Alize startled awake gasping. For an instant she could not make out her surroundings, but when she turned her head, the light of the moon shone through a window and she recognized Kell’s small kitchen. Night had settled thickly in her absence, but this darkness was warm and bustling with the sounds of muffled voices from the street and the smell of olive oil and winter citrus. It was a soothing earthy darkness.

Alize shook herself, trying to feel her muscles again, to rid them of their numbness. She rested with her arms on the kitchen table, over the breadcrumbs from breakfast, now stale and hard. Her chair creaked as she eased her shoulders upwards.

Alize rubbed her face and shuddered. She had survived the emptiness once more. The episodes were occurring more frequently now, and she had no map to plot the course of her experience. Each descent risked everything: she never could be sure she would connect with her soul, her dagger, before the emptiness consumed her. Before it made her its own.

Alize brushed away the hot tears that escaped down her cheeks. Self-pity served no one. She would move forward or she would not move at all. That would be true surrender.

Her body began slowly to reignite. It felt gangly around her, a tangle of unwieldy limbs. Alize gasped as she massaged the sore crick in her neck. The muscles burned.

“Alize,” Kell appeared in the doorway, emblazoned in candlelight. “You’re awake.”

Alize tilted her head to regard him. Her tongue still felt sluggish. “How long,” she strained, “how long have I been asleep?”

“Is that what we’re calling it?” Kell asked. His voice rang too loud the small kitchen. It made Alize’s ears roar in response.

Alize slumped over the table, exhaling. She had trouble confronting Kell’s animosity at the best of times. This was the worst of times. She had to remember what strength was before she could feign it.

But when Kell next spoke, he lowered his voice until it almost converged with the sheltering stillness. He spoke almost with kindness, which perhaps was worse. “Davram said the sun wasn’t even setting yet. It’s past midnight now.”

Alize bent her her head to rest it in her hands once more.

Kell’s footsteps moved across the floor. The chair across from her barely scraped the ground as he pulled it from the table. “What happened to you? You were unresponsive, just breathing.”

Alize dragged her chest up from the table, wishing she had more time to prepare to have this conversation. To have this conversation with a Sargon. Even if that Sargon were Kell.

“Don’t tell me you tried kissing me,” she grumbled.

“No.” Kell did not seem to even register the joke. His scrutiny only intensified.

Alize flushed. But she could not hold the regret in her mind. It was already far too cluttered.

“It didn’t resemble sleeping. You seemed too...uncomfortable.” Kell murmured. Conflicting emotions flickered over his face. The table sagged as he too leaned onto it.

His fingertips nearly reached Alize’s, and she jolted to realize she craved that touch. She craved it without understanding it, and she feared succumbing might convey a message she did not want Kell to have. It might invite him into a space she could barely inhabit herself. She could not welcome him into her weakness. That was hers alone to guard.

But she remembered the warmth of his touch. It brought heat to her stomach. Is that not living? A voice inside her inquired. Does that not protect you from the emptiness?

Alize withdrew her hands to clutch her knees under the table.

Kell watched her. “You really disturbed Davram. He said you looked like his brothers, before they died from the Empty.”

Looking everywhere but at Kell, Alize responded with a dismissive frown. Davram came closer to the truth than she cared to admit.

“To me,” Kell continued, watching Alize, “you look just like all the Hrumi who died in the prisons under my watch.”

Alize winced. She had suspected that. The confirmation made her situation all the more bleak. If she suffered like this when separated from her dagger, it verified Kell’s story about the deaths of the Hrumi in the prisons. It meant they died by soul separation, not by soultrussing. Not by the Sargons.

Then what had they died for?

“Since you don’t seem so surprised,” Kell sighed, “would you care to explain to me what happened?”

Alize could hear Kell’s patience wearing thin. She hardly could blame him. Of course he wanted to understand. Of course he wanted Alize to help him understand. After all, he had been honest in his revelations.

But the Hrumi dagger binding ceremony was the clans’ most important secret. Our best protection. Our last protection. Such a secret could never be untold. This is too big, Alize thought, to big for me. Still Kell awaited an answer and Alize hated to crush him yet again with her reticence. Especially given everything else he was dealing with.

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“Kell, I’m sorry, I can’t…talk about it,” she murmured finally.

Kell sighed softly. “Can’t or won’t?”

“I said I’m sorry!”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Alize drew her hands to her neck, feeling Kell’s frustration like a hammer on her skull. She hated her answer, but could imagine no better response to satisfy both forces tugging at her heart.

“It’s not for me to decide.” Alize risked a glance at the Sargon. “It’s not my secret. It’s just a trust I keep.”

Kell sat back and folded his arms.

Alize could not tell whether his expression belayed renewed attention or resignation. Neither could she judge which one felt worse.

“Even now, Alize,” Kell muttered. “Some of you sisters in the prison are suffering the same symptoms, where for large spans of the day they become completely unresponsive. All this time I thought it was another defiance against us, like the hunger strikes, that they were doing it themselves, somehow. But you are not imprisoned. So I now I begin to give the Hrumi accussations more credence. They call it a slow soultrussing.”

Alize resisted balking. Instead she used all her will power to shrug. She desperately hoped it hid her panic. Kell had already guessed far too much.

“And naturally,” Kell continued, “the Hrumi accuse me of trying to soultruss them.”

No. Kell did not deserve that accusation. “I know this isn’t the Sargons’ doing, not to me anyway.” Alize whispered. Surely she could admit that much. “I suffered from this in the citadel too.”

“Then who is doing this you?”

“Kell. Please. Don’t ask me that.” Alize’s heart thudded, but she strove to conceal her own internal doubt. The soul separation, the dagger binding ceremony, was meant to protect the Hrumi. If Kell realized the clans were safe from the Kogaloks and the Deku, it would become all too easy for him to deduce the location of the children’s camp in the Deku protected mountains.

A camp that lies in ruins, Alize reminded herself, while your living sisters suffer now. But if Alize inadvertently divulged the location to Kell, could she trust him to keep it a secret? No other place offered such privacy and security. And she knew the pressures weighing on him.

Indeed, they had names like Qaaru and Melis.

When she dared glance at Kell again, his eyes seared through hers. “Six weeks, Alize. That’s the average span of time it will take for a lone Hrumi to die in prison.”

“Yes,” Alize’s voice cracked, “I remember you said that.”

“One woman died only days after showing symptoms. Have long have you been having them?”

The answer to that question terrified her. “It’s not your concern.” Eight weeks. And worse every time.

Kell shook his head and leaned over the table until Alize could feel his breath on her cheek. There was no gentleness left in his face. “What,” he spat, “could these secrets possibly be worth?”

“Don’t ask me that!” Alize shouted.

“Can I ask you anything at all?! Or is that too offensive? Do you care more about keeping me ignorant than doing anything to help yourself or your sisters?!”

Alize wanted to curl up under the table and let someone else face these questions. They threatened to undo her. But she forced herself to meet Kell’s eyes and speak with all the patience she could muster. She prayed that he would recognize all compromises she was already making. “You’re asking a different question than you think.”

“Can you explain it to me?” Kell demanded, utterly unassuaged.

Alize pressed her fingers to her temples, “Obviously not.”

Kell rose from the table. “Then I cannot help you, even if I wanted to.”

“Fine,” Alize grumbled. She had no right to expect more from him, whatever her hopes for compassion. “Just let me see the Hrumi tomorrow.”

For a moment Kell held her gaze. Then his face soured. “Why should I?”

“What?” Alize choked. In the same moment she realized she had depended on Kell, she realized how stupid that had been.

Kell stepped forward until he loomed over Alize.

She leaned back in her chair to regard at him in dismay. It marked, perhaps, the first honest emotion she had shown him since coming to Parousia.

“Why should I help you do anything,” he enunciated, “when at best you don’t trust me, and at worst you’re actively subverting my efforts?”

Alize jumped to her feet so quickly she jostled the table. “I thought we were fighting on the same side,” she spewed. She hated his implications. She hated further still that she could not quite deny them.

“I’m not so foolish. I’m fighting for peace, Alize, for an end to this senseless cycle of aggression. But as far as I can tell,” Kell grimaced as he shook his head again, “you’d prefer to demonize the Sargons than try to save anyone.”

Alize opened her mouth to object, but Kell turned from her and left.

Alize caught up to him as he stepped on the first stair. “Don’t you think I value my sisters’ lives, their safety? You have us by the neck and I can scarcely breathe!”

Kell slowed in his movement, but he did not look back at her. Alize wanted to catch his arm, to press his hand into hers so he could feel her trembling. Then he would know her desperation. But there was always a chance he could use that against her. For what good could come of showing a Sargon weakness?

She rushed forward with her words instead. “I’m trying to do what’s right, Kell! Everything I’ve ever told you is true! If I’m silent, just be grateful I don’t feel I have to lie to you!”

Kell whirled to face her. “Grateful?”

“Yes!” Alize shouted, wishing the disgust away from Kell’s features. “I’m trying! There are so many things I can’t give to you, and it has nothing to do with me or you - it has to do with the titles we both carry. You are a Sargon-”

“That’s not all I am!” Kell yelled into her face.

“Lucky you!” Alize shouted back. She could scarcely manage this anger, partly because she was uncertain who she was angry at. Everyone. And for all she could not tell him, for all she was bound to honor the Hrumi traditions, she wanted Kell on her side too. Yet he was drifting further and further away from her and she was powerless to stop it. “Because you can’t understand how confined I am! The threats my sisters live under – they constrain our imagination!”

“And is that my fault too?!”

Alize’s breath caught in her throat. She could see Kell’s hands shaking as he faced her. She buried her own hands in her sleeves, but lowered her voice. No part of her relished this fight. But neither could she see any way to avoid it. She knew Kell carried so much kindness, though she no longer believed he reserved any for her.

So be it, Alize yielded silently, I only need that kindness to help my sisters, not for me. But try as she might to believe that, it did not quite resonate with her memories.

She lowered her voice. “No, that’s not your fault. But I’m trying to tell you that I never imagined anything like the concord your grandmother described to me. It sounded so crazy to me, but I believe it now. I just need to figure out how to make it happen.”

Kell’s expression remained unmoved.

“And you,” Alize stammered, “you may have all the good intentions in the world, Kell, but you can’t do this alone. I’m the only person who can help you.”

Kell turned from Alize, his silhouette swimming in the darkness. The silence extended, joining the night like an accomplice.

Alize twisted her fingers in her sleeves, waiting for Kell, waiting for some semblance of forgiveness.

His shook his head and sighed. “I know.”