“All the stars you look up to—kid, you just wait. By the time you’re thirty or forty, they’ll have tell-alls recounting all the therapy they need just to sleep at night.”

I’m not sure whether to wipe my cheeks or stay dead. Vincente insisted this morning, every morning, “Absolutely still. A stone. Eyes to the sky, searching for heaven. If you stare long enough, you’ll see it.”

“Tesslin VanGlaise stands accused of assaulting a rider,” the inquisitor continued, while she could feel his eyes drinking in the sight of her, “and of practising magic for some years prior to doing so.”

In my heart, I wanted to be better, more patient, more adequate. Grandma had hurt me many times in the past. She never had a good thing to say, and her criticism went from fat and ugly to selfish and useless. When I was younger, she would say both that I was heartless and that I was kind to the point of stupidity, and she would laugh whenever I felt pain, saying my mother spoiled me rotten.

Standing there in the shadow of the building with the entire town’s held breath in her hand, she knew they’d suffer if she went through. That somehow, their lives were wrapped up in or… antithetical to the existence of the haunted castle.

She and I are alive, along with half the city’s sorcerers. The enemy fleet has entirely vanished, together with every male sorcerer in Flowers and Summer. The day is ours, but at what cost?