“I will be good,” Marzina promised.

“Hah!” Zagiri said scornfully. “I shall be amazed if you are.” She mischievously stuck her tongue out at her younger sister. “Want to turn me into a toadstool, brat?”

Marzina’s purple eyes narrowed dangerously. “Not at all,” she said sweetly, “but I might make your careless tongue sprout with toadstools, sister dear.”

Zagiri shrieked, horrified, for she knew Marzina could do exactly what she threatened to do.

“This is not the kind of behavior that will gain you the privilege of going to your grandmother’s, Marzina,” her mother said quietly.

“I didn’t say I would, Mother. I just said I might,” Marzina answered pertly.

Lara had to laugh. “Well, threatening is as bad as doing it, so control your anger in the future. You must learn that or else your magic will control you, and not the other way around.” She turned to Zagiri. “You are happy being what you are, my golden daughter. Please let Marzina be what she is meant to be. You should help one another. Now I would be alone in my garden. Leave me, my darlings.”

They all arose from the soft lawn, and the three sisters hurried back into the castle. Lara walked to the end of her garden, and, reaching a wall, looked down the Dominus’s Fjord and out to the sea. Suddenly she could just make out a faint smudge of lavender upon the horizon. It would be the sails of Corrado’s vessel, and it was headed home. A wave of sadness overwhelmed her briefly. It was finished. Magnus was gone. She felt the ice about her cold faerie heart harden with her admission of fact. The small bit of mortal within her retreated, cowed by the magic thundering through her veins now. There was no time for mortal weakness anymore.