, prince,” she said.

Roxas approached. He knelt at her feet, keeping his head bowed, his eyes averted.

“I will tell you the rules,” said the Lady in Red. “Once you’ve heard them, you may ask for my help again—or you may choose to walk away. Things are not yet so broken that they can’t be salvaged. I will tell you now that you could salvage them without my help.”

If that was so, Roxas didn’t see how.

“The rules are these,” said the Lady in Red. “First: I can only grant what is wished. Second: I will take whatever you offer me in exchange. Third: you get what you pay for. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Godmother.”

“You mustn’t lie. I will ask you again: do you understand?”

Roxas fought down the fear climbing his spine, the frustration clawing up his throat. He breathed deep and nodded.

“You will grant no more than what I wish. You’ll take whatever I offer in exchange, but the power of the spell relies on the size of the payment. I understand.”

“What is it that you want? And be specific.”

Roxas opened his mouth to repeat his earlier plea, but the left-eye part of him stopped the words. What had the Lady in Red just said? You mustn’t lie. So he couldn’t.

Not even to himself.

“I want… I want Axel to be a woman,” he said. “Always.”

“You would ask me to cut off half the child’s soul,” the Lady in Red said. “How will you replace it?”

“I’ll love her,” Roxas said immediately. “Truly, every day, to the end of my days.”

“Love,” sighed the Lady in Red. She shook her head. “How do you expect to know the shape of such a thing, when neither of you has ever been truly loved?”

“What do you mean? My mother loved me, and Axel’s father loved her.”

“My point exactly,” the Lady in Red said sadly.

“I don’t understand,” said Roxas. He didn’t want to understand. His soul shrank from understanding. He could see the cracks getting wider.

“Love is not a substitute for being whole,” said the Lady in Red. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

Roxas’ head was spinning. Better than love? What more was there to give, what more could he do? He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists, supplicant on his knees with head bowed before her.

“Please,” he said, “Godmother, please. I would give anything for her.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” said the Lady in Red. “Ask me again, and this time remember the rules. Now. What do you want?”

“I wish for another pair of shoes to transform Axel into a woman,” Roxas said.

The Lady in Red’s voice was heavy as she asked: “And what will you give for them?”

“I will give the blood of my heart and the strength of my arms,” Roxas said—and hastily amended: “All that I can spare. I will give my kindness, my friendship, my integrity.”

He hesitated, wondering if he could offer (or if she would accept) his love.

“As you wish,” said the Lady in Red.

Something stabbed Roxas in the chest. He looked down. A long, silver needle protruded from his breast. The Lady in Red reached down and plucked it out, and a crimson thread unspooled behind it. With the speed of expertise, she began to weave. The thread took shape, a pair of slippers, soft-soled, like a ballet dancer might wear. Roxas grew dizzy. He could feel every inch of the thread pulling blood from his chest, a deep, stinging pain. He gritted his teeth and bore it. He would show her that he understood what it was to love someone.

The Lady in Red at last wrapped the red thread around her fingers and bit it off. What was left unused spattered to the ground. The slippers drifted into the Lady in Red’s hands: crafted of the finest crimson silk, the same color and luster as her dress, dainty and perfect. Roxas reached out to accept them from her and had to catch himself on both hands to keep from falling flat on his face. His head spun wildly. Darkness clouded his vision. His heart pounded, frantic as a drowning child.

“Be sure, prince,” the Lady in Red said quietly. “It’s not too late.”

“I am sure,” he said, breathless, lips tingling.

She sighed. “Then rise.”

Through a great effort of will and a nauseating dizziness, Roxas got to his feet. The Lady in Red held out the shoes to him. He accepted them like twin infants.

“Thank you, Godmother,” he said. “A thousand times, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” she said. “Remember: as long as you both still live, it’s not too late. Go.”

He bowed to her, clutching the shoes to his chest. By the time he straightened up, he was alone.

Beyond the space where she’d been, the lights of the castle glimmered through the trees—though he was sure he’d been walking away from them. They were no more than a hundred yards off, fractured and splintered by the cracks in his left eye.

And if those cracks grew as he staggered towards home, it was all the more reason to move as fast as he could.

---

Roxas collapsed on the floor of his room, head spinning, lungs burning, every limb trembling with exhaustion. Sparks swarmed his vision, threatening to overwhelm him; he staved them off by force of will alone. As his ragged breathing slowed, the clock tolled four; and as the bells faded, he could hear Axel snoring gently.

Arduously, Roxas stood. He would have crawled to the bed if not for the broken glass all over the floor. Axel was lying there, fast asleep, curled up on top of the covers in his servant’s clothes, still barefoot. Roxas leaned hard against the foot of the bed, trusting it to keep him upright. He bent down and, with trembling, tender hands, slipped the blood-red slippers onto Axel’s feet, first one, then the other. He watched as the hair on Axel’s legs thinned and paled, traced the curve of calf to thigh to hip, to waist, to breast, to face. His heart keened with hard-won relief.

She was there. She was all there.

Another wave of exhaustion swamped Roxas. He crawled into the bed next to Axel, who woke with a start. He took her hands, hardly able to keep his eyes open.

“You’re back,” she murmured—and, startled, touched her own throat.

“You’re back,” Roxas said, caressing her cheek with trembling fingers.

Her eyes welled with tears. She drew close to him, buried her face in his shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Roxas’ hand found the soft curve of her back. His lips found her cheek, her ear, the tender flesh of her throat. He pulled her closer, pressed her body against his, delirious with weariness and want. A small gasp escaped Axel. Her hands gripped his shoulders.

He pushed her over onto her back and rolled on top of her, bit her neck while his hands worked to rid her of the coarse and offensive clothing. She squirmed under his attentions, trapped between his legs, hands feebly pressing against his chest.

“But—” she whispered, breathless— “you said—”

He found her mouth with his and muffled any further objections. Who could care what he’d said, what foolish compunctions had driven him to deny her? God was not here; Axel was, and her breasts were soft and her cunt was wet and he wanted her, right now, consequences be damned.

Even as aroused as she was, she was so tight that he couldn’t enter her right away. He turned her over and took her with his chest against her back, one hand squeezing her breast and the other over her mouth to muffle her whimpers and then her moans, fucked her like a dog and got drunk off the sheer obscenity of it.

He finished deep inside her, kissed her behind the ear, and passed out cold.

---

He woke to the sound of weeping.

Through a pounding head, an aching body, and blurry eyes, he struggled up to his elbows on the bed. Axel was sitting on the floor, dressed but disheveled, tears and snot running unheeded down her blotchy red face. The slippers were still on her feet.

The same color as the blood on her hands and on her ankles.

“Axel?” Roxas croaked.

“They won’t come off,” she said, hiccuping sobs. “They won’t—they won’t come off.”

One of her fingernails had lifted like the lid of a chest; the others were caked with pus and blood from her ankles. One of her thumbs was dislocated.

The rest of the room was riddled with a spiderweb network of thin black cracks.

Roxas struggled to take a deep breath. His stomach was filled with lead shot. The portrait of his mother on his nightstand glared at him with cold disapproval, loveless. A crack ran right through the center of it.

On the floor, Axel sniffled and bent to her gruesome work again, clawing and yanking at the slippers as though she would tear her own feet off if she had to. Roxas tumbled down from the bed and took her wrists.

“Stop,” he said; and when she refused, insisted: “stop.”

“Let go of me,” she said.

“You’re hurting yourself.”

“It doesn’t hurt. Let go!”

Roxas tightened his grip and forced Axel’s hands away from her feet. She started to struggle. Her eyes were wild, red from crying.

“Axel, stop it!” Roxas said. “You’re not thinking clearly!”

She froze suddenly. Her face paled, lip quivered. She stared at Roxas like she’d never seen him before.

“You did this,” she whispered. “You… you did this to me. On purpose.”

“What?! No! I never meant—”

A stabbing in his jaw and tongue, as of long red fingernails striking through his mouth from underneath, and the whispered words of a curse that hadn’t felt like one at the time.

You mustn’t lie.

“You did this to me!” Axel shrieked.

She thrashed like a wild animal, screaming let go, let go, let go! Roxas had to comply—half to stop the noise, and half to keep her from breaking her own wrists in his grasp. She scrambled backwards until her back hit the wall, whereupon all the fight suddenly went out of her. She sank to the floor, wracked by sobs so powerful she could barely breathe.

“I hate you,” she blubbered, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you….”

Roxas watched as, soundlessly, all the cracks splintered wider and father with every repetition of that terrible mantra. One of them intersected with the wall. The musical clink of breaking stone was accompanied by a thin rain of dust.

“Axel,” Roxas interrupted, sick and dizzy, panic clawing up his throat, “I’m sorry. I didn’t—we can—please, just calm down—”

A banshee cry escaped her as she buried her face in her knees and sobbed even harder.

“I never—should—have come—here,” she gasped. “I want—to go—home—!”

“No, come on, it can’t be worse than that place. We—you can find a way to live with this, can’t you? Maybe it won’t be so bad. Once we’re married—”

“I will never marry you!” she screamed.

The ghost of a mule kicked through Roxas’ head, shattering his vision into a cascade of carnival mirrors. He reeled. His left eye watered as it struggled to make sense of what it saw—things disjointed, bent and twisted at odd angles, a crooked bedpost, a duvet unraveling. The whole castle was unstable around him, as if the slightest breeze might collapse it like blocks in a child’s playhouse. He sat heavily on the floor, too dizzy to balance on his feet. He put a hand over his left eye, shutting out the cracks, some of which were so wide that he could have stuck his hand through them.

Even when he couldn’t see the cracks, he could still see the lights flickering behind them, painted on the back of his eyelid; and his right eye could see the gap in the stone wall, the broken bedpost, the threads spilling wild from the duvet.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled toothlessly.

Axel fisted her hands in her hair, choking her sobs down to shuddering whimpers. She was accustomed to crying quietly, Roxas realized, and hated himself all the more for forcing her to employ the tactic here.

He didn’t dare speak, for fear of making it somehow worse, for fear of Axel shattering the world entirely by the force of her hatred for him. While they sat still, neither speaking, the cracks didn’t mend, but at least they didn’t get any bigger.

A knock came at the door.

Roxas leapt to his feet and nearly fainted on the spot. The bed caught him as he toppled, gracelessly, his vision filled with sparks and his ears filled with roaring. If the person on the other side of the door spoke, he didn’t hear it. He was just regaining his wits when, without permission, the door opened.

Chapter 18: Gavotte

The duke stopped on the threshold of Roxas’ room and surveyed the scene with a flinty eye: the glass all over the floor; the terrified, weeping, ruined girl; the prince disheveled in last night’s clothes; the bedding a mess.

“Well,” the duke said, not with any satisfaction, but without a hint of remorse. “That’s about how I expected this to fall out.” He turned to Roxas. “Your father wishes to see you.”

“...Now?” Roxas said numbly.

“He could conceivably wait long enough for you to change clothes,” said the duke.

Roxas turned to look at Axel. Her face was still buried in her knees, her hands still clenched on her hair, her ankles still bleeding. She was frozen, so motionless that she might not have been breathing.

“I—I can’t just leave her here,” Roxas said.

“Not to worry,” said the duke. “The kingdom now has a vested interest in ensuring she doesn’t run off to tell tales. And may I say, Your Highness—”

Roxas’ stomach dropped. His mind and mouth weren’t fast enough to interrupt the duke’s sneering:

“—well done.”

He expected Axel to lunge for his throat; that she didn’t was more horrible than any wound he might have received. She just sat there, small and silent, as though by pretending she didn’t exist she could make it so. The duke summoned a servant. The servant coaxed—and then hoisted—Axel onto her still too tender feet and hustled her out of the room to God knew where. Roxas could only sit there and watch, paralyzed by guilt and an unaccountable dread.

“Get changed,” the duke said. His tone was much nastier now that they were alone. “And clean yourself up. You’ve made more than enough of a mess for one day.”

“It was an accident,” Roxas said, stupidly.

“Oh, I’m sure it was,” said the duke.

“No—that’s not—I didn’t—”

“You’ll be pleased to know that your father has canceled the remainder of the ball,” the duke said. “The state of the castle prohibits any further entertaining. And, as the ball is over, he has selected an appropriate bride for you. He would like you to meet her. Clean yourself up.”

“No,” said Roxas. The cracks were so wide now that he was half-blind in his left eye. “He can’t—he can’t do that! That was her, in here, just now! I found her, I already chose!”

“Oh?” said the duke, arching one silver eyebrow. “And does this girl fit the glass slipper, which so mysteriously went missing last night? Which, unless I am much mistaken, is currently scattered somewhere amongst the remains of all our windows?”

He gestured sharply to the glass on the rug. Bile climbed Roxas’ throat.

“She did,” he said thinly. “I swear to you, she did.”

“And is this girl of noble birth?”

“Yes!”

“Really? Then, praytell, whose daughter have you just deflowered?”

Roxas floundered. Axel-the-boy was a noble, but as far as the entire rest of the world was concerned, Axel-the-girl didn’t even exist.

And neither one of them had ever told Roxas their father’s name, anyway.

“No one will stop you from keeping her as a mistress,” said the duke. “I would estimate your father has about five minutes’ worth of patience remaining. I would not let it run out, if I were you.”

The duke left. The door creaked only halfway closed behind him—a crack had intersected with one of the hinges. Roxas sat and stared. The wheels of his mind spun fruitlessly, gaining no purchase.

He’d been kind. He’d kept love in his heart. How had everything gone so wrong?

The duke’s voice drifted up from the stairwell below.

“I don’t care where you put her,” he said. “Just put her away. We’ll figure out what’s to be done with her later. And for God’s sake, get her some proper clothes.”

Roxas stood abruptly—though not too quickly, for fear of fainting again. If Axel didn’t want him, fine. She’d still be taken better care of here than in her stepmother’s home. If she changed her mind later, that was also fine; much as Roxas hated to admit it, the duke was right: Roxas could keep whatever mistress or mistresses he liked. Oh, it might make a scandal someday, but a good scandal now and again held the public’s attention, which was sometimes more important than holding their love.

Churning on the furious steam of such thoughts, Roxas shucked off his ruined ball clothes and dressed himself for an audience with the king.

---

The castle bustled with servants, still cleaning up the mess from whatever glass disaster had struck the night before. Roxas stormed past them and sometimes through them, clinging to anger like a life buoy. He’d stand politely through his audience with his father, maybe even marry his shiny new betrothed, and then, then, he would set about sharpening the blades of his vengeance. He was a prince, God damn it, and sooner or later there would be hell to pay for the way he’d been treated.

“Traitor!”

Roxas spun. Across the main hall, accompanied by a contingent of armored guards, were Hayner, Pence, and Oliver—being led away in irons. Hayner struggled like a lunatic. Oliver wore the death-mask of the betrayed. Pence wouldn’t even look at him.

“Liar! Philanderer! Brute!” Hayner spat.

Confusion and hurt got tangled up in each other, leaving anger free to respond.

“Watch your fucking mouth!” Roxas snarled, hand clenching on the ceremonial sword at his hip.

“You faithless snake!” Hayner retorted, thrashing so hard his feet left the ground even as the guards hauled him and Pence and Oliver away. “You tricked us, you lied to us, you sold us up the river—and for what? So you could fuck some cross-dressing peasant whore?! You’re dead to me, you understand? Dead to me!”

The guards dragged him around the corner and his furious indictments turned to echoes. The captain of the guard approached Roxas sheepishly, his helmet under his arm.

“Your Highness, my sincerest apologies,” he said with a bow. “You may rest assured that—”

“I don’t care,” Roxas snapped. He brushed past the guard and stalked on towards the king’s audience chamber.

At least half to hide the red mask of shame burning on his face.

---

The audience chamber, had it been located anywhere other than a castle, would instead have been called a study; the bookshelves, tables, desk and chairs were glorified by the habitual use of King Diz, who preferred to see his petitioners quietly and privately. Until today, Roxas had always guessed it was out of respect for his subjects, giving them his full attention and the dignity of privacy.

He was beginning to suspect it was in fact so that he and his retinue could spin whatever tales they liked about petitioners who had not been treated as magnanimously as the king’s reputation would lead one to expect.

When Roxas entered the chamber, there were four people present: the king, sat behind his mahogany desk, his face unreadable; the duke, standing to steely attention at his side; a girl in a dark blue dress, sitting primly and patiently on one of the king’s chairs; and an older man standing protectively behind her.

“Father,” Roxas said on entering, bowing stiffly. His hand was still clenched on the hilt of his sword, and his jaw was still tight.

The king made a permissive gesture, as if to acknowledge the formalities without caring much for them. He flicked a glance at the duke, who clicked his heels together and spoke with his chin high.

“His Highness, Prince Roxas. Your Highness, may I introduce the Lady Xion, Marchioness of….”

Ringing filled Roxas’ ears as he turned his eyes to the girl. She was slender and pale, with hair black as ink, an oval face, eyes blue as the sea. He recoiled from her with an instinctual revulsion.

“I can’t,” he croaked.

“—and her father, Lord—what?” said the duke.

Roxas backed up a step, shaking his head. “I can’t… I can’t marry her. I can’t.”

“Roxas,” the king said sternly. “Don’t be foolish.”

Roxas had been told both his mother and his sibling had died during the birth—but what if it was just a story? What if it was just another tale spun up to keep the kingdom running? A dead queen and a dead baby begged for sympathy, but runaways—and hadn’t the Lady in Red implied that Roxas’ mother hadn’t loved him as much as he thought?

It had to be possible, because it was happening.

“I can’t,” Roxas insisted. “I won’t.” He rounded on the king with disgust and rage. “And you—you know why I won’t!”

“Do not make a scene in front of our guests,” the king warned.

“Our guest?” Roxas pointed violently at the girl. “That’s my sister!”

The girl gasped and covered her mouth. Her father cried aloud in outraged disbelief. The duke immediately leapt in to soothe, mediate, or deflect and went entirely unheard.

The king banged his hand on his desk and roared: “SILENCE!”

There was silence.

“What madness has possessed you?” the king asked Roxas. “You will not make such unfounded accusations of our guests, nor, indeed, of me. Remember your station, and your duties to it. We agreed that, should you fail to—”

“We didn’t agree on anything! You decided how it was going to be and put on a big show to make everyone else think the whole thing was fair! You picked her because you knew I wouldn’t marry her, because you want an excuse to make him—” he gestured to the duke— “next in line instead!”

“Preposterous!” the duke interjected.

“Not only have you gone too far, Roxas, you continue going farther,” the king said grimly.

“Your Majesty, Your Grace,” the girl’s father said, uncomfortable and maybe even a little frightened, “please pardon my interruption, but perhaps His Highness is not well. He… does not seem to be entirely himself.”

“You have no idea who I am,” Roxas snarled at him.

For the first time, the girl spoke.

“I’m not…” she choked, looking up at her father with red-rimmed eyes, “Father, I’m not—am I…?”

“Of course not,” her father said. “Be still, my darling, we’ll—”

The ghost of a mule kicked Roxas in the head.

He recoiled, clutching his left eye. The castle shuddered on its foundations, strongly enough to stagger the duke and shut up the girl’s father. Rather than subsiding, the shudder became a series of rolling tremors, pulsing through the ground, growing faster and stronger with each passing moment.

The girl cried out in terror and clung to her father—only she wasn’t a girl, not with Roxas’ left eye covered, she was a woman—and moreover, she wasn’t his sister. Couldn’t be his sister.

She was too old.

Masonry splintered. If the windows hadn’t shattered the night before, they certainly would have then. Roxas dared to uncover his left eye, blinking reddish tears from his vision, and beheld the true horror of the tremors.

The world was falling apart.

The cracks had gone wild, racing through everything and everyone, their edges jagged and caving into the light-flashed blackness behind. They struck through the walls and floor, through the ground and trees outside the window, splitting stone and earth and wood and sky as though all were equally brittle. One of them cracked the woman’s father in half. Guts and blood spilled out everywhere, drenching the woman and tumbling into the gaping maw of the killing crack. The king was yelling, giving orders; the woman was screaming; the duke paralyzed in horror.

The tremors grew in pace and intensity, a frantic crescendo.

A heartbeat, dying.

Roxas lurched into motion. He grabbed the duke by the lapels and shook him.

“Where is she?” he snarled, shouting to be heard over the roar of the end of the world.

The duke gawped like a fish out of water. The door to the audience chamber burst open and a guard rushed in.

“Your Grace! Your Grace! The woman, she stole one of our men’s swords, she’s locked herself in—”

Roxas dropped the duke and seized the guard. “Where?!”

“Up—up in the west tower, Your—”

Roxas ran.

Dust and pebbles rained down from the ceiling around him. The castle was in an uproar, guests and servants shouting, screaming, fleeing for their lives while more and more of the world collapsed into the ever-growing cracks. A guard grabbed Roxas, shouting warnings and pleas; Roxas shoved him off; the guard stumbled backwards into a yawning vertical crack and was instantaneously shredded into a thousand gory ribbons.

Roxas sprinted onwards, through the hall, up the stairs, dodging cracks and leaping over crevasses, more and more visible to his right eye as the castle crumbled around him. The tremors grew ever stronger, the pulses subsumed under the violent tide. Roxas tasted blood on his breath. Every muscle shrieked for relief. He gave none.

At the top of the stair was a door and one guard, unarmed, furiously trying to break it down. Roxas leapt to his aid. A stone the size of a horse fell out of the ceiling and shattered on the stairs behind them. The guard screamed—so loud that Roxas could hear it over the deafening rumble—and fled, clambering over the splinters of rock and down the stairs. A second massive block of masonry smashed him into red paste.

Roxas hurled himself at the door, slamming his shoulder into it over and over until his arm wrenched out of its socket. The landing under his feet buzzed and cracked. He drew the ceremonial sword at his hip and thrust it through the lock on the door. Steel snapped, iron held. Roxas screamed fit to tear his throat open and kicked at the door in a mad frenzy. A crack struck through the hinge like black lightning. Roxas threw himself at the door once more and this time it gave. He crashed through moments before the entire stairwell collapsed.

He landed in a pool of blood.

Before him, Axel lay face-up on the floor, pallid and wide-eyed and gasping, his—

—her—

Roxas clutched at his head, vision swimming, stomach churning, ears ringing. Somehow Axel-the-boy and Axel-the-girl were there, occupying the same space at the same time, and both of them together had taken a guard’s half-blunt sword and hacked off their right foot at the ankle.

That exact point, that blood-gushing stump, was the bullet-hole in the glass of the shattering world.

Roxas crawled to the Axels’ side on his knees, took their faces in his shaking hands. The world was so riddled with cracks that he was nearly blind in his left eye. The Axels stared at him without recognition, their striking green eyes blown wide and unfocused. They tried to grasp his wrists—the fingers on their left hand were cut down to the bone where they’d held the blade of the sword to accomplish their gruesome work. There was no strength left in their arms. There was hardly any blood left in their body.

Hang on! Roxas implored them. His voice was all but lost in the ongoing collapse of the castle.

The Axels said something, or tried to. Roxas read the shape of the words in their trembling white lips.

Roxas, run.

Roxas dropped their head and whipped off the sash that had held his ceremonial sword. If he could just stop the bleeding—if he could just buy a little time—

He fumbled for the Axels’ right ankle, wrapped the sash above the stump and twisted and twisted and twisted, so tight he could feel the silk creaking. Thick blood vomited from the wound, squeezed out by the makeshift tourniquet. The flow slowed but didn’t stop.

Tighter. He had to get it tighter, if he had a stick or a dowel or anything to make it just a little tighter—

Roxas staggered back to the door and groped for the hilt of his broken sword.

His hand plunged into the white-hot darkness inside a gaping crack.

His skin flayed off before instinct could yank on his arm. He fell back screaming, clutching his wrist. White bone showed through the tattered red flesh on his fingertips. The castle quaked so violently that he bounced on the floor like a babe on a mother’s knee. The pain was blinding, all-consuming. Axel’s blood splattered his face and soaked his royal clothes. The wall of the room collapsed, and outside the sky was falling in great jagged chunks while the ground shattered and gave way to that infinite abyss filled with flashing lights.

Something drove Roxas to reach out, to clutch not his own wounds but Axel’s, to try, by the force of his lunatic grip alone, to stop the bleeding. Even as everything collapsed around them, as the incredible calamity devoured the world, somehow keeping Axel’s heart pumping one beat longer was the only thing that mattered.

As long as Axel was alive and Roxas was alive—as long as they both still lived—

 

THE END

Chapter 19: In Which Axel Bestows a Great Gift

Once upon a time in a far away land, there was a powerful faerie who lived in the ruins of an ancient walled city. He was known throughout many kingdoms, and he was called many things that were true: proud and quick to anger; trickster, shapeshifter; Flame-Tongue, the Red Bandit, King of the Ruined Country. Yet the people of those lands also called him something that was not true: they called him wicked.

So it was that when the king and queen of the kingdom which bordered this faerie’s domain were blessed by the birth of a son, they invited absolutely everyone to the party—save one.

Whatever their hopes might have been, the slight did not go unnoticed.

---

Flame-Tongue, the Red Bandit, King of the Ruined Country reclined by the window, dozing. He wore the shape of a man: tall and lithe, a shock of blood-red hair, with a face and body that would have put even the greatest sculptors of the ancient world to shame. He was clothed all in black: high boots, loose trousers, a sleeved shirt that seemed painted on and exposed a swath of marble flesh from his collarbones to his navel. The crown that graced his head was hammered from the last rays of summer sunlight, bejeweled with wasp-venom diamonds and blood-garnets picked from the tips of blackberry thorns. His cloak, trailing lazily off the divan on which he rested, was woven from fine threads of midnight, and fastened at his throat with a ruby clasp.

Even in sleep, Axel knew he was beautiful. He did it on purpose.

In a war-banner flutter of black wings, a raven alighted on the windowsill. She shook off the dust of the road and sidled down the stonework with careful claws. Her heavy onyx beak leaned close to Axel’s face, her beady eyes reflecting his serene expression. She raised all the feathers on her head and butted against his temple.

“Gimme kiss,” she croaked.

Axel cracked one emerald-green eye open. He smiled lazily, lifted a slender hand to scratch the raven under the chin with one sharp black fingernail.

“Hello, sweet,” he said. “Back so soon?”

The raven made a hopeful ks! in the back of her throat, the sound of a kiss. Indulgent, Axel kissed her beak. The raven puffed up to almost spherical proportions.

Axel raised his arms over his head and stretched, luxuriating in the warmth of the afternoon. He sat up and offered a hand to the raven, who climbed on and sidled all the way to his shoulder so she could nuzzle his face some more.

“Gimme kiss,” she said.

“Spoiled rotten,” said Axel. “What news?”

“Gimme kiss,” the bird insisted.

“Assassin,” Axel warned.

Assassin cleared her throat. She opened her beak and a wheedling whisper trailed out like a termite boring through old wood.

“A prince is born in the kingdom of Soir. His naming celebration will take place on the morrow. Every noble in all surrounding kingdoms is invited. Every faerie in the wood is invited. There will be three days of feasting and games for the common people. Auspices smile on the kingdom. Gimme kiss.”

“Every faerie in the wood?” Axel said. “What about me?”

Assassin shrugged.

“And every noble in all surrounding kingdoms, that has to include me. When were the invitations sent?”

“A fortnight hence,” Assassin whispered.

“Unbelievable!” Axel spat, shooting to his feet to pace the barren room. Assassin leapt off his shoulder and flew to the back of the divan, which was less likely to go lurching around wildly. “Soir is right next door. They can’t have forgotten about me, unless—” He whirled, planting his fists on his hips. “Assassin, how long have I been asleep?!”

She shrugged again. “Pretty bird,” she cooed soothingly.

“They wouldn’t have forgotten,” Axel said again, pacing back the other way. “The messenger must have been eaten by something on the way here. Or Saïx killed them, to spite me.”

Saïx was another faerie, one of the wood, with whom Axel had been feuding for some centuries. It wouldn’t have been entirely out of character for him to do something so petty—then again, it wouldn’t have been entirely out of character for a mortal king to get too big for his golden britches, either.

Axel stopped. The cloak of midnight drifted down to rest against his back. His hands tightened to marble fists. The room grew darker, all except for his eyes.

“They wouldn’t dare to have forgotten,” he said.

“Pretty bird,” Assassin repeated, sidling towards the window.

The gloom dispelled of its own accord. Axel spun on his heel, returned to the divan, and flung himself down on it with adolescent impudence.

“On the other hand, who would want to go?” he said. “It sounds boring.”

Assassin tilted her body into a straight horizontal line and croaked from deep in her chest, a pure raven sound. She often employed this technique when she felt she wasn’t being heard.

“What?” said Axel.

“Hello, sweet!” she said insistently, and added a ks! for good measure.

“Oh, right,” said Axel. With a quick phrase, he summoned a peeping yellow chick from one of the neighboring farms. It appeared instantaneously on the stone floor.

Assassin glided down to it. The chick whistled and stumbled, hardly as big as Assassin’s thick black beak, its round head bobbling on its thin neck, its tiny feet struggling to support it. Assassin grabbed its body in her beak and smacked it on the stone floor until it stopped peeping, then set about plucking out all its downy yellow feathers with great satisfaction.

“Pretty bird,” Axel said fondly.

While Assassin tore up her well-earned reward, Axel gazed out the window, drumming his fingernails on the stone sill. Truth be told, if an invitation to the little prince’s naming ceremony had arrived, he most likely would have ignored it (and found a reason to turn the messenger into something with four legs—not unbreakably so, just to keep the humans on their toes). Not receiving an invitation, however, made him want to go more than anything in the world. That other faeries had been invited didn’t trouble him; the invitation was more a protective courtesy than an actual expectation of attendance. Certainly his being left off the guest list had been a mistake or a misunderstanding, but he would relish the opportunity to wreak a little havoc while some doddering royal oaf tried to explain it to him, and would relish even more the opportunity to turn a whole king into something humiliating. Donkeys and toads were played-out, so maybe a rat or a rabbit. Something that knew how to be chased.

Axel didn’t get out much.

Assassin, having eaten about half the chick, picked up the bloodied remains and flew them out the window to hide in one of her many stashes. A few moments later, she returned, one thin string of viscera dangling unattended from her beak. Axel plucked it out and fed it to her by hand. She preened at the attention.

“What do you think, Assassin?” Axel asked. “Shall We grace them with Our presence?”

“Gimme kiss,” Assassin croaked, and raised all the feathers on her head in expectation.

“You’re right, they don’t deserve it,” Axel said, scratching her beak. “But we can’t have them forgetting about us. That simply won’t do.”

Ks! said Assassin, pressing her head against his.

“My thoughts exactly,” said Axel.

When Axel traveled, he never did so as a man. That was his formal wear, his dress-body, for special occasions and impressing guests, and it was as unsuited to the road as other finery and regalia. Many faeries with the power of transformation preferred to cover long distances as shafts of light or swarms of sparks; Axel considered these to be not only precarious but unbearably twee. They, in turn, likely found his preferred method of transit to be ghastly and brutish, which it was. That was more or less the point.

When Axel traveled, he always wore the shape of a bird or a beast.

Today, he felt, was a bird day; a day for observing unobserved, for slipping in through high windows and listening from rafters. The weather was mild and the winds were fair, and the kingdom of Soir was not so far that his wings would be sore from the journey.

So, the moment he made up his mind to go, he leapt up from the divan and wrapped his cloak of midnight around himself.

“I seem a raven,” he stated.

The cloak contracted, the spell scintillated, and Axel transformed into a great hoary raven, black of wing and white of breast, with eyes like two flawless emeralds set into its ebony head. No sooner had he hopped up onto the windowsill and fanned his feathers for the wind than Assassin was snuggling up next to him, preening his neck feathers, cooing and fluffy.<

As far as she was concerned, Axel was her mate, her pair-bond; a devastatingly attractive raven who spent entirely too much time pretending to be other things.

“Places to be, my sweet,” he scolded her mildly, with a quick beaky pinch on her neck. She backed off, deferent but undissuaded. Hope sprang eternal.

Not that Axel minded. Most mortals experienced a similar delusion. Alas that more of them didn’t make good pets, for if Axel had it all his own way, he would be surrounded at every moment by creatures obsessed with him—except, of course, when he wanted to be alone.

Today, he was content to be accompanied, and as he leapt from the windowsill and set his wings upon the wind, he called out for Assassin to follow him. She was delighted to comply.

---

The castle of Soir was grander than Axel remembered, grander than his own by half, so he was already predisposed to huffiness before he and Assassin even entered the courtyard. What they saw there didn’t help in the slightest: the entire massive square was wall-to-wall with humans, all waving banners and dancing and singing praises for the little baby prince tucked away somewhere inside the impressive and sturdy stone walls. This close, it was all nobility, but the crowd spilled out of the castle proper and away, growing rowdier with distance as it transitioned from politicians to commoners, who were mainly enjoying the excuse to take the day off work and get rip-roaring drunk.

Axel took no issue with this behavior, but he was still going to ruin their day.

The two ravens entered the Great Hall by a high window, unshuttered and unattended in the mild weather and the joyous occasion. They alighted on the rafters and shook out their feathers, watching the endless river of gift-givers and well-wishers approach the two thrones and the royal cradle beside.

(Well, one of them watched; the other took the opportunity to preen her mate in a misplaced but entirely appropriate act of avian love.)

The call of a trumpet clattered around the hall, and a slightly hoarse herald called out.

“Their Majesties King Lauriam and Queen Elrena, and Her Highness Princess Naminé of Oubli!”

The trio stepped up to the throne, tall father and elegant mother and a platinum-headed girl who—in Axel’s inexpert understanding of the aging of humans—was very much still in childhood, and probably on the younger side of it. All three of the visiting royals carried small gifts; the princess seemed to be taking hers much more seriously than her parents were.

“Your Majesties,” Lauriam said. “Please accept these gifts on this most joyous day, and in honor of the promise to join our two kingdoms when the children are of age.”

“It is an honor to receive them, Your Majesty,” the king of Soir said with a tilt of his head.

“And may I say,” Lauriam added, leaning in closer and lowering his voice to a much more genial tone, “about time, Sora!”

The two kings both laughed, while the queens shared a commiserating glance and the little princess stood stoically with her Very Important Present in hand.

“Here, here,” Sora said, gesturing excitedly. “Set the gifts aside—let’s let the girl have a look at her betrothed.”

Elrena put a hand on the princess’ shoulder. “Naminé, would you like to see your future husband?”

The girl’s eyes got so big that Axel could see them from the rafters. So could Assassin, and the sight pulled her full sleek-feathered attention.

Assassin’s beak was to eyes what a hammer was to nails. For Assassin, who knew that she was in possession of a hammer, it was an eternal temptation that the whole world was full of nails.

Axel gave her a quick nip on the neck to snap her out of it. Now was not the time.

Down below, the little princess nodded assent to Sora’s offer. Elrena took the gift from her hands and shooed her towards the cradle by the side of the thrones. Naminé peered over the side with breathless wonder and came up utterly disappointed.

“That’s a baby,” she announced disdainfully.

The nobles all tittered, and the queen of Soir—Kairi, if there hadn’t been a change of monarchy since Axel was last paying attention—patted her platinum head.

“Yes, my dear,” she said, indulgent, “but he won’t always be.”

“I can’t marry a baby,” Naminé insisted.

“Come now, Naminé, we’ll discuss it later,” said Lauriam, beckoning to his daughter. The girl folded her arms and stomped to his side, her face a mask of disgust.

Axel decided he liked her. If she ever wandered into his kingdom, he’d be sure to turn her into a wolf. Little girls loved turning into wolves. Many of them decided to never turn back.

Assassin nudged him. Axel pulled back into the moment and, following Assassin’s keen gaze, noted sparkling motes of dust swirling down through a shaft of light towards the royal cradle. All his feathers puffed out. His blood boiled. His beak ground against itself in affronted shock.

Three faeries materialized next to the cradle.

A gasp rolled through the great hall, blowing out all the chatter and murmur and leaving only silence behind. It was so quiet that the sound of Axel’s claws carving curls of cedar off the rafters was clearly audible. Everyone looked on in delight and awe despite the fact that the three bubbly buffoons burbling over the baby were bumbling bumpkins at best.

He might, might have been able to stomach the appearance of Saïx, who (as Axel knew all too well) had a fondness for little royal pets. He, at least, would have deserved the awestruck silence, being as near to Axel’s equal as existed in the first world—unlike those three pipsqueaks down there.

These mortal swine wouldn’t know real power if it kicked in the doors and cursed their whole kingdom.

King Sora was the first to recover his wits. He inclined his head steeply to the three faeries.

“Honored guests,” he said. “Thank you for gracing us with your presence.”

“Obviously!” scoffed the first, blonde and robed in mottled green.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said the second, portly in red.

“Oh, isn’t he darling,” sighed the third, slender and wearing floral-patterned orange. She had almost her whole torso stuck inside the royal cradle, lavishing attention on the baby.

“Olette, get out of there,” the first one scolded, while the second more surreptitiously tried to pry her loose. “We drew straws, remember? I get to go first.”

“Definitely didn’t help that you were the one holding the straws,” the one in red said.

The first faerie scowled. “Quiet, Pence.”

“I know, I know,” sighed Olette In Orange. “But look at him, Hayner, he’s just so cute.”

“Um,” King Sora said carefully. “Go first?”

“Gifts!” the first faerie, Hayner, cried. “Obviously we came to give gifts. And I pulled the long straw, so I get to go first.”

Oh, that was it. Long, short, or otherwise, that was absolutely the last straw.

“Stay here and listen,” Axel hissed to Assassin, before leaping from his perch on the rafters and flying out the window. He cut a wide arc around the castle, gaining height. A hundred feet above the center of the packed courtyard, he pinned in his wings and dove towards the doors—solid oak, iron-banded, shut and barred to the cacophonous rabble, twenty feet tall if they were an inch.

They burst open hard enough to crack the stone on either side for fear of being struck by Axel.

Gentry and nobility scattered like starlings before a charging hound. Axel threw open his wings and with them, the cloak of midnight.

“I seem a man!” he spat amidst the uproar.

From the black depths of the cloak, his human body sprang out and landed in a long and regal stride with the cloak billowing behind him, his crown blazing upon his head, his black boots ringing on the stone floor. All around, faces turned ghastly and white, gasps were stifled in trembling hands, knees buckled and shoulders hunched. Even the three faeries at the thrones huddled together for safety.

Good.

Axel strode to the very base of the thrones, center-stage, and stopped on a dime.

“Well, well, well,” he said, sweeping his gaze across the assembled and watching them cower. “Isn’t this a fun little to-do. We’ve got everybody who’s anybody—” his eyes landed on the faeries and he smirked— “oh, and the nobodies, too.”

“Axel,” Hayner the Brash said. Axel wasn’t sure what was the bigger affront—the way her lip curled on the name, or the fact that she’d presumed to use it at all.

“Ah-ah!” Axel warned, indicating the crown on his head.

Hayner declined to correct herself. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, me? I came to pay my respects to the little prince, as a gesture of goodwill.” He turned a sharp-ended look on Sora. “Even though my invitation seems to have gotten lost in the mail. You really should pick your messengers better, Your Majesty.”

With all the reckless courage of a bee defending its honey from a bear, Sora said: “You weren’t invited.”

It took a second for the words to sink in, a second that Axel spent blinking bemusedly at the king. He simply couldn’t fathom that any mortal would dare to speak to him like that. But no, the silly little thing was staring him down with chin raised and eyes hard. Not only had he sincerely declined to invite the most powerful faerie in the land, he’d said so, out loud, in front of the entire kingdom and three other faeries besides.

Rage ignited in Axel’s core, a great roaring conflagration that filled him head to toe with blinding white-hot light. It came out his mouth in a startled guffaw that then built to a full-bellied laugh. The sound ricocheted off the walls like volleys of arrows; half the nobility dove for cover while the other half was pinned where they stood.

“Oh,” Axel chortled, wiping his eyes. “Oh, no. Well now I just feel silly. I guess I’d better go.”

No one, not even the other faeries, moved a muscle. Axel twirled a hand and inclined his head and half-turned, the very picture of a gracious exit—until he stopped.

“But while I’m here….”

Queen Kairi grabbed her husband’s hand in terror. On any other day, her instinct would’ve been right. But the affront was too great; there was no beast miserable enough to transfigure the king into, and anyway, these people had gone beyond needing a gentle reminder of where they stood in the pecking order. This was personal.

Axel smiled. “I might as well give the little prince a gift, right?”

Kairi cried out and threw herself at the cradle. Axel struck her with a spell flicked from the tip of his tongue. So fragile was her constitution—and so white-hot was his rage—that she turned to glass and shattered on the floor. Sora roared and lunged from his throne. Axel smote him, too, and it was only the quick intervention of King Lauriam that spared him the same fate as his wife: the leg he landed on smashed into a thousand pieces, but the rest of his body was caught, translucent and screaming, before he hit the flagstones.

Power surged in Axel’s body as he flung his arms high above his head. The cloak of midnight billowed out, scattering the light in the room to the far corners. Axel spoke in his true voice, a voice that rattled the castle on its foundations.

“ BEFORE THE SUN SETS ON THE PRINCE’S FIF TEENTH BIRTHDAY, HE WILL CUT HIS FINGER ON A SHARD OF GLASS AND DIE!”

The mortals gasped. The faeries blanched. Axel rooted his feet and braced himself.

What mortals misunderstood about magic was that spells were physical objects, albeit ones that existed in a world-behind-the-world that was completely invisible to them. Faeries could not knowingly lie, and so, when they made proclamations about the present or the future that were not yet true, they either choked on the words or they rearranged the world. Rhymes and conditions and caveats were shortcuts, load-bearing structures engineered to make the spell bigger without making it heavier. In truth, the hardest (and most dangerous) spells to cast were cold absolutes: the entire volume had to be filled with power. No void spaces, no air holes, multi-ton monoliths of solid force.

These were also, by the same token, almost impossible to break.

The curse heaved into motion, slowly at first, but with inexorable momentum. In the space behind the world it began to take shape, a spinning black cloud swelling to enormous proportions, chewing through Axel’s power at a terrifying rate. It rose, bestial and raw, a whirling maelstrom stretching long and thin into the sky, threatening to pull Axel off his feet, threatening to rend him limb from limb, straightening, hardening, sharpening, until at last, like a javelin, it plunged into the heart of the kingdom.

Light and heat and noise beyond imagining. Axel’s constructed body was vaporized—perhaps it was only the cloak of midnight, woven for him as a gift by one of the Great Ladies of the Wood, that spared him from complete annihilation. As the curse cooled, he drifted banner-like up through the great hall, out the window and onto the wind, wafting high and aimless over the great citadel of Soir.

The entire city, every plant and paving stone, every bird and beast, and every mortal subject of the kingdom within its walls had been transformed into living, colored glass.

Save one.

---

Axel floated in through the window of his own castle, half alive and barely conscious, little more than a breath of smoke on the breeze. He settled over his divan and lay there exhausted for an uncounted time.

It occurred to him, fuzzily, that he might have slightly miscalculated the power of his curse.

Sooner or later, Assassin arrived in a clamor of black wings that stirred the smoke on the divan.

“Gimme kiss?” she called out hopefully, looking around the room.

Axel mustered his will and all the strength he had left.

“I seem a snake,” he wheezed.

The cloak of midnight tightened around him, sucking at the dregs of his power, and squeezed him into shape—a black snake with white belly scales and a red diamond pattern on its head. It wasn’t entirely dignified, but it was easy, being quite compact and having no fiddly limbs or feathers or fur to worry about. Assassin made an agitated noise and shuffled on the window sill. She didn’t like snakes.

“What news?” Axel asked heavily.

Assassin puffed up and shook herself. She declined to join him on the divan, but opened her beak dutifully and let the news wheedle out.

“The green faerie gifted the prince with bravery. The red faerie gifted the prince with kindness. The orange faerie cast a spell, thus: When curse insists he should be dead, the prince won’t die, but sleep instead, by time untouched ’til he should wake; with True Love’s kiss the curse shall break.”

Axel hissed out a wry laugh. It was a desperate move, resorting to True Love. The three bumpkins didn’t have anywhere near enough power to break Axel’s curse—this one had been forced to resort to rhyming just to slightly alter the shape of it—but True Love was the one thing that seemed to defy all rules of magic. It didn’t matter how big and weighty the spell; if it came up against True Love, it might as well have been made of sand.

The good news: in Axel’s eight centuries in the mortal world, he’d seen actual True Love crop up maybe four times total.

The bad news: sometime in the next two hundred years or so, the game would be up. True Love was as unstoppable by hand as it was by spell; if he got in its way, he’d only be trampled.

“The faeries then hatched a plot with the kings,” Assassin went on. “The prince will be smuggled from the city of glass and into the woods, raised by the faeries disguised as commoners. Only after sunset on his fifteenth birthday will he return to the city to reclaim his birthright.”

“Morons,” Axel yawned. What was it with mortals and thinking they could just run around the end of a curse? Did they also try to knock down enemy castles by pretending they weren’t there?

Still, it might make things unpleasant for Axel. The curse would do whatever it took to see itself through, even in its altered form, and it would take whatever power it needed—especially with True Love tangled up in the mix. Mortals rarely managed to run a curse around so thoroughly that it consumed its caster, but such things had been known to happen. It was no comfort to the unfortunate caster that the curses thereafter tended to fail catastrophically and expend their energy in violent and unpredictable ways, but at least the mortals never got away with it.

“The prince was taken,” Assassin finished. “I did not see where.”

“Find him,” Axel commanded.

With that, the last of his strength was spent, and he fell into a deep sleep.

He would not wake for six years.

---

The cottage hadn’t so much been difficult to find as difficult to notice. Assassin—and the lesser faerie subjects in the Ruined Country that she’d conscripted into service while Axel recuperated—had passed over it a dozen times at least without giving it a single thought. When Axel woke, he took it upon himself to join the search; he, too, spotted the cottage and immediately discounted it.

That was what caught his attention: the cottage was difficult to notice on purpose.

So he’d assumed the shape of an owl and scouted it out, as best he could, but the same spell that made the cottage slip from the mind made the occupants all but invisible. He was sure he’d seen them come and go, heard them bustling about inside, but he always just happened to be daydreaming or dozing off at the crucial moment.

Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have bothered himself with such a frustrating task, but waking to find that six whole years had passed without the prince pricking his finger had given him a case of nerves. The curse he’d cast was powerful in its simplicity, but the bumpkin faeries’ solution to it was also surprisingly elegant. The cottage was far from the epicenter of the curse, and distance demanded power. The curse would try its damnedest to reach the prince out here—more furiously the closer his fifteenth birthday drew—and with every league it expanded, it would consume more and more of Axel’s strength. He didn’t really think it would destroy him, but he wasn’t sure, and it was that lack of certainty that led him to risk his own dignity on finding the little tyke.

It was a sunny spring day when he finally got lucky.

He’d been watching the cottage for a day and a night—partly because his subjects were annoying him and partly because he legitimately had nothing better to do—when his owl ears picked up a commotion some distance away in the woods. It seemed to be a human voice, albeit a small one, raised as though in pitched battle. Curiosity piqued, Axel took flight and followed the sounds, gliding from branch to branch in the dense, sun-speared wood.

Soon enough, he came upon a babbling stream, and in it, golden-headed and mud-splashed, a babbling human child. Its shoes were off, its simple linen dress soaked and filthy, and it was swinging a stick wildly, beating back a briar on the opposing shore of the stream with heroic vigor.

Axel had never gotten a look at the babe in the crib, and he’d gained no proficiency in estimating the age of human children in the intervening years. This one might have been six, but then again, it might have been anywhere from four to twelve. He also couldn’t tell its sex; humans put all their children in dresses until they exited childhood.

But it was, overall, an auspicious place to find a child, being so close to the enchanted cottage, and though Axel didn’t know the little prince’s name (much to his chagrin), there were other ways of finding him out.

Axel glided down from his branch and landed on the ground some distance away from the child, where he wouldn’t be seen or overheard. He wrapped his wings around himself, murmured a few words, and transformed into a green-eyed fox, all black save for a white belly and a blush of red on the snout and between the ears. Carefully, making no noise at all, he crept from the shadows and approached the child, who had been defeated by the enemy briar and was sitting in the stream, picking up smooth rocks and splashing them down again with great delight.

Axel crept closer, and closer still. When he was within leaping distance of the child, he purposely stepped on a twig and snapped it loudly.

The child looked up, startled. It saw Axel. Its eyes were as blue as the sky and rapidly became as wide. Its little red mouth hung open. Its little white hands froze in midair, gripping two smooth stones, dripping water into the babbling stream. Axel tipped his head to the side and perked his ears.

“Hello?” the child whispered. It was, Axel considered, a rather brave thing to do.

“Hello,” said Axel.

Chapter 20: In Which the Prince Makes a Friend

Impossibly, the child’s eyes got even wider. The stones it had been playing with fell from its hands, splish-splash into the stream. Axel approached one step closer and turned his furry fox head the other way.

“What kind of a thing are you?” he asked.

“I’m a boy,” said the child—without any implication that Axel should already know. It was remarkably kind, for a human of his age. “And you’re a fox. Aren’t you?”

“I could be a fox,” said Axel. He came one step closer. “Do you have a name, boy?”

Here, for the first time, the boy grew wary. His enormous eyes narrowed, his posture tightened.

“My aunts said I wasn’t supposed to tell my name to anything in the woods,” he said.

Oh, yes. This boy had been raised by faeries, all right. Axel sat down and curled his big fluffy tail over his front paws.

“Well, you don’t have to tell it to me,” he said. “I was only asking if you had one.”

“Oh,” said the boy, relieved. “Yes, I have a name. But I can’t tell you what it is. Do you have a name?”

“Yes,” said Axel, smiling. “But I won’t tell you what it is. You can make up a name for me, if you like.”

The boy giggled. He crawled out of the stream and knelt on the bank, eye-level with Axel, though still too far to reach out his little white hands and grab any fur.

“I’ll call you Fox,” he decided.

“Then Fox I’ll be,” said Axel. “I’ll call you Prince.”

The boy laughed, delighted. “I’m not a prince!”

“Really? You look like a prince to me. Anyway, how do you know I’m a fox?”

“Because you’re a fox,” said the boy. “Do you want to play? I don’t have anybody to play with.”

Axel licked his chops. “Sure.”

“What do you want to play?”

“Let’s play… catch the fox!”

And he dashed into the shadowy wood.

The boy squealed and charged after him, crashing through the brush with reckless abandon. Axel could have lost him in an instant, but he stayed close, passing through columns of sunlight instead of around them, letting his tail poke from bushes and around the trunks of trees, weaving, waiting, darting away. The boy followed, single-minded and delighted. No matter how his guardians had warned him, they had also loved him; he’d lived all his little life never knowing anything that meant him harm.

It was a pity none of his aunts had gifted him with wisdom.

Deeper and deeper into the woods they went, straying from the paths and the bright places. The boy’s delight turned to determination, and very shortly thereafter to frustration. He called out wait, Fox! and stop it! and no fair! At last, when they were more than a mile from the stream, Axel hung back just enough for the boy’s little white hands to barely brush the furry tip of his tail.

Then he darted into the shadows and, from the boy’s perspective, disappeared entirely.

The boy shouted Fox! Fox! for a while, and crashed through the underbrush for a while, and finally—with some gentle nudging of the trees at Axel’s behest—stumbled out onto bluff where a single huge yew tree had left a clear line of sight over the woods.

Far away, like a rainstorm from a cloudless sky, like a lake caught halfway through exploding, like a great shining mirror—there rose the City of Glass.

Axel watched from the shadows as the boy forgot all about his pursuit and wandered, open-mouthed, beneath the boughs of the great yew. Wonder sparkled in his giant blue eyes—and better than wonder, longing.

With a self-satisfied swish of his bushy tail, Axel vanished into the wood.

---

For five years, Axel forgot all about the little prince, figuring that the power of his curse (and the indestructible, unstoppable forces of True Love, which could reach the prince when the curse couldn’t) would handle it from there. Besides that, there was unrest in the Ruined Kingdom, relict from when Axel had slept for more than half a decade. Some of his subjects were under the impression that they no longer needed him and might be better served ruling themselves. Axel was quick to disavow them of this notion, but they were a wily and stubborn bunch, and Axel and Assassin poured quite a bit of time into sniffing out and extinguishing all pockets of resistance. So for five years, the dungeons filled, the gallows creaked, the pikes on the ramparts were rarely without heads, and Axel had better things to do than worry about a golden-haired little boy out in the woods somewhere.

That is, until the curse started gnawing him.

He first noticed it during a rowdy bacchanal. Axel had long been known, by his subjects and by most of the faeries larking about the mortal world, to throw absolutely preposterous parties. They could last upwards of a fortnight if he was kept in the right mood, and featured pleasures so luscious that even the most dedicated hedonist might blush. Towards the end of the snuffing-out of the resistance in his kingdom, he developed a sudden hankering for such festivities and conjured them up on the spot, leaving friends and neighbors to drop in as they pleased.

He didn’t exactly hope Saïx would turn up, but he wouldn’t have objected to an opportunity to show off his masterwork to someone who would appreciate it—and better than appreciate it, be jealous of it. What was the point of building something enormous, if not to make somebody feel small?

Contrary to all experience, however, Axel partied for less than two days before he found himself longing for a nap.

No sooner had the thought congealed in his mind than it popped like a stopper and let out a flood of panic. He leapt from his window on the instant (leaving a very confused and rather wounded huldrekall behind) and transformed into a black falcon mid-fall; he flew straight across the land, hell-for-leather on a blistering wind, until he came to the kingdom of Soir and the City of Glass.

There, his worst fears were confirmed: the curse was still churning in the center of the castle, and the glass now extended well beyond the citadel walls. Not only had the little prince not cut his finger on a shard yet, the curse suspected he might never do it if it didn’t go out and get him.

Axel landed on a convenient fence post (still wood). He was light-headed. The wind gusted around him, ruffling his feathers, frustrated at being left so suddenly without direction. Axel shivered once before regaining control of himself.

All he had to do was get the prince into the city. He even knew where the boy was, or at least how to find him—and True Love was, for the moment, on his side. He had more than enough time and more than enough power, too.

For now.

It was fine. Everything was fine. How much trouble could one mortal boy be?

---

It took a fortnight of concerted effort just to find the cottage again.

Axel suspected his encounter with the prince hadn’t gone unnoticed by the boy’s faerie caretakers. Whether or not they knew who exactly their boy’s new friend was, they had shored up the defenses on the cottage to the extreme. The woods for a mile in any direction were filled with a forgetfulness, an idleness, and a carelessness, each of them misty and insubstantial on their own but damn near opaque when taken together. Even Axel, powerful and canny as he was, had more than once found himself wandering out of a particular patch of woods with all the moony mindlessness of a mortal man meeting his marital mate for the first time.

It wasn’t just frustrating. It was downright undignified.

Yet once again, there was a fatal flaw in the faeries’ foolery. The obscuring mists drew a perfect circle in the woods—as Axel discovered by monitoring his minions from a distance and marking the point at which they turned stupid—and he would’ve bet a great deal of gold that the cottage was located at the exact center of the circles. All he had to do, therefore, was wait at the border for something to stray out.

After another fortnight, something did.

---

It was singing this time, not battle-cries, but Axel still recognized the voice; not necessarily as the prince’s, but as young-human-alone-in-the-woods, and only a little more than a mile from the cottage, which was as good as certain. He transformed from a black owl—his best form for watching, listening, and waiting—and into the fox again, and padded through the underbrush with his ears pricked.

He found the prince—for of course, it was the prince—in a sunny glade, gathering blackberries from the bush while a gangly white foal tried everything to escape the halter securing it to a large oak.

The prince was much the same as he had been, if a little taller and better proportioned. The hair on his head was still golden, and his hands were still lily-white, though stained with the juice of ripe blackberries. He wore shirt and trousers, now, though there were no hairs upon his chin and his singing voice was high and clear and sweet as birdsong.

Still not yet a man, though it was coming. Axel guessed somewhere between eight and fifteen years old before he recalled that, of course, if he was indeed the prince of Soir, the boy was precisely eleven.

Axel crept closer through the underbrush. The white foal noticed him long before the prince did, pricking its ears and stiffening its knobbly knees and snorting up a storm.

“What’s wrong, Samurai?” the boy asked, though he didn’t look up from his gathering.

The foal snorted and stomped, tossing its head. Axel was tempted to give it a quick bite, just to see what would happen. He refrained, not least because he’d suffered enough indignity for a whole decade without being kicked in the head on top of it. Instead, he kept low, his white belly nearly scraping the ground, his eyes fixed on the prince.

Which was why the snare caught him completely by surprise.

The foal screamed. The prince jumped. Axel thrashed and snarled, dangling by his back leg a good three feet off the ground. So startled was he that, for a moment, he forgot his own power and succumbed to the instincts of his body, shouting obscenities and raking the air with his claws.

“Fox?!”

Axel stilled. He craned his neck around until he could see the prince, standing there staring at him in wonder—eyes as blue and as wide as the sky.

“What are you looking at?” Axel snapped. “Let me down from here!”

The prince took a step forward, half-extending a hand. “I thought… I thought I made you up. But you’re here. You’re real!”

“I’ll bite your hand off if you don’t let me down!”

A smile tugged the corner of the prince’s mouth. He stuffed it down, straightened his back and planted his fists on his hips.

“If I do,” he said, “you must promise not to run away again.”

“How dare you!” Axel cried, offended.

The prince shrugged. “If you don’t, I won’t let you down.”

A sliver of doubt entered Axel’s heart. Was this the boy who’d been gifted kindness at birth?

“You’d leave me here to die?” he demanded. “Oh, Prince, some friend you are.”

A light came on in the prince’s eyes. A breath of wonder eased into his lungs.

“It is you,” he said softly. “It really is… where did you go? Where have you been?”

“If you’d let me down, I could tell you,” Axel said.

Again the prince reached out, and again stopped. “First, promise me you won’t run away.”

Axel rolled his eyes so hard it spun him in a complete circle on the end of the snare.

“Fine, I promise I won’t run away if you let me down now.”

The promise leapt between them on a thin golden thread—invisible to the prince’s mortal eyes, as it existed only in the world-behind-the-world. As it did so, a barely-perceptible tremor ran through that secret space, like the skin of a drum vibrating in sympathy to the sound of a voice. Axel had never felt such a thing happen in conjunction with a promise before, and so assumed it to be unrelated.

The prince approached regardless. He took hold of the branch to which the snare was secured and pulled it down, lowering Axel onto the ground, and held it under his armpit while his gentle, lily-white hands freed the biting snare from around Axel’s leg. A warm wash of gratitude flowed through Axel—which he stamped out the moment he felt it. There was no call to go doting on the boy just for a little kindness. If he let the prince scratch him behind the ears, well, that was all part of the plot.

He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had been kind to him, which meant—Axel’s memory being what it was—that no one ever had been.

“How long has it been, Prince?” Axel asked. “You’re bigger than when I last saw you.”

“I don’t know,” said the prince. “A long time. I was just a boy when we met. I looked for you. My aunts told me I shouldn’t, but I did anyway.”

Axel snorted, ducking out of the prince’s attentions and slinking away, out of arm’s reach. He sat and curled his fluffy tail over his paws.

“And did you set traps for me, too?” he asked.

The prince shrugged, looking away. “I set traps for a lot of things. We have to eat. I’m sure you understand that.”

“I hunt,” Axel said haughtily. He couldn’t say I don’t set traps; he was setting one right now. He cast a cool look at the foal, which was quivering with agitation. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, this is Samurai!” the prince said, delighted. “He’s my birthday present. Isn’t he wonderful? They said I could ride him when he got big enough, in a year or two.”

“His legs are so long and his fur is so short,” Axel said, disapproving. “And where are his teeth? And what’s wrong with his tail? He doesn’t look wonderful at all.”

“I’m sure he’d make a terrible fox,” the prince allowed, “but then again, you’d make an awful horse.”

“I could be a horse!”

The prince laughed. He got to his feet and picked up his basket of blackberries. “You know, right after you ran away, last time—”

“I didn’t run away. You lost me.”

“Well, right after I lost you, I found something. A… a cliff with a huge tree, and you could see out over the whole forest, and way out in the distance, there was a great sparkling city. I was so lost….” He chuckled, shaking his head. “It’s a miracle nothing happened to me before my aunts found me. Anyway, I haven’t been able to find that place again. Do you know where it is?”

Ah. That would explain it. True Love must have been slacking. Axel flicked an ear and rolled his shoulders.

“I might,” he said. “What’s in it for me if I tell you?”

The prince frowned. “I could… hm. Well, what do you want?”

Axel smirked, got to his feet and stretched, all the way from his tail to his toes.

“Didn’t your aunts teach you that’s a dangerous question?” he said.

“I didn’t say I would give you whatever you wanted,” said the prince.

True; and now Axel couldn’t pretend he had, either. What he wanted, of course, was to get the boy into the City of Glass—but it was too big a task for so small a boon. What he needed was trust.

“Take down your snares,” he said.

The prince balked. “All of them?”

“All of them.”

“How will I catch game?”

“You could do it the right way: with your nose and your teeth and your claws.”

“Well… I’ll take down the snares. But after you’ve shown me the city. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Axel said. The accord, lighter and thinner than the promise, wafted between the two of them like gold spider-silk. Another faint tremor rolled through the world-behind-the-world—stronger than the last, surely unrelated to the current business. Axel yawned, showing his long pink tongue and all his white teeth. “It’s this way.”

---

“If you’re a fox,” the prince said, “why can you talk?”

“Why can you?” Axel shot back.

“Because I’m human. All humans talk. I’ve never met another talking fox.”

Axel stopped just short of pointing out that, technically, he’d never met another talking human, either. Now was not the time for earth-shattering revelations about the nature of the prince’s upbringing.

“How many not-talking foxes have you met?” Axel asked.

“Hm… well, none, I guess, but actually I’ve never met another talking animal at all, and I’ve seen plenty of animals. Calm down, Samurai, there’s nothing there.”

The three of them—Axel, the prince, and the prince’s horse—strolled leisurely through the forest. The horse, being the cleverer of the two mortals, remained thoroughly agitated about Axel’s presence, and kept trying to toss its head loose from the bridle. The prince held onto it, which was probably more fortunate for the horse than it was for Axel.

“Were you something else first, and got turned into a fox?” the prince asked keenly.

“No,” said Axel. He’d turned himself into a fox.

“Were you a man?” the prince pressed.

“Certainly not.” He’d only seemed to be a man.

“Because I’ve heard of people getting turned into animals. My aunts said there’s a wicked faerie who lives in a kingdom not far from here who’ll turn me into something wretched if I go wandering off alone.”

“Wicked?!” Axel cried. A yowl rose from his throat and bared his teeth. “They couldn’t possibly—!”

“Wait, you know him?” said the prince.

Like a warped glass window opening to show the vista beyond, Axel’s plan made itself clear in his head.

“Well, yes,” he said haughtily. “I’m a member of the Ruined Court. The Red Bandit is my master.”

If Axel couldn’t be said to be his own master, nobody could.

He was so pleased with this little turn of phrase, he didn’t notice that the prince and his horse had stopped in their tracks until he’d gone several yards ahead. Puzzled, he looked back over his shoulder. Now the boy was almost as wary and skittish as the horse.

“What?” said Axel.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you,” the prince said.

“Oh, come on. Have I ever hurt you?”

“You got me very lost.”

“Ah-ah! You got you lost. Not my fault you don’t know your way around the woods. Anyway, if I wanted to transfigure you into something horrible, I would’ve done it back at the blackberry bush, before you’d noticed me.”

“Maybe you don’t have the power to do that,” said the prince. “Maybe you’re taking me to your master so he can do it.”

“Do you really think the King of the Ruined Country has nothing better to do than turn people into beasts willy-nilly?” Axel demanded. “Everyone he’s transformed has deserved it, one way or another. Usually for trespassing or being rude or otherwise acting like a beast in the first place. It’s not like he does it just for sport.”

The sport was part of it, but it wasn’t just for sport.

“My aunts said he was very cruel.”

“Your aunts could tell you the sky was purple and you’d have to believe them,” Axel retorted.

The prince opened his mouth to answer—and stopped. He looked at his horse, chewing his lip, shuffling his feet. He turned back to Axel.

“If your master isn’t wicked,” he said cautiously, “why would my aunts tell me he is?”

“How should I know? I don’t know them.”

The prince considered some more. “Will you tell me about him?”

“Do you want the story, or do you want the overlook?”

“What would the story cost me?”

Axel’s tail swished as he fought down a smile. “A promise to keep me and everything I tell you a secret. To never whisper a word of it, even to a tree or a stream or a breath of wind.”

“That sounds fair. I promise never to speak of this meeting or anything you tell me.”

The magical contract leapt out between them, a snaring golden vine, heavier on the prince’s side than on Axel’s. It wrapped around each of their tongues and tied tight—a promise to speak, and a promise not to speak.

It was a deeply, gougingly uneven deal. Axel was quite pleased with it.

Just then, a third tremor, stronger still, rolled through the world-behind-the-world. The leaves on the trees shivered.

Unrelated. Obviously.

Axel stood up and shook himself. “Come on. Overlook’s not getting any closer with us just standing here. What do you want to know about old Flame-Tongue?”

---

Half an hour and several self-aggrandizing tales later, the three arrived at the overlook. The prince immediately forgot about Axel and almost forgot about the horse, tying it to a low branch without even looking at the knot. He wandered out to the edge of the overlook, spellbound. Axel sat down next to the horse and let the prince have his little moment.

“Rough gig,” he said to the horse. “You want out?”

The horse stamped its hooves and rolled its eyes and communicated, in every way available to it, how much it wanted to trample Axel into a sticky mat.

“Pass,” said Axel. He got up, shook himself, and meandered to the prince’s side.

“It’s real,” the prince was murmuring, tears in his eyes, hands clenched on the hem of his shirt. “It’s really real.”

“Yes,” said Axel.

“What is it?”

“These days they call it the City of Glass. It used to have a different name, but it’s gone out of style.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Axel, for the first time in a while, really looked at the city in the distance. Come to think of it, it was beautiful, even (or maybe especially) with the curse sticking black and straight out of its heart.

As the two of them watched, something happened.

Axel felt it before he heard it, heard it before he saw it: a tremendous blow, a catastrophic force, crashing through the world-behind and straight into the first world, a deluge in reverse, time catching up with the half-exploded lake, fractal rainbows, a pillar of a hundred million glass shards blasting into the blue sky, higher even than the blunt end of the curse, and the trees of the forest flattening, and the prince gasping, and a sound like every word ever spoken bearing down on them at once—

And the shockwave hit.

---

“Fox. Fox!”

Axel groaned and pried his eyes open. He was lying on the ground. His whole little fox body ached. His vision swam. His ears were filled with ringing and whispers, too distant and too numerous to decipher.

The prince was leaning over him, and there was something wrong with his eye.

“You’re alive,” the prince said, with palpable relief. “Are you all right?”

Axel checked himself. The body was a little banged up, his essence likewise, but nothing that a good sleep wouldn’t heal. He raised his head and looked past the prince.

The City of Glass was sparkling shrapnel in the distance. The explosion had defoliated the trees for a mile in every direction, snowed down glittering powder for another mile after that, but none of the fallout had reached them here. The curse had been knocked off-kilter by the tremendous force of… whatever had done this.

Because despite the obvious utility of an entire city of broken glass, it hadn’t been the curse’s doing. The expenditure of force was too great. If the curse had pulled that much power, it would have killed Axel outright.

Could it have been True Love? That seemed the logical answer, and yet Axel found himself disinclined to believe it. True Love had always, in his experience, used human hands to do its slaughtering. Furthermore, a blade that could cut through anything never needed to expend much force. Whatever had struck the City of Glass, it had been a blunt instrument, wielded by no one.

“I’ll live,” Axel said, picking himself up gingerly. “You?”

“I…” The prince hesitated. He winced, squinting his wrong-eye, and shook his head. “I don’t know. It felt like—I thought something hit me, but it seems all right now. Except… I don’t know. Things look… different.”

Panic shot through Axel’s chest, but he quickly quelled it. If the prince could see the world-behind-the-world, they wouldn’t have been talking so cordially. He certainly wouldn’t have called Axel Fox.

“Fox,” the prince entreated, “what happened?”

The whispers surged in volume for a moment. Axel shook his head, trying to rid himself of them like biting flies. They quieted, but didn’t leave. Even in the world-behind, he couldn’t see where they were coming from, and it was starting to unsettle him.

“I don’t know,” Axel said slowly. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Could we go and find out? People might need help.”

Axel tore his eyes from the ruins of the City of Glass. The prince was kneeling next to him, a look of stoic worry on his cherubic face. Warmth stole through Axel’s chest, unwanted but, for the moment, unheeded.

“Sweet Prince,” he sighed. “There’s nothing anyone can do for them now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything in the city was turned to glass. Every-one, too.”

The prince looked like he might be ill. He looked over his shoulder at the scintillating ruins.

“Everyone?” he said thinly.

Axel looked someplace else. It was hard to focus with the whispers nibbling at the edges of his consciousness. He noticed, for the first time, what was missing from the scene.

“Where’s your horse?” he asked.

The prince got ahold of himself. He sighed and hung his head.

“I don’t know. I think he ran away when….”

“Well, he shouldn’t be too hard to find,” said Axel. “Very distinctive smell.”

“If only I had a nose like yours.”

On a different day, Axel might have taken the opportunity to turn the little prince into something with a snout. But today, the prince had freed him from a snare, listened to his stories, and, most importantly, stayed with him when he might have been wounded rather than chasing after his precious horse. That was more than an everyday kindness.

“You can borrow mine,” Axel said. “Until we find your horse.”

The prince almost smiled. “What would it cost me?”

“Nothing,” said Axel. “But just this once.”

Chapter 21: In Which the Prince Incurs a Debt

They found the horse frothing and quivering in a thicket where its halter had gotten tangled. It rolled its eyes and tossed its head and stomped its hooves, and the prince forgot about everything else in the world as he eased towards it, speaking soothing words with his lily-white hands outstretched.

Axel knew an opportunity when he saw one. While the boy was distracted, he slipped away into the woods—not running, of course—and, when he was far enough away, transformed into a raven to fly home.

He wasn’t sure if it was idle curiosity or the subliminal messages of the whispers that caused him to turn towards the City of Glass as soon as he cleared the treetops.

---

The destruction was absolute. Not only had the city and all its occupants turned to so much sparkling rubble, but the land for miles around had been cut to ribbons by the explosion. Even the curse was severely gouged. Scavengers picked at the corpses, and Axel’s body twinged with discomfort from what his faerie mind knew; that soon the scavengers too would die, because of all the glass they were eating.

He returned to the Ruined Kingdom—now looking ship-shape by comparison—and immediately locked himself in his highest tower, refusing to see even Assassin. He assumed the form of a man, his best body for thinking furious, frightened thoughts.

The whispers followed him there, too, their incalculable distance and sourceless volume unchanged.

In all his centuries in the mortal world, he’d never seen such a thing. Indeed, even the uncounted time he’d lived in the deepest, darkest, behindest parts of the world-behind could provide no precedent. This disaster—attack?—had come from nowhere, with only the barest sliver of a warning. He’d perceived no effort on the part of any caster, which was in some ways a relief; then again, he couldn’t convince himself that it was some sort of natural phenomenon, because the only consistent impression he got, pervading all his senses but especially his ears, was a subtle and utterly unshakable sense of wrongness.

Something more than the city had broken. Whatever had happened, it was not of this world—and it was not of the world-behind-the-world, either.

Axel was, by nearly every metric, powerful. He couldn’t be called the most powerful—that plaudit went to the three Great Ladies of the Wood—but he was head and shoulders above the vast majority of faeries, so it was almost unheard-of for him to encounter anything bigger than himself.

For the first time since he’d hatched, he found himself feeling exceptionally small.

Axel forced himself to stand still, to defy the impulses of his human shape and think rather than feel. He considered attempting to contact one of the Great Ladies of the Wood—if anyone knew what was happening, it would be them—but decided against it. One of them had an inexplicable grudge against him, the second had already given him a gift far beyond his means to repay, and he hadn’t heard from the third in centuries. No, there had to be a way to figure out what had happened, and where it had come from, and why it had come here.

And of course, there was the small matter of the prince and the curse. Things were looking promising, what with the acres of shattered glass lying around and the prince’s foolhardy desire to help and whatever secret machinations True Love was up to in the background, but things were also getting stranger by the day, and it never paid to get complacent.

Still, he had four more years to figure it out. Plenty of time.

---

That year, Axel started dreaming.

He had never dreamed before, and to his knowledge—which was vast—no other faerie had, either. Yet the dreams came, creeping through his sleeping hours and leaving only footprints for him to find upon waking. Most often he only remembered voices. One of the most prominent was his own.

The other, worryingly, was the prince’s.

The snatches he caught and remembered were baffling at best, frightening at worst. They used a variety of languages, some archaic, some modern, some a twisting perversion that was well nigh gibberish; they spoke in tones that filled him with longing and other feelings that were too alien for him to name; they felt like memories and premonitions both at once, known and unknowable, impossible and completely real, and they opened his mind to something that was so far beyond his understanding that he’d never before so much as imagined it.

What if there was another world, invisible to even his prodigious senses, behind the world-behind-the-world?

And if there were three worlds, why not four? Why not an uncountable number, stretching onion-shell out to infinite expanses and each filled with wonders and horrors so utterly incomprehensible—

At that point, Axel turned himself into a little black cat and had a lie-down. Cats were good at perspective, and exceptionally good at lying down.

The point, he surmised eventually, was that he was hearing the prince’s voice in his new dreams. That was graspable. He might not yet understand why, but it felt like the sort of thing he could figure out. He’d want to check up on the prince anyway, just to make sure the job got done—and, indeed, having never cast a curse of such immense magnitude before, he couldn’t say for certain that this wasn’t all just a side-effect. Once the prince was interred in his True-Love-waiting sleep, either everything would go back to normal, or Axel would have a couple centuries to figure it all out. This was such a reassuring thought that he refused absolutely to think on the matter any further.

For a while, at least.

---

—these weird pauses. Mostly. Everybody just stops and waits even though—

Axel snapped awake in a sunbeam, gasping for breath. The dream echoed in his spinning head. His body panicked, his essence struggling to keep its shape. All he knew, in that first moment of waking, was that he was dying, bleeding out from a wound he could neither see nor feel.

When his thinking mind caught up, the prognosis wasn’t much better: the curse had its teeth in his throat, and it wasn’t going to let go.

Three years, eleven months, and twenty-eight days had passed since the Glass Disaster, and the prince had yet to cut his finger.

Leaping up into the shape of a raven, Axel called for Assassin. She came at once. He gave his orders swiftly and concisely before hurling himself from the window to personally join the effort.

Moments later, every subject in his kingdom was flooding out into the world with the sole purpose of finding the prince.

---

It should have been no surprise that Axel found the boy first; he was first off the mark, and, moreover, knew the prince and his haunts better than any of his subjects. He flew straight to the forest, to the edge of the enchanted radius around the cottage, which—in clear demonstration that the prince had gone beyond his promise and not so much as implied anything about Axel to his faerie aunts—was much unchanged since the last time Axel had been here.

If he’d been thinking clearly, he might not have ordered all his subjects out on a search so easily accomplished by himself, but despite his eight centuries in the mortal realm the passage of time still occasionally startled him, and he was deeply out of sorts from the vampirism of the curse. He had also thought, or hoped, or assumed, that the curse would work itself out now that the City of Glass was shattered and the prince knew about it.

But of course, for the curse to make the prince go to the City of Glass, it had to reach him, and he was very far away. Where the hell True Love was, and why it hadn’t stepped in, Axel didn’t have time to ponder.

He was just coming down from his panic, just starting to think clearly, when, with a thunder of hooves and a crashing of branches, a white horse burst from the enchantments around the cottage and out into the woods with the prince astride it, riding bareback and bridle-less. Axel scrambled to follow while the whispers filled his ears.

Through grove and glade, brush and bramble the horse charged, with Axel dodging trunks and branches as he flew full-tilt to keep up. Through the roar of wind and whispers, he couldn’t hear a thing, but his sharp raven nose could smell tears. He might have to follow that scent, because try as he might, he couldn’t keep up with the horse.

Not with the curse bleeding him dry.

In a fit of desperation, Axel spit a spell into the woods ahead of the horse just before it crashed out of his line of sight.

Moments later, he heard an awful snap, a scream, and a very loud thud.

On aching wings, he glided down to the forest floor, and with rather more effort than he was accustomed to, transformed into the fox. On silent paws, he crept towards the sounds of labored breathing and, quieter, crying.

He found the prince and his horse not far from where he’d flung the spell. The horse was lying on the ground, heaving and frothing and rolling its eyes, one of its forelegs very clearly broken. The prince knelt next to it, petting its head, unable to even murmur any comforts through the two-handed choking grasp of some mortal emotion that Axel had no frame of reference for.

But looking at the prince, with the whispers clamoring in his ears, he felt a twinge of something, deep and miserable in his belly.

He slunk from the underbrush, stepping out into full view and going utterly unnoticed. The horse was dying of shock; the boy was shocked senseless.

“Sweet Prince,” Axel said softly, “why are you crying?”

The prince’s head snapped up. His sky-blue eyes were stained pink. His lip was bloodied. His face was blotchy and red and wet with tears.

“I—it was an accident,” he choked out. His voice had dropped in the intervening years. “They—my aunts—they’re not my aunts, they told me—and I didn’t want—I ran, I didn’t see—and Samurai—he’s—he—”

“He’s dying,” Axel said.

The prince moaned and buried his face in the horse’s thick, quivering neck. He was destitute, demolished, utterly undone. Clearly there had been some kind of falling out with his faerie guardians.

Perfect.

Even as Axel thought it, another twinge caught him through the chest and stomach. He put it down to the gnawing action of the curse.

“My master could save him,” Axel offered.

The prince raised his head. There was a terrible hope on his face.

“Your… your master? The…?”

“King of the Ruined Country, one and the same,” said Axel. “A broken leg should be nothing to him. But it would be better if you pleaded your case to him in person.”

The prince was on his feet in an instant. “Take me. Please. I—I don’t know how to repay you, but—”

“We’ll discuss it later,” said Axel. “This way.”

He darted off into the woods. The prince followed. As soon as they were out of sight of the horse, Axel spit another spell over his shoulder to mend the broken leg; it would be easier to break it again later, if needed, than it would be to bring the horse back, and the horse certainly wouldn’t survive more than a few hours with its leg in that state.

Even that little spell caused a noticeable dip in Axel’s reserves of power.

So the two of them, Fox and Prince, one knowing the beloved horse was fine and the other certain it was dying, hurried through the wood and into the Ruined Country.

---

It had been a great city, once; little was left but the walls and, at the center, the walled castle. Most of the buildings had been reduced to charcoal, dust, and rubble, though the stencil lines of the streets still cut through straightly enough, and inside the city proper no enterprising vegetation had been permitted to take over the scorched earth. On an ordinary day, it would be chittering and glittering with Axel’s subjects—today, however, as they were all out searching fruitlessly for the prince, it was eerily silent.

Axel rather liked the effect. The part of him that was in his right faerie mind considered disposing of his subjects altogether in order to keep it this way.

He padded through the streets as a fox, making a show of alertness, while the prince, too exhausted to weep but still thoroughly distraught, staggered along behind him. It was a good half-day’s journey from the cottage to the Kingdom on foot, and the two of them had made it without stopping for rest.

At the castle walls, before the smashed-in gate, Axel stopped and turned back.

“You’ll find him inside, at the top of the highest tower,” he said, keeping his voice hushed.

“You… you’re not coming with me?” the prince said. His split lip started to quiver.

Axel shook his head. “Now listen carefully: you must remember three things. Are you listening?”

The prince took a deep breath and nodded.

“First: you must show the utmost respect,” Axel said. “He is a king, after all, and more powerful than any of your mortal monarchs. Rudeness will get you transfigured. Do you understand?”

“Show respect, don’t be rude,” said the prince, frowning in concentration. “I understand.”

“Second: ask only for what you want. Don’t even imply that you might be asking for something else. That includes any of that oh-if-only foolishness you mortals love to pull. Understand?”

“Ask only for what I want,” the prince said. “Understood.”

“Third—and this is the most important one: don’t tell him I brought you here.”

The prince balked. “Why not?”

Because Axel wanted to see if he’d do it, mostly.

“He’s not a big fan of mortals,” Axel said. “It’s anybody’s guess what he’d do if he found out one of his subjects brought one to his doorstep.”

Entirely true; Axel himself didn’t know what he’d do if one of his subjects dared to show a random man into his castle.

Pain crossed the prince’s face. He swallowed and nodded again. “I won’t say a word.”

“Good,” said Axel. “Now go.”

The prince steeled himself, then strode through the gates of the Ruined Castle. All things considered, it was a brave thing to do.

And if Axel listened closely, the prince’s footsteps carried a strange echo, and more whispers, phrases he could almost pick out, and along with them, a deep and gut-wrenching feeling of….

Axel wasn’t sure what it was. Apart from the twinges in the woods earlier that day, he’d never felt it before.

There was no time to interrogate it. The second the prince was in the front door, Axel dashed around the corner, transformed into a raven, and flew up to the highest tower, where he transformed into a man. Changing twice in quick succession left him ragged around the edges—the curse was really doing a number on him—but fortunately the castle was large and winding and he had a few minutes to neaten himself up while the prince struggled to find the highest tower. Assassin, loyal as ever, wasn’t there, still out dutifully searching with the rest of Axel’s subjects.

All alone in an empty room, Axel had nothing to distract him from the whispers.

They were just so tantalizingly close. He could make out words and phrases in his dreams, so why not during his waking hours? He felt certain that, if he could just hear them properly, the whole uncomfortable mystery would unravel itself—and Axel would gain an understanding so profound that he might even have some leverage over the Great Ladies of the Wood.

Consonants here, sibilants there. Axel leaned his cheek on two knuckles and closed his eyes. If he could just focus—if he could just pick one out—if only they wouldn’t all speak at once! He stopped down his body’s breathing and heartbeat to hear better, and for a second time liked the silence of his empty kingdom better than its typical bustle. He focused all his prodigious will on just listening.

—looked over the side, but I’ve never—

—when he fails to rescue you from—

—nothing he can do to me out there—

The sound of a footstep on stone was deafening.

Axel snapped back into himself. The prince was standing in the doorway, his sky-blue eyes enormous, his peasant’s clothes dirty from the long journey, his face pale and his golden hair tousled and his little red mouth hanging open. Frozen. Utterly frozen at the sight of Axel.

“Well?” Axel demanded—more curt than he’d intended to be when he left the prince downstairs.

The prince recovered his faculties. He came two steps into the room, hesitated, then knelt, head bowed, one forearm braced on his knee.

“Your Majesty,” he croaked. “I—I have traveled many leagues to find you. I would… I would request your aid, if you will tell me the price of it.”

Axel’s sour mood evaporated on the instant. He reclined on his throne, throwing a leg over the arm and kicking his foot. The prince made a pretty picture, kneeling at his feet.

“What’s your name, boy?” Axel asked.

The prince’s hands clenched. He let out a slow breath.

“My friends call me Prince,” he said.

“Oh?” said Axel, amused. “Are you a prince?”

The fists clenched tighter. “Apparently.”

Interesting. “And do you have a lot of friends?”

The golden head twitched, like he wanted to glare at Axel and wasn’t letting himself do it. Axel could just about read the thoughts scrawled on the inside of his skull: show respect, show respect, show the utmost respect.

“At least one,” the prince said.

“I see. What brought you to my doorstep, of all places?”

“I heard legends of you and your power,” the prince said, and he was so smooth about it. “I sought you out because of it.”

“Don’t lie,” Axel said sharply, though really it was all he could do to keep from wriggling in delight. “What brought you here?”

“Your Majesty, I speak truthfully,” the prince said. His voice shook, but he kept it together. “I’d heard of your great power. I sought you out because of it.”

“Hm. You’re a curious one, little Prince. Who taught you to tell the truth like that?”

“My—” He cut himself off, and oh, the rage in him. His lip curled on the words: “I was raised by three guardians who could not lie.”

“Fascinating,” said Axel, who knew all of this already. “In fact, you’re so interesting that I’ll hear your request. What do you want, little Prince?”

The prince took another deep breath, and again Axel saw his thoughts clear as day: ask only for what you want, and nothing else.

“My horse broke its leg in the woods,” he said. “I would have the leg mended, but I won’t ask you to do it until I know what the price would be.”

“Oh, you were raised by faeries,” Axel purred.

The prince went taut all over. His head was bent, so Axel couldn’t see if his eyes were filling with tears, but he guessed so.

“Is the horse much beloved to you?” Axel asked.

“Yes,” said the prince.

“And was the breaking of its leg your fault?”

The prince swallowed, and said much quieter: “Yes.”

“How long have you journeyed to find me here?”

“Half a day, Your Majesty.”

“Hm. Hmmm. Well, left that long with a broken leg, any horse would doubtless be dead by now.”

He couldn’t have wounded the boy more if he’d struck him with lightning. “So you can’t—”

“Silence,” said Axel.

The prince was silent.

“I didn’t say I couldn’t,” Axel went on softly. “But it will raise the price, and you will have to change your request. Tell me again, Prince: what do you want?”

“I… I want my horse alive and well and whole.”

“Done,” Axel said—because of course it was done, and had been done for half a day.

But the prince didn’t know that. He looked up at Axel—at Axel’s beautiful human body—with a mixture of awe and terror and the blossoming insanity of young mortal attraction. Instantly, Axel wanted nothing more than to be looked at just like that for the rest of Time; he’d been feared, adored, groveled to and fawned over and lusted after, but he had never been worshiped before and thought he could never get enough of it.

This was his boy now. How exactly he intended to prevent curse or kingdom from claiming him, he didn’t yet know, but that was a mere trifle. Even so rudely drained of power by the starving machinations of the curse, Axel was a king. If he wanted something, it was his; it was that simple.

“I…” the prince stammered, “I didn’t….”

“No, you didn’t get the price in advance,” Axel said. “But despite what legend may have told you, I’m not so wicked as all that. My price for returning your horse to you alive and well is this: travel to the City of Glass and bring me back a shard of its king before the next sunset.” That would give a full day of wiggle room in case something went wrong. “Do this, and your debt is paid in full.”

“Your Majesty, I couldn’t possibly travel all the way there and back in a day,” the prince objected. “I—I would ask for more time.”

“Would you?” said Axel. “You can’t have it.”

At this point, most humans would have said: then I need a way to get there faster, and Axel would have said: you got it, and turned them into something with feathers or fur.

But the prince said: “Then I would need my horse.”

“Oh, that could be done easily enough.” Not by Axel, not today, but someone could have done it easily.

“What would you ask in return?” the prince said heavily.

Axel considered only a moment, for all the while the wheels of his mind had been turning.

“A kiss,” he said. “Your first kiss.”

The prince’s face couldn’t decide whether to blanch or flush, and became charmingly blotchy in the fight. Unsteadily, he started to rise.

“Not now,” Axel said, laughing. “Silly Prince. Is that price agreeable to you?”

“It is,” said the prince, with a little crack in his voice.

“Then go. Your horse is getting bored.”

And that must have been true, because Axel felt no drain on his power as he said it. Doubtless the horse would be quite startled when it arrived here, but they were simple creatures. In the time it took the prince to work his way back out of the castle, it might get bored again.

The prince bowed his head low. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

He rose, backed out of the room, and fled down the stairs.

Axel wasted no time. First, he opened a doorway through the world-behind-the-world, which was larger than the first world and more flexible, and therefore could be folded at convenience to bring two distant points close together. The horse—standing around munching on leaves—heard its master hollering from Axel’s castle and leapt straight through the doorway, crossing twenty leagues in a single bound to land in the courtyard outside.

Axel let the doorway slam closed behind it and collapsed on his throne, gasping for breath and shaking. A spell like that should have been nothing to him, and yet he was almost undone by it. It was pitiful and infuriating and he was scared.

It would all be fine. With the prince charging headlong towards the City of Glass on a mission to sift through its contents, the curse wouldn’t have to work so hard—soon enough, either it would see itself through or True Love would finally get off its ass and do the damn thing, and then Axel would have all the time in the world to figure out how to get his boy back.

Because, of course, since Axel had laid claim to the prince’s first kiss, no True Love could wake him with one until Axel allowed it.

Oh, the cleverness of me, he thought, and found it a charming turn of phrase.

Distantly, through the open window, Axel heard the prince calling Fox! Fox! Just like old times. Much as Axel would have liked to accompany him, he was too exhausted to manage the transformation, let alone the journey. Not that it mattered: he’d know the moment the prince pricked his finger.

But too much had gone awry already for Axel to be entirely content with that. He heaved himself to his feet and crossed to the window.

“Assassin,” he said.

With another twist of the fabric of the worlds, she was there, flustered and a little dizzy but always happy to see him. It was the one permanent magic he had gifted her: the power to hear him wherever he was, and come whenever he called.

“Hello, sweet,” he praised her, and kissed her head and scratched her beak.

“Hello, sweet!” she cooed, preening under the attention.

“Your eye is mine,” Axel murmured, and saying so, he plucked out her right eye and tucked it under his sharp black fingernail.

Assassin hardly noticed; certainly she felt no pain.

“My eye is yours,” Axel said. His right eye shrank down and fell out of its socket. He caught it gently and fixed it in Assassin’s head. Assassin croaked and shook herself, but Axel soothed her until she got used to it.

“Follow the golden-haired boy on the horse,” Axel told her. “I’ll be with you the whole way.”

“Pretty bird,” she said, and ks!

Obligingly, Axel kissed her head one last time. She puffed up, cawed once, and flew out the window. She spotted the prince quickly and took up a high vantage point on the hurrying wind to keep up with him, watching with her own eye and Axel’s, too.

Axel returned to his throne—carefully, for having his vision split in such a way could lead to bruised knees—and settled in to watch.

---

It was at least half a day’s journey to the City of Glass, even at the prince’s breakneck pace, and so it was only to be expected that Axel would nod off once or twice during his vigil. He dreamed, and in his dreams he saw only darkness while the ever-present whispers spoke to him: of things so familiar they could have been memories, and of things so strange they were beyond his imagining; of kings and dukes, of weird magics, of impossible ships and roaring horses; of fine slippers that stirred up such feelings of dread in him that he woke in a cold sweat.

He was alone in his high tower room, and he was also perched in a tree about sixty paces behind his prince.

Whose path was barred by a knight in white armor.

Axel sat bolt upright. He stuck a finger in his ear and, though it cost him power he could scarcely spare, declared: “My eyes can hear!”

“—must go to the City of Glass,” the prince was entreating. “It’s urgent.”

“And I’m telling you,” the knight—a woman—retorted, “you must not go to the City of Glass under any circumstances.”

“Why not?” the prince cried, in utter distress.

“Are you or are you not Prince Roxas of Soir?” the knight demanded.

Despite everything, a thrill ran through Axel. He had the boy’s name. He had everything.

“Who are you to ask?” Prince Roxas retorted to the knight.

She took off her helmet, revealing a cascade of platinum-blonde hair and a surly expression that was passing familiar.

“Princess Naminé of Oubli,” she said. “We were betrothed as children, and though your father is dead, my father never called off the engagement. Your faerie godmothers found me and told me you had run away and that the Red Bandit was after you. Roxas, you must not go to the City of Glass before sunset on your fifteenth birthday. You are a cursed man.”

“I will be, if you won’t let me by,” he snapped—then, remembering himself, added: “Your Highness.”

“Try to pass me, and I will tie your hands and carry you to Oubli on the back of my horse,” Princess Naminé said. “After your fifteenth birthday, you may do whatever you want; until then, I am duty-bound to stop you.”

“If my father is dead,” Roxas said, “then I’m king now, and I order you to stand aside.”

“I’m trying to help you, Roxas,” Naminé said.

Roxas’ horse tossed its head and danced in place. Princess Naminé’s horse regarded it with the cool impassivity of a trained warrior. The princess was in full plate armor, and wore it as if it weighed nothing. Roxas was clad in peasant’s clothes, hadn’t slept in two days, and didn’t even carry a weapon.

There was no way he was making it past her.

Roxas charged her anyway. She unhorsed him so fast that his horse didn’t even notice and galloped off into the woods without him. Roxas hit the ground with a solid oomph. Naminé reigned in her steed and dismounted, pulled a length of rope from her bags while Roxas lay wheezing on the ground.

“You’ll thank me for this later,” she said.

In his tower room ten leagues away, Axel got to his feet. Roxas must have made it almost to the borders of the City of Glass, because the curse wasn’t having to work nearly as hard—some of Axel’s strength had returned. The moment Naminé started hauling Roxas back to her own kingdom, that would change. Axel had to move fast.

He whispered a command to the one creature in the world that could hear him wherever he was.

“Go to the City of Glass.”

Assassin leapt from her branch and into the sky. The last Axel saw of Roxas and Naminé, the one was being hog-tied by the other, though struggling admirably. Axel willed him to keep it up.

Assassin cleared the treetops and revealed that, indeed, they were hardly a quarter-mile from the outskirts of the shattered city. Axel directed her to land at the border. When she was settled, he gathered himself.

Less than a day ago, opening a doorway across ten leagues had almost killed him. Now, the distance was slightly shorter and he had a stronger anchor in Assassin—but the curse had also been chewing through him during the whole intervening time.

He wasn’t sure he would survive doing this.

He was sure he wouldn’t survive not doing it.

With a yank and a heave and a sharp-edged phrase, Axel folded the world behind his tower up against the world behind Assassin, punched a hole in either side, and flung himself through.

For reasons that wouldn’t come clear to him until much later, he landed on the other side as a fox.

Assassin took off in startlement, but quickly flew down to check on him—whether to see if he was all right or to see if he was dead enough to start eating, Axel couldn’t have said. He butted his head against hers and yipped a word to get his eye back, shaking himself to make it fit in the fox’s socket. Assassin’s eye was still under one of his claws, and he tucked it back in place more or less gently.

Shortly after, a tremor and a weakness chased through him. The great shattered field of the City of Glass jittered—and the black javelin of the curse at its center buzzed and snarled. The grass under Axel’s feet turned translucent and brittle, a slow wave washing west towards the kingdom of Oubli.

Naminé had gotten Roxas on the horse, and she was riding.

Axel rolled around in the vitrifying grass until his ruff sparkled, then leapt to his feet and charged into the woods. Assassin followed close behind.

“Find them!” Axel barked at her. “Slow them down if you can!”

With a croak, she swooped upwards and disappeared over the trees. Axel ran as though his life depended on it.

Which, at this point, it did.

---

Trees flashed past, sun and shade, brush and bramble. Axel’s body withered around him as the curse drained him drier and drier. His fox ears picked up a commotion ahead, raised voices of human and horse and raven. His heart leapt. He ran on.

He crashed out onto the path, where Princess Naminé sat astride her chuffing, dancing horse, clutching the reins in one hand and guarding her face with the other; where Assassin swooped at her eyes over and over, croaking and cawing; where Roxas lay draped over the back of Naminé’s horse, bound to himself but not the saddle, jostled and miserable. His golden hair shone like a second sun in the dappled wood.

“Prince!” Axel called desperately.

Roxas’ head snapped up. His sky-blue eyes went wide.

“Fox!” he cried, and threw himself off the back of Naminé’s horse.

Chapter 22: In Which the Curse Sees Itself Through

Roxas landed with a thump. Princess Naminé, armed and armored, wheeled her horse around. Assassin swooped at her face again—then, in a stroke of brilliance, at the horse’s face.

The horse panicked, throwing its head and dancing back and whinnying. Naminé struggled to get it under control. Roxas, on the ground, pulled himself upright. His hands were bound together in front of him. Axel ran to him.

“Prince,” he said, breathless. The curse was eating him alive. He hardly had the energy to speak.

“Keep away from that thing!” Naminé shouted, still fighting her horse for control as Assassin harried them both.

“You’re here,” Roxas said. His eyes were full of tears. “You found me, you’re here.”

“I’m here,” said Axel. He came even closer, stepping his front paws onto Roxas’ knees. Awash with relief, Roxas buried his fingers in the thick black fur of Axel’s ruff.

And the one shard of glass still embedded in it.

Axel felt the curse go off, felt it like a bowstring snapping, a chain breaking, a stone cloak cast off. Power flooded back into him as the curse dutifully returned everything it no longer needed. Above him, Roxas’ eyes came unfocused. Naminé was leaping off her horse in slow-motion.

“I seem a man,” Axel murmured.

His form billowed upwards in the cloak of midnight, from being clutched in lily-white hands to holding poor little fading Roxas in the crook of his marble arm. Faint surprise registered on the boy’s face even with the curse hauling him under. Axel smiled and leaned down and spoke in his ear.

“Good night, sweet Prince,” he said.

Roxas’ eyes fell closed. He went limp.

Naminé swung her sword at Axel’s head.

He caught it one-handed.

“Now, now,” he said, while her arms trembled and the first inklings of terror danced behind her eyes. “That’s not very nice.”

“Let go of him, foul creature,” she commanded. “Or I will strike this blade through your shriveled heart.”

“You have no blade,” said Axel.

Steel turned to sand in his grip. Princess Naminé staggered as the force of her swing expended itself in air. She recovered her balance in a single step, drew a dagger from somewhere and lunged at Axel again. This time, he caught her by the breastplate. The dagger crumpled like paper when it met his skin—no blade there, either.

“Tell me honestly,” Axel said, “what did you think was going to happen?”

She said nothing, staring at him with that fiendish mixture of fury and fear that was peculiar to knights in shining armor.

Axel hated knights in shining armor. It was baked into his bones from birth.

“Did you think you’d outrun my curse?” he taunted. “Drag him back home and fall in love? He’s mine, Your Highness. Mine.”

“You haven’t won,” said Princess Naminé.

“But the game is over,” said Axel. “You know, I remember you, Princess Naminé.”

Fear won out over fury—she knew enough to know it was bad that he had her name. Not her whole name, but enough of it. She tried to push away from him to absolutely no avail. He was strong again, stronger than trees and stone, and she was only mortal.

“I remember,” Axel said, “what I thought about you. Do you know what I thought?”

“Unhand me!” she said, struggling.

“I thought you’d look good in fur,” he said. “You’re a wolf, Naminé.”

And the world rearranged itself to make it true.

The transformation was fast, but not instantaneous. Axel let go as the armor split, the clothes tore—he was cruel, after all, not wicked. By the time Princess Naminé hit the ground, she was fur all over. By the time she scrambled back to her feet, she no longer stood on two legs.

By the time she looked back at Axel, she was a white wolf.

“Much better!” Axel said.

She lunged for his throat. He batted her away with the back of his hand. She slammed into a tree with a harsh yelp, crumpled to the ground, lay stunned. Axel knelt next to her with Roxas, still bound, in his arms.

“Two things,” he murmured. “And listen closely. Are you listening, Princess?”

Her ear twitched.

“Good. First: there is a way to turn yourself back.” The whispers surged in his ears, and though he hadn’t quite intended to, he continued: “The moment another mortal calls you by your name, you will be human again. No sooner, no later.”

Her breathing was heavy. Her eyes—human-blue—wandered vaguely over the forest. Axel laid Roxas down next to her.

“Second: watch Roxas for me. I have some business to attend to on your behalf.” Here, just for a moment, his smile turned truly wicked. “Since you want to be heir to a ruined kingdom so badly.”

Naminé was too stunned and too lupine to respond. Axel rose, dusted off his hands, and turned towards the kingdom of Oubli.

---

He dropped into the center of the courtyard as a bolt of black lightning. People scattered in all directions, toppling banners and banquet tables, trampling games, tearing their fine party clothes. Axel resumed his man shape, holding a snarling whirlwind around himself to billow his midnight cloak.

“SO YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD RUIN ME?” he roared, shivering the flagstones with his true voice.

Someone screamed for the guards. Axel smote them with a spell hurled like a dagger through their throat. More screams, fools in frippery fleeing for the castle, guards from the garrison galloping for Axel. Axel clutched the ruby clasp at his throat and ratcheted the whirlwind up another notch.

“THEN LET ME REMIND YOU,” he thundered, “WHO EXACTLY YOU’RE DEALING WITH!”

The guards lowered their pikes and charged him. The nobles swarmed like ants in a kicked hill. Arrows spat from the castle’s turrets and walls.

Laughing with the ecstasy of rage, Axel unfastened the clasp at his throat and cast off his cloak of midnight.

---

Afterwards, the moment would be remembered on account of a single guard at the gate who threw down his weapons and fled the castle altogether. He would describe the grim tableau to the people in the towns and villages, and the story would pass from mouth to ear. One of the ears, listening from convenient rafters, would be Assassin’s, and so the story would eventually make its way back to Axel, who would like it immensely.

The maelstrom erupting in the courtyard, the crack of breaking bones, the great shadow blotting out the sun; the smell of sulphur and ash; the screams.

Of everything that happened after, no stories were ever told.

---

Some two weeks after Axel’s annexation of the kingdom of Oubli, the last of the fires finally went out. Axel stowed the sleeping Prince Roxas in the highest tower of his new castle—which he had declined to knock down or incinerate for precisely this reason—and commenced a celebration that was, even by his own high standards, an absolute rager.

Part of the reason for this was the entertainment: a few dozen of the nobility of Oubli had survived the upheaval, and Axel made merry sport out of them for his guests. The strong ones were hunted, the spitfires auctioned off as pets, the straight-laced set out as toys at the orgies until they were either claimed as a party favor or they broke. All the food in the castle and the surrounding city—and then the farms surrounding the city—was brought in for a mighty feast, supplemented by whatever the hunting parties caught out in the woods. Enough wine to drown a small sea was consumed. There was a dance that played on uninterrupted for nearly a week. The castle’s ancestral treasures, including a surprising number of powerful magical items, were put up for plunder. Eight new types of fae were conceived (and likely many more half-mortal children), there were four murders, and Axel himself was blackout drunk for twenty days running.

But at last, after almost a straight month of festivities, the food was all consumed, the wine ran dry, a few of the musicians dropped dead, and the party dispersed like fog in the morning sun.

Leaving Axel, the whispers, and his hangover to clean up the godawful mess.

---

Most of the dirty work was handled by his subjects; however, such was the state of the castle, and so illustrious had been the guests, that in a few cases he was compelled to lend his own hands. One such case was out in the gardens, where the revelries had sprouted all manner of eldritch plants amongst the charcoal ruins of the mortal ones. Beneath the thirty-foot-high brambles, there was a stone gazebo that someone had fancied enough to clean up and lightly enchant so that it always smelled of sugar icing.

Rather than attending to the brambles—which were a bit much even for Axel’s tastes—Axel was trying to scrub off the enchantment on the gazebo because something about the smell made him sick with fury.

“Quite the party.”

Axel turned. Standing at the edge of the gazebo was a faerie with hair like moonlight and eyes like mirrors and the bearing of a statue that had been brought to life against its will.

“Saïx,” Axel said. “Surprised to see you here. Thought you hated parties.”

“I do,” said Saïx. “However, I could hardly fail to pay tribute to your great conquest. I’m given to understand that unpleasant things happen to those who dare ignore you.”

“Oh, you heard about that, huh?” said Axel. What he meant was: Don’t you have anything better to do than annoy me?

“You’ve hardly made yourself inconspicuous these last fifteen years,” said Saïx. What he meant was: Everyone’s noticed your little tantrum and it’s tacky.

“I’m flattered you think so highly of me as to consider your own cold shoulder to be a risk,” said Axel. Translation: kiss my ass.

Saïx stepped into the gazebo and said: “We will speak privately. Unobserved.”

The space between each pair of opposing columns shimmered with silver threads, pulling the gazebo through itself until, with a pop, the space within turned inside-out and the view through the columns was perfectly reversed. The sounds of the world outside went silent. Even the light breeze stopped at the doorways. To any outside observer—even another fae creature—the gazebo would appear empty, even if they walked though it.

Axel had to admit, begrudgingly, that it was a very pretty bit of magic.

“When was the last time you heard from the Lady in Black?” Saïx said.

Axel straightened up. He and Saïx were, as far as either one could tell, about evenly matched—and in that ‘about’ lay the heart of the game. They had been playing espionage with each other for centuries, trying to suss out exactly who would come out on top if it came to blows. Little post-party encounters were all par for the course, an intellectually stimulating few days that were a welcome chaser for the carnal diversions that preceded them.

This was a new opening.

“Lady in Black, huh,” said Axel. “Must’ve been a couple centuries since I heard anything from her. Guess I must’ve done something to offend her.”

“Entirely likely,” Saïx drawled. “And yet, you may well be the last to have heard from her. No one I have spoken to has seen hide nor hair of her for at least a hundred and forty-eight years.”

Axel tried never to look surprised around Saïx; it was a sign of weakness. But this was such startling news that he couldn’t keep a little flicker of it off his face.

“You weren’t aware, I see,” Saïx said.

“Like I said: figured I’d just pissed her off,” said Axel. “Not even the other Ladies?”

“Curious thing about that,” said Saïx, insinuating himself closer. “A certain degree of power vacuum has come to my attention in recent years. I did some digging. The Lady in Red was last seen seventy-six years ago. Care to wager a guess as to when anyone last heard from the Lady in White?”

—Heart of the Forest, Rosy-Fingered Dawn, spare—

Axel brushed off the whispers and focused on running the math. “Thirty-nine years?”

“Forty years,” said Saïx.

“Doesn’t add up,” said Axel. “Unless….”

Unless whatever had happened took four years to kick in. That would make the timeline one hundred and forty-four, seventy-two, and thirty-six. Perfectly square.

“I have searched for the Great Ladies of the Wood,” Saïx went on. “They are gone, and few traces of them remain. As though, perhaps, they did not intend to return.”

“Mm,” said Axel, frowning into the middle distance. If the Great Ladies had disappeared with such a rigorous cadence—twelve times twelve, twelve times six, and twelve times three years ago—what had disappeared in the twelve-times-one year? Twelve years ago—

Axel’s stomach dropped. The whispers surged in his ears, cacophonous and unintelligible. Not twelve-times-one years ago; twelve-times-zero years ago, plus four. Four years ago.

When the City of Glass had exploded.

Suddenly Saïx was right next to him, his left shoulder just barely not touching Axel’s right, his head angled just so to speak into Axel’s ear.

“Something has broken,” Saïx said, cold breath against Axel’s cheek.

—already broken—

—except the West wing—

—yet that they can’t be salvaged—

Axel tried to grapple on to the whispers, to catch more than fragments, but Saïx—damn him—talked right over them, and they quickly subsided.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it had something to do with you,” he said.

“If it did,” Axel purred right back into Saïx’s pointy ear, “confronting me about it would be a dangerous move, don’t you think?”

The old patterns were the easiest to fall back on.

“I didn’t intend to imply you did it on purpose,” Saïx said. “If you were capable of such things, you wouldn’t be wallowing in mortal filth. Yet when I trace back the dispersion of the shockwaves, their epicenter lands remarkably close to you.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Axel snapped. “This has nothing to do with—”

His voice stuck in his throat. The stomach-dropping dread intensified.

Me, he’d wanted to say. Nothing to do with me.

But faeries couldn’t lie, not without rearranging the world to make it true. So it did have something to do with him, and he didn’t have the power to change that.

Saïx sized him up, the look of a predator deciding whether or not the catch was worth the chase. Despite regaining much of the power the curse had taken, Axel was still nowhere close to fighting form. If Saïx was going to strike, now was most likely his best opportunity.

Instead, Saïx stuck out a hand.

“Truce,” he said.

Axel stared at him. Saïx just barely lifted the corner of one eyebrow.

“If, indeed, something untoward has happened to the Great Ladies of the Wood,” Saïx went on, “there will inevitably be a struggle over their territories. I will require allies if I am to claim anything.”

For the first time, it struck Axel exactly how petty all this squabbling was. Something catastrophic, perhaps even cataclysmic, was happening just behind the scenes, and all Saïx saw in it was an opportunity to steal center-stage, with no sense or care that the theatre might have been burning down around him.

“I fear no usurpation from you,” Saïx went on. “You have demonstrated growing disinterest in anything aside from your parties, your sandcastles, and your dolls. I would ask for sanctuary when I am in need of it. In return, I will not strike you from your throne and seize your power while you are weak.”

And yet, petty as he was, he could still wipe the floor with Axel just now.

“Define sanctuary,” said Axel.

“To permit no harm to come to me while I am within your walls.”

“Too much. I won’t be liable for you biting your cheek while you eat at my table.”

“Then to hide me from my enemies, and do all within your power to prevent them from finding me or harming me when I am within your walls.”

“Hmm… that, I could do. Until when?”

“Until I have seized the mantle of a Great One.”

“Then agree to comport yourself as my guest while you’re within my walls, and to not strike me down at any point before or after getting your mantle.”

Saïx narrowed his mirrored eyes. His hand wavered, but he didn’t retract it.

“You wouldn’t need to strike me down, then, would you?” Axel cajoled. “I’ll just be a frivolous fool, frolicking in the fields with my soirees and my souvenirs and my sandcastles.”

Saïx almost smirked.

“Agreed,” he said.

Axel clasped his hand. “Agreed.”

The contract struck through their hands like a sewing needle, trailing golden and silver thread twined together. Saïx hauled Axel in close, not quickly, but irresistibly. He was, even for a faerie, remarkably strong.

“I intend to get to the bottom of what you did,” he whispered.

“Tell me the moment you do,” said Axel.

---

Axel returned to his new tower several hours later, the wheels in his head back up to full spin, the whispers in his ears back down to white noise. Saïx had gone on his way, doubtless picking whatever holes he could find in the agreement the two of them had struck. Axel had been doing the same, and had only given it up because he’d finally gotten the damn sugar-icing enchantment off of the gazebo.

Roxas was right where Axel had left him, at rest on a princely bed, blanketed in gold and royal blue, surrounded by fine accouterments. It had taken some doing to ward the room well enough to make sure no one snuck in here during the party, but Roxas was a treasure worth protecting. Other mortals could be hunted and sold and used up and thrown out. Roxas was special.

Axel crossed the room and sat on the side of the bed, regarding the boy with an artist’s appreciative eye. He could feel, ever so slightly, the wheedling of the curse, drawing a spider-silk thread of power to keep Roxas alive, asleep, and untouched by time. In the grand scheme of things, it was nothing at all to Axel; yet it made him grind his teeth.

Happy as he was to have his prince alive, it wasn’t fair that someone else could modify his curse and make him pay for it.

“Remind me to eat those three bumpkins,” Axel murmured.

At the sound of his voice, a clamor of wings arose from the window, and Assassin flew in to land on his shoulder. She puffed up and preened as usual, but did so while giving Roxas the stink-eye.

“Hello to you, too,” Axel said to her, scratching her beak. He considered, briefly, taking the shape of a raven and letting her have a clutch of eggs on his account—drunk as he’d been, he hadn’t gotten much if any dalliance at his party, and she was due some kind of reward—but decided against it. Someday, when she’d all but lost hope of it ever happening, then he’d concede.

It was more fun to be wanted than had.

“Who’s a pretty bird?” Axel asked her.

“Gimme kiss,” said Assassin, pressing the top of her head against his cheek.

Axel obliged. “You’ve worked hard, my sweet. Take the weekend off. There’s plenty of carrion to go around.”

Assassin croaked, went ks!, threw one final hateful look at Roxas and flew back out the window. Axel watched her go, amused.

Who would’ve thought a raven could get jealous?

It was quiet in the room, and as Axel sat alone, the whispers tickled against his consciousness, teasing him, goading him to closer examination. He brushed them off, annoyed, and returned his attention to Roxas; the pretty face set in repose, the golden hair curling out over the pillow, the red mouth, the lily-white hands folded on the chest.

He was certainly worth getting jealous over. Axel brushed the hair off his forehead with sharp black fingernails, traced the curve of his cheek, the line of his jaw. There was a regretful tint to the gesture. The boy was pretty asleep, but he’d been fun awake—would be even more fun now that Axel could enjoy him in human form.

His mind whirled with the possibilities, diversions and entertainments and games. He and Saïx had shared a pet princess once, many centuries ago, before Axel had been gifted his cloak of midnight and the power to shapeshift. Saïx also had only one shape—then as now—but as he and the princess were the same size and style, this had led to a certain imbalance in the distribution of fun. In a fit of jealousy, Axel had eaten the princess, which had precipitated his long-standing feud with Saïx. Axel hadn’t dallied with a mortal since—partly, if he were being honest with himself, out of concern that Saïx would take the opportunity to exact a bit of petty revenge—but mostly because he hadn’t found one worth dallying with.

There had to be some way, he considered, idly thumbing Roxas’ lower lip, of breaking the curse without waiting around for True Love. Axel had the boy’s first kiss, so no one could wake him without Axel’s leave—not that candidates abounded. The strongest contender was currently a wolf, and everyone who’d known her closely enough to break her curse was either dead or had been absconded with to the world-behind.

There was the small matter of the bumpkin faeries, but even if they stuck their noses in, Axel had specified that only a mortal could break Naminé’s curse, so they were about as thoroughly hamstrung in that department as the princess herself.

“No rule saying I can’t eat all four of them,” Axel said. He bent down and kissed Roxas’ forehead. “Back soon, sweet prince.”

He began to straighten and was arrested by a pair of enormous blue eyes, one of which had something indefinably wrong with it.

Simultaneously, Axel and Roxas both screamed.

Chapter 23: In Which Axel Establishes a Grand Deception

Axel leapt back, scattering accouterments and upending a stool with a crash. Roxas scrambled into the corner of the bed, pressing his shoulders against the wall.

“What thefuck!” Axel cried.

“You—you’re—” Roxas stammered. He wrenched his eyes off Axel just long enough to look around the room. “Where am I? Where have you taken me?!”

“How the fuck are you awake?”

The easy answer presented itself to Axel on a silver platter. Axel slapped it aside and sent it clanging across the floor.

“You’re the one who—the whole time, it was you!” Roxas shouted. “You tricked me, you lied to me!”

“Would you SHUT UP?” Axel snarled.

The stones of the castle hummed in resonance with his true voice. A shadow crossed the sun. Roxas seemed to remember, all of a sudden, who Axel was. His mouth snapped shut like a steel trap. His anger dove for cover under fear. His lily-white hands clenched on the royal blue bedsheets.

The easy answer lay on the floor at Axel’s feet, waiting for him to pick it up.

“Stay where you are, and be quiet,” Axel told Roxas.

Roxas nodded. Axel turned from him and went to the window. The City of Glass was too far to see from here, so he called for Assassin. She attended him posthaste, delighted that he was no longer paying attention to his boy. He ignored her requests for kisses and instead swapped her eye for his.

“Go to the City of Glass,” he commanded her. “Circle it once, then return.”

Assassin didn’t go immediately. She looked past Axel at Roxas—he could tell exactly where she was looking with his eye in her head—and made a low croak in her throat.

“Pretty bird,” she said nastily.

Then she left.

Axel stood at the window for some time, his hands clenched on the stonework, Roxas’ gaze boring holes in his back. Since it would take Assassin at least half a day to reach the City of Glass, he blotted out the vision from his roving eye—partly so he could focus better, and partly so he wouldn’t bark his shins on any furniture while Roxas was watching. Even without split vision, he felt unbalanced, like the world was cast adrift on some cosmic ocean. The whispers in his ears sounded enough like surf.

If the curse was still there, he could put it down to trickery, or foolery, or insanity.

If the curse wasn’t there….

Axel took a deep breath. This man-form was prone to catastrophizing and over-thinking, but he didn’t have to give in to its whims. For decorum’s sake, he tucked Assassin’s eye into his empty socket and resized it to fit. Then he turned back to Roxas.

Awake. Watching. Angry and frightened. Not the look Axel wanted out of him.

“Are you yourself enough to speak calmly?” Axel asked.

Roxas actually considered before answering. “I think so.”

“Good. You had questions. I’ll answer them, provided you can conduct yourself civilly.”

Roxas nodded. He bit his red lips. “Where am I?”

“The Kingdom of Oubli,” said Axel. “What’s left of it.”

Confusion consumed caution on Roxas’ face. Axel glanced out the window at the ruined city, the wrecked walls, the exuberant plant-life choking the courtyard. A grand deception took shape in his mind. He beckoned to Roxas.

“See for yourself, if you like,” he said.

Gingerly, Roxas rose and crossed to the window. Axel stood aside to let him look, watched his shoulders tighten and his breath catch and horror fill his wide blue eyes. It was the closest Axel had been to him in this form, close enough to feel the warmth coming off his body, and Axel was seized by the urge to curl his fingers through the golden hair at the nape of Roxas’ neck. He resisted—but saved the impulse for later.

“How…” Roxas choked. “How long have I been asleep?!”

“I couldn’t tell you precisely,” said Axel. “Mortal time tends to get away from me. But things have changed considerably since you were last awake.”

“I can see that,” Roxas said faintly. He seemed to be staying upright only by leaning on the windowsill for support.

“Sweet Prince,” Axel began, reaching to touch his shoulder—but Roxas snatched it away from him, turning to face him and stepping back.

“Don’t call me that,” he said. “Only my friends call me that.”

“Aren’t we friends?” said Axel, stung.

“You cursed me,” said Roxas. “You cursed me, and then you pretended to be my friend to make sure it went through, and now I’ve been asleep for—for what, a hundred years? And—”

“Yes, I cursed you,” Axel admitted, “and yes, I saw it through, but one thing you’re wrong about, Prince: I never pretended to be your friend.”

“Friends don’t curse each other,” Roxas sneered.

“I wasn’t your friend when I cursed you,” Axel said. “You were a baby. I only got to know you after that. And I had to see the curse through, or else it would’ve killed me. I never harmed you, Prince.”

“You lied to me.”

“I deceived you. It’s not the same thing. Your faerie aunties never lied to you, did they?”

Roxas’ jaw clenched. Anger looked well on him—not as good as infatuation, but it was still pretty enough. It was the kind of anger that never burned out entirely, and made the process of domestication that much more fun. For now, Axel just spread his hands and sighed.

“The truth is, Prince, while you were asleep, I tried to think of ways of breaking the curse I cast on you. Having known you, I didn’t want you to sleep forever.”

“So you kidnapped me until you could fix it?”

“Look outside, Prince,” Axel said. “I can guarantee you wouldn’t have fared nearly so well if I’d left you out there.”

“You could have undone the curse before I fell asleep. You could have just—stayed away! Let me live my life and never—it’s your fault I fell asleep at all—”

“Civilly,” Axel warned.

Roxas reigned himself in, though it was with some difficulty. His fists clenched, his jaw worked, his eyes burned.

“Everyone I knew is dead,” he said.

“Not everyone,” said Axel. “I imagine your aunties are still kicking around somewhere. If you’d prefer their company to mine, you’re free to seek them out.”

Roxas ground his teeth. At last, he shook his head.

“Am I… free to go?” he asked.

“You can, if you’d like,” said Axel. “But I warn you that the world outside these walls may not be as kind as the one you remember. Oubli is part of the Ruined Country now. If you leave, I make no guarantees for your safety.”

Roxas’ big blue eyes slid out of focus as he stared into his own imagination. Whatever he saw in there must have been dire, because his body tried to make itself smaller.

“Where else would I even go?” he said, mostly to himself.

“Then I would invite you to stay,” said Axel. “As my guest.”

—no way to treat a guest.

Axel shook his head, the whispers like water in his ears.

“Perhaps,” he went on, “eventually, if the fancy strikes you, we could come to a more permanent arrangement.”

“Such as?” Roxas said dully.

“Prince Consort,” said Axel.

Roxas looked up at him again, and there it was, that intoxicating mixture of fear and arousal. Axel smiled.

“I understand it’s a slight downgrade from king,” he said. “But as there isn’t much for you to be king of, you might find it more rewarding.”

“I’d… like to be alone for a while, if I may,” Roxas said. “I need to think.”

He wasn’t the only one. “Of course. Take all the time you need.”

Roxas hesitated, then said: “Thank you. Your Majesty.”

“You’re welcome,” said Axel, and with a wink: “Your Highness.”

---

Several hours later, Assassin arrived at the City of Glass. Axel almost couldn’t bring himself to look—but no more could he send her or any other minion back again because he’d chickened out. Really he needn’t have even instructed her to circle the city. He could’ve seen everything he needed to see from a mile off.

The curse was gone.

Not broken or shattered or crumbled, just gone. A thousand-ton monolith turned to smoke and blown away on the wind. Axel had to transform himself into a large black centipede—a thing that didn’t breathe—to escape the feeling of suffocation.

Even as a centipede, though he had no ears, he could feel the whispers like soft breath against his antennae. His voice. Roxas’ voice. Sometimes other voices, but overwhelmingly those two.

The answer to the question how did the prince wake up had an easy answer, and it was lying at the top of the highest tower, burning a hole in the floor.

For the first time since the prince’s waking, Axel permitted the words True Love to cross his mind. It wasn’t entirely on purpose; the mind of a centipede was sparsely furnished, and didn’t have nearly as many rugs to stuff things under as the mind of a man. If he were in his right shape, he could’ve hidden those words away from himself for labyrinthine centuries—but it was not to be.

Well, since it had crossed his mind, he might as well think about it. Centipedes were not inclined to analytical thought, however, so he first changed into a raven: clever enough to sort it all out, not so intellectual as to be predisposed to existential dread.

Axel took up a spot on a high rafter and ruffled his feathers against a warm breeze. He’d seen four confirmed cases of True Love that he could recall (though he had a mind like a steel trap, he also spent a small percentage of his life too drunk to think, and couldn’t discount the possibility that he’d seen another True Love or two and kept no memory of them). The things he knew were these:

First: all cases had been between two humans.

Second: all eight humans had been young and rather foolish. He was notoriously bad at guessing ages, but he might guess about the age of Prince Roxas, if pressed.

Third: True Love itself was imperceptible right up until it wasn’t, and then it shone out like a blade forged from the molten sun, blinding bright and sharper than broken glass, white-hot, thin and smooth-sided and seemingly indestructible.

Finally: nothing caused it. True Love simply happened, having nothing whatsoever to do with the will or actions of the participants. It seemed to be an inherent property of certain essences that, once they touched, they would instantaneously fuse into something arcane, undying, and possibly with a will of its own.

Was it, then, so impossible that True Love might—once in a millennium—crop up between a faerie and a mortal? Perhaps Axel had only seen it between humans because humans saw an awful lot of each other and made a great deal of space in themselves for love. If Axel’s kiss had broken the curse—without even expending the prince’s first kiss!—then he must have been Roxas’ True Love.

It certainly clarified more than it confused. No wonder the forces of True Love hadn’t swooped in to save Axel and make sure the curse went off: they had been acting through Axel!

Axel flattened his feathers, flew to a different rafter, scraped his beak on the old, hard wood. He couldn’t quite countenance it, and the reason was this: if Axel was Roxas’ True Love, then Roxas must have been Axel’s True Love, and Axel didn’t like that. It implied bondage, commitment, permanence—and, as demonstrated, it meant Axel was not entirely his own. True Love could, at its own discretion, use him as its instrument; what else could have possessed him to plant that fateful kiss on the boy’s forehead just now?

Furthermore, if True Love really had been behind him the whole way, then it had done more than just use him: it had toyed with him. True Love couldn’t fail—it was as dependable as the sunrise—and yet Axel had come within a hair’s breadth of failing. To leave him twisting in the wind and secure him in bondage to a pet—that was adding insult to injury.

Admittedly, Roxas was no ordinary pet, but he was still a mortal, meant to be enjoyed at Axel’s leisure and disposed at Axel’s whim. Someday he would stop being fun. Someday (without significant intervention, anyway) he would grow old and die. Axel, all things being equal, and barring any roving knight with a magic sword, could easily live another eight centuries in the first world before time started to catch up to him.

Could have lived another eight centuries.

Even as a raven, Axel felt a bit ill. That was the other thing about True Love, the double-edge of the impossibly sharp sword.

It was no surprise that, with their essences fused into an indestructible thing, the two people caught up in True Love by necessity died together. It simply wasn’t possible to untangle them anymore. Axel had seen it happen.

Four times.

Axel shut his eyes—or rather, his eye and Assassin’s eye. He could still see the wide forests of what had been the kingdom of Soir rolling by beneath her as she soared home. He tried to feel the wind under her wings, the soft embrace of the sky, the warm glow of a job well done. She would come home and she would love him in a way that made sense—obsessive, possessive, and deeply shallow—and he would love her in a way that was equally familiar and comfortable. Though Assassin was a favorite, she was still a toy. If she thought of herself any differently, that just made her more fun.

There was a beautiful boy upstairs, and Axel desperately wanted to play with him as he’d played with so many beautiful creatures before him, and something inside him recoiled in horror at the thought.

If this was True Love, he wanted no part of it. He would find a way to break it. Whatever had gone wrong in the world to permit it, he would set that thing right.

Was he a frail mortal lover, floating blindly in a sea of circumstance and waiting to be dashed upon the rocks of fate, or was he Flame-Tongue, the Red Bandit, King of the Ruined Country; trickster, shapeshifter; proud and quick to anger? He had toppled empires and built his own, worked feats of magic that scraped the heavens, and most of all, he had endured. He had always endured. He would not die on a sword he’d somehow forged himself.

And the first step, he decided, with the straightforward logic of his raven’s form, was to refuse to bend the knee to the bizarre impulses stirred up in him by this True Love.

With his mind made up, he hopped out the window and flew right back to the prince’s room.

---

Axel alighted on the windowsill and took in the room. Roxas had returned to the corner of the bed and had been crying. It looked good on him, and yet the sight sent a stab through Axel’s gut, that same wrenching, nauseous feeling he’d had when sending Roxas through the gates of his old castle in the Ruined Country, only somehow worse.

True Love at work, perhaps?

Axel hopped from the windowsill and, with a whisper, landed in his man shape. Roxas started, froze. Axel tipped his head to the side.

“Sweet Prince,” he said. “Why are you crying?”

Roxas’ jaw clenched as the anger flared up in him. He uncurled himself slowly, deliberately. He wiped his face on his sleeves. He got up off the bed and stood to his full height—which would come up to Axel’s shoulder, just about.

“My business is my own,” he said, though his gravitas was undermined by the stuffiness of his nose.

Axel shrugged. “Are you hungry?”

“What would a meal cost me?”

“Half an hour of your company, starting when the deal is struck. After that, you may send me away at your whim—and I may leave at mine.”

Roxas considered, nodded. “That… sounds fair. I agree.”

Axel waved a hand and spoke a few words at the little table in the corner. A hearty meal appeared upon it—snatched from the table of a peasant elsewhere in Oubli, but they were Axel’s subjects now, and he accepted all tithes.

Roxas fell upon the food with ravenous abandon. He hadn’t eaten in over a month, after all, even if he’d been asleep the whole time. While he ate, Axel meandered across the room and eventually sat down across from him.

“Have you given any thought to my proposal?” Axel asked, oh-so-casually.

Roxas stopped halfway through a spoonful of stew. He swallowed heavily, set the spoon down, sat back and composed himself. There were speckles of stew on his chin and at the corners of his lips, beet-red. Axel decided he’d make a good boar, if the occasion ever arose. Strong, stubborn, proud (if uncouth) and dangerous enough to be a real prize—yes, boar was a good fit.

“I’ve given it some thought,” Roxas said. “I haven’t come to a decision.”

“Interesting,” said Axel. “What have you thought about it?”

“That… perhaps I’d like to see what the world outside has to offer me before I decide to abandon it.”

That wouldn’t do. Axel gave him a hungry smile.

“Then you should be equally eager to see what I would offer you,” he purred, “before you decide to forego it.”

Roxas’ face reddened, his breath caught, his little white hand tightened on his spoon. Axel flicked a hand at him.

“Oh, finish your meal first,” he said.

Roxas nodded and went back to his stew, rather more mechanically than before, always keeping half an eye on Axel. There was still something about his left eye that bothered Axel, mostly because he couldn’t tell what it was.

“The day the City of Glass exploded,” Axel said abruptly. “What do you remember about it?”

A thin line appeared between Roxas’ eyebrows. He slurped down another spoonful of soup before answering.

“Some,” he said. “Likely not as much as you. If I may… why do you ask?”

“You may.” Axel gestured to Roxas’ face. “What happened to your eye?”

Roxas blinked. “My… my eye?”

“You said something happened to it. I can see there’s something wrong with it. Between your experience and my knowledge, I’ll bet we could figure it out.”

“Why do you want to know?” Roxas said cautiously.

“Curiosity, mainly.”

“What else, other than curiosity?”

Axel smiled with his real teeth. A curl of smoke laced his words: “Do you think that’s a wise way to speak to me?”

A thrill of fear ran through Roxas. He averted his eyes.

“My apologies, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, no, that won’t be necessary,” Axel said. “King to King. You may call me Axel.”

That one really threw Roxas for a loop. It wasn’t Axel’s true name, of course; that was a secret so closely guarded that sometimes Axel hid it from himself. Nonetheless, it was an informal name, neither title nor epithet, and it was no surprise that Roxas was staggered by the implication of parity between the two of them. His faerie aunties hadn’t prepared him for anything like this.

“I—thank you?” he guessed.

“This is the part where you tell me what I may call you,” Axel prompted.

“My… my guardians called me Chrysanthos.”

“Golden flower. Cute. Well, I don’t like it, so Roxas it is.”

Roxas it is, the whispers echoed.

Roxas panicked.

He leapt up. The chair and table toppled. Stew splattered everywhere. He lunged for the open window.

“Roxas, stop,” Axel commanded.

Roxas froze on the instant. Axel stood, stretched, stepped up behind Roxas and caught him as his paralyzed body began to topple, a close embrace. He wrapped one arm around Roxas’ waist; with the other hand, finally got to play with a curl of golden hair.

“What did you think was going to happen?” Axel said into Roxas’ ear. “Best-case scenario, I let you jump out the window? You promised me half an hour of your company, and I’ll have half an hour of your company. If you’d like to leap to your death afterwards, that’s your business, but I hope I’ll have convinced you not to by then. You may speak, Roxas.”

Roxas’ mouth unlocked, his throat worked, though the rest of him remained utterly rigid, strung taut on the near-absolute power Axel held over him.

A name was a hell of a thing.

“How?” he croaked.

“Heard Princess Naminé use it out in the woods,” Axel said. “Her fault, not yours, if that’s any consolation.”

“It isn’t,” said Roxas, but Axel had his essence in the palm of his hand, and felt him take the slightest bit of solace.

In some ways, it was infuriating how easy it was for mortals to lie.

Axel tangled his hand in Roxas’ hair and pulled—not hard, not sharply, but with inexorable force. Roxas’ essence thrilled and recoiled all at once: he liked it, and he didn’t like that he liked it. Just being held this way was overwhelming him.

“Didn’t get out much, did you,” Axel remarked, studying the curve of Roxas’ throat, the drawn bow of his parted lips.

“No,” said Roxas.

“Never lain with anyone before?”

Roxas flushed red-hot. His essence squirmed even if his body couldn’t.

“No,” he said.

“It shows,” said Axel. He tested the lobe of Roxas’ ear with his teeth, felt the boy’s essence writhe: he wanted it to stop and he never wanted it to stop, both at once. “I’d wager, given your upbringing, you’ve never even been touched before.”

A faerie of a different constitution—such as Saïx—might have been blistered hanging onto an essence that burned as hot as Roxas did in that moment. For Axel, it staved off a chill he’d gotten so used to that he’d almost forgotten it. He chuckled.

“Am I wrong?” he asked.

“N-no,” Roxas managed.

The hand at his waist slid southward. Roxas’ breath caught.

“Tell me when to stop,” Axel said.

“S… stop,” Roxas whispered.

Axel stopped at once, exactly where he was. There was another hitch in Roxas’ breath, and his essence whined.

“Now is that what you really wanted?” Axel said. “Or did you really want something else?”

Roxas agonized. Axel could feel every inch of it, stretching him so thin and taut he was libel to snap at the lightest touch. Axel refused to touch him.

“Well, give it some thought,” he said. He dropped Roxas and the magical paralysis together, turned on his heel and strode to the door while Roxas reeled so severely that he almost fell over the upended table.

“You—I—w-wait, I didn’t—”

“Half hour’s up,” Axel said brightly. He tossed open the door, tossed a smile over his shoulder. “Business to attend to. You understand.”

With a wink and a wave, he left Roxas alone and aching.

While True Love gnashed his guts into paste.

---

A few hours later, when Axel had successfully suppressed whatever strange emotions True Love was trying to stir up in him, Assassin made it back from her long journey. Contrary to all prior experience, she wasn’t happy to see him. The moment she entered the room, she swooped at him like she intended to pluck her eye out of his head with her beak.

“Hey, hey!” he said, fending her off with a flick of the hand. “What’s the big idea?”

She landed on the smashed ruins of a nearby desk and croaked at him, long and loud. Axel crossed to her and aimed to scratch her beak. She bit his finger.

Anger flashed in Axel’s chest. He grabbed her by the beak and threw her to the floor. One of her wings broke. As she cried out in pain, so Axel’s anger faded.

“Oh, my poor sweet bird,” he said. He knelt on the floor, gathered her up, healed her broken bones with a caress and a murmur. She lay trembling in his hands, her eye rolling, his eye twitching. While he had her, Axel swapped their eyes back—then gathered her to his chest, kissed her head and scratched her beak.

“You know better than that, my sweet,” he told her. “You’re a clever bird. Don’t ever do that again.”

“Pretty bird,” she ventured hoarsely.

“Yes, my pretty bird,” he said. He kissed her head again.

She kept on trembling, and didn’t puff out her feathers for him, but she pressed her head against his chin. He summoned a bevy of baby chicks for her, all peeping and stumbling, and set her amongst them with the gentlest of hands. Soon enough, she’d forgotten all about the incident—the pain was gone, her belly was full, and all was as it should be. Axel gave her a kiss on the beak and told her again to take the weekend off, hopeful that he could actually allow her to do so this time.

He left her to her feast and set out to hunt down those three bumpkin faeries with a whistle on his lips.

---

Axel coasted high above the gold-kissed treetops, heading for the ex-kingdom of Soir. Visions of a bright future danced in his head: the meddling bumpkins eaten, Princess Naminé left wild for so long that she forgot how to be anything but a wolf, and of course, the lifetime of sweet torments he could inflict on his soon-to-be Prince Consort. He wore the form of a black owl in readiness for the oncoming night, attentive for any flicker, any murmur of the three faeries who had made his life so unnecessarily complicated for the last fifteen years.

Thus, he heard the scream from a league away.

It was Roxas’ voice, unmistakably Roxas’ voice, and not from the whispers in his ears. From his tower. Axel abandoned his search immediately—what if Saïx had snuck in and decided to take opportunistic revenge for his old pet? What if the bumpkins, or, worse, Princess Naminé had been waiting for Axel to leave? He ripped open a hole in the sky and flung himself through, back to Roxas’ room, where the raw agony of the scream struck him like a fist in the gut, where the state of affairs ignited in him a blinding fury.

Things strewn everywhere. Roxas thrashing in the bed. Black wings beating the air.

Assassin, with her beak buried to the hilt in Roxas’ eye.

Chapter 24: In Which All Comes Undone

Axel had entered the room as a black owl; he lunged forward into the shape of a man.

“YOU WRETCHED BITCH!” he snarled. He grabbed Assassin by the throat and hurled her to the floor. The red haze in his vision hardly abated. He spun on his heel and knelt at the bedside, cupped Roxas’ mauled face in his hands.

“Don’t touch me!” Roxas cried, swatting at Axel with one hand and covering his gore-dribbling sockets with the other.

“It’s all right, sweet prince, it’s all right.” He caught Roxas’ wrists, gently but firmly.

Roxas kicked him in the chest to entirely no avail. The jostling made him cry out in pain again.

“Let me help you,” Axel said. “It’s an easy fix.”

“What—would it—cost?” Roxas spat out between gasps.

“Nothing!” said Axel, appalled. “Obviously, nothing. Let me help you.”

Finally, Roxas stopped struggling, though his chest heaved like a rabbit’s. Axel drew him close, wiped the blood and pus off his face, pulled the lids of the right eye open with his thumbs swiped his tongue through the socket to clean it out. Roxas retched and thrashed in his grip again.

“Roxas, hold still,” Axel commanded.

Roxas, of course, could do nothing but comply. He lay whimpering in Axel’s arms as Axel cleaned the wounds, as Axel grew him two new eyes and fitted them into their sockets.

Whereupon the strangest thing happened: the moment the left eye was in its place, the sky-blue iris cracked like a struck mirror. In the next instant, the cracks were gone, replaced by that indefinable wrongness that had belonged to the original eye.

“What do you see through that eye?” Axel murmured, mostly to himself. “Hm. Well, good enough. You can move again, if you’d like.”

Job done and the taste of blood thick on his tongue, Axel turned to see what remained of Assassin and what could be done to salvage her.

The answers were, respectively: very little, and nothing.

Such had been Axel’s fury that his touch had burned her alive. She had thereafter hit the floor with great force. The shape of a raven, wings splayed, head thrown back, was printed on the rug in charcoal dust. Nothing else but a spatter of Roxas’ blood remained.

Axel’s heart broke. He sat down on the floor next to the shadow of his sweet bird, his favorite toy, his Assassin, while misery filled him head to toe. He realized, much too late, that her eye had been in his head while he played with Roxas. She must have seen the whole thing, known exactly what her pair-bonded partner was getting up to while she was away. It was no wonder she’d reacted the way she had. He hated her idiotic jealousy and at the same time adored her for it. Who else was so obsessed with him as to try and pluck out the eyes of anyone he touched?

There would be no replacing her. She was one of a kind.

“Something is broken,” Roxas said.

Axel pulled out of his malaise and looked over his shoulder. Roxas was still in the bed, curled up small, touching the skin around his new eyes. His expression was haunted.

“What?” said Axel.

“That’s what I see with this eye,” Roxas said. “Sometimes it gets better, sometimes it gets worse, but the cracks run through everything. Trees, land, sky—even people. Sometimes I think I can see things through them. Behind them. My guardians couldn’t see them, so I thought maybe they weren’t really there. Can you see them?”

The wheels in Axel’s mind churned.

“No,” he said slowly, “but ever since the City of Glass exploded, I’ve been hearing voices. Mostly yours and mine. Coming from somewhere beyond Faerie.”

Faerie being the human term for the world-behind-the-world. It was a silly name for the place, but Axel didn’t mind sacrificing precision for brevity on occasion.

Roxas raised his head. His essence thrilled with hope, with relief, with wanting—oh, he’d liked the touch of Axel’s tongue—and at the same time, with disgust and fear and hatred.

On the instant, Axel’s grief over Assassin evaporated and blew away on the breeze.

“But you believe me,” Roxas said.

“Yes,” said Axel. “What do you see through your cracks, when you see through them?”

“Lights. That’s all. Just lights. Moving.” He hesitated, then asked: “What do you hear our voices saying?”

“Oh, bits and pieces, fragments here and there,” said Axel. “Honestly, all I have are hunches.”

“Like what?”

Axel smiled, rose to sit on the bed, offered his hand to Roxas. Just because he was excited about unraveling this little mystery didn’t mean he was going to lose sight of his long-term goals.

“That’s not the kind of thing I’d share with a guest,” he said. “But I might share it with my Prince Consort.”

Roxas only considered for a moment before taking Axel’s hand.

Axel pulled him into his lap. True Love hauled on the promise of the first kiss strung between their mouths, pulled it taut and drew them together—but Axel held fast, propped his forehead against Roxas’ to hold them apart. If True Love wanted it, Axel wouldn’t cave to it. Roxas just barely stifled a whine. His essence was white-hot with wanting.

“You’re mocking me,” Roxas accused, breathless, rocking against him involuntarily.

“I’m teasing you,” Axel said. “It’s not the same thing.”

Roxas tried again to kiss him, and again Axel rebuffed the advance, placing a finger over Roxas’ red lips.

“Now, what makes you think you’ve earned that?” Axel asked. “You gave me your first kiss, remember?”

“In exchange for time I didn’t get,” said Roxas.

“Well, and by that metric, I never got my glass shard, so by rights I could’ve left your horse for dead. Why don’t we call it even and say it was the horse for the kiss?”

“Then I’d say my horse died decades ago, and I’m overdue for the kiss.”

Axel grinned. He tangled a hand in Roxas’ hair to hold him still, trailed his fingertips down the thin chest to the narrow hip, kissed just to the side of his mouth.

“You’re going to be a lot of fun,” he said.

“What makes you think you’ve earned that?” Roxas returned.

Axel yanked Roxas’ head back, bending his back to such an angle that he had to cling on to Axel with both hands and his legs to keep from being flipped onto the floor. Axel, at his leisure, trailed his wandering hands under the boy’s clothes, skated thorn-sharp fingernails across his supple flesh, trailed his tongue from Roxas’ collarbone to his ear.

“What makes you think I have to earn it?” Axel purred.

Roxas was finally left without any rebuttal, whining and writhing in Axel’s grip. Axel nipped at his throat, head swimming with all the forms he could use to fuck his new toy senseless, talons and teeth and tentacles, all the delicious torments he’d wring him through, how good he’d look with those blue eyes rolled back in his head and his tongue hanging out, drooling from both ends—

“Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”

Axel turned from Roxas with a growl and half a mind to strike the messenger dead on the spot. The little creature—a goblin or something—tumbled from the sunset-painted window and threw itself face down on the floor, prostrate and trembling.

“What?” Axel said through his teeth.

“The—the—the—”

“Out with it, or I’ll have your tongue!”

The goblin spewed all its words in a frantic rush.

“The-three-good-faeries-found-the-wolf-princess-and-gave-her-a-sword-of-Truth-and-a-shield-of-Lies-we-couldn’t-stop-her-she’s-almost-at-the-gates-Your-Majesty!”

“WHAT?!” Axel leapt to his feet, sending Roxas crashing to the floor. “What do you mean, good faeries?”

But the goblin had fainted on the spot at Axel’s first exclamation. Axel stormed to the window and looked out. His blood boiled. His stomach sank.

A light moved through the forest, white and flickering under the dusky sky, making straight for his gates. If it weren’t for the tangled wilderness his party guests had left behind, she would already have been upon them.

A sword of Truth. A shield of Lies. Where in the fuck had she gotten such things?

Well, from the faeries, obviously. But where in the fuck had they gotten them?!

It dawned on Axel sickly and quickly: from the plunder of the kingdom of Oubli, of course. Sometime during the twenty days Axel had been blackout drunk, they’d waltzed right into his new castle and absconded with weapons that might have been given to Princess Naminé’s family for precisely this purpose. Forty years was not a long span to prophecy across, especially for a Great One, and especially for a Great One with a grudge.

Wherever she’d vanished to, the Lady in White was probably laughing.

In the next moment, the light burst from the trees and onto the stone bridge across the moat. A noise burst likewise from Axel’s mouth—equal parts fury and mirth.

Princess Naminé might have had her magic shield and magic sword, but they were strapped to her back and held between her teeth because she was still a wolf.

“Oh, tremendous!” Axel crowed. “What are you planning to do with—”

Something hit him in the back, hard.

The stone windowsill bit his hips. His feet slipped on the smooth floor. He overbalanced. He toppled. A tangle of thirty-foot brambles rushed towards him. The cloak of midnight streamed out behind him.

“I-seem-a-raven!” he cried in a rush.

The cloak transformed him. He flung out his wings. His claws brushed the brambles as he heaved himself onto the purple air. He wheeled, looked back, saw Roxas leaning out the window and cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting—

“Naminé!!”

There was a slight hiccup in Axel’s reserves of power.

A howl turned into a scream. Metal clattered on stone. Far below, Princess Naminé gained her feet—nude, unbalanced, her hair wild and her hands clenched on sword and shield. She looked up at Axel with more fury than fear.

Back in the tower, Roxas cheered.

Shock caught against comprehension and sparked. A great deflagration of pain filled the whole volume of Axel’s being.

In a blind rage, he tore off the cloak of midnight.

Axel’s true body burst forth into the first world with a thunderclap. His blood-red scales blazed in the last light of sunset before his wings snapped open to blot out the sky. He crushed the brambles under his earth-wracking weight, landing with a violent tremor that shook dust from the ruins of Oubli and staggered Naminé—and how small she was now! His spiked tail lashed, his claws gouged the stone, his swan-neck twisted back and smoke poured through his hundred dagger fangs.

In the window of the tower, Roxas was the size of an ant. His eyes were terror-struck, his little red mouth hanging open, his lily-white hands empty at his sides. Axel fixed him with an emerald stare. There was murder on his teeth and a scream in his belly, despair in his eyes and a knife in his great burning heart. He hated Roxas more than he’d ever hated anything. He loved Roxas more than he’d ever loved anything. He wanted to kill him and couldn’t bear to lose him.

He growled out words from his barrel chest, so loud and low that they made the rubble dance.

“ROXAS,” he commanded, “RUN.”

Like a plucked bowstring, Roxas’ essence fired him through the tower room’s door, down the stairs and out of sight. Axel turned his attention back to Naminé—an insect, chitin cracked, stinger at the ready.

Rage consumed everything else inside Axel, white hot. His neck curled high, his jaws gaped, the spark-teeth at the back of his throat chittered.

A jet of orange flame forty feet long roared down into the brambles.

Naminé ducked behind her shield. Fire spilled into the brambles and caught. As the first sun curled miserably beneath the horizon, a second sun ignited in the courtyard, painting everything in lurid tones.

Axel cut the flow of flame to suck down a breath. The air quivered and tasted of ash, the stones glowed beneath his feet, the brambles crackled and squealed.

And Naminé rose from behind her shield of lies, untouched.

Axel lunged for her with a snarl. His snout struck the shield of Lies and a knife of ice plunged straight through his armored scales, down to the bone. He recoiled, roaring and clawing at the pain of touching something utterly antithetical to the fabric of his being. Emboldened, Naminé rushed him, her feet sizzling on the half-molten stones, the sword gleaming in her hand.

So he couldn’t touch her? Fine. He didn’t need to.

With a tremendous heave, Axel leapt into the air. The sword glanced off his scales—less mighty weapons would have shattered, but even this one wasn’t mighty enough to cleave through. A single beat of his great wings propelled him to the tower and hurled Naminé off her feet. He grappled onto the stonework, clawing out windows and crushing tiles. With his tail lashing for balance, he spat another jet of fire at Naminé. Again, she raised her shield to deflect the flames. Again, the brambles all around her were set alight. Smoke rose like black war-banners, strangling the stars.

Though the rage in Axel could have burned forever, the flames in him could not. Bereft of his most glorious violence—for the next few minutes, until it replenished itself—he roared his defiance into the smoke-smuggered night.

Far below, among the blazing brambles, Naminé screamed her own challenge right back. She hurled the sword across to the courtyard, rushed forward, threw down her shield of lies and leapt onto it. She skated along the bridge, eddies of hot air whipping at her hair and reddening her skin.

Axel gripped the tower tight, snaked his body to the proper angle, and flapped his wings once.

Naminé, to her credit, kept her grip—but the powerful blast of air buffeted her and the shield alike on the glassy surface of the melted stone. She refused to scream as she went over the side.

She couldn’t help herself when she landed in the sea of burning brambles below.

Axel snaked down from the tower, slithered across the molten courtyard to peer over the side of the bridge. He watched Naminé struggle, pierced in a hundred places by monstrous thorns. He watched her burn, snow-white skin charring black under the oppressive heat.

He watched her die an agonizing death, then he stuck his head down into the furnace, plucked her body out, and ate her.

Axel hated knights in shining armor, but he could stomach one or two.

Amid the firelight glow of the second destruction of the kingdom of Oubli, Axel seethed. He could no more murder Roxas for his hideous betrayal than he could throw himself on the discarded sword of Truth—yet neither could he permit the act to go unpunished. True Love be damned, the boy would suffer. He would suffer a hundred—no, a thousand lifetimes for what he’d done. Axel would destroy everything he loved, tear him to pieces and stitch him back together, destroy his heart and his mind and his nature, hunt him endlessly across land and sea, abandon him to—

There was a sudden snap.

—release her to Asphodel. She’s paid more—

—still friends, or we could be, if you’d—

—can’t just leave her here—

—without you! It isn’t—

—be with me—

Axel reeled as the whispers surged in his ears. They were deafening, unrelenting, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Panic surged in his chest, a mortal panic, something he should never have felt in his true body, something even his true mind couldn’t make sense of. He thrashed, shook his head and clawed at his ears, staggered among burning brambles and melted stone. He couldn’t catch his balance or his breath. He planted his claws in the earth and gnashed his teeth, fighting for some vague semblance of control.

At which moment, the sword of Truth shoved between the scales on Axel’s foot, bit into his hide, and drew a single drop of blood.

Three things happened in very quick succession:

Axel struck out on pure instinct at the site of the pain.

The Truth tore the scales from Axel’s eyes and scoured all delusion from his labyrinthine mind.

Roxas hit the wall of the castle hard enough to break every bone in his body.

It took another precious moment for Axel to understand what had happened. Both worlds, the first and the one behind, were riddled with jagged black cracks, behind which flashing lights chased each other like will-o-the-wisps. The sword of Truth protruded from the top of Axel’s back foot, a silver thorn, still wedged between his scales. Roxas lay crumpled against the castle wall, wide-eyed and gurgling his last breaths. Between him and Axel, the smooth golden surface of True Love stretched out.

With a thick crack running right down the center of it.

A tremor rolled up from deep beneath the earth, shivering Axel’s iron bones. An answering peal of thunder crashed down from the sky as the firmament split along one of the heavy black cracks. A thin noise of pain and a great deal of blood escaped Roxas’ battered throat.

In that moment, Axel could not fail to understand. Roxas hated him, and Axel deserved to be hated. All those torments he had planned in retaliation for Roxas’ rebellion were torments he had already inflicted. His games were monstrous. His grand deceptions were cruel jokes. His caprice had wounded this child as deeply as his claws, and as fatally. And up until this moment, Axel had thought it was fun.

Whether it was the sharp end of the Truth or the ruination of the spreading cracks, in that moment Axel became the first and the last faerie to ever know guilt.

He didn’t love Roxas. He’d chosen not to. Over and over and over, he’d chosen, and now it no longer mattered what he chose. To let the boy die was unutterably cruel. To save him would be worse.

Between them, the golden span of True Love shuddered.

Splintered.

Shattered.

Axel, flensed to the bone by the light of Truth, had no capacity to disbelieve. He saw it and therefore it was true. He felt it go, more grief than heartbreak, release without freedom. Its shards clattered down like the shards of the glass citadel of Soir. Its light snuffed out like a child’s hope betrayed.

Axel stood in the courtyard of his ruined kingdom and watched as Roxas died a slow and agonizing death. He felt the world coming apart around him and was not surprised.

If True Love could not endure, nothing could.

The world-behind went first, crumbling like sand cliffs into the sea, like tattered silk whisked away into a raging river. As it frayed, ripped, snapped, its underpinnings tore out of the first world and left bloody holes behind. The tremors built until even Axel’s prodigious weight was jostled as carelessly as a rabbit in the back of a wagon. The horizon buckled. The stone tower, weakened by clambering claws, collapsed, laying waste to the upper floors of the castle. The walls would soon follow, would bury Roxas for whatever time this world had left.

Even then, something in Axel called for him to go to Roxas, to shelter his broken body until the last. Something else, wilder and older, screamed at him to fight, to flee, to forge on as he always had and endure.

Axel did neither. He folded his wings in tight and lay down on the bucking ground, bowed his head and laid flat his lashing tail. It was the last and only kindness he could give this world, to die with it. It was the last and only mercy he could show Roxas, to let him die alone.

When oblivion came, Axel met it happily.

 

THE END

Chapter 25: THE CAPTAIN'S REVENGE

Once upon a time, very far from here, there was an island in the center of a glass-calm sea. Its mountains tickled the sky, its forests filled with climbing trees, its beaches drawn with silver ink under the moonlight.

If you look closely, just there, you can see two boys.

If you look closer, you will see their crossed swords.

And if you look even closer than that, you may see that one of them is, ever so slightly, not a boy any longer.

---

It should have been storming.

The crash of steel on steel rang off the sheer cliffs. The young man’s boots scuffed in the sand, crushing his toes. He raised his arm to block a swift overhead strike and the armpit of his shirt tore.

He remembered, with sudden vivid clarity, how oversized that shirt had been for him when he arrived on the island.

“What’s wrong?” the other boy said, twirling his sword. “Getting tired already?”

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” the young man said, struggling to keep his voice from cracking, as it was wont to do these days. “Just—stop. Aren’t we friends?”

“Friends!” the boy cried. He laughed heartily, holding his belly. “I don’t make friends with grown-ups!”

His voice turned to snarl as he came after the young man again, steel flashing in the moonlight. The young man blocked, parried, lost yet more ground. The boy had driven him here, driven him like a dog drives a fox, only the young man had no hole to hide in.

“Nothing’s changed!” he insisted. “We’re still friends, or we could be, if you’d just be reasonable.”

“You see! You see? You never talked like that before!”

Crash, clash, flicker and flash, their swords danced against the crystal sea. The boy scored a glancing hit on the young man’s arm, drawing blood.

These were no toys.

Angry and frightened, the young man struck back. His arms were longer, but not yet stronger, as the boy had played swords for much longer than he had. The boy caught his strike on the guard of his sword. The young man tried to twist the boy’s sword out of his slender grip, but only succeeded in hauling the whole boy around, bare feet dancing over the silver sand.

“Come on, you’re better than this,” the boy said. “If you’re going to betray me, at least make it fun.”

“I haven’t done anything!” the young man objected.

“You knew the rules—and you broke them!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose! And what’s so bad about growing up, anyway?”

The boy’s face blackened. “I knew it was too late for you.”

His head jutted forwards. Little pearl-teeth sunk into the young man’s hand. The young man yelped in pain. His sword landed in the soft sand. He lunged for it and was met with a swift cat’s-claw swipe of steel across his cheek. The boy planted his bare foot on the grip of the young man’s sword.

“Come and get it, then,” he taunted, grinning.

Blood filled the tooth-marks on the young man’s thumb. Blood trickled down his face, got caught in the peach fuzz on his jaw. His fists clenched in anger.

But his heart quailed.

“No fair,” he said to the boy, eyes fixed on his lost sword.

“Hmm….” The boy put his fist on his hip, cocked his head to one side and twirled his own sword. “I guess it isn’t. And if I kill you now, you’ll say I didn’t do it fair and square, because you always find something to complain about. All right. Here.”

With a flick of the toe, he tossed the young man’s sword back to him. The young man caught it. The boy leapt instantly into a fencer’s offensive stance.

“En garde, you blackguard!” he cried.

The young man braced himself.

He threw sand into the boy’s eyes and ran.

---

Sand turned to stone, and sky turned also to stone as the young man fled into the caverns honeycombing the island. The boy’s taunts rang behind him, his back and bum and thighs smarting and his clothes tattered from where the cat’s-claw sword had caught him. Even as he entered the low, wet tunnels of the caverns, he knew it was a mistake—yet where else could he go? If death was certain either way, he’d take the way that offered him a little more time.

Some part of him, foolish though it may have been, still hoped that his dearest friend in all the world would stop trying to kill him. The young man couldn’t be blamed for this delusion; after all, the boy running him down to his death was a facetious one, and changed his mind on many matters as easily and as quickly as a falling leaf decides which way it wants to drift.

“Rotten coward!” the boy called, his voice echoing, echoing in the dark. “Come back and fight! Aren’t you a man?”

“No!” the young man shouted over his shoulder, though he couldn’t tell where, precisely, the boy was—behind him or ahead.

“Liar!” the boy accused.

Liar! Liar! Liar! The caverns picked up the call in half a dozen voices. Dread grasped the young man in slimy tentacles.

“I’m not!” he cried. “You all know I’m not!”

“Liar,” the boy hissed, and he was suddenly very close. He raised his voice again: “Run him down, you dogs!”

A baying erupted in the tunnels, clamoring from the slick gray walls. Footsteps scurried through the dark. It couldn’t have mattered less that they were only the footsteps and voices of children—their teeth were real enough.

The young man fled again. At every turn, the baying hounded him, barreling out of tunnels and boxing him about the ears. Sometimes he would rush towards a darkened path and a nimble form would leap out at him, flashing a dagger and snapping its teeth; he would scramble back from it, slipping on the slick rock, and run for a different path, a different opening, while howls and barks and bright silver laughter chased him down.

In this way, the children herded him to the lagoon.

The young man tumbled out into moonlight, blinding bright after the darkness of the tunnels. The baying tumbled out after him, but now he had nowhere to run. There was but one entrance to the caverns here, and it was behind him. There was but one path ahead, and it led to a jut of black rock, leaning way out over the lagoon as if craning to see the bottom without losing its balance. To either side were sheer cliffs. Above was a dome of lace-rock, letting the moonlight through in patches. Below—way, way down below—was the lagoon, still as sapphire, a stumpy foot of the great blue stillness outside the cavern’s mouth. Its surface was broken in just one place: by a massive black crocodile, encased in the water like a bug in amber, only his eyes and his snout and the washboard knobbles on his back poking out.

There were other things under the water, with sweet mouths and grasping hands and huge lantern eyes, and unlike the crocodile, they played with their food.

“Bow, wow! Gotcha!”

The young man spun as first one, then two, then three-four-five-six children spilled from the mouth of the caverns, little daggers in their little hands, cheeks flushed from the great chase. The young man backed away down the jut of rock, though there was only so far he could go. He raised his hands in peace. There were boys among the children, but not the boy.

“Okay,” the young man said, “you caught me. I’ll—you can make me do all the chores, if you want. I’ll sleep in the doghouse, too. Good game.”

The children giggled among themselves, but still approached, creeping on dirty, wet feet. Their eyes were bright as coals in the moonlight.

“Good game, but it’s over now!” the young man cried. His voice cracked and the children laughed at him. Rage and shame turned his face all hot and red. “Stop it! Stop it, it’s not funny!”

“We haven’t caught you yet,” one of the children said, creeping out ahead. “But almost.”

“What will you do once you catch me?” the young man asked.

This gave the children some pause. They looked at each other according to the whims of who each one thought was the smartest or the wisest or the most in-charge. None of them seemed to have an answer.

“You could let me go,” the young man suggested, heart in his throat and his hands and his feet. There was little ground left behind him, just enough to hold his body if he lay down flat. “Then—then you can chase me again tomorrow.”

“Oh, yes, that sounds fun!” a child cried. “We’ll chase him every night!”

“Nuh-uh! Why should he get to get chased all the time? I want to get chased, too!”

“You can’t get chased! You’re too slow to get chased!”

“I want to get chased! I want to, I want to, I want to!”

The young man chanced a look over the side of the jut. It was sheer, damp with the breath of the quiet sea. Far below, a single low wave rolled in.

Maybe, maybe he could climb down.

And then what? If he survived the crocodile and the other things, the sting of saltwater in his wounds, if he could get back onto dry land—well, the island wasn’t empty of allies.

But they were all the boy’s allies first.

“Quit your yapping, you dogs!”

The children froze their cocking fists and shut their mouths, snap. Through a hole in the lace-rock ceiling, on a beam of moonlight, the boy drifted down, fists planted on his hips, sword and dagger through his belt. His eyes, bright and cold as steel, stayed fixed on the young man. He halted a good twelve feet up so he could keep looking down on all of them.

“Why have you stopped?” he demanded.

“We chased him and we caught him,” one of the children volunteered. “Now it’s somebody else’s turn to get chased, but we don’t know who.”

“Oh, you should decide!” another child cried with great relief. “Choose, choose! Who’s turn is it next?”

“It can’t be anybody’s turn next, because we aren’t done with the first turn,” said the boy.

The children looked at each other again, puzzled.

“What do you mean?”

“Look, he can’t get chased anymore. He’s all chased out.”

“Unless we let him go back into the tunnels.”

“But that would mean letting him by, and we can’t let him by.”

“But he’s not caught either, is he,” said the boy. “He’s just stuck.”

“You don’t have to do this,” said the young man. He didn’t back up another step. He was too afraid to move. “Please. You don’t have to—”

“Grab him!” the boy barked.

All the children surged forward. The young man might have leapt off the jut of rock, but his legs said: nuh-uh. The children grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground, no matter how he struggled. He was only a little bigger than the biggest of them, after all, and there were more of them than there were of him.

Below, a second wave rolled in, striking the base of the cliffs with a wet schlapp!

“Hold him down,” the boy commanded, descending until his feet touched the bare rock. He approached with a swagger in his step. He stood over the young man and drew the dagger from his belt.

“No!” the young man gasped, fighting harder (but still not hard enough). “Please, no!”

“What are you going to do to him?” asked one child, holding the young man’s left leg.

“Hmm,” said the boy, looking over his dagger. His eyes flicked to the lagoon, and his face lit up. “I know! I’ll cut off his hand and feed it to that big old crocodile!”

The children laughed and cheered. The young man screamed, weeping, begging. The boy pointed and called out orders.

“You—bring his hand up! You—cover his mouth, I’m tired of his blubbering! You—keep hold of his legs, or he’s going to kick right off the cliff! Hop to it, now, hop to it!”

Though the young man fought, the children hadn’t been running nearly as long or as far as he had, hadn’t fought the boy on the beach, hadn’t been driven round and round through the tunnels. One of them covered his shouting mouth. Two each held his kicking legs. One lay flat across his bucking belly. One knelt on his left arm. One dragged his right arm up past his head, right to the edge of the rocky jut.

A third wave charged in from the sea, smashing (BOOM!) against the cliffs with such force that all of them were misted with salt-spray.

Bright-eyed and now freckled with sea-diamonds, the boy sat down, criss-cross applesauce, next to the young man’s arm and twined their fingers together to hold his hand still. The young man screamed as hard as he could and struggled as hard as he could, shouting his former friends’ names into the uncaring hands that muffled him. The boy gave him a sly look and smiled.

“After this,” he said, “we’ll see if you can run some more.”

The boy raised his arm high. The dagger flashed in the moonlight. The young man squeezed his eyes shut.

At that very moment, the entire crystal sea exploded.

---

A warm moon reclined low on the horizon, casting her honey-soft eyes over the world with the easy love of the profoundly sleepy. Stars twinkled high above, whispering the night’s gossip to each other behind their tiny brass reflectors. Below them, the wide sea stretched out, agitated, a million cats turning round and round trying to get comfortable under a big blue blanket. Right smack in the middle of that sea, there was an island, jagged and pinched, like someone had drawn it out elaborately, disliked it, and crumpled it up in their fist. On the island was a mountain, and a forest, and a field; capes, bays, cliffs and beaches; and on the back side, a cove.

In the cove was a pirate ship.

A fell wind, laced with the smell of coal dust, chased in from the north, blowing the moon’s hair into her face, startling the stars, scattering a family of glitter-fin seals like tenpins, rustling the coarse white cloth of furled sails, and flapping the tails of a long red coat against a pair of shiny black boots.

Above the boots and inside the coat, the young man from our story’s start—not so young anymore—clenched his hand on the hilt of his sword. A black eyepatch sat tight against his weathered skin. He stood on the bow of the pirate ship, looking not at the island, wondrous though it was, but out at the sea and the stars and the moon and the wind that smelled of coal dust.

“Olette!” he barked.

Olette hurried up from below decks, boots thudding on the stairs. She was almost as weathered as the man—gray in her hair, lines carved deep into her face, spectacles on her nose, the years packed thickly onto her bones. She’d been there on that terrible night, holding down one kicking foot—and later, not much later at all, she’d become the second Lost Boy to turn into a Found Man.

“Yes, Cap’n?” she said.

“Weigh anchor and prepare to make sail,” said our man, the captain. He turned on his heel and made for the helm. “He’s back.”

A shiver ran through Olette. A fire lit in her eyes.

“Aye, Cap’n,” she said. She stomped back downstairs, hollering the crew into their places, kicking the ship alive like a hornet’s nest. The captain strolled to the top deck. He gripped the smooth wood of the wheel in both hands. There was a scar across his left wrist, pale and ugly in the moonlight. The old rage burned bright in him, and the fear, and, new since last we saw him, a bitter thirst for vengeance.

Axel had returned to Never Land, and if Captain Roxas had anything to say about it, it was going to be the last time.

---

The ship, a fierce old schooner called Trezava, circled the island like a shark, the agitated waves thumping and bumping against her hollow sides. She had played this game often in the bright waters of the Spanish Main (how she’d made it from there to here is a different story altogether). Her lights were all out, the better to see without being seen, and her crew crept about her decks like alley cats, low and soft-shoed, some with spyglasses and others with eyes alone trained on the star-spattered sky. Captain Roxas slunk among them, the lowest and the quietest, and often he would pass utterly unremarked. For this reason, he never touched or spoke to anyone, lest he frighten them into shouting and give the whole ship away.

Up near the bow, a rope-lighter flickered, three quick sparks whose light was dulled by an overarching coat. Roxas slithered down the deck to where Saïx was tracking something across the middle of the sky.

The moonlight glowed on the scars across the bridge of his nose, remnant of a childish vengeance. X marked the spot on the pirate treasure of his face.

“Fairy light,” he whispered, as Roxas congealed next to him.

“Plenty of fairies,” Roxas whispered back.

Saïx shook his head. “Forty degrees azimuth. They don’t fly that high on their own. Hst! And something just snuffed it out!”

Roxas pulled his own spyglass and fixed it to his un-patched eye. He swept the bubble of telescopic vision across the stars, that unbroken spread of glitter, until—

“Ten degrees port, azimuth thirty-five, headed due south and descending,” he murmured to Saïx. “At least two. Roll out the long nine.”

Other scallywags on the Trezava might have raised an objection to that order; not Saïx. He scuttled off while Roxas kept his eye trained on the little silhouettes blotting out the background fabric of stars. He couldn’t make out how many were in the bundle—he only knew that Axel, flying alone, would never move so slowly.

The quiet squeak and trundle of the long nine’s wheels on the deck was almost drowned out by the slap of waves against the hull—almost, but not quite. The rest of the crew quickly cottoned on to what was happening. Roxas braced himself right where he was, watching the silhouettes drift slowly down towards the treetops like a dandelion seed.

Hurried, not-hushed-enough footsteps thumped up behind him, and a coarse hand grabbed his shoulder.

“You can’t fire on them,” hissed Ven, a more recent addition to the crew, loyal as they came, inconveniently squeamish. His resemblance to his captain was striking, such that Roxas wondered often if he might be a long-lost nephew.

“Might not get another chance,” said Roxas. “Now hush up.”

“What if you hit someone who isn’t Axel?”

“Then at least they’ll not suffer long. Tell Mr. Saïx to fire at will.”

“God’s sake, they’re—”

Steel flashed. Ven gurgled. Hot fluid gushed over Roxas’s hand, spattered on the wooden boards near his feet. He lowered Ven soundlessly onto the deck.

He never took his eye off the descending silhouettes.

Twenty degrees azimuth, nineteen. All too soon, they’d be down among the trees and disappear entirely.

Another hand on Roxas’s shoulder.

“Mr. Saïx is—Jesus wept, what happened here?” Olette whispered, fingers digging into Roxas’s shoulder.

“Has anyone else got eyes on them?” Roxas asked.

“Aye, Fuu has.” By her captain’s lack of response alone, she knew precisely what had happened. “She’s alongside the nine.”

“Then tell Mr. Saïx to fire at will.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

As silently as she’d come, she was gone. Roxas began counting down degrees azimuth in his head.

Twelve. Eleven. Ten. Nine. Eight—

KABOOM!

The long nine flashed like lightning, roared like thunder, rocked the whole ship like a rogue wave. The echoes cracked off the hard angles of the island, ricocheting tennisball-fashion around every cliff and canyon. Birds exploded from the trees. The stars yelped and jumped and dropped their reflectors. Even the moon startled awake.

Eight degrees above azimuth, a clustered silhouette blew apart.

Two pieces dropped into the trees.

One piece shot straight upwards.

The last piece flew out sideways, tumbling on tight curls of turbulence, away towards the Black Cape.

Roxas snapped his spyglass closed.

“Missed,” he spat. He wrenched his knife out of Ven’s throat, kicked the body overboard, and marched back to the helm, hollering orders.

Unless he was much mistaken, there would soon be a child drowning off the Black Cape.

---

To the child’s great credit, it was still afloat when the Trezava, all her lamps lit, dropped anchor off the Black Cape. The cry of man overboard! went up, three or four pirates dove into the water towing ropes, and the child was hauled onto the deck, water-logged and exhausted. Roxas presided over all with a jaundiced eye and his bloodied hands clasped behind his back. The child seemed to be a boy, about fourteen years old. Either the fright of the cannonfire or some natural accident had turned his hair silver. He looked as though he hadn’t slept or eaten in days—making his ability to tread water for nigh on half an hour even more impressive. His skin was tanned in the lamplight. Roxas suspected a coastal origin.

“Seems to be unharmed, Cap’n,” reported Wallace—quartermaster and third in command, forced to take over Olette’s duties while she fussed over the child. “What shall we do with him?”

“Stand aside,” Roxas ordered.

All his crew—Olette somewhat reluctantly—stood aside. Roxas stepped closer, looming over the boy. The boy’s eyes were washed out in the lamplight, too tired to be frightened, too frightened to sink into sleep.

“Have you a name, boy?” Roxas asked.

The boy nodded.

“And what would it be, then?”

The boy swallowed. He croaked out in a small, hoarse voice: “Riku.”

Chapter 26: LITTLE JOHN SILVER

Roxas looked the child over again. He was a strong lad, to have stayed afloat in the waters off the Black Cape for half an hour. But he must also have been a rather foolish lad, to have ended up there in the first place.

“How came you to the Never Land, Riku?” Roxas asked.

“There… was a boy,” Riku said, unfocused.

Olette stepped up to Roxas’s elbow. “Cap’n, the boy’s exhausted. We can get the story from him come morning.”

Roxas chewed his tongue about it, but was forced to admit that she was correct.

“Fair wind,” he said. “Feed him, water him, get him out of sight. All three at once. Jump!”

Olette snapped off a salute and whipped around, barking orders. The child was hoisted up and bundled down into the hold, Olette and Wallace and most of the crew going with him. Oh, they played at being hard and cruel, but they all recalled what it was like to be small and frightened and lost. They’d make a great show of roughness and spoil the boy absolutely rotten.

Roxas couldn’t much blame them. Fourteen wasn’t the youngest they’d caught, but to find one so innocent of Axel’s poisons was rare indeed.

Once he was alone enough, Roxas climbed down the side of the ship, hung by his knee from the rope ladder, and washed the crusted blood off his hands in the dark sea. The moon had almost set, sinking back to sleep when there had been no further cannonfire, and the night would soon be black as pitch. The tide was on its way out, exposing humps and bumps of barnacle-crusted rock like whale backs in the water.

At times, a profound melancholy would come over Roxas, rusting his movements and misting over his eye. This one didn’t last long, but it drained all the vivacity from him, leaving him to haul his carcass back up the ladder with heavy arms and dragging feet. He stumped towards the hold, where he could hear the party already beginning.

“It isn’t nice to take other people’s things.”

Roxas grew very still. The voice, all too familiar in its petulance, its supreme confidence, had come from behind, ten or fifteen feet above the deck of the ship.

“Finders keepers,” Roxas growled. It was juvenile and humiliating, but that was the only language the boy understood.

The boy.

“I found him first,” said Axel. “So he’s mine.”

“Then you lost him, and I found him,” said Roxas. His hand drifted, ever so slowly, towards his hip. “So by rights, he’s mine.”

“Silly old man,” Axel scoffed.

“Not so silly as all that,” said Roxas.

In a single motion, he whipped around and drew his pistol and fired, CRACK!

The stars all jumped again. Axel was gone in the blink of an eye and a glimmer of fairy dust. The moon peeked her head back above the horizon to see what all the fuss was about. Roxas stood stock-still on the deck, smoke curling from the filigreed end of his pistol. His hand began to tremble. His breath came short and sharpish. Shadows of the muzzle flash danced in his eye.

Boots hammered on the deck. Wallace came hurrying up from below, his pistol already drawn.

“Where are they, Cap’n?” he asked, eyes darting, shoulders hunched.

With deliberate care, Roxas tucked his own pistol back into its holster. He turned on his heel, away from the island and the dark that Axel had vanished into.

“False alarm,” he said. “But bar the portholes and keep a man on every door. We’ve got something of his, and he’ll be wanting it back.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” said Wallace.

He hurried back downstairs, and Roxas took himself off to his quarters.

---

The captain’s quarters on the Trezava were lush with treasure, isolated, dim. The treasure was mostly remnant from Roxas’s predecessor, a fearsome pirate he hardly remembered save for the gold-trimmed coat he now wore and the sensation of the man’s blood spattering on his face. The isolation and dimness belonged to Roxas.

He sat down heavily in his cushioned swivel-chair and stared through his large mahogany desk. His hands started to shake again, slowly at first but with rising violence. He reached into a low drawer of the desk and pulled out a crystal bottle of rum. One swig down, two swigs, and his hands managed to steady themselves. He put the bottle away. He toyed with the door on the empty glass lantern that sat on the corner of his desk. He leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. Breathed.

While he wasn’t looking, the hand with the scarred wrist snuck up and peeled the eyepatch from his left eye. There was an eyelid underneath it, whole and round, matching well the one on the right side. Underneath the lid was an eye, whole and round, though shuttered at the moment. When Roxas opened his eyes, to anyone outside his own head, they would appear matched—blue as the sea, tired from the bags they carried, distinguished with crow’s feet; whole and round.

Inside his head, the view was quite different.

The world as Roxas’s left eye saw it was a dizzying thing, a stained glass window that had been smashed to bits and stuck back together without any regard for what the original was meant to look like. Walls joined at odd angles, floors buckled, ceilings distended. Each window gazed out on a dozen different views at once—particularly noticeable in the direction of the island, which, if you believed the glimpses and fragments, should have been three times its current size and possessed of a much wider variety of terrains. The desk was four desks all cobbled together. Roxas’s hands—

Roxas tried not to look at his own hands.

Even faced with such horrors, Roxas’s reaction was primarily one of relief. The ruins were no more ruinous than the last time he’d checked. Of course, they also were no less ruinous, but as he’d never seen them get any better, the best he ever hoped for was that they hadn’t gotten worse.

A knock came at the door. Roxas fixed the eyepatch back over his eye and the world as he saw it returned to normal: one room, one view, one desk, two hands. Neat. Simple. Whole.

“In!” he barked.

Olette entered. She shut the door behind her.

“The new boy’s settled in the galley,” she said. “Seems he’s not eaten in a few days. Must have been quite the journey.”

“Hm,” said Roxas. “Any resistance?”

“As we’ve fed and watered him, no,” said Olette. “But he’s giving sideways eyes all about. He may try to run.”

“Then he may sleep in the brig.”

Olette stiffened. “Are we to keep him prisoner, then?”

“How old would you guess that boy to be?”

Olette said nothing.

“Better a prisoner than a dead man,” said Roxas. “He’ll sleep in the brig. That will be all.”

Olette said nothing, and also didn’t move.

“What?” Roxas demanded.

“Why?” she said. “Why Ven?”

“Too noisy,” Roxas said brutally.

“He was hardly twenty.”

“He was too noisy. Dote on the children, and this is what you get. Let his fate be a warning, to stave of Saïx’s mutiny for another day. How many has he to his cause, now?”

Olette sighed. “Six, at last counting.” She added, as if she could sneak it past him: “And what was the gunshot?”

“Am I to be interrogated? I, captain of this ship?”

“No, Cap’n,” said Olette.

“That’s right. About your business.”

“It’s just that we all heard it,” she said anyway. “They’ll be wanting answers, and if you won’t give any, they’ll make some up.”

All the fight went out of Roxas. He bowed his head, leaned his elbow on his desk and his head on his hand. His face aged ten years in a breath.

“He was here, wasn’t he,” said Olette. The faintest tremor of fear was in her voice. “Here, on our ship.”

“Looking for the boy,” Roxas mumbled. “Doubtful I so much as winged him, but at least he’s gone.”

“He’ll be back.”

“Maybe once or twice, but then he’ll forget. In a month or a week or a day, little John Silver down below will have always been a pirate, and his mortal enemy. The Lost Boys will know the fearsome story of him better than their own names.”

She went to him then, crossed his room in her solid, stomping boots, touched his shoulder as gently as her coarse hand knew how.

Olette loved him, and Roxas had never been quite sure what to do about it.

“Our Riku won’t,” she said.

“And will it stop them from running him through the moment he sets foot on land?” said Roxas. “No. Axel wants him because I’ve taken him, not because he really wants him. He’ll forget him the moment he wants something else.”

“He hasn’t forgotten you,” Olette pointed out.

Roxas snorted. He pulled out his bottle of rum, took a long swig, and thumped it down on the desk.

“He forgot me thirty years ago.”

---

In the cold light of day—filtered through the prism installed in the top deck—Roxas somewhat regretted throwing Little John Silver in the brig. He was loath to use the boy’s proper name, even in his head, at this stage; it was still too likely that the child would be killed or spirited off. It didn’t do to get attached to anyone, but especially to the young ones. Give them half a chance, and they’d love you, and if they loved you, you might hesitate to put a knife through their throat when they were making too much noise.

This boy didn’t look much in danger of loving Roxas at the moment, but you never could tell.

He was awake, sitting on the floor of the brig with his legs and arms crossed and a mightily grumpy expression on his tanned face. Fourteen had been a good guess at his age; he was just starting to come into his musculature, which hinted at the promise of a strapping young man, but currently he still gangled. His eyes were the color of sea-glass.

The smell of coal dust lingered, ever so faintly. Roxas’s chest clenched like a fist, as if his lungs could grab hold of the scent and never let go.

“So,” Roxas said, “here you are. I trust you found the accommodations to your liking?”

“Let me out of here right now,” said Little John Silver.

“I refuse your request, but thank you for making it more or less politely,” said Roxas. “My name is Captain Roxas, and it was I who ordered your rescue. In exchange, you’ll be so kind as to tell me how you came to be here, and anyone who might have come with you.”

“Why?” said Little John Silver, cocking his head to a quite annoying angle. “So you can lock them up, too?”

“More than one, was it?” Roxas said.

Little John Silver seemed to realize he’d said too much and decided—wisely—not to say any more.

“Brothers?” Roxas suggested.

A flicker of worry on Little Silver’s face. Roxas stepped closer.

“Sisters?” he guessed.

Another flicker, this one slightly more lively.

“Brother and sister,” Roxas concluded. “Both younger than you, but the sister’s the youngest.”

“That’s none of your business!” Little Silver cried.

“I’ve made it my business, and you may yet thank me for it. How did you come to the Never Land? I know who brought you here, but I don’t know why.”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

Roxas shrugged. “Then you may stay in the brig while I and my crew hunt for your siblings.”

Little Silver was on his feet and at the bars in an instant, wild as an animal.

“You leave them alone!!”

“No, I don’t think I shall,” said Roxas. “It’s early days yet; Axel may not have got his hooks all the way into them. It’s always worth trying. Rarely works, but always worth trying.”

“Hooks? What are you talking about? What are you going to do with Sora and Kairi?!”

“I’d like to save their lives, if I may,” said Roxas.

“Liar!” Little Silver snarled.

Liar! Liar! A dozen little voices echoed in Roxas’s ears. Panic thumped him hard in the gut. His legs twitched with trying to run away. His skin broke out clammy with cave-damp and salt-spray. The scars on his back and thighs and buttocks stung. His left eye watered underneath the eyepatch.

“You leave them alone!” Little Silver was still yelling. “If you lay a hand on them, I’ll—I’ll make you sorry!”

“You’ll shut your mouth if you know what’s good for you!” Roxas roared back.

Silver shut his mouth, snap. In an instant, he was a child again—short, gangly, shocked. Perhaps no grown-up had ever threatened him before. Roxas wrestled his instincts for control.

“You will remain in the brig for the time being,” he told Little Silver. “For your own safety.”

Little Silver seemed too out of sorts to speak. Roxas turned on his heel and stalked out of the hold, his red coat flapping behind him.

If he had it all his own way, he’d never have to deal with another child again for as long as he lived. Alas, such was his fate that he had to deal with at least one or two almost daily.

Up on deck, most of the crew was lazing around or entertaining themselves while a chosen few kept eyes out for Axel and the Lost Boys. In the old days, there had been more threats to the pirates, but these had all but vanished in the intervening decades. So much so that Roxas had forgotten what most of them were. The mermaids and the crocodiles were the ones he remembered best, and the ones he knew for surest were gone. The great explosion of the crystal sea had destroyed them utterly.

Indeed, the sea was one of the safest places to be in Never Land; Roxas and his ship and its cannons were the main threat. Everything else of note roosted on the island itself. The ones Roxas knew about were the fairies, who lived in a great underground cavern where they threw near-constant balls and galas, and the monsters, which lived deep in the dark wood and would kidnap you if you asked nicely (or devour you in a single bite if you didn’t) and were good sports about being slain.

All paled in comparison to Axel: more fay than the fairies, more monstrous than the monsters, more ruthless than the pirates.

And the Lost Boys loved him for it. Worshiped him for it. He had them all convinced that he was the sun and the moon and the stars, and that when he killed their friends, it was the friends and not Axel who’d committed some grand betrayal. And then the Lost Boys forgot, and then they grew up, and then they died—or, very occasionally, maybe one in twenty, they ended up on the deck of a two-masted sailing ship, lounging in the shade of the sails and gambling on dice.

For a red-hot instant, Roxas hated all of them—men, boys, fairies, monsters, ship, sea, island—until a wave of melancholy swamped the feeling. In a cloud of hissing steam, Roxas slogged across the deck to the ship’s wheel, where first-mate Olette, quartermaster Wallace, and navigator Saïx were plotting a course (or plotting something, anyway). As Roxas approached, Olette and Wallace stood to attention, while Saïx side-eyed him like a snake.

“Morning, Cap’n,” said Olette. “How’s our Riku?”

“A brat,” said Roxas. “Lay in a course for the Cliffs.”

All three of them, even Saïx, paled.

“Er,” said Wallace. “And why there, Cap’n?”

“The boy needs some convincing,” said Roxas.

Saïx stepped forward. “Captain,” he said, like the word tasted bad, “our crew is not so thin that we need waste time on recruitment. We have been given a window of opportunity; Axel will be tired from his journeys, and distracted by his new playthings. We—”

“Oh, you think so, do you?” Roxas cut in.

Saïx forged ahead regardless. “With respect, Captain, for what purpose do we remain here? Axel and his Lost Boys massacre your crew at their whim, and we scrape our living from the dregs of their games. Our efforts spare perhaps one out of every two dozen children he takes; to abandon them would be no great loss if it means saving ourselves. I have plotted a course back to the Spanish Main. The tide will go out mid-morning, and we ought to go with it. Any pursuit—”

“When it’s your ship, Mr. Saïx, you may turn tail and flee like a dog,” Roxas snarled. “While it is my ship, you will lay in a course to the Cliffs.”

The razor-sharp look in Saïx’s eyes said: It won’t be your ship much longer.

The silver tongue in Saïx’s mouth said: “Aye, Captain.”

With a bow, he took his leave, soft-shoed feet quiet on the deck. Olette and Wallace looked at each other. Wallace raised an eyebrow and pinched his mouth. Olette sighed.

“Cap’n,” she said, “he wasn’t wrong, you know.”

“You’d leave the children to die, then?” Roxas asked.

“No,” said Olette.

“You’d leave your murdered friends unavenged?” said Roxas.

“No, Cap’n,” said Wallace.

“We will end Axel,” Roxas said, venomous. “I swear this to you. Once he is ended, we’ll all of us go home.”

“Aye, Cap’n!” said Wallace, believing him.

“Aye, Cap’n,” said Olette, but she didn’t believe.

She was wise not to. Roxas knew, courtesy of his shattered left eye, that there was no sailing back to the Spanish Main from here; only a forest of splinters and an encircling chasm of cracks awaited them. Unless the ship could fly, there would be no going home.

“Olette, take the wheel,” said Roxas. “I’ll be escorting the boy.”

Chapter 27: THE CLIFFS

A chill wind gusted across the deck of the Trezava, shivering Little Silver under Ven’s old coat. Roxas kept a hand on his shoulder, guiding him, supporting him, and, most importantly, keeping him from leaping overboard. The sea had grown rough, gnashing like steel teeth as the Trezava bumped down the coast of the Black Cape.

“Where are we going?” Little Silver asked, watching Roxas and the sea with equal suspicion.

“A dreadful place,” said Roxas, “but one you’ll benefit from seeing. It’s not a long journey, but long enough for a story; tell me how you came to the Never Land.”

“Maybe I don’t want to tell you,” said Little Silver.

“Aye, and maybe I know the story already. Perhaps your mother and father were away. Perhaps your nurse had landed herself in the doghouse. Perhaps a window was left open, and something flew in through it. Am I close?”

Little Silver had a face like sour milk, but not, Roxas suspected, because he understood. He was feeling dreadful only because suddenly he wasn’t special.

“Our mother caught his shadow a while back,” Little Silver mumbled. “He said he liked to sit at the window and hear the stories she told us. She was telling us Beauty and the Beast when his shadow got caught. He came back to get it, him and the little fairy—”

“Fairy?” Roxas said sharply. “What fairy?”

Little Silver gave him an odd look. “I don’t know. He just called her the lady. Anyway, he was trying to stick his shadow back on with soap, which is stupid, so I sewed it back on for him.” His face got even sourer. “And then he thought it was all his own idea and his own doing, which wasn’t fun.”

“Oh, the cleverness of me,” Roxas quoted sneeringly.

“Yes, that’s what he said. How did you know that?”

“I know him,” said Roxas. “So you sewed his shadow back on; what then?”

“Well, then he was going to go, but I didn’t want him to. I wanted to know where he was from and how he could fly and all kinds of things. He said it would be easier to show me than tell me, and I could fly too, if I wanted. I couldn’t leave Sora and Kairi alone, so I woke them up, and then he taught us all to fly and that was incredible, and we didn’t want to stop, and he said we could all come and have adventures in Never Land with him and never grow up, because children don’t grow up in Never Land, and we could fight pirates and dance with fairies and steal treasure from monsters, and I could tell him how Beauty and the Beast ended and all the other stories, too, and it would be a grand adventure, and—”

As he spoke with ever-rising enthusiasm, the ship rounded the horn of the cape, and the coastline gave way to the Cliffs.

Little Silver’s shoulder tensed under Roxas’s hand and his voice choked off. The Cliffs had that effect on people. A chaos of razor-sharp spines shark-finned out of the churning steel ocean, enclosed by a half-moon cove. A jut of black rock loomed out over the uneasy sea. A cave entrance hollowed out the island behind.

And, too, there were the bodies—some gnawed by sea-creatures, some rotting away; most little more than skeletons, shattered by the tides. For this reason, the Cliffs were more properly called the Bone Cliffs, though out of respect for the dead, their full name was rarely used on the Trezava.

“A grand adventure I can’t promise you, boy,” Roxas said to Little Silver, “but I’ll give you a story sure enough.”

Little Silver said nothing, his face slowly screwing up with disgust more than horror, especially as the stench reached them on the gusting salt winds. Roxas tightened his hand on the boy’s shoulder, leaned down and pointed to a landmark near the center of the cove.

“See there, that poor lonesome ribcage caught on that pinnacle?” he said. “That’s my friend, Hayner. On the day I grew up, he held my right arm down when Axel wanted to cut off my hand and feed it to a crocodile. On the day he grew up, Axel drove him to that jut of black rock—up there, you see?—and said, If you haven’t grown up, then fly. Hayner was always the best and the smartest and the strongest, and never afraid to prove it. I think he really believed he could still fly, right up to the very end.”

“It was probably just an accident,” said Little Silver. “Axel probably thought he could still fly, too. He shouldn’t have jumped.”

“Aye, that much is true, but it wouldn’t have saved him,” said Roxas. He pointed to another tangle of bones and rotted cloth, crumpled at the base of the Cliffs. “There, that’s Pence. Clever old Pence. Held my mouth shut the day Axel decided to kill me. I still offered him a place, you know, but he didn’t believe Axel would ever turn on him. Few things was Pence ever wrong about, but that was one. Your new friend drove him to the high cliff and said, If you haven’t grown up, then fly. Pence was clever enough to know the jig was up; no, he said, I won’t fly.

“If you won’t fly, then fight! cried Axel, and drew steel then and there. So Pence fought for his life. Lost, of course. He was more words than swords. Axel ran him through and threw him over.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Little Silver snapped.

“Yet he did,” said Roxas.

“You’re lying again. How do I know you’re not lying?”

“If I am lying, how would you suppose all these bodies got here?”

“You probably killed them,” said Little Silver. “You’re a pirate; pirates kill people and do other horrible things.”

“Ask any of my crew; they’ll tell you the same. They’ve all seen what that creature is capable of, and how often he’s capable of it. Eight of the others I knew, too: Seifer, Rai, and Vivi; Vexen and Zexion; and Wantz, and Biggs, and Jessie. The waves have taken all but Jessie now—just there, and she waves to us every time the tide comes in. There have been dozens more I didn’t know. Some grew up, and Axel drove them here to die. Some earned his ire, or drew his displeasure, or sometimes there were simply more Lost Boys than he liked to have at once; fickle creature that he is, he forgets how many he has and how many he wants from one moment to the next.

“To each he gave the same choice: fight or fly. But there was no choice for any of them. That is your clever new friend, young lad. That is the thing which holds your brother and sister in his sway, and plays his laughing games with them, and promised them grand adventures. Aye, children who come to the Never Land don’t grow up, that much I’ll grant you; but Axel’s the only one who never gets older.”

Finally, Little Silver stopped to think rather than snapping back like a rubber band. He glowered at the Cliffs, at the skeletons and the rotting bodies. He turned suspicious sea-glass eyes on Roxas.

“Your crew,” he said. “Where did they come from?”

“Lost Boys, to a man,” said Roxas. “Some get wise before the road runs out, and my gangplank’s always lowered to them as come looking for it.”

“You shot a cannon at us.”

“At Axel,” said Roxas. He leaned in close, until Little Silver leaned back from him. “Thirty years, I’ve watched that creature steal and murder children. Thirty years I’ve let him massacre my crew for the sake of sparing his sacrificial lambs. As you’d all three have been killed eventually if I didn’t fire, I hope you’ll forgive me if I had few qualms about shortening the length of your stay.”

“He wouldn’t kill us,” Little Silver asserted.

“Bet your life on it?” Roxas asked.

“Yes!”

“Bet your brother and sister’s lives on it?”

The boy opened his mouth, but no words came out. His eyes drifted back to the Cliffs, and the bodies, and the steel-gray sea and the black jut like an iron poker.

“I don’t believe Axel killed all those people,” he said slowly, “but I also don’t want to leave Sora and Kairi alone with him. Will you help me get them?”

“Aye, Riku,” said Roxas. “That, I will.”

---

Riku was given clothes and shoes and a dagger, a hammock below decks, a set of dice that had belonged to another murdered crewmate. He was given no duties yet, as he hadn’t formally joined, and Roxas didn’t want to drive him off with hard labor when he’d only just won his favor. It was nonetheless call for celebration, and the crew kicked up a merry fuss about it; ten minutes in, Roxas was swamped by a wave of melancholy and excused himself before he stabbed someone.

All he could think of was how Riku was going to die; today or tomorrow or ten years from now, it would all come out the same in the end. Oh, he might grow up with the pirates, but for what? To become a jaded, gambling, grog-swilling layabout, stripped of all wonder, trapped on this ship as firmly as the skeletons were trapped on the rocks of the Bone Cliffs? How long before Saïx, that silver-tongued zealot of homesickness, recruited him to the mutiny? How long until he was mourning the deaths of his siblings? How long until one of them, poisoned by Axel’s winsome words, ran their brother through for daring to survive?

A very merry day indeed.

Roxas slogged into his quarters, eased into his squeaky swivel chair and stared through his desk. Almost like he hadn’t moved from the spot since last night.

Fitting. Nothing he’d done for the past thirty years had moved him an inch; why should the last ten hours have been any different?

Roxas laid his head down on his desk, eyes half open (though only one of them could see). There was much to be done and he couldn’t face any of it. He ought to formally induct Riku into the crew. He ought to see if he could find the brother and sister, just in case it wasn’t too late (of course it would be too late, it was always too late). He ought to muster his crew, his cannons, his pistols and swords; storm the island, slay the boy, end the nightmare once and for all.

Or he could throw himself into the sea and have done with it. Saïx was on the verge of mutiny anyway; it would be a good joke, if macabre, to make all his conniving for naught. At the very least he’d rob Axel of the satisfaction of killing the dread pirate, Captain Roxas. Until Axel forgot, and the dread pirate had always been called Captain Saïx.

But these were idle thoughts, tantrum thoughts, wailing despair and pounding their fists on the floor over something that was ultimately quite inconsequential. Roxas might have had a good long wallow in them had he not noticed the faintest glimmer of light intruding into his gloom.

Roxas moved not an inch: to all appearances, he was still slumped half-insensate in his melancholy. Just beneath the skin, however, his blood quickened, and his eye tracked the little light with predatory precision.

First it flickered at the gap above the door, scooting along from right to left. Evidently it found the space too small, for it vanished and reappeared at the bottom of the door, this time sliding from left to right. Here it found purchase, and slipped inside—a round purple light, no larger than a doubloon. Once inside, it shook itself with a sound like distant sleigh bells, then took to the air. It flitted here, flitted there, peeking in the corners and under the shelves, squeezing through the locks on treasure chests, disappearing under the sheets in Roxas’s bunk and popping back out again. It even checked the rafters before drifting down to land on the large desk, tip-toeing across maps and papers, passing the tall glass door of an empty lantern—

SNAP! Roxas slammed the lantern shut on the little purple light and closed the latch. The lantern rattled

“Really,” he said, part disdain and a much larger part regret. “He’s reduced you to this?”

Inside the lantern, the queen of the fairies, the Great Witch of the Woods, the Lady in Black beat her tiny fists against the glass and stuck her tongue out at him.

Roxas double-checked the latch on the lantern door before setting it back on his desk. The Lady in Black continued to buzz her dragonfly wings and beat her tiny fists. Roxas sat back and laced his hands over his belly.

“Sent you to scout, did he?” Roxas asked laconically.

Silver bells chimed from inside the lantern, the language of the fairies. She was so small that her voice was high and bright—though he remembered a time when it had tolled like church bells.

“And you obeyed, did you?” he said.

The Lady in Black chimed again, a tune that Roxas knew to mean: “You silly ass!”

“Silly is the one who seems to have forgot who put you in a bottle first,” Roxas said.

The Lady in Black reeled back a foot and kicked the glass hard, toonk! She squealed and hopped around on one foot, clutching her toes, then plopped down in the center of the lantern in an agony of despair.

Roxas’s heart twinged. She’d been like a sister to him, once—a very long time ago—and he still hated to see her this way. He laid his arms down on the desk and laid his head on top of them, the better to see her up close. She didn’t wish to be seen, and turned her back on him, arms folded.

“I’ve missed you,” he said softly.

Her wings quivered. She otherwise ignored him.

“I have,” he insisted. “We could have stayed friends, if only you hadn’t thrown in your lot with that—boy.”

She shook her head so vigorously that her short black hair spun out like a dancer’s dress and fairy dust plumed like mushroom spores inside the lantern.

“What? You would’ve abandoned me regardless?” Roxas said sharply. “You had a choice, and you chose him. And look where it’s gotten you.”

The gossamer wings drooped. The fairy-light dimmed. Roxas sensed he’d said something wrong.

“Aye, and in a better world, there would’ve been no choice to make,” he admitted. “I shouldn’t blame you. He’s the one who tore us apart. It needn’t have ended up this way.”

Once again, she shook her head; not vigorously this time, but with quiet sadness.

“No?” said Roxas. “What do you mean, no? Axel’s not the one who wrought all this?”

“Silly ass,” she sighed.

“You can’t have meant that it needed to end up this way?”

She said nothing, only drooped and dimmed a little farther. Roxas was at a loss, an ache in his heart and a dread in his belly. It was hard to believe now, but the Lady in Black had always known things that were beyond knowing, seen things that were beyond seeing. She had been great and powerful, once.

A long, long time ago.

The corner of Roxas’s mouth curled like a fishhook.

“Do you remember that first summer?” he asked softly. “The grand summer gala. I think we had about four of them a month. It was the only time we could be sure of having real food, and not only pretend.”

The Lady in Black sniffled.

“You were kind to me,” Roxas said. “I don’t remember much from those days, but I remember that I was very frightened and you were very kind to me. You were much bigger back then. Really I don’t know when you got so small.”

She heaved a tiny sigh and said something he couldn’t understand.

“I’d wager it’ll all come right again,” said Roxas, “once I’ve killed Axel.”

The Lady in Black looked over her shoulder, and to his surprise, the look on her face was not one of sudden anger, but of ever-deepening despair.

“You silly ass,” she said again, distraught.

Roxas bristled. “What? You care that deeply for him? Perhaps you’ll change your mind when he fails to rescue you from your new prison.”

He leapt to his feet and flicked the lantern. The Lady in Black chimed at him, also on her feet, but Roxas didn’t speak the language fluently and wasn’t paying much attention besides.

“They won’t be any more assured of meals now than they were then,” he said darkly. “Poison’s the way.”

He strode out of the room, the tiny protestations of the Lady in Black ringing in his ears.

---

“Cap’n, I dislike this,” Olette said.

The two of them, Olette and Roxas, crept side by side through the woods with a hand-picked dozen of the crew behind them. Riku had been left on the ship, and furthermore had not been told where they were going; he could only get in the way or get himself killed here. Olette’s words were the first spoken since coming ashore, and they made Roxas uneasy. Not enough to stop him, but enough to make him think about stopping; they were just about the strongest protest Olette had ever registered.

“They’re all dead men walking, save Axel,” Roxas said. “Bear that in mind before you decide to spare him for their sakes.”

“I’m no more inclined to spare him than you are, but the children—”

“Have killed more of us than we ever have of them, and will keep on doing so at the drop of a hat,” Roxas interrupted. “Save your pity for them as earn it.”

“But Riku’s brother and sister; what of them?”

Despite his hardened nature, Roxas did pause to consider this—but only for a moment.

“Axel will want his share first,” he said, “then those who are most in his favor. The new children will go last, or not at all. We may have time to give an antidote, or may not even need one.”

“As you say, Cap’n,” said Olette, but she still wasn’t happy about it.

A distant shriek echoed through the woods—from this distance, it was difficult to tell if it was one of joy or pain. Roxas’s heart skipped a beat and his skin broke out in clammy sweat. He cast an eye about, spotted something likely, and held up a hand for the company to halt.

“They’re close,” he whispered to Olette. He pointed to what he’d spotted. “That clearing—set it down there. Once it’s done, have our men hide amongst the trees and brush, surrounding. No one is to move unless they are spotted, or until I give the word.”

“I dislike this, Cap’n,” Olette said again.

“Noted. Get to it.”

“Aye, Cap’n.” She slipped away from him, whispering instructions to the company.

While the pirates worked, Roxas crawled into a large mulberry bush and tucked himself in. He’d left his red coat back on the ship, and now, dressed in only browns and blacks, he was easy to lose in the underbrush. Keeping one hand on his pistol, he pulled the leaves of the bush aside like blinds to watch the clearing.

Four of his crew emerged from the brush, one scouting, two guarding, one carrying the payload: a round cake the size of a child’s torso, beautifully iced and decorated in vibrant greens. The pirate set it on a convenient stump. It looked good enough to eat with one’s bare hands.

A sudden vertigo struck Roxas, turning his stomach and making his left eye water under its patch, filling him with a dreadful sense of familiarity.

He’d been here before.

Chapter 28: NO CAKE!

Roxas’s head spun as his crew slipped back into the woods, leaving their payload alone in the clearing. As much as his bones were certain he’d been through all this before, it was with the caveat that he hadn’t been here, exactly; that if he turned his head and looked about, he might see himself somewhere else in this scene, traipsing through the woods or creeping along the tree branches, laying the bait: a cake, quite large, with tempting green icing….

He shook himself. Such bouts of deja vu weren’t uncommon (though they were rarely so strong). If there had been another cake sometime in the last thirty years, what of it? No plan was ever truly made up from whole cloth, or if it was, the cloth was woven from something. Axel, certainly, wouldn’t remember if any of this had happened fifteen or twenty years ago; he hardly remembered last week.

All at once, the Lost Boys crashed onto the scene, laughing, talking, tussling and tumbling. Roxas recognized a few of them and was alarmed at how much they’d grown. He was equally alarmed at the number he didn’t recognize; and again at the number, total. Axel rarely liked to have more than six or seven, certainly never more than twelve, and there were currently fourteen. So engaged in their childhood mischief were they that it took a solid few seconds for any of them to notice the cake, even placed as it was in the center of a clearing.

“Hullo!” one said, standing up to her full weedy height. “Where’d that come from?”

“Oh, wonderful!” another cried. “The Lady must have made it for us! It’s somebody’s birthday!”

The most-enthused made a lunge for the cake and was caught by at least two other sets of hands.

“Don’t you dare,” one scolded. “Axel will kill you if you have his birthday cake before him.”

“How do you know it’s his birthday cake?”

“Well, it’s not my birthday. Is it your birthday?”

“Well… no….”

“Whose birthday is it here?”

A few uncertain glances passed about. One very grubby child raised a tentative hand.

“I don’t know when my birthday is,” he stated. “Could be my birthday today.”

“But the Lady doesn’t like you,” yet another child sneered. “She wouldn’t make you a cake. She’d only make Axel a cake.”

“But—”

In a gust of cold wind and a glimmer of pixie dust, the devil they spoke of swooped into the clearing, his fists on his hips and a laugh on his lips.

“Well that was a fun game,” he declared. “What shall we play next?”

“Axel! Axel! Look!”

All the children clamored at once—except two, Roxas noticed, standing near to each other at the back and looking quite exhausted, dressed in clothes that were newer and cleaner. A little brown-haired boy and a littler red-haired girl.

“Everyone stop talking at once,” Axel said, annoyed. The Lost Boys all shut their mouths, and Axel swept a disapproving look over all of them. “Really, I don’t know when there got to be so many of you. Now, somebody tell me what all this excitement is about. Just one somebody, if you please!”

The girl who’d first noticed the cake—clearly some kind of wise elder in their child society—pointed behind Axel, at the cake.

“Somebody’s birthday,” she said.

Axel turned, and an arrow went through Roxas’s chest. Axel looked exactly the way he had on that fateful night, thirty years ago. The way his face lit up, from peevish confusion to pure delight, was just the same as when he’d had the brilliant idea to cut off Roxas’s hand and feed it to a crocodile.

“A birthday, indeed!” Axel cried. “My birthday—it must be. That’ll be fun, we’ll have a party, and we must have candles from somewhere, and little sandwiches to eat with your fingers, and little drinks with laughs caught in the bubbles, and great big tables, and music—and dancing, of course! It’ll be just—”

Axel stopped all of a sudden. He frowned and cocked his head to one side, his clever green eyes squinted up as though he was listening to something he couldn’t quite make out. Roxas grew uneasy. This posture, though he’d never seen it while he was among the Lost Boys, was familiar enough to him, and sometimes signaled a drastic change in Axel’s mood. Most of the time he seemed to brush off whatever was speaking to him, but upon occasion he could go from jolly to melancholy, mellow to murderous in the blink of an eye and the whisper of a word that only he could hear.

“Wonderful?” Axel said under his breath, in a voice much older than his body. “Or dull? It can’t be both.”

“What should we do with the cake, Axel?” a Lost Boy butted in, impatient.

Axel came back to himself. He laughed, bright and sparkling, and leapt into the air, taking position above them all.

“What else but eat it?” he said. “And I don’t think you should call me Axel, Wakka. I’m the grand duke of this band, so you should call me Your Grace. I think that sounds much better, don’t you?”

A few Lost Boys in the back exchanged a dubious glance; other, more seasoned members took it completely in stride.

“Yes, Your Grace!” they piped. “May we have the cake, please, Your Grace? It looks ever so delicious!”

“Hmmm,” said Axel. “No cake before dinner, I think. We must have dinner first, or you’ll spoil your appetites.”

“Just this once? Please, oh, please? It’s your birthday after all, shouldn’t we get to break the rules for your birthday?”

They learned fast, these children; appeals to vanity always worked.

“Well, maybe just this once,” Axel said, eyeing them slyly. “But I get first go. It is my birthday, after all.”

“Yes, Your Grace!”

“No! No! No!”

The single dissenting voice came from the back, and the sea of Lost Boys parted from it—or from suspicion of the violence that would follow it.

They learned fast, these children.

The parting sea revealed the little red-headed girl, stomping her foot.

“Nobody can have any cake until we find Riku!” she cried, shrilly distraught. “You said we were going to find Riku!”

Axel frowned, bemused. “Who?”

“Riku! Riku!” said the girl, and burst into tears.

The boy next to her grabbed her hand and glared at Axel with stalwart defiance (and a little bit of desperation).

“Our big brother, Riku,” he said. “You remember. He came here with us. You brought him here with us!”

Axel’s eyes narrowed, then widened. He snapped his fingers.

“Oh, yes, the one who’s going to tell us all the stories! You don’t have to worry about him; I sent the Lady to find him. Now, Tidus, you’ve got the longest sword, so you should cut the cake—”

“NO CAKE!” the little girl shrieked, and broke from her brother’s grasp and with a mighty heave upended the cake onto the ground.

Fury warped Axel’s face. His sword was drawn in an instant. Roxas braced himself for the grim conclusion of his displeasure when suddenly, the little girl’s brother lunged forward and stood between her and Axel, arms thrown out to shield her.

“Stop,” he said.

A hush fell over the Lost Boys. They, like Roxas, had seen this play out before. The little girl also went quiet and still, her eyes enormous and frightened, sensing, perhaps, that she had done something unforgivable.

“Out of the way,” Axel ordered.

“You won’t hurt my sister,” said the little boy.

“It’s my birthday, I’ll do whatever I want! Now get out of the way, or I’ll feed you to the monsters!”

The little boy blanched, but didn’t move an inch. He shook his head. Several of the Lost Boys were slinking back into the brush, trying not to be seen.

The light of murder flared bright in Axel’s eyes. Roxas’s hand tightened involuntarily on the brush—and broke a twig.

Axel’s head snapped up. His nostrils twitched. He held up a hand for silence. All the Lost Boys froze.

“What is it, Axel?” one whispered.

“Pirates,” Axel hissed. “Quick! Into the trees.”

In a twinkling he was gone, and most of the Lost Boys went up into the canopy after him on gusts of fairy dust. The two new children, Riku’s younger siblings, struggled to get off the ground, frightened and confused and clutching each other’s hands. Roxas bit down on the impulse to dart out and grab them both.

Olette failed to suppress that same impulse. Whether she thought she could get away clean or whether she really didn’t believe any of the Lost Boys would do her harm, she lunged from the brush without warning.

On the first step, both children spun around.

On the second step, the little girl screamed.

On the third step, just as Olette was snatching for her arm, a piping voice called: “Now!”

Six Lost Boys dropped from the trees, daggers-first. Roxas squeezed his eyes shut, jaw clenched, muscles like steel cables under his skin. Olette

In less than half a minute, thirty years of quiet devotion bled out in the dirt.

“Come on now, no time for celebration!” Axel scolded the murderous children. “Where there’s one, there’s bound to be more. Split up—and keep high!”

The Lost Boys leapt back into the trees and scattered to the four winds. Roxas forced himself to look, to see where they went. Olette wouldn’t be the last of his crew to die today; some would get lucky and make it back to the ship, and others would not.

A flare of bright red hair zipped away north over the trees.

Without a word to his crew, Roxas slipped through the underbrush after it.

---

He found Axel by the entrance to the fairies’ great underground halls, those arching caverns that now filled Roxas with a deathly dread. Axel was lying on his stomach on a bed of moss, chatting amiably with a little white light, evidently having forgotten all about his quest to murder more pirates, though it had scarcely been ten minutes.

“It’s silly, isn’t it?” he was saying, kicking his grubby feet. “I told them I was a duke, but really I’m a king. I suppose I didn’t want to shock them too badly. It would be quite a shock, wouldn’t it? Learning I’ve been a king this whole time.”

The little light jingled and flickered. Axel laughed. Roxas, still hidden in the underbrush, drew his sword, ever so slowly, under cover of the noise.

“Silly little fairy!” Axel said. “I didn’t marry anybody to become a king, I just am one. Anyway, she wouldn’t marry me. She wants to marry that silly old pirate.”

Roxas froze solid. Even the air in his lungs turned to ice. The fairy Axel was speaking to let out another jingle. Roxas could only catch a word here or there; something about stupid and mean and insult. Axel wasn’t listening. His feet had stopped kicking and his eyes had gone foggy and distant.

“Though it’s odd,” he mumbled. “I could’ve sworn they were….”

The fairy jingled again. Axel snapped back to himself. He made a face at the tiny creature.

“I don’t know what you mean, too good for him. He’s a pirate captain, isn’t he? That’s almost as good as a king. And he was a prince before he was a pirate, anyway, so I don’t see what the trouble is.”

The boy’s imagination was as wild as ever; though Roxas hardly remembered his life before Never Land, he knew he hadn’t been royalty. Princes didn’t live in dark two-bedroom flats with stairs so narrow your parents had to turn sideways to get up them, in a tiny bedroom with a tiny window that only looked out on green, green woods….

Roxas blinked, shook his head as though beset by flies. His window had looked out on a city; a grungy, noisy, smelly, smoking city that he missed more than air. There had been no trees.

So why did he remember woods?

It must have been Axel’s influence. Roxas had watched Never Land bend to his whims before; it shouldn’t have surprised him that his own memory was subject to them, especially with the creature rattling off nonsense not thirty feet from him. While Axel built his tall tales taller, Roxas slipped out of the brush and crept his close quarters closer.

“Oh, yes, but he was a magnificent prince,” Axel was saying. “The kindest, bravest, most beautiful prince in the world. But then one day he wished a fairy to turn him cruel and wicked, and she did it.”

The fairy jingled, “That never happened!”

But a part of Roxas, deep and dreadful in his belly, thought that it had.

“Did, too,” said Axel. “I saw. He turned wicked and tried to stab me with a silver sword.”

Roxas could remember the gleam on the terrible blade.

“I had to cut my foot off to get away,” said Axel.

The fairy objected again, and again the noxious guilt building in Roxas’s belly disagreed. Perhaps the fairy was immune to Axel’s whole-cloth histories—Roxas decided to trust her memories over his own. Biting his tongue ’til it bled, he crept closer, and closer still.

“Did, too!” Axel cried. “Look, I’ll show you—”

He turned. He saw. He cried out.

Roxas lunged at him. His sword buried itself six inches into the moss. The fairy and Axel lit off in opposite directions—Axel into the sky, the fairy back into the caves, quick as frogs fleeing a heron’s beak. Roxas slashed at Axel’s retreating feet, but missed by a mile.

Axel whooped, laughed, cut a high loop above Roxas and drifted down, hands on hips and legs akimbo, to hover on a glimmer of fairy dust about fifteen feet up.

“Ahoy, captain!” he cried brightly. “I’ll bet you thought you’d be quick enough to catch me that time. But I’m much too quick for you to ever catch me.”

“Long way from your crew,” Roxas growled, “aren’t you, boy.”

Axel shaded his eyes with his hand and made a show of looking about.

“I don’t see yours around, either,” he said. “I guess that makes us even.”

“Not in the slightest,” said Roxas.

Axel laughed. “Princess? Is that the best... you’ve….” He wound down, sank half a foot in the air. A frown crossed his face. He looked at Roxas with earnest confusion. “Wait, what did you say?”

“Enough of your games!” Roxas snarled. He brandished his sword. “And enough of you, altogether!”

“No, I don’t feel like playing swords with you today,” Axel said, poutish. “You said something, but it wasn’t what you said. So what did you say?”

Roxas took a wild swing at him, though he knew there was no chance of connecting. Axel pulled his feet up and somersaulted in the air. When he came back around, his face was twisted with anger.

“I said I don’t feel like it today,” he snapped.

“If you had any dignity, you’d fight me on solid ground,” Roxas said. Fury reddened his vision and whitened his knuckles. His left eye watered under its patch.

Axel rolled his eyes. “You’re such a pain. Why don’t you go play swords with Hayner?”

“Hayner’s dead!” Roxas roared. He lunged at Axel again in a blind rage. Axel twisted like a ribbon in the wind, and no steel met any flesh.

“Oh, right,” Axel said offhandedly, considering the sky. “I wonder whatever happened to that dog? I thought… you….”

He went foggy again, and again lost altitude. Had Roxas been in full possession of his wits, he might have waited an extra moment or two; but at the mention of Hayner, and at Axel’s forgetting about having murdered him, he was so full of grief and anger that he couldn’t see straight, let alone think in a line. The moment he saw Axel lose focus, he leapt, sword-first, and what could have been a killing blow left only a cat-scratch on the boy’s slender arm.

Even so, the whole world shuddered like scaffolding in a storm.

Axel yelped. He shot up nine or ten extra feet, well out of range; touched the scratch on his arm; stared at the blood on his fingers. He turned huge, betrayed eyes on Roxas.

“That hurt,” he said, as though nothing ever had before.

Roxas was too angry to speak, seething on the ground while the object of his vengeance hovered just out of reach. That object’s face twisted suddenly in to a mask of violence, teeth bared and eyes burning, and in the next instant he swooped down at Roxas like a great knife-beaked bird!

Roxas thrust his sword up. Axel evaded the skewer. The eye-gouging strike of his dagger cut wide. Sharp pain flicked across Roxas’s cheek. Gray-gold hairs floated off on the breeze.

A black eyepatch flopped unceremoniously onto the moss.

Roxas reeled back, clutching his face. The island spun around him, a kaleidoscope of land and lake, field and forest, sea and sky. He dropped to his knees, half-blind and dizzied beyond standing. Tears streamed from his left eye, diluting the blood that ran from the scratch on his cheek. His back prickled with knives-yet-to-come, his throat closed for fear of being slit. He groped for his sword and couldn’t find it; every time he put his hand down, he seemed to put it down in six places at once.

“Ha! Got you!”

Axel’s voice cut through high and clear, perfectly normal, as though the world wasn’t in ruins around them. Roxas, on instinct, looked up.

And discovered the one thing in the broken world that was entirely whole.

Chapter 29: A FAREWELL IN GLASS

Amid the kaleidoscopic ruin of land and sea and sky, Axel stood alone, whole, his silhouette ringed in chasing lights as if all the fractures in the world converged behind him. There was a single nick in his outline, the place where Roxas’s sword had scratched his arm.

“What?” Axel said, his triumph at getting the better of Roxas turning to confusion. Roxas could almost hear the glass shards grinding as the boy moved. “Don’t just stare at me. You’re supposed to yell and try to shoot me. Or else run away.”

It made no sense. When everything, everything was shattered to pieces, how could Axel, who’d been there on the night the cracks had first appeared, who’d been right next to Roxas when Roxas had shattered—how could he still be whole?

Unless, of course, he was the one who’d broken everything.

“Fiend,” Roxas hissed, too breathless for proper venom.

“You’re so stubborn!” Axel said, exasperated. “Every time I’m about to kill you, you stop being any fun. Why can’t you just play fair?”

“Fair?” Roxas spat. “When you’ve bent the world to your wicked whims, how can anything be fair?”

“I’m cruel, not wicked,” said Axel. “You’d know that if you listened. And what do you mean, bent the world? I haven’t bent much of anything lately. Unless you mean that coconut tree we tried to—”

“Silence, you wretched brat! Was it not enough to destroy me? Had you to destroy everything else, too?”

Axel looked at him quizzically. “You really are a silly old man.”

With a roar, Roxas lunged at him. Even on a good day, with all his wits about him, he was rarely quick enough to get anywhere close to Axel; today, out of sorts and half-blind, he missed by a mile, tripped over his own feet, and landed face-down in the fractured moss. He turned to face the doom that must surely be swooping towards him—but Axel was floating about fifteen feet up, looking down with an almost pitying air.

“I will have to kill you someday, I think,” he said. “That’s really the only thing left to do.”

“Then do it now, and be done with it,” Roxas said.

Axel shook his head. “Not here. Not now. That’s not how it’s supposed to go. Oh well; good-bye, I suppose I’ll see you soon!”

He arced off into the shattered sky, drawing a stained-glass trail behind him. Roxas watched him go in silence. His ears were ringing, and something unpleasant stirred in his stomach.

Gingerly, Roxas picked himself up. He covered his left eye with his hand to return the world to wholeness. He found his eyepatch where it had fallen, tied it back on too tight. He glanced up into the sky where Axel had gone, but there was no sign of him now, not even a trail of fairy dust. Roxas looked down at his own hands—old, worn, calloused and tanned. He balled them into fists but couldn’t clench. All the fight had gone out of him, replaced by a creeping dread.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that Axel had said something capital-T True. For Roxas to have died here was somehow implausible, despite the fact that he’d been at Axel’s mercy. Moreover, Roxas himself filled with an overwhelming forbiddance at the thought of striking his blade through Axel’s heart, of shattering the last whole thing in this broken world, although doing so was the only thing that he truly wanted.

It was, quite simply, not how it was supposed to go.

How he knew that, or if he’d known it before this moment, he couldn’t have said; yet the conviction was as strong as one based on the firmament of experience. Perhaps it was the after-effects of that tilting deja vu he’d met in the woods; or perhaps it was Axel, bending not just the world but Roxas to his fiendish whims.

Either way, Roxas would not cave. For thirty years, he’d failed to slay that child-murdering menace. Whether it was delusion or premonition or compulsion that had stayed his hand, he would show no more mercy. If the last whole thing in the world was Axel, then perhaps the world was better off broken.

So Roxas gathered himself and set off through the woods back to his ship.

---

The casualties were grim, but not insurmountable; five more of Roxas’s crew had been slain by Lost Boys in the woods, while the other ten had returned with only a few nicks and scratches between them; and the main force of the crew, which had remained on the ship, had suffered nothing worse than boredom. Even young Riku was still among them, learning to play dice and tie knots.

Learning from Saïx, so who knew what else he’d been taught.

Word of Olette’s untimely demise must have reached the crew, for they were more subdued than usual. It was testament to how well-liked she’d been that the struggle to take her position as first mate hadn’t started yet. Roxas couldn’t imagine that would last long. He considered briefly, as he paced the deck, appointing Saïx to the position, but decided against it. A bit of power wouldn’t satisfy him who wanted all of it; and in the mean time, it would mean having to take Saïx’s suggestions into consideration. What Roxas really needed was an excuse to kill the bastard.

Or for Axel to be dead, and the entire premise of the brewing mutiny to go defunct.

Roxas’s pacing took him past Wallace, who’d been left on the ship in case both captain and first mate were killed. Promoting him from quartermaster to first mate would only be natural, yet he made a much better quartermaster than he would make first mate. From the way he shrunk from Roxas and avoided his eyes, he seemed to know it, too. Roxas gave him a nod and a clap on the shoulder before pacing onward.

No, Wallace wouldn’t do. Roxas took up a position on the aft of the ship and paged through his crew. The number of candidates for first mate was slim, at best. Olette, really, had been the only man for the job, and the only one who’d ever held it. She was irreplaceable.

“Captain?”

Roxas turned. Behind him, at a respectful stand-off, stood Riku, hands empty by his sides, chin proudly lifted.

“What is it, lad?” Roxas asked.

“Where are Sora and Kairi?”

Ah. Right. Another tally in the failures column.

“Didn’t manage to grab them,” Roxas said, turning his face to the sea. He hadn’t managed to poison them, either, but he couldn’t offer that as consolation.

“Are they all right?” Riku pressed.

“Well enough, I suppose; all in one piece, at the very least.”

“Miss Fuu told me Axel almost killed Kairi,” the boy said; an accusation, spoken with the inflection of calling Roxas a liar.

“Almost, aye, but he didn’t,” Roxas said.

“We have to go back out after them,” said Riku. “And I’m coming with you this time, to make sure it gets done.”

“We don’t, and you aren’t.”

“Then why should I stick with you? First you tell me they’re in danger, then you tell me you won’t save them. If you won’t help, then I’ll do it myself!”

“And if Axel’s forgotten he once wanted you, he’ll kill you on sight,” Roxas said coolly, “as he does to all pirates.”

“He can’t have forgotten me. It’s barely been two days!”

“You’d be astonished what that creature can forget, and how quickly. Your brother and sister are safe, for now. They’ll mind their words and glorify their red-headed king, and have a merry old time chasing about through the woods without a care in the world—even for you. Heartless, that’s all children are. Gay and innocent and heartless.”

“I’m going after them, and you won’t stop me,” Riku declared.

“Even if he takes you back,” Roxas said, “you’ll have perhaps a year. Perhaps a year before he drives you to the cliffs and tells you to fight or fly.”

“Then I’ll have a year to learn to do both better than he can.”

“You’re not the first to have thought so.”

Riku fumed in silence before spinning on his heel and marching off across the deck—whether in defeat or to his doom, Roxas couldn’t tell and didn’t particularly care. If the boy wanted to die so badly, let him.

Pity, though. He might have made a good first mate.

---

Even in mourning, there was much to be done on the ship; and by Roxas’s accounting it was better to give the men work than to let them wallow. Decks had to be swabbed, barnacles scraped from the hull, sails and clothes mended, rope coiled, cargo secured, supplies inventoried, fish caught for food and fruit picked to stave off scurvy. Roxas prowled among the crew as they worked, quick to dole out a sharpish comment or a sharper slap on the head whenever he caught a slacker or a gossiper. So long as he remained in motion, helplessness couldn’t catch him up; it was too heavy and too slow. Additionally, he had to keep an eye on Saïx and make sure he was only grouped with those who were already on board for the mutiny, rather than fraternizing with the rest of the crew and potentially recruiting more to his cause.

Unfortunately, one of those seemed to be young Riku, who, although he had not departed the ship after his argument with Roxas, had certainly departed the camp of wanting him for a captain. It was no great surprise; someone who wore his desires upon his sleeve made it easy for anyone to tell him whatever he wanted to hear.

Eventually, Roxas found himself back in the captain’s quarters, alone, gloomy. He sank into his chair. His head was splitting, and his left eye hadn’t stopped watering yet, dampening the lower edge of his eyepatch. Sitting there staring through his desk, the sails of his mind hung limp and windless. Once again, there were things to be done, and he couldn’t bring himself to do any of them; places to go, yet he couldn’t spur himself to move. And now there was no Olette to run things in his stead, to do and go when he couldn’t.

He wished, suddenly and viciously, that he had loved her better when she was alive—or that she had loved him less. Perhaps he could have gotten it through her head that the children were murderers, and she would still be here. Or perhaps he would have learned to stand on his own if no one had ever been there to prop him up. Either way, it was too late now: she was gone, and he was ruined. How wretched it was to depend upon someone!

The bleak idea crossed Roxas’s mind, yet again, of hurling himself into the sea and having done with it. If only there were any giant black crocodiles still on the island, so that one might snap him in its jaws the moment he leapt overboard!

At mention of jaws and snapping, Roxas cracked open an eye and looked to the lantern on his desk. The Lady in Black must have been asleep, for her light was perishingly dim, and she was making no ruckus about being let out. She did appear to have written something in fairy dust on the wall of the lantern. Roxas leaned closer, curious.

All it said was: DON’T!

“Don’t?” Roxas wondered aloud. “Don’t what?”

The Lady made no answer. She was curled up small—so terribly small—on the floor of the lantern. Her wings were almost as transparent as the glass. Even as Roxas watched, her glow faded.

“Wait!” he cried, seizing the lantern. “Wait, stop!”

She didn’t so much as look up. Before his very eyes, she shrank down, and down and down, like she was being pulled into some invisible drain. Roxas dropped the lantern on his desk and snatched the door open, jammed his fingers inside like he could catch her—but it was too late. His fingertips touched only air and a smudge of fairy dust.

She was gone, too.

Roxas sat numbly and stared dumbly, his thick fingers shoved into the empty lantern. He’d known, abstractly, that fairies didn’t live very long, but he’d never seen one die. Besides that, the Lady in Black had lived more than thirty years already; he’d always thought she was exempt. Yet, now that he thought about it, there really was no denying that she used to be bigger—five feet tall if she was an inch. Whatever had caused her to shrink through the years must finally have shrunk her down until there was nothing left. Maybe that was the way all fairies went, and it just took longer for the Lady in Black because she started bigger.

Under its patch, Roxas’s left eye ached.

Slowly, he pulled his dust-stained hand from the lantern. The Lady’s final message was still scrawled on its panes, only slightly smeared.

DON’T.

Roxas hurled the lantern across the room. It shattered against the far wall.

He sat trembling with rage for a moment before a wave of melancholy swamped him. With a moan, he buried his face in his hands and dug his fingernails into his scalp.

First Olette, now the Lady. Five of his crew, anonymous in the woods. What next? Who next? How much more could this horrible, broken world take from him?

The sea thumped against the hull of the Trezava, rocking her gently. A plan entered Roxas’s head fully-formed.

Find the Lost Boys’ hideout. Lay an ambush. Use Riku as bait. Take them one by one as they emerged. Away to the ship. Make them walk the plank, one by one. Ready swords to cross with Axel when he came to the rescue.

And then something that wasn’t a plan entered Roxas’s head, equally well constituted.

Lose two men to something hiding the dark of the captain’s quarters. Be caught flat-footed when Axel emerged, blood still on his sword. Listen for the ticking of the great black crocodile and become unmanned by terror. Fail, fall, SNAP!, and silence. And the crew surrenders. And Riku embraces his siblings. And the children fly away in the ship. And Axel returns without them.

Roxas’s breath was short, his head spinning. He could not call the thoughts idle fantasy; there was a surety about them that marked them as premonition rather than imagination. If he took these children now, stole them and tied them up and threatened their lives, they would all get to go home. Not because of him, but because of Riku, and Sora, and Kairi. Because of whim and happenstance.

Because that was how it was supposed to go.

Roxas’s breathing grew more ragged. His nails bit into his scalp as his hands clenched.

And what then? Axel would return, and be alone, and soon enough forget. Perhaps these children would be saved, but what of their children? And their children’s children? For that, too, was an inkling on the edge of Roxas’s augury: that for uncounted generations, Axel would persist, long after Roxas was digested in the belly of….

Of a crocodile that had died thirty years ago.

Slowly, Roxas raised his head. Slowly, he took off his eyepatch. Slowly, he looked at his hands.

His right hand, nearly whole, nicked and cracked and cast in different lights but mainly there.

His left hand. A dozen hands, all splintered from the wrist, stuck together in whatever order the edges fit best. Missing function, missing fingers, missing. And his cabin, a hundred cabins. And the world—a thousand worlds. And all of them broken.

All of them broken.

For thirty years, the world had tried to be as it was supposed to be. For thirty years, things had slipped through the cracks, just like the Lady, one by one devoured or evaporated as pieces fell out and the universe contracted in a desperate attempt to stay whole.

There was a hand where a hand shouldn’t have been. There was no ticking crocodile where one was meant to be. There was a poisoned green cake in the woods that would never be eaten, had never been eaten. There were lost children who wanted to go home. It had all happened before.

And it would all happen again, because things couldn’t go the way they were supposed to go. Roxas’s proper ending was as far out of reach as the Spanish Main. The world was broken and it couldn’t be fixed.

Roxas looked to the side. Across the kaleidoscope of the room, the shattered lantern spilled across seven different decks, its sharp edges blending seamlessly with the ruins of reality. Among the shrapnel, a glimmer. Among the chaos, a last, desperate message, truncated by the shattering.

DO.

Roxas got to his feet. He strode from his quarters with his eye uncovered. He made a silent apology to the Lady in Black.

If the world could not be fixed, then it might as well be ended.

Chapter 30: TO HELL WITH IT ALL

The longboat hauled ashore on a spit of beach, the barnacled hull rasping against white sand and black rocks and thick brown muck. Roxas climbed out creakily, his body jellied and his hands blistered from the long row in from the Trezava. His black boots sank in the muck, slipped on the rocks, wobbled in the sand, and a dozen suns beat down heavy on his sweaty neck. Up the shore he staggered, and into the shade of the palm trees/cliffs/mangroves, before collapsing to catch his breath.

He’d made the journey alone, and the seas had been rough.

Around him, cicadas whirred in the trees and creatures scuttled through the underbrush. The surf rolled in gently, more hush than crash. The sounds, at least, seemed unfractured. Or perhaps it was only that all the fractured places sounded more or less the same. Roxas couldn’t bring himself to care all that much.

He’d brought with him only his sword and a pistol with a single shot. By his reckoning, that was all he needed.

Greater than the struggle of rowing across a hundred jumbled seas had been the struggle of finding a way forward that truly defied the well-worn paths of the universe. Roxas had not previously realized how much of his thinking was being done for him by a world that had particular outcomes in mind. Ideas were easy to come by; but by their ease, he recognized them as foreign invaders, tracks laid on a curve so long it appeared, at first glance, to be straight, but which would only carry him back to precisely where he was. Poison, ambush, kidnapping, cannonfire—all had occurred to him as flashes of genius and all had exposed themselves by their own light.

He couldn’t even be certain about what he was doing now. The idea of a duel, one-on-one, felt too right for it to be truly defiant. Yet it was a messy idea, and one that he couldn’t see the endpoint of. To clash with Axel in a battle to the death felt correct; but the only correct outcomes he could imagine were ones that were now impossible—walked planks and crocodiles—and few of them involved Axel striking the killing blow himself. Certainly none involved Axel being slain.

Roxas was certain by now that there was a reason why Axel appeared to be the only unbroken thing in a shattered world. Either he had broken it, or he was the last thing holding it together.

And Roxas no longer cared which.

Bracing himself against something which could have been rock or wood or both, Roxas heaved himself to his feet. To navigate the island, he supposed, would require some amount of deliberate ignorance; though the path before him was utterly impassable to his true-seeing eye, he’d never in thirty years had an issue crossing the island with his eyepatch on. Much as it galled him to play into the world’s soothing lies, he tore a strip off his shirt and bound it over his left eye.

The island returned to its singular appearance at once. Below him was a white sand beach, and before him a thick forest of palm and elephant ears, and behind him a single crystal-blue sea and the Trezava, floating in the distance with her sails stowed. A pang went through Roxas’s heart at the sight of her, sweet and whole and in her element. She was the closest thing he’d had to a home for his entire adult life, and when the world perished, she must surely go with it.

Roxas clenched his teeth and hardened his heart. The ship was only another trick, another placating fabrication, designed to keep him upon his appointed path. She was as much at fault for Olette and the Lady’s deaths as Axel, as the island, as the Lost Boys and the pirate crew and all of it. All of it, the whole world, was in on it together.

So Roxas had invented for himself a new paradigm, a guiding light in a crazy mixed-up world where the fragments and shards of loved things lured him onto the sharp points of terrible things and then slipped through his grasp anyway.

“To Hell with it,” he muttered to himself. “To Hell with it all.”

---

For perhaps two hours, Roxas waded through the underbrush and cursed on his under-breath. Once again, he felt that if he ever stopped moving, helplessness would catch him up; but this time, helplessness was personified to him not as a personal failing, but as a predator of the woods, autonomous and hungry. He was no longer outrunning his own mind, but rather outrunning the whole world.

It occurred to him that the world might have a vested interest in him failing to find Axel; that he was perhaps less integral to its foundations than that red-headed hellion; that the world might let him die out here and slot Saïx into his place to prop up the failing foundations for another decade.

Roxas gritted his teeth and dug in his heels. If the world wanted to be rid of him, it would have to fight for every inch.

Not ten seconds after this silent declaration of war, a commotion erupted in the woods ahead—raised voices, crashing underbrush, the tinny crack of steel against steel. Roxas redoubled his efforts, beelining for the noise. It was hard to make out through the distance and the thick vegetation, but both voices sounded like children.

Roxas forged into a thick bramble and was caught. He struggled furiously, that strange sense of urgency driving him forward lest the world catch up with him.

He needn’t have bothered; for the world was so quick on its feet that it had gotten out ahead of him, and now, with unceremonious violence, it spat out two combatants into a clearing before him.

Riku, with leaves caught in his hair and sweat on his brow and all his weight on his back foot; and driving him, driving like a dog drives a fox, floating on glimmers of fairy dust—

Axel, of course.

Riku staggered back from the latest engagement, panting and wild-eyed. Neither he nor Axel had spotted Roxas, mired in the underbrush. Riku crouched like a cornered animal, his tanned hand white-knuckled on his sword. Axel planted a fist on his hip, cocked his head to the side, and loosed a luminous, guileless grin.

“What’s wrong?” he said, twirling his sword. “Getting tired already?”

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” Riku said. “It’s me, you know me. We’re friends!”

“Friends!” Axel scoffed. He laughed heartily, holding his belly. “I don’t make friends with pirates!”

His voice turned to snarl as he lunged at Riku again. Riku blocked, parried, lost yet more ground.

Roxas’s head ached, eye watered, ears rang. The dreadful deja vu loomed over him again. This had happened before. This had all happened before.

“You’ve lost it!” Riku snapped. “I ran away from the pirates! I don’t want anything to do with them! I came back for Sora and Kairi.”

“Oh, is that what this is about?” Axel said brightly, viciously. “They’re mine now, John Silver. You won’t have them!”

Riku, prodded in his most sensitive spot, threw himself at Axel with wild abandon. Their swords crashed, clashed, flickered and flashed in the noonday sun. Roxas saw the flick of the wrist before it happened, felt the cat-scratch pain on his own arm a moment before Riku recoiled.

As he learned, just like Roxas had learned, that Axel did not play with toys.

Silver fire flashed in Riku’s eyes, and he attacked Axel with renewed vigor. His arms were longer, perhaps even stronger, but Axel was swift and at ease. He caught Riku’s strike on the guard of his sword. Riku tried to twist it out of his grip, but Axel just danced around him on swirls of fairy dust, weighing nothing.

“Come on, you’re better than this,” Axel said. “If you’re going to betray me, at least make it fun.”

Stinging pain shot through Roxas’s eye and heart simultaneously. Whatever Riku said in response to Axel’s jibe was lost amid the ringing in Roxas’s ears. In a daze, he lifted his makeshift eyepatch, let himself glimpse what his gut had already understood.

There was a hole in the world where Roxas was supposed to go, and it was contracting around Riku.

“You should have thought of that before you decided to be a pirate,” Axel said.

“I didn’t!” Riku cried, on the verge of furious tears. “I’m not a pirate! I don’t understand why you’re doing this!”

Roxas could have told him: it was because the betrayal was the point. Because someone like Saïx, gaining the captaincy, would sail away from the island and leave the hole in the world unfilled. But Riku—Riku who would feel the bitter sting of Axel’s sword, who would watch his beloved brother and sister driven to the ends of the earth and over the side—he would never leave. Just as Roxas had never left.

And how many before Roxas?

Axel’s face twisted at Riku’s desperate pleas of ignorance. “I knew it was too late for you.”

His head jutted forward. Riku shouted in pain as the little pearl-teeth sank into his thumb. He tore away from Axel. His sword landed heavy in the underbrush. He lunged for it and was met with a swift cat’s-claw swipe of steel across his cheek that staggered him back again.

Axel planted his bare foot on the handle of Riku’s sword, grinning.

“Come and get it, then,” he said, twirling his own blade.

Roxas dropped his eyepatch back in place and lunged from the brush sword-first.

Axel was quick, but he wasn’t invincible. Roxas’s silent ambush was like nothing he’d ever faced; Axel, like all children, had a deep and abiding conviction that the world should be fair to him.

Roxas’s blade caught him across the back and, quite unfairly, cut a deep gash through his tender young flesh.

Axel screamed. The world shuddered so violently that it shook all the birds out of the trees. Axel shot into the air alongside them, trailing blood and fairy dust in equal measure. Riku stared at Roxas, his mouth agape and his arms hanging limp by his sides. The world continued to shiver every time a drop of Axel’s blood fell.

“This is between him and me, boy!” Roxas snarled.

Riku snatched his sword from the ground and fled into the woods, hollering for Sora and Kairi. He might find them. He might not. Roxas refused to care, because it didn’t matter anymore.

To Hell with him. To Hell with them all.

High above, Axel turned to face Roxas with tears streaming down his face and a murderous fury on his mouth. His blood dripped onto trees and brush, an earthquake-rain. Roxas’s left eye burned as though it were shriveling up in his head. He kept it covered. He knew what he was doing well enough; he didn’t need to see it happening.

“You cut me,” Axel said, utterly betrayed. “You hurt me!”

“Aye,” said Roxas. “And what will you do about it, coward?”

Axel went for him like a harpy, shrieking all the way. Even so out-of-sorts, he was still blisteringly fast. Roxas had no time to dodge, so he had to block. No sooner had he deflected the first strike than a second was whipping towards his head. He ducked it, parried a second, caught a third on his shoulder. Axel was graceless, furious, wild with pain. Even so, Roxas couldn’t get a strike in edgewise, such was the ferocity of his opponent’s onslaught. Axel cut his arm, battered his head, kicked him hard in the chest with a little bare foot.

Roxas seized his opportunity and Axel’s ankle. The boy yelped as Roxas yanked him out of the sky and hurled him to the ground. Axel landed hard, right on the slice in his back, and howled in pain. Roxas stabbed down at him. His blade only met soil.

Red pain exploded in his belly as Axel lunged up to stab him in the gut.

And the world shuddered.

Roxas barely felt it. With a grunt, he wrenched his sword from the ground and struck at Axel again. Axel was already gone, and the blade plunged into Roxas’s shoulder, another blast of pain, another tremor from below. The tip of his sword cut a cat-scratch on the back of Axel’s calf. The smell of blood. The pain in his left eye was far worse than in either of his wounds. Axel came at him again on his blind side but by then Roxas could hear the glass cracking as he moved and parried the strike that would have buried itself in his neck.

Crash, clash, flicker and flash—and all the while, the sound of breaking glass.

“Stop it!” Axel snarled, teary and toothy. “You’re doing it wrong!”

Roxas made no response, grimly battling on not for his life, but for Axel’s death. He scored another scratch on Axel’s ribs, received a gash across his chest in return. Where he sliced, Axel stabbed. Where he parried, Axel riposted. Blood soaked his shirt and seeped into his trousers. The world shivered uncontrollably around them.

In the end—as it always happened—Axel gained the upper hand.

One of his wild swings, aimed for Roxas’s face but evaded at the last second, sliced through the fabric covering Roxas’s left eye. The world shattered on the instant. Roxas’s left hand likewise smashed into a hundred permutations of itself and, unfortunately, the sword was allotted to one that couldn’t hold it.

So the sword fell. Roxas was disarmed, pinned in place by the wreckage of the island all around him—for it was wrecked, even worse than before, all a jumble of sharp edges and senseless angles. Above him floated Axel, still ringed in flickering lights, still whole save for the nicks in his silhouette.

“Run, Roxas,” he seethed. “Run!”

Roxas saw the world tighten its coils around him.

Before he knew what he was doing, he ran.

---

Roxas tumbled out into moonlight, sunlight, and shadow all at once. The sound of pursuit tumbled out after him, but there was nowhere left to run, and anyway, the world had him right where it wanted him. Somehow, through the wreckage of the island, through the burning pain in his body, he had run here, of all places.

A cove filled with shattered rock—or perhaps covered over with it—bounded by sheer cliffs, filled with a hundred crashing seas. There was but one path ahead, and it led to a jut of black rock, leaning way out over the sea as if craning to see the bottom without losing its balance.

Roxas shambled onto the jut and collapsed, one hand pressed to his belly, blood soaking his shirt and his trousers all the way down to his black boots. The wound was a mortal one; just not immediately so. He couldn’t tell if it was the loss of blood or the kaleidoscopic churning of the shattered world that made everything spin. He couldn’t have stood back up even if he’d cared to.

A scuffle behind him drew his attention. Axel stood at the mouth of the caverns, profane in his wholeness, the sword still in his hand and a waxen fury on his face. Roxas knew at once that there would be no taunts, no games; the creature was wounded, and would lash out as one wounded.

Axel advanced. The world shoved and pulled at Roxas, trying to drag him down the black jut of rock. Roxas held fast to his stillness. There was no averting what was to come, so it might as well happen here, on his terms.

Down below, the sea hammered on the jagged cliffs, a hundred arms and fists pounding at the walls to be free.

Axel bared his teeth. With a snarl and a gust of fairy dust, he leapt at Roxas, sword poised to pin him to the rock, and—

In one smooth motion, Roxas whipped the pistol from his belt and fired, CRACK!

The sound of breaking glass echoed across the island.

Axel stopped in midair. He looked down at his chest where a red flower was budding, blooming, drooping. He looked up at Roxas, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, growing paler by the second. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. No sound came out.

All around, the glass shards ground against each other. The land shivered, the sky flickered as the tenuous stability of the kaleidoscope finally slipped, its lynch-pin pulled, its keystone broken. Axel sank in the air until his toes touched the ground, collapsed to his knees in slow motion and puff of fairy dust. A chunk of the sky a mile wide broke loose and splashed down into the ocean, hurling up a tidal wave of glass shards. Part of the island caved into itself, ripping open a hole to a great blackness, infinitely deep, chased with flickering lights. The tremors in the ground built to full earthquakes as the structures below crumbled away.

Still pressing his hand to the wound in his gut, Roxas dragged himself across the broken-glass ground towards Axel. Tears streaked the boy’s face, and his mouth gaped as he struggled to suck down his last breaths. He reached out a little white hand, frightened and desperate. Roxas could pull himself no closer. He stretched out his own hand as far as it would go, blood-stained and calloused. Everything else faded to a dull roar, an imploding blur, and it was just the two of them, just there, reaching for each other as the world ended.

Just a silly old man who wasn’t going to get any older, and a little boy who wouldn’t grow up.

Ever.

 

 

THE END

Chapter 31: let's take it from the top

ONCE

UPON

A

TIME

---

The letters fuzzed around the edges and pulled back with a crackle, revealing a CRT television bigger than God, a zigzag throw-rug under a slick modern coffee table, and Roxas, hurling the controller down before flinging himself back on the corduroy couch.

“Hey, come on, Roxas!” Xion chided from the kitchenette. “You’re gonna break it.”

“It’s already broken,” Roxas spat.

“I think you’re just bad at it,” Xion said.

Roxas glared at her. She twinkled at him. He had no idea how she did it—she just did.

“Yeah, well, if Axel and Saïx weren’t always late, I wouldn’t get bored enough to play it,” Roxas said, huffy. “I mean, come on. The Battle of the Bands is tomorrow and they still can’t show up on time?”

Xion leaned her forearms on the kitchen island and grinned at Roxas. “If they were later, maybe you’d have more time to get good at Storybook Beatdown.”

“Go away, Xion,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“But the Battle of the Bands is tomorrow! How are you going to find a new drummer by tomorrow?”

Just then, the front door slammed open, pulling focus like a crash zoom, and in stormed Saïx: his sticker-papered bass case slung over his back, his face dour, his powder-blue hair plastered to his skull. In fact, he was drenched head to toe.

“There you are, Saïx!” said Xion. She frowned. “Is it raining?”

“Don’t ask,” Saïx said shortly.

Roxas hopped up to go look out the window as Saïx slammed the door behind him. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

“Not raining,” Roxas reported. He turned to Saïx, now dripping in the breakfast nook. “Did you drive into a lake again?”

Saïx glared at him. “Don’t. Ask,” he growled.

“Here,” Xion said. She chucked a dish towel at Saïx’s head, which he caught with his face. “We might as well go ahead and get set up. Axel will get here whenever he gets here.”

“Maybe,” Saïx said darkly, toweling off his face. “Or maybe he drove his stupid bike off a cliff because a pretty girl walked by.”

“Don’t worry, you’re pretty, too,” Roxas teased (although the words tasted bad in his mouth).

“Gross,” said Saïx. He leaned over and wrung out his hair. About a gallon of water poured onto the linoleum.

The roar of a motorcycle engine sounded outside. Roxas whipped around so fast it made him dizzy, and the dizziness made him nauseous, and something poked him hard in the left eye. He caught himself on the windowsill, reeling and blinking and shaking his head.

The door slammed open again and AXEL swanned in; a lanky eighteen-year-old with cool, alternative fashion sense and a shock of bright red hair, electric guitar case under one arm, motorcycle helmet under the other.

“’Sup, losers?” he said cheerfully.

For a bizarre, airless second, he just stood there, and everyone just stared at him. The words Roxas had been about to say stuck in his throat like they’d been nailed there. His left eye stung and ached.

As suddenly as it had stopped, the world lurched back into motion.

XION: Hey Axel!

ROXAS: You’re late.

SAÏX: Speak of the Devil.

AXEL: I’m so flattered. (Noticing SAÏX) Hey, why are you—?

ALL THREE: Don’t ask!

Axel shrugged and crossed the room, threw himself down on the couch which Roxas had so recently vacated. Roxas turned to watch him and his left eye started watering almost as much as Saïx’s hair.

Something was wrong with the north wall of his house.

“You guys didn’t start without me, did you?” Axel asked; and before any of them had a chance to respond, said: “Nah, of course you didn’t. Wouldn’t get very far without your lead guitar and lead vocals—unless you wanted a gig as a karaoke machine.”

Again, a hiccup of silence. Xion rolled her eyes through it. Roxas was struggling to breathe.

Something was wrong with the north wall of his house.

“And he’s humble, too,” Saïx said bitingly.

“I could do lead vocals if you didn’t show up,” Roxas heard himself say. His lips were numb. Something was wrong… something was wrong….

“You?” Axel scoffed. “Sure, I guess—if we were some schlocky pop band.”

“Rude,” said Xion.

“Calls ’em like I sees ’em, babygirl,” Axel said, grinning.

Roxas recoiled back into his body like his soul was on a rubber band.

“Back off,” he snapped at Axel. “That’s my sister.”

“Whoah! Easy, tiger,” Axel said, raising his hands. “We all agreed: no hitting on the drummer.”

“She hits back,” Xion said with a vicious smile.

Axel pointed at her. “And anyway. I like my girls a little more mature, you know what I mean?”

He held his hands out in front of his chest at the approximate level of “maturity” he meant.

Xion threw an apple at him. He caught it without even sitting up.

“Thanks, sweetheart!” he called.

Roxas’s hands balled to fists at his sides. His right arm, the one facing the north wall of his house, went pins and needles all over. He unclenched his fist and the feeling went away instantaneously.

Must have pinched a nerve or something.

“If everyone’s done with drama,” Saïx said, “we have a Battle of the Bands to prepare for.”

Axel crunched into his apple. “Sure, sure. Not that we need it. We’re gonna blow everybody else out of the water, no problem.”

“No problem,” Saïx agreed. He swung his bass case off his back, set it on the breakfast table, and popped the latches.

About forty gallons of water gushed out everywhere.

---

One commercial break later, all four of them were on their hands and knees with every towel in the house, trying to sop up the mess.

Or at least, that’s what Xion was doing. Axel was slacking, Roxas was a nervous wreck, and Saïx was too despondent to do more than shove wet towels around aimlessly.

XION: Come on, guys. My parents are gonna kill us if this isn’t cleaned up by the time they get home.

SAÏX: Good. At least it will be over quickly.

AXEL: Parents, schmarents. If they kick you guys out, we’ll all go crash at Saïx’s place.

ROXAS: (Sotto voce) What are we going to do? Seriously, what are we going to do?

A wet towel hit him in the face. He flailed, sputtering.

“Lighten up, sunshine,” Axel teased. “There’s always next year.”

Roxas ripped the towel off his face and threw it down with a loud splap! Axel was grinning at him from across the breakfast nook.

And for a second, the expression went wooden, and Roxas’s left eye watered as his words stuck in his throat. His right side was facing the north wall of the living room. He didn’t dare turn his head to look. He didn’t know why it would have required daring.

In the same moment, something flickered in Axel’s eyes behind his frozen smile.

In the next moment, the words came loose and tumbled out of Roxas’s mouth all at once.

“There’s not always next year! You and Saïx are seniors. You’re both leaving for college next year.”

“College? No way.” Axel started counting off on his fingers, showing off his fabric-scrap rings. “I’m gonna go to L.A., get famous, get rich, and get a girlfriend. I won’t have time for college.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” said Xion.

“But you’re still going away,” Roxas said. His chest ached at the thought. “So you won’t be here for Battle of the Bands next year.”

“And Saïx is going to college, aren’t you, Saïx,” said Xion.

“With any luck, I’m going to decompose,” he said dismally. “What’s the point of living when my bass is ruined?”

All four of them whip-panned to look at the bass: seaweed trapped between the strings, barnacles growing all over the body, an octopus hugging the neck.

All four of them turned back, wincing. Xion patted Saïx’s shoulder. Somehow he was still wetter than anything else in the room.

“It’ll be okay,” Xion said. “You can get a new bass.”

Lightning struck through Roxas’s brain. He sat bolt upright.

“That’s it,” he said. He leapt to his feet. “That’s it!”

AXEL: What? What’s it?

ROXAS: All we have to do is buy Saïx a new bass!

XION: Roxas! You’re a genius! How much cash does everyone have?

Pockets were turned out. Between Roxas, Xion, and Saïx, there were about forty bucks (some of them still very soggy).

“Axel?” Xion prompted.

“Nada,” said Axel.

“Nothing?” said Saïx, with a hint of accusation.

“Zip,” said Axel. “Sorry, bud.”

“Aren’t your parents rich?” said Roxas.

“So?” said Axel. “Your dad’s a cop, doesn’t mean you can arrest people.”

Once again, Roxas’s words stuck in his throat for a three-count.

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” he said.

“Of course you don’t,” said Axel. His gaze was weirdly intense for how casual his voice was.

“If he doesn’t have anything, he doesn’t have anything,” Xion butted in. “Anyway, what’ll forty dollars get us?”

“Laughed out of the venue,” said Saïx.

Roxas rolled his eyes and sighed. “Well, okay. So we just have to raise some more. How much would a good bass cost?”

“There’s a Bumper Claymore at The Guitar Place,” Saïx admitted. “It’s going for a thousand dollars. I was going to spend my share of the prize money on it.”

“Sweet, that means if we get it for you, we get your share of the prize money,” said Axel.

“Ax-el,” Xion said, scolding.

“Ugh, fine, whatever,” said Axel. He leveled a finger at Saïx. “But you’ll owe us, big time.”

“Couldn’t we get something cheaper?” Roxas asked. “You know, just something to replace the one you had?”

“If he’s going to get a new bass with the money anyway, we might as well get him the one he wants,” said Xion.

“Assuming we can find a thousand dollars in a day,” Saïx said.

“Nine hundred and sixty dollars,” Xion said optimistically.

AXEL: Hey, I got an idea.

ALL THREE: No stealing!

AXEL: (Petulant) I have no ideas.

WEIRD SILENCE:

---

The enterprise of drying the floors had been abandoned some time ago. Now the four were arrayed around the living room in various states of wracking their brains: Xion drumming her fingers on the kitchen island, Roxas sitting on the floor with his chin on his hand, Saïx pacing, Axel inverted on the couch.

“Bake sale,” said Xion.

“None of us can bake,” said Saïx.

“Popcorn sale?” she amended.

“What are we, a movie theater?” said Axel. “How about a car wash?”

“Would you turn right-side-up and be serious?” Roxas snapped at him.

“I am being serious,” said Axel, pouting. “Being upside-down helps me think. Rushes all the blood to my brain.”

“If he’s suggesting car wash, that’s not where the blood is rushing to,” Saïx said dryly.

“Eat my shorts, Blues Clues,” Axel retorted.

Saïx went for Axel over the back of the couch. Axel caught him with both feet on his chest. Xion leapt into the fray and tried to pull Saïx off while the two boys slapped at each other furiously.

ROXAS: Wait a second, what are we doing?

XION: (Aggrieved) Trying to kill each other?!

ROXAS: We’re musicians. Why don’t we go busking?

The fight stopped mid-slap as the other three turned to stare at him.

“You know, busking,” said Roxas. “We play on street corners and people drop money in our hats or whatever. I bet we could raise a thousand dollars in no time!”

“Oh yeah,” Axel said, like he’d somehow forgotten. He let go of Saïx’s hair and dumped him behind the couch.

“We’ll split up to cover more ground,” Roxas said. “I’ll take midtown. Axel, you take the north side. Xion will go to Central Avenue—”

“And what am I, chopped liver?” Saïx demanded, rising like a swamp creature from behind the couch.

“Uh,” said Roxas. “Uh, Saïx, you can, uh—”

“Solve mysteries,” said Axel.

Saïx went for him again. Axel snatched a cushion off the couch and used it as a shield while Xion grabbed Saïx by the waist and tried to pull him back.

SAÏX: Let go! He deserves death!

AXEL: You keep talking, but all I hear is bow buh-bow!

XION: Stop egging him on!

ROXAS: Okay, you know what? Fine. Now it’s a competition, and whoever raises the most money wins.

Again, the fight tableaued. Xion and Saïx looked at each other.

“I need a car to carry my drums,” she said.

“I need Axel to lose,” Saïx said.

They shook hands decisively and sprinted out the door together.

“Good luck, losers!” Axel called after them. He tossed the pillow back on the couch and stretched.

“Shouldn’t you be running off, too?” Roxas said.

“Why? I’ll make double what any of you guys do in half the time. Besides, there’s no way that drum kit’s gonna fit in Saïx’s Corolla. You want a ride to midtown?”

Roxas’s mouth went dry, his hands sweaty. His stomach bunched up and squirmed.

“On that death-trap of a bike?” he said. “No thanks. I’ll ride with Saïx and Xion.”

Axel shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

He sauntered out. From elsewhere, there was the distinctive sound of an entire drum kit falling down a set of stairs. Roxas blew out a breath and turned to get his keyboard.

The door flew open and Axel came back in, arms laden with a heap of duffle bags, all bulging fit to burst. Roxas stared at him.

“What’s with the—?”

“Hang on to these for me, would ya?” Axel said. Without waiting for an answer, he dumped all the bags on Roxas, knocking him to the floor. Roxas sputtered and struggled to extract himself.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, yeah, forgot to mention. I’m gonna be staying over for a while.”

“What?”

“Y’know, just probably ’til the end of the school year. Soon as I graduate, I’m moving to L.A. anyway.”

Somewhere, Xion and Saïx were yelling at each other, to the sound of continued drum calamity.

“You want to stay here?” Roxas said. “Until—until the end of the school year?”

“Yeah. What, you don’t think your folks’ll go for it? I figured they would, if anybody would.”

“I’m—but—you can’t—”

“Y’know what, I’ll just talk to your mom about it, whenever she gets back. Meantime, make yourself useful and start unpacking for me, would you?”

“Me? No! Unpack your own—I’m not your—”

Axel was already on his way back out the door. “Sorry, gotta run. This money ain’t gonna raise itself!”

Roxas continued sputtering, struggling to get free of the pile of bags. Outside, an engine revved and tires squealed on pavement.

“You—you can’t live here!” Roxas shouted. “I live here!”

Nobody answered.

Nobody answered loudly.

Roxas’s left eye watered. A shock of dread went through his chest. He held perfectly still, hardly breathing.

All alone and with nothing to distract him, there was no denying it, no ignoring it. Something was wrong with the north wall of his living room.

At just the right angle, and only out of the corner of his left eye, the clutter and brick-a-brack Roxas had grown up with was replaced by a massive, slightly curved, and utterly opaque sheet of black glass.

And there was something behind it.

Watching.

---

It was almost eleven at night before the four reconvened in Roxas and Xion’s living room. Roxas had almost managed to convince himself that his flickers of paranoia earlier hadn’t happened—or at least, if they had, he was just going a little bit harmlessly crazy and could ignore it.

He couldn’t afford to be crazy right now. Not when the Battle of the Bands was tomorrow. Maybe afterward, if he was still seeing things, he’d tell someone. Wait for the men in white coats to show up. Take a long vacation to a padded room.

His performance had suffered from his distracted thoughts, and he’d only raised about thirty dollars in six hours of busking. Saïx and Xion seemed similarly exhausted, although they’d refused to spill the beans on how much they’d earned until they could do it to Axel’s face.

Even though the three of them were sharing Saïx’s Corolla—which was older than Saïx—they still arrived back before Axel and his sexy motorcycle. Roxas spent the wait time covertly checking out the north wall of the living room. Although he did manage to catch glimpses of the black glass out of the corner of his eye, the crushing sense of being watched was absent.

He could deal with that. All he had to do was not look.

Right up until an engine revved outside, and everyone in the room turned, apparently totally unconsciously, so their backs weren’t facing that wall.

“Finally,” Xion said, rolling her eyes. “I didn’t know Axel could be late to slacking off.”

“Axel will be late to his own funeral,” Saïx said.

All the hairs on Roxas’s body were standing on end. Sweat beaded on his skin like the spiral fluorescents had turned into halogen spotlights. He couldn’t make himself turn his head, not even to sneak a glance at the north wall.

It was back. Whatever it was. Watching them.

He bit his tongue, dug his fingernails into his palm on the side not facing that wall. There was no it. There was no sheet of black glass. He was just crazy. All he had to do was pretend everything was normal, because everything was normal.

The front door opened. Axel stepped in and tossed his guitar case onto the couch.

AXEL: Yo.

XION: Took you long enough! We’ve been waiting for, like, an hour.

AXEL: Aww, did I keep you up past your bedtime?

ROXAS: Yeah.

The world hiccuped. The words Roxas wanted to say stalled in his throat. Axel caught his eyes with a strange urgency, that wooden smile frozen on his face. The corner of his mouth twitched.

Roxas’s words unstuck.

“So let’s make this quick,” he said. “I got thirty bucks.”

Xion winced. “Ouch.”

“Thanks,” Roxas said through his teeth. “What about you?”

“Well, we were probably on track for the same,” Xion said, considering the ceiling. “I was doing drums and Saïx was—”

“They don’t need to know,” Saïx cut in, pink around the ears.

Xion shrugged. “Anyway. We weren’t doing so hot, until this old guy said he’d pay us twenty bucks to go away. So we did.”

“Then we set up across from Shady Acres,” said Saïx.

“The retirement home?” said Roxas.

“Exactly,” said Xion. “Then the golf course, then the country club, then the fishing pier.” With a flourish, she produced a fat stack of bills and slammed it on the table. “Four hundred dollars. Beat that, Axel.”

Axel yawned. “Four hundred? That’s all?”

“Okay, wise guy,” Roxas said, fists planted on his hips. “How much did you make?”

Axel snatched a scrap of paper off the fridge, scribbled something down, and thrust it at Roxas.

“Read it and weep,” he said.

Roxas took the paper. Scrawled on it were five words. Five words that made Roxas’s stomach heave, throat clench, heart leap. Five words that couldn’t have been seen by whatever was watching through the false wall of his house.

Five words.

I can hear them too.

Chapter 32: if life ain't just a joke, then why are we laughing?

Axel knew he’d guessed right when Roxas blanched paper-white at the sight of the note in his hand.

The wave of relief that crashed over Axel almost took him out at the knees. He leaned an elbow on the kitchen island to keep himself standing.

About a hundred invisible people were still chuckling from nowhere.

Roxas crumpled the note up and stuffed it in his pocket.

“Yeah, well,” he said (too loudly? too casually?). “You don’t have to brag about it.”

“Who was bragging?” said Axel. He fought to keep his tone normal, steady, devil-may-care. They were still listening. Whoever They were.

“He didn’t beat us, did he?” Xion said. “There’s no way he beat us!”

“Sorry, sister,” said Axel. “Better luck next time.”

“I’m going home,” Saïx announced, and stormed out the door.

“You’re welcome!” Axel called after him.

“Quit yelling, my parents are asleep,” said Roxas. Was his voice shaking? Was he twitchy, or just tired?

“And we should be, too,” said Xion. “The Guitar Place doesn’t open until, like, nine tomorrow anyway. We’ll go get Saïx’s bass after school. Axel, you can meet us there.”

“Yeah, about that,” said Axel. “Thought I’d stay the night.”

“You’re not—” Roxas began, but Xion cut him off.

“Oh! Sure. You can use the couch, it folds out. I’ll go grab some blankets and pillows.”

She hopped off her bar stool and left the living room. Axel looked at Roxas. Roxas looked at Axel.

“You want to tell me—” Roxas began.

Axel reached across the island and put a finger on Roxas’s lips. “No.”

ROXAS: (Swatting his hand) Stop it.

AXEL: You sure? If I do it enough, maybe some of my talent will rub off on you.

ROXAS: Don’t need it. And you’re not staying here.

AXEL: Kinda seems like I am.

ROXAS: I’ll tell my dad you stole six hundred and fifty dollars from somewhere.

CHORUS OF THE DAMNED: Oooooh!

Axel’s heart skipped a beat. How, how could Roxas have possibly known that Axel had come back with six hundred and fifty dollars? Could Axel, somehow, have written the wrong note? Passed over a normal message instead of a secret one?

No. Not with those voices still ringing in his ears. Not with how confused Roxas looked at what had just come out of his own mouth. Roxas didn’t know how Roxas knew the figure, either.

“You’ll keep your mouth shut, is what you’ll do,” Axel said.

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll tell the whole school about the Dairy Queen Incident.”

Roxas lunged across the kitchen island and grabbed Axel by the shirt. “You wouldn’t dare.”

The invisible people burst out laughing. Axel smiled and shrugged, waiting for them to shut up, some deep instinct telling him that he was Not Allowed to talk over them.

And Roxas also waited, frozen, one of his eyes squinted half-shut like the sound was causing him physical pain.

“Your couch or your dignity, Rox,” Axel said, when the laughter had died down. “Your choice.”

Roxas hauled him closer. He had remarkably pretty eyes. Especially when he was mad.

“I wasn’t the only one walking away sticky,” Roxas threatened.

Guffaws from the Choir Invisible.

“Yeah,” Axel allowed, “but I’m moving to L.A. in two months. You’ll be stuck at school for another two years.”

Roxas ground his teeth. Axel flashed him a winning smile.

“Baby, I’ll burn us both to the ground,” he said sweetly—then thought: that’s a good fucking lyric.

Two intentionally heavy footfalls sounded from the hallway. Roxas and Axel both looked up.

XION: Am I interrupting something?

CHORUS: (Raucous laughter)

ROXAS: (Dropping Axel like a hot coal) No! Nothing!

AXEL: Just checking if I had waffle cone in my teeth.

Roxas whipped around to glare at him. Axel winked.

“O-kay,” Xion said. She adjusted the giant bundle of multicolored blankets in her arms. “In that case, you two mind folding out the couch?”

“Sure thing, babe,” Axel said.

Roxas was already on the move, tight-lipped and red-cheeked. Axel joined him at the couch, bending to the work and putting their heads close together.

“What’s wrong with you?” Roxas hissed, barely moving his mouth.

“We gonna talk about the voices now, or after lights-out?” Axel whispered back.

Roxas’s eyes flicked away. He fumbled the fold-out bed, almost dropping it on his toes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“You so do,” said Axel.

Roxas glanced away again. Axel would have pressed the point, but with the couch bed unfolded, Roxas straightened up and stalked off, out of the living room and down the hall.

“Sleep tight!” Axel called after him. He shook his head and blew a strand of hair out of his face.

Xion came over and dumped the pillows, blankets, et cetera on the barren, lumpy mattress.

“You got it from here?” she asked.

AXEL: Yeah, yeah. You need somebody to tuck you in?

XION: (Sweetly) I think Roxas would break your nose if you tried.

AXEL: Sheesh. Talk about your anger issues.

XION: Seriously. He doesn’t like it when you hit on me.

AXEL: What, is he jealous?

The Choir Invisible got a real kick out of that one. Instantly, and with every fiber of his being, Axel hated them. He locked up with a paralyzing rage, like an engine overheating.

Xion just smiled indulgently and rolled her eyes.

“Good night, Axel,” she said.

“Night,” he managed.

Xion breezed off after her twin brother. Axel turned to the pile of blankets on the bed and sighed theatrically.

“Worth a shot,” he said to no one.

The ghosts, finally, laughed themselves out of the room.

---

It was a long, nearly sleepless night, but one that was mercifully free of disembodied voices. Morning came with a jaunty musical sting and Roxas’s mom, Mrs. Uchiyama, flicking on the kitchen lights and starting the coffee maker.

Axel groaned and rolled over, covering his head with a pillow.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Uchiyama. “Good morning, Axel. I didn’t know you were staying over.”

“Mmn,” said Axel. His mouth was suddenly dry. His hands were swollen. He could feel every beat of his heart in his chest.

“Coffee?” Mrs. Uchiyama offered.

Axel pried himself out of the blankets to sit upright, rubbing his eyes. “Sure. Thanks.”

Mrs. Uchiyama bustled around in the kitchen. Axel hauled himself to his feet and stretched. According to the clock on the north wall, it was ten past six in the morning.

Great. He could even get to school on time.

“I hope your parents knew you were staying over,” Mrs. Uchiyama said, pulling mugs out of the cabinets. “Otherwise they’ll be tearing the town apart looking for you by now.”

A bomb went off in Axel’s chest. His throat closed to contain the explosion. He could neither move nor speak, and the long silence made Mrs. Uchiyama turn around. A thin line appeared between her eyebrows, the exact same one Roxas got when he was trying to figure something out.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

Axel crumbled.

In two seconds flat, he went from Cool Teen to miserable lump, crying his eyes out and blubbering the whole ugly story through his snot. At some point, Mrs. Uchiyama picked her way out of the kitchen and sat down next to him on the fold-out bed—he didn’t notice until she put a hand on his back, ever so gently.

She might as well have stabbed him. There was no more talking through the tears. All he could do was sit there with his elbows piercing his knees and his hands fisted in his hair, choking on his own throat and burning in his skin.

Dad was right. He was a fucking sissy.

Eventually, with the aid of about half a box of kleenex, the episode burned itself out. Then he was just sitting there, red-eyed and red-nosed with a splitting headache and Mrs. Uchiyama, still just sitting next to him with her hand on his back.

It made him want to kill someone.

“Do you need a place to stay?” Mrs. Uchiyama asked.

Axel nodded. If he opened his mouth, he might not be able to put his teeth away again.

“Then you can stay here,” said Mrs. Uchiyama. “Although there might be an adjustment period—Xion and Roxas have never been good with transitions.”

Axel scoffed. His nose was too stuffy to snort.

“I’m serious. They’d scream like banshees when we tried to put them in the tub, and scream like banshees when we tried to pull them out. Xion’s mostly grown out of it—don’t girls always grow up faster than boys?—but Roxas might be a little… difficult, at first. He’ll get used to it. And then they’ll both pitch a fit when it’s time for you to leave.”

“Good to know,” Axel managed. He swallowed hard. He blew his nose for the millionth time. “Um.”

“Mm-hm?”

“Don’t… um. Please don’t… tell anyone. Please. I—I just have to stick it out until the end of May, and then I can—my parents aren’t gonna tell anybody, obviously, because…. I just don’t want it getting around.”

“Of course,” she said.

For another white-hot instant, Axel wanted to kill everyone, wanted to grab her by the shoulders and scream, Where is your rage? Where is your fucking rage?

Or maybe it was all perfectly understandable. Of course it had gone down the way it had, and of course he’d want to hide it from everyone at school. He should be grateful that Mrs. Uchiyama hadn’t thrown him out on his ass, too.

“Thanks,” he said.

From the kitchen, the coffee maker hissed and spat. Mrs. Uchiyama patted Axel’s back.

“Coffee’s done,” she said.

---

The morning passed in a haze, half-aware, as Axel fought tooth and nail to maintain his usual caustic attitude at school. By lunch he was sick of it, so he snuck out and hopped on his bike. The roar of the engine crossfaded to snarling guitars as he bent low over the handlebars and just went.

He didn’t know where he was going. Maybe all the way to L.A. Maybe he’d get on the interstate and open the throttle as far as it would go and hold it there, and if he and all his problems ended up a greasy stain on the asphalt—well, who would care?

He’d made it to the Big Creek Dam, right at the edge of town, when the montage track faded out and his head finally cooled off. The Battle of the Bands was tonight. Saïx and Xion and Roxas would be furious if he left them hanging. He could at least hold out until tomorrow.

Axel pulled off the road and parked his bike, wandered over to a big oak tree and dropped down under it. His hands were shaking. His knees were jelly. He was having a tough time getting enough air down, and despite how much crying he’d done that morning, there were more tears pressurizing his sinuses and eyeballs.

It would have been really, really easy to keep going. If he hadn’t remembered about the Battle of the Bands….

No. He wasn’t going to think about it. He was just skipping school because he was a lazy punk. A ‘bad kid.’ He could even buy his own cigarettes and porno mags! Legally!

And where was the fun in that?

On the bright side, he hadn’t heard any disembodied laughter all day. Maybe he’d been so stressed out that he’d gone crazy for a day. Probably it was a good thing Roxas had ignored his note.

Axel leaned his head back against the big oak tree and shut his eyes. Wind hushed through the leaves, and birds sang, and a distant car horn sounded from the interstate. The thick algal smell of the Big Creek lake oozed into his nose. His head hurt, and the back of his throat tasted like vomit, and his pulse throbbed in his hands.

He didn’t want to think about it. He’d rather think about doing a hundred-and-twenty mile an hour dismount on the interstate.

“Fuck it,” he said to himself.

He got up, got back on the bike, pulled a U-turn and headed back into town.

---

Mr. Biggs at the corner drugstore gave him a hell of a stink-eye, but couldn’t refuse to sell him the crappy plastic lighter and pack of Camels.

---

The second Axel slipped in through the stage door, Xion whisper-shouted, “Laaaaaate!”

Axel shrugged. He must have made it just in time, because Xion, Roxas, and Saïx were all waiting in the wings, dressed and nervous and ready to rock and roll. Xion’s drums were probably already on stage, and Roxas’s keyboard was being presided over by a black-clad stagehand. Saïx had his new Claymore bass—hands-down the most gorgeous instrument Axel had ever laid eyes on, moonlight-blue and tastefully glittered, with a mother-of-pearl fretboard and silver tuning pegs and a white shoulder strap. A pang of jealousy shot through Axel’s chest and almost set his lungs off again, which would’ve been a pain in the ass. He’d showed up an hour late because it had taken him that long to stop coughing.

Bright side, his brain was no longer slicing itself to ribbons. There was something to be said for taking the edge off.

“What can I say,” Axel croaked, slinging his guitar case off his back. “The party don’t start ’til I walk in.”

Laughter erupted. Axel’s heart skipped a beat—but it was just the audience, out in the main theater, laughing at something happening on stage.

ROXAS: (Stiffly) Yeah, well, the Battle of the Bands didn’t wait for you, so hurry up.

AXEL: It’s fine, they usually last ’til about eight in the mo’nin’.

SAÏX: Ludacris?

AXEL: I dunno, seems reasonable to me.

AUDIENCE: (Laughs)

Axel locked up. His heart jumped into his throat and stuck there. His thoughts lost traction and spun out.

The laughter wasn’t coming from the theater.

He was hearing things again. But he couldn’t be hearing things again, because he was done hearing things. It had been a one-off, a stress response. He was way less stressed now. He had a place to sleep tonight and everything!

And it definitely couldn’t have been real, because no one else showed any sign of having heard it. There was just Saïx rolling his eyes and Xion groaning and Roxas—

Roxas looking away awfully quickly, and fumbling the bottle of water in his hands.

Axel had no time to interrogate any of it, because he was rapidly on the sharp end of a different interrogation.

“What’s wrong with your voice?” Xion asked.

“My…?”

“Are you even going to be able to sing like that?”

“Yeah. Obviously. I’m f—”

He broke out coughing again. To the sound of uproarious laughter.

“We’re screwed,” Saïx said flatly.

“I’m fine,” Axel insisted. The words tasted like blood and nicotine. “I can do it.”

“You can’t,” said Saïx.

“You super can’t,” said Xion. “But Roxas could.”

All eyes turned to Roxas. He strangled the water bottle in his hands.

“I—I don’t know,” he said.

“You know all the words, don’t you?” Xion pressed. “You can just sing the melody instead of the harmony.”

“I don’t know if I can do that and play at the same time,” he said. He was sweating, eyes darting.

“Then don’t play,” said Saïx. “We can do without a keyboard. We’re doomed without a singer.”

“I can do it—” Axel tried to insist, and was once again cut off by a wracking cough and a smattering of laughter.

“It’s up to you, Roxas,” Xion said. “Either you sing, or we have to drop out.”

Roxas’s eyes darted. The water bottle crunched in his hands. He took a deep breath and let it back out again.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

Before Axel could argue any further, somebody with a headset, dressed in all black, hustled up with a clipboard.

“Twilight Clocktower?” she asked.

“That’s us,” said Xion.

“You’re on deck. Jessie’s going to set the keyboard for you. Once she’s off the stage, you go out. You guys are last, so just stay out there after you’re done. Got it?”

“We actually won’t need the keyboard,” Xion said. “Change of plans.”

The stage manager frowned, made a note on her clipboard. “O-kay, I’ll let Jessie know. In that case—she’ll just tell you when to go out.”

“Got it, thanks!”

The stage manager hustled back into the darkness. Lights and drums and guitar burst through the wings as the band ahead of them started their song. Axel threw on his guitar—which looked like a real piece of shit next to Saïx’s new Claymore—and sidled over to Roxas.

Under the cover of the noise, and keeping his eyes on the other band’s backs, he murmured, “It’s happening again.”

Roxas went rigid. He didn’t look at Axel. His hands clenched on his water bottle.

“Go tune up,” he said, barely moving his mouth.

“Roxas—”

“Go. Tune. Up.”

Axel backed off. The air seemed awfully thin. He could feel his heartbeat in his hands and his face as well as his chest. His head spun.

He bit his tongue, using the pain to pull himself back down. Whether Roxas thought he was crazy or not, Axel did need to go tune his guitar before they went out to perform. Whether Axel was crazy or not, the Battle of the Bands was still his ticket out of this town. He’d be damned if he’d let a little schizophrenia shake him.

He’d be damned if he let Roxas turn his song into pop-punk schlock, too. Axel was going to sing and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

He slipped off to the green room and tuned up as quick as he could, putting his ear next to the strings to hear them without an amp. He barely got it done in time, sprinting from the green room and through the wings and onto the stage just as the lights came up on his angry-nervous-freakingout bandmates. He skidded three feet on his red Chuck Taylors and grabbed the microphone.

“Hello Macante City we are Twilight Clocktower and we’re here to rock your socks off!”

On the last word, something in his throat tore. He tasted blood. His eyes watered. He just barely choked down the cough that desperately wanted to erupt from his chest. Reality hit him like a punch to the gut.

There was no way he was going to be able to sing.

And meanwhile, a sea of people cheered, so many that Axel couldn’t possibly have told if there were more voices than faces. A techie darted onstage and plugged in Axel’s guitar with a squeal of feedback. Axel low-fived them (to scattered whoops from the audience), then looked over his shoulder at Roxas, standing awkwardly in the space where his keyboard would have been if the techie had brought it out.

Met his eyes.

Stood aside and gestured to the microphone.

Roxas sucked down one more deep breath before approaching. Axel took another few steps back to give him space, willing him to do it right, to please please please not screw this up….

Roxas yanked the mic down to his level and said: “Hit it.”

Xion raised both drumsticks over her head and shouted so loud that her voice carried all the way to the back of the venue unamplified.

“ONE TWO THREE FOUR!”

They hit it.

The first chord went up through Axel’s chucks and all the way to the top of his scalp, buzzing under his skin and lighting his hair on fire. The crappy guitar came alive, roaring like his bike, like the snarling sharp-toothed thing caged up in his chest forever. Saïx was there with him, tearing it up on the Claymore. Xion had the whole stage shaking, the whole crowd jumping. Roxas stood center-stage, head bent, eyes shut, white-knuckling the microphone with one hand and sketching the keyboard part with his other. One heel tapped with increasing fervor as the music hammered through whatever self-conscious walls he had up.

When people asked what kind of music Twilight Clocktower played, Axel always gave the same answer:

Hot, Fast, and Loud.

The instrumental intro crashed toward the first verse. Axel bit his tongue and threw out one last desperate prayer. The last sixteen beats, the drum fill, the guitar riff.

Roxas cut loose.

 

You wanna tell me I don’t know me like you know me

Like I better straighten up or else the world is gonna show me

That I’m good-for-nothing, always bluffing, gotta hide the whole me

Like I’m only gonna make it if just let you control me

 

Axel couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Not only was Roxas pitch-fucking-perfect, diction impeccable, but there was a cold, sharp edge to his honey-tone voice that Axel had never heard before. It went straight through the base of Axel’s skull and sent chills down his spine. The crowd cheered and Axel nearly joined them.

He glanced back. The mic Roxas would have used while playing the keyboard was still set up. As Roxas launched into the pre-chorus, Axel backed down the stage toward the empty space.

 

Should I

Get-get-get-get on my knees?

Would that

Make-make-make-make you happy?

 

It’s over and done, a slip of the tongue

There’s blood in my lungs, who-oah

You think you’re slick

But you make me sick

 

The chorus hit and Axel came in on harmony and even with his voice nearly ruined it worked. Axel had never gotten over how good he and Roxas sounded together, what a musical miracle it was that they’d found each other.

What an idiot he’d been to never let Roxas take lead vocals.

 

Would it be the end of the world if I did things my way?

Will it all come crumbling down if I say what I wanted to say?

Baby, send your Trojan horse, and I’ll burn it to the ground

If you’re gonna lock me in a glass house

Then don’t leave all these stones lying around

 

They blasted into the instrumental bridge at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, jet-propelled on the cheers of the crowd. Axel leapt upstage and landed back-to-back with Saïx, shoulder blades hot and hard under the lights, sparks flying from their guitars. Roxas ceded center stage to them, head still down, hands still clenched, lit up in black glitter and the halo of laser-focus. Xion crashed into the last drum fill like a landslide and Roxas leapt back in for one last chest-cracking chorus before all four of them hit the resolution together.

The roar of the crowd drowned out the final chord.

---

“Annnnnnnd the winner of this year’s Battle of the Bands, put your hands together one last time forrrrrr… Twilight Clocktower!”

The crowd went wild. Xion jumped four feet straight up and punched the air. Saïx clapped Axel on the shoulder, grinning ear to ear for what might have been the first time ever. Roxas stood there wide-eyed and reeling. Axel picked him up by the waist and spun him around while the crowd kept cheering and lights flashed and confetti poured down from the ceiling, laughing and crying and shouting at the top of his smoke-stained lungs.

They’d made it.

---

They got back to Roxas’s house around midnight, hoarse and half deafened and sweaty-disgusting. Roxas and Xion had ridden with their mom; Axel had taken his bike. Mrs. Uchiyama only stuck around long enough to have a celebratory bowl of low-fat sugar-free fro-yo before congratulating them all, hugging her children, and going to bed. Xion wasn’t far behind—she scarfed down her ice cream, called dibs on the shower and bolted off.

Leaving Axel and Roxas suddenly and unavoidably alone.

The clock above the TV snipped the silence into neat squares. Metal spoons scraped on ceramic. Roxas kept his eyes down, his shoulders tense. In the fluorescent lights of the kitchen, the sweat-streaked black glitter and eyeliner made him look like a raccoon that had rolled around in fiberglass insulation—and he looked like he knew it.

Since leaving the venue, Axel hadn’t heard any laughter. He almost dared to hope that it was well and truly gone.

But maybe the ringing in his ears was just drowning it out.

Axel took a deep breath and put down his empty bowl.

“So,” he said.

Roxas fixed him with a look that stalled the rest of the words in Axel’s mouth. He flicked a quick glance at the TV, pursed his lips, and half turned away.

“Not here,” he said quietly.

He set off down the hallway, beckoning for Axel to follow.

Chapter 33: oh cameraman, swing the focus

Through the window of Roxas’s room, it was just possible to creep across to a hanging gable and from there, ease up onto the roof of the house—over the living room, so his parents wouldn’t hear his shoes scraping on the shingles from their bedroom. Roxas had done it a thousand times, could do it in ten seconds with his eyes closed, but he took his time so Axel could follow him.

Up on the ridge line of the roof, he could see out over his neighborhood—streetlights painting the roads into dull orange rivers, roofs peeking through trees like black stones, stars half-smothered by the halogen glow of Macante City just to the east. It was a cool spring night, and quiet, welcome after the heat and noise of the Battle of the Bands venue. There were crickets in the grass below and owls in the trees and an occasional flutter of headlights from the streets.

There were absolutely, positively no giant sheets of black glass.

With a scrape and a grunt, Axel sat down on the ridge line next to Roxas, a little closer than Roxas would have chosen to sit but not so close that he felt the need to move away. Axel sighed and stretched his long, long legs out. His red Chuck Taylors were dulled in the darkness.

“You smell like an ash tray,” Roxas accused.

“Yeah, well,” said Axel. His voice was still husky. He shrugged. “Worked out pretty good for you.”

The quiet ballooned around them. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted off of Axel’s leather jacket. He stifled a cough and took a breath like he was going to say something.

“My mom said your parents kicked you out,” Roxas said.

Axel, for once in his life, didn’t answer right away. Roxas risked a glance at him. He had his head tipped back, looking up at the stars. His guy-liner was somehow still perfect. There was glitter in his hair—the same color as his Chucks. Dulled in the darkness.

“Yeah,” Axel said.

“Why?” said Roxas.

Axel glanced at him. Roxas looked away immediately.

“She didn’t tell you?” Axel asked.

“Said I should ask you.”

Axel did one of those laughs that was just a puff of breath through the nose. “Nice.”

Silence for a good ten seconds. Roxas squirmed. Axel didn’t.

“So why did they kick you out?” Roxas asked.

“Wouldn’t cut my hair,” Axel drawled.

“No way. You’re kidding, right?”

Axel shrugged. “Well, that and a couple other things. It’s not super important.”

“I guess not,” Roxas said stiffly. “Y’know, my mom wants me to move back in with Xion so you can have my room.”

“Oh, yeah? Cool.”

“It’s not cool. That’s my room.”

“Chill out, Rox, it’s only for a couple months.”

“Yeah, so you can stay on the couch.”

Axel turned to look at him fully. Roxas shrank at the intensity. He suddenly didn’t want to be here, sweaty and itchy, not knowing what to do with his hands, not knowing where to look, not being able to breathe.

“Tell me you can hear them, too,” Axel said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Roxas said, for the second time in as many days.

“You do. You have to. I’ve seen—”

“I haven’t heard anything.”

“Quit screwing around, Roxas. I know I’m not crazy.”

“Maybe you’re just too crazy to know the difference.”

Axel grabbed his arm. Roxas’s whole body locked up, overheating. His stomach dropped. He got pins and needles from his neck to his fingertips.

“I’m not crazy,” Axel insisted. His eyes bored holes in Roxas’s head.

“Yeah you’re sure acting not crazy,” Roxas said thinly. They were so alone up here, and Axel was bigger and stronger than him, and what if he pinned Roxas down, what if he wrapped his hands around Roxas’s throat and—and—

Axel shook him. “So tell me I’m crazy. Tell me you haven’t noticed anything weird these last couple days. C’mon, Roxas, lie to my fucking face again—”

“I don’t hear it, I see it!” Roxas blurted in a panic.

Axel froze. His hand was bruising tight on Roxas’s arm. He let out a shaky breath.

“You’re serious?” he said. “You’re really serious.”

“I’m serious,” said Roxas. “Will you let go of me now?”

Axel looked at his own hand like he hadn’t noticed what it was doing. He let go immediately, scooted back a foot from Roxas, and planted both hands on the shingles.

“Sorry. I just—sorry. But… what do you see?”

Roxas shrugged, rubbed his arm, looked someplace else. He pulled his knees up to hide his half-chub terrorboner in case it got worse before it got better. Somehow it was about ninety degrees out all of a sudden.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought… I’m just seeing stuff. Like—y’know, A Beautiful Mind? That movie with the math professor who thinks he’s in the middle of some kind of conspiracy, but it turns out he’s just hallucinating? I thought it was like that, and if I just ignored it, it’d be fine. As long as I knew it wasn’t real. So I wouldn’t have to go to the loony bin or whatever. And I mean—how do you know we’re not both crazy?”

“Oh, at the exact same time, about the exact same stuff?” said Axel.

“Shut up,” Roxas snapped.

Axel smirked. He also pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, although he never stopped looking at Roxas.

(Roxas really wished he would stop looking.)

“What do you see?” Axel asked again, more softly.

Roxas squirmed. It would sound stupid if he said it out loud. He wasn’t completely convinced Axel wasn’t playing some kind of mean, elaborate prank on him, and the last thing he wanted was to humiliate himself.

Well, humiliate himself more.

“Just stuff,” he mumbled. “I—I guess it’s these weird pauses. Mostly. Everybody just stops and waits even though no one’s saying anything. And it’s like I can’t say anything, and I don’t know why.”

“Yeah,” said Axel, “that’s when they’re laughing.”

Roxas glanced at Axel and regretted it. He was just starting to cool off.

“They?”

“I don’t know who they are. What they are. But they can hear what everyone’s saying and they laugh and go ooh and aww and stuff like that. But mostly laughing. Usually at stuff that’s not funny.”

Roxas recalled, with uncomfortable clarity, Axel’s frozen, wooden smile.

“But it’s not all the time,” Axel went on. “Most of today, they weren’t around—at least not where I could hear them—but then as soon as I turned up at the venue, bam, there they were again.”

“I think…” Roxas started, and stopped, biting his lip. He glanced at Axel again. There wasn’t a trace of his usual lazy sarcasm. Roxas swallowed and forged ahead. “I think it’s only certain places.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Like where?”

“My living room is one, I guess. The Battle of the Bands venue. And the main hallway at school, and… at least one classroom. You weren’t there, but… yeah. Things got kinda weird in History today.”

“What makes you think it’s the places and not just, like, random times?”

Well, he’d already started, so he might as well finish.

“There’s these… I don’t know how to describe them. I can kind of just barely see them out of the corner of my eye sometimes. It’s usually like a wall, or even just a big patch of empty air. If I look at it just right, I can see this big… like a big sheet of black glass.”

“Like a window?”

“Bigger. Like the whole wall. And it’s always there, even when the—the thing isn’t happening.”

“Is there one up here?” Axel asked. He sounded genuinely worried about it.

Roxas shook his head. “It kinda seems like it only happens inside. I mean, so far. I only noticed it yesterday.”

“Same,” said Axel. “It was like something broke, and suddenly I’m hearing voices.”

“Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But I think….”

“What?”

“I think,” Roxas said carefully, “it might’ve been going on a lot longer. Like, since the beginning of the school year. I mean, thinking back on it, I—I remember those weird pauses happening. They just… didn’t seem weird. And I definitely wasn’t seeing into the phantom zone or whatever.”

“Y’know what, now that you mention it, I remember it, too,” said Axel. “But it’s definitely only been since you and Xion transferred in.”

A car rolled by on the street below, beetle-black in the dark. Crickets chirped. Overhead, the stars twinkled like spilled glitter.

“So… what now?” Roxas asked.

Axel blinked. “Y’know,” he said, “I have no fucking clue.”

---

Roxas didn’t end up moving into Xion’s room, after all. That night on the roof, he and Axel came to the conclusion that they needed to be able to talk regularly, without anyone (or any-thing) else knowing about it—so it would make the most sense for them to share Roxas’s room, which had roof access. Axel wasn’t optimistic about Roxas’s mom agreeing to the proposal, but told Roxas to have at it with a kind of your-funeral tone.

Even Roxas was surprised at how easily his mom agreed. Maybe it had something to do with the weird pauses, the laughing ghosts that Roxas couldn’t hear watching them from behind the living room wall. They were present—extremely present—for that conversation.

At some point that evening, while Axel was moving all his stuff in, the two of them got on each other’s nerves so badly that they divided the room exactly in half with a roll of duct tape and a No Crossing rule.

It was only after the fight had burned itself out that Roxas noticed the back wall of his room—the wall with the window—had developed Black Glass Disease.

Fortunately, after the lights went out, the skin-crawling sense of being watched faded. Even more fortunately, the glass didn’t stop Axel and Roxas from climbing out the window to talk about what the hell had just happened.

---

And then, as swift and neat as an episode break, a whole month passed without a single Weird Pause.

At first, Roxas’s whole life had been tension. He hadn’t slept at all for three nights, twitching at every little sound from Axel’s side of the room, sweaty and keyed up, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. After those few days, his resting heart rate finally dropped back below a hundred BPM, and he’d started getting used to sharing a room with Axel.

Despite the lull in activity, the two of them had learned some things during the break. For example, Roxas had learned that eighty percent of Axel’s personality was a put-on. Out in public, he was loud and lazy, always sarcastic and frequently mean, and he didn’t care about much of anything except getting famous and getting laid.

When it was just the two of them, he was different. Careful and sort of awkward and startlingly smart. Oh, sure, he was still a sarcastic know-it-all, just without that edge of sleaze that made Roxas want to punch him in the nose. He didn’t talk about girls at all, and talked way more about music than about his music career.

Talked about how Roxas was the right singer for Twilight Clocktower. How even if they were Axel’s songs, they needed Roxas’s voice. It was flattering to the point of being uncomfortable.

Axel also hadn’t gotten Intense again, and that was good, because Roxas hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the first time. It was half the reason he’d decided to keep the hard border between their halves of the room, despite the fact that they hadn’t had a single argument for a month.

Meanwhile, Axel had learned that Roxas’s parents didn’t have names.

It had been tough to swallow. In fact, Roxas was still struggling to come to terms with it. One night on the roof, just casually, Axel had asked Roxas what his mom’s first name was.

And Roxas hadn’t been able to answer.

As much as it messed with Roxas’s head, Axel took it in stride. He’d been doing some snooping, not looking for anything in particular, just seeking some kind of confirmation that whatever was wrong with the world wasn’t only in their heads. He’d taken to bringing the mail in so he could peek at who was writing to the Uchiyamas—and while that hadn’t produced any leads, he had noticed that every single piece of mail was addressed to “Mr. Uchiyama” and/or “Mrs. Uchiyama”, never including a first name.

Then he’d looked through other documents in the house and found the same thing. He’d even straight-up asked Roxas’s mom for her first name, and an inexplicable semi had driven past on their little suburban street, blaring its horn at just the wrong moment. He’d asked Roxas—who ought to have known—to put the final nail in the coffin.

The next day, determined to prove what had to be real insanity on Axel’s part, Roxas printed out a fake permission slip at the school library and brought it home to his mom.

She signed it Mrs. Uchiyama.

---

The next Event started, without warning or preamble, at school.

Roxas got the tingles the second he walked in the doors—all the hair on his body stood up, his stomach clenched, his animal-brain screamed at him that something was watching. Other students stood around chatting in the hallway, and their groups were too perfect, too composed, and somehow nobody had their back fully to the bank of lockers between the bathrooms and the principal’s office.

A giant banner hung on the wall by the stairs, done up in gold paint and sparkles and Old English font, not quite exactly opposite that bank of lockers.

MACANTE HIGH “ONCE UPON A PROM”

This Saturday, 8-11 P.M., In The Gym

Xion walked up behind him and chucked him on the shoulder.

“What’sa matter, zombie?” she teased—then, following his eyeline: “You forget Prom was this weekend?”

“It snuck up on me,” Roxas heard himself say. Where was Axel? He glanced around the halls as surreptitiously as he could, but there was no sign of him, and he wasn’t exactly easy to miss.

XION: Who’re you gonna ask?

ROXAS: Huh? Nobody. It’s too late now.

XION: I heard no one’s asked Naminé yet.

AXEL: (Pouncing from around the corner) Not true.

(ROXAS and XION scream)

Everything stopped for two whole seconds. Roxas and Axel locked eyes. Roxas’s expression must have given away as much as the wooden smile on Axel’s face, because understanding passed between them like lightning.

They were watching, and They were laughing.

The world unfroze.

“Don’t do that!” Roxas cried, pressing a hand to his chest.

“Sorry,” Axel said, unapologetic. “But what I heard was that Naminé’s been turning all her potential Prom dates down.”

“Cool, so there’s no point in me asking her,” Roxas said, hugging his books to his chest and turning his back on Axel. He didn’t want to. It just happened.

“Mmm, I dunno,” Axel teased, leaning over Roxas until he was almost speaking right into his ear. He smelled like cigarettes. “Maybe she’s holding out for somebody in particular.”

“Cut it out,” said Roxas. Heat rose from his hips to his scalp, so profound that he must have been visibly blushing.

“I think you should ask her, Roxas,” Xion said. “The worst she can say is no.”

“No, the worst she can say is I’m a lesbian.”

Another Weird Pause. Roxas checked on Axel and his heart skipped a beat. Behind the wooden smile, there was a flicker of real anger.

Roxas looked away again quickly.

“I think you’re just nervous because you’ve never been kissed,” said Xion.

Roxas lunged forward and clamped a hand over her mouth, shushing her urgently. Guilt erupted in his stomach, hot and sickly.

Why did I do that? he thought. I can’t treat my sister like that.

“Oh, man,” Axel said, viciously delighted. “Roxas is a lip-licker?”

ROXAS: A what?

XION: (Muffled) Mmph hmm mm phms!

AXEL: What she said.

WEIRD PAUSE:

A sharp pain in Roxas’s palm. He yanked his hand back with a yelp, then glared at Xion.

“You bit me!” he accused.

Xion shrugged and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

“Anyway,” she said, rolling her eyes, “lip-licker just means somebody who hasn’t had their first kiss yet. Except it’s mean and rude.” This with a pointed glare at Axel.

No one has ever called anyone a ‘lip-licker,’ ever, Roxas thought. That’s not a thing.

But his mouth wouldn’t open to let him say it.

“Calls ’em like I sees ’em, sweetheart,” Axel said. He leaned in way too close to Xion. “Good news is, it’s easy to cure.”

She shoved him back by the face. “For your information, I’ve already had my first kiss.”

“What?!” Roxas cried. “When? With who?!”

“None of your business,” she said, folding her arms and turning her nose up.

“Woooow,” Axel said. “So what I’m hearing is: sloppy seconds?”

Roxas jumped him. It happened so fast that he had no time to stop it; one second he was standing there embarrassed and sweaty, and the next he and Axel were on the floor, legs kicking arms flailing bodies crushed together as Roxas tried to tear Axel’s hair out and Axel tried to put Roxas in a headlock. As though from a great distance, he heard the conversation keep right on going without them.

SAÏX: I see I’m late to the festivities. What is it this time?

XION: The usual. Hey, who’s your date to Prom?

Stop us, Roxas thought, trapped in the rabid animal of his own body. Why isn’t anyone stopping us?

Axel got the headlock, an arm around Roxas’s neck as he crushed Roxas’s back to his chest, both of them somehow sitting up against the lockers. Roxas yanked at Axel’s arm but couldn’t budge it. His face started to swell up.

There wasn’t even a group of other kids watching the fight. There was always a group of kids around a fight. They could smell one coming a mile off and swarmed like sharks.

But everyone was just… standing there. Only Xion and Saïx were watching, casually, off to one side. While they talked about Prom dates.

“Say uncle,” Axel said, mocking.

Roxas tried to kick him and Axel ratcheted his grip tighter. Roxas’s back arched as his pulse hammered at his ears and the inside of his face. He was going to pass out. The smell of cigarette smoke and leather and Old Spice enveloped him.

“Say uncle!” Axel said again.

“Uncle!” Roxas wheezed.

Axel let him go with a shove that put Roxas on his hands and knees, gasping for breath. His terrorboner was at full mast and trying to break through the zipper of his pants. His face burned.

“Remember that next time you decide to pick a fight,” Axel said—then, in a much friendlier tone, “Oh hey Naminé!”

Roxas’s head snapped up. Standing in front of him was NAMINÉ, certified cute-girl, blonde and sweet and demurely tucking her hair behind her ear.

Roxas dove for his discarded textbooks, scrabbled them into his arms and clambered to his feet, crushed the books against his boner and bolted.

Saïx, Xion, and Axel all caught him, spun him around, and shoved him back at Naminé. Roxas just barely managed to stop himself before he bowled her over completely. She jumped and squeaked and didn’t step back even an inch, her nose almost touching Roxas’s chin as she stared up at him with enormous, pale-blue eyes.

Time stopped for a three-count. Roxas’s pulse throbbed in his face and his hands and his dick.

“Um,” he said.

“Hi, Roxas,” said Naminé.

He swallowed heavily and managed to take a step back. He kept his textbooks clamped against his pelvis.

“Um,” he said again. “Hi. Good morning. Naminé.”

“Good morning,” she said with a smile. She leaned to one side to peek past him at the big banner, then turned her attention back to him. “So, are you excited for Prom?”

“Uh. Y-yeah. I guess. Are—are you?”

I have to get out of here let me OUT OF HERE, he thought desperately.

NAMINÉ: Mm, sort of. I don’t have a date yet.

ROXAS: Oh.

NAMINÉ: (Innocent and hopeful) Do you?

ROXAS: Um. Uh. No. Actually. I don’t. I was—um. I was kind of wondering—

He glanced over his shoulder for absolutely no reason. Axel, Xion, and Saïx were peeking out from around the corner behind the lockers. All three of them gave him a thumbs-up on a scale from fiendishly enthusiastic to completely grim. Roxas panned back to Naminé and licked his lips.

“I was wondering if you’d want to go with me,” he said.

Naminé smiled, ducked her head, tucked her hair behind her ear (when had it gotten un-tucked?).

“Sure,” she said. “I’d like that.”

“Yeah?” said Roxas, grinning like a lunatic. Why? He wanted out now. “I’ll um… I can’t pick you up, ’cause I can’t drive—”

His words got stuck. He couldn’t make himself turn his head to look at Axel again, to confirm that what he thought was happening was really happening.

“—but I’ll meet you there?” he finished.

“Mm!” Naminé said, nodding decisively. “See you there, Roxas.”

She stood up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek, leaving a smear of lip gloss behind, and literally skipped off down the hall. Roxas reached up to wipe the goop off his cheek, but his hand wouldn’t let him do anything but touch it reverentially.

A heavy arm landed across his shoulders and the smell of cigarette smoke folded around him.

AXEL: Nice going, lip-licker.

WEIRD PAUSE:

SAÏX AND XION: (From either side) Now don’t mess it up!

Roxas slapped Axel’s arm off his shoulders and wrenched away from all three of his bandmates.

“Don’t touch me,” he snarled. “What’s wrong with you guys?”

“What?” said Xion. “We got you a date to Prom. Didn’t you want to go with Naminé?”

“You all—and he—” Roxas sputtered. He jabbed an accusing finger at Axel and stopped dead.

Axel wasn’t wearing that stupid self-important smirk anymore. He looked confused, sickly, maybe even scared. Other kids were staring as they walked past on their way to first period.

Roxas realized he was standing with his back to the wall of black glass.

The Event was over. So why did he feel like he was still being watched—and more closely than ever?

His face was burning. His whole body was slimy with sweat and dread. He couldn’t breathe right. His throat and shoulders tingled.

And to top it all off, he still had a raging boner.

“Screw all you guys,” he snapped, and stalked off down the hallway.

To the bathroom, where he locked himself in the stall farthest from the door, put his back against the graffitied tile wall, and had a panic attack.

He could visualize, with unsettling clarity, the match-cut between his shaking hands raising to cover his mouth and Axel lifting a cigarette to his lips.

Chapter 34: my thoughts are choking on you, my dear

The lighter caught on the third try. The flame quivered as Axel lit the cigarette pinched in his lips. The smoke burned his eyes and sinuses and throat. It didn’t hurt, or at least, he didn’t care if it did.

It had only been a month and he was already going through a pack a week. Some sanctimonious D.A.R.E. cop in his head scolded him that he’d better quit or it was going to kill him.

Axel took a long drag off the cigarette.

If it was going to kill him, let it.

He was skipping school again. After the incident that morning, the air had turned to sandpaper and being around other people had become unbearable. Everyone was talking too loud and too much and too all-at-once. The disgusting things he’d said to Xion lingered on his tongue like he was constantly throwing up in his mouth. The bruises and sore scalp from the morning’s scuffle pinged his conscience with every beat of his heart.

He’d clung on by his fingernails until lunch, when it was easier to get away. He’d gone back to the suburban wilderness of the Big Creek Dam, parked his bike, posted up on the concrete barrier and lit up a cigarette and it was right about then that his brain caught up with him.

There wasn’t really anything stopping him from taking off for L.A. He had his share of the prize money from the Battle of the Bands, plus what he’d managed to save under his bed before the big falling out with his parents (Axel didn’t have his own bank account; he’d been shackled and chained to Daddy’s Mastercard). Minus the six hundred and fifty he’d pitched in for Saïx’s new bass. He didn’t really need to graduate high school—and he probably wouldn’t if he kept skipping class this much. He could take off to start his music career whenever he wanted.

Even if it was obvious now that Axel didn’t have a music career waiting for him in L.A.

Roxas did.

Axel could ride on his coattails if he stuck with Twilight Clocktower, maybe. He could be The Guitarist. But Axel’s voice was weird (and getting weirder with every pack of cigarettes) and he definitely couldn’t carry a solo act. He didn’t have The Magic. He hadn’t known about The Magic until he’d seen it on Roxas, that night at the Battle of the Bands.

And over the past month, he’d come to realize that he, Axel, was not the protagonist of his own life.

Roxas was.

No matter which way Axel looked at it, everything made more sense with Roxas as the center of the universe. Oh, sure, other people could get up to wacky hi-jinks galore, but only and always subordinate to whatever was going on with Roxas.

Take the Battle of the Bands, for instance. You could look at it as an unfortunate series of coincidences that had ended with Roxas stepping up to avert disaster like any good friend would.

Or, if you were paying closer attention, you’d notice the universe twisting violently to achieve that single shining moment where Roxas had been hoisted aloft under confetti and cheers, Hero Of The Day. Saïx’s bass getting ruined, the busking plan, Axel’s sore throat—shit, maybe even the existence of the Battle of the Bands. Axel had wracked his brains trying to remember if anyone had actually mentioned the Battle of the Bands before it was ‘tomorrow.’

And now the same thing was happening with Prom, only this time he was sure no one had spared a single thought for Prom over the last six months until suddenly, this morning, it was all anyone cared about.

More precisely, Roxas’s date to Prom was all anyone cared about. And the fact that Roxas had never been kissed.

Axel sucked down another lungful of smoke. His hands hadn’t stopped shaking. His stomach hadn’t stopped churning.

Roxas was sixteen. Roxas was sixteen. Axel shouldn’t even have been hanging out with him, let alone sharing a room with him. It had to stop. He had to walk away, cut all contact, get on his bike and just go, go, go, even if nothing was waiting for him. It would be better than getting kicked out again. It would be better than another fight with Roxas, in public or, infinitely worse, alone in their room. Alone on the roof. Alone, anywhere, with sixteen-year-old Roxas.

Axel took a third long, sandpaper drag. The cigarette burned down to the filter. He leaned his elbows on the concrete barrier and flicked the butt over the side of the dam.

It fell a long, long way.

---

Axel slept on the fold-out couch that night. Roxas was giving him the cold-shoulder anyway, but he’d rather not take risks. When Roxas’s mom asked him about it in the morning, he told her the two of them had had a fight (which was, at least, true).

“Oh, well,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll be over it soon.”

“What do you know?” Axel mumbled. “You’re not even real.”

“Coffee?” she offered.

---

The Audience stayed gone until lunch the next day.

Axel found Xion and Saïx sitting together and plopped down between them, craning his head this way and that.

“Where’s Roxas?” he asked.

“Avoiding you, probably,” said Xion.

“I heard he made you sleep on the couch,” said Saïx.

Like a peal of thunder, laughter erupted from everywhere.

A forest fire of rage whipped up red hot in Axel’s chest. The shame underneath ignited with an oily black smoke.

“Huh, now where could you have heard that from?” he said, glaring at Xion.

“No idea,” Xion said wistfully. She popped a french fry in her mouth and chewed it at Axel.

“Yeah, well, he’ll get over it,” Axel heard himself say. “I have a problem and you two are gonna help me with it.”

Saïx and Xion raised their eyebrows at each other.

“Are we?” said Saïx.

“News to me,” said Xion.

Axel pointed sharply at each of them in turn. “You owe me for the bass and you don’t want me running your soft and frillies up the flagpole.”

More laughter and a few wolf whistles from the Audience. Axel hated them. With every fiber of his being he hated them.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Xion snapped, slamming her hands down on the table.

“I live in your house, sister, you wouldn’t believe what I could get up to.”

Hilarious. Apparently.

“What is it you need help with?” Saïx asked.

“I don’t have a costume for Prom. You two are gonna make me one.”

“Seriously?” said Xion.

“Yeah. C’mon, it’s that whole fairytale theme. I can’t show up in a suit, I’ll look like an idiot. But I’m also not wearing some ten-buck Halloween surplus piece of junk. Xion, you can sew, and Saïx, you have an encyclopedic knowledge of princess-cartoon villains.”

“They’re my idols,” Saïx said. The Audience laughed.

“So,” Axel concluded, “you’re the perfect people to make my costume for me.”

“First of all, no,” said Xion. “Second of all, since when are you going to Prom?”

Axel shrugged.

Since Prom popped into existence yesterday morning, he thought.

“Just decided,” he said. “C’mon, it’ll really show off your skills!”

“Do you even have a date?” Xion asked.

Why does that matter? Axel tried to retort, and couldn’t.

“Oh, yeah, guess I’ll need one of those,” he said instead, scratching his chin.

“Hah!” said Xion. “No date, no costume.”

AXEL: No problem. (He leans back as a PRETTY GIRL walks past) Hey there, beautiful. What’s your name?

PRETTY GIRL: Who, me? Um. Ava.

AXEL: Ava, you wanna go to Prom with me?

PRETTY GIRL: (Flustered) Oh! Sure. I—I mean, yes!

AXEL: Yeah? (A HOT CHICK walks past) Take a number and get in line.

Axel’s body chased off after the other girl like a dog. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t turn back to Ava and apologize, let her down easy, do anything but leave her standing there open-mouthed and hurt while the Audience laughed their asses off. Couldn’t stop himself from hitting on the other girl, couldn’t stop his eyes from roving over her body like she was a piece of meat, couldn’t stop himself from telling her she was going to Prom with him and making disgusting faces at Xion and Saïx when she agreed. He couldn’t do anything.

He couldn’t do anything.

---

That night, Axel bit the bullet and met Roxas up on the roof. He brought his cigarettes, because there was no way he was making it through the conversation without them.

Roxas cold-shouldered him through the entire first cigarette. It was only when Axel stubbed the butt out on the shingles and immediately lit a second one that Roxas even spared him a glance.

“That’s gross,” Roxas said.

Axel shrugged, blew out a stream of smoke. “I’m gross.”

“You can say that again.”

At least three minutes of silence passed between them. Axel left his cigarette smoldering between his fingers, trying to make it last a little longer so he wouldn’t have to light a third.

“Sorry,” he said eventually. “About yesterday.”

“Are you?” Roxas said. “Or is that just what you’re supposed to say?”

“It’s… what I want to say,” Axel said, but a sliver of doubt wormed into his gut. Was it? Was it really?

“Sure,” said Roxas. “Whatever.”

“Should I go?” Axel said quietly.

Roxas sighed, hung his head, rubbed his eye.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I wish you were this Axel all the time, instead of that other Axel who’s a bully and a creep.”

“I’m not trying to be like that, Roxas. It just happens. It’s like whenever They’re watching, somebody waves a magic wand and turns me into an asshole.”

“You don’t know when They’re watching,” Roxas said.

“Uh, yeah I do,” said Axel, annoyed. “I can hear them, remember?”

“Maybe they’re not always making noise.”

“Listen, I know when I’m saying stuff I don’t want to say, and it’s when They’re around. It happens to you, too, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t magically turn into an asshole.”

“Oh, so you’re a homophobe all the time,” Axel said nastily.

Roxas bristled. “Why do you care? Are you gay or something?”

The venom in his voice went through Axel’s heart like a bullet.

“I hope Naminé dumps you and bangs your sister,” he retorted.

The sound of Roxas’s furious, indignant spluttering followed him all the way down off the roof.

He resigned himself to sleeping on the couch for the rest of the school year.

---

With a musical sting and a tacky whoosh, Prom arrived.

It was held at the Macante City Botanical Gardens, on the middle level of the big three-story greenhouse. The floor was concrete, bounded on one side by a peeling white railing that overlooked the lower floor where the big plants grew up to the glass ceiling. Girls in princess dresses and boys in crappy silver lamé knight/prince/king costumes crowded the dance floor while teachers prowled for anyone failing to leave room for Jesus.

Axel found himself lounging in a corner sipping lukewarm fruit punch, singled out by the quality and villainy of his punk-rock evil fairy costume. Saïx and Xion had really outdone themselves. He should have been over the moon.

He wanted to go home.

He couldn’t remember getting here. Oh, he knew he’d gotten the costume from Saïx and Xion, picked up his date from somewhere, come here, grabbed his dinky plastic wristband, abandoned his date and hit the snack table instead. He knew it but he didn’t remember it, like someone had just summarized the last three days for him.

All of a sudden, the music halved in volume. Axel looked over at the DJ’s table, expecting some kind of announcement, but she was still bumping along like nothing had changed. Everyone else was dancing just as enthusiastically as before, totally oblivious.

Axel’s stomach sank. There was no wondering what had happened.

They were here, and They wanted to hear people talk over the music.

Right on cue, there was Saïx, stepping up to Axel’s elbow like he’d appeared out of thin air. He was dressed up as some kind of death god, all black robes and a skull painted on his face. There was a blue flower pinned to his chest, a boutonniere from the kiosk out front. His costume wasn’t quite as good as Axel’s, which must have pissed him off to no end.

Assuming he was real.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Saïx said.

“I know, right?” said Axel. “They’ll let anybody in this place.”

“Enjoying yourself?”

Axel snorted. “You kidding? I’m bored outta my mind. This whole thing is dull, dull, dull.”

SAÏX: Where’s your date?

AXEL: Don’t know, don’t care. She’s not made for talking to.

AUDIENCE: (Laughs)

AXEL: Where’s yours?

SAÏX: She hasn’t arrived yet.

AXEL: Suuuuure. I bet she’ll be here any minute.

AUDIENCE: (Laughs)

Saïx glared at him, but just then Xion appeared on Axel’s other side.

She was dressed up like a fairy. A Goth Slut fairy. There was corsetry and a lot of leg and way more boob than Axel ever wanted to see from a sixteen-year-old.

“Hey guys,” she said. Bouncing on her toes in a way that demonstrated she was not wearing a bra anywhere under all that. “You both look great!”

“Wow,” Axel heard himself say. “You look… uh….”

“You like my costume?” she said. She half-twirled, half-bowed, snapped back upright again. Boing boing.

Axel’s mouth made a noise like chyah. Saïx pushed him out of the way and pulled out a second blue flower from somewhere, fixed it around Xion’s wrist somehow.

“It suits you,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, twinkling at him.

“Wait a second,” Axel said, shoving the two of them apart. “She’s your prom date?”

“Yes,” said Saïx, deadpan. “Is that a problem?”

“Problem?! Obviously it’s a problem! We all agreed: no hitting on the drummer!”

The Audience laughed.

“She asked me,” said Saïx.

The Audience thought that was a riot.

“When did this happen?” Axel demanded.

“While we were working on your costume, actually,” said Xion, folding her arms (under her boobs). “We had a lot of time to get to know each other.”

Axel glared at Xion and pulled Saïx aside.

“Why didn’t you tell me she was hot, man?” Axel said in a whisper that was way too loud.

“We’re just here as friends,” said Saïx.

“Oh yeah right. You mean to tell me all that time you two spent getting to know each other—”

“She’s a villain fan,” Saïx said, “and it turns out I like costume design. Look at it this way: you were right. We do work well together. As you can see.”

He plucked Axel’s sleeve and brushed past him to return to Xion. Axel watched him go, strangling his paper cup of fruit punch.

From nowhere, his date The Hot Chick lunged from the crowd and grabbed his arm in both hands and mashed her boobs against his biceps.

“There you are!” she said, breathless and giggly. “Come on, let’s dance!”

“Can’t wait,” Axel said woodenly.

She dragged him onto the dance floor to the sound of laughter.

Once they were out there, she was all over him in a way that the prowling teachers really should have stopped. Axel tried to put some distance between the two of them, but the best he could do was look Not Super Into It. She didn’t seem to notice at all.

“I don’t want to be doing this,” Axel said, and was astonished to hear the words actually leave his mouth.

She laughed a laugh that was so outrageously annoying that it couldn’t have been genuine, spun around and pressed her back to his chest, her butt to his pelvis.

“I’m serious,” he snapped. “Get off of me.”

He couldn’t shove her off—not because she was especially stubborn, but because his arms just wouldn’t do it.

“Watermelon watermelon,” she said flirtatiously.

“…What?” said Axel.

“Watermelon watermelon watermelon,” she said.

A suspicion sank into Axel’s gut, even as his hands found themselves magnetized to her hips. He glanced around the room and spotted Roxas, standing in an inexplicable clearing on the dance floor, looking like an adorable dork in his little prince costume.

Talking to Naminé, in her beautiful white princess costume.

“What’s your name?” Axel said bluntly to his date.

She laughed again and kept dancing. Axel’s skin crawled. His feet were nailed to the floor. He couldn’t take his eyes off Roxas. His fingernails dug into The Hot Chick’s hips and she didn’t notice.

Of course she didn’t. She wasn’t real.

The bumping club song spun out and transitioned into a slow dance. The lights dimmed, all except for roving miniature spotlights that coasted around the dance floor like pixies. Axel’s date turned around and looped her arms around his neck, pressed their foreheads together.

“Watermelon watermelon,” she murmured.

Axel choked on a scream. Not intentionally. He would have loved to scream. Furious tears pricked his eyes and wouldn’t spill over. He wanted to throw up. Or at least have a cigarette.

On the other side of the dance floor, through The Hot Chick’s stupid hairdo, he could still see Roxas and Naminé, Naminé and Roxas, her arms around his neck, his hands oh so careful on her waist. Axel watched them step on each other’s feet and laugh awkwardly. Watched them go from stiff-limbed zombies to swaying stalks of grass, drifting closer, breathing sweeter.

Watched Roxas lean in and kiss Naminé on the lips.

---

Axel stood by the snack table. His arm was looped around his date’s cardboard waist. His ears rang. His eyes stared into the middle distance.

His entire body was full of broken glass.

“This was fun,” his date, The Hot Chick, giggled.

Axel slowly pulled back into his own head. It was the first thing she’d said to him other than watermelon watermelon in probably a few hours.

“Want to go get milkshakes?” she asked, drawing circles on his chest with her fingertip.

“Hmm, could be fun,” he heard himself say. The voice didn’t even sound like his. “But I know what would be more fun.”

“What?” she said.

Axel leaned in until his mouth was almost touching her ear. His arm tightened itself around her waist.

“It doesn’t matter what I say,” he whispered, “does it.”

The Hot Chick gasped, shoved out of his grip, and threw her drink in his face.

“Pig!” she spat. She flung the empty paper cup on the floor and stormed out.

Axel stood there with his arms half-raised and his eyes closed, dripping on his stupid costume and the concrete floor while the Audience laughed and laughed. He wanted to be dead. He wiped his eyes and flicked the fluid off his fingers.

Another cupful of lukewarm fruit punch splashed in his face.

“Oh come on!” he cried.

Ava, the Pretty Girl from Tuesday’s lunch, smiled at him. “Took a number, got in line.”

The Audience howled with laughter. Ava balled up her paper cup and bounced it off Axel’s forehead. She followed the Hot Chick out to cheers and whistles.

XION: (Arriving at the scene of the crime) Whoah, what happened to you?

AXEL: Not exactly the kind of sugar I wanted poured on me.

AUDIENCE: (Laughing)

AXEL: (Noticing all of XION) Hey, you’re a girl. You wanna…?

XION: Oh! Sure!

And she threw her drink in his face.

Chapter 35: there's just too much that time cannot erase

Roxas rode home with Xion and Saïx in the old Corolla. He sat in the back watching the streetlights roll by while Xion and Saïx belted out princess-cartoon villain songs in the front seats. Roxas kept his teeth clenched, dug his fingernails into his palms until he was sure they must have been drawing blood. The other two didn’t seem to notice that he wasn’t joining in.

Saïx dropped them off at the end of the driveway. He and Xion exchanged cheerful see-you-Mondays as Roxas dragged himself out of the back seat. Axel’s motorcycle wasn’t parked in front of the garage. Xion called dibs on the shower and ran inside. Roxas shambled after her, jaw aching from the force of his clenched teeth.

By the time he got inside, Xion was already in the shower. The lights were out. The black glass behind the north wall looked on blindly. The couch was unfolded into a bed. Unmade. Empty.

Roxas shuffled past, into his room. Both beds were made. Both beds were empty. The black glass stared, uncaring. Roxas shucked off the more cumbersome parts of his stupid prince costume and climbed out the window, up to the peak of the roof, under the quiet and the stars and the faint, lingering smell of cigarette smoke.

Alone in the dark, he curled around the caving-in hole in his chest. The tears that had been stinging his eyes spilled over and he buried them in his knees. His lips burned, strawberry sweet and utterly ruined. There was no taking it back. No fixing it. He’d finally had his first kiss and he hated it and he hated himself and he hated everything because it was done, it was forever, and it was wrong.

It should’ve been Axel.

---

And yet the world, relentless and cruel, kept turning. It couldn’t even give him the distance of a chapter break before moving on to Sunday morning.

Roxas shuffled out of his room bleary and mussed, half-awake. He had one foot on the kitchen linoleum before he spotted the flare of bright red at the kitchen island.

His sluggish heart leapt into his throat. His joints locked. Nausea gathered in his stomach and heat rose in his cheeks.

Axel was sitting on one of the bar stools at the kitchen island, hunched over a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee, his head bowed and his eyes down. He hadn’t spotted Roxas yet.

Roxas slipped back around the corner and pressed himself to the wall. He let out a silent, shaky breath. He glanced at the north wall of the living room—the little of it he could see from here. The black glass was still there, just at the edge of visible. The feeling of being watched was….

Well, present, but not very intense. Not like it was during an Event.

The sound of methodical crunching came from the kitchen.

Roxas took another deep breath. He couldn’t just hide here all day—not least because Axel would probably come this way as soon as he was done with his breakfast. They didn’t have to talk about what had happened at Prom. Not yet. It could just be a normal Sunday morning. For both of them.

Together. Alone.

That was fine. It was fine. They’d shared a room for, like, three months, and it had been fine.

Actually, technically they were still sharing a room. Was that fine? Because part of Roxas felt like that was the finest thing ever and part of him wanted to jump out the window now—

Get a grip, he thought, digging his fingernails into his palms.

With one last steadying breath, Roxas peeled himself off the wall and came into the kitchen. He’d forgotten how to walk. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He didn’t look at Axel and that was normal, right? On a normal day he wouldn’t have looked at Axel. Right?

“Morning,” Roxas said. Super normally. Nailed it.

Axel completely ignored him.

“Um?” Roxas said. His hands were so sweaty. “Axel?”

Axel took a sip of coffee. He kept his eyes down. He went right back to his cereal as if Roxas wasn’t even there.

Panic wrapped a hand around Roxas’s throat. What if he wasn’t really there? What if he’d fallen off the roof last night and died and turned into a ghost and—

Or, maybe, Axel was just giving him the cold-shoulder because he was still pissed off.

“Okay,” Roxas sighed. “Look, you don’t… have to say anything if you don’t want to. But, um. I’m sorry. For that stuff I said about lesbians and for calling you—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Axel cut in.

“What?” said Roxas. Axel was talking to him! That was good, right? Even if he sounded miserable? “I—no, well, I mean, it kind of does, because, um—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Axel said. There was a bitterness in his voice that was bordering on poisonous. “There’s nothing we can do about it, so why bother?”

“Do about it? A-about what?”

“Any of it,” Axel said. He made a vicious, helpless gesture to the world at large. “The shit we say, the shit we do, any of it. There’s no point apologizing, or trying to be better, or whatever. If They think it’s funny for you to be a shithead, you’ll be a shithead. End of story.”

“Shh!” Roxas hissed. “Not here!”

“Why not?” said Axel. He still wasn’t looking at Roxas.

“Because—” Roxas dropped his voice to a whisper, glancing at the barely-there sheet of black glass underneath the wall of the living room— “They might hear you!”

“Who gives a shit?” said Axel. “What, you think we can keep secrets from the cosmic super-beings? You think they care about anything we say?”

“Then so Xion doesn’t hear you,” Roxas said through his teeth.

“Xion isn’t real, either,” Axel said brutally. “Neither is Saïx, neither is Naminé, neither is anyone at school or anybody in this fucking town. It doesn’t matter, Roxas. We’re all just little dolls for Them to play with whenever they want, however they want. We might as well get used to it.”

“That’s not true,” Roxas said. Panic was tightening its grip on his throat. Guilt and shame were filling up his stomach. “That can’t be true. If we’re just—dolls, why do we keep doing stuff when They’re not around? We can still think and feel and—and do stuff. We have to be real. At least you and me are!”

“Nah,” said Axel. He drained his coffee and smacked the mug down on the countertop. “Just you.”

He got up and headed for the door. Roxas barely restrained himself from grabbing him by the sleeve.

“We can do something about it,” he said to Axel’s back.

Axel didn’t even slow down.

“I’ll prove it to you!” Roxas insisted.

Axel walked out without ever once looking at Roxas.

---

So Roxas hunkered down to wait for the next Event.

In the mean time, Axel barely spoke to him—to anyone, really. He still went to school and sat with Roxas and Xion and Saïx at lunch and came to band practice, but he didn’t respond when people talked to him, didn’t offer any wisecracks or fun facts, didn’t do much of anything but go through the motions like some kind of robot. Roxas tried to get through to him, to have just one normal conversation to show that it was still possible and worthwhile, but Axel was a brick wall. Whenever he didn’t have motions to go through, he either sat around inside watching TV or stood around outside smoking like a chimney.

It was hard to watch. All the harder because everyone else completely brushed it off, even Xion and Saïx. No matter how hard Roxas tried, he couldn’t haul Axel out on his own, and he couldn’t convince anyone to help him.

All the while, the end of the school year ticked closer. Roxas didn’t want to think about what might happen when Axel no longer had any motions to go through, when the world cut him loose and expected him to ride off into the sunset.

For obvious reasons, Roxas hadn’t brought up the Prom Event.

In fact, as far as he could tell, no one was talking about Prom. Xion didn’t tease him about his first kiss, nobody at school had anything to say about it, even Naminé never mentioned it.

And speaking of Naminé.

She was around, in a general sense, but it wasn’t like she and Roxas were dating. Nothing whatsoever about their interactions had changed—not the style, and not the frequency. He talked to her maybe twice a week, and she was always very sweet and fairly shy. As much as Roxas wanted to clear the air—she was really nice, he’d like to stay friends, but he wasn’t interested in being boyfriend and girlfriend—he could never quite work his way around to actually doing it. He wasn’t sure she thought of them as an item, and he’d sound like an arrogant idiot if he tried to break up with someone he wasn’t even dating.

It was like none of it had happened, except for the sickness in Roxas’s stomach and Axel’s time-lapse of self-destruction.

The more time passed, the more certain Roxas became: he was only going to get one chance to prove Axel wrong, one chance to defy the words put into his mouth. One last Event.

And it was going to be—it could only be—the last day of school.

---

One horizontal line later, that day arrived.

Roxas walked into school with his eyes sharp and his head on a swivel. Every mention of pizza lunches, yearbook signings, and graduation parties set him on edge, wondering if this would be the moment when the dull fluorescent lights turned halogen-bright and his mouth stopped needing his brain to tell it what to say.

Somehow it still caught him off-guard when, while he was switching out books from his locker, Naminé skipped up to him and kissed him on the cheek.

“Hi Roxas!” she chirped.

The whole lens of the world refocused. The hallways had rearranged themselves while his back was turned, angles adjusting, groups regrouping, foot traffic coming to a halt as every other student in the school was suddenly blocked from passing between Roxas and the black glass behind the other set of lockers. He’d gotten so used to the feeling of being watched that he hadn’t even noticed its sudden and incandescent intensification.

“Hey Naminé,” his mouth said, while his body shut his locker and put an arm around her shoulders. “What’s up?”

“Just saying hi,” she said. “I haven’t seen you all day, and it’s almost lunch time.”

You never see me at all most days, he wanted to say, but the words stayed stuck in his chest.

“I missed you,” Naminé added, snuggling closer to him.

Since when has she been this clingy?! Roxas wondered, horrified.

“Aw, I missed you too,” he said. He kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled like strawberries. His lips and the arm looped around her shoulders crawled.

“That new romcom is coming out tonight,” Naminé said.

Roxas frowned. “What new romcom?”

“You know. Summer Lovin’? Apparently it’s really good. A perfect date movie!”

“Oh, yeah? Cool,” said Roxas.

I need to get to class, he thought. Come on. Say it. ‘I need to get to class.’

But it was like his jaw was nailed shut.

“Don’t you want to ask me to go see it with you?” said Naminé.

“Oh. Right. Uh—do you wanna go see it? With me?”

“Toniiiiight,” Naminé prompted, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Well, but I can’t tonight,” he said. “I already promised Axel and Saïx I’d come to graduation.”

Naminé pouted. “Seriously? Me and my whole family are leaving for Alaska tomorrow morning, for a whole month. Can’t you skip it?”

Roxas made a face. He felt the words coming: I guess for my girlfriend—

He clenched his jaw and his fist and every other muscle he thought might help hold it back. As loudly as he could, he thought: I am not saying that.

Instantly, another set of words smacked into the back of his head, too quick and unexpected for him to even think about catching them.

“I can’t,” he insisted—or more like whined. “They’re only gonna graduate once.”

“And we won’t get another chance to go on a date for like a month!” said Naminé.

Roxas didn’t even hear the next words that came out of his mouth. The implications had just hit him and his head was spinning, heart fluttering with hope.

He didn’t just have a script. He had options.

“You’re the best, Roxas,” Naminé gushed. She planted a sticky-sweet kiss on his cheek and skipped off down the hallway.

Roxas’s stomach sank. He touched his cheek—his hand still wouldn’t let him wipe the lip gloss off. Excitement turned to dread.

“What did I just agree to?” he wondered aloud.

Three seconds later, the lights stopped down and the entire student body dispersed back into normal motion. Roxas scrubbed his cheek with his sleeve. His hands were sweating. His heart hadn’t slowed down.

He needed to find Axel.

---

But Axel was nowhere to be found. Roxas shouldn’t have been surprised that he was skipping school, and he probably shouldn’t have been angry about it, but he was both. After a month of going through the motions, why would Axel choose today to revert to type?

He wasn’t at lunch—although Xion was. As soon as Roxas started to approach her table, another Event kicked off. Through it, Roxas learned what his autopilot mouth had agreed to and the hare-brained scheme the universe wanted him to pull off.

Apparently, he was going to go to the movie with Naminé and show up at graduation to cheer for Axel and Saïx. To do so, he’d need Xion’s help. While Roxas picked up Naminé (or more precisely, Roxas’s mom picked up Naminé with Roxas in the car), Xion would ride with their dad to graduation. She’d slip into the back of the gym to congratulate Saïx and Axel—ensuring that they both saw her—before slipping out again, disguising herself as Roxas, and running down the street to the movie theater.

Meanwhile, Roxas would tell Naminé he needed to pee and slip out of the theater while Xion was slipping in to take his place; between the darkness, the disguise, and the two of them being twins, Naminé shouldn’t be able to tell a switcheroo had taken place.

Roxas would then sprint back up the street to the school and get into the audience just in time to cheer for Axel and Saïx, stick around long enough to congratulate them afterwards—ensuring that they both saw him—then sprint back to the movie theater and switch with Xion again well before the lights came on.

It was the stupidest plan Roxas had ever heard. Moments after he and Xion high-fived over it, the Event ended and the two of them were left dangling in the noisy cafeteria.

“Hey, by the way,” Roxas said, trying to keep his voice casual. “Where are Axel and Saïx?”

“Roxas,” Xion said, patronizing. “The last day of school is always Senior Skip Day.”

Duh, said the universe.

---

The plan went off about as well as Roxas expected, which was to say: stupidly.

The night ended with him out of breath and sweaty, limping out of the movie theater with Naminé hanging on his arm and gushing about how she’d had no idea he was so experienced, and they’d have to go see another movie as soon as she got back from Alaska. When Roxas got home, he found Xion swilling through a whole bottle of mouthwash. The two of them exchanged a grim look and the highest and most sacred pact of siblinghood:

We Will Never Speak Of This Again.

The worst part was, Roxas still hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Axel—not really. Oh, they’d had some dialogue at the graduation venue, mostly Axel delaying Roxas from getting back to the movie theater in increasingly absurd and frustrating ways, but they hadn’t talked. Roxas had no chance to communicate that he’d found a soft spot in Their control, and Axel, for his part, spent the entire interaction completely dead behind the eyes.

Which was, to say the least, really unnerving.

But finally, finally, the horrible day was over, and all Roxas had to do was wait for Axel to come back and then they could slip out onto the roof and talk it through.

It was close to ten o’clock. Roxas poured himself a glass of milk and sat down at the kitchen island to wait.

He finished his milk. He paced the living room a few times. He checked out the window to see if Axel’s bike was parked in the driveway yet.

Eleven o’clock. Roxas folded up the couch bed and watched a couple episodes of TV. First sitting quietly, then fidgeting all over, sideways, on the arms, upside-down. He gave himself a crick in the neck glancing at the door.

Midnight. He broke out the Storybook Beatdown game he played whenever he was waiting for Axel to show up late to band practice. Axel always showed up before Roxas could get any real practice in. Any minute now, he would hear the growl of Axel’s motorcycle coming up the driveway.

Any minute now.

Any minute now.

---

Roxas snorted awake in his own bed, still fully clothed.

Sunlight was pouring through the blinds. He sat bolt upright and received a swift gut-punch from the universe.

Axel’s half of the room was barren.

Roxas sat there staring, mouth agape, heart twisting in agony. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t right. This wasn’t how it was supposed to—

He heard the front door open.

Roxas leapt out of bed, threw open the door, sprinted down the hallway and into the kitchen—

Where Axel was just turning to go, his guitar case slung over his shoulder and a sarcastically bittersweet expression on his face.

And the lights brightened, and the air scintillated, and the sensation of being watched bore down with crushing force.

Chapter 36: i'd burn this city down to show you the light

“Leaving so soon?” Roxas heard himself say. The words were foreign in his mouth. The black glass screen hidden behind the living room wall darkened the corner of his vision.

Axel bowed his head, clicked his fingers, turned to almost face Roxas. Not all the way facing Roxas. That would’ve put his back to the glass wall.

“Dang, you caught me,” Axel said. “Y’know, I hate goodbyes. I was hoping I could sneak out real early so nobody would see me.”

ROXAS: At nine in the morning?

AXEL: Yeah, like I said. Early.

WEIRD PAUSE:

ROXAS: Well, sorry to mess up your genius plan, but you forgot something. You can’t leave without it.

Axel raised an eyebrow and put a hand on his hip. The expression would have been jaunty, endearing, if not for the fact that his eyes were dull and unfocused.

“I never forget anything,” he said. “What do you think I forgot?”

Roxas moved center-stage and held out a fat envelope that he definitely, absolutely hadn’t been holding when he’d left his room.

“This,” he said.

Axel looked at the envelope, then at Roxas. “What’s that? A love letter?”

Roxas used the ensuing Weird Pause to try and catch Axel’s attention. He couldn’t do it. Even looking right into Axel’s eyes, there wasn’t a flicker of recognition, no hint that anything was going on beneath the surface.

ROXAS: It’s the prize money from the Battle of the Bands.

AXEL: (Bemused) Uh, check your accounting, Rox. I already got my share of that.

ROXAS: I know. Xion and Saïx and me pooled ours and… we wanted you to have it. Y’know. To get you started in L.A.

When? Roxas wondered. We definitely never talked about that. And where did this envelope even come from?

Axel’s face softened. His eyes stayed completely dead.

“Aw jeez, you guys,” he said. He crossed to Roxas, took the envelope and tucked it into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. “I’ll put it to good use. I promise.”

Like what, buying a girlfriend? the script said.

Roxas fought back with vehement revulsion. His whole body tightened, throat worked, fists clenched. It wasn’t easy, but he knew the trick of it, now. He simply stalled until the universe was forced to give him another option, and he didn’t have to stall for very long.

The words: You’re gonna buy some talent? popped into his head.

Absolutely not. Roxas clenched even harder. His face reddened with the effort of holding the words back, but he kept them down.

Try again, he thought.

Almost a whole second had passed since Axel’s last line. The universe was getting desperate. It threw its words at Roxas’s mouth with incredible strength.

“You’d better,” Roxas blurted.

There was a slight, lukewarm pause. Axel half-turned toward the door and did an exaggerated, awkward shrug.

“Anyway,” he said. “Guess it’s about time for me to hit the road.”

See you around leapt into Roxas’s mouth. He clenched his teeth and swallowed it. He wasn’t saying that. As soon as he said that, Axel would leave, and he’d never get a chance to say anything else.

More words came up like vomit, good luck out there. Roxas swallowed them, too.

Wait up for me, he didn’t say. He tasted blood. His jaw and teeth ached. His tongue cramped.

The script threw out a hail-Mary: I’ll miss you, man. He could say that. It would be enough to say that, wouldn’t it? I’ll miss you, man.

He had to say it. Time was running out and he had to say it. That was how it was supposed to go.

But Roxas didn’t say it. Roxas breathed nails and swallowed sandpaper and pulled out all his teeth at once and said:

“Don’t go.”

The silence that followed was deafening and breathless and utterly unlike a Weird Pause. Axel froze. He turned. His eyes were no longer dead, but the spark of hope Roxas had expected to see wasn’t there, either.

He looked terrified.

His mouth and throat tried to move. No sound came out, until a scoff of a laugh broke through.

“Roxas—” Axel chuckled. He scratched the back of his head, let his arm flop back to his side. “I’m gonna miss you, too.”

“Don’t go,” Roxas said again.

A million invisible eyes shot lasers at him through the black glass. Roxas held firm, fists clenched, shaking.

“Pass,” Axel said, patronizing and indulgent. “I got a music career to start, Rox! I gotta get famous, get rich, and get a girlfriend.”

Panic and fury and desperation bottle-necked the script’s words and, completely of his own volition, Roxas shouted out:

“I can be your girlfriend!”

The Weird Pause came down heavy and thick. The smile on Axel’s face turned wooden.

Something inside Roxas snapped for good. Heat flooded through his body. Steam filled his head. The sheet of black glass loomed in the corner of his vision, anonymous and cruel and silently, eternally laughing.

“It’s not funny,” Roxas said.

The Pause stretched out. Axel turned, waving over his shoulder. He started walking out. The air was like gelatin, like cold syrup, and Axel was walking away and They were laughing and laughing and laughing—

Roxas sucked down a breath so deep it threatened to pop his lungs.

ROXAS: IT’S—

He grabbed the bar stool next to him.

ROXAS: —NOT—

He spun to face the wall of black glass.

ROXAS: —FUNNY!

The bar stool hurtled from his hands like a meteor, like a bullet leaving a gun. Time slowed to an amber crawl—Axel half turning back, Roxas overextended in a paroxysm of rage, the stool pinwheeling through the air, the whole room ringing and buzzing and vibrating until it blurred—

The bar stool struck.

The wall shattered.

Air turned to water. Behind the wall was a vast expanse of blackness, weightless and devouring, chased with lights that sped along invisible wires almost too fast to follow even in the underwater bullet-time of Roxas’s adrenaline shock.

And the sound—!

The pieces of the shattered wall heaved backward, a glass explosion into the room where Roxas and Axel stood, and there were things in them, color and light, images spinning and tilting—no, reflecting off the shards: an upraised knife, a boy and a fox, a charcoal creature with an arrow in its shoulder, a couple at the foot of a four-poster bed, a woman plunging toward a blue-green river, a slender hand with two cloth rings—

Axel grabbed Roxas’s hand. Roxas tore his eyes off the slow-motion explosion.

“Roxas,” Axel shouted, “RUN!”

The words echoed between the tumbling glass shards, filling the room, ballooning into the incredible roaring darkness beyond, a command, a threat, a warning, a plea, a prayer, over and over and onward and outward. Roxas stared, finally seeing, finally understanding.

Axel dragged him out of the house.

---

—want to teach me to dance, or—

—will be furious. Gods, where to even—

—cross-dressing peasant whore?! You’re—

—makes you think you’ve earned—

—don’t make friends with pirates!

Axel and Roxas ran out into the driveway enveloped in the deafening roar of a hundred million voices all shouting at once. The wall was still exploding behind them, massive plate-glass shards of wood and furniture drifting outward in a growing bubble of slow-motion demolition. Bright white light blazed from the breach. More beacons were scattered under the open sky, more explosions all over town, all of them levitating massive shards of glass into the sky, as though Roxas had thrown a bomb into the secret space where the Audience hid, the world-behind-the-world—

—great calamity approaches. The thread unravels. Woe and misery—

—bent the world to your wicked whims—

—only fair things—

—wasn’t supposed to happen—

And the voices kept pouring in, howling like a tornado.

Axel dragged Roxas to his motorcycle, kicked the kickstand up and threw a leg over, fumbled the ignition and revved the engine and barely heard it over the fucking sound.

“Get on!” he yelled at Roxas.

“I broke it,” Roxas said numbly. There was no way Axel should have been able to hear him over the noise, but he could, loud and clear.

“No kidding, now come on!” said Axel.

“All of it,” Roxas mumbled. His eyes, unfocused, drifted back to the exploding house—and was it expanding faster? “All of us.”

“Roxas, get on the fucking bike!” Axel snarled.

Roxas blinked back to himself. Dazed and unsteady, he climbed on the back of the bike and wrapped his arms around Axel’s waist. Axel peeled out onto the road and took off as fast as he could, speed limits be damned. The streets were absolutely deserted. The rush of wind past his unhelmeted head couldn’t drown out the voices.

—shouldn’t have run off—

—silly old man—

—nowhere else I could—

“We’ll head to the Big Creek Dam!” Axel called back to Roxas. “It’s the quickest way out of town! Once we get on the interstate, we can outrun it for sure!”

Roxas said something. It sounded like, No interstate.

“Shut up and hang on!” said Axel.

He took the turn off Roxas’s street so fast he scraped his knee on the asphalt. Roxas clung on tighter, hands clutching Axel’s shirt, chest pressed hard to Axel’s back, face buried in Axel’s shoulder. Axel squeezed the throttle and bent low over the bike. They were making it out of here. They were both making it out of here, they were going to L.A., and when they got there Axel was getting them a hotel room and fucking her in earnest—

—wild and lithe as an animal—

—drooling from both—

—because I love—

They shot out of Roxas’s neighborhood doing fifty and swerved onto the main road through town. There were no cars, no pedestrians. In the distance, the school was gone, consumed by a white-light glass-shard fireball already a hundred feet high. It would have enveloped the road, too.

“Change of plans; we’re taking the bypass!” Axel said.

Roxas might have murmured into Axel’s shoulder: It doesn’t matter.

“It fucking matters to me!”

—matters to me—

Axel gunned it up the road, ran four red lights and screeched onto the Macante Bypass—also barren, deserted, like everyone else in the world had just evaporated and left Axel and Roxas behind. As they rounded the south side another beacon came into view, inflating over the town like a hot air balloon on fire.

“What the hell is that one?” Axel demanded of no one.

“Botanical gardens,” Roxas said, with the casually dazed tone of someone who had a serious concussion. “Prom. Remember?”

“Rather not,” said Axel. “You back with me? You wanna tell me what the hell you did back there?”

“I broke it,” Roxas said again.

“Yeah, you said! What it, Roxas?”

“Everything.”

—they used to be is—

—in the city was turned—

—but the intense, sourceless ache—

—else faded to a dull roar—

—collapsed around them—

“Shut up,” Axel hissed at the voices, now so loud that they were blurring his vision. “Everybody shut up, this isn’t about you.”

“Axel,” Roxas said.

“You especially!”

The Big Creek Dam exit loomed against a sky that was more white than blue. Axel swerved across all four lanes of the bypass and up the exit ramp. The sharp turn at the end forced him to slow down or else smear them both across the intersection. The second they were straightened out he opened the throttle again, tires shrieking as they tore away from town, as the colors washed out of the roads and houses.

“Axel, stop,” Roxas said.

“Thought I told you to shut up!” Axel called back to him.

—stones of the castle hummed in resonance—

“We can’t get out of town,” said Roxas.

“Not with that attitude!”

Houses turned to trees and trees turned to woods as they roared up the road to the Big Creek Dam. Axel’s heart pounded in his chest and his hands. His back was soaked with sweat (and other things), the night was—

—sting of saltwater in his wounds—

—such feelings of dread in him that he woke—

They rounded the corner to the Big Creek Dam.

Axel hit the brakes so hard his bike turned sideways and skidded fifty feet.

---

The bike screeched to a stop in a cloud of burned rubber, overbalanced and sent Roxas and Axel staggering off. Axel tried to catch the bike before the handlebars hit the asphalt and didn’t manage it, hopping sideways and cursing. Roxas wandered a few steps away, staring at the thing that had finally put the brakes on Axel.

The dam ended halfway across.

Where there should have been a concrete bridge, a lake, a river, an opposite shore of woods and road, signs pointing to the interstate—there was just empty whiteness. Not like fog, not really. Like somebody had given up halfway through painting a picture, only they’d painted from the outside of the canvas inward.

“What the fuck,” Axel said. He was out of breath. His voice was shaking. “What the fuck.”

“I told you,” Roxas said. His voice was distant in his own ears.

“Okay, we’ll—we’ll take Jefferson Road,” Axel said. “That’ll still put us going west, we won’t have to go all the way through—”

He cut off, ducking his head and choking on his breath. One hand reached to cover his ear and didn’t make it there, curled into a claw and hovering in the air.

“Shut up,” he whispered. “Shut—up—”

“I think it won’t hurt as much if you stop fighting it,” said Roxas.

Axel glared at him through bloodshot eyes. Alive eyes. He heaved the motorcycle upright and threw a leg over it.

“Get back on the bike,” he snapped.

“There’s no point,” said Roxas.

“Don’t give me that bullshit! We’ll find another way out, now get—”

Another spasm of pain wracked him, bent him low over the handlebars. It looked, Roxas considered, like he was having a really bad case of brain-freeze.

While someone was blasting an air horn right next to his head.

Roxas stepped closer, put a hand on Axel’s back. If Axel felt it, he didn’t react. Soon enough, the episode passed. Axel came up gasping and unfocused, hands shaking. He was in absolutely no condition to drive. It was a miracle they’d made it this far.

Above them, the sky was completely white. Although the sun had disappeared, the light was getting brighter, slowly and steadily.

“Axel,” Roxas said. “Stop fighting.”

“Shut up and get back on the fucking bike!”

He made a grab for Roxas. Roxas stepped out of range. Axel tripped over the bike and fell to his knees, wheezing and clutching his head. Carefully, Roxas knelt down next to him.

“It’s a lot, I know,” he said softly. “It’s easier if you just let it happen.”

“We—are leaving—this fucking—town,” Axel gasped. “Both of us. I don’t care—I don’t care—”

“We can’t,” Roxas said.

“Shut up! Shut up, I’m not—going back! I just fucking—decided to be—we’re leaving, you and me, together, we’re going to L.A. and—”

“There is no L.A.,” Roxas said.

---

“What are you fucking talking about?” Axel snarled. “Fucking Los Angeles! Of course there’s a Los Angeles, it’s—”

—not the same thing—

—silly, isn’t it—

—a bit… much out there—

—all right, sweet prince, it’s all right—

“There’s nothing outside of this town,” Roxas said. Totally unbothered. Or maybe just deathly calm. “There never was.”

“That’s bullshit. I’ve been outside of town, I’ve been—”

—lied to—

—a king this whole time—

—hearing voices. Mostly yours and—

“No,” Roxas said, “that’s just how you were written.”

“I wasn’t written, I’m real! I know what I said but I’m real!”

“None of this is real.”

Axel grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground, no matter how—

—dragged herself onto dry land—

—both of them in the shadows—

—cried out in pain—

It was only his grip on Roxas’s shirt that kept him upright. He couldn’t tell if he was going blind or if the light had just gotten that bright, blurring and bleaching everything around them. It hurt. Everything hurt and he was starting to understand and he didn’t want to understand, his soul shrank from understanding—

—tore the scales from Axel’s eyes—

—how Juliet could plunge that happy dagger—

—how Orpheus could have screwed up so badly—

—had all happened before—

“I’m real,” Axel spat through gritted teeth. “I’m real. All of you—shut up—this isn’t—about—you!”

“They are you,” said Roxas. “They’re you, and they’re me, and sometimes they’re even us. I broke it, Axel. I broke it here and that broke it everywhere. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Not—with that—fucking—attitude!”

---

The light kept getting brighter, and with it, the roar they’d left in the dust got louder again. Axel’s ears were bleeding. He leaned against Roxas, hands fisted in his shirt, gasping and writhing, his face screwed up with pain.

The sight squeezed Roxas’s chest like a vise. Of all the things in the world he couldn’t change, this was the one that hurt the worst.

“Just stop, Axel,” Roxas begged. “Please.”

Axel shook his head. His Chuck Taylors scraped the ground as he tried (and failed) to get his feet underneath him. Still trying to fix the unfixable.

---

The world was spinning. His head was full of sound and pain, pain and sound, pressurizing as the raw noise hammered at her ears—

—lost in the cacophony—

—and heat and noise beyond—

—pain and a great deal of blood—

He could barely feel Roxas next to him, the ground underneath him, the body around the searing all-consuming NOISE shaking the foundations of the world—

—caved into itself—

—a calamitous swoon—

—like sand cliffs into the sea—

---

Typical Axel, Roxas thought; and, on reflection, recognized that this was true. Even in glimpses and shards, fighting losing battles to the bitter end was Axel all the way down.

With one or two notable exceptions.

“I’m going to do something that will hurt you,” Roxas told him. “I’m sorry.”

---

Axel

—hissed a breath—

clapped his hands

—on the hilt—

over

—to catch the dripping—

his ears

—were filled with ringing—

but it didn’t

—matter anymore—

stop.

---

Gently, Roxas pulled Axel’s hands away from his ears. Axel screamed, thrashed. Cut off suddenly.

His eyes rolled back. He finally, finally breathed.

---

Axel regained consciousness. The voices weren’t so deafeningly loud anymore. He looked up and saw Roxas.

Still beside him.

---

Unseen and unheard, something broke loose from the two of them and started drifting away.

---

“Told you it’d be easier if you stopped fighting,” Roxas said.

“I’m not done fighting,” said Axel.

Roxas sighed. “Of course you’re not.”

“We don’t know there’s no way out,” Axel insisted. “Just that none of us have found one yet. We don’t know how many got broken, or if there’s something we could do to save—”

“It’s too late, Axel,” Roxas said gently. “It’s going to be okay.”

“How can you say both those things back to back with a straight face? What if—what if we never find each other again? Fuck, what if this is it, and there’s nothing after this? What if—”

Roxas took Axel’s face in his hands. He smiled—breathless, almost laughing.

“Axel,” he said, “just… be with me.”

---

And the camera panned back, and back, and back, fading to a paper white. And for a moment, however brief, Axel and Roxas were entirely unseen; and for whatever time they had left, they were together; and for once, for whatever it’s worth, they were ready for—

 

 

THE END

 

 

 

 

 

And whatever would come after.