by Jay Kristoff
… well, centuries, Mia supposed.
She was beautiful. Her lips and eyelids black as ink. Utterly motionless, save for the hems of her gown, which curled and swayed as if alive. And her shadow, Goddess, it was so dark, Mia’s eyes hurt to look at it. Watering as if she’d stared into the suns too long. It pooled at the woman’s feet, bled out across the bone like liquid. Dripping away over the ledge she stood on and vanishing entirely before it landed.
Slow as centuries, Cleo lifted her hands, digging her fingertips into her skin. Mia saw her forearms were scratched and scabbed, her nails now laying in another score of welts. The woman’s green eyes were upturned to the ceiling’s vast and cracking dome, head tilted as if she were listening—save there was nothing to hear but the hush and sigh of the endless winds.
Cleo held out her hand, fingers splayed, and Mia felt something shifting in her breast. That pull again. Like gravity to earth. Like powder to naked flame. Her skin pricked with goosebumps, and the shadowed nooks and hollows about the room stirred and shivered, as if they, too, felt the woman’s call.
Mia caught movement from the corner of her eye, saw a tiny black shape spring from the darkness and take to the wing. It was a passenger, she realized—a daemon, wearing the shape of a tiny sparrow. It alighted on the tips of Cleo’s fingers and the woman laughed with joy, turning her hand this way and that as if to admire the daemon’s dark beauty.
The sparrow trilled a tune like Mia had never heard. The notes were clear as crystal bells, ringing down the length of her spine. It was the opposite of music. An unsong, echoing there in the vast recesses of that dead god’s skull. And, still smiling, Cleo stuffed the sparrow into her mouth.
Mia felt screaming across the back of her skull. That hunger swelling inside her, dark and terrifying and filling the space utterly. Cleo threw her head back, chewing as the shadows around the room shook, their fear seeping through the fragments in Mia’s chest and bleeding out, cold and oily, into her belly.
This is how she’s sustained herself all these centuries, Mia realized.
Gathering the pieces of Anais to herself and …
… and eating them.
Cleo lowered her chin. Oil-black locks tumbled about her face. Swallowing thickly, she looked to the alcove where Mia hid. And the woman smiled as a voice—cold and clear as a truedark sky—rang in Mia’s head.
You may come out now, dearheart, sweetheart, blackheart.
Mia felt the fear spread: an icy tide, trickling out through her fingertips and down into her legs, making them shake. But she steeled herself, made her heart iron. She placed her hands on the hilts of the gravebone longblade at her back, Mouser’s blacksteel at her waist. And drawing a deep breath, she stepped out onto the floor below Cleo.
The woman looked at Mia, her hair rippling with the hems of her gown. She smiled, a thin trickle of something black and sticky spilling down her chin.
“My name is Mia,” the girl said. “Mia Corvere.”
Cleo tilted her head.
We know.
The woman spread her arms, and the shadows in the room came alive. Bursting from the cracks and crevices, spilling from the bottomless dark at the woman’s feet. Tens, dozens, hundreds of shapes, each one wrought of living, breathing darkness. Serpents and wolves and rats and foxes and bats and owls—a legion of daemons, cutting through the air or slinking across the bone or darting from shadow to shadow. A shadowviper slithered between Mia’s feet, a hawk made of rippling black alighted on the ledge above her head, a mouse sat directly before her and blinked with its not-eyes. The whispers swelled, a cacophony inside her mind, speaking with one dreadful voice.
You have walked so far. Suffered so much. But you need suffer no more.
Mia narrowed her eyes, staring up at the beauty, the horror, the woman.
“How do you know what I have and haven’t suffered?”
We know all about you.
Cleo smiled. Held out her hand. And from the darkness about her, a shape coalesced on her upturned palm. It was a shape Mia knew almost as well as her own. A shape who’d found her the turn her world was taken away, who walked beside her through all the miles and all the murder and all the moments until …
Until the moment I sent him away.
“Mister Kindly,” she breathed, tears welling in her eyes.
“… hello, mia…”
“… What are you doing here?”
“… you told me to find someone else to ride…”
The not-cat narrowed its not-eyes, tail whipping in anger.
“… so i did…”
Walking along the pale length of Cleo’s arm, Mister Kindly pushed himself into the dark locks of the woman’s hair, draping himself about her throat and shoulders, just as he’d done to Mia countless times before. Cleo shivered and ran her hand over the shadowcat’s fur, and he arched his back and tried to purr.
A black jealousy stirred in Mia’s breast as Cleo’s voice rang inside her head.
We know why you are here.
Little pawn.
Broken thing.
“You don’t know anything about me,” Mia said.
O, but we do. We see the bruises of their fingertips upon your throat, even now. “The many were one,” yes? “Never flinch, never fear,” yes? How poorly used you were, dearheart, sweetheart, blackheart, by the ones you named Mother.
Mia looked to the not-cat, her heart crawling up into her throat.
“You told her?”
“… i knew you’d make it here eventually…”
Mister Kindly’s tail curled about Cleo’s neck, not-eyes turned to the dome above.
“… best to be prepared for your arrival…”
Cleo stared at Mia with eyes as deep as centuries.
We knew you were coming. We heard you calling in the desert. The wastelings who answered your summons.
“Kraken,” Mia nodded. “Retchwyrms. How can they hear us calling?”
They are all that remains of the city that once stood here. Worms and insects, twisted by the magiks that bled from this corpse that was empire.
“And why do they hate it when we werk the dark?”
They remember in their souls. They know in their blood. His fall was their ruin. And we are all that is left of him.
“Anais,” Mia whispered.
Cleo’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the Moon’s name.
You come to claim that which is ours.
“Unless you want to give it to me.”
Cleo sighed and shook her head.
Little one. Nothingling. Serf and sycophant to a power too weak to save herself. Bidding us die that her son might live. Condemning us to the grave so she might know reprieve. Asking all and giving nothing and never once questioning the right of it.
The darkness about them shivered as the woman raised her hands, palms up.
Goddess she names herself. And slaves she names us. Thinking us tiny players on a stage built of weak and hollow grandeur.
Cleo looked at Mia, black lips curling in disdain.
She offers nothing, save what she will take back. And still, you kneel before her.
“I kneel for no one,” Mia spat.
Cleo’s laughter echoed off the gravebone walls, rolling among the gathering of daemons like ripples through black water.
“I mean it,” Mia said. “I give no fucks for gods or goddesses. I don’t care about winning a war or restoring the balance between Light and Night or Niah or Aa or any of it. I never have. I’m here for my brother.”
Cleo licked at her lips, fingertips digging into her skin. The whispers about her seemed to hush, the dark sinking deeper as she dragged broken nails down her arms again. She shivered at the pain, eyes wide and shining.
We had familia once. A boy. A beauty. All we had, we gave to him. And he left us, dearheart, sweetheart, blackheart. Left us all alone. Seek not your worth in the eyes of others. For what is given may be taken away. And what then shall remain?
�
��I’m not here to answer your riddles,” Mia growled. “I’m not here for the meaning of life. I’m here for the power to rescue the only thing I have left that matters.”
We will not give it to you.
Mia took one step closer. “Then I’ll take it.”
“… mia, you can’t win like this…”
“Shut the fuck up, Mister Kindly.”
“… look around you…,” the shadowcat insisted. “… look where you are, what you face. stop and think for a moment, for once in your life…”
“Fuck you,” she hissed, drawing her sword.
Cleo raised her arms, and the shadows erupted. Ribbons of living darkness unfurled like wings from her bare shoulders. She rose into the air, long black hair whipping and coiling, her legion of daemons swarming, swooping, swaying around her.
Mia reached into her belt, flinging a handful of red wyrdglass right at Cleo’s face. Cleo’s body shimmered, the glass exploded, blooms of fire flaring briefly in the gloom. But the woman was already gone, Stepping out of a shadowbat’s body and hovering in the gloom above Mia with a dark smile. Cleo’s long black hair formed itself into blades of shadow, flowing like liquid, sharp like steel, streaming toward Mia like spears, and Mia
Stepped
aside, reached back into her belt, flinging a handful of white wyrdglass this time. The globes exploded into a toxic cloud, but again, Cleo was simply gone, Stepping out of a shadowhawk’s fleeting form, back to the air over Mia’s head. The girl Stepped, up, far up, directly into the shadowed roof of this strange cathedral. Kicking off the crumbling gravebone ceiling and diving back down out of the sky, blade raised in both hands. Cleo flickered again, avoiding Mia’s blow, catching her up in tendrils of liquid black. Mia slashed at the darkness,
Stepped
away like a hummingbird, flinging more red wyrdglass. Cleo simply vanished, appearing out of Mister Kindly’s shape, still waiting back up on the landing.
And so they danced, the pair of them. Black smoke, echoing dark, hollow booms. Mia was silent as death, her face a grim mask, her blade flashing. Flickering around the room like a wraith. Both of them could Step where they wished, so many shadows, so dark and deep. But Cleo was simply more. The air was filled with her daemons, a multitude she could vanish into and out of at will. Her shadowblades seemed to be everywhere at once, hair streaming out in impossible lengths, Mia barely able to keep ahead of their edge. The whispers were deafening inside her head, the thud of her pulse drowned beneath. Her teeth were bared, eyes narrowed, face damp with sweat. And all the while, born aloft on wings of black, Cleo simply smiled.
She’s playing with me …
A half-dozen shadowblades sliced the place Mia had stood a second before. She Stepped forward, her longblade cleaving toward Cleo’s throat, only to watch the woman flicker away again. Again. Again. It was like chasing ghostlights. Like killing smoke. The woman moved too swift, more at home with the shadows than Mia could ever dream. All her training, all her will, all her desperate rage was less than worthless in the face of such impossible power.
She Stepped to the shelf beside Mister Kindly, stumbling as she landed, her blade as heavy as lead in her shaking hands. Cleo turned toward her, long black hair whipping about her. But she didn’t press her attack, simply hovering in the air. Mia was drenched with sweat, smoke burning in her lungs.
Enough? Cleo asked inside her mind.
Mister Kindly appeared on the woman’s shoulder, not-eyes fixed on Mia.
“… look around you, mia…,” he pleaded. “… you can’t beat her like this…”
“… RELENT…,” came the whisper from the daemons around her.
“… Yield…”
“… LOOK AROUND YOU…!” the shadowcat demanded.
Cleo floated across the space between them, radiating a dark and bottomless majesty. She alighted on the bone before Mia, smiling with black lips.
You cannot defeat me, blackheart. You cannot even touch me.
Mia pawed at her burning eyes, searching for the words. Some plea or prayer, something she might say. She felt a bumbling child before the strength of untold centuries. Standing an insect high in the presence of an almost-god. The power of a fallen divinity boiled below this woman’s skin. A legacy wrought of untold murders, the pieces of a shattered soul ripped from broken chests and reassembled, piece by bloody piece, inside Cleo’s own.
Niah’s first chosen.
What was Mia beside her?
You are nothing, the woman told her.
“I am Mia Corvere,” she hissed. “Champion of the Venatus Magni. Queen of Scoundrels and Lady of Blades.”
You are no one.
“I am a daughter of the dark between the stars. I am the thought that wakes the bastards of this world sweating in the nevernight. I am the war you—”
No, dearheart, sweetheart, blackheart.
Cleo smiled, one slender hand outstretched as if to bestow a gift.
You are afraid.
It took Mia a moment to feel the weight of it. To recognize the shape of it. Mister Kindly had walked in her shadow since she was ten years old, tearing her fears to ribbons. With Eclipse and him both inside her, she’d been indomitable. Fear had been a blurred memory, a forgotten taste, something that only happened to others. But after all those years, at Cleo’s smiling behest, it had finally, truly found her. Rising on an ice-cold tide in her belly and setting her legs to buckling.
You never know what can break you until you’re falling apart.
You never miss your shadow until you’re lost in the dark.
Mia’s sword fell from nerveless fingers.
She stumbled to her knees.
She’d been alone before, but never like this. Her brief moments without her daemons had always been tempered by the knowledge that they’d return. But now there was nothing to stand between Mia and a foe she’d never really faced. An enemy she’d never truly conquered. Her tongue was ashes and her body was lead, wide eyes searching the gloom as her breath rattled through clacking teeth.
Why had she come here? What was she doing? Who was she to script herself into prophecy, to take her place on a stage peopled with imperators and gods? One weak and frail and feeble girl, who’d only dragged herself this far with the help of the things that rode her shadow. And now, now without them …
You are nothing, Cleo smiled.
You are no one.
She was ten years old again. Standing in the rain on the walls of the forum. Watching her world crashing down before a howling mob. Her mother stood behind her, one arm across her breast, the other at her neck. Mia could feel her, almost see her, pale skin and long black hair and slender white arms draped about her daughter’s shoulders. Claws digging into Mia’s lungs. Lips brushing Mia’s ears as she leaned in close enough to smell charnel breath and rusting skin. Mia closed her eyes, shook her head, trying not to listen as it hissed inside her mind.
You should have run when you had the chance, little girl.
“No,” she hissed.
Beg my forgiveness.
“Fuck you.”
Plead my mercy.
“Fuck. You.”
It was a weight, pressing on her shoulders. It was a hammer, shattering her like glass. She felt herself sinking in her own undertow, pieces drifting down into the dark. Her love was lost. Her hope was gone. Her song was sung. Nothing of anything remained. She looked for something to cling to, something to save her, something to keep her warm in a world grown so suddenly black and cold. She reached toward her vengeance and found it futile. She reached toward her anger and found it hollow. She reached toward her love and found only tears. Sh
e scrabbled in the bitter ash her heart had blossomed in, black grit beneath her fingernails, a black sting in her eyes.
Looking for a reason.
Looking for anything.
Eclipse scoffed. “… YOU HAVE THE HEART OF A LION…”
“A crow, perhaps.” She wiggled her fingers at the wolf. “Black and shriveled.”
“… YOU WILL KNOW THE LIE OF THAT BEFORE THE END OF THIS, MIA. I PROMISE…”
And there, on her knees, the darkest night of her soul closing in around her, Mia finally saw it. A tiny spark, flickering in the black. She seized hold of it like she was freezing, like she was drowning. A strange shape, altogether unfamiliar—not the vengeance that had driven her or the rage that had sustained her or even the love that she’d set her back against. It was a simple thing, almost impossible to grasp. A tiny thing, almost impossible to see the breadth of.
Truth.
“Never flinch,” her mother had told her.
“Never fear.”
But there, alone in Cleo’s dark, Mia finally realized the impossibility of those words. Facing her fear for the first time in as long as she could remember, Mia finally saw it for what it was. Fear was a poison. Fear was a prison. Fear was the bridesmaid of regret, the butcher of ambition, the bleak forever between forward and backward.
Fear was Can’t.
Fear was Won’t.
But fear wasn’t ever a choice.
To never fear was to never hope. Never love. Never live. To never fear the dark was to never smile as the dawn kissed your face. To never fear solitude was to never know the joy of a beauty in your arms.
Part of having is the fear of losing.
Part of creating is the fear of it breaking.
Part of beginning is the fear of your ending.
Fear is never a choice.
Never a choice.
But letting it rule you is.
And so she breathed deep. Dragged its scent into her lungs. Felt herself wanting to fly apart, to curl up and die, to lay down and litter this graveyard with her bones. Feeling it pour over her, allowing it to soak her, letting it wash her clean and knowing it would be all right. Because to be alive was ever in some way to be afraid.