For the second time in my life, I die. Them’s the breaks, I guess, when you taunt an almost-god to her face.

  Death has a funny way of flattening things. Fear, anger, love, hate, it all gets smushed down into a deep, dark, pit of… nothing. I’m dead, so what does it matter?

  But there’s something wrong with my death. The last time this happened, all I felt was the cold peace of oblivion. A gray world for a gray soul. I drifted until I was found.

  This time, I feel sharp pain like a knife in my chest. A wound that yearns to bleed, though I have no blood to give. The pain wakes me up. The wound throbs where my heart should be, hot and red and stabbing, and the waves of pain cut through the icy fog of death’s embrace. Dead, but not numb.

  I’m at the foot of the Visage Spire; the version in the World of Glass, its courtyard littered with rubble. Up above, the orb is still missing on this side, but above that, the sky is black as pitch. No stars, no clouds, no light.

  Only, the longer I look, the less certain I am of that observation. There are stars, they’re just hidden; tucked behind the veil, their twinkling lights peek out from the curtain of endless black. If I focus, I can see them. If I keep looking, I’ll see the constellations of their nature, bound and shaped by invisible signs. There is a pattern to the formless emptiness. There is a meaning. A language. The stars are whispering, and if I could only—

  My chest wound throbs again. The spike of pain brings me back to myself, clarity once more cutting through the haze around my mind—banishing a sensation like what I felt when I peered into Mordacity’s spellbook. I shiver.

  I need to get out of here. I need to stop being dead.

  I drift through the empty streets of another Forks. Everything is cold and gray and dreamlike; words are smudged and buildings twine around each other like mating serpents. Every brick is a cardboard facade. There is no substance to this world.

  In this dark and dreary mockery, monsters watch me. Hungry things. Dead things, I think, like me, but without the clean promise of rebirth.

  I keep drifting. Running—floating—stumbling. I’m there, and then I’m not, and I’m here. So it goes. I just have to move faster than the worms.

  Three sanctuaries call to me: my apartment with Sophia, my apartment alone, and the halls of the Ossuary. A dog bed, a shrine to vanity, and a stronghold. I should feel a pang of longing for the first, but I don’t. The second has no appeal. In the third, I might be safe from the prying eyes of Jupiter and Venus.

  I follow my tether through empty, haunted streets. I blink and there’s a door, carved of bone, waiting to be opened. I step through and come alive again.

  I breathe in. I wobble, but I’m standing. One of the Ossuary’s private rooms, lower floor, like where I transformed on my first visit. I’m safe.

  Life hits me with all the strength and subtlety of a freight train. Heat flows through my limbs, color assaults my eyes, and I can hear the ragged edge to my breathing. I’m strained, but I’m alive. I made it back.

  My chest seizes and screams at me, pain jabbing at my brain, and I collapse to my hands and knees on the Ossuary’s floor. Breathe in, breathe out. Pain, pain, pain. Like a hole in my chest. Empty. Empty. Empty.

  With another shudder, the pain dulls. It’s there, but the sharp peak recedes to a background hum. A red tinge to the edges of my mind.

  I shift until I’m sitting, staring into space, and then I raise my hand to my throat. I feel for my pulse with two fingers. I wait. I move my fingers, hoping I just had the wrong spot, but I can’t find it. I can’t find my pulse. Hand to wrist, searching. Still, silent. Hand over my chest. Over—

  Nothing. There’s nothing there. My heart is gone.

  “Oh, fuck,” I whisper, and then I’m in the Morrigan’s garden again.

  Strix Striga is standing over me. We’re in the hedge maze, surrounded by green and flowers. There are birds flying overhead. The Morrigan and her throne must be elsewhere. Striga stares down at me. Cold fury is held back by an iron will. “What have you done?”

  So much. Oh, god. A terrified shiver runs through me. Words babble from my throat without conscious direction. “Heart. She took my heart. Tore it out. Still gone.”

  I’ve ruined it. I’ve ruined everything. Striga narrows her eyes. Peering at me with second sight? She says, “Elaborate.”

  I swallow. “Venus. I—I came to her personal sanctum. Her temple, I think. From atop the Spire. And then, I—I told her that I freed one of the Jovians, so she ripped out my heart and killed me.”

  “You did what?” Striga asks sharply. She takes half a step forward, but stops herself. The flicker of shock and anger passes over her face in an instant, and then it’s back to cold focus. “No, we’re going to do this properly. Start from the beginning. Tell me everything, Archon.”

  Everything. How could I ever tell you that? I can’t stop shivering. Is this how a beaten dog feels, waiting for the next kick? What’s wrong with me?

  Fool. Now she’ll never love you.

  I feel like a spring too tightly wound. I push to my feet, wring out my hands, and start pacing. Striga waits for me. Watching me. Judging me. An iron angel with invisible wings that keep me trapped inside a box.

  “I wanted to help,” I say suddenly. I stop pacing. “I wanted to help you.”

  I wanted to save you. I wanted your attention.

  “But, I didn’t know how. Went to a few people, trying to learn more about… everything. About the egregores. About magic. Found some hints. To bring down a god, you can cleave it, you can eat it, or you can replace it. I’m not strong enough to eat a god and I’m not clever enough to twist it against itself, but to replace it… I thought, maybe, I could do that. So I’ve been positioning myself as a rival to Venus—acting like her, embodying her, and then trying to be more Venus than Venus.”

  I’m pacing again. Gesticulating. I feel like I’m only aware of my body every other blink. Scratching on the back of my neck, under the skin, scraping against my nerves and spine.

  “It worked. It worked!” I shout, and then I cringe in on myself. Too loud. Too raw. I clear my throat, not looking at Striga, and say in a quieter voice, “The King in Yellow called me a claimant to the seat of Venus. The priestesses of Venus recognized something in me that mirrored the mark of their goddess on their own souls, and Agatha saw strings that line up.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “How?” Striga asks, calm and clinical. “When did Hastur call you a claimant?”

  I hesitate. Resentment curls in my gut. I wish I could run away. You’ll hate me. You’ll hate me forever. You were always going to hate me. “I cast a spell. Experimental. Ritualistic.” I conjure the green flame and shape it into an ember. I can feel three others, muted and dim but still burning across the dimensional barrier. “First on Agatha, to give her confidence and help her channel her best self. Then… on the deimovore that attacked me in the woods. Her name is Phoebe, now. I gave her a body. I changed the rules of her existence.”

  Striga is quiet for a moment, and I almost drown in the silence. “That’s a dramatic change. How much did it cost you?”

  I laugh. “Almost nothing. A single spark.” It was easy. Was it too easy?

  “I see. What did you do next?”

  “Then I floundered. I didn’t know how to press the claim, so I just sat on it for weeks until… the plan. You’ve seen the consequences, I guess.”

  Shame burns on my face. How much of your schemes did I ruin, Striga?

  Frustration follows. Maybe if I’d known anything about them, I would have made a different play.

  Striga says, “Give me details. What were you trying to do?”

  My mouth is wrong. Dry, wet, cotton, acid. “I needed everyone’s attention. An audience with the major players. So I threatened the illusion, and then Pandora visited my home.”

  “Rhea’s counterpart,” Striga says with a nod. “Continue.”

  “I wanted to force the Jovians’ hand,” I explain. “I wanted them to make an overt move against Venus that we could exploit. I got their attention, got them off-balance by revealing I knew more than they expected, and then pointed them at Venus and cut a deal: I’d grant Pandora—and only Pandora, until they showed results—a transformation that freed it from the previous rules of its existence. A Jovian capable of more than ‘empower and guide.’”

  “That was a dangerous call,” Striga says tightly. “What measures did you take to ward against betrayal?”

  I’m prepared for the question, but I still flinch when I hear it. “The spell works off intent, and it has to serve both caster and recipient. If Pandora takes any action against my interests, the spell immediately ends.”

  Striga purses her lips. “I see. You will share the specific wording later. Keep going.”

  Am I breathing normally? Why do I feel like I’m suffocating? “Right. With that done, I finally answered my phone and went to Visage HQ for a dressing down. I knew Pearl would want to deal with me personally, which put me in a room with one of the priestesses. I could feel a connection, and once I pointed it out, she could, too. She and Glamour took me to the orb above the Spire, where they activated a portal hidden in the main screen. On the other side, I saw her temple; statues everywhere, shrines, a place of worship.

  “I was counting on Venus being bound by appearances. I gave her a story she couldn’t contradict in front of her followers without ceding some kind of ground in our metaphysical contest. Then, once we were alone, I threatened her with the Jovians to try and force a concession. That… backfired. When she learned what I’d done, she was furious. She demanded I undo it, I tried to negotiate, and then she ripped my heart out.”

  Reciting that last part sends another throb of pain through my body, emanating from the place in my chest where my heart used to be. I remember the face of Venus vividly. Some of the fear I felt in that moment is still coursing through me, stuck in the empty cavity in my chest.

  Finishing my story should bring relief, but it doesn’t. I feel like my bones are vibrating with anxiety. I chance another look at Striga’s face and flinch away from the intensity in her eyes. She hates me. I failed her. I ruined everything.

  “It worked,” I whisper, uncaring of how desperate and defensive it makes me sound. “It went bad at the end, but it worked. It—it wasn’t a terrible plan. I learned things, Striga.” Now the desperation is all-consuming, and I take a step toward my savior, hands shaking and clutched in front of my chest. “I learned things. Venus told me about Echidna and Typhon—all the Jupiter champions are moving to attack Visage, and Venus thinks she’s prepared for them. And. And! Venus said everything is going down on ‘my day.’ If that’s one of her traditional festivals, it’s Spring, but if it’s—”

  “It’s Valentine’s Day,” Striga says curtly, cutting me off. “She’s planning to ascend on Valentine’s Day—it has the strongest resonance for her domains.”

  Ice down my back. “Why… why do you say like that you already knew it?”

  “Because I did. I also knew about the movements of the Catastrophes, and had determined their intent to interfere with the ascension. It had become quite obvious.”

  I feel like I’m falling. I’m at the height of a very, very tall skyscraper, and I’ve just been pushed off the edge. My wings are melting wax. “You knew? But I—but then all I did—”

  “Was for nothing,” Striga twists the knife. She places her hands on my shoulders, gripping hard, and looks me in the eyes. Her gaze is burning, her voice harsh. “Do you understand the magnitude of what you’ve done, Archon? How much you’ve put at risk?”

  Any other time, any other moment, I would be happy just to feel my beloved’s touch. But right now, that joy doesn’t come. In its absence, something sick and wretched curdles inside me. I push her hands off and step back.

  All I ever wanted was for Sophia to love me. No, that’s not true. I wanted her time, her attention, her obsession; I wanted her to love me the way that I love her. For that love, I would do anything. Be anything. I just wanted to be perfect for her, because she was always perfect for me. But that isn’t true, either.

  How many nights have I spent alone, crying, because she had to cancel our plans again? How many times has she treated me like a curiosity or a pet? When she’s out there fighting to save the world, does she even think about me? Does she think about anyone? Or is she still alone, even surrounded by allies?

  I clench my fists and hold her gaze. “No,” I snarl, “I don’t understand! I can’t! Because you never tell me anything! I am so sick of being kept in the dark. You bring us into the fold, but you still refuse to trust any of us!”

  Her expression darkens. “You speak of trust to defend deception. If you wanted my trust, why did you do this? Why did you hatch plans in secret instead of coming to me with them?”

  “Because you’d say no!” I spit. “Because you’d insist on taking control, and then it wouldn’t be my project, my gift, my tribute, and I’d be just another piece to move across the board! You always have to do everything alone, you—you control freak!”

  “You don’t know me,” she says, frozen and unyielding and contemptuous.

  I laugh. I laugh and laugh and laugh, hysterical and manic, doubled over, and my eyes are wide and my lips stretched when I say, “I do! You’re always like this! Always keeping secrets, always controlling, always so horribly selfish! You want all the burdens for yourself. You’re the only one you’ll allow to play the role of savior that you’re so damn in love with! When will it be my turn? When will you let me save you? Since the day we’ve met, you’ve been suffering alone and it’s killing me. Why won’t you tell me? Why won’t you talk to me?”

  Somewhere in that babble, I turned to pleading. With each question, Striga shifts back a little farther. With each detail, another crack appears in the mask of ice she’s made of her face. Confusion. Fear. Denial. Uncertainty. “What are you—what do you mean? When did we meet? How do you know me, Archon?” And then, so quiet I almost don’t hear it, “Who are you?”

  It’s only when she says those words that I realize what I’m about to do. I laugh again, wondrous and afraid. I close my eyes.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  And I melt out of my witch form. Back to me. Back to Rachel.

  “We met,” I say softly, “in college. It was chance, really; we were thrown together as roommates, and we weren’t that alike. You were cute, and I liked making you laugh, but it didn’t seem realistic. The honors student and the slacker party kid only work out in the movies, I thought. But then you saved my life. When I’d burned down my future, you picked me out of the ashes and gave me a reason to keep going: you. You’re my reason, Sophie. I love you.”

  Slowly, fearfully, I open my eyes.

  Striga is gone; Sophia Lane stands across from me in the Morrigan’s garden, and she’s crying. Tears streak down her cheeks, her eyes already getting a little puffy and red. She stares at me like I can’t possibly exist, and then, before I can say anything else, she lunges for me. She wraps me in a hug, squeezes me tight, and whispers in my ear the only words I’ve ever wanted to hear from her:

  “I love you, too.”

  TMGM goes on hiatus after the March 4th update. TMGM will return from hiatus on April 5th.