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The queen had warned Calliope about flying too far from Prospit, especially towards the dark corners of the sky.
"It's not safe for children of the golden kingdom in the dark," the queen had said. "Come back to the palace, don't think about such things. We can have tea in the gardens."
Calliope sat on the golden letters that hovered about Prospit, marking the end of their sphere of influence. She clenched her fists. She was old enough to know that darkness was nothing to be afraid of. She flew into the sky, golden gown fluttering around her as she ducked and dodged her way through the veil. She had gazed at it from afar through the royal telescopes but it was so much bigger in person. She rested on a large rock of the far side and gazed down on the dark kingdom. Derse.
There was a tower. She knew that in it slept her shadow. Her other half. Her brother.
She turned back to Prospit, quick as could be, and there curled up in her bed, squeezing her eyes shut until she saw red.
It was months before she could gather the strength to try again. This time she made it to his window, peering into the shadows and trying to make out the shape of his body. It was the fifth time before she went inside.
In his sleep he seemed very small. She shouldn't have been surprised, she was still a small girl herself and they were, after all, the same in almost every way. She reached out, nervously tracing the air above the red spirals. Not every way, but almost. She could feel his breathing against her palm and she held her own in, waiting and waiting for something to happen. Nothing did.
She sat up in her bed a long time that day, gazing into the clouds and asking them for guidance. They showed her red. Red, red, red.
uu: DO YOu KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO BAD GIRLS?
uu: DO YOu?
The next time she had dinner with the royal court she dropped her steak knife. They brought her a fresh one and the first was tucked neatly into the hem of her skirt. Her heart beat triple time when she flew back to her tower, sure that any second the guards would yell stop and she's be dragged to the dungeon. But no one said anything and she sat shivering in her bed, turning the knife over and over in her hand.
Her hand didn't shake when she was in Caliborn's room though. It was perfectly steady as she rolled up his sleeve, noting that their green matched perfectly until she traced the knife's tip down his arm and drew out that red.
uu: THEY WON'T TALK TO ME ANYMORE.
uu: I'M NOT GOING TO PuT uP WITH WOMEN THINKING THEY GET TO CHOOSE WHEN THEY ENTERTAIN ME.
uu: THEY NEED TO LEARN THEIR PLACE.
She leaned down and drew her long white tongue up the trail of red. The taste was bitter and salty, like sour dirty metal on the back of her tongue. It was the exact same taste as her own blood. She hadn't been expecting that. She drew her tongue over her dry lips, smearing them red.
The second cut was across her bare stomach. She traced the line with one long nail, smearing the blood across his skin. She giggled as she wrote her name.
It looked good in red.
Her fingers wrapped around his throat.
He was pathetic. Under her touch he was so pathetic and weak. She didn't even need her knife, she could just twist her wrist and that would be it. The game would be over.
Or she could use the knife. A more dramatic ending, the king toppled over into a spill of red.
Their teeth got in the way. It wasn't like kissing she watched other people do. Their teeth got in the way. She growled lowly and wiped the back of her mouth with her sleeve, turning the clean gold to red.
She couldn't wait for him to wake up.