Liv was hardly aware of being carried away through the city. Her head hurt from the chunk of ice that had fallen on her, and she felt untethered, as if she might pass out at any moment. Her father held her cradled in his arms, and she thought of little more than how soft the white fur of his cloak was. Her right arm was held awkwardly to one side, and her hand burned painfully.

The storm overhead broke, and rain came down in sheets, quickly soaking through her torn and bloody white dress. The shock of the water was enough to bring her back to awareness momentarily. “Where are we going?” Liv mumbled.

“To the embassy,” Ambassador Sakari answered.

“No,” Liv protested. “I need to know if Matthew is alive.”

“Who is she talking about?” her father asked.

“Baron Summerset’s son,” Inkeris explained. “Something like an adoptive brother to her.”

“She will need a clear mind to deal with the mana-sickness,” Liv’s father said. “Is it close?”

“This way,” Sakari said, and Liv closed her eyes. It was comforting to be carried: she couldn’t remember the last time someone strong had simply scooped her up in their arms, so that she didn’t have to worry about anything. Thunder rolled, but it didn’t frighten her.

The next thing Liv was aware of, they were being challenged at the gates of Acton House. She blinked, and raised her head, finding that her palm hurt less. She glanced down her arm, to where Inkeris was holding her right hand between both of his, shining with the light of a warm summer sun. Then she noticed how many guards, in how many different colors, manned the gates.

There was the green and white of the Summersets, of course, but also the black and red of the Crosbies, and the black and gold of the Talbots, and even the red and gold of the Grenfells. The guards were all armored in jack of plate, with a mix of polearms and rapiers, and even a few warhammers thrown in.

“It’s Liv,” a voice called, and she recognized it as Piers, the guard who’d wed Sophie. “Open the gates and let her in.”

“Is Matthew alive?” Liv shouted back to him.

“My daughter is hurt,” her father’s voice rumbled. “I need a quiet place to treat her.” The gates creaked open, and then she was being moved through the knot of armed men and into the house.

“It’s Liv,” Arnold Crosbie called back into the house. “Bring her this way,” he said. There were so many people - servants and soldiers everywhere, crowding the hallways. She got a glimpse of the library, before she was laid down upon the couch by the fire, and recognized Isaac Grenfell, Gerold Talbot, and Baron Henry in his chair by the fire. Cade Talbot rose from a chair, sleeves stained red to his elbows, but his father held him back.

“Is your chirurgeon here?” Sakari demanded.

Henry shook his head. “She went with my wife and Matthew.”

“He’s alive?” Liv asked, trying to sit up and finding herself held down.

The wheels of Baron Henry’s chair creaked over the wood of the library floor as he maneuvered himself closer. “They took him to Coral Bay,” he said. “Through the waystone. Julianne, Master Grenfell, and Beatrice are with him.”

“You hear? The boy is safe, Livara,” her father said, taking her hands in his own. “Clear your mind of him. Now you must heal yourself.”

“I used the charm,” Liv muttered.

“Her veins,” she heard Cade say. “I’ve never seen anyone with veins that dark.”

“Valtteri will help her,” Ambassador Sakari said. “She needs space and quiet. And afterward, food.”

“Come with me then, everyone,” Henry said. “We’ll go to the dining room and have food brought up. Mana-enriched?” he asked, but Liv didn’t catch the answer. A shadow fell over her face, and she opened her eyes to see Cade leaning over her.

“Thank you,” she said. “For keeping him alive.”

“Come along, son,” Baron Talbot said, and soon the room was empty of everyone save Liv, her father, and Inkeris, who she saw take up position at the door as if to guard her from any further interruption.

“Livara,” her father said. “I need you to listen to my voice, and try to do what I tell you. Can you do that for me?”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Liv murmured. She tried to nod her head, but it was pounding so badly that it hurt.

“Our Vaedic blood will help your body to recover,” Valtteri told her, “but you are also suffering from mana-sickness. You used your magic without proper form and structure, and raw mana has spilled throughout your body. I need you to feel it, where it has collected in your arms and hands. Can you feel it?”

Liv was used to sensing her mana deep within the core of her body, not in her extremities. Depending on how empty or full she felt, it might be confined to her chest, or extend down into her belly, as well. She searched in those places, and found only an absence. Her arms and hands, however, felt to her something like a finely marbled steak, with cords of mana running through her flesh and bone. “That doesn’t feel right,” she mumbled.

“No,” her father said. “The mana has accumulated where it should not be, and it is changing your body. If you don’t control it, it will twist and warp the flesh, skin and bone, causing them to spread tumors and poison throughout your body. What I need you to do is to take that mana in hand, and use it.”

“Cast a spell?” Liv asked.

“No,” Valtteri said. “Move it. Think of the mana in your body like wrinkles in fabric, and work to smooth it out. Feel the places that are wrong, and push the mana through them.”

Liv had spent eighteen years practicing how to summon mana up from inside her, channel it down through her arms and hands into her staff, and there use it to fuel her magic. Sensing the mana was not the problem, but without a word of power to call on, there was no emptiness to fill, no suction from her staff, no draw upon her from without. She didn’t know where to begin, or how to take hold.

Like wrinkles in fabric, her father had said. Very well. Until coming to Acton House, Liv never had a maid. She knew how to get wrinkles out with a heated iron and steam. She shaped her intent, pressed it against her arm just below the elbow, and pushed.

It was hard, like running the last lap around Castle Whitehill when she was already exhausted, and for a long moment, Liv didn’t think it would work at all. She pushed so hard that she couldn’t think of anything else, couldn’t even make herself breathe, and then finally something moved.

Stolen novel; please report.

Once she had made a beginning, it got easier - which was like saying that once you picked a heavy bucket of water up, walking with it was easy. Still, Liv pushed, smoothing the mana out of her muscles and veins, some inner eye watching it gather as she went. Down, down, down the forearm toward the palm in which she’d grasped her sword of ice.

“My hand feels wrong,” she said.

“Yes. It is frost-bitten,” her father explained. “Move the mana through it, and concentrate on making what is wrong right again.”

Liv pushed the mana through her hand, like kneading dough for pie. There was so much wrong. Tiny crystals of ice, like the ones she’d felt in the clouds, pierced all along the inside of her hand, the fingers, the thumb, where she’d been frozen to the hilt of the sword. Where she directed her mana, the crystals melted, and the pierced and broken parts of her were slowly set right. It took all of her attention and awareness, and everything else faded away, leaving Liv’s world entirely that of mana and the tremendous effort to move it.

She couldn’t have said how long she worked. First on her palm, and then, when that didn’t feel wrong anymore, on the deep gash in her left arm. There was plenty of raw mana piercing her flesh in that arm, as well, though less by the time she’d finished with the injury. Then, she gathered what was left of the mana in her body, and moved it up into her head, where the ice had fallen on the top of her skull. There was wrongness there, too, and only after it had gone did Liv finally stop and open her eyes.

Morning light scattered through the library windows, revealing her father, sitting in a chair next to the hearth. His eyes were closed, but he opened them when Liv sat up. She looked down at her arms and hands, flexing her fingers, and felt no pain. “How is this possible?”

“Our people learned how to control mana from the Vaedim themselves,” her father said, his voice quiet in the morning stillness. “We used it for centuries, as their servants, before the war. Humans only learned how to wield magic when Tamiris gave them his gift, and they barely learned it then. Mostly, they tried to use it to win a war, and then immediately had to survive in a broken world. They’re like half-trained children swinging swords about in play.”

“By the gods, I’m filthy,” Liv realized. The fine white dress she’d looked so perfect in at the masque was ripped at the skirt, bloodstained, torn, and soaked in mud.

“I have been informed that your servant girl will draw a bath as soon as she knows you are awake,” Valtteri said. “There is food prepared, as well, and fresh clothing. But take a moment before you attempt to stand.”

“Are you angry with me?” Liv asked.

“What?” Her father frowned. “Why would I be angry at you, Livara? Because you couldn’t fight off two dozen armed men by yourself? You’re clearly very talented, but also still a child. You should never have been put in that position in the first place.”

“No,” Liv said, shaking her head. “Not that. Because I didn’t come find you before now.”

“I am not angry with you.” Valtteri rose from the chair he’d been sitting in, crossed the intervening space, and knelt next to the couch, where he took her hand in his. “Please, believe that. I am angry with myself, for not knowing. For letting you grow up without me, when a simple message to Whitehill would have changed everything. For not ever thinking that something could come of my time with your mother.

“Are you angry with her?”

“I am trying not to be,” her father said. “I want to hear what she has to say, first. It would not be fair of me to judge her actions before I understand her reasons.”

“I didn’t know what you would be like,” Liv said. “I didn’t know if you would believe me, or if you would want me even if you did. And then, whether you would take me away from her.” For the second time, her father wrapped his arms around her, and Liv was frightened by how much she was growing to love it.

“I will not take you anywhere you do not wish to go,” he promised. “But you are more than welcome at Kelthelis, if you want to come.”

“That’s your home?” Liv asked.

“And yours, when you are ready,” her father said. “It is nothing like here. Very cold, but also very beautiful. So far north there are no trees, only endless white plains of ice and snow. Your grandfather, Auris, raised a palace of ice to watch over the Tomb of Celris, and that is where we live.”

“All of ice?” Liv pulled back, and rubbed at her eyes. They were grainy with lack of sleep. “How do you stay warm?”

Valtteri grinned. “I will show you. I will teach you everything.” Her belly rumbled, and he laughed, standing and offering a hand to her. “Do you feel well enough to get changed and have some food? I think it will make you feel better.”

“I think I do,” Liv said, accepting his help to stand. “And then I think that I have a lot of questions about what is happening.”

☙

Acton House remained packed full of people, many of them strangers to Liv. Thora was sent for, and Inkeris, who must have slept outside the library door all night, helped Liv’s father walk her upstairs to her rooms. Both of them seemed concerned that she would tumble over at any moment, but she couldn’t bring herself to resent them for it after all that had happened. She drew the line at interrupting her time in the bath, however.

“I will meet you both downstairs,” Liv told them firmly. “Over breakfast. When I am clean.” Then, she shut the door to her sitting room, and let Thora take her hair down, wipe the ruined makeup from her face, and remove her borrowed jewelry. The dress was utterly ruined, and they balled it up on the floor to be disposed of. By the time she was ready to slide into the tub, it was full of steaming hot water, and Liv couldn’t help but let out a groan of relief once she’d settled in. Whatever her father had taught her to do with mana, it hadn’t soothed all the lesser aches and bruises accumulated during her chase through the streets of Freeport, her tussle with Josephine, and the fight that followed.

It was only after her hair had been thoroughly brushed, her body scrubbed clean, and finally Liv had dressed in one of her plainer gray dresses, that she descended the stairs and made her way to the dining room. She’d found her staff leaning in the corner of her sitting room, and took it down with her more convinced than ever that she needed a wand.

At the table, she found an enormous breakfast laid out, and every chair occupied, with so many people crowding the room that some of them were standing, eating with their plates held in one hand. When Liv entered, everyone but Baron Henry stood to greet her.

“I’m glad to see you’re alright,” Cade told her, just before Lady Julianne swept Liv up in a hug.

“You brave, foolish girl,” she said. “Running off like that. What if we’d lost you?”

“Matthew?” Liv asked her, once she’d been released.

“Safe at Coral Bay,” Julianne explained. “I just got back from the waystone. He’s in the infirmary with Professor Annora, and Beatrice is there to make certain he doesn’t push himself.”

Liv felt like she was finally able to release a breath she’d been holding since the night before. “Here,” Cade told her. “Take my seat.” He pulled out a chair, and Liv sat. In moments, a plate full of hot sausages and eggs was placed before her. With her first bite, Liv realized the sausages must have been made from mana-rich venison. A rush of energy filled her body with every bite, and she expected she would be ready to cast a new Ice Sphere once she’d finished with breakfast.

“Why are so many people here?” Liv asked in between bites.

“Easier for them to pick us off one by one than to strike when we’re together,” Arnold Crosbie said.

“You speak as if we’re already at war,” Baron Talbot shot back. “It hasn’t gone that far yet.”

“They tried to kill my daughter,” Valtteri said. “So far as I am concerned, that is more than enough cause for war. Livara, you said something about the gulls, just as we reached you. What did you mean?”

“I meant it was the queen, wasn’t it?” Liv asked, pausing with her fork raised. “House Sherard’s word lets them control birds, and the gulls were watching everything. And then they swooped down to attack me as a distraction. Who else could, or would, do that? Lady Julianne said the queen had tried to kill her before, and the girl I chased was the same one in Whitehill, when the castle shutters were opened during the eruption.”

“There’s no proof, though,” Isaac Grenfell pointed out. “Everyone who attacked her is dead, and the boy that knifed Matthew only knew he’d been paid enough gold not to ask any questions. None of this would be enough for a majority of the great council to side with us.”

“Go to the king,” Cade suggested. “Put it before him. He’d have to listen to his own daughter, wouldn’t he?”

“The king hardly knows what’s happening around him on a good day,” Henry said. “And if he did listen, that wouldn’t be the end of it. If he sided with us against his own wife and heir, that would be war.”

“We go to the palace,” Julianne said.

“If you go alone they’ll kill you,” Baron Henry protested.

“Not alone,” his wife replied. “We have four barons, a Master Mage of the guild, and the Eldish Ambassador. That’s too many to kill out of hand. They’ll have to meet with us.”

“I cannot take sides in a succession crisis here,” Ambassador Sakari said. “It is one thing to protect Liv when she’s in danger, but if I went with you, I would drag my people into this mess.”

“I’ll go in your place, then,” Liv’s father said. “And they had better pray to the Trinity I don’t simply pull their palace down on their heads and call it justice.”