Throughout the night, Kier had gone about his business same as usual, muttering covertly to loyalists about reports and spying, metaphorically signing death warrants and setting execution dates for those that starvation wasn’t curing, hearing petitions, overseeing trials alongside Snowblister that were, really, no more than a pretence — they were judge, jury, and executioner, and they had already decided on guilty. But unlike the norm, he held even the petition hearings in the main cavern rather than in his den — and all the while, as the hours ticked by and the night darkened and darkened, he kept half an eye on the camp entrance, at first expecting, and then hoping, that Eris would walk in. He was distracted most of the night, gaze constantly glancing to the empty entrance; increasingly, as the night wore on and still there was no sign of her, he’d lose his train of thought mid-sentence, eyes on the dark entryway, and have to falter an ‘uh’, and once or twice even an apology, and, dragging his gaze away, try to regain what he was saying. It wasn’t unusual for Eris to be off by herself for long periods of time — they each had their own lives, their own things to do, and often they wouldn’t see each other until they both retired to their nest. But she hadn’t said anything when they’d gotten up that dusk, hadn’t given any indication that she’d be doing something that would keep her away the whole night.

As dawn broke and the Clan began to disperse to their dens, Kier stayed where he was in the centre of camp, expression noticeably uneasy despite his silence. He tried to distract himself, tried to mull over the business details for the next night — but his gaze always returned to the camp entrance, and though he relocated again and again around the cavern, he always ended up standing up and pacing restlessly to another place. Eventually, the time he spent in one place grew shorter and shorter, until he would barely sit down before standing up again. Dread was beginning to tighten his throat. The Clan stayed out of his way, both darkly curious in the face of the tyrant’s humanity and afraid of what Kier in such a high-strung state might do.

He was just on the verge of biting the bullet of looking like a weak, anxious mate in front of the Clan and sending out a search patrol when Eris finally appeared. Immediately he let out a shuddering burst of breath and hurried to her side, meeting her at the bottom of the slope. “Eris.” Only then, cutting through the drunken, dizzy haze of relief, did he notice the state she was in — the dried blood, the slice through her ear, the groggy, far-off look in her eyes. “What happened?” Bewildered terror clouded his voice, made him sound like a child who’d never seen blood before. Conscious of watchful eyes even now, he crossed to her other side, blocking view of her from the warriors’ den, and shakily eased her a little more out of sight behind the sloping rock that led up to the camp entrance. With a little more privacy, Kier drew closer to her, eyes darting across her body. “What happened?” he repeated, more breathless now, like if he spoke any louder the quiver in his voice would be overwhelming. He didn’t yet place the familiar scent on her — it was such an ordinary smell to him, one that had been there his whole life, that, in his current state, he didn’t stop to think that it being here, now, was wrong.

“My sister?” Kier echoed, staying where he was as she shouldered past him, staggering slightly to turn and watch as she left. He was too bewildered to understand how the two things were connected, looked truly, almost innocently discombobulated as he stared after her.

And then, like some ominous chorus in the background, the realisation began to slowly build within him. Until finally, with his heart pounding so loudly in his ears he could hardly hear anything else, with his blood rushing so hot and so quick that his inner ears became bright red, with his forelegs beginning to tremble, Kier understood. “KATE?” he shrieked, and cats around the whole cavern who were supposed to be asleep shrank back and pressed closer to the ground. Kier never lost his temper, not publicly, but now the stone almost shook with his anger. The air crackled with it. He stared after his mate for a moment as she swerved down the passage, his eyes wide and wild, before they finally snapped to a cluster of warriors watching. He stalked after Eris and, as he passed them, he suddenly snapped out a paw and backhanded one of them across the face. “Kill three,” he snapped to a hovering loyalist, his vicious, shaking voice baring no trace of its usual calmness, and stalked after Eris with his tail-tip twitching violently and pleading, babbling wails rising behind him.

“She did this?” he asked Eris, still a little way behind her, his voice echoing off the passage walls. Now he gave no thought to anyone hearing; the whole Clan would hear their leader shouting, if they could hear anything over the desperate screams behind him. “Kate did this?” Quickening his pace, he bounded to Eris’ side; forgetting his gentleness with her for a split second, he almost grabbed her and slammed her against the wall to make her speak. But he didn’t; of course he didn’t. He wanted to throw things, wanted to be violent, wanted to tear the whole camp down and crush the Clan beneath the rubble, wanted to drag a prisoner out and rip out their throat for himself just to feel the hot rush of blood — but all he could do, fur prickling along his shoulders and tail-tip continuing to twitch like it was holding all his violence within it, was pad along at his mate’s side with his heart pounding in his chest and adrenaline turning his blood volcanic. For the first time, his emotional repression felt close to snapping point, felt like everything was just below his paper thin skin. His chest was filled with it, shuddering every icy cold inhalation. If he had been sitting still, his claws would have been tapping manically against the stone ground. A wail and clamour went up in the main cavern; the first warrior had been slaughtered, blood splattered across the floor, and the others were weeping and begging. Kier didn’t react, just continued at Eris’ side, eyes never leaving her profile. “Why? Did she know who you are? Why was she here at all? When did you see her?”

Kier followed along behind her, growing increasingly frustrated and irritated as she refused to pick a room to go into; time and time again he trailed after her, only to immediately be forced to back out again when she changed her mind. He loved this about her, her quirks, but now he just wanted to sit. His fur continued to prickle until he was almost fully bushed out, and only then did he force it all to lie flat, overlapping and disordered. When she finally whipped around to face him, Kier stopped in front of her, meeting her gaze with taut, unblinking intensity. He didn’t move as she advanced on him, just listened and took it in silence — he was just relieved she was at least talking. What is with your family, Kier? “How would I know? I cut my ties with them.”

When she at last chose a room, he followed her in and paced restlessly around the perimeter of it, the twitching of his tail turning to lashing. He listened, thinking, evaluating, laying it all out in his mind. When she leaned close to him, eyes burning and muzzles almost touching, Kier stopped, head slightly drawn back. And it all made sense. “Oh.” After a moment, he spun around and lashed his tail, resuming his pacing. Familiar nausea roiled his stomach, the miner’s canary of all the feelings he kept buried deep and airless. “Well, that’s old news. Why is she bringing it up now? Harley was sick anyway — he was going to die. How did she find out? Did you tell her?” It sounded for a moment like he was blaming Eris for upsetting his sister; but he quickly went on. “It doesn’t matter. She’s always been volatile. I doubt she’s so sad about losing Harley as she is about no longer being anyone’s favourite.” The way he spoke about her, past the anger, was almost forgiving, like he was going to brush this off as a petulant lark. He had history with Kate Eris would never have, had slept sprawled out with her, travelled for moons on end with her, grown up with her. Loved her. Been bullied and tormented by her. Spent long, childhood nights hating every inch of her, whispering to whatever dark thing in the night sky was listening to kill her, to rid him of her.

But as soon as he realised that was what he was feeling, fresh anger flooded his gut. He was so used to his sister’s violent temper tantrums that he was willing to bow down, to brush off injury to his mate because poor little Kate didn’t really mean it; Kiernan, you must forgive your sister. His tail lashed as he paced faster, cutting his path back and forth, back and forth, a growl rising in his throat. “I’m leader and still she doesn’t respect me, doesn’t respect you. What more do I have to do?” His voice rose to a shout and, suddenly lashing out, he raked his claws along the cave wall with such force that sparks flew off it, leaving long, jagged white marks. Eyes fogged and unseeing with anger, he whirled around and padded back to Eris, hooking a paw over her shoulders and pulling her close with a forceful, possessive sort of reassurance — reassurance that this wasn’t over, that Kate wasn’t going to get to her again. He rested his chin across her shoulders, glaring blindly at the opposite wall, claws tapping absently on Eris’ bones as he thought, withdrawing into his mind.

“Do you want her dead?” he asked finally, voice so quiet, so violent, against her warm fur.

In a way, it was all Kier had ever wanted. The feeling of suddenly creeping close to some long-forgotten, impossible wish fluttered to life in his gut. Deep-seated hatred beat back to existence like a rising military march. She’d hurt Eris. This was unlike anything she’d done before. This wouldn’t be an eye for an eye; this would be a life for an eye. He hadn’t yet stopped to think about their kits — this was about Eris, and the hot, drowning anger of it, the enduring, bubbling insult of it, the fear of it, consumed him until he was blind, until his blood was humming.

At her confirmation, Kier shivered. Relaxing his hold on her into something gentler, he shifted his chin to the top of her head for a few minutes before beginning to quietly groom the dried blood from Eris' ear, tender and soothing. His heart rate began to slow as his thoughts quietened and became more coherent, as plans began to unfurl and grow cold, and with it his touches softened into devoted, intimate comfort. When he heard she was still wheezing, he dipped lower and rasped his tongue along her chest, trying to soothe her breathing and get the blood flowing like a mother would a newborn kit. After who knew how long of silence and damp fur, he drifted back up to her head and took up his old task of cleaning away the dry, clinging blood. "Kate is nothing," he whispered, tongue brushing over Eris' ear, the words like sensual sweet nothings in the dark. "She's nothing. She'll be even less soon. You're everything. We'll raze it to the ground. There'll be nothing left." The sentiments continued, whispered so softly, so unthinkingly, just babbled out as they came to his mind. There were no thoughts of how gratifying, how powerful, it would feel to conquer the empire his grandparents had ruled, how it would feel to turn to ruins the place he'd been nothing in; no thoughts of Laertes, of the silent, unspoken rivalry he felt with Bermondsey as the most powerful influence on the kit's life, the festering need to triumph over him. They would come later. For now, the world was Eris. The world was her blood and his devotion to her.

There was anger still, quivering, burning anger — nothing could ever go right. There was always something. This was the beginning of the end. His frustration had the intensity of burning, desperate rage; he wanted to tear out his sister’s throat just to have her out of the way, to ensure his family, which had become nothing but a violent thorn in his side, couldn’t sabotage his plans anymore. This was war between siblings — but there was also brutal, hateful glee. And while the rage rotted and simmered, the glee grew. This was the conclusion to their story, and he was going to come out on top. He'd always known he would.

But then Eris spoke.

At first, when she turned to him with such sudden fear, he just gazed back at her uncomprehendingly. And then, slowly, the beginning of timidity began to seep into his eyes. "The kits?" he echoed, and his voice was no more than a weak whisper. And then she was moving again. He fell off balance as she pushed out from under him, quickly regaining himself and hurrying out after her. "Bleeding?" he repeated in alarm, like he truly hadn't noticed. He sped up to fall in anxiously beside her, steps quick. "W-what do you mean you're bleeding?" But as he said it, he felt something hot and wet on his pawpads and glanced down; there was blood following Eris on the dusty stone floor. He bounded ahead again to catch up to her, his fur now bristling with something very different to anger. Panic clouded his head, widened his eyes, tripped over his tongue. "You—you were fine — you were fine. Weren't you? Why wouldn't the kits be fine? We'll—we'll stop the bleeding, everything will go back to how it was. Kate is small, she—" He laughed, but it was tinged with terror, tinged with manic, breathless dread. He drowned beneath disbelief, beneath denial. "She can't have hurt you this badly. Eris." He sped up and stopped her just before she made it to the main cavern, staring into her eyes with his pupils darting rapidly back and forth, with a small, crooked grin on his face, like she was joking, like any minute she was going to drop the act. He was desperate for it. The grin shook; it was unstable. "You're alright, aren't you?"

When Eris snapped at him, Kier just stared back at her helplessly, his smile falling. He hurried after her to the entrance to the medicine den, heart pounding, all his senses heightened to screaming by adrenaline, all the stone colder than cold, all the air dustier than it had ever been — and that's when the blood around her bloomed and spread. The last of his forced optimism shattered and faded to nothing. "Oh my god," he choked out, taking a step back on shaking paws, and it was almost a wail. Throwing off all his concern for appearances, all his desperate denial, he slipped past Eris and into the medicine den, reappearing a second later behind the achingly new medicine cat. As Eris was moved into the dark privacy of the den, Kier just gaped in terror from the entrance. The blood pooled; it didn't stop; the stone walls began to press in on him, to stifle his air, to fill everything with grey, blurry fog.

"She—she’s hardly had any training," Kier babbled half to himself, backing away in wide-eyed, fumbling terror, his voice just a breath, like he was admitting to some terrible failing of his. And he was — no one he cared about was meant to get hurt; a medicine cat wasn't important; they were just a tool, just a— just a... The words became an excuse, a reassurance to himself; it wasn't his fault, it was Twilightdance's, it was hers, she should... He struggled to make sense of his reasoning. She should know — she should know what to do. But she didn't. And it was his fault. No matter how he spun it, it was his fault. His voice rose to a confused wail; his steps fumbled back and forth. "Nothing was supposed to happen. This wasn't meant to be like this. I didn't—I didn't plan—" Guilt, terrible and raw, swallowed his words. If they had a competent medicine cat, maybe this would all be different. Maybe it would be reversible; maybe they could be saved. His ambition, his blind selfishness, had killed their kits.

It might kill his mate.

The thought signed his unborn children's dead warrants. Surging forward, getting underfoot and in the way, knocked this way and that by the medicine cat, he ordered — pleaded — in a desperate, crackling voice, "Twilightdance, save Eris. I don't care if the kits die, just save her, save my mate." He didn't look at Eris as he said the words, didn't ask her permission; his wide, terrified eyes just bore into the medicine cat's. There wasn't even a threat in them — there might come one later, if she failed, if his mate died at her paws, but now there was just the pleading, desperate need for some tiny semblance of control, of reassurance, some promise that whoever he lost, it wouldn't be her. It couldn't be her.

As the day wore on, every second filled with pain, with screams, with vicious snaps at an untrained medicine cat who was doing all she could, Kier cried, begged, pleaded, his voice thick and hoarse and choked up. He hovered behind Twilightdance, flitting along at her shoulder like an anxious shadow, staring. He couldn't sit still, alternated between lingering in the background, weeping openly until his cheeks were stained with clear, glistening rivulets and his eyes were red and bleary and brimming with tears, pacing frantically, and hunkering down beside Eris, murmuring desperate, worthless reassurances and licking her head. Meaningless, terrified comfort was the only thing he could give her, even if he might have been the last cat she wanted near him right then. He didn't shout abuse at Twilightdance; for the first time in his life, he was terrified into blind obedience, doing what she told him to. He was glad for anything he could bring her, for anything he could do, was desperate for it; when she told him to bring water for Eris, he did it, and whispered a breathless, shaking "here, here" when he brought it, crouching down at her head and stroking his paw down her temple — when she told him to massage Eris' stomach, he did it — when she told him to groom the blood from her flank, when she told him to fetch herbs from the stores, he did it.

At one point, growing so panicked and frustrated that hysteria gave way to accusing anger, he almost shoved the medicine cat aside and did it himself — he had been the one to train her in the first place — but his paws slowed and froze before he could intervene, because he didn't know any more than she did. All his medical knowledge was on plants, on poison, on how to staunch bleeding and sew up bounds with fast, brutal stitches; he didn't know how to save her life. He didn't know how to stop a miscarriage.

It couldn't be stopped.

No matter what he did, he was helpless.

Finally, when she told him to say goodbye to their kits, he did.

And as dusk settled grey and dark and rainy over the camp, as the noise that had screamed from the medicine den for hours on end faded to rain-lashed silence, as it fell heavy and empty over the cavern, their children were gone.

Since the miscarriage, Kier had been silent. Snowblister had more or less taken over the running of the Clan. There'd been a time in the hours following, when he'd been so crazed with rage and grief, that he'd bounded out of camp with an escort and gone to hunt down his sister — not to kill her, not to kill her yet, but just to scream in her face, just to bowl her over and sink his teeth into her throat, just to tell her this was the last time he would ever be her brother. From now on, he was just the tom who was going to kill her. He still bore the wounds from that declaration of war, that miserable, tearful, hateful encounter. But it had taken the last of his energy. Since then, he'd been quiet. He'd hardly eaten. Hadn't spoken a word — which, for Kier, was a testament like no other that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Most days he just lay in his nest, the clinging warmth of it sick against the ice of the air. The early spring storms had started, pelting the forest with rain, sometimes cold, sometimes warm. Everything was grey and muted. The shadows of rain droplets slipped down his den walls, and he watched them for hours on end without truly seeing. Some days he just sat or crouched in the main cavern, gazing down at his paws, oblivious to cats moving about him and staring at their tyrant. They were just a stream of blurred shapes. Faceless. The scars on his throat from his mother's claws ached in the chill. He itched at them sometimes, with vague motions of his forepaw, without really feeling. Everything was silent. He couldn't hear anything anymore. It was all just heavy, grey quiet. As the cold rain filled the forest, the cavern became warm with body heat. He wasn't aware of it. He and Eris didn't talk, though he tried. While she disappeared into delirium, he felt all the grief to his core. It consumed him. It wasn't numb; even when he was silent, it wasn't numb. It was vicious and overwhelming. His whole world was grief.

The viciousness turned numb eventually, though. At first it had been sharp and clear; Kier was grieving, but he was still Kier. His mind still turned. He felt it all, and he was aware he felt it, like looking at black ice. But eventually, he couldn't feel all of that and stay sane afterwards, and so it had faded. His voice, when he did speak, became unnaturally quiet. He sounded like a shy, uncertain apprentice. At first he brought Eris food — even if he couldn't eat, he never forgot her; after a while, he asked someone else to do it, with a faltering, confused voice like he couldn't remember what it was he had meant to ask, head fogged with fatigue, frowning into the middle distance. They'd just bowed and obeyed, and now, rather confusingly to him, food would just appear beside their nest. Often it simply rotted. He smiled, sometimes, and that was more unnerving to the Clan than anything. It was like he'd forgotten who was a traitor, who was bound for the gallows, who plotted against him. He just smiled at them without anything behind his eyes.

The rogue gave birth the same dusk Eris lost their kits. And though he hated these kits that weren’t hers, though the guilt ate at him, though raw mourning consumed him and hollowed out his eyes, he turned to them because he needed heirs. There will be others, they said to him. But he didn’t want others; he wanted the kits he and his mate had created. Wanted the kits his sister had taken from them. He cried more than he would ever admit, and he wasn't ashamed of it; he had every right to cry. He cried in their nest late at night, turned away from Eris so she knew she didn't have to comfort him; he knew she hated that. He'd buried the tiny bodies of their unborn kits, alone by moonlight, trembling and holding them to him and weeping with no one to comfort him, just so she didn't have to; he'd take any measure of suffering, of pain, onto himself so she didn't have to feel it. He spent every waking and sleeping moment with Eris, curled up with her in silence, holding her to him, their warmth communicating what they could not — only slipping away when she was asleep, which was most of the time, paws silent and heart heavy with guilt and bitter hatred, resentment tinged with tearful, yearning softness, to see to his new kits. But all the time he was with them, playing or just looking down at them with cold disapproval, his mind was on his mate, on the kits they had lost, the kits that would never breathe air, the kits that deserved to do so more than these children of a rogue. He loved them. He couldn’t stand to look at them. He gave them back to their nursery queen. He thought about them when he was with Eris and hated himself for it. He thought about Eris when he was with them and hated them for it.

He was coming through the fog, though. The black ice, the clarity, was returning. It was a thousand times worse for him, and a thousand times more dangerous for everyone else. The clarity brought violence. The clarity brought his pain inflicted on others, and erratic, screamed orders, and a mad glint to his eyes. It brought unpredictability and irregularity, moods impossible to predict, and where before Kier's orderly violence had been frightening precisely because of its meticulousness, its manipulativeness, its subtlety, this wild volatility was worse. But his gentleness with Eris never wavered; he brushed the back of his paw along her cheek while she slept, and plotted vengeance with the clear-eyed hatred that bubbled within him in the dark, and loved her.

Kier! Kier! When she barrelled into him, he finally looked up from his grey, empty grief, staggering forward from where he'd been sitting with his head bowed and his shoulders drooped. The mourning came in waves; this wasn't a violent day, it was a sad, quiet one. He was small again. The camp was flooded with the sound of rain outside. "You're speaking," he breathed in relief, in amazement. "You're up — you're awake. Should you be up?" He was going to laugh I won't ask the medicine cat; she was no use, but he didn't; the dark joke was too soon. Kier no longer called Twilightdance by her name. He let Eris push him once more, then fumbled away from Eris to face her, resting his paw on her cheek and gazing at her with a small, hopeful smile. "How are you feeling?"

Meeting her gaze with a silent, agonised concern, helpless and confused and underlined with a growing sense of dread he was desperate to ignore, Kier raised his paw and brushed his head fur back the way it was supposed to go. When she set off, moving far quicker and more recklessly than she should have been in the wake of a miscarriage, Kier followed at an urgent pace, too preoccupied with keeping her in his sight to ask questions. She’d always had a creative relationship with reality, a certain artistic license, and that’s what he had always loved about her — but this seemed terribly wrong. The foreboding wailing to life in his gut grew.

When she disappeared into the canyon, he was still rounding a corner when he heard her shout echo towards him — how long do you think I can hold my breath? Sucking in a frantic breath that might have held a curse, he quickened his pace and splashed through the water towards her, not paying it any attention. “Eris,” he began, voice utterly devoid of humour, expression unsmiling — his eyes were filled with terrible worry. Oh! Here’s the moss you were looking for, remember? He didn’t spare it a glance, just gazed at his mate with awful, helpless forlorn, the grief resurfacing and turning to something truly sick, truly beyond bearing. When she grabbed him, he didn’t resist, just let her jostle him about, stricken eyes never leaving hers.

He couldn’t admit to himself that what was happening, was happening.

He couldn’t cope.

Before she could move again, he grabbed her back. “Eris,” he said again, and his voice was pleading — pleading with her to wake up, to come back to him, to prove him wrong. “Eris, do you— do you…” Kier couldn’t get the words out. He didn’t want confirmation. He didn’t want to be faced with this awful reality: that he was alone. Finally, voice shaking and quiet, he raised his paw to her cheek and choked out, trying a small, encouraging smile that just looked desperate and broken, “do you remember what happened to the kits?” Tears brimmed in his eyes, but still he smiled, teeth just showing, head slightly tilted. Trying to be brave.

Not ‘our’ kits. He couldn’t bear it to be ‘our’ kits. They were just ‘the’ kits.

Quiet, world-shattering horror filled his gaze and widened his eyes as he took in the words. He didn’t respond to her threats, to her pleading, to her insults — his mouth was just open slightly, moving without sound, like for the first time in his life Kier had no idea what to say, like his very mind was silent. When she rubbed under his chin, he didn’t move, didn’t reciprocate, just kept staring ahead like he hardly felt her. The confirmation was too much. His thoughts couldn’t start up again; there was just yawning, endless loneliness. Fear. The inability to process what she’d said. She set off, growling about his incompetence, and his gaze stuttered towards her, watching her go. Only then, fumbling up, did he follow — for no reason other than, despite the grief clouding behind his eyes, he couldn’t leave her to go where he could not. He flinched when she leapt out at him, his eyes still filled with nothing but staring misery.

Which one do you think is the highest? Everything within him ground to life, just to keep her safe. “If you want height,” he whispered, padding up to stand miserably at her shoulder, eyes on the pine needle-strewn ground, too overwhelmed to raise his voice, “there’s no place higher than the bear cave.” With whatever scrap of power he had left, he wasn’t letting her climb a tree; she would grow bored and hysterical at the top and jump off.

Brushing his tail unfeelingly down her flank, he stumbled once and then led her through the trees. He was barely aware of the journey; next he looked up, they were climbing up to the flat top of the cave, overlooking the entirety of NightClan’s territory. The stars were a blanket above them; the forest stretched out below, a black tapestry of trees; DayClan’s golden fields, SunClan’s red desert, and somewhere out there, the League — they all spread away before them. Kier looked out over it all and drew in a shallow, shuddery breath.

But he couldn’t continue like this.

He felt insane, like he himself was being gaslit, like all the fog, all the grey, crushing grief that Eris couldn’t feel was seeping out over him and pushing him to the earth. Crumbling, Kier crouched down and buried his muzzle in his paws, eyes closed in grief. He shook his head slowly, like he was fighting back the need to throw up, like he was dizzy, like being up this high had given him vertigo. Like he was trying to wake up, trying to tell himself this wasn’t happening — Eris was alright; this wasn’t real; any minute now this would all stop. “Eris…” he whimpered, so quiet, voice shaking, trying to be calm but breaking beneath the weight of his sick fear, his sorrow. “Our kits died. They died. They’re gone.” He shook his head again, muzzle still tucked between his paws; he couldn’t cope with this, couldn’t handle it. It was too much. He needed his mate; he couldn’t lose her too, couldn’t be alone, couldn’t have her body here beside him, growing thinner and thinner, and not her mind. Couldn’t watch her waste away in delusion while he suffered here on Earth without her. He felt his heart breaking. He felt himself crumbling under the weight of being the only one keeping them going, keeping them afloat.

She was his best friend — he needed her, her company, her mind, her love. He needed her more than he’d ever known, ever realised. And now she was slipping away from him. Eris’ unseeing smile broke him.

He was alone.

But they would get through this.

He would take care of her until she was well again.

She would come through this on her own, in her own time. And he would be there for her.

She would be alright.

The manic, blindly hopeful prayer felt like a lie in his head, but still he clung to it.

She would be alright.

Suddenly pushing himself to his paws, he swept around her and buried his forehead against her cheek, eyes closed like a child seeking comfort from their haunted mother. “You’ll be fine, Mousey,” he assured her desperately, not seeing the stars, the treetops, anything else around them. There was only her and his promise. He brushed a frantic paw down her shoulder, her foreleg. “I’ll be here. I won’t go anywhere, and you’ll be fine.” His paw brushed down her again, like he was trying to convince himself of something, or like he was trying to wake her up. Tears spilled over his cheeks, startling him, and he drew up a paw to touch them. And suddenly, like a tidal wave had crashed over him, Kier was sobbing. “Please, Eris, I can’t do this by myself. I need you. We’ll have other kits — a thousand kits. But I need you. I— You can’t leave me alone. I don’t know what I’ll do. I love you— I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything. Please just come back to me.”

When Eris jumped backwards, dangerously close to the edge, Kier’s eyes flamed with fear. He babbled — he would have done anything, said anything, to soothe her, to ease her back away from the edge she was blind to. She could have slapped him again and again and he would have only ducked his head and taken it. “Yes, yes, they were, you’re right.” His voice was passionate, terrified, gaze darting constantly to the perilous edge her back paw was crumbling the stone of. “I understand — I was wrong. I’m sorry, my dear.” He grinned, but it was a desperate, frightened thing.

In this horror of her grief, there were only two directions he could take: push her mind further, push it to snapping, or keep it where it was, soften and cushion the unreality it huddled in. Resist her, or bow to her.

And Kier bowed to her.

“Of course we will, my dear,” he breathed, so brokenly, quietly loving, an actor reading a wretched script on buckled floorboards. Padding over to her with subservient, apologetic steps, he eased her away from the edge as if he were simply guiding her to tea, picking his way over the perilous drop so if anyone fell, it would be him; the forest was vast and black beneath him, the rock so feeble, but he forced himself not to take in the quivering fear at the edge of his vision. Legs shaking slightly, he continued to guide her away, back to the safety of the centre of the stone roof. Only when they reached it did he glance back over his shoulder and let out a shuddering breath. Settling down beside her with trembling movements that tried so hard to be fluid, to be natural, he lay on his back and carefully drew her down to his side. Staring up at the stars, pupils darting wildly but not seeing any of them, he let out another purposeful, shuddering breath; his lungs had forgotten how to expand and deflate on their own, and as he took in each deliberate breath, he tried, too, to ease the hammering of his heart. It didn’t work; he could just see his chest at the bottom of his vision, fluttering wildly like a fragile bird’s. All he could think of was how to get his mate back, and yet the very thought of it, the swirling, disjointed thought of it, felt like some impossible feat. Like swirling, muddied waters he couldn’t see the bottom of. He’d never felt like that before, and it terrified him. Made his stomach twist with weak, fearful nausea.

What if there was no way to back?

Well, then he would make one.

He would gut every cat in every Clan until there were none left, and he would find one.

Still trying to get his deep, slow breathing under control, Kier rolled his cheek against the cold, dry stone and rasped his tongue behind her ear, still trying to be soothing and grounding despite his state. “Our kits won’t thank you if they come home and you’ve wasted away,” he told her, as lovingly and casually as he could, like it was a normal thing to say. Like their kits weren’t rotting in the ground. His heart broke in his chest. His voice shook slightly. “You need to eat, need to be as fit as you can possibly be. Mm?” He smiled at her, eyes hollow with misery, with fear. The breeze washed over them, cool and fresh with night. He breathed it in through his open mouth, gazing at the way the stars reflected in Eris’ amber eyes. They’d never been warm; they’d always been so cold. Now, his heart ached at the beauty of her. At the grief of it.