She heard him, his soft footsteps beyond the open doorway leading into the emperor’s bedchamber. Last night Sky had stayed with him, and Elegant Waters had not, leaving when she felt sleepy, though her two husbands had been far from finishing their round of four generals—a strategy game that bored her. She’d slept uneasily, as had become her habit in the weeks since their last attempt to draw the great demon home. Worry, she was certain, though sometimes Elegant Waters believed she could sense the lack of the demon in the walls, in the floors.

  When she composed, she expected Moon to be listening. Since it left with Raliel at the end of the summer, she’d done this alone.

  The emperor emerged, box of ruby rings in hand, his hair braided in the messy way that meant he’d done it himself.

  Elegant Waters nodded to him and plucked the most recent measures of her new song. He plopped on the edge of her bed, box cradled in his lap, and listened. Unguarded this early, he seemed more beautiful than when under his layers of expressions and ink, loops of braids, embroidery, dark smile.

  “Do you,” the emperor began, and the palace trembled.

  She gasped, gaze flying up to his, just as the emperor grimaced and arched his back. He fell onto the bed, and his ring box slid off his thigh: it hit the floor with a crack. The lid opened like a mouth and spit out twelve rings, rubies bright as blood spatter.

  Then Elegant Waters felt it, ripping through her. A cord of lightning, slicing her in two, easily as if she were butter.

  Aether swallowed her up.

  She saw snow.

  Her mountain, the drifting black lines of trees, the jagged spill of cliffs. Snow. Ice falling, sliding through gray skies.

  Waterfalls. Crystal-blue arcs slicing through the gray-black-white. So many. A thousand waterfalls, reaching, slowing, freezing. Everything stopped, and at that moment the snow gleamed in its purest form: filaments of ice, patterned into impossible stars.

  Elegant Waters fell back into herself, sobbing and bent in half. She was so cold. She smelled blood.

  It was her fingers: cut against the strings of her harp where she’d gripped too tight. Elegant Waters released it, wincing at the fresh sting of pain.

  She stood, shaky, and looked to the bed where the emperor slumped, dreadfully pale. “Kirin,” she said, climbing onto the mattress to shake his shoulders. “Kirin.”

  “Kirin!” called Sky from the emperor’s bedroom. The First Consort stumbled as he careened into her room, clutching his chest with one large blue-tinged hand.

  The emperor snapped open his eyes. “The demon,” he said, voice harsh as if he’d been screaming.

  “Raliel,” Elegant Waters answered.

  The palace trembled again, as if with an earthquake. She felt it, saw the sway of the ink drawing that hung beside her bed, saw the shiver of the privacy screen beside her wardrobe.

  Sky clambered onto the bed with them. “Are you—” He touched Elegant Water’s cheek, and she nodded once. They both looked at Kirin.

  “It’s gone,” he said. “It’s gone.”

  Yelling outside their room drew their attention, and then a distant but impossibly loud rumble shook through the walls.

  “Was it holding the foundations in place?” Kirin said, incredulous, and threw himself up, pushing past both his husband and wife. He stopped suddenly, staring down at the spill of ruby rings.

  Then Night Shine appeared: drew herself out of the air with a pop. The temperature of the room heated instantly, like she was a bonfire pretending to be a girl.

  Elegant Waters stood and stepped between her husband the emperor and the great demon of the Fifth Mountain. “Night Shine. Take me to the Third Mountain.”

  “El,” Kirin began, “you can’t—”

  “She can leave,” Sky said, almost choking on it. “The demon is—we can all—”

  But Elegant Waters ignored them, staring at the churning black-red flecks of lava in the demon Night Shine’s huge wide eyes. “My daughter is there.” She’d seen it: her Mountain of One Thousand Falls, at the base of the Third Mountain. Ice, and Raliel.

  The demon swung around, grabbing Elegant Waters up into her arms, and threw the both of them together out the window.

  Glass rained, slicing at Elegant Waters, who clutched at Night Shine, holding on to flesh that changed under her fingers: skin, muscle, feathers, scales, and more arms wrapped her, held her just as tight, and Elegant Waters felt the new throb of wings pushing, lifting them: a heartbeat. She clutched what she could, found tears in her eyes, and heard only the roar of the wind. To herself, she whispered her daughter’s name over and over again, a refrain, a prayer, never stopping, never, until they were far away, surrounded by cutting snow, and she began to scream it aloud.

  ELEVEN

  THE MOON DIED FOR Raliel roared.

  (A scream, or a song?)

  It reached with every particle of itself out and out, changing, transforming, and Raliel said, “I am Raliel Dark-Smile,” reaching too. The great demon bent, flared—it grasped the furious great spirit of the Third Mountain and destroyed it in a starving, aching drag. The power of it flooded, exploded, and it moved for another even as it shoved that power at Raliel.

  She caught it easily: it crashed through her like a waterfall, unrelenting, stripping her of all that she was except for exactly what she was.

  (More.)

  (Not between life and death, between day and night. But both. Beyond.)

  Then came another wave of it, pounding, ripping, pure horrible gorgeous aether.

  Raliel caught that too and turned herself inside out. She maybe screamed; she definitely hurt. But she kept catching, kept dragging, pouring, making herself a waterfall, a high, arcing, inevitable waterfall of silver-blue aether.

  The Moon Died for Raliel took again and again—bear, eagle: two great spirits so surprised, so unguarded, the demon devoured them as it unraveled under the onslaught of its own consummation.

  Then—the sorcerers. Too tied to their familiars, bound by names, bound by blood and love: they went together.

  More and more and more, the magic careened from the great demon into Raliel until she was scoured thrice over and filled up again: floating off the stone floor, mouth agape, eyes wide, seeing everything.

  And she took it. Put the aether into the corners of herself: veins, elbows, teeth, belly, everywhere inside her bones, the little channels of marrow turned white-cold. Raliel made of ice. Raliel translucent. Raliel interconnected snowflakes.

  Raliel embodied again.

  She fell hard to the ground, joints jarring, bruised on knees, hip, hands scraped raw. Her spine bowed, and she heaved for breath.

  Every piece of her ached. Trembled.

  It had been fast. It had been a hundred years.

  Carefully, Raliel cracked her eyes open. She stared at her hand splayed against the gray granite beneath her. It flickered with shadows, rippled into scales the color of snow, tinged blue like mother-of-pearl. Then it was her plain human hand again.

  Her stomach rolled. She spat a string of bile on the floor.

  “Moon,” she whispered.

  She remembered that infinite moment when they were bound. Sorcerer and great demon. Familiar. Oh, familiar—known.

  It meant to know. Be known. To recognize.

  The Moon—her familiar.

  Raliel recognized that her familiar was gone. She was herself. Poison-free. Alive. Huge with sorcery. Her heart pounded.

  Tears flooded her throat. She swallowed them.

  Sitting back, she glanced around the room. There was nothing with her. Nobody. Then the stone trembled. The mountain groaned.

  It was empty, too. Spirits gone. Sorcerers gone.

  Raliel was alone in a dying mountain.

  She breathed. She dragged herself back out onto the balcony—into the snow.

  Shivering, curled on her side, she held on to the piece of herself she knew: that cold, beautiful amethyst geode under her heart of blood and flesh. The Moon’s nest. Empty and shadowed. She held it as her body rippled and changed, slid between states, between boundaries, scale and skin, air and flesh, and Raliel put herself into the nest, safe among shards of crystal and reflecting ice.

  Holding on.

  Breaking apart.

  Holding on.

  Until she heard her name like a harmony countering the song of the wind. Her name, her name, and hands on her shoulders pinning them back into shoulders, lips on her cheek—her cheek, hers—and arms lifting her up up up into the sky on the wings of a great demon.

  TWELVE

  IT WOULD TAKE RALIEL a long time to relearn how to be alone.

  When the great demon of the palace died, part of the wall of the sixth circle collapsed, killing two people. In the spring, Raliel would go herself to take blessings to their families, discover the names of their cousins and grandparents, and remain a week to help repair a neighbor’s fence.

  They would tell stories about her, in the years that followed, they and others she encountered in her travels: Raliel Dark-Smile walked confidently throughout the land, but slowly for all the stops she made to listen to the complaints of mushroom spirits and coax smiles from the emerging wildflowers. Upon arrival in any village or town, she would ask if there was help she could give, like rethatching a roof or attracting a fresh, merry rabbit spirit to the town’s fertility shrine. They said she especially enjoyed sharing a bonfire with the townsfolk and could be persuaded into telling stories of her Heir’s Journey—the Last Heir’s Journey, some would call it. She might mention The Scale, or a demon-kissed warrior with dangerous secrets, or waterfall dragons and a deep-sea demon. Raliel might look up at the gibbous moon as it floated among stars and wisps of clouds. She might say that when the moon grew so, it was the opposite of the bright sickle-smile of the crescent. This was when the darkness smiled.

  The moon had a dark smile, too, she would joke.

  Like the tide, she would come and go from the palace. Seeking every corner of the empire on her own two feet—and very occasionally with wings or fins, but she did not tell stories about that. She would swim the entire length of the Selegan River without taking a breath, darting between fish and under flat-bottomed boats, and laughing with the dragon. Transformation was hard without a familiar, but she wouldn’t go about finding one.

  She would visit the Fifth Mountain and the First, as well as the emptier ones where people needed to be resettled or given magical aid. She’d organize the women of Four Ridges to assist her, and reach out to monasteries and a few local covens for help shoring up the dangerous parts of the empty mountains. And she would wander. She’d meet stinky pond scum demons and glorious lightning demons. Once she’d spend a week chatting with the colorful demon of a nurse log, tending to its lichens and fungi and iridescent beetles and handfuls of earthworms. She’d meet spirits, too, and liked raccoons and foxes and braided the tail of an impressive spirit stallion once, but of course she preferred the attitudes of demons. She would meet a storm dragon outside Shards of Summer and get so close it would nearly tear her to pieces. Recovering with her father Sky’s extended family would be a revelation of noise, and she would tell them, who had such strong demon-kissed blood, that the sorcerer of the First Mountain had taught her blue was the key to sorcery. But she thought it was relationships.

  That’s why she would try to forge them everywhere she went. And it would work. The heir would become known for steady strength and listening skills. For an ease with spirits but a fondness for demons that allowed her to negotiate most issues better than a witch or itinerant priest.

  And always, always, she would return to the sea.

  Because she was like the tide.

  She’d return again and again to the palace, to her family, to her future.

  But before all that would happen, the first winter she was home, when her mother Elegant Waters and the great demon Night Shine brought her back to the arms of her fathers, Raliel had to rebuild her most fundamental relationships: with her parents, and her friends, and the silent, empty walls of the palace.

  It was easiest with Rose Blue, Salri, and Averilis, for none of them were upset. They welcomed her back and listened as she haltingly told them what she’d done and why and then asked for their honest opinions. She listened in return. She squeezed their hands, and she thanked them for being her friends when she did not know how to reciprocate. She said if they wanted to go home, or serve someone else, they should. If they ever wished to leave or change, those were their rights.

  With her parents, it was different. Elegant Waters refused apologies, ferociously insisting that Raliel had done no wrong. Her mother was so stubborn, Raliel hardly knew how to talk to her, and so the death of the Moon hung between them. With her father Sky she knelt and asked forgiveness, not for taking the demon, but for lying. And for giving his agate away to a dragon. Sky said he was proud of her and put a large hand on her cheek, brushing with his thumb as if she were the one with tears in her eyes. Raliel and her father the emperor circled each other coldly for several weeks until one dawn Kirin appeared at her bed and dragged her half-sleeping self up to the Moon’s Recline Garden for evergreen tea and silence. A waiting silence. A silence for quietly placing down burdens.

  So she reached out a hand and let her skin pebble into small mother-of-pearl scales, dry and glistening like a snake’s. “I can be anything,” she whispered.

  Her father’s amber eyes lifted to hers, and he said, “Good.”

  “I’m not sure I should be in the line of succession,” she added. She didn’t know if she’d age or die or anything.

  But the emperor immediately and dramatically rolled his eyes. Then he slid one of his ruby rings onto her thumb. “If you can be anything, you can be mine, too.”

  That was that.

  Shadows of the Fifth Mountain and the great demon Night Shine brought Osian Redpop to them two weeks after Raliel herself had been returned, when things were still chaotic and the imperial family sorted rumors and stories and decided what to tell the people. Osian was unconscious and remained that way for nearly three months.

  Balmy spring winds were blowing off the ocean when he woke. Raliel attended his bedside in relief. “How do you feel?”

  Osian’s lashes fluttered, bright brown against still-wan cheeks that slowly flushed under Raliel’s regard. “Better,” he said. “Stronger.”

  “The sorceress Shadows unknotted your aether, and you were asleep and healing for the entire winter season. You’re in the palace and safe. And free.”

  “Can I stay?”

  Raliel took his hand, laced their fingers together. “Please.”

  He smiled, tiredly but real. Dimples flashed, and Raliel caught her breath.

  “What happened to Moon?” Osian asked.

  “Scoot over,” she said, and when he did, Raliel lay down with her head on his pillow and told him face-to-face, their hands clenched together between them, exactly what Moon had done.

  The first time Osian joined her at an official function as her personal guard, whole and glowing with readiness, Raliel nearly managed a smile backed by nothing but joy.

  Alone in her room, Raliel stood at the window and put fingers of aether into her belly, pressed and explored the slick, dark spaces inside her. Changed her lungs, her breasts, her jawline, and put it all back. Tapped the sparks of desire waiting in the cold. Nothing dragged claws up the insides of her ribs in response. Nobody sneered under her heart. There never was laughter echoing in her skull or hissing commentary.

  She put her cheek to the wall and listened: only the sighs of the wind and distant conversations, the faint presence of the city all around.

  It took a month for mice to appear in the cellars and remain.

  They kept up the shrines cut into the stairwells and red-washed walls, but nothing withered the flowers. Nothing dried out the bowls of tea. Maybe, Raliel thought, someday there would be smaller spirits flitting through the corridors, or some of the flower demons in the gardens would finally dig their roots deep enough to claim offerings.

  At the end of the winter, Raliel heard a soft harp song from a waiting room in the seventh circle. It was her mother’s song.

  Raliel paused at the entrance to the music room. Elegant Waters played a lullaby with repeating cascades of notes, a tumbling melody like layered waterfalls. It was from her home on the Mountain of One Thousand Falls, and she used to play it for the great demon.

  Pushing in, Raliel listened quietly. She folded her hands and closed her eyes until the notes faded. When she looked, her mother had one hand flat to the parquet floor. Her lovely pallid face held tightly with grief.

  “You can visit home now,” Raliel murmured, going to kneel beside Elegant Waters.

  “This is my home, little emperor,” Elegant Waters said. She took her hand from the floor and pressed it instead to Raliel’s knee.

  “You could take me, then.”

  “Yes. Someday I would like that.”

  They sat together, listening for anything to break the silence.

  There came only the creak of footsteps overhead, the slide of wood as other doors opend and closed.

  Raliel tried very hard not to break in half.

  Her breathing quickened. This was why she kept busy, kept moving, listening, plotting, planning, kept to practice and education, to as much and as many responsibilities as she’d ever had. Silence and sorrow were only for those moments alone at her window. But oh, she missed her Moon.

  Raliel erected a little shrine on the beach, near the tunnel through the bluff.

  Built with seven chunks of salt crystal quarried from near the Second Mountain, the shrine arced over a crescent-shaped tide pool. Each crystal she carved with runes for the moon and seven blessings, and blue ribbons tied in place. The pool was shallow but alive with dark-orange starfish and pink anemones, the occasional crab or even an indigo octopus. Wind caught the whistle mounted at the crest of the shrine and sang a low, sad song.