Rainbow Brite stood at the last bright ridge before the eastern edge and counted the missing thrones. Four now. Four royals gone in twelve days, starting with the one she had loved best and fought with hardest — the one who called the outer realms a waste of her. Below the ridge, the grass stopped being green. It did not fade. It ended in a clean line, as if a blade had drawn it. Beyond that line the world lay flat and colorless, and somewhere inside it, she believed, the other royals were still alive. She could restore a faded place by walking into it. She had done it since she was a child. Each restoration cost her breath, weight, hours of standing. She had already tried, at dawn, to cover the northern waste on foot. She made it two miles before her knees gave and the color behind her guttered like a wet candle. Rainbow Land was vast. The realm had four compass edges and a hundred hollows between them. Alone, on foot, she would reach the last royal weeks after the last royal stopped breathing. She sat down in the grass and admitted it out loud. "I can't do this alone." The sound of it opened something. She heard hooves before she saw the animal — slow, deliberate, coming up the bright side of the ridge. The unicorn stopped an arm's length from her. Its coat ran in bands of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Its mane fell straight and even down its neck. Its eyes held the same colors as its body and watched her without blinking. She did not know where it had come from. She knew, looking at it, that it had been waiting. She stood. Her legs shook. She put one hand on its shoulder and felt the heat of a body built to run. "East first," she said. "The one I argued with." The unicorn knelt. She climbed on. When it rose and turned toward the cut line in the grass, the ground under its hooves brightened for three steps before going flat again — not restored, but marked. A trail she could follow back. She had not told any of the other royals she had been avoiding the edges. She was about to cross one at a gallop, and someone, somewhere, was going to see the light move.

The unicorn cleared the cut line at a gallop, and the flat ground rolled out under its hooves in every direction. Rainbow Brite looked back once. The trail behind them glowed in short bright dashes on the grey, a broken stripe pointing straight at her from the ridge. Anyone standing on high ground would see it. Whoever had taken the four royals would see it. She leaned close to the unicorn's neck. "They can follow this," she said. "We have to kill the light before we reach the edge." The unicorn's ear flicked back. It did not slow. She thought it through as they ran. The trail came from the hooves striking colorless ground. If the ground were not colorless, the hooves would leave nothing. She could not restore the whole waste — she had proved that at dawn — but she could restore a narrow band, one hoof-width wide, under a running animal, if the animal ran fast enough that she only had to hold each step for an instant. She sat up and pressed both palms flat to the unicorn's shoulders. "Faster," she said. "Straight line. Don't turn." The unicorn stretched out. Rainbow Brite pushed color down through her hands into its body and out through its legs. The next hoofprint bloomed green and stayed green. The one after held. Behind them the broken stripe closed into a solid ribbon of grass, thin as a footpath, running clean from the ridge to the horizon. It did not fade. It did not mark her. It looked like something that had always been there. The cost hit her in the ribs. Her breath went short. Her arms shook against the unicorn's coat. She counted the miles by the burn in her chest and did not lift her hands. When the eastern edge rose ahead as a low grey rim, she let go and slumped forward. The unicorn slowed to a walk. Behind them lay a narrow green road no watcher would read as a trail. Ahead lay the edge, and whatever had taken the royal she had argued with. She had bought her approach. She had spent something to buy it, and she could feel the account inside her running lower than it had that morning.