A thick grove of trees soared out of the forest before Kaye, and she wondered how she’d missed it before. She had flown and walked all over the mountainside with Bryant and Celeste, but she didn't remember ever walking in this direction. As she moved closer, she felt a whisper of dark energy and wondered why Celeste had not spoken of this place. Perhaps it was only for priestesses—true priestesses. Still angry at Celeste, Kaye slipped through the barrier of trees.

The center of the grove opened into a deserted ring about three meters across. The floor was covered in dead leaves and discarded pine needles, but nothing so much as a blade of grass grew inside the ring, with the exception of a small rectangle of rock, about a foot square and as tall as her abdomen. The top was worn and smooth, with a circular pool of water gathered in the middle, and the sides were pocked with the remnants of scorch marks. Kaye said a prayer to Aleda before crossing the threshold of the deadened circle.

She felt the change immediately. The sickening hatred because she was Faye—the fear echoing from the residual memories. But somewhere below the barrage was a vein of welcoming, of brotherhood, because despite her wings, Kaye had been raised Tarrin, and was a descendant of the Odion.

“You are what we’ve become,” it whispered to her soul, “daughter of Eoin,

daughter of Aleda,

you are our future. You must understand.”

Two voices, pulling in two directions, speaking in disharmony as they tried to sway her toward them. Kaye wished she’d protected herself before entering the grove and turned to go, but she could hear them clearly—two distinct voices clashing in the stone.

“Daughter of Eoin.

Daughter of Aleda.

You must see."

The ringing of the voices in the stone propelled her forward to stand before it. She ran her hand above the surface and the energy of the stone shifted and pulsed beneath her. It shimmered within her hand like a scrying pool and she watched, detached, as it moved up her arm. She only had time for a breathless gasp as the energy engulfed her, and she grabbed the sides of the stone, bent over the water.

Kaye had always been a twin, but now she knew what it was really like to be two people at once, one person in two bodies. She was both the Faye and the Tarrin. She was looking at herself and returning her own gaze. She knew everything that happened in that moment because it happened to her, by her own hands.

At the same time, however, she was neither of these women. They had names

Katrina

Brianna

and families and pasts and futures separate from her own. She was their distant future, both of these women, but they acted out none of this in anticipation of her. Kaye was a ghost watching on in silence.

“You wanted this, woman; it will be by your hand that it is done.” Ian pressed the cold bone knife into Katrina’s hand as she stared at him, wide-eyed. She hadn’t expected it to come to this violent separation of the tribe. But he turned to his tribe-wife, the Lady of the Faye, and there was compassion and regret in his eyes. Maybe even love. Kat’s grip on the knife tightened and she straightened.

“Pray your Mother can protect you from this, Brianna. Pray you are powerful enough to stop me.” Kat stalked forward to the beaten figure on the ground.

Brianna tried to rise, her hands under her, spent muscles trying to push her up. ‘Aleda, help your humbled daughter,’ she cried out in silence, ‘do not let her do this to me!’ She was on her hands and knees, her breath coming hard into her chest, when Katrina grabbed her wing and pulled it. Brianna arched back and was thrown for a second time against the altar. She gripped the rock, steadying herself against its sturdy, solid weight, and pain blazed across her back like a whip as the first cut ripped through the base of her wing.

She cried out, but the noise did nothing to quell the vicious knife. Kat tore at the other wing, jealous rage wanting not only to remove it, but to ruin it so no magic could make the Lady Faye again. Brianna did not cry out again, but clung to the altar with silent tears. Her mind was too busy to find the place where pain, anger, and regret did not exist, but shock kept the pain at bay. She turned her eyes to Ian, but he wouldn’t look at her. Her vision floated past him to a young ghost of a woman with the features of the tribe—of the Faye.

Then Kat flung the Lady from the altar and laid the ruined wings on top of the stone, the bloody knife holding them down. “You are cast out. From here on, any person in the tribe of Aleda with wings will be whipped and cast out, like you. Your power is mine now.”

The scene began to dissolve as Kaye stumbled out of the clearing, her new wings burning where they lay across her back. She hit a tree and sunk down against its trunk, eyes still wide and mouth parted. As the spirit of the altar’s vision faded, relief rushed in, and Kaye fainted.