Her hands fold into one another, fingers interlaced and poking out like the ridges of some fantastic mountain range. Then, either thumb touches, a motion trained time and time again—a practiced and meticulous routine, not just the spur-of-the-moment kiss of two star crossed lovers. It’s their wedding day. She’s envisioned this rapturous moment hundreds of times more than she’s actually experienced it.

  Mastery floods the canvas I’ve painted on, like she’s laying herself bare for me. That’s exactly how I can see the faults in her thought process.

  Grass is trimmed to a respectable height, the river’s flow is steadied to a gentle pace, and the stone embankments become more polished and orderly. The buildings that I shifted into architectural styles alien and human both, start to become more consistent. Just as Whimsical, but put together with a steady hand. Do you see what I’m getting at?

  It was pretty clear before, but this just makes it even more obvious: Velvet is still stuck on me. She can’t even get herself to mess with my territory—she’s just making it look nicer! Even the sun looks satisfied with the changes.

  “Don’t tell me that’s all there is,” I say, “it can’t be. What’re you gonna do, make my hair nice and neat?” I throw a hand out to the side. To tell you the truth, it’s not my proudest moment—but you have to get where I’m coming from! This is very interesting, and is what I thrive off of.

  “, Luce.” She says, some stone-cold bite to her tone. Ooh, she only ever pulls that out for the extra-special guests.

  “There’s a change.” I grin, “You’d have me real convinced that you’re taking this seriously—if only you actually did some—”

  Searing, blistering heat radiates through my collarbone, and then I hear the crack of a gun. She shot me! Seriously? Actually—

  I ask,

  she says nonchalantly, ignoring the fact that I just got shot,

  Man… I gotta stop getting ahead of myself.

  Another half-dozen come flying my way, and I’m quick enough on the uptake this time to actually do something about it. They glide across my body like sharks, careening right back at their owner from the tip of my outstretched finger. Now everyone, toss in your bets—does Unerring

  They screech past her uselessly—not even to their target. What can I say? a terrible shot.

  My fist thumps against my chest, and I imagine my body filling in that bullet hole in the same way as gravel settling. Before I know it, the pain’s gone—replaced by some burning phantom sensation. Probably shouldn’t have given Velvet the time, though. Looks like she got all prepared while I was healing up.

  Eighteen different revolvers are floating behind her, or at least that’s how it looks. If you look right you can see her entity—some shadowy thing without a face—looming over her. I’ve never gotten a good look at it before, so I never really figured out if it’s got nine pairs of arms or not. It’s easy enough to see the silly hat on its head, though. Always made me wonder if she dressed it herself.

  “Luce,” she says, “drop your territory.”

  “No way. Are you stupid?”

  Velvet grits her teeth, hissing out from between them, “You’re destroying the city, Luce— it!”

  “And what about you?”

  “Yeah.” She agrees, “I’m not much better. I’ll probably get in a shit-ton of trouble if I don’t drag your corpse out of this.”

  I look her up and down and say, “Why don’t you just admit what’s holding you up, Velv? We both know that if it were anyone else, you’d already have stuffed ‘em full of holes.”

  She clenches her fist into a little ball and mutters some curse that gets lost in the wind. Feels like her entity’s staring daggers at me—I can tell just how bad it wants to put a bullet or twelve between my eyes. “What the fuck , Luce?” She asks, “Everything was going so between us, and then—”

  “Then I met King.”

  Her eyes tense up, and she winds up looking about as angry as an alley cat as she asks “What in the is so special about ”

  “He just feels right.” I say, and it’s the truth. “I don’t know—shit. You were talking about some really serious stuff back then, Velv! Like you wanted to get or something.”

  “And so you fucked off without a word for —after two years; and the next time I get to see you—the next time I get from you, is you trying to take me down with ”

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  Man… I just hate this part. Everybody in the world gets hung up on this, hung up on some idea of commitment. Love is just some stupid little social contract each party signs onto without a word—and it sure as fuck isn’t binding! Doesn’t matter how intense the start is, it can end just as easy. All it takes is one little thing—one little push in the wrong direction—and all those dominos you set up’ll fall right over.

  “Not my fault.” I mutter.

  Velvet laughs, folding over forward while her gun hangs limp in her grip—pointed straight toward the ground. Her cackling sounds almost panicked, feverish. Makes me feel bad, than bad. Shit—what do you want from me? The feelings stopped, and I sure as hell didn’t want to face that music. So I didn’t talk to her about it, didn’t talk to her at all after that.

  She picks herself up, clutches her face like she’s gotta protect herself from the way I’m looking at her, and then centers herself again with some half-hearted, shaky breath. She says, “Alls below, Luce. You’re incredible—just incredible.”

  “Incredible?” I say, “Fuck, Velv, you’re turning into a fucking robot that can shoot a gun perfectly, and I’m turning into… Into something else. What’s the difference? There’s a cost to climbing the chain. If you can’t accept that, stick to regular-old human girls!”

  She looks hurt by that, shoulders slumping and face wincing like I ran up and smacked her. For a second I’m glad for it, too—happy to have dealt some invisible blow; the dumb, drooling, angry thing in my heart for it. Then there’s just guilt in its place. Gnawing, aching guilt because I got off on hurting someone who only ever loved me.

  It isn’t my to feel guilty, though—so it only ever sticks around long enough to begin to feel. By the time morning rolls around it won’t even be a concern—pinky promise.

  Eighteen arcane muzzle-flashes surround Velvet—her nimbus—and I step back. By nature of its being, though, I’m not allowed to look at it for long—not unless I want to dig bullets out of every single vital organ I’ve got. The freshly-planted cardboard in front of me opens up—pinpricks of light poking through where each of those projectiles struck.

  Six of ‘em were where my heart should’ve been. That’s real poetic, don’t you think?

  I push down that cardboard cutout of myself in front of me, shouting straight from the chest, “Your entity’s not too happy with me, huh?”

  Man… King is taking his sweet time—stealing the records shouldn’t have been that hard, right? And I mean, Velvet’s here, and that’s way more important! If we kill her, we can take all the time we want on stealing their information, seeing as it’ll be .

  My left hand grabs at the air, clutching at something invisible. Something hiding away in Velvet’s lockbox-heart. And then, from my lips spill words I’ve only said twice in my entire life.

  “Whimsy within Heart’s Desire.”

  I can feel it—oh, can I feel it. Her desires are , almost intense enough to be a Whimsy summoner. Real conflicted, though. There’s some weak shouting about wanting me dead, about beating me to a pulp and handing me off to the authorities. But one voice is shouting louder than the rest—spilling something stupid about flipping me away from King and pinning it all on him.

  So that we can stay together..? No way—is she for real? This… Fucks’ sake—this isn’t fair. I need to end this. If I can just get this over with and go lay down, and just it’ll be fine.

  The guns behind her fade away as her concentration slips and her entity is forced to take over on the territory. It doesn’t have a choice unless it wants its summoner to get obliterated even quicker—not to mention the collateral.

  She’s in a daze now—her heart turned into some melting pot of conflicting ideals. Velvet’s strong willed, she knows it’s wrong to abandon everything she’s built for a girl who stopped loving her. But, you know, who hasn’t staked their everything on some little Whim? There’s a billion questions inside her, a billion doubts stopping her from taking that step. It’s my job, as a summoner of Whimsy, to get rid of those.

  In the sweetest voice I can—in the most sickening saccharine tone I’m allowed—I say, “I love you, Velvet.” I say it to her heart, to her soul, but the words feel like bile running across my tongue. A lie can be a real burden, you know? Even a little, harmless white lie. Even when the recipient is about to check out of this side of the mortal cycle.

  Velvet takes a step forward, her entity’s silhouette jostling her real roughly. She mumbles, “M-Mastery in…”

  Don’t resent me for it, alright?

  The parlor tricks are for the weak ones.

  I know how it looks.

  But this is how a balanced fight goes for me.

  “E-Each.. Each..”

  I don’t use a sword, or a gun.

  I don’t have some special martial training or spell-schooling.

  I’m just some girl who chases things she shouldn’t.

  Sometimes I have to play dirty. So please—, don’t resent me for it.

  The territory is dropped in favor of a new offense, and eighteen guns are conjured anew behind Velvet. I can see their levers pull back—but no more. She’s restraining it, keeping her entity from firing on me. It thrashes in the clutches of her spiritual musculature, screaming silently to try and save her from the fate that her heart’s delivered.

  Quieter than a whisper I say, “I want that”

  I have to take what I can get in these sorts of situations, you know?

  There’s no better way of winning—no better way to assure it safely.

  It’s not my fault that her Whim was this.

  It’s not—I swear.

  The barrel feels frigid against Velvet’s forehead. Doe eyes pierce through to my soul—the love in them makes my knees wobble and sets my heart a-thrashing. I felt it too, back then. I felt it. Loved her more intensely than anything else, but not anymore. Would it change things if she knew that? A reluctant finger pulls down. There’s a click, and then a thunderclap. The thump of a corpse hitting against concrete isn’t enough to force my eyes down. But I don’t have to look to know.Velvet Alto is dead—and her Whim is gone with it.