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1
In Hella’s dream, Nacre lies in a blue valley.
The city is white stone buildings, colorless streets, the sky overhead bleeding pink. The stars overhead are no more than faint suggestions of light holding back the dark, too dim to be seen through the haze. Hella wanders the deserted streets, hand resting on the hilt of her sword, but the city is empty, empty, empty. No smoke from the chimneys, no lamplight spilling out from behind shuttered windows, no hands to turn the keys in the locked doors. Hella is alone in Nacre with only her blade for company.
Her feet scuff against the alabaster stones, the only sound except for the slow, even breathing of something ancient and enormous. A bead of sweat works its way free from her hairline, rolling down her forehead. Hella grits her teeth, recalling childhood stories of the dragon, Hieron. Almost unconsciously, her hand tightens on the hilt of her sword. She’s ready , but for what, she isn’t sure.
She wanders a while longer, trending toward the outskirts of the city, scanning the streets for any sign of life. The city of the dead has never felt so lifeless, and it unnerves her. In the waking world, even the Ordennans had left signs of themselves: bootprints and spoor, shattered reliquaries and campfires burned down to ash. The Nacre of her dreams is as empty as if it were never occupied, empty as though its builders had simply lost interest in settling there.
Finally, she comes to the outskirts of town. She rounds a corner and finding herself confronted with a wall of silk, a hand the size of a boulder. She cranes her neck, looking along the wall, realizes it’s the sleeping form of a woman—Adelaide, enormous in scale, curled around her city like a child with a favored toy. Her body makes a mountain range, the curve of her hips a glacier. She’s lovely like this, utterly incomprehensible. Hella simply cannot grasp the scale of her and so she does not try: she focuses instead on smaller details.
Her hair, wrapped in satin. Her cheek, resting on her hand. Her lashes, thick and dark, crumbles of mascara collecting at the corners of her eyes. Asleep, she looks ordinary. Almost human.
Something like tenderness stirs behind Hella’s breastbone and she suppresses it, a boot on its throat. Glowering, she turns on her heel and stalks away, down a gleaming white alley. When she wakes, she throws herself into her morning exercises, trying very hard not to let her thoughts linger on the seismic rise and fall of Adelaide’s chest, on the alluvial sweep of her dark lashes on her cheek. She is not entirely successful.
2
Even in her sleep, she cannot escape Adelaide.
Hella is standing on the shoreline, shading her eyes against the sun. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and she’s waiting—for what, she doesn’t know. A ship, maybe. A storm. It does not matter because it is her dream, hers until it becomes Adelaide’s. The Queen of Pearls is a specter in blue, haunting her sleep.
Hella is on the beach, and then Adelaide is there, tugging at the threads of her dream, reshaping the landscape of her mind. At Adelaide’s touch, the wind-lashed shores of Ordenna melt away and resolve themselves into Adelaide’s throne room. Her throne is raised up above eye level, so that Hella has to crane her neck to look her in the eye. She slouches in her seat, apparently unconcerned, her chin propped on her fist.
(Grudgingly, Hella admits that she looks damned good. Her gown is bias-cut silk and her boots are buttery black leather. Hella envies her ease, her elegance. She is dressed in rough wool and plain cotton, the soles of her boots worn nearly through.)
“Ordenna,” says Adelaide, venom dripping from her words. “What is it that you’ve come here for?”
Hella glowers up at her. “This is my dream,” she says crossly. “Or it was, until you showed up.”
The corner of Adelaide’s lip twitches up. “I was called, Ordenna. Have you been thinking sweet thoughts of me?”
“ No ,” says Hella, and the immediacy of her answer would be rude if she were talking to anyone but Adelaide. Her face heats, and she drops her gaze, which is somehow worse because then Adelaide’s boots are at eye level. She stares at her own feet instead, mouth set in a frown.
Adelaide’s laugh cuts like crystal. “Of course not.”
“I wasn’t!” Hella’s eyes flick up to Adelaide’s face again, and there’s an infuriating smirk playing across her full lips. Hella forces herself to look away before she says or does something stupid.
“I’m sure.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Why indeed?” says Adelaide, mockingly. “Queen-Killer, Truth-Teller. It’s all the same.”
Sighing, Hella looks away. She fixes her gaze on an imagined horizon beyond Adelaide’s throne room and wishes that she were anywhere else. “I’m sorry,” she says, and she’s almost surprised to find that she means it. “If I’d known, I wouldn’t have done it.” She risks a glance at Adelaide, peeking up through her lashes. The other woman’s expression is inscrutable, affronted.
“Why apologize?” The confusion in her voice is genuine. “ I’m not sorry. You brought me here, Queen-Killer, I should be thanking you.”
Hella doesn’t respond immediately. “I shouldn’t’ve,” she says, slowly. “This power you have, I gave it to you. It’s my fault.”
“You give yourself too much credit, Hella. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been one of your countrymen, and I’d rather be bound to your blade than to anyone else’s.”
Hella looks up at her sharply, and then grins. “Careful. That sounded almost affectionate.”
Adelaide purses her lips, and if Hella didn’t know better, she’d swear she was flustered. “All I mean to say,” she says icily, “is that your hygiene is better than the average footsoldier. Marginally.”
“So...you like looking at my tits while I’m in the bath, got it.”
“We’re done here,” says Adelaide, and the throne room disappears around them. As it does, Hella wakes, still laughing to herself. She thinks that maybe Hadrian and his church are onto something.
Maybe it’s not all bad, having a god a god in your head.
3
Hella dreams of her girlhood in Ordenna. She is thirteen years old and very awkward. By her own reckoning, her arms and legs are too long for her body, her hair is a boring shade of mud-red, and she’ll probably die alone and unloved, a kissless freak. Her latest growth spurt has left an ache in her joints, and she’s feeling very sorry for herself as she walks barefoot along a washed-out road, spring mud squishing under her feet.
She’s walking alongside the road, and then she is not. The Ordennan countryside vanishes, and a palace springs up around her; a dizzying maze of verandas and gleaming white stone. Wide arches convey her from room to room and the warm breeze carries the discordant music of a badly-played harp.
Not knowing what else to do, Hella follows the sound.
She is awkward in the space. Her bangs are plastered to her forehead with sweat and there is still earth between her toes. Self-conscious, she proceeds through the shining rooms, feeling large and conspicuous and unlovely. Somewhere nearby, the harpist mangles a chord starts over. They play as if they’re forcing the notes from the instrument, possibly at knifepoint. At thirteen, Hella has not yet met Lem King, but she knows enough about music to know that it isn’t meant to sound like that.
She rounds a corner and finds herself in an empty, open space: spindly little chairs arranged around a central dias, upon which the Queen of Pearls—the Princess of Pearls, perhaps, she’s a child herself, no more than fourteen or fifteen—is abusing a massive harp. Her lack of skill is obvious even to Hella’s untrained eyes, but she looks so elegant sitting there with her cheek resting against the frame and her long-fingered hands arranged on the strings.
Her hands fall to her sides as Hella enters. “You interrupted me,” she says, accusatorily. Her quicksilver eyes flash in irritation, and one of her tidy box braids escapes her topknot and falls in front of her face.
Hella, thirteen years old and very awkward, is overcome with a sudden urge to cross the room and brush it back, out of Adelaide’s eyes. Even with the benefit of her waking-self’s years, she doesn’t understand the impulse. Adelaide has made her a girl again, shy and uncertain.
Instead of flirting, Hella glowers at the other girl. “I did you a favor,” she says, “you suck.”
“Oh, like you could do any better.”
“I bet could,” says Hella. “I probably couldn’t do worse. ”
With a scoff, Adelaide gets up off her bench and gestures at the harp. “I’ll take that bet,” she says. “Go ahead.”
Hella regrets her bravado almost immediately. The harp is taller than she is and heavily ornamented, all gold and mother-of-pearl. Aware once again of her bare feet and shabby clothes, she worries that her touch will crack the frame or snap the strings. If she ruins the harp, she wonders, will she be held accountable for the damages? Hella is dreaming, but her dreams are Adelaide’s reality.
She swallows and takes Adelaide’s vacated seat. Heart in her throat, Hella raises her hands and places them on the strings. She hesitates a moment before she plucks at the strings, striking a shivery chord which hangs suspended in the air.
Hella draws back, turning to Adelaide. “See?” she says, “easy.”
Adelaide is looking at her, studying her the way Hella had studied her. She’s smiling slightly, her eyes soft but intent, and when she realizes Hella’s caught her staring, she lowers her gaze, apparently embarrassed.
Hella’s face heats. “Are you there?” she says, heart pounding, and then the palace disappears. She’s abruptly in Ordenna, barefoot by the side of the road, mud clinging to her trousers. Disoriented, she sets out down the road again, unable to get Adelaide’s face out of her mind. The softness of her expression and her smile—
4
When she wakes, she does not fully recall her dream. The shape of the thing eludes her, so she clings to the details: the heat of a held gaze, the chill of icy fingertips on flushed skin. The curve of Adelaide’s smile, the curve of her hip. Scattered pearls, peonies in bloom, lightning striking the prow of a ship.
When she wakes, Hella’s forehead is damp with sweat and her limbs are tangled in her bedclothes. Heart pounding in her chest, she flings the covers away and crosses the room to the washstand. She fills the basin and dunks her head, trying to throw off the spell of sleep. It was a dream, she tells herself, as stern as any parent dispelling nightmares, just a dream.
As she’s wringing out her hair, she catches sight of herself in the silvered mirror hanging on the back of the door. For just a moment, her reflection is not her own—her skin darker, her smile sharper, her eyes silver-blue. But when she looks again, she is just herself, alone in the room.
“Just a dream,” she says, out loud, trying to convince herself. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
There’s no answer. She isn’t sure why she was expecting one.
5
Maybe it was inevitable that they should find themselves here again, circling one another in Adelaide’s throne room. Her palace is cold and bright and lifeless as the starstuff, sunlight slanting through the leaded windows, white marble columns arching up to a ceiling as distant as the sky. The only sound is the echo of their footsteps, the staccato tap-tap-tap of Adelaide’s heeled shoes counterpoint to the percussion of Hella’s heavy boots against the polished floors.
The Queen of Pearls is majestic in pale silk, her gown understated and almost modest, except for the transparency of the material. As she moves in careful circles around the perimeter of the room, mirroring Adelaide’s movements, Hella grinds her teeth. She looks intently at the other woman’s face and at her feet and at absolutely nothing in between.
“Why are we doing this?” She’s not expecting an answer, but she’s certain she’ll go mad if she doesn’t give voice to her frustration. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to let each other go?”
Adelaide laughs. “Let you go?” she says, her voice light and teasing. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Hella frowns at her feet. “How long do you really think we can keep doing this?” she says, changing tracks. “Aren’t you tired?”
Her words strike a chord; Adelaide stumbles. She recovers quickly, but for just a moment, her composure slips. Startled, Hella tries to meet her gaze, but Adelaide looks away, her mask of indifference fixed firmly in place.
“Gods don’t tire.”
“Sure,” says Hella, “but people do.”
Adelaide looks directly at Hella, her dark eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What are you saying, Queen-Killer? Speak plainly, this ornamented speech doesn’t suit you.”
Hella rolls her eyes, choosing to ignore the barb. “This doesn’t have to be a fight,” she says. “We don’t have to keep this up forever. I don’t know if we could.”
“And what is ‘this?’”
Hella gestures at the throne room around them, the gleaming white marble, the elevated throne. “ This, ” she says. “You in my dreams. Us, at each other’s throats. There are enough people out in the real world who want to kill me, I don’t need to be fighting the woman in my head, too.”
“ God, ” Adelaide corrects. “I am no mere woman, this whole continent is my domain.”
“Yeah, and that sounds exhausting. C’mon. Just this once, let’s not argue.”
“What shall we do instead?” says Adelaide, her perfect lip curled in a sneer.
Her sneer does something to Hella; unbalances something inside her. She feels unsettled, reckless in a way that she hasn’t in years. With a one-shouldered shrug, she decides to speak recklessly. “Do you want to dance?” she says, and she’s past pretending not to care about the answer. Every part of her wants Adelaide to say yes.
For the second time, Adelaide’s composure slips. She comes to a graceless halt, staring at Hella, her face wide-open. “Dance?” she repeats, incredulous.
“I know you’ve heard of it,” says Hella, and she extends her hand. “C’mon.”
Haltingly, Adelaide takes Hella’s hand and allows herself to be drawn close. Hella settles one hand on Adelaide’s back, steering her into the center of the room. “I’m rusty,” Hella warns, her heart in her throat, “I haven’t danced in a long time”
“Nor I,” says Adelaide, and she speaks so softly that Hella has to strain to hear her. “I haven’t done anything so ordinary in…a while.”
“There’s not much ‘ordinary’ left these days,” says Hella, equally soft. “It’s the end of the world, and all.”
For a moment, Adelaide says nothing. “It doesn’t have to be,” she says, and her hold on Hella’s hand tightens. “There is safety to be found in death. I can protect anyone who passes willingly into my realm, at least for a little while.”
Adelaide is looking expectantly at her. There’s something soft in her eyes, and Hella has no answer for her. “I’m sorry,” she says, and she’s surprised by her own sincerity. “You know I can’t, not yet. There’s still so much to do out here—”
“Of course,” says Adelaide, and there’s something sardonic in her voice. “End of the world. What hero could walk away from that?”
“I’m not a hero.” Hella sets her jaw, avoiding Adelaide’s eyes.
The other woman pulls back, her face folded into a tight-lipped smile. “You are,” she says, “you always have been. I see that, now.”
“I’m not —”
Adelaide is gone before she can finish her sentence. Hella fades into wakefulness, and for the first time in a long time, she is alone in her own mind, and she knows that it will be a long while before she speaks to Adelaide again.
It shouldn’t upset her as it does.
5+1
Aubade is nothing like Nacre. Nacre was cold stone warmed by the sun, reflecting its golden glory back at the sea. In Aubade, the warmth comes from below, as if the city sits atop a massive furnace, basking in its heat like a cat in a sunbeam.
Adelaide cannot find rest in Aubade, the heat interferes with her sleep. Samothes has given her quarters in his castle, rooms as fine as his own. She has food, clothing, furniture, everything she could ask for. Her bed is large and comfortable, but she cannot sleep. She tosses and turns and wakes in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat. She can only find sleep in snatches, in brief respites troubled by nightmares. She dreams about her father and her brother, her city and its citizens, all of them dead and gone and beyond her reach—
She is lonely. When she was a girl, she had Angelo. As a woman, she had Nacre. As a god, she had the whole of Hieron and every living thing on its back. Now, she has nothing, not even Hella.
The other woman is avoiding her, she thinks. Hella spends her days in the castle yard, running drills and practicing her footwork. Adelaide spends her days in shadow, watching from a distance, unsure of herself. She thinks she should be happy, because this is what she wanted, after all. She and Hella are together, they are safe. This is Samothes’ domain, the Heat and the Dark cannot touch them here.
She is lonely and she is bored. She concedes that perhaps Hella was right, that safety means nothing when there is still so much left undone in the wider world, so many wrongs to be righted. Adelaide is no hero but the days stretch longer and longer and idleness gives way to ennui and then to anxiety. She has nothing to do, nowhere to go. Even in her sleep, she cannot escape it, although she tries.
Adelaide sleeps and she dreams. She dreams about Ordenna, about Nacre in ruins and Hella somewhere among the ashes, lost to her. She wakes in a blind panic and rises from her bed, drawing her robe around her shoulders. Still half-dreaming, she leaves her too-warm room, and her feet carry her to Hella’s door. She hesitates there, her fist raised, poised to knock. She doesn’t know what she wants, but she knows she has to decide.
It doesn’t take her very long. She wants Hella, she always has. Whatever it means, whatever form it takes, she wants to be with her, always.
She knocks.
From within, a voice, thick with sleep. “Who is it?”
“It’s Adelaide.” She is nervous, unaccountably so. She has been in Hella’s head, seen all that she’s seen, felt all that she’s felt. There should be no secrets.between them, no reason to feel any kind of trepidation or hesitation.
“Come in.”
Hella is sitting up in bed, her hair loose around her shoulders. Her expression is guarded, but Adelaide cannot blame her for that. Hella’s caution is sensible in a way that Adelaide’s nerves are not.
“I couldn’t sleep,” says Adelaide.
“Me neither.” Hella speaks softly, so softly that Adelaide has to strain to hear her. “Its too warm, here. I think I got too used to winter.”
Adelaide laughs and moves a little closer to Hella, so that she can hear her better. No other reason. “I did, as well.”
“Do you think it’s spring, out there?” Hella is lovely. All the hard planes of her face are softened by the warm, golden light of the gas lamps. Adelaide admires her, and tries to pretend that she isn’t, but she knows Hella is wise to her. It’s infuriating.
“Perhaps,” says Adelaide. “Do you think it’s always spring, in here?”
Hella is smiling. “Perhaps.”
Adelaide swallows. There’s more to be said—much more—but she doesn’t know how to say it. She could begin with an apology, or a request for one. Or she could begin by asking what Hella intends to do after the world opens to them again, whether she intends to leave Adelaide in Aubade and return to the dying world and continue her mad quest to beat back the Heat and the Dark. Adelaide has a thousand questions for Hella, a thousand demands to make of her.
She asks, instead, for permission.
“Can I stay here?” she says, and perhaps she did have reason to be nervous. Adelaide has worn a mask nearly her whole life; she has forgotten the face beneath. “I’m lonely, without you. I have...I’ve missed being in your head, Hella.”
“I’ve missed you too, Adelaide” she says, and the corner of her mouth lifts in a grin. “You can stay as long as you like.”
Hella extends her arms to Adelaide and relief swarms her system. “I intend to,” she says, because there’s no point in pretending otherwise. She falls into Hella’s arms and tucks her head under the other woman’s chin.
It’s not so bad, Adelaide decides, being with Hella instead of within her.