Blood Over Bright Haven — Chapter 15: The Truth

“Holy is magical conquest, for God gives power to the mages, and through them His Might is known. The mage’s responsibility is to bring to heel the wild of the world and make it civil through the cleansing Light of Feryn, the Father. As he tames the wild energy given into his hands by God so too must he tame his inferiors, though they resist him.”

— The Tirasid, Magely Conduct, Verse 10 (59 of Tiran)

PASSING THROUGH TIRAN had become a nightmare of normalcy. The trains still ran, the tills turned, communication towers blinked through the mist, and the factories clunked and boomed as they always had. All this mechanical movement Sciona had once found so comforting… it was all drenched in blood. Each flash and spark, she knew to be Blight, striking the life from something—or someone—beyond the barrier. But having spent the past seventy-some hours drowning in visions of unraveling bodies, Sciona was learning to keep her head above the burning sea and breathe.

She walked through the city as though the sights and sounds around her constituted a dream that would pass when she opened her eyes. It was the only way she could keep moving. And if she didn’t keep moving, the nightmare would never end.

Trethellyn Hall seemed so much colder than it had, rising from the stately university skyline to dwarf the structures around it. Sciona had always held the size of Bringham’s building in awe and esteem, a reflection of her great mentor. Now, its stature set a deep shudder that made the hair stand on her arms. Sciona’s department—often Sciona all on her own—had been the one sourcing the energy for all those stories, hundreds if not thousands, of spells per day.

Despite the urgency driving her on, she didn’t take the magic-powered lift up to Bringham’s office. The train ran whether she boarded it or not, but the lift sat idle unless someone called for it, using up precious magical energy —precious life—and, selfishly, Sciona didn’t want to watch out the metalwork doors as the lift rose past floors upon floors of alchemists, conduit designers, and other mages testing new spells for Bringham’s factories. She did not want to see the scale of industrial magic to which she had been party for seven years.

Unfortunately, she knew the building so well—she had taken the lift up so many times—that, even on the stairs, she knew exactly where she was based on the sounds and smells filtering into the stairwell. There was the clank and whir of the mechanical looms on the first floor where Kwen workers tested new machinery for efficiency, the piercing chemical scent from the dye testing floor, followed by the distinctive whoosh of alchemists siphoning material for new dyes. Fleeing each new sound and scent, Sciona took the stairs two at a time and reached the upper floors sweating.

She stopped in the doorway of Bringham’s main laboratory to catch her breath and wished the pain was limited to the stitch in her side, which would fade in a few minutes. Until this point, she had been able to maintain her calm, but visiting her old workplace always brought old emotions to the surface and, this time, with the nostalgia, came agony. The top floor swarmed with movement as it had for all the years Sciona had worked here.

Lab workers scurried from one station to the next with boxes of testing fibers. Spell writers and analysts in purple robes typed and scribbled furiously in their cubicles. Meanwhile, mages on the floor tested a myriad of spells for weaving, sewing, lifting, heating, cooling, folding fabric. That symphony of firing action spells had been Sciona’s joy for many years. This laboratory was where she had first tasted real power, where she had become a monster.

Drawing in a deep breath, she let the stitch sink into her side, wounding, absorbed the pain, and moved forward. A few workers and students looked up in surprise as she passed, but many had their heads down, too focused on their work to register the undersized highmage sweeping through their ranks. Sciona had been one of those oblivious ones, consumed by magic, rarely considering the people around her or the effects her work might have on them.

At the back of the vast laboratory, she climbed the final stairs to Bringham’s office door and knocked. A lab worker in an assistant’s coat

opened the door.

“Highmage!” he said in surprise.

“I need to talk to Archmage Bringham. Now.”

“Oh—” The young man looked over his shoulder into the office, where Bringham was sitting with several purple-robed apprentices, clearly in the middle of a meeting. “I’m not sure if this is a good time.”

“It’s fine, Tornis.” Bringham stood, then addressed his group of research mages. “We’ll resume this discussion later. If you’d give us the room.”

Some of Bringham’s underlings cast looks of confusion and concern at Sciona, but all left the chamber without question.

“Highmage Freynan,” Bringham said when they had gone. “I’ve been

expecting you.”

“You have?”

“Ever since our last conversation. Come in.”

Sciona had always thought of Bringham’s office as vast. She now realized that it wasn’t much bigger than her own lab. The sense of size came from how little it actually contained. There was a desk, an extra chair, the bookshelves bearing Bringham’s private library—all finely crafted but fundamentally utilitarian. On one wall hung a portrait of Bringham’s father, looking stern, and on the opposite wall, a portrait of Archmage Orynhel looking sterner still. The requisite five lights, representing the five Founding Mages, burned above the desk, but there was no extraneous decoration. Where other mages filled their offices with family portraits, works of art, and potted plants, Bringham kept his bare. Sciona had always liked that. It seemed a good, quiet space for the great mind to do its work.

But at the moment, she longed for a little more to distract her. In the past few days, she found that bare walls invited visions of the girl at the ocean, bleeding out into the water.

“God, you look exhausted, Freynan. Sit.”

Obediently, Sciona sank into the chair before Bringham’s desk.

“I’d send for tea, but you look like you might burst if you don’t speak.

So”—he sat opposite her—“what did you want to talk about?”

The words came up like vomit—burning, acrid, and uncontrolled— everything she had told Thomil, but even less measured, more frantic, surely unintelligible to anyone but an archmage who had known her for years. She watched his face as she spoke, watched his thumb rub uncomfortably at the pen in his hands, but couldn’t guess at his thoughts.

“So,” she finished, “I know beyond any doubt that I wasn’t looking at an illusion. I was seeing a land beyond Tiran and witnessing what really happens when we siphon for our spells. I’m happy to do more research to confirm my findings, but this is where I stand now.” She left off, feeling spent, empty, and shaky—as if she really had just thrown up at Bringham’s feet again.

He seemed to take a millennium to respond.

When he did, his tone was resigned. “Oh, dear… I should have known you were too smart…”

“What?” Sciona whispered, ragged from anticipation.

“To buy the curse explanation. We tell many of the highmages when they’re starting out, that they’ve run afoul of a Sabernyn curse. I should have known you’d only buy it until you’d calmed down enough to have a good think.”

“I didn’t buy it at all,” Sciona said—because even now, for some Godforsaken reason, it mattered that Bringham think her clever. “The moment you said it, it didn’t add up. Archmage…” Her voice broke. “Why did you lie to me?”

“You’re right to be angry with me,” Bringham said. “I treated you like any new highmage, but you’re not. You’re Sciona Freynan. I shouldn’t have insulted your intelligence with a cover story.”

“Cover story? So—Y-you mean…?” Sciona didn’t want to think about what he meant, but it was why she had come here. So, despite the urge to turn and run from the office, to hear no more, she gripped the sides of her seat hard and held still to hear his response.

“Research what you will, Miss Freynan.” Bringham’s voice was gentle but firm. “Discover what you will. Feryn knows I can’t stop you. But this particular subject is not something we talk about in the High Magistry.”

“This particular subject?”

“The true nature of the Otherrealm,” Bringham said quietly, as though worried someone might hear him—here within the walls of his office at the top of his own building. “We do not speak of it.”

Sciona’s world had gone blank.

Bringham knew. Everything she had told him about Blight and the source of magic… he had known, and he had lied to her.

“This was not something God ever intended men to perceive,” Bringham continued. “This is why He bid Leon compose mapping spells with guards in them and then bid Faene fix those lines in sacred canon. We are a civilized people, living civilized lives. To talk about where magic comes from is… It is in poor taste.”

In poor taste? “Well, I need you to talk about it.” The only part of Sciona’s body that still felt real was her heart, beating far too hard. “If I’m going to stay and keep researching here. Please…” She needed to hear him say the words ‘it’s not really true. We don’t siphon human life. I had no knowledge of this. None of us had any knowledge of this.’ “Freynan, be realistic. We need a great deal of energy to keep Tiran in its glory, to keep its citizens safe and free and provided for. We can’t do all that while wringing our hands about where that energy comes from.”

Sciona’s heart, floating in bodiless limbo, froze straight through.

“I’m posing this to you logically, not mincing words, because I know you can handle the truth. I’m trusting you.” Bringham said it as though she owed him something in return. What? Her acceptance? Her calm?

“You really knew…” This whole time, the archmages had known.

Bringham had known and persisted with magic, great and small, teaching it to the next generation, claiming it was a blessing from God.

“Of course, I know, Freynan. All of us do.”

“But—how?”

“Think about it, Freynan. Archmage Thelanra and Archmage Gamwen are both mapping specialists. Did you imagine that, throughout their combined hundred years in the High Magistry, they never deduced what you did in a few months? Did you imagine that their illustrious predecessors never deduced it? You’re a damn good mage, Freynan, but—”

“I didn’t just deduce it,” Sciona cut him off. Embarrassingly, Thomil had been the one to draw conclusions from the Forbidden Coordinates before Sciona suspected anything. “I saw it. Clearly. As though it was right in front

of me. If Gamwen or Thelanra had seen what I did, they…” What did she mean to say? That they wouldn’t continue using magic? That Bringham wouldn’t? “I saw a girl in my mapping coil, and when I… wh-when I—”

“Freynan, listen to me.” Bringham leaned forward with a note of urgency.

“The most powerful minds and hardest hearts have a breaking point. This— what you’re doing right now—is not something mages can afford to do to themselves. This is not something I want you to do to yourself. Please. You have too much to offer.”

“So, you don’t want me to acknowledge the truth? To name it? Isn’t that a mage’s purpose under God?”

“Not in this case,” Bringham said softly. “Not when it comes to the Otherrealm.”

Thomil was right. Bringham didn’t care. Not about Sciona, not about the lives he had taken in his long career of magic. And if warm, giving, nurturing Bringham didn’t care, then none of them did. Sciona was certain.

And, with that certainty, a deep hatred welled in her frozen heart, shooting the ice through with wrath. It wasn’t just hatred for one man who had carelessly killed so many for his power; it was pettier and more intimate than that.

Bringham and his ilk had built themselves up as Tiran’s heroes for generations, all the way back to the Founding Mages. Hundreds of thousands of people worshipped them. Hundreds of thousands of little boys —and little girls, when they were as ambitious as Sciona—wanted to be them. The mages of Tiran accepted that reverence as if they had earned it when, in truth, they were the deepest, lowest sort of evil. By both the Kwen metric of the harm they did and the Tiranish metric of intention, these were the worst souls in the universe. How dare they hold that evil up before Sciona as an ideal? How dare they siphon her energy, her enthusiasm, her life’s work into their organization on the promise that it was a great good?

“Why?” Was the only word she had in her, this cracked whisper that couldn’t possibly contain all the rage in her being.

“Because Tiran comes first.” Bringham’s voice was as softly earnest as it had ever been, and it poisoned every kind thing he had ever said to her.

“Progress comes first. Magic is all that separates our civilization from the hardship and savagery of the Kwen.”

“But we have a hand in making the Kwen a savage place!” Sciona burst out. “The conditions beyond the barrier—those are conditions our magic

created.” She thought of scarred Carra clutching that knife, determined to kill her. What had to happen to a little girl to turn her into that? What sort of horrors did she have to endure?

“Our magic creates civilization. Where it comes from is out of our hands.

It is God’s will.”

“But it’s not,” Sciona protested. “It’s literally not. We look for energy sources, map them, siphon them—willingly, knowingly. How do you abdicate responsibility for that?”

“By remembering that God gave His chosen mages access to the Otherrealm for a reason. He meant for us to use it.”

“Except he didn’t ‘give us access to it,’” Sciona said. “Founding Mage Leon figured out how to map and siphon based on texts he took from the Endras—the Kwen of the Vendholt Mountains.”

“Under divine inspiration,” Bringham said with insufferable confidence.

“Remember, this was at the same time God sent him a vision that he must found a new city.”

“Why would a good God ask anyone to found a city at such a cost?”

“No one can know the Father’s reasons, and those are not for us to question.” Bringham seemed to see that his answer had not satisfied Sciona and pitifully tried to patch it. “We can infer that God knew that hard times were coming to the Kwen, and He wanted His true worshippers to be

protected.”

“Hard times…”

It was such a pleasing story, imagining that the Tiranish were simply chosen for survival by an all-knowing power beyond their control. But there was a serious cause-and-effect problem with Bringham’s logic that Thomil had identified only moments after coming to understand the origins of Tiranish magic. ‘Hard times’ had come upon the world because of Blight— if not solely because of it, mostly because of it.

How was a population supposed to recover from a bad crop or bitter winter when death kept striking out of nowhere? The Kwen hadn’t coincidentally fallen into chaos and starvation during the same time that Tiran was founded; the Kwen had fallen because Tiran was founded.

Because stolen magic had enabled Leon and his disciples to take even more of what was not theirs.

“Need I remind you that Leon gave the tribes of the Kwen a chance to join him in salvation?” Bringham said. “He warned them of the dark times

to come if they chose not to submit to the true God. Those who refused him simply suffered the consequences of their heresy. They brought Blight on themselves.”

“But Tiran itself is the cause…” Sciona started before realizing that this battle was lost in every way that mattered. Bringham knew. Anything she might say, he already knew, and he had already decided it wasn’t important.

Her kindly mentor was gone. He had been gone before she met him.

“I’m so sorry, Highmage Freynan,” Bringham said, and God, he really sounded it. How dare he? “Most highmages get to grow into this truth gradually and absorb it as they are ready. Feryn, I think I was twice your age when I had it all pieced together.” He let out a wry laugh. “Such is the curse of the sharp mind.”

“So…” she said quietly. “You know what the Otherrealm really is.

Obviously, the other Archmages of the Council know… Who else?”

“Anyone who’s served in the High Magistry for more than five years or so, as well as any city official who’s worked closely with the Council for that long.”

Sciona ran the numbers in her head. That was most of them. Most of the High Magistry and most of Tiran’s government. A whole entrenched system of mass murderers here in the heart of civilization.

They’re either evil, or they’re stupid, Carra had said, and now Sciona knew which. She should have known from the beginning. She just hadn’t wanted to believe it. And still, a last hope in her refused to die. There was one more thing she had to try.

“My research could help stop this,” she said, hating how fragile her voice

was, how defeated she already sounded.

“Stop what?”

“The taking of human life. I’ve created a mapping spell that allows me to view the Otherrealm—the Kwen—in total clarity. It’s like looking through a window, color, detail, and all.”

“Color?” Bringham lit up as though they weren’t still discussing the mass slaughter of innocents. “Impossible!”

Sciona tried to smile and felt like her facial muscles might tear. “Sir, you know that word is not in my vocabulary.”

“But—how…? No, never mind.” He returned her approximation of a smile with a disturbingly genuine one. “I suppose I’ll see at the demonstration in a week like everyone else.”

“I just thought that if we could see the energy sources we siphon more clearly, we could select them more carefully.”

“Absolutely!”

“We could avoid murder.”

“Not murder.” Bringham held up a finger as if Sciona had said something incorrect, gotten a term wrong in class. “It is not murder to use what God has gifted us.”

“But now, God has also given us a way to use it without hurting anyone,”

Sciona protested. “Isn’t that the greater gift? The opportunity to move forward in clear conscience?”

“Sciona,” Archmage Bringham said, and she knew from his weary, apologetic tone that she was being rejected. “Your compassion does you credit as a woman, but it is not realistic. Even if we were to direct magic away from humans, Tiran must still feed on life in the form of plants and animals. The savage people of the Kwen are still living on borrowed time on land that cannot sustain them.”

It was the same argument Thomil had made—that direct siphoning was only half the reason the people beyond the barrier were struggling. Only Bringham phrased it as though the decline of the Kwen was a fated inevitability, not the result of human action.

“This is the price the Kwen pay for their heresy.”

“Three hundred years ago,” Sciona said. “Three hundred years ago, a dozen Kwen leaders refused to convert to a new religion and move in with their conquerors. Those people are all dead now. Everyone who could have had any hand in that decision is dead. But the decision to Blight the Kwen —to siphon—is a choice we make every day. How holy is it to steal life from people who’ve never had a chance to convert? Who’ve never knowingly slighted our god? Who’ve never even laid eyes on Tiran?”

“Evil begets evil,” Bringham said. “Their ancestors worshipped false gods and passed that darkness on to them. If they truly want redemption, they can earn it. They can cross into Tiran, convert to the light, and work for their immortal souls.”

“They don’t make it across, though,” Sciona said. “The vast majority of them die in the Reserve siphoning zone around the barrier.”

“And thank goodness for that,” Bringham said with a laugh. “Can you imagine this city without the use of the Reserve—or worse, overrun with Kwen in such numbers?”

Worse? The implication was nauseating: that the most important function of the Reserve was not to provide energy to the city but to keep the vermin out.

“Blight has always been God’s way of striking down the unworthy.”

“But God doesn’t bring about Blight,” Sciona protested, unable to cede this point. “We do. Humans, with our fallible, selfish human motives. Like you and me—and Sabernyn, for Feryn’s sake! If God really intended Blight as a punishment for those who rejected him, then why…” Her voice caught on the memory of the girl in the ocean. There had been no black-haired warriors in the Horde of Thousands. Tiran was siphoning people too far away to ever have heard of Leon or the god he may or may not have fabricated to justify his greed. “There is no moral basis for Blight. There can’t—”

“Sciona.” Bringham cut her off, his voice infuriatingly gentle. “You’re thinking about this too logically.”

“Too logically?” she repeated. “Too logically? I thought the female crime I was supposed to avoid was thinking about magic emotionally. Too logically, Archmage?”

“God is beyond mere mortal logic. It is not for even the greatest minds to question His will. Remember this. It makes it easier.”

“But—I—”

“I know,” he said softly. “You’ve learned to question everything, turn over the rocks no one else pauses to notice. It is your greatest strength as a mage, but every mortal has his or her limits defined by God. And this is where our role as mages is not to question but to accept. Not because it’s logical but because all beings have their limits, and you will destroy yourself if you don’t. I can’t afford that. The women of Tiran can’t afford that. Tiran itself can’t afford that. If we are to keep developing our civilization as we must, this is where we mages lay down our tools of science and kneel before God, All-knowing.”

But Sciona couldn’t do that. Not when science was supposed to be the godliest of arts. Not when this creeping doubt kept pointing out that all Tiran’s knowledge of God came from Leon, who, it seemed, had been a prolific murderer, plagiarist, and liar. There was too much dissonance from

God all the way down.

“Then I…” I’m a heretic.

The thought had been building since the throes of her panic in Aunt Winny’s apartment. Now it manifested in the form of a void where her soul used to be. It left her empty. Terrified. Yet oddly exhilarated.

“Many think that women are too soft for what we do here, too weak for the burden of this knowledge. But I know you, Sciona Freynan. Your first devotion is to magic and advancement. Your head will clear, you will remember who you are, and you will move beyond this.”

Sciona was nodding—not just because she had promised Thomil she would play along—but because, on this, Bringham had a point about her.

She had never given any indication that she cared about the well-being of others. As far as Bringham knew, she had no interest in people who couldn’t further her ambitions.

“Your devotion has always been to magic,” Bringham said again, his voice so soothing—because perhaps this was the voice he used with himself to get to sleep at night. “None of that has to change because you’ve uncovered a few skeletons.”

“Yes, sir,” Sciona answered from the void inside her, this vacuous space where an enthusiastic girl used to live. Because her ambition hadn’t come from a pure desire for power. Maybe, at its core, it was that, but the desire had come to her swaddled in a softer delusion: that her work would ultimately benefit others. It would help other girls avoid the obscurity she feared. It would improve the lives of working people like Alba and Aunt Winny and even their Kwen neighbors. Somewhere in her soul, Sciona had used that notion to justify all her selfishness. The belief that her work was good… That wasn’t something she could give up. Maybe Bringham and the others couldn’t give it up either. But unlike them, Sciona wouldn’t lie to herself, wouldn’t use God to ease her guilt when reason screamed otherwise.

Bringham smiled that proud smile that had always sparked such a glow in her and now fizzled in the dark. “I can’t tell you how many people warned me that a woman would be too soft for this revelation. Do not prove them right.”

“I won’t,” Sciona said, and with those words, a fresh determination flickered to life in the emptiness. It wasn’t a strong feeling; the hollow was too oppressive, and the first sparks wouldn’t catch on cold nothing. But it was the beginning of a conviction: she would not be soft, but nor would she

be hard ice in the way that Bringham wanted. She was going to show Tiran

something they had never seen before.

She was going to show them Hellfire.

Bringham saw something of the spark in her and chucked her under the chin.

“That’s my star pupil,” he said. “Just remember that there are girls all over the city looking up to you at this moment. For them, if no one else, let’s get through this next week, yes?”

“Yes, sir.” A week. Sciona had a week to prepare her next move. “Thank you for taking the time to talk to me about this, Archmage. I realize that I’ve been difficult, and I’m sorry.”

“Difficult, my dear? Not at all! This must have been a terrible shock.”

Bringham was still looking at her in concern, and Sciona realized that she needed to sell her part better. She couldn’t make her next moves with a worried eye on her. Bringham needed to believe she was the same driven, single-minded Sciona she had always been, that nothing had fundamentally changed.

“Yes, sir, but I feel better now that you’ve helped me understand. You’re right. My first loyalty is to magic. And who am I to question the will of

God?”

“There’s a good girl.”

“I just…” Why not play the weak little woman for once if that was the quickest way out of this office? “Honestly, all of this has exhausted me, sir.”

“I’m sure,” Bringham said sympathetically.

“I wonder if I could have the rest of the week off? I think I need to take a few days to sort out my thoughts before I return to my lab.”

“Of course.” He hesitated. “And I’m sorry to trouble you with this when you’ve just gone through so much, but we have a loose end to tie up. Your Kwen assistant will have to be dismissed.”

Dismissed? Sciona didn’t let the alarm show on her face. “That seems unfair, sir. I brought this on him. The mistake was mine.”

“Of course, but if he chooses to be vocal outside the university, what he witnessed in your lab must never be believed. You’ll dismiss him on the

grounds of mental instability.”

“But he wasn’t—”

“You must do this, Freynan. For his own good and the good of Tiran.”

“Right,” she said, realizing that this might not be the disaster it seemed.

Perhaps it would be best if Thomil vanished from the Magistry’s gaze.

“I can arrange for a proper assistant to help you prepare for the presentation if you like?”

“No, thank you, sir. That’s not necessary.”

“If you’re sure you can finish without an assistant.”

Sciona wasn’t sure she could, but what she definitely couldn’t do was finish her work in her laboratory with the eyes of the Magistry on her.

“Getting a new assistant caught up would take more time than it would be worth,” she said, “and you know me, Archmage. I’ve had the bulk of my material ready for days now.”

He seemed to buy the lie. “I bet you have. I just want to make sure you’ll be ready to present it before the Council.”

“Oh, I will be.”

The green jewel eyes of the Founding Mages flashed judgment through the mist as Sciona climbed the steps of the Main Magistry. She glared right back at them.

This is where we lay down our tools of logic and kneel before God, All- knowing.

Sciona figuratively chewed on the words as she physically chewed the inside of her cheek.

Maybe it made sense for Bringham to push the boundaries of magical knowledge only until he reached God and demurred before his superior.

That was the canonized destiny of men like Derrith Bringham. They did what a man was supposed to: they revered and obeyed the men who had come before them, strove for greatness in the model of their predecessors, and, in the end, they were rewarded with power, acclaim, and dominion over lesser beings—a small godhood of their own. It was a tidy path for a highborn man like Bringham, but it didn’t apply to Sciona. After all, if she had done only what a girl was supposed to do until now, she would have no power, no acclaim. Only an obscure existence as the subject of someone else’s dominion. The path to God wasn’t laid for women like her. It was laid on their backs.

If there was a signpost where Sciona was supposed to lay down her tools and kneel—let herself be a stepping stone for someone else—she had passed it a long time ago. She had passed it over and over again by simply refusing to slow down for anyone. Why should Bringham be an exception?

Why should God Himself be an exception?

Sciona’s laboratory was not the mess she had left it. Some time during the past few days, an invisible Kwen janitor had cleaned it, top to bottom. The papers that had flurried to the floor had been carefully placed back on her desk. The spellograph Thomil had smashed against the wall was gone, scattered keys and all.

“Miss Freynan?” a voice said, and Sciona turned to find Jerrin Mordra in the hall behind her, a stack of notes clutched nervously to his chest. “I wanted to ask… are you alright?”

“What?” It might have been the first time one of Sciona’s co-workers had spoken to her kindly. Thrown off, she fumbled. “I mean—yes. Fine. H-how have you been?”

“I just wanted to let you know… Some of the things I’ve said to you… I didn’t mean any harm by them.”

“Right.” Sciona blinked and failed to remember what, in particular, Mordra the Tenth had said to her. Whatever barbs he was sorry for, they had been dull compared to Renthorn’s and fallen out of her head without leaving an impression.

“I never meant for you to… I didn’t know you were having such a hard time.”

“That’s kind of you to say.” Sciona studied Jerrin Mordra for a moment.

There was a nervous pain in his fern-green eyes that seemed sincere. “Are you a kind person, Highmage Mordra?”

He looked confused. “I’d like to think so. I hope so.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Are you sure you’re alright, Freynan?”

“Highmage Mordra, if you’re a good person—or you aspire to be—you should ask your father to pull some strings and find you a different job. One

far from magic and politics.”

“Why?”

“I appreciate you checking on me. I have to get going.”

“Highmage Freynan?” Mordra said, but Sciona had already swept down the hall, a plan crackling on the kindling inside her.

Fire filled the void.

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