“It’s just me today,” Rowena said as she strode across the dark bedroom to fling the curtains away from Kieran’s window.

Light flooded into the room instantly, and she looked hopefully at Kieran to see if the shock of the brightness had woken him. It had not, just as it had not on the preceding four mornings.

It had been six days since the incident. Five long days since Kieran’s coma began.

“I’m gonna sit you up, okay?” Rowena had fallen into the habit of talking out loud to her still friend. He had always been the only one she could really talk to. Mattie and Sorel had been around a lot the last week, but they were new friends. Calla wouldn’t stop talking, about anger and revenge and Rowena struggled to get a word in. And her father–

“Still drinking. Or maybe hungover now. It’s hard to figure out which is which, you know?” Rowena said bitterly as she pulled the sheets back on her friend. She had barely seen or spoken to her father since she’d awoken– she couldn’t bear to relive what they’d gone through when her mother had died.

She put her hands under Kieran’s armpits, and with a grunt, she yanked him up the bed as best she could, fixing a pillow behind his back. Not that he indicated any thanks, but Ambrose had told them to try to change his position when she could.

Exhausted with the effort, she sat on the chair by his bed. It felt like everyone had a chair by their bed these days– at least, in her little world. “We’re finally doing the funeral in a couple of days. I hope… I hope you’ll wake up by then. Please.”

When Rowena had gone downstairs that first day, she hadn’t been prepared for what she found. Calla had told her her father was in the back room, but she hadn’t revealed that Tommie was, too. Tomas wouldn’t let anyone inside, he’d just been sitting and drinking with the body. Calla had started yelling again, but Rowena had just sighed, and told her sister to go get Ambrose. Her father was a retired Soldier. Nobody was going to force him to do anything he didn’t want to do.

Pathetic excuse for a Healer though he was, Ambrose could be of some help, and Rowena had convinced him to freeze Tommie’s body. As deep a freeze as possible, to preserve it until she could convince her father to let her brother be buried.

Given Ambrose’s fairly low level as a MAGIC USER, Tommie hadn’t been preserved pristinely, the way Rowena had read about in books. Truly skilled MAGIC USERs could freeze a body without altering a single thing about it, so that it just looked like it was sleeping, but Ambrose’s version had led to a sickeningly bluish white little corpse with flakes of frost in his hair, on his eyebrows, on his eyelashes.

“Oh, Kieran. He looks… he looks like a monster. I… I can’t wait until he’s in the ground, and we can start to put this behind us.” Rowena hesitated, then took Kieran’s hand.

“You idiot. You idiot. What were you thinking? Was it worth it?” she asked bitterly, then turned his hand over in hers so she could look at his wrist.

As Calla had said, there was the MAGIC USER sigil right in the center of the wrist below the palm. Underneath that was a rather unusual sigil. Mattie had looked it up in the pamphlets and documents salvaged from Martha’s house but they couldn’t find anything about it.

Calla’s imagination had run wild with that one, but Rowena didn’t care. It didn’t matter what Kieran had chosen. Either he’d wake up, and tell her what and why, or he wouldn’t, and it didn’t matter.

A knock on the door snapped her back to reality. “Yes?”

Sorel’s head popped in, her gentle face full of gravity and concern. “It’s time for the meeting now. How… how’s Townie?”

Rowena sighed, and held up her hands. If Ambrose couldn’t figure it out, how should she know? “No change.”

She patted Kieran’s hand as she stood and explained to him, “They’re deciding today if we should get to try to make our own Selections. I’ll be back after that.”

She fell into step with Sorel as they left Kieran’s family home. Next door to it was his mother Kella’s tannery, quiet and abandoned since Kieran’s incident. Kella wasn’t there– she’d gone ahead to the meeting when Rowena had stopped in that morning. As a member of the Council, she was part of the citizenry making the decision about Selection week.

“What do you think?” Rowena asked Sorel as they walked down the dusty street towards the town center. As Kella used rather ill-smelling materials such as urine in her work, their home and workshop were on the outskirts, though still inside, the town. The sun was still warm despite the autumn season, and she still sweat a little with the effort of the walk. Rowena had never been particularly strong to begin with, and she was still feeling a bit weak from her fall and the events of the last week.

Sorel immediately shrugged, looking surprised that anyone had asked her opinion on the matter. “I’d give it a try.”

Rowena frowned. She herself was torn between her desire to get things back to normal, or at least to move them forward into a new normal, and her fear of the corrupted Heartstone. Some people said the glowing had gone down a bit, but was it worth the risk? Maybe they were all just getting used to how it looked now.

As her internal debate raged, they arrived at the town square. Everything looked almost exactly the same as it had a week ago, as it had a year or a decade ago, except that the black obelisk in the center was still threaded with the glowing red and orange light. Timo, one of Sorel’s many brothers, sat on the edge of the fountain guarding the Heartstone.

Not that anyone seemed particularly inclined to go near it.

They arrived at the town hall and walked in. The hall was large and airy, with alternating stone and wooden supports along the archways to the back. It was one of the coolest buildings during the summer thanks to its high ceilings and one of the warmest in the winter due to its massive central hearth, and was used for all kinds of town meetings and events.

This meeting was open to anyone who wanted to discuss the matter at hand, though of course the families of this year’s sixteen year olds were closer to where Jacob, the Alderman, stood with the Council, including Kieran’s mother Kella.

Jacob was an older, frail-looking man, but Rowena knew better than to judge him by his appearance. They were lucky in their Alderman, which was a secondary Subclass that bound a Leader to a town for life. He was a fair man, firm and thoughtful. She trusted he would make the right decision.

Whether or not she would actually touch the stone and attempt her class Selection– even if it was allowed– was a totally different matter.

Rowena recognized many of the townspeople as she and Sorel made their way to the front. After all, this affected them more than anyone else, and even if they didn’t get their Class assignments, they were still newly minted adults in the community.

She saw her sister, Calla, standing next to Artemesia, the innkeeper, who clutched her six year old son tightly to her breast with one hand and held Calla’s hand with the other in support. As Artemesia had nursed Tommie along with her own son when Rowena and Calla’s mother had died, she had to be feeling the loss just as keenly. Calla caught her sister’s eye and gestured for her to come over.

Rowena pretended like she didn’t see, instead joining Sorel next to Mattie and Melody, all standing in front of Sorel’s large family– five, no, six brothers and sisters, all equally large and strong looking, dark complexions fresh from the outside of town life farming afforded.

“Hi,” Mattie said shyly to Rowena and Sorel. “How is he?”

“Same,” Rowena whispered back.

“He never should have touched it,” Melody said fervently. She had the same coppery red curls as her twin, but usually took far more care with her appearance. Over the last several days it looked like she’d practically stopped brushing them at all, and her skin was sallow from lack of sleep and nutrition.

“He didn’t know,” Rowena hissed.

“At least he’ll have a Class if he wakes up,” Sorel said quietly. She looked back for a brief second at her family behind them– Farmers, Brewers, or other more rustic professions. Each one had a specific role, Rowena realized. She’d known, of course, that many individuals inherited shops or jobs from their parents, but she’d never quite appreciated what an operation a rural farming family would be.

She wondered what Sorel’s role was supposed to have been and what effect it would have on the family if she didn’t get to Select it, and blushed with shame that she’d never considered Sorel’s situation before.

“Not worth it,” Melody retorted, then turned eagerly towards the stone podium at the front, where Jacob was getting ready to share the council’s verdict.

Jacob shuffled a few pieces of parchment before he began, but put them back down before he opened his mouth to speak. “It has been a hard week– the hardest in Tunehlan’s history. Today, we together mourn the loss of Mason and dear Tommie, and we lend our most healing thoughts to young Kieran.

It is not the council’s wish to distract from the town’s mourning, yet we have only two days before the Selection week is concluded, and so we must make a decision now.

To summarize our discussions, I ask councilwoman Kella to speak against allowing the Ceremony to continue. And then, by special request, I will allow a non councilmember to speak for allowing the Ceremony.”

He stepped back, and Kieran’s mother slowly made her way to the podium and looked out upon the pitying crowd.

“Friends. Neighbors. You know me, and you know my son, Kieran,” her voice wavered when she said his name, but she swallowed and continued with resolve, ”My son who is still lying, nearly a week later, unconscious in his bed for having made the foolish mistake of meddling with strange magic we can’t understand. Magic that killed Mason, and sweet Tommie.

“The Heartstone will be there in a year. A year is not much of a price to pay to ensure its safety– or find someone who can. I say we skip this year’s Ceremony and protect our children!”

At that, thunderous applause resounded through the great hall for several minutes, with particularly fevered applause from Melody. Rowena noted that her sister, however, was not among those clapping. Calla looked angry.

“Alright, quiet please–” Jacob stood back up and used his Crowd Control Ability on the crowd, a useful Ability from his Alderman subclass.

A wave of calm washed over them, and the crowd quieted. “I’d like to ask Martha to please come up and speak on behalf of the Ceremony.”

Now Rowena knew why Jacob had used Crowd Control, because the unignorable feeling of calm was the only thing keeping everyone calm and quiet– she could sense everyone’s shock and curiosity as an almost palpable tension as the broad woman slowly made her way to the front.

“Thank you all, first, for your support of my Mason,” Martha’s voice also caught as she named her dead husband. “He was my world. My… my everything. Except masonry itself. You know, it was funny, all those years ago, when I came through town and we met– I thought it was ridiculous, a Mason named Mason, and me a Mason to boot– too perfect to be real, or too fated to be fake.

“But now that he’s gone, I still… I still have my craft. And now I know that no one can ever take that from me, not until I die. And so… I’m not saying they need to, or have to… but let them choose. Let our kids– I’m sorry, they’re adults now– just let them choose. That’s all I’m saying. That’s all.”

A murmur went through the crowd as she stumbled back to her seat. She put her face in her hands, and wept.

Jacob once again came up to the podium and raised his hands.

“The council and I have unanimously decided to cancel this year’s Selection Ceremony,” he said firmly. “We respect Martha’s unwavering dedication to her students’ autonomy, but the reality of Kieran’s situation is far too serious to be chanced. Not with our children, the future of this town.

“We’ll see where we stand with the Heartstone next year,” and with that he nodded at the four young women standing at the front– not without sympathy, Rowena thought.

Rowena felt twin flutters of relief and dismay in her stomach and clenched her hands together. She heard Sorel grunt with dismay next to her– matching the sighs of her family behind them– but Mattie gave no indication of her feelings either way. An audible cry of relief sprang from Melody.

Someone else was letting out a cry, too– but one of anger.

“You can’t just wait and see what’s going to happen!” Calla shouted from her position next to Artemesia. “What about running tests? What about sending someone after the stranger that did this?”

A shocked murmur rippled through the crowd. Rowena saw Martha frown and Kella stare in surprise. Jacob’s face kept calm and steady, though his eyes narrowed. He simply stated, “We’re not even sure there was a stranger in Tunehlan, or at least, not one that meant us any harm.”

“My sister saw him! And so did Kieran!” Calla moved forward and shook a finger at Jacob and the council. “If I were sixteen, I’d become a WARRIOR and do something about it!”

Not now, Calla! Rowena thought regretfully and not without a small bit of anger as curious glances split between herself and her raving sister. The whole town looked at Rowena expectantly, but she just set her jaw and stared straight ahead. She wouldn’t feed the flames of this scene.

“We know Rowena’s account of the evening,” Jacob said evenly, “and the law will pursue it as they can.”

Calla’s will seemed to break at that moment, and she shrank back a few paces. Then she turned and walked straight up to Rowena with a look of utter disgust on her face.

“How can you just stand there and let them keep you from getting your Class? You could have abilities to track down this killer tonight, but here you stand like a… like a lapdog taking orders!” Calla was so angry she was practically spitting.

Rowena just stared at her.

“I’m going home to make sure father hasn’t drunk himself to death,” Calla snapped.

Something broke inside Rowena as her sister pushed her way through the crowd and away towards their home. She stood, at once aware she was in the midst of all of the people she’d ever known and yet feeling completely alone, suspended in her grief and hurt. She raised a hand to her cheek and held it there, her mind racing.

“She’s being ridiculous,” Melody said reassuringly. “Things have been hard. She’ll realize– she doesn’t want you to end up like Kieran. What could a Merchant do, anyway?”

Mattie nodded, but looked unsure and thoughtful. She tugged on Sorel’s shoulder, and the two of them disappeared without a word.

“I have to go,” Rowena said suddenly, and turned to follow in her sister’s footsteps out of the town hall, trying to ignore the whispers and stares around her.

But once she got outside, she realized she didn’t want to follow Calla home. She knew what was there: an angry sister, a drunk father, a dead brother.

Instead, she turned her feet back towards Kieran’s. He’d been left alone long enough, though she knew Kella would be along shortly. Still, a few minutes to speak with Kieran’s peacefully sleeping body would help her figure out her own thoughts, the storm that was raging inside of her.

She barely thought at all as she stumbled her way by memory back to his house, thinking all all the hundreds or thousands of times she’d taken the long, dusty path ever since they were small children. It seemed so long ago– in fact, their last walk together, to Martha’s house, seemed just as distant. It was like there was a break in her life: between before the incident, and after.

All this and more tumbled around in her head until she reached Kieran’s house and saw the bright light coming from his window. She must have left a candle burning, damn it!

She hurried and barged her way into the house, running up the stairs two at a time as though the candle hadn’t been left unattended for the previous hour anyway. But what she saw there forced her to a halt, gasping and shocked, tears of joy welling up in her eyes.

Kieran stood facing the dull, tin mirror by his wardrobe– he’d always been vain, and she opened her mouth to say as much when he turned around and the words died in her throat when he she saw his face.

Her Kieran had beautiful, impish hazel eyes. This Kieran, though– his eyes were a burning, molten orange red color.

The same color as the cracks in the Heartstone.

“Hi, Ro,” he said sheepishly.