effort, and familiarity, and too many binds means spreading yourself—and your magic—thin.”
“But couldn’t another shadowmage use one of those binds to sneak into your mind?”
Val’s lips twisted into a smug, self-assured smile, as if she suspected Veronyka wanted to do just that. “It’s my mind—it’s where I’m most powerful. They would be foolish to try.”
Rather than scare Veronyka off, the words resonated down to her very core.
If asked before today, she’d have said one of her greatest fears was having Val inside her mind. The unwanted invasion and vulnerability of it haunted her every step, but Val’s words just now had irrevocably altered Veronyka’s understanding of shadow magic. All this time, Veronyka had been focusing her energy on the wrong thing: keeping Val out, so afraid of having her sister in her mind that she’d missed the fact that it was her mind, and there, she ruled.
There, she was most powerful.
Val misinterpreted her stunned look. “Forget it,” she said. “It’s a power you’d never understand.”
“It sounds like a one-way bond. It sounds like you force people to be loyal to you rather than inspiring it on your own.”
“Inspiring loyalty…,” Val murmured, shaking her head. “You talk like your mother.”
Veronyka had heard Val pass harsh judgment on everything and everyone, but after what Veronyka had seen in that abandoned mine, she knew that while what Pheronia had done was risky—and surely there were other such instances when she tried, perhaps in foolish hope, to reason with her sister—she was not stupid. For Veronyka’s entire life, Val had belittled Pheronia and praised Avalkyra. How hollow those words were now that she knew the truth.
“Thank you,” Veronyka said, and Val scowled.
Before she could retort, Sidra returned heaving a bucket of water, contents sloshing over the side.
Val turned on her heel and left, returning a short while later holding a long swath of sheer green fabric stitched with gold thread.
“What’s this?” Veronyka asked automatically, though she already knew. They were getting her cleaned and dressed to meet her fiancé.
Ignoring her question, Val hung the garment on the back of the door, revealing a dress with of “split skirts,” which was a common style among Stellan women. The design allowed the wearer to ride easily—important for a culture so entrenched in horses—while still maintaining a soft, elegant look. Skirts were utterly nonexistent in Pyraean and Phoenix Rider history, impractical for the working classes and downright dangerous for people who rode flaming firebirds. As such, they’d never been favored in the Golden Empire’s fashions, though they had been fairly popular in the lesser kingdoms of the south. The weather was often scorching in the Stellan Plains, so flowing, loose-fitting materials were worn by both men and women of that region.
Split skirts became the norm, and clearly, Val wanted to endear Veronyka to her Stellan husband.
Veronyka wanted to remind Val that no matter who her betrothed was, she wasn’t Stellan—but the words died on her tongue. Pheronia Ashfire had been Stellan on her mother’s side, and as for Veronyka’s father? She knew it didn’t matter, not truly, but something about not knowing her cultural history, her origins, made her feel like a plant torn up by the roots.
As Val tried to straighten the sheer layers, part of the embroidery caught on one of her braids and she cursed.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered, and Veronyka was strangely comforted by it. The dress was beautiful, but it wasn’t her, it wasn’t Veronyka. The outfit felt like a costume, like the heavy face paint a player wore on Mummer’s Lane.
Worse, it was something a Rider would never—could never—safely wear, and Veronyka hated the idea of putting it on, of erasing that part of herself. Deep in her mind, Xephyra crooned.
Sidra returned with another bucket of water and an armful of other supplies, which she handed to Val. Val put the bottommost bundle onto the window ledge, then offered a thin cotton towel and a hunk of olive soap to Veronyka.
Veronyka’s hair and skin were sticky with sweat thanks to the late-summer heat and the filth of the battle the previous day. She desperately needed to bathe, relished the idea of feeling clean again—but the thought of what came after made her take several staggering steps backward. Panic was clawing at her, a rising tide in her throat.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I won’t do it. I won’t dress up like a doll for you. For him.”
Val glanced over her shoulder. In response to Val’s wordless command, Sidra reached into the hallway