Roach is awake after less than an hour. Rivin, too, because he sleeps light.

  She’s barely off the pillows when his eyes flutter open, watching her stretch tall through thick lashes. There are deep bags beneath his lash line that never seem to go away — eternal bruises for the agony he endures or avoids in his nightmares. They’re darker lately because his skin is so pale, because he’s so exhausted he doesn’t know how he’s still functioning, or how he even manages to sit upright, let alone pull himself to his feet.

  The girl busies herself with her pack, flinging it over one shoulder. “You even sleep?”

  Rivin nods. “Enough.”

  He’s sure she doesn’t believe him, but he’s learning that doesn’t seem to matter with Roach. She rarely pushes once she’s lit the fuse, merely waits for him to come around or learn the hard way. He is. His whole body aches, flaring in resentment of his own persistence. There’s blood on the bandages when he checks, and although he tries to walk with his spine straight, he can’t quite disguise the tenderness weakening his ankle.

  Before long the girl descends to the bottom floor, riding — on her stomach — the spiral railing all the way down. Rivin hears a scuffle and a curse before a thud, then footfalls and tins clanking. He sighs his relief. It doesn’t do much to ease the ache in his chest, but her noise has stopped aggravating the lingering pulse in his head.

  When he’s alone again, he combs back the hair from his eyes, hisses a sharp gasp when his fingers skim the gash at the crown, and feels the cold return. The absence lingers like deeper, darker shadow, creeping up the boots he hadn’t kicked off and right up over his kneecaps. Rivin nearly stumbles on the way to the staircase, tries his best to take the steps two at a time; he’s sure the painted galaxy on the ceiling is laughing at him as he goes. You’re an ant, giggles the asteroid. Run, ant. He focuses on leather tapping tin. Tap. Tap. Tap.

  When both feet find tile and the air returns to his lungs and the colour streaking across the steel chases away the black reaching for his heart, Rivin breathes out heavily. I’m so tired.

  Roach already has breakfast ready — cans emptied into a pot, still cold, now an unappealing violet. It’s enough to turn his stomach, so he doesn’t immediately approach when she uses a ladle to fill a chipped mug and holds it out for him.

  “What is this?” He takes it hesitantly, uses the spoon to part the goop.

  “Figured they all taste the same anyway,” the girl shrugs. “So I combined all the protein!”

  “You always eat things cold?”

  “Saves time. Plus, stove’s broken and you’re in a hurry.” She lifts another ladle and the sludge falls thickly from the spoon. She smirks from behind the sticky drip. “Unless?”

  “I can do cold.”

  Her grin twitches. “I see that.” She deposits the scoop into another mug and begins to shovel it into her mouth. It’s impressive, actually. She doesn’t even make a face.

  Rivin follows slowly, poking his tongue at the height of one spoonful. The taste is egregious. He tries to swallow anyway, somehow finishes the cup, and while his stomach churns, it eventually settles.

  “Your mother taught you well.” Roach waves her licked-clean spoon at him.

  There’s another ache in his chest. Run, Rivin. He glances over his shoulder, jaw set tight. There’s a lump in his throat, and it’s not from the soup. “We need to go.”

  The girl raises an eyebrow and for a moment there’s the briefest hint of concern. She’s reaching into her pocket again for the canister of petal and pill, but Rivin stops her before she can. “No.” He can’t afford to fuck up. It’s too easy to give in to the blur. “I’ll be fine. Let’s get out of here.”

  Roach worries her bottom lip with her teeth before turning away, and once again she doesn’t argue. Instead, they begin to prepare for the final stretch of their ascent. Roach packs her bag and pockets full of papers, trinkets and several of the leather binders, while Rivin replenishes the medical supplies and water.

  His eyes linger on the weapon rack, on the huge blade in the center. Roach gives him permission to take from it again, but he doesn’t budge. He turns quickly towards the door once they’re done. “They’ll just slow me down.”

  They leave with Roach already whistling, her hands in her pockets and her braid completely undone. Rivin follows suit with pain blooming everywhere but in his face. Run, Rivin.

  I’m going home.

  She leads him past the sleeping observatory and deeper into mossy tunnel towards a crack in the Southern wall, separate from the clear path. They have to work their packs between jutted out rock, hold their breaths to suck in their stomachs and thin themselves out to squirm in. Roach stretches beforehand and then slips through like one of the creeping vines, holding out her hands to take Rivin’s sword while he works his larger body through.

  “Where next?” he asks after a while, already breathless and weak in the knees but still just as determined. He stumbles on the way out of a crevice, corrects himself just barely as they enter another clearing; a deep well in the earth.

  “Just up.” The girl is looking skyward.

  His gaze follows hers up rows and platforms of collapsed earth and sharp ledges that appear to create a natural staircase leading higher — much like the spiral at the observatory, but not built for humans or by them. Glowmoss clings to the walls and ceilings, but the light is dim and the shadows are heavy. He sucks in a breath.

  The climb is brutal and they have to consistently help each other. Roach is small but strong, intuitive when it gets too challenging. Rivin isn’t used to being the one helped, but his hands slot into hers easier each time.

  Like the No Option Drop the ascension takes hours. Time blurring into itself as fingernails claw at stone, at earth, at metal. There’s blood in his boots again from where his side screams. The more he pushes, the worse it gets. Everything in him aches to stop. He can’t. Won’t.

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  He can almost taste home now. Or perhaps that’s a dream too.

  Roach never stops, never scolds, never teases. Only helps. Only steps into place when he needs it. Eventually the gorge narrows as they climb higher, and everything looks the same until it doesn’t. He sees metal bolted into what remains of a platform, the bones of a ladder still clinging to the edge but missing all but the parts fastened to the rim.

  Much of the ceiling holds the shells of shattered light beams, and there’s missing railing along the edge of one side, cupping titanium walls wounded by old scorch marks. Thin vents dot the dark where the ceiling flows into tunnel, and he can hear noise coming through; life — distant, but there.

  Rivin’s heart picks up pace and so does he, almost sobbing with relief — choking instead on spat up blood. Roach helps him up the last of the gorge, straining mightily to hoist his weight over the edge. They’re both shaking by the time they make it to the platform.

  The girl pants and wipes the sweat from her brow before quickening to his side to help him stand. Rivin’s knees knock together at the same time as his teeth. “Almost there,” she reassures.

  He doesn’t respond when she helps him through the doorway and into a short tunnel. It leads towards a plain room void of any objects or tables. The tin is scorched completely black with burns and sparkling through the thick of it — to the left of a complex paneled door — is a sleek silver numberpad.

  Finally, and crumbled in the very middle of the small vault, is a charred skeleton burned completely free of clothing. Its sooty bones are collapsed at the epicenter of the worst of the blackened steel. Roach spits at its grave when she walks past, but not in a way that implies malice — more like ritual — and then looks to Rivin expectantly. “It’s tradition.”

  The boy blinks. Tilts his head. Lets his eyes trail over the old bones of someone’s child, and then spits.

  It’s not long before she’s powering up the numberpad and punching code into the panel. “Just gotta…” When she finalizes the key the door comes to life, pieces disappearing like a puzzle solving itself. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Hiss.

  It reveals familiar landscape, mostly hidden beneath debris and stacked foliage, but he also sees the precious glow of synthetic light and neon — distant signs blaring out from the Spine.

  His breath hitches and no one says anything more as he moves forward, almost scrambling, almost clawing like the moment will disappear. Like he has to grasp it right now. Before it’s gone.

  The girl steps aside as perfectly as the door, hands laced behind her back and lips softly curled to watch as Rivin reenters the reality he knows best with a breathless choke in, deep and full of longing, fat with his relief.

  He stumbles over turned earth and trash and right to the highest mound of crag he can find, heart a drum within his chest. Thrum. Thrum. Thrum. He can see the spires in the distance, the bulbs of light slung atop the rafters of the vendors’ upper-strip. He can spy the outline of houses in the West End and the terrible gnash of teeth that is the Staircase of Mercy in the smog. He can smell the sulphur and the smoke, and the dense, coppery spew of the Seraph Mines in the depths. It’s ugly. Rancid. Hot. Home.

  He breathes in more deeply and for the first time in his short life Rivin thinks that the stink of the Lowrealm smells good. He almost smiles, almost laughs, almost cries out in rapture — almost sobs until his throat is hoarse. Caught in a moment of mind-bending euphoria. He looks around, desperate to share the joy abounding with bright eyes, before they dim.

  His heart hiccups. His stomach drops. Roach is gone.

  He’d half-expected her not to follow, to prove herself some ghost or insane hallucination. He’s struck by how much he doesn’t want that. How much he needs that not to be true.

  This isn’t like the first time when he’d turned his nose up at some beggar child smirking in dirt, some brat he could forget before the harsh reality took them all. No, he couldn’t forget. Not her teeth catching the light like she eats it. Not the sun she’d introduced him to. Not the strange child who twirled over memories caught in battle, just as she had in the dingy cabin of portraits.

  “You look like you owe me something.” And his chest hurts because it flares to howl at just how much he does owe her. How quickly he’s come to care when he swore that he wouldn’t. How the hole in his chest that’s already gaping wide only grows deeper. Suddenly there’s something blurring in his eyes as the cold seeps in with eager talons.

  There’s a rustle at his side — small yet distinct. He glances over reluctantly — almost terrified, like looking too quickly might crush him into nothing. But then the warmth returns, hotter than the sun and somewhere deep within his chest where it lights up the ruins there. Vanquishes the ghosts.

  She’s already standing beside him with her fists on her hips, amber eyes looking boldly out at the city landscape. She’s grinning — all victory and no shoes. She breathes in deep enough to flare both nostrils and winks when she catches him staring.

  Everything hits him all at once and it all feels impossible. Completely, utterly impossible. Like an observatory deep inside the earth. Like a palm stealing the sun. Like a world freshly discovered.

  Like a Queen of Roaches.

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Roach skips ahead to slide down the crag before darting towards a stack of fallen beams. She fossicks through the dust as Rivin comes to join her, clutching his side and still reeling, still in awe of this odd little creature who’s led him straight out of Hell.

  She kicks over a broken crate before crouching low to brush away debris from a mound. He can see the white steel from over her shoulder and he knows what it is before he even understands it himself. Once more he can feel the heaviness in his pocket, where a bloodied rune lie idle but not forgotten.

  “Ta-daa!” The girl stands tall when she’s done and crosses her arms over her chest, tilting up her chin as though waiting for applause. There within the rubble and the rock is what’s left of the Pale Knight. A dented visor and chest plate. Two gauntlets still slick with Rivin’s blood. With Mouse’s.

  Not gone, a voice flutters in his head like windchimes on a drone. Grey eyes dart away from the corpse to bore right into Roach’s beaming grin. He’s silent for longer than she’d like, stunned and unable to hide it. He looks almost pained, and the quiet hangs thick.

  He’s staring too hard. Looking at her like she’s something else. He doesn’t understand it. Doesn’t understand her. Doesn’t understand what they’ve just gone through.

  The girl begins to flush a bright, pretty red, huffily averting her eyes and turning away. She looks back only to pull a face that makes her look human again, blowing a tendril of wild hair from her eyes. “It’s nothing.”

  “You—”

  “It’s nothing!”

  “It’s—”

  “It’s a gift! For your dead friend or whatever!” She waves a hand dismissively and Rivin chokes on his gratitude, wrinkling his face into a frown again. Still, her cruel deflection doesn’t hit as hard as he expects — not while there’s still Lowrealm air in his lungs.

  He glances at the mound they’d scaled, the door now hidden from his view, already folded closed behind them. Now that he’s back where reality lives his brain pulses with pressure and his mouth opens and closes.

  When he looks back at Roach, he realizes he doesn’t know how to handle this type of gratitude either. He’s overflowing when he walks towards her. She still has her arms crossed, lips pursed and pouty, only softening once he gently places his hand on her head.

  His eyes are wide like he isn’t sure what he’s doing. He isn’t, really. His movements are stunted and unsure, clumsy but gentle as he tousles her hair. She leans into his hand like a cat accepting kindness and his words are breathy when he says, “Thank you… Roach.” They’re unfamiliar too.

  It’s not that he’s never been thankful for anything before, but his chest is tight and his side is cracking back open and he is — he is so thankful.

  Rivin looks towards the landscape and out towards the glow of the civilization (or close enough to it).

  He feels the pull of home. Of friends waiting and holding their breaths. So close now. So close.

  She snatches up his free hand and threads their fingers together, squeezing tight as she hums, “Let’s wrap this up, huh?”

  Rivin nods. His heart feels all wound up in warmth and thorns.

  This is it.

  The dream is over. Time to wake up.