As I sit and plait my ratty hair into a new braid, fighting the knots into submission, the Usher comes to my door.
“It’s time.” He looks at me, dressed, the faint smell of smoke and burnt papers still lingering in the small space. If I didn’t know him better, I’d say he was suspicious.
But he brushes it away and leads me through the gloom of pre-dawn and out of the camp. We’re alone. Or rather, I can’t sense anyone following.
We’re going in the opposite direction to the path that leads to the torture area and the bathing building. But I keep my questions and thoughts safe behind my lips. Our journey spans the early dawn and into the brightness of the new day. The sun is hot, the beams attacking me as we clear any cover of trees into an open area, and the unseasonal heat takes advantage.
In Estereah, it would be growing cooler, the nights drawing in with the harvest done for the year. Here, it could be mistaken for mid-summer.
And still the Usher continues, marching his crooked body through the long grass around us.
Finally, we arrive at an open field as the sun peaks in the sky. The rush and rumble of waves is nearby, but I can’t see them, and the ever-present mountains still bracket us.
If I were here, on a walk, enjoying the day with Ten, it would be a beautiful spot. Idyllic. But that impression only serves as a warning of what else is to come. For I’ve learned there is nothing of beauty or kindness here without a cost.
The Usher stops, turns to the sky, and then looks at me.
“I had hoped that we’d have your brother here. But as you two can’t get along, we’ll have to do this the hard way.”
“The hard wa?—”
A string of words that sound like incantations cut me off. He tilts his head to the sky and continues to mumble. The only word I make out is Novandia, before I’m hit with a stream of light. Sunlight. So hot, I scrunch my eyes up and shy away, crouching, and covering my face with my arm.
But I can’t move.
There are words all around me, inside my head, in the air, fighting, arguing…
It’s burning, like the heat will vaporise me and leave me nothing but ash on the floor.
“Don’t fight it, Ever!” he calls.
“I’m not fighting. It hurts. It’s burning!”
“You are a Fifth and must embrace Novandia.”
“Aslendrix made me a Fifth. Not Novandia!” I yell back, grimacing.
My fingers dig into the soil as I bear down against the onslaught of heat, sure that my bones must be melting.
“You cannot beat me, Sister.” The words ring loudly inside my mind, and for a second, fear freezes all the heat I feel under the rays shining down on me. That can’t be Fenix. He’s not here. And he can’t project his thoughts. Only Ten can do that with me, and I’ve blocked that—shielded against him.
“He spoke to you.”
As I lift my head, the Usher is before me, an eerie smile cracking the skin at his cheeks and distorting his face further.
The light has gone. The heat has gone. But there’s a dark ring, charred and burnt, around where I still crouch on the ground.
I don’t answer him.
“Is this what you did to Fenix?”
“No. Fenix underwent his under a full lunar eclipse. She was not present, and so Novandia could bestow his gifts in abundance.”
“So, what was this?”
I can’t imagine what that might have been like if this weren’t in abundance.
“Just a boost. A partial eclipse. We cannot wait forever, but you will have received an extra charge, a fraction of the magic you may need, perhaps. You are strong, despite your own will to the contrary. You have a great gift from Aslendrix, if only you were to hone it.”
