I collapsed back into my cell, sitting on my heels. What I needed to do was think, but what I was doing was biting back hysterical laughter. It just all felt so absurd. Nalei’s soft yet insistent call snapped me out of my internal struggle.

  “Izak!” She whispered as loudly as possible. “Izak!”

  “I can hear you, Nalei,” I whispered back. “What?”

  “What were you talking to that guard about?” Nalei asked.

  I hesitated. I hadn’t spoken about my brother, or my family at all, to any Biralei except Adain. The silence felt physical, palpable, and hard to break through despite the circumstances.

  “I think I could, maybe, convince him to help us get out,” I whispered back. “I knew someone in his family once. A Mage.”

  Silence. Then, Nalei whispered back more softly.

  “He does seem kinder than the others,” she said. “Younger and softer. I hope you’re right.”

  I didn’t see any guards again for several days, or what I thought were days. Maybe a week. The cells did lower the lights and brighten them again in cycles, though I couldn’t properly count them as they passed. They never turned off completely. Meals seemed to come twice a day. But Theo didn’t come back.

  Dr. Hins was taken away before I saw Theo again.

  He was led away trembling and trying in a weak voice to demand answers from the guards. None of these guards were familiar, but I hadn’t been taking note of any besides Theo. Around Nalei and my cells Hins pulled back, resisting only for a moment.

  “Tell my family I love them!” He begged us. “My wife, the baby-”

  A guard pulled him forward roughly, and his words were cut off. He followed them to the exit of the cellblock. When it came this time, the screaming was short. It was a sharp, hoarse cry, raised for only moments before cutting off.

  “Nalei,” I asked softly in the dark. “Do you think that was-”

  “Yes.” She spoke shortly. “Wife and child. Mrs. Hins. We have to remember.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  She said it so fiercely that I could almost forget what a notion of radical optimism it was. The assumption that we had to remember was predicated on the idea that we could escape and have the chance to tell his family what happened to him. I leaned heavily against the wall and hoped that Theo would come back. I wished I had a god to pray to.

  One more remembrance for the Memorial Courtyard, I thought. Then I realized that wasn’t quite right. Dr. Hins wasn’t a Biralei. He would be remembered only by his own family. They would likely have a funeral, maybe even bury him. Mages were always cremated in the Mage Division, we didn’t have space for a full cemetery in Headquarters. I realized I didn’t actually know much about what mourning and death looked like outside the Division.

  I could remember so little from before the Division. My father had told us religious stories on camping trips, even though religion was discouraged. My mother had quietly said prayers with us once a week and taught us of the holidays when they came, secretly. Her religion had been intertwined with the Mage aristocracy and was especially illegal. Within the private confines of our home, with neither participation nor resistance from our father, she’d taught us about the old gods. The ones for mountains, waters, wars, hunting, harvest, and magic. The gods of the dead Empire. I couldn’t remember any of the prayers anymore.

  The memories of those soft moments, when she turned off the lights and used magic to make a glowing orb the size of her thumb, hurt in the same way seeing Theo had hurt. In a way I couldn’t deal with right now. I pushed them away.

  Of course the memories only came back in physical form when Theo opened the door to the cellblock. He held it open for another gurney to come through. I watched as they wheeled Dr. Hins through. It was as Nalei had described last time. His limp body seemingly untouched, his chest rising and falling, and his eyes open and unfocused. Not only did he not struggle, or move at all, something felt wrong with him.

  I realized with a jolt that his magic collar was gone. Dr. Hins might not have been a trained Mage, but he should have had enough training to throw some guards around telekinetically at least. He should have been able to escape.

  He should have been, except he wouldn’t even move. It was eerie. I wrapped my arms around myself and stood back as they passed, feeling the hairs rise at the base of my neck. I reached out with my magical senses. I couldn’t feel any magic from him at all, just like Genner. Not even the small, raw magic any living person should have, much less the tidy bit of magic he’d had when we met.

  Hins had as much magic as a corpse.

  “Be careful with him!” Theo called as they deposited Dr. Hins in his cell. “He made a grave sacrifice! For all of us!”

  He was a grave sacrifice, seemed more accurate. I didn’t like the tone of Theo’s voice, the energy of it. I watched as Theo trailed behind the other men while they exited, having finished depositing Dr. Hins’s body in his cell. Theo gave me a small nod as they passed.

  When they got to the exit, Theo hung back.

  “I want to stay with him a little bit,” he said. “I want to observe him and make sure that he’s, well, that he’s as comfortable as he can be.”

  One of the guards said something in a jeering tone, but the other one said something soft and closed the door. Theo walked back, straight to my cell. He leaned toward the mesh wall between us, but I didn’t step forward.

  Theo’s hair was a mess, standing up on one side, and his green eyes were wide and wild. He didn’t look happy, exactly, but energetic. Maybe even crazed.

  “Izak,” he said, and his look softened to something more like an actual smile. “Oh, Izak. I had time to think and I understand now. I always wanted a brother, Izak.”

  His tone seemed sincere, and his wide eyes were similar to how they looked when he was a child. Despite myself, despite everything, I stepped forward, closer to the door of my cell. I felt drawn to him even as the hairs on the back of my neck rose.

  “You understand?” I asked. My voice cracked and I winced, but Theo didn’t seem to notice.

  “Yes,” he said. “Izak Heirdic. You used to be my sister once, but you’re now my brother. I understand and I- I cannot tell you how happy I am to see a member of our family again.”

  I myself felt that “happy”, as a word, could not contain all of my feelings about seeing a member of my blood family again. Adain had longed for his and I’d scoffed at him. Still, something cracked inside me at the sound of my chosen first name and my born last name. I walked up to the mesh wall of my cell and pressed a hand against it.

  “You really mean that?” I asked. “You hadn’t forgotten about me?”

  It was a silly question, but I’d essentially managed to forget about them, a feeling I’d unthinkingly assumed was mutual. As I buried my memories and pain, tried to move beyond them and pretend they didn’t exist, I’d always thought my family was out there doing the same.

  “Of course,” Theo said. “None of us ever forgot about you, Izak. It broke us when they took you away. Our family never fit together the same way again.”

  I swallowed past a lump in my throat. It seemed like my life had been made of nothing but losses, leaving something exposed inside me. I’d squeezed the wire mesh between my fingers. Guilt, pain, horror, and raw, pure hope filled me.

  “You’ll help me escape?” I asked softly. “So we can be brothers together?”

  “Oh,” Theo said. He stepped back. “No, Izak, I can’t. Not yet. Not while you’re a Mage.”

  “What? Theo, I’ll never not be a Mage.”

  Even if my tattoos were destroyed and my memories lost to some horrible head injury, I would be a Mage. The magic would burn within me, like eternal hot iron, still molded into the shapes I’d trained and practiced it into over years. If I truly forgot all of my skills and spells then my magic might slowly break apart into its raw state, or maybe I’d instinctively re-learn the spells from muscle memory and magic memory. Impossible to know, but no matter what I would never be like an ordinary person nor even like the unusually powerful yet untrained child I had once been. It was Mage or death.

  Or… maybe I’d stop being a Mage from being sucked dry of magic and movement. Maybe I’d be reduced to a terrible half-life, like Hins and Genner, alone in their cells and surviving off of IV drips.

  The shock of realization made me step back. That’s what they were doing.

  “You will be, though,” Theo said. “That’s what all of these sacrifices are for. A century after the revolution against the Empire we will finally have equality!” He moved in close to the cell. “You and I will truly be brothers.”

  “We can be brothers right now!” I hissed. I tried to shake the wire mesh, but it was too stiff. “Why can’t I be your brother as I am, as a Mage?”

  The strange smile playing on Theo's lips dropped. His shoulders slumped and his eyes fell into shadow despite the bright hall lights above.

  “As a free Mage, you’ll be powerful enough to kill me with a word or touch,” he said. “You will always have the power and I will always have to bow to you. Even if you say you don’t want to, you’ll use it. As soon as it really means something to you, to win and subjugate me, you will. There is no family to be had there.”

  “What kind of propaganda have they been feeding you!?” I asked. I leaned in close again, trying to put physical weight behind my words. “Theo, that’s not how it works!”

  “It’s not propaganda!” Theo slapped the wires between us and I stumbled back. “It’s my life, it has been my life for years! You have no idea what it’s like, living as a human among Mages.”

  “Mages are human!” I protested. “And like ninety-nine percent of the population aren’t Mages, Theo! We’re Mages living among mundane humans.”

  Theo shook his head. “You haven’t been where I’ve been. There will be no peace until Mages are gone.”

  “But Mages will never be gone. Some people will always be born with more magical talent than others! It’s just nature!”

  Theo smiled, then, wide enough to show teeth.

  “Some tasks seem impossible,” he said. “Some things require work, ingenuity, and,” he took a deep breath in, “sacrifice. But nothing is impossible, Izak. I can do it. Nature will fold to technology. I can make us truly be brothers.”

  “Sacrifices, like Officer Genner and Dr. Hins?” I asked. My anger was pulling me away from convincing him to rescue me, but I couldn’t stop. “It’s not a sacrifice if you’re giving someone else’s life! They’re the ones giving, not you!”

  “I’d test it on myself if I could, but it has to be Mages,” Theo said. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it’s right before we ever use it on you!”

  The door at the end of the hall opened before I could respond.

  “Heirdic!” Another guard called. “General wants you!”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “You’ll be alright,” Theo said as he turned to leave. “Things will be better, you’ll see!”

  “You don’t need to do this!” I hissed after him, hoping he could understand. “Listen to me. You don’t!”

  But Theo was down the hall and away too soon. I sat down heavily. He was totally disconnected from reality and I had no idea how to reach him.

  As long as there have been Mages, people have sought ways to control the magic of others, to stop it, and there were some limited ways. But none could truly stop anyone from being a Mage. At least, something deep inside whispered to me, that’s what you hope.

  “He doesn’t seem to be listening to you,” Nalei called softly to me.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said. I leaned on the cell wall near her. “I don’t know him anymore.”

  “Family is weird,” Nalei said. “Especially if you’re a Mage.”

  I realized with a start that I hadn’t actually told her that it was me related to Theo. Well, it probably hadn’t been hard to figure out.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  There was silence for several long moments. I slumped against the wall shared with Nalei’s cell.

  “I had a child, you know,” Nalei said.

  I jolted so hard I nearly fell over.

  I’d known. The Mage Division would sponsor anyone who carried a pregnancy. They took reproductive samples from all their members, and would jump at the chance to combine them to make new babies for the Biralei family. They wanted high concentrations of magical blood. Nalei’s involvement in the program was an open secret.

  I searched my mind desperately for something to say that wasn’t tantamount to yes, I’d heard the gossip about you.

  “Do you, uh, miss them?” I asked finally.

  “I was never going to be allowed to raise her,” Nalei said. “She went to some older, more established Biralei couple. But I got to nurse her and name her. I didn’t realize how much it would hurt to be separated from her, but at least I get to visit her occasionally. I got to, at least, before now.”

  “Oh,” I said. I felt wholly unequal to the task of saying something in response to this. I couldn’t imagine having a child, much less having a child taken from me.

  “I might never see her again now,” Nalei said. Her words were empty of emotion, but in a dry, echoing way familiar to me. Dry like letting any feeling in at all would open the floodgates.

  “You will,” I whispered. “We’ll be okay. We’ll get out of here, somehow.”

  Telling Nalei that felt as empty as hearing from Theo that I’d be alright. Like all the meaningless platitudes I’d ever heard. But I had to say it, I had to say something. I wanted, so dearly, to mean it.

  “Yeah,” she said, but then fell silent. I heard her move away from my cell.

  Theo did not come back down. Guards came down with food for Milo, Nalei, and me as well as fluid IVs for Genner and Hins, but none of them were familiar. None of them spoke to me or passed notes, there were no signs that Theo had understood me. I started surreptitiously trying to see if I could pull one of the sink’s metal handles off.

  I spoke with Nalei occasionally, mostly reminiscing about training and imagining what we’d eat if we got out. We didn’t talk about our circumstances, though. We didn’t talk about how Emry had been completely missing, either escaped or killed during capture. We didn’t talk about our families or the horrible gaps in our magical senses where Genner and Hins should be, or if they were alive. It was at least a week before something broke the routine, maybe two weeks.

  That’s when guards came down to take Milo.

  Milo screamed and fought like nothing else I had seen. He spewed curses and hit out wildly, refusing to go quietly. They shocked him and made him scream, but he continued to fight. I could hear him struggle in his cell and watch as they tried to drag him down the corridor.

  “-you ASSHOLES won’t get me!” Milo was yelling. “I SAW, I SAW what you did to them! You monsters, I won’t FUCKING let you FUCKING BASTARDS- NO-”

  More guards had to come and restrain him to drag him away; it seemed to take nearly a dozen. They had to tie him up and carry him, and even then it took much longer with Milo struggling and spitting and screaming. I watched the whole time, unable to look away.

  It was horrible to root for Milo and yet know that he was doomed, but it seemed wrong to shy away from it. Like if I looked away it would harm Milo’s already impossible chances.

  Or like it would be disrespectful as skipping a memorial service for the dead.

  They dragged him out eventually, though, and his yelling faded to echos. There was another short scream this time, like with Hins. Only right as my shoulders had relaxed, there was another, longer scream.

  They never brought Milo back to the cells.

  Theo eventually came back, at least, though it was several days later. He brought a small apple pastry down to me, though I didn’t want it by then. My younger brother pushed it through the slot at the bottom of the cell and sat across from me. I just stared, not making any moves toward it. I wondered if Theo had been there when they did… whatever they were doing to us.

  “It’s your favorite,” Theo said, “or it was. Do you remember how you used to beg mom to make apple pies?”

  Barely, maybe. That felt gross to remember against the much more recent screaming of Milo. Far from wanting to eat it, I felt nauseous. I said nothing.

  “I know,” Theo said. “I know. That last one was… upsetting. We were almost there, though. Not many more people will have to suffer.”

  “Are you going to help Nalei and I?” I asked bluntly.

  “I will help you,” Theo said, “be free of magic.”

  I paused for a moment, silenced by those words. There was a time when I could be charming. When I could be manipulative with a smile. That time felt like an eon ago.

  “Then I have nothing to say to you.” I took a deep breath in. “You have done some… some horrible thing to three of us now. One at a time. You are killing us, Theo, and everything you’ve said makes me think you’ll just kill me, too.”

  Theo winced. “Genner and Hins aren’t technically dead.”

  I noted the absence of Milo’s name there. It was horrible, but I was strangely glad. Milo would have probably preferred that. He didn’t fight that hard to be hollowed out the way Genner and Hins had been.

  I met Theo’s eyes. I don’t know what tired horror he read in my gaze, but he looked away.

  “You’re right,” he said. “You’re right. It’s horrible. It’s not what we wanted, but it’s what happened. But we’re so close, Izak. We almost had it with the last man! We were there and he was fine, but then he… wasn’t.”

  “He’s dead,” I said. “Theo, magic is natural. It’s part of the world. You have to find a way to live with it.”

  Theo let out a sigh almost like a snort. “That’s easy for you to say, as a powerful Mage.”

  “You know, Theo, if you haven’t noticed, being a Mage hasn’t been that great for me recently!” I said, waving a hand to indicate the cell. “But I still can’t stop being one, because it’s a part of me. Like being a human, or a man, or alive.”

  “None of those things let you murder with your mind!” Theo protested. “None of those things let you turn back time or control others’ minds!”

  “Certainly none of those things landed me in a cell before,” I said. “Look around you! Isn’t this proof enough that anyone can be cruel? When can you accept that? I am literally your own long lost brother, who needs your help, not your enemy!”

  My voice had raised higher than I intended, and I glanced up warily at the camera in the corner of the hall.

  “You aren’t my enemy,” Theo said, infuriatingly calm. “But your magic is. Do you know why I brought you this pastry?”

  “Why?” I asked, crossing my arms.

  “Because it’s Adaline’s birthday,” Theo said. “You remember, our older sister? It’s been ten years since you’ve seen her. It’s been three years for me.” His voice was surprisingly bitter.

  “And what does that have anything to do with imprisoning and torturing people, like your own brother?” I demanded.

  “Magic destroyed our family. Magic took you away, magic broke our mother and murdered our father, and magic destroyed Adaline. I still celebrate her birthday so I can remember it is a curse. I will free us, or I will die trying.” Theo leaned forward as he spoke, his voice quiet yet vehement.

  “Was that because the Cult of Tyrant captured them?” I asked. “Theo, not all Mages are like that. They’re a Cult, that’s the problem with them, not their magic.”

  Theo shook his head. “You don’t understand, Izak. You weren’t there. We were there because of magic, this all happened because of magic.”

  If I ever imagined my family, it was exactly as they were or living normal lives. Theo’s words rewrote that vision into something that had me swallowing down nausea and dread.

  “What?” I asked. I tried my best to make my voice calm, to cling to the detachment I had so deeply ingrained. To be ready to deal with anything. “Theo, what happened?”

  He hesitated. The pale lights from above shadowed his face, making it hard to read the specifics of his expression. I could see complex lines of pain and shining eyes.

  I waited for his answer, holding my breath despite myself.

  “You don’t need to know,” he said finally. “The dead are dead. Gone. The only thing we can do is make meaning of it now. It has to be worth it, Izak. It has to be. These sacrifices can’t be for nothing.”

  Then he leaned back to stand up, and my angry detachment broke. This was the most I’d learned of my family in years and it was horrific, but it only underscored my own desperation. All I could hear in his words right now was that he wasn’t listening, and I needed him to listen.

  I scrambled up and slammed myself against the wire wall of my cell.

  “You’re going to kill me, not nobly sacrifice yourself!” I yelled. “I didn’t agree to your fucking crusade! Magic didn’t do all that, it’s just easy to blame, and you will bleed me out for this delusion!”

  “It’ll go right next time,” Theo said. “You’ll see!”

  Then he turned to walk away from me.

  “I will not see, I’ll be dead!” I called after him, scrambling to think of something I could say to get my brother to turn around. “Theo! Listen to me! Theo, please! You can't just leave me here! THEO!"

  But Theo was gone.

  Eventually I did eat the pastry, but it tasted like despair as much as apple. For all my fantasies of eating pasties like apple tarts these past few days, it turned out I missed tasting apple outside of prison, not just the fruit itself. Alone in my cell, the mismatching taste of sweet pastry only highlighted the grimness of my circumstances. Eventually I learned against the wall.

  “Nalei?” I asked.

  “Yes?”

  “How often do you think of your daughter?”

  Silence. Then: “Every day. I think of her every single day, even before this.” As if that sentence opened the floodgates, Nalei launched into a description of her daughter: “She is so beautiful, so full of life and joy. She loves dresses and capes and any flowy fabric, and she thinks yellow is the perfect color. She has these tiny, perfect hands…”

  I half-listened, half-thought of my own mother. Before this, before seeing Theo again, I assumed my mother thought as little of me as I did of her. That she could also tuck away those memories. Except she hadn’t been nine years old, with only four real years of concrete memory. She was an adult through all of it, she gave birth to me, and she would have memories of me back to her own pregnancy. Maybe she thought of me every day of the past ten years that I was gone.

  I closed my eyes and tried to focus on Nalei’s words, on her story. Her family wasn’t broken yet, not if she could get out of here. She could still see her daughter. That was the closest hope I could hold- any hope for my own blood was long since past, but blood wasn’t my only family. I was Izak Biralei, after all.

  Theo came back with the guards around a week later. They were coming for Nalei.

  Seeing them come to her cell, I thought desperately for a way out, but I could only think of my memories. I thought of the mother whose face I could barely remember, Genner’s patient voice, Hins’s eyes as he mentioned his baby, and Milo’s screaming resistance. I remembered Adain and the emptiness that had been my recent life without him.

  I thought of Nalei’s daughter. The one she would never see again.

  “Stop!” I slammed on the wire of my cage. “You’re getting the wrong one! What the hell are you all doing?”

  A couple guards glanced over at me, but Theo waved me away. “Pay him no mind! We have orders.”

  “Orders to go for the Healer?” I demanded. “What would she do with her magic, what threat does she pose to you? I study Spacetime magic and I will kill you! I will kill you all if I get free!”

  Theo still didn’t look at me, but another guard did. It was a familiar one, who I’d seen comforting Theo before. He murmured something in Theo’s ear. Whatever he said, Theo recoiled.

  “No, we have orders!” He said. His face had gone pale. “We’re coming for the Alterationist!”

  “We wanted to come for the Mages whose magic we fully understood,” the other guard said. “But if he’s a Spacetime Mage for sure and not an Interdimensional Mage, then he would be a higher priority.”

  All the other guards had paused at the man’s words. Nalei’s cell door was not yet open. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my fingers, wrapped tight about the wire mesh of my own cell door.

  “He’s probably lying about that,” Theo said. “He’s just trying to sacrifice himself in some misguided martyrdom!”

  “And how would he know we’d want a Spacetime Mage, not an Interdimensional one?” The other guard questioned. “I didn’t think you’d given quite that much away to him.”

  Theo flushed at that. “I hadn’t, of course, but we still can’t know that he’s telling the truth.”

  “You can’t defend him forever,” the guard said. “I thought you understood that this would take sacrifices, Theo. It’s time to learn.”

  Theo clenched his hands. I noted that his fists were trembling and felt something like satisfaction.

  “I’m just trying to follow protocol!” Theo protested. “We don’t need him!”

  “Protocol takes in new information,” the guard said. He stepped back, over to my cell, and the other guards followed him. “We have a new subject now.”

  I had imagined myself fighting like Milo, when it was time to take me away. But now fighting might risk Nalei and I wouldn’t do that. Theo insisted that magic had broken my blood family. Well, maybe. I had let down Adain, but that didn’t mean that I would let down the magical family I had left. One Biralei for another.

  I’d never see my mother again, but I’d do what I could to let Nalei see her daughter.

  I looked back to her cell and saw her blinking back at me, wide-eyed and disbelieving. Her hand curled around the wires as she stared after me. She might have mouthed the words thank you.

  Yes. I could sacrifice myself for this, even if I wished it was someone other than my younger brother holding the knife.