Rosebay does not often occupy her thoughts with the going ons of her family.

She is aware, peripherally at least, of her mother’s plans—of the grandiose steps she takes to remake this Beqanna into something of her own image—and she feels something like pride when she stops to consider it. But she has always been a headstrong girl, and she does not think outside of herself often, if at all. So she kisses her father’s slender cheek in the morning and smiles dutifully at her mother before leaving their home for the world beyond it. The world where she travels and explores and finds herself.

Where she first discovers her gift for enthrallment, weak as it may be.

And then the potential to let herself come undone.

The world where she meets monsters like Crown and ghoulish demons. Where she travels up the mountain to see what else simmers in her blood. The potential a constant drug, dragging her forward.

Today though—today, she stays closer to home. Calling in a sing-song voice to her twin as she moves through the pine and the forest of her mother’s making. “Iris,” she calls in her silvery voice, the fog winding around her thin legs as she walks. “Sweet Iris,” she calls again, ending on a small hum.

She glances upward and then back down, peering around the trees as she walks.

“I miss you, dear sister,” she calls, her poisoned lips tipping up into a smile.

She would find her soon enough, she knows. Soon enough.

but in all chaos, there is calculation