Yuzuru’s fist connected with a nearby tree, again and again. Pain shot through his knuckles as the skin split. He gripped both sides of the tree. It had been cut in half by the masked girl, making the rings visible above the trunk. “Describe her," he said.

Gweyn shrugged. "Brown-haired, tall and thin, liked to read books...”

“Did she have a mole under her left eye?”

“Yes.”

“And a scar on the pad of her right index finger?”

“Uh… I think so.”

“God damn it!” Yuzuru ripped his bag off his back and kicked it into the woods. “Why didn’t you tell me this when we first started traveling together?”

“Would you have believed me?” Gweyn answered.

“Of course!" Yuzuru said. "Probably.”

Gweyn came over, her footsteps unsure. “It wouldn’t have made anything else I said to you untrue,” she said. “My mother told me everything about you. She used to stay up all night with me, telling me stories of the world you two came from.”

Yuzuru held up a hand. “I know how this sounds. But have you ever seen her naked…”

“Time moves faster in Arcadia,” the masked girl cut in. “I don’t know exactly how much, but it’s something close to ten times.”

“Ten times.” Yuzuru repeated the words, running them around his tongue and mind. “Ten times.” He shook his head. No. It wasn’t possible. This meant one day in reality was ten here, which meant the three years he’d been looking for Honoka, she spent thirty here.

His body felt too heavy. He leaned against the dead tree and slid down.

Gweyn came over and squatted next to him, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I was going to tell you.”

“Oh, yea?” Yuzuru wanted to laugh. “When? As I kneel beside her grave? Then, will you tell me how she actually lived a full and happy life in this depressing place pulled out from some angsty teen’s nightmare?”

“Pretty much,” Gweyn said. “But she doesn’t have a grave. She didn’t leave behind anything, other than me.”

“And a plaque,” the masked girl offered.

A slow buildup of laughter grew inside Yuzuru until it became a gut-quivering guffaw. He stood, wiping tears from his eyes. He was laughing so hard it was making him dizzy. He held out a hand towards a tree for balance but he misjudged the height and fell right over it instead.

That just made him laugh harder.

The two girls stood watching him.

“He’s reacting worse than I thought he would,” said the masked girl.

“It’s your fault,” said Gweyn.

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Yuzuru grabbed a broken branch and started whacking at the tree.

“How have you been?” the masked girl asked.

“Good," Gweyn answered. "No thanks to being hunted by you.”

The masked girl’s thin shoulders rose and fell. “I wasn’t… there are forces at work, Gweyn, larger than any individual.”

Gweyn chuckled. “That’s what my mother started to say before she left the kingdom and abandoned us, and I hated her for it.”

The stick shattered. Yuzuru threw the pieces away and sprawled onto the ground. The moon was nestled among a galaxy of stars, the brightest of them all. His lungs ached. Pressure mounted behind his eyes. He couldn’t believe this. He refused to. And yet, it made a bizarre sort of sense. If Honoka had found a way to get back she’d have done it already. The only reason she hadn’t was that she must’ve found a reason to stay.

Or, that she was dead.

Yuzuru lifted his head to look at Gweyn. He really studied her, noting all the similarities in the straight of her nose and her wavy dark hair. There were times when she reminded him of Honoka, whether it was her sense of humor or the casual way she talked. He just never thought to make the connection.

He picked himself up and hobbled into the bushes to find his bag. When he came back, the girls were standing together.

“Do you need to talk about it?” Gweyn asked.

“Did she…” Yuzuru tried to force out the words. “…ever say anything about me?”

Gweyn smiled softly. “I could write you a book.”

The sky began to brighten, the stars fading with the coming of a reddish dawn.

“I don’t want to break the mood, but we’re running out of time.” As night bled away, the gloominess of the previous day lessened, but the masked girl’s voice took on none of the joviality. “Right now, the Prince of Skulls is leading his men across the Blue Nation. If Cold Castle does not act, all of Arcadia is lost. King Rychard does not have the necessary experience or men to stop an invasion of this size.”

“I’m not following,” said Yuzuru. “Kind Rychard is…?”

“The ruler of the Yellow Nation,” said Gweyn. “He resides in Bronzehaven, where Taiga and her kids are.” She pointed north, to the row of mountains making up the Corridor, their peaks hidden below the clouds. “The Strydes controlling the Blue Nation is northeast of here. If we go north a bit more, we’ll be in the Red Nation, ruled by the Tachelms.”

“I will send a raven ahead of you,” the masked girl said. “But you know the Stryde King will not be able to lead. His heir must take the throne.”

Gweyn kicked at the grass beneath her feet. “It’s not my fault he’s gone insane.”

“I did not say it was,” said the masked girl. “But if you do not go to Cold Castle, then the fall of Arcadia will be partly your doing.”

“Hold on.” Yuzuru looked between the masked girl and Gweyn. “Why is the fate of the world on Gweyn’s shoulders? She’s just a… half-traveler girl.”

It was Gweyn who answered. “My other half isn’t quite ordinary either, actually.”

Yuzuru stared at her, the gears inside his brain ticking along. “No,” he said. “No, no, no.”

“She is the last heir to Cold Castle,” said the masked girl. “I have been asking her very nicely to take her place as ruler of the Blue Nation for many months now.”

“H-honoka had a kid… with a king?”

“Yep,” said Gweyn.

“So you’re a princess.”

“…Yep.”

Yuzuru smiled, but nothing about this situation seemed funny. "Does that mean Honoka was a queen?”

Off to the side, the masked girl cleared her throat. “This is a discussion you can have on the road. The sun is coming up. You should put it to good use.” As she said it, color spilled through the brightening sky, turning red to orange to a light, pale blue.

“I want to see her,” Yuzuru said. “Please, Gweyn. Take me to Cold Castle. I want to talk with the King.”

Gweyn hung her head. “He lost his mind when my mother left. The most you’ll see in Cold Castle is a plaque dedicated to her death.”

"It's a good plaque though," the masked girl said.

Yuzuru was still reeling from the new information. Pieces were falling in place on a puzzle he didn’t even know was there. But he managed to hold onto one conviction. “I need to know she lived in this world, as one of you.” He took Gweyn’s shoulders and looked into her red eyes. He wanted to convey everything he was feeling, all the loss and hope, all the things he couldn’t bear to say. "I need that, Gweyn, so that I can accept that she died."

As the light peaked across the tree tops, Gweyn raised her head up and let out a sigh. There was a hardness in her ruby-red eyes, the kind Yuzuru knew meant she’d made up her mind. But what it was she decided, he didn’t know, until she turned to face him.

“Alright," she said. "I’ve been getting a little homesick anyway.”