The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski
SID
I STAND IN NIRRIM’S ROOMin the palace, in that place of hasty finery, as though flung together by someone who had little idea of what it meant to be rich and powerful, and put together a few expensive items to ensure that everyone would think that she did know.
Nirrim is there, at a distance from me, looking down at someone stretched out on her bed. I see her shift, lifting a dagger high, and when she moves, I see that the person lying there is me.
That is my dagger. It is poised to stab into my heart.
But Nirrim’s hand unclenches. The dagger falls with such a clatter that I can’t help but wince. She might have damaged the blade’s edge. I am about to stride over and snatch the dagger from the ground to inspect it thoroughly, when someone behind me says, amused, “Only you would be more worried about your dagger than the fact that I was about to kill you, Sid.”
I turn, startled, to see Nirrim, dressed as she was the first time I saw her, in an uncomfortable-looking, horribly unbecoming beige dress. She smiles. Yet when I glance over at the bed, Nirrim is also there, dressed in finery, staring down at my sleeping form, her expression twisted in grief.
The Nirrim in the beige dress says, “She doesn’t understand what she has lost. She only knows that she is lost.”
I am very confused. “Are you …?”
“I am Other Nirrim. I am her memory.”
“Thank the gods.” I lift my left hand, the one that holds her heart, and say, “This is for you.”
She smiles again, a little sadly this time. “Not for me. For her. I don’t actually exist anymore.”
I trace the shape of her mouth. “You do for me.”
“Sid,” she says, her voice full of wonder, “you went to the realm of the gods for me.”
“And came back.”
“Not yet. Not quite. Sid, you are going to have to let me go.”
“No,” I say sharply. “I have been letting everyone go. Find your way home, the god said. It has been a journey of loss.”
“And gifts. And forgiveness. You know this. I, too, must ask you to forgive me for not being here if you return to the mortal realm. Even if you give me my heart, I will never be the same person.”
“Who will you be?”
She looks over my shoulder, and I see that the Nirrim with starlike earrings, as bright as tears, weeps over my sleeping body. Other Nirrim says, “I will be the woman who, even with no mercy in her heart, could not bear to destroy the person she loves most. Will you go to her?”