Her ancestor was overwhelmingly better than her, so all she could do to protect Gavriel was guard him against them with everything she had. If not with a shield of magic, then with her body. She grabbed her ancestor’s fist from behind as they pulled it back, the front of Gavriel’s nightshirt in their other. She snarled, dropping her weight with them in her grasp and kicking their feet out from under them.

The three of them fell together against the dining table. The chairs and table shrieked against the floor as Malou crashed into them first, groaning as her hip and shoulder slammed against hard edges. Her ancestor tried to throw her off, but she launched herself between them and Gavriel.

As Malou struggled to free Gavriel from their hold, her ancestor let out a laugh full of delight. “I’m not making this too hard for you, am I? I’m not sure you’ll be able to keep this up much longer.”

Did she have a choice, though? Just as she reached for Gavriel’s nightshirt, her ancestor socked her in the jaw. As her father had taught her, she rolled with it as best as she could and didn’t let go of either her ancestor or Gavriel. With his nightshirt in her hand, she imagined it becoming intangible like the letter to Brosch she’d hidden between the layers of her greatcoat and the clothes she’d hidden in her valise that she’d worn to deliver it.

He fell back, shirtless and frailer than she remembered him being. Eyes wide and breathing hard, he fumbled his way to his feet and looked at her for what to do.

“Kitchen!” she croaked, and he bolted.

Her ancestor cackled as they wrapped their free hand around Malou’s neck. “Smart, but not smart enough.” Squeezing her throat, they stood and yanked her closer. In her mother’s deep russet eyes, Malou swore she could see tendrils of angry magic roiling in their depths. “You should’ve ended this already. You won’t be able to protect anyone like this, Malou.”

Her vision darkened at the edges, and she clawed her nails into her ancestor’s arm as if attempting to cling to her consciousness. Quickly—she had to do something quickly. She shifted more magic to the muscles in her neck, and her awareness of the feeling of her ancestor’s feral grip flooded her attention. She drew on that feeling, and her mind boomed with the heightened awareness she’d had just before becoming immaterial before.

As her ancestor moved to throw her across the dining room, Malou released that hyperawareness and her materiality with it. When they released their grasp on her, there was nothing of her.

Her ancestor glared into the space where she used to be and flexed their fingers, then they gave a breathy laugh. “Giving up so easily? How disappointing. Have fun watching me rip this kid apart with my bare hands.” They turned toward the kitchen, rolling their shoulders and cracking their knuckles.

Like this, her consciousness filling the dining room and expanding throughout the house, she could sense the enormous presence of her ancestor and the magic they were able to manipulate. The immensity of the power under their control seemed to span across time and space, and the heaviness of it threatened to drown her will to fight against them to protect Gavriel. How could she win against that?

The ache in her soul reverberated as her ancestor found Gavriel cowering by the backdoor in the kitchen. It didn’t matter if she won just like it didn’t matter if he was real. Either way, her only option was to go to him.

His imminent danger called to Malou’s awareness, bursting through her from the marrow of her bones to the hair raised across her skin. Her muscles pulsing with magic, and her materiality coalesced in the space between Gavriel and her ancestor, who was stalking toward him with the thrill of the hunt brightening her mother’s features. Malou fought to catch her breath as she faced them.

“You haven’t given up yet?” they asked, taunting her. They licked their lips as they pivoted from her. “Why’d you lead me here, then? Did you not believe me when I said I’m an assassin?” They inspected the knives in the woodblock by the sink one by one.

“Get out of here,” Malou ordered Gavriel. She kept her attention focused on her ancestor but felt Gavriel touch the back of her arm for a moment. He wasn’t real, but that was all it took to steel her for what was to come. Then the old hinges on the door whined as it opened and closed with a slam.

“Sometimes you need to end it before it gets worse,” her ancestor said. They’d chosen the two largest knives in the block, and Malou’s heart rioted in her chest. Every fiber of her being told her to run, that one of those knives would slice into her flesh if she didn’t escape now.

“You’ll know,” they continued, slowly closing the distance between them while Malou panted. “If someone has more fight in them when you’ve got them beat, they’ll have a look in their eyes.” They pointed a knife toward one of their own eyes. “You need to kill those ones, or they’ll come for you again and again and again. They won’t stop until they kill you or die trying. Do you understand me?”

Terror consumed Malou, but wasn’t it all in her head? She forced herself to take in a large breath of air to ground herself. Now to think. She might be able to block the first few of her ancestor’s attacks, but likely after that, her ancestor would find a way through her defense with a well-timed, precise slash of a knife. Although it’d take a while to take her down with knives alone, eventually her ancestor would make it out that door and there’d be no way for Malou to catch up to their speed.

If this was all in her head, though, couldn’t she just change what was here? Gavriel was here because she’d imagined him here just like this house and the knives in her ancestor’s hands were merely objects of her imagination. She could just let it all go. She’d have to release the hold that memory had on her, though, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to do that.

“Malou!” Laure yelled as her ancestor dove at her.

While she knocked away one of their hands at the wrist, the other was coming at her temple in at an angle she couldn’t block without injury. She hissed and imagined her magic forming a thick shield in front of her forearm as she brought it up to protect her head. The tip of the knife cut through it but just barely jabbed into her arm.

Her ancestor laughed wildly as they pushed Malou back with a lunge, then an upward slash that almost sliced off her fingertips. “I’m enjoying this more than I thought.” They cackled when their knife sank into her shoulder. “It’s been so long since I’ve wanted to cut someone down this badly. Even if you lose, at least be satisfied that you entertained me.”

Malou thickened the shield on both of her forearms and concentrated her static-like magic on the new throbbing pain in her shoulder while she imagined past the feeling of it to before she’d been stabbed. As soon as the pain dulled, her ancestor’s knife swiped across her thigh. She couldn't stop the shriek that ripped out of her.

“You need to work on your speed,” her ancestor quipped.

“Imagine that you’re faster,” Laure instructed. “Aren’t they showing you exactly how fast they are? Shouldn’t that be all you need, Malou? Imagine that you’re as fast as them.”

Could she do that? Could it be as simple as that—an example for her to latch onto and replicate? As she shifted magic to her knew wound, she imagined her shielded arm coming up to block her ancestor in time, sending that electric feeling down into her muscles. She was almost too slow, but she pressed harder, again and again, studying her ancestor the same way her father taught her to preserve memories through associations reinforced with magic.

Except the faster she got, the more strained her muscles grew. She’d known she couldn’t hold out forever, but she’d hoped to have time to figure out how to end this. When her ancestor’s knife dug into her side, her knees threatened to give out, but she shoved them back into the counter.

The distance gave her only a moment to breathe. Her ancestor threw one of their knives at her, and while Malou dodged, they grabbed another and tried to come at her from the side. With one more rush of magic, she crouched under the swipe to grab the outside of her ancestor’s arm with one hand and a fistful of their hair with the other. She yanked their head back and kicked out their knee to make them kneel. A glimmer of hope bloomed in the back of her mind.

Her ancestor must’ve been pulling back their strength, though, because even as they were forced to their knees, they tore their arm out of her grasp. They swung around with the other, and Malou could either risk being disemboweled or find a way to block it. She went to stop the blade with her hand but imagined at the same time the familiar weight of her favorite rapier in it. Its swept, corded hilt against her palm. Her thumb and first finger wrapped around the crosspiece.

Steel screeched against steel. Then her ancestor lunged with the other knife, and Malou parried that while jumping back to create enough distance between them to have an advantage. Her chest was tight from breathlessness and every muscle on her body ached, but she assumed a standard escrima pose and prepared herself.

“Good.” A sinister grin stretched over their face—her mother’s face. Seeing that expression clenched Malou’s jaw. “You finally look ready to fight me.”

Somehow, her ancestor was even faster now, their jabs and swings rising closer to cutting her down each time they came for her. Malou could just barely keep up, but she was losing ground too quickly. She wouldn’t last more than another minute. She couldn’t let this go on.

Either she had to let the memory of this house slip out of her imagination or she needed another plan. A plan to end this for good. Her ancestor’s goal wasn’t Malou—it was Gavriel. They were only biding their time until she couldn’t fight back anymore to go after him, which made him the perfect distraction.

Fatigue settled into her bones, slowing her down too much to compensate, and the knife in her ancestor’s hand went into her gut nice and smooth. Almost too easily, as if her flesh were butter. When they pulled it out, she grunted through a flash of white-hot pain, metallic hurt burning up her throat as she dropped to her knees, and imagined that young, frightened Gavriel returning to the backdoor. Drastic and a gamble, if this didn’t provide her the opening she needed, then it’d all be over anyway.

The handle twisted. The door creaked open.

Her ancestor’s attention shifted, a fire burning in their eyes when they spotted Gavriel peeking his head into the kitchen. Malou angled her rapier, rising to her feet and she drove its blade through their ribcage and into their heart. Her chest tightened watching shock cross her mother’s face, watching life fade away from her mother’s eyes one heartbeat at a time until her mother’s lifeless body was slumping against her.

“Malou!” Laure yelled. “Can you hear me? Malou, are you alright?”

“Yeah,” she mumbled and swallowed hard. Then her mother’s body collapsed into shimmering dust that diffused into the air until it there was nothing left. She hadn’t really killed her mom, but it felt like she had. “This isn’t real, right?”

“You need to heal yourself,” Laure instructed. “Or let me help you. You did well, though. Really well.”

Malou glanced to the backdoor, but Gavriel was gone. She sighed, eased herself onto the floor, and pressed her hand to the bleeding wound in her lower abdomen. She groaned as she put pressure on it. She was in too much pain to concentrate on trying to figure out how to heal such a deep slash.

“I might need help.”

“I can help.” Her mother waltzed back into the kitchen from the dining room, and Malou was too dizzy and too tired to react, let alone startle. “You can call me Elder Kahina. I was an assassin, a daughter, a sister, and a mother, though not for long. I hope my daughter grew up to be like you.”

Malou released a shaky breath. “If you trained with her like this, I’m sure she grew up to be much better than me.”

“You didn’t think I’d come back, did you?” Elder Kahina crossed the distance between them and sat on the floor beside Malou. She looked over the cuts and stab wounds she’d served, mending the small ones with a soft brush of magic.

“Listen,” her ancestor said as she worked. “When you kill someone, they live on just like this. Death isn’t the end of life, just another phase in an ongoing cycle. Of course, taking a life is still taking a life. Each person you kill should stay with you, but that’s all that should. No guilt and no regret. Repeat it.”

“No guilt and no regret,” Malou echoed. She wasn’t sure saying that would make it true, but under no circumstance could something like this happen in the real world. Elder Kahina was right.

“This was your win,” her ancestor said, moving to the gash on Malou’s thigh. “Been a while since I’ve lost. You must truly want to protect that boy.”

“Not so much a boy anymore.” Malou winced at the pressure of Elder Kahina burrowed magic like sutures into the wound. It felt like she’d dug her fingers into it, knitting the severed edges of her flesh together in their wake. “We’re soulbonded.”

Elder Kahina’s eyebrows raised. “That explains a lot.” She laughed and slapped Malou’s thigh when it’d been fully healed. She flashed a smirk when Malou flinched. “I didn’t think you’d have a waaliye. Given that I asked who you wanted to protect the most, it was inevitable yours would show up. I thought it’d be your cousin or Laure. I should’ve asked. That’s my mistake.”

Laure scoffed. “Was it, though?”

“Who is he?” Elder Kahina pulled Malou’s hand away from the slash in her lower abdomen, and Malou sucked in a breath to prepare herself. The piercing pain of her ancestor’s magic stabbed through her deeper than the knife that’d made the wound in the first place. “I’m asking so you can talk through the discomfort.”

“Discomfort?” Malou wheezed, tipping her head back to stare at the ceiling and its exposed wood beams past the blur of white crowding her vision. She forced the words out as best as she could. “He’s my best friend. Knows everything.”

“Does he have a name?”

“He does.” Finally, the pain deadened into the phantom of piercing hurt. She released a long, shaky breath and looked at her ancestor.

“Fine, don’t tell me his name. I’m sure I’ll learn it eventually.” Elder Kahina wrapped her hands around Malou’s neck again, causing her to stiffen.

This time, though, her ancestor massaged the smoothness of her mother’s palms against her skin, alleviating the dull throb leftover from being choked. Her ancestor’s tender touch related a feeling of care that she couldn’t remember ever feeling from her mother. She averted her gaze.

“Do you know how rating works?” Elder Kahina asked.

“Vaguely.”

“Every time you win, you take points from your ancestor’s rating. How many points depends on a few factors. You were unranked before since this was your first time, which means your win nets you a thousand points in addition to the thousand you started with. I take no hit to my rating because the first meditation is traditionally instructional.”

“Exactly,” Laure said. “Your first meditation wasn’t supposed to be a game of kill your strongest ancestor. Ridiculous. She should be glad you didn’t ask me for help. I would’ve ruined her.”

Ruined her how? Malou would’ve scoffed if her ancestor weren’t here. “So you took advantage of this tradition to test me because even if you lost, you wouldn’t really lose anything. Got it.”

“You get it. We’re a lot alike, aren’t we?” Elder Kahina removed her hands and gave a loud belly laugh. She leaned back on her hands. “So this win makes your rating 2000 now. If you’d lost, your rating would’ve remained 1000, so there would’ve been no loss on your side, either.”

“What rank does that make me then?”

“Your entry rating places you at the Apprentice 2nd Class rank. At this rank, if you win or lose, you’ll either add or subtract 60 points. The 60 is your development coefficient. The next rank up, it’ll be 30. Then 15 at the Master rank, 10 at the Grandmaster rank, and 5 at the Elder rank. Not that you need to worry about any of that for a long while.”

The system sounded comparative rather than an absolute measurement of strength. In no world was Malou stronger than Elder Kahina, but she’d been good enough to win this once. However, it did mean she was likely stronger than her ancestors whose ratings were lower than hers. Or, on the other hand, if her rating was too high, Malou would lose her next few games and her rating would self-correct to more accurately reflect her true strength.

On the other hand, if her rating was too low, she’d keep winning and it’d go up. “So how many wins would I need to rise to the next rank?”

“Apprentice 1st Class requires a rating of at least 2100 over fifteen or more games. Or if you fall below 1800 at any point, you’ll go down to Apprentice 3rd Class and you’ll have to work your way back up. Though, skill-wise, you may be closer to a Master. Where have you been training all this time?”

“Nowhere. My father taught me all I know, and I’ve just been practicing little things since then. Is there a place where I can train?”

“Have you not heard of Khalasaj Tower?”

So Malou could learn more about magic at Khalasaj after all. “That’s where we’re taking the Teir since it’s supposed to be the safest place for it. I’ve heard that there’s some initiation process, but that’s all I know.”

“It’s the headquarters of the Tir Sías and where they train their new recruits. Have you heard of the Tir Sías?” When Malou shook her head, her ancestor rolled her eyes. “Each generation knows less and less. The Tir Sías created the Teir—some say to predict Ediz the Destroyer’s next reincarnation and prevent him from destroying the world. When you get there, tell them your rating and rank. They’ll want you. They love síasaaliye like you. I’d know because I was recruited by them when I was your age, and I did their recruiting after I graduated from the Tower for a time.”

“Will they take anyone though?” Malou asked, thinking about Gavriel. She wouldn’t want to join without him.

“Only if they practice sahiriya—manipulating sahiri, or as you’d say, using magic. The Tir Sías are a group of people who can use magic and the Tower is a magic academy. The basic requirement is being able to use magic.”

Except Gavriel couldn’t really use it yet. Maybe Malou would hide that she could until he learned how.

“Thank you,” Malou said and meant it. “You could’ve gone easy on me, but I learned more because you didn’t. I hope I get to meet you again.”

“I still went easy on you, but we’ll meet again soon. If you’re ready to go, close your eyes and count up to ten. When you reach ten, you’ll wake up where you were before you fell into meditation. Stay safe, Malou.”

•••

Malou sat with a gasp this time, forced to wake by pain rushing through her. As if her real body reexperienced each of her ancestor’s landed punches and knife wounds in meditation. The nerves along her spine pinching in remembrance of the way she’d slammed against the stairs. Her shoulder and hip throbbing where they’d hit the table and dining chair. Her jaw where Elder Kahina had punched her.

“Fuck.” This must’ve been what Laure had meant. At least the dozens of knife wounds had been healed. “This is hardly different from the Almuzayan root tea.”

“I tried to warn you,” Laure said. “I’m sorry. Just go to sleep, Malou.”

She didn’t think she could until some of the pain had dulled, so she reached for that static electric feeling of the magic she’d imagined in her meditation. It tingled first in her fingertips, so she closed her eyes and focused on slowly spreading it past her knuckles and up her arm.

“What do I do with my cousin?” she asked quietly. “I can’t protect her by killing anyone. What can I do for her?”

“Why don’t you ask her what she wants to do? But not right now. Why not get some rest and have breakfast with her? I can change her schedule around for you.”

“Wow, I forgot you could do that.”

“I still know how to be a personal assistant.” Laure scoffed. “I’m just also more than that now.”

Malou hummed, a soft smile pulling at her lips. “Right. My bad. Though, now that I think about it, Elder Kahina seemed to know an awful lot about Revernais politics and current technological advances for a dead person.”

“Knowledge is timeless,” Laure explained as Malou reveled in the feeling of magic filling her chest. “I’ve heard people say that the moment you die, your entire life flashes in front of your eyes. Not only does it flash backward, but it flashes forward. At that moment, you exist as magic does—everywhere and in everything. She knows everything she’ll ever know.”

“Do you know everything you’ll ever know, then? Since you’re magic?”

“Technically,” Laure said, clearly drawing out her answer as if that’d lessen the blow. “I know everything that has ever happened and ever will happen. That means I know what would happen if I told you everything I know, so you have to trust that I’ll tell you what you need to know when you need to know it.”

Didn’t that make Laure no different from her father then? Or did this make her more like Zeynel? In either case, there was only one response. She relaxed into the calm that her magic returned to her as it crept down her legs. “I trust you. What else can I do but trust you?”

“I promise you.” As a different jolt of magic washed over Malou, Laure continued, “I promise that I’ll protect you as fiercely as you protect me.”

This was nothing like how she and Gavriel had promised to protect each other in front of the fireplace at Eleusis House, but she could feel the sincerity of the proposal all the same. “And I’ll protect you with everything I have.”

Exhaustion finally overcame her, and the last thing she heard was Laure wishing her a restful sleep.