"Hello, Astria. We need to talk."

Astria whirled around to face Beryl, who was sitting in the large, overstuffed chair in her sister’s bedchamber. There were still signs of sleep in Astria's eyes, and, as she spun round, her pillow-matted auburn hair flew out in several different directions.

Seeing her sister like that had an odd effect on Beryl. She could not remember the last time she had seen Astria in anything less than a perfectly-composed state. Unkempt and startled, she looked vulnerable. She looked human.

The Court Sorceress put her hand over her heart and fixed her sister with an angry look.

“Gods!” she said, her chest rising and falling beneath her silk nightgown as she fought to bring her breathing under control. “Are you trying to kill me?”

Beryl sat stone still. Through her one green eye, she peered at her sister across the heavy darkness of the room.

“That’s an unfortunate choice of words,” she said.

“Fine,” Astria said. “Be that way.” She sat down on the velvet-upholstered bench at the foot of her bed. “What’s so important that it couldn’t wait until the morning?”

“This,” Beryl said.

The scarred woman reached into her pocket, where her fingers closed around a heavy gold signet ring, property of a lesser matriarch of Great House Dentevi.

Or at least it had been until an hour or so ago, when Beryl had removed it from the dead matriarch’s finger.

Beryl tossed the ring to her sister, whose sleepy hands bobbled it before catching it.

Astria looked down at the ring in her hand. As she did, her eyes went wide, and all traces of sleep vanished from her face. Her mouth fell slightly open, and she looked up at Beryl.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” she said.

“Do I know what I’ve done?” Beryl repeated, incredulous. “I killed a Dentevi matriarch tonight. I killed her, and I killed four more Dentevis to boot. They’re lying in the street where I left them. Their bodies are probably still smoking. So, yes, I know exactly what I’ve done.” Her voice shook as she spoke. She leaned slightly forward in the chair and levelled a finger at her older sister. “And don’t you dare flatter yourself into thinking that I did it for you. Because this isn’t about you and me anymore. This is bigger than us; your salvation was just collateral damage.”

Beryl stood up and walked over to where her sister was sitting. Astria’s face was frozen in a kind of stunned look – her pupils were wide, and her mouth hung slightly open. Beryl wondered just how long it had been since anyone had dared to speak back to her sister. It seemed to her almost as though Astria had lost the ability to process hard truths.

“But enough about what I’ve done,” Beryl said. “Let’s talk about you for a second.” She leaned in close to Astria’s face, so that their eyes were level. “Have you ever killed anyone, Astria? And I don’t mean, have you ever had anyone killed, because I know the answer to that. No, what I want to know is: Have you ever looked someone right in the eyes – just like I’m looking at you, now – before you burned the life out of them? Have you ever smelled the smell of their melting skin as you watched them die? Do you have any idea what that feels like?”

Astria was silent. She stared back at her sister. Then, slowly, she looked down at her hands, averting her eyes.

Beryl shook her head.

“I didn’t think so,” she said. “So let me tell you how it makes me feel. It makes me feel like I’m dying inside, like I’m killing a little part of myself, too. And, if I keep it up, I won’t have any soul left. I’ll be nothing but scar – hardened, and rough, without feeling. And it will change me. It will turn me into one of those people who I try to tell myself that it’s okay to kill. Or, Gods forbid, it will turn me into you.”

Beryl was quiet for a moment. Then she stood upright again. Turning away from her sister, she said:

“Which is why I’m through with you, Astria. I’m through with the lies, and the deception, and the killing. I can’t deal with them. Not anymore. Whatever I was trying to change between us, whatever kind of relationship I was deluding myself into thinking we might have? It’s not worth it. I have been your guardian angel of late, but I will not be your assassin. I’m walking away with what little of my soul I still have intact. I don’t even care about my name anymore. You’re welcome to it. No name’s worth my soul, either. Not even our mother’s.”

Beryl turned back around to look at her sister. Astria was propping herself up with both arms and leaning slightly backwards, as though recoiling from a blow. She looked more stunned than angry.

Beryl sighed. Imagining this conversation in her head, she had expected to feel some sort of relief, or release, even. But what she felt instead was sadness. Sadness at the death of a dream which she had held on to for so long, in spite of such long odds, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

The dream was an illusion, she knew. Always had been. She had to let it go. But it still hurt to do so.

“Goodbye, Astria,” she said. “I hope you’re happy with the life you've chosen.”

Something about the finality of Beryl’s words seemed to snap Astria back to the present. Color started to return to the Court Sorceress’s face, and her mouth drew tight into a scowl.

“You can’t just leave,” she said. She threw the signet ring back at Beryl, hard, so that Beryl’s fingers smarted as she caught it. “You can't just do this to me and then walk away. Do you realize the position you’ve put me in? The Dentevis will come for my scalp.”

Beryl shook her head.

“Not if they’re smart, they won’t. I made it very clear what will happen to them if they do. And, after tonight, I suspect they will believe me. For what it will cost them to get you? You’re not worth it, Astria.”

Anger flashed across Astria’s face. Beryl could see twin sparks starting to smolder in the black centers of her sister’s eyes.

Beryl knew that, not too long ago, that ominous portent would have frightened her. It would have cowed her into submission.

But not anymore.

Astria was opening her mouth to speak, but Beryl cut her off.

“Even if the Dentevis are dumb enough to start a blood feud,” she said, “it won’t be with you. I’m the one who’s been killing them off – I made that very clear to them, too. If they come after someone, it will be me. And I’m not related to you, am I? I’m not a Trevanei. You saw to that. I’m just a Nameless troublemaker. You’re not responsible for me.” Beryl’s eye narrowed. “And don’t think I don’t know that’s why you will never give me my name back. It’s not really about what I did to our mother – or, at least, it hasn’t been about that for a long time now. No, it’s all about you, Astria. Just like everything else, it’s all about you. I’m just too useful to you the way I am, the way you made me.”

Beryl walked past her sister and made for the chamber’s enchanted door.

“Well, as of today, I’m giving you what you always wanted,” she said. “We’re strangers now.”

“Oh, how noble of you!” Astria called out after her. Her voice rose as she spoke, and Beryl could hear a kind of incredulous frustration straining against the false civility of her words. “It's that time already, is it? Time for your tactical retreat back into martyrdom, into that comfortable, piteous sanctuary from whence you always disclaim responsibility for the fires you start? Is that what happens now? You’re going to vanish off to some other world, and leave me behind to clean up your mess?”

“No,” Beryl said, fighting to keep her own voice level. “I’m going back to my shop, at least for now. What I said about stopping the Dentevis? I meant it. I’m not going to stand by and let them drown this world in blood for their own purposes, whatever those purposes may be. And the same goes for you. Whatever game you’re playing? It has to stop. Because, from now on, if you get yourself into trouble, I won’t be coming to your rescue.”

Beryl stopped in front of Astria’s door and traced her finger across the House Trevanei seal. The black marble door slid open, its movement silent and smooth.

“You’re making a mistake,” Astria said, and Beryl thought she could detect a trace of fear beneath her sister’s voice.

“It wouldn’t be the first,” Beryl said. “But it’s one I can live with.”

“Beryl, wait.”

Beryl stopped in mid-stride. She had one foot out the door.

“Did you ever manage to find Fisco Vane?” Astria asked.

Astria was normally a very good actress. But, just then, Beryl thought that Astria had been trying a little too hard to sound disinterested, to act as though she hadn’t been dying to ask precisely that question the whole time they had been talking.

Beryl turned around to face Astria, and the change in her sister's demeanor was startling. Moments earlier, Astria's anger had been looming like a summer storm. Now she was a picture of forced composure - her face a studied blank, her breathing calm. She held one hand behind her back, while the other pulled idly on a strand of her long hair, wrapping it around her fingers.

The transformation was as complete as it was abrupt, and it sent a small chill down Beryl's spine.

Beryl was silent for a moment while she tried to decide how much of her encounter with the Shark she ought to reveal to her sister. Given the circumstances, she concluded that less was more.

“I did,” she said.

“Did you find out about his arrangement with the Dentevis?”

“Yes, I did.”

This time it was Astria’s turn to be silent for a moment. Beryl waited quietly for her sister came to her own decision about how much to admit to knowing.

“Did you find out what he was going to sell to them?” Astria eventually asked. Beryl could see that her sister was biting her lip.

“The slave collars? Yes, I did,” Beryl said.

“And did the Dentevis get them?”

“No, they didn’t,” Beryl said.

“And I suppose I have you to thank for that?”

“Yes, you do.”

“What happened to them?” Astria asked. As she did, she seemed to shift her weight forward ever so slightly, and Beryl could hear a sort of poorly-concealed nervous excitement lurking just beneath her sister’s words. “The collars, I mean. Do you still have them?”

Beryl shook her head. “No,” she said.

Astria's fingers stopped playing with her hair. “Where are they?”

“I destroyed them.”

“That was a mistake,” Astria said, her tone sharply changed. The feigned disinterest had vanished in an instant, replaced by a familiar anger. Her eyes blazed; the storm had returned.

Beryl felt an urge to lash out at her sister. To tell her about the vision she’d had when she had first touched the collar. To try to shame her, to try to hurt her.

But she didn’t. Something held her back. It felt to her like the fragile remnant of her soul, fighting for survival.

So she just said: “It was no mistake.” A tear formed in her one green eye as she said it.

Then she walked out the door.