I had not liked the way Drianthenes had said ‘initiate him’, but at that point every survival instinct I had was telling me to get out of the Command Tent. So I followed between Adaline and Henri as they led me back to Maggie’s healing tent. This time her gaggle of girls was gone, and she waited alone inside for us. I trundled to one of the pallets on the floor and collapsed onto it.

  “So,” Maggie asked, “how did it go?”

  Henri rolled his eyes. “He barely knew anything, I don’t even know why we bothered to keep him.”

  “Henri, I believe that your presence is no longer necessary now that Maggie is here to watch over the prisoner,” Adaline said. It was a dismissal, and Henri followed it.

  “I would prefer to be at the Command Tent anyway,” Henri said, slumping off. “Important discussions are happening there.”

  “Be off with you, then!” Maggie said, shooing him out. When he’d gone she turned to Adaline. “How did it really go?”

  “It went well, actually, I thought,” Adaline said. “He didn’t seem to suspect anything about Izak! And Izak himself knew enough to answer the important question, which is that Theo has been feeding the Hands information.”

  Maggie nodded grimly. “I thought as much. That’s why Drianthenes keeps the details of the ritual close to heart.”

  “What ritual?” I asked, then yawned. This was far too much insinuation and power games for my muzzy head. I laid back down on the pallet, but tried to keep my eyes open, reminding myself that I should keep listening.

  “The one that will change everything,” Adaline said. “You’ll learn soon enough, the basics of the plan aren't a secret within the Heirs. Speaking of which,” I heard the change in her voice as she turned from me to Maggie, “Drianthenes wants a report from you about Izak’s injuries, and for you to initiate him.”

  “I have a report written up already,” Maggie said. “I already know Drianthenes will be more interested in his magical injuries than his physical ones, so I put plenty of details there. I have no idea what they actually did to him, though, I’ll admit that.”

  “You don’t know?” Adaline said. “How is that even possible?”

  “Oh, I wish I was as wise as you thought I was, girl,” Maggie said. “Now run off and deliver that report, the sooner he gets it the happier he’ll be. He has a tidy mind like that, Drianthenes. I’ll deal with the initiation here.”

  There was shuffling around the room. I think Adaline left very quickly, but I didn’t actually know. At some point in the conversation my eyes had shut themselves, and I ended up dozing off a bit.

  I woke up with a start when someone dabbed a wet towel against the back of my neck. That shot me right into an upright position, making an undignified noise.

  “What the fuck!?”

  “It’s just a towel, boy, I need to make sure your skin is sterilized for the tattoo,” Maggie said.

  “What?” I asked. Then I registered all the bowls of ritual magic herbs around her and the tattooing needle in her hands. I pushed away from her. “Oh, no. You are absolutely not tattooing an enchantment on me.”

  “It’s a requirement for staying with us,” Maggie said. “It won’t hurt you. It’ll just mean that Drianthenes can turn off your mind’s ability to access magic when he needs to. It won’t give him access to anything else.”

  I shot up on my feet, and started to back away. “No. Absolutely not. I am not putting my magic in anyone else’s hands.” I hit the back of the tent and raised my hands. My eyes were still caked with sleeping dirt and I felt weak like a kitten, but desperation pumped through me. I had just escaped one collar for my magic, I wasn’t going to step into another.

  Maggie sighed. “Lad-”

  “Don’t ‘lad’ me!” I snapped. “Gods above, I don’t even know why Theo is bothering to look for a way to stop Mages! There’s apparently a million and one ways to stop magic and everyone wants to do thm to me.”

  “Most ways of stopping magic require more magic,” Maggie said. “And all of them are individual and require constant effort. None will work on the grand scale Theodoric wants.”

  The way she said his full first name was like a disapproving mother, and I suddenly realized this strange woman might actually know more about Theo than I did. I didn’t know why the thought was unsettling. I shook my head.

  “Either way, I am not letting you finish what he started,” I said.

  “It wouldn’t be the same-”

  “NO.”

  “What did he do, exactly?” Maggie asked. “Your magic, it looks…” She squinted her eyes at me. “Burnt, at the edges. Like someone was trying to cauterize your access to it shut.”

  I grimaced at the image. “I think that’s exactly what they were trying to do, in some freaky, experimental way.”

  “Either way, it’s clearly affecting you,” she said.

  I froze. “It is? What do you mean?”

  “It’s making it hard for you to do magic, I can see it,” she said. “Are you finding magic more exhausting than you should? Are easy-to-use spells harder?”

  I stared at her in horror from what she could see and, even more, from the terrible truth of her words.

  “I saw it earlier today, when you tried to teleport,” she said. “The way I stopped you shouldn’t have knocked you out like that. There’s something wrong with your magic.”

  My back slowly collapsed against the side of the tent. It was thankfully sturdy against my crumbling world.

  “There’s something wrong with my magic,” I repeated. It was as if there was something wrong with my breathing. I didn’t always know who I was or what I wanted, especially since Adain’s death, but I knew I was a Mage the way I knew my heartbeat.

  She began to step closer to me, and I waved my arms.

  “No! Stop!” I cried. “Hasn’t there been enough done to me? How do you know whatever weird initiation thing you want to do to me won’t make it worse?”

  She stopped and frowned sympathetically. “I don’t know if what’s wrong with your magic is permanent. I could recommend a course of treatment, if you want. But I have to initiate you.”

  I swallowed. I leaned against the tent wall, and tried to think. The cool evening air from beyond the tent leaked through, helping me wake up. She stood there, watching me intently, but not moving toward me yet.

  “Look,” I said, thoughts racing, “there’s something wrong with my magic and I get exhausted trying to use it. I’m under constant guard. I won’t be able to do anything, okay? I won’t even be able to use magic while being watched and, if I could, I’m limited. You don’t know if this tattoo will make it worse or not. Could you just wait on the tattoo? Give me time to recover, first?”

  If I even was going to recover. I couldn’t think about that right now.

  She considered me, and sighed. “I would if I could, boy. But Drianthenes expects to be obeyed.”

  I felt the words like a slap on the sternum.

  “You’re at least as powerful a Mage as he is!” I protested. “You’re probably a Great Mage yourself! Can’t you do something?”

  “I do what I can,” she said, her voice tight. “But his control over this place is more than magical, boy. If I ever directly disobeyed him then I’d lose what power I had to help people here.”

  “You’re not helping me,” I said bitterly, even though I knew it wouldn’t change her mind. I closed my eyes, squeezing them shut for just a moment. I understood her point, even if I didn’t agree with it. I heard her move toward me again and held up a hand. She courteously stopped, as if I could truly do anything to halt her.

  “Do you have any temporary options?” I asked. “Just something to stop my magic for now, but not a tattoo yet?”

  “I have some medical paint that will stay on the skin for some time…” She mused. “In your case I might want to do something to restrict your magic use while you try to recover anyway, like I would if you’d injured yourself from overuse of magic. I could do something like that, to last a few weeks, and make it look like the initiation mark…”

  I felt my chest lighten with hope, but then she shook her head with dismissal.

  “It’s not worth the risk,” she said. “Drianthenes probably wouldn’t notice, he doesn’t look hard, but if he did it could have dire consequences. It’s not worth giving you a few weeks of denial.”

  She started toward me again, tattooing needling in hand. I turned around, scratching at the wall of the tent, to find it rough and firm. I was terrified to use my magic and risk her knocking me out, waking up again with a new tattoo and violation of my magic. I turned back to see her only steps away from me.

  “I will cause a scene!” I screamed. It was the only thing I could think of, in this place full of rules and roles and private conversations. “I will fight and yell and try to stab people! Even if you take away my magic! It will be embarrassing and it will TARNISH ADALINE!”

  That finally got her to pause in her approach toward me, and I continued.

  “She’s the one who vouched for me, who got them to take me here,” I said. “She already has one crazy brother, how about two? They’ll start to think that madness runs in the family. Her engagement is already in jeopardy, isn’t it? She can’t afford this scandal.”

  The gleam of pity in Maggie’s eyes had turned to outrage.

  “You wouldn’t!” She snapped. “You would harm yourself with such antics as much as her, moreso even!”

  “I’m already a prisoner,” I said. “What do I have to lose? I’m already at the bottom here, but Adaline…”

  My heart pounded in my chest. It was an utter lie, I couldn't afford to jeopardize getting help for Nalei, but Maggie didn’t know about that yet. I just had to be convincing, and I knew how to do that. I put every ounce of real desperation and panic in my voice. I tried to make it real. I already wanted it, I wished I could fight back like that, and I put that desperate desire to crack and scream and stop playing other people’s games in my voice.

  Maggie’s shoulders slumped. I had to consciously resist letting out a sigh of relief. She believed me.

  “Fine,” she growled. “I will get out the medical paint, for now, and restrict your access to all magic temporarily. But in two weeks I will put the initiation rune on you. I don’t know what hope you’re holding onto, boy, but you need to let it out soon.”

  I softly let out the breath I was holding.

  “I’ll sit still for the painting,” I said, because there was nothing else to say.

  It was kind of calming, actually. Even in her frustration with me, Maggie’s hands were steady and professional. She painted the magic evenly onto the skin of my neck, and I could feel the buzz of it sink into my skin.

  Afterwards, she gave me advice on how to treat, and hopefully heal, my magical injuries (‘burns’, she called them) from the Machine.

  “Remember the meditations you did as a Novice?” she asked. “Sensing and sitting with the magic within you, feeling it as a part of you? Practicing just holding it in and letting it relax within the bounds of your skin? They do teach you that at the Division, right?”

  “Of course, it’s basic training,” I said, frowning. I occasionally still did meditations like that as a warm up, but I had moved past them to greater workings when I was ten. For a whole year I did nothing but feel, meditate on, and learn about magic as a child. I had thought I was past that forever, damn it. I was a Mage. Magic was what I knew, what I had.

  I touched the freshly dried paint on my skin.

  “You won’t be able to rub it off,” Maggie told me. “That’s why I put it on, to stop you folks from injuring yourself further. Give it a rest.” She snorted softly. “Actually, rest would be another help for healing. Go sleep and keep sleeping. Sleeping almost always helps the healing.”

  Now that was an instruction I was happy to obey.

  “Have any of these pallets been used by sick people recently?” I asked.

  “None, and we sterilize them,” Maggie said. “Choose one and get sleeping. I can see the tiredness in your eyes, I won’t wake you.”

  “I won’t wake up to a new tattoo?” I asked.

  “I don’t even need to knock you out for that,” she said acidicly. “You think I don’t have magics to restrain a body if I need to? Go off and sleep.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Alright.” I crawled over to the nearest pallet. They were padded and warm, which was enough. The relief of surviving the day made my exhaustion hit harder. It helped that Maggie, in her odd way, reminded me of Shamora. “Goodnight, your Excellency old Maggie the cultist.”

  She snorted. “Goodnight, lad.”

  I fell into a thick sleep, dreaming that Adain was calling for me from Oblivion Isle. Trying to reach back to him, I couldn’t quite catch him, but I could just make out his words. He kept telling me that I didn’t know everything, that I was missing something, and I wanted to tell him I know. But I didn’t know if he heard me.

  I drifted back into wakefulness slowly, reluctantly. My head was heavy with disorientation, like in the mornings and afternoons after Adain’s death when I used to drink myself to sleep. From the quality of the light I could tell it was already evening, just like those times, but this time I wasn’t in the peace of my own bed.

  There was still a camp of likely-malevolent strangers out there, and too much politics with missing pieces. But, unlike in my dank cell, there were also things to tempt me. I had a purpose, to help Nalei, and this Cult was intriguing with all its secrets. I still didn’t know what the “ritual” was or what information they were so terrified of escaping that they kept everyone in so tightly.

  And there was a mouthwatering smell of cooking onions and meat. That’s what woke me up in the first place. My stomach ached and I couldn’t remember the last time I had a real meal, not prison food.

  I pulled myself up, blinking away the sleep to find Maggie soaking something in a huge pot. The primary source of light was a warm lamp above, and no daylight peaked in through the corners of the tent. Stretching out my arms, I felt my back pop, and Maggie looked over at me.

  “You slept for fourteen hours,” she said. “It was good. You needed it. Now, it’s time to do mediation and I’ll send you off to dinner.” She sounded pleased, as she had everything sorted out.

  “Yes, mom,” I said, since I could tell she liked good-natured teasing.

  Instead of laughing she sobered, looking away from me back down at her cleaning pot. Her movements slowed, as though she suddenly had to fight through something heavy for every motion.

  “I’m not your mother, boy,” she said. “Though, you should talk to Adaline about that today. She’s been keeping your mother’s ashes for years now. She’s got trouble letting go, and maybe you could help.”

  My stomach lurched. This was a lot for having only just woken up.

  “How can I possibly help her?” I asked. “I didn’t even know our mother for years. We’re barely family anymore.”

  “You’re family,” Maggie said solidly, “and you’re new. Maybe seeing that there can be good changes as well as ill can help her move forward and stop holding on so tight to what’s gone.”

  There was a tension to her eyes and harshness to her voice, only increasing as she spoke. It was not like the heaviness of how she spoke of my mother.

  “You’re not just talking about my mother, are you?” I asked. It was almost strange to talk so much about her, about any of my family. “You mean Sarai, Adaline’s friend. The one she keeps saying we need to rescue.”

  “Yes, Sarai. She’s dead,” Maggie said flatly. She sat back on her heels, wiping her hands on her sturdy dress. “We found her body. Died of a gunshot wound and branded with the sigil of the Hands of Humanity.”

  I frowned. This opened up more questions than answers. Nothing seemed to fit together right.

  “But why would they kill her?” I asked. “They were looking to capture Mages.”

  “It was a warning to us,” she said, “to stay out of their business. That much was clear.”

  “But it only brought more of your attention to them,” I said. “Drianthenes said that the Hands wasn’t your first priority, it’s some bigger plan. Theo knew that, right, or had an idea, so why bring more attention to them?”

  It was a stupid thing to do. And whatever I thought of my brother or his leader General Hendar, they weren’t stupid. I could remember the way they watched everything carefully, Hendar’s measured words and Theo’s logical arguments. No, they weren’t stupid.

  “Who knows why the Hands do anything?” Maggie said. “Not you or I. No matter why or how, Sarai is dead. We burned her and spread her ashes at the Sacred Arbor. She’s gone, and Adaline needs to accept that.”

  I stared at her. She was bristling at me with odd defensiveness. She was… guilty. There was an obvious answer as to why, but I couldn’t ask her if she was complicit in Sarai’s death.

  “How can Adaline move past it if she doesn’t understand why?” I asked instead.

  Maggie tightened her lips and hummed. She looked down at her hands, studying them. Right as she looked up to speak, Adaline threw open the flap to the tent. She was in a soft blue gown that went down to her ankles, layered like a flower petal, and had actual flowers woven through her hair. She still wore makeup subtle enough to barely be visible, contriving to look naturally like a woodland sprite.

  “Dinner is ready!” She called. “Is Izak- oh good, you’re up! But you’re not at all ready. Maggie, do you have those clothes I gave you for him?”

  “Of course,” she said. “They’re folded up right by his bed, the boy just hasn’t noticed them yet.”

  “Well, we need him to look his best,” Adaline said. “This is a court, Izak, and in a court appearances are powerful.”

  They had me dressed up in cream pants and a button-up shirt with a brown vest and leather shoes. If Adaline was a woodland sprite, I was a tree, but I liked to think I was a handsome one, even if the outfit wasn’t as sleek as my Division uniform. They also used ritual Alteration magic to make my face drop the stubble-going-on-beard I had been growing in prison and cut my hair. I wanted to press it down, but Adaline insisted it looked better while natural and messy.

  The pampering and attention to appearance was a surreal change from my life these past few weeks, but it made me feel more human.

  “I know I said that appearances are powerful,” Adaline said, “but you still don’t want to look like you put any effort into them. Men look down on that.”

  “I’m a man, and I think it’s fine,” I said. “People judge by appearances, there’s nothing wrong with wanting some control over your own.”

  “Yes, but you’re a-” Adaline began to speak, but then caught my expression and hesitated. “You’re not from the Heirs.”

  “I suppose Drianthenes likes to pretend he rolls out of bed every morning with carefully trimmed stubble,” I said with a sigh. I would need to impress him to launch my rescue mission to Nalei. I acquiesced to the artfully messy hair.

  Outside it had been growing darker, but the amount of people had been multiplying. It seemed that every single member of the Cult, somewhere well over 100 people, were all here. They sat everywhere: on the ground, using portable chairs, or simply with magic. I hadn’t seen this many Mages in one place since the last Mage graduation ceremony at Headquarters. Mages sat in the front, with ordinary humans in the shadows behind them.

  I tried to count every head there as I walked with Adaline. There were more than estimated in Division files, though the ranks of the Division were still larger by a multiple of 10.

  Thinking of the graduation ceremony, everyone who went dressed in their best: in formal robes that signified rank by color with the most powerful Mages in black and the graduates in a pale blue, while trainees wore white. It had been much larger than this gathering, in the grand hall that had once been the receiving room of the Emperor, but still much quieter than this. Though there had been the gentle shuffling and occasional sneezing of a crowd, the majority of the graduation ceremony stayed in reverent, or at least obedient, silence. It had been rows and rows of organized people as polished as they could be by magic. Afterwards, there were parties ranging from the politely genteel to the raucous all-nighters shut down in the early hours of the morning, but those were all separate affairs.

  Dinner at the Cult of Tyrants wasn’t like any of those gatherings. The rumbling of voices was as natural as meals in the dining hall, though more boisterous. Dogs sat around people’s feet and a couple men sported hawks on their shoulders, with pets getting bites from, even eating off of, people’s plates. It was chaotic with a clear lack of formal seating chart. There was some subtle order to it, though, concentrations of people of similar age and sex or families in similar places with the non-Mages sitting off to one side. Many people sat in (likely stolen) fold-up camping chairs while others stood or sat on the ground.

  Women leaned in to speak in low tones and giggle while young men occasionally shouted and exchanged friendly shoves. The sense of casual comradery gave me nostalgia for my Mage student days and what my friend group never quite was.

  “Follow me,” Adaline said. “Unless you want to resist and force His Excellency to freeze you with his mind.” I could feel Drinathenes’s corralled flood of mental magic noticing me, and I followed.

  People watched as we passed, staring at me especially. I appreciated all the effort we spent in cleaning me up. People leaned in to their dinner partners to make comments I couldn’t hear, but I simply squared my shoulders. This magical sizing-up, at least, was familiar.

  Adaline led me over to a spot near Friedrich and Drianthenes, where the high-ranking cult members clearly sat. Adaline claimed the seat next to Friedrich. Calenthe turned up her nose and pulled away, the young women near her following.

  Maggie, oddly, sat slightly apart from everyone, though many women of all ages waved at her and went over to say hello. Looking at the entire event through my magic sense, I could see clearly that she was the most powerful Mage here besides Drianthenes. Both held their magic within them in complex patterns weaved with intense strength and decades of practice; it made it difficult to gauge which one was truly stronger. Many of the young people were likely just as strong as them in raw magical force, if not stronger, but with magic it was the training and expertise that counted. Being able to understand and shape magic meant more than raw power, which could always explode in your face.

  As they all settled in, non-Mages came around to hand out the grilled carrots and chunks of the meat I had smelled earlier. A woman by the fire was using specialized Alteration magic to increase the size of each piece of cut meat. The gathering quieted as people began to gnaw on the new food. I tried not to show how starving I was in my table manners.

  When the gathering was suitably quiet, Drianthenes rose up. His chair had been placed on a wooden block with ample room for him to stand above everyone else at the gathering. He put his hands together before speaking.

  “It is one of those nights where I must ask for your patience and your ear,” Drianthenes said, “as I speak to you not from one of the Tomes of the Gods, but from my own thoughts. I hope my thoughts might still reflect on the holy wisdom of the Gods. I have been called, by recent events, to think deeply about the world.

  “Yesterday we came back from a mission of vengeance against the supposed ‘Hands of Humanity’ for the terrible killing of one of our own sweet girls.” He paused, to allow many of the women of the crowd to hide their heads in sadness or let out breathy sobs, while men sat stony and solemn. “You know the facts of the mission from my report this morning, our triumph. My son and his fiancee’s discovery of an imprisoned Mage to liberate, many victories, and yet there was more than triumph to that mission. There are feelings, deeper connections of wisdom, that it took me longer to put to words.” He paused again, placing a hand on his heart. “Sarai Drianthenes was a gift and the loss of her is tragic, an appalling act. But now that we have enacted our blood price and the righteousness has burned bright, I am left with only pity. People do not become monsters for no reason. The Hands of Humanity are lashing out in desperation against an unjust world.”

  Many around the fire blinked at his words, surprised, but interested. People leaned forward as he continued, and even I was intrigued. I studied the Great Mage as he spoke. I thought of the too-small file on the Cult of Tyrants and all the information that the Mage Division lacked, the information I lacked. This could be valuable insight into the Cult.

  Drianthenes kept his gaze steady on his audience as he continued: “They know, as we all know, that something is wrong. The leaders of Westrion are more corrupt every year, governments barely functioning, and tensions of war always simmers. Something has gone deeply wrong in the world and we all sense that, in deep-seated longing that few truly understand. The order of the universe is simply not right and it is so easy to let the pain of that send you on a path of corruption, especially for those who are weaker and don’t understand these feelings.”

  A pause. His words were deliberately tempered and steady. It wasn’t what I had expected, not a parody of incoherent yelling for devotion. His words skimmed along the surface of something real, pulling in things that were hard to deny.

  Even in the relative seclusion of the Division, I had heard the complaints about the government. Even the Mages, governmental agents that we were, complained. Honestly, maybe we had even more complaints about the inefficient and opaque decisions made by our non-magical government.

  “It leads so many astray, but once you know the truth, once you have that bone-deep understanding, you will never be led off the true path.” He drew himself up further, and his audience mimicked him, I even caught myself doing it in some unconscious instinct. “You will join the forces of the righteous and, despite this broken world, you will feel that wholeness within you from the truth. I want you all to sit with it. To feel it. To feel the brokenness of the world, a world where not even the girls of our family are spared. A world where Sarai could die before her eighteenth birthday and Adaline could lose one brother to kidnapping and another to corruption.”

  Beside him, Adaline flinched and looked down. I balled my hands into fists on my lap, even as I kept my face clear. I’d felt the force of charisma, the lull of twisted truths that Great Mage Drianthenes brought up. But the mention of my own plight snapped me out of it, even as the cultists around me were nodding or tearing up.

  My journey, my pain and separation from my family, were not Drianthenes’s to use. Drianthenes, who had basically kidnapped me. He did not get to pull up my pains to evoke whatever confused point he wanted to. And as he brought up Theo’s “corruption” it made the description of non-Mages in his words stand out all the more. I had no doubt who the “weak” were that Drianthenes had mentioned.

  Drianthenes took a breath, letting the moment of tension and sadness fill the air, letting a few women start to sob (or pretend to sob), before continuing: “And I want you to feel your strength against it. All of us here know the truth. Once you see it, it is everywhere. It is so simple and clear, rising like sunrise and ringing out like a bell: the Gods made this world! They designed it! They gave us magic for a reason. The Gods did not give out power like a man throws out scraps, no! They did it with meaning! With purpose!”

  A strange double feeling twisted my gut at those words. Despite my anger, I could feel my own magic still buzzing within me and it was right, like it was part of the order of the universe. As natural and necessary as the beat of my own heart, maybe even more so. And I hurt at the injury done to it by the Hands of Humanity, hurt in ways that made Drianthenes’s description of magic real and true to me.

  But I also couldn’t access my magic because of the sigil Maggie put on me, the sigil that might have been a tattoo firmly putting my natural power under Drianthenes’s control.

  Drianthenes stomped a foot down on the dais below him, adding rhythm and emphasis to his words, the cultists sitting around the fire cheering with him: “Mages were made to rule! Not to be kidnapped and sit in towers wearing rings like collars and tagged like dogs, legally barred from taking leadership! There is a natural order to this universe that runs under everything, and it has been perverted! It is up to us to put it right! All of us suffer under a corrupted order, and it is those same weak ones who sought to take charge and now lash out in desperation who truly suffer the most. We have strength within us, truth, power, magic! Like Emperor Raxolas before us, we shall seek out the blessings of the Gods and take the power of the world!”

  I shifted nervously in my seat and glanced over at Adaline. It was unnerving to see her smile. The reflections of the firelight danced in her eyes and her smile was beatific and, for once, utterly true. She sat up straight and stared eagerly, almost hungerly, at Drianthenes. She drank in his words.

  The words of the speech were flowery and vague, but there was more in Adaline’s eyes than that. These people were planning something, though it might be unhinged. I thought of the human sacrifices, made regularly like clockwork.

  “The Empire, the Trust of Raxolas, shined light and peace on this world for hundreds of years before the power was diluted and corrupted among the Mage families. Even then, there was stability and peace. Ever since the human dogs went rabid and the terrible Biraleis turned bloody traitors, this world has known rot and ruin. But we have been strong enough to survive!”

  My heart beat harder than it should at the words condemning Biraleis, condemning me. I held myself still like I had to take a blow. My stomach twisted and my shoulders shook with fight or flight instinct. But there were too many people here, and no one was leaving or objecting. My learned survival instincts, the ones that pushed me to blend in and work with the world around me, kicked in.

  I wished I could fight, could jump up and scream out that Drianthenes was perverting the truth, taking events out of context. Drianthenes took the ugly truth, but not the whole of it. He didn’t care that the Emperor had become a living corpse unfit to rule after unnatural centuries of life, or the abuse that the Mages of the Empire heaped on non-Mage subjects. His words were full of careful omissions to make a threateningly compelling narrative.

  “We are the strongest of the strong, the heirs of the Mages who survived massacres, we who have built ourselves up while pushed to the sidelines. We are the hope, the guiding light in these dark days. We are the Heirs of the Empire!” Drianthenes paused as the cheering grew overwhelming, making it almost impossible for him to continue. A few young men howled in approval, getting the dogs around the fire to start barking.

  It was only at that point that I finally understood the buzz of tension that had made me so restless the whole speech. A low-level mind magic effect, probably stretched out across the whole group. I’d been trained to notice effects like these and should have seen it sooner, but my magic was still hurt. No one else in the crowd seemed to notice. Despite the warmth of the fire against the night, I grew cold.

  “The Convergence that Raxolas drew his incredible strength from approaches. We must be ready. I am sending out a team to secure the Sacred Arbor before the Convergence for the Divine Solstice. The Celestial Eclipse is coming and it is our destiny to meet it. Another sacrifice will be needed soon, and we will do it together. Feel the strength within you. Feel the righteousness and truth. Follow me, my brothers, and I shall not lead you astray. Power breeds true and here we are.”

  His tone was light and I sensed that this speech was, finally, coming to an end. It made my skin crawl, and it opened new questions. What was the “Convergence”? Raxolas’s power had been legendary, unlike any other Mage known, and he’d destroyed entire armies single-handedly. It was hard to separate fact from fiction about history, but it was fact that he had lived for hundreds of years and conquered the entire continent before it broke apart during the Revolution. There were rumors of his harnessing a comet or the stars, but I’d never known of any historical certainty. If they really could access that power… then they really could recreate the Empire, just as Adaline thought.

  A missing piece slotted into place. Theo had known about this, something like this. He had taken it to the Hands of Humanity, who had… what? Planned to use it for themselves? For what?

  Oh. Of course. To cure the world of Mages.

  Drainthnes was continuing as my mind churned. “Now, put down your heads for the Blessings of the God of Storm, the God of Mountains, the God of the seas, the God of the Hunt, the God of Darkness, the God of Life, and, of course, Goddess of Magic, Ylestra, Blesser and Conduit for the creation of Humanity. Hear us sing!”