Heather stood at the top of the stone tower she had claimed for herself, watching a vision she could not read. Her three children were asleep in the cottage below. Her sisters were not speaking, and Heather still called Bella every Tuesday and Cyndi every Thursday, holding both lines open like a bridge no one else would build. The vision shimmered above her palm: two blond heads, one white, a small bright device passing between them. It broke apart before she could see who took what. She pressed her hand flat against the tower's cold rail and tried again. The pink ends of her hair lifted in the wind. She had come up here every night this week, hoping the height would sharpen the pictures. It never did. The visions came in pieces, always her sisters, always something wrong, and she could not act on pieces. If she picked a side without knowing, she would lose the other one for good. Her children would grow up with half a family. The air above the rail cleared, then thickened. This time the vision held. Heather saw Cyndi in a quiet room, alone, sliding open a drawer. Cyndi lifted out a sleek scanner with a violet screen and slipped it inside her sleeve. She walked out without hurry. The room was Bella's. Heather knew the blue cloth on the chair. Her stomach dropped. The picture jumped forward. Cyndi stood in front of Bella now, holding the scanner out like an offering returned. She said something short. Bella's face did not change. Cyndi placed the device in Bella's hand and stepped back, chin lifted, waiting. Bella raised the scanner and pointed it at her sister. The violet screen brightened, held, and went dark. Bella lowered it. She shook her head once. She said one word Heather could not hear, and set the scanner down on the table between them. The vision closed. Heather stayed at the rail with her hand still open. She understood now what the pieces had been trying to show her. Cyndi had taken the scanner to force a reading. She had asked Bella to measure her worth for something, and the answer had been no. And Cyndi had known it would be no before she asked, because she had already stolen the device once to try it herself. The manipulation reached back months. It reached to Heather too. The Thursday calls. The quiet books Cyndi claimed to read. Heather went down the tower stairs with her hand on the wall. In the kitchen she picked up the phone. It was not Tuesday. It was not Thursday. She called Bella anyway. When Bella answered, Heather said, "I saw it. The scanner. Tell me what she wanted." There was a long pause on the line. Then Bella, quieter than Heather had ever heard her, said, "Come over. Bring the children."

Heather packed a bag for the children before dawn. She was folding a baby blue blanket when the air above the kitchen table went tight, the way it did before a vision. She braced for pictures. Instead a flat purple board dropped out of nothing and slapped down on the wood. A black marker rolled after it and stopped against her hand. The board was ruled like a calendar, with the word prophecy printed at the top in loose black letters. The marker lifted itself, uncapped, and began to write across the empty squares in a quick, scratching hand. It wrote while it worked. "I know the prophecy song, I can sing it all day long," it sang in a small tin voice. "I know the prophecy song, I can sing it all day long." Heather stared. Her magic had always come as loose pieces she had to guess at. This thing was doing the work for her. She leaned in and read as the marker moved. Two blond heads at a stone circle. A locked drawer. A camera above a door. A choice at Bella's house before the week ended. The marker filled three squares, capped itself, and dropped. The board went still. Heather touched the ink. It was dry. She could read every word. She laughed once, sharp, then covered her mouth so she wouldn't wake the children. For the first time her prophecy magic had given her a whole sentence instead of a shard. She rolled the board under her arm, pocketed the marker, and woke the children with a hand on each shoulder. In the car she set the board on the passenger seat. The marker hummed the song under its cap, quieter now, patient. Heather drove toward Bella's house with a full prophecy beside her and, for the first time in months, a plan she could actually follow.

Heather pulled off the road two miles from Bella's house and parked under a wide oak. The board on the passenger seat had gone warm. The marker climbed out of her pocket on its own, uncapped, and started writing across a fresh row of squares. She held the wheel and read as the ink dried. There will be a new, maybe two, but three will earn the throne. The power of the mare. Two will have time in their hands. One will rule the realms. But who is the two and the one, or else there will be none. The marker capped itself and dropped. The tin voice under the cap went quiet. Heather read it twice. Three. Two with time. One with the realms. She waited for the shard-feeling that used to come with her visions, the flash of a face or a hand. It came slower this time, like a photograph developing on the seat beside her. She saw a stone circle. Two young women stood inside it. One had yellow sparkly hair pulled back for work. The other wore a green hood and stood close, watching her sister's hands. Goldie counted under her breath, and a leaf hung in the air for five beats before it fell. Sierra caught it and held it still herself for one more. Bella stood outside the ring with her arms folded, not helping, only watching. Then the picture shifted. A tall young woman with white sparkly hair stood on a stone floor, giving an order Heather could not hear, and people moved to obey. Silver. The realms. The one. Heather sat back. Her children were not in the car. They had not been in the car for years. She remembered that now the way you remember a room you left on purpose. Her three were grown, in their twenties, scattered across towns of their own. The bag of baby blue blankets in her memory belonged to a morning that had already passed. The prophecy was not about her children. It had never been about her children. She picked up her phone. It was not Tuesday and it was not Thursday. She called Bella anyway. Bella answered on the second ring. Heather told her what the board said, word for word, and what she had seen at the stone circle, and the young woman on the stone floor. Bella was quiet a moment. Then Bella said, plainly, that the training had already started, and that Heather should keep driving. Heather asked if Bella had known. Bella said she had guessed. She said the role picks its own. She said Heather's part was not to protect them from it now, but to name it correctly. Heather rolled the board up and set it on the back seat, out of sight. She started the car. The prophecy was written. The three were chosen. Her job had changed from hiding her children to reading the right ones, and she had, and she could keep driving.

Heather drove the last two miles with the board rolled up on the back seat. She meant to hand the prophecy to Bella and step out of the way. Then the board grew warm again through the fabric. She pulled into Bella's drive and parked. The marker was already tapping against the inside of the roll when she unwrapped it on the hood of the car. The ink came fast this time. The passing is close. The hands will change before the next full moon. Name them by then or the seat sits empty. Heather read it twice. She understood. Bella's role as time-keeper was ending soon, and the two girls holding time between them had to be named out loud, by her, before the moon turned. She counted days on her fingers. Eleven. Maybe twelve. She carried the board inside. Bella was at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. Goldie sat across from her in a white coat, hair pulled back. Sierra was on the counter, swinging her boots, green hood down. Heather set the board flat on the table so all of them could see. Bella read it without moving her cup. Goldie read it and set her hands on the wood. Sierra hopped down and stood at her sister's shoulder. "Eleven days," Heather said. "I have to name them before the moon. Out loud. To you." She looked at Bella. Bella nodded once. "Then name them," Bella said. Heather's throat closed for a second. She had spent years keeping her own three off lists like this. Naming someone else's children felt like signing a paper she could not take back. She looked at Goldie. She looked at Sierra. She said their names. "Goldie Cylendar and Sierra Cylendar. The two who hold time." The board took the words. A line of ink crossed under the prophecy and stayed. Goldie did not smile. "Alright," she said. Sierra put a hand on Goldie's arm and left it there. Bella set her cup down. "Silver next," she said. "When she comes through the door. Not before." Heather agreed. Silver was already the ruler in practice; the naming would be a formality by the time she arrived. But the two by the time were done. The prophecy had a signature on it now, and the signature was Heather's voice. Her phone buzzed on the table. Thursday. Cyndi's day. Heather looked at the screen, then at Goldie, who had just been named across a line her mother could not cross. She did not answer. The phone rang out. Bella watched her do it and said nothing. Heather understood what she had traded. She had named Cyndi's daughters into a role Cyndi had been rejected from, and she had let a Thursday pass without picking up. The line between her sisters was no longer open on both ends. She had chosen a side by speaking.

Heather was still at Bella's table when the phone rang again. Not hers. Bella's. Bella picked it up, listened for four seconds, and set it down. "Cyndi is at the stone circle," she said. "She has a crowd. She has magic she should not have." Heather felt the board warm under her hand. The marker began to tap. She unrolled it. The ink came in one clean line: she took what was in the case. Name it before she uses it. Heather read it out. Goldie stood up. Sierra was already at the door. They drove in Bella's car. Heather held the board flat on her knees. Bella drove without speaking. Goldie sat in the back with her hands open on her thighs, counting under her breath. Sierra watched her sister and matched the count. Heather understood what her sister had done. Cyndi had opened the sealed case in her house and taken the stored magic. She was using it now to call people to the circle and claim a seat she had been refused. The circle was full when they arrived. Cyndi stood at the center in a purple coat, blond hair short and bright. She saw Bella and did not stop talking. "She kept the role by keeping the rest of us small," Cyndi said to the crowd. "I have the proof in my hands." She lifted a vial. The liquid inside was thin. Bella walked to the edge of the stones and set a small device on the top of one. The scanner. She turned it on. A number rose in the air above the vial. It was low. The crowd read it. A few people at the back began to leave. Cyndi's face did not change. She lifted her hand to throw the vial. Bella looked at Goldie. Goldie stepped forward and closed her eyes. Sierra put a hand on her sister's back. The air in the circle went slow. Cyndi's arm moved through honey. Bella walked across the stones, took the vial from her sister's fingers, and stepped back. Goldie let go. Time snapped forward. Cyndi's empty hand finished its throw. Heather stepped into the circle then. She did not shout. She spoke so the front row could hear. "Cyndi Cylendar took what was not hers. The scanner shows it. She is not the keeper. She will not be." The board wrote the words under her prophecy and locked them in ink. Cyndi looked at Heather for the first time. Her face was flat. "You picked," she said. Heather nodded. "I picked." Bella walked Cyndi out of the circle and banned her from the house in front of the crowd. The war Cyndi had tried to start ended before dark. But Heather watched her sister walk to a car with three people she did not know, and she understood the next problem. Cyndi had lost the circle. She still had allies. And now she had nothing left to lose.

Cyndi came back before the crowd had fully thinned. She walked back into the circle with three strangers behind her, and her hands were full of light. She had pulled every scrap of stored magic she still had, and it was loose in her fingers now, spitting sparks in every direction. One bolt hit a stone. One hit the grass. One went wide over the heads of the last watchers, and they ran. Heather stepped in front of the children before she thought about it. Bella was already moving. "Get them down," Bella said. Goldie and Sierra dropped to a crouch at the edge of the circle. Silver stood behind her mother, tall and steady, her white hair catching the last of the light. The board went hot in Heather's hand. The marker moved on its own. Heather read it fast. "Give them the time. Give her the realms." She looked at Bella. Bella nodded once. Bella crossed to Goldie and Sierra and put a hand on each of their heads. "All of it," she said. "You hold time together now." The magic left her in a slow, clean line, gold into Goldie, green into Sierra. Goldie gasped. Sierra did not. When Bella lifted her hands, the two girls stood up different. Sierra's eyes were bright. Goldie's hair sparked at the ends. They faced Cyndi together and the air around Cyndi thickened, then held. Bella turned to Silver. "The realms are yours," she said. "Rule them the way you said you would." She pressed her palm flat to Silver's chest. Heather stepped in beside her sister and laid her own hand next to Bella's. She spoke the names out loud so the board could lock them. "Silver Powerforce. Cyndi Cylendar, the younger. Rulers of the realms and keepers of time." The marker wrote it. The ink set black. Silver drew in one breath and the power settled into her like it had been waiting. Cyndi threw everything she had left. It came at Bella and Heather in one wide arc, purple and mean. Heather did not move. Bella did not move. They took the strike together, shoulder to shoulder, and the magic went into them instead of past them. Heather felt her feet go heavy first. Then her hands. Then her hair. She looked at Bella and Bella looked back, and Bella's mouth moved in something close to a smile. The stone climbed up their arms and closed over their faces at the same second. Silver did not wait. She raised one hand at her aunt and the air went white. Cyndi's coat froze first. Then her arm, still lifted. Then her face, flat and unsurprised. The third statue joined the other two inside the circle. Goldie stepped forward and set her palm on the stone that had been her mother. Sierra set hers on the stone that had been Heather. Silver looked at the crowd that was left, which was small now, and said, "It's the next generation. Go home." They went. The three girls stayed in the circle until dark. Heather's children came down from the car and stood between Goldie and Sierra, and no one told them to look away from the stone that had been their mother. Silver knelt and spoke to the smallest one, and the child nodded and took her hand. In the morning Silver would open the house Bella had kept for centuries, and Goldie and Sierra would set the first clock together, and the realms would hold. Heather had wanted her sisters back on the same side. In the end she had put herself between them, and the war had stopped there. The children were safe. The role had passed. The circle was quiet. The story her sisters had refused to tell was over, and it was not hers to finish.