We blow out all the windows. Zadia lets me do most of those, since supposedly smashing things is good for when you're crying of relief for having not died today.

She thinks I'm crying about that. I'm not crying about that. If this sinkhole had a simple name, I'd call it the pain of my whole life spent unknowingly in the enemy's base. More complicated and I'd add ingredients of my birth, the pain of Kael's current physical scrapes tingling on my nerves, how I'm carrying Michael's madness around. I think I'm carrying that around. Am I carrying that around? I don't know, no, I don't want to deal with that, I'm crying because we didn't die today, and Zadia's not crying, so I blow out most of the windows.

With cleavers of mist, I slice glass from their frames--or I break them with my boot, or smash them with my knife hilt. Clouds of vapor catch spraying fragments and hurl them outside, shards clattering on the towersides, sparkling with sunlight. We circle the whole bulbous room and Zadia hammers out the final two with a broken chair leg, then hurls that out the window. We name the illuminated tower a courtyard, a place for growing things, a place for pondering courtyard mushrooms and the pavilioned sky.

We crane our heads to the breeze and fill ourselves up in the warm light, my tears plop to the painted dome, sliding to drip off the tower's underbelly like morning dew. Then Zadia and I, we use mist and knives and go running, screaming, slashing apart curtains, kicking the backs of wardrobes out, kneeling and carefully staking splinters of wood into the rug, knife-slashing open dress bodices. Zadia crushes necklaces and jewels against the walls, tiny orbs scatter in the frizzy rug. She stomps on tables and claws mist at the ceiling, raining plaster, tearing down curtain strings and sliding mechanisms. Thin rods and clasps disappear into the carpet.

I stab spears into the beds, then kick the mattresses off the frames and break the headboards. I jump on the beds' thin support beams, smashing them below my boots, I use mist to rip the legs apart. We shatter mirrors, grind face powder into the pillows, rip up runs of the rug and stab weapon hilts and torn socks into the gaps of cold, glowing stones.

We drag our ruinous mess into a huge pile of wood shards and glass, away from the doorway and Perseverance and our backpacks.

With fat mist cords, we drag corpses from the stairs past the dented door, so we don't have to go down the steps ourselves. We sprawl them in a loopy, leather path, two by two, winding around tattered curtain remnants, hurled bed stuffing, slashed up gowns and scattered black gemstones.

Climbing precariously, we build a throne from the smashed silver wardrobes, bedside tables, blackwood frames. We cover up the silver paint and paler woods with black curtains, this is for the night warriors, we tie the curtains in tangled knots and make a seat from a table, the legs broken off, the stained eating surface wobbling on chunks of rubble. Out of wardrobe doors and mirror frames we cobble stiff armrests and a broken backrest; on them, I smear white soap streaks in a silly drawing of the rising sun. Then I sprinkle splinters of glass over the dry soap with mist fingers. At the top of the destruction behind the throne, we prop a wide headboard, intricately carved with mushrooms and roots.

We haul Perseverance's breathing body onto the throne. He flops sideways, poking his arms on glass. We rest his boots on the heads of dead night warriors, the destination of the leather walkway. Zadia gives him a circlet crown out of a round shield that she smashed the center out of.

Then I stab him from the back and through the gut, high and off center, so blood spurts over his dark red tunic, darkening it further.

Zadia and I step away, backs to a window, breeze rustling our sweaty clothes. She plants her hands on her hips. "This is going to stink in a few days."

"Not all of them are dead."

The Empress might be one of the bodies sprawled over the debris-filled rug. We didn't check the faces. And there's still some bodies on the stairs.

"Most of them are."

My eyes water, and my stomach growls.

"I heard that," Zadia says.

"Let's go eat." I march to my bag, inches from the leather boot of a breathing night warrior. I nudge the shoe away, scooping up my blade and the remaining soap to shove them inside my backpack. But my fingers brush the pointed stones inside, and I freeze.

I can sense Kael. The cuts on their elbows. The breath in their lungs. Their hands wiggle under cool liquid, but my heartbeat rises, Kael Kael Kael and they go still. I breathe in. The pointed stone warms against my knuckles. They exhale, tracing river-smoothed pebbles. My finger pokes one of the stones. Kael picks a pebble up, smooth. My hand curls around the rock.

"Troy?" Zadia says.

I let go, pulling my hand out and tying the bag's flap shut, my heart skipping. "I think Kael's coming here," I say. "For the rocks."

Kneeling by her stuff, Zadia says nothing. She slowly pulls her backpack on, and stands.

"And there's still night warriors in the sleeping quarters," I say. "Possibly ones on the battlefront, too, who will come here."

"Well." She strides to the door. "I'm starving. And I need to fill my water containers. Then we're finding some nice, safe beds. We'll worry about them later."

"Okay." I get up and follow, winding down the staircase and the leftover bodies, then leading the way to the Glowing Castle's kitchens.

***

We eat sticky rice and milk, and fill our water containers from the barrels by the cooking fires. We squint through the tiny chimney windows into a courtyard, all the violet trees losing their leaves.

We leave the tables and cooking areas all intact, because we might need them. And we throw handfuls of salt on the raw meats in a vague effort to keep them from rotting; I suggest we throw them outside for the birds and insects but Zadia says we never know what food we might rely on.

I guide the way to the sleeping quarters, where One's old rooms are, and I drag one room's bed into another room (I don't bother trying to figure out who they used to belong to; they don't belong to anyone but us anymore) so we can sleep side by side. Mostly I don't sleep, since the stones are glowing, since the room is the exact dimensions as One's room even if it might not be truly One's--it's got the same tiny rug, similar tatty brown cloth hung in one of four corners, same dark quilts and thin sheets.

At pounding footsteps, we both sit up. But they aren't pounding for us.

"The Empress' tower!" an echo carries. "It's...it's...it's awful!"

"Huh," I say.

Zadia yawns. "Let's bar the door shut, and deal with them tomorrow." She smooshes her face into the pillow.

So I block the door with mist and curl under the quilts, hands around my backpack, boots and socks discarded on the stones. The yawning sinkhole gapes at me and I try filling it with...with something. I keep blinking, wiggling around to hold at bay the tears.

When I finally try and lie still, to sleep, Zadia bolts up, checks all the walls and the door, lies back down, then does it again mere minutes later. Then does it again minutes later. I wipe my nose, then my eyes. Neither of us sleep until tomorrow. Whatever that means anymore.

The thought that someone might try healing the dead night warriors, or try ruining our throne, gets me crawling out of bed, pretending like there's no sinkhole sucking at my ribs. Dispersing the mist barricade, I creak the door open. The corridor's empty. Zadia slips out of bed and follows, eyes heavy, and we both tiptoe barefoot, barehanded into the hall. Our gray clothing looks too dark with all the glowing stones.

"I guess this makes it tomorrow," I whisper, "since we're dealing with it now."

"We didn't sleep enough for it to be tomorrow," Zadia mutters. "Unless it's barely after midnight."

"Maybe." I shrug. "But how's anyone ever going to know?"

At a distant shout, we draw knives of mist, but no one appears. So we stop in the kitchens for breakfast of mushrooms and cold stew, slurped down in silence. Then we march to the central tower, ascend the stained stairs and rid our castle of night pests, rebuilding the leather path twice as wide and remaking the toppled throne, perching Perseverance and his now-bloody crown there again, under the rising soap sun.

We exit the tower, leaving the door slightly ajar behind us. I show Zadia the cellars, the maintained courtyards, the judgment hall and its imposing rows of black chairs, the Empress' undersized chair at its head. We take them all apart, build half a dozen tall thrones, construct a court worthy of the stupid Dawn kid's coming.

***

The End.