Zoisite’s eyes flickered, the arced green filigree of his iris flashing. A jewel beetle in black moss. His lips pursed slightly, a tongue tip venturing out. Always most seductive when concentrating, when unaware, when forgetting his justifiable vanity, when pretending to understand a task he did not.

Kunzite spoke again. “Call it up.”

Zoisite dropped his pretense on know-how, straightened, and turned his pale face, heart-shaped and still a little soft from boyhood, up to Kunzite. The eyes narrowed to jade slits. “I don’t know how.” Then, swinging his hip out to one side and brandishing the shuriken, “I’m already a good enough aim.”

His voice, yet to gain the low, soft tone and crystalline inflection of his later years, bounced high and clear off the gut-ridged walls. In the corner, the youma cowered, evermore aware of what a good target its monstrous flair was offering. A purple-flecked ruff about its neck made it clown-like, and its knotted crown of horns (“the creator loves pizzazz”) spread from its head like the much-missed rays of the sun.

Kunzite stood watching Zoisite ready his shuriken, covertly admiring the boy’s buttocks from his vantage point. Ah, but more than admiration was required at this moment.

“Your aim is not important now.”

Zoisite lowered his weapons. “Then it’s my throw? But you said my throw was good.”

“Learn to summon the energy, and you won’t need to throw at all.” Kunzite plucked the gleaming stars from Zoisite’s hand. “Metal is cheap. You want to throw metal around? Go join Endymion’s army.”

Oh, that earned a succulent pout. Then, in perhaps one last flourish of earth-born willfulness, or some parting kiss with mortal materials, Zoisite retrieved the shuriken and threw them, using no more power than that which his slender-muscled arm could pitch forth.

The youma was stuck between the eyes, frozen dead in his pose, a fountain sculpture spouting red onto the floor. A humble execution for an extravagant creation. A waste.

Zoisite tittered, perhaps a little nervously.

Kunzite closed his eyes. The boy would learn - eventually - once he stopped thinking of practice as a game. But the silver king knew better than to blame Zoisite for that. Too many tumbles on the training hall floor, that was the problem. It was always best that way, impromptu, Zoisite squealing as half of his skin was bared to the cold stone beneath him, half to the warmth of Kunzite’s body. Less of that now. Zoisite was beginning to expect it; one could see it in his pouts, his flouncing, the way he kept getting away with such wastefulness as the blight that now slumped against the wall. A puppy trained on treats never hears his master’s voice, watching only the hand that carries the sausage.

A fresh start would have to be made; the days’ work, topped off by the anticlimactic slaughter of the youma, had been the last of these idle sessions.

Now the tower beckoned. Kunzite was tired - Kunzite was often tired - why would he not be? The same power that he coaxed forth from his student was sucking Kunzite dry, straining in his every cell, coursing through his blood like ichor, swamping his brain. It had turned his hair white. No wonder Zoisite balked at it.

Ah well, to bed. To bed, to dark sheets in the tower, to storms outside, to warm flesh inside, to the scent of Zoisite’s hair under his nose as he slept. Someone would clean up the mess, the wasted youma with its sun-beam horns and purple clown ruff.

So. He should have known.

The strangled demon had been dragged out of his cell hours ago, the last of Kunzite’s strength departing with it. It would have drained him completely - perhaps even killed him - had Kunzite not found himself lucid enough to know where to grab and when to squeeze. As it was, the youma left him with barely enough strength to hover between sleep and wakefulness, thinking thoughts both convoluted and painfully clear. His plans of escape, laid with the hope of one who thought he’d survived grimmer situations, lay in pieces on the dark cell floor.

He knew now, everything.

He had called the youma slaughtered during Zoisite’s training a waste, but that had been the waste of a living world, a world without real end, always replenished by an extravagant, indiscriminate life force, a great fire. The waste had been only ostensible. Abundance had shoved it aside.

Now the fire was gone, dissipated, drowned, blown away in a flash of light, leaving only a litter of sparks and embers. Like Kunzite. Like the youma. In a few days, they would would flicker out and freeze, hunted by the arctic winds he knew were yammering through the tunnels, deeper and deeper every hour.

Entropy-- they would all be stone again.

The youma knew it, too. Kunzite wasn’t too far-gone not to notice his guards; food and cold and fear were now their only topics of discussion; their agitation rose from them and drifted to Kunzite like a terrible stink. He knew that most of the demons had been called to dig in an excavation Kunzite’s old tower. As if the food he kept there would be enough to feed a thousand youma. Perhaps they would eat Kunzite. Or would that be admitting defeat?

So, that was it. Waste.

No revolution, no regeneration, and - this stung Kunzite most of all - no reunion. Ever practical, Kunzite realized that even if he did escape, his hopes of tracking Zoisite down within this maze of tunnels, no magic lantern to guide him, were as fanciful as the dreams that jumped and glided through his blurred sleep.

Yuruse.

Zoisite had been happy to die before, radiant and loved, a shrine, an ornament, a monument to blasted youth and beauty. How would he take his new death? Slow, lonely, his eyelids freezing shut?

He who loses his nerve loses everything.

Kunzite had said that to Zoisite, once, as a warning.

But he had never discussed the succession in reverse.

When Jadeite was a boy, a time long ago but fiercely, ruefully remembered, before his voice had broken and his balls dropped fully (adolescence is so full of fractures and falls), before he’d retreated into the shade and let his eyes go narrow and cruel, indeed, before he was Jadeite, he had been taught how to recognize dangerous animals.

Animals are dangerous for three reasons: they are frightened, or they are hungry, or they are mad. One can tell a frightened animal by its rolling eyes, its jerks, its failed attempts to escape before resorting to bite or kick or claw. The hungry ones are obsequious, quiet, have a terrible stare, and almost always hide themselves before the attack. The mad ones, though, are most grim, as they still practice their instinctive graces, their ritual behaviors, as they did before, only now with slight dilapidation: a quivering flank, a foaming mouth. Sudden rage.

Perhaps Jadeite merely thought the mad ones most grim because he’d once been bitten by one: a black nag that had whinnied softly, trotted over with her ears perky, and given him a savage bite on the shoulder. She was mad, completely so, and the bite became infected. The two things were not related, but Jadeite nonetheless expected, in his child’s mind, to sprout hooves and a tail and join the nag in neighing and kicking himself in the gut.

It never happened; the horse was killed and boiled for glue, and Jadeite was saved for a different poison.

Nevertheless, he remained sensitive to the look of a mad creature, and the one who stood before him now, calling himself Hatsumomo or something similarly ridiculous, made Jadeite patently nervous.

It didn’t help that the stranger’s story, offered upon questioning, made no sense whatever. If Jadeite knew anything about Zoisite at all, it was that the latter would not deign to blow his nose on this stringy piece of jetsam, let alone invite him into the inner sanctum (as the stranger so claimed). Strange, too, was his history. Jadeite was certain that Beryl hired no humans as chamber servants, let alone gauche, gangly, post-adolescent blunders such as this one.

And where in the world did he get such an absurd name?

But there was something else about this Hatsumomo and his stumbling chatter, something in the air, invisible, like vapor. It made Jadeite slit his eyes - even in the low light -- and keep his distance.

It was the same slow fear that had crept upon him when the black nag had stopped her grazing and trotted over to chomp on him instead. Something showed on the stranger’s waxy, triangular face, in the downturned grin of his vast mouth, and in his small, firelit eyes. It reminded Jadeite of an eggshell, trembling and jittering as, inside, the restless chick pecked and pecked.

If only he would let go: stop his blabber, his apologies, his groveling, and let Jadeite see.

Above them, Zoisite let the bath out, and the walls and ceiling around them were suddenly alive and gurgling as the water dropped down the pipes. Hatsumomo, startled, looked up at the noise, momentarily dropping his placating smile.

Jadeite’s boyhood training had served him well, and he felt the hairs on his neck rise stiff.

Along the eggshell appeared a tiny crack, and -- for just a moment -- a glimmering beak poked through.

Nephrite didn’t bother to double back, hide, or even look over his shoulder. He ran, a flat out bolt, excitement and not a small amount of fear flooding him with sweet anaesthetic, saving him from his own hammering heart and rasping lungs. After all, how often had he run like this before, when he could use his magic to take him wherever he wished? But he ran now, his arms and legs singing through the air, his hair flung back, the sounds of picks and youma voices softer, softer, then gone.

At last, he allowed his pace to lag, stumble, and stop altogether. Then came the pain. It was as though he’d been dragging agony behind him on a sled, and now it slammed into him from behind, unable to stop itself. Sweat soaked him and his breath coughed and crowed. His uniform clung to him in all the most irritating places, and he realized slowly that the tops of his boots had rubbed his calves raw. God.

The thrill of escape bled out of him, and Nephrite gradually felt himself return to his usual state: irascible. A nagging “Now what?” hung over his head as he limped along the black tunnel.

It occurred to him that he hadn’t the slightest idea where he was going; the tunnel he now walked had been, in the Kingdom’s breathing days, a service run frequented by those who could not teleport themselves. In short, by scum. This particular scum-run dipped and meandered, like a length of dropped twine. (Exactly what Nephrite wanted at this time. Where was Theseus when you needed him?) When Nephrite came to a fork, he found himself opting for the tunnel with a downward slope; the deeper he went, the warmer it seemed. He tried not to think why.

All the while he kept his ears pricked, pushing his unadulterated, unenhanced, painfully human senses to their utmost. Sir might have followed him. Stranger things have happened.

Presently the tunnel evened out, the floor smoothing, the ridges along the wall becoming even and deliberate. He had arrived somewhere.

Cautiously, Nephrite made his walk slower and quieter and more delicate, though he wondering if the groans of agony from his calves were not audible.

Suddenly, he froze. Ahead of him there was a small archway, and beyond it, the wan glow of a lantern. Nephrite’s nerves prickled anew, treating his heart to another sweet dose of adrenaline. As though jogged by this somatic bristling, Nephrite’s memory abruptly came to life, and suddenly he knew where he was.

The prison. Right back where he’d started. What a laugh.

He knew he should have turned around and retreated, soundless and safe. There were most likely guards there, and the stars weren’t going to lend a hand. For prudent Nephrite, as cautious as Kunzite and far more concerned for his own well-being, backing away should have been the only thing to do.

But something was needling him to go on, making him creep closer and closer to the threshold. What was this strange sensation that flooded his body, making him so bold? Was it his nerves? His hormones? His horoscope? Something he ate?

Or was this something he’d felt before, when he’d burnt the ransom note found on Naru’s bed?

As he approached the light grew brighter, and Nephrite realized with some fright that he was casting a flat, black, and wholly conspicuous ersatz of himself on the wall. The guards - if there were any - would be quietly arming themselves at the sight of his gigantic hopping silhouette.

He nipped back into the gloom, breathing hard, a kind of sly rapture, that of the dare, transforming him from surly astronomer to nimble assassin. He knew this feeling. He’d definitely felt this one before, when he’d materialized in Ragtime’s dingy upper floor. The quivering sobs of Naru, trussed up in her jammies, had drifted to his ears as he’d waited for the right moment.

No creaky stairs to give him away this time. But no magic to help him, either.

Silent, taut as a spring, he rounded the corner.

It was Ragtime again, without the fireballs and ice blades. The guards had known - he should have known too, stupid - and they collided instantly, filling the air with noise. There were two youma, both on top of him, shoving at each other for the opportunity to stick him first with their short blades. Nephrite didn’t know whether they’d been given orders to kill him- surely Sir would have wanted the honour. Perhaps they didn’t even know who he was.

Their weight was all that was hurting him; he spent his time trying to writhe free, while they spent their time roughly jousting with one another, the dispute over who would stab first becoming more and more heated.

Finally (Nephrite could hardly believe his eyes), one guard clocked the other square on the nose, knocking him cold. Freed of half his burden, Nephrite wasted no time in bringing his knee up as high and hard as it would go. The remaining youma, under all its gear and armour, was plainly and vulnerably male. It let out a pained little cough and dropped its sword.

Into Nephrite’s hand went the fallen weapon, and ear to ear went the slashes he made in both demon’s throats.

Not bad at all for someone with sore calves. Bruised but terribly pleased with himself, Nephrite swaggered to his feet, holding onto the sword. He’d need it later, no doubt.

This was the part where he’d untied Naru, a warm, cuddly creature of the sort he wasn’t used to holding, and carried her out into the street. He’d gotten used to it, though, especially the warmth, and had carried her quite some distance in silence, thinking what it might be like to keep on walking like that.

But there was no Naru this time, and so he scanned the bars of each cell door with a distracted curiosity, seeing what he could see. He wasn’t one for jeering at captives, but perhaps he’d find someone behind bars who’d help him make an exception of himself. He knew Zoisite had flown the coop (a shame), but the prison was large, and who knew-

Kami-sama.

He stopped short before the bars, nearly dropping his sword, hardly believing but knowing he must, knowing he must believe the body he saw in the recesses of the cell, believe its dull ropes of white hair. A sick wave swept up Nephrite’s legs and into his belly.

Hadn’t he prepared himself for this? How often had he fantasized about the death of his secluded enemy? Kunzite, the silver king, the wolf in the tower, the schemer, the hand that had sculpted Zoisite to be everything that he was? How often had Nephrite rejoiced in imagining him dead in the shadows, beaten down and stripped?

So why did it make him feel so strange to look upon the body in the cell, lying with its back to him, a dream come true?

It almost wasn’t Kunzite at all. No regal air, without his height and bearing. No terrible eyes. No clothes. No voice. Even the body was not what it should be, shabby and starved as it was.

So.

Nephrite had gotten his wish, or at least one of them. Yet the wretched feeling didn’t leave him as he turned away from the cell.

As he left, a small movement caught the corner of his eye. He turned, and this time did drop his sword. The sickly feeling in his stomach bunched up and squirmed and split into twins, horror and disgust. They nailed his feet to the floor and forced his mouth open, soundless, as he watched Kunzite’s dead head lift slightly, turning a fraction so that a single eye roved to meet Nephrite’s.

He would never forget that one-eyed stare, alive and dead at the same time, clouded, blank, accusing him nonetheless.

He knew Kunzite didn’t have much time left; already mistakable for dead, that body of his was as still as stone. Yet now Nephrite couldn’t leave, couldn’t move, riveted to the spot by that waning silver eye.

Kill him. It would be like mercy. Mercy and Nephrite’s own gratification bundled up into one. He could take the keys from the fallen youma, unlock the door, and quickly, before that eye could catch him again, drive the sword through Kunzite’s head.

Taking control of his limbs once more, Nephrite turned in search of the keys.

But suddenly she was there before him, stopping him, an image so intense it seemed real, and he was in Ragtime again, looking down at her round, blue-green eyes, wondering at her. Little thing she was; her wrists had been almost as thin as his thumbs, warm and thrumming with her pulse. She’d given a small sigh as he’d untied her, and another one as he’d hoisted her up into his arms.

He’d known, then, that he’d done the right thing. With Naru, he’d done good.

And so he found himself taking up the keys and putting the right one into the lock, and hesitating. His sword hand quivered, lowering the blade and then raising it. This wasn’t Naru. This was Kunzite; Kunzite had hated him, always. Kunzite was the one who’d sent Zoisite out, he was the hurt behind it all, the open wound, the dragon, the devil.

With him, Nephrite could do no good.

At first, Zoisite had wondered if it was his own imagination; the muted cracking noise had sounded so much like the thunder that had played on nights like this, outside the window. It had been so much a part of his evenings; he’d throw the window upon to let the humid, lazy storm air come drifting in, and to let the thunder sound its loudest as Kunzite moved above him in the lightning’s strobe.

But as Zoisite dragged himself from the bath and dried himself, he found that the sound continued whether or not his mind was on romantic stormy nights. It was a persistent noise, aggressive even, close and echoing at the same time.

He strode cautiously back into the bedchamber, listening all the way. Finally, he stopped at the window and hauled it open, poking his head outside. He was a long way up; the bedchamber was in the castle’s highest spire. Zoisite loathed the way the view had changed: gone were the arresting swamps far below, and above, instead of a sheet of low cloud, a sheet of low rocked formed a giant canopy. It made Zoisite feel small and sad and imprisoned, like an insect in a jar, even though he knew that that rock had been there all along. Life in the Kingdom had been made tolerable by illusions.

The sound was definitely louder out here. Craning his head up to the slate ceiling, Zoisite swore that the racket was coming from up there, as though someone was hitting on the rock. Maybe it was cracking; maybe it was caving in. God. The sky would cave in and Zoisite would be crushed, never having even attempted to find Kunzite-sama. What an end.

He pulled his head inside and donned his clothes, and then he was out in the hall, intent on telling Hatsumomo to forget about his own bath and get a move on. Time was lean. He’d waited too long.

As he descended the staircase, he paused, listening. Down in the foyer, out of sight, Hatsumomo’s voice could be heard, chattering away. Can a deep voice chatter? Closer, perhaps, to a taut mumble. Zoisite’s skin crawled.

By God, not only was the oaf dull and annoying, but he was also a lunatic! Zoisite was aghast. Had he been the one to invite this creature into his home? At least this would justify killing Hatsumomo, an idea that Zoisite had been toying with more or less since the beginning. True, the oaf had saved his life, and for that Zoisite felt he owed some mercy, but what altruism can one expect from a lunatic? Perhaps he’d just stabbed that youma because he felt like it. Zoisite, shuddering, suddenly remembered the way Hatsumomo had grinned after killing the guards: a huge grin, an insane grin, in the midst of all that blood and vomit.

Hatsumomo, the lunatic. The dead weight who’d led Zoisite here, distracting him from finding Kunzite-sama. It was all so clear. The oaf must die.

A sudden furor began to overtake Zoisite, as it always did when he prepared to kill. It was his trick, how he murdered so easily. A man with many troubles, many sorrows and rages, need only open the floodgates within and soon his body would be crackling with death. Zoisite called up his demons with ease, recognizing them one by one. Brutality, Regret, Waste, Worry: they were all at hand. And a new one too, Loneliness, fresher and keener than the others, pushing him on faster.

Up until Zoisite entered the room and uproar ensued, Hatsumomo had been dividing his efforts in two: half concentrated on ingratiating himself to Jadeite, assuring the latter that he had been invited into the house, and half spent on examining this new Tennou up close. The second to grace Hatsumomo with his presence, Jadeite left quite a different impression. Somehow, Hatsumomo had expected all of the Shitennou to be the same: four even points on a compass, four balanced seasons, all beautiful, all divine.

Zoisite was beautiful and divine. With Zoisite, there was a dark light, a grace that Hatsumomo had sensed even when the young king had punched him, insulted him, or floundered in puke. It was the aura of the sublime, terror and wonder, which was, after all, what the stories made the Shitennou to be.

Jadeite, on the other hand, did not look sublime, or even terribly beautiful. He had narrow blue eyes that shone like polished stones, yellow curls that looked as though they’d been lacquered to hang over his eyes just so, and a mouth that pressed so tightly shut, his lips were almost white. Where was his majesty, his light?

The comparison was even more striking when Zoisite entered the room, his hair wet and his cheeks and lips flushed, eyes flashing and raw. Hatsumomo could feel him, even from a distance; he was white hot.

Zoisite and Jadeite had clashed almost immediately, or at least clashed as much as a civil greeting between two startled parties could allow. Zoisite wanted to know precisely how Jadeite had managed to get in, and Jadeite wanted to know if Zoisite intended to shut up. They faced each other close, Zoisite advancing on Jadeite, Jadeite refusing to budge. Hatsumomo had thought the young king had never looked so marvelous as did now, bedraggled and furious, thrusting his face into Jadeite’s, who towered above him. As the exchange went on, more and more sparks started to fly.

“If you recall, I outrank you-“

“You think that matters now, Zoisite-san?”

“How dare you! And in my home, too!”

“This is Kunzite’s home. It belongs to neither of us.”

“You know very well I have more right than you to be here.”

“Right! Imagine! And at a time like this, no less! Zoisite-san, do you have any idea what’s going on above our heads?”

Zoisite faltered a bit here. He didn’t know; neither did Hatsumomo. “I… I know enough. I know that the youma have Kunzite-sama, and I will find him.”

It was now Jadeite’s turn to advance. “My goodness, you really are a child. There are scores of youma running around out there, looking for you! If you go out now, you’ll give us both away.”

Hatsumomo could see the strain in Zoisite’s face. His wide eyes were red from exhaustion and were glimmering more than usual. “I am going to find Kunzite-sama.” His voice was low, but it trembled slightly. “Jadeite-san, if you stand in my way-“

The corners of Jadeite’s mouth turned up. “You’ll kill me?”

“Yes,” Zoisite’s voice was barely a whisper; any louder and it would have cracked. Hatsumomo could hardly bring himself to look at those eyes: wet, blurry green, but not overflowing. He knew Zoisite wouldn’t let that happen, not in front of Jadeite.

“You’re not welcome here,” Zoisite continued in the same hushed voice. He wasn’t meeting Jadeite’s eyes anymore. “And you can’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m telling you what’s good for us.” Jadeite’s tone was growing more assertive; he was winning.

“If I wait any longer….” Zoisite now seemed not to be talking to Jadeite at all; his voice was barely audible, and his glassy stare was focussed on the floor. “I can’t leave Kunzite-sama to them. I can’t. I’ve wasted time. I have to go.”

Jadeite’s hands moved faster than Hatsumomo’s eyes, for the next thing he knew, Zoisite was being held firmly by the upper arms. Hatsumomo, from his own experience, knew how much Zoisite loathed to be touched like that, and he watched with some trepidation as the boy’s bleary eyes filled with rage.

Meanwhile Jadeite was talking slowly. “Listen very carefully-- ”

“Let go of me!” Zoisite blurted.

“Shut up and listen!” For emphasis, Jadeite shook Zoisite, once.

The young king shrieked with fury. Unlike Hatsumomo, Jadeite refused to obey his commands, and the former held on obstinately, gritting his teeth.

“There’s something I have to tell you-“

Zoisite arched his back and screamed, perhaps more than necessary. His eyes had overflowed, if only from the force of his struggling, and Jadeite looked upon him with mild alarm and growing, reciprocal anger.

Hatsumomo sat transfixed, unable to speak or even move. He could feel the hate in the room, feel it as though he had an organ to sense it. It made the hairs on his arms prickle as the sensation crept throughout his body, pushing him beyond fascination, beyond even sympathy for the writhing Zoisite. Every movement of the two locked kings enthralled him; he could not look away.

“If Kunzite-sama were to ever hear about this….” Zoisite gasped as he twisted about.

Jadeite’s expression changed slightly, his eyes widening a fraction. Hatsumomo felt it instantly; the air seemed to grow hotter, thicker. Harder to breathe.

“Kunzite is dead.”

Zoisite went still. His face, previously downturned and red as a tomato, was white as it looked up into Jadeite’s. The latter released his grip, shoving Zoisite back as though wanting to see if he’d fall. But the young king kept his footing, though his knees were bent slightly. Again he looked at Jadeite, his face expressionless, mouth open.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I saw him myself, dead in the prison. So stop your foolishness.”

Neither Jadeite nor Hatsumomo caught Zoisite as he fell, though they both knew he would. As it was, the young king dropped without so much as a word, hitting the floor with a weighty thunk. Jadeite stood above him, face unreadable.

Then the silence came, creeping in from the shadows, nearly swallowing the crackling of the fire.

The air, which had almost choked Hatsumomo as he’d sat watching the skirmish, slowly seemed to clear, and as though this had some bearing on the working of his limbs, he finally found himself able to move again. He cautiously approached the tableau of the two kings, not daring yet to break the silence.

It was Jadeite who did. “He’ll be fine. Take him to a bed.”

Hatsumomo obeyed, quietly slipping past the blond to kneel beside Zoisite. But before he reached out to take him, Hatsumomo turned and asked: “Jadeite-sama… was that true, what you said?”

Jadeite shrugged. “Kunzite’s not dead yet, if that’s what you’re asking. He will be soon. But I need Zoisite on a leash now. He’s far too dangerous when he’s lovesick. When he’s lorn, he’s more controllable.”

Hatsumomo looked down at the young king’s folded body. He was lying half on his side, face pushed into the floor, wet hair spread out in a tangled, orange web.

“We have to stay in here,” Jadeite was saying in an even, authoritarian voice, “until the youma drop. Then it will be safe.” He stopped and looked down, studying Zoisite. “That was too close. If he acts up like that again, I may have to take more drastic measures.”

With that, Jadeite turned, boots squeaking on the polished floor. But before he left, he turned again and said, “Hatsumomo, you may stay here if you wish, but I don’t want to see you. Come near me without my permission, and I will kill you.”

Then he was gone, his footsteps clicking away in the darkness.

Hatsumomo sat there for some moments, breathing in and out, testing the air that seemed moments ago to have been acrid with hate. He was utterly incredulous, not believing his eyes as he’d watched the two kings fight, nor his ears as he’d heard the words Jadeite used to bring Zoisite down. And then there was that feeling, creeping along his skin. He felt charged, somehow. Electric. Perhaps this is what happens if one stays in the company of the Tennou too long. Perhaps this was why no one was allowed to see them.

Slowly, he reached down and gathered Zoisite up into his arms. The young king was dead weight, not squirming and struggling like last time. Heavy, too. And Zoisite’s bed was on the second level.

Stumbling, pausing many times on the stairs, Hatsumomo laboured up to Zoisite’s bedchamber, poking his head into several rooms before finding what he assumed to be the right one.

The dark bed was large enough to sleep six, and it rose from the floor like a castle all to itself. Kunzite must have slept here, with Zoisite. It was strange to think of them like that, together, lovers, if only because Hatsumomo couldn’t imagine Zoisite allowing anyone to touch him, let alone make love to him. Yet it was an oddly pleasing thought to entertain: Zoisite naked on the bed, embracing someone. Kissing, too. The young king did have a fine mouth.

Zoisite gave a little sigh as he was deposited on the bed, his skin chalk against the black sheets. Hatsumomo stood alongside, looking down at its unconscious occupant, wondering if he’d done all that was required of him. Should he pull the blanket over him? Shut the curtains? Silly. But the boots should come off.

Gingerly, he sat down on the edge of the bed and took one of Zoisite’s booted feet onto his lap, knowing all the while that he shouldn’t be doing this, knowing that it was a trespass. Nonetheless, he felt he had to, if only for the incongruous reason that nobody else would. Kunzite would likely never return to this bed.

As Hatsumomo turned the slender, leather-clad ankle in his hand, he felt uncannily like a child stepping into a garden recently left to seed, belonging to someone once but now abandoned. An iron gate slightly ajar, greenery massing behind it. With no one there to cut them, roses strained to the sky.

The left boot sighed and slid off, followed shortly by the right. Hatsumomo sat there for a moment, not thinking, just holding Zoisite’s warm right foot in his hands.

There was a sound in the room: a faint, dissonant tapping noise, at first unnoticeable, but once discerned, seeming to come from everywhere. It was a gentle sound, yet so persistent, and as Hatsumomo’s eyes drifted from Zoisite to bedpost to curtain to floor, it seemed the whole room was chattering in a strange, stone language.

Something in him stirred, like an animal rolling over in its sleep, and a chill came over his skin. His throat constricted slightly, and for a moment he feared a repeat of what had happened earlier, the air he couldn’t breathe. But all he got was the dull throb of an emerging headache, not surprising at all considering when he’d last slept.

Releasing Zoisite’s foot, Hatsumomo rose, and without so much as a glance over his shoulder, he left the room in search of a bed of his own.

There were barely fifty youma digging now; the weaker ones, the females and the smaller males, had dropped to the ground hours ago, pleading to Sir to let them stop. Sir knew better than to force them on; there had been three small mutinies already. One had gone so far as to attack Sir with his pick, a mistake to be sure, but enough to rattle the youma king’s cage. Since then, those who proved that they could dig no longer were permitted to leave; compassion was a quality of a good leader, after all.

As it was, fifty picks rose and fell, fifty gray and green and blue scaled backs hunched over, fifty minds hypnotized by rhythm. Then it was broken, as suddenly from amid the chime of the picks, a great whoop was let out.

Sir rushed over, crowded on all sides by onlookers. In the centre of the disemboweled floor, in one of the deepest scars, a hole had appeared. Right now, it was the size of a man’s foot, and Sir crouched down to peer through it.

It was like looking into the ocean. The ridges of the floor below were blue in the low light, a seascape without the sea. And rising towards them, like the mast of a sunken ship, was Kunzite’s tower, black and tall in the gloom.

Success!

He turned around to address the horde: “All of you who aren’t digging will be put to work on the ropes. I want sixty feet of good twine, knotted with footholds. Go!”

He’d gotten up because he couldn’t breathe. His lungs, his throat, his mouth were burning, full of smoke. The smoke crept up into his head; swelling his brain, making his temples throb and his forehead pound. His skin, too- his skin was on fire; he couldn’t see the flames, but they flowed over his arms and legs and back, biting him black.

He threw himself out of bed, too stunned to make a sound, and stumbled out into the hall. All he wanted was relief, something to drive the smoke out of his head and cool his skin. Water couldn’t touch this fire; it was in him, in his skin and chest.

So stop your foolishness.

He stumbled blind into the room, knowing he’d been there before, but not able to think whose room it was. As he entered, the fire shrank and vanished, as though suddenly trapped without air. His skin cried thanks. The smoke was still there, though, fogging up his head, throwing a brown veil over his vision.

But with every step he took toward the bed, the haze seemed to clear a bit, the closed roads in his brain slowly opening up again, one by one, driving thoughts so strident they hurt.

But the time he reached the bedside, there was nothing in his mind but a bright light, stabbing through the smoke, falling through his eyes onto the figure who lay there.

It was the light that drew him down, down so close that his face touched the face of the other, the light bouncing off that white skin, shining like heaven. His hands reached out into the blaze, searching and finding within it golden curls of hair. How long had he waited to touch them?

This is what the sun must feel like, he thought, as he pressed his lips to the white cheek.

Cheeks, eyelids, forehead: he stopped at each one, blinded by the light, delving briefly for respite in the darkness of the mouth, then moving on, searching for more. He found the throat, trying as it was to hide beneath that rough gray collar. Then he was excavating, digging out the light that had been buried. He drew apart the folds of the jacket, shoving them aside like curtains to the morning sun.

Everywhere was warmth. He needed it, needed more and more. The fire was catching again; he needed to soak himself in the light to keep it back.

More light! He was down to the last of it; he knew by the way it split into two and then tapered. He had reached the end and it was not enough. He pushed his entire body against it, trying to ease his smoldering skin. His head and chest were filling with smoke again, and desperately he tried to suck clean air from the mouth below his.

It wasn’t enough. He needed to hide; he needed to cover himself, envelope himself, shroud himself in the light and the warmth. He dug for it, pressing his face into the open mouth, pressing his hips between the spread legs. His arms wound tight around the body, so tight he thought he might sink right through that shining white skin.

Let

me

go!

Hatsumomo, drawing huge, suffocated breaths, sat alone in the bed he’d found for himself. He was soaked; sweat was dripping into his eyes and off his nose. His head throbbed, and as he brought his hand up to wipe his the moisture from his face, he found his forehead burning hot.

Exhausted, feverish, he lay down, not even the rhythm that echoed in his room keeping him from sleep.