I notice the cracked glass first.

Thin as spider silk, the cracks crisscross the heavy glass panes inset into the rust-colored front door. From a few steps back, the fissures make the glass appear frosted, but when I step closer the hairline cracks that turn the clear windows opaque and fuzzy become obvious.

The thick bars of the security door are still intact, but the metal of the lock is warped like paper curled in a flame. I slide my finger through the opening and pull, the distorted lock popping out easily as the door creaks open.

I turn the doorknob slowly, unsurprised that the shattered knob turns freely. The slight movement as I push the door inward is enough to shake the glass loose, and pebbles of safety glass rain down at my feet.

My hand slides to my hip as I step over the threshold, my boots crunching on the glass underfoot. The smooth hilt of the Hell-forged dagger tucked into my belt fits perfectly into my palm as the door swings open and I scan the ruins of my current address.

I’ve never been terribly sentimental, and even if I was the type to cry over broken dishes and torn fabric, a few months in a dwelling isn’t enough to make it a home. But I still freeze in the doorway, anger surging through me at the damage in front of me.

I kick the door closed behind me, the last shards of glass still clinging to the window frame clinking on the scarred wood floors. Whoever did this is long gone, and the noise of the slamming door is the only outlet I have for my fury.

The blue velvet couch and the overstuffed chairs that dominate the small room are upended, the fabric ripped open. Springs and stuffing poke through the wounds in the cushions, spilling out like entrails. Feathers from one of the shredded pillows litter the floor like blackened snow. The scent of scorched fabric and burnt feathers hangs in the air, acrid and heavy.

The desk is still upright, but the thick oak top is cracked down the middle, and the lacquer covering the surface is bubbled and charred from heat.

Not that I’d ever thought otherwise, but whoever did this certainly wasn’t human.

“Caila?” I call, expecting no answer.

The small kitchen is as much of a wreck as the rest of the house. I step over the remnants of a crushed bottle, the red wine it held drying into a sticky puddle that looks far too much like congealed blood. More broken dishes litter the floor, and the cabinet that held them gapes open, the door barely clinging to one broken hinge. I run my finger over the smear on the dark wood, and it comes away tacky and red.

And this isn’t wine.

I hear something pop under my boot, and I rock back on my heels to stare at the crushed teacup on the floor. Caila had shown up with the ridiculous tea set the day after we moved in. Delicate as butterfly wings, something about the fussy little cups captivated her, and she lined them up on a shelf above the unused stove like candy colored soldiers.

Now it’s nothing more than ruined bits of mint green porcelain ground into the cracks between the floorboards.

Next to it is another feather, but this one isn’t another curled piece of white fluff from a pillow. Long as my forearm and tawny gold as an eagle’s, the edge of the feather is mussed and bent. I crouch down and pluck it from the ground, clenching my hand around it and feeling the faint whisper of Caila’s presence.

She didn’t go easy.

I’ve seen enough.

I back out of the kitchen, and stride down the narrow hallway to the bedroom I claimed as my own, the feather still clutched in my hand. Spartan and spare, this room began as little more than a place to sleep, something Caila with her constant desire to nest chides me on in every new location.

“You humans make such interesting things!” she would say, sidling into my room with a rug or lamp in one of her deceptively fragile hands. “What’s the point of living forever if it’s in an empty room?”

I always give in, and as time passes my monk-like quarters begin to resemble a room an actual person lives in.

It amuses me more than it likely should that a celestial being does a better job at feigning normal humanity than I do.

Tonight though, I don’t notice the decorations. I don’t glance at the large painting of the stormy ocean Caila hung on my back wall. The mesmerizing swirls of blues and greens and blacks fail to captivate me. My eyes are on one thing only, the heavy trunk resting on the floor below it.

I drop to my knees, running my hand over the lock and sighing with relief when I feel the faint tingle of magic that tells me it hasn’t been tampered with. I lean forward, my lips barely an inch from the lock and whisper “Open.” Obediently the lock pops, and I flip open the trunk, staring in at two thousand years of history and knowledge and power contained in a few square feet of oak and metal.

Wrapped in a length of roughly woven linen is the object I want. I unwind the fabric quickly and run my fingers over the hammered bronze bowl, the sharp angles of the Phoenician text etched deeply into the metal. “See what is hidden,” I murmur.

I duck back into the hallway, the damage to the house not even registering as I fling open the cabinets, searching for an unbroken bottle of wine. I see one leaning precariously against the fridge, the neck cracked but mostly intact. Popping the cork splits the glass even more, but it doesn’t matter.

Not for what I have planned.

I pour the bottle into the bowl, the deep crimson looking like blood as it fills the bronze vessel. I shove my sleeve up, baring my forearm, and draw the razor-honed edge of my dagger across it. Blood wells up from the cut, and I hang my arm over the bowl, watching as it drips into the wine.

The cut heals quickly, and I dip the feather into the mixture, the tawny gold of Caila’s feather disappearing under the thick ruby liquid. I hover my palm over the smooth surface and concentrate, feeling the mixture bubble and then ignite, a plume of black smoke rising from the bowl.

“Show me,” I hiss, staring into the flame, waiting for the shifting smoke to coalesce into an image or a clue, anything to tell me where Caila is.

The smoke drifts upward, and I repeat myself, the words coming out as a snarl instead of a beseeching request. I learned long ago, magic is a wild dog. Show it fear or weakness, and it’ll tear out your throat.

I’m not asking for Caila’s location. I’m demanding it.

The smoke swirls as my power wars with whatever’s blocking me. I push harder, feeling the muscles in my arms tighten as though preparing for attack. I taste the tang of iron on the smoke, and the half-healed cut on my forearm burns.

“Show me!” I yell for a third time, my voice rising above the roaring in my ears. The smoke thickens, the flames rising above the side of the bowl, consuming the contents, and some idle part of my mind is grateful that I disconnected the smoke detector the day we moved in.

The smoke rises higher, crawling along the ceiling like a living creature, and I feel pressure around my throat like fingers digging into my windpipe. I see a flicker of something in the smoke – heavy iron chain and a deceptively normal door - before the fire eats through the last of its fuel and abruptly goes out.

I gasp, sitting back on my heels and frantically drawing oxygen into my choked lungs as the smoke dissipates around me, leaving nothing more than a haze in the air.

Resting in the now empty bowl is the feather from Caila’s wing, still untouched by the flames.

Whoever has Caila was able to match an angel in battle and has enough power to ward her location from me.

It’s time to bring in the big guns.

And I know just who to call.

I expected her to be taller.

The supernatural world loves its gossip as much as much as any human, and the Last siding with Hell hasn’t escaped the attention of any witch, medium or demon this side of the Mississippi. But it’s the rumors that Lucifer has fallen in love that shock me far more than the idea of someone choosing the Pit over Heaven.

When they show up, I’m sitting behind the desk, my feet up on the ruined surface as I toss the rough iron coin etched with Lucifer’s sigil into the air. He chuckles as I palm the coin and get to my feet, his face breaking into a wide grin at the sight of me.

“Elissa, it’s been too long.”

“Far too long,” I agree, glancing around him at the diminutive blonde hovering a few feet back. “And this must be the girl who domesticated the Devil.”

Grace tries and fails miserably to stifle her laughter at that.

“He’s hardly what I’d call domesticated,” she says, stepping around Lucifer to stand in front of me. I’ve always been tall for a woman, especially in the time of my birth, and Grace is a full head shorter than me, but the power radiating off her makes it easy to forget her small stature.

I can already see why she enthralls Lucifer. She moves like an immortal, sure and steady with a confidence rolling off her that has little to do with Lucifer at her side. She fought for him, but she fought for herself first, and it shows.

I like her already.

Lucifer’s eyes track her every movement with a possessive protectiveness I’ve never seen from him. If the dirt Caila relayed to me in the aftermath of the city going mad is true, Uriel nearly killed them both, and Lucifer looks like he’s still waiting for Heavenly retaliation to strike.

He knows his family far too well to trust in the calm after the storm.

My curiosity can wait though. Caila can’t. “As much as I’ve been dying to meet you, this isn’t a social call.” The crashing reality of my friend’s absence hits me, and I lean back against the desk, looking up at Lucifer with a desperation I haven’t shown anyone since I was a barefoot girl begging at a witch’s door. “I need your help, Lucifer.”

“Does it have anything to do with the state this room is in?” Lucifer asks.

I nod. “I came back to it like this. I was only gone for a few hours. Caila put up a fight, obviously.”

“Caila,” Lucifer repeats slowly, and in the space of a second I see his hackles rise. “She’s one of Uriel’s, isn’t she?” It isn’t a question.

“Was,” I reply. “Hasn’t been for a long time.” Lucifer takes a step forward, putting himself between me and Grace, and I’m shaken at the naked display in front of me. This isn’t the Lucifer I knew who was the most concerned with spitting on Heaven whenever he was offered the chance.

This is a man who, for the first time in thousands of years, has something to lose.

Even with all of our history, bringing up the name of an angel to him, especially one tied so closely to Uriel, is a risk.

But I’ve never been one to take the easy way.

“You of all people know the political bullshit in Heaven. Uriel had a lot more support than anyone knew.” I hold Lucifer’s gaze, his cold, dark eyes searching mine for any hint of treachery. History or not, I have no doubt that he would end me if he thought I was working for Uriel, and I have to fight the urge to snort in derision at the thought of that.

Lucifer’s new girl isn’t the only one who lost everything because of Heaven.

“She wasn’t helping him,” I repeat. “Anyone that disagreed with Uriel’s methods did what they could in the background, but even most of his detractors weren’t willing to risk their skins for a bunch of humans.”

I let the disgust drip from my voice, thick and oily as the memory of Caila’s despair. “Caila is nothing like Uriel. She cares about the people here.”

I remember her tears seven years ago.

“He’s killing them. Everything I do to try and hide them, every bit of help I send. . . it’s never enough. Nothing we do is ever enough.”

October in Boston was dull grey skies and streets punctuated with slashes of red and orange and gold, like fire and blood. Caila paced through the cramped apartment like a caged animal while she waited for a phone call.

“Marianne, you can’t keep hiding this from her. It’s going to get both of you killed.” Caila sat on the floor in the bare apartment, and the fact that she wasn’t muttering about our lack of actual furniture showed me just how worried she was. Nothing existed beyond the voice on the other end of the phone. “I can’t come. I know I’m being watched, and I’ll lead him right to you. But you have to prepare her.”

A day later, and it was over. It wasn’t the first time either of us have had the bitter taste of failure burning in our mouths, but it was the first time I’d seen the perpetual optimism that Caila wore like a shield fall away.

Grace takes a step forward, sidestepping around Lucifer, and wraps her smaller hands around my own. I feel that same angelic lightness that floated around Caila, though Grace is tempered with a vein of darkness, black and strong as iron, and I stop being surprised that she managed to bring the Devil to his knees for love of her.

She’s had an angel watching her from a distance since her birth. It only seems fitting that the Devil join the club.

“Someone took her.” The words tumble out of me, and I feel like one of the women who show up on our doorstep, broken and lost and eager to spill out my life’s story to the pretty blonde angel in front of me.

But Heavenly blood or not, Grace is no angel, and Lucifer might be a changed man, but trust has never come easily to either of us. I don’t expect that to change now.

His hand covers Grace’s where she’s clutching mine, and from the outside it looks like a comforting gesture, but I’ve known Lucifer far too long to expect that. His fingers brush the back of my hand, and I feel him searching through my mind, subtle as a snake, flipping through thoughts and hidden desires with ease.

At least at first.

I’m not the girl staring over the cliffs, watching the sails fade into white specks on the waves anymore, and two thousand years has siphoned away any mortal fears and replaced them with bluntness and nerve. Lucifer presses against my mental walls, searching for the chinks in my armor, and I push back just as forcefully.

A warning flashes in Lucifer’s eyes before he takes a step back, breaking the contact between us, and I wonder just how many people outside of this room can taunt the Devil and walk away unscathed.

“Did you see enough to satisfy you?” I turn away from them both and the soothing cloud of Grace’s presence drops away, bringing back reality like a shock of icy water.

Grace’s grey eyes dart between the two of us, but she stays silent.

Lucifer gives me a tight nod, and as quickly as it appeared his suspicion dissipates. “I didn’t expect you to have taken up with another angel after my wayward brother.”

Nothing but a tick in my jaw betrays me as I clench my teeth to avoid reacting to the name Lucifer’s dancing around. He, no doubt, saw the massive wall around my heart with Michael carved into every brick.

“That has nothing to do with this,” I snap.

Lucifer sighs, turning his back on me and walking towards the kitchen, the soles of his shoes crunching on the chunks of glass still littering the floor. He crouches down and runs his fingertips over the scorch marks blackening the floor.

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

Caila’s feather rests on the kitchen counter, the pristine golden plume looking out of place among the domestic rubble. Lucifer picks it up, turning it over in his hand, his eyes slipping closed. I wonder, not for the first time, what history he shares with my best friend. Our differing allegiances always remained carefully unspoken between Caila and I.

“Hell doesn’t have her.”

My shoulders slump as that chance shatters. I’d hoped for a demon gone rouge. A fallen angel that resented Caila skirting a bit too close to the dark side. Even Lucifer himself taking vengeance on Uriel’s garrison.

“If she’s not in Hell, and she’s warded from me on Earth that just leaves-“

“Heaven.” We both turn to Grace when she speaks up. Immediately her eyes widen and she puts up two hands, stopping us both before we can speak. “Don’t look at me. I’m pretty sure I’m not at the top of anyone’s list for information in Heaven. And your friend aside, if I can go for the rest of my life without encountering anymore of those feathered dicks, I’ll be a happy girl.”

This time it’s Lucifer’s turn to snort with laughter, but his amusement fades quickly when he turns back to me. “She’s right, you know. If she was working to undermine Uriel, one of his supporters might have taken it on themselves to punish her. Seems like everyone is taking over Father’s duties as of late.”

“Then it’s over.” The idea of never seeing Caila again, of losing another person to Heaven’s politics and back-biting snuffs out that flame of rage smoldering in me.

Gone. Not because of me, but that barely matters anymore.

“Maybe not.”

That hollow place inside me blazes to life at Lucifer’s words, even though I know it’s just false hope. “I’m powerful, but my spells can’t breach Heaven.”

Lucifer’s lips twist into a smile, and I almost expect to see an apple in his hand. “No one needs to breach anything when you have someone who can come and go as they please. Now just who do you know in Heaven?”

He can’t possibly be suggesting-

“Michael.”

“No,” I snap.

Lucifer arches one dark eyebrow. “I’m well aware of your feelings toward my brother, but you know as well as I do that if she’s hidden in Heaven he is the only shot you have.”

“No,” I repeat. “Don't ask me again. I’ll find another way.” I push past the both of them, barely hearing the murmur of concern from Grace as I shove open the back door.

The backyard is a mess neither of us have put much of an effort into improving yet. The grass is a few inches too high to be respectable, the spindly pale green blades wrapping around the chain link fence. I sit down on the cracked cement of the steps, the rough stone warm from the heat of another 90-degree day. The sun hangs low on the horizon, a streak of orange barely visible between the tightly packed houses.

The girl I was wouldn’t have been able to comprehend a place like this. Two thousand years and six thousand miles separates the person I am now from her, but some days I can still feel that lost child ghosting my steps.

I hear the screen door behind me creak open before slamming shut with a dull slap. Grace hesitates for an instant before sitting down next to me.

I don’t look at her when I start speaking. I stare out at the horizon and the thin sliver of the sunset I can see between buildings. “The world’s not a great place for women, even now. But when I was born, it was so much worse.” Grace shifts beside me, and I wonder at myself for dredging this up.

I know I can’t refuse Michael’s help, if he’s even willing to give it. If another angel has Caila, we’ll need all the aid we can get. Lucifer will do what he can, but I can’t pretend that his immediate loyalty lies with anyone but Grace. He won’t risk her or himself to save another angel, and I can’t blame him for that.

Hearing Michael’s name, even thinking it, dredges up memories I’ve buried for centuries under a sharp tongue and sharper blades.

“I was born in Phoenicia, over two thousand years ago. You stop keeping track after the first few centuries.” I hear Grace’s breath catch next to me, and I glance over at her, quirking a smile at the surprise on her face.

“I should be used to it by now,” Grace says, shaking her head slightly, as though taking more than a few weeks to grow accustomed to people tossing the word centuries into conversation is unheard of. “Lucifer just never seemed to be anything but exactly what he is, but you feel different.”

I turn away from Grace again, focusing back on the fading rays of orange cutting though the yard. “That’s because I am. I’m human. At least part of me still is.”

Sidon.

I was born during a summer storm. The waves clawed against the cliffs like monstrous fingers intent to rip our village into the sea. My father used to say it was proof that I had cursed his family, but we were damned long before I was conceived.

I am not one of the lucky ones, born in the villas at the top of the hill, overlooking the small, squat dwellings in silent judgment. I am not one of those girls born into a gilded cage, a pampered life of soft hands and docile servitude. They live in a prison, just as I do, but I would gladly trade all my lofty dreams of freedom for a soft bed and a kind word.

We are poor, but that doesn’t always equal misery. Even for my own sisters our lot in life isn’t entirely dismal.

Just for me.

I have the misfortune of being the seventh daughter of a man with no sons. A dye-maker by trade, my father spends his days crushing the sea snails down to make the famous Tyrian purple dye that stains his hands the color of old wine to the wrists. The stink of rotting shellfish hangs around him, a decaying miasma that fits the ugliness of his soul.

And from the moment I take my first breath, he hates me.

It’s my eyes.

I share the same dark hair as my parents and sisters, deep chestnut brown shot through with strands of bronze that catch the sun like faint streaks of fire. I will one day grow taller than all of them, even my father, but he has no way of knowing that when he holds my squalling infant body.

But my eyes.

Pale blue as the distant snow-capped mountains, the first time they open he curls his lips into a sneer and shoves me into the arms of one of my sisters. That is the first and last time he ever holds me.

If I’d been a boy, those eyes would have been a sign that I’d been blessed by the gods. I would grow to be a hero or a warrior, anything but another man spending his days shoulder deep in rotting shellfish. My father would spend his days peacocking with pride at his boy that bears the mark of the gods, gulping down the thick wine, satisfied with the knowledge that he’ll be able to hitch his future to his infant son’s.

But I’m not a boy. Since I lack that one all-important appendage between my legs, my existence is a curse. Another mouth to feed. Another bride-price to negotiate in a few years. Another voice added to the feminine din in his house.

And two pale eyes always watching.

I might have endured it if the hatred had only come from him. If I’d been wrapped in the warm love of my mother and sisters, I might have learned to suffer with a sweet smile, lapping up any scraps of affection dropped my way. Instead, my earliest memories of my mother are her glaring at me like my very existence is a betrayal. In her mind, I’m certain it is.

My father couldn’t breed a boy, so my mother looked elsewhere for the seed that would bring her that all-important son. A clandestine affair with another man from our corner of the village would be too risky, but a bustling port like Sidon brings ships each day bearing endless streams of foreigners. Greeks and Romans fill the marketplace, greedy fingers snatching up the Tyrian purple cloth to clothe the wealthiest citizens, and even a few golden-haired barbarians from the north walk our streets.

I still imagine my mother, hiding her face in the folds of her cloak, her skin worn and lined far before her time from a hard life, mixing herself with the whores down at the docks hoping to catch the eye of a wandering sailor.

I doubt she even bothered learning the name of the man who would father her youngest child, and if I’d been male any differences would have been forgotten in the joy of finally finally having a son.

Instead, I’m just a reminder of a failed attempt at controlling her own future, and my father mutters constantly about how his house is cursed with faithless women.

It’s no surprise I run whenever I have the chance.

From the time I can walk, I focus every bit of my childlike energy on escaping the too-close walls of our home. The rough-chiseled limestone never represented the comfort of hearth and home or the relative safety of quiet domesticity. To my younger self those walls are nothing but a prison.

The only good fortune I have is the complete apathy of my parents. No one notices or cares where I go, so each day I slip out of the house at sunrise and follow the worn paths upward. Each step takes me higher and higher as I duck through the market stalls, ignoring the voices of our neighbors shouting the virtues of their wares, eager to sell bread or cloth or fruit to the foreigners wandering the city.

Up and up I go, the rough gravel digging into my bare feet, the sand sliding through my toes. Dust clings to the ragged hem of the raw linen of my robes, but all I see is the horizon. When I reach the top, out of breath from running, I freeze, the unrelenting sun beating down on my head as I stare over the edge of the dizzyingly high cliff to the bright turquoise of the water below.

So far above the city, the stink of the dye vats and unwashed bodies fades to nothing. The constant drone of voices becomes nothing more than a faint hum in the distance, blocked out by the cries of seabirds riding the updrafts and the roar of the wind whipping through my ears.

I spend my childhood on those cliffs, watching the ships and longing for the freedom they represent.

I am twelve years old, and life has never been kind to me. I know my hope of boarding one of those ships and sailing to another world will never leave the realm of dreams and wishes. If I’d been a man, the army would take me across continents, the navy across the seas, but I’m only a girl destined to live and die within a few miles of where I was born.

I’m still too young to truly understand hate, but I hate that knowledge.

I know that my days of freedom are winding down. Soon I will be married off to whatever man my father can convince to take me, and I’ll spend my days as a servant in my own house, flat on my back whenever he demands it, bearing his children until, my body worn out and used up, death will come for me.

I think by then I will welcome it.

But the gift that comes with living as a ghost in your own home is knowledge. No one ever bothers to shield me from the truth, so I hear it all.

A short, squat man with glittering black eyes and an oily smile sat at my father’s table the previous night, counting out coins into a purse that he presses into my father’s greedy hands. Feigning sleep on the thin pallet in the darkest corner of the room, I listen.

“You’re making the right choice,” the man says, his lip curling in disdain as he takes in his rough surroundings. A handkerchief flutters through his thick fingers, soaked in perfume, and he holds it under his nose as he tries to block out the ever-present stink of the dye that clings to the house. His beady eyes narrow as he stares into the dark corner where I presumably sleep. From the shadows, I stare back, pouring every drop of anger my young mind can muster into that glare.

I know who he is. Every city of our size has a flesh-peddler, and there is only one reason a man like him would lower himself to enter a house such as ours.

He is making a purchase.

He snatches the purse back, satisfied that my father has already gotten the taste of those jingling coins into his heart. “A girl that willful with those strange eyes. . .” his voice trails off as he squints into the darkness, no doubt expecting my eyes to glow like a beast’s. “No one will marry her,” he continues, tucking the coins away in the folds of his robe. “But my customers will only see the pretty face, and I’ll have that willfulness whipped out of her if she doesn’t obey.”

My father nods, sticky wine sloshing over the side of the clay bowl he drinks from, his mind already counting the coins. The brothel-keeper rises from the creaking chair, and the both of them stumble outside, murmuring plans of bringing me to the brothel in three days.

I’d like to say I was stunned. I wish I’d had it in me to be shocked that my own father had just sold me into a short, miserable life as a whore for a handful of coins, but it only seems like the next progression in my grim existence. But for the first time, I have one clear word echoing in my mind.

No.

I’ve seen those women down by the docks – their scarred faces, their dead eyes. They are the ones cast aside, unwanted daughters or barren wives, spinster sisters or girls who simply didn’t know their place. A few would stare back at me, brashly daring me to insult them, but most keep their eyes on the ground until a potential customer strolls by.

My father’s cruelty stole my childhood. It isn’t going to steal the rest of my life. And I know just how to save myself from that fate. Or more specifically who.

Every village has that one women living alone in a dilapidated hut at the edge of town. The men sneer at her and call her a witch, harsh words hiding a very real mantle of fear. The respectable women of the city hide their faces behind veils when they knock on her door, begging for a charm to entice a lover to stay or heal an ailing child.

Ours was called Amma.

She was old when my mother was young, wrinkles carved into her nut-brown skin like canyons.

When I knock at her door a few hours later, there is no surprise on her face.

“I wondered when you’d come,” she says without preamble, turning her back on me and walking into the shadows of the hut without pausing to see if I follow. “I’ve been waiting for you since the day your mother came to me with a swollen belly and demanded to know if she carried a boy.” She laughs, a rough cackle splitting her thin lips, and flips open a large wooden trunk. She moves like someone half her age, her hands steady as they sift through the trunk’s contents. This is no feeble old woman, whiling away the days as she waits for death.

The bronze bowl she pulls out is finer than anything I’ve seen before, the angular markings of the text around the border nothing more than pretty decorations to me then.

She places the vessel on the rough-hewn table, the shining metal looking out of place on the scarred wooden surface. I watch silently as she pours wine into the bowl, thick and dark as old blood. With a speed I don’t expect from her age, she snatches my hand up, and a thin dagger that she concealed in the folds of her robes slices across my palm.

I hiss and try to yank my hand back, but her grip is strong, far stronger than it should be. She holds my bleeding hand over the bowl, her dark eyes watching as three drops land on the smooth surface of the wine.

She releases me and steps back, nodding at the bowl. “Ask,” she orders. At my confusion, she adds. “I could feel the power in you before you were born. It’s sleeping, and you’re the only one who can awaken it. You must ask for it.”

I am twelve years old. In this world, I would be a child, but I haven’t been a child in a very long time. I’ve seen too much, felt the difference in me brewing discontent like a poison. My entire life, I have never asked for anything for myself.

I lean over the bowl and stare into the blackness. I see my own reflection, but underneath it something ripples, waiting. I can already feel it uncoiling in me.

“I want-” I stumble over the words, years of making myself as small as possible, of staring at the ground, of being invisible war with the desire to finally be in control of my own destiny.

I stand straighter, pulling myself to the full height I try so hard to conceal and stare into the depths of the bowl. The surface shivers.

I want control. Power. Freedom. I whisper the words in my mind as the mixture smolders.

I want to choose my own way. The surface bubbles, and I feel the heat rising up.

No one will ever own me again. Ignition. All at once the wine erupts into flame, thick smoke rising from the surface and surrounding me. It pours into my lungs, and instead of choking the breath from me the heat feels cleansing, scouring my soul of weakness and fear, leaving those places open for something better.

The fire burns itself out quickly, consuming the fuel and leaving the bowl empty and gleaming on the table.

I feel the wood under my fingertips, felt the splinters where they dig into my palm. I taste smoke and blood, and I know I’m done asking. There will be no more begging for scraps.

I turn my attention away from the empty bowl, turning to Amma and finally meeting her eyes. She’s smiling.

“What’s next?”