Felitïa slumped over and lay her head on the pile of papers on the table. She didn’t keep it there long—she didn’t want to wreck her notes, after all—but she had to admit she was getting tired.

Oddly, she was starting to feel guilty about feeling tired. It was as if she had spent so much time sleep deprived, her mind had somehow convinced itself she wasn’t allowed to ever be tired again—which was nonsense, of course. Tiredness was part of life and she was going to continue experiencing it from time to time.

And it made sense at the moment. She’d been at this for hours. It was perfectly normal to feel exhaustion.

She was going through The Foretellings of Eleuia again. Since most of her previous study of the book had been while sleep deprived, she wondered if maybe she had missed something. Also, the creature Meleng and Feviona had encountered two days ago had left her constantly thinking about the passage on the page the book was currently open to: In 2333, the demons will come for the Will-Breaker.

Was the fire being one of these demons? There was no way to know. Even the word demons might be a mistranslation. The Ninifin word could also mean simply darkness worshipper. But so many Darkers had come for her recently, surely the passage referred to something different.

So maybe the fire being was one of these demons. If it was, there would be more, since whether the word meant demon or not, it was in the plural. If the fire being wasn’t one of the demons, then there were still other things to come, so it didn’t really make much difference. She needed to be ready for them somehow.

She slammed her fist down on the table. Damn it! She was getting far too accepting of these prophecies. There was no way she was going to let her future be foretold by someone from two centuries ago.

“Sorry,” she said to Hedromornasta, who had jumped slightly when she hit the table.

As usual, he didn’t respond, just continued to stand silently in the corner of the library, watching her in that disconcerting way of his.

He looked tired. She wasn’t sure exactly what gave her that impression. There was nothing particularly different about his stance or manner—other than, perhaps, the fact she’d startled him at all. However, it made sense he’d be tired too. He’d been with her all day, and most of last night too.

There had been no sign of Mikranasta to take over for him today, which meant he’d been up all night and now all day as well. He had even been forced to drag Felitïa with him several times in order to relieve himself. In a way, that was a bit of poetic justice, considering she always had to relieve herself in either his or his mother’s presence. However, she did feel bad that he wasn’t getting any rest time today. And while today was more extreme than others, he also seemed to get the brunt of the time with her. Mikranasta seemed to do about eight hours total with her most days, while Hedromornasta did the remaining. It wasn’t exactly balanced, though Mikranasta probably justified it as something to do with Hedromornasta’s training—to teach him to not be so angry all the time, perhaps, though if so, it wasn’t working very well.

With a sigh, Felitïa pulled the book closer to her and stared at the page again. She hadn’t had much luck finding anything new she could be certain applied to her, but she had found one passage that might possibly, and she flipped to that now.

Trust not the passage of time. The past can deceive, the future confuse, or the future deceive and the past confuse. Seek the doubled blade of knowledge and power.

It was the final foretelling in the book, and Felitïa had previously dismissed it as nothing more than a cryptic warning not to put too much trust in the foretellings—Eleuia’s little way of covering herself if her foretellings didn’t come true. However, looking at it again now, Felitïa wasn’t so sure.

Most of the foretellings were pretty straight-forward in their meaning, such as the one just before the last one: 2337 will be a year with a record harvest. There was little about that one’s meaning to question, other than the location where the harvest would occur. However, a few were less obvious, and even a couple were downright cryptic: The time approaches 10,000. When 10,000 is reached, the decision must be made: hell or hell. Felitïa was actually fairly certain she knew the basic meaning of that one—a decision will need to be made where there are no good choices, only bad ones—but it still gave no mention of ten thousand what.

She had assumed the final foretelling was just trying to copy the style of the more cryptic ones to hide the fact that maybe none of them were trustworthy. But maybe that was just what she had wanted the last one to mean.

However, she had realised today that she had been mistranslating it. Previously, she had translated the third sentence as Seek the double blade of knowledge and power. Read that way, it was just a metaphor of a blade with two edges representing other things.

But the word was doubled, not double.

That was the problem with reading in a language not your native. Mistakes were so easy to make. She had double-checked with Nin-Akna and made certain that, yes, it was doubled. That changed the meaning somewhat, suggesting instead something that had been copied. Perhaps even an actual blade? A sword?

It wasn’t much to go on, but maybe it meant something. If she could figure out its meaning…

There was a rap on the door, and a servant entered and gave a flourishing bow. “Your Highness, Agernon—no last name—is here to see you.”

Felitïa jumped to her feet with a smile. “Please, show him in.”

The servant moved aside and Agernon hobbled into the room, his cane clacking on the floor.

With another flourishing bow, the servant backed out of the room and pulled the door shut.

Agernon watched the servant go, then looked at Felitïa, a scowl on his face. “I hope you’re not expecting any of that nonsense from me.”

Grinning, Felitïa shook her head. “Please, no. Never. Never ever.” She spread her arms, approached him, and hugged him tightly. “It’s so good to see you.”

He feebly hugged her back for only a moment, before pulling away. “All right, enough with the touchy-feely stuff.” He walked over to the table and pulled out one of the chairs. He stared at it a moment, a look of disgust on his face, then sat down.

Felitïa returned to the table and sat across from him. “I thought you refused to come to the palace.”

“Yeah, well, you won’t come to see me, so…”

“That’s because you won’t let me come with…” She trailed off and just pointed at Hedromornasta.

Agernon glanced over. “Pheh.”

“What was I supposed to do? I can’t go anywhere without him or his mother at the moment.”

“Really? Why?”

“I could accidentally read your private thoughts.”

“Pheh. At my age, I don’t have anything left to be embarrassed about.”

“And the other people nearby? The ones I’d pass on my way to you?”

Agernon’s scowl deepened and he didn’t reply.

“I can’t take the risk.”

He stared at her a moment, then lifted his cane up and laid it on the table in front of him. “Look, Felitïa, I really don’t like you being here. Years ago, when Elderaan brought you to me, I only agreed to test you because you assured me we’d be snubbing our noses at the nobility. Yet here you are now, hobnobbing with them, living with them. I hear you even plan to give a public audience, sitting on the fucking throne.”

Felitïa sighed. That was Anita’s idea. It was supposed to make the people of Quorge more comfortable with her presence. Felitïa hadn’t strictly agreed to it yet, but she was probably going to have to. “I haven’t had much choice.”

Agernon shook his head. “There’s always a choice, Felitïa. There aren’t always good ones, but there’s always a choice.”

“I know. What I mean—”

Agernon held up his hand to stop her. “Look, I understand there have been reasons for you being here. You didn’t want to offend the previous Lord Belone, and I understand the choice you made there. But from what I’ve heard, the new Lady Belone is pretty friendly to you, and exceedingly so towards Nin-Akna. I don’t think you need to worry about offending her if you’re not here all the time.”

“I know. I just…” She lowered her head and closed her eyes for a moment. “There’s so much going on, so much I need to do. I have to learn to control my abilities. I have to figure out these damn foretellings. I have to track down Darkers before they kill us all. Soon, there are supposed to be demons coming to kill me as well. I need all the help I can get.”

“I’m not disputing that. But why do you have to be here?”

She looked him in the eyes. “Because I need resources, Agernon. I’m broke. The money from selling Elderaan’s shop dried up ages ago. Anita’s funding me at the moment. She’s paying for Captain Gen to stay here, for—”

“What do you need your own personal ship for?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know yet, but I’ve already been from one side of this continent to the other and dragged halfway across the world. I’m probably going to need it eventually. Anita’s only asking that I stay with her while I’m in the city. My presence helps solidify her position. Having royalty—even disgraced royalty—supporting her gives her a political edge when dealing with other local nobility and other provinces. It’s the least I can do for her when she’s doing so much for me. I’m sorry.”

Agernon harrumphed, but didn’t say anything.

After a moment of awkward silence, Felitïa said, “How are you doing?”

He harrumphed again. “Making do.”

“I was really sorry about what happened to your home.”

He shrugged and looked away from her. “Decades of memories there, but like I said, I’m making do.”

There was awkward silence again. Felitïa wished she could sense his feelings—not that she couldn’t tell what they were. It was obvious he was upset and angry. Rather, she wanted to know the intensity of those feelings. Just how angry was he at her? She hated to think she was letting him down in any way.

“Look,” she said, “I will happily come to see you. At any time. You don’t even need to give me much notice. I want to get to work on the Staff again. I want to understand it, and the Pearl. But you have to let me bring Mikranasta or Hedromornasta. Either that, or you have to wait however long it takes me to figure out my abilities. Maybe that’ll be a few days, but it’ll probably be months. Mikranasta certainly seems to think it’ll be months.”

Agernon sighed loudly and shifted positions in his seat several times.

“Please, Agernon.”

He leaned forward, bending over the table. He glanced at Hedromornasta, then spoke quietly. “You’d be wise not to trust them, Felitïa. Jorvan seems an eminently fine and decent person, but his mother…” He glanced again at Hedromornasta. “Let’s just say, I would never willingly turn my back to her.”

“And why is that, Mister Agernon?”

Felitïa’s heart skipped a beat.

“Motherfucker!” Agernon stumbled back and jumped to his feet. “What do you think you’re doing? You could have given me a heart attack, sneaking up like that!”

Mikranasta lowered her head in a slight nod. She was standing right beside Felitïa, and Felitïa hadn’t even noticed her approach. “My apologies, but I was not expecting your presence. It was meant as a test for Felitïa.”

“Bullshit!” Agernon grabbed his cane and leaned heavily on it. “You may not have expected me, but you still had to come through one of those doors and walk over here. You had ample opportunity to change your test!”

“Perhaps, but when someone is talking… Is shit the right word? I’m sorry. I’m still mastering your language. When someone is talking shit about me behind my back, it tends to annoy me.”

Agernon slammed his cane into the floor. “How dare you! I don’t care how ridiculously powerful you are. I will not be treated like this!”

“Then I suggest—”

Felitïa slammed her hand down on the table as she stood up. “Enough!”

“Felitïa, how can you—?”

Felitïa held up her now somewhat sore hand. “Agernon, please. Mikranasta, that was inexcusable. Do not ever treat my friends like that, no matter what they’re saying about you. Talk to them, or ask me to talk to them, but don’t ever do anything like that again.”

Mikranasta bowed her head. “As you wish, Will-Breaker. My apologies.”

Felitïa leaned on the table and took a couple deep breaths. As she did so, Agernon slid a necklace of amethyst beads across to her. She looked up and smiled at him.

He didn’t smile back, and his eyes kept looking over at Mikranasta. “This is why I came. I finished examining them. They’re magic that I can easily understand, which makes a nice change. They do exactly what you already worked out. They help clear the mind, and strengthen focus and concentration. They also act as a catalyst for mentalism spells if you spend a bit of time charging them with your mind first.”

Felitïa picked up the necklace and tied it around her neck. “Thank you, Agernon.”

“Right, I’m off then.” He backed away from the table towards the door, his cane clacking.

“We’ll talk again soon,” Felitïa said. “I promise.”

“We better. We have a lot of work to do, and the sooner we get started the better. But you know my terms.”

Felitïa gave him a sad smile and nodded.

He backed up to the wall and felt for the door. Finding it after a moment, he opened it and backed out.

When he was gone, Mikranasta went over to a stool she had left in the room and dragged it over to the table. “He really did refuse to turn his back to me. Am I really that intimidating?”

“I think you know full well you are,” Felitïa said, sitting down again. “So let’s stop the games.”

“Yes, of course. My apologies again.”

Felitïa sighed. “Where have you been? Poor Hedromornasta here has…” She stopped. Hedromornasta wasn’t there. He must have slipped out when Mikranasta arrived—and Felitïa had failed to notice that as well, failed to even notice the switch-over of control of the shield.

“We really need to work on your observation skills,” Mikranasta said.

“Perhaps, but we also need to work on my telepathy. That is specifically what you’re supposed to be helping me with.”

Mikranasta sat on the stool. “Yes, and to develop your telepathy, you will need observation skills. You cannot close your mind off to someone you don’t know is there.”

Felitïa rubbed her temples. She really didn’t need this right now. “So where have you been?”

“Taking care of some personal issues.”

“Such as?”

“As I said, they are personal.”

Felitïa nodded. “Right. Fair, I suppose.”

“I confess I also wished to wait until you were tired at the end of the day. I wanted to see how you deal with tiredness.”

“You’ve seen that already.”

“Not precisely. Previously, you were sleep deprived to the point of being delusional. I want to see you at a normal level of tiredness.”

Felitïa nodded. “That makes sense.”

“Then enter the Room and we will begin.”

The Room sprang up instantly at Felitïa’s call, bare and empty apart from the black walls and the broken grey ones. For now, she kept the sensations of the rest of her mind out.

A moment later, Mikranasta’s magical presence appeared. Not bad. There are some definite improvements.

I’m glad you noticed. She wasn’t actually, though she was reasonably certain was successfully hiding that feeling from Mikranasta. She had spent hours yesterday restructuring the Room’s black walls to make them stronger, but still appear the same strength to anyone trying to invade her mind. It was good that she’d succeeded in making them stronger, but disappointing that Mikranasta had noticed so quickly.

I see you’re also hiding casual thoughts from me. Good. I’m now going to attempt to distract you. I am going to send you an itching sensation. Let it through. It is not dangerous, merely annoying, but it will become steadily more so. I want you to keep your defences ready for any other threats. I won’t do anything that is actually dangerous, but I will occasionally do other things, and I want you to block those. The moment a stray thought gets through to me, or you fail to block anything I do apart from the itch, you’ve failed, and we’ll start again. Understood?

I understand. Elderaan used to do a similar exercise with me.

I’m glad he did at least one thing right.

Felitïa ignored that. She was pretty certain it was just to get her off guard. She was not going to let Mikranasta get to her that easily.

Her elbow started to itch. It was fairly mild, so she could easily ignore it. Besides, she was pretty certain if she tried to scratch it in the real world, it wouldn’t work.

Gradually, the itch got worse.

Felitïa focused on basic concentration exercises, not allowing the itch to bother her. Could she get away with using the prayer beads to help her? No, Mikranasta probably wouldn’t approve. Besides, it would be more satisfying to succeed on her own merits.

Several minutes passed. The itch got worse, but Felitïa breathed slowly and calmly, and ignored it.

Then something grabbed her shoulders and shook her.

Felitïa gasped, and the black walls of the Room shook apart. She put them right back together. They were only down for a split second, but it was too late. She’d failed. The itch was gone.

She opened her eyes as Mikranasta walked back round the table to her stool. When she sat, she stared back at Felitïa with her thin eyes, saying nothing.

“I know,” Felitïa said. “That was stupid of me. You never said the distractions would be magical. I just assumed.”

“Never assume anything. It will get you killed.”

“It will never happen again, I promise.”

“We will start again.”

Of course, almost all the distractions after that were magical. They ranged from the incredibly pungent stink of a skunk to a feather tickling her toes, a sneeze that just wouldn’t come, a high-pitched whine in her ear, and more.

And she failed to block most of them. That was the only way she even knew what they were. The ones she did succeed in blocking never got close enough to her to make their effects known. The walls of the Room simply swatted the magical effects away. Unfortunately, her successes were very few, though they became a little more frequent as time went on.

Mikranasta made one other attempt at a non-magical distraction. Felitïa kept her eyes open the entire time, watching both the real library and the Room in her head. When Mikranasta threw a small stone at her, she caught it and didn’t lose concentration. So at least she had that to be proud of.

She wasn’t sure exactly how long they kept it up, but it was well past dark when Mikranasta finally said they could stop.

“Get some rest. I have a busy day planned for tomorrow.”

Felitïa nodded. She was exhausted and didn’t need much convincing to get some rest.

Mikranasta stood up, bowed her head to Felitïa, then left the room. Hedromornasta entered as she left.

Felitïa gathered up her notes and The Foretellings of Eleuia, and headed for the door. It occurred to her that she hadn’t had any dinner, and only just now noticed how hungry she was. She would have to grab something before settling down. She turned to Hedromornasta. “Fancy a bite to eat?”

As usual, he only stared back at her with his perpetual scowl.

“Suit yourself.” With a shake of her head, she walked out the door, and headed for the kitchen, Hedromornasta following behind.