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Lucy was out of breath by the time he saw her. In the distance, a blond head bobbing among the dunes, ribbons trailing behind. He'd only started to exhale, the grip his anxiety held on him fading, when the ground split open.

She'd evaporated in seconds, along with what felt like half the desert. Green light shot skyward, a target  poison-drenched.

His breathing caught. His legs stalled. Abby. He'd found her only to lose her again.

"Lucy!" Margo grabbed his arm and yanked him back. He blinked as the mouse-woman shoved hair from her eyes. Grimacing, she pointed at the ground. A crack had started forming, right where he'd been standing.

He marveled at her. She seemed to have this bad habit of saving him, mostly from himself, occasionally from Cloudian-devouring shadow monsters, with grand displays of magick, or begrudging pulls backwards.

A smile dropped onto his face as he stared at her, that same smile pressed thin once his gaze returned to the horizon and the gaping hole in the Sands. "Abby," he said, hopeful she was safe, fearful she wasn't.

Margo shook her head, fingers closing and opening around her pendant. "She'll be fine."

"You saw that didn't you?" He speared the space in front of them. Margo's gaze plummeted to her feet. "A fall from that height, or getting hit with debris on the way down or--"

Fingers wrapped around his shirtsleeve and tugged. "She'll be fine."

He looked at her, again. And this time, he really looked. At her trembling upper lip and whiskers, her bad posture, the way she diverted her gaze so he wouldn't see how her eyes swam. Realization smacked him like a rock to the head.

She was trying to comfort him despite her own worry. It was too kind a gesture for her to waste on someone like him.

"Yeah," he patted her head, the lie bittersweet on his tongue, "sure." 

The corner of her mouth curved. "She and Sebbi were together. Axion too. I'm sure he shadow-stepped them all to safety."

Lucy took a step back, and steadied himself. "You're absolutely right." Another lie. "She'll be safe. And no matter how stupid my brother is, he's a cat. We always manage to land on our feet."

Except that wasn't the case. Sebbi seemed determined to stand too close to the edge, reckless and carefree. His inattention to detail and lack of caution got him in trouble and he'd managed to affront every Moonborn House and get himself poisoned. Sebbi never landed on his feet without bungling the jump spectacularly first.

But he'd pretend the inverse was true, and numb himself to it all, because it was the only way Lucy knew how to be.

From behind them, a strained groan rose from a dune. They both started, Margo jumping into the air, Lucy stalking forward, claws out, jaw snapping. His muscles aching with tension, his alertness on overdrive.

A hunched figure staggered forward, and Margo gasped. Lucy bristled as he retracted his claws.

Axion stumbled into the moonlight, eyes glazed, clothes tattered, lips puffy. His stars carried the colors of fresh bruises, deep purples and blues. Ink-like stains dappled his shirt.

He blinked a few times, recognition like flint struck, ignited in his eyes. His lips quirked. "You're alive, mouse-wizardess." His stars sputtered white, before returning to their darkened hues. "I expected nothing less." He swayed, like a tree caught in a storm, his knees twisting inward as they threatened to buckle.

Margo darted forward, arms outstretched. She managed to catch him before he crumpled.

"You keep saving me like that," Axion forced a wet chuckle, "and I'll be forever in your debt." Eyes sliding over to Lucy, he added, "You and I must be similar in that regard, your Highness."

Lucy crinkled his brow and threw his arms over his chest. "Weren't you supposed to be with Abby?"

Axion gave a few more blinks. "Singular-minded as always, I see. Something else you and your brother have in common." He dragged himself away from Margo, huffing, as he fumbled to his feet. "I'm sure you've noticed the giant hole in the sands."

They nodded.

"We fell. Abby. Your brother." Lucy felt his stomach churn, his head as heavy as lead. "I managed to shadow-step, but not before colliding with a boulder." He motioned to his right shoulder, which hung limply at his side, something sharp protruding near his collarbone, ruining the sleek lines of his jacket. Grimacing, he added, "I could barely get myself out, I would have died if I attempted to rescue them."

Lucy rushed forward and yanked Axion's collar. The gold of his eyes smoldered with fury. "Then you die," he spat. "You don't leave without trying."

Axion's gaze landed on Lucy's hands. A smirk played on his mouth. Even as he leaked parts of himself on the sands, the foolish night lord managed to be amused. "You and your brother seem very keen on wrecking my favorite shirt this night."

Lucy pushed him away and growled. Axion shrugged. "I had high hopes for you. The way you reeked of alcohol when we first met, I thought for sure you'd be the fun one. But turns out the infamous cat brothers, the lost heirs of the Aelurian throne, are nothing but disappointments."

Lucy's eyes narrowed as he flashed both his fangs. Under the moonlight, his claws glimmered as he extended them in Axion's direction. "I've never been one to go out of my way to impress men. Afraid such tactics are reserved for the fairer sex."

Axion's eyes slid over to Margo. A dozen or so stars hurried to gather above his eye. "You don't say..."

"Axion," the mouse-wizardess interjected. The air around her crackled as lines of blue skipped across her knuckles. "Can you shadow-step us into the bottom of the pit?"

Axion nodded. "As long as there's an abundance of shadows," he said after a pause, a glazed look in his eyes, "it shouldn't be that hard." He tensed his jaw and stood straighter, his arms out. "You know how this goes, wizardess, Highness." He waved them forward. "We must be touching for me to transport you anywhere."

Margo nodded gravely, casting a glance at Lucy before ambling over to Axion. He shoved her against him with force, her face squished against his chest. Axion grinned, his lips coated in drying blood. "Your turn, your Highness. No need to be shy."

Lucy lumbered toward him, reached out and grabbed a fistful of Margo's tunic. Axion's eyes widened. "Ah, shadow-stepping by proxy." Something glittered in his cosmic expression. "Clever."

"I don't think I like you," Lucy hissed over Margo's head, her curls brushing the nape of his neck. She squirmed, though he couldn't tell from which of them she was trying to escape.

Hi smile having widened, Axion slid his foot to the right, trapping a shadow of a tree branch beneath his toe. "The feeling," he drawled as he dragged it over, "is mutual."

Without another word, Lucy was plummeting. The fall lasted seconds, but by the time solid ground materialized beneath his feet what was left of his nerves was frayed, his stomach flipping over itself.

Eerie green light splashed the ground around him, but aside from that, he was in darkness. He sniffed mold on the air. Tasted something metallic. Heard the shifting of fabric and underneath it all, muffled sobs.

He focused on the sound, and narrowed his eyes, hoping his heightened Aelurian senses would allow him to penetrate the dark. He spotted a mass in the center of the room, the source of the sobbing, but couldn't make out much else aside from vague shapes.

Axion stalked toward the mass, passing through shadow and light undisturbed, his steps as assured as if he'd been strolling the streets of Laos in high noon.

Lucy squinted harder, feeling pressure mount behind his eyes. He could make out more. A figure lying nearest them, draped in all-black. His eyes were empty, his dark hair slick and sprawled along the floor. Some kind of inky darkness, not quite shadow but not wholly solid, engulfed his lower half.

Axion slammed his foot into the figure's side. It succumbed to the impact rocking back and forth just once before settling into stillness.

"Father," Axion's voice echoed cool detachment. He scanned the length of the figure, his eyes dim and cool. Like the moon in late autumn. "And here you thought you'd be standing over my corpse someday. Ah," he raked his fingers through his hair, eyes focused on his father's unmoving face, "if not for the tragedy before me, I'd have obliged the humor among all this irony."

Lucy stood upright and leaned, trying to make out the tragedy Axion had spoken of. Then he noticed there was something hidden behind the Shadow King's lifeless form. Someone hunched over and shivering. They were the source of the sobbing.

"Ab—"

Axion hunched over, and rested a hand on her shoulder. "I'm so sorry for your loss." He turned, his dark eyes somehow piercing the dark to find Lucy. "And for yours." The sincerity in his voice made Lucy's throat close.

He took a step forward. Another. Another. His footsteps ricocheted around him. Margo trudged at his side, her face pale, her radiance all but gone. The way she walked, like she was part of a funerary procession, made Lucy's heart sink.

Shadows flickered on their faces as they passed light, then shadow. Light. Shadow. A step taken. Another and another, until Lucy finally saw. He wished he hadn't.

Abby was surrounded by blood, Sebbi's body cradled in her arms. She turned slowly, her face gaunt and weathered, like her stint in this place had aged her decades. Her brow was wrinkled, her eyes bloodshot. Remnants of snot crusted her upper lip and chin.

The ribbon in her hair was almost completely undone; it only stayed because it'd gotten tangled in one of her many knots. Her hands roamed mindlessly over the head she held in her lap, fingers moving like machines, working through a matted mess of fur. Sebbi's eyes were open, but were unseeing.

All the air escaped him.

He pressed his nails into his palms, his fingers tingling as feeling left them. It couldn't be. His lips quivered as darkness skirted his vision. This was a trick. Some kind of evil shadow magick. He stumbled backward, his foot colliding with a rock. Margo plunged to the ground and curled in on herself.

She started to weep, her cries barely registering as Lucy's eyes darted from her to Sebbi's body.

A corpse.

He wanted to explode. Erupt into a raucous laugh. Cackle until his ribs broke and he snapped in half. Sebbi dead? What a joke. After almost three years of silence on his part, after learning he'd been poisoned and returning to the blighted realm that had stolen their mother and their childhood from them, after saving strangers while risking losing those that mattered, that truly mattered, for him to die here, in a dank pit, while Abby watched him go...

No.

His brother was stupid, but he wasn't that stupid. He'd never choose this. Not when home was a horrendously striped sofa in a squat little flower shop in Ean. Where Lucy'd be waiting, ready with a bottle of Tridian Winterberry ale to crack open and pour the second Sebbi lumbered through the front door, finally returning to his rightful place.

With Abby. Beside Lucy. Home.

"Lucy—" Abby's voice was raw and fragile and pleading. He jerked his head away. "Lucy, I'm so so—"

"No."

He took another step back, his head throbbing, dark spots stampeding across his vision. "I don't want this."

A wet half-sob broke free of Abby's mouth. "Lucy—" she croaked, when she could finally manage words again.

Fur fell in front of his eyes as he shook his head, shaking it until it hurt, until he felt like his blood would pour from his ears and nose. His veins felt molten. Chills crawled over every inch of his skin.

What was it that he had said? That death was something he couldn't flirt or charm away? That kind of inevitability scared him endlessly. A truly merciless amount of his nightmares involved him watching the people he loved die.

Drinking took the edge off those nightmares, but he still found himself too afraid to sleep on most nights, his legs carrying him through the streets of Ean.

Something clamped around his ankle. It was Margo, her fingers trembling as they dug into his fur, her radiance a sullen, muted red. It looked like blood had misted around her.

He yanked himself free, and continued his retreat, removing himself from what laid in front of him. Running away. Refusing to acknowledge one of his nightmares had become his reality.

"Lucy—"

Finally, laughter broke from his mouth. Peals of chuckles at first, unsure and awkward, transformed into throaty chortles, heavy, guttural noises that could have been mistaken for sobbing. It poured from him until his stomach ached, until his mind felt like it would implode. His teeth chattered inside his head, a madman's echoes playing on an endless loop inside his head.

Abby's eyes widened, tears rampaging down her face and splashing off her chin. It was like she was crying extra, for Lucy's lack thereof. He both loved and hated that about her. "Lucy—" His laughter clawed at his throat, gouging it anew with each painful giggle. "Lucy, please—"

"You don't get to tell me my brother's dead!" It felt like his world had caved-in, and he was suffocating beneath the rubble, trying and failing to claw his way to the surface. Everything was heavy, and his lungs weren't working. No matter how much air he breathed, it didn't feel like it would be enough. He was crushed. This is what it felt like. Sebbi's death had crushed him.

"I'm sorry." Abby hung her head, another sob bursting from her causing her to slump. Despite looking like she might collapse, she did her best to remain seated. "I'm so, so sorry, but he's..."

"Stop it!" He snarled and for the first time ever, Abby recoiled. From him. "If you say it," Lucy continued, vile words tumbling from his lips before he could catch them, "for the first time in my life, Abbernathy Tells, you'll be stripping me of my last hope."

She withered on the spot like one of her alchemic failures back at the shop, her lips pressed flat, her smile dead in her eyes. Her sobbing returned, causing violent spasms as blunt emotion exited her.

This wasn't her mourning; this was her hurt. Pierced by Lucy's words. Good. Perhaps it was better this way.

"Lucian..." His name was all but a whimper, squeaking out through clenched teeth, spoken between bouts of crying.

Gods, he'd never seen her cry so much.

Afraid he'd crack and run to her side, he focused on anything but her. The wet stones. Clinging moss. The odd shapes carved in the walls, illuminated by that ill-green light. "He's dead, yeah?"

His gaze flitted to her. She gave a curt nod, her lip trembling again.

"Well..." Lucy closed his eyes, exhaled, then turned around. "That's that, then." His eyes roamed across the walls. Directionless. Aimless. Lost. "Shall we leave?"

"Lucy—" Margo's voice struck like lightning and for a moment, his wallowing, self-loathing abated. She squeezed his wrist. With her free hand, she cupped his cheek and forced him to meet her gaze, head-on. "Are you—"

"Gods," he ran a hand through his fur, feeling every strand on his neck bristle. He knew what he was about to do. Be stupid. Burn the good things. Push them away. Lie to self-preserve. To stop hurting.

He'd honed such a skill hadn't he? Turning it on whenever a woman got too close, whenever he felt them really begin to see him?

"What a stupid question you're about to ask." He glowered. She relented and cast her gaze downward. Doing what only a coward would do, he kept going, hellbent on trampling on everything he still had left. "Were you okay after Hestor's death?" Margo winced. A tear she couldn't fight back ran down her cheek. "No." Lucy sneered. "You weren't. And that was just some childhood friend—"

"Lucy!"

The sharpness in Abby's tone made him pause, but only for a second.

Sebbi was dead. Lucy's world had ended and nothing would ever be the same again.

"—this"—He stabbed the air, leveling his claw at the corpse handled so delicately under Abby's care, "is my brother! My flesh and blood! I will never be okay, Margoliesse so don't you dare think to ask me such an asinine question again or I will--"

Axion's hand clamped down on Lucy's shoulder, the night lord's nails biting into Lucy's flesh. "That's enough."

It wasn't. Lucy wanted nothing more than to throw fire, spit poison. Scorch everything and everyone with his wrath. Turn his world into ash and charred remains, because wasn't that what it was, now that Sebbi was gone?

He huffed, his gaze darting between Abby and Margo. Had the mouse-woman ever looked so defeated before? Had Abby ever looked so helpless? So tragic?

Lucy's hands balled into fists. He'd done this. This was the carnage of his own making. Because nothing mattered anymore.

You're lying.

Maybe he was, but it was easier this way. Or, it would be, eventually.

"He's dead." Two words, slipping through his lips, confirmed what he knew. Snapped into place the pieces of what he'd seen. And it brought Lucy to his knees.

He screamed, head in his hands, convulsing, rocking on his heels, one drawn-out, heart-breaking shriek gutting him of everything, everything he'd tried to make himself numb to rushed forward. Leaving him ragged. Short of breath. Hollowed and livid and overwhelmed.

What was he to do now? How did life continue on?

Unexpected warmth spread throughout his body. He blinked. Back the tears, the bitterness. Margo's arms were around him, her cheek pressed against his. He caught the corner of her mouth rise and she was radiant. Like the sun showering the land in its light after a week of storms.

"You need to breathe," her voice sounded like a dream birthed from an unshakeable nightmare. "You're going to give yourself an attack if you carry on like this. Just focus on me and breathe."

He lifted his arms, desiring nothing more than to close them around her and pull her tighter. Closer. Press her into him. But he feared suffocating her under all his need. So instead of holding her, he dropped his head onto her shoulder. "Why are you here? Why—" do you still care?

Her hold on him only strengthened. "Because it takes a lot more than some harsh words to get rid of me." The levity of her voice made Lucy hope she had smiled.

He breathed her in. Her sweat, her sweetness. It seemed to cancel out the death and rot permeating the room. "I'm really as ugly as you say, aren't I?"

Margo's hands caressed his back. "You're not so bad. You need work definitely." She chuckled in his ear. "And a good kick in the pants every now and then, but, you've got redeeming points. Besides," she pulled away, and for the first time since they'd arrived, Lucy noticed the streaks her tears had carved down her face. Sebbi's death hadn't just crushed him, had it? "this is hard for everyone."

With a tentative finger, he reached for her. And when she didn't jerk away, he traced her cheek. "Miss Puffs, I don't deserve you."

She looked on the verge of smiling, or breaking; he never could infer her expressions. The puzzling mouse-wizardess, the prey that always alluded him, no matter how hard he tried.

"Your Highness." At Axion's prompting, Lucy dropped his hand and Margo's hold on him loosened. Abby's hand was in the Night Lord's, her eyes never leaving the pair of bodies splayed on the ground. "We should leave."

Lucy nodded as Axion dragged Abby over to them. Without a word, he placed a hand on Margo's shoulder and shadow-stepped them back to Darkmoore.

It happened in a blink. Sebbi's body retrieved. The Shadow King's corpse burned. News of the whole thing swept through Aelurus like a plague.

Sebbi was nicknamed the 'Savior King.' Lauded as an unparalleled warrior, truly blessed by his ancestors.

He'd wrestled the realm free from the evil machinations of the Shadow King. Stopped a decades-spanning plot to gather an undead army and plunge the entire Eridan into darkness, single-handedly.

The Aelurian common folk forgot their animosity for their deceased Crescent Moon born king. They no longer hated or feared the foreigner, the hemma-domesticated mongrel that had sullied their kingdom's throne.

The Moonborn Houses swallowed their vitriol for the former ruler, to give him a moment of respect. It was the least they could do, and they'd performed their task magnificently.

Sebbi was loved, posthumously.

And none of it mattered.

Lucy's brother was dead.

Always together, what an obvious lie.