A woman lay huddled on the ground. Weeping, she clasped an unmoving infant in her arms. Her cries were the only sounds amid the crackling of fire.

We all come from broken pasts, murmured the voice from underneath the hood. The Dark attracts the grieving. The sounds of lament are a pleasure to its senses. All who embrace the Dark know loss before they are granted its blessing.

Was this Aenah? I remembered a similar vision when that Faceless had briefly lowered her defenses and gave me access to her mind. She too had clung to a dead infant before a burning city, the first and only time I felt any empathy on her behalf.

Aenah knew loss, but her grief differed from yours. Your brother was old enough to be raised, had enough of his own will to be given his own freedoms. Aenah’s child had no such choices. Her daughter would always remain an infant, never growing up and never understanding what had happened. That knowledge tore at Aenah. Usij may have known similar agonies, though the well of his mind had been poisoned for far too long to draw sanity from its depths.

You all worked together…

No. We shared the same goals and sought to independently attain them by all means. As do you, Tea. Your colleagues sought to hide the truth from you. They are willing to kill you to preserve their objectives. Only you, of all the asha who claim the Dark, seek out shadowglass.

This was the elders’ purpose, then? To kill me under the guise of a trial and an execution? Because my death under other circumstances would incite suspicion?

Have you ever thought otherwise?

I paused. No.

Mykaela they can control. She is too weak. In time, they believe, opposition will fade once you are gone. There will be new empresses and new Dark asha, and the elders shall endure. That is the nature of tyranny, young Tea. Maintaining power is their sole intention. Why worry about retaliation and revolution when they have always intended to wield the sword? Such was Vernasha’s dream.

You have kept yourself abreast of Kion politics.

I am aware of many things.

Why tell me this?

We share the same goals, Lady Tea. We make good allies. What does it matter the means used to bring about the end result?

You want destruction. You seek to complete shadowglass to rule. That is not the same as what I want.

You do not know what it is that you want. You wish to rid the world of magic, yet you do not wish to rid yourself of your dead brother. It is a contradiction you have not yet come to terms with. The only solution is to wield magic for your own good, to suit the world to your principles. You know this. It gives you guilt. We are the same.