Cyndi Cylendar was born in 1289, and by now she had learned to smile while she lied. She sat at the desk in her cover building, a small stone room lined with shelves of books Heather believed she read. Behind the books, her real work waited: charts of the realms, names of allies Bella had never met, and a plan that ended with Cyndi holding every door between every world. She wanted it all. She had wanted it since the day Bella walked into a room and Cyndi felt herself vanish. She checked the feed from the camera above Bella's study first. The lens hummed under its casing. Bella sat by the window in her blue robes, writing slowly, the scanner resting on the table beside her tea. Cyndi watched Bella set down the pen. Bella stood, walked out of frame, and left the scanner behind. Cyndi moved. She crossed the garden, slipped through the side door, and lifted the scanner off the table in one motion. Its screen glowed pink under her thumb. She tucked it into her sleeve and walked back the way she came, past the wooden fence that hid the crates behind her cover building. Her hands did not shake until she reached her desk. She worked through the night. She copied Bella's routines, her phrases, the way Bella held her chin when she spoke to the realms. In the morning she brought the scanner back and set it on the table as if it had never moved. Then she asked Bella, plainly, to scan her. She said she wanted to know her own worth. She said it with Heather standing in the doorway, holding a cup, because Heather made everything look ordinary. Bella lifted the scanner. She pointed it at Cyndi. The screen flickered, held, and went dark. Bella read the result and set the device down. "No," she said. "The role is not yours." She did not explain. She did not soften it. Heather looked between them and said nothing, because it was not her story. Cyndi kept her face still while something inside her folded shut. She walked back to her cover building and stood at the desk with the charts spread open. The scan had failed. The role would not be given. That left only what could be taken, and taken quietly. She pulled a sheet of paper toward her and began a new list: every camera she would need to add, every book she would move behind the fence, every hour of Heather's Thursday call she could use. Bella would keep her role for now. Cyndi would learn to hide her work until the day she did not need to hide it anymore.

Cyndi sat at her desk the next morning, marking spots on a map where new cameras would go. The scan had closed one door. She was already prying at another. Then she heard the front gate open, and two voices carried through the garden. She knew both of them. Goldie stood on the step with a small case at her feet. Sierra stood behind her, hood pushed back, green hair catching the light. Cyndi opened the door and kept her face soft. Goldie spoke first. "I'm moving in with Bella." She did not wait for a reaction. "She offered me a room. I said yes last night." Sierra folded her arms. "I came from Maplecrest to help her pack. I'm staying the week." Cyndi held the doorframe. "Bella asked you." Goldie nodded. "She wants to train me. My magic slips. She thinks she can help." Cyndi looked at Sierra. "And you knew." Sierra did not blink. "I knew this morning. I'm not sorry." Cyndi stepped back and let them in, because refusing would have told them everything. She watched Goldie fold clothes into the case in the front room. Cyndi tried one push. "Bella rejected me last month. You understand what it looks like, you going to her." Goldie kept folding. "It looks like I need a teacher and you aren't one." She closed the case. "I know you and Bella have a fight. It isn't mine. My hands are the thing I have to fix." Sierra sat on the arm of the couch and watched Cyndi the way a guard watches a door. By afternoon the case was by the gate. Goldie hugged Cyndi once, brief, and said, "I'll call." Sierra did not hug her. "I'm walking her over. Then I'm coming back here for the week." Cyndi understood the second sentence. Sierra was not visiting. Sierra was watching. Cyndi smiled and told them to be careful on the path. She shut the door and stood in the hall until the sound of their steps was gone. She went to her desk and pulled the map toward her. The cameras on Bella's study were now cameras on Goldie's new window too. That was a gain. But her own daughter had walked into Bella's house by choice, and her youngest had planted herself in Cyndi's front room with clear eyes. The circle around her had tightened on both sides in one afternoon. Cyndi crossed out two names on her ally list, because both women had daughters and both would hear this story by morning. She wrote a new line at the top of the page: move the charts out of the house tonight. Sierra would search. Cyndi would be ready when she did.

Sierra fell asleep on the couch around midnight. Cyndi moved the last of her charts into a locked box in the shed and walked back to her desk. She opened the feed from the cameras aimed at Bella's house. The kitchen window was lit. Cyndi leaned closer. Bella stood at the counter with Silver beside her. Silver's white hair caught the lamp. Bella spoke, and Silver nodded once, then again. Cyndi could not hear them, but she knew a lesson when she saw one. Silver was being taught to hold the realm. Not Goldie. Not Sierra. Silver. Cyndi watched Bella tap the counter twice, and Silver copied the motion. A handoff, quiet and steady. Bella had already picked. Cyndi switched to the feed on Goldie's new window. Goldie sat on the floor with Sierra across from her. Cyndi did not know when Sierra had slipped out; she checked the couch camera and saw a folded blanket where her daughter had been. Both girls held their hands in front of them. Goldie's fingers moved, and a candle flame on the rug stopped. It held for a count of five, then wobbled back. Sierra tried next. Her flame paused for one count. Bella walked in behind them and set a hand on each daughter's shoulder. Training. Not a demonstration. Training. Cyndi sat back. She had been counting on time. She had told herself Bella would drag out the choice for years, and in those years Cyndi would build her network, gather her tools, and step in when the seat was empty. Now she saw the shape of it. Silver would take the role within the year. Goldie and Sierra would hold the power beside her, trained hands, loyal to Bella. Three young rulers who knew their work. Not the confused new leaders Cyndi had pictured. A wall. If Cyndi waited, she would be waiting outside a locked door forever. She closed the laptop and pressed her palms flat on the desk. The window of a weak, untrained successor was already gone. She pulled a fresh page toward her and wrote one line at the top: move before Silver is confirmed. She underlined it. Then she wrote the second line. Split them. Silver, Goldie, and Sierra could not be allowed to stand together. If she could pull even one away from Bella's house, the training would break. Cyndi thought of Goldie's brief hug at the gate. She thought of Sierra folding her arms on the couch. Neither would come back on a kind word. She would need pressure, and she would need it soon. She turned off the desk lamp and sat in the dark, planning the first crack.

Cyndi waited two days after she saw the training through the window. On the third morning she drove to Bella's house with a tin of shortbread and a story about missing her sisters. Heather's car was in the drive. Good. A room with Heather in it would soften the edges. Cyndi rang the bell and smiled when Bella opened the door. Bella did not smile back, but she stepped aside. Heather was at the kitchen table with a mug. Silver stood at the counter slicing an apple. Goldie sat on the floor with Sierra, both cross-legged, a coin between them on the rug. Cyndi set the tin down and asked if she could watch the girls practice. Heather glanced at Bella. Bella nodded once. Cyndi took the chair closest to the rug. She had come for one thing. Bella kept her stored magic in a small vial on a chain under her collar. Cyndi had watched the footage until she was sure. If she could get her hands on it while Bella's attention was on the girls, she could be out the door before anyone counted the seconds. She waited. Goldie lifted the coin off the rug with her fingers, then held it in the air. The coin stopped. Sierra breathed out. Bella leaned forward to correct Goldie's wrist. Cyndi rose, crossed behind Bella, and reached for the chain at the back of her sister's neck. Her fingers found the clasp. She had it open when Sierra's head turned. Sierra did not speak. She looked at Goldie. Goldie looked at Cyndi's hand. The coin dropped to the rug. The room slowed. Cyndi felt her arm grow heavy, her fingers thick, the clasp sliding out of her grip in a way she could not stop. Bella turned inside the slow air, easy as walking, and took the vial back. She refastened the chain herself. Time snapped forward. Cyndi stumbled a step. Heather was on her feet, mug still in her hand, mouth open. Silver had set the knife down and moved between Cyndi and the door. Bella looked at Cyndi for a long moment. "You will not come back here," she said. "Not for tea. Not for the girls. Not for any reason." Goldie stared at the rug. Sierra stared at Cyndi. Neither of them looked surprised, and that was worse than if they had. Cyndi walked out without the tin. She sat in her car at the end of the drive and gripped the wheel until her hands stopped shaking. The three girls had moved together without a word. That was the wall she had feared, and now she had tested it and been thrown back. Worse, Bella had barred her from the house. She had lost her last way in. She would have to reach Goldie or Sierra from outside, and she would have to do it before Silver was confirmed.

Cyndi drove home from Bella's with her hands still tight on the wheel. She had lost the vial, but she had not lost everything. In her coat pocket sat a thin glass tube no bigger than her little finger. When she had reached for the chain at Bella's neck, her thumb had brushed the stopper of a second vial hidden inside Bella's collar. She had pinched it free without knowing. She found it in her pocket at a red light. A pinch of Bella's stored magic. Not much. Enough. She drove to the stone circle and parked at the tree line. She had told her allies to gather at noon if she sent the signal. She sent it now, from the car, tapping the small screen with steady fingers. Then she walked to the center of the ring and uncorked the vial. The magic climbed her arm like warm water. It was thin, but it was Bella's, and it carried Bella's weight. She lifted her hand and pulled a low sound out of the air, a bell tone that would reach every house within the valley. People came. Not many. Enough to start. She stood on the flat stone and named her claim. She said Bella's time was ending. She said a prophecy had already spoken it. She said the seat belonged to someone who would use it, not hold it. Faces turned up at her. A few nodded. A few crossed their arms. She felt the borrowed magic thinning in her palm and pushed harder, raising her voice to fill the space it left behind. Bella came through the outer ring with Heather beside her and Silver a step behind. Goldie and Sierra followed, holding hands. Cyndi did not stop speaking. She had counted on this. A crowd, a challenge, a sister forced to answer in public. Bella did not answer. She lifted a small round device from her palm and pointed it at Cyndi. The scanner. It read the magic in Cyndi's hand and spoke the number aloud in a flat voice. The number was small. Smaller than the crowd expected. Someone in the back laughed once and cut it off. Cyndi kept her arm raised, but the borrowed magic was already gone. Goldie stepped forward and lifted her own hand. The front half of the crowd stopped moving. Sierra stood at her sister's shoulder, breathing with her, holding the pause steady. Five counts. Six. Long enough for Silver to walk to the flat stone and take the scanner from Bella's hand and hold it up so the rest of the crowd could read the number for themselves. Then time released, and the frozen half of the crowd stumbled forward into the same small number, the same small laugh. Cyndi walked off the stone before anyone could stop her. No one did. That was worse. She had spent Bella's magic and Bella's name and had come out smaller than when she started. Her network had seen it. Silver had held the scanner. The girls had held time together in front of everyone. Cyndi drove home and sat at her kitchen table and understood that she would not take the seat by standing in front of a crowd. She would have to take it by taking one of the girls.

Cyndi drove home from the stone circle and did not sleep. She sat at her kitchen table until the sky went gray. She had lost the crowd. She had lost the vial. She still had one thing left: the last drop of Bella's magic dried on her palm, and the anger under it. She would not take a girl. She would take all of them at once. She would walk into Bella's house and end the line before Silver was confirmed. She went at noon. She did not knock. The front door gave under her hand because Bella did not lock her house in daylight. Bella stood in the front room with Heather beside her. Goldie and Sierra stood by the window, holding hands the way they always did now. Silver sat on the arm of a chair, tall hair catching the light from the window. They were waiting for her. Heather had seen it. Heather's purple board stood open against the far wall, ink still wet on the last line. "You should not be here," Bella said. "I am here," Cyndi said. She raised both hands and pulled every scrap of magic she had left into her palms. It was not much. It was enough to kill someone standing close. The air in the room went hot. Goldie flinched. Sierra did not. Silver stood up from the chair. Bella turned to Goldie and Sierra and lifted the chain from her own neck. She broke the clasp with her thumb and poured the last of her stored magic into their joined hands. "Time is yours," she said. "Both of you. Hold it together." The magic climbed their arms and settled. Goldie's five counts became something longer. Sierra's thin thread became a rope. Then Bella turned to Silver and said, "The realms are yours. Rule them better than I did." Heather spoke their names aloud, all three, and the purple board wrote the words in ink and locked them there. Silver Powerforce. Goldie Cylendar. Sierra Cylendar. Signed. Cyndi threw everything she had. The room went white. Bella stepped in front of the girls and Heather stepped in beside her, and the two sisters caught the blast against their chests with their arms open. The magic went into them and did not come back out. Bella's skin went gray first. Then Heather's. Their feet set into the floor. Their hands stayed open. Their faces stopped. Stone. Cyndi stood in the quiet with her hands empty. She turned to run. Goldie lifted one hand and the room stopped moving. Sierra stood at her shoulder and held the pause steady, longer than five counts, longer than ten. Silver walked around the frozen air to Cyndi and looked at her once. "You are done," Silver said. She lifted her hand and the same gray climbed Cyndi's arms, her throat, her face. Cyndi's last thought was that she had wanted the world and had not been given even the room she stood in. Then the stone closed over her eyes. Silver walked out of the house first. Goldie and Sierra followed, still holding hands. The purple board stayed on the wall behind them with three names locked in ink and two statues in the front room and a third statue where Cyndi had tried to stand. The realms had new keepers by nightfall. The peace between