Cyndi Cylendar bolted the iron door behind her and listened for footsteps on the stair. None came. She let out a breath and turned back to the room she had built in secret under the black towers, a hollow carved into rock her sister Bella could not see from the crystal palace. Bella ruled the enchanted realms and had told the whole court that no sister would follow her on the throne. Cyndi meant to prove her wrong. She crossed to the ritual table at the center of the room. Four spell books sat stacked at one corner, their leather split, their clasps stained. She opened the top one to a page she had marked with a strip of black cloth. The spell asked for a spoken name and a drop of blood. She pricked her thumb on the clasp and spoke the words. The candle on the table bent sideways, then straightened. Nothing else moved. Weeks of work, and she still could not lift a stone across the room. She knew why. Her sorcery was not ready. If she moved on Bella now, the court would catch her before the spell finished, and treason meant the block. She needed more nights here, more pages, more blood. She needed the fortress to stay hidden. A soft knock hit the outer door. Cyndi froze. The knock came again, patient, three taps. "Cindy. It's me." Heather. Cyndi shut the book and pushed the stack behind the table. She crossed the room, unbolted the door, and opened it a hand's width. Her younger sister stood on the stone step in a pale dress, pink hair loose, blue eyes tired. Heather looked past Cyndi's shoulder at the candle, the table, the books. "You shouldn't be here," Cyndi said. "I followed you last night too," Heather said. "I saw the door. I didn't tell Bella." "Why not?" "Because once I tell her, I can't untell her." Heather folded her arms. "I came to ask you to stop. Burn the books. Come home." Cyndi thought about the spell that had failed, the weeks she still needed, the sister on the throne who had shut the door on her. She thought about what Heather could say at breakfast tomorrow and what would happen by dusk. She stepped back and opened the door wider. "Come in," Cyndi said. "Let me show you what I'm doing. Then decide." Heather hesitated on the step. Cyndi kept her hand on the door and her face soft. She had one page in the second book that did not need strength, only trust and a shared cup. It would hold Heather's tongue for a season. Long enough. Heather stepped inside. Cyndi bolted the door behind her and reached for the kettle on the shelf.

The kettle never boiled. Cyndi set it back on the shelf and turned to Heather, who stood by the ritual table with her fingers on the split spine of a spell book. Before Cyndi could pour the cup and speak the trust spell, a bell rang far above them, three short strikes. Heather's head lifted. Cyndi knew the sound. A palace attendant was on the stair corridor, calling for Heather by name. "They tracked me," Heather said. "I told the guard I was walking the west field. He didn't believe me." She wiped her palms on her dress. "The dog is with him. It follows my scent to the door and Bella knows this room exists by supper." Cyndi crossed to the wall and pressed her hand to the packed earth behind the table. She had been feeding the ground for weeks, pushing her magic out through the dirt in a slow black stain that already reached the palace foundations. She pulled a thread of it back now, up through her wrist. The floor warmed. A small mound of scorched dirt rose beside her boot, veined with red like a coal cracked open. She spoke a name into it. The mound pulsed once. Above them, in the corridor, the guard dog's bark twisted into a whine and then stopped. Cyndi felt the animal drop. She felt the attendant stumble and forget which turn he had taken. She held the spell until his footsteps moved the wrong way down the stair. Heather watched the mound cool. "You killed the dog." "I turned him around. The dog will wake." Cyndi lied about the dog and knew Heather heard it. She stepped between Heather and the door. "You can't leave. If you walk up there now, he sees you coming from this hall and Bella has the map by morning." She lifted the second book off the stack. "Stay a season. One cup. You keep your tongue, I keep my work. After that you go home to your children and I never ask you again." Heather looked at the door, then at the mound, then at her sister. "A season," she said. "And when Bella asks me where you are, I say I don't know, and the words come out true." She took the cup Cyndi poured and drank. Cyndi drank after her and spoke the binding. Heather's shoulders dropped an inch, as if a small weight had been set down in a room she could not see. She sat on the stool by the table. She would not climb the stair until Cyndi opened the door. Cyndi bolted it and turned back to her books. The dirt under the palace was almost ready. Heather was inside the trap, and the attendant was walking the wrong way, and Bella did not yet know either thing.