Tezoni Cappaz steps out of the shadows with murder on her mind.

Her muse doesn’t notice her at first. For a moment, she trails behind him. Her hands are clasped behind her back; on her face, a sly grin plays at her lips, showing hints of teeth that look more like fangs. It grows wider when the boy she’s been following, stops. Excitement licks through her veins, giving rise to the hairs on her neck. “Was it the shoes that gave me away?”

He doesn’t have to turn around to know who had followed him—who else—but he does it anyway. Tezoni meets his face, stony and rigid and annoyingly hard to read, and offers a small wave. His brows furrow.

“Hiya, A.Z.” She takes a step forward and he inches back. So this is the game we’re playing, then. Alright, Mister High-and-Mighty. If you want me to bite, I’ll bite.

“Tezoni,” he says. His voice is rich and smooth, loud in the hallway. He corrects his slouch, towering over her.

Tezoni bristles, her brown, nearly black eyes losing their gleam. Her fingers—now balled into fists at her sides—are white, and when they dig into the soft pad of her otherwise calloused palms they leave crescent marks. It stings. “Let’s skip the formalities, shall we?” she snarls, cocking her head to the side. “You and I both know each other.”

“Sometimes I wonder if that’s as much of a blessing as it is a curse.”

God. What a prick.

“It should be easy for you to tell, A.Z. Well, you know. Considering.” Her hands itch to unsheathe her blade and get this over with already.

Hurt flickers across his face in a flash that’s hidden almost as quickly as it came. “You,” he says, “don’t get to talk about that as if it were my fault. You weren’t even there.”

“Well, A.Z., was it really not your fault?”

His rage is bubbling over his smooth exterior, little cracks and fissures in that stupid act he puts on. Tezoni can’t possibly understand why he does it. It’s so much more effort to hide what you feel—to guard what you say so carefully as if the very balance of your life depends on it.

“I know what you’re doing, Tezoni. I’m not stupid. And I won’t fight you. So please, stop trying.” He says his words slowly, picking them with care, trying (and failing) to not let the tremble in his voice betray his masked feelings.

Tezoni frowns, her bottom lip jutting out in a sulky pout. “Oh, A.Z.,” she slathers her words in utterly false sympathy, “always painting yourself the victim.”

She takes a step forward. Then another. And another. Like a lion stalking her prey, Tezoni slides her sword out of its sheath, its sleek iron her lion’s-claw, an extension of her being. She watches A.Z.’s every moment, and when he sees the light dance off the edge of her blade a sound rumbles out of his chest and resonates in the hall. A warning growl. The hair on her neck raises and shivers roll deep down her spine. Adrenaline floods her senses and surges through her veins like wildfire, making her fingers twitch on the handle of her blade.

“Don’t.”

But his voice is quiet, and then his fighting clubs appear in his hands.

So they dance.

Tezoni slashes at his shoulder, and A.Z. falls back. She cuts at his chest, and A.Z. falls back. She throws her weight forward and goes to plunge her sword in his chest but again A.Z. falls back and she stumbles and nearly falls. Again and again and again.

Her body shakes with fury and now she’s jabbing and hacking at empty air, tears welling and stinging in the corners of her eyes. A strangled cry claws its way out of her throat. “Why won’t you fight me?”

She swings a sloppy uppercut and her iron meets one of A.Z.’s clubs. Her grip on it falters, and with the other, A.Z. knocks her sword out of her hand and it clatters to the floor, sliding away. Tezoni blinks through her tears, at first confused and then enraged. A scream, black with hate, tears itself from her chest and she leaps at him, bringing them both crashing to the ground. Her hands are flailing, scratching blindly, wanting him to die, die die die before she realizes she can’t breathe.

His hands are around her neck.

Tezoni’s eyes are wide and terrified and oh god she can’t breathe. She claws at his hands, choked, mangled sounds escaping from her throat, looking him in the eyes—but his gaze is cold. The pressure increases on her neck, choking her, killing her, his fingernails digging sharp into her skin. A.Z.’s face dissolves into shapes and colors that swim before her eyes. It’s too much effort to keep them open, now. Tezoni would much rather let them flutter close and sink into the black, into the deep black…

She’s ripped from the black and back into an explosion of white seconds later, her eyes wrenching open, chest heaving with the sudden rush of cold air filling her lungs. His grip still ghosts her neck in a ring of yellowing bruises like a painted noose. Tezoni sits there for what seems like forever, hunched over and moving only in slow rises and falls, clawing at the tile with A.Z.’s blood underneath her fingernails.

His shadow passes over her once in a silent eclipse, and then he’s gone.

For far too long, the only sound that filled the halls was her harrowed breathing.

✤

Above, the sky envelops the world in a smooth black expanse, dotted with twinkling stars and fuzzy, faraway planets. Tezoni Cappaz pulls her knees to her chest and traces the bruises, now dark and hateful and purple, that wrap around her neck. She has her gaze skyward, looking out the windows of the glass conservatory, but her mind is too close. Her thoughts are suffocating.

Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.

What were you thinking? He could have killed you.

He should have killed you.

Tezoni stretches, then lies back, spreading out on the cold floor.

What were you thinking?

She closes her eyes, focusing on the pounding, ever-present ache at her neck. The thoughts drift away and leave her empty. Somehow, this is worse. Her limbs feel strange. Like she’s afloat. Nothing feels real. Her hand swims in front of her face and she only briefly acknowledges it before it disassembles into… nothing. Impressions of shapes. Why are they moving? What are they? Nothing feels real.

The stars double, then triple, phasing in and out of existence. Tezoni can’t move. She’s powerless. The black of the sky grows larger and larger until it’s all she can see, an endless infinite void, stretching out forever and ever, enveloping her in its crushing grip. Is it real?

Does it matter?

Everything’s so small.

What are you thinking?

She can’t answer that one. Tezoni can’t do much of anything at all. Not now, not ever. This is all there is, and this is all there ever will be. It’s black and dark and she’s alone and scared and there’s no one there except those heavy hands on her neck. She can’t breathe. Why can’t she breathe?

Breathe.

Nothing. She’s clawing at her throat. Oh god, why can’t she breathe?

Breathe.

Why did you do that? Why did you have to do that? Tezoni doesn’t know. Is she even Tezoni anymore?

Breathe.

She breathes.

Little by little, the world regains its sharpness. Colors coming back. Shapes no longer shapes, but figures. Things. Tangible, real things. Her hand—yes, her hand—was there, in front of her eyes. All five fingers, bending, wiggling, saying hello. Tezoni counted them, again and again and again, desperate to cling onto the one thing that made sense as her world came back in a great flood of real.

For now, at least.