Matilde and Vera. Kathrine and Mari.

Whatever they chose to be called, it didn’t matter to Cyrene. All that mattered was that they were real.

They were real. They were here. And, as much as she hated to admit it, Basille Selby was right. They had found her.

Running footsteps pattered on the ground behind them. Cyrene stood hastily and turned to face whoever was coming their way. She almost put herself in front of Matilde and Vera to shield them from the intruders, but then she realized how ridiculous that would be. Two Master Domas who had managed to evade notice for two millennia had to be infinitely more powerful than she was, and surely, they needed no protecting.

Avoca rounded the corner. “Cyrene! You’re alive! Oh Creator! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you.” She looked between Cyrene and the two women at her sides and frowned. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

Matilde purposely tottered forward. “Well, if you aren’t the spitting image of your mother.”

Vera shook her head. “Grandmother, I’d wager, Kathrine.”

Avoca frowned. “What?”

“We have been gone from Eleysia for too long, it seems,” Vera continued.

“Absolutely too long,” Matilde said.

Avoca’s eyes were as big as saucers. “Cyrene, who are these people?”

Ahlvie and Orden appeared around the corner. They both doubled over with their hands resting on their knees.

“Creator, Avoca!” Ahlvie cried. “Warn me before you go running off like that.”

Orden seemed to assess what was going on and straightened up. His chest was still heaving from exertion. “What’s going on?”

Matilde raised an eyebrow at Cyrene. “Friends of yours?”

“Yes,” Cyrene confirmed. “This is Avoca, Ahlvie, and Orden.”

“And who are you?” Ahlvie asked.

“Manners on that one,” Vera chided.

Ahlvie flashed her a smile.

“He means,” Orden said, “who the hell are you and what are you doing to Cyrene?”

“This,” Cyrene said with a dramatic pause, “is Matilde and Vera.”

All three of her friend’s mouths dropped open at the same time. Cyrene wasn’t sure if they had even believed that Matilde and Vera could be found. They had been away from home for so long, searching and searching with such little information.

Cyrene would be the first to admit that she had been losing hope, but everything had changed. All it had taken was for her to lose control of her powers and cause a massive explosion—the very thing she had been avoiding since she got here.

“Thank you for the introductions,” Vera said politely. “However, in the palace, I go by Mari, and my sister goes by Kathrine.”

Avoca reverently ambled forward. “It is an honor to meet you both.” She pressed the tips of her fingers to her lips in a sign of deference.

“Oh, I have missed Leif manners,” Vera said with a smile.

“You know about…Leifs?” Avoca asked.

Matilde snort-laughed. “Know about them? You have much to learn.”

“Perhaps they should not learn it while out here, in the middle of a tunnel,” Vera suggested.

“Yes, of course, Mari. I was just getting to that.”

“Shall we depart then?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Matilde and Vera walked forward at a rapid pace. Cyrene jogged to keep up with them. She had no idea where they were walking to, but she knew that she desperately needed their teachings. Her friends followed in her wake.

“I suppose we’ll have to get her out of the country,” Vera said.

“I think Ika Roa would be perfect this time of year,” Matilde said.

“Yes. I do hate that we have to leave so soon after the Eos. I would have preferred to show more respect to the gods with the elements so near.”

“I believe the gods just gave us a blessing.”

Vera glanced over at Cyrene. “Yes. Ika Roa then.”

“That way, we can start from scratch. She has the power and something else I’m not sure about,” Matilde continued, as if Cyrene wasn’t standing right next to them. “Something powerful though.”

Vera nodded. “I feel it, too. We’ll have to discover what that means at a later date.”

“Yes. We should bring the Leif girl. She’s young, but they always look that way.”

“What exactly are you talking about?” Cyrene asked in confusion. “Ika Roa?”

“We need to leave the country immediately,” Vera said as they rounded another corner.

“What?” Cyrene gasped. Why?”

The women looked at each other and then proceeded up a flight of stairs without answering. They took their time climbing to the top. Matilde griped under her breath about flying, and Cyrene just stared at her in confusion.

“Don’t mind Kathrine. She misses the sky.”

Cyrene nodded, having no idea what that meant.

Vera took a deep breath when they reached the top of the stairs. “Ika Roa seems like the perfect place to begin your training. And you must be trained, or you’ll be a danger to everyone and everything.”

“At the rate you’re going, you’ll burn yourself out,” Matilde warily told her.

Cyrene shuddered at that thought. She couldn’t lose her magic, and she didn’t want to harm anyone. But leave the country?

She was about to say something, but Matilde turned her attention to Avoca.

“Shira is still Queen in Eldora, isn’t she? I heard she took the throne after Eve’a fell in battle.”

Avoca’s eyes widened again. Matilde and Vera were talking about something that had happened two thousand years ago.

“Yes,” Avoca peeped.

“Perhaps we should go there,” Matilde said dreamily. “We haven’t been in Eldora in so long, Mari. Just think about the woods…”

“But if she’s anything like Sera, then it will be water first. The rivers aren’t enough. We’ll need all of the Lakonia.”

Cyrene’s head was spinning. “You have to take me out of Eleysia to train me?”

“Yes, and we should move with haste,” Matilde said irritably. “Are the boys coming with us?”

Vera cast her gaze over Ahlvie and then Orden. “They might as well. They already know too much.”

“Wait!” Cyrene cried, silencing their endless tirade. “I can’t leave Eleysia. Why can’t we train here?”

“Just like Sera,” Matilde mumbled under her breath.

“Let me guess…something to do with this Prince Dean you mentioned?” Vera said.

Cyrene’s cheeks heated, but she couldn’t deny it. She didn’t want to leave Dean. She wanted to see what could be with him. At the moment, he felt essential to her magic. Maybe it was selfish to want this…him. But she had walked away from Edric without even a backward glance. Her heart couldn’t do the same to Dean.

“Yes.”

“Oh, how history always finds a way of repeating itself,” Matilde said. She shook her head and looked at Vera, as if to say, You reason with her.

“Especially when they erase it and have no hope of learning from their mistakes,” Vera said in response. She shrugged her shoulders at Matilde. “I philosophize; you implement, Kathrine. So…implement.”

Matilde grumbled under her breath and tossed her wild hair to one side. “Must we stay in Eleysia? Is this Dean so important?”

Cyrene nodded. He had become so important to her in such a short period of time, but he was very important to her. She had to see this through.

“Can you still train me here?” Cyrene asked.

Matilde huffed in protest and looked to Vera. They seemed to be speaking their own language for a moment.

“We have to,” Vera said to Matilde.

“Always making things difficult.” Matilde wrenched a door open. “In, all of you, before I change my mind.”

“Should I go find Maelia?” Ahlvie asked Cyrene.

“There are more of you?” Matilde asked. “How many people actually know about your powers?”

Cyrene bit her lip. “Um…more than one.”

“Gods!” Matilde cried, walking away. “We’re nearing a two-millennia ban on magic and the Circadian Prophecy’s potential conclusion. And the first magical wielder we’ve seen with any strength in hundreds of years is running around with a Leif, proclaiming herself to anyone who knows what to look for. If we felt that disaster, Mari, then you know we weren’t the only ones!”

“Do you mind sealing the room before you start going off on philosophical diatribes?” Vera asked, pursing her lips.

“That’s normally your area of expertise,” Matilde said.

Matilde dramatically waved her hand in the air. Avoca’s eyes widened again. Even Cyrene, who had practically no knowledge of magical properties, could sense that what she had done was powerful magic. And she had wielded it effortlessly.

Vera smiled at her sister and then sank into a chair. Cyrene looked around and saw that they were in a quaint sitting room. There weren’t any rugs down. Only a few wooden chairs rested against the wall before a low table. A few cushions were tossed in front of the table. And there were old, really old, paintings on the walls.

“Please have a seat,” Vera said.

Avoca immediately dropped onto a cushion, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Ahlvie took the one next to her, but he looked significantly less comfortable sitting on the floor. Orden leaned back against the wall, crossed his arms, and stared around at the lot of them. Cyrene dropped into one of the chairs, but Matilde remained standing, pacing back and forth across the room. She didn’t seem to be able to stand still.

“So, by my estimation, you have a long way to go,” Matilde said, walking to one end of the room and then back. “What exactly were you doing in that hallway anyway? The amount of energy you used could have had disastrous consequences.”

“I…was locked inside,” Cyrene said.

Vera tilted her head. “Why?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure. Dean’s sister, Alise, and one of his soldiers, Robard, locked me in there. I don’t know what their motive was or what they were doing. At first, I thought it was because Alise hated me and didn’t want Dean to be with me, but I think that’s such an extreme. The reasoning doesn’t make sense.”

“We can get to the bottom of the issue later,” Matilde said. “All I’m gathering is that you used a very powerful energy blast to unlock a door?”

“Um…yes,” she whispered.

“That’s child’s play. I can give you five hundred different ways to use the energy you possess to open a door without destroying half of the palace.”

“Well, I don’t know any of those,” Cyrene said. “I had to get out of there, and that was all I knew how to do. At least, I didn’t black out.”

“You’ve been having blackouts?” Vera asked softly, her voice serious and concerned.

“Yes, nearly every time I use my magic in any significant capacity. You can be upset with me for how I got through that door, but I’m not trained. The only training I’ve had is with Avoca in the woods, and she has Leif magic, which is different than Domas.” Cyrene sprang to her feet. “Neither of you knows the difficulties I’ve already gone through to find you so that you can train me. I did the best I could, and that got me here. I think the very fact that I’m still alive—despite half of the Byern and Aurumian armies, three Braj, and a pack of Indres tried to capture or kill me—is pretty impressive.”

Vera and Matilde looked at each other, and then huge smiles spread across their faces.

“Good, they said.

“Good?” Cyrene asked.

“We wanted to make sure you were ready,” Vera said.

“How did you get that I was ready to train out of that?”

“You faced adversity and came ahead, all on your own. Most Doma who go untrained don’t last past seventeen. None of your strength,” Matilde informed her.

“So?”

“So, you’re ready,” Vera said. “We’ll train you.”

“When do we start?” Cyrene asked, clapping her hands together.

“Now,” Matilde told her.

“Now?” Cyrene blurted out.

Vera stood. “Yes, I think now sounds perfect.”