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your elders to object.”
    Juli’s jabs about the university struck home, as she knew they would. I had been a fool in those days, associating with so many ordinaries in such . . . free . . . circumstances. I had been warned that even conversation with ordinaries could seduce an undisciplined man. But indeed I had forgotten myself, my place, and my responsibilities.
    Never could I repeat such a failure. My sister had no one else.
    “Lace up your gown, Juli, and bind your hair properly, else go back to your own rooms. I don’t know who the Registry will send as escort, but it does our reputation no good for you to appear so . . . untidy.”
    “Bind your own hair,” she snapped. “I think I’ll cut mine off today. I hate it.”
    “Don’t. Just don’t. Please,
serena
.” My sister’s hair was supposed to remain uncut, plaited, and wound about her head in the style of a country matron, which indeed looked ridiculous with her tender features. But our family discipline prescribed it, just as it prescribed everything else, from the color and shape of our masks to the particular aspects of our bents that we could practice and the very gods we worshipped. Registry and family protocols shaped every detail of our lives, and investigators noted lapses.
    “Four years and I can change the rule to a style you prefer,” I said. “Please, just behave until then.” I could not bear the thought of Pons sending a minder to supervise us until I came to my majority.
    Pons had been livid when I was not publicly whipped, censured, or otherwise shamed after Montesard. She desired me to be an example, so that no pureblood family would dare send their progeny into the libertine world of a university again. Perhaps with her promotion to curator, shehad influence enough to get what she wanted. She couldn’t know that the price I’d already paid was irredeemable.
    For almost thirty years, my father’s father had served King Eodward as Navronne’s Royal Historian, using his magic to read battlefields or borderlands, for delving into ruins or deciphering ancient texts to extract the sweeping truths of war, migration, and civilization. The king had credited my grandsire with helping him grow Navronne into a healthy, prosperous kingdom renowned in the world—one with some chance to withstand this abrupt decline in the weather. I had longed to follow in his footsteps.
    By the age of ten years, almost every pureblood youth displayed a pronounced leaning toward one parent’s magical bent or the other’s. Yet my talents had remained balanced between the Masson bent for art and architecture and the Remeni bent for history. Though I showed a deft hand at portraiture, inherited from my Masson mother, my preference had ever been for my Remeni father’s bloodline magic. I relished the study of history.
    Dual bents were extremely rare, and usually displayed each as barely functioning. The family would prepare the youth for a modest future—hired work within pureblood society with severely limited use of magic, forbidden to marry or conceive children. Unfortunately, experience warned that two strong bents led inevitably to madness, and the Registry had long insisted that the lesser one be excised. Yet my talents had both manifested as quite robust, and by age sixteen, I still could not say honestly that one exceeded the other. The divine glory of the magic thrilled and satisfied no matter which I invoked. Even my brothers teased that my only madness was excessive adherence to rules.
    With the encouragement of my good and generous parents, my grandsire had allowed me to pursue both talents far longer than usual, even including a university education in history. If I maintained my strong discipline and even temper to the end of my studies, he would petition the Registry to allow me to retain both bents.
    Fool that I was, I squandered their indulgence, and my grandsire forbade me to pursue my bent for history further. No matter my pleading