She lay on her back in the grass on the third night. The ground was pleasantly warm beneath her, and as long as she didn't move around too much, the heat was tolerable. He lay beside her and tentatively held her hand-tentative, even now. Far away, she felt a trace of amusement. She wanted to feel the blades of grass under her legs, listen to the sounds of other voices murmuring into the gentle breeze, and all these things were there, in the distant place. Life was in a distant place, with the sun. Here, there was only the darkness.

And Aleron, for now. He whispered, "I wish there were stars to look at. Then tonight would be perfect." His hand tightened on her own and she squeezed back comfortingly, even as she turned her face away from him, and away from the sky. Closing her eyes shut out the glow of nearby lamps, and she simply lay there for a while, breathing in the hot air, sickening with the scent of decaying flowers.

After a while, he reached over, touched her face. "Zoe-are you crying? I'm sorry. Did I do something wrong?"

She sat up, pulling away from him. Her shift was damp beneath her and she did not move to pull it on herself. Instead, she brushed her fingers across her face. "Just sweat," she said softly. "The heat is so terrible."

"Oh," he said. He sounded so uncertain, like such a boy. When she'd been his age, she'd experienced so much more of life than he had. Than he ever would, perhaps. The thought made her stomach hurt and she arched her head back, shaking her hair away from her skin. She should cut it soon... perhaps shockingly short. People could be scandalized in the candlelight.

She looked up at the sky again, where the bright moon would be in a normal world, and then rose to her feet. Scandal: it was such a cheap way of getting attention, and it went sour so quickly. Her gutter-games were shameful, just as Lissende claimed. Arabelle Sone, with her bloodline and connections, could afford to play at scandal. Zoe was not so privileged.

She turned to find Aleron behind her, pulling his own clothing over his skin. She raised one eyebrow. "Aren't you hot?"

He looked surprised. "But... that's indecent."

She took his arm, turned him in a slow circle. "Look around, Aleron. Cityfolk are dropping dead in the streets. The sun is gone," and she was proud of the way her voice didn't tremble there, "and we just made love in the park. We were naked." She let go of his arm and waved at a lamp and the murmurs on the wind. "Just as they are." The darkness created the illusion of privacy so neatly, save for the murmurs.

He looked at her with pleading eyes. She sighed and bent over to pick up her shift. She shook it out extravagantly and then draped the short robe over her shoulders and tied the sash. "Better?" He nodded mutely, and she took his hand again and begin to stroll beside him. There were many lamps around the little lake in the western half of the park, and she wondered if Lorien Yuasa had found Keiji Sone. She knew her cousin Vincent was in a courtesan house tonight; he and Keiji had fought again. She sometimes thought Lorien should simply steal Keiji away from the city, away from Vincent's charming dark eyes and mercurial temper, to some place where they could spend enough time together to really sort out their feelings for each other. But Lorien was so terrified of upsetting Keiji, of doing the wrong thing, and he constantly lived the fear that any aggressive action would only earn him Keiji's apathy or hate. Zoe cared for all her friends, but she wished they'd been able to sort the whole terrible triangle out at the Royal Tournament.

They'd all talked about competing in the Royal Tournament, but she'd been the only one to make it far enough to be noticed. What a joke. The entire tournament had been a huge joke, from the weighting of the tournament against the Minamet and the Crown Princess's brother to Gahariet's chess defeat at the hands of Prince Hideo and strange success at the wits contest. Melisande Sone had been right to walk out.

She pushed her hair away from her face again, and steered Aleron around the north side of the lake. There, she stood on a stone bench and pulled him up beside her. She pretended the stone held some residual coolness from before the sun went out and said absently to Aleron, "Didn't anybody tell you I was a bad influence?"

He might have flushed, but she wasn't watching for it in the darkness. "My mother..." he mumbled. "But you're not a bad influence. You're wonderful."

Zoe stood on her tiptoes and kissed him gently. "I am very much a bad influence. If you consort with me, I will taint your reputation irreparably. The Church will come eat your soul. The monster that swallowed the stars will pluck out your eyes. You'll never find a good match, blind and soulless, and you'll be forced to spend your days drinking and wenching." She shrugged. "Dramatic, I know, but every Komaru needs a claim to fame."

He caught her shoulders and kissed her swiftly, and she closed her eyes against the leap in her heart. Oh, she didn't want to like him so much, but he was so sweet and brave and charming. And so young. She felt the darkness pressing in again and squeezed her eyes against the tears. When she opened them again, he smiled at her. "Ruby Touraine is in a pretty good position for somebody who spends all his time drinking and wenching."

Zoe laughed. He did this to her; she'd been drawn to him by his sense of humor, his ability to make her laugh. Eight days ago, a party, a face she'd always dismissed as some kid before he made her laugh. "Aleron Komaru, if I turn you into a duelist, your mother and my sister will tie me to the back of a mule and whip it all the way to Hope."

He raised an eyebrow back at her and said, "And would you enjoy that?" His hands moved to tickle her.

"No, you fool," she gasped, "We'll fall!" In response, he slipped off the bench and pulled her down into his arms, catching her and holding her. Then he glanced at the lake and resolutely squared his shoulders.

"My lady is suffering from the heat?"

"No, Aleron, you're such a child, the water is just as warm-" her words ended in a squeal as he waded into the lake and dropped her. The water closed over her head and it was warm, but it was comfortable. Her bare feet touched the mud-and-stone bottom of the lake and she crouched down there for a minute, her hair waving above her head like red moss. She pulled her legs up under her and floated for a moment, closing her eyes. Was this what it was like in the womb? Would this be what dying felt like? What would happen when the world ended? Would anything matter?

Aleron yanked her from the water then. She was limp and soaking as he held her by her shoulders, her shift clinging to her skin. Her hair was plastered against her face and in her eyes. Then he pulled her against him into a tight embrace. "You scared me," he murmured. She fought for a moment to regain her mental equilibrium, the sense of the dark silence underwater melting away before the solid presence of Aleron's shoulder. She closed her eyes.

She'd slipped so easily from a growing child playing games to an adult who lived the games while her sister and brother went on to better things. They were useful, but Zoe was something for mothers to warn their sons about, something their sons would ultimately forget as they, too, went on to better things. She felt Aleron's fingers stroking her back gently, and sighed. Such thoughts, so useless. Aleron understood what mattered.

She smiled against his shoulder, and then toppled to one side, pulling him under the water with her. Then she wriggled away from him, brushing her fingers across his face before putting a few feet between them and surfacing. He surfaced only a few heartbeats later and called after her, "Are you a Mer?" His hand touched his face where she'd brushed it. The water slid past her skin, the sweet perfume of the blossoms concentrated around her, and for a moment, the reflection of the distant lamps in the lake let her pretend there were stars still.

"The sea destroys," she called back, and began wading out of the lake. She realized abruptly she'd been sober since she'd learned the sun had gone out. At first it had been because Sana had decided to get thoroughly drunk, and she wanted to watch out for her friend, and since then... since then, she'd spent too much time fighting the despair to risk the results of a good drinking binge. She wished Lucien would come back, even if the sun never did; she saw the moon more often than she saw the sun anyhow, and with its snuffing, she felt more alone than ever before. Lucien had been constant, even when the stars faded and the lovers went on with their lives.

She'd ended the first day of the darkness by fighting with Lissende about her wanton, shameful, useless behavior and walked out to find Sana already drunker than a duelist. Her adorable pet mercenary was hovering around her, but she sent him off to comfort Gahariet in the darkness while she and Sana found a rather better bar than the hole Zoe had met them in. Sana was angry, drunk, and then despairing.

That had been bad.

"What," she'd told Zoe, "does it matter what any of us do? Who can kill the man who slays the sun? I, with my mighty pen? It doesn't matter. Everything of who we are is decided when we are born and some physician delivers us from between our dam's legs. They count the strands of our lives then, and the more we have, the less we get. And it's not even something we can choose. I thought maybe it could change, but all this is bound to Komaru and the sun and the stars and really, that makes us no more than animals who are just smart enough to rail at our fate. Better we'd never been born; the tick-tock of the execution of the sky would continue on without us and nobody would ever, ever need to cry." But Sana didn't cry, not even at the depths of her despair, and that was worst of all.

Aleron took her arm, startling her. "Now we're both wet," he teased, and then sobered. "Where do you keep going to, so far away?"

She sighed and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. "Into the darkness." She pulled away and looked up at him; a distant lamp reflected as sparks in his eyes. "You're such a sweet man, Aleron. You make a good Komaru."

He tilted his head to one side. "Where in the darkness, though?"

She shrugged. "It's all the same, in the darkness. What will happen when we run out of candles? Out of light? Have you ever thought of that, that we could run out of light? And what happens to people who are in the darkness too long?"

Uncertainly, he said, "The Church...?"

Once, she would have laughed, but now she just sighed. "We'll run out of light; I think we ran out of the Light in 200. You weren't even born, more's the pity. You deserve better than darkness."

He frowned at her fiercely. "They'll give me whatever they think I deserve soon enough, but for now-" and stopped. "What?"

She hadn't meant to wince. She tried to toss her hair behind her head, but failed to make the soaked strands do anything but flop against her face. "Nothing. What do you think you'll get?"

His frown didn't change. "Zoe, everybody I know loves you. Your sister is harsh sometimes, but it's because you do such dangerous things."

Her expression turned to ice. "Ah. How sweet." She turned to walk away and he caught up with her, a little boy again.

"No, I'm sorry. I won't mention it. You can do whatever you want."

She turned to look at him again. "You really think that."

He nodded.

"Anything," she said flatly. "Could I marry whomever I chose, and retain the love of my family? Could I marry a man I loved and not shame somebody?" She turned and pointed at the palace, where a lamp on a balcony glittered like a solitary star. "Could I live there? Could I rule from the throne room?" He hid his shock well, and she dropped her voice to a murmur. "Could I matter? Could I have children who would live any differently from me? Could I bring back the moon? Could I..." She shook her head.

He swallowed. "Lissende, Gahariet..."

She finished, "Are not me. They have their ways, but I can't make their ways mine and still be me, and the me who matters is a part reserved for only the highest. So here I am." She looked around, swallowed. "In the dark."

He hesitated and then pointed out, "If the world is ending, nothing anybody does or is matters."

She smiled at him gently. "Yes, and that makes me so terribly sad. Isn't that odd? I'm so very proud of Lissende and Gahariet, and of Keiji and Sana, too. And yet the darkness wipes everything away." She wiped at her own face.

"Sweat again?" he asked wryly, and she glared at him.

"You're a wicked, mocking child. Stop it at once." And she held out her arms to him and he came to her and kissed her again, and once again, she let the darkness fade into the light she felt while pressed close to him. It was so brief, but it was the sweetness of everything she wanted for as long as it lasted. And then it faded, and she slept, and in her dreams, Aleron was just a face in a line and she was a lamp trying desperately to replace a star, shouting, "See me!" But the line of faces just kept going, sparing her the most incurious of glances as they went on to a future. In the dream, she was the only one in the darkness, and nobody needed her little light. And when she went out, nobody noticed.

Some time later, she was woken from a fitful sleep in the crook of his arm. "Look," he whispered, his lips brushing her ear, and pointed.

And she realized she could see his finger in greyness. She turned her head slowly towards the faint rim of light on the horizon, and he squeezed her in his arms. "Look, Zoe, it's coming back. We can't run out of light. It's not like water, or food, it's light."

She looked at the dim illumination for a long moment, and then turned her face again. The light was back, but instead of the joy Aleron demonstrated, all she felt was the need for a drink. It was all inside her now, and in the grey light she could see the imprint of the grass on her hand, cloth on her arm, and she could see the shape of her mind from within. She wanted a drink, so maybe she could go blind once more, but she knew she couldn't shut out the darkness. She slept again, instead.

Later still, he woke her a second time. There was only a little more light, and it was gray and gritty. She frowned up at him. "It's getting cooler," he said. "Just a little, but you're still wet. I don't want you to get sick. Let me take you home."

She let him pull her to her feet. Her back ached and her skin was rubbed raw in places. "I look terrible."

He took her hand, pointed at the horizon again. "Look, Zoe. See, the light has come back," he repeated.

She could only look at him with hopeless eyes as she whispered, "Not inside, Aleron. We ran out of light, and now the darkness survives inside." And she wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him clumsily, and then hid her face against his chest, breathing against his heartbeat as he took her home and tucked her in. And when he left her alone to sleep, there was only the darkness.