I smash the clay heart that used to be a sin eater and scatter the shards with my feet. The catharsis isn’t quite as satisfying as I’d hoped, but it’s still pleasant to consider how far I’ve come from the scrappy twig that snapped and broke as often as it scored a kill.

  Now I’m untouchable. Well, at least to the likes of this. I’m sure Contrition and Malice will make me eat my words.

  I glance over at my companions and, seeing them still fighting, resummon that magic bow from before to cast another volley of light arrows. As soon as I see the spell land, I dismiss the bow and turn my attention to the stone gates.

  Are we ready for this? It’s going to be a psychic attack like no other.

  Bring it on. I haven’t lost to one yet.

  I lay my hands on the inscribed stone and shove with all my weight. The tall doors creak open, stone grinding on stone, and then the storm envelops me.

  An infinite weight presses down on me, its wordless voice pounding inside my skull. Guilt lashes my back, my sins dragging me down into the deep dark pit at the bottom of my soul. Screams echo through my bones. In darkness and solitude, I am blinded and perceived.

  A vision flashes through my mind, stained with the song of the archdemon.

  Eirdryd smirks, the huntsman practically sneering at me. “What prideful words. But can you back them up? What could you offer me, famished little girl? What do you have to bargain with that I could not take by force?”

  I roll my shoulders and match his smirk with a toothy grin of my own. “My name,” I reply. “I’ll sell you my name.”

  Do I regret that decision? It gave my enemies leverage over me, certainly, and for that I burned with hate. Everyone who heard about my decision called me an idiot for it, or at least that’s the sense I have in this moment. A thousand voices whispering my folly.

  But for all the consequences I suffered, was it not still a necessary choice? If I refused to bargain with the fae, or if I tried to offer some lesser prize, he might have left me to die in the woods. Knowing his true loyalties, he probably would have switched to threats or just outright killed me. My survival has always risen from taking great risks.

  So no, I don’t regret it. “You’ll have to try better than that,” I tell Contrition. “I overestimated myself, yes, but my actions were still necessary. I never would have gotten this far without the fruits of that deal.”

  The dark swirls, the song flares, and I’m thrown into another memory.

  When I speak again my voice is cold and merciless. “If you wanted to be my voice of reason, you had your chance.”

  The incubus flinches away from me, hurt blooming on his face. I don’t care. All my attention is on the cat now. Smiling, smug, mirthful Cheshire. Loving, caring, lying Cheshire. Only Cheshire.

  “Okay. What do you need from me?”

  The cat tells me, and I say the only word she needs to hear.

  The sight of Cheshire is painful. My heart aches for what I’ve lost. For what I threw away.

  But the scene itself? Taking Cheshire’s hand? How could I ever regret that?

  “What do you expect me to say to that? Should I care that I burned a bridge with Bashekehi? We were never going to be friends. He was always going to judge me and look down on me. I could have followed him to the Myriad, sure, but what then? What would I do when the Game of Glass began? When Prevara took an active interest? Without power, I wouldn’t have survived the week. Contracting with Cheshire was the only live option. I don’t regret becoming her partner, no matter what followed. No matter what she really was.”

  Contrition is silent. For a living wellspring of regret, a divinity forged in pain and guilt and loss, so far it’s missed me twice. Is my brain really that hard for her to understand? Or is she just holding back before she goes for my throat?

  Lightning flashes in the dark and I get my answer.

  “One condition,” I tell the Demiurge. “I want you to free Cheshire. Give her back whatever she used to be.”

  Melpomene looks down at the catgirl, still kneeling and dazed, our whole conversation slipping right through her ears. “Alice, there isn’t an original to put back. She was never real to begin with. She’s just a vessel.”

  Her words don’t faze me. “Then make something up. That’s my condition.”

  A mistake. A real mistake, and I flinch from it. I had a girlfriend who loved me and wanted to stay with me and I threw her away because it didn’t feel real enough. I couldn’t accept her as she was, so I killed her. Gods, Cheshire…

  Cheshire has me caught, my tender flesh giving beneath her grip. She murmurs, “It wouldn’t take much to shatter those pretty wrists, frail as they are. And I know for a fact that you don’t have the strength to stop me, and you won’t until you come back to your master. Do you like being able to move your hands?”

  She relaxes her grip just enough that I can think and breathe again. I’m shaking worse than before, my legs and arms and teeth all out of control. “Wh-what are y-you doing, I th-thought you were supposed to be my—”

  Cheshire squeezes again, her strong hands crushing my weak wrists. Pain spikes in bruised muscles and aching, vulnerable bone, so close to breaking. She’s going to break my wrists. She’s actually going to break my wrists. This can’t be happening.

  The pain echoes, phantom sensation lingering as the vision ends as abruptly as it began. The monster who hurt me wasn’t Cheshire, couldn’t have been Cheshire, but she wore my Cheshire’s face and spoke with her voice. And it’s my fault that she was turned into that.

  Melpomene sweeps her hands toward the still form of the girl I almost loved. “The clay is fresh, your tools laid out. You can sculpt a new Cheshire, a better Cheshire, a Cheshire that you can trust. Shape her as I shaped her, carve her as I carved her, create her as I created her. Alice and Cheshire, together again, but this time by your intent, by your rules, by your design.”

  Cheshire, my Cheshire, cut and molded and made anew. An act of insane violation. An act of absolute control. All I’ve ever wanted, or dreamed I might have wanted. All I’ve ever feared, or told myself I feared.

  But I didn’t take the knife. I didn’t shape my Cheshire. Instead—

  I back away from the grisly tableau, my horror finally eclipsing my fascination. I stumble, trip over myself, and hit the flagstones outside the tower. My breath is coming out ragged and panicked, I’m hyperventilating. What was I about to do? What was I thinking? Who am I?

  Who am I? Who is Maven Alice?

  Is Alice the hand that takes the knife or the hand that recoils from its touch? Is it more Alice to reject the Demiurge or to borrow her gifts and thank her for them? Is it even possible to be Alice authentically when there are so many of us?

  I’ve lived this life three times now, walking through a hallway of mirrors reflecting the thousand lives before me. They all end in tragedy. They’re all heaped with suffering. Always, always, always, our apotheosis is only torment.

  I’m no exception. I’m no one special. I’m just another copy. Is that all I was ever meant to be? Were these mistakes forced upon me, or is Alice just that weak?

  How much of what I’ve suffered was my own damn fault?

  I’m incapable of letting people in. I’ve wired my whole personality to keep people at arm’s length, charming them with lies and never letting them see the real me. I see everything as a challenge that I have to do alone or it doesn’t count. And then I fail, because that’s what happens when you don’t accept help. And I get worse, and everything gets worse.

  I ruined Cheshire. I failed to love her. I failed to cherish her. I rejected the truth of her until it became a lie. Just one more romance I messed up. One more heartbreak I brought on myself. More self-inflicted pain, like all the pain I’ve ever felt. All of it my fault.

  My fault.

  I sink beneath the weight of it.

  If I’d tried a little harder, maybe I could have gotten higher grades, or made more friends, or achieved something real with my waste of a life. If I’d been a better kid, maybe my father would have loved me, or at least he wouldn’t have hated me.

  The guilt and doubt clouds my mind. It seeps into my heart and spreads through my veins. The water rises.

  If I’d never been born, maybe my mother wouldn’t have died.

  The regret is drowning me.

  All my fault. It was always my fault.

  But that is a goddamned lie.

  I pull myself out of the whirlpool and straighten my back. I glare into the void with eyes free of doubt. Regret will not conquer me. Nothing will ever conquer me.

  I am the Intercessor, walking a thousand worlds. I am the Red Queen, dominating all that stands in my way. I am Hastur, pulling the strings from above the stage.

  I am Veseryn, making deals in the dark to claim what was denied me. I am Mordred, haunted by injustice and driven to correct the world. I am Kiana, yearning with all my heart to meet someone who will understand.

  I am all of this, and all of this is Alice.

  “You cast too wide of a net,” I snarl. “Those are the original’s regrets, not mine. I never lived that life. I never struggled through that trauma. All I feel of it is a pale shadow that she put in my head. I am not my father’s daughter, nor my mother’s. I’m just Alice.”

  The shadow of regret loosens over my shoulders, but it doesn’t go away. The image of Cheshire is still locked in my mind. The last time I saw her. The wrongs I did to her.

  “But it wasn’t my fault,” I tell Contrition. “I won’t bear the blame for something that was done against my wishes. I wanted Cheshire to be free. I wanted her to be her own person. I wanted her to have the choice to love me. And the way Melpomene twisted that was a cruel abomination, another knife wound dealt by her hand. That is the truth of my relationship with Cheshire: the chance to be with her was taken from me, not something I turned away from. It was our creator’s plan from start to end. I won’t feel regret for decisions I didn’t make.”

  I only hesitate for an instant before taking the plunge.

  “And neither should you, Reska. What happened to you wasn’t your fault. You were used and manipulated by the people around you, by everyone in your life. They made you into a weapon and then left you in pieces. You didn’t deserve this. You don’t deserve to stay like this. So let me help you. Let me save you.”

  The pressure doubles. The weight of Contrition’s attention bores down on me and I grit my teeth and bear it. I’m not losing.

  “None of this should have happened! None of this was earned! And none of this needs to keep happening. Let me save you, dammit!”

  The song sharpens into clear words, into an infinite mantra scouring my thoughts. Only the end and only regret and only the end and only regret—

  “No!” I shout. “You’re wrong. There is so much more than regret. There is forward. There is tomorrow. There is what we make of the day after we feel our sorrow and guilt and our wish that things were different. We can’t change the past, but we can still shape our future. Right now that future is in sight, Reska. The tower, the Demiurge, the cycle. There will be a tomorrow, and it’s up to us to make sure that tomorrow doesn’t hold another thousand years of hurting girls like you and me. Don’t let the next Reska suffer like you did. Don’t let this Reska suffer either.”

  The song sharpens again, gets louder and more piercing… and then it falls silent.

  The darkness clears. The heart of Contrition’s soul, surrounded by gale and lightning, is a shattered crater. I see the ruins of the Dawnbringer castle, pounded to dust by time and hate. Torn banners flutter in the wind.

  In the eye of the storm, a broken girl cries. She is naked, and her skin bears the lash-marks of a thousand years of torment. She kneels on gravel, sharp stones digging into her legs. She hunches over herself, holds herself, hands digging into her sides. She is more blood and bruise than woman.

  Reska Ines Zelic, once Dawnbringer, once Shadowsun. Now Contrition.

  The nails have been torn from her fingers, the flesh chewed down to bone. Her eyes are puffy, bloodshot, and clouded. Her lips and gums are raw and bleeding. Her hair is ratty, tangled, and unkempt. The color has been leeched from her, dark hair and eyes gone pale.

  This is a woman who has forgotten what it means to live without suffering. This is what it means to be an archdemon by the rules of Pandaemonium: to be consumed by your own worst traits, made into an unchanging monument to your worst moments. To never grow beyond one fateful decision.

  I thought I was making a real choice when I turned from the Labyrinth’s glass shard to pursue Royalty by ascension. Now I understand. All of them, every last Royal in the universe, they’re all frozen in time. They crystallized their identities, made themselves immutable laws of reality, and now they’re stuck.

  In another timeline, on another world, Malice killed Wonder with a simple trick. The nature of Wonder, that childlike devil, is that she is always learning and never knowing. Imagine being able to watch your favorite movie for the first time a thousand times and you begin to understand why so many begged Wonder to lose their memories and become her lethe drinkers.

  To kill Wonder, Malice took a world and bound its people together, linking them all to a crown of pearl and gold. She gave it as a gift. When Wonder wore the crown, her mind was flooded with the knowledge and experiences of every soul on that planet. To keep the crown was to lose her naivety, but to reject the crown was to reject her curiosity.

  Whatever option she chose, she could not be Wonder any longer. So she split in half and Malice ate her soul.

  Now, somehow, I have to pull Reska out of Contrition without killing her in the process. I have to make her reject regret and fill her soul with something better. Something that will make her Reska again. I don’t know if it’s possible, but I have to try.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  I take a careful step toward her. “Reska? Can you hear me?” No response. I step closer.

  “Stay away!” she cries. A wave of force pulses out from Reska’s body. I stagger back a step, but grit my teeth and push through it.

  “I need you to wake up from this nightmare, Reska. I need you to fight the curse! I’m here to help you!”

  A tendril of crackling red energy lashes out of the storm. Reflexes stolen from my Intercessor self let me deflect the attack, sending it back into the wall of raging wind. Reska keeps crying, her whole body shivering, and the storm keeps growing more volatile.

  “You’re hurting, I get that. I’ve been there. But this isn’t right! You don’t deserve to be in this much pain, Reska. No one does!”

  “Shut up!” she screams at me. “Shut up, shut up, shut up! You don’t understand!” Her bony fingertips sink deeper into her flesh, carving bloody gouges in her sides. “It’s all my fault, everything is my fault!”

  “That’s not—”

  Another buffet of wind shoves me back, knocking me into a cracked pillar that once held up some room of the Dawnbringer castle. I grimace and steady myself, ignoring the pain from the impact. I’m not getting anywhere with this, am I?

  “You’re a victim!” I shout at her over the wind. “It wasn’t your fault!”

  More tendrils of storm lurch toward my location and I dance out of their path, the pillar behind me exploding into stone fragments. The girl on the ground looks unchanged, just as lost in her fugue state as ever.

  On the other side of the crater, Mordred steps out of the storm.

  “MURDERER!” Reska screams.

  A dozen bloody hands burst out of the earth, their limbs of clay and gristle boneless in their movement. They fly at Mordred with clear intent, violence and misery wreathing them like motion blur. The copy of a murderer has pain in her eyes, her mouth drawn into a thin line. Vorpal flutters through the air and cuts snicker-snack through every abominable arm. The severed limbs melt into puddles of rot and grease.

  Mordred closes her eyes. She breathes deep, her shoulders slumping and then straightening. When she opens her eyes again, her face is deathly calm.

  “Monster!” Reska cries, face still clutched tight in her hands, eyes now leaking tears of blood into the shattered gravel of the castle crater. “Betrayer!”

  Mordred steps toward Reska and cuts down another false limb. Another step and the storm rages, but each tendril of surging wind stills before her blade. A sin eater rises from the soil and Vorpal pierces right through its clay heart. Mordred’s expression is completely blank and emotionless. A stone mask stares at the bleeding girl in the heart of the crater.

  Contrition’s anger turns to fear. The attacks double as Reska sobs and shrinks in on herself. Her anguished shouts become terrified whispers.

  “No, please, please don’t come any closer. Please, please don’t hurt me. No, no, no.”

  The next wave of phantom limbs hesitates. Bloody hands pull back and storm tendrils waver before Vorpal has even swung. Sin eaters form and crumble all on their own. Mordred keeps advancing, implacable and imposing.

  Mordred steps into the inner ring of the crater and Reska falls silent. The wounded girl’s tears dry up, her sobs stuttering to a halt. She shivers, naked and flayed. The storm around us churns faster and faster, lightning streaking through hurricane winds.

  “Just do it,” she begs. “End it. Give me what I deserve.”

  Mordred raises her sword and my heart stops beating. Everything else fades out of focus. There’s only me, Reska, and that damned Vorpal.

  She can’t. She won’t! Don’t you dare, don’t you—

  Mordred snaps the Bloodstained Blade over her knee.

  “I break the curse that I have wrought,” Mordred spits into the gravel. “Let it end as it began, called and commanded by this hateful tool I wield. Let neither curse nor sword ever again take peace and joy from another soul.”

  The storm freezes. Reska freezes. The world is stopped in time.

  All around us, in the air and stone and storm, Contrition begins to unravel.

  Reska lifts her head just enough to stare at the shattered pieces of Homura’s masterwork, her falsified family Crest. The weapon they made together. The weapon that murdered her mother, her teacher, and her brother. The weapon that murdered her.

  Mordred throws the tip of the blade aside, but the hilt she twists open, revealing its secret compartment. She plucks a single marble from inside and drops the hilt. A tiny globe of captured starlight rests in the palm of her hand.

  “I kept it,” she whispers, voice aching with grief. “We kept it, I guess I should say. We always remembered that precious moment. Could never throw it away.”

  Reska stares, transfixed. Words don’t come to her, but more tears well in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Reska. I’m so incredibly sorry. I hurt you. I betrayed you. I dismissed you. I was wrong. I was so, so stupid.”

  With each word, hope and confusion bloom on Reska’s face. Her stare takes on disbelief as she hears Mordred’s heartfelt apology. She sinks lower into the earth, practically melting to the floor, hands rising to cover her ears but never quite enough to block the sound.

  The storm weakens. Lightning diminishes, winds return to motion but settle and slow. The world beyond isn’t visible, just an endless expanse of orange sunset glow. In the far, far distance, a bit of blue paints the edges.

  Contrition retreats further from this space, the ancient shadow of regret banished by the breaking of the curse. I can still feel it, like sandpaper rubbing on my skin, but the feeling lessens with each passing moment.

  On Reska’s face, understanding slowly replaces confusion. Hope becomes sadness. Reska finally meets Mordred’s gaze, and she says, “You’re not the real Homura, are you?”

  Mordred flinches, but nods. “I’m not. I’m just a copy. But I will speak for her.”

  Reska laughs, the sound light and desperate and bleak. “What will you say?”

  Mordred clenches a fist, leaving the starlight marble visible in her other hand. “Homura was a fool,” she snarls with that signature self-loathing all us copies share. “She made the wrong choice, that night in the castle. She chose the abstract of a cycle and a grand mission over the truth of her eyes. Over the girl in pain right in front of her that she could have saved. She chose wrong.”

  Reska smiles, joyless. “How could she have chosen any different?”

  “She should have,” Mordred insists. “She should have chosen you, Reska. She should have saved you. She should have protected you.”

  The princess lowers her gaze. “Even when I became a monster?”

  Mordred crouches in front of her. “Yes. Especially then. It was her responsibility, and she shirked it. You deserved better than her betrayal, than her abandonment. And you deserve better than this, Reska. You should never have been made into Contrition.”

  Reska stays quiet for a moment that stretches on too long, an uncomfortable silence that I’m loathe to break. Then, finally, she meets Mordred’s gaze again and asks, “Did you ever love me, in all that time we were together?”

  Mordred glances away to hide the pain, but when she turns back it’s still etched into every line of her face. “I loved… the idea of you. I loved what you meant to me. I thought you were a damsel in distress, my princess to save and woo, and I thought I could be your knight in shining armor. Stupid of me, given what I went on to do to you. But, in those days before it all went wrong, I saw a chance to save myself, vicariously, from a past I’d never get to change. I thought I could right my old wrongs by stepping into yours. That’s why I wanted to make you queen. You were supposed to be my dream girl. I loved all the ways I thought you could complete me. But I don’t think I loved you. I don’t think I really saw you, in the end. I only saw your scars and loved how they looked like mine.”

  This time, when Reska cries, there’s a ghost of a smile on her face. A wounded, bitter smile, but a smile that’s real. Tears fall and her body shakes, but the storm doesn’t get worse. When at last the crying stops, the almost-smile is still there. “Thank you for being honest.”

  Mordred’s own smile is bittersweet, her voice laced with regret no longer stained by Contrition’s poisonous influence. “Too little, too late. Always the way with me, it seems. I wish I’d told you this before. I wish for a lot of things I know I’ll never have.”

  Reska laughs at that, and it’s almost a real laugh. “I have a lifetime of experience.”

  She turns her head toward the other side of the crater, past me and into the fading storm. Kiana steps out of the air a moment later, teary-eyed and exhausted.

  “You’re me, right?” Reska asks. “My copy?”

  Kiana doesn’t look surprised to see any of us. Maybe her torment in the storm was just being forced to watch herself. She nods her head and walks over to her original self. “I’m a piece of you. The version of you from before you became Contrition.”

  “I’ve lived you countless times,” Reska murmurs. “Over and over, the same story stuck in my head. I meet Homura, I fall in love, I fall to darkness, and everything ends. Out there, outside this prison, I know something must be happening. I can feel the shift in the air as I move from world to world. I see flashes of the lives I’m destroying, and I can’t do anything to stop it. Their torment becomes mine, another piece of willow weaving my wicker cage. I’m so tired.”

  Kiana contemplates something, staring unfocused past all of us. “Did you ever learn what Homura meant, when she spoke of a cycle? Did you learn what we really are?”

  Reska seems taken aback by that. She glances at Mordred, then at me, then back to her double. Mordred and I stay silent, watching the scene and letting Kiana take the lead here. “I know that Homura and I share a connection with Katoptris. I know she thought this conflict was bigger than us.”

  Kiana holds out a hand. “Let me show you what she meant.”

  Reska hesitates, looking distrustfully around the crater again, but she takes Kiana’s hand. Immediately she gasps, eyes going wide, and she stumbles to her feet as a flood of information overtakes her. I’m thankful that her wounds preserve her modesty, though perhaps that’s an oxymoron.

  Kiana gently takes Reska’s other hand and holds them both, offering stability. When Reska comes back to herself, there are new tears sliding down her cheeks.

  “Awful,” she says, horrorstruck. “That’s so awful. So many times. So many sacrifices.”

  “It’s what we were made for,” Kiana says with loathing. “A victim gift-wrapped for the altar. She creates us only to destroy us. She keeps us lonely so we’re easier to push in that direction, toward that end. No family allowed to love us, no joy allowed to linger. She shapes us into the kind of person who will make all the wrong decisions, and then she bleeds us for them.”

  “Why? Why is she doing this?” Reska leans into Kiana’s grasp, fearful of comfort yet craving it. Kiana is soft with her, holding her gently.

  The copy glances at me and tilts her head. “You’d know better than I would, I think.”

  I have a few ideas. I clear my throat and say, “I’m not completely certain, but I think your story is supposed to be about guilt. The Demiurge is looking for something, and she believes she can find it in our stories. For Kiana, for Reska, what she’s examining is the idea that love and happiness are undeserved, so someone who seeks love and happiness must be made to suffer for it. She created you to feel that it was your fault that your mother died, that your father hates you, that you can’t find love, that you keep getting hurt… because all of these things are true about the Demiurge, or they were at some point before she left her humanity behind. The memories that Homura and I carry are versions of her memories, and those are some of the thoughts that haunt her. That haunt us, in proxy of our creator. It’s how she perceives reality.”

  “And she’s wrong,” Kiana quickly cuts in. “The Demiurge is wrong, Reska. I know we made mistakes in our life, and I know the world suffered for those mistakes, but they weren’t our mistakes alone. We were groomed to make them.”

  Mordred joins us. “You were manipulated, Reska. By me, by Prevara, and by the Demiurge. You were used and betrayed, made a pawn in someone else’s game, and for that ‘sin’ you were told to drown in guilt. But it wasn’t your fault. Being manipulated is never the victim’s fault.”

  Reska shies away from our words, but that mix of hope and confusion is written across her face again. We just have to keep going and we can get through to her, we can wake her from this nightmare. The curse is banished; all that remains is one final nail in Contrition’s coffin.

  I tell her, “The punishment never fit the crime. Whatever mistakes you made, whatever role you were born into, that never warranted the loss of your father’s warmth and your brother’s kindness. Nothing you did could have justified how Homura treated you. Nothing could have justified the isolation. No one—no one ever deserves—”

  I can’t finish it. I know the words I want to say, but they won’t come out. Even now, I struggle to believe the argument I’m making.

  Kiana picks up the torch. With iron conviction, she says, “Nothing that any of us did was ever so awful that we don’t deserve to be loved.”

  Reska and I flinch at the same time, the words cutting deep into both of us.

  Can that really be true? It’s not like being loved is some inalienable human right. There are plenty of monstrous people out there who shouldn’t be owed someone to love them.

  You’re hiding from the point. It’s not about being owed something. Reska feels—we feel—like our sins are so great that love is a kind of injustice. That something is wrong in the world if we are loved, if we are cherished, if we are cared for. That all of these things are a violation of some natural order imposed on us by the things we’ve done. But that’s not true. No one’s sins could ever be so great that it would be justice to deny them a heart freely given.

  Was Cheshire’s heart freely given?

  Yes, it was. The girl she used to be was dead when we meet her. The only Cheshire we ever knew was the one who wanted to be with us. And it wouldn’t have been undeserved if we had accepted her love.

  Reska is going through something like I am, and the others are staying quiet to let her process. The storm outside the crater is changing, speeding up here and slowing down there, as Reska cries with eyes shut and whispers words too soft to make out.

  Melpomene and Thalia showed me the truth of Reska, the truth of what she was made to be. She was made to want above all else the one thing she could never have. The first Kiana was distracted by thoughts of power and respect, and Homura thought this Kiana would be the same, but those notions had long since been carved from the pattern. All Reska ever wanted was for the people around her to love her for who she was instead of who she might be. She thought her nature made her unlovable, and Homura ended up reinforcing that belief.

  Today, that belief dies. I’ll kill it myself, if that’s what it takes.

  “I love you,” I say suddenly. Everyone looks at me in surprise, but I barrel on. “Not like Homura did. I lived your memories, Reska, the loop you were trapped in all those years, and it made me feel for you. Your frustrations and your fears, your longing and your hesitation. I empathized, and that made me like you. I wanted you to be happy. I still do, because I’ve come to know you as intimately as I know myself. I love you like a sister.”

  Reska trembles at my words, but she listens raptly. The storm shudders.

  It clicks for Mordred. She says, “Homura was in love with your scars, but you’re more than that. I love the way your eyes light up when you talk about the stars and the constellations. I thought you would be better if you embraced your darker side, if you became a monster like me. I was a fool. I love the gentle warmth in your heart that fought so hard to save even the people who had hurt you. You could have killed them all, but you couldn’t bear the thought of it. I love you for being who I could never be.”

  Reska is a deer in headlights, anguished and frozen and needing. The storm splits.

  Kiana is next, and last. She stares into her own eyes, biting her lip as she fights with the words in her heart. Finally, softly, she says, “I made too many mistakes. I hated what we became. I hated us. But I am so tired of hate, Reska. I am tired of drowning. So in this moment, here at the end of everything, I want to believe that I can be more than my wounds. I love you, Reska. I love that we survived everything the world threw at us. I love that we remembered the good times along with the bad. I love you, my other self. We are stronger than we ever dreamed we could be.”

  Reska sobs, one final, anguished cry, and she hugs her copy tight. She squeezes with all the strength left in her frail, ravaged body. The storm and the horizon melt away, leaving clear blue skies.

  Reska and Kiana hold each for a long time, crying into each other’s arms. I don’t rush them; just this once, I think the Demiurge will let us have this moment.

  When all her tears have dried up, Reska slowly untangles herself from her copy and turns to face me. There’s new resolve in the set of her mouth, old life and spirit returning to those dark eyes. “Alice. You’re the key to all of this, aren’t you? You were chosen.”

  “I was. For what, I’m still not certain. But the Demiurge has poured too much of herself into this world for it to be just another turning of the wheel. I don’t know if I can end the cycle, but I have to try. I have to change things.”

  She nods. “I believe you. More than I ever believed Homura, for whatever that’s worth. But, I need you to promise me something.”

  “I will,” I answer immediately. “Anything.”

  “Whatever happens next, whatever world gets made to replace this one… there’s going to be another girl like me. Promise me, Alice, that you’ll never let her believe she deserves to be hurt more than she deserves to be loved.” The conviction in her voice is almost frightening, a level of intensity I wouldn’t have expected from Reska.

  I swallow, chest tight. It’s a heavy weight, but one I’m not capable of refusing. Not anymore, at least. “I promise.”

  Reska smiles, and this time her smile is warm. “Thank you. Okay. I think I’m ready.”

  Kiana pulls Reska into another hug, two shards of the same pattern holding each other tight. “Just this once,” Kiana says, forehead resting against Reska’s, “let’s go out on our own terms. No more sacrifices. No more altars. Only us.”

  For a moment, I don’t understand their meaning. When I figure it out, it’s already too late.

  Both girls glow with red light, and in seconds that light has enveloped them. Their bodies disintegrate, melting into each other and joining the swirl of bright crimson.

  The light flows from them into me, the shard I excised rejoining my soul and bringing an old sister with it. Reska’s essence commingles with mine, becoming part of me. Dimly, distantly, in a room outside the universe, I feel a gobbet of meat absorb another cut of flesh.

  I stare at the space where they just stood as the world around me crumbles away, the skyline of Fata Morgana replacing the infinite void. Mordred is caught frozen in the act of reaching out for the girls, a cry stifled in her throat.

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “I get it now,” I murmur. “The purpose of putting those shards in me.”

  Mordred glares at me with suspicion. “Did you know this would happen?” she demands. “Did you plan this?”

  I shake my head. “No, but it makes sense. One last gambit before the stage burns down. None of the splinters have ever achieved whatever arcane objective Melpomene sets for them. But maybe, if enough of those little splinters came together to form one big splinter, more complex than any standing alone, more whole than the rest… maybe then she gets her way.”

  Mordred doesn’t have a sword to threaten me with anymore, but I can sense her hostility. “Tell me honestly, Alice: would you give it to her? Would you let that monster win?”

  I laugh, the sound bursting out of me full-throated and radiant. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  I flex my hands and call to the new threads twining through my soul. Shadows bubble at my feet, answering my call and flowing into a dozen new shapes. Reska’s last gift to me, the inheritance of her divine flesh.

  “The Adversary and I agree about one thing, Mordred: the age of the Demiurge ends. By the day’s end, before the ashes of this universe have cooled, a new god will sit her throne.”

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