Dreathus Engail, ruler of the Engail coastlands, was Ancita’s father.

This was the first thing anyone thought about when they looked at her. The first thing anyone learned about her after meeting her. Often, this fact preceded her everywhere she went and in everything she tried to do.

The second thing that most people knew about her was the fact that, like her father, Ancita was a powerful mage.

Although you wouldn’t have known it to look at her.

Ancita’s plain, straight dress was the murkiest and least intrusive grey she could source, she wore no adornments, she kept her black hair swept into a tidy bun with her fringe pinned back, and she was at that moment scrounging around on the floor under the low tables and benches, looking for the pen she had dropped.

She found it, but at what cost?

She stood up — more of an awkward shuffle back out from under the table, worming between it and the bench seat — to arch and stretch her stiff lower back. She’d never said anything, but would it have killed the school to provide seat cushions for the students and their tutors?

Ancita understood that the entire estate-turned-school once belonged to the noble family Tyrone, and they surely would have had cushions. The school ought to have kept a few, she thought.

Though the building was completely transformed — with wings for various library collections focused each on history, philosophy, mathematics, language and the likes — and smelled now strongly of ink and paper and alchemical concoctions — the carved details in the woodwork, the vaulted ceilings hung with fabric canopies, the many corridors and small adjoining rooms with their heavy curtains all bore the residual impression of homeliness. Hard benches aside, Ancita found it… welcoming.

But where the building was welcoming, the people in it — the students and the other tutors — were not particularly so.

It seemed that only one person in all of Bluddrayl genuinely liked her, and he had to pretend that he didn’t.

She sat back down beside one of her pupils, Damon. He was studying the geography and politics of the coastlands, which were, for better or worse, Ancita’s specialty.

He had been working away for the better part of an hour and hadn’t needed her help much at all in that time. It gave her an unfortunately expansive opportunity to think. When she thought about what she was going to do next — she couldn’t just keep going like this, could she? pretending to be meek and magicless — she came up uncomfortably blank. But when she tried to think about more comfortable and pleasant matters… Well, it didn’t seem right to let her mind wander there among polite company.

So she did her best to keep her thoughts in neutral territory. In fact, it was sort of a grey way of thinking. In her grey dress on the grey bench beside the grey walls with her grey thoughts, Ancita felt she could all but disappear. Indeed, that had been her intention for the last few months. Don’t stand out. Blend in.

She looked at the map of the continent that Damon had placed to his right. On his left, he had several reference books open, and he scrawled his notes into a book of his own, looking back and forth between them and occasionally across to the map.

There, leading in from the Glassius Sea, was the Curved River. The one she had used to flee Engail’s capital to come to Bluddrayl.

Truth be told, she hadn’t fled specifically to Bluddrayl. She had arranged last-minute passage on a ship about to leave the harbour. A trading galley to take her down the Curved River some way. When it docked, she swapped into another ship, and then another.

And ended up here.

At the time, she’d thought only of survival. And that mode of thinking had lasted for another month before she calmed down enough to think clearly. If her father knew where she’d gone, surely he’d have found her by then. And since then, the council and people of Bluddrayl had evidently kept their promise to take her in and not send word to her father.

What did he think had happened to her?

Did he care?

Not that it mattered.

If nothing else, she was sure that he had loved her, in his own way. Even if he’d ordered her put to death.

But since calming down, she couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to do. And it seemed the council didn’t much know what to do with her, either. They’d bound her magic and, eventually, she’d found a position for herself as a tutor, given that she was well-educated on all manner of topics. She wasn’t their prisoner, but neither was she entirely free.

With her magic bound, she felt muted. It was like it simmered within her, just below the surface. Unable to ever unleash it, she found she could hardly sit still. She had the urge to pace almost all the time. Preferably, to run. Or, like she had that morning, to —

Damon was looking pointedly at her rapidly bouncing knee.

Ancita sighed and stilled herself, tried to refocus and look over the notes Damon was making.

‘This map is out of date,’ she muttered. ‘Dariegus has been taken into Engail lands, and this border here has pushed west.’

Damon frowned down at the relevant areas of the map. ‘Why do the borders move? Weren’t they agreed on by the parties when their states were established?’

Ancita held her tongue, unsure how to answer.

‘Because taken into is political weasel-speak for invaded by.’

Weston.

He was twisting back toward them from his seat in front. Since he had spoken loudly to ensure his voice carried over to them, a few others in the room had turned their heads Ancita’s way. She noted that Damon, unnecessarily in her opinion, matched Weston’s volume as he asked Ancita, ‘Invaded by your father?’

A few more heads turned.

‘Yes. By my father.’ Ancita spoke just as clearly and firmly as she could.

Unhelpfully, some of the other tutors tittered in response. Ancita noted the way Damon’s eyes flickered over their faces. He was absorbing and processing. Coming to understand that Ancita was at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Soon he’d treat her with a little less respect; she’d already seen it with other students. This was not what she needed.

The door to the study room creaked open and Ancita jumped to her feet, more as a result of her barely contained restless tension than anything else.

Victus.

What was he doing here?

This was not what she needed either.

Colour rose to her cheeks and she became hyper-aware of her body, how she held herself, where she looked. But she had to admit that her restlessness had calmed a little at the sight of him. He, at least, was a friendly face, always. She smoothed her dress and tried to look quietly indifferent to his arrival. But she need not have bothered: Damon had returned to his work, as had Weston to his.

You handsome fool, she thought, even as the word fool echoed back onto her: She didn’t stop herself from walking over to meet him by the corner of the room.

‘Good morning, Victus. It’s been a while.’

Her eyes shone playfully under the deceit. In fact it had been some two hours or so since they’d seen each other just outside town. Recalling it flushed her with remembered desire.

‘Good morning, Ancita. Indeed it has.’ The way he looked at her — surely his very look would give everything away. But somehow it didn’t, and somehow no one else cared about the two of them standing in the corner. She knew from the way he looked at her that he wanted to sweep her up into his arms and away — away from everything. Everyone. He had said as much that morning. And she rather wanted him to, too.

She took a step closer. In order to not be overheard, she justified. She knew this closeness would be so much less potent if she didn’t still carry the memory of his lips on hers so recently. It was like the more time they spent together, the more acutely she wanted to be with him.

It was the most gorgeous and dangerous distraction from all her problems.

‘You look well,’ he said. She understood what he meant: I needed to know you got back to town safely.

She craved to kiss the side of his mouth.

‘Thank you; a brisk walk around town this morning has done my constitution wonders.’

To slip her arms around his neck.

His next words were awkward and stilted. ‘If you do. Go walking again. You should keep in mind. In the woods this morning, Magenta was attacked by — by a creature — a rabid bat.’

Ancita startled. ‘Who? Where? Attacked?’

Victus took a steadying step back. ‘No one. A townsperson — well, not really. Just — be safe.’ He shook his head. He couldn’t tell her more. He could never tell her more. Not when they weren’t alone, and they were so rarely alone.

Ancita knew that the only solution was for them to stop hiding their friendship.

‘Well. Thank you for letting me know.’

But Victus would refuse.

‘Is there anything more?’ she asked. ‘I should return to my duties.’

Because Ancita’s father was Dreathus Engail.