“Good to see you out of the back room, Father,” Rowena said simply, pulling the wristwrap up over her Sigils.

Her father, Tomas, was a large man with an open face and a mouth that was usually quick to smile. Now, though, he looked livid. He reached down and grabbed her wrist, pulling the wrap back down and glancing at the Sigil emblazoned upon it. “So it’s true.”

Rowena yanked her arm back with difficulty. “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

“You’d better. No daughter of mine is going to be a ROGUE,” he retorted, running his hands through his muddy brown hair. He shifted his weight from side to side, his legs in a wide stance, as though he were preparing for a fight.

“Well, it’s a bit late for that,” she said archly, rubbing her wrist.

Tomas caught her eye, winced, and sat down in the chair beside her bed with an angry grunt, causing the wood to squeak from his bulk. “Rowena–” he started.

“If talking about this–” she gestured at her wrist, “--is all you came for, you can go. I haven’t seen you in over a week; I hardly need to see you now while I’m… recovering.”

“No, I… I’m glad you’re okay,” he said uneasily, but reached out with his large hand to stroke her hair, a hand that had so often given hugs and help when she was a small child. It had been a while since he’d treated her like his little daughter– she supposed it had been a long time since she'd been his little daughter. But then he met her eyes, her strange new eyes, and shuddered a little bit.

“I know it’s a little unusual,” Rowena started, but stopped herself. She didn’t really know what to say about it at all.

“I heard that you…” Tomas’ voice broke a little bit. “If you saw someone, a stranger, a suspect… someone who could have had something to do with Tommie’s death… you should have told me.”

Rowena blinked and gaped. She took a few moments to try to sort out her thoughts about what he’d just said, and failed. “Are you– how could you— just when was I supposed to tell you, pray tell?” she said. “Before your first drink of the day, or after your last?”

“That’s not fair,” Tomas protested, rubbing his eyes with his hand. “I lost my son.”

“And I lost a brother! And so did Calla!” Rowena pointed out. “What about your daughters?” She held her hands together, palm to palm, in front of her lips and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself down.

“I know I let you down,” Tomas muttered uncomfortably. The pain in his voice was apparent, but Rowena didn’t care.

“I’m hardly surprised,” she said, her jaw tight.

“But that’s still no reason to go do– do that,” Tomas regained a little of his disappointment from earlier. His face was wild with distress. “How could you, Ro?”

“I… I know that stranger is connected to Tommie’s death somehow. I know it!” Rowena said fiercely.

“But why would you choose a ROGUE?” He spat the word out like it was poison. “I understand you want to go after that… that stranger you say you saw.”

“Someone has to.”

“But why not choose WARRIOR?” he couldn’t keep the look of betrayal out of his brown eyes, the only part of him that she had inherited.

And she was grateful for that. She looked at him in disgust, tightness in her chest, thinking of all of the times over the last years that he’d let her do the heavy lifting with their family and business. She didn’t want or need any more pieces of him: not physically, not mentally, and certainly not his Class.

“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” Rowena said, her voice low and tight. She tried to shovel her anger into the emptiness inside her, stuffing it far away.

“I don’t know where you got that idea, young lady,” Tomas pointed a finger in her face, beginning to heat up again. “Did you even think about the consequences of this? A WARRIOR can retire and open up a shop. But who would ever go to a store run by a retired ROGUE?”

Rowena’s breath caught again, and she forced herself to inhale and exhale evenly. He wasn’t wrong, but she couldn’t think about that right now. Slowly, she caught his and held his gaze, knowing her unusual eyes made him uncomfortable.

“I haven’t had to explain myself to you since I first took Tommie from mother’s dead arms and had to figure out out to care for him at age eleven. I haven’t had to explain myself to you since I took over the shop that puts food in this family’s mouth at age fourteen. I haven’t had to explain myself to you since you disappeared into a drunken stupor after my brother died– not long before my sixteenth birthday, which is the age of majority, in case you’d forgotten. So I’m sure as hellfire not going to start now. Get out of my room.” Rowena didn’t yell the last words, but the intensity with which she said them caused her father to freeze. “NOW.”

Influence Individual, Activated. Level One Achieved! the foggy voice said triumphantly in her head as the last word escaped her lips.

What? she thought frantically. No! I selected Calm Person and Detect Secret! I shouldn’t get another Ability until my Subclass levels!

Smugly, the voice responded, Strong emotion or dire circumstances can add additional Abilities to your roster or trigger their use. Especially for you.

I didn’t want that!

Distracted, she hardly noticed that her father had gotten up and left the room without a word, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Sorel’s head had appeared between the frame and the door. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Rowena said flatly. “No. I’m guessing you heard all of that?”

Sorel just nodded, then hesitated.

“What is it?” Rowena was getting tired again, and rubbed her temples with her fingertips.

Sorel looked down at the floor for a moment, and then her own orange-red eyes met Rowena’s. “You don’t have to tell me why you--”

Rowena sighed, and then gestured at the chair by her bed. “Come on in.”

The tall girl paused, but came into the room. She sat, and then waited patiently for Rowena to begin speaking, expression grave.

“I don’t actually know why, not exactly,” Rowena confessed, shaking her head. “I just… you’ve seen my father. He’s all I can think of when I think of a WARRIOR and I—anyway– I couldn’t stomach the smells of the blood, from when– wait, did that happen to you?” she added, suddenly curious to hear about Sorel’s experience with the Heartstone.

Sorel nodded curtly. “A fog. The Sigils. Choices, all around us.”

“Did you hear the voices?”

“At first,” Sorel confirmed. “I didn’t need them, though. It didn’t take me long to make my Selection. I knew I was going to be a WARRIOR - Shield.”

“But did you know that because you’d decided before? Or did you see something in the fog that made you realize that’s what you wanted?” Rowena leaned forward eagerly.

“I smelled the blood and– it smelled alright. But when I thought about being a Shield, it felt like… like the summer sun on a ripe peach,” Sorel grinned slightly with the memory. “I’ve always wanted to protect. Defend.”

“The sun on a ripe peach,” Rowena repeated, surprised. She smiled a little for the first time in what felt like a long time. “That’s poetic.”

Sorel didn’t respond, but Rowena thought she saw a little warmth enter her expression.

“Well, that’s how I felt, too. I don’t know why I felt it for ROGUE. I felt it for OTHER, too,” she added quickly, feeling a slight need to defend herself. “But that wasn’t going to get me where I need to go right now.”

The other girl just nodded. “I figured you’d have your reasons.”

“I wish everyone was as open to that idea as you are,” Rowena said with a sigh.

They sat in a comfortable silence for a few minutes. Rowena enjoyed the chance to be in another’s company without talking or explaining, but it was short lived as another thought occurred to her. “And Mattie? You seem close. Do you know what happened to Mattie?”

To Rowena’s surprise, Sorel blushed a little bit. “I’ll let Mattie tell her own story. And speaking of Mattie, you should get more rest if we’re going to go after this mysterious stranger.” She stood up to leave.

“We?” Rowena asked, bewildered, as she leaned back in bed. Just one more rest, she promised herself. One more rest, and then she’d figure out just how to go about finding the stranger.

“It’s all decided. Kieran, Mattie, and I discussed it after we left. If Jacob isn’t sending anyone after him… we’ll have to go. You can’t go alone. You can barely run,” Sorel pointed out with an amused twist of her mouth.

Rowena was getting too sleepy to argue. “We’ll discuss… this… later…” she murmured as she closed her eyes.