The attending girl shows me to a private room with a locking door on the same level. It’s barely noon, but I’m exhausted from the morning and the night and Regiana and Dashan and the bloodborn. Still, I can’t make myself sleep, so I sit up on a low pile of cushions and call for oil. A different girl brings me some—I am apparently important enough to merit my own serving girl, now—and I begin to work it into the knots in my staff.

  It’s always struck me as a contradiction, that the main weapon of a water-worshipping people should need oil, should need to repel the very element we see as holy. That water, when it gets inside anything—wood or iron or stone—destroys it, eventually. I wonder if I am like that, if the deeper I get into this game of religions and guilds, the more destruction I bring.

  It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t stop if it meant the destruction of the whole city and the temple too—better that than corruption destroys it slowly. Better to make a clean break.

  The girl brings me tea about the time I have the staff polished to a high gloss, and I turn to my thief’s rope. It needs oil too, to stay supple and silent, and as I work it in I wonder about Gaxna, wonder if they’re feeding her, if they’re torturing her, if she thinks I am coming for her. Ironically, I wish I had some of her blood, so I knew what she was feeling, even though she’d hate it. It kills me not to know.

  I have the rope polished and it’s still barely mid-afternoon. I will leave before dawn to sneak into the temple, but that’s still hours away. I call the girl back, and she appears quickly in the door. “Yes ma’am.”

  “Bring me Theral Yelin.”

  Confusion shows on her face. “Who?”

  “Theral Yelin. She’s a second-year student. Currently that way.” I point, using my new awareness.

  The attendant’s eyes widen in understanding and she leaves. This is one wrong, at least, that I can right.

  The girl returns with Yelin a few minutes later. She looks like I remember her, wiry and scared and hiding it all under a brave mask. I know her too deeply now not to see through it. Not to see myself in her and the fear that pulses underneath.

  “You needed me?” she asks.

  “No,” I say. “I needed to apologize to you.”

  Confusion mixes with the fear in her breast. “I don’t understand.”

  I wave the attendant out and pour Yelin tea. “What happened yesterday was wrong. I should not have taken your blood. They should not have made you give it.”

  “It’s… your place, ma’am.”

  I wince at the honorific. “Have you experienced bloodsight yet?”

  She shakes her head briefly, looking down.

  “Well, it’s too intimate for strangers. Not something that should be given without permission. Will you sit?”

  She sits. “It’s what they do.”

  I do not miss that she calls theracants they instead of we. “Well, they shouldn’t, not without permission. But I can’t undo it now, so I want to offer you two things. The first is my blood.”

  She gasps.

  “It’s only fair. When you learn bloodsight, then you will have the same knowledge of me I have of you. Here. Take it.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  I poke my thumb with a belt knife and offer it to her. After a moment she takes it, and I again get a flash of her thoughts, overlapping the emotions of her bloodsight until I almost feel as though I am her. I am glad when it ends.

  “And the other thing, ma’am?”

  “Call me Theia. The other thing is freedom.” I meet her eyes. “I have felt you weeping in the night, Yelin. I know what you think of these women, in the safety of your own thoughts. There is a way out.”

  Her eyes widen, but she shakes her head. “It’s already been agreed. My family has nothing. The theracants took me in.”

  I remember Gaxna’s story. “That’s what they do, apparently. Take girls with nothing to lose, then break them down so they can train them. They tried it with me too. But there is a place, up the peninsula from here. They take in girls like you, teach you a trade. Give you another chance at life. A—friend of mine knows them. Gaxna. Tell them Gaxna sent you.”

  From the way her eyes widen, she knows about Gaxna. Or maybe Gaxana. “But I have nothing. Not even these clothes are mine.”

  “The theracants can spare those, I’m guessing.” I pull a small gold ingot from my pocket, the last of my stash from the raid with Gaxna. “Here. This will be enough to buy you passage on a caravan and pay for your first year’s expenses. There are other girls there. Girls like you. You can start again.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asks. The mistrust in her eyes hurts me. Yelin has not had an easy life.

  I shrug. “To make myself feel better, maybe. It doesn’t matter. There are a lot of things out of my control right now, but this is one thing I can do.”

  She takes the ingot, and some part of me relaxes. Now it’s up to her. “You’re the one, aren’t you?” she whispers. “The one they’re talking about.”

  “Probably.”

  Her eyes widen. “Are you really battling the overseers?”

  I grimace. “Not exactly. Though yes, I have fought a few.” I pull the scarf down so she can see the bruises on my neck. “The last time didn’t go so well.”

  Cautiously, she takes a sip of tea. “Then why are you doing it?”

  “They murdered my father.” I am surprised to feel tears well up, surprised at how strong they are. They murdered my father.

  Yelin looks uncomfortable, then reaches a hand over.

  “Not that I even knew him,” I go on, making myself, “but he deserved better. And they’re corrupting the temple. It used to be a place where people could go for answers, for justice, for guidance in their problems. Now it’s all money and politics and people getting disappeared.”

  Yelin sets her cup down. “That’s why the theracants are posting women at every fountain. To try to keep order.”

  My laugh sounds bitter. “Maybe. Or maybe they just want power.” As I say it, I realize my reasons for fighting feel different now. That I still want justice and a safe city, but I haven’t said the deepest one.

  “They have someone I love,” I say. “Maybe the only person I love. And I want her back.”

  Yelin nods like she knows, and consolation comes through our bond. “And if you lose her, you lose everything.”

  “Yeah,” I say, words failing me. “Pretty much.”

  Her fingers start tapping against the wood. Her eyes widen, watching them, fear spiking inside. “I have to go.”

  I frown, then realize someone is bloodpushing her. Probably calling her to lessons. She stands.

  “Remember what I said,” I say. “You don’t have to stay here. Use the gold to book passage up the peninsula and ask for a seamstress named Ciri. You’ll be safe there.”

  She nods, and the panic, fear, and hope surging in her breast surge in mine too. Then she scurries out, and her emotions fade into my waves of worry and fear and responsibility. I take a deep breath—the currents are too strong to ice. I visualize them as a waterfall instead, and myself a great mossy stone in the center. I let it all run over me and downstream and try not to get caught in the current.

  The current I can’t avoid is Gaxna. Gaxna, who never wanted any part of all this, but stuck her neck out to help me anyway. Who was just trying to escape the city’s politics, and I dragged her back into it. Gaxna, who lost an eye to her last partner, and now could be killed for knowing me. She’s probably cursing my name right now. She more than anyone is the reason I have to do this. I don’t want Nerimes to win or the temple to fall or the world to get swallowed in a sudden deluge, but more than all that, I want her back, want the life we got a little taste of before everything went to slop.

  Because what is all this worth, if I end it alone?

  I try to ice the fear that wells up, the deepest one, sitting cross-legged on the theracant’s cushions, breath slow and steady. The fear of being alone. Of being abandoned by my father and now maybe losing the only person I have left. I recognize that deep down this has always been my fear—that my dad put me in the temple because I wasn’t good enough, that he died because I wasn’t good enough, that Gaxna would figure me out sooner or later and leave too. That she hates me even now. I know it’s crazy, I know it’s probably not true, but I can’t ice it. It’s too strong. This is something I have to live with.

  So I sit on a cushion on the night before the world ends and breathe deep, steeling myself for the fight.