Don't step into the light, they told her. Seventh daughter of a third-tier nobleman and his gypsy wife; poor, unnoticed Ty Lee, sent away to boarding school to curry favor as part of a matched set, identical sisters with pink cheeks and long braids and gleaming smiles. Safety in numbers, safety in conformity. The nail that sticks up is the first hammered down.

(Gymnastics is a way to escape that, temporarily take refuge from the mind numbing constraints. She scrapes her knees and breaks her arm leaping off the roof before her parents finally hire her a tutor, but they're quick to discover her unearthly flexibility. It ever so slightly sets her apart, and though it's a useless skill in the grand scheme of things, she pushes herself harder and harder to succeed at it all the same.)

Princess Azula blazes like the sun, consuming everyone in her path and making a slow disaster out of them. Girls pale and launch their foreheads at the floor when she saunters by; she once set Tanaka Emi's hair aflame because the younger girl beat her in a history examination. Ty Lee teaches her to do a triple back handspring on the firebending green and learns to swallow her fear whole.

(Demon child, her mother's friends whisper, Ursa told me last month that she once burned Prince Zuko's bed to ashes. While he was still inside. Her father puts her up to it- that's what I've heard. Ursa vanishes into the night. Azula leaves school to be tutored by Lord Ozai's best generals and starts to paint her lips the color of blood.)

Ty Lee is stupid, Ty Lee only thinks about boys and makeup and cartwheels; no, she's learned her lessons well, is smart enough to hide a mathematician's heart behind a cheerful, innocent face. Four simpering compliments and Azula won't shove her down the stairs, six centimeters of hoisted skirt and she can have dilated eyes watching her all night, twelve surgically precise jabs along the chi pathway and a bender can be made kitten-weak. Stupid girls do not survive the court, do not get become ladies-in-waiting or her royal highness's chosen companions; the clever ones who are too proud to hide their brains get culled with even more speed. Mai never figured out the rule and Azula never had to, but Ty Lee can't paint a picture or sing an aria or dance Nihon Buyo without her limbs spinning in colorful directions and doesn't have the luxury of dodging it.

(Don't tell anyone, Azula says after her hot breath laps against Ty Lee's neck. Don't tell anyone, Azula says after she kisses Ty Lee for the third time. Don't tell anyone, Azula says after she starts bringing Ty Lee to her chambers in the night and slipping her out at dawn. This is the price you pay, she reminds herself, for the princess's favor, and tries to feel as though she's been awarded a great honor; imperial concubine, a pretty little doll that's secretly caressed and broken before the sun comes up.)

The war means nothing to her, despite the endless hours she spent learning history, being lectured on General Treung's strategy and Fire Lord Sozin's conquest of the Air Temples. Mai joins Azula's mission because she is bored and craves adventure; Ty Lee joins because Azula threatens to incinerate her entire performing company if she doesn't. Fight, she's told, so she does, the avatar and the Kyoshi Warriors and the Earth King until there's so many fingers pointed she can't tell who's to blame. Azula raised her from poverty, Azula raised her from obscurity, Azula is the most amazing and perfect and beautiful woman in the entire Fire Nation, in the entire world- she wants to believe it so badly she aches sometimes, wants to go back to little girl hero worship, but she finds that she is no longer capable of believing half the gushing words that spill out of her mouth anymore. Azula is cruel, Azula is a monster, Azula hurts me and hurts Mai and hurts-

Mai betrays Azula because she loves Zuko and Ty Lee betrays Azula because she loves Mai. She sees Azula's rapid unraveling, how she twists her face and moves to plunge the cold fire into her oldest friend's chest, and thrusts swift fingers into pressure points until the princess spins and crumbles. It is the only time she has ever, ever gotten the upper hand, and it not nearly as satisfying as she'd imagined it would be, pinned back by guards and staring into deranged lightning eyes.

(She first runs away to join the circus when she's eight. Eight turns into eleven turns into fourteen and she's still running.)