Barl’s rage at her brother was so consuming, she wrote him out of her diary. Used an expunging incant on her scribblings to make it seem he never was. And if he came back… when he came back… she’d show him his absence. Thrust the diary beneath his nose and shout, You see? You weren’t missed!

Because she missed him so badly, she woke in tears with every dawn.

How could you, Remmie? How could you do this to me?

She’d made her peace with Venette. Beneath the pain, she knew this was Remmie’s fault. Not hers. He’d have done this with or without the councillor’s help. At least with it, he had a chance.

To get there in one piece. But how will he get back? If he survives the incant… the blight… Morgan… how will he get back in time?

And that was the crux of it. As ever, for her, it came down to time. The Olken were running out of it. The drought was tightening its grip. And if she broke its stranglehold on Lur without raising the wall, then the warding incant she’d created would never see the light of day. The magics wouldn’t permit it.

Which means if I break the drought first, and then Remmie fails, there will be nothing to stop Morgan… and all of us will die.

And though she could hardly bear to think of it, there was a chance he’d fail.

So now I must hope my brother murders the man I love. Loved. The man whose madness I helped create. The man who loves me, though his heart is made barren and his brilliant mind a ruin.

And so, hoping, she would wait. Wait as long as she could. And while she waited, continue to create Lur’s future. The future she wouldn’t see if Remmie failed to murder Morgan… and, out of time, she was forced to raise the wall.

With the inciting weather magic incants perfected, she turned her skills to what came next, the incants and protections that would keep Lur’s weather tame, the land in precarious balance, the warding powerful enough to hold Morgan at bay for the years it would take him to die of old age.

Because she knew, oh she knew, that until time claimed him he would stop at nothing to reach her. Though for some reason his dream sendings had ceased of late, she didn’t need them to know.

There was also the question of who would magework the weather day in and day out, once the warding wall was raised. But the answer was obvious. She chose Venette as the weather magic’s first guardian. Who followed next would be Venette’s choice, in consultation with the new Council, when it was formed.