Chapter 16- The Third Night

A/N: WARNING, some seriously terrible, disturbing things happen in this chapter. Don't force yourself to continue.

The princess slowly shifted up, never breaking the stare of the red eyes, and reached one hand out to her side. She swiftly pulled the bed-curtains back, and suddenly, from out of the gloom, the sight of Katsuki Bakugou jumped out at her.

He was stood quite strangely, and seemed to be in pain. One of his legs was kicked up onto the edge of her bed, whilst the other was planted on the ground, and both were set straight. As she watched him lean forward onto the higher leg, she realised that he was stretching. This was not the only thing that she realised.

"Get your feet off my bed!" she said, leaping up to sit.

"They're not on your bed." He replied, calmly switching legs "They're on the wooden frame. Calm it."

"And who said that you could put your shoes on the wooden frame?"

He leaned in to the stretch.

"I fucking did, what's your problem? D'you have any idea how cramped I've been all day? My legs are fucking killing me."

She rolled the blankets off her lap and tied back both sides of bed curtains, then extended a pointing hand.

"Then stretch on the window-sill."

" 'Tch"

He didn't move. Her upper lip twitched with irritation. By now, however, she fancied that she knew him well enough to make things go her way.

"What? Are you afraid it's too high for you?" she smirked.

"Hah?"

"I mean, what kind of novice doesn't stretch regularly? Or, no, maybe your knees are so weak that you put all the weight on your ankles?"

"Fuck off!" snapped Bakugou. "I've got stronger knees than you and fucking broccoli boy combined."

She raised an eyebrow suggestively. He scowled, and pushed back off the bed. Stalking over to the window-sill, he proceeded to kick one leg onto the ledge in a single, swift, straight-legged swoop. He looked back at her, grinning.

"Well?"

She was, quite honestly, impressed. His sudden display of acrobatics had knocked her wide awake, but she did not do him the courtesy of saying it. Instead, she settled on forswearing her challenge in a vaguely sarcastic tone.

He practically beamed with the victory, but his joy was short-lived. As soon as he began to lean into the stretch again, he let out a pained grunt and his standing leg began to shiver. The princess observed him with faint curiosity.

"Whatever do you do to get quite so stiff?" she asked, a genuine tone slipping in as she watched him struggle.

"I hide." He said, switching legs "From your parents. And a bloody lot of love I get in return for it."

"You don't want my love." She replied.

" 'Tch."

She rubbed her eyes. The night beyond was as starless and as black as creation, and the wobbling light that came from her lantern cast only faint waves of orange. At the window, Bakugou appeared as the bent silhouette of an aged tree.

"Gods," she yawned "what a farce all this is."

"Oy, I didn't fucking ask for this either."

"Well, you've certainly made yourself at home anyway."

He took his legs down and stalked back into the circle of light. Instinctively, she leaned away from him, and fell back onto her pillows.

"You talk tough for someone who's scared of me." He sneered "And for your information, if I'm here, it's because the dream gods wanted me to be here, so I don't see why I shouldn't bloody well make myself at home."

She scowled at him. Pushing herself back up, she fought the unsensible urge to grab him by his furs and knock her skull against his. Violence buzzed in her hands, barely restrained, electrified by his condescension.

"I'm not scared of you," she dripped, all venom "I resent you. I resent that I might have to marry you, and that I will have no choice in the matter. Congratulate yourself all you want, but I will not applaud you, I will not praise you for your feat. You have not won on your own merits, but from my foolishness.

"You saw me, didn't you? You watched as I turned away a boy far better than you, far kinder, far more honest." Wrath overflowed in her lungs, pouring out "And now he's dead! I killed him. And gods- gods, I resent this. I resent my role. I resent you.

"So you- you, whose purpose I do not know, you who smiles at my sorrows, you may laugh all you want, but I will not bow before you."

She stared at him, vicious. Under her glare his superior smile melted away, metamorphosing slowly to that strange expression that she had come to know so well, those thin-pressed lips and narrow eyes.

He was a stranger before her again, towering, in his lion skin and beads, like some ancient statue of cold marble. His eyes seemed to glow like coals in the pale light, searching, probing.

He leaned forwards. She leapt at the movement and lunged for his neck, hands like claws. She was an eagle, a tempest; her hair flew about her and her crumpled fingers grazed the soft fur of his cloak as he twisted away. His palm rushed out from his side and slammed her square in the chest, toppling her onto her back.

He quickly stepped back into the shadows as she lifted herself off the bed. An inhuman shriek had lodged itself in her throat, but she had not found the strength to let it out.

"Fucking calm it." He snapped, but there was an unusual delicacy to his tone "It's dark in here. I was just trying to see you."

"Tell me that when you don't have a knife." She spat.

With an idiosyncratic click of his tongue, he reached his hands down to his belt (he did not even look away) and unhooked his jambiya. He tossed it carelessly in her general direction, and it would have soared over her shoulder had she not caught it at the very last moment. She felt the tight curls of the metalwork dig into her skin as her grip tightened around it.

"Fuck's sake." He said, watching her tuck the scabbard away "You're hardly very trusting."

"You've given me no cause to trust you." Replied the princess.

"Yeah, but I'd still prefer it if you did."

She frowned at him, leaving the expression open and easy to read.

"You owe me something. Remember, cheeks?"

Dread tingled in her legs, in the bones of her ankles, sparkled in the veins of her toes. She might turn to stone. Her eyes fluttered away.

"I never promised."

"Bullshit. You're a Royal. There are certain standards you gotta uphold."

"Why do you want to know?"

"Don't you want to tell me?"

He wasn't answering the question. He never would, she knew, but perhaps she had entertained a foolish hope that the stranger with the ruby eyes would eventually look upon her with something close to sympathy.

"I don't. I really don't want to tell you."

"Why not?"

"I don't think that you want to hear it."

Bakugou took a step forwards, into the glow of the orange. The bead at his ear glistened heavily, and his lion's teeth were bared in his usual snarl.

"And why's that?"

"Because-"

"I'm the one who fucking asked."

"Listen to me!" she cut "It's because- what will you do once you know? Think about it. If you live to the morning I will have to marry you! And you, equally, will have to marry me, but you shall know all the things I have done."

"Fucking so what?"

"So you will marry a girl who you know to have done appalling things. And I know that you do not love me, but to be an object of disgust - or worse, pitied - is quite something else, and I would like to avoid it if I can."

He folded his arms.

"You don't have to worry about any of that. Just tell me."

She searched his face. What did they mean, those straight-set lips, that brow that pinched? What did he want? Why had the dreams gods sent him?

"C'mon. Don't you wanna untangle it?"

"I don't think so."

"Really? I think you do. I think you're full of rage. I think it sends you clawing at unsuspecting men like a girl possessed."

She could not help but roll her eyes. Somehow, it brought a smile to her face.

"You are many things, Katsuki Bakugou, but unsuspecting is not one of them."

"Try me."

He took another wary step closer. She pulled the covers over her legs again and looked up at him, bolstered by the new warmth.

"Why don't you have a seat, then?" she said, motioning to the corner of the bed opposite her where he had previously sat to brood.

With a suspicious glance, he kicked off his shoes and used one hand to push himself up and sit atop the covers, leaning against the bedpost. The sheets beneath him twisted and swirled as the shifting surface of a lake in the wind, and the curtains fell in around him as an obscuring embrace. The tangerine light caught only the red and white of his eyes, like blood in the snow, and the pearly enamel of his dragon teeth.

"Well?"

"It will be a long story." Said the princess.

"So talk until you fall asleep."

"I'm not sure where to start." Said the princess.

"So find one end, and pull."

XXX

The dead, when they were fresh-buried, were never quite gone. For a short while, stuck between the earth and the heavens, they wandered the mortal plane, glassy and impermanent as a reflection in water, and haunted the dreams of those who knew of their death.

But the princess was not visited by her parents the night that she had put them in the cold earth, nor the many nights that followed that. Her nights were as still as death. She awoke always with the chill of the oncoming winter, and the scratching emptiness of her solitude.

The castle was as hollow and skeletal without her parents. A fine dust began to settle on the stone as if to mark their absence, and everything around her was turning grey and cold. Already she was beginning to notice cracks where there had not been before, drafts that had never penetrated so far, and a terrible echo to the distressed bleating of her good-natured, hoary old goat. It was as though her home had died along with the King and Queen.

She spent much of her time in Lasandu city's squares, where the children gathered to talk and plan, and did what she could to help, but before Izuku came she never felt that she had any firm friends. Only the weaver-boy, a vague acquaintance whom she made through their common livelihoods, reappeared on occasion. They were never really that close.

She was alone as one by one the castle's treasures disappeared, and the children were sent away, and Lasandu itself began to bleed, its people and traditions trickling down the steep and the ice into the valleys below.

The only thing that she could not bring herself to let go of was Omochi: an aging goat, a calming, unjudging animal who had stuck with her through thick and thin, and the only reminder she had left of what life used to be like. The manner in which Omochi's black, horizontal pupils floated in her weepy apricot eyes had always put her at ease. They were the eyes of complete ignorance, of a profound disdain for the world that changed around her, and yet they seemed to know all.

When Izuku came, of course, and Tenya, Momo and Shouto, her life took a turn for the lively, and there was no need to rely on elderly bovids for company. For a time she had even dared to be optimistic. There was just enough fuss about setting up the city guard and finding help to build the Todoroki-Yaoyorozu house that she did not have time to think about the inevitable coming of spring.

Spring still came.

It was a relief, after the brutal winter, to see the snowdrops spring up and the birds return to soar about the peaks. The children had spent the time locked away from the blizzards refining their skills, and the return of the markets on the square was as bustling and innovative as she had seen it on any occasion. Izuku, who had not known Lasandu before Ochaco, displayed a startling fascination with their traditions, and joyfully threw himself into the making of a hundred acquaintances, all of whom she came to know too.

Spring bloomed into summer. She held Izuku's hand, and leaned her head on his shoulder, and when the Todoroki-Yaoyorozu house was finally finished they spent much time all gathered around the table, laughing and making all sorts of wishful plans.

And all that time, they ate the grain that had been left for them by the winter-dead adults, and the children of the winelands left their fields to grow wild once again.

She knew this. She was a princess, after all, and it was her responsibility to know what state the kingdom was in.

She tried all sorts of things. She encouraged foraging, but those children who had not learned it from their parents soon made themselves sick on bad mushrooms, and after three younger siblings were carried away by wolves the idea of venturing down to the treeline was fast abandoned. The planting of home gardens went similarly well for the impatient inhabitants of the city, as did any mention of rationing.

By mid-autumn, they were running out of grain. Ochaco sat at the table in Momo's house, surrounded by the more intelligent of her friends, and discussed what they ought to do.

They were only children, she insisted, and they were deserving of help. It was ridiculous that Lasandu, though rather geographically isolated, should be so shunned by its neighbours, and they were well within their rights to ask for help. Why not send someone down the valley?

Shouto, who had been silent for the whole conversation, snapped at her for the first and only time in her life.

No, he asserted, they must not, under any circumstances, reveal the true state of affairs in Lasandu. He had come from Onirus, and he knew the king of that adjoining land well. If king Endeavor ever learnt that they were weak, he would immediately send his soldiers to invade, and the carnage that would follow would be unforgiveable.

He shook as he spoke. She was terrified that such a stoic and gentle boy could be so transformed by fear.

What could they do? They were only children.

By the end of autumn, they were eating the last of the grain. They were forced to begrudgingly turn to foraging again, and the prices of alternative foodstuffs began to soar. It took the deaths of twenty-three children in all before everyone learned which plants were poisonous, and several more were lost on the journey to and from the forests. A myriad of frugal practices was suddenly adopted, and all of the parts of the plants that had previously been considered too chewy, too bitter, too stringy, were now delicacies.

Silently, winter put its claws into the mountain and began to squeeze.

XXX

"I remember a week or two when I ate nothing but the husks of grains and boiled nettles."

She picked at her nails and avoided Bakugou's gaze

"It was disgusting. They stuck to your teeth and they were hard to swallow and they were bitter but you have to understand- you have to understand- the hunger, it- it…" she struggled to push the words out "breaks you. It's the only thing you feel. There's nothing inside you but hunger. You have to eat something, anything, and the thought consumes you entirely. And that week, when I ate nothing but husks and nettles, was only the beginning. At least then, I felt something."

XXX

Starvation changed her until she did not know who she was. First her monthly blood stopped. Then the fat shrank off her bones, leaving her pale skin bone-tight, and her blood started to run cold. The pangs of hunger fizzled away, replaced by a numbness and mental fog that hung heavy in her skull.

By mid-winter she was a ghost of herself. She spent days sleeping away the pain, only occasionally using what little energy she had to chew down the tree bark and leather that kept her alive.

And then the tree bark and leather ran out.

Hunger became a thing of its own, carved its way out of her stomach and took mastery of her every sense. It watched her from the darkness and whispered to her. Eat, eat, eat.

You are not alone in the castle, the hunger hissed, for there is meat within your reach. It totters about on mahogany hooves and delicious, soft white legs. It is as weak as you are; it would be so easy to eat, eat, eat.

The hunger took her away from herself then. She was so detached that she did not know what she had done until the knife was in her hands, and the linen-white fur was stained with red, and Omochi's honey-orange eyes were cloudy as sand. When she came to herself, she found that she did not have the energy to scream, or grieve, or even scold herself. Starvation did that to her, you see. The emptiness inside her stomach seemed so vast that there was room to consider nothing else outside.

Omochi was old. She had been her companion for eleven long years, and the time was evident in her greyish meat. It was tough, gamey, and unpleasant, but Ochaco savoured every bite. Ochaco liked eating Omochi, and recognising that terrified her. She feared what she had become.

She saw very little of Izuku after that. She knew what he would look like, saw the image of his skeletal face in her mind, and she feared that he would hate her just as she hated all the children who had become reflections of herself. They looked fit for haunting.

XXX

"Have you ever noticed that there are no stray cats in Lasandu city? No mongrel dogs that play in the streets?"

Uraraka peered at Bakugou through the dark. He shuffled uncomfortably.

"There is a reason. You know it now."

XXX

In her waking hours, when there was nothing better to do (and there usually was not), she would weave. She liked to think it kept her sane, or saner than she could have been. It kept her stiff limbs moving just enough, and occupied her mind with bright patterns of colours. It was something that she could do alone.

She ran out of thread on the same day that the hunger came back. It was the most intense pain that she had felt in all her years of life. Her body was wracked with agony like nothing that she had ever felt before, and her nerves were aflame, and through the near-trance of overwhelming hunger she was dimly aware that she might be going insane.

She needed to live on. Perhaps she was selfish, in that way. Though it had occurred to her that death would bring her to her parents, the blackness, the absolute nothingness, of sleep also scared her. She was afraid that one day her eyes would close and never open again.

Laboriously, she made her way down the winding steps and into the snow. The smell of fresh air hit her like a slap as she left the stale halls of the castle behind, and the cold of the outside world seized her very bones.

She did not see a single living soul on her journey to the weaver-boy's house on the east side. She would not have wished to; she did not know what she might have done.

When she knocked on the door, there was no reply. She did not stay still in the snow for very long before trying to push it open, and when she did, she found it unlocked.

She stepped warily into the house, squinting in the dusty light. The hearth was unlit and there was an abnormal quiet about the place, as through nothing had been touched for a few days. She looked about. He was not in the kitchen, nor the front room with the fireplace, and when she called out she heard no response. It was only as she approached the wooden stairs to his bedroom at the back that she saw him.

He lay crumpled on the floor at the foot of the stairs, a black jumble of limbs. Halfway down his right shin his leg was bent at a sharp and unnatural angle, and his eyes stared glassily at the ceiling. She fell to sit at his side, swaying with alarm. Only his eyes moved towards her.

"Gods," she said "Gods, what happened? Are you in pain?"

He groaned. His lips were stiff and parched, and he had difficulty speaking.

"I fell." He grunted. "I am sure that I have broken my leg. I cannot get up. I feel as though I am ripped apart."

He had always been a skinny boy, and the famine had hit him harder than most. His bones had grown weak, and he was now all but wasted away. Uraraka brought a hand to cover her mouth, partly out of shock, and partly to cover the smell of sweat that rose from him.

"What are you doing… here?" he said, carefully rolling each syllable off his tongue with great concentration.

"I only wanted to ask if you had some thread for weaving. But now that I have seen you, now-"

He slid his hand over to tug at the hem of her dress. The movement was slow, jumpy, impossibly frail.

"Just take it." He murmured "It is in its usual place."

"How can I, when you're in such a state?"

"I cannot stop you. I am not good for much else."

She held his hand. The bones of his knuckles stuck out from under the loose skin.

"What can I give you in return? I have no food, and nothing to help the pain."

A little moisture formed on the waterlines of his dry eyes.

"Kill me." He whispered.

She tightened her hold around his hands, but could not find the words to protest. He continued.

"Kill me. End my pain. I have lain here two days and two nights, and I will lie here until I die. I burn and sting and ache and swell. Kill me. Take the knife that lies on the table and slit my throat."

And in the creaking rafters above, hunger crouched watching. Its pointed teeth dripped with saliva and its sickly yellow eyes bulged with greed as it began to whisper. It is as weak as you are; it would be so easy…

XXX

Uraraka was silent. A painful heave had settled in her throat, and no matter how she tried to get the words out, she could not. She felt strangled, couldn't breathe. She could not meet Bakugou's eye. There was a deep green glow at the edges of her vision.

"Did you do it?" Bakugou's voice resounded through the dark, low and quiet.

Her hands were shaking and she choked for air. She swallowed, hard, and let her nails dig into her palms.

XXX

She had appeared at Momo's door with her hands caked in blood. Momo's hair, usually so silky and full, looked greasy and thin when she opened the door. She had once been full-figured and proud, but now stood bowed and macilent. She was surprised to see Ochaco there.

"Momo," said Ochaco "how many ca-lo-ries do you think there are in a human?"

They made an event of it. Shouto brought out their best plates and Momo used their finest copper stewing pot. Ochaco went about the city collecting and notifying her friends, and through their disgust still they smiled at the thought of meat. First Tenya, whose thinness shocked her, then Kyoka, who brought Denki along, and finally they came to the house where Izuku stayed.

He would not come. Though he was cadaverous, his green eyes held their resolve. He looked upon her for the first time, as he would for ever more, with pity.

"I cannot go with you." He said, fragile but firm. "I understand you. But I want to be a hero. I want to be a hero, is all."

That evening they dined at Momo's long table. For the first time all winter there was an infectious merriment about her friends, despite the heavy sense of the magnitude of what they were doing. And as she ate the weaver-boy, and the fennel and mustard seed flavour of his soft meat spread in her mouth, she wept a single tear.

Not out of regret for the terrible sin that she had committed, nor out of grief for the boy whom she had killed. No; she cried because it was quite the most delicious thing that she had ever tasted in her entire life.

XXX

"Bullshit."

Uraraka flinched.

"What? How- how dare you?"

"Listen," said Bakugou, unwrapping the curtains from around him and shuffling closer into the light "it's just obvious from my perspective that that's not the truth."

Her head swirled with confusion. Gods, she was so exhausted.

"You're fucking lying." He stated, calm and self-assured "You're lying and you don't even know it yourself. You've got yourself convinced that you don't regret what you did, that you're a monster for not caring, but it's blindingly fucking obvious that you do care."

"I don't regret what I did. I don't regret living."

"Don't you?"

He shuffled even closer, and she did not stop him. There was something both gentle and overbearing about his wide silhouette, the lion fur that hung down from him onto her lap.

"But you cried as you ate him. Maybe you regret something else. You regret being caught, at least."

She rubbed her eyes, as though to shield her face from him. She felt as though she could not deny him the truth, though the feeling came from nowhere and lodged itself, twisted, in her ribs.

"Shindo." She whispered. "He saw me. He thought that I was the princess' handmaid. And the rumours started, and the crowds soon followed. And a great number of children were never buried because of me."

"Shit." Observed Bakugou.

She bit back a laugh of incredulity and frustration. He was quite unbelievably terrible with words.

"Shit. I've ruined my whole life because I was selfish and afraid. And the things that I have seen, terrible things that I have seen, will never leave my skin."

"But that's regret, then, ain't it?"

The air wedged in her throat.

"I don't regret it." She gasped for breath.

"You don't seem so sure."

"But I don't have the dream! I don't dream of him."

Where had the light gone? All that she could see was Bakugou; the world shrank around her.

"What dream?"

"The others- my friends, they- they see him at night. He haunts them. They think of what they've done and they weep and shake and shiver, but I cannot even recall his face!" she was shaking "I cannot even remember the face of the boy whose very heart I ate! And I did this! I did it! I held the knife in my hands, I dragged them down with me, I ruined them. How can I say that I regret it?"

"That's not-"

"I can't regret it! I can't regret it because that means I- It was all-"

She was asphyxiated by the words. She bent forwards, choking, and he placed a hand on her arm. She flinched.

"It wasn't all for nothing." His voice was low and placating. "You need to recognise that. You did what he asked of you. You ended his suffering, and before that you ended Omochi's. You helped your friends. You have to admit that you did both bad and good, that you regret what you did. It's impossible to move on, otherwise."

"And if I regret it? Then what? How can I ever move on? How can I live with what I have done? Everyone knows. I let those rumours grow because I needed them to, I needed to be feared to keep my kingdom safe, and now nobody outside of Lasandu will ever look upon me fairly."

"That's not true." He shushed. "That's not true."

She looked up at him. His eyes were as red as carmine and as still as the black, black night around them. Her heart swelled strangely, and she pulled away from him.

"So I am full of regret. I am so full of regret that it might spill out of me at any moment, that if you push me, I will pour and never stop."

His hand moved to her arm again, and she withdrew from his touch.

"What do you want from me, Katsuki Bakugou?"

"You don't want to know that, princess."

That unreadable expression again.

"Why not?" Desperation crept in "Why not? After I have told you so much will you give me nothing in return?"

"Not tonight, not tonight."

"When, then? What of the morning? When it comes, will you tell me then? All this time I have let you know so much of me, and in exchange I have learned so little. I have torn myself apart for you and you have handed me the scissors."

He reached out to stroke her hair. She watched him cautiously, not understanding.

"Just go to sleep." He said, softly. "The dream gods have had their fun. We're both tired."

"Will you really give me nothing before you leave?"

He smirked. His usual temperament seeped through.

"I think I've given you rather a bloody lot, actually. I think I was excellent as emotional support, since you seem to have had fuck-all in that department; without me, you'd still be convincing yourself in vain that you are irredeemable. But go on, ask away." He trailed his hands away, over the fabric of her sleeve "What do you want from me, Ochaco Uraraka?"

"I want you to tell me why you are here, and tell me the truth."

"Not tonight."

She bit her lip. The knot in her ribs swelled to fill the chasm of her lungs and twist around her heart.

"Then I want to cry." She blurted "I want to cry endlessly and I want you to hold me as I fall asleep."

"Needy, aren't we?"

She did not know what emotions were crashing in her head, only that they were too much, far too many to fit inside her skull. Through the heaviness of her eyelids, she shot a withering glare at him.

"I believe I deserve far more for what you have put me through."

"Oh, fine," grinned Bakugou "whatever you say, your loneliness. I can do that. I'll be the fuckin' best at it, actually."

Without asking for her permission, he went to sit beside her, and motioned for her to lie down. She slowly complied, and he proceeded to meticulously pull the blankets over her and tuck her in, still silent and determined. He untied the bed curtains and let darkness fall in the cloth chamber again. Finally, he took off his cloak and laid it atop her, then settled underneath the covers at her side. She felt the heat of his flesh and smelt his cloying scent of sugar as he wrapped his arms around her. She shamelessly gripped the front of his shirt and breathed deep.

"It's alright." He whispered into her hair. "Just let it all out."

For the first time in two years, Ochaco Uraraka cried her fill. She cried for her parents, and for Izuku, and for the weaver-boy, and for all of the pain of her cursed existence, and it came tumbling out in barely-muffled sobs.

Like the streams that spring from the melting of the glaciers when the warmth of summer arrives, her sadnesses liquified inside of her and poured out from her oaken eyes. From a gentle trickle to the rapid flow of a torrent, every unhappiness that she had ever known came rushing, and spilled onto the pillows beneath her and the warm arms of the boy who held her. Her eyelashes were wet with a thousand nights spent alone, and all the stars in the sky that she had stolen from Izuku, and the ever-present pain of her bruised cheek.

She pulled herself so close to him that she felt the skin beneath his clothes and the tickle of his breath. The sobs continued to climb their way out of her throat, carrying with them a rasping sting, and she lost herself so completely in her sorrow that she forgot where she was, and who she was with.

The world swirled around her, blurry, as the eye of a roaring whirlpool. Bakugou was light as flotsam, and she curled into the protection of his floating sturdiness amongst the raging storm around, clinging desperately to the familiarity of the touch that he provided.

She cried until her eyes were swollen, and hiccupped until her nose ran. When she was done, and her tears had stopped flowing, she was asleep in the arms of a stranger.

The stranger sighed, and watched her sleep for a moment. He extricated one of his arms to pat her experimentally on the head.

"Goodnight, princess."

A/N: Did you miss me? How do you feel about this chapter's relevations?

In case you missed it: in chapter 10, Ochako tells Awase that "she wished that his bones lay soft under the foam, and his knuckles were stuck with fennel and mustard seed". Bones go soft when they are cooked on low heat for a long time as they are reduced to mainly collagen. Fennel and mustard seed are traditionally used in Nepalese cooking (Lasandu takes some cultural inspiration from Nepal). So, in conclusion, Ochako essentially told him that she wished he'd been eaten during the famine. It was certainly a vicious thing for a princess to say!

Anyway, I wanted to make sure that this little reference was noted, as it will only make sense once you've read this chapter. I've given Ochako a bit of a vein of evil.

I'm fairly sure that no one saw this coming, but that's completely the point! Even though I put in a variety of clues, I purposefully used chapters 10 and 14 to plant the idea that the weaver-boy was involved in a more... sexual way, so if that's what you were expecting, you totally read it right. I didn't really expect anyone to correctly predict this, and frankly I would be a bit disturbed if they did.