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Prologue

THREES ISTERSI SLAND

SEPTEMBER1702

H er heart was broken The jagged shards of it stabbed at her soul until each hour, each moment, of what her life had become was a misery Even her children - those she had carried in her body, those she carried for her lost sisters - were no comfort

Nor was she, to her great shame, any comfort to them

She had left them, even as their father had left them Her husband, her lover, her heart, had returned to the sea, and the parts of her that were hope and love and ic had died that day Even noould not reether, the joy of thehters, the life they'd made on the island Such was his nature Such was her fate

And her sisters', she thought as she stood on the cliffs she loved, above a sea that boiled and bucked They, too, had been fated to love and to lose The one as Air had loved a handsouised a beast A beast who had shed her blood He had murdered her for what she was, and she had not used her power to stop him

And so the one as Earth had raged and grieved and built her hatred stone by stone until it had become a wall that no one could breach She had used her power for vengeance, forsaken her Craft, and embraced the dark

Now the dark closed in, and she as Fire was alone with her pain She could fight it no longer, could find no purpose for her own life

The dark whispered to her in the night, its sly voice full of lies Even knowing them for what they were, she was tempted by them

Her circle was broken, and she could not, would not, withstand alone She felt it, creeping closer now, sliding along the ground in a filthy fog It hungered Her death would feed it, and still she could not face life