I’m having trouble understanding exactly what he means, because the glitter is getting deeper in my head now, not just in my eyes. It’s like his words wink and rotate the way sequins do, and sometimes they beam back the light, sometimes they don’t. My mouth crawls like a hive of bees. But I can tell from the catch in Kezzer’s breath that whatever Prince just said had a pretty big impact.
“Once?” Kezzer snaps, and now I really can’t take the way she’s looking at me, even if I can only halfway see her eyes. But before I can do anything about it she turns back to Prince. “You’ve destroyed him! The selfishness and the emptiness, and how callous he is now—none of that is him. He tried to trick our best friend and trap her here, and Josh—he still doesn’t see anything wrong with that.”
Wait. Kezzer can’t be saying those things about me, can she? She said my name, I heard her, but it doesn’t connect. I’m just now catching up to what Prince said earlier: that I’ll be leading the charge. And Kezzer called it an assault on our old friends. Okay, maybe I can see why she would disapprove, but I’m having trouble feeling anything except this hazy anger at her. She needs to start respecting my decisions, whatever they are.
“I’ve only worked with the materials at hand, Ksenia,” Prince tells her. “As any artist does. Such ferocity, and loss, and longing, and desperation, all in one youth—it made for extraordinary potential. I had only to brighten certain colors. To enhance what Joshua brought to me. And oh, his rage against your world, and even at you! It’s been a great pleasure to shape him to my ends.”
Kezzer gasps. At first I think she’s reacting to what he just said, but then she looks down and I follow her eyes, to where the knife I used earlier is stuck just above her hipbone. Her white tuxedo shirt is stained with spreading crimson. How did that happen?
Casually, Prince plucks the knife out and drops it with a clang. “Such rage,” he continues, like nothing happened, “that he was ready to wound you, earlier. He knows perfectly well that those stairs are composed of a person he purports to love devotedly, and yet he drove the blade home without a pang. And how touchingly you rushed to his defense, not to your own!”
Kezzer is clutching her side and her fingers are bright with blood. I don’t know what to do. “Kezzer?” I try. “I didn’t mean—” But it’s too hard to finish the sentence. I stare at the red seeping through her sliced-up shirt.
“Oh, it’s only a flesh wound, Joshua. Don’t start with any bothersome qualms now. Not when you’ll be riding forth this very night with your troops behind you, to make your old world suffer as it deserves.”
“Tonight?” I say. I’m having trouble saying much. Kezzer’s blood is dripping on the tiles, but her focus is on me.
“Alexandra will be moving against us at any moment,” Prince explains. “She has a traitor assisting her, one who will help her invade our territory. I mean to attack first.”
That makes sense. Won’t Kezzer have to admit that that makes sense? But she whirls on Prince with her upper lip hiked.
“Lexi will never come back here! She wouldn’t throw her life away for no reason! And Josh won’t have anything to do with your attack.”
“Oh, Ksenia. For no reason, you say? You may be a very small and inadequate reason, but are you no reason at all? Alexandra bound herself to you, and so her return here is as inevitable as night. And then there are the children, of course; she means to steal them from us as well, if she can. As for Joshua, he’ll do as he’s told. Unselle has gone to fetch his steed. Dearest Joshua, are you ready?”
Things have gotten really quiet, except for a few snickers. Can’t she see that they’re trying to make us argue? Why does she have to let them manipulate her so easily?
If she was as smart as I’ve always thought, she’d just start kissing me and throw them all for a loop.
“You can fight this, baby,” Kezzer says to me so softly that it’s hard to hear her. “Please. I know you can.”
We’re all waiting for so long that it’s like there’s a break for commercials before the program resumes, and the whole time Kezzer keeps gazing at me, I can feel it. But I’m not in any mood to look at her.
“Oh, for chrissake, Kezzer,” I finally say, and it comes out harsh, and cruel, and caustic. “Would you please just stop bitching?”
Around me faces break out in crooked, congratulatory grins, like the walls are made of gleaming teeth. Kezzer buckles a little, then catches herself, and I hear the sob snag in her throat.
They’re clambering out of the pool, all of them, those changeling people: hoisting themselves over the tiled lip, clawing their way up the ladders. They’re dripping wet and maybe a little bloated from being underwater for so long, and there’s still a soft lavender glow clinging to their skin—but yeah, apart from that, they’d fool anybody. And—it’s just sinking in—they’re here to follow my orders. For once in my life, I’m going to be in charge of something.
From the corner of my eye, I see Prince wrap an arm around Kezzer’s shoulders, and I see his hand dig into her with a tight, iron pinch, but I guess I can’t always be jumping up and down to protect her.
“You see,” he croons confidingly in her ear, but loud enough that I can still hear him just fine, “it’s only natural that Joshua would hate your other selves, Ksenia, and even want to murder them: your personal changeling, for one, and all those squealing, splintered little replicas of you that have displayed such an interest in, ahem, architecture. He hates any aspect of you that remains outside his grasp. To put it another way, he’s enraged to find that so much of you will not answer to the name Kezzer.”
She doesn’t answer, but I can feel her. She’s brittle enough to shatter at a breath, staring after me. I don’t look at her directly; instead I turn to where Unselle comes riding on another of those cloud-horses, stepping gracefully around the pool, with a second horse trotting along behind her.
“And that,” Prince continues, “is why Joshua is ready to become truly one of us. Very soon, he will complete his transformation, and join us forever. Like us, never-contented.”
“But not me,” Kezzer growls, low enough that I barely catch it. “You can’t be bothered to change me.”
“Not so much that I can’t be bothered, my lovely Ksenia, but that there is far more piquancy in keeping you as you are.”
My horse is almost here, and it’s a real beauty. I can see coils of mist spiraling inside its head like smoke inside glass. Rainbow fumes where the light hits it. I hope Prince had the sense to make it tougher than the two racehorses that just fell apart.
“And even if Josh does manage to fight—what you’re doing to him, you’ve still got me as a hostage. He’s screwed either way.” I think Kezzer’s voice just set a world record for bitterness. I guess on some level I was aware of that, the hostage thing, but it still seems obnoxious of her to come out and say it.
Unselle hauls back on the reins—and it’s kind of literal-minded of them, but I see that the reins are rains, lines of silver droplets stretched across the air. She looks fantastic, though, with her billowing lace dress spreading over the swirling white vapor of her horse, all that white accented by the bloody writing on her skirt and the ruby twist of her mouth. I’ve never been that into her look before—too girly—but now it seems fascinating, scintillating. She gives a flick of her hand, and my horse comes trotting up and stops right in front of me.
Unselle smiles. All at once she’s the most gorgeous person I’ve ever seen. The changelings are crowding in behind her, their mouths gobbling fishily at the lilac air.
“My knight?” Unselle says, and gestures for me to mount.
I’ve got no idea how you’re supposed to get on a horse, like my life hasn’t been much for sitting on anything higher than a sofa, but that doesn’t matter, because as soon as I think about it I’m up, perched on the cloudy saddle.
“Shall onward we be?” she says, and strokes my cheek. All the pain slides out of my skin, so she must have healed my cuts. I feel myself start to go, and where really doesn’t matter at all.
Somewhere behind me, Kezzer screams. And hey, I didn’t even say goodbye to her. Do I need to say goodbye? But I’ll be back soon, and Kezzer will get over her freak-out. Everything is going to be fine.
But I promised I’d sing for her. That’s the last thing in my mind as we ride off, up the wall and then straight through the ceiling, with the changelings shuffling behind us: I never sang for Kezzer tonight, and I told her I would. I even told her she could pick the songs.