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“You might like this,” is what the man who should be dead says to her.
And all Apo can think, all she can hear, all she can form between her horribly parched lips are the words, “I killed you. I stuck an axe in your throat.”
The night sings beneath her boots. There is something soft in the wind or lack thereof, and the red of the carpet seems to seep into the torchlight, staining the spruce planks that quiver before her. Even stripped from the trees that no doubt once stood tall in the distance, they have not completely forgotten their essence, their life, and it is this wonderful amalgamation of the moonlit skies and the floor below that tells her, with bated breath, that the woods remember, remember life and death as they see it, and that they remember him, the blue-haired one, and that they remember that he does not live.
Her grip on her axe slackens, just for a moment. The wooden planks do not cower before her. She is not why they tremble, with what little life they have left. Before her they would not tremble; they would sing praises of the sun as her feet crossed the floors, skirt swishing out behind her as her hand held not an axe, but instead her darling, decorated in blossoms and the festival lights.
No, she is not why the very night thrums in the air.
Moonlight brushes through the clouds, doing little to cut through the scarlet atmosphere that overtakes each night. The very skies are stained a beautiful (sickening, too much like blood) red, the same color as the cravat around her neck, as the flower over her chest that they will place over her grave.
I’m alive, she thinks into the night. I’ll be home soon, my love. The days grow long, I know, so let me first do this, protect them, and then I’ll be at the door with weary feet. As if the carrier pigeons would be able to pluck her thoughts from the air. As if they were not weighed down by the metallic scent of blood hanging around them, or the smooth curve of her bloodied axe, or the uniformly white teeth that make up Scott’s smile.
His smile.
His lips are pale; they twist with the look of kings, curving with a devilish sweetness that would bring a village boy to his knees. There’s a vague politeness to be found between his teeth, a quirk of his lips that is an apparent justification for his unrivaled sanctimony.
“You mean you thought you killed me,” he says, his features softening with an air. He adjusts his collar, long fingers brushing over the bloodstains on the white fabric. He tilts his neck slightly, suggestions of blue veins beneath the translucence, and there, as though a mirage, Apo sees the bloody burned line of where metal had met flesh; it’s gone between the moment her heart stops and beats again.
She swallows. “I put an axe in your throat.” It’s painfully obvious, she knows, but what else is there to say? The axe at her side shines silver in the moonlight, though it is marred with scratches and blood. What lives had it taken before? Only those of trees, of undead creatures that crumpled in piles of disintegrating bones and flesh that in the end left behind naught but shimmering orbs of yellow and green. Sheep. Pigs. The chicken that had fed her when deep in the woods, with the paths of Oakhurst before her abandoned by centuries of time, her only other option had been the dandelions dotting the grass. Never a human. Never a creature that had a heart that beat exactly like hers, whose skeleton may very well be indistinguishable from hers in a grave, never a man that had waited and walked along respectfully with the rest of the townsfolk as they toured their newly built houses.
Never a man with striking blue hair. Never a man with so definitely red eyes, now that they weren’t hidden behind a skull. Never a man with such a kind smile.
Never a man named Scott Goldsmith.
Oh, the winds whisper as they brush against her hand. Your blade has finally sung.
Oh, her axe sings. So you are a soldier yet.
And oh, Apo thinks. I’ve killed a man.
Because the creature in front of her is most definitely not alive. Even while the crimson in his eyes gleams in the red night, a brilliantly pale pink (like her flowers on the cusp of opening their petals) tinging the inner surfaces of his lips, he does not live, and cursed blessed be the night that has borne him, for the aristocratic curve of his cheekbones is gentler than a lamb, of an easy cheer she has seen before, in superiors staring down in disdain at bloodied bodies and broken arrows. They’d smiled then, at their fatal efforts, at the soldiers that lived to continue the campaign. They’d smiled as they’d handed her those beautiful papers that meant freedom, that meant home, that meant Cherri, that meant coward, and meant failure– to protect, to decide the fates that had been hers, however briefly– and meant that the pristine white– and the young greens and sun-aged browns that it led to– would settle over the drying reds, drawing them away from her simple skies and darling home.
(Perhaps the most beautiful kindness is that which is cruel).
It makes her feel sick. It weighs down her breath, strangling her lungs as it is joined by the chill of the autumn breeze. The faint wisp of Scott’s breath doesn’t join hers in the air, and in doing so leaves her with her second truth– he is not quite dead either.
But still, he is not alive, and it is his blood that decorates her blade. Though it was less, bleed he still did, and her axe had come down with a deadly accuracy; hesitation had not driven her arm.
She’d put an axe in his throat.
“Mhm. Mhm. I see that.” His gaze doesn’t even bother to flit to the axe at her side, the condition of his nails clearly more worthwhile. There’s a wry drawl to his words as he speaks, pulling out the inflections in his accent that betray that it is not of the century.
He sees.
He sees.
Something crawls in the back of her throat, strangled and desperate as it tangles with her heart that leaps to join it. It reaches for her mouth, to escape, and it reaches for her chest, just below the spot where a deep red flower is pinned, acting as the only doorkeeper to where her otherwise unprotected vitals lie.
Her lips part, then press into a quiet line. Her voice would tremble, she knows. The sound already echoes through her veins, clawing at her skin from within in a frantically pathetic attempt to get out. Its tremors are horribly quiet. The reddening night pays its respects to them both.
The man’s hand reaches up to comb through his artfully parted hair, and Apo’s hands do not shake.
“–It was actually great, ‘cause you kind of–”
Sharp. Deadly. Precise.
The axe comes down in a flashing arc, crashing down onto his shoulder in an unrelenting rush of intent. The architecture of the human body– the careful structure of its skeleton, how it is decorated with organs and painted with flesh– is not unfamiliar to her, and she feels the blade rip through those blueprints– through fabric, through flesh and bone and blood– to reach the man’s heart.
He looks at her, gaping wound in his shoulder neatly beginning to recement its foundations, and Apo’s hands do not shake.
“–put me back to–”
It moves as though it was made for this. The muscles in her arm twist smoothly with the movement, swiveling in anticipation of the next strike. The arc it follows is wider, and had her legs not stood strong– had they not known, remembered– it would have taken her in a dance of its own, spinning into the arms of the night. But they do remember, and the steps they take are practiced, bringing her forward so that the burning silver of the blade is within reach of his chest, his neck, blueprints tearing further as a second gash claws for his heart. Rough wood passes easily through her grasp, and her hands move to adjust themselves out of their own discretion, thrusting the butt end of her axe into his chest, sending him stumbling backwards.
The smile that morphs his face is almost bored. He stretches his neck, blood staining the corner of his mouth. Crimson eyes flit to the waning moon overhead, and the moon’s own indifference settles into his own tone. “Sure, go. Do it, come on–”
And Scott steps back towards her, and Apo’s hands do not shake.
She doesn’t know what it looks like to cleave someone’s head in half. The ache in her arms tells her it is a very gruesome thing.
“...What?”
Her feet scramble to the beacon, reaching, begging for the quiet orange warmth– like sitting by the fireplace, like the skins of onions peeled for dinner– and practically falling into the circle of glowing white particles, the faint runes somehow offering a momentary reprieve in their obscurity. Her axe– she can’t seem to tear her grip from its handle, the blade clattering against the floor as she half-collapses onto her knees, arm slackening, but she settles for placing at least one of her hands by the base of the beacon, tempted for a moment by the flickering glass before she catches herself on the planks beneath her. She bows her head, eyes frantic, idle, numb.
There’s red on the floor. Just some ways away from the once ornate mahogany table, with aged legs and empty chairs at the empty table.
Blood? Carpet? Blood?
Her heart beats exactly three times in the moments that follow.
One.
On the first beat, she sees her bangs falling into her eyes. She thinks they’re dark brown, should know that they are, but bathed in the vivid reds of the night, not even the pale glow of the beacon can wash away the maroon it so clearly is.
Two.
On the second beat, there are tremors coursing through the hand pressed against the floor. The spruce planks quiver beneath her, and although it is a rather still moment, it is as though they have remembered that they are trees and must grow towards the sun, hollowing the platform beneath her as they twist their branches into the ground.
Three.
On the third beat, her head is raised, and her eyes catch Scott’s, cool as he walks back through the castle’s ruins, a sickeningly beautiful smile painted on his lips. Apo rises to meet him.
“So, did we get our anger out?” She freezes. Scott practically glides as he steps onto the table, hands tucked neatly behind him. Each thread of his luxurious shirt, his soft waistcoat, his pristine cravat, even the high collar of his coat, which had got the worst of the blood from her final strike, flared out behind his head– every thread of his being, a part of her realizes vaguely– the night has reconstructed, careful and exact and undoubtedly whole. When had she climbed onto the edge of the table? His eyes curve into gentle crescents, her feet instinctively taking a step down. A smile. A hand resting on her shoulder as he looks down at her. “Are we done?”
“Why are you–” Her voice comes out as a whisper. “Why are you still alive?”
“See, this is what I was saying before,” he says. And his voice is so gentle, her eyes breathe. So kind, so gentle, so horribly, wonderfully sweet. He is a cool sun in the aftermath of a scorching fire. The place he had rested his hand on is terrifying in its hollowness, in the soft cold that threatens to overtake her, and yet the emptiness only grows as his fingers slide their way off. “This could be you. You could get to spend all of eternity with your loved one.” He says it like it is a fact. Like she is very small, and he must explain the rules of the world to her.
Leather boots stumble back, calloused hands doing nothing to catch the armrest of the chair behind her. They are frozen, still, suspended at her sides. “I don’t–”
“You don’t want to spend all of eternity with your loved one?”
Her breath hitches. Her eyes escape his crimson stare, just for a moment.
“I don’t get what the issue is,” he says, leaning down to peer at her more closely. He takes a strand of her hair in his hand, letting it fall through his fingers. Smiles, again. The moon reaches its peak behind him, silhouetting his features with the faintest of light. There’s a warmth in his gaze, a tenderness that traces his touch. “I don’t get why I’m such a bother, I mean–” He straightens, hands once again folded behind his back as he turns to the side, gazing thoughtfully towards the ruined gates.
Her hands twist for her axe. Where? Slung across her shoulder. Why?
She doesn’t have an answer for that. There is only one word screaming through her brain.
Die.
“–I’ve not hurt anyone. I’ve not killed anyone.”
“Die.”
“So far the only person killing–”
There’s a clatter as the axe falls from her grasp, hands trembling as they reach blindly for her cravat, clutching the fabric of her dress. Apo thinks she’s forgotten how to close her eyes.
She finds herself moving. Her steps are quiet as she makes her way across the wooden surface of the long table, gaze floating down. It must have been beautiful, once. Despite the lingering debris, the fresh bloodstains, the parts where the wood has rot, is rotting and falling away, it is beautiful, and must have been so when it still had a hall to sit in. There are careful, delicate notches throughout the table, scorch marks that somehow blend into the grain of the wood (though something tells her this was a later addition). Even age has yet to strip it of its integrity– it feels steady, balanced beneath her weight, in spite– because– of the rot. She wonders if the rough imprints are of a dinner perhaps too joyous, or if they are from a bitter show of ire, or if they are marks her own axe has somehow left. The first seems the least promising, and yet a chandelier hangs above her, hooked and set into the evening sky as ghosts and memories pour themselves wine.
Her mouth is dry.
Wisps of clouds float idly through the sky, never once crossing paths with the bitter moonlight. They look like small clouds of white bats, like stolen tufts of spun sugar. No stars offer to guide her home; they have not since she first reached the town.
Apo is there to meet Scott. A soldier standing at attention. He blinks, and she stares back.
Something cracks within her.
“So far the only person doing killing is you.” He takes a single step forward, tilting his head to the side. “I’ve not killed anyone.”
And oh, isn’t that the truth. Her hands hang limply at her sides, lost without the axe that they’d held onto like a lifeline. Her head doesn’t fall, not exactly— she is too proud a soldier for that, even now, with the blood seeping into her boots and clothes and hair and skin— but she cannot seem to find the strength to raise it either, to lift her chin in that same regal way, so slight that it is clear it is not a discomfort to him, or even a conscious action, but rather something carved into his jaw. Dark eyes follow him. They are forbidden to look anywhere else, now. They are forbidden, and so she is left to stare at the arch of his eyebrows, the tailored cuffs of his coat, the gloved hands that reach out of them.
He brushes a hand along the side of her head, elegant fingers catching the locks of— red? Brown?— hair that tumble past her ear. “Maybe I’m not the monster,” he says. “Maybe you are.”
It is not a touch she leans into. It is not one she can pull away from. It is one that is without care, cool instead of Cherri’s fire, not a wonder by definition that she is forced to check whether she dreams, and smile when she does not. Rather, it is light, barely brushing her hair as it leaves it to be a physical barrier between him and her skin. A suggestion rather than a form. And yet, she is far too aware of its presence; there is a bit of white leather against the strand of her hair furthest from her neck— there is a thumb tangled just shy of a centimeter away from her ear. It is a sense that leaves her hair on end, breath painfully aware of each particle of air, of matter and skin hovering around her.
She forces her chin up, lifting her head what little amount she can manage. “You guys can– you guys can kill people. You– said you can.”
Stars above.
“Yes, and so can you, as you’ve evidently shown, by killing me unprompted three times.” He touches his neck, then his forehead, running his fingers across his collarbones. “Three.” Something twists his expression, just for a moment.
“What, do you want to just like, talk or something?” The taste of bile is gone from her throat, and somehow that is all the more sickening.
It tastes like blood.
He hums. “Well, I was just going to offer to turn you, so you could also be this strong.” Ah. She does not imagine the reproach glittering in his fine eyes. “But so far, my hospitality has been spat on.” Scott steps delicately past her, as though she is nothing more than a simple commoner utterly lacking in manners. The silver of her axe against the wood is dismissed– he will not even kick it away, for it may just scuff his boots. She is drawn to follow as he glances at his chests– no part of her thoughts can fathom why she steps forward so willingly, and only her eyes seem to have retained their wits, watching every twitch of his fingers, every tilt of his hand with a wary anticipation. He sniffs. “Maybe I won’t.” Her feet once again find her atop the mahogany table, and the blue-haired man spares her a glance. “Maybe I don’t want to spend eternity sharing my gifts– my powers– with people who scoff at it,” he says, leisurely joining her in cool, measured steps. He looks at her intently, the barest curve of his lips still adorning his face.
It is like a private not saluting her general. A soldier girl looking into the eyes of a king. Apo turns to face him, somehow. Her head will not rise. It remains slightly bowed, her gaze narrowed as she looks up at him. “Well, I don’t want to spend eternity with you. What makes you think I’m just going to stick around you this entire time?”
She wishes the ways his eyes widen ever so slightly would be at least more mollifying. “That’s never been a thing.” Flickers of amusement curl into a grin at the corner of his mouth. “I never said you had to spend eternity with me. I’ve told you explicitly: you’re more than welcome to leave.”
The light shining in his eyes is odd, different from the bitingly cold gentleness that had filled them before, and the ruined bridge feels like a lifetime away. She looks at him again, partially because she doubts her eyes could bear to even blink, and partially because the night seems unable to do little else than claim, through shifting clouds and faraway howls, that his man is its king and son.
He is handsome, she thinks bitterly. In the ways that Cherri is not. In the ways that men are not. In the ways that mark his bright skin, pale, tinged with red where appropriate as more kindly than the kindest of men.
Agarwood and the night breezes are his perfume; Apo is beginning to think the metallic undercurrent woven through it all is but a figment of her imagination.
She breathes through her mouth.
“I can’t kill you,” she says.
“Mhm,” he says.
“So then, what if I just tell the whole town about you? Every single one of you.” Are dying tonight, her oath hums. (Can oathbreakers be lovers?)
The moon catches his grin before her. “How’s that worked for Avid?” No fires burn in his eyes, the reflection of the torchlight dancing in them as he peers at her with barely concealed amusement. “I hear he’s…running around outside on his own, now?” He tilts his head with the look of someone who has never been wrong. “Is that right?”
“They trust me a lot more than they trust Avid–”
A long-suffering sigh escapes him. “Avid thought the same.” He shakes his head.
“I mean, I have Martyn, Sausage, Cleo–”
“You have them all because they agree that it’s crazy to believe in vampires,” he says calmly. Adjusting his cuffs, he turns, wandering to take another look through his chest. Apo stiffens at the familiar gleam of polished blue poking out amidst the various items. “But the moment they don’t believe in vampires, what are you going to do then?” Her hands still as he touches her shoulder lightly. “You have them right now because you’re sane.” With each rise and fall of his vowels, she is left with a low mimicry of a lullaby. It is quiet and steady, with the soothing melodies of any sleep-song, but it is not a very good one. It feels as though her eyes are being peeled apart by their lids, as though the night air and the iron– not iron, she thinks vaguely– woven through it have taken the whites of her eyes and stained them a deep red, leaving behind confused veins and red-brown irises that do not quite know what they are seeing. The man moves behind her, and she surveys his absence for some moments before her eyes catch up. “If you walk in screaming, ‘he’s a vampire!’ and also–” He turns back to face her, the curve of his eyes and lips suddenly as soft as they’d been just moments before. “‘I killed Scott.’” He touches his neck. “‘Multiple times.’” His forehead. “‘And he’s still back!’” The line drawn across his chest is careful, measured, as coolly patronizing as– she doesn’t know anymore. The drawl in his voice is too calm, too lost in conversation that it has stolen away the clawing in her chest, the wave of bile that had threatened to overtake the feeling streaking through her bones. He smiles. “That’s not going to go well, is it?”
“So what’s your point, then?” she asks. There’s an ache in her neck, dipping beneath the weight of her head. “What are you trying to do here?” She watches him. The shift in his eyes is bare, a quiet detail that sets off the scarlet of his eyes. It does not stain his teeth, yet, though they still smile in the moonlit night. Not grin. They do not grin. They have not grinned, not once in the time she has first seen him, and perhaps it is this what sets him apart, that his teeth do not bear mirth in such ways, instead limiting themselves to the smiles of nobles and heirs, who have been taught to smile and do so beautifully, like the curve of the crescent moon that had risen some days before. Like he looked upon the world and its creatures as though they could not quite see the stars that scorned him, laughing and calling out to the birds as they scattered, as though he was to introduce them to a wonder they had never seen before. A wonder like forever. Like eternity. Like blossom trees and wonderful eyes, like embroidery and—
“I got woken up from an eternal slumber. I was asleep. I didn’t get involved in this. I was thrust into this life.” The torchlight burns brighter in his eyes. It is scathing. “ I need to eat. I need to survive.” It cuts through her. She cannot ignore it. “But I’ve not killed anyone.”
(Yet.)
Apo’s gaze flits to her axe, forgotten on the floor. “You need to eat by eating other people,” she says.
He gestures vaguely to the pens behind him, like they are lands and he is the lord unbothered to consider them. “Or animals, which is why I have sheep.”
“Then why were you sucking my blood.”
The words cannot even come out as a question. Each syllable is clearly enunciated, spat out tangled with veins of the racked screams that had festered in the back of her throat. They are born of blood, of what had landed on her and along her neck in her bitter attempts of murder. Carrying the same roundness that had run through her hair, in phantom fingers along her dark locks and brushing against her shoulders, they have gained a second life. They’d clawed for the twisted moonlight, the calm words, the barest initiations of contact– the crawling, sickening emptiness that had been brought upon her. Because it had been there, in the disinterested glances and sanctimonious smiles. The dipped head, the white teeth flashing in the sunlight– moonlight– the stillness that had caught her, just for a moment, a breath– the feeling of teeth, and the feeling of dying.
It haunts her.
And all Scott says, all he can offer with that wonderful smile are the words, “Owen said, ‘I brought food.’ How was I to know that wasn’t part of the deal?” He blinks. “It’s like if you go to a restaurant and someone puts a plate down in front of you.” Tilts his head. “You eat it.”
“I’m just food?” The night thrums in her ears. “You just equated me to a— a restaurant dish.”
“Yeah.” He says it as though it is a fundamental rule of the universe. “It’s the same as I don’t need to kill–”
The gentle accent of his voice slips into the calling of bats in the background. Time for bed, sweet child. Time to rest your weary head. It melts into a soft hum in her ears, and for a brief few moments, Apo thinks she can accept that the red tinging the atmosphere is from lanterns only, that with the harvest upon them, the village children have taken it upon themselves to decorate with bright reds and sun-forgotten ones. Her shoulders straighten slightly, rolling backwards as they relish in the freedom they have been given, unbound from leather straps and silver clasps, without the burden of an axe– of death– curling them inwards.
An entire universe seems to end between them. Neither notice.
To her left, red bunting sways in soft sighs, murmuring sweet nothings to the cobbled floor that will come alive with dancers. There is no music, no fiddlers or lighthearted singers, but there is a space for them, marked off by a blade of grass no different from the rest. But it is there, and she feels as though the firelight in the lanterns are what draw her in, lulling her into an achingly new familiarity. Yes, there is where the moon will sing. Moths and hounds will gather by– the flash of blue that glints in the corner of her eye are like diamonds, as though the light itself is practicing how to shine across jewel-set brooches and gold buttons.
It offers her a single flower. Her head turns, looking behind her as her hand instinctively reaches out. But there is no apple blossom in her hand. They are out of season, dead and faded months ago, and as her fingers slowly curl into the palm, there is little light shining upon them, lost in the fog and bloodstained air.
The ghosts on the bridge are no more than wraiths.
And Apo mourns her dead flower.
Scott’s voice is still lilting. “–why people are so weird about letting other people drink your blood.”
A single spring is not equal to a lifetime.
And I will love you always.
Apo looks at Scott, her chin lifting. “Okay,” she says. “Turn me.”
A second passes. The vampire looks at her, crimson eyes blinking once, carefully. “You sure?” She feels a cool hand settle on her shoulder, not a wonder, not a love, grip too steady to be careless, reaching into her bones in a solid, unquestionable manifestation of contact. Of cool sunlight. Of biting night. Of bloodied teeth and death.
And all she can say, all she can allow past the rushing, terrifying calm of her thoughts are the words, “If it’s not me, it’s someone else.” She says it with the same voice that says hello. The same voice that murmured assent alongside a row of soldiers. The same voice that said she would kill them, that said they were dying, that said she’d stuck an axe in his throat.
She says it with the same voice that had said, “I’ll be by your side soon enough. Just in time to share a dance with you at the Spring Festival.”
His smile is as beautiful as ever. “That’s true.” It reveals a row of pearly-white teeth. He squeezes her shoulder, as though this is a memory to him and he is truly a man. “It’ll only hurt a little bit.”
Her throat closes over. “No, wait, I don’t—”
He stops. The world stops. It breathes, for a moment, and she thinks that it has never done this before, not when she’d first enlisted, not when she’d killed Scott Goldsmith, not when she’d adjusted the bow in Cherri’s hair and told her “I love you.”
And as fangs sink into the curve of her neck, the carrier pigeons left with naught but bloodied silence, Apo’s heart stops. It stops with the rest of the world, with the footsteps still too far to see the two with blood on their skin, and it stops with the quiet flow of blood in her veins.
Apo does not die, but she does not quite live either.
–.–
A light shower has just passed when Apo makes her way to the top of the beacon tower. She brushes her hair from her eyes, blinking carefully as she surveys the stone walls, trying in vain to throw off the orange that tints her vision. When the first hints of dawn had formed along the horizon, she’d darted away from Avid and Drift, mumbling weak excuses that were nonetheless the truth.
“I’ll see you guys later, I’m…a bit spooked by what happened at the castle. Nerves.” They’d curled themselves in her stomach, brushing against her strangely hollow insides. “The beacon– will probably help. Since it’s hallowed, and all that.”
She’d turned to leave before Avid could start preaching of the evils in the shadows. His well wishes were warm.
“Thanks for saving us!” Drift’s tone was no different from when she’d called her their hero.
As her hands flailed to bolt each door shut, she’d told herself it was only irony– nerves– that deterred her from falling into the searing gentle circles of runes surrounding the beacon. Something tangled between her fingers as she burned warmed them by the glass, and her eyes flashed, steps forming a haggard circle.
“No, I don’t want to desecrate a beacon right now–” And the universe was indifferent to her complaint, to the hysteria creeping into her voice, so she’d pressed her fingers into the stone and tried not to scream and stared at the only sun she’d now see.
Safe, the light patters on the door had told her.
The air is still cool. Occasionally, a lone droplet will strike the tip of her nose, and somber grays stretch across the sky.
She punches the wall. It is hard. “What am I doing? Why–” Her hands claw for her face, her neck, the flower over her chest. She can’t fight the world as it brings her to her knees. Maroon locks spill over shaking shoulders, and her lungs do not scream for air– not anymore– and yet she kneels there, words lost in hoarse gasps that rack her voice with the echoes of a girl standing under a blossom tree. “God, why– why did I do that?”
To protect and to serve, the lack of weight across her back tells her. How very small she feels.
She leans against the damp stone, legs folding beneath her as her hands reach for the slit in her skirt. They fumble against the red of her petticoat, hesitant before her fingers finally find smooth metal. The silver of the chain is hot against her skin, and she pulls it out gingerly, letting her dog tags slide down onto her skirt as a compact mirror rests in her palm. Her thumb traces the engravings; they are pressed into her skin not long after.
It is a simple thing, a dull bronze against the palm of her hand. It feels like a small star, and yet it does not burn her, layered between backings of paint and the brass encasing.
She presses her thumb further into the engravings. It is not unfamiliar to her skin, nor are the few scratches unexpected, though they are still regrets. The ridges of twisting flowers and swirls like fire are gentle, and the runes neither of them can read tell her the Sun awaits your return.
How she wishes it would not. She pries the mirror open, gently.
“It's beautiful.” Her nicest. As refined and well-made as a girl like her should have, and yet it was her sole ornament that held such stature. “I–”
“So you remember,” she’d told her, and Apo had smiled and tried to. She'd tried to remember it would not be so long. That she would not let some months become a lifetime.
The blossom tree in the garden had begun to lose its buds.
“You're so beautiful,” Cherri said. Except Cherri's smile outshone anything the universe could ever come up with. Except the fingers intertwined between hers held the most wonderful touch she could have ever dreamt of.
Except Cherri was the exception– the one spring that she would await as the flowers dulled and the leaves fell, as biting cold swept through her cloak. The one spring that would bloom even as the world faded and died. The one spring that meant forever.
Dappled sunlight in clouds far towards the direction of the crypt hover in the mirror. Pale gold hums against the fields in the distance, dancing across blades of grass and still-restless puddles as the sun just barely lightens the overhanging sky.
The sun will rise and fall with eternity. It always has.
“Oh,” she says softly. “I’m going to live forever now.” Her free hand grips the dark fabric of her skirt, the maroon of her petticoat riding up along her calves. “I’m going to live forever.”
Why?
Each tree that had been felled for the walls had known life for far longer than her. She remembers the hilt of her axe against her palm, the blade heavy as she raised it over her shoulder, and–
The splintering sound that follows sounds like bone. In the reflection of the mirror, a vague form of leaves and branches can be seen to collapse into the undergrowth, and something like blood seems to fill the air.
“I just…thought it’d protect the town.” Her voice cracks.
Apo stares at the mirror in her hand, and an empty sky stares back.
“What is she going to think?” she whispers. “What am I now?”
The carrier pigeons bring her no reply.