“We can’t eat spirits out of their shrines.” The idea unsettled her, and the edges of the dream wavered.

  “Why?”

  “Those are their houses. It’s…” Raliel paused. “It’s rude.”

  Moon tilted Osian’s head to the side. It looked inhuman despite the facade, because its expression was so flat and innocent. “I don’t care.”

  “I do.”

  “When will we get rid of him?” Moon’s frown pulled Osian’s face into a pout. It rubbed its thumbs along the back of her hands. “When we are alone we can do so much better. Move faster. We could already be at the First Mountain!”

  Raliel pressed her lips together.

  “I could eat him, you know. Overnight. Just lean in close, and I’ll drink up his aether.”

  “Moon,” she snapped. “No killing people—absolutely not. If you do, I will destroy our amulet and you’ll be snapped back to the palace forever.”

  “You promised,” the demon hissed. “You promised to change the bargain, to help me fly again.”

  “And I will, Moon. But not if you kill anyone.” Raliel felt the air growing even colder and ice crawling down her cheeks like frozen webs of tears.

  Moon lowered Osian’s lovely lashes again, then bowed to her. “Keep your promise, Raliel,” it murmured dangerously.

  “You keep yours,” she threatened in turn.

  Then she woke up with a gasp, staring up at the black night sky.

  FOUR

  THE GREAT DEMON OF the palace did not have a plan.

  It just wanted so much.

  Wanting was akin to hunger, and demons were always a little hungry. Being dead spirits without their own core of aether, they constantly required a source. Most demons could only survive with a permanent spring of constant aether—a house. But great demons managed to make their own connection to aether, so all they had to do was eat.

  The great demon of the palace did have its own connection, but that connection was the palace-amulet binding it to the palace and the imperial family (and more loosely to Raliel). Moving so far away drew its connection taut and tenuous, and dangerous, and it was difficult for it to feed without drawing aether straight through Raliel, which in turn exhausted her. Though it wanted so much, it did not want to hurt her. Only because she was its best link to the world. Its only chance at freedom. If it broke the amulet accidentally, there was no telling what would happen to it. Though it did not remember its death and birth, it vaguely recalled a world-ending hurricane, wild hunger, and desperation that dwindled smaller and smaller toward total annihilation. It did not want to find itself unhoused and similarly desperate again.

  It wanted to get to The Scale and demand the old sorcerer tell it how to break from the amulet. (That had been Raliel’s idea, that they ask the old sorcerer. She’d suggested Night Shine and the sorceress Shadows at the Fifth Mountain first, but Moon refused to speak to that terrible little demon. Night Shine had tricked it for years, eaten its aether-food, seduced away its prince, disobeyed it in its own house! It might ask a different great demon, if such a creature existed, but not Night Shine!) It wanted to make its own house with its own sorcerer, sink into a mountain or ancient king tree or vast lake or, even better, the cliffs at the beach or an entire island—it certainly fantasized about being an entire island. It wanted to reach out with teeth of aether and chew into the whole world, sucking power into itself, infusing its being with light. It wanted to stretch its wings and fly. Take Raliel with it, up into the clouds, out over the ocean, listen to her scream like it was a roar.

  But in order to do all of that—any of that—they needed to ditch Osian Redpop, who held them back.

  If Raliel would only leave the little blue warrior behind, the great demon could show her how to eat enough aether that they could make her light on her feet, make the forest bend around them, turn her arms to wings maybe, tug on aether-winds and fly there in two days!

  The demon told her that for the sixth time today.

  “Moon,” she breathed, barely putting any sound to it at all.

  The demon liked the way the name shivered in her throat, a self-contained breeze, her lips touching briefly, her tongue tip at the roof. Its name.

  Moon.

  It didn’t think about its name often. Or rather, it hadn’t thought about it often. Moon Caught in the Tide was just its name, and it had a different one once, before it was… this. Before it was a great demon, before it was part of the palace. For years (decades, centuries) it had vaguely considered its name to be the Great Demon of the Palace. But it wasn’t. Sometimes people called it Moon, like the emperor, and Night Shine had before she was Night Shine. But sometimes she’d called it Great Demon, too. A title, if not a name.

  But Raliel said Moon like it was all the name the demon would ever need.

  Usually she said it softly like just now: so Osian Redpop didn’t hear. Sometimes, though, she paused in her walking and looked up at the sky. She said, “Moon,” looking up at the curved fang rising against the blue. Or at night, as they traveled on and the rising time changed. She sighed, said its name, and Osian didn’t think it strange; nobody did. Raliel was only pointing out the moon.

  The demon knew otherwise: she was giving herself an excuse to say it. Moon. Like an invocation. A summoning. Or just a sweet hello. Cold and sweet like fresh mountain water, not warm and sweet. Raliel was never warm. Just like Moon was never warm.

  Moon did not like her. Not exactly. It appreciated her. That was all. She was clever, sharp, beautiful, and spoke to it without fear or inflection. She gave it what it needed: attention and aether. She was wonderful.

  It did like possessing her. The sensations of sore muscles and deep breaths, the slow descent into sleep and the flush of heat in her cheeks that was so rare it still surprised the demon. But the demon wanted so much more. Its own body, beyond its house. Like Night Shine. It was a great demon—why could it not do what Night Shine did? Simply because it did not have a sorcerer? It had a palace! It had the emperor and his family. Why wasn’t that enough to let Moon taste with its own tongue, not the off-center possession of taste? Laugh aloud because it was startled into amusement—not Raliel’s muffled giggles. Not the way she swallowed laughter back—and cries of pain, too. Also not the purr the demon made when it tried to laugh, to make Raliel feel how it found something funny.

  Usually what it found funny was Osian Redpop. The demon could admit that. They still needed to ditch him.

  Moon wondered what a demon-kissed would taste like, if it could get its own teeth and bite into Osian’s arm or palm or—something. Did the blood tingle with aether? Or was it only blood?

  Not that Moon knew what any blood tasted like. Raliel said blood was metallic, that it tasted like blood.

  Moon. Moon.

  Moon wanted Raliel to say its name again. Louder. It wanted her to snap at it, demand something with its name. Laugh its name. Find all the ways its name could sound. That’s how Moon would know the shape of itself. A name was like a house.

  Every time she said it, she built the demon a new foundation.

  It slid into her dream again that night and made itself into Osian: small, tight, very sweet and pretty with those big dark eyes and long lashes, deep dimples, dainty wrists, but Moon gave itself black-black hair and white-white skin. Raliel liked it, even if she didn’t want to admit so.

  Fine.

  In the dream they were in a vast plain of snow, surrounded by lovely painted mountains. One of her mother’s paintings. The lines of the dream-world dripped like watercolors or very thin ink.

  Raliel knelt in layers of robes that mirrored the landscape: white and gray blurring over each other. Her hands were folded patiently in her lap, and she looked at Moon with her light-brown eyes. Waiting.

  Moon wanted her to say its name, so it waited too. They stared at each other, while around them the mountains dripped, ink pooling into little ponds with tiny ink flowers, then spilled away in thin streams.

  Slowly, Moon smiled. It thought about bitter things, sour things, it thought about what metallic was: bloody, and it thought of the rush of ocean waves. All that went into the smile. Beautiful, dangerous.

  “Moon,” Raliel said finally.

  “Raliel.”

  “What do you want?”

  The question ripped through the demon; it felt its shape ripple before it clenched down in control again. She had only asked because this was her dream, and Moon had formed them conscious space here together. Why, she wanted to know, had it made this dream? What did Moon want from her right now? But the question was so much bigger. It had told her what it wanted: to fly. To be free. To be its own.

  The demon shook its head, then let go of the dream. It dissolved around them, melting ink mountains draining into the white paper valleys, until all became a smooth gray shadow.

  Raliel slept, but Moon opened her eyes.

  Night draped around it, dull and dark through these human eyes. Moon blinked, drew a slow and silent deep breath to enjoy the stretch and pull of ribs and skin, the drag of air through two small nostrils, down the throat, the press of diaphragm. Hair teased at her forehead, her shoulder ached gently from how she slept on it. She was chilly, but pleasantly so. Their fire was no more than quiet embers glowing with a shimmer of red-gold mesmerizing to Moon. For many long moments it stared at the rich hot color, smoothing into Raliel’s body. It curled her fingers around the edge of the blanket, stretched her toes. Realized it was alone.

  This crossroads shelter was no more than a sturdy lean-to, red-painted wood on two sides with a thick thatched roof, a fire pit and sigil-protected boxes of basic supplies. Raliel had gone to sleep on her blanket, head to head with Osian Redpop’s blanket. But the demon-kissed warrior was not here.

  Moon parted Raliel’s lips to sneer softly into the night. Where was he?

  Carefully, Moon sat up in her body, one hand seeking the hilt of her sword. It listened, tilting her head.

  Beyond the shelter the forest shivered quietly, layers of shadows and night, colorless. No birds remained awake. Even the frogs and grasshoppers had fallen silent. There came no hint of footsteps or the light panting and shift of leather Osian produced when exercising.

  Where was he?

  Moon stood. For a moment it did not move further, acclimating itself to Raliel’s height and balance. It had never taken control like this, moving her limbs, blinking, breathing—no, Moon realized it was not breathing for her, nor pulsing her heart, there were many things her body did on its own, without Moon’s will or interference. The rhythm of her heart picked up speed as it focused attention there, on the chambers filling, squeezing, the blood rushing, pausing, arteries like filaments of heat, threading throughout her body, to every part of it, so fast! A river inside her—no, this was an ocean, with a tide of its own, in and out, in and out, a system without any moon in its sky, but changing because of other input. Her skin flushed, Moon felt the heat in her cheeks, relished it, and the crawl of it up her neck, blossoming sweat—what a surprise!

  Moon laughed. Once, loud, then covered her mouth with her hands. Giggled under those soft palms.

  It had a mission. It could not be distracted by the wonders of her body. Later, later it would dive down those pathways, along her spine, feel the tingle of energy snapping under her skin, deep in her bones. Moon hummed—a purr that sounded both whispering and full from inside her skull, using her tongue and lips and nose to produce it.

  Then Moon crept out of the shelter to hunt Osian Redpop.

  It was disappointingly easy to find him. The warrior knelt at the crossroads itself, in front of the stack of shrines built up against a hemlock tree. The drooping branches and thin needles created a narrow house for the shrines, a private space for devotion. Moon took care to walk quietly and ducked off the narrow path behind a rough-barked sugar tree.

  Osian held a paper against his thigh, writing on it with quick fingers. A candle in the base shrine flickered, casting Osian in soft contrast. His frown deepened the dimple to the side of his mouth, and he tossed his head to move hair out of his face. As Moon watched, Osian folded his paper and placed it on the stone offering plate tucked into the shrine before a statue of a turtle. The turtle’s eyes gleamed with glass or quartz, not the sweet blue of aether, suggesting the spirit of the crossroads slept, or… Moon looked up at the third of the shrines, smallest and perched at the top. Yes. The turtle spirit peered out from that one, at Raliel’s height. It was a thin slip of aether arched in the shape of a shell. Two tiny eyes blinked.

  Then the demon-kissed warrior took up a rock, and without warning slammed it down over his paper: a flash of aether, the sharp smell of ashes, and the paper vanished.

  Oh, Moon mouthed silently to itself with Raliel’s lips.

  Purposefully, Moon stepped forward, toe of Raliel’s boot on a bed of fallen leaves from the sugar tree. They crackled under it, and Osian leapt to his feet, turning, hand on the hilt of his small sword. Eyes wide, he unerringly found Raliel’s shape in the dark and did not quite relax fast enough. Interesting, Moon thought. It barely stopped from narrowing Raliel’s eyes in suspicion.

  “I did not know you were so devoted,” Moon said gently. Oh, its voice—Raliel’s voice, felt different when it formed the sounds, when it heard with her ears and skull. It wanted to say more, but it wanted to say things to Raliel. It blinked, distracted again.

  Osian pulled a wry smile, released his sword to put that hand to the back of his neck, rubbing almost shyly. “I couldn’t sleep, Heir. I thought I would see if the spirit here was interested in a conversation.”

  Lying, Moon crowed silently, viciously. Osian Redpop was lying to Raliel Dark-Smile. Oh, they had to ditch him now. “I see,” it said in what it hoped was a reasonable, cool tone.

  “I’m sorry I woke you.” Osian walked to the demon, and by now every shade of uncertainty and surprise had vanished. He smiled sweetly, big dark eyes luminous and soft in the spare starlight.

  “I do not mind,” Moon murmured. It wanted to shoot out Raliel’s hand and grasp Osian’s throat, dig her fingers into his skin, rip out the trachea. Would it be hot? Or as Moon sucked that aether out of him, would it be cool and refreshing? Demon-kissed aether must be brighter, more delicious. Mustn’t it?

  That would be one way to ditch him.

  But Raliel would not like it. Moon had promised. It wanted too much from her to give her reason to deny it. She slept deeply, and maybe Moon’s possession kept her asleep. It was unsure, new to this, and to the cold silver amulet tingling against her breastbone knotting them together.

  “Do you think you can sleep now?” Moon asked Osian.

  The warrior nodded, seemed to hesitate about something Moon could not read—but Raliel might’ve.

  Moon gave in to the urge to touch Osian. It reached, but instead of grasping violently at his throat, Moon put two fingers gently against Osian’s jaw. Osian’s lips parted, and Moon allowed the fingers to drift along the edge of the jaw, then fall away. It turned and walked back toward the crossroads shelter. Behind it, Osian dashed to catch up but said nothing else. He seemed to breathe a little quicker. Moon ignored it, laying Raliel back down in her blanket and curling up to draw itself back into the nest of ice and amethyst under her heart until she woke up.

  FIVE

  THE GREAT DEMON AMBUSHED Raliel when she picked her way through a tangle of vines to the small pit dug behind the crossroads shelter. She’d woken weary, as if her sleep had been thwarted by nightmares she could not remember. It felt like she’d run miles, or suffered through triple sword practice. As she stared at the pit compost, willing herself to prepare what was necessary for relieving herself, Moon slithered up her spine like a branch of frost.

  Raliel gasped and went still.

  I woke last night, while you were dreaming, the demon whispered from just inside her ear.

  A full-body shudder coursed through her, involuntary. Raliel blinked hard. “What does that mean?” she murmured.

  later, discuss it later—now I must tell you something about Osian.

  Raliel frowned.

  I woke, and he was not in the shelter. I followed him to the crossroads shrine, where he used an aether-stone to send a message through the aether. He was not happy to be caught but pretended it was nothing.

  “You—he…” Raliel took a breath and tried again. “You spoke with him.”

  you spoke with him, from his perspective.

  “Moon.”

  Raliel.

  She bit her bottom lip, dragging the skin harshly. Since she was on her Heir’s Journey, makeup-free, without needing to perform (much), she didn’t worry about bad habits like this. And it felt good. Just enough pain to ground her.

  When she said nothing, Moon continued, its whisper soft and dangerous. Osian is spying on you. He sent a secret message.

  “Maybe it was to my father,” Raliel said. “That would not surprise me.”

  still a spy, if spying for your father.

  Raliel laughed soundlessly. That was true. She let herself wear a tiny scowl and stepped to the pit to do her business.

  he is not on our side. Not on your side. Leave him, Raliel. Moon did something to the nape of her neck that felt like cool needles dancing against her skin, raising the tiny hairs there. It felt delicious, on the brink of danger. Raliel. We only need each other. Just the two of us.

  Half engaged in her bodily functions, Raliel did not answer, but she considered. It was pleasant having Osian with her on this journey, sharing the hard work of travel, making friends on her behalf, flirting. But Moon was correct: this journey had a purpose, and if Osian was keeping secrets, it was even more vital they not allow him to know of Moon’s presence. Moon seemed deeply invested in being alone with her, a thought Raliel did not mind in the least.