I kneel in the next stream and let my root burn through the water until it boils around me. Hot. Hotter. Hottest again.

No longer the point of the spear, the tip of an arrow.

Not the strongest girl anyone knows.

Not the most incredible girl, or the impossible one.

No longer the pain-welded blade. No longer a blade at all. No one’s weapon but my own.

I burn the ancestral plane until it dries up, until the bed turns to dust, and the voices die down to silence.

Vera gasps beside me. “What have you done?”

I turn to her, and everything feels so clear.

“You said they ran so I wouldn’t have to,” I say. “But I think they ran so I could choose one day. And today, I choose me.”

“You are a child. Too young to understand what you’ve done.” Vera shakes her head slowly, turns transparent. “I can no longer help you.”

I stand. “Don’t you see? I don’t want your help. Not when it ends this way, feels this way.”

She is near-fading, a red wisp of light. “Then take my warning instead.”

“And that is?” I whisper.

“You don’t want the weight of us, but consider where that leaves you. Consider that chaos favors imbalance.”

When I open my eyes again at the hill above the Keep, the furnace inside me is still lit. Part of me worried that it would not be, after scorching the streams to my ancestors. Part of me worried that might be the price I would pay to live without their voices and their influence.

But I shouldn’t have worried at all. My instincts were right.

Arthur’s dream world showed me a way of using my power outside of the stream and away from my own body, away from my own blood even. The king’s dream made clear that I don’t need to follow my ancestors’ instructions or heed their warnings to survive. All I have to do to control my power is decide that it is mine.

By burning away their roots, I am finally free to grow my own.

And my power is ready to grow with me. I feel it. Ready for my call. Burning at my volition.

Hot enough to forge whatever I want.

Excalibur is a pile of scrap metal beneath my hands in the dirt, but I won’t let it stay that way.

I take a deep breath, hold my hands out over the blade, and command aether and root both to layer themselves over and over again, up and down the blade. It is a weapon, cast and forged for my bloodline—and I will cast and forge it again.

Within moments, the heavy longsword shines in the dirt, its stone now a deep purple, its blade silver and sharp, its hilt ready for my hand. It will need a scabbard for traveling.