She rose out of the rubble with her guts trapped halfway under the broken wall.

​

The open wound in her stomach pulsed, drooped with the weight of blood and shit and bowel. It was the part of her body that felt most like meat, and thus the part of her body that still managed to hurt. She put a hand to its throbbing center and came away slick with her juices. She did not feel like she had been a healer in her previous life, but she knew that this was a wound that did not close.

​

She looked at her intestines, at their deep red crush under the stone. Everything was painted in her body’s violence. She dug her fingers inside of herself and found the notches where organ connected with organ, and when she felt satisfied with the map she had made of the inside of herself, she yanked.

​

Her body gave up on itself quicker than it should have. It didn’t matter. She spilt onto the rock and stone until her middle was empty and cold. Her body was lighter afterwards, and though she did not know how she had become what she had become, it felt like something heroic, to exist and be something different than she was before, even if that something was made of less parts.

​

She did not remember much about herself. It felt like something she had not intentionally forgotten.

​

She turned slowly as she looked at her surroundings and tried to piece together any previous existence. She appeared to be at the edge of what had possibly been—a tower? Castle, something inside of her said, and she believed it. Castle. She was standing at the edge of the smoldering ruins of a castle.

​

She searched the rubble with her eyes for any other survivors, but no one else crushed underneath the dark gray stone moved. She saw them, though. Saw who else the castle walls had claimed. A leg jutting up from the rubble. An oozing skull leaking tissue from a gash in its left face. A dark maroon smear. Red dripping between two rocks that had collided with each other; a limp hand hanging down between them, smeared in the stuff.

​

She used her own hands to pat herself down, to feel for her own oozes and gashes. White bone stuck out of her left arm, cutting beneath her elbow. Something in her chest did not fit right, and she felt it as it sliced into her. But her lower half had suffered the worst of it: open guts and shattered knees; a hip that tried to pull her back to the ground; two long bones protruding from both of her shins, cut at strange angles, like the rest of the bone had broken off in the landing.

​

Something in the middle of her neck snapped when she turned her head to the side. She heard the way the air trickled out of her throat on every strange, impossible breath. She searched for a heartbeat in her ears but came away with blank, empty sound.

​

She should not have been alive. But she was, and because she was alive, she wanted to know why. She wanted to know who she had been when the castle had been a castle instead of a gravesite. It did not appear that anyone who had stuck around would have any answers to give her.

​

She couldn’t stay here.

​

She scoured the sky for a point of orientation and found a tendril of smoke winding its way up to the clouds. Her eyes followed the strand of smoke back down, and—there. Behind a copse of trees.

​

She wanted to know who she was, and the place in her chest that hurt when she breathed began to hurt a little less once she had a direction to go in. Smoke meant somebody who wasn’t here. Smoke meant somebody who had made it out. Maybe they were like her. Maybe they were like her before, when she was that other thing.

​

She did not care what they were. Just that they were there, waiting, sitting somewhere that she wasn’t.

​

It took practice, getting used to her body again. She knew with certainty that she had not been built to move like this. She pushed in as much of herself as she could, and what she could not, she discarded. Several teeth spilled into her mouth, and she spit them into the dirt. One of the disks of her knees slid out from between the folds of her skin; she let it fall behind. She tried to rip off the rest of the gown that hung on her in rags, but her hands did not want to cooperate, and the fabric was coated in red stickiness that seared it to her gray skin in a way that made it impossible to succeed. She dropped her hands back to her sides and dug the nails she had left into the bruised flesh of her palms.

​

By nightfall, she was on the far edge of the wood. The smoke entered her nose when she breathed, and she felt its burn escape from her cheeks, her eyes, her throat. She saw the fire that caused the smoke soon after. Shadows lingered around the orange brightness, moving between it and a multitude of sheets that were fashioned into makeshift tents. A city of impermanence. She did not feel the need to cry out and warn the camp of her arrival; she thought her crunching movement to be loud enough.

​

She was right. The shadows—people, she decided—started to turn towards her, pointing and questioning. She hadn’t thought this far ahead. She did not know what to say to get them to listen, to ease them into seeing her for who she was now. But she did not have to; one of them spoke first.

​

“Dion?”

​

She stopped moving at the sound of that name, in that voice. She did not know either, but her body did. She began to tremble, and her vision swayed. She wanted to call out, but she didn’t know what to call.

​

The ache of it all was familiar in a way she did not expect. So much about this was solid and knowable, tugged at parts of her she did not know how to access. She knew the tone of the voice, the expression on the face that accompanied it. It was imprinted in the clotted blood that sat in her veins, written in the seeping middle of her brain.

​

“Dion!” that voice shouted again, and Dion remembered.

​

“Clementine,” she breathed, voice whistling through the hole in her neck. She knew it didn’t carry; she licked her lips with her busted, sandpaper tongue and tried again. “Clementine.”

​

~~~

​

The bright morning sunlight painted her lady in colors so bright, Dion’s first thought was of the stained glass in the chapel. She outshone every depiction of Mary that Dion had ever seen. Searing green, deep red and yellow, glimmering blue. If Dion knew how to find that kind of raw material, she’d construct her own image of the princess. Fasten it to the ceiling of her bedchamber so she would always wake up to the sight of her face.

​

Seeing her in the flesh now was better than it had any right to be.

​

“I can feel you staring.”

​

Dion laughed and swung herself out of her lady’s bed, feet landing solidly on the fabric of her own discarded dress. She bent down and danced on her toes until she was stuffed back into her clothes, and when she was done, she looked over at her lady again and saw Clementine’s gaze catch on the curve of her stomach. The look made Dion’s heart beat louder in her ears; she seemed positively ravenous, staring at Dion like she was about to lunge for her dress-strings.

​

“Come here,” her princess growled, and Dion obeyed.

​

When she was within reaching distance, Clementine snagged Dion’s elbow and maneuvered them both so that her thick arms were tight around Dion’s middle as they turned their gazes to the day that lingered on the other side of the window.

​

“How did you sleep?” Clementine asked, pressing a light, lingering kiss to Dion’s side. Dion’s next breath stuttered on its way inside her body, and her lady chuckled, mouth still ghosting along Dion’s clothed rib. Dion rubbed her hands up and down Clementine’s arms, rough fingertips fluttering over the hair that laid against her skin.

​

“Like the dead,” she responded. “How about you, princess?”

​

“As well as one can,” she said, and snickered playfully, “when they’re next to another who snores.”

​

Dion scoffed and spun in Clementine’s arms to look her in the eye. “Oh, tell me I didn’t.”

​

“You did.” She smiled at Dion, all teeth, and Dion wished with every bit of her being that she could tell her that she loved her.

​

But thoughts of love, as they always did, brought her back to Richard.

​

She smiled back at her lady, though not as brightly. “I do apologize, my lady. I hope for your sake that Prince Richard does not suffer the same afflictions.”

​

Dion’s fingers found Clementine’s. She examined those of her princess to keep from peering into her face, from searching her expressions for something that would only make her hurt more. She saw a small imperfection in the nail that caught her eye, then two more.

​

The princess might have grimaced, but Dion was busy looking at her hand.

​

“I will not be forced to marry him,” Clementine hissed, and Dion felt her viridian eyes roaming her face, catching in Dion’s corners. But she was still focused on her lady’s fingers. “I despise any existence that means I have to.”

​

Dion was Clem’s lady-in-waiting. Had been born into it, bred into her service, even before they had become what they were now. Being this close to Clementine every day meant that Dion noticed her. It meant that Dion saw her lady’s thick fingers and knew where the nails had been. It was her job. It was her entire purpose.

​

But there was dirt caked under her lady’s nails, and Dion hadn’t been around to watch it happen. Where would she have gone? When would she have had the time? If Dion did not know, then it was because Clementine had decided Dion would not know. She had decided Dion couldn’t. But how—?

​

Bile rose in Dion’s throat, thick and burning. Her skin throbbed everywhere her princess had touched her the night before, every secret, tingling place. She’d been worn out, after. Had fallen asleep with Clementine wrapped around her body like a rope. Hadn’t woken up even once in the night. If Clementine had gone out, Dion wouldn’t have noticed.

​

Dion looked into her lady’s face, and she saw resolve.

​

“You can’t,” she whispered before reaching down and snatching up her lady’s other hand. She held onto her—like if she just squeezed her fingers tight enough, she could keep her here, safe, protected. “Princess, whatever you’re going to do, don’t.”

​

The princess smiled at her, and it didn’t reach her eyes. It didn’t even look like a smile on Clementine, nothing like the one from a moment ago. Simply a parting of lips and teeth, empty and pointless. A movement that held nothing nice behind it.

​

Which meant she wasn’t going to listen to Dion, no matter what Dion said. She had only seen this smile twice before. She liked it less and less each time. Once in service of Dion, lying on the cold marble floor, sobbing into her blood-stained fabrics. Tell me who did this, and I will make them pay. Once in service of herself, sitting at the dining table, bickering with the man who would be her husband. Tell me why your kingdom should mean anything to mine.

​

This was how the princess smiled at her when she had given up on being kind.

​

“Whatever do you mean?” Clementine asked, voice pitched-up and breezy. She tried to pull back, but Dion held fast, sinking to her knees in front of her princess as she brought their joined hands to her chest.

​

“Clementine,” she said, mouth stinging. There were no safe places to look. There was nowhere on her lady that Dion did not know. Mouth, fingers, throat—Dion knew it all. She felt something break off inside of her, something lonely and longing and heavy. “Please.”

​

Dirt under her fingernails. Dirt that matched the grounds of the castle, and a streak of green and brown, at the bottom of Clementine’s blue gown, that had not yet been laundered out. Every conversation she had had with her lady since the announcement of the engagement came flooding back through her mind. There must be a way to stop this. Clementine, tapping her fingers on the bedspread, saying, I’d dig his grave myself if I could. Dion, holding tight to her lady’s shoulder, begging her to shush. Clementine, looking up at her, vicious and determined. I would! I would send this castle tumbling to the ground if I knew how.

​

“Tell me why I shouldn’t,” Clementine responded, and there it was. Any hint of affection Dion could find in her beautiful, familiar face vanished. Receded behind some wall Dion didn’t know how to crawl through. This was a look she’d seen twice over, too. This was her princess. This was her Clementine. The kind who dug ditches. The kind who wanted to start a war.

​

When Clementine pulled her hands back this time, Dion let her.

​

“Tell me, Dion,” her lady continued, and her voice tipped desperate. Dion found her eyes and thought about kissing them closed. “Why should I waste away in some other king’s castle? Why should I be relegated to a life bearing his children?”

​

“What a terrible life,” Dion said, voice a dark monotone. “What a terrible life it would be, being queen.”

​

Clementine reeled back, and Dion felt the slap before it landed.

​

“How dare you?” Dion watched her lady’s bottom lip quiver. Thought about how that lip had felt trapped against her own. I will make a beast of you yet. Mourned whatever it was that she could no longer have, whatever temperamental, tepid thing had started blossoming between their bodies. “How dare you, of all people, say this to me?”

​

The princess leaned down, and her voice found purchase next to Dion’s ear. Dion closed her eyes and stifled the sob that came up her throat, choking on it. “I was inside of you, Dion. You’re mine,” she whispered, and the words were shredded, bent wrong around her teeth. At least Dion knew this: she would not be alone in her mourning. Despite how stupid and horrible and useless it was, Dion still wanted to kiss her. “Do you no longer heed me, Dionysia?”

​

“I heed you,” she whispered back, and hated the way her voice shook. “I have always heeded you.”

​

Clementine pulled back and looked into Dion’s face, and Dion knew she would not find what she was looking for. Her eyes jumped along the lines that made Dion up, from the slope of her nose to the dimple in her chin, and Dion felt the certainty of it as a tremor in her bones. This would be the morning her princess would say goodbye.

​

Clementine’s mouth hardened. Dion pretended it didn’t. “You heed me. But you won’t follow me.”

​

“No, princess,” Dion replied, and her words were carried out of her mouth on a cry.

​

In the space between her next trembling breath, Clementine bent closer and pressed her lips to Dion’s. Dion’s body responded in kind. She moved against her princess and tried to bury the taste of her underneath the swell of her tongue.

​

She was Clementine’s. Her lady-in-waiting, her servant, her friend. Her lover. Hers.

​

She kissed her harder. She would always kiss her harder.

​

~~~

​

Dion’s broken legs shook, and she landed on them with a snap.

​

Dion. She had been Dion before this. She had been a lady-in-waiting. She had been someone else’s. She had been Clementine’s.

​

“Dionysia,” she said quietly, documenting the feel of the syllables in her teeth. “I am Dionysia.”

​

With this knowledge came more. Her lady’s hinted-at and barebones plan. The castle walls shaking, and Clementine not being there to lead Dion away. Dion, running up the stairs; being trapped on the ramparts. Dion, seeing Clementine staring up at her from below, and thinking for the second time, This is it. This is where she leaves me. The stone crumbling beneath her feet. Dion falling, crushed and deserted, to the unforgiving ground.

​

Clementine ran to her now in a mad scramble, feet tangling in her hurry. Dion watched her ankles twist with brittle clarity. She heard the smack of Clementine’s hands against the dirt and watched her lady crawl the final few feet—felt a bit of her heart thump, weakly, against the jut of her rib. The princess’ hair hung loose around her shoulders, save for the front pieces pulled to the back of her head, the exact way Dion had always done it. It was a crude imitation of her handiwork, like a body trying to remember something someone else’s fingers did.

​

“Dion,” her lady whispered, and Dion shut her eyes so she would not have to see her lady’s reaction to her new form when she stopped an inch from her face. There was nothing left of her for Clementine. Nothing a princess would want to call her own.

​

The princess gasped. Dion imagined the hand to her mouth and knew that it was there just like she knew anything else.

​

“Oh, love,” Clementine breathed. Dion felt the heat of her lady’s palms ghosting along the new contours of her body and tried not to think what her princess must have been thinking. Horrible. Monstrous. Terrible devil. Ghastly, dying beast.

​

Here in the darkness, it was only Clementine who saw, only Clementine who knew.

​

It did not feel like a comfort; it felt like a noose pulling taut against whatever was left of her throat. She thought of her past self, of what a still-living Dion would have thought of her princess being the one person in the world to see her for who she really was. Something in her middle hurt. She did not know if it was the phantom pain of some organ she no longer possessed or if it belonged to the cavern underneath her ribcage now. Like most things, it did not matter, and Dion knew that.

​

She opened her eyes, and she beheld her lady. Same freckles dotting the bridge of her nose. Same eyes, gleaming. But of course these things were the same; Dion was the one who was different now, the one death clung to like a stench. Dion was the one who had changed.

​

Clementine’s expression was closed-off and empty, pink mouth quivering. Dion reached out, and her princess winced, reeled back as if she’d been hit. She did not stand, though, and Dion was glad of it; she did not want to chase her princess down. Not now. Not after what she had done. She deserved that much.

​

“Do not leave me again,” Dion begged, wicked fingers digging into the soft flesh at Clementine’s wrists. “You do not get to abandon me thrice.”

​

“I never abandoned you,” Clementine started, but Dion shook her head and heard something at the back of her skull pop out of place.

​

The princess looked away from her, and Dion felt the emptiness of her stomach drop. Felt the frantic pump of breath she no longer needed. A body is used to living, she thought, and held her princess harder. Her eyes burned, but she did not know from what. She did not think herself capable of producing tears. A body must become used to dying.

​

“Look at me.”

​

Clementine did not turn her head. Dion watched a gulp slide down her lady’s throat and saw her eyelids flutter shut. Studied the way her jaw tightened, the way her nostrils flared. Then she let the ache of it all run through her, siphon whatever last gentle thing she had left.

​

“No,” Clementine whispered. “I do not want to.” But Dion was done listening to her princess. She was done with serving. She was done with being dismissed.

​

“Look at me, Clem.”

​

A tear leaked out of the corner of Clementine’s eye. Dion watched it roll down the curve of her cheek and felt nothing but heavy space in her chest. She had felt this weight before, suffocated in it, but she had never felt it in conjunction with whatever else she felt for Clementine. Not until that very last day. Not until that very last kiss. Clementine had always been—lightness, and good things, and holding a warm hand underneath a table. It was knowing she was the one her princess wanted to build a home of.

​

Dion was all heaviness now.

​

“I did not abandon you,” her princess hissed. The light, gone out. “I will not be made to feel as if I did.”

​

“Where were you, then?” Dion nearly yelled. Clementine’s pulse throbbed up into Dion’s fingertips. If she focused, she could almost pretend it belonged to her too. “When I died, where were you?”

​

“Stop it.” A sob escaped Clementine’s mouth. Dion did not let herself feel sorry. The time for sorries was over, left buried under the rubble of a hundred mutilated bodies. If Clementine wanted her to be sorry, she would have to find the rest of Dion’s spine and shove it back in place herself. “This is not how you address your sovereign.”

​

“I am your abomination,” Dion said with finality. “I am the shining edge of meaningless death. I am existence, every bit of it, all at once.” Her voice took on a tremble, and she let out a withering laugh. “Alive, dead, alive, dead. I am your beast. And you dare not look at me?”

​

Dion let go of one of her princess’ wrists, but it was only to wrap both hands around the other. She did not ease Clementine into it, and she did not offer her a choice. Simply pulled Clementine’s arm until she had her hand splayed against the back wall of the hole where Dion’s intestines had sat. Until she felt Clementine’s stuttering breath travel through her face like smoke, decorating her open cheeks in spittle. Until she felt Clementine’s nails scraping against her leftover flesh, peeling the rest of her bare.

​

“Look at me,” Dion said as she broke open.

​

This time, her lady listened, and she turned her head and stared at Dion like she was pinning her soul inside the tatters of her body.

​

“Fine.” Clementine swallowed, and Dion caught the shine of tears dripping down her lady’s chin. “Fine, Dionysia, if it will satisfy you.”

​

What she wanted to say was, Nothing will ever satisfy me. What she wanted to say was, You used to satisfy me. What she wanted to say was, I am not yours to satisfy any longer.

​

What she said was, “Thank you.”

​

It felt like ages before either spoke again. When they did, it was Dion whose voice scratched the night air first.

​

“The king?”

​

The princess hesitated when she answered, and it was enough for Dion to know what she was going to say before she said it. She brought a hand up to her lady’s face, a familiar old comfort. Clementine leaned into the touch even as she shuddered through it. “Dead.”

​

“What a terrible thing it must be,” Dion responded dryly, watching the previous rendition of this conversation play in her eyelids as the second unfolded in front of her, “being queen.”

​

This time, when Clementine’s hand came, Dion was ready to catch it.

​

“You are insubordinate,” her princess choked out, straining against Dion’s wrist. “You dare talk to your queen like this? You dare do this to, to me, your rightful ruler, yo—your—”

​

“Mistress,” Dion provided, dragging the word along her gums. “Bed-wife. Lady. Murderer.”

​

The noise that left Clementine was animal. “I did not kill you! You are here before me, are you not? I saved you!”

​

Dion on the ramparts, Clementine below. Dion, shouting her name. Clementine, shaking her head. No, no, that wasn’t right—Clementine, yes, shaking her head, and Clementine screaming something up at her, something Dion could not hear. Dion’s skin tingling before the fall that would claim her.

​

“You have saved nothing,” she hissed, and let her lady’s hand drop.