She had been so certain there would be a shift. That her veins would change color, or a familiar voice would tickle her ear. But she was still alone amidst the gaping expanse of numbness, a stretch of fog over the ocean that dimmed the stars above.
In a small grove—little more than two trees and a stump for sitting—she paused to comb through the New Maiden’s journal again.
I’m afraid, the New Maiden had written, over and over. At first, Sabine had found relief in that recognizable phrase. But now it was a slap in the face, an empty bowl offered to someone withering away from hunger. She did not have the time to flip slowly through its contents, searching languidly for some hidden meaning. She needed answers.
Help me, she pleaded. But there was no response. No gust of wind rustled through the book’s pages, guiding her to the entry that would call her magic back. There was no tingling in Sabine’s fingers, no static on her skin. Nothing and no one were there to help her. Despite her best efforts to open her heart and build community, she was still devastatingly, impossibly alone.
It took all her self-restraint not to fling the journal into the water. “Why did you even want to come back?” Sabine shouted to the sky. She began to weep, her grief palpable in every drop of salt that fell from her cheeks. Sabine’s tears splattered the pages below, seeping into the parchment and smearing the ink.
But the water did not erase the New Maiden’s words. It changed them.
If you are reading this, then I am dead, and you are burdened. I am sorry for what I have done. I would not wish your lot in life on anyone.
Sabine wiped away her tears, the better to read the unexpected words.
I only meant to save him, the New Maiden had written. I thought if I drove away his hurt, I would be worthy of the accolades offered to me. But when I opened myself up to his darkness, I did not know that it would sink its feral teeth into me, that it would shock me to my very core.
People are so quick to inflict pain, to take the scars from their hearts and carve them onto another’s. The world is dark and terrible. I do not know how anyone is meant to survive it.
It was a sentiment with which Sabine was intimately familiar, one she had considered time and time again beneath the blankets in her family home.
Sebastien is desperate to reclaim the darkness, to extract it from me at any cost. He is embarrassed by his hurt. But what he does not understand is that it does not define him. There is no use in him carrying this darkness alone. His scars only prove how poorly he was loved.
Yet as I sought to offer him salvation, I damned you in my stead. My time on earth is coming to an end. I have promised to return, but when I do, this darkness will belong to you.
As the New Maiden, I was always going to hold the burdens of those I loved. I made that decision. I chose that path for myself. But you, dear one… if you are reading this, you did not ask for my fate. You have inherited the consequences of my decisions, have held the pain of others without understanding why.
Your life has never been your own. Your soul was never yours alone. How frightened you must have been. How angry you surely are now.
Sabine could barely breathe. Anger was not an emotion she had ever permitted herself to embrace. Anger was for a father who had lost next quarter’s rent to a card game. Anger was for a Loyalist guard who did not receive due deference. Anger was not for a girl with a family who loved her and a roof above her head. Sabine had always erred, instead, on the side of despair.
But sadness and anger were intrinsically linked. And if a person was allowed to feel only the half of it, the rest would echo emptily.
Do not shy from that rage. Cradle it carefully in your hands. Direct it toward that which has held you in place. And then, the New Maiden had written, let it burn.
Sabine raced barefoot through the water, her toes screaming with cold as she returned to the encampment. She arrived out of breath, scanning the crowd for Genevar, but Brianne found her first.
“Look what we’ve uncovered,” she said, starry-eyed, pulling Sabine toward the mishmash of splintered wood, gold objects, and shattered ceramics. “All of this, for the New Maiden.”
The attendants were placing rocks around the excavated area to denote the space where the altar had once been. As though guided by an invisible hand, Sabine stepped over the border. The red-haired attendant placed the final stone, sealing the New Maiden in the center.
Sabine knelt before the altar. The people of the Lower Banks encircled her, watching tenderly from all sides. She was not alone—not here. Not anymore.
Her lips were numb with purpose, her skin prickled, charged like the breath before a lightning strike. She dug her fingers into the earth and squeezed shards of clay and broken glass until her palms bled. She felt no pain, only purpose. Finally, she knew what to do.
Sabine let the broken offerings fall to the ground. Then she pressed her bloody hands to the earth, and she screamed.
She screamed for the New Maiden, carrying the pain of those She loved. She screamed for the third daughters before her, lost before they could live. She screamed for Brianne, a pawn in the clergy’s hands, a sacrifice for Church and country, both of which had failed her. And she screamed for herself, a brutal, feral shriek, for the life she had lost and the life she still had to live, for her sadness and anger and everything in between.
It was Brianne who joined her first. Her small voice, usually so sweet and soft, turned raw as she shouted her fury. When Sabine turned toward her, Brianne’s blue eyes sparkled. Genevar joined in next, her brittle voice low but surprisingly robust. Then the redheaded attendant, then another white-robed follower, then more and more—until the entire circle screamed to the sky, to the earth, to the sea.
Only Katrynn remained quiet, looking uncertain. Sabine got to her feet and stood before her sister on the other side of the circle.
“We deserve to be angry, Rynn.” Sabine said the word with such tenderness, as though it was a breakable object rather than a feeling. For so many years, the Anders sisters had been taught just that. When their father lost the rent at the gambling table, that was anger for him alone to feel. Orla Anders was tasked instead with the quiet suffering that came later, the all-encompassing sadness at what was lost, not the fury at finding out who had done the losing.
Katrynn looked at Sabine warily. The sisters had followed their mother’s example, were quick to bite their tongues when those feelings sparked. It was safer to suppress. But hiding in the shadows was no way to live, not when life had battered them and left them bruised.
Their hurt mattered, too.
Sabine held out her hand. Katrynn took it, unbothered by the dirt and the blood. She squeezed her sister’s fingers, and then she opened her mouth and shrieked, the final voice in a chorus of chaos. The entirety of the Lower Banks raged as one.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, a response to their furious cries. The skies opened up, and in seconds they were soaked to the bone. Screams turned to shrieks turned to laughter. Anger became joy in one spectacular swoop. Sabine’s skin sparked as the air before her swirled. Power crackled in her fingers, in her heart, in her toes, shimmering and iridescent as the emotion that nestled within her. She let out a whoop, laughter sacred on her lips.
Genevar crossed the stone border to stand by Sabine. “I knew that you would find your way.”
“Thank you for bringing me here.” The New Maiden squeezed her hands into fists, unfurling her fingers one by one, reveling in the unfamiliar feeling of agency coursing through her.
“It was always my dream to live out my days in the place where Ruti wrote,” the old woman said. “I think, perhaps, that when you take your leave, I will remain. I’ve spent too long in the depths of a cellar. I want to feel the sand beneath my toes.”
“But—your records,” Sabine stammered, too ashamed to speak her true denunciation: Genevar was abandoning her.
“Recordkeeping is not an art, child,” the old woman said, smiling softly. “Anyone can do it if sufficiently devoted.”
“I am,” said the youngest Warnou. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, her smile so big she might have been the sun. Brianne had been born into the Church’s tangled web. It only made sense that she would want to spend her days making order of disarray. The Archivist did not look surprised, as though this conclusion was not only expected but planned.
“You are,” Genevar agreed, her shaking fingers working to unhook the clasp of a chain around her neck. On it hung a key with sharp teeth and a curved head. “History now belongs to you.” Brianne beamed as she accepted the necklace.
