Things grew much more complicated when Dor’s half-sister, Fallinal, appeared at court. She was related to him through his father, and they had been raised together. They were close; she seemed to understand him more than anyone else but Vathorem. She came to court, arm in arm with Dor, on a bright fall morning thirteen days after I arrived in Vilahna. She grew herb in the mountain compounds in the north and came to Alamadour to bring crops to market for the harvest a few times a year. That’s all it took: thirteen days.

I was a mess when she came through that door. I had spent my whole life hiding from this gift, fighting it, and there I was in a different country with a man who demanded I let it out. Not just that I feel it, and know it, but that I admit it was the way I understood the world around me. That this gift was me, and that I had to embrace it in order to wield it with anything approaching competence. I had stopped holding back. I tried to hold my tongue, but I no longer fought the urge to read someone, and I no longer struggled against wherever my instincts wanted me to look. So, there I was, this conduit for the gift, raw and untempered. Confused, and very young yet, with a young man’s curiosities.

She came through the door, and I felt her before I even saw her. I felt an invitation. I felt an attraction like a steel cable between us formed in the space of a heartbeat. I saw her, and she was beautiful. I saw her and I felt her see me as beautiful. I saw her and saw in the way she stood, the way she smiled, what she wanted from me. And I lost myself. The gift came alive with a ferocity. It’s all I was, suddenly. The story goes that she came through the door, that she looked at me, and that I jerked upright in my seat like I’d been electrified. The story goes that she laughed, and I was across the room in three steps, and then I had her locked in a kiss. That’s how the story goes. All I remember is Vathorem. It was a fog, a haze, until he pulled me out of the room. He held my chin and stared into my eyes. “Ariah. Ariah!”

“Yes, yes, I’m here. What happened?”

“You know why back in the Empire ones like us don’t marry, right?”

“Mercy. I…mercy.”

“No harm, not this time. But desire is one thing and wanting it is another. You understand? This is a thing you’ve got to control. You cannot do that, take someone like that. It’s not right. It’s not fair to them. Do you understand?”