I slip off my shoes, down to my stockings. Quieter that way. Mumble an excuse to my friend. And I run.

I am flung back and forward, writhing between time and space.

Selah. Mary. Regina. Corinne. Emmeline. Jessie. Leanne. I even see a glimpse of my mother, Faye.

Eight visions. Eight sets of memories that aren’t mine. Eight bodies that I inhabit, sucked down into lives I’ve never lived. All running.

Every daughter of the Line of Vera in the last two hundred years has run from the Order. Every mother has passed on the warning. And here I am inside its home.

Eventually, I slide into a shadowed space with no walls. In front of me, a pair of naked brown feet surrounded by flames.

“Daughter of daughters.”

I push to standing to see Vera. She is much as she’d been before: a woman in an empty, dark world. Blood and flame swirl around her deep brown arms, hair stretching up and wide like it is reaching for the universe.

“Where—?”

“This is the plane between life and death.”

The plane between… I look around at the darkness and feel the waiting of it, and the completion, too. Like smoke, ready to become matter or dissipate. Sound, ready to be heard or silenced. This is an almost and already place.

“You… you brought me here before,” I pant. “When I pulled the sword.”

She nods once.

I speak around the tears, through the memories that ache in my chest. “All of those lives… all of the running—”

“You had to see, because you need to understand who you are.”

“ ‘Who I am’…?”

“You are the point of our arrow.” Her voice grows louder with every word. “The tip of our spear. The bow of our ship. The flare of our long-simmering heat. You are the living embodiment of our resistance. The revelation after centuries of hiding. The pain-welded blade. Wound turned weapon.”

“I know…,” I say. “I know…”

“No. You do not.”

The flames on Vera’s skin glow brighter. “From the first daughter to the last, our furnace has grown. Each life burns hotter than the life before. You are my lineage, at its sharpest and strongest. With all that flows through you, you have the power to protect what evil would destroy. You can face what must be faced.”

Her words flow directly into my chest, searing me from every direction.

“We ran for many reasons. We ran to protect ourselves. We ran so we would not die, so that our daughters could live.” Vera steps forward, and her voice is slow, rich lava against my skin. “But one purpose, one dream reigns above all others. Do you know what that is, Bree?”

I shake my head, gasping. “No.”