I know these updates are taking a while. It's not because I'm not writing. It's because I'm rewriting. A lot. This whole exchange is super important and I want to get it right. Thank you for waiting, people.

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            "O'otani," Sholu breathes into my hair, his calloused hand resting at the nape of my neck. Strands of my silvery blond hair twine around his fingers as he gently runs them through my messy waves. He says my name like it's a question he's waiting for me to answer. "O'otani."

So I do, wrapping my arms around him tighter in silent reply. Fuck, he's warm. Solid. I feel as if the slightest breeze could blow me over. I'm like one of the streamers of paper dolls that Alya and I used to cut out as girls. But maybe I'm not even that; maybe I'm just the memory of a memory, or a slant of light.

Maybe... maybe I'm nothing at all.

But Sholu- he's the something to my nothing, the brightness to my total eclipse. It's an unholy fire that burns in his veins, it's hellfire, but it's warm and it's bright. And I'm cold to my very marrow. When you're freezing, you'll share anyone's body heat. That's all this is, I tell myself. A way to keep myself alive as everything around me turns to ice and shatters. It doesn't mean anything. I won't let it mean anything.

I lean into him, tucking my head under his chin. My lips brush lightly against his chest and he stiffens, in shock, I think. Like he expected me to shove him away. Maybe even crack the empty Drakara bottle on the side table and use the shards to sever his carotid artery.

He's waiting for some kind of killing blow, but I'm so tired of killing. Of dying. Our hateful dance used to give me energy, to stir my blood to boiling and tether me to the goal of ending him, but tonight I just want to feel alive again. Whole.

He's always been so fucking bright. A false sun with the world wrapped around his finger. Silken words and cold, calculating grey eyes. The kind of intense charisma that makes people blind and deaf and dumb. He practically shimmers with life. With power, and I-

I'm still shaking. My chin trembles against his chest like a metronome keeping time.

"You're still shaking, love," he says, speaking my thoughts aloud.
"As always, your insight astounds me," I snap harshly, wrapping my arms around his back. Letting my hands press lightly against the open wounds I've created there. He winces, and I smile. But it's a fleeting joy, short lived and fragile. And it does little to quell my rage or loosen the tightness in my chest. Hurting him cannot change the past, and that is part of why I'm shaking.

I don't know how to explain it. I've felt their absence like a knife in my side, digging a little deeper every day. They've haunted me, their screams following me inside fevered dreams. Their still, slack faces are permanently etched on the inside of my eyelids, there every time I blink. They've been taken from me, and I feel it acutely, but this is a different kind of loss entirely.

A startled, incredulous laugh pulls itself free from my mouth as I realize why. Focusing so acutely on destroying Sholu, giving myself over to revenge... it was a way to keep them close to me. Maybe part of me even believed that hurting him would change the past.

That's gone now. No goal, no relief. That tether connecting us cut.

When it hurt the most, I'd remember the good things. Shira's smile. The desert lilies blooming brilliant orange beneath the cerulean sky. My mother's hands as she brushed my hair. Nather sitting me on his lap and telling me wild stories that taught me what it was to dream.

Now, when I think of my happy memories of my mother, I see a liar. A traitor. A woman who wanted her daughter in power so badly she'd have her own half-sister and nephew killed.

When I think of Nather, I think of the time she pulled me rudely from his lap, her face panic-stricken in a way I didn't understand until very recently.

As the Izsaiki, I'm meant to protect both Shira and our family's legacy. That legacy has been on fire for a long time, and tonight it finally crumpled to grey ash.

I could fill volumes with all the things they didn't tell me.

When I think of my family, I wonder if my aunts and uncles knew what was happening and failed to stop it. I want to believe they didn't, want it so badly, but I- I can't. Not in a family as tightly woven as our own, living in the same palace day in and day out. Someone had to know.

Then I wonder if Sholu was telling the truth when he said Mirana poisioned Sorzsa. If maybe she found out what he'd done to his own daughters and, driven forward by the scars he'd inflicted upon her, stirred something tasteless and fatal into his drink before dinner.

Then I think of Amsol Kalth, the woman who gave Shira such a fair face. Nather told me once that he had her delicate features and milky skin, her long fingers and thick lashes. I picture her pacing the halls of the palace, a prisoner. I hear them sneering at her, saying she used her looks to snare Sorzsa when she only agreed to marry him because he threatened her family. He had her husband killed in a fit of jealousy, so she knew he wasn't bluffing.

I think of a young Somitu laughing and playing while assassins slinked to her door, sent by the half-brother who was terrified she'd inherit in his stead. I think of her running for her life.

I wonder if anyone else was involved in the murderous plot. Until recently I would have said no, but if my own mother planned Somitu and Shira's murder, anything is possible.

I thought disagreements over how to handle the Vasayaste were the fault line we cracked along. But it went so, so much deeper than that.

How did I not know?

Why- why do the good memories have to be so tangled up in the bad, the light woven through with strands of immutable black? Why didn't I see it before? Why- just why-

"Let me go," I whisper so quietly it's barely audible. Sholu doesn't answer; he knows that he's not the one I'm speaking to. "Let me goddess-damned go," I say a little louder, voice halfway to a snarl. There's something about it, though, that sounds like a frightened child. I hate that. I hate a lot of things. Him, myself, maybe even my family. This whole broken world, from the rainforests of Suumaral to the deserts of Shikkah to the ice cliffs of Imgyonstarn. If I could bring it all down, make it collapse like I am- make it bleed like I am, like Sholu's back-

"They're not the ones holding on, little tiger girl," he murmurs, drawing back slightly so I'm looking in his eyes. They're the gleaming grey of a sword, but I don't mind. I've always been drawn to sharp objects. I used to be one myself.

"I know," I admit softly. "What I don't know is how to let them go. It's eating me alive. I'm eating me alive." My voice takes on a slightly frantic quality. "I keep waiting to swallow myself whole, but I just keep going around in tighter and tighter circles. I'm so fucking dizzy, but I- I can't stop. And I can't keep going on like this. I'm a candle burning at both ends."

"You're a wildfire," he whispers, thumb brushing softly against my cheek. The tender touch burns me, as if his words have invoked the very flame he speaks of.

"And you're the world as it burns," I sneer, but I don't let him go. I'm not sure if I could stand on my own. I'm not sure I could bare to lose his vital heat, pressing so firmly against me, a steadying force as the maelstrom of my emotions rips through me. "You're an arsonist and a traitor and-"

"And the only one who has actually told you the truth."

"Don't speak of that as if it's a mercy," I return. My hands pull him closer, pressing hard against the flayed skin of his back. He groans in pain, but doesn't pull away. "Right now I'm holding you close, Sholu, but my nails are raking across your broken back. Sometimes it's the softest touches that hurt the most."

"Brutality suits you," he says softly, actually leaning into my touch, as painful as it must be.

"I almost forgot," I tell him "that you're fucking crazy."

"No, you didn't," he says simply. "And if I'm crazy, what does that make you?"

"I've told you before," I reply just as simply. "Damned."

He chuffs. "Why do you insist on carving yourself up inside?"

"Because I did this," I breathe back, my voice a hoarse whisper. "I betrayed my bloodbound and my dizsa, and my family was- they were all killed."

"No," he says softly, lifting my chin so I meet his eyes. I hadn't realized I'd looked away; I suppose I didn't want to see my own shame reflected in his gaze. What I see there, though, isn't shame, or reproach. It's not judgement, nor desire, not exactly. It's... gentle. Coaxing, even. "I did this, O'otani. You were not complicit. You are only guilty of trusting your own mother's judgement."

"If I stood before Amshira," I reply, "and told him what I had done, then told him that I wasn't at fault because I was only trusting my mother's judgment, that I never meant any real harm, that I intended to serve his best interests always, how do you think he'd react?" I grimace. "He'd spit on me, Sholu. And he'd be right to do so. I broke the oldest kind of vow, and it doesn't matter that I did it thinking I was protecting him. It broke something inside of me, and I don't know how to set it right."

His eyes are pained, his touch on my chin firmer, becoming his hands cradling my face. I'm shaking again, I realize. I can't believe I just said that out loud, and to him, of all people. But I already feel lighter, the pressure pressing down on me lessening by degrees. Maybe he's the only person I could say all of this to, because he's been here the whole time watching this cataclysm unfold. Watching me burn.

Hell, he lit the match.

"If you stood before your beloved prince," he says, "he should fall to his knees and kiss your feet in thanks for saving his life. You sacrificed so much for him, and you never questioned whether he was worth such pain. He's goddess-damned lucky to have someone so loyal to him, so certain of her affection that she'd marry her enemy to keep his head on his shoulders. And you did it without even the satisfaction of him knowing what you'd sacrificed. He should fall to his knees and beg forgiveness for leaving you alone that night and every night after, the rest of it be damned."

"The rest of it is us, Sholu," I tell him, my voice reedy and haunted "and we already are."

"Why can't we just be us for the rest of it instead?" he asks me, hand running through my silvery hair. "You and me and the rest of our lives. It could be a more honest paradise than the Citadel."

My laugh is disbelieving and brittle with pain. "You're made of lies, Mesviraste, even if you've told me the truth. And you think pretty highly of yourself, implying you're a substitute for the Citadel Eternal."

"All people aren't the same, so why is paradise? What do you or I want with a walled city filled with endless, mind-numbing peace? Would you be happy?" He smiles down at me. "I think you'd jump off the Citadel walls and hit the sand running. Adventures to have, wars to wage, places to see, perhaps even men to kill. They speak of walking as the ultimate punishment, of wind and sand scouring skin and burning feet, but what of running hand in hand across the dunes laughing? What of all of the places we might walk to, and all the things we might see along the way?"

"It is separation from Zsavina," I say. "It means never going home."

His expression softens. "You are your own home, O'otani. Wherever you go."

My laugh is sudden and chaotic. "If I'm a home, I've got holes in my walls and cracks in my foundation. My windows have no panes, my doors no knobs or locks."

"Holes in walls can be patched," he tells me gently, "and foundations repaired." I wish his eyes would harden, turn back to their usual grey steel instead of this... this melting silver. Flashes of understanding that he can't possibly possess taunt me from their subterranean depths. When you're drowning, I think again, you'll let anyone pull you to shore. But what if I'm drowning in him?

"As for the windows, they'll let the light in. Gentle breezes will fill the stagnant air with the scent of wildflowers. And I'm guessing you've had enough of locks after spending twenty two-years confined to this palace and then a month alone in your room."

"The walls are graffitied with slurs and accusations, and every mirror is cracked."

"Then see yourself reflected in pools of rippling water or silver plates. Paint over those insults and curses," he urges, then smiles. "Or, knowing you, write worse ones on top of them until they're completely illegible. I'm sure it won't be hard, darling; you're more venomous than an asp."

I laugh bleakly.

"What's so funny?" he asks.

"I was just thinking that somewhere along the way, my venom became my poison. I'm not immune."

"It is not your poison," he says softly. "I told you, we're not the beasts. We're their heirs."

"Maybe we're both. Heirs and beasts. Venom and poison." Enemies and... and something else entirely.

"Maybe," he admits. His hand rises to the nape of my neck almost absentmindedly. I shudder as his fingers play across the curve of my collarbone.

"Regardless, I deserved every bit of what you gave me. What I did was unforgivable, though I hope you'll forgive me anyways."

I look up at him, confusion and maybe even fear in my eyes. "Why haven't you ever said that to me before now?"

He shrugs. "Would you have listened if I did?"

I sigh. "No, I wouldn't have."

And now that I am, what does that make me? Reasonable or weak, realistic or relenting, sagacious or blind? Whatever this gambit was, I realize, I've lost. I lost the moment he handed me that whip.

Maybe it wasn't just me who lost, but us. I thought my family was both human and divine, but now that seems laughable. We're no more holy than the sand beneath our feet. Perhaps less so; the sand was never complicit in Sorzsa's abuses, Kyoro's viciousness, or Somitu's blatant manipulation.

"What are you thinking?" he asks. The tingle of his fingers brushing against the nape of my neck makes me shudder. He sees it, too. I can tell. He pauses, something bright and strange glowing back at me from those unholy eyes.

Holy and unholy. Destroyer and savior. The one who pushed me into the deep water and cut the ties that would allow me to resist its currents and the one now keeping me from drowning. I hate him for it, hate him with all the depth and intensity of those deep waters, but I won't cast him away. Not now, not when he's the only thing that isn't sinking.

Destroy the world enough, I think, and perhaps you become the world. Just because there's nothing left to defy you.

"There's me." I don't realize I've said it out loud until Sholu tilts his head and says "and there's me."

But who are you really, O'otani Koritzu? Are you any more solid than his hands gripping your waist, promising at least the illusion of stability?

Does it matter if you stop fighting, just for a single moment, when the entire world already thinks you've capitulated? More than that. Gleefully orchestrated the atrocities alongside him?

Make me real again, I want to say. Give back what you took. Give back that certainty, even if it was always a lie- even if we were never chosen- even if the rot came from within as well as without...

"Tell me more," I whisper in a softly breaking voice. Maybe we're breaking each other. I don't even care anymore; I like the weight of his hand on the back of my neck, the snare of his arm around my waist, the sharp tickle of breath as he steps closer to me, sharing my air...

A traitor in name, in action, and now even my body begins to defy me. I suppose this is its own kind of death.

You weak girl, a voice in my head chides. It sounds halfway between my own voice and aunt Jinn's. You fear the cold and dark waters so much that you yield to this man. You wrap your body around him because you cannot stand on your own, but that is no crime. The crime is in the wrapping of your spirit with it, propping yourself up with this... this poison. Venom and poison, child, are one and the same. Be careful you don't choke on them.

You made me weak, I shout back internally. You taught me my family was infallible, our grace unending, our strength unyielding, our nobility stamped upon our blood like a promise. You told that lie over and over again, like speaking it could make it true. In doing so, though, you just made a lie out of me. So don't you dare blame me for this. Don't you talk down to me from your place in that cloudless Citadel, Jinnra. If I am choking on poison, it is poison you all poured into my outstretched glass. How could I be expected to distrust what you offered me?

Sholu might be the undertow, but if there weren't depths of secrets lurking beneath me, there'd be nowhere for his current to pull me. No danger of sinking beneath the weight of all of this water. No need to save myself by clinging to the very thing pulling me under.

This is your fault. I am your creature.

"Tell me more," I repeat hoarsely. "About what it could be. Polished silver and moonlit pools and the scent of wildflowers. Convince me it's possible for me to climb this world like a ladder instead of sinking under the weight of all that we've done. Convince me this won't destroy me. Take the sting out of my venom, because it's poisoning me and I don't- I can't find my way out. I've tried, Sholu. I've tried but I-"

"Hush," he says softly, brushing his fingertips over my lips to still them. I wonder when I stopped flinching under his touch. "Let me speak."

"Like I could stop you if I wanted to," I mutter, trying to salvage some of my shredded pride. He ignores my comment, like he understands and accepts the deep need driving me to make it. As if my bitterness is not a threat to him because I'm already leaning into him further, letting him support a little more of my weight.

"Do you want me to?" he asks, gentle voice belied by his blazing eyes. The eyes of a victor. "Because if you do, I will. I'll stop all of this and leave you be."

I thought him gracious enough to allow my comment to pass unheeded. I was wrong. I've been wrong about so many things. His eyes almost glow as they burn into mine, bright and hard as diamonds. Tell me you want me, they demand. Tell me you need me, pride be damned. Tell me the truth as I did for you.

"I asked you to tell me, didn't I?" My reply was meant to come out bitingly sarcastic; instead, it sounds like a confession. I asked you to help me. I let you hold me up. But please, I want to tell my family's ghosts, my goddess, my own reflection, before you judge me, know that it was a matter of survival. I'm cracking down my center; my body is a fault line instead of flesh. Please, before you judge me, see my pain, my fear, see how hard I tried to resist ending up here- see that I am a warrior, even if I am also a weak, whimpering thing.

"You did," he says, as if that's answer enough. "And I will, as soon as you close your eyes."

TO BE CONTINUED

The next chapter is the end of part 3. I'm genuinely shocked I got this far into the story. It has taken forever, but it's basically moving into the final act. BUCKLE UP it's gonna get fucking wild.