The oracle is broken again. My father went to have his prospects set in line, he is preparing to make his final presentation to the academy council in a few weeks. Instead of anything intelligible, the oracle kept saying, “Fate is dead, it always has been.” It’s a strange thing for an oracle to say, I think, but apparently, that is all it has been telling people for the last four days.

  -”Conversations: Eavesdroppings from the Mad City”

  Three days spent in Danfalla is enough to make the past few weeks begin to fade into memory. The difference between picking desperate fights against inhuman monsters and taking time to be normal, maybe making the occasional stroll around the manor grounds or sitting quietly in the garden, is too much to be real. The girls who do these things can’t be the same person, and in the quietude of the fading light, neither feels like me.

  As I stare out past the boundary wall around the manor, watching the western part of the city as the sky sets the world burning as it falls toward the horizon, I can’t be certain if I’m not in a dream. How would I know? Maybe I am still there, lying at the bottom of a cliff with my head dashed against the rocks, imagining all of this in my final moments of life. How else could a girl like me end up here, watching a city of tens of thousands from a cedar balcony, silk dress aflutter with the playing wind, staring at hands absent of any blemish or sign of hard labor. If this is a dream, wouldn’t it be better to wake up? I don’t want to.

  The door to the room opens behind me, and I turn to see Jess walking into the luxurious apartment in the west wing of the manor I was given upon our return to Danfalla. She has taken to the local style of the city, some trend involving silk wraps crisscrossing the torso–always of two colors and woven through with threads that sparkle in the light–and loose silk pants. She wears it well, the black and silver silks somehow contrasting with her vibrant skin.

  She stops at the table near my bed as she crosses the room, picking up the cloche on a silver tray and snatching up a bite of toast from within. “Still not eating?” she asks, leaning against the wooden rail of the balcony next to me.

  “I eat,” I say. “I just eat my own things. There was so much of that bug meat harvested from the hive we managed to take down that I won’t be going hungry for a while. Illigar let me keep my choice of the pickings.”

  Jess makes a face. “That was nice of him.”

  I shrug. “I am in a unique position.” While I did have my choice, I took the meat of the royal guardians that I managed to loot, keeping my promise to the commander of the 4th army and delivering everything else. That meat was the most valuable by far, the affixes of light and gold running beneath the more abundant affix of corrosion. Mostly, that was all the termites that we killed have infused in their flesh, corrosion. It is nothing to complain about, though I already have the affix, my affix will slowly grow stronger the more I eat.

  I also made off with a significant portion of the termite queen’s meat, the one that Illigar killed outside of Maidenlake. I still haven’t identified the mana inside. Despite having the resources, finding the motivation to dive into my books to figure it out has eluded me. It is a pain just to find the energy to leave the apartment.

  “He is giving the bulk of the prize to the people of Danfalla,” I tell her.

  “Seems wasteful,” she says. “I might not eat monsters, but magical food is a delicacy anywhere. In places where you cannot grow it, I know it is quite expensive.”

  “People are starving out there,” I say, nodding off toward the city spreading away from the manor.

  The inner wall of the northern district of the city, the wealthy district, delineates the anxiety of the well-off from the desperation of the poor. Every day that passes, it seems like more and more guards end up on the wall, more of the occasional scream piercing the night from far in the city. How terrified must someone be for me to hear their screams even in my sleep?

  “They have packed everyone in here from all over the duchy,” Jess says, crushing down on the last bit of toast as she shoves it in her mouth. “There isn’t room for everyone.”

  “It is starve and get robbed in Danfalla or face the monsters in the naked night.” I sigh, looking at my hands again. “The meat harvested from a few battles won’t be enough to help much. There are too many mouths to feed and no one working the fields to make sure it gets done. They would have started pulling in the harvest soon. Now, it all spoils out there.”

  “Would there ever be a good time for a beast tide to start?”

  “I suppose not. The middle of summer, maybe, but we’re getting into autumn now.”

  “I was told that the farmers in the empire pull in the harvest with the blood moon,” she says.

  I can’t help but look askance at her. “Who told you that?”

  “Just some people talking while I was in town a few weeks ago.” She sighs as well, putting her full weight on the railing. “I miss shopping in town. Just when I was starting to pick up the hobby, the shops started closing. I was going to get some new silks for the celebration, but the boutique next to Madam Lowrie's was robbed a few nights ago, and all the stores on the street are closing in response.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Celebration,” I spit, the word like a curse on my tongue. “What is there to celebrate?”

  “The liberation of Maidenlake was the excuse, I think.”

  I sag, falling back into my chair as I stare at her. “I don’t understand this at all. There are people out there who have to dig through garbage to find their meals for the day, and we are going to a party where we will celebrate what happened at Maidenlake. We will celebrate part of a city being destroyed and so many lives being lost.”

  Jess takes a seat as well, looking at me intensely. “You know that is not the point of the occasion. I’m not going to tell you to stop moping on your balcony like some sappy noblewoman, but you really should. Stop, that is.”

  “I know. I just can’t stop thinking about how a few years ago, it would have been me down in those crowded streets, scrounging for food, seeing things that no one should have to see. But that isn’t me now, is it? I am the rich girl up in the clean tower, given a clean room for free in her friend's estate, where maids make up the room every morning. I don’t have to think of food here, it just appears on the table next to the bed a few times a day if I don’t visit the kitchen. Is it okay to live like this?”

  She chews on that a moment, giving it some real consideration. “Maybe not,” she says eventually. “The people in this part of the city have a lot. They could give some of that up, help out in these difficult times. But is it wrong to make yourself and your family wealthy when times are good? I don’t think so. Seeing your family prosper is everyone’s aspiration, and now you are here because your friend is a beneficiary of that. It isn’t as if you are some poor girl hanging onto his coattails either. You told me how your abilities work, how much gold did you make from disenchanting all of those battlefields?”

  “A sickening amount,” I admit.

  “And I wouldn’t say that you are wrong for having that. Now, is it shameless for a celebration party to be thrown while so many are suffering? Absolutely. I still plan to go. I want to dance with Dovik, and I want to drink. I want to forget the last few weeks, at least for a night. I think you should try to forget it, too.”

  “I do want to forget it,” I say. “That, however, is wrong. It seemed like almost everyone in the army had done just that by the time they made it back to Danfalla, looking back at everything as a series of victories while they made toasts to the dead. I don’t forget. We very nearly died in that hive. That monster killed eight people in less than a minute. No one in our assault team could have stopped it.”

  “One person did,” she says.

  I scoff, rolling my eyes. “I dropped the ceiling on it. It wasn’t exactly as if I overpowered the monster.”

  “It still died. I understand what you mean, though. I have been fighting for years, building my skill with every battle, but some monster that hatched from an egg was pushing me back after just a few seconds. Dovik might have been keeping up with that thing, but I could tell it was getting stronger and stronger. I didn’t have the skill or power to keep up. Forgetting that, forgetting that despite how immortal I might feel some times, I’m not.”

  She leans forward, putting her hand over mine. “You saved us, you know. Even if it was just dropping a ceiling on some bugs, it wasn’t something I could do. One day, the two of us will find some more bugs like those in the hive, and with our awesome power, we will make playthings of them, maybe destroy a hive or two.” She succeeds in pulling a smile from me with that. “Besides, if they are giving the meat out to the people in the city, then I think you might have contributed more to the duchy than most with that ability of yours. Magicians might be able to do some miraculous things, but not many can make mountains of food appear from nowhere.”

  “Speaking of abilities,” I say, “when were you going to tell me you had an ability like what you did in the hive? You think it might be useful for your teammate to know that you can teleport incredible distances.”

  “I’m sorry. It feels like we agreed to share everything and then just never did. Everything my mother told me growing up, and then everything that happened in the trial, makes it hard to trust others with that. I know you aren’t going to betray me, but it is still hard.”

  Her words stab my heart. I can almost see it even now, Samielle’s name floating in the air next to her, the name of one of the people I have murdered. The urge to confess it to her then and there comes over me, but the words won’t form around the knot in my throat. Jess sees something in my face, something that makes her speak first.

  “Alright.” She lets out a long breath. “I’ll tell you about it, what I have figured out at least. The ability comes from my Grace Essentia, and it allows me to teleport to anywhere I can see. As far as I know, there isn’t a limit to the range. I seem to be able to bring someone along with me, but I don’t think it was meant to be used that way.”

  Then, she looks at me with those kind eyes of hers, looking as if she just confessed her feelings to me. The vulnerability in her eyes tears me up inside.

  “My brother has an ability like that,” I finally manage to say, my mouth moving on its own.

  “Which one, the handsome one or the one that hit on you?” She says it with such a straight face that it is impossible not to laugh. I know it here and now, I can never tell Jess about Samielle. I can’t risk what we have. I’m afraid of what my world might become without her sunshine.

  “Don’t make me say, the attractive one,” I tell her.

  She shrugs. “I have a type, tall and strong men. From everything you told me about him, your brother is the tallest and strongest. Is he really bigger than Jor?”

  “Well, not when Jor uses that ability of his, but the rest of the time, yeah.”

  “Even when he is all muscly?” she asks.

  “Yes, even then.”

  “You need to introduce me,” Jess says.

  “I heard that he is in the Galean Capital from Corinth. He won’t be at the orchard when we visit after this whole beast tide business is done. Shouldn’t you be more focused on Dovik anyway, not my brother?”

  “I can look,” Jess says. At my smile, she stands, tapping my hand. “You seem to be feeling better. Do you have something to wear to the party tonight?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Great. We can get ready together in a few hours. We’ll get Chella to help us out.” At the mention of the maid’s name, most of my good humor evaporates.

  “You didn’t hear?” I ask, looking back out at the city. “Chella didn’t show up to work this morning. Her family said she left to come here before dawn, but she never made it to the gate. Some guards are out looking for her now, but I don’t think they will stay out on those streets after dark.”

  “She went missing?” Jess asks, already halfway back into the room, stopping and looking back at me.

  “It has been happening more and more.”

  “Damn,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

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