It was no longer translucent and dancing with spunk but instead a stormy dark grey, sitting at the bottom of the vial, biding its time until Coralythe released it, bound under contract.

Oma scooped up Coralythe’s meager coinage and thrust the bottle and contract at her. “Take them and go.”

Coralythe stood, stuffing the new treasures into a pouch in the folds of her dress. Her glare swept over Oma and shifted to grateful appreciation when it landed on me. Then she was gone.

I expelled a long breath.

Oma rounded on me and sent bony knuckles to the top of my skull. “Foolish child! There is an order to selling wishes that involves far more precision than you seem to have room for in that shallow head of yours.”

Filled with the conviction of having stood for something just, I didn’t cower. “If it were truly such an important matter, you wouldn’t have bent to my will.”

“I gave you a chance to step into the role of your birth, and you squandered a wish because of your own swayed emotions.”

“Squandered?” I laughed humorlessly. “I made that wish—”

Oma slapped me. Not for the first time.

“I had every right to gift it as I deemed fit.”

Oma gathered up the other loose scrolls and stuffed them in a sack. “You don’t have the wisdom to make these decisions yet.”

“How can I when you haven’t taught me!”

“I’m not about to start now.”

“You can’t deny me! I’m of age.” How dare Oma go back on her word? “You act as though you are the Wishtress and have never intended to let me use my Talent the way it was meant to be used!”

“This wasn’t how it was meant—”

“I’ll never know how it was meant to be used because I’ve been nothing more than a cooped hen to you, giving you wishes instead of eggs. Waiting to be either slaughtered or freed.”

Oma breathed deeply through her nose. When she spoke again, her withered voice cut like jagged lumber saw blades. “I was wrong to include you.”

“I never should have been excluded from wish transactions since the day you started them.” Last word. I needed the last word in this.

“Don’t think you’ll be included again.” Oma marched across the tent to leave, but my anger settled into a hot loathing, and my next sentence came out in a dangerous hiss.

“Don’t think I’ll ever make another wish for you to sell.”

Instead of being shocked like I expected, Oma cackled. “As if you could control your childish emotions long enough to stop them!” Then she was gone.

It took me a long moment to gather my anger and stuff it into the pocket of my heart firmly enough to exit the tent. Anouk met me on the other side, eyes wide and breathing fast.