Night Shine

by Tessa Gratton

  On and on they flew, into colder, wetter air, into lacerating clouds.

  Tears turned to ice on her lashes, then ripped away, rimming her eyes with red.

  The dragon slowed and Shine clenched around it, panicked that it was too soon; they couldn’t be there yet.

  She pushed up and looked: ahead was the dark outline of the Fifth Mountain miles and miles away, below the rain-forest canopy so vivid green it was black in the late sunlight, shimmering in wind, an ocean of emerald, jade, obsidian leaves. The Selegan slipped like a vein of opal through it all.

  “I smell them,” the dragon called to her, its voice rumbling through its scales.

  They sank lower, pushing north on a gust of wind.

  The rain forest broke open to expose the lava field and the vast meadow. Covered in soldiers.

  Clusters of men and women lined up in lacquered red and brown armor, painted with gleaming teeth, their helmets crested with feathers and horns. Warhorses and wardogs stomped, snorted, and howled, lifting their long faces and baring teeth at the dragon as it drifted high overhead. Shine stared down at hundreds of soldiers. Too many—so many! They were putting together catapults and archer platforms near the front, where the mountain started. Forward scouts already climbed, hunting for doorways or passes.

  Shine’s gaze was drawn to one sorcerer just before he thrust a staff into the ground and released a wailing ball of fire directly at them.

  She thumped the dragon’s neck and it curved away and higher, pumping its wings to take her to the peaks, to the mirror lake.

  “I hear her calling me,” the dragon said, tilting sharply so Shine yelped and fisted her hands in its feathers.

  It wiggled like a snake, up and down, keeping close to the peaks, then it dove down toward a jut of mountain. The balcony outside the sorceress’s rooms.

  Shine tumbled off as the dragon transformed beneath her, so they both landed on their human feet.

  “Sorceress!” Shine cried.

  The cave mouth leading inside shifted wider and Shine saw lights glowing inside, a diagram cut into the stone floor and the sorceress crouched, cutting with her wand. Flares of black feathers arced off her back almost like wings, and her hair was a black-brown-red mass of hair and feathers and tangling claws. Her legs were bent wrong, too many joints and talons dug from her toes into the ground. She had so many teeth, and when her head snapped toward them, the bone-white eye burned like a star.

  She was perfect.

  Shine stopped at the edge of the diagram. “Sorceress, what can we do?”

  “I am holding it,” she answered roughly, tongue and lips working hard around the sharp teeth, blurring the words. “Not enough power.”

  “Is my heart enough?” Shine asked. She knelt and stared intently at the sorceress. She wanted to dig her hands into the other woman.

  The sorceress paused. A ridge of feathers along her cheeks flared. “Together. Maybe.”

  “I am the Fifth Mountain. I can wake it up. We can.”

  “Maybe,” the sorceress said again.

  “Will you marry me?” Night Shine asked. “Will that…? Will you?”

  The sorceress darted in one powerful leap across the diagram and landed before Shine, knocking her over even as she threw her arms around her. “Let me in,” she whispered.

  Shine kissed her.

  Teeth sliced her lips and she tasted blood. Salty, hot, sweet blood, and behind it a burst of power. Shine wrapped her arms around the sorceress’s head and her legs around her waist. “Take me to the heart of the mountain,” she said against the sorceress’s mouth.

  They fell into the stone, sliding through cold rock, liquid rock, glittering granite, and embracing fingers of crystal.

  Shine held tight, and when they hit the floor of the massive cavern chamber with all its stairs and the broken crystal, she couldn’t breathe for the sudden whoosh of pain.

  The sorceress rolled off her, and Shine sat up.

  Around them, the mountain was layers of rock and ash and eager, pulsing crystal. Shine rolled onto her stomach and spread her arms against the stone floor as if she could hug the whole mountain.

  She whispered, “I’m home.”

  “Roll over,” the sorceress said, kneeling beside her.

  Shine did, onto her back. She looked up at the sorceress’s mismatched eyes, one alive with emeralds, leaf green, the other a moon, a star, night shine. Her bloody lips, her shark’s teeth, her wide copper cheeks flourishing with feathers. “You’re beautiful,” Shine said.

  “Do you trust me?” the sorceress asked, sliding one leg across Shine’s hip to kneel over her.

  Shine licked her lips and said, “Night Shine Over the Mountain.”

  Her full, true name. New and gleaming. Unused. A secret shared.

  The sorceress gasped and it turned into a laugh. A bright laugh, a dangerous smile. Perfect. She put the tip of her wand to Shine’s chest. It was cold and sharp. “Night Shine Over the Mountain, your heart is ours, and mine ours. What is my name?”

  Shine said, immediately, “Shadows Between Hearts.”

  “Shadows,” the sorceress whispered, tasting it for the first time. It was new; it had always been there. Waiting.

  “Shine,” Shine whispered back.

  Then the sorceress stabbed her crystal wand into Shine, who screamed. It pierced her chest and heart, driving down through bone, flesh, skin, tunic, and into the stone below.

  Night Shine flared to life, her blood thick, viscous magma rolling inside her, just as it rolled in the chamber-heart of the Fifth Mountain.

  The chamber was old and buried deep, had been left alone, sleeping, for almost two hundred years. Since it had killed her, consumed her, turned her into the demon of the Fifth Mountain.

  Made her fire.

  Shine curled her fingers and tugged, screaming as she dug her hands into the molten rock, as she drew the magma up and up the throat of the mountain, screaming as she blew steam out of overgrown vents, screaming, screaming, screaming as the Fifth Mountain rumbled from tip through foundation and out, out, out into the jagged foothills.

  The mountain bucked, and blood pooled beneath Shine. The Selegan River rushed away, churning with heat, and splashed up at its shores, a sparkling wet warning to the army. Get out. GET OUT.

  Smoke shot up, steam and ash, as the mountain burped its poison, darkening the sky.

  Shine felt every creased valley and peak, every streak of crystal and finger of magma reaching up, up, up to find a mouth. She felt the mirror lake boil and pebbles tripping down the slope into the alder grove. She felt the panic of the army far below, their pounding steps, the wheels and hooves as they fled.

  She screamed at the sorcerers, showing them what kind of stars were inside her guts now.

  As she dragged the mountain to fiery passion, she felt the cool shadow of her wife using the anchored power to push harder at the invading sorcerers. A barrier of light and ice-knives thrust up and out, laughing as it chased them.

  Together the mountain and her wife were fire and shadows, just like the stars and the black night sky.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  yOUR HOUSE IS THE mountain now

  its bones are your bones. your heart is its heart. all that power and life part of you

  draw on it

  the heat of the earth the fire heart the molten blood

  draw on it

  make your little soft body hard again, healed and whole again.

  the mountain’s house is your body, too

  and both of you

  mine

  FORTY-EIGHT

  THE SORCERESS WAS WHISPERING to her.

  Shine swallowed a weird, tangy flavor and cracked open her eyes to radiant sunset streaks of red-orange cutting between thick black clouds still puffing up, up, up from the volcano.

  She sprawled surrounded by grass and sparkling pebbles in the bowl of the mountain, easily sensing her exact place. The mirror lake was just past her feet, and bright dawn sprites p
eeked up nervously from the shore. The Selegan River spirit coiled far at the foot of the mountain, silver-happy and relieved. The mountain groaned and burped smoke, but the anger she’d awakened rested again. Like a snoring giant, they’d reminded the army of their potential.

  The sorceress stretched beside her, one arm around her waist, the other pillowing her head as she whispered into Shine’s ear. Her words danced along Shine’s jaw, tickled her cheek and lips, and she smiled a little bit.

  the mountain’s house is your body, too

  She was whole. Strong. Crystal bones and slow-flowing magma in her arteries. Muscles of long, sinewy quartz, skin of hot ash and fertile earth growing tiny grasslike hairs. The mountain was pink flesh, sand-pale skin, freckled, and laughing.

  No, wait, Shine was flesh and bone and skin, smiles and teeth and feathers. The mountain was stone and crystal freckles. No—

  It didn’t matter. Both were both. She felt so good.

  And extremely exhausted.

  “Shine,” said the sorceress, and Shine tilted her head to meet the sorceress’s eyes. Evergreen and bone white, perfectly bisected by red-slit dragon pupils. “Shine,” she said again. She skimmed her hand up Shine’s stomach and breast and neck, to cup her jaw. She scraped her sharp lacquered nails at the soft skin. “I love you.”

  “Shadows, I’m too young to be married,” Shine whispered.

  The sorceress bared her teeth and rolled away, up to her feet with easy grace, and wandered toward the copse of aspen trees. But she glanced over her shoulder and smiled.

  Shine laughed happily and got up to chase her.

  SHINE AND SHADOWS

  AT THE FOOT OF the Fifth Mountain, where the spring that birthed the great Selegan grew wide enough to be called a river, a demon-kissed young man knelt to dip his hands into the clear blue water.

  He was a warrior and had traveled over a month to reach this place, from the distant capital city in the south, up through the King-Tree forest and rising rain forest, alone and serious-minded, but for the occasional little forest spirits who trailed along in his footsteps. When he arrived at this rolling, emerald lava field, he’d stopped and remembered his old friend and the wondrous smile that had filled her face with such joy and awe the first time she’d set foot here.

  A breeze ruffled pink and purple balsam on the opposite side of the river; here the bank was black sand, and the warrior sighed softly. He’d almost died here once.

  “Hello, Selegan River,” he said, widening his fingers to allow the water to play around his fingers. “Do you remember me? Last year I arrived with desperation and vengeance, but this summer I come with respect in my heart.”

  The surface of the river flickered silver-white under the sun, and a tiny flip like a fish’s tail splashed water up at the warrior.

  He smiled and wiped at the water.

  Then the Selegan River spirit leapt up, snapping out its wings. It grinned as water streamed through its curved teeth and lashed its tails in greeting. The demon-kissed warrior held out his hand again, and the dragon licked it, wiggling happily, and fell again into the water with a massive splash.

  The young man laughed, though he was soaked and dripping.

  Behind him, he heard a low rumbling, like distant rockfall. He stood, turning, in time to see a hill of grass-covered lava tremble, heave, and then open like a mossy stone mouth.

  A young woman climbed out, and behind her, the earth knit itself back together.

  She stared at him blankly for a moment, seeming like nothing more than a goblin or a strange meadow spirit in scraps of a tattered gray silk dress that might’ve been woven of spiderwebs or clouds. Her hair was longer, but still chopped in uneven layers, the ends lifting out as if they’d been charged by lightning. Her skin was suntanned and her cheeks too pink, with freckles and a small pink mouth. Her eyes were round and dark now as obsidian caverns.

  She wasn’t wearing any shoes.

  The demon-kissed warrior smiled. “Shine.”

  In answer, she smiled back: wide and wild. “Hello, Sky!”

  Shine danced eagerly toward him, her bare toes pressing down the thick grass that popped upright immediately.

  He held out a hand for her, but she ignored it, jumping up into his arms.

  Sky staggered. She was as heavy as if her bones were made of quartz. He grunted and reframed his stance to stay upright, holding her tightly because now he knew she wouldn’t break.

  “It is good to see you,” she said in his ear.

  But Sky stared past her: bright, white summer air darkened into shades of gray and black as if a raven blotted out the sun. The shadows coalesced slowly, elegantly, drawing out of light itself, until a beautiful lady stood with them in a complicated black-and-pink gown, edged in mint green and embroidered with scarlet peonies. She smiled too, showing sharp teeth; one of her eyes was summer green, as green as this fertile lava field, while the other was as white as ivory.

  Shine let go of him, hopping down, and she said, “How are you?”

  Sky nodded to the sorceress and said to Shine softly, “He asked me.”

  The young woman gasped and held her breath. Sky could see tiny shards of light in her big black eyes; they turned slowly, like stars. “First?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “That I will answer when I return to him.”

  Shine looked over her shoulder at the sorceress, who lifted one of her elegant eyebrows and drifted gracefully toward the Selegan River. Then Shine touched Sky’s chest. “What can I do for you? Invite you here instead? You are welcome here, with Shadows and I, if you would rather. Here you can be anything.”

  “If I say yes to him, I can’t return here. I could never visit you.” Sky took her hand off his chest and held it. “And since his investiture ritual, he has been confined to the palace forever.”

  “That is the destiny he wanted,” she said sharply. But her eyelashes fluttered, and again she glanced at the sorceress. “I have not forgiven him.”

  The warm breeze blew, bending the flowers and bright-green grass. It smelled sweet, and a little bit charred, like a fire burned just past the next rise. At the river, the sorceress knelt, her skirts spreading in perfect arcs against the gleaming black sand.

  Shine licked her lips. She put her hand over her own heart.

  Sky said, “Would you make a bargain with me, Night Shine of the Fifth Mountain?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe.”

  “Try to forgive him. For me, and yourself. And the whole empire.”

  “What would you trade for my efforts?”

  “What do you want?”

  Suddenly, the sorceress was behind him. He stood trapped between Shadows and Shine, growing cold as ice even under the afternoon sun, and the sorceress said softly, “We like hearts.”

  But Shine laughed, as if it had been a brilliant joke. She laughed and shook her head, gleefully saying, “Sky, we are so full of our own hearts; she is teasing you.”

  The warrior shivered, stepping out from between them.

  Shine said abruptly, “Say yes to him. Become his First Consort. That’s what I want.”

  “Good,” he said, relieved. “And you’ll try, and because everything you try you eventually manage to do, someday you will forgive him and come to us.”

  Sneering a little at the complimentary trap, Shine crossed her arms. Little sparks of shadows puffed away from her body, as if she shook off magic when she shook off her mood. They curled like wisps of fog. She nodded. “It might take until you have children and they’re grown tall as him.”

  Sky said, “All right,” because he thought, as he looked at her, that it was already done. She’d done it the moment he asked. Sky couldn’t help the slow smile that spread over his mouth.

  She saw it and narrowed her eyes. “You’ll stay for a few days on my mountain and tell me everything.”

  “Then the Selegan will take you home,” said the sorceress. “As
fast or as slowly as you like.”

  Sky nodded, looking forward to the mirror lake and the strange mountain, to being entertained by Night Shine and the Sorceress of Shadows. He wanted to hear what they’d become together, what they’d discovered. He wanted to fall asleep with her head on his shoulder.

  But Shine stepped close to him. She lifted her chin to stare up at his eyes. “And when you return to Kirin Dark-Smile, you will give him this message from me.”

  “Yes,” Sky said, waiting.

  Shine put her hands on his face and leaned up on her bare toes; she kissed him.

  Surprised, Sky caught her at the waist and kissed her back, gently.

  “You will say,” she whispered, barely pulling away, “that it is a kiss from the great demon of the Fifth Mountain and a promise to the entire empire. Kiss him, from me, in front of whomever you like, or nobody at all. Your choice. That is my message.”

  He put his forehead against hers, smiling at the choice, and then he kissed her again, soft and warm, because it would be better to give Kirin two kisses than one.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Though I’ve been thinking about Shine and her story since 2012, I didn’t decide it was The Time to write it until late September 2018. At a mere two years, from proposal to first draft to copyedits to hardcover, Night Shine’s journey has been the shortest and smoothest (so far) of any of my books. Maybe because I drafted it partly in a desperate fugue state, but probably because of the amazing team supporting me and the book, both in my personal life and professional life.

  I’d like to thank everyone at McElderry Books for the gorgeous design, detailed copy work, proofing, and art and all the marketing that put this book into readers’ hands. Especially thanks to the editors, Karen Wojtyla, Nicole Fiorica, and Ruta Rimas. You all not only let me write the weird things I want, but encourage me, then press me to make it better.

  Thank you, Laura Rennert, my agent. It’s officially been over a decade since we began working together, with countless short stories, nine published novels—and more to come. Here’s to a couple more decades together.