I ride on the back of a wagon while we travel down an old dirt road through an impossibly dry, hot desert. I shift my veil around my neck to catch the sweat while I practice chords on my father’s harp. One day, I hope to buy my own harp …

I’m crying as Valathea takes me into her arms, and the vané woman’s lips are soft. I still know this is goodbye. Worse than goodbye, because there’s nothing I can do to convince Valathea to stay. To stay living. To make the pain of existing bearable for just a bit longer. She puts her hand on my swollen belly and whispers, “Promise me you’ll teach him to play,” just before she begins the ritual that might as well be suicide.

I set down the harp once called Valathea on the edge of ruined streets, not liking the way these ruins feel familiar, the way I feel like I’ve been here before. Worse, I know I’m being followed. I’ve felt eyes on me for days now. I don’t think it will be long before the morgage make themselves known. But I’ve come here for a reason, and that reason is to negotiate for the lives of my people. I refuse to believe the only path to victory lives on a sword’s edge.

There must be another way.

Up ahead I see a large palace, the least ruined structure in the whole dead damn city. Surely if the morgage leaders are anywhere, they will be there. I lift the harp again, muttering that Valathea might have at least waited until we’d left before cursing herself, and head in that direction …

Then I remember darkness and hunger and a great, unending void. I remember a voice, screaming. I remember pain, not my own, but felt as keenly.

I blinked my eyes, waking. I was still on the mountain, still in Suless’s dream world. The goddess of witchcraft and betrayal still held me.

“What was—”

“Did you think you’d forgotten the lives you’ve lived before? That such knowledge is lost? What interesting lives you have led, my dear. I can see why Tya picked you.”

I backed away from her. “I don’t…” I shuddered. “I saw fleeting images. They didn’t mean anything.”

“Just as well.” She wiped her hands against each other. “We’re done here for now, anyway.”

“What did you do to me?”

“Left road marks.” Her smile seemed every bit as feral as I remembered from the normal world. “A foundation for you to build upon. It’s much easier when you’re a baby, but it can work to some extent on anyone who hasn’t finished their neural development. You, for example. And you didn’t need much help—either Tya or Xaltorath must have beaten me to the most important changes.”