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Being in the workshop all day made me wonder what kind of person I might have become if I had spent the last ten years in a land that allowed things to grow independently instead of being broken to conform. If I had been given the chance to flourish in the open instead of keeping myself always in the shadows.

Ember had found a purpose in needle and thread. Thorn, in metalwork and hidden blades. I ran my hand lightly over the spine of the codex. Books. It had always been books for me. All of our apprenticeships had been covers, but they had also slotted in with our interests, which had eventually become talents.

I had wanted to join the rebellion the moment I heard that they existed, a few months after arriving in Craven City. When I knew what they were fighting for, it became my obsession too. No one mourned my uncle, King Oban, not truly. The tyrant deserved his end. But no one had prepared us for what came after we fled the castle that night. There is a certain type of madness in witnessing your castle fall. It wasn’t just the people who had died trying to protect the bricks and mortar; it was the hope that had been extinguished as they’d died. The end hadn’t burned fast and bright, but settled in slow and choking. That’s the thing with endings, it’s not always a precise point in time; sometimes it’s a quiet erosion.

Annatalia didn’t blink out the moment the king died as our enemies had hoped it would. Our stories, our myths, and our legends were all still whispered to our children before they slept.

In the years that followed, while our true identities were hidden, we were ‘reeducated’ in the Craven City boarding houses. Turned out, there was a lack of women in the Barren Lands, a symptom of couples wanting sons to be in the Rider lottery. So many took the potion and chose a baby boy, and they rectified this by taking Annatalian women. The anklets Aster had placed against our skin on the first night might have changed our features. It glamoured our appearance, but it still showed everyone who we truly were beneath the surface—Annatalian. Therefore, unfortunately, it hadn’t changed our desirability. We were just three of the four hundred women taken and shipped to the Barren.

King Malar of the Barren ruled Annatalia from across the canyon. And the conquest made him revered, for he had fed his starving people. It had also made the rebellion swell with every injustice done to the men, women, and children forced to work their lands and then starved when the crops were shipped away. Wherever the General had been hiding all these years, he had also been scheming, and he was the new focus of our enemies’ rage.

The sixth night of Yule was drawing in by the time I stretched and rose from the workbench. Aster had brought food earlier, like an offering neither of us wanted to acknowledge. He hadn’t spoken much; only questioned when the codex would be fixed. I had lied and told him it would take two nights for the magic to return. It would be alive by this evening with all the YuleMots in the air and the buzz of magic in the walls. And I was the best there was at what I did—he should have known that by now. But he just watched me in that way that tugged at my chest. It was a look that told me he already knew what I would find in the codex, assuming I was allowed to read it. Like he was deciding whether he wanted me to find out.

Then he left without another word to tend to his Warhorse.

The codex lay on the bench, the leather darker now where the paste had set, the spine firm beneath my fingers when I lifted it. I checked the stitching again, which was unnecessary, but I needed the grounding. Each thread held. Each page sat where it should. It was whole again, and it was ready to talk to me.

“Right,” I muttered, more to steady myself than anything else. “Now’s the time to tell me what you know.”

I opened the book. The first few pages resisted, stiff from disuse, before giving way with a soft crack. I expected blankness again, and the hollow absence I was used to, but the pages weren’t empty. Ink bled faintly through the parchment. As if the book was checking that we would not be disturbed this time.

Life, Death, Rebirth. I chanted. And the words began to form.

I checked the door, making sure none of my captors—for really that’s what they were—were near, and then leaned closer.

The script wasn’t consistent, and the lines blurred at the edges, curling into shapes that took a few minutes to fully form. Then I turned the page, and the next section was clearer. The ink settled long enough for me to read snippets of it.

The women who tried to phoenix-bond proved unable to contain it. Their frail bodies failed under the strain, their minds fractured by the fire. Some died at the Choosing, others soon after the bonding fever took hold. They can never be allowed to enter….

Even with Earthworld magic, they cannot survive it…

The fall of the Riders… But this wasn’t the first time…

Then further down.

“You have no right to…”

Then, on another page.

…the curse has made the bond with the phoenixes unstable…for the safety of all kingdoms, a solution had to be decided upon.

“Then find the coven that set the curse. It would have taken a hundred witches or more to cast a curse that powerful… How is it possible that there is not even a whisper of who was involved?”

The more I read, the stiller I became. What in all the Otherworld Gods had I stolen? Memos from a meeting about the curse? After a while, I realised it was notes taken during a discussion between different factions— different Kings. I had never heard of all the Kings getting together to decide what to do with their cursed phoenixes and Riders. But it didn’t seem like knowledge that needed to be a secret, so why was it hidden away?

Women could not become Riders, because the ones who had sought to bond had died. Witches set the curse, but no one knew who they were. All this was well known.

It was clear I was going to have to run before they found out the book was exactly what I expected it was…insignificant. I had never planned on mending it for others to read, but now that the words had flowed back, I was captivated by the snippets of the past.

…no other kingdoms agree with the Celts…they have their Warhorses, they’re not part of the deliberation…

The Barren King turned his back on everyone in the room before continuing, “Their solution is inelegant. There is a better way to ensure that we keep the situation contained for generations to come. We have spent some years testing Riders’ oaths.

First, we selected the boys loyal to us who could go to the mountains and the Chosen. Sealing the area so no others could enter. Now, we have been working on an idea more… substantial. I propose that we Oath-bind the Riders to their Kingdoms… to their Kings. The curse means that when the phoenix goes mad, so does the Rider. If we are in control of the Rider, we can control this problem. We will not lose them as well.”

“This has been tried before. Any oath taken by a Rider never lasts. The Skyworld magic burns away Earthworld Oaths in a week or a month.”

“Then we do it before… when there is Skyworld in their blood, but they are not bound to their phoenix yet. We do it on the 6th night of Yule… at the turning point.”