Every night, I see the child, crying over her dead mother. And in the dreams, Vo’s Ahxhil birds are everywhere, perched on the edges of the boat and filled with a mourning I feel straight through my heart. They look up as one and set their eyes on me.

I wake up crackling with fitful lightning and wondering how many more dead mothers there are to come. How many more motherless children.

“I’m to meet with Ung Li,” Trystan informs me a few days later, his expression remote.

It’s a nightmare, I want to confide in him. What’s happening just outside our borders...it shouldn’t be happening. We need to help the people fleeing here. My family is wrong to want to shut them out.

I was wrong.

Trystan, I was wrong, and I’m lost in confusion. Minyl was right. We can’t wall ourselves off from the Western Realm and pretend it’s not there.

But I say none of it, because I can sense that he needs to keep himself tethered firmly away from me.

So, instead, I let the lightning inside me spit and churn and consume me.

“I’m lifting your guard after Xishlon,” Ung Li states succinctly from behind her Wyvernguard tower chamber’s desk.

Both Trystan’s power and mine ignite with surprise, my lightning aura crackling outward all over my skin.

It takes Trystan a moment to find his voice. “Does that mean...”

“I’ll be granting you the same privileges as other apprentices,” she says. “Privileges with the same restrictions, of course. And I’m granting you more extensive use of your wand.”

Tears sting my eyes as I realize what this will mean for Trystan. I turn and take in his stunned expression.

Ung Li signs the Leave Pass before her and hands it to him. “I’m also granting you one day’s leave to go to Voloi at this week’s end to purchase clothing to replace all that was vandalized. I will be granting you unrestricted travel in Noilaan and to the South Wyvernguard Island beginning on Xishlon.”

I can smell Trystan’s heightened shock as his forking lightning mingles in with my own.

Xishlon—the purple moon holiday only a few weeks away.

The biggest holiday in all the East. A celebration of Vo’s most revered manifestation—Her manifestation of Divine Love.

“I can see my brother? My family, and Tierney?” The yearning in Trystan’s words tightens my heart and makes me feel like I’m yearning too.

And I know that I am—for this Mage standing beside me.

Ung Li sets down her pen and levels her gaze at Trystan, a crease forming between her brows. “You must understand why I kept you isolated, Trystan.”