I open my eyes to darkness. The same bland, familiar darkness I always wake to.

Except, water gurgles somewhere close, and the air's cool on my skin--my bare skin.

Goosebumps erupt up my arms and I gasp.

"Whoa, that didn't sound good." Leather rasps across stone.

"M..." I cough.

The sounds rasp closer. "Wait"--relief trembles in his voice--"are you awake or muttering in your sleep?"

"Yes," I cough.

"Uh..."

"I'm awake." My hands scratch around me, finding flat rock. "Why..."

"Oh good," he sighs, and rustling float from my left. "You've been out three days. I gathered a bunch of wild mushrooms so I hope you like them."

I wiggle my legs. Pants rustle around them. But... "Why don't I have a shirt on?"

"I had to get that arrow out of you and clean the wound. In the dark. Your shirt was ripped and bloody so I just took it off, and used it for bandages."

I wiggle my arm and my shoulder sears with pain, but it does seem to have cloth wrapped around it. "You ripped up my shirt?"

"Hey, I didn't want to, but in a choice between you bleeding out or not having a shirt, I picked you not having a shirt." Scuffing noises come closer, then warm skin bumps my hand on my uninjured side. "Oh, hi there!" A hand touches my forearm, then slides up to my elbow, sending ice through my veins. "Okay, where's your hand?"

"Other way," I whisper. "Michael...you can't see anything?"

The hand goes back down my forearm. "That sounded like a question. Was that supposed to be a question?"

"Yes. No. It's just..."

Michael's hand finds mine. "Found it. Haha, I thought I bumped into your shoulder." Soft lumps press into my fingers. "Here are your wild mushrooms, please tell me you like them. You're probably starving so I bet that'll make them taste better."

"I'm glad you can't see in the dark."

"That's super random, okay. Are you delirious?"

"No."

"You know, I've tripped over you like three times because I'm blind in this cave--we're in a cave, so you know. And I have no idea if your wound is clean or not, plus I lost the mushrooms I gathered the first two times. If you stumble across them, let me know. I am not glad I can't see in the dark."

"That's not..." I close my eyes, not that it makes any difference. "Everybody in the castle can see perfectly fine in the dark. I can't."

The hands recede from my palm, but leave the food in my grasp. "Oh so this is a loneliness thing. Alright." He pauses. "Have you tried the mushrooms yet?"

My hand hasn't moved. "I also can't smell or taste anything."

"Wow," Michael says. "I was...not expecting that."

I lift my hand. At least two mushrooms bounce to the floor. But I stuff my palm to my mouth, and chew whatever tough, stringy things Michael's found. My stomach growls.

"I heard that."

"Niiffh," I say. I swallow. "They taste delicious."

Michael snorts. "You just said you can't smell or taste anything. Were you serious about that? Or are you actually delirious?"

"I'm serious. And yes, they taste delicious. Everything tastes delicious. Whatever delicious means. What does it mean?"

"Oof." His tongue clicks. It nearly blends into the babbling water. "Delicious means...good? It tastes good?"

"And what does that mean?" I quest at my shoulder injury with my magic, but my stomach growls again and I give up. The wound aches with quiet pain.

"Well, if tastes were colors...delicious would be your favorite color."

"Hmm," I say. I poke his knee with my hand. "Can I have more food?"

"Oh right of course." More mushrooms, these ones warm--probably from sitting in his hands--press into my wrist, then fumble to my palm. "I can also get you water, but while you were unconscious I did get you to swallow some. But again, it was dark, so I don't know how much. So you may or may not be thirsty. Wait. Do you get thirsty?"

I chew, and swallow. "Why would I not get thirsty?"

"Because...you can't taste?"

"That has nothing to do with getting thirsty."

"Huh."

"More food please."

Mushrooms squish into my hand. "And also," he says, "I did not wash your pants when you soiled yourself. I just stuck you in the water until my arms got sore and called that good. You haven't pooped in three days. Which I know, because I would have smelled it. Thank goodness."

My face heats up. "Yeah." I feed my face. "But my pants don't feel wet." My face heats up more.

"I just barely changed you into yesterday's pants."

The heat in my face spreads to my neck. "Thanks?"

"Don't worry, it was dark, and...I'm going to change the topic now. Good news--we are still alive! No one's found my secret hiding cave in the woods."

I poke his knee. He hands me more mushrooms, and something that I think is a leaf. I stuff them into my mouth and chew crunchily.

"And more good news, I think your wound is healing, so we can leave soon. Plus you're awake! Yay! We can put some distance between us and the people chasing you."

I crunch through leafy stuff.

"So...any plans on where to go now that...you know, you've been chased out of the literal only home you know and have been nearly killed by the people who more or less raised you?"

The leafy stuff's hard to swallow. Pretty sure it makes a loud gulp. But I say nothing.

"Sorry," he says.

I want to roll toward the brook and drown my heartbeat under the babbling water. "It's fine," I say.

"Yeah I don't think it is."

"Whatever."

"Do you want to sit up? I can help..." Leather scuffs the stone, and I reach my hand sideways but his knee's no longer there.

"Do you have more food?"

He stops. "You literally ate all of it. And there was a whole armload there."

"I did?"

"Yes."

"Okay." Slowly, I quest my skin magic out to my bandaged shoulder. And my stomach doesn't growl to distract me this time.

The wound is spiky with infection, resistant, but I burn that away. Then I stitch the skin together, the muscle, make whole the chipped collarbone.

I investigate my nose. Three days have reduced the swelling somewhat, so it takes only moderate effort to mend the skin smooth. I sit up.

"One?" Michael asks. "I can hear you moving around. Do you need help?"

"No. I just healed it."

"You just..." His disbelief almost makes me smirk. "One, you've barely seen sunlight fro three days. Also, hold on, healing?"

I scoot toward the sound of water, and my feet splash into cold liquid. "Yeah."

"I need to know how to do that. Both things. I can barely do magic after a single night, much less after three days in a dark cave. How do you heal yourself? That's...no one does that."

"Every one of the healers does that." My feet slip into the cold water; its ice touch shivers up my ankles.

Michael scuttles closer, his silky clothing bumping my bare shoulder. "Sorry." He scoots so we're not touching. "I want to hear about this."

I frown. "The three nights thing? Or--"

"The healers. The night warriors have soldiers that heal themselves? Can they all do that?"

I open my mouth, not entirely sure what he's asking.

Leather thumps the ground, then two quiet splashes hit the water. "One?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know how to answer that." My heels slowly go numb, and I sink my feet deeper in the water, until the chill's soaking my thick pants and the back of my calves.

"I feel like it's pretty simple. Can all the soldiers heal themselves?"

"The soldiers aren't healers. So no, none of the soldiers heal themselves."

"Wow. You have already lost me. Also this water's cold. Why are we sticking our feet in here?" Two splashes, then tiny plips of water tap the stone. It's unnatural, I realize, this flat stone floor with the brook cutting through it.

"It's not that complicated," I say. "There's soldiers, then there's healers, then there's the Empress' household, and the castle defenders--which includes the kitchen staff and cleaners, and animal tenders, and the wall guards, and the Empress' guard. Soldiers don't heal."

Michael's silent.

"Are you still lost?"

"No, not lost. Just, processing. They've got a whole caste system?"

"It's not a caste system. No one's any higher or lower. Everyone's assignment is where they can best help everyone succeed."

"They have an Empress."

"Except that."

"And it's pre-determined by magical ability, isn't it?"

"So what?"

"And you're telling me no one in that place ever esteems soldiers above the floor cleaners? They all treat the...kitchen staff people just as kindly as the brave warriors?" He snorts, and the sound echoes off the cave ceiling. "It's a caste system."

"Like you're any better." I push my legs deeper in the ice water, and my half-numbed feet find the rocky bottom. I stand up. "You're waiting for some Dawn person to save you all."

"At least we give people options about what jobs they might want so they don't hate what they do every day."

"No one hates their jobs--"

"It's weird that you're defending them," Michael says, not even angrily, or loudly. I take a step forward in the water, the current tugging at my knees. "They tried killing you."

I wade across the brook, finding the other bank; a vertical stone wall up to my thighs. "Was this cave man-made?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm pretty sure this forest hides the ruins of an old town. This is the upper floor or something. Or used to be, until the forest ground started rising around it, and now it's more like the slightly-raised-above-the-ground floor. And I think the stream took over what used to be a stairway. I shone some light in here the first time I found it and that's what seemed like was going on. I broke a banister by accident."

I pull myself from the water onto the bank opposite Michael, the bare stone under my hands cold. "An old town? Why's the upper floor made of stone? I thought ancient people made everything out of wood."

"Your guess is as good as mine. I didn't grow up here."

"So why's there a waterfall outside if the brook is in a stairwell? Shouldn't the water flow down into a lower hallway? Or to a doorway?"

"Because, I don't know, maybe the bottom of the stairs got blocked so the water found another--wait. How'd you know there's a waterfall outside?"

"I saw it. I dreamt about it." I crawl across the floor, fingers finding only dust.

"You dreamt about it," he says.

"Have you seen around this whole cave?"

"One," he hisses. "Please stop exploring. You were unconscious not that long ago. And it's night out."

I stop. Not that far behind me, the brook water babbles. "I just got curious. And I'm still hungry."

"Well, I never went across the brook with an armload of mushrooms, so good luck finding anything to eat. Unless there's a rodent you want to consume raw."

I sigh. "You never wanted to see if this place has any old secrets?"

"It...literally doesn't. It's tiny. One, I've spent three days here with you, and a whole night before that, and I have crossed that brook multiple times. But I don't want to get wet right now, so could you come back over here? It's night, and who knows if there's any Night Warriors out searching for us. We should try to be quieter."

"Fine," I whisper, and turn around, crawling back to the water.

"What do the Night Warriors do with prisoners?" he says, softly.

I sink my feet into the brook. "I don't think we have prisoners."

"So they just kill everyone they take captive? Wow, so much for being righteous and better than us."

"Okay, I don't really know if we have prisoners. I've never watched the soldiers come back from the battlefront." I slosh across the stream, climbing back to stone warmed by where I sat before. My shoulder bumps Michael, but he doesn't move. I think he's kneeling.

"Are you saying you've never even been to the battlefront?"

"Yeah?" I pull my wet feet from the water and kneel on them. My knuckles poke Michael's knee, the fabric of his gown or shorts only half covering it.

His knee shifts away from my touch. "So you have no idea what's even going on? How is that even possible?"

"I know what's going on." I huddle over the warm circle of stone. "I healed injured soldiers basically every night. I know people who didn't come back. The soldiers have their stories that I hear in the kitchens all the time."

"But you've never seen it."

"Have you seen it?"

"You know"--cloth rubs across the ground, then his hand brushes over my arm--"you really like to dodge questions."

I nibble my lip. "What?"

"I keep asking you questions. Like the fact you dreamt about the cave opening. You can dream about stuff like that? And how in the whole past decade have you never seen the battlefield?"

I cross my arms. They're cold on my stomach. "I don't like giving up secrets."

He snorts. "I saved your life. I pulled an arrow out of your shoulder, and made you drink water so you didn't die, and I held you in the stream when you peed. Multiple times a day. Do you think I'm going to make fun of you now or something?"

"Fine." My fingernails bite into my biceps. "I've never seen the battlefield because I'm a healer. I was training to be a field medic, but that...stopped."

"So you have literally lived in the castle your whole life."

"No. I was born in the Lost Fortress."

"The...oh."

"The one you captured."

"Huh. Is that why you're still talking like you're a Night Warrior? Why you keep defending them?"

"No."

"I think it is. You're mad at us for stealing the place you were born."

I snort.

"Well, you could go back there. Now. I live there. I can vouch for you and you can show them your light magic."

He could... I could... A yawning want opens under my ribs and it's suddenly hard to breathe. This whole time we were fighting to take it back and now I could just go there. I could just stroll through their gates and...and join the people who took my birthplace from me.

The birthplace I have no memory of. But that's not the point. This war to take it back has defined my whole life, it's everything I did, everything I trained for. We were supposed to take the Lost Fortress back, to protect the rest of our lands. I was supposed to.

Yet the people I lived with, ate next to, slept beside for over a decade, the people who I healed so they could fight again--they want to kill me. They tried to kill me.

And now I can waltz into the Lost Fortress whenever I feel like it.

"Yes," I say. "Let's go there."

Thanks for sending me home, night pests.

"Uh, please?" Michael says.

"What?"

"Please, can we go to the fort? You can't just boss me around."

I suck in a breath. "I want to go there. Will you please take me?"

Michael's lips smack, and he's silent for a hot breath. "Okay, that sounded super desperate." He giggles. "Wow, you are a surprising person."

I scrunch up my eyebrows. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. Sure, I'll gladly take you to the fort. And last question--you dreamt about the cave?"

I sigh, arms falling to my knees. "After you did the light explosion thing, I saw...you carrying me here. But from above. Like in the sky."

"Huh," he says. "That's neat." Then he scoots away. "Well I'm going to try and sleep. Wake me when dawn comes around, so I can take you to the fort. Which is very much not Lost." His clothes rasp over the floor. "Good night."

***

Michael sleeping gives me lots of time to think. I have no idea what time of the night it is, and my desire to go exploring around the cave or go looking for the waterfall utterly vanished after Michael mentioned there's people likely in the forest searching for us, hunting for our tracks. And my intrigue at whatever old town used to occupy this forest also completely vanished, without Michael pestering me with questions of his own that I didn't want to answer.

So I sit, rocking back and forth beside the babbling stream.

I think, for maybe a minute, about the Lost Fortress. What it looks like. If I'll feel any sort of connection to the bricks and corridors there, where I spent the first half-ish year of my life.

I think, for a few seconds, about Brevity shouting right before Michael's light explosion. She's dead now. Or if that wasn't really her I heard, someone else is dead now. Turns out I don't really care.

Then I don't want to think about anything else, so I sit, bored out of my mind, until my stomach growls and gets me crawling around the cave searching for the stashes of mushrooms that Michael lost, avoiding the stream and the sound of Michael's slow breathing a few steps from it.

I stumble into a backpack, but don't search inside--it's probably got Michael's spare clothes, which he chose not to rip up in place of my shirt to bandage my shoulder. Though he must've loaned me these fuzzy dry pants, that are much more comfortable than the scratchy healer's uniform I was wearing, so maybe I'll forgive him for ripping up my shirt.

My bloodstained shirt. From Regalia punching my nose. Maybe I'm glad he ripped it up, the memory of that warm spurt of liquid might still cling to me if he hadn't, I shudder at that look in her eyes before the aura of shadow overtook her face and she attacked me.

I shove her from my mind, crawl through a pile of dust, but her face has summoned Perseverance's, his two chipped bottom teeth. The ghost of his hand curls tightly around my bandaged shoulder, his voice echoes with the gurgling water, his lurking shape looms over my neck.

The top of my head bumps the cave wall. I carefully stand, discover the wall is actually a slanted peak, and creep backward while tracing the flat surface angling above my head. A few paces from Michael's breathing, my outstretched hands lose to the height of the ceiling.

This cave literally is the upper floor of a house, with a triangular roof. Yet, in my dream, Michael shoved us into a round cave opening, in the side of a round hilltop. I squint, up into the dark, and wonder how much dirt must cover the rooftop to turn this house into a round hill.

Then my stomach growls and I scoot forward, until my fingers can trace back down to the edge of the cave/room. Then I crawl along the perimeter. At the first corner, there are no piles of picked mushrooms. Same with the next. At the sheer stream bank, I've still found zero piles of picked mushrooms. So I lean my head forward until water tugs at my hair, and stare into where the water's coming from. It's pitch black though. Maybe this "hill" is large enough to contain multiple old, ruined houses inside it, like a secret underground village, and we just have to follow the brook upstream to find them.

But, the darkness gives no clues, and tiny, cold droplets splash my forehead and cheeks. So I sit back up, pushing my wet hair ends away from my forehead so the ice water trickles down the back of my scalp instead of down my face.

I...know how to ruin Perseverance.

I shiver with the liquid trickling down my neck.

By extension, I can ruin Regalia.

Perseverance told me, he admitted it himself that he had a crush on Humility when they were younger. That towering hunk of a soldier who always stuck his longbow in the sword cabinet.

What are the chances Perseverance still has some lingering, unfulfilled crush on Humility?

I can ruin them.

...Somehow.

I wipe water off the back of my neck and rub at my shoulder blades. A brilliant idea, but how does one get Perseverance to go after Humility while running from the castle?

I have the key to ruin them both, expose Regalia's father for the liar he actually is. But I have no way to turn the key.

I crawl back towards Michael and sprawl at his side, facing the rasping sounds of his breath. In. Out. Air brushes the tips of my hair.

I wait for dawn, fantasizing about Perseverance throwing himself at Humility in the middle of sword practice. Maybe, Perseverance's sword will shatter Humility's longbow, and Humility will punch him, but Perseverance won't fight back because he's subconsciously infatuated. Or maybe Humility accidentally shoots Perseverance through, and before Perseverance dies, they confess their secret love for each other. Or maybe, they both go to the battlefront for the same week, and get taken captive by the Sun Slaves--Waiters on the Dawn--and have to work together to escape, falling in love in the process.

Maybe, I can ask whoever's in charge of the Lost Fortress to specifically capture Perseverance and Humility just to make that happen.

Michael's breath tickles my forehead and I shake off the fantasies. Do the Waiters on the Dawn even take prisoners? Michael was talking like he thought the Night Warriors did, since they were "righteous." So maybe the Waiters on the Dawn don't. And even if they did, why would they let Perseverance and Humility escape again, just in the hopes of them falling in love and ruining both their families? Them dying would ruin their families. Just, not in the same way--not in a faith-shaking, betrayal sort of way.

Maybe, I can ask Michael to sneak into the castle and plant love letters.

I smirk at the vision of him running through the dark corridors with creamy white letters, following my directions to each of their rooms. How absurd that would be, his amber eyes and pale gown trying to blend in with those stones and silver soldiers.