She lets me go after that. I’m a little numb. I wanted answers, and now I have them. And at the same time, I don’t. What I really wanted to know was how much my mother was in the wrong, whether she was a bad match for my father and even a bad person. But my grandmother’s story hasn’t answered that, not really.

  It’s told me a lot about her that I’d never even thought to consider. A lot that is far from obvious at first glance. I curl up and focus on just taking in what I’ve found out and coming to a new understanding of who she is.

  Someone who’s been through something awful and come out the other side. Someone who’s fallen apart and put herself back together again. I can admire that. But some part of me can’t help being a little jealous. Because I’m not like her. I’m Malaina. And that won’t change, no matter what new life I build for myself.

  I hide behind one of the enchantment textbooks so my dad doesn’t wonder what’s wrong and deduce that we were doing more than just dress fitting, and occasionally remember to absently turn a page to simulate reading.

  I want to meet Sierra more than ever, after learning she’s my grandmother’s lover. What does that make her to me? Nothing, because they’re not and can never be married. But maybe that’s not what matters. Maybe, if I want, and if she turns out to be a good person, she can be part of my family too.

  But I understand now why my grandmother wants to tell her about the books Edward sent me. Doing otherwise would be keeping a secret from the woman she loves, hiding something about her work and her passion.

  I still can’t let Sierra find out. Not without knowing that she wouldn’t spread the information. And she might well feel obliged as a historian to not let it remain a secret.

  I know Edward had the best of intentions when he gave me those books. But he’s started something that will be very hard to stop. And I get the feeling that his father is not going to like my role in it.

  I have to suppress a sigh, because my dad is still there. I miss having my own room. And I miss actually being able to talk to him instead of having to conceal things. I should probably do something that isn’t just pretending to read. I glance at the clock: it’s a few minutes until eight. I don’t want to work on enchanting when my mind is still caught up in what my grandmother told me. Magic is so dependent on my mood, and I think I’d struggle to reach the necessary calm and focus for detailed enchantment work right now.

  Which I suppose leaves Georgiana. Though I’ll need to have the self-discipline to stop and sleep at a reasonable time. That’ll be fine, though… won’t it?

  It is not, in fact, fine. Two hours passes in the blink of an eye, and suddenly I’m having to tear myself away from Georgiana’s description of the Feast of Stars. Times have changed, if she attended when she was seven and sixteen-year-old Edward doesn’t. Or maybe that’s just Lord Blackthorn wanting to protect his son from the dangers of court.

  Because it is dangerous. I’m not sure how much Georgiana understands, but she certainly complains about people always asking her about her father and the King. It seems unfair that Father thinks I am too young to know, and yet all these people seem to assume I do. And sometimes when I tell them I don’t, they’re mean to me. I tell Father whenever that happens, and he says he’ll make sure they’re not mean to me again. I hope he does.

  I can’t imagine her understanding what she’s writing. I’m not sure whether Felix Blackthorn is just giving his daughter empty promises to reassure her or whether he’s really prepared to make an enemy of anyone who harasses her.

  Even the King asks me for Father’s secrets. It’s not so bad when she does it, though, because she laughs about it and everyone laughs with her. The King is nice to me. She gives me little treats and strokes my hair. I think it’s because I’m Charlie’s friend. She says Charlie and I have to dance together, but I don’t think he’s a very good dancer.

  Two children dancing at a party would normally be harmless enough. When one of them is the King’s only son and the other is the daughter of a powerful magician and landowner, though, it has… certain implications. No seven-year-old should have to worry about that, so I’m almost glad that she doesn’t seem to see what those implications are.

  But she’s perceptive, and she learns quickly. I can’t imagine her remaining innocent for much longer.

  I turn to the entry on the Bird’s Day. Which is really a description of the Ship’s Day evening, because she was whisked away to bed without having time to finish writing the day’s entry. I hope I still recall the details well enough to write them.

  Her account certainly seems detailed. But I don’t get to take in anything more than that before my dad reminds me of bedtime. It was definitely a mistake to start doing this in the evening. Or maybe the mistake is needing sleep.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Well,” says my dad when we’re both ready to sleep. “I hope you had a good birthday.”

  “I did,” I reply. Despite the whole new set of problems Edward’s brilliant gift has given me, and despite the revelations from my grandmother. It’s the best birthday I’ve had in a very long time.

  I sleep surprisingly well considering how many ideas are competing for space in my mind. I wake at seven and thirty on the Tree’s Day. The symbolism is fairly obvious this time: trees represent growth, strength, resilience. We’re supposed to reflect on how we’ve grown over the last year and how we can continue to grow.

  It feels like I’m having to grow and change a lot faster than your average tree just to survive. And I’m sometimes afraid that I won’t be able to keep up. That I won’t survive.

  After breakfast I have to work on the enchantment, if I want it to be done for the Day of Gifts tomorrow. Thankfully my grandmother is cloistered in her room sewing for the same reason so I can at least work without her seeing. Not that that makes it any easier. This is a more advanced project than anything I’ve tried before, after all, and it requires the kind of precision that Malaina are not best suited to.

  It takes me a couple of hours even to produce an enchanted light that’s powered by channelling magic. While I’m glad when I can get that to work, it does seem a little useless, since I could accomplish the same thing just by casting the spell. To be worth anything, it needs to draw its power from the ambience.

  Which is the hard part. It’s a very common enchantment formulation, and Edward has sent me several variations with detailed instructions, but that by no means makes it easy. Because it’s not just a case of copying the standard formulation, I have to combine that with the existing light-enchantment so that the magic drawn can actually be used to power the light.

  Edward has sketched out how that’s done as well, because of course he has. It takes me fifteen minutes just to understand his diagram – I’m not sure if that’s just because I’m being slow or because I’m not as used to interpreting enchantment diagrams as he is. A bit of both, probably.

  The complexity is mostly just in trying to think of the two pieces as combining together into a whole, and casting a single enchantment rather than two separate ones. Trying that for a couple of hours doesn’t give me anything more than a headache and a growing frustration with myself. I repeat to myself that it’s okay not to understand things right away. It’s okay to not be Edward.

  But if I convince myself that it’s fine, then isn’t that believing that I can’t do it? And won’t that cause a self-defeating spiral? Magic might be amazing, but sometimes it just feels awful.

  Before I can do anything about that, it’s time to leave for the day’s service, which is at noon. I have to frantically purge the candleholder of the latest failed enchantment and hide it under a cushion before my grandmother can see what I’m doing.

  And then we’re walking to the temple again. The weather is unseasonably warm for a change, and I end up dismissing my usual warming-spell halfway there. I’m surprised by how quickly I’ve begun to appreciate this familiar routine. It helps that I’m not quite as afraid of a Malaina episode as I was last time.

  The service is an interesting one. The priestess presiding belongs to this particular branch of the temple, rather than the monastery, and she’s one of the harsher type of preachers. Her tree metaphors centre around pruning and rooting out impurity and weakness. I have to not listen too closely, because I’m scared of what would happen if I let those particular seeds take root in my mind.

  But afterwards, the priests move through the crowd and hand us acorns to plant. I’m not sure where we’ll find room to grow a tree or three in the apartment, but I like the idea of it at least. My dad complains as we walk back that he doesn’t have any old vases or plant pots. He’s vague about why, but it’s not hard to tell that it’s because he left the old house so abruptly.

  My grandmother insists that she’s going shopping for a plant pot in which to plant our acorns at once, and splits off to go to the market. She refuses my dad’s offer of help. I think she might have accepted mine, but I don’t make it. Because this way I have more time when she’s not there to work on the enchantment.

  My dad finally asks what I’m working on as we’re walking back, and I tell him. He approves of the idea, I’m pleased to find, and asks me to explain some of the technical details to him. I do my best, though it’s not easy, and find that it helps my own understanding of what I’m doing.

  And between that and the break, it only takes me a few more attempts once we get back before I have a working enchantment. It’s not the complete product, of course – it needs a way of being turned on and off, not to mention adjusting the brightness (which is far too low to be of any use at the moment). But it works!

  I show it off to my dad, who is almost as pleased as I am. I’m not sure you can really understand the joy of finally making some difficult magic work until you’ve experienced it, but he seems to come pretty close.

  I’m still laughing in triumph when my grandmother returns and I have to hastily purge the enchantment, hide the candleholder and pretend I’ve been reading one of the enchantment textbooks all along. She can probably tell something is off from the awkward position in which I’m sitting and my far-from-relaxed posture, but she says nothing. To be fair, after her performance about the new boots she can’t criticise me for failing at subtlety about presents.

  I just want her to go away so I can try and make the last part of the enchantment work, but it’s time for a tree-planting session. My acorn is buried deeply in a pocket, but thankfully is still intact. I pull it out and wonder how exactly my grandmother managed to carry a pot so large back from the market on her own. And she bought a bag of soil as well. Maybe I should have offered to help her after all.

  She pours the soil into the pot, which has been set down in a corner of the room where it shouldn’t be in the way. We all produce our acorns and use our hands to bury them in soil. My grandmother is praying again. My dad produces a watering can from somewhere and we take turns drizzling water over the pot.

  Then, finally, I’m free to return to enchanting. I do like the idea of the acorns, though, at least while I don’t wonder too much about what will happen when we have three growing oak trees and nowhere to plant them. Sometimes I wish I could enjoy ideas without always being the one who worries about little details like that.