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“Levek, are you ready to be forged?” Tonhald asked his youngest brother, clearly changing the subject.

Iryana shot him a grateful look.

Levek shut his book and put it aside. “As ready as I can be. Though it would be easier to prepare for if I knew—”

“Ugh, Levek,” Kladara moaned. “You know we can’t tell you anything more.”

He leaned forward, eyes squinted slightly. “Can you at least tell me if you get to choose where the forging tattoo goes?”

It was not a polite thing to ask about, but Levek had a tendency to ask those kinds of questions.

“I think it depends,” Tonhald said carefully. “On what you—on uh, things.”

They couldn’t say much, not to someone yet to be forged. The ways of forgings were sacred and if one knew too much going in, the risk of something going wrong was much higher. There was an openness and vulnerability to submitting yourself to the will of the magic not knowing what it meant. Levek hated being in the dark though.

“Very helpful,” Levek said dryly.

“I didn’t get to choose,” Hadima said softly, hand pressing against her heart and then sliding up to where the blue water-forging tattoo peeked out above her collar like waves crashing against the shore.

Iryana could only imagine what truths Hadima had shared that had to be marked over her heart. Perhaps the same ones she’d shared with Iryana after Karvek had beaten her. Iryana couldn’t help the pang of regret toward her sister. Hadima might have forgiven her, never even blamed her, but Iryana understood the consequences of her actions now.

“Me neither.” Kladara patted her stomach, where her own tattoos were, though Iryana had never seen them.

A few of the others nodded in agreement.

“I chose,” Teshya said, looking up as her fingers stilled. She pushed back one of her sleeves to show the blush-red markings that almost seemed to flicker and swirl around her forearm like dancing flames. “I wanted to see them easily, to remind myself why I use my forgings.”

“Perhaps it’s well-specific,” Tonhald mused, trailing his fingers over his wife’s red tattoos.

Kladara turned to Iryana, leaning across her chair and into Hadima’s space, her eyes bright with curiosity.

“You’re the only metal-forged here,” Kladara pointed out quickly, as if she’d been waiting for an opportunity to question her about this. “And you’ve been forged in two kinds of wells. What do you think?”

She tried not to fidget; it was expected that they’d be curious. They hadn’t seen the extent of her tattoos, no one had other than Pyetar, and he hadn’t been focusing on them at the time.

“I didn’t choose, either time.” They kept staring at her, unsatisfied, Kladara most intensely of all. She forced herself to elaborate. “The Keeper at the metal well said for me it would have to start, uh... behind my heart…” She looked over their heads, not making eye contact with any of them. “They spread out from there. And at the water well, the Keeper wanted to continue the existing tattoo.”

In the quiet that lingered after her words, many unspoken things were said. Those who were forged knew the meaning forging tattoos had, could imagine what stories they told for Iryana.

“So,” Iryana put on a calm and unbothered expression. “I imagine it depends, but I wouldn’t assume you’ll have a choice.”

Levek worked his jaw around, clearly not happy with that answer. “What are the odds I’m forged and my magic acts like Kladara’s?”

“Your magic is bothering you?” Iryana asked Kladara too quickly, nearly falling forward off her chair to meet her cousin’s eyes.

Kladara shrugged. “I wouldn’t say it’s bothering me. It just feels… strange lately.”

“Kladara has always been more sensitive to it than the rest of us,” Tonhald said, offering his sister an apologetic look.

That wasn’t something Iryana had known. She looked over Kladara carefully, thinking. Perhaps the magic hadn’t settled as completely in her cousin as it did for most people. It could be a sign that what Iryana was feeling, though worsened by the two fighting magics, was normal and would resolve itself eventually.

“It’s just been more so than usual,” Kladara added, pulling at the ends of her braid.

“Do you have any pain when you use your forgings?” Iryana asked with feigned casualness.

“No, it doesn’t hurt.”

“You know, I’ve read some stories that talk about the magic almost having a way to communicate.” Levek rose to sit on his shins, face growing increasingly animated. “When the gods chose their champions, they would call them with the magic and it was like a tug in the direction they wished you to go. Some legends say they could even talk to them that way. Is the magic drawing you somewhere?”