POV: Ayla

The Mage’s lips touch my forehead and the dark opens like a door that has been waiting years to unlock.

I am eight years old again. I stand in the corner of my mother’s bedroom, small and quiet, watching her the way I always did when she thought I was asleep. The lamp on the table throws a circle of yellow light across the bed. Her hands move fast. She writes with a pen that scratches against the paper. Her shoulders shake. Tears fall onto the page and she wipes them away with the back of her wrist before they can ruin the ink.

“Sera,” a voice calls...