Estrella Wayland had one year to master four powers, or she would fail the trial that named the next queen of Arcastia. This morning she only wanted the gardener to drop his rake. She did not mean to speak the command. The words slipped out wrapped in her mother's old gift, the Voice that bent any mind that heard it. The old elf's hands opened at once. The rake fell. His eyes went flat and empty, and he waited for her next order like a thing that had forgotten it was alive. "Stop," she whispered. "Please, stop. Wake up." But the Voice only pushed deeper. He stepped toward the garden wall when she asked where her father was. He would have walked through it. She grabbed his sleeve with shaking hands. She found her father in the throne hall of the white castle. King Ash Wayland stood below the tall arched windows, reading a letter he did not look up from. He had ruled Avalon for over a hundred years. He had once ruled beside her mother, before her mother died and left Estrella every gift at once and no one who held them all. "I compelled the gardener," she said. "He won't come back. His eyes are wrong." Her father set the letter down. He closed his eyes. She felt his mind brush hers, telepath to telepath, following the thread she had tied. In the garden, far below, she sensed the old elf blink and stumble and remember his own name. "He's free," Ash said. "He won't remember it." Relief lasted one breath. "Teach me to control it. You have the Voice too. You must." "No." He said it flatly. "I have four gifts. Not hers. The Voice was your mother's alone. I never carried it." He turned to the window. "No one living holds all four. You are the first." The word first landed like a stone. She had come for a teacher. There was none. Not her father, not any elder in the courts. Whatever she learned, she would have to learn with no one ahead of her on the path. Ash crossed the hall and took her hands. His were steady. Hers were not. "Your mother found the limits of her Voice by testing them," he said. "Carefully. On herself first. There is a record. She wrote down what nearly cost her a mind she loved." "Where?" "The vault beneath this castle. Her private journals. Sealed since she died." His jaw tightened. "I have not opened them. I could not." He pressed a small iron key into her palm. It was warm from his hand. "You will teach yourself," he said. "From her. It is the only mentor left." Estrella closed her fingers around the key. She had a year, four powers, and a dead woman's handwriting. She turned toward the stairs that led down into the dark, and began to walk.

The stairs ran down beneath the castle longer than Estrella had guessed. She held the iron key in one fist and a torch in the other. At the bottom she found no vault. She found only bare stone walls and dust, three corridors that forked and crossed and led nowhere. She walked them all. Each ended in blank rock. The key grew heavy in her hand. She could not even begin learning until she found the door it opened. She stopped and pressed her palm to the cold wall. "Where is it?" she whispered. The question echoed and died. She had no map and no one to ask. Then she remembered the one person who could see what she could not. She reached out with her mind, telepath to telepath, and called her father. He came faster than she expected. His golden wings nearly brushed both walls of the narrow stair. King Ash Wayland looked at the three dead corridors, then at his daughter's dirty hands. "I can't find it," she said. "I've walked every one." "You walked past it." He did not soften it. He closed his eyes. She felt his clairvoyance open like a cold window. He raised one hand, and stone ground against stone. A seam split the wall where she had leaned. "She hid the entrance with her own voice," he said. "Only one who shares her gift can open it now." "How?" "Speak to the door. Not to a person. To the stone." His jaw tightened. "I cannot teach you the Voice. But I can tell you it has no mind to break. Try it where it cannot harm anyone." Estrella faced the seam. She drew a breath and let the Voice rise, the same power that had nearly killed the gardener. "Open," she said. The word carried weight she could not see. The wall shuddered. The seam widened. A low door swung inward on silent hinges. Behind it lay a small room. A table stood at the center, draped in a purple runner, a candelabra rising from it unlit. Her father touched a candle and flame caught across all five. The light showed a chest against the far wall, dark wood carved with deep swirls, a silver plate around its keyhole. Estrella knelt and fit the iron key. It turned. The lid lifted. Inside lay stacks of journals in her mother's hand, leather worn soft at the corners. She lifted the top one. The first page held a single line: Day one. I made the maid forget her own name, and I wept. Ash stood very still behind her. He did not reach for the books. "I will leave you to her," he said, and climbed back toward the light. Estrella sat alone with the candles and the open chest. She had the key, the vault, and her mother's words at last. But the first page already warned her. Learning this power meant breaking minds while she learned. She turned to day two, and began to read.