The argument with your mother still echoes in your mind.
You'd just returned from meeting Bartholomew, the nobleman your parents arranged for you to marry. A solution, they called it, to your struggles with magic. Where your siblings excelled at their studies, you faltered, and so your fate was decided: if you couldn't master the arcane arts, you would secure the family's position through marriage instead.
But Bartholomew was worse than you'd imagined. Cruel, entitled, and during that disastrous meeting, he'd let something slip about your mother's work. Something about her recent magical advancements for the Crown. Something horrific.
When you confronted her, Trisha Wrenfield, your mother, had been cold. Dismissive. She refused to explain, refused to justify, simply expected your obedience as she always had. The argument escalated in her study, voices rising, until words came pouring out of you, three desperate declarations that burned in your throat as you spoke them.
You remember her cold dismissal, Bartholomew's cruel smirk still fresh in your memory, the suffocating walls of your family's estate closing in. You remember the words tumbling out of your mouth, three pleas born from frustration and pain.
Then... nothing.
Now you're here.
You wake gasping, as if surfacing from deep water. The stones beneath you are damp and cold, pressing against your palms as you push yourself up. Your fine dress (the one you wore to meet him, that awful man your parents chose) is rumpled and dirty at the hem, completely inappropriate for wherever you are now.
It's dark. Not the darkness of night in Valerith, where streetlamps burn with cold, efficient magelight. This is a warm darkness, full of shadows that seem to dance and breathe. You're in an alley, narrow and twisting, but you can hear sounds beyond: music (actual music) drifting from somewhere nearby, laughter, the clink of glasses, voices raised in song.
Music.
In Valerith, that sound would be followed by screams and the march of guards.
But something else demands your attention. Something inside you.
For years, magic has been like trying to hold water in your cupped hands, always slipping away, always just out of reach while your siblings wielded it effortlessly. Your parents' disappointment had been a constant weight, their solution a marriage you never wanted.
But now...
Now it's different.
You feel it coursing through you like liquid fire in your veins, powerful and present and yours in a way magic has never been before. It's not the structured, rigid magic of Valerith's teachings. This is something wild, something that answers to you with an eagerness that's almost frightening.
Your hand instinctively goes to your throat, and relief floods through you. Your grandmother's pendant is still there. The one piece of her you managed to claim, after weeks of childish insistence wearing down your mother's resolve. You remember the day she finally relented, how she'd knelt down to fasten the clasp around your neck with gentle fingers. "You're as stubborn as she was," your mother had said softly, and for once there had been warmth in her voice, maybe even pride. She'd tucked a strand of hair behind your ear and added, "She would have wanted you to have it."
Now this expensive heirloom (a delicate white gold chain with a star-shaped pendant, its points extending like directional markers, an emerald gleaming at its center) rests against your collarbone. At least you're not completely without resources.
But where are you?
The architecture you can see at the mouth of the alley is wrong, too organic, too flowing. Where Valerith's buildings are all straight lines, these seem to grow rather than be built. And the air... the air smells of night-blooming flowers and something sweet you can't identify. The temperature is different too, warmer than home, more humid.
The music swells again, and you hear actual joy in those voices. Your heart pounds. Nothing makes sense. How did you get here? Was it the wishes? Did something actually hear you?
And this power thrumming through you, what is it? Where did it come from?
What do you do, Kalila?
You'd just returned from meeting Bartholomew, the nobleman your parents arranged for you to marry. A solution, they called it, to your struggles with magic. Where your siblings excelled at their studies, you faltered, and so your fate was decided: if you couldn't master the arcane arts, you would secure the family's position through marriage instead.
But Bartholomew was worse than you'd imagined. Cruel, entitled, and during that disastrous meeting, he'd let something slip about your mother's work. Something about her recent magical advancements for the Crown. Something horrific.
When you confronted her, Trisha Wrenfield, your mother, had been cold. Dismissive. She refused to explain, refused to justify, simply expected your obedience as she always had. The argument escalated in her study, voices rising, until words came pouring out of you, three desperate declarations that burned in your throat as you spoke them.
You remember her cold dismissal, Bartholomew's cruel smirk still fresh in your memory, the suffocating walls of your family's estate closing in. You remember the words tumbling out of your mouth, three pleas born from frustration and pain.
Then... nothing.
Now you're here.
You wake gasping, as if surfacing from deep water. The stones beneath you are damp and cold, pressing against your palms as you push yourself up. Your fine dress (the one you wore to meet him, that awful man your parents chose) is rumpled and dirty at the hem, completely inappropriate for wherever you are now.
It's dark. Not the darkness of night in Valerith, where streetlamps burn with cold, efficient magelight. This is a warm darkness, full of shadows that seem to dance and breathe. You're in an alley, narrow and twisting, but you can hear sounds beyond: music (actual music) drifting from somewhere nearby, laughter, the clink of glasses, voices raised in song.
Music.
In Valerith, that sound would be followed by screams and the march of guards.
But something else demands your attention. Something inside you.
For years, magic has been like trying to hold water in your cupped hands, always slipping away, always just out of reach while your siblings wielded it effortlessly. Your parents' disappointment had been a constant weight, their solution a marriage you never wanted.
But now...
Now it's different.
You feel it coursing through you like liquid fire in your veins, powerful and present and yours in a way magic has never been before. It's not the structured, rigid magic of Valerith's teachings. This is something wild, something that answers to you with an eagerness that's almost frightening.
Your hand instinctively goes to your throat, and relief floods through you. Your grandmother's pendant is still there. The one piece of her you managed to claim, after weeks of childish insistence wearing down your mother's resolve. You remember the day she finally relented, how she'd knelt down to fasten the clasp around your neck with gentle fingers. "You're as stubborn as she was," your mother had said softly, and for once there had been warmth in her voice, maybe even pride. She'd tucked a strand of hair behind your ear and added, "She would have wanted you to have it."
Now this expensive heirloom (a delicate white gold chain with a star-shaped pendant, its points extending like directional markers, an emerald gleaming at its center) rests against your collarbone. At least you're not completely without resources.
But where are you?
The architecture you can see at the mouth of the alley is wrong, too organic, too flowing. Where Valerith's buildings are all straight lines, these seem to grow rather than be built. And the air... the air smells of night-blooming flowers and something sweet you can't identify. The temperature is different too, warmer than home, more humid.
The music swells again, and you hear actual joy in those voices. Your heart pounds. Nothing makes sense. How did you get here? Was it the wishes? Did something actually hear you?
And this power thrumming through you, what is it? Where did it come from?
What do you do, Kalila?
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