The door to the dungeon did not open so much as it surrendered. Stone sweated. The air was thick with rot and a sour, metallic tang that clung to Kylie's tongue as if the room wanted to live in her forever. Fungal stains crept down the walls like old tears. Water dripped somewhere out of sight. Rats skittered and vanished when her boots rang once on iron.
Kylie stood in the black with her wings closed and her fists tight. A single purple spark bloomed in her palm. The glow pushed the darkness back by inches, then feet, then far enough to show the little iron hatch in the far wall. Its handle was cold and slick as she reached for it. The lock had sealed itself long ago with a ward that only answered to her voice.
"Open," she whispered.
The ward shivered and broke. The hatch came loose with a breath like a dying animal. Inside lay a narrow shelf and a tape player the size of a brick. Dust curled off it in white streamers. A cassette sat in the bay with a label written in messy, slanted letters: FOR KUINA. FOR ORTUS. FOR TRUTH.
Kylie touched the plastic with the tips of her fingers. Her hands shook once. She made them stop.
"Wow," she said, voice soft and hoarse in the dark. "Ten years since I put this here. Ten years since I decided to show you someday. I cannot believe I am about to make good on that." She drew a breath that tasted like mold. "I was terrible that night. I know. I did not have a choice. Kuina, when I show you this, I hope you understand me."
She slid the tape in until it clicked. For a heartbeat she closed her eyes and saw red eyes, a freckle that lived near the left cheek, hair like fire on good days and dull embers on bad days. She opened her eyes again.
"Play."
The heads caught. Static cracked. The little window turned and the ribbon moved. The dungeon dissolved. The dark gave way to another night entirely.
The camera shook once then steadied. A girl filled the lower corner of the frame, lips painted black, eyes bright like a cat that had learned to talk. Kylie looked into the lens and tried on a smile that did not know whether it was shy or dangerous.
"Oh hey, Ortus," she said, keeping her voice low. "Recording like you asked. I do not love being on camera, but if you insist then here I am." She tipped the lens up a touch. "I will narrate what is about to happen. I am in a weird little neighborhood in Washington, USA. The houses here all look like they were built by the same man who hated color. I am about to bring a new girl to us. Her name is Kuina Tyorkin. I have had my eye on this beauty for months. She is suffering. She needs rescue. So I brought the bottle." She winked. "She will be my number sixty. Cute little milestone. Time to work."
The camera swung toward a dull blue house with a cut lawn and no flowers. The porch light burned yellow over a door that had been opened too many times by the same angry hand. From the inside came the sound of a man talking to no one and a bottle tapping wood. Then the door burst outward as if it had offended the girl who came through it.
Kuina ran. She ran without looking down at her bare feet. She ran with tears spilling and breath hitching and a bruise on her cheek that had not yet found its color. She did not see the camera. She did not see Kylie lift into the air with a soft beat of wings to get out of her way. She just ran. The night took her.
Kylie's voice lost its smile. The camera shook as she rose and hovered. In the doorway behind, a figure staggered out into the light. He was broad in the worst way, with a belly swollen from beer and pride in equal measure. His hair was thinning and did not know it. A bottle of cheap lager dangled from his hand like permission.
"Where the hell are you running," he slurred. "Hey. Get back here you filthy little brat. All of this is your fault. All of it." His voice broke on the word fault and cracked into a laugh that did not belong in any house. He swayed and turned back inside without closing the door.
Kylie breathed once. "Ortus," she said softly to the lens. "You saw that. She ran. I am not chasing her. Not yet. I have something else to handle first."
The smile dropped off her mouth and fell into the grass. Her fists curled. She landed on the roof without a sound and crept to the skylight. Glass pane. Yellow light below. The camera peered with her. A shape on the floor did not move. Red hair fanned across tile. A hand lay open with a ring still on it.
Kylie went white. "Oh my goddess," she whispered. "Is that her mother. You filthy bastard." The skylight gave under a single punch. The camera pitched and caught her as she slid through broken glass into a kitchen that smelled like copper. The man jerked and spun, eyes wide and slow to focus.
"Hey," he said, knife-edge of fear hidden under beer foam. "Who the hell are you. What are you doing in my house."
Kylie did not answer with words at first. She pointed and a violet bolt flicked from her finger like a snake. It kissed the bottle and made it explode against his wrist. Beer sprayed the ceiling. Brown glass cut his skin in a rain of glitter.
"Ahh. Damn. That hurt you witch," he howled, clutching his hand.
"What did you do here," Kylie asked. Her voice had gone very calm. It was the sound a surgeon might use if the patient had confessed to killing the nurse. "What did you do to them, you ugly, bald, useless pile of meat."
The man blinked slowly and then tried a smile as if he were charming at parties. "Oh. The woman. I am so tired of her. I never loved her. Not once. We fought every day. And Kuina. That cold little thing. Always distant. Always detached. This was bound to happen. And who are you to talk. You look like some black magic freak."
Kylie stared at him as if he had stood on a kitten and asked why the floor moved. Her eyes grew wet and then dry again without letting the tears fall. She shook her head, once, tiny.
"I cannot believe someone like you exists," she said. "How could you hurt Kuina. How could you hurt Tipa. Two gentle women who did nothing to you. Two hearts you were supposed to protect. Did you ever once ask your daughter how she was. No. You drink. You swing your fists for stupid reasons. Then you kill again. Listen carefully. Your sentence has been decided. You are not leaving this house. Your life is over. I do not want to enjoy this. I do not. But I do not have a choice. Prepare yourself."
He laughed at her. He had three teeth too many for that laugh. "You are killing me. What can a small woman like you do. I will tear you apart," he said, and then he ran at her with a kitchen knife as if he had trained on anger alone.
His knife hit a wall he could not see. The air went hard in front of him with a soft bell note. He bounced off it and went to his knees with a grunt. Kylie stepped in and drove her boot up into the place where a man's pride lives. He folded with a sound like metal bending. She hit him across the mouth. Then the ribs. Then the sternum. A sharp kick twisted his right knee sideways and he screamed with something in it that had not known how to come out before.
"Who are you," he gasped. "You witch."
She kicked him again. He hit the far wall and slid down with his head crooked wrong. Violet cuffs snapped into being at his wrists and ankles, pinning him to the studs. He spat blood at the floor and tried to make a joke that would not come. The camera watched from the counter as Kylie lifted one hand and drew a bright line in the air. The line bit the tip of his index finger off as neatly as a tailor cuts thread.
He screamed. The scream had history in it.
"No. No. What did you do to me. Let me go you little—"
"You did not listen," Kylie said. She took his right hand in the glow of her power. Skin charred. Bone cracked. The hand popped free of the wrist with a sound like a cork. He howled and jerked on the cuffs until his shoulders bruised themselves.
"Please. Please. Stop. Tell me what you want. I will do anything."
"Decide what you are," Kylie said. "Cold and cruel to the end or suddenly polite. Do not make me watch you pretend to be human." She tilted her head. "You claim you are drunk. Drunks do not argue about whether they are drunk. You are sober enough to lie. Try something else."
"I swear," he said, breath hitching. "I am sorry."
Her jaw went tight at that word. "You do not get to say that." She sent a web of violet force into his right leg and then the left, a hundred pinprick blasts so fast the camera caught them as a blur. Each burst found a tendon or a nerve and taught it what pain is for. He thrashed until he vomited. He sobbed and tried to faint. She kept him awake with a soft whisper of power that locked his eyes open.
"Please," he wept, snot stringing his upper lip. He had started to shake in hard jolts that wanted to be seizures. "Please let me go. I do not want to die."
Kylie looked at him as if she were looking at an old hole in the road. Her voice stayed even. "It does not work on me when you beg. I want you to understand something before you stop existing. I will find Kuina. I will help her. I will give her what you never gave her. Warmth. Love. A real home. Peace. A real hug. I will not abandon her. Ever. I will make sure she is happy and that she forgets all of this. As for Tipa, I will see to it that she is laid to rest the way she deserves. You will not leave pieces big enough for the crows."
He made a sound like a broken instrument and then he lost control of his bladder. The dark stain spread across his pants and crawled down his legs. He began to cry like a child. "I am sorry. I did not control myself. I loved them. I do not want to die."
Kylie burned through the cuff on his remaining hand and took the hand itself. It fell with a soft meat thud. "How dare you ask for mercy," she said, voice like a knife pulled slow from a sheath. "You beat them for years. You stole their futures. Mercy is not yours to request."
He coughed blood into the air and it speckled her cheek. He sagged and his eyes fluttered. She flicked a charm at his temple that kept him conscious and aware. "You will watch every second," she said. "Now we move to the part I am looking forward to the least. It is still yours to pay. Do you know what happens when the human body learns it can no longer stand. Let us test that."
His phone rang somewhere under a couch. Kylie's phone rang in her pocket. She answered without looking away from him.
"Hello."
"Kylie," Ortus said. The voice came through with a smile in it and a little poison. "Do you have the girl yet."
"I am working on it," Kylie said. "I will call you back."
The man swallowed and licked blood from his mouth. "Why do you care about Kuina," he asked in a small voice. "You do not even know her."
Kylie let herself smile, soft this time. "Do you know what destiny is. Destiny told me she will be my wife. It knows the future. She does not know me yet. She will. I will love her. She will love me. It will take time but time belongs to us. I fall in love fast. Everyone knows that. With her it was not speed. It was gravity. The quiet. The kindness. The way she loves animals. The way she treats books like they are alive. The music. You never saw any of it. You never asked. You were busy hitting your daughter at home and watching her suffer at school."
He tried a last, tiny angle. "If you are so good, why did you not help her before."
"Because I needed to study the ground," Kylie said. "Who is doing what. Who is the root of the rot. Now that I have seen it, your sentence is set."
The power in her hands gathered until the camera lens washed out white at the core. She reached toward his legs as if selecting fruit. The force tore both free at the hips with a wet crack. His scream was so high she felt it in her teeth. It fell apart into little sobs and then into silence while his mouth still moved.
Kylie went close. "Any last words."
He smiled with blood on all his teeth and spit in her face. "Tell Kuina I will see her in hell," he rasped. "And you too."
Kylie wiped the spit away with the back of her hand. The smile died. She stepped back and held up two fingers.
"Two fingers of torture."
The room filled with violet light that came in fast, clean lines. The force hit him again and again, a hundred places, a thousand, every joint, every rib, the throat, the scalp, the eyes without touching the eyes, the jaw hinge, the spine. The screams turned into one continuous note that finally broke and fell. He came apart the way a bad thing falls when no one is left to hold it together. Flesh became pieces. Bones became chalk. Blood tried to write one last lie on the floor and then faded as her power burned it away.
What remained of him vanished under a single sweep of her hand. Smoke curled from her fingers. She blew on them like a gunslinger and let herself smile again, almost small and girlish.
"Bye bye. Nothing."
The camera went shaky for the first time. Kylie turned from the wall and crossed to the woman on the floor. She crouched. She lifted the body in her arms with all the care she had denied the man. The camera caught Tipa's face at last. Freckles. Lips without color. Hair bright as a sunset.
"You are beautiful," Kylie whispered. "I am sorry, Kuina."
The tape cut to a gray morning. Washington rain fell in a hush that made the cemetery feel like a secret. Kylie set Tipa down into a fresh grave and smoothed the sheet that covered her. She placed flowers. She placed a smooth stone. She wrote a name on a clean new marker and pressed her palm to the letters.
Back in the frame, Kylie faced the camera with wet cheeks and a steady gaze.
"Kuina. You will see this someday. I meant every word. I am yours. I will take care of you. I will be your woman forever. Your mother is buried with honor. Do not worry. Your father is not anywhere you need to fear. When you feel the fire of revenge, remember there is nothing left to burn. I hope you understand me. I did all of this for you. For love. I love you, baby. I believe in fate. Fate says that in ten years we will be married and together. I will reach you. I will wait with the bottle. I do not know how long. You need time. I will watch over you. And Ortus, you will not see Kuina or this tape for a while. I am sorry."
Kylie reached out and the frame filled with her palm.
Click.
Static hissed and then died.
The dungeon came back. The drip in the dark. The wet walls. The rats that listened. Kylie sat on the cold floor with the tape player between her knees and her hands over her mouth. She tried to breathe and it did not work. She tried again and made it work. She wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands and laughed once without any humor in it.
"Fate was right," she whispered. "I cannot believe it."
She stood. She lifted the tape free. She kissed the plastic lightly and slid it into her coat. When she spoke again it was to the stones.
"After the show I will show her. It will be fine."
She killed the light in her palm and left the dungeon to its rot.
On the other side of the city the arena did not smell like rot at all. It smelled like perfume and hot metal and a million open mouths. The fashion floor was a storm of color and sound. Staff ran with clipboards and cosmetics. Holograms flickered over the stage as designers argued with stylists who argued with girls who had already decided what they were.
Backstage, the harem filed into a dressing suite where racks of gowns and shoes stood at attention like soldiers who knew how to flirt. Envelopes waited on a glass table, each with a name written like a promise.
Kuina picked up the one marked with her own, broke the seal, and read. Hair color: green. Heels: green. Dress: pink, glitter, slit high. Lipstick: red. Emphasis on curves. The stylist who had hovered near her clapped her hands and smiled.
"This will suit you perfectly, Lady Kuina. Trust me."
Kuina rolled her eyes at her reflection. "It does not look like me. Do it anyway. Let us finish this parade."
The stylist beamed and pulled pins out of her teeth to get to work. A small army descended with brushes, irons, and spools of thread. Kuina watched herself become someone else in the mirror and felt the heat of the arena find her through concrete.
Across the table Mira opened her envelope and grinned with a kind of relief. All red. Dress, lipstick, heels, even contact lenses that shifted her eyes to match the flame in her hair. She blew herself a kiss in the mirror and then glanced at Kuina.
"You will look dangerous in pink," she teased, then lowered her voice. "Do not pretend you do not love that."
"I am here to finish something, not to play," Kuina said. Her mouth softened anyway. "If you win I will cheer."
Mira laughed and touched Kuina's hand once. "You are too sweet sometimes."
Lika opened hers and found white everywhere. White skirt. White cropped blouse. White lipstick like frost on her mouth. Hair up and full of glitter that would catch the spotlights. She blinked and blushed and then looked very proud of herself.
Molly tore hers open and went still. Short purple dress. Hair dyed to match. Orange contacts. She looked at the card as if it had suggested she become a weather system.
"I do not know about this," she whispered. "I am a pink woman."
"You will own it," Lika said, fastening the white blouse with careful fingers. "You can be a purple woman for one night."
Clara's list made her grin at nothing in particular. Piper's made her whistle low. A new name lay where Kylie's should have been. Yasmin. Replacement. That word bounced around the room like a trapped bird. No one said it aloud. Everyone felt it.
Time bled. Forty minutes fell away while stylists fought curls and heels learned feet. Ortus walked alone along the back wall, reading a list and muttering to herself like a judge rehearsing a sentence. She looked up once at the ceiling and smiled a private smile.
"The gods delivered," she said under her breath. "I hope I will not need wild judgment tonight."
Five minutes later the final pins were in and the last lip had its color. The stylist behind Kuina stepped back and let the mirror have her. Green hair like wet leaves spilled over pink glitter that held to her like electricity. Red lipstick drew her mouth in a sharp, perfect line. The slit in the dress drew an arrow from her hip to the floor. The green heels made her legs look like they could kick the sky.
"Wow," the stylist said, and then put her hand on her hip like a coach. "Listen up. You walk with one hand on your waist. At the end of the runway you blow a kiss. Then you turn and go with both hands on your waist. Got it."
Kuina stared at her. "Is that who I am."
"For tonight," the stylist said. "Then you get to be whatever kills your enemies."
"Fine," Kuina said. She put one hand on her waist and the mirror told her a truth she did not want to admit. It looked right.
Back in the hallway a runner pinned the order to a corkboard. Lika first. Molly second. Clara third. Kuina fourth. Yasmin fifth. Piper sixth. Mira last. The runner stepped away and the list shone in screenlight. Murmurs moved through the group like wind through fine fabric. You could almost hear the audience on the other side of concrete and velvet, a living body practicing its scream.
Above all of it, above the lights and the cosmetics and the breathing and the nerves, a voice rolled from the stage and filled the building. Ortus. She did not need a microphone. She took one anyway because she loved the feel of it in her hand.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she called. "Welcome to the show of the century."
The arena answered with a roar that shook powder off cheekbones. Laser storms opened over the catwalk and sketched red and blue across the ceiling. Holograms spun the names of the contestants in letters as tall as houses. Cameras clicked and whirred and streamed to a thousand screens in a thousand worlds.
"Here are the rules," Ortus said with wicked delight. "You will sit. You will cheer when it is time. You will not be coy. Anti sexuality is forbidden. Virginity is a crime tonight."
The audience answered with a chant that had no shame in it.
"Yes Ortus. Yes Ortus."
Backstage, Kuina looked at the lineup and then at the empty seat where Kylie should have been tying her corset or teasing the mirror. She felt a pulse low in her throat.
"Where is she," she asked.
No one answered because no one knew. Molly opened her mouth and then closed it and then said, "She will show later."
Kuina nodded once as if that settled it. She went back to the mirror. The mirror told her she was ready. She did not argue with it.
Far below and far away, under a city full of lights and drink and a hundred million eyes, a tape sat warm in the pocket of a black coat and waited for the one girl it was meant to break and set free at the same time.
The runner lifted a hand.
"Places," she said.
Lika breathed in and stepped toward the curtain with white glitter in her hair and a heart that had made a choice. Molly followed with purple doubts and a mouth set in a brave smile. Clara rolled her shoulders. Kuina put one hand on her waist and smiled at herself the way a weapon smiles when it knows it is sharp. Yasmin adjusted a heel. Piper sucked her teeth and laughed quietly like a storm building. Mira checked her lipstick in the reflection of a phone and said a small prayer to the part of herself that loved victory and the part that loved losing to the right woman.
On the last beat before the music hit, Kuina lifted her chin and looked down the hall as if she could stare through concrete and find a girl with black lips and a dangerous heart sitting alone with a tape. She did not find her. She did not need to. The night would bring them together. The night always did.
Out front the first chord landed like a promise.
The crowd stood and screamed.
The show began.
To be continued…