The Demon Queen Wants To Live.

The sun had begun its descent by the time the Academy fell away behind us.

Solara had discovered the window. She had found it perhaps a minute after the carriage began to move, and she had not looked away since. She thrust her small head out into the moving air and chirped, and the chirping did not stop. Her four wings were half spread against the wind. I kept my hands cupped beneath her.

Men in blue armor rode on either side of us, and their column parted the streets as surely as a line of charging cavalry parted infantry. I had ridden in processions before. Mine had emptied cities rather than streets.

"Why are you enjoying this?" I asked her.

Sol turned just far enough to regard me with one golden eye. Then she chirped and returned to the window. I checked the bond and found only contentment.

"I think it's the wind," Ash said from beside me. "She likes the breeze. She’s a bird, no? Maybe it’s some instinct of hers."

I considered this. "Is that correct, Solara?"

Sol turned around fully this time and regarded me with both golden eyes. She chirped once, and turned back to the window. That was suspiciously close to an answer.

"We should be only minutes away now," the Marquis said. He sat opposite us with his hands folded in his lap. He had been folding and unfolding them since we set out. "Thank you both for coming so quickly. I had thought I would have to wait far longer."

"We have our own reasons for urgency," I said, absently. He nodded as though he understood. He did not.

The carriage carried us into a part of Koralis I had never seen. I had thought the upper ring's finery excessive already, and this was more excessive still. The buildings rose higher here, each one likely built to be seen over the wall of its neighbor. It seemed we had not walked even a fraction of one of this city’s three layers. And now it was likely we never would.

"And if you require any payment at all," the Marquis began, "any at all, I want you to know that I would-"

"I said none is required," I said, my gaze fixed on the road outside. "And that if I changed my mind, I would tell you. My answer remains the same. It will remain the same the next time you ask."

It was the third time the man had asked since we boarded. It was almost enough to make me reconsider out of spite alone. I knew that would be petty, and so I stayed my tongue. At the very least the man had said nothing about Ash's mark. He had looked at it once, his eyes had widened, and then he had pointedly looked away.

The Marquis nodded slowly. "Of course. Forgive me."

The carriage stopped before a set of gates that stood thrice the height of any door I had passed through in this world. They were black, and there was blue laid through the black. They slid open with a groan I felt through the floor of the carriage.

"We're here," the Marquis said, looking out.

We rolled down a road wedged between gardens that spiraled outward in inscrutable patterns. We passed a fountain on the way in. It had been made into a proud horse, with water pouring from around its hooves. It was larger than the masterwork in the central square of Koralis by a considerable margin. It was also considerably less impressive.

There were men and women all around. Servants tending to the gardens. Men in blue patrolling between carved paths in the gardens. "About what we asked," Ash said.

The Marquis nodded quickly. "There is no one within the manor itself save my daughter. You will not be disturbed."

The carriage stopped before the manor proper. Most of its stone was tinged blue, and it climbed higher than any single building I had seen in Koralis outside the Academy. One of the guards opened the carriage door and stood aside.

"After you," the Marquis said.

I stepped down. Ash stepped down behind me. Before the manor's steps stood lines and lines of maids. Their heads were bowed, and they were whispering to one another. The whispering swelled as they saw my horns. I lifted Sol and set her back between them, and the whispering swelled again.

"Please," the Marquis said. "Follow me."

The inside of the manor was lavish. The halls were tall and long, and the floor had been polished until it threw back a dim reflection of whoever walked on it. Tapestries and murals hung from the walls. Suits of pristine looking armor were set into alcoves. Even from a glance it was clear that none of the suits of armor had ever been worn.

I had halls like these once. Mine had been greater. Mine had been carved from black stone with pillars that no beast could have circled with both arms. I had walked them a thousand times with one of my Generals trailing behind me.

I had liked the look of them then. I did not like the look of them now.

The Marquis led us up a wide set of stairs, and then through a series of turns. The manor was empty, exactly as he had promised. Our footsteps were the only sound in it.

"I don't sense anyone," Ash whispered, just loud enough for me.

"It would be truly foolish if he had not listened," I whispered back.

A few more turns, and the Marquis stopped outside a large brown door. His hand rose toward it and did not touch it. "He's past here," he said. I nodded. "I will be outside," the Marquis said.

Ash and I looked at him. "You do not wish to come inside?" Ash asked.

He looked at the door for a long moment. He took a breath, and slowly shook his head. "I've been inside too long, I think," he murmured. Then he straightened, and found his voice again. "And you wanted no eyes on what you do. Didn't you? I'll wait."

It was a familiar technique. He used it more poorly than I. "Come, Ash," I said.

Ash opened the door, and we stepped inside.

The air was stale. That was the only word for it. A window stood open on the far wall, and the air was stale anyway. The walls were white and featureless. There was nothing hung on them and nothing set against them.

Beneath everything sat the faint smell of herbs. I had stood in a room that smelled like this before. That one had been full of beds. There was one bed, and on it lay a boy.

He was long-limbed, and he would have been tall standing. His face was young. There was the father in the set of his jaw, and the sister in the shape of his eyes. He was breathing, slow and even. There was no wound on him that I could see. None at all.

On his left forearm sat a Sigil, branching pale against his skin. A white Sigil.

I looked at his face again. Ren had told me the boy was seventeen when he had reached the Sigil. Corin had corrected her and told me sixteen. The boy in front of me could have been either of the two. He should have looked older. The face on the pillow was no older than the children I passed in the Academy's corridors every day. His sister looked as old as he did now. Or perhaps she was older by a hair.

"Lys." Ash pointed.

In the corner of the room, or perhaps segmenting it, hung a white sheet. It ran from a rod near the ceiling to the floor, and it cut a wedge of the room off from the rest of it. I had seen and ignored it in that first glance. I looked at it now. For past the sheet was a shadow. The shadow of a figure, sitting on its knees.

My daughter will be there. As much as the vow allows. So this was what he had meant. The shadow stirred as the door closed behind us. "Is that you, girl?" I said.

It took a moment for the figure to answer. "Yes."

The voice was soft. Softer than I remembered the girl's voice being.

I looked to Ash. Ash shrugged. My condition had been simple. No eyes on what I did. A kneeling shadow behind a cloth was not eyes, by the letter of it. It was not nothing either. I had already half turned toward the door when the girl spoke again.

"A-are you really here to help him?" The voice was thick, and it trembled on each word.

"Yes," I said, eventually.

A few heartbeats passed. "Can I stay?" she said. "I can... I can leave, if you want."

I looked at Ash again. Ash only looked back at me. This one was mine to decide, her face said. I sighed. "You may stay behind that sheet, but you will not make noise. Of any kind."

"Okay," Lena said, slowly.

I crossed to the bed. Sol looked down at the boy and let out a single chirp. It was a smaller sound than her usual chirps. Then she went quiet, and she stayed quiet. I lifted her from between my horns and set her into Ash's waiting hands. Ash cradled her against her chest.

I touched the boy's skin and found it warm. I put two fingers against his throat and found a steady heartbeat. There was nothing outwardly in this body that a healer with eyes could have pointed at and called wrong. "Let us begin," I murmured.

I reached with my left hand, and a trickle of white light passed from my palm into the boy. Inside the inside. If this was only damage, then it would be simple. The Cradle restored what was. I had only to find the hollow, and fill it.

I searched and found nothing. So I searched harder. For some wound or some tear in the mind. Something. I went through him the way I had gone through Corin, channel by channel. I found nothing at all. There was no damage anywhere in him at all. The Beginning found nothing to fill.

And the impressions came, because they always came. They came strong, and I did not push them back.

I saw a girl standing in a courtyard with her back bent, and two hands settling on her shoulders and pushing them straight. I saw the same hands do it again a week later, and a month later, and a year later, and the girl's chin coming up higher each time, until the straightening was hers and the hands were only watching.

I saw a boy in an empty training yard long after the lanterns had gone out, going through a form for the ninetieth time because the eighty-ninth had been imperfect. I saw him do it in the rain. I saw him do it in the blazing sun. I saw him do it in the freezing cold. I saw him do it with his hands shaking.

And I felt what he had wanted. It was very simple, and it was very small. He had wanted to stand in front of his sister one day and tell her that he was the strongest, and he had not wanted to lie to her when he said it. So he had set about making it true.

So he challenged Ilyasviel. So that he might stand as tall as he had told his sister he stood.

There was no hatred in him. I searched for it and would have found it if it had been there to find. There was none. Not for my kind. Not for the one who had beaten him. Nothing at all of what his sister carried.

I did not know why I had expected otherwise.

My left hand began to shake. I stilled it. And then I felt it.

I felt the white. It was around the boy's mind, or perhaps through it. It was vast past describing. I could not understand how I had failed to see it the instant I entered him. I reached out with the Cradle and touched it.

The thing hummed. It shivered, and the shiver moved through the whole impossible breadth of it. It moved through the Cradle, and into me. I have received ten thousand greetings across two lives, and I knew one when I felt it.

Hello, cousin.

I pulled the Cradle back so quickly that I felt the wrench of it in my own arm.

"Lys." Ash's hand was at my side. "What's wrong?"

I stared down at the boy. At his slow and unchanging breath. "It is not a wound," I said. "He is not injured." I said nothing more, not until I knew.

Ash paused. Her gaze went to the white sheet, and then came back. "Is it like-" her voice dropped further, "like him?"

She meant Corin. She was asking if the wrongness and the boy were the same thing. "I do not know yet," I murmured.

I took a breath, and I reached out with the Requiem. A single thread of black, and I sent it inside the inside. Inside that endless white. The Cradle had not been able to push through it at all. The Requiem sank in like a hand into still water. And with it came the impressions.

There was white in every direction. It went out to a horizon and it did not stop at the horizon. Above it was a cloudless sky that stretched farther still. There hung a blazing sun that sat at a fixed height and cast no shadows anywhere. Beneath it there was a plain that had been white and empty forever and would be white and empty forever. There was no wind. There was no sound. There never would be.

I looked at all that white, at a world that would never be anything but what it was. I had made a place like this once. I had made it dark instead of white. I had never once wondered what it was like inside. Ashia had been beautiful, once. I wondered if this place had ever been the same.

Something turned over in me. It was grief. I crushed it, but it did not entirely go. And then I saw the figure.

He was far out on the plain, and he was walking. His back was straight. His stride was even. I reached for him, and the reaching told me everything. He walked. He had been walking for four years. He would walk for however long forever turned out to be.

I felt his determination, which had not worn down. I felt his exhaustion, which had not deepened. I felt his hope, which had not dimmed. I felt his fear, which had not faded. Every one was exactly as strong as it had been four years ago, and every one would stay exactly as strong forever. And I understood why.

Because nothing in this place was allowed to wear out, or dull. Nothing was allowed an ending or a beginning. And I felt one final thing. He wanted to stop. In some small part of himself hidden from the white, he wanted the white to end. He wanted to lie down on that white ground and stop.

But in this place there was no ending anywhere in it for him to reach. His was a dying with no death at the end of it.

Then the white noticed me. It reached for the thread of my Requiem and it came eagerly. The way roots reach for water. It was trying to feed.

I gathered the Ending and struck at it. The white shuddered. It came apart where the black touched it, and for one breath there was a hole in that endless plain. I felt something almost like hope.

Then it reformed. And by no sense I could name, I knew that what I had done had made it stronger. It had taken the Ending into itself, and it had come back greater for the taking. I had seen this last night in an empty street. Heads I had erased and that had come back again.

And it was still reaching. Still drinking from the thread that joined us. I tore the Requiem free.

The room came back all at once. I was sweating. My arms shook and I sat down hard on the edge of the bed. There was sweat running cold down the length of my spine.

"Lys!" Ash was there, one hand closing on my shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"I- I am," I said, slowly.

I was looking at the boy. He lay exactly as he had lain, breathing exactly as he had breathed. The silence stretched. Nothing changed. For us it would, when we stepped out of this room. For this boy it never would.

"What- what's going on?" Lena said from behind the sheet.

She had broken my one condition. I did not rebuke her. I said nothing at all. Sol lay flat in Ash’s hands, just watching the boy. The shadow on the sheet shifted. This time, Lena’s voice was much quieter. I almost did not catch it.

"Is... is he in pain?"

A Demon Queen does not lie. Lies are the shields of the weak, and I have never required a shield. But to not lie did not mean to speak truth. I have answered a question with a different question’s answer. I reached for one. It would not come.

And beneath the reaching, I found something new. For the first time in either of my lives, I wanted to lie. For the thing in front of me was too ugly for the truth. For even a girl who had insulted me deserved better than this.

"Yes," I said. It was the truth, the smallest part of it. From behind the sheet came a single choked sound. It was small, and after it there was nothing at all.

Ash knelt in front of me, until her eyes were level with mine. Sol lay very still against her chest. "Can you do something?" Ash whispered. "Do you need my Sever again?"

"No," I said. "Your Sever and my Requiem would only make this worse, I think." I looked at her, and I made certain she was looking at me. I kept my voice low. "If we are careless, then nothing may ever let this boy cease. The thing inside him refuses endings."

Ash looked from me to the boy. She was quiet for a long moment. "And the only thing we can do is bring endings.” She looked back at me. “What... what is it?" Ash asked. Her voice had dropped past a whisper.

I looked down at the boy. At the boy who should have become a man, but never would.

A power that had taken the Ending into itself and come back stronger than before. A power that had met the Beginning and greeted it like kin. It was a hydra's power. Cut a head, and it rises. Burn it, and it rises anyway. No wonder the mark wore Echidna's form. It had simply gotten her eyes wrong.

"If I had to give this power a name, I would call it the Unending."