THREES ISTERSI SLAND SEPTEMBER1702 H er heart was broken. The jagged shards of it stabbed at her soul until each hour, each moment, of what her life had become was a misery. Even her children - those she had carried in her body, those she carried for her lost sisters - were no comfort. Nor was she, to her great shame, any comfort to them. She had left them, even as their father had left them. Her husband, her lover, her heart, had returned to the sea, and the parts of her that were hope and love and magic had died that day. Even now he would not remember the years they'd had together, the joy of them. He would not remember her, or their sons, their daughters, the life they'd made on the island. Such was his nature. Such was her fate. And her sisters', she thought as she stood on the cliffs she loved, above a sea that boiled and bucked. They, too, had been fated to love and to lose. The one who was Air had loved a handsome face and kind words that had disguised a beast. A beast who had shed her blood. He had murdered her for what she was, and she had not used her power to stop him. And so the one who was Earth had raged and grieved and built her