Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

Two miles.

Every day for two weeks, Kosana forced her to run two miles on the perimeter of the Settara, and Vaasa wanted to hurl.

She had been active her whole life. Had been taught by a blades master, had sparred with him, even bested him sometimes in close fighting. She’d taken bruises, withstood soreness, and could normally run two miles without much issue.

In the cold .

Here, with the morning sun causing every inch of her to sweat, Vaasa came to terms with the fact that she was outmatched. That perhaps Reid had been correct in asserting she learn to use her body in this temperature and humidity.

The only thing worse than admitting she was wrong was having to spend the morning with Kosana, who barely spoke a word to her. And when she did deign to speak, Kosana’s distrust and resentment dripped into each of her words. After their two miles were up, they would stop near a group of Kosana’s corps, and even though all of those warriors would be granted the opportunity to spar, Vaasa would be haughtily dismissed.

Vaasa knew it was a dig. Knew her body was strong enough to endure more than a run. That she could probably keep up with at least some of the maneuvers and sparring these warriors engaged in.

But why prove anything?

If they wanted to see her as a spoiled, helpless heiress, that was their mistake to make. So she would smile sweetly at Kosana and trot off to the villa and not exchange a word with Reid. The only time the two of them spoke was when they were around others, which was often—salt lords, merchants, and advocates from their workers’ guild. In front of them, she was the devoted wife and potential high consort. She’d do whatever it took to keep returning to the sodality day after day.

The second day she’d arrived, Amalie had said when they were alone, You look terrified. He must have told you who Melisina is.

She doesn’t hate me?

You didn’t kill him, that must count for something.

It seemed Amalie was privy to the entire story, so she was one of the only people Vaasa didn’t have to lie to. The young witch taught her to summon tendrils of the void and wrap them around things. Melisina taught her how to dismiss the magic when it became unruly. Even Suma had joined their lessons. She’d swiftly learned the name of the two rebellious women who’d stolen Amalie’s daybed: Mariana and Romana. Not sisters, but they should have been.

Each witch was different in how they used the raw magic granted to them by Veragi, but they could all generally do the same things. They all summoned tendrils of the power, could form entire shapes and walls made of glittering black. Vaasa had watched in wonder as Suma created a ring of magic around her, never smothering her own senses, but casting a barrier that only a fool would cross. Something about their shared looks made Vaasa wonder what they weren’t revealing to her.

But the limits, the dangers , of the magic were clear: within that void, someone could easily lose their life. They could not manipulate anything outside of the magic—which, apparently, could be done by the witches of Imros in Sigguth, who could manipulate metal the same way the witches of Una had manipulated light. It explained why their weapons were so precise, their boats so well crafted. The witches of Zohar in Irhu could move the tides. And there were healers in Wrultho. The more they taught her about the covens, the more she understood why magic was kept in the shadows: before Icruria’s unification, wars between the six territories had decimated the magical population. Supposedly, even long before that, it was not the territories that had defined Icruria—it was the bloodlines that wielded magic. Ancient, cruel families ruled various estates along the coastline of the Settara. They had wiped each other from the face of the continent in their quest to own more land. It was a wicked, disastrous time, and now magic felt too precarious to share. Even separate covens did not typically work together or allow access to their histories. It was a scale that balanced on a razor blade; on one hand, it prevented the witches from consolidating their power, and on the other, it prevented them from fully understanding it.

I would like to someday unite them, the way the territories were united for the greater good , Amalie told her. Vaasa had never seen such a clear dream in the eyes of another—a worthwhile ambition. But almost all of the witches across the continent were in their sixth or seventh decade, sometimes far later, when they gained their magic. Suma believed it was the gods and goddesses punishing them. Melisina said it was an ambiguity even she could not understand. Magic only lived in one generation at a time.

Young witches, while powerful, were a tragedy.

One morning, when Vaasa went to sit down at her usual table and observe some of them quietly, Melisina put her hand up. “Don’t. We have something to do.”

“What are we doing?”

“Getting you a notebook.”

“A notebook?”

Melisina walked to the door and gestured for Vaasa to follow. Amalie grinned like she knew something Vaasa didn’t.

Melisina plunged down the stairs Vaasa had just walked up, and even though she wanted to curse Melisina for forcing her to use her sore muscles, they felt more flexible after the effort. On the main floor of the Sodality of Setar, they walked down a string of hallways and through the center courtyard. Acolytes in purple robes swished around them to their morning classes, and the routine was familiar—just as she had done in Dihrah. For a moment, she missed the small purpose she felt in a routine schedule such as that.

To learn for learning’s sake was a privilege.

Melisina led her into a large room filled with parchments—papers and notebooks and books lined every shelf.

“Pick one you like,” Melisina said. “But do not open them. You must choose from the cover alone.”

The cover alone?

Vaasa crept forward and plucked a random notebook from the shelf, a gray cover with a sturdy spine and what appeared to be plenty of paper within. Turning to Melisina once again, she was met with a scowl.

“What?” Vaasa asked.

“Pick one you love,” the woman said. “For if you don’t love it, it will mean nothing to you, and it must mean something to you.”

“Do notebooks have to mean something to us?”

“They do, otherwise we will not use them. I will be back in an hour.”

Vaasa gaped. An hour? Who would need so much time? But Melisina grinned, just like Amalie had, and disappeared behind the door.

As she glanced around, she wondered if these women even used the notebooks they loved.

There were hundreds.

But she did exactly as Melisina instructed—she did not open them. Some were plain with only color to adorn, and others were so gilded Vaasa wanted to scrunch her nose. None particularly spoke to her, though, so she just kept moving down the shelf.

When Melisina returned exactly an hour later, she crossed her arms and laughed.

Vaasa sat on the floor in the center of the room with a disorganized spread of notebooks, her nose pressed against the cover of one while another sat heavy in her hand.

“I tasked you to find one ,” Melisina said.

“Well, I found twelve, and I would like to take them all,” Vaasa declared.

Laughter flooded the room, and Vaasa curled her legs to her chest, her back against one of the stacks as Melisina slid into the spot next to her. “One. Only pick one.”

One? She pouted as she looked at her options and then met the amber of Melisina’s eyes. With that particular hue, she really should have known Reid and Melisina were related. “How do I pick?”

Shrugging, Melisina said, “Follow your intuition.”

Vaasa didn’t know much about her intuition anymore. Her whole life she’d depended on it to guide her. It had been the driving force behind the negotiations she’d translated, the tabletop battlefields that happened behind closed doors in her father’s fortress. While his military men had might, and many of them could outmaneuver forces and weapons, she had known how to get in people’s heads. How to communicate with them and win their trust. She’d done so by listening to that voice in her mind that told her what people wanted and how to give it to them.

Everything she had done, all she had borne witness to, was so she could remain in her father’s good graces. To ensure that she never ended up exactly where she was now—married. Out of control. A threat to her brother. If she proved herself more useful at his side than as a bargaining chip, she thought Dominik would never have to hunt her down.

“I can’t,” she admitted.

“And why is that?”

Magic seemed to rattle in her bones. Instead of answering, she looked down at her feet.

But Melisina did not waver. She didn’t answer for her and did not move on. She sat silently and waited. Vaasa realized she expected an answer, and she wasn’t likely to let her off without one.

“I can’t tell the difference between the magic and my intuition,” she whispered.

“Hmm.” Melisina shifted her weight. “That is because there is no difference. The magic is your intuition, and you will never learn to wield it if you do not learn to listen to it.”

Those words settled somewhere in Vaasa, twisted with the power in her veins. Lifted something in her chest.

“Now, look and listen.”

Peering down at the books, Vaasa took a deep breath. As she gazed upon the spectrum of colors, she pressed down into herself, down to where the magic reigned. Like an entity all on its own, she could feel its misty presence coating her insides. As if she could touch it. Smell it.

It roared to life and Vaasa retracted from herself, doing what she always did—focusing on something outside of her to take the attention away.

Melisina tsked. “You must face this discomfort someday. Why not today?”

Her first instinct was to take a notebook and throw it across the room. Her second was to run without a look back.

But she gazed at the notebooks once more, and some little voice inside of her told her to do something tremendously stupid: try.

So she did.

Nothing else had worked thus far.

She felt it again in her gut, the way the magic roared to life and slithered in her veins, writhing and dark and furious. She wanted to smother it. It looked and felt like hatred. Like the pounding pulse of horror.

Tears pricked at her eyes and she shook her head, using the back of her hand to wipe away a stray tear.

“Good,” Melisina said. “Perhaps it’s time you feel whatever that emotion is.”

Was that what Vaasa had been doing? Hiding from her emotions and calling it survival?

Melisina was right, though—someday she would have to face it, and she would rather do so surrounded by parchment than by people. So she reached for it. She tried to listen.

Her fingers brushed the books, and she felt the texture of each one. Rough. Soft. Some like suede, some like gravel. Eyes running over the menagerie of colors, she almost stopped on an orange one, but her hand kept going.

Her touch landed upon a smooth leather cover that seemed to spark the magic. Beneath her hand was a pitch-black notebook with purple leafed etchings along the borders in whorls and curved lines and swirls carved down the sturdy spine. She’d plucked it off the furthest shelf about three rows down. It was nothing particularly special, except that it was. When she held it in her hands, she could feel the… rightness of it. At first she couldn’t hear it, but the longer she sat with the slithering tangles in her gut, the more she heard the soft hum of the snake. Like it whispered its approval.

“This one,” Vaasa asserted.

Melisina grinned. “Open it.”

Flipping the cover, she found two words written at the bottom of the first page in unfamiliar handwriting.

It was her name.

Vaasa squeezed the notebook between her fingers. Melisina must have placed the notebook on the shelf, and of the hundreds in this room, Vaasa had somehow managed to find it.

“Weapons that are misunderstood cannot be used,” Melisina said. “So that is where we will begin. This is hard work, listening to our intuition and not allowing our mind to make a mess of our heart.”

“Did you know I would pick this one?”

“No,” Melisina admitted. She stood up with effortless grace and extended Vaasa a hand. “But now that you have it, it’s time to use it.”

She didn’t know if that was a justification in Melisina’s eyes, or simply an explanation. It was the first time in two weeks that she didn’t feel like laying waste to every person in a room. The first time her chest let go, and her throat opened for a full breath.

Honesty could be had in this room, and she reveled in it.

That day, she stayed long past nightfall.

To master Veragi magic often meant sitting uncomfortably, either with the entire coven or just with Melisina. Often, it was Amalie who sat beside her, quiet and entangled in her own work, but always there. She had grown slowly used to the woman’s presence. Had even begun to take comfort in it. But in the wake of that comfort, worry haunted her. Images of Dominik destroying the sodality were sometimes so overwhelming Vaasa could hardly breathe. She didn’t particularly like the introspective exercises—especially when it forced her to reflect upon the choices she’d made that night with Reid. Her veiled threats and how she let the worst parts of herself escalate a situation perhaps beyond mending. How when she felt hurt, she struck.

It was the first time she acknowledged how ashamed she was.

That feeling particularly weighed on her as she ran her two miles down the shoreline of the Settara and once again Kosana refused to speak to her. The blond warrior had not dared allow more than one sentence a day to pass between them.

Not that Vaasa truly minded or didn’t find her coldness justified.

When this was over, she would steal away to the veranda and spend the little time she had to herself reading a book written in Zataarian. If she didn’t use the language, she would lose it.

Around the bend of the shoreline, they came upon the same circle of warriors who always trained together at this time. Fluid movements and graceful leaps caught Vaasa’s eye, and she pictured them as mountain cats. As a child, she’d been warned to avoid the stealthy creature that slunk through the mountains and into the gardens when night fell upon Mek?s. The only time Vaasa ever got close enough to one to feel the softness of its thick, snow-colored fur was when a mountain cat broke into their coop and demolished a group of chickens. One of the guards sent an arrow directly through its head, and her father had made a pelt from the furs. He’d forced her and Dominik to watch as he skinned the extraordinarily thin creature.

This is the natural way of things, he said. The strong outlive the weak.

The warriors in front of her did not use arrows, but their knives were sharp enough to cut. Plenty of them threw their blades with greater precision than a bow.

Kosana made off to go spar with the circle and shouted over her shoulder, “Go run another two.”

“Teach me something that matters,” Vaasa shot back, the image of the lifeless mountain cat haunting her and chasing away her common sense. “I think I’ve mastered run .”

Members of their group went rigid, and some averted their eyes entirely. One, a raven-haired warrior who’d just forced someone into surrender, stifled a chuckle when she stood up from the ground and wiped the dirt off her clothing.

Kosana narrowed her eyes.

“We’re next,” the commander announced to the group. Her blue eyes dragged over Vaasa and the murderous curl of her mouth set off warning bells.

The circle of warriors backed up a few inches to make room, and Kosana prowled into the center as if the entire thing was a show. Vaasa assumed it was, one where she would lose and look as weak as Kosana had made her out to be.

Still, the only thing worse than getting her ass kicked would be to refuse the offer.

So Vaasa stepped forward on tentative, tired feet and took a long, deep breath.

The raven-haired woman gave a low warning to Kosana, but the commander waved her off. So the warrior handed Vaasa a blade, and then began to strap one to her bare forearm. Vaasa furrowed her brow at it, having never utilized a sheath this way. Kosana silently slung a similar sheath around her own forearm and tightened the leather straps. The smallest of blades gleamed in the morning sun as the warrior rolled her shoulders and picked up her second knife. “First to force the other into surrender wins. Signal by tapping twice,” the raven-haired woman told her. When Vaasa met the woman’s hooded brown eyes, they appeared wary, as though she was concerned about what was going to happen but had no intention of saying a word.

Vaasa stepped forward, the unfamiliar pommel of the short knife pressed in her palm, the straps on her forearm itching a little.

Kosana crouched into a fighter’s stance, and without so much as a warning, pounced.

Vaasa spun to dodge the attack, barely passing the commander. Kosana was quicker than the other two Vaasa had watched, moved with more agility and intention than anyone Vaasa had known, and the thought kick-started her body into action.

Heart pounding, Vaasa avoided most of Kosana’s advances, but could never once get the lead on her. Dust flew around them, and it bit at Vaasa’s eyes. Her muscles strained as she rolled over her own head and sprang to her feet, sliding into a crouch and then dodging again.

“I knew he underestimated you,” Kosana spat as they circled.

“He learned that lesson first, though,” Vaasa said with far more audacity than she truly possessed.

That murderous glint in Kosana’s eyes returned. Would Kosana really hurt her?

It’d be one way to get rid of her.

Vaasa knew she had something to atone for with this woman. Knew that when Kosana had found Reid, it sealed their fate. The anger and resentment flooded the warrior’s eyes, and the next time Kosana pounced, Vaasa didn’t escape so quickly. Kosana’s knee dug into Vaasa’s stomach and she grunted. She didn’t have the skill, or the energy, left to do much against the mighty woman. Though she had always been able to at least hold her own, Kosana outmatched her in all the ways that mattered.

It hit her then what she lacked: endurance.

Kosana would survive her any day.

This is the natural way of things. The strong outlive the weak.

Vicious pride roared to life and Vaasa threw herself at the warrior.

Flying through the air, Vaasa slammed into the ground with a harsh bite of her lip and Kosana dragged her blade in a short burst along Vaasa’s upper chest. Vaasa didn’t even see Kosana’s movements. Her stomach coiled and the magic burst to life in her gut. Vaasa tensed and spun, maneuvering her legs into a tangle with Kosana’s enough to gain leverage. The two women scratched at each other as they tumbled. Kosana pressed her knife down the inside of Vaasa’s arm, and panic seared at the feel of her skin splitting.

“Surrender,” Kosana commanded.

Vaasa’s response was to spin them and drag her own blade down Kosana’s thigh. The warrior hissed with her anger and slammed the pommel of her blade into Vaasa’s cheek, hard . Color burst behind Vaasa’s eyes and she cried out, losing any leverage she had.

Kosana swung herself up and on top of Vaasa, knife moving, and Vaasa caught the woman’s wrist. With a twist, she forced her to release the blade and it fell to the ground near them.

Confidence bloomed in Vaasa and—

Kosana twisted her other arm in a swift, admittedly graceful motion, and before Vaasa could understand what happened, the tiny blade it contained was suddenly at Vaasa’s jugular.

Vaasa slammed the ground twice in defeat.

But Kosana pressed her blade harder and spat, “This is for his wedding night,” before slicing a shallow nick beneath Vaasa’s chin.

Pain spiked down her throat, and Vaasa choked on her own fear, the unintentional, visceral response to a knife so close to her lifeline.

Just then, the commander was torn from her place by the raven-haired warrior, curses flying through the air. “She conceded!” the woman yelled when Kosana fought back.

The nasty threat of losing control stung against Vaasa’s fingertips and she could no longer focus on Kosana. Slipping. The magic was slipping. All she knew was the power, the way it reared inside of her and threatened to explode. Darkness flooded down her arms and fingertips, the snake suddenly growing in size and pushing against her lungs. It took every ounce of strength Vaasa had to bite it back. To keep it contained within herself. It crawled into her throat, and she didn’t know what it would do. Didn’t know if she could control it.

“Whatever wound you inflict upon him, I will give you one to match !” Kosana bellowed, as two more of her corps slung arms around their commander.

Vaasa’s breath came in pants, slipping through parted lips as tears stung her eyes.

Fight back, fight back, fight back.

She only nodded.

Kosana spat into the dirt next to Vaasa and dropped the blade, wiping off the dust from her leggings and shirt; she threatened something unintelligible at the warriors who tried to approach her.

Vaasa rolled to keep her hands hidden. The people around her probably thought she was weak, probably thought her a sniveling coward, but Vaasa forced breaths the way Melisina had taught her. She willed the magic down her wrists and to swirl in patterns around her fingertips. To listen instead of detonating.

Then she willed it to snap back inside of her, and the threat extinguished.

Vaasa choked out a sob.

Someone tried to touch her, to help her, and she cursed at them in Asteryan. Perhaps it was the first moment they realized she hadn’t been speaking her native language since she arrived. That she knew theirs well enough to understand each word they said, to edit her own output—Every. Single. Day.

The blood from her neck, chest, and arm trickled in slow streams. Not enough to do any real damage. Even her cheek hadn’t shattered, which Vaasa assumed was a calculated angle by the commander. If Kosana had wanted to, she could have made it far worse. And if Vaasa sat curled in this dirt any longer, the cuts might get infected.

She hauled herself up from the ground, limbs shaking, and watched as the raven-haired warrior forced Kosana to walk away. She tore the leather sheath off her wrist and threw it in the dirt.

Vaasa, in all her pride and anger, lifted her bleeding chin and met the eyes of each person in the circle.

Silently, she turned on her heel and limped back to the villa. Reid had already left for the day, and Vaasa thanked each of Icruria’s gods for the reprieve as she slid to the floor of the shower and burned.

She let the wave of magic shake the stone floor and turn the water black.

Melisina Le Torneau sprang to her feet at the sight of Vaasa walking in the door.

Black robes swishing, she sprinted across the mosaic floor. “Dear girl, what has happened to you?”

Vaasa’s face was swollen and had already begun to shadow over with the impending bruise of Kosana’s bone pommel against her cheekbone. Her lip was split. The three wounds she’d sustained stopped bleeding in the shower, and in a few days, they would scab over. There were no broken bones, no fractures, not even a sprain.

All of this would disappear.

“Nothing,” Vaasa said, voice low as she slid past Melisina and took a seat at the table closest to the bookshelf.

Amalie stood slowly, flanked by Suma, Mariana, and Romana.

Of course they were all here this morning. She’d considered not coming at all, but each day she wasted was another she’d have to spend married to Reid of Mireh.

Melisina didn’t move. Standing at least twenty feet from Vaasa, she slowly turned. “Does he know this happened?”

“Your son?” Vaasa asked, pointedly raising her eyes but being careful not to lift her chin and aggravate the wound.

“Yes, my son ,” Melisina snapped as she closed their distance and began to inspect Vaasa’s bruised face. At that moment, all five women bent over her like pigeons over breadcrumbs. Vaasa shooed them away with a few waves of her hands, forcing the women to give her space.

Too close, they were too close.

Eyes bulging at the cut beneath Vaasa’s chin, Amalie’s voice dropped. “Who did this to you?”

“I almost killed them,” Vaasa said instead of answering the question. She looked at her hands, which showed no trace of mist any longer. “I almost lost control of this magic and obliterated an entire circle of people.”

Melisina’s lips tightened and not a soul in the room spoke.

“Is it always going to be like that?” Vaasa asked flatly.

Apparently Melisina had seen enough of Vaasa’s wounds, because she rose to her full height. “No.”

“All it does is build . All day it builds.”

“I know.”

Vaasa’s hand slammed against the table. “ How do I get rid of it? ”

Pity covered each of their faces, so raw and full of familiarity that it made Vaasa’s stomach churn.

“You do not,” Melisina said.

“I want you to cut it from me!” Vaasa stood with her anger and urgency, her hands wrapping to her stomach, where she pictured the coiled serpent. Over the manipulative, evil, easy-to-anger void that would strangle her insides and anyone who came too close. Nails digging into her stomach, she wished she could reach inside and smother the force. Strangle it. Eviscerate it with a blade. No part of her felt like her own—her body had been stolen by this thing she had never asked for.

Just like her future. Her safety. All because of things she had never asked for .

Tears stung her eyes, her voice cracking. “I don’t want this.”

She didn’t know if she was only talking about the magic now. It could be the chokehold of her brother. Of a life fated to the whims of a throne that she neither wanted nor loved. A marriage no one had asked her consent or desire for.

Romana stepped forward, but Vaasa launched back and almost slammed into the bookshelf. Once again, she couldn’t maintain control, couldn’t calm the slithering force and push it down. Icy fear pulsed at the idea of what this magic would do. “Don’t.” She tried to push past the anger and fear in her chest, but the snake would not rest. It hissed and consumed her, crawling up her throat and biting her tongue.

She wouldn’t let it out again. She would rather it kill her than touch any of them.

Maybe she was better off dead anyway.

As if it heard her and wanted to grant such a wish, the magic strangled Vaasa’s airway and she gasped, hands on her throat and eyes bulging. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe—

“It is water,” Melisina said as she stepped forward, mist bleeding from her hands and swirling up her arms. “Whatever form the magic takes right now, picture it as water. It is trickling and flowing, slipping back down to its home.”

“I… can’t,” Vaasa said, choking, hot tears welling in her eyes.

“You can,” Mariana insisted, stepping forward, too. The rest of the coven flanked her.

As if they trusted her.

As if they believed in her.

“Try,” Melisina demanded. “Please try.”

As if they wanted her to live.

Water. Vaasa thought of rivers and seas, pushed back against the snake that wanted to harm. Wanted to bite and coil and suffocate. That wanted violence so tremendously it was willing to take her when there were no other options.

Water.

Vaasa thought of the Settara, of its glittering turquoise depths and the color it looked under moonlight. How the waves lapped at sand and churned beneath the sun.

Water.

The serpent in her throat cooled and melted, liquid on a hot day, and she felt the icy movement of it down her chest like a full glass into an empty stomach. Just as the Settara did at night, it swayed with her emotions. It lapped at her insides.

Vaasa gasped for air and tears burst from her eyes.

She fell to her knees and whimpered as the cut along her arm split open.

They could all see her on the ground, breaking. It was too much, to peel back each of these layers in front of any other soul. Like a child, she crawled beneath the table so she could hide, knees pressing to her chest as the world closed in on her. Sobs burst from the back of her throat. Humiliation tore at her insides.

Melisina was there in the pool of her robes, climbing under the table.

Vaasa tried to pull back, but Melisina softly begged her not to. “Just cry. Let it out.”

Suddenly, all five witches were on their knees and crawling beneath the table, too. The sight of grace and understanding on their faces forced a miserable wail from the back of Vaasa’s throat. She hid her head in her knees.

But she did as Melisina asked, and she wept. She wept until her eyes burned and she couldn’t breathe through her nose. She wept for what her life should have been. For what her marriage should have been. She wept for the children she would never be safe to have, the home she could never grow old in, the family she could never return to.

Somewhere in the haze, Romana began to speak. “When my mother died, all I saw was flames, and they burned me from the inside out. I hated that part of me, the one that lit everything on fire—even the things I loved. Even the things I wanted. Especially those. But look.”

She held out her hand, and upon the mosaic floor, her mist started to take shape. It folded in on itself and grew until there was an ever-so-small bear, edges trembling as it took a few steps and then disappeared.

Vaasa’s breath caught.

Suma scooted closer, but she didn’t try to touch Vaasa. “It came to me as nothing but long, sharp cramps. Now it is a hawk.”

“Mine began as a cat,” Amalie whispered, “that wouldn’t retract its claws. But now, it is a fox.”

“Mine was a bull, big and horned and angry,” Mariana said. “But now it is a tiger that prowls.”

“What do you see?” Melisina prodded.

How could she ever say it out loud? To cut open her chest and put her shame on display was the one thing she was incapable of.

These figures they spoke of, they were beautiful and strong. Hers was conniving and cruel.

But then Amalie whispered, “Just because this is all you have ever known, it does not mean it is all you will ever be.”

Shaking, Vaasa lifted her eyes. Met the familiarity of Melisina’s gaze, the calm severity of her sharp features. Then to Romana, to the wisdom carved in the brown of her irises; to Mariana, whose power didn’t topple others over; Suma, with her few words that often meant more than everyone else’s; and finally, to Amalie, who wore her strength quietly, cloaked in grace and compassion.

They had each mastered what they first saw in themselves. And when she gazed upon them, all she found was how they could choose who they wanted to be.

She wanted that. To choose.

“It is a snake,” Vaasa confessed through her tears. “I see a snake.”

She was no chameleon. She had become exactly what her father had, and it served as no surprise that what she saw in herself was exactly what others had seen in him. “That is what people called my father,” she whispered. “The Serpent of Asterya. And I do not believe my brother is the only one who inherited his cruelty.”

Suma shook her head. “You can inherit someone’s eyes, or their hair or their nose, but you cannot inherit their faults. You learn them. Which means you can unlearn them, too.”

Melisina placed a hand upon her shoulder, and Vaasa latched on to the warmth. Leaned into it. “You call it anger, you call it fear, but it is none of those things. What lies inside of you is pain. The kind that burns worlds to the ground.”

Pain.

It speared through her, and she choked again, the anger peeling back in bloody red to show the deepest feeling of blue. The inescapable coldness racked her like she’d been buried in ice.

The magic in Vaasa’s stomach hissed, once again a snake. But this time quietly, like it wanted to be heard, like it was begging her to listen.

And when she did, she could hear what her own self was trying to say.

They’d told her from the day Dominik was born that she was second. That her life was worth less than his. That the only way she could survive was if she behaved, if she was useful.

And in the end, no one had protected her from him.

The anger and fear fell away.

And Melisina was right—all Vaasa had left was the pain.

But she didn’t know how to get rid of it. How to conquer the emptiness and the anger.

Exhaustion weighed down upon her shoulders, bending them with its force. “It’s not going away,” she repeated.

Melisina leaned back on her knees, but this time she did not add any further truths or explanations. Silence threaded the air of the Sodality of Setar, and in it, tears began to stream softly down Vaasa’s cheeks.

Beneath this table was the safest she had felt in months.

“Teach me,” she whispered as she swatted the liquid falling from her eyes, forcing herself to take a deep breath. “Please, will you teach me?”

And for the first time, it wasn’t because it was the only way to escape.

It was because it was the only way to have the choice.

Amalie smiled like the sun, and Mariana laughed like it was a foolish question. Voice like a wind chime, Amalie said, “You are not alone, and you never will be again.”

At those words, Mariana started to stand, and a small thud reverberated under the table. “Ow,” she said, rubbing her head.

Romana roared with laughter, and then Mariana did, too.

Amalie giggled and Vaasa couldn’t fight the grin that grew upon her own lips.

Careful to avoid the table, Melisina got to her feet, dusting off her robes and extending Vaasa a hand.

It all felt like too much, their affection. She’d done nothing to earn it.

But she took Melisina’s outstretched hand anyway.

“Today, you will learn about grounding. About where in the world you can plant your feet firmly and come back to yourself, no matter how out of control you feel.”