Derpy tested the floor with his heel before trusting it with his weight.
Stone held beneath his foot, cold enough to feel through his sole. When he looked down, its surface changed to the polished floor of a palace corridor. A moment later, dark seams divided it into the uneven slabs he remembered from containment.
He stopped moving.
The walls offered no better explanation. They rose at different angles and ended before their corners could meet, leaving narrow gaps filled with drifting ash. Overhead, a dull light spread through a sky where a ceiling should have been. He could see enough to know there was nowhere to hide, but nothing that told him how to leave.
His wrists felt bare.
Derpy raised his hands. The bracelets floated several feet away, turning slowly around him. Their warmth reached his skin each time they passed. He followed one with his eyes, waiting for the familiar reassurance of its presence.
It completed another circuit without returning to him.
He remembered Vaeloria’s laugh, the steward’s pale face, and the moment a name had changed the weight of the morning.
Site Black.
His fingers curled against his palms. He had been trying to hold everything together when he heard those words. There had still been people to speak to, questions to ask, some explanation he might reach if he could keep his voice steady long enough.
He needed to get back. Whatever had happened, he could not leave it unfinished.
“You’re still trying to find a peaceful way through this.”
The voice came from behind him.
Derpy turned too quickly. The floor shifted beneath his feet, and he caught his balance with one hand extended.
His own face watched him from a few paces away.
Sinister Derpy wore no monstrous shape that would make him easier to reject. His hair fell the same way. His hands hung loose at his sides. Even the slight tilt of his head belonged to a gesture Derpy recognized.
The smile was the difference. Derpy knew what it cost him to smile when he was frightened. This one required no effort at all.
“You said you would help me,” Derpy said.
“I did help you.” Sinister glanced around the unfinished room before returning his attention to him. “You’re standing here because you finally reached the point where you couldn’t keep doing it alone.”
“That doesn’t explain why I’m here instead of out there.”
“I think you remember enough to explain that yourself.”
Derpy looked toward the nearest gap between the walls. Ash drifted through it without landing on the floor. There was no corridor beyond it, no glimpse of the chamber he had left.
Sinister approached at an easy pace.
“You tried talking,” he said. “You kept your hands still, chose your words, and gave them every opportunity to see something other than the creature they had already decided you were. How much more were you planning to give them?”
“I was trying to stop anyone else from getting hurt.”
“Including the people who were perfectly willing to hurt you.”
“That doesn’t mean I want them dead.”
Sinister stopped in front of him. Up close, the resemblance became harder to bear. Derpy searched his expression for anger, impatience, anything he could recognize and argue with. He found an attention so settled that it seemed to have been waiting for this conversation long before he arrived.
“You didn’t ask for bodies,” Sinister said. “You asked for help. You wanted the pain to stop, and you wanted to believe you could make it stop without becoming something you hated.”
“I still want that.”
“Then you should have been more careful about what you offered.”
One bracelet passed between them. Derpy reached for it, but the ring continued beyond his fingers.
Sinister watched his empty hand.
“Five days ago,” he said. “Do you remember the room?”
Cold stone pressed into Derpy’s memory. The smell of iron returned so clearly that he swallowed against it. He remembered sitting in containment with no one close enough to hear how badly his voice shook.
He had reached inward because every other direction had been closed to him.
Please. Just help me do this without hurting them.
Derpy lowered his hand.
“I offered you a chance to help,” he said. “I didn’t give you permission to take everything.”
“You said I could take control when you couldn’t manage it anymore. You said you would stop fighting me if I promised not to hurt the ones you love.”
“And you knew why I was saying it.”
“Of course I knew. I was there.”
The answer came without embarrassment. Sinister stepped around him, studying the floating bracelets while Derpy turned to keep him in sight.
“You were frightened of what they would do next,” he continued. “You were frightened of what you might do if they pushed far enough. I offered you someone who could carry that decision, and you accepted.”
Derpy felt the warmth around his wrists increase, although the bracelets remained beyond his reach.
“I don’t want to be you.”
For the first time, Sinister’s smile faded slightly.
“You wanted me when you needed saving. You don’t get to pretend you never opened the door because you dislike what came through it.”
Derpy tried to step back. His heel met the floor, but the movement took more effort than it should have. The ash overhead slowed until individual flakes hung in the dim light.
Sinister drew a quiet breath and began to sing.
The first notes carried in Derpy’s own voice. He felt them in his chest before he understood that his mouth had not moved.
I rose before you had a word for fear,
Before your lungs learned how to beg,
When silence wasn’t peace—just clear,
And mercy hadn’t found its legs.
No throne. No law. No right or wrong.
Just hunger wearing patient skin.
I listened to your heartbeat’s song
And learned the door you locked within.
Derpy pressed a hand against his ribs. A second pulse answered beneath his own, keeping time with the song. The bracelets slowed on opposite sides of him.
You learned to hate me from the aftertaste.
You learned my shape from sleepless nights.
I was awake before your world had names,
Before your prayers learned how to bite.
You call me ruin, you call me the end,
Yet you invited me again.
You closed your eyes, you held your breath,
And signed your shaking name in debt.
“I asked you to help me,” Derpy said. “I’m still here. You can hear me telling you to stop.”
Sinister held his gaze through the next verse.
You thought the bargain was a bridge,
A quiet way to make it stop.
But bargains don’t erase the edge—
They only teach the blade to talk.
I don’t sleep under stone and bone,
A tired beast you keep beneath.
I am the dark where vows are sewn,
The thread that tightens when you breathe.
Light pulled from the bracelets in thin, curved lengths. Each length joined another, forming links that remained suspended around Derpy’s arms. He pulled his hands close to his body. The unfinished chains followed.
Your fragile peace, your careful tone,
Your “I can fix this” whispered prayer,
Was just a key you carved from bone
And pressed into my waiting stare.
You tried to be gentle. Tried to be good.
Tried to be seen as something else.
But they still looked at you like blood—
A monster wearing borrowed flesh.
Derpy turned toward the gap in the wall and forced one foot forward. He managed a step. On the second, the light caught around his wrist and drew his arm behind him.
He seized the nearest link with his free hand. Warmth spread through his fingers, terribly familiar.
So you came to me. Not as a war.
Not as a scream. Not as a sin.
You came like someone at a door
Who finally lets the wolf come in.
I was alive before your world had a name,
Before the echo of blame and shame.
You call it peace, you call it change.
I call it chains you rearranged.
The words he had spoken in containment returned between the notes. He heard his own promise with all its exhausted pauses, each concession made because he had believed protecting the others would be enough.
Sinister lifted one hand.
One for the promise you couldn’t keep.
One for the fear you couldn’t say.
One for the nights you couldn’t sleep.
One for the price you chose to pay.
Not iron. Not rope. Not steel.
Just truth made tight around your will.
You said my name. You made it real.
Now I decide what peace means still.
The chains closed around both wrists. Another length settled across Derpy’s ribs, and he stopped fighting long enough to draw a full breath. The binding allowed it. When he tried to move toward the wall again, it held him where he stood.
That small distinction frightened him more than pain would have. Whatever this was, it had been made to keep him here intact.
You thought you bought yourself a dawn,
A softer path, a cleaner end.
But dawn is just the mask you put on
When darkness learns to play your friend.
I don’t forgive. I don’t pretend.
I don’t heal what they won’t spare.
I am the beginning without an end—
And now I’m wearing your face out there.
Derpy tried to call for someone. Lenora’s name reached his lips, but the room swallowed it beneath the music. He could no longer tell whether there was anyone beyond these walls to hear him.
You call me chaos. You call me fate.
I call it balance you learned too late.
When all your careful truths collapse,
You’ll feel my smile in the aftermath.
The melody ended. Its vibration remained inside the links.
Sinister stepped close enough to touch him, though he kept his hands at his sides.
“You made a deal,” he said. “I kept my part. The people you love are still protected by it.”
“They’ll try to stop you.” Derpy struggled to keep his voice steady. “You know they will. What happens to your promise then?”
“It remains a promise.”
The answer should have helped. Derpy wanted it to help badly enough that tears stung his eyes.
Sinister leaned forward until their foreheads almost touched.
“You asked me to carry what you couldn’t. Now sleep and let me drive.”
Derpy’s knees weakened. The binding supported him as the floor disappeared from view, followed by the walls and the suspended ash. He fought to keep his eyes open, holding on to the face before him because it was the last thing he could still see.
Sinister waited until he could no longer manage that either.
Five days later, morning light reached across the palace chamber and settled over the hands resting on the bedcover.
Sinister opened Derpy’s eyes.
He lay still for a moment, listening to footsteps beyond the door. A servant approached, paused, and continued without knocking. Farther down the corridor, a guard spoke too quietly for the words to carry.
He sat up and turned his wrists. Both bracelets rested against his skin, warm and apparently harmless. He flexed his fingers before pushing the covers aside.
By the time he reached the corridor, the guard had stopped speaking.
Sinister offered him a pleasant nod. The man returned it with the rigid care of someone unsure which response might cause offense. A maid waiting near the next doorway bowed before he reached her and remained lowered until he passed.
He let them watch him walk away.
Lenora, Lewd, Queen Vaeloria, Amy, and Lyn were gathered in the sitting room. Whatever conversation had brought them together ended when he entered.
Lenora studied his face first, then his hands. One ear turned toward the corridor while the rest of her attention stayed on him. Lewd held Sphinx close, her fingers tightening as his gaze passed over her.
Vaeloria remained seated. Her posture belonged to a queen receiving a difficult visitor, but she watched him too closely for the meeting to be ceremonial. Amy stood with her jaw set. Near the side of the room, Lyn shifted enough to keep the doorway clear.
Sinister looked around at them.
“You can all tell,” he said. “That saves us an uncomfortable introduction.”
“Where is Derpy?” Vaeloria asked.
He pulled out a chair at the table. Lenora watched the movement without stepping aside to welcome him.
“Resting. He needed more of it than any of you were likely to persuade him to take.”
“He can tell us that himself when you let him speak,” Lenora said.
Sinister sat. “He isn’t ready to have this conversation.”
“Then you should understand why we aren’t pleased to have it with you,” Lewd replied. “You walked in wearing his face and expected us to accept that he’s sleeping.”
He rested his hands on the table where they could see them.
“I’m not here to hurt you. That much you can believe.”
“You keep making decisions about what we should believe,” Vaeloria said. “Start with something we can verify. What have you done to him?”
A knock interrupted before he answered.
Vaeloria’s eyes stayed on Sinister as she called for the visitor to enter. Mk3 stepped inside, took in the arrangement of the room, and bowed to the queen. The motion was stiff enough to suggest she had more urgent concerns than performing it correctly.
“There is something you need to know about the nights he spent in containment,” Mk3 said.
Lenora turned toward her. Sinister remained comfortably seated.
“I heard him speaking when there was no one else with him,” Mk3 continued. “At first, I thought he was trying to settle himself. Then I heard him answering questions.”
“Whose questions?” Vaeloria asked.
Mk3 looked at the figure sitting at the table.
“The other presence. He was negotiating with it.”
Lewd loosened one hand from Sphinx. “What did he agree to?”
“He wanted help keeping the peace. He kept saying he didn’t want the people he loved to be hurt.” Mk3 hesitated, then met Lewd’s eyes. “In exchange, he agreed to let the other presence take control when he couldn’t keep going.”
Lenora faced Sinister again.
“And you decided he had reached that point.”
“He reached it without my assistance,” Sinister replied. “I was there when it happened.”
“You were there when he was desperate,” she said. “That is what she just told us.”
For a moment, his fingers stopped moving against the tabletop.
Then he reached into the empty space beside his chair.
Lewd recognized the book before he brought it fully into view. Her shoulders drew tight as he set Blight Vein on the table and slid it toward her. The cover scraped softly over the polished wood, stopping close to the edge.
She caught it before it could fall, then left her hand resting on top.
“Why are you giving me this?”
“It belongs to you. I don’t need it.”
“You don’t get to decide what Derpy needs.”
Sinister leaned back in his chair. “This is my body just as much as it is his, Lewd. You may dislike hearing that, but your dislike doesn’t make me disappear.”
“I’m asking about him,” she said. “Every time we do, you turn the answer back toward yourself.”
Amy glanced at the book, then at his empty hand. Lyn remained beside the doorway, close enough to intervene without crowding the others.
Vaeloria drew his attention back to her.
“You brought that here for a reason. If you intend to act without it, tell us what you are planning.”
Sinister’s smile narrowed.
“The Elven War Council and the War Office have had their opportunity to listen. Derpy tried to resolve this peacefully, and they continued treating him as a monster whose cooperation was something they could arrange.”
“And you believe frightening them will improve that?” Amy asked.
“I believe he has spent enough time making himself easier for them to tolerate.”
Vaeloria’s fingers tightened against the arm of her chair. “You are speaking about actions that will have consequences for everyone in this palace. I will not accept a grievance in place of an answer.”
He considered her for a moment before leaning forward.
“I don’t know how long I’ll remain in control,” he said. “But while I am, I will cause destruction. I thought you deserved to hear that from me before someone arrived to explain it on my behalf.”
Lewd drew Blight Vein closer. Lenora rose fully from the edge of her chair.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt us,” Lewd said.
“And I meant it. Derpy made that a condition, and I will keep it.”
Lenora planted one hand on the table. “He asked you to protect the people he loves. Do you think watching you use his body to hurt others will leave him untouched?”
Sinister looked at her hand before meeting her eyes.
The room waited for his answer.
“I promised that I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said at last. “I cannot promise you will approve of what I do to everyone else.”
A hard knock struck the sitting-room door.
Lyn turned toward it immediately. The measured weight of the sound belonged to someone arriving on official business, confident that the room would make time for them.
Vaeloria straightened. Amy moved clear of the table, and Lewd kept her hand on the book. Lenora remained beside Sinister, close enough that he would have to pass her to reach the entrance.
Warmth flared beneath his bracelets.
He glanced down at them, then toward the door. The warning did nothing to diminish his pleasure.
“It’s about time we got this show on the road,” he said.
The handle turned, and the door began to open.