Zero had not slept since becoming Zero.
She had, in the weeks before that, slept perfectly well. She had been Kristie then — a name that felt, in retrospect, like a piece of clothing she had outgrown without noticing — and Kristie had slept in barracks and roadside inns and, once memorably, in a tree, and none of it had posed particular difficulty. Sleep was a function. She had performed it.
Now, when she closed her eyes, she could feel the golden chain.
It was not painful. It was not even uncomfortable, exactly. It was simply… present. A warmth at the edge of her consciousness, like standing near a hearth you hadn't chosen to stand near. Her master's soul, vast and strange, connected to hers by a thread of something that felt older than magic and more fundamental than blood. She could feel, distantly, that he was awake. She always could. And when he was awake, some part of her was awake too.
She had stopped fighting this.
