It's a chest wound. Traced across her body is a scarlet cross of blood and sacrilege so beautiful that I can hardly turn away from it even as the knife clatters down with her body.

The shadow takes form behind me. I'd heard him there the whole time, of course, but it's still unnerving to watch him peel out of the recesses of my imagination and into reality. "Well. That's one way to end things."

This is when another shadow jumps atop him and holds him down. I watch the two half-Canira, near identical to me, wrestle in Rena's blood, and realize I'm entirely delusional. One of them calls, "Well, do something, you idiot! She's going to bleed out without those powers."

"Thanks, Sirius, I'm working on that," I yell back to him.

The knife is heavy in my mouth as I pick it out. I feel the last of Rena's hold over it die away as I tug it upwards, standing in her blood. Her white body is so still as the red rains dye her pink, so that her whole coat matches her spots. I open one of those blue eyes and find it lifeless. I want to fall back down beside her, tired as I am, now, but the adrenaline is rocking through my veins just as quickly.

"We could have run away together," I whisper to her.

No we couldn't.

"How long have I been lying to myself?" I ask Sirius and Lukko, the thief and the weasel, wrestling behind me in the blood. They look so young, as if conjured from the pettiest of dreams, and they've been haunting me long enough for me to know that yes, this is exactly what they come from, although the latter has been stronger for who knows how long.

"Since you've been born." Lukko says. "Come on. Finish them off. I didn't worm my way up into the guard over an entire lifetime so you could chicken out and start crying at the end of the end of everything."

"It doesn't really matter what you want," I drawl, standing over the body. I wish Nina was here to spur me into action. I wish a lot of things about Nina, honestly, and knowing I'll never see her again either way is perhaps one of the crueller parts of this. I wanted to be hurt. She needed to hurt. We had a healthy agreement worked out based on this.

And here comes Rena with her hopebuddy, out to save the world! How could I compare to such relentless optimism?

As if I weren't taken in by all kinds of illusions. Chief among them now is the illusion that I could return upstairs and go about my business again. I know Avery has seen the bite marks. It could be days or weeks before I am given over to madness. Yet it was taking us so long...

Rena already could have gone mad. Knowing that she was falling to her demons was the most potent defense my demons had for themselves. If she couldn't survive, with all her wild abandon, why would I, coward that I am, have a chance? I pull the door upwards and look outside, letting the starlight fall heavy in my eyes. No matter what my decision is, these will be my last mortal moments. There are so many stars tonight.

All the stars could belong to us.

I had never considered owning the stars. It was beyond even my most vivid power fantasies, and trust me, those were vivid.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Yet she's given me another option.

Take the crown, Gale.

I need them to love me.

Take it.

I need them to respect me.

"Take it." Two shadows, two echoes of myself... of my heart... they fall behind me, into the heat of the presence. There are no room for moon-shadows inside.

My head twitches. I ascend the stairs. I can hear them burning in my head. I could save the world in her name. I could take all of this on. This is a new way forwards. This is a new moment, the crown jewel of a new future... I could be the future they need. She gets to rest. That's my only demand. All those years, all that pain, and all I can give her is the blade.

Couldn't even do that. Ah, I'm pathetic.

I already miss her. She breathes what might be her last behind me and her breath is like featherfall.

Don't turn around.

My face trembles, but there is another voice in my head.

Lira.

A murderer rests in the putrid heart of the heart of this city, and he says my name: Lira.

I remember other stories. Other sorry lovers. Other bad endings. Lira, Lira, Lira...

The city is hungry with a need for stories, the way we hold in each other's memories, the way we stay alive... I make the legacy tonight that will form me in the lives of all living beings long after I die, whether I die as a monarch or as the bloody traitor who killed her twice. Two kinds of failure. Two bad endings. Like us, Rena, like us.

Like us, echo the dead, the ghosts of Lira's City.

The dead wait to see what I will do next.

"These are the only crowds who will ever cheer for me," I tell them ruefully, turning around. I lean over Rena's limp body and breathe in her scent, tasting roses and the dust of the moon, veiled by the thick sun-heat of divine power that still mars her limp body. I whisper into her ear, "Here's to our future."