This mountain is starting to get claustrophobic. The carved-out halls echo my booted footsteps, letting every critter know that I'm not in the best of moods. I'm not in the best of moods most days, but that's because I've been forced to live in hiding for the past two fucking decades. I feel like a fucking rat.

Technically speaking, that's only a mere spec in my immortal life, but twenty years is still an agonizing twenty years no matter how long your life span is. Not that anyone would be able to tell since I still look like I'm in my early twenties. Hardly doubt anyone of a mortal bloodline could handle the surprising truth that I'm actually a hundred and thirty-two years old. Mortals say that's impossible, but my sisters say that I'm still in the early stages of life despite my haggish attitude.

Time is a mockery. A stupid, idiotic mockery when I quite literally speed up, slow down, or freeze time with half a thought. I honestly could make these days go by faster, but using the power only drains me dry, and with our current situation, I need to be at full strength and ready to move at a moment's notice.

Still, that doesn't mean that I'm not going to sit here and play with my fingers when we should be prioritizing the safety of the people my sisters and I of the Ginerva swore to protect.

There are nine of us. Each with a different power we fought for and was given so long as we used them to serve and protect our rulers. Nine women who call each other sisters because we'll know no other family in our lifetimes. We're the most elite, powerful, and dangerously skilled faction in Ker. Or we would be if an evil psychopath didn't force us to cut ourselves out of the world in order to protect it from said bullshit. Not even one mortal's lifetime and our island were already considered forgotten. Though I suppose Thralia has never really been connected to the rest of the world. What lives on our island doesn't reside anywhere else, and our ancestors learned a long time ago that the unknown and the powerful tend to be hunted until their extinct due to fear. It happened to the Fae some dozen or so centuries ago, and we would've well been next.

  Not that it fucking helped to keep the power hungry people already living in Thralia out. Now we're here, stuck in hiding in a mountain on a shit piece of land that is nothing like our homeland. The island was the only land we had known until Dawn abandoned it. It felt like a knife in the heart when I found out that she had disappeared overseas with no trace as to where she went. We grew up together, we schemed together and discovered the many pleasures of being a woman on the same night. Having planned on getting into the Ginerva at a young age, I thought it a good idea to befriend the next heir to the Thralian throne. She was just an upper hand, at first, but I learned quickly that nothing about Dawn was predictable. Her twin wasn't as wild as Dawn was, but sometimes she'd tag along on our adventures.

When Dawn left, I knew that if anyone knew where she had run off to, it was Sibella. Little Ella who always had her ear around the corner and her eyes spying in the shadows. I questioned her about her sister's disappearance every day, but she said that her sister's whereabouts were just a mystery to her as the rest of us. I was so close to dragging her by her hair to a secluded place where I could get the answers I wanted, when the Pater Princeps, late King Kerrigan, sent me, my eight sisters, an old hag, and a handful of talented Thralian spies to search for our runaway Mater Natura.

We searched and searched, keeping to the shadows and getting information through the town's drunken gossip or echoed whispers in alleyways. For years we searched every inch of the middle continent for even a spark of the power our Queen had, but it didn't end as it should've. So we got our bearings, gathered our people scattered throughout the land, and stayed concealed until the day came for us to fulfill the vow we swore through a bloodbond made the day she was crowned.

I didn't pick this lump of dried dirt as our hideout, and it shows. Hollis Mountain is the tallest in the mountain range that runs along the northeast Cressidian and Vandarian border. People often climb it to get from one kingdom to the other without being spotted by patrols, but if they get too close to us they suddenly find themselves taking a long way around or turning back. They're simple wards carved into the bark of surrounding trees within a two-mile radius of where we are. All my sisters know the markings, but it's Willa who has the power to keep them maintained for such a long period.

Willa is the old hag Kerrigan sent with us and the wench that thought this mountain of cold winters and too hot summers was the perfect place to stay for nineteen years.

Okay, so she's not a withered, grey-haired, wrinkled, cranky old lady, but she's still old in my eyes. Eight hundred and seventy-five years she's been alive. A bit long if you ask me, but most immortals could live up to thousands of years if they're healthy, and Willa's still spry enough to keep up with us in the sparring rings. She's the most experienced in Thralia, and her name is suiting to her powers. She can shield herself and those around her from anything, render people invisible, smother your senses, heal a wound in seconds, bear wards for years on end, and is immune to any power influence of any kind.

Willa: Resolute Protection.

Being the oldest and wisest, she's been the "Great Lady" of Hollis Mountain. I wouldn't call her our Queen, but more like our...manager. She handles everything from keeping track of our supplies to keeping this piece of lump rock a safe haven. My sisters and I will sometimes maintain the wards when Willa is beginning to drain, but aside from that, we mainly keep all the idiot teenagers in check. A huge downgrade from what we're supposed to be doing. They're a small group, but they're crafty. They like to sneak out to Histra and enjoy some of the travelers going through Shephard's Pass. It's a pain to have to go and retrieve them and then have Tanith wipe the clueless trader's minds. I'd rage for having her waste her power on something so vulgar, but she needs to release her grip on the power every now and then. We all do.

Our powers are a complicated treasure. On one hand, they're helpful in a fight, but on the other, they cannot be fully contained. Hold in too much and it will start to feed on you from the inside out until it kills you. Or you release it to the last drop and sleep for cycles on end. If you use it to the last drop, then you're left vulnerable in a coma. Makes for easy killing. So we need to use our powers regularly to keep it from spilling over the edge like boiling water in a pot, but we also need to have as much of it as we can for when a certain birthday finally arrives and gets rid of the ink of intertwined circles on the inside of our wrists. Luckily, the entirety of Thralia is trained to defend itself. We learned centuries ago that we will be hunted and cut open for even the slightest sliver of our powers, so the moment you reach double digits, you're taught the basics of keeping yourself alive if you were kidnapped.

If you choose to, you're allowed the right to go to the nearest training camp and learn more. The only problem is that if you choose to do so, you'll know nothing but the campgrounds for a decade. No contact with anyone outside the walls whatsoever - not even family. You're secluded and kept to a strict schedule that has you learning in a classroom, practicing both with and without weapons and only breaks in between for a meal or sleep. It's not as bad as it sounds. Aside from the busy schedule, you're assigned to a small faction with about eight to twelve other students. The selection is random, and you're always put with the students who arrived in the same cycle as you.

My sisters and I became quick friends after being stuffed into a faction together. We spent our decade in the camp constantly pushing each other to the limits. We knew what the instructors were going to ask of us since we were the only all-female faction in the camp, so we would push our cots against the walls of the square room, and continue training when we should've been sleeping. Our goal was to become the quickest, fastest, strongest, and most lethal faction in Camp Daleka. It was rare to have a faction of all women, and we wanted to prove ourselves to others. When the time came for the Trials, we were already feared and highly targeted.

It pushes my buttons constantly that for the past twenty years, we've been nothing but ghosts that are now used as babysitters and maids. Guarding the lives of the ones we vowed to guard is one story, but keeping the pants of those in the mountain on to keep our population to a controlled number, is a whole other story. Not to mention that we can't trust anyone else aside from me and my sisters to go to Histra for supplies, and all in bulk and for a decent price too.

Speaking of supplies, it looks like I'll be taking another trip into the dry town.

I find Willa in her "office" speaking to Koldo, one of the men in charge of rationing the food. He only comes up here when he needs something. It's understandable. Willa's quarters are on the top level of the mountain, and everyone else is at the lower caves. My sisters and I are a level in between, which makes it a hassle to go either way. I don't think I've ever been so grateful for the power of misting from the elementals, allowing us to travel anywhere we think of within seconds. That way we can disappear at the slightest chance of danger and get from one place to another in a span of a few seconds. The larger the distance, the harder it is to pull the power, but it's become easier in the past few decades.

"It's been a month already," I say the second I step foot into her office.

She sighs, already knowing the argument to come. "I'll see to it that the crates are restocked," she tells Koldo.

"Thank you, Great Lady." He walks to the door, pointedly staying five feet away from me as he does so. I may or may not have a reputation for throwing small, sharp, iron stars at people when I'm in one of my 'moods.'

I don't wait for the door to close before speaking again. "He's going in the wrong direction. We should be pointing him right to her – but instead, we're watching him and the other idiots go crazy because they have yet to find her. We took an oath to Thralia to protect and serve the elementals-"

"You also made a promise to Dawn. Do you plan on breaking that promise and risking your death that won't come at the hands of a sword, but a tattoo on your wrist?"

I go silent. She's pulled the same bullshit response every time I've come up here in the past four cycles. Everyone knows that I'm the last person to break a promise – especially to my best friend and our previous Queen. When she died nearly eleven years ago, we all felt it. Having been bonded to her since she was born, me and my sisters knew the exact moment her heart stopped. We were in the middle of a meal when we all fell unconscious. We woke a few minutes later and didn't say a word as we all teleported to Fernweh. The moments that followed aren't ones I wish to think of. It makes the mark on my arm itch and I curl my fingers into my palm to keep myself from doing so.

"When she becomes of age in the next given cycles, do not think that for a moment I will not be there to kill every single person who has even looked at her wrong, before breaking those chains off of her," I declare for the umpteenth time.

"Rohana..." She slumps into her chair behind the cracked cedar desk. It's full of scattered papers, her elbows wrinkling a few of them as she drops them down. I suppose she's seen better days. Her bright red hair is braided into a crown atop her head, but it's frizzy and loose, and stray strands fall in front of her face. When she looks back up at me, her green eyes look entirely worn. She has a ring of gold around her pupil rather than silver. As the Resolute Protector, she was given multiple abilities rather than just being Manifested. So she's gold – superior to me and my silver-circled sisters.

Bloody hag pulls that card every chance she gets too.

"We cannot interfere. You heard what Dearbháll foresaw-"

"Dee has been wrong before," I counter.

"Yes, but never about these things. Never about the elementals."

To that, I have no argument. Dearbháil is a seer – a powerful one. If Dee says we go down the left path rather than the right, then we do. If she says to not interfere with the lives of others then we don't. It's the latter that is currently gnawing away at me.

"So you're just going to let him keep breaking her? Like he broke Cleménce?"

I know my blow hits its target when a force field snaps into place around her. It's not to keep me from hurting her but to keep her from hurting me. It's a bad card to play, and I instantly wish I could take it back. None of us like to remember that day. The day it all started.

"Get out."

"Willa, I didn't mean-"

"Get. Out."

She points to the door and I know better than to try to apologize after bringing up Cleménce. Mentally slapping myself for being an asshole, I turn and walk out the door.

I walked up those stairs to try and wear the anger out of me, and now look what I've done. She won't want to see me for a cycle or two. At least, not without wanting to throttle me or toss me over the side of the mountain. I knew I should've brought Tanith with me to keep me in check, but she's been sketching in her room all day and it's hard to pry the paper and pencil from her hands without getting a few bruises and scratches in the process. The woman loves her art.

Gods and their Saints pray for me and my idiocy and my too quick to anger behavior. It gets me into a lot of trouble, but that never stops me from doing something reckless. I highly doubt much could.