Sethe’s hands slipped around her neck, like a chain of cool silver. Web closed her eyes, her voice carefully neutral.

“You know I don’t Mistress.”

“I do?”

She sounded genuinely surprised. Web could never tell if it was maliciousness or a true forgetfulness, and in the end it never mattered. The hurt was there, all the same.

“By your enchantment, Mistress. Dreamless sleep. It was the second thing I asked for, remember?”

She was silent awhile, her fingers threading through the strange cobweb mane. She didn’t exactly pull, but the tension was uncomfortable enough. “…now I do. So your nights are silent then…that is almost sad.”

“I wished it, Mistress.”

“So you did.”

Her voice had a musing tone, and Web couldn’t help but wonder what brought this about. Suddenly Sethe wished for affection – and here they were, riding under that sleepless moon for the first time in months. Her Mistress weighed almost nothing, like a ghost on her back, and when she stretched languidly against the curve of her neck and spine she hardly felt a thing.

“I still dream,” she whispered, voice stranger than it had been in a long while, and suddenly Web knew that something was off. “…faster, Web. I want to outrun them awhile.”

She did as she was told, taking off like the demon she used to be. Sethe held tight and she felt the curve of a smile against her skin.

“Soon. Not now, but soon, we’ll catch him.”



Tonight it’s a mad tea party in a dead garden. She wonders vaguely if it’s his choice or hers – the aesthetics are a bit cliché. The stiff silk collar scratches at her throat, and she idly fingers the handle of her immaculate white teacup through her black lace gloves. The table and chairs seem like they’ve been there for ages, their white paint flaking, stained with dirt and rust and decayed organic. Weeds thread and tangle through the dainty metalwork like lover’s fingers, and beneath them whisper the legs of a thousand unseen creatures.

But the china is perfect and pretty, white as milk and polished glass. The tea is deep and dark burgundy; she busies herself pouring it to her stuffed animal companions while she waits. They smile emptily at her, mirrors of her imperfections. Archaic smiles from their sewn-shut eyes, catgut mouths, mutilated ears and limbs. She tucks her ebony tulle skirt under her legs and crosses her ankles, patiently anticipating the guest of honor.

He never keeps her waiting long.

With every step the grass oozes something wet and foul, but he doesn’t seem to care. His wings are tucked close to his sides, and those gorgeous, eerie green eyes are as distant as ever. He cocks his head at her, almost amused.

“Haven’t I seen you before?”

His voice is strange, a sing-song lilt without a melody. It wound about the spine like winter chill, and she shudders with an almost pleasure. In this dream world, nothing makes sense. She meets his eyes and shifts her tiny black top hat to a more rakish angle.

“I was playing the Countess Báthoryová, remember?” she smears her incarnadine lipstick into a gash across her mouth and grins. “You watched from the shadows as they put me in the gibbet.”

Something flickers in him; he’s recalled. “Ah yes. Most wake before then, but you chose to stay…”

She lifts the teapot, the steam holding the musky scent of pomegranates and rose hips. “Would you like some?”

He nods, smiling vaguely. She can’t quite tell who’s testing who now, but it’s a game she’s willing to play. She knew that the moment she saw him. She cups her hand and pours the tea onto her lace and skin, watching it pool. Smoke wafts and dances about her fingers, but she feels no burn. With a polite, demure smile, she offers it to him. He doesn’t hesitate in the least; he bows his head to her hand and she feels his tongue brush and catch on the stitched roses.

He raises his head, his muzzle stained dark crimson on scarlet. “It tastes,” he muses, almost as if to himself but his eyes are on her still. “Like blood and honey.”

Her smile turns into a smirk as she flicks her hand, revealing an open, bleeding wound, a stigmata on her palm. The spilled liquid turns to butterflies in the air, creatures of silkscreen wings and stingers as long as her finger, fluttering about his face. He’s unmoved, and his gaze never falters. He tips his head and his rictus is white bone and red veined.

“It’s been awhile since the last lucid dreamer.”



“Mistress, your hand-!”

She opened her eyes at Hellion’s startled voice. Spots of blood spattered on her white bed sheets, crimson dribbling down the satin and silk. The younger mare’s eyes were wide with something like shock, wider as her Mistress raised her wounded hand and studied it with something almost like disinterest.

“So,” she said, finally, more to herself than anyone. “It has begun.”

Hellion didn’t know what to say, or really if it was her place to say anything at all. Her Mistress always made her feel uncomfortable, letting the silences grow between them until she couldn’t stand it.

“Mistress,” she hazarded, roughly, her tongue catching as those ink dark eyes turned to her. “Your wound…should I-?”

She smiled like the bow of the silver moon, beautiful and far out of reach. She held out her gashed palm, almost inviting.

“A kiss would be enough to heal it, don’t you think?” her voice was enigmatic as always, cruelty hiding behind the edges.

With a shuddering breath, Hellion bent her head. She could never say no, after all.



“In my happy home, I barely breathe, in my lover’s arms, I find relief...and there’s a sky that’s changing, and a bird that sings…”

She sings even as the mansion burns, a blaze of white and angry orange, spitting embers and smoke into the charcoal night sky. The moon leers at her with a peacock fan of eyes, unblinking and silent. Shadows grow like blackthorn trees, catching at dying stars. She sits and waits, rocking the china doll slowly to the song of her voice.

“How long has it been burning?” he asks. In the firelight he glows like an ember, the whiteness of his mane and tale catching the flames in a halo. She looks up at him, setting the doll gently in her lap.

“Forever. It was made that way,” her hands indicate the rotwood skeleton of elegant rooms, delicate windows, frail bones that should’ve turned to ash ages ago. Smoke races and coils through the halls, in an odd resemblance to fleeing figures. They leap from the gaping portals and spiral to the ground.

She stands, tucking the doll under her arm. Her mourning gown swirls around her feet. “I’ve forgotten my music box…will you come with me?”

He follows her without a word. They walk up the spiral staircase, littered with ash and glass. The flames scream instead of roar, but even so their voices still ring clear. She indicates an angel with a hollowed out chest, heart in her outstretched hands. Beside her is a faerie girl without a face, weighted down with chains. Their marble is burned almost black.

“Sive, Sanguine.”

She pushes through curtains of flame and steps daintily over fallen in pieces of roof and doorways. The doll is always held close to her heart. They pick their way across a hallway of holes and thick , weighted smoke that catches at cloth and hair. At the end there’s a door covered in soot, lined with fragments of mirror. She catches the handle easily and opens it, walking into the darkness. He moves after her brushing the door closed to keep out the fire.

It’s a library full of books in languages she doesn’t know. Silence bleeds from the walls, lost time like a layer of dust lines everything. The music box is on the glass reading table in the center of the room. She picks it up carefully and sinks into the plush cushions of her loveseat. She hugs the doll tightly and flicks open the lid.

“In my lover’s arms, I wait for morning. I beg my god to speak and tear me apart… I’d lay down my body, I’d lay down my arms – “

It’s her voice but choked with a thick emotion, tears that she has never shed. When it dwindles down to nothing but sobs, she lets it fall to the floor and shatter. His eyes glow in the dark, almost curious.

“Collecting parts of a soul,” he says, his voice like water. “To fill what is empty.”

She’s paying rapt attention to the doll; he hadn’t noticed that it was a male figurine, impossibly beautiful, clothed in rags. She smoothes the hair away from its face. Only the eyes are painted, but they’re so expressive that there’s really no need for anything else. She looks at him, and her face is like a diary locked shut.

His smile is slightly lopsided. “You think…I am one of your missing pieces.”

“Of course,” she replies, voice quiet. “You would’ve burned to ashes if you weren’t.”

He grins for a split second, before the fire eats him alive.



It was Web’s touch that woke her. She sat up, shuddering, a hand at the hollow of her throat. When she pressed she could feel the rawness, as if she’s swallowed fire. She must’ve been screaming.

Web did not comment, unlike Hellion. She merely waited, silently, watching with those ruby-wine eyes. They knew each other too well for games of hurt and comfort, and it was perhaps the reason that, even after all the time and all the lies, Web was still her favorite.

Minutes passed as Sethe drew the air into her strained lungs. Web’s eyes traced the ash that left marks on her pale skin, like the smear of bruises. For once there was a calm between them, and as always, Sethe could never let it stay.

“Do you remember?” she asked, suddenly, softly, sounding almost human for the first time in ages. “Our koishii…”

Web stiffened, almost in pain. Then her eyes narrowed, and there was poison laced in her words, along with a raw, deep hurt like the reopening of an old, festered wound. “You promised no more memories, Mistress.”

Silence as Sethe’s face slowly turned as impassive as the moon, hiding behind her veils of ice and glass. She turned to the window, cold as marble in the light. “I remember that now, Web. Forgive me.”

“…as you wish, Mistress.”



The air in her throat is as dry as bone. She stands, letting the body cradled in her lap fall to the ground in an awkward heap, like a cut-string puppet. It’s one of thousands scattered about the arena floor; faceless shadow corpses, blood like spilt oil.

“You showed me your secrets. I can return the favor.”

She faces him, her pendant earring colliding against her face. She’s dressed like a Roman empress, her robes so purple they’re almost black, stiff with gold and silver. The games are all for her; she holds her head high, sweeps her hand out over the carnage.

“The Ares.”

He walks through the bodies, as if they were nothing but smoke. His eyes are distant, more distant than they’ve ever been before. When he speaks, it’s not with his voice, but a thousand. “A part of me died on this field, long ago.”

She walks beside him, moving stiffly through the regal silk. “What is worth the blood of a warrior?”

His shadow breaks away from him, flanking her other side. Its eyes are as green as his, but it does not speak. They look to each other like a mirror, and he smirks with something almost like pain. “Because I loved.”

His shadow staggers, falls, turns to dust on the wind. The bodies on the ground begin to jerk and twitch, stretching themselves into crucifixes casting long shadows on the ground. The sky is gray as ash, and the smell of blood and fire fills the air. Flames lick up her flowing sleeves and mantle; like wings they sprout from her arms and shoulders, melting her bones and skin. She rises like a phoenix, smoke silver and nothing else.

“To love in spite of destiny,” she slides down his spine, tangling her effervescent fingers in his mane. “To fall for your Thanatos, the one who brought Ares to his knees…”

Her laugh is the wicked scream of wind. She pours into his throat and through his veins, into the deepest, darkest parts of his soul. Here is a temple palace of obsidian, buried deep in the caverns of the earth. Stones grow like cathedrals, dripping glass and water, and strange flowers bloom from crystal and dust.

Like Persephone she sits on her black-marble throne, her robes shadow and mist, six jewels reminiscent of pomegranate seeds at her throat and brow. He kneels before her, stone serpents binding his legs. She moves as languidly as slow water, stretching herself over her pedestal like cast-off silk.

“We are the same, you and I,” she says, the curve of her mouth apple red and sweet. “Bastard children of Eros and Kore.”

She stretches out her hands to the snakes; they writhe into a crown of thorns and vipers on his head. When he rises his eyes are as wanton as hers; her nails dance under his chin. Her Dis, her Thanatos, her forbidden fruit…

She plucks the jewels from her neck and swallows them.

This time, she chooses her fate.



“You dally too long in these daydreams,” Geo said, flatly. She supposed the mare had been there awhile; it would explain the ire in her pretty sky eyes.

Sethe smiled, knowing it would infuriate her further. Geo always made it much too easy to play. As expected, the mare snorted, shifting brusquely. She was good at hiding her anger, that was for sure, and no end of amusement in testing the limit.

“It’s been some time since I’ve had such pretty reveries,” she let her voice remain light, with a teasing note like a willful child. “Surely, Geo, you enjoy your dreams?”

The winged mare met her eyes. “I have never been so idle.”

She pouted; arguably she showed the most emotion around her angel-blue, no matter that most was an act. “He would not like you, I do not think.”

The mare’s eyes narrowed; bait taken. “Who…Mistress?”

Sethe let the answer play on the tip of her tongue, teasing out the silence till the tension felt like exquisite fire on her skin. “Tell me, Daughter of Light, what happens to the souls of monsters?”

“…Do you speak of the Ares?”

There was the danger, the frigid dead tone in her poison voice. There was the flaw that made a diamond. Sethe smiled – her win.

“Yes…and no. What will happen to you and I?”

Her eyes flashed like lightning, the turn of her hoof like the lingering thunder. They echoed in the chamber long after she had fled.



Tonight there is nothing but darkness. She holds out her hands; it takes a few moments before the light flickers into them. It’s been so long since she’d last called it – it curls around her fingers, like the lapping tongue of a kitten.

It’s strange, almost as if it misses her.

As it grows brighter she can make out his face. His eyes are like stars, acid light and fire cold. It’s the eyes, she realizes, vaguely. It’s always been the eyes.

“This is new,” she whispers. It seems taboo to raise her voice; they’re like children telling secrets under a blanket. He smiles, faintly.

“It’s your turn.”

It reminds her of a movie she might’ve seen. The light in her hands is as small as a grain of sand – and yet…they say that the world was made of dust once. She closes her hand, and it winks out as if it never were.

Her world begins in darkness.

She draws the shadows, the monochrome of stone and silver. Her feet sketch the familiar stonework of her bedroom floor. Her fingers trace the marble walls, the spiral wrought iron of her bedposts and vanities. There’s a window here, for the light, and into it she throws the moon and every star exactly as she remembers. There is silk and satin and velvet, all as cool as the silver adornments cast carelessly over the bedside table.

She does this all with her eyes closed, guided only by touch and taste and the steady sound of his breathing. She slips under the covers, the familiar dip of her weight in the bed.

He’s still there.

She opens her eyes.



He stood there, real as blood and moon and shadow. She smiled, linking her arms around her knees. “So now who is Lucid, you or I?”

He tilted his head at her, and his grin was anything but.

“Do you really want to know?”