“She’s just a girl!” someone shouts, and it’s true.

Avani Wystan is a girl, barely sixteen and all the more terrifying for it, but she’s also insanely good at what she does.

It’s her destiny, whatever the people say.

And she’s standing just feet away from me, looking straight out at the crowd like I’m not quite brave enough to do. If a man from the Water realm or the Sky Realm was here, he would think she was Queen.

She is not, of course.

“Everyone here,” I say, waving my hand vaguely at both the crowd and the people standing beside me, “is alive because of that girl. If I say that she is my highest general, it is for good reason.”

Two girls, so close in age and so far apart in almost all else… it’s a wild thing, in the end. In another life, we could have been friends, but we are in this life, this world, and that is not a safe thing to be.

Sometimes, I hate being Queen.

Sometimes, I hate everything about destiny.

But what can I do about it?

I was born to rule, and I am ruling. I can’t be bothered to fight, not like Avani.

That girl could probably fight fate and win easily, the strength she has.

It’s… incredible.