Young Writers Society

The door to the Council chamber had hardly closed behind Cassia, Tilana, and Raphel after the meeting before Cassia exploded. “He’s literally been bedridden for a week! What does he think he’s doing? Raphel, you can’t let him go.”

“You think he’s going to listen to me?” Raphel said, indignant. “He won’t even let me examine him!

Tilana shook her head. “What I don’t understand is, why does he think he has to go? We can send someone else!”

Cassia was about to say she didn’t know, but the door behind them opened again. It was Haliel. She looked around, bun bobbing anxiously atop of her head, and hurried forward, taking Cassia by the elbow and sweeping her wings around her shoulders.

“Come with me, Cassiandra,” she whispered, ushering Cassia forward. “You both as well,” she said over her shoulder. Before Cassia knew it, Haliel had steered her all the way out of the castle, past the hedge maze, and along a narrow pathway that snaked down the mountain and opened into a sheltered grove. Unlike the rest of the gardens, this grove grew wild, carpeted with lush ferns and tangled vines straining, somehow, toward the center of the grove.

There, where the canopy cleared, lay a pool as round as a mirror and as still as glass, with water as clear as the sky.

Cassia pulled away from Haliel, turning her back on the pool and it’s painful memories.

“Why did you bring us here?” Angels rarely came to the Giving Pool after they received Mithrinde’s Gift as a child. It was a sacred place, and the Giving was not lightly spoken of.

Of course, Cassia had never experienced it. She avoided Tilana’s eyes, but she could still read her sister’s guilt in her stance. It wasn’t her fault she’d been born first, or that for some reason the Pool only had one mote to give to twins. It had only taken five years of repeating that for Cassia to start believing it.

“Because I needed a place where we absolutely will not be overheard,” Haliel said quietly. “And… because I hope Mithrinde may guide us here. Your father cannot go on this mission.”

“Yeah, duh,” Cassia said, more curtly than she meant to. “But you saw how well talking him out of it went.”

Normally, Micah listened carefully to every one of his Ministers, even if he disagreed. But this time when Raphel, Irin, and Cassia had all raised objections, her father had slapped his palm on the ebony table and said, “Enough. I hear the concerns of my Council. But this decision is final.”

Haliel threw up her hands. “I didn’t suggest this! Quite apart from his health, does Micah really think we’re going to let our Archpriest go traveling through foreign lands with a drake right before the Renewal? I wouldn’t put it past them to take the opportunity to kill him and make it look like an accident.”

“There has to be a reason,” said Tilana. “Some reason he thinks he can only do it himself.”

“Maybe it’s Mithrinde’s will,” said Raphel, though he sounded uncertain.

“If he’d had a vision, he would have said so,” Cassia said. “He wouldn’t leave us guessing like this.”

Although Archpriests were the link between the gods and their godformed, her father rarely received visions from Mithrinde. In fact, she could only remember him ever telling her about a single one. It had been about her.

“Vision or no vision, he cannot go,” Haliel said. “We all agree?”

Cassia, Tilana, and Raphel all nodded, though Cassia’s stomach twisted. What if Micah going really was Mithrinde’s will, but she told him not to tell anyone?

Cassia pushed that thought away. Mithrinde didn’t deal in secrets.

Haliel lowered her voice. “I have a plan to send someone else in his place. I didn’t tell the drakes who was going because I thought we would decide that at the meeting. I only told them it would be a mage of great skill. They’re going to meet you at the border tomorrow morning and teleport you to Promise to meet the drake they’re sending and pick up the thief’s trail.

Haliel ran her fingers along her wings in an anxious preening gesture. “I told Micah they’re meeting us tomorrow evening. If we’re careful, by the time he realizes something’s wrong you’ll already be in Promise, and the drakes will refuse to go back on the deal.”

“He’ll be furious,” Raphel fretted.

“Better furious than dead,” Haliel said grimly. “Or am I wrong about his health, doctor?”

Raphel opened his mouth and then closed it again.

Cassia took a deep breath. Her father couldn’t go. That much was obvious. She thought she could lie to him, to keep him alive.

“Okay,” Cassia said slowly. “So we send someone else. Who?”

Three pairs of eyes turned as one to fix on Cassia.

“I thought that would be obvious,” Haliel said. “You are our Grand Mage, after all.”

The night air breathed still and cold in the grove surrounding the Giving Pool. The trees linked a tight-knit canopy, like sentinels folding their arms in warning. The thick scent of pine hung heavy over the silent clearing, sheltering it from Mithrinden’s perpetual winds.

Cassia shivered in her thin dressing gown as she emerged into the clearing around the pool. She was supposed to be turning in early so she could be up before dawn to meet the drakes at the border of Mithrinden, but she couldn’t sleep.

So she had come back here instead, ignoring her memories of watching Tilana step into the pool, her skin blazing in the light of the moon. Of being that young girl with a terrible longing blazing in her chest for a birthright that couldn’t be filled. This was a holy place where MIthrinde’s power gathered.

And Cassia needed to feel Mithrinde’s power tonight. In less than twelve hours, she, Cassia would be leaving Mithrinden alone, with a drake, to search for the most important magical artifact in all of Icalla. Against her father’s wishes. The Archpriest’s wishes.

She was okay with that. Her father was like that sometimes — too stubborn for his own good.

She wasn’t okay with going against Mithrinde’s wishes. So she had to be sure. There was a chance that this all was Mithrinde’s will, that She had commanded Micah to go and he just hadn’t told anyone, and that everything would be all right if he did.

Cassia didn’t think that was likely. But she had come to the pool anyway.

The moon shone like glass on the pond’s surface, pristine and unnaturally still, with no ripples to disrupt it. It was a half moon tonight. A half-moon wasn’t an omen, and yet Cassia couldn’t help but feel that everything from this point forth was balanced on the point of a knife, ready to tip one way or the other.

Cassia sat on one of wide, flat rocks rimming the pond, careful not to touch the water, as that was only done at a Receiving Ceremony. Because it was only a half moon, no eight-year-olds would be coming for their Receiving Ceremony tonight. It was just her.

“I’m going to do this,” she said quietly, watching the moonlight shimmer in the pool. “I guess, if you really don’t want me to go, you can send a dream to Micah so he can catch me. Or let Tilana know, or something.”

She put a hand to her chest, feeling her heartbeat and nothing beside it. People often said they had “feelings in their motes” about things. Micah said they were guiding nudges from Mithrinde, and to listen to them.

But without a mote, Mithrinde couldn’t guide Cassia directly. Cassia’s feelings were her own, and she wasn’t sure how she felt. She didn’t feel safe, or good, about anything that was happening. But she should have been panicking, and she wasn’t. That was something.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Cassia started, but it was just Tilana, picking her way across the clearing. She was barefoot and wearing a pale blue dressing gown now, her hair unbraided and tumbling down her back much like Cassia’s.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Cassia said.

“I guessed.” Tilana slid onto the rock beside Cassia, folding her legs underneath her and gazing out over the lake. “Until today, I hadn’t come down here since… well.”

“Me either. But… what if we’re not doing the right thing?”

Tilana tapped a nail against the rock and glanced up at the brilliant moon above. “Does it matter?”

Cassia darted a quick glance at Tilana. Of course it mattered. But she also knew what her sister was getting at. Even though she had a mote of her own, Tilana didn’t put much stock in consulting Mithrinde when it came to making decisions. She figured that it didn’t matter to Mithrinde how you chose to live out her ideals, only that you honored the power she gave you. Which Cassia knew was true — it was what Micah always said when Cassia asked him to ask Mithrinde something.

But how could anyone not want to know, for sure, if they were doing the right thing?

“This is too big for that, Ty.” She had come here hoping to feel… something. And surrounded by the peace of the lake, she did feel better. But was that a sign?

Tilana was already nodding. “I thought you’d say that. So I brought something for you.”

Cassia tilted her head to one side, confused. Her sister wasn’t carrying anything.

Then Tilana reached over her shoulders, grasped her wings in both hands, and pulled.

They came loose like gauze, glowing brighter and brighter as they shrunk into a brilliant point of light Tilana cupped in her hands.

Cassia looked up at her sister’s starkly lit face and knew what she was suggesting. “No. No way. Borrowing it to fly around Mithrinden is one thing, but you don’t know how long I’ll be gone—”

“—And that doesn’t matter, because you need it more than I do,” Tilana interrupted. “You’re going to be working with a drake, and you’ll probably have to fight humans, and if you go into the other Orders’ lands you’ll have to disguise yourself. You need all the tricks you can get. Plus, you’ll get to ask Mithrinde for all the guidance you want. She might even answer.”

That silenced Cassia. Her eyes lingered on the light in Tilana’s palms. Wasn’t that what she wanted more than anything in the world? Even if it was just for a little while?

Tilana wasn’t backing down, and Cassia knew better than to try to talk her out of it. “If you’re sure,” was all she could bring herself to say.

Tilana didn’t bother responding. She leaned in, her curly raven hair falling across her shoulders, and pressed her mote of Mithrinde to Cassia’s chest.

Cassia gasped as the euphoric, tingling coolness swept through her from head to toe, stilling her mind and soothing the dread in her stomach. The power drew in and coalesced at the back of her ribcage right where Tilana’s wings took root and bloomed on her back. Sensation flooded in and she threw back her head and laughed, spreading her wings and fighting the urge to take flight right then and there.

Tilana was smiling her quiet smile that meant she was pleased with a negotiation. “Try some magic,” she urged. “You won’t have much time to practice, so you’d better start.”

Hesitant, Cassia lifted her hand and found that with only a nudge of the mind, moonlight collected in her palm, clinging to the magic in her fingertips. She focused on the moonlight, and it took the shape of her father in her palm, smiling and healthy and strong. She gathered more moonlight and poured it into her hand, and in a second it had taken the shape of a tall, smiling woman with long, curly black tresses.

“It’s so easy,” Cassia marveled. She’d tried a few illusions before, when borrowing Tilana’s mote, but she always forgot how different this magic felt compared to the painstaking process of setting up a human ritual.

The two illusions stood there silent in her palm, arms around each other’s waists, looking up at Cassia and smiling. Tilana and Cassia watched the image of their parents for a long moment, each in her private thoughts.

Then Cassia waved a hand and the illusion vanished. She blinked back the prickling in her eyes.

Now that Mithrinde’s power had settled in her chest, Cassia listened for a feeling in her mote. Go forward and lie to her father — defy her Archpriest — or stay home and let him die?

She felt calm. She didn’t know if that counted as a feeling in her mote, but Cassia decided it did. She wasn’t going to lose her father like she’d lost her mother. Doing this… felt right.

“You can still say no,” Tilana told her. The barest trace of a frown betrayed her worry. “It’s going to be really dangerous. We can send a Service agent instead.”

Cassia shook her head. “I’m the Grand Mage. What else was the point of me learning all that human magic? This is what I was born for.”

And said like that, a part of Cassia really believed it.