Four Months Earlier
“I’m pregnant,” Katya said.
Sonya’s world as she’d known it had ended with those two little words. Their mother had exploded at the two sisters, filling the tight family room of their woodside cottage with denial, then anger, then fear. She advanced on Katya with the full cart-weight force of her emotions, as if they had the power to turn back time, to rewrite the new future that Katya suddenly scrawled over all their lives.
“And you!” their mother demanded, whirling towards Sonya. “Where were you during all this?”
“M-me?” Sonya said blankly, gripping the dining table behind her.
“Yes, you! She’s your younger sister. You’re supposed to be the one looking out for her! Protecting her—” Their mother’s eyes whipped towards the windows, gaze wide, as if suddenly remembering other people existed in the world. She crisscrossed the room, reaching past flower-embroidered curtains to grab the frames, shutting each window in turn. Once they were cloistered, she regarded Sonya with a face like stone. “Her virtue!”
Sonya swallowed.
Her younger sister stood alone in the center of the room, shoulders hunched, head bowed. Poor Katya, who’d always been so proud… Her arms hugged around her midsection.
Around the new life growing inside.
Sonya had known that she and Petar, the tailor’s son, were secretive sweethearts. Had been for years. She’d expected tears when summer ended this year, when Katya had to leave for Lucra and her new life in the Imperial Academy of Magic. She’d expected drama. Heartache.
She hadn’t expected this.
Sonya clung to the table, enduring their mother’s scattered wrath, her fractured tears, for what felt like forever, until their father and Mischa returned home from their dealings with the local woodsman. As her father entered the cottage, hanging his hat on the peg by the door, their mother flung herself upon his brawny frame, and the storm began to thunder all over again.
As Mischa stared at the scene with confused, ten-year-old eyes, Sonya felt herself leaving the stability of the table. Sweeping a shaky arm around his back, she herded him out of the cottage.
As the door closed behind them, cutting off the worst of the yelling, Sonya felt a small weight lift from her chest—still hard to breathe, but she was no longer choking on it. She led her only brother through the small garden that spanned the stretch of land between their house and the forest, past the small headstones that marked the graves of ancestors both long past and still freshly missed, and to the small bench their father had carved from a single trunk of oak years and years ago. Its gentle curves cradled the two siblings as they looked back across the yellow, white, red, and orange flowers towards the house.
The shrill spikes of their mother’s voice occasionally pierced the air, even out here, and Sonya’s heart lurched for her sister.
For all of them.
At least their house was far from the heart of the village—a legacy from the days when her distant grandfathers had been wandering woodsmen themselves, not carpenters—so there were no neighbors to hear.
“What happened?” Mischa asked softly.
Sonya regarded her brother, squished against her side like a small fawn beside her. He’d always been small. It felt like only yesterday when he’d been born, a weak squalling thing while she and Katya had already taken to rambling unaccompanied through nearby creeks and glades. He was so young that he’d never known their Nonna. Mischa had been alive… that night, but he held no memories of it.
Only stories.
“There’s been…” Sonya weighed her words carefully. He deserved to know, but he was still so young. She didn’t know if he’d understand. Didn’t know what he’d say if the wrong person asked him the wrong questions. “There’s been a problem with Katya. And the Academy. Mama’s… trying to fix it.”
Mischa’s brow furrowed. As a hard frown formed over his little face, Sonya wanted to tug him towards her. She wanted to ruffle his chestnut hair. Tell him everything was going to be okay.
“She didn’t get in?” he asked.
Sonya’s heart clenched. “No, she… Katya got in, but there’s been… a different problem.”
“Oh.”
His feet kicked at the grass. “But she’s still gonna become a mage for the emperor, right? We’re still gonna get a new house in the city?”
“I…” Sonya wanted to lie, but she couldn’t. Pregnant girls didn’t enter Imperial Academies. They weren’t given scholarships. They weren’t showered with glory. “I don’t know.”
Her gaze cast over the garden, landing on the headstone of her Nonna’s empty grave. It’d been nine years, but the memory still clawed, deep and cold, into her soul. By instinct, her hand patted the leather sheath at her waist. Nonna’s old carving knife remained a heavy weight. A heavy reminder. Overhead, in the cheerful blue sky, the pale ghost of the waning moon was disappearing behind the upper tips of the western trees.
Just when one new moon had passed and they could all breathe again, the next seemed always at their doorstep.
Sonya swallowed tightly. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
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The rest of the week passed in a slog. Sonya woke up most mornings with a headache and dark circles that clung like iron weights beneath her eyes, kept awake by Katya’s recurring sobs in the narrow bed beside hers. She would’ve headed for their plushiest chair beside the fireplace instead, a contorted sleep still better than no sleep at all, if Mischa hadn’t already left their shared bedroom to claim it.
Today wasn’t proving any different, and Sonya fought from rubbing her eyes for the fiftieth time as she waited for her friend Galina to finish hauling up her bucket of water from the village’s well so that she could do the same.
Water-hauling had always been a long task made longer by the gossip Galina loved to tell. The summer sun was seductively warm against her skin, and Sonya did her best to nod along without nodding off as Galina side-tracked from a story about Maksimovic the baker and the mysterious discounts he’d recently received from the miller’s wife into yet another echoed tale about the miller wife’s nephew, who’d just returned from some unexpected journey to Breze.
As Galina’s voice flattened into a lulling stream, Sonya’s mind began to wander.
Her eyes drifted over the rest of the village square. It was rather empty at this time of day. Any farmers would be out in their fields, craftsmen would be crafting in their workshops, most wives and daughters would be busy preparing their families dinners… Apart from a few mothers letting their younger children play at the southern half of the square, the only other person out at present was Old Man Anic, sitting atop their village’s bell tower, gazing out at the surrounding mountains and forests.
To be frank, it was more of a bell platform than any sort of tower—a thin, rickety structure with wooden posts that’d been lashed roughly together and a single ladder—but it served its purpose when the village needed it each month. It wasn’t the night of the new moon quite yet, so they didn’t need a guard today, but Old Man Anic liked to be useful, and everyone in town generally liked that he liked it.
“—and? Sonya?”
Sonya started back to attention. Galina was staring at her with patiently frustrated eyes, filled water bucket in hand.
“What?”
Galina sighed. “I said, do you know when Katya’s going to be headed to the capital?”
“Oh. That’s…” Sonya’s chest tightened. Galina knew about the entrance exam Katya had taken last month. The whole village did. Her mother had been sure to rave about it to everyone she’d passed in the street. Follow-up questions about the topic had never been hard to answer. Until now. “I don’t.”
She lifted her own empty bucket and brushed past Galina to hook it onto the well’s chain.
“Well…” Galina said behind her, as Sonya tried to busy herself with checking that it was securely attached. “That’s a slightly different answer than the one you gave me last week.”
Sonya didn’t say anything as she began to crank the chain downwards.
“Is it because of Petar?”
Sonya tried not to flinch. Galina knew too much about her family to outright deny it though. “S-Something like that…”
Galina groaned. “Oh my God, I can’t believe her! She’s not going to the capital for him?!”
Sonya whipped around, face paling. “Shhh!” Her eyes darted to Old Man Anic… to the mothers and their children across the square… Thankfully, no one seemed to have noticed Galina’s outburst, but her family couldn’t take chances. “She might still go,” Sonya said weakly. Her mother had been making secret visits to the apothecary, although Katya refused to take anything. “We don’t want talk spreading.”
“Fine,” Galina groused. “Still…” With her own look towards the edges of the square, she lowered her voice. “I can’t believe her. She’s got a chance to go to the imperial capital. The capital! She could be catching the emperor’s eye, not just some son of a tailor…”
“She’d be serving the emperor,” Sonya said flatly. “Not marrying him.”
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Galina made a dismissive noise in her throat. She let her water bucket rest on the ground and tossed her plaited black hair behind her shoulder with a flippant motion. “That’s her fault for dreaming small…”
Sonya shook her head and returned to her task at the well. Her hand was white and bloodless where it’d been gripping the crank. She forced it to move again.
“Still…” Galina continued. “I wish it’d be you.”
Sonya burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. It was the first bit of humor she’d gotten all week. “Sorry,” she said, not bothering to look at Galina as her bucket hit the water at the base of the well with a muted slap. She watched as it slowly submerged in the darkness. “It’s just… well… It’s me.”
“Oh, please,” Galina insisted. “You are not as bad of a mage as you think you are.”
“Good enough to be a herb witch, you mean,” Sonya muttered.
The silence behind her wasn’t a denial. And there shouldn’t have been. Although Galina was right in that Sonya was hardly a disaster when it came to magic, there was still a huge chasm between simple charms and power strong enough to serve the Holy Tiberian Empire. True, Sonya could hover a cup of water like no one’s business, but she couldn’t lift this bucket out of the well—a fact twice as frustrating as she began to turn the crank in reverse, gritting her teeth as her muscles strained with the new weight.
And that was just this bucket. Imperial mages were expected to summon storms to sink fleets of enemy ships, to un-topple homes after they’d been destroyed by earthquakes or demons, to summon shields that’d protect whole battalions of infantry in war…
“If I was the academy,” Galina continued. “I’d pick you over Miss Too-Good-For-the-Rest-of-Us Katarina.” She used Katya’s formal name as some sort of additional attempt to express her true contempt.
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not the academy.” Sonya’s arms burned with exhaustion as the bucket neared the top of the well. “Otherwise the empire would be in ruin.”
“I mean it! You study harder, at least.”
Sonya snorted. With a few last, aching cranks, the bucket reached the top. Water sloshed over its edge as Sonya dragged it to mercifully rest atop the well’s stone rim. “I’m sure my study habits would mean the world to some city when my barriers crumpled beneath a demon’s attack and half their families got slaughtered.”
Galina appeared to ignore this. “You could always steal her spot…”
“What?”
“If she decided not to go,” Galina said. She tapped an idle finger against her round chin in thought. “It’s not as if anyone drew her picture on the application.”
Sonya frowned as an unsettling feeling crept over her stomach. Her friend couldn’t actually be saying any of this seriously…
“Galina, I—”
“Yoohoo! Hello, girls!”
Sonya and Galina turned as two older women approached the well—the spinsters Maria and Olga from the block of farms that lay peppered outside of town along the north-leading highway. Both carried their own buckets to fill, and Sonya carefully moved hers aside as they approached.
“How’s your sister?” Olga asked, setting her bucket on the spot Sonya’s had just been. Her black eyes glittered like a beetle’s shell; her smile curious without being warm. “Has your family heard back from the Academy yet?”
“No!” Sonya replied, slightly too quickly. She clung desperately to the handle of her water bucket, trying not to look at Galina even as she felt her friend’s stare along her back. “We’re still hoping though! Any day now!”
Olga’s gaze slid to Maria, and the two women shared a look. Sonya tried to offer them a confident, reassuring smile, but it felt tight. Strained. And it only felt worse the harder she tried.
She felt a tug on the back of her dress.
Galina.
As they left the well, Sonya heard one whisper, “Bet it was a rejection… Not so better than us now, are they?”
Sonya stiffened, a stone sinking in the pit of her stomach, but Galina cleared her throat softly and Sonya remembered to keep moving.
So much for suppressing neighborly suspicions…
“I’m sure Katya will say yes,” Galina whispered as they reached the edge of the square. Her voice, though quiet, was bright and hopeful. “I know your sister’s fond of Petar, but it’s the capital. It’s the emperor! She’d be crazy not to go!”
Sonya forced a small laugh as the pit in her stomach grew. “Yeah… she would be crazy. Wouldn’t she?”
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Nothing had changed by the time the next new moon arrived.
Kneeling in the garden behind the cottage, Sonya shivered beneath its empty gaze. She hated the moon. Hated the uncertainty it brought. The helplessness. Already, the sun hung low against the top of the neighboring forest, painting the sky red. Darkness stretched from beneath the trees, ready to swallow the garden, her house, the road, and everything beyond. Her skin crawled with the feeling of it somehow watching her.
At least there were only nine hours between sunset and sunrise this time of the year.
Only nine hours of danger.
It wouldn’t guarantee protection, but Sonya said a prayer anyway as she laid a fresh bouquet of field flowers upon her Nonna’s empty grave. As the shadows reached the edge of the garden, Sonya abandoned it for the fragile safety of their cottage.
The house was bigger than it’d been when Sonya was a child. They’d added an extra bedroom and separate workshop over the years, the wooden charms that she carved and Katya enchanted bringing an extra trickle of wealth to their family. They’d planned on moving to the city after Katya left for the capital, finally taking refuge behind the safety of its gates.
Her family were all in the family room—Mischa and her father practicing letters at the table, her mother darning a sock in the fireside chair, Katya crouched beside her as she tended to the swelling fire itself…
Instead of joining them, Sonya found herself lingering in the open doorway, her hand tracing over its frame and the various trees and woodland creatures that had been carved into it. She’d been saying little private goodbyes to their house this summer, making peace with leaving the only home she’d ever known, but perhaps she might as well start getting used to the idea of staying. Even if Katya kept earning money with her spell work, it’d be nothing compared to the stipend she would’ve received as a student of the Imperial Academy. And, if her sister kept the baby, then her family would also have that new mouth to feed.
It was a far different future than the one her family had been imagining.
“Close the door, Sonya!” her mother hissed. “You’re going to kill the fire!”
Sonya sighed, doubtful of that, but obeyed.
Across the room, a heavy-eyed Katya twisted her hands and the fire expanded like a breath. It danced in the hearth without log or stick, though Katya occasionally fed it the loose shaving. During the summer, none of them needed the flames (and before Katya’s powers, they would’ve done without one, in order to save the logs for winter), but new moons always brought unique chills, and, despite everything else, Sonya was grateful for her sister’s presence in their lives. Grateful for the warmth as Sonya took up a silent vigil beside her.
A small basket of leftover wood blocks hung on the wall near the hearth. Sonya grabbed one and unsheathed her Nonna’s old carving knife. Letting both objects lie heavy in her hand, she cast through her head for ideas to carve, then set upon the block with smooth strokes. Shavings fell onto the carpet before her.
Future fuel for Katya’s fire.
As the wall clock ticked and the sky outside darkened, movement caught Sonya’s eye. She watched as Katya withdrew a folded sheet of paper from her dress pocket. Her sister’s mouth pressed into a tight line, and then she crumpled the paper and threw it towards the fire.
The acceptance letter.
It had to be.
“What are you doing!?” Sonya dove for the letter without thinking. She hissed as her hand touched flames.
“It’s all over anyway!” Katya cried. “I might as well burn it!”
Sonya bit back a curse that her mother provided for both of them anyway. “Don’t say that!” their mother snapped. “Don’t you dare say that!”
“Why not?! It’s the truth!”
With her carving knife, Sonya poked and prodded the letter out of the fireplace. Smoke curled from its surface, and Sonya stamped on it with her foot to prevent the paper from catching ablaze.
“Stop yelling!” Mischa yelled. “All everybody does now is yell and I hate it!”
The noise grew and grew, the dangers of the new moon forgotten, and as Katya and their mother reached a fever pitch, their father dragged Mischa out of the room. His own whining and wailing remained audible from the other side of the door.
Once Sonya was sure the letter was well and truly safe, she opened it, carefully, so as to not rip the crumpled paper. Katya had held onto the blasted thing all week. She could’ve easily burned it this entire time. So why now? What had changed?
As Sonya’s eyes scanned line after line, they found their answer at the bottom of the page.
“Oh,” Sonya said.
The small noise ripped their mom from her latest beratements. “Oh?” she demanded. “Oh, what?!”
Katya sniffed. At some point, she’d started crying again, and her face was all red and blotchy. “Sonya saw,” she said. “Sonya knows.”
Below paragraphs of flowing praise and congratulations were printed several lines of cold and passionless logistics. Including one line about sending confirmation of one’s acceptance to the Academy via imperial mail by the 10th of Quintil.
Which was tomorrow.
Their mother snatched the letter from Sonya’s hands. Her eyes flew down the page like a bull’s rampage, then froze as they seemingly reached the same line that Sonya’s had. Her face darkened. Her limbs trembled.
“You knew!” she shrieked, stabbing a finger at Katya. “You knew this whole week and kept it from us!”
“I knew you’d act like this!” Katya yelled back, and the flames swelled with her. “I knew it’d be my fault all over again, even though there’s nothing I can do!”
“Nothing? Nothing! You can take the potions I got you and send that little tailor’s spawn back where it belongs! That’s something!”
Katya went white, choking the flames from the hearth with her. The room plunged into darkness. The distant singing of crickets filled the silence. “Never,” she hissed as she wrapped her arms protectively around her middle. “I am never killing my baby.”
“Oh?” their mother continued, unfazed. “Is that so? But you’re apparently fine with killing the rest of us. Well, I hope you’ll be satisfied with that choice when we’re all forced to stay here and one day you’re the one digging a grave for your parents in the back garden!”
“She wasn’t even your mother!” Katya cried out. “She was Papa’s! And you never liked her anyway!”
A slap rang out.
Katya’s face hung tilted from where their mother had struck it. The air turned cold. Icy. Sonya’s breath hung before her in tiny crystals.
“What happened to you, Katya?” their mother whispered, her face as white as the rest of theirs. “My darling little girl. You were always so bright, so beautiful… You’re the one who was supposed to go so far…”
Sonya flinched along with her sister.
Katya was the one destined for great things. It’d always been that way. For as long as Sonya could remember. Not one of two.
Just one.
Katya laughed, hollow and wretchedly. Her arms tightened around her stomach. “I guess you’ll just have to find someone else,” she spat bitterly.
“There is no one else! Who do you think could possibly take your place? Sonya?” Their mother even laughed at the seeming ridiculousness of the idea.
A knife sank into Sonya’s gut.
The words weren’t anything but the truth. She’d even told Galina as much at the well—she wasn’t good enough. Never would be. But it was one thing to say it and another to hear it and yet another to hear it from straight from one’s mother of all people…
“No, not Sonya,” Katya quickly agreed, and the knife twisted, leaving behind a red hot coal of… something in its wake. “I didn’t… But there are other cities. Other academies. Maybe not this year, but one day—”
“Oh, ‘one day’!” Their mother scoffed. “If I had a lira for every ‘one day’ that waltzed its dreamy way across—“
Sonya’s clasped thumbs played against each other, her breath coming in shallowed, frigid pants as her sister and mother’s latest fight rose higher and higher. A floorboard creaked from the neighboring room—Mischa. Or her father. She supposed the difference didn’t matter.
And then, beneath that creak, beneath the yelling, came the sudden echo of Galina’s words. The echo of her friend’s confidence. Her friend’s surety.
Because maybe… just maybe… Sonya wouldn’t have to excel. Not everyone could be at the top of every class, after all. Life with Katya was a daily test of that. So, maybe… Just maybe… all she’d have to do was survive.
And Sonya had always been good at surviving.
“I could,” Sonya heard herself say, and the small words somehow cut straight through the thunderous squall. The other women turned to face Sonya, and she almost quaked beneath the intensity of their stares, feeling unsettlingly like a deer that’d caught the gaze of a pair of hunters. Armed hunters. She forced herself to swallow. Forced herself to continue. “I could take Katya’s place. I could go to the Academy.”