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Cassia closed her free hand around the glyph stone. Its pulse reassured her the rhythm of the world had not changed. She worked the stone in her hand, and its broken edge drew blood.
Her other shackle slid off.
“You’re almost there.” Queen Soteira helped her sit up.
Cassia looked at the straps that bound her legs. Six thick leather bands with iron buckles secured her to the bedstead. As if a scrawny thing like her was dangerous and strong enough to require such precautions.
Well, if someone had bound her like this, that must mean she was dangerous. And strong.
“I knew that already, didn’t I?” Cassia said.
She reached over and picked up her spade. She set the sharp edge to one of the straps and began to saw away at it.
The sunlight in the room faded. Gentle darkness wrapped around her, touched with the light that emanated from Queen Alea. A chill evening breeze breathed in through the window, and Cassia caught Lio’s scent.
Cassia worried at the strap until her hands and arms were sore. She would not stop for anything. She had worked when she was tired before, and she had won. As her cut in the strap widened, the other five began to crease and crack. The buckles began to rust.
“You are no match for me!” Cassia cried.
The buckles crumbled, and the straps broke apart.
MEDITATION GLASS
Lio had to strainto hear her heartbeat.
A glass door was all that separated him from her. He could shatter it with a thought. Every political victory for which they had risked their lives demanded he keep his distance. He could destroy all of that with a single act.
The glass door hummed in warning.
His father’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “Wait. Trust the Annassa.”
Only the flow of the Queens’ magic, concentrated on Cassia’s still form, warded off Lio’s despair. He watched Perita and the Kyrians hover over his Grace. The vultures of Chera waited on the edge of the room.
“If this is to be Cassia’s Gifting, Father, I—”
“If it is not, you will still need secrecy.”
“Politics don’t matter if she is—”
Cassia’s door and windows and every pane in the glass roof of the courtyard began to whine.
“I don’t want to have to cast stone feet on my own son,” Father warned.
Lio gritted his teeth and flattened his hands upon the fragile door. The glass stilled under his touch.
His father drew him away from the door and sat him down on a bench. “If she needs you, Annassa Soteira will tell you.”
Lio held his power latent and prayed.
Father took a seat beside him. “When we realized glassmaking brings out a slight affinity between you and minerals, you told me you wanted to pursue that craft because you were happy to discover at least one small way you took after me.”
“That’s true.”
“But you also chose to work with something fragile to prove to yourself you would not break it.”
“I knew that if I could cast powerful spells without breaking glass, I was truly in control of my magic.”
The windowpanes rattled.
