I didn’t dramatically leap to my feet and dash out of the classroom. There was no need. The prophecy had clearly stated that the danger would come under a full moon, so I checked my tablet to make sure it wasn’t a full moon (not for over a week), took my train of thought under my own damn control, and finished my rune. It burned beautifully.

Then I went to meet up with everyone and freak out about the prophecy.

When I got back to the dorm, Kylie and Max were already there, and one of them had thought to fetch Saina, who sat nevously on a chair in the middle of the room while Max paced restlessly back and forth. Kylie, as usual, lay on her bed, keeping the bedcurtains open as a concession to the fact that she was involved in a conversation with everyone.

“Ah, Kayden,” Max greeted me as I entered. “There’s a prophecy – ”

“I heard. So. What do we think?”

“I don’t know. Yet. At least we have time. If it’s going to happen on the full moon – ”

“A full moon,” Kylie cut in. “It might not be the coming full moon. You know, sometimes I miss the limitations of prophesying in a normal place. I used to be able to prophesy and know that whatever I’d just said was something that was going to happen to somebody really close to me, within twelve hours. It made everything a lot easier to decypher.”

“I’m happy to have more than twelve hours’ warning,” Saina cut in. “I’d really like to not be killed over timeless sands. I’m definitely not complaining about having more time to avoid that.”

“You could just avoid anywhere sandy?” Kylie suggested.

“ ‘Over timeless sands’ is probably Duniyasar, given the context,” Max said, “but yes, avoiding anywhere that could be construed as ‘timeless sands’ is probably a good idea. It might not be good enough, though. In the prophecy, that’s where you’re killed, but there’s no reason the location should be integral to the murder plot. Even if we ‘avoid’ that death, the same killer could kill you somewhere else.” He rubbed his goatee thoughtfully. “So far as I can tell, we have two people in this prophecy – the Heiress and the Faithless. And two locations – the Heartbound and the Timeless Sands. The prophecy specifies leaving one for the other, so – ”

“The Heartbound isn’t a location,” I cut in. “It’s me. That’s what the prophecy called me the time it prophesied my death in the lake.”

“Oh. Three people, then. Okay.”

“I’m glad you’re involved,” Saina said. “You know what’s going on, so that’ll help a lot with me, you know, not dying.”

“What happens if you do die?” I asked, struck by a sudden thought. “I mean, not… not that you will. You won’t. But I just realised; you said that if Kylie dies while she owns Duniyasar, it goes back to you. You gave it to her and you’re her heiress and you didn’t give her the rights to change that. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“But what if you die while she still owns it? Won’t that be a massive political problem?”

“Oh! No. The line of succession for Duniyasar is about fifteen people deep. If I die, my mother is next in line, and then my little brother, I think. Unless somebody goes on a Surya murder spree, there’s no risk of anyone ‘stealing’ Duniyasar by being granted the kind of ownership that Kylie has.”

“Does that mean that any female in that line of succession might be the ‘heiress of Duniyasar’ in the prophecy?”

“No,” Max said. “There’s only one heiress. Saina’s mother becomes the heiress only when she dies. I mean, if she dies. Which you won’t.”

“You guys bring up a pretty easy way to solve this,” Kylie said. “Saina, why not just tell your mum about the prophecy? I’m sure the instant she knows you’re in danger you’d have more bodyguards than any assassin could deal with.”

“True,” Saina said, “but that’s exactly why I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell her. The prophecy mentions me being killed by ‘the Faithless’, to restore faith. That’s probably the Duniyasar traditionalists.”

“Hmm, good point. And it specifies that they’d pretend to be your friend. If we tell your mother, she’s obviously going to do her absolute best to try to keep you safe; she’s not going to just let you wander around unguarded. But pulling you out of school and giving you guards is just asking to have the guard you trust the most put a knife in your back – or poison and runes, I suppose.”

“What traditionalists?” I asked.

“Like most of the old families,” Saina explained, “mine used to have a spell. A prophecy, which probably isn’t surprising, given Duniyasar’s affinity for them.”

“A bloodline pophecy?”

“No. I mean, yes, sort of. It’s complicated. It was easy to control the inheritance of, before the Pit was built. The people responsible for the Pit were its first users, of course, so those lineages don’t have their traditional spells any more. The Pit is a lot more versatile and makes everyone a lot more powerful, but it’s… different. And the thing about prophecies that stay in one family or one culture for awhile is that they tend to get a sort of… pseudo-religious… following.”

“When the school was built, there was a lot of cultural backlash,” Max added. “A lot of people saw the change as a kind of spiritual betrayal.”

“Okay, but that was ages ago,” I said. “ Wasn’t it? Everyone alive today has only known a post-Refujeyo world, right?”

“For context,” Max said, “this all happened before our country was even colonised. Personally, I can’t imagine holding onto something for that long, but – ”

“I’m sure you can’t,” Kylie said drily. “It makes perfect sense to me.”

“Ah. Right. The point is, there are still some people out there nostalgic for the good old days when everything was perfect and spiritually pure before the Pit made magic soulless and unmagical or whatever. Not very many, and they don’t really do anything except grumble to each other in magazine articles, but it only takes one radical to poison someone.”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Saina said. “Some people have been trying to drum up traditionalist resentment against mum for years, for political power.”

“They want to gain power in Refujeyo by creating resentment against Refujeyo? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Not against Refujeyo, just us. The argument is that Guppa and Mum and the various other members of my family in politics have turned their back on our family duties, that we leveraged our family power to gain control in Refujeyo and abandoned the systems that got us there in the first place. Which I guess is true in a way; if my ancestors and people like them didn’t have that kind of power, they never would’ve been able to build Refujeyo in the first place. But these people claim that while Refujeyo is all well and good for most mages, it’s ‘beneath’ people like us and the moral thing to do is stay out of modern politics and return to our traditional duties, or to forsake our ancient names and territories and give it to someone who will.”

“They think your ancestors sold out,” I translated.

“Essentially, yes. Athough after seeing the state that Duniyasar is in, I’m hardly surprised.”

“So you think,” I said, “that these ‘faithless’ looking to restore their faith are people who want Duniyasar in the hands of someone who’s going to behave like a traditional, pre-Pit steward of the place, and if your mother won’t abandon either Refujeyo or Duniyasar then they’re going to work their way down its list of heirs until they find someone who will.”

“That’s the most likely scenario, yes. Although they might not be thinking that long-term. They might just be angry and looking to lash out at the person they see as causing their pain, and mum’s too powerful to attack directly.”

“In which case, I don’t know what we can do about this,” Max said. “We’ll find something, of course, but if the attack is coming from someone pretending to be your friend, we can’t trust anyone to – ”

“Sure we can,” Kylie said. “We can trust us.”

“Can I trust you, though?” Saina asked, quirking an eyebrow to show she was joking. “Maybe you’re pretending to be friendly.”

Despite the obvious joke, Kylie took the question seriously. “Max and me, sure. But we know that Kayden isn’t ‘the faithless’ because he’s called ‘the heartbound’ in the prophecy. It won’t give two names to the same person in one prophecy. It specifies that the attack will come on a full moon, over timeless sands, after you leave Kayden’s sight.”

Max nodded. “Right,” he said. “So the prophecy specifies that this attack comes on a full moon, somewhere sandy, after you leave Kayden’s sight. So, you should spend full moons inside with Kayden, and we can try to find out just where the threat itself is coming from, and prevent them from trying in some other way.”

“This sounds like a terrible idea,” Kylie said.

“It was your idea!”

“No, all I said was that Kayden isn’t the prophesied killer. But if we’ve got an assassin on the loose, having their target just hang out with a teenager once a month with no actual guards or real protection is a lot more dangerous than just telling the High Crone. Maybe someone might slip past your mum, Saina, pretending to be friendly, but they’d slip past Kayden a lot easier.”

“I don’t think so,” Saina said. “The prophecy said they’d use poison and runes. I can protect myself from both of those. With such strong hints about the murder weapon and timing, there’s not all that much danger – but if I tell Mum, she’ll pull me out of school and the chaos will give our assassin more opportinuties.”

“The prophecy tells us what their first attempt will be. But if they can’t get you on the full moon with poison and runes, what’s to stop them from trying something else?”

“We are,” Max said firmly.

“How? This isn’t Clara with a stolen ring. Your family doesn’t run in circles this powerful. Do you even know what to look for?”

“Kylie’s right.” Saina stood abruptly, hands clasped in front of her. “None of you owe me anything. It was presumptuous of me to suggest keeping this from my mother. I’ll tell her immediately.”

“No, that’s… that’s no what I meant. I just… look. When you do things, sometimes you fail, alright? Sometimes, nobody solves the prophecy on time! Sometimes we ovrlook something or we’re not fast enough or we protect someone from the thing that would have killed them only to get them killed in a different way! Sometimes, people die! Horribly! I’m not saying we shouldn’t help. Of course we’ll help. I just don’t think we’re enough. We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire right now; there’s the familiar thing and this other really ominous prophecy that we don’t understand at all and now the political implications of me having Fionnrath’s Destiny, which nobody asked for – ”

“Wait,” Saina cut in. “Your spell is Fionnrath’s Destiny?”

“Um, yes? Is that important right now? Compared to the assassination plot and everything?”

“It’s definitely something I would’ve liked to know before transferring ownership of a sacred magical site, for preparation purposes if nothing else.”

I groaned. “Oh, fuck. I didn’t even think of the political implications of that.” But Max should’ve thought of them, right? I glanced at him. His face was carefully neutral. “Is that going to be a problem?” I asked.

“No,” Saina said. “This is what these sort of transfer contracts are for. It’s just… nice to know the implications of my actions in advance. When possible.”

“Sorry,” Kylie said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Saina said. “You were saying?”

“Right. Well, we’re not bodyguards. I have experience with this spell, but I’m still training, and honestly most of my experience with interpreting what it says was about me abusing limitations that it doesn’t have at Duniyasar. I know the spell said that this assassin will pretend to be friendly, but I’m sure there are competent guardians you actually trust who you know wouldn’t try to kill you. I just think that if you don’t tell your mum, you’re putting ourself at way more risk for no reason.”

Saina sat down again. She took a long moment to carefully consider he words, before finally saying, “Three years ago, one of mum’s friends tried to stab her. He wasn’t a super close friend, but they were friendly. They’d hang out together, he used to babysit when I was younger, stuff like that. But he was being blackmailed, and offered some really big rewards, if the High Crone became unable to serve her role for a while. So he tried to put her in the hospital. This kind of thing happens, sometimes, but it really shook her up. He failed, but things became unstable, she became protective and scattered and… well, the attempt had the desired political effect, anyway. If I tell her that someone pretending to be a friend is trying to kill me…” she shook her head. “I don’t think I would be safer, if she pulls me out and surrounds me with guards or whatever, but even if I was, I know what it’d do to her. I’m not doing that to her unless I can be reasonably sure her help would actually be useful.”

“So you’re putting your own life at risk to avoid making your mother feel scared?” Kylie’s question was unexpectedly scathing.

I cut in. “Oh, come off it, Kylie. Like you don’t do that sort of thing all the time. There’s tons of really important stuff I’m not telling my parents about.”

“I do not – ”

“Told them about Fionnrath’s Destiny yet?”

Kylie stopped talking. Glared at me. “That’s different,” she said eventually.

“It’s really not.” I turned to Saina. “I can spend full moons with you, if that helps. We could make them monthly pit comp training days or something.” I’d have to skip the occasional class, but absolutely no one was going to care.

She smiled. “Thank you. Although I must say – and don’t take this the wrong way – but Kayden, since I started spending time with you, my life has gotten a lot weirder.”

“Yeah,” Max sighed. “He has that effect on people.”