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Part I

elilith (el·lil·lith) noun

Tattoos given to the girls of Weep, around their navels, when they become women

Archaic; fro the time when a woman takes possession of her destiny, and determines the path of her own life

Chapter 1

Like Jewels, Like Defiance

Kora and Nova had never seen a Mesarthim, but they knew all about them Everyone did They knew about their skin: “Blue as sapphires,” said Nova, though they had never seen a sapphire, either “Blue as icebergs,” said Kora They saw those all the tih these were no common servants They were the soldier-wizards of the empire They could fly, or else they could breathe fire, or read minds, or turn into shadows and back They cah cuts in the sky They could heal and shape-shift and vanish They had war gifts and ith and could tell you how you’d die Not all of these things together, of course, but one gift each, one only, and they didn’t choose the—like an ember for air—should one only be so lucky, so blessed, to be chosen

As Kora and Nova’s o, that Mesarthim last came to Rieva

The girls were only babies then, so they didn’t re metal skyship, and they didn’t remember their mother, either, because the Servants took her away and made her one of them, and she never came back

She used to send them letters from Aqa, the imperial city, where, she wrote, people weren’t just white or blue, but every color, and the gods from place to place My dears, said the last letter, which had co Out I don’t knohen I’ll return, but you will certainly be worown by then Take care of each other for me, and always remember, whatever anyone tells you: I would have chosen you, if they had let me choose

I would have chosen you

In winter, in Rieva, they heated flat stones in the fire to tuck into their sleeping furs at night, though they cooled off fast and were hard under your ribs when you woke Well, those five words were like heated stones that never lost their warmth or bruised your flesh, and Kora and Nova carried them everywhere Or perhaps they wore them, like jewels Like defiance Someone loves us, their faces said, when they stared down Skoyë, or refused to cringe before their father It wasn’t much, letters in the place of a mother—and they only had the memory of the letters now, since Skoyë had thrown them in the fire “by accident”—but they had each other, too Kora and Nova: companions, allies Sisters They were indivisible, like the lines of a couplet that would lose their ht as well have been one name—Koraandnova— so seldom were they spoken separately, and when they were, they sounded incomplete, like one half of a mussel shell, cracked open and ripped in two They were each other’s person, each other’s place They didn’t need lances, and their hopes were twins, even if they were not They stood side by side, braced together against the future Whatever life ht fail them, they knew they had each other

And then the Mesarthim came back

Nova was first to see She was on the beach, and she’d just straightened up to swipe her hair out of her eyes She had to use her forear knife in the other Her fingers were craore all the way to her elbows She felt the sticking drag of half-dried blood as she drew her arlinted in the sky, and she glanced up to see what it was

“Kora,” she said

Kora didn’t hear Her face, blood-streaked, too, was blanched with numb endurance Her knife worked back and forth but her eyes were blank, as though she’d stowed her risly work An uul carcass hulked between them, half flayed The beach was streith dozens ures like theirs Blood and blubber clotted the sand Cyrs skirled, fighting for entrails, and the shallows boiled with spikefish and beaked sharks drawn to the sweet, salty reek It was the Slaughter, the worst tiirls, anyway The affs and knives, but spears They did the killing, and hewed off the tusks to carve into trophies, and left all the rest where it lay Butchering omen’s work, never“Our wo,” the men boasted from up on the headland, clear of the stink and the flies And they were strong—and they eary and gri from exertion, and streaked with every vile fluid that leaks out of dead things, when the glint caught Nova’s eye

“Kora,” she said again, and her sister looked up this tiaze to the sky

And it was as if, though Nova had seen as there, she couldn’t process it until Kora did, too As soon as her sister’s eyes fixed on it, the shock rocked through them both