Ealin had been twelve years old the first time it happened. Her father had always been a well-respected mage, still studying his craft under the ancient archmage but with pupils of his own, but that summer, the old archmage had died, and her father, Jaeron, had ascended to his place.

Ealin herself kept busy in the Mage's Keep; she could not begin studying magic until she had grown another year, and so most of her days were filled with chores, from sweeping and dusting and laundering to helping to prepare the plain fare that was served at the keep. By night, her father gave her books to read and quizzed her on arcane subjects, for it was his ambition to have her follow in his footsteps as an apprentice to magecraft and the use of bloodstones.

At least, that was what she had always believed.

"There you are," he said one night, opening his chamber door in response to her knock.

"I am sorry, Father; have you been waiting for me?" She was carrying his evening tea on a tray, and as he held the door open for her, she crept through the chamber on quiet feet. She made a practice of being subtle and quiet and in every way avoiding any disturbance; the archmage and her apprentices were frequently in need of absolute silence for their studies and for their experiments.

"I have been."

"Well, here is your tea, Father. I'll come get the tray before you slee—"

"No, stay a minute, my dear."

Ealin set the tray on her father's tea table and looked up at him curiously. He had never been one for companionship; usually, his affections for her were muted, rendered with courtesies or curt words as she came and went throughout the day. She kept a room in the servants' quarters and seldom saw him, except that she was the one assigned to his wing of the Keep, the only one of the maidservants with kin among the mages.

"Come here."

Ealin followed her father's gesture, approaching his work table, whereupon lay the same huge book she had marveled at in her youth. Now that she was older and better-read, she could make out his steady, even script; moreover, she could make out the drawings he had carefully scribed onto one of the large pages—make them out, but not understand them.

"What are you working on, Father?" she asked, genuinely curious. She reached out, but her fingertips hovered an inch above the page. She was too frightened and too unworthy to touch his work.

"An experiment. A grand experiment, but a secret one. Can you keep a secret, my little bird?"

Ealin looked up at her father under her lashes, her heart skipping a beat. She had often craved his affection, ever since she had been a small child and, motherless, had been tended more by the female servants than by him. She knew that he loved her—on an intellectual level, she knew it, for he was her father and she his daughter. However, of embraces and sweetness and kindness there was little, and she often felt very alone.

When he called her his little bird, a token of affection that was so very rare and so strongly craved, she knew without consciously acknowledging it that she would do absolutely anything for him. "I can keep a secret very well, Father."

The archmage turned toward his book, reaching out to gently trace the edge of the page. "This is my most cherished study, my greatest work. This is the secret, Ealin. The secret to our ascendance to the true heights of our race."

He smiled, his fingertip trailing over a carefully-drawn funnel. Next to it he had sketched a curving metal tube ending in a wicked point. "The one thing the Arcborn have which we lack is magic. At the end of the day, it is such a small thing; we capture it easily with bloodstones. But someday...Someday, we, too, will have magic in our blood."

Turning again to look at Ealin, Jaeron raised his brows. "And you will be the first, Daughter."

A spike of fear shot through Ealin's heart. "What do you mean?"

He opened the cupboard on his desk and from within, he produced an object that looked very much like what he had drawn in his book. "Look," he said. "The funnel collects the blood; this piece here—" and he indicated the narrow metal tube with a tap of his index finger— "will, with the pull of gravity, allow it to flow directly into an open vein."

"Father, what—"

"You'll help me, won't you, my little bird?"

Ealin felt suddenly lightheaded. She could not tear her eyes away from the innocent-looking device her father had produced from his desk. When finally she did, she met his dark, fathomless gaze, and she felt herself nodding without her conscious consent. "I'll do anything to help you, Father."

He smiled at her and reached out, cupping her face in his hand. Ealin closed her eyes at once, the gentle touch sending a bolt of pain through her stomach—mingled joy and fear.

"It will be but a moment, and all will be arranged," he whispered. "Stay here."

And with that, he left the funnel and the tube on the desk, and he left the room.

Ealin stood where she was, staring at the door, for a moment. Then, her knees shaking, she looked at the device and at the book. Leaning over her father's notes, she could pick out the thread of his theories.

...to draw the blood laden with magical properties into the veins of the Starborn subject, thereby mingling the two currents and empowering the inert blood...

...remains to be seen whether the body will then be fully empowered; however, as research has borne out, the effects of the Arcborn bloodline do not quickly fade, such that a mixie born of a Starborn woman and an Arcborn man is nearly equal in his power as a fully Arcborn child. It follows that should the experiment prove effective, the subject should enjoy a broad range of magical command...

...to test upon a subject young enough to withstand the intrusion, in good physical health and with a strong faculty for healing...

Her breath was thin and unsteady, and she felt she might not remain on her feet; grasping for purchase on the edge of the desk, she lowered herself into her father's seat and closed her eyes.

But she only sat for a moment before the door opened again, and she looked up to see her father standing there with a child by the hand. It was a little girl, her blonde hair hanging lank around her cheeks. On the left was a new-made marke, still red and scabbed.

Ealin had changed her mind. She did not want to do this.

But there was a light in her father's eyes: the light of fervent intent, of glory. He locked the door behind him. The child looked up at him, raising a balled fist to her mouth; her eyes were wet with tears, and when she traded a glance with Ealin, they were full of fear that did not discriminate.

***

It was the middle hour of the night when all was through, and Ealin could not stand. She sat with her back against the wall, clutching a bowl to her chest. She had already been sick twice, and her father was pacing on the other side of the room, his long, cruel fingers knotted into his dark curls. The little girl lay on a length of canvas at the end of her father's bed, and the flagstones were slick with blood.

"And now we wait," he said. "We must simply wait. Unless you feel it. Do you feel it, Ealin?"

Ealin had no capacity in her mind to try to feel anything. She was staring at the little girl, whose name she did not know, and there was a stone where her heart had been. No—not a stone. A deep, bottomless chasm, an endless, dark abyss.

"Ealin," her father said.

She looked up at him; her eyes felt heavy and sore with weeping. "I don't feel it," she whispered. "Yet."

She did not feel anything, because the nameless child was dead, and she thought that she, too, would soon die. She could not tell how much of the blood soaking her sleeve and the side of her habit was hers and how much had belonged to the little girl until her father had claimed it for the purposes of this mad experiment.

Ealin was certain her father had not meant to kill the girl. To consider otherwise was more than she could bear. It was simply that he had been so eager—so eager that his hands had shaken. He had sat Ealin here, where she still sat, her back against the wall, and he had cleaned his tools in a kettle of boiling water and then, ever so carefully, he had inserted the pointed end of that device into her arm.

"It must find the vein," he had muttered as he fished with the point underneath Ealin's skin. Cold and shivering, she had done her best to sit still for him and had refused to look.

The little girl had crept back to stand in a corner, her hands over her mouth, and had begun to cry, and she had not stopped until much later. She cried when Ealin's father brought her over to her; she cried, shaking uncontrollably, when he tried to open a vein in her wrist and instead opened a gash. She cried when he held her up by the back of her dress, keeping her wrist above the funnel, which Ealin held in one shaking hand.

Ealin had not been able to look at the girl's face. She had watched her father's instead, and it was the way he had looked that had scared her most of all.

"What a mess," he said, shaking his head as he surveyed the scene. He looked at Ealin, the corner of his mouth twitching down, and a pang of hurt broke through the terrible numbness that had consumed her—hurt, because he had looked at her as if it were her fault.

"It will work, Father," she said, trying to feel the conviction she put into her voice. "You are a genius. I know it will work."

He smiled at her then. When he knelt at her side and took her arm into his hands, he was gentle. He had given her a wad of cotton to press over the wound in her arm, and it had worked to stem the flow of blood. When he took it away, the scab reopened, but only a little, and the blood was sluggish and thick. "Lie down, little bird," he whispered, leaning down to kiss her brow. "You must rest, and in the morning, you must tell me if you feel the power."

"What will you—" Ealin couldn't find the words to ask; they froze on her lips. What will you do with the girl that you killed? The girl that you killed for me?

"Don't worry. I have help." He stood, and as he did, he scooped Ealin into his arms as if she were just a little girl no older than the Arcborn child he'd bled dry that night. Then he lay her down in his very own narrow pallet and drew the clean blanket up over her, heedless of how the sticky blood on her arm might stain it, and he smoothed her dark hair back from her face. "Sleep, Ealin. Sleep, and dream of tomorrow."