Kyne seethed as she walked back to her hut from the Sisters’ council meeting. A darkness spread inside her like night bleeding black across the evening sky. It began in her chest and curled its inky tentacles into her brain, her stomach, her limbs, all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes.
She’d felt this darkness before. As a girl, she’d felt it whenever she overheard one of the fathers gossiping about her in sorrowful tones, whenever she saw one of the other children give her a furtive look of pity, or fascination, or disgust. Anything that reminded her of the way she feared the Vagri saw her—as the girl who had no mother, the girl who’d killed her mother—made the darkness inside her grow.
Kyne couldn’t remember a single moment of her life when she’d been without this darkness. It had been with her ever since the day her mother had died after giving birth to her and her twin brother, Po. Sometimes the darkness grew so large it seemed to be bigger than her entire body; other times it shrank to the size of a small dot just underneath her breastbone—but no matter its size, the darkness was always there.
There was only one thing to do when the darkness got big enough that it took over every part of her: lash out at whoever was unfortunate enough to be nearby. The darkness inside Kyne isolated her; she knew this, but she didn’t care. In the moment, all that mattered was making others hurt the way she hurt. And she proved to be skilled at hurting others with her words, at spotting the one thing that made her target vulnerable: a limp, a scar, a stutter, a family embarrassment. Whatever it was, Kyne would pick at it and pick at it until her victim broke down into tears and the other children looked at Kyne no longer with pity, but with fear—fear that if they weren’t careful, they’d be next.
It felt good, lashing out. But the good feeling never lasted long.
Now, as Kyne ducked to step inside her small hut in the Sisters’ camp, she looked around the close room and felt her rage grow from a simmer to a boil. Kyne usually found her living quarters cozy, but now the smallness of the space was simply a reminder of where she didn’t live: the Vagra’s hut in the center of the village. It was a reminder that the Ancestors hadn’t chosen her.
A roar of fury rose up inside her chest, but she didn’t want to let it loose for fear that one of the other Sisters would hear. Instead, Kyne’s eyes fell on a lamp sitting by her bedside, a lit wick angled out of a clay pot filled with oil. She crossed the room to the lamp in a single step and extinguished the flame between her thumb and forefinger. In the brief moment before the flame was smothered, she felt a small but sharp pain on her fingertips and thought of her humiliation at the council meeting—the Vagra called me a fool, Kyne thought, she said I was afraid, and in front of everyone, all the Sisters. Then, the wick snuffed, she cupped her palm on the side of the clay basin and flung it across the room. It shattered in an explosion of clay shards and splashing oil.
Kyne stood for a moment facing the place where the lamp had struck the wall, her hands curled into fists at her sides. She felt better, a little. But not enough. The darkness was still there, roiling just underneath her skin.
“Kyne?” came a voice behind her.
“What?” Kyne snapped as she whirled around to face the doorway.
It was Thruss and Rehal, Kiva’s friends. Kyne had played with all three of them when they were girls, but they’d never been her friends. Kiva, Thruss, and Rehal had never wanted to play with Kyne—she knew this. But they had tolerated Kyne’s presence because they were afraid of her.
There was fear in their eyes now, too, but Kyne sensed it wasn’t her they were afraid of this time. At least, not just her.
“Well?” Kyne demanded. “Go on, don’t just stand there. What is it?”
“We’re sorry, Sister,” Thruss said.
Kyne’s anger began to dissolve. It pleased her to hear Thruss address her with respect, as “Sister” rather than “Kyne.” She felt a smile creep to her lips, but she quickly suppressed it. Let Thruss and Rehal squirm a while longer.
“We wanted to ask you about what happened at the council meeting. We didn’t understand everything that was said.”
Kyne sniffed. Why had Thruss and Rehal come to Kyne with their questions rather than to Kiva? Maybe now they were more afraid of Kiva than they’d ever been of Kyne.
“Sit,” Kyne said, nodding toward two wooden footstools. Thruss and Rehal sat, but Kyne kept her feet, towering over the other two girls. “What is it you want to know?”
Rehal cleared her throat.
“The Strangers,” she said. “You and the Vagra kept talking about someone called the Strangers.”
Kiva nodded. “The Strangers are … creatures, beings—no one knows—that Kiva saw in her first vision. The one she had four seasons ago, the one that put her next in line to be Vagra after the old woman is dead. Kiva told us about the vision at the first council meeting she attended, just like you had to tell us about your visitation from the Ancestors.”
“But why doesn’t anyone in the village know about this?” Rehal asked. “The men, the children? Why wasn’t anyone told?”
“The Sisters often talk about things that they don’t share with the men and children,” Kyne said. “You’ll have to get used to it. The things we discuss in council—you can’t tell your father, your brothers. Not even your mate, if the day ever comes when you decide to take one.”
“These Strangers,” Thruss said, leaning forward. “Kiva knows they’re coming, but she doesn’t know why, or whether they’re a threat. But you think they are. And that’s why you want to go to the Forsaken.”
“Yes,” Kyne said. “But the Vagra doesn’t approve. As you saw.”
“But you’re right, aren’t you?” Thruss said. “Kiva and the Vagra, they don’t have a better plan, do they?”
“Thruss, don’t,” Rehal said, her voice soft but pleading. “Kiva’s our friend. If she thinks that there’s a better way—”
“But we don’t know what she thinks,” Thruss said. “She didn’t even talk during the meeting. And she’s not our friend anymore. We’ve barely seen her since she was named to be Vagra.”
Kyne watched Rehal and Thruss with a growing sense of amazement, not quite believing what she was hearing. If Kiva’s own friends doubted her, what must the rest of the Sisters think? When the girls turned their gazes back to Kyne, she felt dizzy.
The girls’ faces tugged at something in Kyne—something deep in her mind, something she’d buried there long ago, on the day she’d first come to the Sisters’ camp. She’d been young when she’d first heard the voice of the Ancestors: eleven seasons, the youngest girl to ever receive a vision from the beings who watched over and guided the Vagri. As she’d marched to the Vagra’s hut to undergo the blood ritual, she’d felt the Sisters’ eyes on her and heard in her mind the whisper of their thoughts.
Look at her.
So young.
The Ancestors must have a plan for her.
Perhaps she’ll be our next Vagra.
In that moment, Kyne had felt something grow from nothing inside her, larger and more insistent than the darkness had ever been: ambition, the dream of being the leader of the village, of seeing the faces of the Vagri looking toward her not with pity or fear—but with admiration, expectation, and deference. The way people look at a leader.
The way Thruss and Rehal were looking at her now.
Kyne had buried her ambition deep inside her on the day that Kiva, not Kyne, had been named the next Vagra—but now Kyne felt it growing again, coming to the surface. With effort, she pushed it back down, put the thought behind the barrier she’d built for herself in her mind.
Not here. Not where Kiva could hear her thoughts.
“Maybe … maybe Kiva needs our help,” Thruss said. “Maybe she wants to go to the Forsaken but she can’t because she’s scared of them, or scared of the Vagra. Maybe we need to—”
“Stop,” Kyne said. “The first thing you need to do is stop talking, right now. Don’t even think what you were about to say, not here. It’s not safe. Kiva could be listening.”
Thruss’s eyes widened; Rehal’s too.
“She can hear everything we’re thinking?” Rehal asked.
“Not everything,” Kyne said. “All at once, the voices of the men, children, and the Sisters are too much for her—Kiva can only understand our thoughts by letting in one voice at a time. Still, she could be listening to any one of us. You have to learn how to guard your thoughts, Sisters.”
“But then how—,” Thruss began. Kyne cut her off by lifting her flattened palm into the air.
“Not here,” she said. “I can teach you. Until then we can’t talk about this unless we’re outside the village, safely away from the reach of Kiva’s powers.”
Thruss nodded. Rehal looked nervous, hesitant about what was happening, but she didn’t protest.
“And what about the Forsaken?” Thruss asked.
Kyne turned away. She didn’t agree with the Vagra’s hesitance to go to the Forsaken for protection against the Strangers, but the old woman had been right about one thing: making contact with the Forsaken would be no simple task. What Kyne needed was a man, someone who could be sent to live with the Forsaken as one of them but who would also be loyal to her and report back on what the Forsaken wanted, how they could be controlled.
Or not a man—a boy, maybe, someone unattached, with no hut or mate or children of his own.
Kyne smiled to herself.
“You leave the Forsaken to me. I have a plan.”