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Ana wouldn’t stand quietly in the corner or slip away to the nursery. She was fighting her way toward me, past the wall of water my mother summoned. She tore at it with her wind, trying to divert the swell, but her power was nothing to the Queen.

“Stop that howling.”

Whose? Mine? My mouth was open, screaming, tears running down my face. No matter how often it happened, I couldn’t stop the tears. The pain—it wrung every bit of control from me.

The wall of water surged higher, then plummeted down in a graceful swirl.

Graceful, if it hadn’t been horrific. If that twirling rope of water was not shoving itself down Ana’s throat, silencing her screams.

Drowning her.

I pressed my eyes closed.

Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.

But it wouldn’t. I was old enough to know that, to know that when my mother came—when she brought him with her—they wouldn’t stop until he was satisfied.

I choked, sputtering, my body fully out of my control.

Make it stop.

It wouldn’t stop.

Make it stop.

Then he withdrew, the intense pressure ripped from my body. Every orifice aching, my stomach clenched, the bitter emptiness inside of me somehow hollower than it had been before.

My eyes were still closed.

The roar of water couldn’t cover the things happening within the room, my fae hearing too sharp even if I was deficient in every other way.

Fabric shifted back into place, as if nothing untoward had happened. A satisfied male sigh.

“Well?” My mother demanded in her low whisper, cold and calculating, always.

“I have filled her as best I can.”

My stomach lurched. I was going to be ill.

Not now, I urged myself. Not until they are gone. Not until they leave us. If I could hold out that long, Ana would pull me into her lap. Maybe she, finally, would help me escape this never-ending torture.

“When will we know?” The Queen asked.

“We must give the seeds of magic time to take root.”

I couldn’t contain it. Bile spewed from my throat, onto the stone floor before me. My knees trembled with the force of it. I collapsed to them, hardly feeling the pain of my joints hitting the ground. Everything else hurt too much.

My mother’s disgusted scoff filled my ears.

They walked away, out the door which closed with a soft sweep of hinges. The crash of water softened until it was nothing but the natural fall of water into a still pool. I stared at that door for several long beats, never truly believing the torture was over.

Magic would never take root. Not in me. No matter how many times they tried to pump me full.

Finally, I allowed myself to look to Ana, a whimper escaping my throat.

A whimper that turned to a scream, with no crash of water to cover it.

She lay on the cold stone floor, no breeze left to lift her hair away from her cheek. Her once warm brown eyes stared at me, unseeing.