That night, I dream only of Nox Laederic.
I see him die a thousand times over, flames swarming his skin like flies, as my hand reaches out toward the embers only to be met by ash and darkness.
I can’t sleep without seeing it, which means I barely sleep at all.
That boy is going to get me killed.
I know it the same way I know the sky is blue and the sea is black, and the bargain is absolute. Once the hair is traded, our magic imprints itself and it’s only a matter of time before death comes.
Those are the rules of my great-great-grandmother’s spell.
By the time morning arrives, I’ve already been awake for hours, the thought of dreaming again far too horrible to try.
I dip my paintbrush into the water and glance at my hand, like there might be answers hidden inside the king’s mark that is now etched into my skin.
There aren’t.
Angrily, I smudge a line of black across my canvas.
Usually, painting heals my mind. Without my gloves, I feel weightless, and some days I can paint for hours—new worlds and new faces—and forget I ever have to wear them again.
This time it isn’t helping.
Damn that soldier to the River of Memory and back.
“That’s … pretty,” Irenya says, staring at my painting with a look that implies the opposite.
I shove my hand back into my pocket, so she doesn’t catch sight of the mark.
“What is it?” she asks.
I shrug.
I’ve tried to re-create the room from my vision, to narrow down where I’m supposed to die in two days’ time, but everything is still a blur.
I have the red floors and the half-painted white walls, but the rest is hazy, so I’ve coated it in a layer of orange embers. They sprinkle from the gaping ceiling, like rain from the stars, and pool across the floor in a lake of fire.
My bracelet sits on a table in the center, melting.
“What’s the huge black line across the middle?” Irenya asks.
“Therapy,” I say.
And then I drag another across it in a large X.
“We should burn it,” Irenya says. “Before anyone sees.”
I stare at the melting bracelet, remembering how it felt to have those flames eat away at my skin.
“Throw it in,” I agree, gesturing to the fireplace.
We always burn my paintings.
If the king ever saw them, he’d take away my brushes for good.
When I was eleven, I once painted a girl trapped inside a tower, with hair so long that it stretched out the window, as she looked down at flowers she’d never get to pick.
Her hair wasn’t green and her eyes weren’t awful, but she had all my wishes in her smile. Ideas of traveling the world, before I knew better.
My mother saw the painting just as I finished the final stroke and she held it up to the light, sighing as the sun sprinkled through the window and lit up the untouched flowers.
When she placed it back down on the easel, her eyes glistened. She looked like my mother again. Like the woman who braided my hair during lullabies and told me stories of our old goddess.
For just a stolen moment, I didn’t feel second to our family’s blood oath to the king. And when Theola reached down to cup my cheek, it didn’t feel cold.
It felt like a mother’s touch, which was something she hadn’t given me in years.
“Oh, Selestra,” she said.
Then the king stepped into the room and Theola tore her hand from my face, told me to practice more, and threw the canvas into the fire before he had the chance to look.
Since that day, I’m only supposed to paint for the king, but the idea of drawing nothing but clouds littered with diamonds is torture, so Irenya does it instead.
She paints what the king likes and I paint what I want. When we’re done, we hand Irenya’s painting to the king as if it’s mine.
Then burn mine to cinders.
I like it that way.
Throw any frustrations I have onto a canvas, see them alive and in color, then watch them melt away.
I want to see this one go up in flames more than any of the others.
“Ready?” Irenya asks.
“Burn it,” I say.
She throws it into the fireplace and the flames roar in response.
I watch as they grow higher, brighter, until the last vestiges of my painting turn to ash. Fire meeting fire; my predicted death erased before my eyes.
It settles my heart a little. Not much, but it’s something.
The king always says that when a person dies outside of the bargain, their soul is ferried to the River of Memory, so it can flow in an endless slumber.
People become imprints, existing only as a record of all that has been. So for them, selling their souls at the Festival doesn’t seem like a bad thing, when after death they’ll just be asleep anyway.
But I’ve never believed it.
I still remember the stories my mother used to tell me of the goddess our family is descended from. Asclepina, imbued with the powers of death and immortality by ancient snakes, so she could see through death’s eyes and heal her people.
My mother whispered her tales to me as a child whenever the king wasn’t around. She’d tell me how Asclepina could ferry us to a true afterlife, where we would live eternal beside her. How before they were wiped out, each of the old witch families had a patron goddess who would do the same.
They’re things my mother hasn’t spoken of in years, but I’ve never forgotten. The stories circle within me.
If the king eats my soul, it’s not just that I’ll die. It’s that I’ll never get to meet our goddess or any of the witches from my bloodline.
I’ll be damned.
“Come on,” Irenya says to me. A look of knowing spreads across her round cheeks. “If therapy is what you need, I know just the place.”
For a few seconds, I can’t breathe.
I fall to the floor with a grunt as the air is knocked straight out of my lungs. It feels like I’m suffocating.
I look down to my ivory tunic with a sigh.
Irenya’s boot print is in the center.
I wipe at the spot with a gloved hand and push myself back to my feet.
“You’re distracted,” Irenya says with a frown. “Not once have I been able to get the drop on you before.”
She’s right. Two years of sparring and never has she bested me.
I was taught well.
“Perhaps that’s why I allowed it to happen,” I tease. “I feel bad for bruising you up so often.”
Irenya pushes the short blond hair from her eyes, so I have a good view when she rolls them at me.
“We don’t have to spar,” she says. “We can always go back to painting, or do some cooking lessons.”
“No,” I say quickly.
Irenya snorts. “You shouldn’t be so dismissive. Punching people in the face is fun, but being able to make good pie is better.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You’ve never taught me to make pie.”
“And you’ve never taught me how to do one of those backflip things Asden liked to do,” she says.
I bristle at the mention of my old mentor.
Asden was a Last Army soldier and trainer for palace guards. He was also the one person in the castle aside from Irenya who didn’t treat me like a witch or a prisoner, despite the fact that he never spoke to me.
With the exception of Irenya and a handful of people at court, few have the privilege of interacting with the heir. They’re also not supposed to touch me, but Asden liked to choose which rules to break and which not to.
He broke the rules when he caught me sneaking down to the gardens when I was eleven—hands full of chocolate stolen from the kitchens—and chose not to tell the king, returning to his patrol with a smirk.
He broke the rules again the very next night when I waited for him by that same spot and asked how good he really was at fighting. And if he could make me better.
For three years, Asden trained me right under the king’s nose, allowing me to sneak out of my tower to find him.
And he never said a word to me.
When I gave a command, Asden nodded. When I sassed him, he swiped my legs out from under me and raised his eyebrows, like I should have seen it coming.
But never once did he speak.
I tried all manner of gibes and insults to get him to break, but it didn’t matter how incredibly witty I was. Asden was a stubborn old git.
Once, Irenya even offered to sneak him three slices of rum cake if he said hello, instead of just waving me into the room. The gesture he gave her after that was far less pleasant than a wave.
Still, we didn’t need words, because Asden taught me the most important lessons of all: How to be strong. How to survive.
Until the king killed him.
Irenya must notice how I stiffen, because her eyes widen.
“Oh, Selestra,” she says. “I’m sorry, I—”
“It’s fine,” I say, shrugging it off. “I’m fine.”
It’s the biggest lie I’ve ever told.
I position my gloved hands into fists and adjust my stance, ready to train away all of my anger and frustrations.
I’m covered completely, with my gloves tucked under the wrists of my long sleeves, and my tunic stretching right up to the edge of my jaw. There’s not an inch of skin on show, aside from my face. I’m sweating underneath it all, but I don’t have a choice.
I can’t risk touching Irenya.
The last thing I need is another vision.
She’s covered too, with gloves on her hands so she can punch me without having to worry.
Such a nice gesture.
“I’m ready to go again,” I say.
Irenya gestures to the swords at the foot of the room, where an entire wall glitters with metal of all shapes and sizes—longswords, broadswords, rapiers. Each marked by King Seryth’s crest.
The same mark that’s hidden beneath my gloves, thanks to Nox Laederic.
“Shall we try fencing?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I should practice how to defend myself if I don’t have a weapon.”
Or if I’m trapped in some fiery building with Nox Laederic, I think.
I sigh as I let the thoughts of Nox and our impending doom slip back into my mind. This training session is meant to be a distraction.
For someone who deals in death and souls, I’ve never had to worry about mine. In all the stories of my ancestors, tales of blood and magic, never once has a witch been marked by the bargain.
We’re different from everyone else. My family created the magic, so how is it I’ve fallen victim to it?
Nox Laederic has cursed me.
I squeeze my hands into fists.
When he looked me in the eyes without flinching, his scar pressed under my fingertips, it threw me. I was so desperate for it—for magic and touch—that I couldn’t think straight.
I let myself be distracted and maybe that made something in the magic go wrong, drawing me in.
I won’t make that mistake again.
I won’t be caught off guard by him.
Irenya raises her arms into fists and nods for me to do the same.
I’m more than willing to oblige. We pace in circles, daring each other to take the next jab, like it’s a game.
Irenya was right: This is far better therapy than painting.
She swings first, but I twist out of the way and ram a quick punch into her gut.
Irenya lets out a groan and I smile, thinking how Asden would be pleased by my footwork.
For a moment I let that arrogance get the better of me, then Irenya shoves her elbow into the air, just as I taught her to, and I can’t move out of the way fast enough.
I stumble backward from the pain.
It feels like my eye might just fall out of the socket.
I do my best to ignore it as she kicks her leg up, aiming for my stomach. I see it coming and grab her ankle, twisting hard.
Irenya spins through the air like a knife, her body whirling twice over before she lands with a thump back onto the floor.
She blinks up at me.
“If I said ouch, could we go back to painting?” she says wryly.
I snort and hold out a hand for her, but Irenya swipes my legs out from under me and I crash to the floor beside her.
“Damn,” I curse loudly, and collapse back onto the ground, giving in to my heaving breath.
“See,” she says, panting. “You’re distracted.”
I would nudge her in the ribs, but I’m not sure I have the energy to move from this spot.
The cold of the floor against my back is a welcome relief.
“How is your eye?” Irenya asks.
I reach out to touch it, and my fingertips barely graze the skin before pain shoots across my face.
“You’re the worst,” I say with a grimace. “It’ll take me over an hour to heal.”
Irenya shrugs by way of apology. “Oops?”
Luckily, bruises and cuts are easy to heal. A lick of magic here, a small siphon of power there, and they fade to memories. It barely requires any concentration anymore, and all I need is a good night’s sleep to regain my energy after.
Bones aren’t so easy.
I found that out the hard way when I left my first training session with Asden with a broken finger that took a whole week to fix.
I had to slip on my gloves each day, hiding the bruise and pretending nothing was wrong when the king asked me to pour his wine. Then at night, I’d focus my power and try to snap the bone back into place. The nosebleeds lasted well after I tried to go to sleep.
I suppose it was my magic’s way of telling me to be patient and that it wasn’t strong enough. But I’ve never been one for patience, and the pain of healing an injury got better with practice.
Besides, it’s worth it.
If the king or Theola sees my injuries and finds out I’ve been training—that I was taught by one of their own soldiers and that I’ve carried on those lessons to this day with the apprentice dressmaker—their fury would tear apart the castle.
I know I risk myself and Irenya every time I go behind the king’s back like this, but I can’t help it. It’s selfish and stupid, but this castle is lonely enough without having to actually be alone in it.
“You should really have breakfast before your first black eye,” Irenya says.
I shake my head. “I’m not hungry.”
“But I’m starving, and eating without you would be rude.”
I laugh, but I can’t stomach the thought of food. All I want is to keep distracting myself from having to think about Nox.
“Since when are you worried about being rude?” I ask. “Go wild. Eat my plate too, if you like.”
Irenya snorts, standing to pull me to my feet. “Why did the heir starve? they’ll ask me. Because I ate all her dinners.”
“I’m sure my mother won’t be too distraught,” I say. “She’ll just spend some extra time in another soldier’s bed to produce a new heir to the Somniatis magic.”
“Souls, Selestra.” A smile teeters on Irenya’s lips. “You’re going to have to learn to hold your tongue when you’re the witch.”
“When,” I repeat thoughtfully.
Now it seems more like if.
What if Nox dies in that fire and it kills me too? What if I don’t even need to be in the room with him when it happens?
Whatever cursed mistake placed the king’s mark on my hand when I saw into Nox’s future is unpredictable. I can’t trust that hiding in my tower and staying away from him will keep me safe.
Whether I like it or not, the magic has bound us together.
Unless I do something, in two days’ time we’ll both die.
Irenya narrows her eyes a little. “Something’s bothering you,” she says. “I can’t cheer you up if you don’t tell me, and there’s only so much I can try to beat out of you with my limited defense skills.”
“It’s nothing,” I say.
“Liar.”
Irenya looks at me with the face of a friend who knows me all too well. The face of my only friend.
She’s worked in the castle as an apprentice to the dressmaker for years, but back when her mother used to work in the kitchens, she always saved me the slice of cake Theola would never let me have at the end-of-week dinner. We’d split it and stay up all night together eating and laughing.
Irenya would tell me all about the edge of the island where she grew up with her sailor father, and I’d describe the hairpin I used to pick the lock to my room and sneak out into the gardens at night.
I’d never had a friend before, or anyone to talk to my age. One taste of it and I was hooked.
When Asden died, Irenya was the one who told me I had to continue training to honor him. She offered to help me spar whenever I needed.
I wish I could tell her what was going on, but it’s too much of a burden to keep the secret of my vision and I can’t risk the king finding out.
He’d lock me up in my tower until I’m ready to become the witch and never even let me attend banquets for my own safety. He’d make me more of a prisoner than I already am, and I still want to hold on to the few freedoms I’ve stolen for myself.
If I want to survive this week, this month, then I need to do it alone.
I’m the heir to the Somniatis magic, after all.
If anyone can cheat death, it’s me.
“One more round,” I announce to Irenya. “Then we eat.”
I walk over to the wall of swords.
It’s summer out and the sun peeks through the ornate glass windows, casting ripples onto the metal, bathing them in color. The weapons are all expertly crafted, some featherlight and others weighty and dense.
Each is as deadly as the next.
I lift my hand and stroke an ear dagger.
It’s a small golden thing with a long black tip, stamped by a jewel above the king’s crest, but what I really like is the forked pommel.
It leaves the perfect space for my thumb to grip.
With a quick glance to make sure Irenya isn’t looking, I pluck the dagger from the hook and slip it under the waistband of my tunic.
Quickly, I grab two flammard swords from the wall to hide the action and turn to face Irenya.
“Get ready,” I say. “I’m going to knock you on your backside.”
I throw a flammard across the room in a high arc, and Irenya grabs it out of the air.
“Bring it on,” she says.
I smile a wicked smile.
The king may think he’s keeping me safe by having me locked away, but he’s only made sure I know every inch of my prison well and exactly how to protect myself in it.
For years I’ve snuck out of my tower and into the grounds, sitting beside the waterfall, hidden by the shadow of the grass, and breathing in the night. I’ve stared at the sky and held my thumb up to the moon, marveling at how small it seems from so close up.
But now I need to go farther. I feel the ear dagger pressed against my back.
If I want to survive this month, I have to make sure Nox Laederic survives too.
In two days’ time, I’m going to save his life.