She was running. She wouldn't stop running. At first he thought she was just running, just bounding over the ground because she was free and alive, but then the ground began to sink into red swamps and she stumbled, looking over her shoulder, a sob catching in her throat as she fled. From him. "Don't run from me," he shouted, unsure if he said it aloud or in his mind. It was hard to tell the difference. "Come back." There was something terribly important he had to tell her, if only he could remember what it was.

Sometimes he caught up to her. She would stumble and fall into one of the red marshes, and they clung to her legs as if they were trying to drag her down. Slogging through the liquid, he reached for her, grabbed her arm, spun her around. He looked down at her face and could find nothing but horror in her blank sapphire eyes and he opened his mouth to beg but –

His hands! His hands were leaving red handprints on her arms, growing red handprints that spread like disease, covering her skin, and he let go and scrambled away, frantically looking for someone to call for help because she was screaming and screaming and all he could do was watch as the red devoured her body and she melted away into the swamps, vanishing. He knelt in the red and searched, frantically, for some remnant of her body, but could find nothing, nothing, nothing, and he pulled his hands up and they were bright and sticky and red…

Blood everywhere blood on my hands so much blood my hands are covered with it so much an ocean of her blood oh Mother Night what have I done what have I done-

Sometimes he had a name, and sometimes he did not. She had a name, always, but he did not dare to speak it, for speaking it would make her real, and if she were real she could die, and he didn't want her to die. No, she couldn't die. Silk and seduction and beauty and he stumbled through the red marshes, calling soundlessly, parched with thirst. He bent to drink the strange red and it was coppery on his tongue. He realized and spat, vomited, retched, tasting blood in his mouth until the acid of his vomit drowned it out. She appeared, far in the distance, standing on a little island of land amid the red sea, and he stumbled and ran toward her, because there was nothing else to do.

You are my instrument – butchering whore Witch no no seven hundred years waiting born to be your lover you cannot – so much blood Mother Night –

There were new faces, sometimes, stumbling through the nightmare landscape of blood, chasing dreams and less than dreams, trying to scream that he was not guilty, that she was not dead even when he was drowning in an ocean of her blood. Sometimes there were moments of clarity. Those were worse. Those were the nightmares that woke him up screaming night after night after night, when she was holding him and he would reach for her hair, and it was always black and that he knew was wrong…

Words lie. Blood doesn't. Darkness be merciful, not Witch, not Jaenelle – not me, I didn't, I wouldn't-

He opened his eyes. Shivering wildly in the cold, he stared at the small fire and waited, listening to the darkness outside his small circle of useless light. He looked up and swallowed, searching for his voice. He would need it once more.

Lucivar's face swam in and out of his vision, juxtaposed on that field of blood. He fought to hold to the world, just for a few moments, his stomach lurching. "Hello, Prick," he said, and could hear the raw edge of a nearly forgotten voice. "Have you come to kill me?"

He didn't need the nod. He knew why his brother was here. He stood up and moved to where Lucivar could see him best, pulling away the shirt from his chest, baring his ribs standing out in his sweat-sheened skin.

"You're lost in it." There was a strange note in Lucivar's voice. It slurred strangely and Daemon blinked away the image of the blood and the marshes and Her. "…caught up in the Twisted Kingdom…"

Daemon blinked, understanding, slowly, that something was wrong. "No," he said, then, more frantically, "Please, you promised."

The motion as his brother sheathed the war blade was deliberate and stabbed painfully somewhere deep inside. Daemon could feel his vision blurring and knew in a moment he would be lost again. "…wish you a long, long, life," Lucivar said coldly, and began to turn away.

He slumped, his knees shaking. "Next time…"

Lucivar's laugh was harsh, brutal, and lacking in any semblance of emotion. "There won't be a next time. I'm dying."

"Dying?" The word came out sluggishly, and Daemon looked at Lucivar for the first time. He could see the labor in the rise and fall of his chest, but that was merely exertion. Then he looked at the wings, and he could see the creeping strands of the mold that was eating his brother's life. Bitter tears stung his eyes as he began to understand.

Lucivar turned away.

So much blood.

"There won't be a next time."

Never goes away.

"I'm dying."

Words lie. Blood doesn't.

"I wish you a very long life…"

Daemon looked up. Lucivar was gone from the courtyard, and he was alone, the cold closing in. He cast out a psychic thread, searching for his brother. Prick? Desperately. Lucivar?

There was nothing.

There won't be a next time. I'm dying.

Lucivar? Gone?

He didn't realize the cry of anguish that tore apart the night was his own until his voice gave out. "Bastard," he whimpered, voicelessly.

Lucivar's face swam out of the darkness, the slime mold devouring his wings, his face set and bitter. "No, Daemon," he said softly in a hoarse voice that Daemon knew, somewhere, belonged to himself. "That's you."

He screamed again, crying out his agony and sanity together. He clawed his way to the Black Wind, dragging himself back to the one familiar sense in this wide, empty land. Surreal was the only place he had left.

There was nowhere else to go. He was always going to be alone, now.