After the archmage left, Arielle faced her family, who were staring at her for several silent seconds.

  “Ari," Thessa said quietly, planting her hands on her waist. "Do you want to explain yourself?"

  Arielle nodded and promptly returned to her initial script. “The fishmonger said that there was no trout today. She offered me a bargain of–”

  “I don’t give two toadshits about the fish,” Mother said, and she rushed forward with an energy that had her daughter stepping back.

  Thessa cupped her cheek. “Ari, tell me. Have you really been using magic this whole time?"

  Ari bit her lip but admitted it with a bob of the head.

  "Unbelievable," Celie said.

  "I still don't get how," Brom added.

  "I talk to the spirit orbs, and they talk back," Ari explained. "I tell them what to do, and they do it."

  "I thought you'd stopped seeing the orbs some time ago," Thessa said.

  "No," she responded. "I just stopped telling you about them."

  "I didn't think they were real. I thought she just zoned and talked to herself," Brom said. "I thought she was crazy."

  "Don't call your sister crazy," Thessa said. "Ari...What do you want to do? Are you sure you want to go to a mage academy? I've heard it can be extremely difficult. Very cutthroat. The few mages I've met always recount that time in their lives with absolute horror."

  Ari stared at her mother. She hadn't thought that far, about whether or not she wanted to go to a mage academy. She'd simply wanted to keep her orb-seeing ability.

  However, she wasn't nervous about attending a magic academy either. Academies meant high-level studying, and studying was one of the things she was good at.

  "The best thing for her would be to give her powers up," Celie said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Why would she just give them up?” her brother interjected. “It feels like such a waste considering she's so powerful. Elric said she wasn’t just a regular mage. She's an Archmage. I think there are only a few dozen of those in the entire world. It takes people several mortal lifetimes to achieve that, and our Ari did in a few years.“ Ari couldn’t be sure, but she thought she detected hints of pride in her brother’s voice.

  “That's not the only thing to consider,” her sister argued. “If Ari becomes an Archmage, she'll need to keep the true strength of her powers hidden for at least a few years, and she'll have to lie in order to do that. Our little sister is not a good liar, Brom, and if she's discovered, that puts her in even more danger. Not to mention, at that point, she'll be far from home, where we can't protect her. She'll be amongst the other Ascendants who are as vicious as they come."

  "Archmage Elric didn't seem so bad."

  "He's only one man, and he's not a good representative of the rest of them. Believe, I've met enough to come to that conclusion." Celie worked as a hired assassin, and her targets were often high-profile, which put her in the company of Ascendants, in a way Brom's job simply didn't.

  She would know more about Ascendant characteristics than the rest of them.

  Arielle had learned a few things about Ascendants and their culture in the schoolhouse. However, apart from Elric and a handful of Greenfingers, she'd never actually met an Ascendant before.

  "I don't know that we need to protect her," Brom said. "At this point, it looks like she can pretty much protect herself."

  "It's not that simple. Having magic isn't everything."

  "But think about her potential. Becoming an Ascendant instantly elevates her status. She's not stuck in Fenway, trying to be a warrior. She can be whatever she wants. She can be a wealthy aristocrat."

  "Is that all you think about? Money?"

  "No. But if we have enough of it, maybe Father will–"

  “Don’t say it.” Their mother finally spoke up, levelling Brom with a sharp gaze before returning to Arielle. “I want you to think hard about the decision, my heart. It’s not one you should take lightly at all."

  "Yes," Arielle said. There were so many angles to consider, and both her siblings had valid points.

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  She had to write them all down and weigh them against each other before she could decide.

  "Good," Thessa said. "Now, go wash up for dinner."

  Arielle handed over her wares, explained why she had salt-fish instead of trout, and went up to her room to ready herself for the meal.

  It wasn’t long before the door opened again.

  She knew it was her sister. Celie moved with a practiced stillness, her presence barely felt.

  However, having her there unsettled Ari. Even when she said nothing, the room pulsed with a chaotic energy that triggered Ari to walk over to her desk and start organizing it.

  “You’re still not talking to me," Celie asked.

  "No," Ari affirmed.

  “You just did.”

  Darn. She kept falling for that trick.

  She still didn't turn around. She kept stacking the books and restacking them in reverse alphabetical order.

  “Oh, come now, Ari. You can’t seriously still be mad at me. I was doing you a favor."

  Ari remained silent, punctuated by the sound of tome hitting wood.

  "You're being dramatic, making a problem out of nothing, and blowing everything out of proportion.” The words landed like separate slaps that Ari couldn't tolerate anymore.

  “I’m not blowing anything out of proportion.” She spun around. "I think I have everything perfectly proportional.”

  “Okay, Ms. Proportional. Tell me what I did that was so wrong that you haven’t spoken to me for four days.”

  “You paid Greta to be friends with me.”

  “No.” Celie held up a finger. “I paid her to talk to you. There’s a difference.”

  The difference was immaterial to Ari. The result was the same.

  She’d thought she had a friend. She’d thought after many long years and failed attempts, she'd finally managed to entice someone, a human, into a companionship. She'd thought there was finally someone who wasn't put off by her peculiarities, and for two months, she'd lived with that blissful belief.

  Until she'd discovered via an overheard conversation that it was simply a trick spawned by her own sister.

  "I’m sorry I did it,” Celie said. “But I was tired of seeing you all alone, all the time.”

  “I wasn’t alone,” she muttered. She had her spirit orbs.

  Her sister rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry, I meant alone and talking to your imaginary friends. Do you know how that looks? It looks sad. I was worried about you, about what would happen if Mother and Brom and I were to go somewhere and leave you behind. How would you cope? Who would you talk to? Don't tell me you didn't have the same worries, too. I saw in your diary–"

  “You read my diary!” Ari gasped. Another infraction.

  Celie bit her lip. “Right. I shouldn’t have mentioned that. But as I said, I was worried about you. I know how sweet you can be when you aren’t being a pain in the ass. I know how kind and sometimes funny you are, also. But no one else is going to know if you don't talk to them."

  "I do talk to people." That was the problem. She had tried so many times, but she always got it wrong.

  The one time she'd thought that she'd gotten it right...

  Well, it turned out to be a lie.

  Her sister rubbed her face. “Ari, I understand that what I did wasn’t the best way to go about it. I'm sorry. I shouldn’t have lied and tricked you. But I truly don’t think this should be the end of it. You still had fun with Greta, right? The two of you seemed to genuinely like each other. None of that was fake.”

  “It was fake to me,” she said. “I thought she chose me.”

  That stopped her sister for a moment.

  “She did choose you,” she said, quieter. “Once she got to know you, she liked you. I could tell. I just… nudged it.”

  “You bribed it.”

  “I encouraged it.”

  “You plotted and outsourced my friendship.”

  Her sister let out a frustrated laugh. "You make it sound evil.”

  “Because it felt evil.”

  Silence stretched. They could hear their mother’s footsteps moving downstairs, but they knew neither she nor Brom would interrupt until it escalated to a yelling match, which wouldn't happen. Ari didn't like yelling.

  “You know,” her sister said carefully, “People help each other make friends all the time. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Not like that.” Ari wasn’t stupid. She knew that it wasn’t normal to pay people to be your friend.

  “How is it different?”

  The younger girl swallowed. “Because I don’t make friends the way you do. It’s not easy for me, and when someone talks to me and spends time with me, it should mean something. It should mean they want to, not that they were paid to."

  She looked down at her shoes, internally cursing at the pressure pushing the back of her eyes. She really didn’t want to cry. She hated crying during arguments.

  “Oh, Ari…” Her sister’s expression finally shifted from confusion to something closer to guilt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see it like that. I didn't think that far.”

  “You never do.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “It is,” she said. “You don't think far because things like this are so easy for you. People like you by default, and you don’t even have to try. You don’t have to wonder if they’re being paid.”

  Her sister flinched.

  “I was trying to protect you,” she said softly. “I didn’t want you to be lonely.”

  “I wasn’t lonely,” she lied. “I was fine. You decided that wasn’t enough.”

  That one hurt. It showed.

  “I’m sorry,” her sister said after a moment. “I really am. I just… I don’t know how to help you without fixing things.”

  “I don’t want to be fixed.”

  “I know that now.”

  Another pause.

  “So what do you want?” her sister asked. “What would make this better?”

  The younger girl took a deep breath, managing to suppress her emotions. “I want you to stop deciding things about my life without asking. I want you to trust that I know when something matters to me. And I want you to never, ever do something like that again.”

  Her sister nodded. “Okay.”

  “And,” she added, “I want you to apologize to Greta for turning her into a liar.”

  She sighed. “That’s fair.”

  The moment turned awkward and unsure.

  “Are you still going to be friends with her?”

  Ari thought about it and shook her head.

  “Oh, Ari…I really do think she wants to be your friend. She came over three times already to look for you.”

  “She just feels guilty,” Ari said. “She’ll get over it.”

  “You should give her a chance.”

  Ari shook her head again. Second chances would just lead to her being more hurt.

  “I really thought I was helping,” her sister said quietly.

  “I know,” she replied. “That’s what makes it worse.”

  But she didn’t tell her to leave again, but Celie gave her space anyway. She probably had to prepare for her mission.

  Ari had to prepare for hers, too.

  Because though she hadn't written it out yet, she knew now what she was going to do.