There’s a flash of white ahead as someone steps out from behind a tree and into our path. My foot catches on a branch, and my ankle twists for the second time in recent months. I bite back a whimper of pain and manage to keep to my feet, hopping on one foot as I back away from the stranger. Grey hair peeks out from beneath their hood, sending my heart into triple time. A hand reaches out to me with a black stone set in a silver ring.
“Hurry,” the figure urges. She shakes her hand for emphasis.
I step back and wince, and Neris grabs my arm as I regain my balance. “What makes you think we’ll trust you, old hag?” she asks.
“It’s either that or meet your untimely death at the hands of Peacekeepers. The gods are at play here tonight too, it seems.”
Another chill runs through me. The gods? Right …
I grab Neris’s hand, holding it in a vise-like grip as she tries to pull away. “Winnie, you can’t be?—”
But before she can finish her sentence, I grasp the woman’s waiting hand, and we’re immediately sucked into a void. We’re weightless, being tugged and pushed, hurtled through the shadows. Once our feet hit solid ground again, I close my eyes and focus on steadying my breath. Neris retches, and my own stomach twists, but the old woman looks unfazed.
We’re inside what appears to be a workshop of sorts with rickety shelves of jars, dried herbs, and colorful bottles that seem luminescent in the dark interior.
I know this place.
My gaze flicks back to the woman in white. “Radika?” I exclaim.
She holds a finger to her lips.
“Since when are you a Purist?”
She lowers her white hood and smooths her weathered hands over her hair. “That is neither here nor there. Now let me see your foot.” She plops herself onto a tall stool and pats her lap.
“My foot?”
Radika mutters something in another tongue and snaps her fingers. By some invisible force, my foot is tugged up onto her lap. I struggle to maintain my balance, but Neris steadies me, her eyes wide. As Radika unlaces my boot, I wince from the sharp pain. Before I can ask her what she’s about to do, my boot thuds to the ground, and her hands envelop my throbbing ankle. Lilac light surrounds her hand, sending tingles into my ankle before the pain dies down.
“You’re—”
“Some say Sorceress, I say Healer.” She smiles and pats my leg. I lower it and collect my boot from the floor. Radika silently regards me as I stand again, my boot relaced.
At last, she speaks up, “You will, someday soon, cross paths with the daughter of Dusk. Whether indirectly, or directly, the gods weren’t clear.”
My lips part to object.
“Yes, yes, you lost faith in the gods after the Cleanse, but that doesn’t change your part in all of this. You will have a choice. It won’t be easy.”
“A choice?”
“You already faced one tonight. Didn’t you?” She gives me a knowing look, and I visibly shudder as I think of glowing red eyes and flaming axes, and then of the other presence like winter in the middle of summer.
“Things are never as they seem at first, Gwyneth,” says Radika. “But you’re intelligent.” She gets up and rushes off to the leather chest on her table, where she pulls out a few satchels that clink as she moves. “No more acting out of fear.” She lifts two of the satchels and holds them out to me. Then to Neris, she holds out the third. “And you, no acting out of impulse. You’re equally important. Equally unique and powerful.”
Neris huffs. “I wish,” she says.
“It doesn’t take magic to make a person powerful.” She inhales deeply, her chest expanding. With a huge sigh, her shoulders droop. “Love and friendship are just as strong.”
Neris and I exchange confused looks.
“Listen, children, I have to disappear for a while, but those vials should hold you over for now.”
The pouch in my hand does feel a little heavier than usual.
Radika absentmindedly spins the ring on her finger as she stares down at the floor.
None of this makes sense. How can Radika be a Puristanda practicing Sorceress? All Purists of higher stations wear vanishing rings, like the one Radika fiddles with. They justifythis particular use of magic by saying that the stones are of natural origin—mined from an enchanted cavern.
