quatervois (n.) a crossroads; a critical decision or turning point in one's life.

If there was light, then there was darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death. So much was defined by what it was not. Sometimes Inanna found herself applying these terms to herself: she did not think that she was selfless, so she must be selfish; she did not believe herself strong, so she must have been weak; she did not see in herself any great lovable qualities, so when she was confronted with abrupt evidence of the fact that she was, in fact, loved – well.

She struggled with that.

Earlier that day, as the others were milling about preparing for muster, Pekka had taken her straight-edge razor, the one she used to help him shave before formal events, and he had gouged their initials into the tree beside the stables; he had been smiling, that little half-smile he wore when he knew that Ina would protest only because she felt she must; she would mention demerits, or glance about for Sauer, but she would not tell him to stop. So it had been that morning: P and I, H and N, roughly sliced into the bark without any great grace. "Your father would be so disappointed," Inanna had murmured softly, but she had taken his hand and he had smiled. He had always been so golden in her eyes; she thought he always would be. If she could only reflect him... wasn't that enough?

If that had been the light then, here, now, was the darkness. The truck rocked back and forth; the gates of the bed had been shut tightly; the gaps in the canvas had been patched to block out any hint of the city through which they now travelled. Home, Ina thought softly – it was her home, or it had been. She had once known these streets as only an errand-girl could, all of the short-cuts and back-alleys. She had recognised every little street cat, known every market stall, could name nearly every boat in the port. Home. Did they have homes now? Could they, as Warriors? Beside her, Pekka's hand grazed against hers again, and her heart slowed. Yes, she thought, home was wherever he was.

She reached over and put her hand gently on Hyacinth's shoulder; the other girl was shuddering, and Ina wasn't entirely sure the truck was to blame. "It'll be okay," she murmured, and Hyacinth looked at her – even in the dark, she could see her move her head, though she could not distinguish her features – and nodded. Azula was sitting on the floor with her head between her knees, monitoring her breathing; the bench-seats were close enough to one another than Zoran's knee was knocking against Ina's. Zor, Ina thought – third place. She would have to tell him how proud that she was, how well that he had done. Her heart felt fit to burst with all that she felt about the rankings. Zoran, third? Pekka, second?

And herself, nearly last.

They could all stay together. That had been one of Ina's greatest fears – that some would be chosen, and others would be left behind. That she would be left behind. At least here, now, she could still try to look after them. She could still try to protect them. No matter what they were about to face, it was better that they were together. All of them.

She would miss the others. Sweet Belle, clever Ragnar, funny Uriasz. It felt a little like they had been amputated from her; she could feel the phantom wound bleeding. She had not even been all that close to Uriasz, but he had been a constant - always there, always teasing, always ready to break the ice.

Now: gone.

They pulled up to the chancellery – the back entrance, lest anyone see them entering. Initiations were performed in utter secret; the risk was too high. It would have demoralised too many if they had known how many Candidates entered the chancellery and left in body bags. The Warriors were to be introduced to Irij only once they were stable enough to be seen in public.

There was very little in those thoughts which made Ina feel better rather than worse. Calm. Ina focused on her heartbeat; she could feel Pekka watching her. She smiled, trying to ease that look of concern from his face – and knew, without looking, that she had been unsuccessful. She put her head against his shoulder and thought, very firmly, of home.

The gates opened, and light flooded the bed; Khalore threw up her hands to cover her eyes, blinking weakly in the daylight. Orfeas Halkias was brisk: "we're late as it is. Please, don't tarry."

They jumped down to the cobbles; Zor turned back to help Ina down, for which she was unspeakably grateful. He always seemed to know what she needed without her needing to say; she could only smile at him in thanks and say, "do I get to claim some credit?"

"Credit?"

"You came third."

"Yeah," he said, with a very slight smile. "You get to take credit. You're a wonderful coach."

They were hustled into the chancellery; Ina looked up, very briefly, at the building as they entered. She had passed it so often from the street, looking at its dramatic facade. The chancellery had grown, very organically, from the clocktower of Kur – what had once been only a small set of offices and workshops at the back of the clock had grown into the administrative heart of the whole kingdom. The clock itself was a work of art: its workings were bare to the air, a complex series of filigreed wheels; its hands were gilded and golden; it tracked not only the time, but the movement of the moon across the night sky. So many of Inanna's poorest neighbours had relied on the clocktower of Kur to tell the day of the week; it was said to mark the precise geographical centre of the city.

But here, from the back-alleys, none of this was visible. It was grey and overcast; it felt like they were being brought into a mausoleum. They were ushered up a set of solemn stone steps, and through an open cloister overlooking a neat rose garden, tended by the chancellor's husband. Then, down another set of steps towards what Orfeas Halkias called the sacellum. It was a small stone chapel, set half-underground; it reminded Inanna a little of the churches near the dock that preached of atonement and salvation. The windows were stained-glass, depicting the revolution of the Irij against the Schreaves. Here was the turning of the World against the other Curses; here was the uprising of the Irij peasantry, armed only with pitchforks and fiery sods of turf; here was the flight of the Schreaves to the island across the sea, where monsters stalked.

Ilja Schovajsa was watching these windows with an expression of such unreadable melancholy that Inanna felt she was intruding on a deeply private moment just to allow her eyes to fall upon him; she looked away, and focused instead on the paving stones beneath her feet. Each one was inscribed with a symbol of a Curse – she was standing on the Star. Beside her, Pekka had paused upon the Moon; he was speaking, very softly, to Kinga Szymańska, who had a foot on the Devil and the other on Death.

Zoran said, "Ina?"

She turned; he was looking at her with an expression of such abrupt vulnerability that she almost feared for what had happened in the last moment. His eyes were blue; his hair was starting to fall from its simple slicked-back style, so that a few strands hung over his forehead and shadowed his face. "Zor? Are you okay?"

Zoran began, "I needed to ask you…"

He was interrupted by Instructor Ermete Tofana. "Line up by rank. You may be out of the academy, but you are still soldiers of Irij. Show some decorum."

Ina reached down, and touched Zoran's wrist very gently. "Ask me afterwards, okay?"

He set his mouth firmly, and nodded. The shadows of the sacellum were painted stark and grey over the angles of his face; he looked gaunt, and exhausted, and scared. She longed to embrace him, to take away all of that fear and to tell him that they would be fine – but Inanna Nirari refused to lie to her friends. They would be fine; that would be apparent when this was all over.

They were falling into line. Pekka was moving against the tide of people; he left Kinga's side to reach for Ina and say, "Ina..."

"Don't get sentimental on me now." Ina forced herself to smile. "If you cry, you know I will."

He stooped, and kissed her roughly; she could not stop herself from throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him closer, as though she could hope to cling to him and keep the rest of the world at bay until this moment was over. She could feel his heart through his shirt, the strength in his shoulders, the gentleness of his hands. He was elemental – she knew him better than she knew her own body. She knew what he was trying to say, without him needing to say it, and she knew he would understand all that she did not have time to express.

When they separated, he murmured, "promise me, Ina."

"Pekka," she whispered, "I promise."

"I love you."

His hand around hers – it could not last. He pulled away, and returned to the front of the line; at the front of the room, one of the doors had opened to admit Matthias Kloet and Avrova Vovk. She was helping him into the room; he seemed curled over onto himself, staring fixedly at the window behind Ina's head, like he could divine in the images captured there a story intended only for him. Avrova Vovk had always reminded Ina a little of her mother, though she had never been able to say why; now, in this light, something about how small she seemed struck Ina as intrinsically Azula-esque. She could not help but instinctively like a woman who so reminded her of her loved ones.

Orfeas Halkias and Ermete Tofana had gone to meet the two Warriors; the keeper of the sacellum, Keeper Aubert Abreo, was preparing what looked to Inanna to be an altar. The five of them spoke softly, their voices too hushed for anything but the suggestion of their tone to bounce around the empty space.

Finally, Keeper Aubert Abreo turned to the assembled line of Candidates. He was a tall, gaunt man with dark skin and a neatly kept beard – the fourth Champion. Though Irij strictly denied the existence of any magic within its borders but for the twelve designated Curses, Keeper Abreo nonetheless carried the air of a mystic. Now, for example, he had spread a set of eleven tarot cards across the alter and stepped back to consult Matthias Kloet about whether he thought they were placed correctly. Matthias stepped forward, moved a few cards, and then nodded sharply. Once he had thus gained the approval of the vaunted Hierophant, Keeper Abreo cleared his throat and began to speak.

"You will all be keen to learn of your designations – to learn whether you are to be a Moon or a Sun, a Wheel or a Star. No doubt you yearn to get your initiation over with. I shall not delay with any great poetry or any pompous speech. I shall only say to you this: you have lived your lives afraid of the dark things in the woods. Now I ask you to go out in the woods. You are the dark things." He gestured to the spread of cards on the altar. "When your name is called – select a card. Allow your hand to be directed by fate. Then, your initiation may begin."

He stepped back, and called for Kinga. The dark-haired cadet advanced up the steps to the dais swiftly, and picked a card without even a moment's hesitation; Abreo did not even need to look at her to confirm which one she had chosen. "The Moon."

Orfeas indicated that she should follow him through one of the black doors lining the back wall; she did so, without so much as glancing behind her at her comrades that still lingered. Abreo was quick to call the next name – Ina did not allow her gaze to leave her boyfriend's face as Abreo called, quickly, "Pekka Hämäläinen."

Pekka moved slower than Kinga had; there was a deliberation to his step as he moved up to the altar. His hand hung, for a long moment, over the right-most card, before he seemed to change his mind at the very last moment and seized up the card next to it. Ina hadn't realised she had been twisting her shirt beneath her fingers until Abreo looked up and announced to the group assembled, "the Tower."

The Tower. She relaxed. Good. Good. That suited him – Pekka the Tower. She could see that; he would be good at it. He was strong. He was reliable. He would be fine. And, after all, the last two Towers had lived… nearly their full ten years.

Was that all? Ten years?

Orfeas had returned just in time to escort Pekka away; Ina wasn't sure anyone but her would have noticed the imperceptible turn he made to scan their ranks one more time, searching until he found her. She smiled.

He had nothing to worry about. She had promised.

"Zoran Czarnecki."

Zoran seemed almost startled – had he forgotten already that he was third? He was more hesitant than either Kinga or Pekka had been as he moved up to Abreo's side, and gazed down at the altar. Matthias Kloet and Avrova Vovk were watching him very intently, from their position at the side of the dais; they seemed to be almost waiting for him. At last, Zoran carefully picked up one of the cards, his brow furrowed, and Matthias seemed to relax imperceptibly as Abreo called, "the Hierophant."

The Hierophant? Ina's heart sank. They were long-lived…. long-lived and blighted with madness and disease. She could not rip her eyes from Zoran's back as her best friend turned to the Warriors, and Matthias indicated that he should follow his predecessor into the second of the two black doors. It shut behind them, echoing, echoing.

Ilja was next. Three of the curses had already been taken – how quickly this was all going. There would be so few left in only the moment. Ina suspected everyone had some quiet wish of which curse they wanted to be their own. Were people disappointed? She had always quietly thought the Chariot might suit her, but any hope in that direction was quickly dashed as Ilja's card turned up as the very same. He seemed… tense, but accepting. What happened, Ina wondered, what happened when you followed Orfeas Halkias down that dark corridor? She watched Ghjuvan and Khalore disappear in that direction as well, carrying with them their Death and Hanged Man cards; the sacellum was emptying quickly.

What was initiation?

She was so deep in her own thought that she was stirred from her distraction only by Myghal saying, quite loudly, from the front of the room, "I don't understand."

"Nor do I." Keeper Abreo was staring down at the card in his hand. "I… I apologise. This should not have happened. I must consult the Hierophant..."

"I don't get it."

"Please, step to the side. We will…. I will sort this in only a moment. We must continue with the rest of the ceremony. Mielikki Zorrico, please."

Myghal looked thunderous as Mielikki moved quickly to the front of the room, obviously keen not to hold up the process; Keeper Abreo obviously exhaled looking upon her card, looking relieved. "Excellent, most excellent. The Star. The Star. Next, then, is Azula Gehörtnicht."

Oh. Inanna bit her lip. They were running out of decent cards. What was left? She tried to run the tally in her head, but her every thought was interrupted with that single pre-occupation: were the others okay? Were they safe? Was initiation going smoothly?

Was anyone dead yet?

"Inanna Nirari."

She took in a deep breath. Don't trip, she told herself silently as she left Hyacinth's side and moved slowly towards the altar. The steps seemed to waver in front of her; she took a deep breath, and began to ascend. Abreo was offering her a warm, broad smile that did little to still her nerves; he carried the subtle scent of cinnamon and incense. Behind him, Myghal was watching her like he thought she had been the one to put him in this situation. Inanna could only try to ignore the weight of his gaze as she focused on the selection before her.

Two cards left. They had ornate designs on their back, inky black and purple intertwined with thorns. One of them had a slight curl to its right corner; the other had a fold in the centre, as though it had been pocketed some day long ago. Two cards left. It was as simple as left or right, top or bottom. Inanna wasn't sure it would matter – at this point, it was simply a matter of chance – so she just inhaled deeply, and picked up a card.

The image before her: two figures, reaching for one another, even as the roots of a tree entwined them, binding them together even as it kept them stubbornly apart. Enscribed above: the title of the curse. Abreo called it for her: "the Lovers."

In this light, Avrova Vovk looked like a ghost; she was a pale figure, shrouded in gloom, and when she offered her hand, Ina's instinct was to reject her, reject her and run from this whole dark space, run until she could see the sun again.

But she could not do that. She would not allow herself to do that. Not now. Not when the others were, not when Pekka was… She couldn't even truly say what she feared. She took a deep breath, and she reached; she took Avrova's hand, and she allowed herself to be guided through the final black door.

Somewhere, close by, someone was screaming. No, Ina thought, not someone. It was the shriek of a dying animal. Avrova seemed to wince at the sound of it, but did not reply to the silent question in Inanna's eyes. Rather, she continued preparing the drink in the goblet – Inanna had assumed, on first entering the room, that it was wine, but that was seeming less likely with every passing moment. It was a pale golden liquid, she saw, so pale that it was almost white. It had a pearl-like luminescence that clung to its surface; the colours seemed almost to move at will. In this small stone room, it seemed to reflect golden light from no discernible source.

"You seemed disappointed." Avrova's voice was not as sweet as Inanna had imagined that it might be; it was low and coarse, like a violin string that had been overplayed. She was a girl of such delicate beauty that Inanna was surprised to hear her speak. "To be chosen as inheritor of the Lovers' Curse."

"I..." Ina shook her head. "No."

"I would not blame you. I was disappointed, when my initiation came." Avrova smiled slightly. "I wanted to be the Star. Then, if you are not disappointed - are you afraid, Inanna Nirari?"

"Yes." The confession felt as if it had been ripped from her; Ina had not intended to give voice to that splinter of fear lodged in her heart. "I am."

"Why?"

"Why?" Ina shut her eyes, and took a deep breath. "I want to do well. I want to… make a change. Improve the world. Repay the debt I owe."

"There is more." It was not a question.

"But I don't know if I can." Her breath hitched. "I don't know if I'm strong enough."

"What you are saying… this is nobility, Ina, nobility and kindness and selflessness. The world will soon strip you of such notions."

"Were you scared? When your time came?"

Avrova barely breathed her answer. "Terrified."

That eased Ina's breathing, a little; her heart was no longer the same leaden weight in her chest. "Were you right to be?"

She wasn't sure why she had asked a question to which she so patently did not want an honest answer, but now it had been asked; she could not revoke it, and Avrova was considering the matter carefully, gazing down into the goblet as though its depths might reveal an answer where her own memories could not. "No," she said finally. "I should have saved some of that fear for what came next."

Inanna's mouth had gone dry.

"People sometimes mock the Lovers' Curse as weak. A decade with it hanging around my neck as a millstone has taught me otherwise. Love has so many forms, so many expressions. It motivates like nothing else. It is dangerous. And you, Inanna, will be dangerous. If you survive."

If you survive.

"But... life without love is a miserable prospect. I existed on the precipices of my own heart, watching those around me move in the ballet of romance and friendship without truly being capable of reciprocation. Nor could I ever hope to earn that love myself. My mere presence was enough to destroy the bonds formed in my vicinity." Avrova smiled ruefully. In the midst of such a speech, the expression was incongruous; they might have been sitting on the beach, watching the sea roil and speaking about romance. "This was my tithe for the curse that was accorded to me. And what one is not gifted that which one is due…. one must steal from elsewhere."

The light slanting in from the window in the corner was quicksilver; it painted both of them in such aureate tones that they seemed almost to glow. In that moment, Avrova Vovk looked so much like Sherida that Inanna nearly ran to embrace her. How could a white woman in her twenties have such a strong resemblance to her fifteen year old sister? It was in the curve of her mouth, the expression in her eyes, the way she held her head. Or… was it? Was there a resemblance at all, or was this just…?

"Do not misunderstand me, Ina. If you could forget what love felt like, you would not miss it. But this a curse, and so you cannot, and you will. Its absence, its loss, and its death will burrow into your heart like a canker; you will never cease to be aware of the weight of your heart in your chest. You will seek it where you can find it, and you will always be disappointed."

Inanna said, softly, "is this certainly my fate?"

"This was my tithe. I cannot say for sure what form yours might take. That being said… I am not sure what you could pray for that would be gentler. The Lover before me was over-imbued with love; that killed him also, and slower than it did I." Avrova turned, and placed the goblet in Ina's hands. "Sit down, and drink this."

"I…" Ina's mind was spinning. Was this it? "Is this… the curse?"

Avrova's eyes were the palest blue that Inanna could ever remember glimpsing. Had they been so pale a moment ago? It was like all the colour was draining from her: her hair was white; her skin was ceramic. "Something like that."

Inanna sat down and said, without knowing why, "is it poison?"

"If it is," Avrova said softly, "it is slow-acting."

Golden indeed, Inanna saw, and with Avrova's gaze so cold upon her, she tilted back her head and she drank. It was bitter, so bitter that her instinct was to retch – but Avrova's eyes were still upon her, and so she did not. There was no more than a few mouthfuls; she finished it, and was abruptly light-headed. If this was the curse, she thought, had that been initiation? Was that all there was to it? After all their talk…

"Every inch and every ounce of love to which I have laid claim," Avrova Vovk said, very softly. "Was stolen. It was never mine. I appropriated it from those to whom it was rightfully due – I took that love, that kindness and that intimacy, from the hearts and holds of dozens of daughters and hundreds of sisters and thousands of wives – all in an attempt to keep my heart warm for a moment or two." She folded her hands; a golden ring winked on her right hand. "Inanna Nirari. Spare me my thievery. Give me a love I can carry without guilt."

"Give you…?"

"Tell me what is in your heart."

So Inanna told her a story.

She told her about a girl who had been raised in the shadow of love, and who had never truly understood how it could be otherwise – a girl who had enjoyed the wealth of happiness and parental affection, in lieu of anything material; a girl whose parents loved one another and their children with a fullness that suggested if hearts could burst from overfilling then they would have done so many years ago; a girl whose mother who had gone hungry with a smile on her face to ensure her daughters did not know the fear furrowing her brow; a girl whose a father who would do anything to see his daughter's eyes light up in joy.

She told her about the boy next door, with hair like spun gold and eyes that looked like the sea – the boy who would sit with her on the docks for hours, as she invented stories about the sailors who crossed the sea before them, the places that they had been, the sights that they had seen and all that the world might contain; the boy into whose room she had crept, night after night, when the nightmares were too bad, so that the hammer of his heart could replace her own until she was calm enough to sleep; the boy who, in her heart, bore no name but was merely and simply him.

She told her about the day that this girl had been drafted for war duty – how the war had arrived for her, without invitation, to grab her in its cold clawed grasp, and how the boy had found her sobbing in the alley behind their homes, feeling that the world was caving in, that the sky had shattered and would fall in upon her at any moment. He had promised her, then, to never leave her. He had not broken his promise – and he had not asked her anything in return. How hollow she had seemed, to depend on him always without being able to support him. What could she give him that he did not already have?

She told her about the efforts this girl had made to give back the love which had been so unfairly heaped upon her, to love as others seemed to love her, even when only pain and suffering followed – how she had tried, to braid hair and bandage wounds and soothe to sleep – to earn the love she was shown, at every turn, without seeming to earn it at all.

And she told her about the lives that the girl and the boy had written for themselves, as they had once written lives for the sailors before them – how she had stolen away to his bed, or with him to the lake, or into the woods, to be alone and to say to one another, it will be okay, for what else could they say?

If I have you, what could possibly go wrong?

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Avrova Vovk began to weep white tears. They left wounds where they fell, burning deep black scores into her skin like the brand of an iron, but the former Lover made no sound and Inanna did not pause in her telling. In this moment, Inanna could almost believe that this story had never been hers; for these long, fractured seconds, it seemed like this love belonged to someone else, someone in another skin and another life, a girl who would walk back out of the sacellum and into the sunlight and live a long and happy life with the man that she loved. It was so far away, so utterly untenable, and in that moment Pekka seemed to her a stranger. Maybe she had never loved him. Maybe she had spied him on the docks one pale winter morning and had spun this tale to keep her heart full. Maybe he had another girl to keep his bed warm, her hair dark and her eyes liquid amber, a girl who did not wake screaming from nightmares, a girl whose smile concealed nothing beneath – maybe Ina had only ever imagined that she could be loved – that her love would ever be aught but a burden – that he would ever love her in return.

Maybe they had yet to meet.

Maybe she would walk out of this room and set eyes upon him for the first time.

Maybe everything would be alright.

Avrova had stood, and walked over to Inanna's side. Placing a pale hand, very gently, against Ina's head, the woman stooped and pressed a kiss to Ina's forehead. It was hot – it burned – no, this was cold, this was true cold, the kind of cold that burned. It seared against Inanna's skin; it went deep to the bone; it sunk in, between her veins and her sinews, to settle somewhere by her heart, this chip-flint-fragment of such intense cold. Avrova murmured, "militat omnis amans," and Ina was abruptly aware that she was falling. The world was retreating from her, as though it had been reeled abruptly away; there was only Avrova, her pale face cracked like a porcelain mask, her pale blue eyes full of white tears still unshed.

Ina was falling, and yet she was not – could not be – Inanna Nirari. No, she was Avrova Vovk. She was Avrova and she had loved… she had learned not to love.

She was Avrova Vovk, and she had promised her father that she would come home. She had promised her father that he would not die alone. Wasn't that love? Had she learned nothing?

Her father.

Her father was dead.

She had broken her promise.

That wasn't love.

Had she ever kept a promise?

Had she ever truly loved?

No... her father was in prison.

Wasn't he?

She was Avrova Vovk.

Or was she Inanna Nirari?

Pekka, I promise…

If there was light, then there was darkness, and here it was. Inanna fell into it, and it embraced her as a lover might, whispering nothing, promising nothing. She fell into the darkness; for once, there were no nightmares.