Did you break the sky and ask it to agree?

  drown the sea and plead it guilty?

  Did you salt the land and lick,

  hoping it would bloom and stick?

  You didn’t. Because I exist,

  and I turned it all to nothing and ash.

  —Berdorf, E. Poems of a Wingless Princess. Unpublished manuscript, Summer.

  How many days had passed since they tossed her behind bars?

  Eura sat on the cold floor of her cell, her back pressed against the wall. She did not look up. She did not look around. The space beyond the patch of ground in front of her felt unreal, as if acknowledging it would wake her from her own personal nightmare.

  Her food lay where it had been left, untouched.

  Part of her was still waiting for something. Not for mercy, but for someone to come and tell her when her trial would be. Or, better yet, the day of her execution. Why waste time, when it was obvious she was guilty of all charges?

  She imagined it clearly: the square, the crowd, the sentence spoken aloud so everyone could hear what she was, what she had done. Public. Final. Deserved.

  Breathing felt like stealing. Another crime.

  She sat there and counted all her wrongs. Over and over again. Every promise she had made to be a good Dame. Every foolish dream of fixing the Map, of helping, of mending. All of it reduced to ash, layered one over the other with the names of the creatures that had burned under her magic.

  Her father had ripped her wings from her back. He should have taken more. He should have torn the Saat out of her as well.

  Eura did not hear the steps approaching her cell. Or if she did, she didn’t care enough to lift her head.

  “Sunbeam?”

  She flinched at the sound of his voice.

  “Jaer?”

  She looked up then.

  He stood just outside the cell, close enough that the lamps caught his face. There was something wrong with his expression. Sadness weighed on it, the kind that comes after a decision has already been made. A grief she had not seen there before.

  It felt like something inside her had already broken.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  Eura did not answer. Instead, she folded in on herself, drawing her arms closer, as if she could shrink away from his pity.

  “I came to… I spoke with your father and—” He stopped. The words seemed to resist him. “There will be no trial.”

  She blinked, but she was not surprised. “No trial is needed.” Her voice came out flat, already decided. “There’s nothing to dispute. I’m guilty.”

  She pushed herself to her feet and crossed the short distance to the bars. Her fingers wrapped around the cold iron.

  “When will the execution be?”

  Jaer stared at her, startled. “There will be none,” he said. “Why would you think that?”

  She did not answer. She only stood there, hands gripping the bars, as if waiting for the rest of the sentence she believed he was too ashamed to say.

  “I killed,” Eura said. “I stole too many lives. The punishment is execution by disembowelment. So there is nothing left of me. It’s barely a fair trade.”

  “You will not be killed,” Jaer said carefully, as if the words themselves were afraid. “Even if that were the Elven King’s wish, he couldn’t. No one would want that.”

  “Sentimentality will not protect the Map. It will not protect anyone.” Her fingers tightened around the bars. “I cannot be allowed to live. It’s the law. It is what needs to be done!”

  Faint golden veins pulsed beneath her knuckles.

  Jaer stepped closer. He slid his hands over hers, pressing his forehead against the iron between them, as near as the bars would allow.

  “You are the Master of the Sun,” he said quietly. “If you die, the world falls back into the Long Night. You have to live. You have no other option if you want to make the world better. You always said you wanted to be a good Dame. To do good.”

  “So that is my sentence?” she asked. “To live with what I’ve done, without paying for it?”

  “Eura—”

  “It’s too dangerous to leave me in a cell. Look around! What if it happens again? These stones and steel are not enough to stop me. I don’t believe there is anything that can stop me.”

  The light beneath her skin brightened, just a fraction.

  Jaer’s grip tightened, grounding her fingers in place. He didn’t know what to say.

  “We could ask Lolth to trap me in the Shadow World,” Eura went on, too fast now. “I wouldn’t hurt anyone there. It would be impossible. And—”

  “You will go to Whitestone.”

  The words stopped her.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your father—” Jaer corrected himself. “The Elven King believes it is… more fitting,” he said. “They have accommodations there. A place. A room, I mean. It’s meant for someone like you. To learn control, but—”

  Eura let out a short, humourless breath. “So I’m being rewarded?”

  Jaer lifted his head at last. He finally met her eyes. The sadness there was deep and settled, as if the decision had been made long before either of them stood in this cell.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Sunbeam,” he said, “it’s a jail. No one was meant to last in it. It’s—”

  That, finally, made sense to her. “It sounds fitting,” she said. "Good."

  A small smile touched her mouth. There was comfort in it. Acceptance.

  “We’ll leave in a few days,” Jaer said. “They’re preparing your transport.”

  “Transport?”

  He hesitated.

  “A coffin.”

  “They told me you haven’t eaten.”

  Lolth stopped at the cell bars. Eura was curled into herself in the far corner of the cell, knees pulled tight to her chest. Her hair hung loose and tangled, unbrushed for days. She wore only trousers and a thin blouse, the fabric clinging to her skin, stained with dirt she no longer seemed aware of.

  Lolth slid the platter through the narrow opening.

  “Please,” she said. “Eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You need to eat!”

  “I’m not hungry!” Eura snapped.

  A thin line of gold flared briefly beneath the princess’s cheekbone, then faded. She pressed her hand to her face.

  “I can’t…”

  Lolth lowered herself slowly, sitting on the ground outside the bars. Then she knelt, bringing herself level with Eura’s line of sight, though Eura didn’t look at her.

  “It wasn’t your fault. You know that.”

  “I killed—”

  “No,” Lolth said. “You didn’t.”

  Eura shook her head. “People died!”

  “What happened was not your choice,” Lolth said. “It wasn’t intended. It wasn’t cruelty. It was a freak accident.”

  Eura laughed once, hollow.

  “That doesn’t change anything. Still, I killed.”

  She lifted her head then, just enough to look at Lolth, her eyes glassy, watery.

  “I shouldn’t exist,” Eura said. “Nobody really wanted me, did they? I’m just a mistake everyone keeps trying to correct, to fix, to shape into something that isn’t me. I’m… I shouldn’t be here. I should have been thrown away like my wings.”

  Rain struck the stone and dirt outside. The sound filled the space between them.

  “That isn’t true,” Lolth said. “I want you. Jaer wants—”

  Eura cut her off.

  “Jaer hates me.” Her voice almost cracked. “I’ve never seen anyone look at me the way he did. So disappointed. So sad. So…”

  “Jaer?” Lolth said softly. “Sunbeam, that man loves you more than anything. Seeing you like this is breaking him apart. We are trying to find a way so you can—”

  “Don’t.” Eura’s voice rose. “Don’t try to soften it. I deserve whatever comes next. And probably more.”

  “You were wanted, Sunbeam,” Lolth said. “You were loved before you were even born.”

  Eura lifted her head slowly. “Who,” she asked, “would want someone like me?”

  Lolth didn’t answer right away, but the answer slipped her tongue.

  “Your mother.”

  "I killed her, didn’t I?” It wasn’t a question.

  “It’s true,” Lolth said. “She died. But there was never a question.” She continued. “Not even for a moment. She would have given her life for her child. She loved you that much.”

  Lolth lifted a hand and pressed it briefly to her face, as if brushing something away. She did not look at Eura.

  “She was proud when she was pregnant,” she went on. “She thought she looked beautiful. Glowing. She used to laugh about it in secret. Looking at her belly growing.”

  “Who was she?” Eura asked. “Who was my mother?”

  “Her name was Zora Dargustea,” Lolth answered.

  The name came surprisingly easily. This was not a conversation she had expected to have this soon.

  “She grew up in Ostesh. She wanted to be a dancer.”

  Lolth smiled, the way one does when remembering someone long gone. As if she were speaking of a life that belonged to another time. Another person. As if it hadn’t been hers, sixteen summers ago.

  “Zora,” Eura repeated. “It’s a beautiful name. It means dawn.”

  “It does.”

  Eura hesitated, then asked, “And my father?”

  Lolth’s expression didn’t change.

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “I do,” Lolth said. “He was a teacher. A good one.”

  Her gaze drifted as she spoke.

  “He taught Zora for a time, though she skipped more classes than she attended. But he was a stubborn man. If she didn’t go to his classes, then classes would go to her.”

  Lolth let out a quiet laugh. “He was so stubborn. And so brilliant. Far more than he ever admitted. Brave, and stupid, in a way that didn’t look like bravery at first. Just recklessness. Your father never turned away from a challenge. Not one that I know of.”

  She paused, then added, softer, “They fell in love.”

  “A dancer and a teacher?”

  “Yes,” Lolth smirked. “She was hopelessly in love with him. He made her feel alive. Free. Like the world was wider than it had been the day before. She could feel things like never before. Taste, smell, touch. He was the gatekeeper of a whole new world for her.” The smile faded. “You weren’t planned. That part is true. They didn’t expect you. Not that early. But they were happy. Really happy. Your father was—”

  Lolth searched for the word, then shook her head. “He was overwhelmed. In the best way. It was funny to see him like that.”

  “Then what happened?” Eura asked. “Why didn’t he come for me? Why did he let them take my wings? Where was he?”

  Lolth didn’t answer right away. “Your father doesn’t know you exist.”

  Eura froze. “But you said he wanted me.”

  Lolth closed her eyes. “Zora had to lie,” she said. “She believed it was the only way to protect you. And him.”

  “From who?”

  For the first time since entering the dungeons, regret crossed Lolth’s face.

  “From people who didn’t see you as a baby,” she said carefully, “not as a child. But as something that fits too well into their plans. Their politics. I’m not sure which word fits best.”

  “I don’t understand,” Eura said. “What fit? I’m not an elf.”

  “Your mother is—” Lolth stopped herself. “Was. She was an elf.”

  The word sat wrong in her mouth.

  “But even before you were born,” she continued, slower now, choosing each word, “you had a will of your own. You chose. You decided to look like your father.”

  “He is a Menschen?”

  Lolth nodded. “With beautiful, beautiful wings.”

  “If you knew who he was… why didn’t you tell him the truth?”

  Lolth looked away. She had already said too much. “He…” She exhaled. “He’s a Sternach. He lives in hiding. He changes his name. Often. That was part of why Zora lied. Why she told him you no longer existed.”

  “An— Sternach?” Eura’s hands flew to the bars, gripping them too tightly. “My father is Yeso Sternach?”

  “No.” Lolth turned back to her at once. “Sunbeam, Yeso died before the Winter began.”

  “But you said my father was a Sternach. He was the last Sternach, wasn’t he?”

  “You are Yeso’s granddaughter.” Lolth hesitated. Then, very carefully: “Orlo. Orlo Sternach is Yeso’s son.”

  The name settled in the space between them.

  Lolth knew, the moment it left her mouth, that it could not be taken back. She had spoken it too soon. Too close.

  Eura was her father’s daughter. Curious. Stubborn. Once she found a thread, she followed it wherever it led.

  Because the apple does not fall far from the tree, as Claramae once said far too many times.

  

  Around the War of Too Many Dragons, my life scattered beyond recovery. Whatever routine I had maintained was annihilated the moment the Magi Order arrived at Regulus in search of an individual named Orlo Sternach. Although my chosen aliases had never failed me, I did not underestimate the Order’s capacity for chasing creatures like me.

  I was convinced, at the time, that I had erased every remaining vestige of my former self. How it resurfaced and by what means remain unknown to me. Well, not now that I am writing this. It turned out to be rather anecdotal. But I digress.

  From that point forward, vigilance became habit. I learned to live on constant alert, cautious, and perpetually prepared to flee. I suspected colleagues. I suspected strangers. At times, I suspected my own students. The irony was not lost on me then, nor is it now.

  What unsettled me most was not ignorance of the charge, but indifference to it. I had no interest in discovering which law I was alleged to have breached, beyond the obvious, which you already know: an Ormsaat in my basement, and a plant that had once been a faerie. Well. Still is.

  I am aware of the question that inevitably follows: what of the Eye That Remembers It All? As I have noted elsewhere, it took decades to learn how to employ it without being drowned by the accumulation of unfiltered memory. Information, when unbounded, is not insight. It is paralysis.

  For many Summers, survival required restraint rather than vision. You must understand that my passivity was not a choice, but an affliction I was unable to overcome for a very long time.

  It is tempting, in hindsight, to attribute my failure solely to circumstance. To argue that paranoia was justified, that caution was wisdom. Yet the longer I write, the less convincing this becomes. Had I not been so consumed by paranoia, my life might indeed have been simpler. Matters might have resolved themselves earlier. It is even possible that I might have intervened before events progressed toward the End of Time.

  This, perhaps, is the most difficult admission to set down: despite an intellect I am assured is well above average, I remain susceptible to the oldest error of scholarship. I mistook the act of hiding for the act of seeing. I was so certain that I was the one being hunted that it never occurred to me to ask whom else I might have failed to notice.

  I wonder if Zora was the one who told her the truth. —The Hexe – Book Three by Professor Edgar O. Duvencrune, First Edition, 555th Summer.