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The sorciere comes when the snow melts.

Cloaked in modest black, she wears little adornment but for the ruby in her ear, glinting in the timid sunlight.

She leads a steed the color of pitch, and beneath the brim of her hat her eyes are shrewd and wide.

You must not look into them, for if you do, you will see impossible things, future and past and diverging paths tangled within those golden depths.

She comes with the first of the Aurélian flowers, those precious snowdrops as soft as an infant’s palms. She stoops to pick one, prying it gently from the heavy, sodden snow.

She tucks it behind her ear and smiles to herself: a smile that is too wide, hiding power in the corners of her mouth and unknowable wisdom under her tongue.

Then she picks a second one, and this one she holds carefully, as though it is a gift for a lover.

She comes in the warm hour before the sun takes its bows.

Her arrival fills the air with magic-scent, impossible to deny—not just of the sage-sharp Mother of transformation, but the sweet freshness of creation and the heady incense of destruction.

Unlike most sorciers, she draws powers not only from Morgane, but from all three sisters.

They weigh heavy on her shoulders and press creases into her brow, but her footsteps are light and proud, almost eager.

Power comes with a price, but it also comes with promise.

She comes to the edge of Lac des Cygnes and inspects herself in its waters, letting her steed drink while she attempts to restrain her wild black hair, sweeping it behind her ears.

She looks almost mortal then. Almost vulnerable.

But do not let that fool you—she is a trickster, and there is only one who has ever been able to truly tame her.

That is where she heads now. Along the lake’s edge, through the tender blooms and the crisp, shimmering crust of snow, her chin raised and mouth tight with determination.

There, by the newly rebuilt docks, near the fresh tulips and elegant boats floating among the duckweed, is the Guardian of the Lake.

A statue, white marble veined in gold, of an angelic girl.

Her features are long, elegant, bright with hope—her hand reaches and reaches and reaches into the sky.

From her back, half outspread, sprout beautiful swan’s wings.

The sorciere releases her steed’s reins, allowing him to wander off and graze. Then she begins to approach the statue, and she appears to grow nervous—a rarity for one with such power as hers. Slowly she extends a shaking hand. Slowly she lays it on the girl’s outstretched wing.

Then she does something truly bizarre. She draws a strange shape in the air and steps up onto the statue’s pedestal.

Rivulets of shimmering golden liquid run down her wrists, dripping off her fingers.

This is true magic, you see—not a street performer’s disappearing scarf or the distant burst of fireworks, but a sticky, thick fluid, flowing with power.

The sorciere brings her dripping hands up to the statue’s face, cupping the other girl’s cheeks, as gentle as the sun telling the moon to rest.

Then she kisses the statue on the mouth.

It is an act of grief and an act of despair and an act of hope. It awakens a flash of golden light, blossoming in the space between the girls’ hearts, one of flesh and one of stone.

And then, as though by a miracle, as though by a curse, the marble girl’s stone skin begins to melt away.

It melts, revealing the graceful column of a throat, the curve of a jaw, the slope of a calf.

It melts, revealing the silk of a doublet, the curve of a breast, the intricate feathering of wings.

It melts, revealing a spot of blood on the back of the girl’s shoulder, the flesh quickly knitting back together until no more than a scar remains.

The marble girl, marble no more, lowers her hand. A heavy breath escapes her, a sound both weary and relieved, the sound of a caged bird finding freedom at last.

There is a shudder of silence, filled with nothing but the beating of two hearts.

Beat, beat.

The girl with the white wings remains rigid in the sorceress’s arms.

Then, as the first rays of sunset seep like golden blood into the lake, she kisses back.

FIN.