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“Don’t stop on my account,” Alice said, appearing with a grin. Her arms were loaded with food, and Fey’s stomach growled loudly at the sight of it all.

“You need to eat,” Alice warned. “That power has to come from somewhere, and if you’re not careful you’ll lose all those muscles you’ve worked so hard to get in training.”

Fey nodded, thinking about the Med Witch who had said something similar, and took a plate from her sister. Alice set the rest down around them and grabbed an orange for herself, peeling it slowly, removing the skin carefully in one long strip.

I forgot she did that, Fey realized, and remembering it made her smile. Alice, eating oranges in the kitchen, Merle swatting at the peel from the floor as it grew longer and longer.

“So,” Alice began. “How much Allium did the White Priestesses give you during your Awakening?”

“That was Allium?” Fey asked.

Alice popped an orange fragment in her mouth. “The silver elixir they gave you to drink? Yeah. That was Allium, all right.”

Her nightmares reared in the back of her mind, and Fey shook them away. Maybe they weren’t nightmares, after all, she realized. Maybe a warning, from something. From the Goddess herself, even.

“Do you remember how much the Priestess gave you?”

“Yeah,” Fey answered. The food was delicious, but she barely tasted it, she was eating so fast. She swallowed. “She filled two goblets and made me drink it all.”

Alice whistled through her teeth. “Two full goblets? Fuck the Goddess, you might be even stronger than I’d hoped, Fey. They must have been terrified of you.” She chuckled.

“Why did they do it?” Fey asked, her voice small. Hurt.

Alice shrugged. “Control, is my bet. The royal family is only in power because they were blessed by the Goddess with control over all four elements, right? But what if, over time, the Goddess’s blessings outside of the royal line became even more powerful? What if Witches all around the realm were becoming stronger, not weaker, over the years?”

Alice motioned toward Fey with an orange slice before popping it into her mouth. “You’re a walking threat to the throne. Not because you could kill the Queen, though you obviously could, if what you did earlier is any indication. But your real threat, Fey, is what you represent. A stronger Witch, Goddess blessed with all four elements, and not of the royal family line. Your very existence is a direct challenge to the Queen’s legitimacy.”

Fey’s stomach sank.

“How many Witches like me are out there?” she asked.

Again, Alice shrugged. “Who knows? Could be ten. Could be a hundred. Or it could just be you.” She chewed her orange thoughtfully and said, “You’re the first we’ve given the antidote to, though. The first one who received Allium during their Awakening. Most Witches weren’t strong enough to be given any. Maybe one in twenty, as best as we can tell.”

“Were you?” Fey asked.

Alice shook her head. “No,” she admitted. “No, and I was one of the first to take the antidote, just as a test, but it didn’t do anything to me. The Witches who were given Allium weren’t picked at random, either. The Priestesses are looking for something. All those rituals, all the cards and bones, they’re assessing our power, somehow.”

Fey remembered the old Priestess, the way she had scrutinized her, tested her. Spent seemingly far longer with her than the other Witches who had been there that day.

“When they find someone that they deem too strong? They use the Allium to dull their powers, cutting off their connection to certain elements. And they’ve been doing it for generations. Taking our young girls and ripping their birthrights from them, just to maintain the Crown. Just to convince us all that the Goddess chose their line to rule over everyone.”

Fey felt sick. Thousands of girls throughout the realm, every year, were sent to the Goddess Temples. How many of them were neutered like she was? Made lesser, more insignificant, all to maintain the status quo?

“How did you find out about this?” Fey asked, stunned. “How did you uncover any of this?”

Alice stared at her for a long moment, assessing.

“You,” she said, finally. “Or, you were the first piece to the puzzle, I guess.” She set her orange aside. “It was something you mentioned when you were inducted into the Blades, years ago. I brought you a healing elixir for your sigils, do you remember?”

Fey nodded.

“Dameon must have assumed you would make one for yourself, being a Water Witch, but I saw you the next day and you weren’t healing fast enough, and you clearly hadn’t taken anything for it.”

Fey remembered.

“So, I brought you one, from our own stock in the training gym. And you know what you told me? You told me it tasted awful.” Alice laughed.

“It did,” Fey said. “Like garbage water. It was foul.”