fernweh (n.) a feeling of homesickness for a place that you have never been to.

She was adrift, strings cut. Her mind was packed full of memories that were not her own – they choked, weed-like, around those that should have been precious to her. Only Illéa was in sharp detail. She may as well have lived the rest of her life in a blur. Everything she had traded, she had given willingly for what she had received in return: a small piece of someone else, and control. Certainty. Power.

gone now. gone. silly girl. silly girl with her silly strings.

Oroitz had fallen before she had. She almost hadn't realised that something was wrong until his eyes – those awful black holes where eyes ought to have been – rolled back, suddenly aglow with red-spotted sclera, and he had pitched forward onto his knees, and he had seized, quite suddenly, and then again, his body quite out of his own control, the absence of the curse leaving all the other malignancies to rattle and thrash around his skill.

death had retreated, and death lunged forward again now.

Azula's legs had given out then. The princess had seen it happen – the princess had caught her, as one catches a precious vase as it topples. But she was good to Azula. She held her, as she fell, and even after Asenath had caught her, Azula found that she kept falling. She had not realised how little remained to her, how many of her own memories she had planted as hooks for her strings, as foundations upon which she could tug and twist and wrench into submission.

was this how a curse took you? was this how a girl faded?

When she sobbed for her mother, Asenath's arms tight around her, she found that she was not calling out for the woman who had birthed her, the woman who had raised her, or even for Inanna. But Swietłana was not here. She was gone. Gone to make the world safe. Gone to save this tiny, precarious, caged city on the edge of the world.

"Lady, I –"

Princess Asenath had loomed in the doorway of the barracks quite unexpectedly. The flare of the torch in her hand was a warning beacon; she boded only ill, and gave the guard no opportunity to acquit themselves with any great grace.

"Morozova," said her lady, "with me."

Reiko hadn't been asleep – fortunate for Reiko, they had not been asleep – though Sahar had been, and now blinked sleep from her eyes as she raised her head from the pillow, glancing inquisitively towards the threshold as though she had mistaken her highness for a mere dream or illusion. Schovajsa must have been on an early patrol, for his bed against the wall was neatly made over again, with the strictest hospital corners that Reiko had ever glimpsed. Even Hijakata had not been so particular. It was nearly enough to make one sick.

They rose immediately – colouring, slightly, under the steely gaze of her ladyship, for they were clad only in their undergarments, a fact which typically meant little in the barracks. Reiko's sense of modesty had been eroded away by the simple reality of military living long ago, but with the princess… it was different. It was about decorum.

They pulled on their jackets and trousers and boots in the same scant amount of time that it took the princess to turn on her heel and walk back across the courtyard, angling not for the entrance to the palace but to the hidden entrance to the cells beneath the structure. Reiko was keenly aware of how heavy their footfall sounded upon the cobblestones as they hastened to catch up with the princess, their sword finding their hand and their scabbard as a matter of instinct.

Princess Asenath produced the key for the imposing wood-and-iron door, which Reiko accepted from her gingerly. They forced the door open with little difficulty, and scanned the interior for any sign of danger. Shackles could only hold back so much for so long – their hand rested ready upon their sword, but in the darkness they could detect no movement.

Very well. They pushed the door open wide, allowing the wan pre-dawn light to seep in over the edge of the threshold, and the princess moved past her with a confidence, holding her torch aloft with the grim countenance of one who intents to set someone ablaze. Down the stairs they went, and Reiko had been in this job long enough not to ask what they were doing or why they were here. The royal family kept secrets. For the good of Illéa. For the good of them all.

Nonetheless, it thrilled. It was some consolation for this reduced position as guard, some form of replacement for the coveted invitation from the tagma. Who else did the crown trust so? Who else would be invited thus, beneath the very crust of the earth, to examine the very nuts and bolts of those secrets which kept the world turning?

The staircase twisted dangerously in on itself, switching direction at random every so often as though with the aim of confounding any who might hope to descend its depths, so that every footstep had to be taken gingerly and with great consideration. When it turned on itself again, and gave way to a flat corridor lined with empty brackets from which torches might once have hung, Reiko perceived at once the silhouette waiting for them at the entrance to the oubliette and set a hand on their sword, prepared, at a single syllable from the princess, to act with the kind of lethal confidence in which they so prided themselves.

But the princess was calm. "Priscus!"

The old man said, "she's taken it poorly."

The princess moved down the dark, damp corridor as gracefully as she might traverse a ballroom, her dress fanning out behind her in a ghostly guideline, throwing fire-red reflections onto the ceiling so that Reiko could imagine that they were looking up into some kind of hellish night sky.

"How poorly?"

"Look for yourself."

Asenath ducked into the oubliette. Reiko remained where they were, discomfited beneath the cold gaze of the old man. Priscus was not a man with whom they were well acquainted, nor a man with whom they might wish to be. It went beyond respect into something bone-deep that they could not admit as fear. Priscus had the same air as a druj, of a thing which has been forced into a particular shape so that it can continue to exist in this reality and adhere to all of its rules but reluctantly, reluctantly. There was an unreality to his edges, something in his eyes which went beyond the usual royal flintiness. Reiko had never dared ask about his identity. They thought that he had rather respected them for it.

Once, just once, he had passed through the training grounds at the same time that Reiko was initiating a new recruit to the guards – initiating, that was the polite word that Sahar preferred to use for Reiko's perennial scraps – and he had looked at them, and they had felt his gaze pass through them as though heated. He had judged them, though for what, Reiko could not say. There had been something sickeningly arrogant in his eyes.

He had considered himself their better, removed from such base concerns as bruises or blood dripping down the back of one's throat.

He was looking at them exactly like that again now. Reiko was almost relieved – almost, for they would not permit themselves to stoop to base, pathetic relief for something so small – when Asenath called for them, and gestured in the dark that they should move closer to her.

The lady was alabaster-porcelain in the dark. She glowed; in this dark, her eyes resembled nothing more than two black pits. She said, "lift her down, Morozova."

Her?

Oh.

They did so. Mutely. No need for exertion: she was a bird-framed woman. All hair. The princess had undone the shackles, so Reiko simply had to lift her from them and, at the lady's direction, lay her on the ground. The princess aimed her torch at the woman's face, riddled as it was with mutilated gashes, and Reiko – Reiko Morozova, scourge of the military, personal guard to the crown, the closest thing this kingdom came to wrath incarnate – had to look away, hands curling at their side as though they intended to fistfight their own worst – best? – impulses.

She managed to be pretty, even as she lay thus, dying.

Reiko Morozova and Akanksha Txori had started at the palace on the very same day, and had climbed the ranks at precisely the same pace. Akanksha had been three days younger than Reiko – born, like them, in midwinter – and a full six inches shorter, five foot nothing, all hair and limbs and smiles. Akanksha was as inclined towards the martial arts as Reiko was towards the discipline of housekeeping. She had taken notice of Reiko. They had taken notice of her.

She was still breathing, but it was laboured. For a split second, Reiko wondered if friendship would mean putting her out of her misery – for this, surely, was misery.

Priscus Alliette, over her, said, "a shame. I had thought her stronger than all that."

The princess said, with a tone that suggested her words were spoken more for Reiko's sake, "she was strong to bear it so."

"Today," Priscus sighed, "of all days."

They returned to the palace under the cover of what little night remained: truth be told, they were being optimistic to call this pale glow night, for morning had long-since-dawned and there was a sentry at the gate prepared to remind them of exactly that. The dawn suited Asenath Schreave: it painted her face all ethereal, as though she had been set aglow within. The heavenly princess was sometimes associated with ice, but that couldn't be further from the truth: her hair was an oil-slick, her eyes flint-silver.

Silas could see why she was their father's favourite. When darling Sena was around, there was a perpetual air of encroaching arson.

He was good enough to feign contrition; his sister was good enough to see through it. Evie and Eunbyeol had shrunk behind him, cowed by the princess more than they had ever been by the prospect of stealing and corrupting the crown prince. How strange, Silas thought, that they trusted him to protect them.

"I am not," Asenath said, pointedly. She was already dressed for the Fall Service in the chapel, her limbs swathed in trailing pink and purple lace as though she were wreathed in a sunset-made-fabric. "Saying anything."

He avoided identifying the contradiction, instead opting for a practicedly glib tone. "I was a few years overdue for a teenage rebellion."

She dabbed away a piece of dirt on his cheekbone. "I'll defend you against Mother."

"I couldn't cope without you, Sena."

Asenath's mouth twisted. "Yes," she said, ruefully.

That was fair.

She looked past him.

"I don't know whether to thank you or chide you. Shall you go and prepare for the Service?"

Silas' friends glanced at him – at first, he mistook the question in their eyes as a request for permission. That was how these things usually went, wasn't it? But no: they were asking if he would be alright, if they were abandoning him to the discipline for the three of them, if they should stay for him.

Stay?

"It's alright," he said. "I've delayed you long enough."

Evie smiled at him – he had never noticed before that she had one chipped tooth, so that her left canine looked particularly jagged – and Eunbyeol touched his sleeve gently as she moved past, a silent acknowledgement of something Silas didn't yet know. Evie limped and Eunbyeol put her arm around her, and they made their way up the driveway together slowly, speaking softly, laughing under their breath.

The real world had been exhausting: far too large and far too loud and far too busy, all noise and people and colour and overlapping lives. The real world had been exhilarating: large and loud and busy, all noise and people and colour and overlapping lives.

Asenath said, "I was worried about you."

"It is good of you to worry."

An exhausted exhale. "Si."

He had to sit down; being back within the walls had hit him all of a sudden, dizzying. Maybe that was the alcohol. He said, "it is good of you, Sen."

She crouched beside him, his persistent mirror image. For so long, she had been his only and perennial companion – was it hard for her to see him stray so? She still occupied the most central part of himself. He could not imagine Silas without Asenath. She had been equal parts sister and mother and tutor to him in their childhoods. He had only ever reflected some part of her light.

She said, "are they your preference?"

"Preferences?"

"The Selection."

He put his head in his hands.

Her hand, gentle on his arm.

"No," he said. His father's sins rattled in his skull as though shackled there. "I like them far too much for that."

Marriage would be one thing, one tolerable thing: though he had only known them a scant few weeks, he found it hard to believe that Evanne or Eunbyeol would ever make themselves unappealing as companions. He would be a good husband to her, whichever of them Asenath chose: she could have whatever freedoms she wanted. It wouldn't be like his parents' marriage. Companionship. Simply. Elementally.

"You know," Asenath said. "That you cannot afford to think that way."

"That's why you and Priscus are meant to make this decision."

"I want you happy."

"Killing those girls won't make me happy."

"They are strong, darling. They could take it."

She dabbed at him again – he had not even realised that he was bleeding from his mouth again, teeth stained scarlet.

"And if they couldn't?"

"You mustn't," Asenath said, "doubt those for whom you care. You do them a disservice by assuming weakness. By shirking your duty to decide."

Silas had knotted his hands over his knees; when he looked at his sister, it was through hooded eyes. "What's the rush?"

She looked down at her hands. "Akanksha is dying. It is Fall Day. If we initiate someone today, properly initiate them, then their chances..."

"What about the preparations? Months of them?"

"There are xrafstars in the kingdom," Asenath said. "Xrafstars that would do us harm. They nearly killed us all. Your friend's face tells the danger well enough."

Asenath was a canny judge of character: she had clearly determined that Evanne had been a victim of the stone druj, rather than a conspirator. The same question had stalked its way across Silas' skin for some part of the night, raising hairs wherever its footsteps landed. This, at last, was a relief, for he could trust Asenath's judgement far more confidently than he could trust his own.

"We need a Radiance," Asenath said. "A full Radiance. We cannot afford to wait."

"She'll hate me for it."

He wasn't even certain if he was talking about Evanne and Eunbyeol. Both, perhaps. For the first time, experiencing only a fraction of the passion his father had felt, he could perceive – crystalline – why Aviram had faltered in his duty so.

"How could they?" It was instinctual; Asenath reached over and ran her thumb over his cheekbone, smearing something black – ink or ichor, it could have been either – across his skin, staining the gold grey. The gesture made her ring flash silver, like there was a fallen star caught between her fingers. "Honestly," she said. Her voice echoed ceaselessly around the walls, reflecting back onto them time after time in smaller and paler reverberations. "What's not to love?"

Well, Jadwiga, it's come to this time when we are really so tired and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.

Kinga's thoughts were wild dogs tumbling against one another, snarling and snapping and howling endlessly, so that her fellow Warriors seemed to retreat from her vision and hearing and knowledge and she was occupied, fully, by the curse which had left her. Only an hour earlier, she had moved, unseen, to the bathroom, and peeled off the eyepatch that Kane had given her, and seen nothing at all – it was a blind eye, that dark horrible thing, which saw nothing and was seen, in turn, by nothing.

Now they were here, in the workshop of the atelier, and Ilja was producing plans, and Khalore was watching it all unfold with the dead-eyed gaze of the hanging man, and Inanna was alive with hope and sorrow and betrayal, unable to look at Eero, unable to keep her eyes from him.

This she had known on the lands of Siarka, as a child with a monster for a sister: curses faltered, come the Fall. Not so much, in Irij – not like this, not this total disapparition, but a weakening, like a stutter in an otherwise steady heartbeat. Jaga had fallen too. Matthias' visions had twisted and moved from him. The odds had stretched from Esteban's grip, and Decebal had collapsed a time or two, his arms stubbornly refusing to take a form firm enough to remain upright, and Avrova had thawed a little, just a little, enough so that everyone could see her, for once, as herself. Arsen had bled and Voski had burned and gravel had fallen from Klaara's wounds like so much falling confetti.

Dagmara had said the same when it came to the Fall: cursed, still, but weaker for it. They lost people on Fall Days, usually. The curses crept back, and fate crept forward. Kinga had expected little different for today, though she had wondered who would go. The thing that wore Pekka's face? Hyacinth, slipping from the World's grip in the only way she might know how? Those were the losses about which she could bear to think, without the shadow of Matthias' insanity creeping near and attractive.

What others?

Zoran's hand landed on her shoulder, and held fast. Was he trying to hold her together, or perhaps himself? Kinga looked at him. Ilja and Ina were scheming. They were in good hands now. Ilja knew that the royal family would be ensconced in the chapel for the Fall Service, and Ina knew that they would have moved the Radiance into another girl hidden away beneath the palace, and everyone assembled knew that it was, at last, the end. The end, dawning near. The end, close enough to touch.

Stretch out your hand, Ghju, I think I can reach if I try...

Ilja had a black eye from where he had fallen on the roof, catching Kinga; Ina had black scars running down her face from where she had fallen in the street, trying to fight off Zoran. She said, "Steadier now?"

"Like never before."

He was lying. The curse had retreated from him, like a wave on the beach, but the nascent insanity remained, soaked deeply into the sandy patterns of his mind. Matthias had been the same. Jaga's generation had grown to dread the Fall.

She put her hand over his, in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture. When had his bones grown so prominent, his skin so thin? Matthias, at least, had always had the decency not to look like he was dying, even when he was. She remembered asking him: when should I go? when ought I?

"Nearly there," Kinga said, and smiled. The mirth bubbled up in her chest, abrupt enough to count as violence. "Nearly there."