“Focus on the information, Mira. This is just the background knowledge.”

It took every bit of restraint in her bones not to toss a pillow in her brother’s direction. Mira didn’t think it was possible for her to focus, not with the stuff she’d just read, but her brother was adamant on moving away from it and focusing on something else. She’d seen the minor discomfort in his posture, the way he turned his head to avoid looking at her, the craters he made in his face by sucking in his cheeks. And then, after they sat on opposite ends of the bed in agonizing silence, Magic picked up the journal he’d read and began nervously flipping through pages before asking her if she was ready to look for the information they needed. The second Mira nodded her head, he flipped through the pages with an eagerness that told her he wasn’t just looking for the myths, but a distraction, too.

There were days Mira wished she’d had Magic’s odd ability to detach himself from the emotional side of things and days where she wished that, for once, he would just slow down and read the room.

Today, Mira wished for the latter.

They’d been going through the journals for the last few hours, discussing the importance of the Spectacles, their impact on nature (at least what they were rumored to be capable of) and their relation to the Scepters, half-sights, and anyone else with the Sight gene. And with each story and account Magic read to her, the more she felt the pounding of her heart in her head.

“The stories I’d heard of Ori growing up,” her brother had said, “always mentioned her as a harbinger of light, the creator of the sun. It was from her wings that stars were born and how shadows were reduced to what they are now, a darkness under step. Her close relationship with metals and earth gave her the ability to transmute the very ground we stand on; her influence alone was how the poor became richer, offering up precious stones to her at altars to be changed to gold coins.”

“I imagine that did wonders for the economy,” Mira said dryly, plucking at a pillowcase.

Magic frowned. “It didn’t happen all the time, Mira. Just … enough. They revered her so much that the earliest known recorders of her mythology believed in Ori as their creator; that all people—to some degree—were born from the stars.”

“Taking into consideration where the gene comes from,” Mira said, plucking at a pillow, “I can see why they thought that.”

“There’s a saying that goes with it.” He stared at Mira with that giddy-looking smile on his face, like he was just waiting for her to ask him to explain. All Mira did was raise a brow and he continued. “As illumae vi nascita. Mas illumae, vi rivita. ‘From light we are created. To light, we return’ is the word for word translation,” he explained, looking relatively pleased with himself, but it wavered and fell away for something pensive.

Mira only stared. Again with the foreign tongue. “What language is that?”

Magic shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t really taught; I learned by reading. Never thought knowing it would come in handy traveling the continent.”

“Define ‘come in handy.’ ”

“Daphne spoke it. So did a few people in Elnoire. Came in handy.”

She found herself pouting, sinking into the plush pillows at her back. Clemont spoke it, too, back in the Southern District. So did Spiros. “Is it a Scepter tongue?”

“I don’t think it’s specific to Sight, I think it’s specific to the Spectacles. Anyone who follows the mythology would likely have learned the language either through reading the tales or by speaking it in the house.”

“But what’s the point of using it if it’s outdated?” Mira asked.

Magic exhaled a long, deep breath, laying down on the mattress, one of the journals opened in his hands and held upwards, elbows extended. His long hair spilled out in a pool just above his shoulders like the splayed out wings of a raven and his round glasses briefly knocked back against the ridge of his brow. It happened in slow motion, enough for Mira to laugh a little to herself. Her brother didn’t notice.

“I wouldn’t say it’s outdated,” he said, flipping through some of the pages. “It’s still used, just in specific groups. Based on its prevalence in a lot of the older journal entries from the last alternate letter years, people seemed to think their wishes would be answered more if they spoke the Spectacles’ language.”

They’re very fickle things, stars. But, learn to speak their language and you may find that they’re more helpful than you think.

The words slapped Mira in the face, jarring her a little. Alaric’s words, now with more sense. She thought he’d just been making a vague statement, connecting everything to stardust. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have been speaking about the Spectacles themselves, too.

Which raised another problem. “But if the Spectacles only really answered to that specific language, then what does that mean for everyone else who doesn’t know it enough to ask for their help?”

Magic was silent. His usual frown had returned, deeper this time. Tiny craters formed in his cheeks and he drummed his fingers along the spine of the journal in his hands. His eyes didn’t seem to know what to rest on, flicking from one side of the room to the other. When he cleared his throat, Mira expected some kind of knife-point reply, something to deny her. But his silence spoke more than his words ever could and unease fluttered in her chest at the notion.

Should’ve kept your mouth shut.

She’d thought it was a valid question, though. Were these myths just choosy with their gifts and abilities? Or did they truly act as protectors of nature and humankind as Daphne claimed them to be so long ago—weeks ago, even if it felt like far longer?

Mira sank further into the cushions, wishing she could disappear in the silence, hoping they could find that answer.

It took an additional half hour for Magic to reboot; Mira took a nap in the meantime in the bed her brother had initially claimed, having no grand words of wisdom to shake him from his rumination. She waited for him to call for her, and when he did, Mira got up and sat by the pillows as she had been before while Magic perched on the edge of the bed as if he were ready to run.

From there, the two proceeded as though nothing happened, as if some intrusive thought did not rob Mira of her brother’s attention, wedging itself inside of his skull to render him a silent wall. They went on talking about the longstanding mythology, the commonalities between them (much of which consisted of offerings at altars, specific rituals tied to their specialties, or other festivals held in their honor).

The question of the Spectacles’ biases regarding who they helped was never brought up again.

Mira understood why to a degree; there was no point in pressing an issue when Magic made it painfully clear it bugged him beyond expression. What she didn’t understand was the reason. That was of far more importance to her when it came to understanding everything else about the myths, their supposed powers, and their relationship to the humans capable of perceiving them.

The fact that they’d gotten nowhere regarding what made them and Sight so dangerous over the course of an evening was eating at her. For some reason, these books seemed to skip over that. Or, Magic himself had chosen to omit them in his read-alouds to her.

Only when her brother fell asleep (on top of the covers of the bed she chose), gradually lulled into slumber by the plushness of the mattress, did Mira take the two journals and light a candle from the counter in the room to bring with her down the steps. Her eyes flitted around the narrow staircase as though something would jump through the walls to grab her. She never used to fear the dark—that was a child’s fear—but now it didn’t seem implausible for demons to be lurking there.

Wood creaked beneath her feet as she tiptoed around the corner, expecting the lobby to be dark. Soft candlelight flooded the room, a cascade of pale orange and red and yellow pulsing in shadows along the wooden walls. The innkeeper, seated on a stool, had slumped forward, her head resting against her crossed arms as her back and shoulders rose and fell in rhythmic motions, accompanied by deep breaths and the occasional whistle from her nose.

Mira blinked. She wondered how often people came through this inn for the keeper to be as bored as she was. Or, maybe people just stayed in their rooms? Either way, she imagined it must be lonely sitting in a building full of people and still be by yourself. There was nothing Mira could do to fix it aside from wake the woman up, but she felt bad doing that, too, so she found her way to the velvet sofas closest to the dying fireplace instead.

Years of creeping around rooms, avoiding discarded liquor bottles on the floor had trained her feet into unnerving silence. Mira might have been loud and boisterous, a fact she boasted about daily and liked to believe was her best trait, but she’d learned a thing or two about erring on the side of caution whenever booze-induced sleep brought her house to an eerie lull.

She hooked the fire poker around the fireplace’s door handle ignoring the metal as it cried until it squeaked and opened wide. Embers flickered faintly, their glow a bright orange as Mira added new wood to the fire from the stack on the side of the hearth, placed some of the fire starters beneath, and tipped the candle she’d used to light her path to get the flames going. Heavy smoke filled the chamber and she gave a few quick breaths to fan the flames before closing the door. It shuttered closed with a bang as the sparks morphed to embers and roared to life behind the glass window embedded in the metal.

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The innkeeper inhaled sharply from her place behind the desk.

So much for keeping quiet.

“Sorry to bug you,” Mira said, her voice a careful whisper as she took a seat at one of the couches. “I just wanted to sit by the fire.”

“At this hour?” mumbled the woman, rubbing her eyes.

“Well, at ‘this hour,’ there’d still be some light left in Droidell to watch the sun set.” It was the truth. This time of the day—evening time—was her favorite time of day. She much preferred sunset to sunrise, finding the scorching reds of the east far prettier than the pale show of gold from the west. “You’ll have to lower your expectations. I’m not as accustomed to the dark as you are.”

“And your friend? The observant one?”

“Neither is he. He’s just more susceptible to comfy beds than I am.”

The innkeeper laughed at that. “What does bring the sun lizards so close to the caves?” she asked. “I didn’t think you folk had the guts to go anywhere outside your city limits, let alone have the gall to cross the Maidenwoods to get here.”

It took Mira a minute to realize that the woman was talking about her and Magic, about Droidellans. She’d never heard Droidellans being referred to as lizards before, but she’d called the Subsidians worse. And now, on a second thought, Mira wasn’t sure whether or not to be insulted.

She settled for ignoring the jab. “How do you know about that?”

“Word spreads fast, miss. That, and between what Val had told me over the phone and what you were telling me, I can connect a few dots.”

“The two of you are close, then?”

The woman shrugged, reaching underneath the desk before coming back up with two cans. “You could say that.” She took the materials with her and, to Mira’s surprise, not only stepped away from behind the desk with the cans in hand, but was far shorter than Mira expected her to be. Without being invited, the woman, whose age showed in the wrinkles that cast shadows on her face from the lanterns and the hearth, sat in a seat nearby, but not close enough for either to be sitting side by side. She placed one of the cans down as if in offering before opening the other herself and taking a sip from it.

The labels on them weren’t anything Mira recognized—her only experience with drinks had been in discarded bottles that found their way under sofas or beds or shattered into pieces at the bottom of an empty garbage bag. She was about to put her feet up and rest them on the edge of the couch when the woman wagged a scolding finger at her.

“No shoes on these cushions,” she said. “Take those off if you plan on doing that.”

Mira did as she was told, sliding one sneaker off without taking her eyes off the innkeeper. They clattered to the floor unceremoniously.

“Better,” said the woman. She bobbed her head in the direction of the can still resting on the table. “That’s for you.”

“I don’t drink,” Mira replied, shamefully intimidated by the offer.

The woman laughed. “Can’t hold liquor?”

A frown tugged at her mouth. Benji would be ever so slightly disappointed in her refusal of a host’s hospitality, but she imagined that the nagging guilt in her chest was more from the fear of being forced to drink to preserve politeness. Had Magic been awake and present, she would’ve deferred it to him so that the “gift” did not go unused. Not like that would be a good idea either—if there was anyone she knew who sucked at holding their liquor it was her brother (even if he claimed otherwise), but better to at least have someone else sip from it and decline than have it be her.

It was unfair how uncomfortable the idea made her.

Mira reached forward and took the can. It was rigid ice between her fingers and the chill that ran down her spine caused her fingers to tingle. She drummed her nails against the tin and kept the drink in her lap. “I’ve never had,” was all Mira could manage, staring at the offering nestled against her.

“First time for everything,” said the woman as she lifted her can and sipped from it. “That is, so long as you wish to. I offer it to every guest that I have the pleasure of speaking with. But don’t think I forgot about your question; I figured I’d join you here to make the experience less lonesome.”

“It wasn’t entirely loneso—”

“Val helped me and my daughter a while ago. Got us out of the Northern District and found us a makeshift shelter with the help of Celez Vesza. I’ve been camped out here, my daughter lives her life free in Maribyss. Whatever he asks of me—within reason—I oblige.”

“What was in the Northern District that you needed to run from?” Mira asked.

“The Cardinal building.” The woman grimaced and took a long sip from her can. Mira tightened the grip she had on hers as her chatting companion finally placed the tin down on the table (empty, by the hollow ringing it made) and sank into the cushions. “The bastards have their roots in every region and Jax’s bribes keep the officials oblivious to the slaughter and confinement of hundreds. Maybe thousands.”

Jax.

She’d heard that name before.

Mira leaned forward, pressing the damp metal of the tin can against her chest. Maybe the innkeeper could answer what the journals would not. “Why? My brother and I have been trying to figure this out for weeks. Everything we find leads to a dead end. Why do the Cardinals, Jax, whoever, want these people captured or dead?”

The woman was silent for a minute before she readjusted herself on the sofa, propping her head up with an arm. Despite the fast consumption of her drink, she didn’t look drunk—not like Daphne, who had been so consumed by drink that it hampered her ability to reliably tell a story. The innkeeper pushed hair out of her face as if to show her eyes, both a deep brown and jarring against the pale white of her skin illuminated by the embers.

“Have you heard the fables of the Nascitar?” asked the innkeeper. “The Birth Giver?” Mira nodded, recalling a bit of what Alaric had mentioned to her and Magic a day or so ago. “Some sources say she can return a man’s heartbeat moments after it stops, heal an illness before it spreads to the rest of the body. It was Soma who gave life to the world, granted her children Sight … and it is she who can take that life away if she pleases.

“The horror stories meant to remind us of her power—and by extension, the other Spectacles—have shown her draining life from enemies, stripping it away from mortals who had betrayed her. Some detail nightmares from those who have witnessed her zap a woman with enough voltage to equal a lightning strike. The Birth Giver she may be, but those who have mistaken her kindness for weakness were very quickly reminded to reconsider. The ones who did got to live. The ones who didn’t were electrocuted to death. Rarely does she do this, so as to preserve her strength.”

Just like the Beast of the Maidenwoods, who hadn’t used the full extent of its abilities when they had encountered it by the Maidenwood tree. Mira figured that, if it wanted to, it likely could have done worse than just have her hear the conjured voice of her deceased mother.

“These creatures are not from here,” continued the innkeeper. “The Cardinals fear them and those associated with them, seeing as the gene replicates part of that celestial energy within us all.”

Mira tilted her head. “ ‘Us’?”

The woman bit her bottom lip. She hesitated a moment, her wrinkled hands drifting towards her long sweater sleeves. With trembling fingers, she bundled up the fabrics and gingerly lifted it to expose skin.

In addition to the wrinkles, her forearms were riddled with curious scars that looked like slash wounds. A few of them curiously resembled track lines, dotting the areas of her inner arms.

“They liked to poke around,” she said, “and see what they could find.”

Mira fought the urge to recoil backwards or say something of comfort. It’s what she was raised to do: offer her condolences to something upsetting. But it would do the woman no good to pity her. It was a kind of sympathy easily misinterpreted as condescension and, while it was etched into her brain like letters on stone to offer one’s sympathies to hardship, Mira had grown to learn that people who knew suffering often squirmed in the face of it.

She kept her focus on the truth of it, neither wishing to console or press. “You hid your Sight?”

“Contacts. Deflects initial suspicion. It makes the questions easier to avoid talking about.”

“Does it work?” Mira asked.

“Most of the time. It’s enough to get them to stop pressing further, but whether or not they come to the conclusion themselves is another story entirely. But I have one for you.”

Great. “What?”

“What interest is this to you?” The innkeeper pulled her sleeves down and crossed her arms over her chest. She sank back into the pillows with the scrunched together, interrogatory eyebrows that Mira had seen the old shopkeepers in Chrome use whenever they didn’t know how to respond to something she’d said. “I always thought Droidellans were pretty keen on their mythology in the same way we Subsidians are.”

“Then you’d be mistaken. In Chrome—where my brother and I are from—the stories are as rare as strawberries in the summer. You can only find them if you travel to the right places. I didn’t grow up knowing about them, but my brother did. He used to tell me a lot about this stuff when we were kids, but …”

The innkeeper raised a brow. “But what?”

Mira frowned, trying to frame her thoughts into correct words, but there was no easy way to say that she didn’t believe without it sounding harsh. She’d had this conversation with her brother months after her twelfth birthday. When he was eight and still childish, Magic had once asked her why she and Benji didn’t place pebbles outside of their windows like he and his mom did. Mira thought it a strange question from a boy she’d only known for a year at the time and had only said what she knew to be true.

If they fall off the sill, Mira explained, they might hit someone on the head. My dad doesn’t want that kind of issue.

But don’t you want her to give you good luck? Magic had asked.

Who?

The bird. The gold one.

Mira vividly remembered staring at the sky, exasperated to be hearing about the same bird every time they spoke. That day, she snapped. Mystical birds in storybooks don’t exist, Magic. You would have found her by now if she did.

The heartbroken look on his face was everything Mira needed to know she had hurt him. Not to the same extent as the mine collapse, which had scarred him in ways she learned to see, but she may as well have taken a knife and stabbed him in the back. Magic didn’t speak to her for days until she apologized, incapable of wording how upset the conversation had made him.

Now, she sank back into the sofa, resting against the cushions, considering the woman’s words. “I didn’t think it was something I needed to know about. They just felt like stories to me. Tall tales to explain how the world works and nothing more than that.”

The woman nodded. “Do you still believe that?”

“I don’t know what I believe,” Mira said. Impulsively, she snapped back the pop-tab of her can and took a sip from it, ignoring the raised eyebrows on the innkeeper’s face beside her. Screw this. She couldn’t be bothered to care about the trouble this would cause her at the moment. The drink bubbled against her lips, fizzy and explosive. She cringed at the taste of it as she took her sip and set it down on the table. It tasted nothing like the liquor her father kept at home, sour and dry in a way that didn’t burn going down.

“In due time,” said the woman, “you’ll figure that out. Have you gotten everything you needed sitting here by the fire?”

“Think so. You were a good help.” The innkeeper patted Mira’s shoulder and stood, walking towards the desk. “I’ll go back up in a minute or so, but I wanted to thank you, too.”

The innkeeper paused at the corner of the sofa, drumming her fingers against it. “What for?”

“Trusting me with your battle scars,” Mira said.