It had only been a week, and Asimi was already restless.

  Everyone in the castle was just so boring. Scholars with their heads lifted high, servants too busy with their work. She was beginning to suspect everyone had been given instructions to ignore her, which was really quite rude; every time she tried to start a conversation, these people would just leave. Without any kind of excuse. They’d just go. She preferred knife threats in the alley to this.

  Only this one group of old men spared her a glance, and it wasn’t a glance, more of a stare — the kind of stare you would give a dead roach on your bedspread. She’d guessed that the one with the very curly mustache was some kind of advisor, mostly because he had an ‘advisor’ badge pinned to his chest. He’d whisper to his old man friends, and she’d sometimes stand in the hallway and stare back at them until they got uncomfortable and scampered away.

  But this view . . . nothing she’d seen could beat it. She’d spent the past week skipping class to go skipping over the palace roofs, scaling the walls until the rubber soles of her boots had been worn smooth. Now, she sat nestled in the curve of a tented roof, perched atop the Outlook Tower. It was the tallest point in the capital, if not the entire kingdom. The rest of the tower shot down from beneath her feet, a dizzying column of stone. The world lay spread out in front of her, buildings serving as colorful dots in the distance, the capital city and then swathes of grassland and forest mingling with smaller towns.

  If she squinted enough, she could see the cragged peaks of the Laminae Mountains, serving as the border between Tessera and Sentis, jutting up like a row of sharp teeth; and maybe even glimpse the floating Aeolia Islands of Synoro, nothing but specks in the sky.

  To her left was the ocean, glittering with gold as the sun left its slumber in the blue depths, vast and endless and sparkling. She wished she could scoop up the sea like liquid jewels and gold dust and soak it all in. Take every city and etch it into her skin. Have every building in Tessera as an ornament on her wrist.

  Birds soared past, and she joined their calls as she watched their wings ride on the winds, free and reckless. The wind whipped through her hair and flattened her skirt against her legs.

  She took in a deep breath, breathing it in. She leaned forwards and measured the distance between the palace and its gates with her forefinger and her thumb. The sun glinted off her silver nails. Innocuous enough; everyone she’d met had assumed it was paint or glamor. Because what rational person would assume they were entirely metal, implanted in her fingers? What rational person would think of tearing out a girl’s nails?

  Rationality hadn’t been Aconite’s strong suit.

  It was laughably ironic. That, despite her paranoia, her careful planning in keeping Asimi trapped to avoid her secrets being leaked, she’d been so clumsy in her plans to kill the queen that she’d gotten caught. And now, even with the queen dead, she would never finish whatever great plan she was working on — because she was dead, Asimi was free, and never going back to that miserable tower again.

  Thinking about the dearly departed was souring Asimi’s mood considerably. She sat up, ripped open a chocolate bar in her teeth, and stuffed the bar into her mouth, chewing to try and get rid of the thought.

  How does it feel to be trapped? she taunted. With no escape? How does it feel to be under six feet of dirt, while I’m up here in the sky?

  She didn’t know where Aconite had been beheaded or buried, and she didn’t care. She imagined the gruesomeness of being stuffed into the earth, soil pressed in against all sides — that suffocation, that pressure, with no room to escape or move or breathe. She imagined Aconite deep in the ground, too deep to ever crawl back out, and waited to feel the triumph, the satisfaction of her victory in outlasting her captor.

  She had waited for this day for years — when she’d be free, freer than free, and Aconite would be dead, gone forever, no longer there to limit and restrain her. When she’d crow about it from the highest place in the kingdom.

  It didn’t feel as satisfying as she’d hoped.

  She stood, restless again, and paused as she spotted a head of curly hair down below. A little pinprick, slowly treading over the palace grounds, heading for the gates. She squinted.

  Yup, it was him. What was his name again? Zeid. Zeid Pnevma. The least uptight of the other three holders.

  Where is he going? She hadn’t bothered to even look at the schedule that had been given to her, but she’d assumed the princess had packed them both into dozens of classes. Is he also skipping class? She had to know. She had to find out. Finally, something to do.

  And there was always the possibility she could rope him into some shenanigans . . . he hadn’t seemed entirely opposed to the sink prospect, something she’d spat out on the spot.

  She stood on her toes, found herself a path down over rooftops and pipes. As tempted as she was to simply leap down, she wasn’t sure the stone liked her enough quite yet to save her from becoming an Asimi splat on the ground. She swung herself over the edge of the roof and began her descent.

  ?????

  “Skipping class?”

  “Crepes,” Zeid said. The shock of watching Asimi’s head burst out of a well-manicured bush was really waking him up. “Yeah, maybe. Just for today.”

  “Ooo,” Asimi said. “You’re going to get in trouble. Your professor’s going to be so mad.”

  “Maybe he should try teaching me something more interesting than ‘thou shalt not stick thy fork in a platter until the presiding ruler hast done so’. What does that even mean?”

  “See, I knew I was right to skip. Asimi’s wisdom, proving invaluable once more.”

  He stifled a laugh. “What are you doing in a bush?”

  “I’m not in it,” she corrected. “I’m behind it.”

  “Your head is coming out of the bush.”

  “My body is behind the bush.” Her head went back in, and she popped up a moment later from behind the bush. “Ta-daaa.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He gave her a small smattering of applause as she bowed, leaves drifting off her skirt.

  “So, why are you staring at a gate?” Asimi asked. “Because you’ve been staring at it for a while now. I climbed all the way down here and then did parkour to land discreetly behind the bush, and you didn’t notice a thing because you were staring at this gate.”

  “Why did you parkour to land discreetly behind the bush instead of walking up to talk to me?”

  “Because where’s the fun in that, Zeid? Where’s the flair? The drama?”

  “Fair enough.” He glanced back at the black iron bars. Tipped with steel spikes, forming a thorny barrier around the palace grounds. As tough as it had been climbing the walls around Prasinos, at least he’d never had the risk of getting skewered. Well, not by the wall itself — the spears were another problem. “. . . I was going to go out and buy a train ticket.”

  “Ah,” she said, snapping her fingers. “You’re broke.”

  “Yup.” He’d dragged himself up from bed, convinced himself to go down the stairs, taken step by step to the gates, and realized only then that he had no money. No shot. He’d patted his empty pockets and silently cursed the world.

  “Easy fix, easy fix.” She held out her hand for a shake and winked.

  He obliged, and his hand came back with a fistful of coin. He stared at it for a moment, then at her, faintly surprised at how smoothly and casually she’d handed this much money over to him. She’d undergone the ‘evaluation’ alongside him; stacks of paperwork he’d puzzled and squinted at, questions about lineage and bloodlines that he’d pieced together through her vocal complaints about each one. She was as free from the records as he was; clearly, she didn’t come from money like the other two.

  “Where to?” she asked, rapping her knuckles against the bars.

  The gates slid open, and they slipped through, Zeid avoiding eye contact with the guards and their spears.

  “My old town,” he answered, as they passed the temple of the deadly rock that was now his employer. “Prasinos.”

  “Ooo, Prasinos! I’ll come with!”

  “What? Why?” he asked, a little more judgmentally than he’d intended. He couldn’t imagine why anyone in the world would willingly choose to visit Prasinos.

  “It’s where my favorite book was written,” she responded. “Also, there’s a chocolate shop there that I adore. Haven’t found a taste in Dimanti to match it.”

  He shrugged. “Do what you’d like. Not like I can stop you.”

  The comment seemed to please her. She puffed out her chest like a little thrush. “So you grew up around there? Say, have you been to that lake?” she asked. “Some old man kept telling me it was cursed. Probably referring to the dragon that was there, but it’s dead now, so I don’t know why he was so paranoid . . .”

  “I’ve seen it,” he heard himself say, his mouth dry. “. . . It’s fenced off.”

  “Did it look cursed?”

  Did it? Even with his picture-perfect memory, his view of the lake was a blur. Maybe because of the hand gripping his shoulder, shaking him roughly, the rasping voice ordering him to look closer, look at what he’d done. There were black spots all around those moments. Fallen trees. Miles of murky water, swathes of red. Algae, maybe. “It didn’t look great,” he heard himself say. “I don’t know about cursed.”

  “Old people and their inane ramblings,” she laughed, shaking her head. “What kind of fence was it? I bet I could climb over.”

  “Don’t think you’d want to.” So much water. And maybe it wasn’t cursed, but he couldn’t quite shake the stories of the dragon that had lurked in its depths, even if that dragon was dead. An enormous beast, eyes harsh gold, threads of water that would sink into your skin and pull you under and never let you go. Water was filling his lungs, spilling out of his mouth; he was coughing and spluttering and the world was dark and —

  He stumbled as Asimi pulled him back, a carriage rumbling past on the street, its driver shooting him a dirty look.

  “Jeez, Zeid,” Asimi said. “Hey, I’m all for a bit of risk, but that was close.”

  “Huh?” He looked at her, eyes wide. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry, my bad.”

  Her brow creased, her smile still there. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Didn’t sleep that well.” That much was true. He was safer in that room than he was in the supply closet, hidden behind the bags of flour and rice. He knew that, and yet he couldn’t manage to sleep without tensing at every miniscule movement. Every sound. Couldn’t manage to close his eyes knowing there was someone else there.

  “Ahh,” Asimi said sympathetically. “You can sleep on the train! Perfect time for sleeping. I’ll make sure you don’t get robbed.”

  “I’ve got nothing to rob,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Aside from the coins you just gave me.”

  “Oh, that’s true. Good for you!” She patted his shoulder and he felt the hand of someone else.

  Get it together.

  He tried to hold on to the images of the passing trees, the feel of the stones beneath his feet, tried to find something to grab onto and anchor himself in.

  Carriages rattled past, horses shaking their heads as their hooves clip-clopped down the cobblestone. Folks aired out freshly washed sheets from their apartment windows overhead, and chatted busily as they walked. The whole city was abuzz, and crawling with people.

  He still wasn’t used to this — this crowdedness, this denseness, after so many years wandering about the dusty roads in a much less-populated Prasinos. He still clung to the wall as he travelled, the way he’d done for years, but he found himself pressing closer, as though he could dissolve into the stone and brick instead of being here, warily eyeing every passerby.

  Asimi whistled, skipping next to him. After a second or two of silence, she said, “Okay, maybe the sink idea was a bit too intense. What about meatballs?”

  “Meatballs?” he echoed. She was always moving, always speaking or whistling or humming, like she couldn’t bear the silence. He found himself grateful for the distraction.

  “We replace all the lights,” she said, with a pause for dramatic effect, “with meatballs.”

  He felt his eyebrows lift. “And who would eat all those meatballs when they’re stale and dangling from the ceiling?”

  “Me,” she said. “Duh.”

  “You’ll get sick.”

  “I literally won’t. Best part of the stone, Zeid! No food poisoning!”

  “Have you seen how many light crystals there are?” he asked. “Even if we only did a portion of a single hallway, you’d be eating fifty meatballs. Forget the food poisoning — your stomach can’t handle that.”

  She placed a hand over her chest with a mock gasp. “You think so low of me. I can eat fifty meatballs. Just watch.”

  “You know what? I’ll remember you said that.”

  “Oho, go ahead. Hold me to my word. I’ll eat fifty-one just to show you.”

  “I bet you can’t.”

  “I so can.” She perked up, standing on her toes to look over the shoulders of passerby. “There’s the train station!” she chirped. “Let’s go do this visit! The sooner we go, the sooner we get back, and the sooner I prove you so wrong.” She took off immediately, slipping through the mob like an oil-greased weasel.

  He left the safety of his wall and ducked in after her.