When we returned to the room, Calix walked in, and my heart stopped when I saw Danae behind him. “Danae!” I screamed. The guards grabbed me when I tried to run to her, but she turned to me.
“Shalia,” she said, her throat working. She glanced back at Calix, and then walked over to me. “Three Faces, you’re thin,” she said. She glared at the guard holding me back but didn’t order him to release me.
“Danae, please,” I said. “Tell him to let me go. Please!”
She nodded. “I’ll try, Shalia. But I have a chance,” she said, looking impossibly sad, “to help him. I need to help him so I can help you too. Do you understand?”
“No!” I cried. “Danae, please! Please!”
Regret filled her eyes. “I’m sorry for all that you’ve suffered. I still think of you as my sister, you must know that.”
I slumped against the bonds of my guard. “Please,” I cried. “Don’t leave me here, Danae. Please.”
She turned away, and Calix put his arm around her, pulling her farther from me.
I was left alone in my cell, and this time I couldn’t hear anything.
The next morning Iona nearly ran over to me while we walked to the river. She clasped her hand in mine, and I felt the immediate rush of power. “They killed her,” she breathed.
“Danae!” I gasped.
“No,” she said, looking forward at the others. “Dara. The fire power.”
I looked around. Iona was right; she was missing.
“You have to heal yourself,” Iona told me. “You have to heal yourself and get us out of here. Yours is the only power that could do it.”
“I told you—”
She squeezed my hand, and her face looked panicked. “I don’t care. He’s right, you know—I’ve been here for God only knows how long and everyone presents their powers in the end. The power is always there—it’s always in you, it’s always inalienable. You have to find a way to get it back. You have to save us before we all die here.”
“Iona—” I started.
She gasped, cutting me off and holding up our hands. “There it is again. Concentrate—you must be able to feel it too.”
“Wait,” I told her, and we took off our clothes to go into the river. Once there, we locked hands again, and her power felt even stronger. I could feel it, like the threads of my power, but instead it was one single thread that slipped between our hands and connected us. Following it, I felt it give a strange little pulse. Like following a trail, I traced the thread through my body.
“The Three-Faced God is great,” she breathed. Her face was full of wonder, like I was some kind of miracle.
“Iona, what are you talking about?” I asked, but she didn’t break the hold, and I felt the pulse again, stronger this time. Steadier. Even and low.
It wasn’t my power, or hers. It was a heartbeat. And it was coming from my womb.
It shouldn’t have been possible, but my daughter, my fierce daughter was still there, still clinging to life. She was a daughter of the desert, of me, of my murdered family that had sent their spirits like soldiers to keep her alive.
Even in the small, secret touch under the eyes of the guards, Iona’s power rushed through me, healing me, healing us, and I sobbed, clinging to her, praying to every Sky and spirit I knew, thanking them.
My daughter was alive.
Sweeping the Stone
When we returned to the room, Calix stood there, smiling at me. I wiped my tears away, standing up straight, feeling a new kind of power rushing in my veins.
“Those two,” Calix said. He pointed at me and Iona.
We looked at each other as they brought us forward. Calix locked me into the manacles from the ceiling and drew my arms up again. “You look thin, wife,” he said. “Not enjoying your stay here?”
I drew a breath and shut my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he said, his breath close to my ear. “You won’t be here much longer.”
I opened my eyes as I heard Iona’s whimper. They tied her down to the table, and she looked at me, breathing rapidly, blinking back tears.
“Shalia, it’s time for you to present your power. I hear you’ve become quite close with her, yes? I knew I could count on you to make friends, even in a place like this. So just know that every bit of pain she’s about to feel will be your fault. Unless, of course, you want to show your power.”
Iona looked up at the ceiling, and I glared at Calix. “I am not responsible for your choices, Calix,” I told him. “You masquerade as a leader, but a leader would take responsibility for his choices. He would save people, not hurt them.”
“Really?” Calix asked, smiling. “You’re naive, Shalia. You have so many grand thoughts of leadership, but peace is always bought with death. Safety is inherently at odds with freedom. And you know nothing of what sacrifices leadership demands until you have fought for the lives of your people. You know nothing of what it takes to lead.” He turned to his quaesitori. “Begin.”
One of the men approached Iona with a small vial in his hand. Another came to the other side and blocked my view of her, holding a cloth and arranging it on her face.
She tried to buck and fight, but they held her tight.
“What are you doing?” I cried. “Calix, what are you doing to her?”
He didn’t answer me.
She whimpered and cried, kicking her legs, but they opened the vial.
“Calix!” I yelled.
“Do it!” Calix snapped.
With only a glance at him, they dripped something onto her eye.
She screamed, a guttural, tortured noise, for barely a moment before her body went limp.
“Do the other eye too,” Calix said. “Unless you want to show me something, Shalia?”
Desperate, I curled my fingers, trying to call up the threads, and I yelled out in frustration as the quaesitori switched places, opening her other eye.
The power is always there, she had told me.
Like my heart. Whether I liked it or not, even if it was shattered in my chest, my heart was still there. It wasn’t as easy as saying I didn’t know how to love anymore. The thought of my child, still growing inside me, was enough to make me believe that.
I shut my eyes and thought of her. My tiny girl, my little survivor.
My power had always been my ability to care for people. To love people, even in the bleakest of situations. Calix could say what he wanted, but that was truly what it meant to lead—to love people when they didn’t deserve it, to love people when it wasn’t in your best interest.
I would not let Iona die.
Like a thunderclap, the threads rushed back to my fingers. I tugged, and the chains tore out of the ceiling. The ground trembled and shook, and the quaesitori capped whatever dangerous liquid they held. My chains fell from me as cracks ran over the ceiling, and my husband turned to me, an evil light in his eyes.
“I knew it!” he crowed. “You see? I’m always right, wife. I will always be able to force you to show this filthy side of yourself.”
“I’ll be honest, Calix,” I told him, holding my hands wide. “I don’t know how well I can control this. You might want to run.”