The second thing she noticed was the wound between worlds watching her like a lidless eye.
Eli inhaled sharply, and the ice in the air stabbed at her lungs. Her fingers and toes were thawing out, and the joints ached as they warmed. Her body felt more tangible and heavy and vulnerable since fusing with the Heart.
“You’re alive, oh my god, you’re alive,” someone was repeating over and over like a mantra.
“We have to close it,” Eli said. “We can’t leave it like this.”
Someone kissed her palm. Eli sat up, and a headache split across her forehead. “Fuck.”
“You almost died.” Tav’s tenor captured her attention. “You asshole.”
“I guess we’re all tougher than we look.” Eli twisted to look at Cam. “Welcome back.”
“You, too.”
“I like what you’ve done to your face.”
“You could use a bit of gardening.”
Eli laughed.
The knives at her waist laughed with her.
It was good to be back.
She pulled herself up, Kite and Tav hovering around her in case she might fall. But she was back, and her body was no longer going to vanish or tear itself apart.
“I hear you’re the Witch Lord now,” she said.
“The walls are a gossip.” Tav frowned at Cam, who shrugged.
“Can we stop this?” Kite gestured at the broken sky.
“I don’t know. But I’m going to try.” Eli pulled the pearl blade from its sheath and tossed it in the air. She caught it by the hilt. It wasn’t hard — after all, it was a part of her. She grinned.
“We don’t have the Heart,” she added, “but we have the wall. A witch. A made-thing. And Tav. That’s got to count for something.” She offered the hilt to Tav. “Do you want me to swear an oath of fealty?”
“Fuck off.” Tav pushed it away.
“Just as well. I don’t think I’d be a very good knight.” But she didn’t sheath it, and instead drew a second blade: the bone blade that remembered her name, dreams, regrets. That remembered the taste of sunlight and honey and burning flesh from its time as the Heart.
The bone blade remembered everything.
THE WITCH LORD
Eli’s eyes were bright with excitement, and her movements were filled with energy — almost manic.
“Maybe you should rest,” they said.
Eli laughed again. Then she threw her head back and howled at the moon. “Close the door, Tav. Make us a key and turn the lock before the City of Ghosts falls into the sky, before the allium fields are burned with ice, before the moon loses its orbit and is cast out into the void.”
“I don’t want to risk you,” said Tav quietly. “I almost lost you. I can do it on my own.” They hoped that was true.
Eli caught their look and held it. “No,” she said. “We’re not doing that anymore.”
“Eli —”
“I love you, and you scare the shit out of me, and I’m not used to relying on other people. But I will if you will. Even baby Witch Lords need help, right?”
Tav’s heart shuddered, and an electrical current ran through their entire body, up and down the length of their spine. Dozens of feathers fell from their wings.
“I-I love you, too.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Another smile, the curve of a reptilian tooth lengthening from pink gums. God, she was hot.
“Witch Lord in exile,” added Kite. Her hair was undulating gently, its shades flowing from pale green to rich turquoise and back again. She didn’t seem jealous.
Tav took Eli’s hand in theirs, raised it to their lips, and brushed a kiss against her knuckles.
“Okay,” they said. “We need to heal the rift. If anyone wants to help, they can, but they don’t have to. It’s not too late to cross,” they added pointedly at Kite. “The City of Eyes is healing.”
“This is where my family is,” said Kite softly. Cam’s stones crooned in harmony with her dulcet tones.
“Me, too,” said Cam.
Eli nodded.
Tav looked up at the rift: the frayed edges, the fabric of the universe coming unravelled. The rip slowly spreading like a run in a stocking, until there would be nothing between the Earth and the alien planet that had been feeding on its energy for years. The Witch Lord was gone, but the harm had been done. Momentum carried her project forward, draining the life from a little blue planet.
This was what Tav had promised to do, when they had thirsted for the Heart that burned under Eli’s skin. When they were huddled in the dark in the Children’s Lair dreaming of power and strength. They had promised to heal the wound.
They looked at their companions. Only Cam had been born here. The other two had chosen to come. All of them had been changed in the past few weeks. They had risked death, and still, they would risk it again. They had saved one home, and now they would save another.
Maybe that’s what being born from diaspora meant — having not one home but many, having many places and people to fight for. (It meant other things, too — pain, loss, guilt, and a sense of being unrooted. But now Tav had wings and was a feathered tree.) Maybe it meant understanding that nations and borders and divisions of human/not-human were meaningless. That some lines needed to be crossed. That some lines needed to be eroded by wind and sand and intention.
Healing the wound didn’t have to mean locking the door. It didn’t have to mean another line they couldn’t cross. Doors could open both ways. Healing the rift didn’t mean an ending, but a change. It meant a new kind of relationship. Maybe one based on care and love.
Maybe a Witch Lord in exile who was also human and had moonlight in their eyes could bring the worlds together in a way that didn’t hurt. After all, worlds can meet like lovers. (Lovers meet like worlds.)
The obsidian blade was warm in their hand. They felt the sharp, sweet burn of Eli’s magic whisper through their body. She was
