Page 12 of The Sundered Blade

“It will not be enough to provoke him with misdirection,” Senaya was arguing. “Even if his plan is not yet fully prepared, if he has learned to harness the full power of his mirror magic, there will be little that can stop him outside of…”

She did not say “death,” but they all heard it, and Karreya responded swiftly to the unspoken threat.

“No. You must not kill him.” She doubted they would understand, let alone agree with her reasoning. The situation was complex and filled with pitfalls, but she knew only that she would not allow him to be killed. Not until she had deciphered what his choices meant for the course of her own future. “I require him alive. He must be returned to the Empire if we are to prevent Her Eminence the Empress from taking revenge on Abreia in her wrath.”

That might not be her most important reason, but it was certainly true. Karreya’s grandmother, the Empress of Zulle, had lost three heirs to Abreia over the years. Should one of them die on Abreian shores, her rage would be sudden and it would be absolute. Even with the united strength of all Five Thrones, there would be no saving Abreia from the flames of imperial vengeance.

“Your brother may have grown more powerful than you remember,” Leisa burst out, “but he is not the only mirror mage in all of Abreia. Perhaps you have forgotten, but there are two more of us here. I am untrained, yes, but with our combined efforts, can we not hope to contain him?”

“Maybe if you had accepted my offer the first time.” Senaya’s tone was level, but Karreya heard the notes of an old pain. “I could have trained you. Taught you how to use this power. As it is, we have no time. Do you think mirror magic is like washing dishes or chopping wood? It is complex. Filled with dangers. I cannot possibly teach you everything you need to know before you will be forced to confront him.”

“And yet you gifted me a mirror in hopes that I would find my own way,” Leisa retorted incredulously. “You claim everything you have done was to protect me, but now you say that learning to use my magic is too dangerous?”

“I cannot force you to believe me,” Senaya said stiffly. “But I have truly wished nothing more than for you to live in peace. This path you are on… It might lead to many places, but none of them are peaceful.”

“You speak so much of peace,” Leisa shot back. “And I will not deny that I long for it. But how are we to find it if those around us wish only to steal, kill, and destroy? Someone must fight to achieve it. Someone must choose to sacrifice their own peace in order to protect that peace for others, and if not me, then who?”

Were all families this complicated, Karreya wondered? Or only those born to power? Did all families argue, or only those who had been separated by time, distance, and regret?

Senaya was silent for a few moments, as if gathering her thoughts. The only sounds were the horses’ hooves on the hard packed dirt of the road and a handful of forest birds, greeting the morning with bright, cheerful calls.

A strange counterpoint to these words of war.

“Your father would have said to allow the violent to fight among themselves.” Senaya’s voice was soft and regretful, echoing with painful memories. “That we are always free to choose peace. After the life I lived up until I met him, it seemed like a beautiful dream. The fae choose peace out of necessity, but what if I could choose it for its own sake?”

“But the violence came for you anyway.” That was Leisa. Relentless. Implacable. Determined. But more than anything else, disappointed. Like Karreya, she had spent years searching for her parent, but the person she found was not what she expected.

“It did,” Senaya agreed. “Always. It took my closest friend, my children, and my husband. It is why I chose to lay aside my power. Why I sought out a life of such simplicity that no one would expect to find me there. And it is why I question this path we are on. I fear that now I have found you, now that I have taken up my power and chosen to protect you, I will only lose you again.”

“I did not ask for your protection,” Leisa reminded her. “I asked for your help. And if you fear losing me, how is it better to stand back and watch it happen than to fight against it with every breath in your body?”

Because to fight was to hope, and hope could be a difficult burden to carry. Karreya had seen the collared mages in her father’s house, had known when their hope was finally extinguished, because they ceased to fight. The light went out of their eyes, and they simply existed.

If you had no hope, then your hope could not be crushed again and again and again, and Senaya seemed dangerously close to making this choice.

“You think we did not fight? That we simply stood back and watched all this happen?” Senaya’s voice had gone raw with pain. “We made none of our choices lightly. Especially not the choice to give you a life we could not be a part of! Do you think that decision did not tear my heart from my chest and leave me sobbing on the floor every night for months upon months? Do you think I did not question my choice to surrender you with every waking moment?”

Leisa was silent. And when she finally spoke, her voice was quiet. Thoughtful.

“I don’t know.” Her answer seemed to echo through the surrounding forest before she continued. “But I do know the questions I have spent my whole life asking. I know the answers I have spent my whole life believing—answers about why you must have done what you did. They are part of what has made me who I am, and they cannot be changed in a day simply because you say they are wrong.”

Karreya had not often experienced the sensation of awkwardness, but she felt it now, and she did not like it. A forest road seemed an odd setting for such a raw and painful conversation between mother and daughter, and an assassin for an audience did not make it in any way less odd.

“If you would wish to keep these words private,” she said, “you need only inform me and I will ride apart. Ahead or behind, it matters not.”

“We stay together,” Leisa replied flatly. “I see no reason to hide any of this from you. Not if we…”

She broke off, pulling her horse to a halt and holding up a hand for silence.

“A wagon is coming,” she said at length. “Horses. But I do not think they are soldiers.”

Startled, Karreya listened to the soft sounds of the forest, straining to hear hoofbeats or wheels among them. But there was nothing, and her hearing had always been quite acute.

“Are you certain?”

Leisa nodded. “I have… very good hearing,” she said, after a short pause.

“It is magic?” The thought did not dismay Karreya, but she was curious about the magic of others. In Zulle, no one discussed such things—at least not openly—and there was much she desired to know.

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