I woke up briefly to movement in the dark. I sat bolt upright, seeing only the outline of a human against the thin light coming in from outside the tent. The disorientation of this strange, dark place overcame me, and for a moment I felt I was in some odd mixture of the dorms at the Mage Division and on one of my father’s late night camping trips. Childish fear of dark woods and a sense of terrifying alienation came together, my heart beating so hard that I almost didn’t hear it when Adaline spoke.

  “Izak?” she whispered.

  Understanding flooded through me, making me sag with relief. I wasn’t safe, but this danger was familiar and non-immediate.

  “Adaline,” I said. Now that terror wasn’t holding me stiff, I yawned. “What time is it?”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “Privately. About Sarai, I wanted to know if there was any chance that you’d seen her.”

  “Is Maggie here?” I asked.

  “I asked Leandra to call her in for a late night pregnancy check up,” Adaline said. “She always answers calls for pregnant women and Leandra is always happy for more attention to her baby. I said I’d watch you.”

  She sat cross-legged in front of me, watching me very intently in fact. She wasn’t interested in being doe-eyed and helpless now.

  “Maggie told me today that Sarai was dead. Really dead,” I said. “They found her body, even if the circumstances sounded odd. Do you really think she’s alive?”

  “That was not Sarai,” Adaline said fiercely. “I know medical Alteration magic, Izak. It’s my specialty. Do you know how complex it is to turn a human body into a wolf and back? And I am telling you, there was something off about that body. Magic had been performed on it.”

  “The Hands of Humanity certainly wouldn’t have performed magic on it,” I said, frowning. “I talked to Maggie today, and I do think something is off.”

  Adaline scooted closer to me. “What do you mean? Do you think the Mage Division or other rogue Mages could be involved?”

  I did a brief inventory of rogue Mages I knew in my head. The spy from Amdriel, who was supposed to be a Mage, though that had been hard to see under the magics of Oblivion Isle, came to my head. But there was no motive there, Oblivion was simply on my mind.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think the Mage Division would kill a cultist, they don’t kill people randomly and they’re desperate for information. I don’t know about rogue Mages.”

  Adaline’s expression darkened at my wording. My head was still clearing from sleep, and I was used to speaking with Maggie, who didn’t care. I saw that I said the wrong thing just before she opened her mouth.

  “A ‘cultist’?” she repeated. “Is that what you think of us? Do you think of Sarai that way?”

  I raised my hands in surrender, even though I could have pointed out that I didn’t even know Sarai because I actually didn’t grow up in this cult. I didn’t want Adaline to be my enemy. “It’s just how they talk about things. It’s only been a few weeks since I was in the Division, remember?”

  “And you think they might have captured Sarai?” Adaline asked. “Maybe they faked a body magically to keep it secret? To get info?”

  I opened my mouth to refute immediately, and she shot me a glare. My jaw clicked shut and I closed my eyes with a nasal sigh. I put more effort into thinking through it, but still shook my head.

  “They wouldn’t hide it if they had a Cul- an Heir,” I said. “It’s political for them. They look useless and Mages look dangerous if the Heirs are free and ki- taking sacrifices. They’d want to declare a victory.” The new language was hard to adjust to, but I’d have to adapt quickly to do well in this place. Well. I’d adapted once to the language of the Division, I could do the same trick twice, even if I was older now.

  Adaline scrunched her nose in disgust. “Attacking other Mages for the sake of humans. Your logic makes sense, though, for the magic police.”

  She sat back on her heels. I didn’t comment on her prioritization of Mages, though I thought with a pang back to Theo’s insistence that we couldn’t be equal siblings as long as I was a Mage. I felt like every day I understood my siblings more, and I didn’t like it.

  “You said the Hands wouldn’t use magic, are you sure?” she asked. “They had Mages captured. They were controlling you somehow, right?”

  “They had us in collars that could sense magic,” I said, resisting the urge to touch my neck. My voice came out flat. “They shocked us if we used magic.”

  “Horrible.” She shook her head. “That’s Mage Division tech, though, you know. That’s what they use to try to control magic and sense new Mages.”

  “It wasn’t the Mage Division who had me captured,” I said sharply.

  “No, but we all know who’s side the Mage Division is on between Mages and humans,” Adaline said, the edge of a growl in her voice.

  “Yeah, the side of compromise and reason,” I said. “The Mage Division is made up of Mages, remember?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Limited Mages. Mages who have their powers collared and corralled instead of being free as they should be.”

  “You’re going to call us ‘collared’?” I hissed. “You’re the ones who literally sign your powers over to your great and shitty leader.”

  “His Excellency Drianthenes is a Great Mage!” she protested.

  “Yes, now if only he was a good person,” I said.

  “Ugh!” She stood up abruptly. “I don’t know why I bothered to talk to you.”

  “Wait!” I reached out and grabbed her wrist. Not enough to actually stop her, but she still paused, looking back at me. I took a deep breath in. Maybe meditating more would be a good idea.

  “I used to be charming,” I said. Charismatic when I needed something, and I needed allies here. I wasn’t what I used to be, but I still had to try. “It’s been a hard few weeks… and honestly, a hard year. Could I try again? Maybe you can tell me about Sarai.”

  She sighed back, and sat down across from me cross-legged.

  “I can usually be charming, too, but I can’t seem to manage it with my siblings,” she admitted. “With my brothers. I don’t know you, anymore.”

  “I know. I don’t know you either.” I ran a hand through my hair. “I’ve seen you be charming with Friedrich. I’d rather you not try to charm me.”

  She snorted. “I wasn’t only speaking of flirting, you jerk.”

  “We’re both missing friends,” I said, not wanting to think about her unsettling fake flirting. “Maybe we can find common ground.”

  “Do you think the Hands might use a Mage to cover their tracks after kidnapping someone?” she asked.

  “Maybe.” I bit my lip lightly in thought. “Not a Spacetime Mage, we can almost all teleport, but they’d need an Alteration Mage. They might keep guns on one and threaten them with the collar. Why would they label their work, though, and not just pretend it was some kind of accidental death?”

  “Maybe they didn’t,” Adaline said slowly. “Maybe… the Mage did. As a warning, to whoever found the body.”

  “Maybe.” This seemed like a lot of speculation. “Adaline…” I hesitated.

  She gave me a sharp look. “What? Do you think I’m lying to myself?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t even see her body. And hey, people think I’m crazy, too.”

  Her eyes softened, and a ghost of a smile went across her lips. It was barely anything, but it didn’t unsettle me the same way her fawning smile did.

  “What is it then?” she asked.

  “I know I’m new here,” I said cautiously. This might not be good territory, but if I wanted Adaline to trust me then I had to give her something to trust, “and I don’t exactly know how things work. But Maggie seemed kind of weird when I asked her about Sarai.”

  Adaline deflated, whether in relief or sadness I couldn’t tell. “I’ve been able to see that, too. I think she’s guilty. Sarai and I were both her students, but ever since I actually managed the werebeast form she’s been so focused on me. I think she blames herself for Sarai’s death, and that’s why she can’t handle the idea of Sarai being alive. It just means she’s failing her more.”

  I frowned sympathetically. “Yeah. That’s hard.”

  I wasn’t totally convinced, though Adaline did know her better than me. That may only mean she had her own biases.

  “What if the Hands do have her?” I asked. “Do you really think your people will send out a mission?”

  Adaline shook her head. “I hope so. The ritual has to be the focus, though. I don’t know how much they can spare. I’ll be on your side trying to convince them to launch a mission. They can’t pretend that Nalei is dead, certainly.”

  I nod, though that wasn’t reassuring to me. They had no reason to care about Nalei.

  “I should go back to sleep,” Adaline said. “I don’t want Maggie to see us talking. She’ll think we’re conspiring against her.” She said it like a joke, so I refrained from pointing out that we kind of were.

  “Hey,” I said softly. “Can I ask you something? Before you sleep?”

  Adaline, who had been pulling away, paused. “Alright. Truth for truth.”

  I lowered my voice further. “Do you actually like Friedrich? Enough to marry him?”

  She flinched slightly, looking down at the ground. Pulling her hands into her lap, she seemed to grow smaller. A tighter target. More defensive.

  “Marrying him will make me Queen of an Empire that will rule the world,” she said.

  “What’s your plan as queen, then?” I asked, letting her dodge the question for now because, honestly, I was curious.

  She paused, then spoke slowly. “Well, Friedrich has trust in the advisors around him and listens closely. As his beloved wife, he would be generous in listening to me.”

  “Yeah, you’d practically rule everything,” I said. “I get that, I’ve seen the way he melts as soon as you turn your eyes on him. I know. But what would you actually do? Subjugate all the non-Mages in the world and force Calenthe to bow to you everyday? Wouldn’t that get boring eventually?”

  She sputtered. “I don’t- you shouldn’t talk about Friedrich that way, he’s the- he’s my-” Then she sighed, and I saw some of the pretense drop. “Izak, the world isn’t in good shape. Mage kids are stolen. You weren’t here, you didn’t see what it did to our family. How it broke our parents. This needs to stop, but Friedrich can’t rule on his own. If I’m there, it can be better. We’ll be the saviors of Mages.”

  “And what if other Mages don’t want to be saved?” I asked. “Adaline, if you came to me at the Mage Division and told me you were my queen, right now, I wouldn’t feel saved, I’d fight you. There are entire Mage families in the Division. What do you intend to do with them? Many of them will fight to the death. Are you ready for another massacre?"

  She flinched. “Fight to the death? Against other Mages?”

  “Other Mages who are taking control of them.” I pointed to the fake tattoo on my neck, which I’d bet Maggie hadn’t told Adaline about yet. Adaline was her protege, not yet her superior. “Do you think it was easy for Maggie to get this thing on me? No Mage outside of the Heirs is going to submit their magic to someone else’s rule like that without a fight. You can call the Mage Division a prison, but as a part of the Division my magic was my own. Is my own.”

  Which wasn't something I could say about the places I’d been since leaving the Division on my doomed mission.

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  She stared at me, but her eyes weren’t dumbfounded. They were thinking.

  “The tattoos aren’t just about control, but you do have a point. But that’s… even more reason for me to rule as Queen,” she said. “If there is fighting, I could try to stop it from turning into a massacre. Friedrich will be merciful if I ask him to be, and Drianthenes wants to crown his son, not himself.”

  I frowned. There was more to say here, but time was running out. I couldn’t fish for information on the tattoos or the defenses of the camp, not yet. I’d pushed Theo too quickly in desperation and he’d rejected my pleas for help. I had to start somewhere else.

  “So you need to be queen as a responsibility,” I said. “As an obligation to the world to help Mage kids and limit the damage Friedrich could do. Alight. But do you actually want to be? Does that sound like a fun existence to you? Being married to someone you don’t care for to limit what he could do to the world?”

  She hesitated. “I wouldn’t say that I don’t care for Friedrich.”

  I bit my lip and leaned forward, making a sincere yet calculated offer.

  “I promise not to tell anyone,” I said. “It’s just that I don’t know if anyone here seems to care about what you… what would actually make you happy.” Even Maggie, though I didn’t think it would be helpful to say so. “However you care for Friedrich, do you actually think being married to him would make you happy?”

  “And you ask only for my happiness?” she asked sharply.

  I shrugged. I didn’t quite know what to say to that, so one truth came out. Not the truth that I wanted her to doubt the Heirs and start seeing me as her ally. Not that I wanted an ally in a place like this. Not that she sometimes reminded me of a different version of myself. But another truth.

  “I don’t have many people to care about anymore,” I said. “I still… we’re still siblings, right?” I should’ve cared. And, in some ways, I did. I could remember how much Adain missed his mother, how he wondered about her, even when the rest of the Biraleis disapproved. It was true enough to be a good lie.

  Adaline was silent.

  “And you remind me a bit of myself,” I admitted. “I… there were things I wanted. I’ve been ambitious. But I haven’t always seen what’s important to me.” This was hitting on something raw, but could be worth the risk to share. I gave a nervous chuckle. “I mean, until I got captured and thrown in a cell. That really helped me realize how important good food and sunlight was.”

  That wasn’t funny and Adaline didn’t laugh.

  “I was going to be happy,” she said slowly. “When Sarai was there with me. She was my best friend. It used to be Calenthe, and I was competing with Sarai for Maggie’s attention, but then I actually got to know her…” She fell silent.

  I thought she was going to leave, she was quiet for so long, but then she spoke again.

  “I could be happy with him, if she was there. I thought I could be happy anywhere if she was there.”

  “But she’s not here,” I finished.

  “I need to get her back,” Adaline said. “Izak, are you sure she couldn’t have been captured by the Hands of Humanity?”

  I shook my head. “Of course I’m not sure. Maybe they could force a Mage to fake a body. Maybe they wanted another Mage prisoner. They told us so little, I don’t know. She could be.”

  “Then I have to find out,” she whispered fiercely. “Listen-”

  Then she stopped. For a moment I didn’t know why, until I heard the sounds of footsteps and soft whistling outside the tent, one of the prayer tunes from earlier that night.

  “Maggie’s coming back,” Adaline said. “Pretend to be asleep.” And she was gone, leaving me to lie alone on my cot in the dark.

  As I heard the footsteps of Maggie returning in the dark, I thought about our conversation. There were tactical things to think about, but mostly I felt guilty. Maggie was right. Hope was going to kill Adaline. She didn’t seem to know what a poison it was yet. But hope might also just get her to help me.

  Days passed in a similar fashion. There were more camp meals and unsettling speeches from Dianthenes. I learned to prefer the days when he read religious texts, which were strange and obscure and felt far less real. I kept an eye out for weaknesses in camp security, ways to escape, but there were magical protections on the camp that I didn’t fully understand.

  One day, Maggie shook me awake early in the morning and shoved a bundle of well-made, practical clothes at me.

  “Drianthenes is waiting outside,” she said. “Don’t keep him waiting, boy.”

  I stared at her blurrily, and then pulled on the clothes along with a brown leather jacket. Before I could get very far, she put a hand on my shoulder. I froze. The look in her eyes wasn’t exactly friendly.

  “I heard part of your and Adaline’s conversation a few nights ago,” she said in a low tone. Over her shoulder I could see the outline of Adaline asleep in her cot. “Sarai is dead, you hear me? Adaline wasn’t the only one who cared for her, she was my dear pupil and even Drianthenes’s own darling step-niece. If she were alive, we’d do everything in our power to get her back. You better watch your tongue mentioning her around Drianthenes, boy.”

  Before I could think of a good response, she lightly shoved me away and stood up, marching back to her own cot. I gathered the clothes up in my arms and scuttled off to one of the privacy curtains to get dressed. I hunched my shoulders against the bite of morning cold in the air and hoped I didn’t look too suspicious.

  Outside Driathenes waited, this time only accompanied by the man I’d seen in the command tent. The one he’d called “Jaccobius”. Both wore sturdy, fur-lined leather coats, with thick, gold-toed boots.

  Drianthenes smiled as I exited the tent. “Izak. How good of you to join us.”

  Jaccobius was a Spacetime Mage, like his son Henri, and Drianthenes had him set up his ritual circle. It would only be the three of us and I could see teleportation runes on his arms, but it wasn’t possible to learn to teleport groups of people as an ingrained spell, not unless it was the same group every time. Changing the thing you were teleporting meant changing the spell.

  “Can you do group teleportation, Izak?” Drianthenes asked. Even as a ritual, it could be hard to get right every time. I had to do an agonizing amount of practice.

  “Yes,” I said, reluctantly adding: “Your Excellency.”

  “Yes, I understand it’s the most common use of Spacetime magic,” he said. It was said with the air of a king who had deigned to come down to speak to a merchant out in the market and ask him of his business. “Are you proficient in your field?”

  A memory of pride tugged at me, warring with tense awareness of my current situation.

  “For my age,” I said simply, not wanting to give away any more.

  He stared at me for just a moment. “Modest, are you? Well, I’m glad to hear it. It’s hard to know how children of diluted bloodlines will turn out. Just look at your brother.”

  I felt my lips tighten and breathed in sharply, trying to otherwise keep my expression clear. I didn’t understand why I felt this stab of anger on Theo's behalf. He had been complicit in my own kidnapping. Somewhere, he was probably helping in Nalei’s imprisonment, which should make him my enemy. I shouldn’t care how Drianthenes spoke of him.

  Was it the re-awakening of some big-brother instinct, now that we’d met again, my old protectiveness of him? Was it some empathy, knowing what it was like to be the odd one out? Or was it that I was only becoming more sure that the eager, crazed certainty in Theo’s eyes when he told me that I couldn’t be his brother if I was a Mage came from here?

  I realized I’d been silent too long, lost in my thoughts. The scrutiny of Drianthenes’s eyes still pinned me. He could sense, at least on some level, my conflicts. I’m sure that to him I might as well have been screaming it.

  “It’s been hard,” I said slowly, “being reunited with my family after so long. So much has changed, some of them have changed so much that I barely recognize them.”

  “Like Theo,” Drianthenes said. “It must have been a shock to see him among your captors. Your little baby brother, now your warden. Do you still see that little boy when you look at him, since you never saw him become the monster he is now?”

  That threw me, as well as his sympathetic look. He almost might have been a friend trying to help me process. Almost.

  “I…” I didn’t know what to say. “He still does seem quite young to me.”

  “Even though you’re only two years different in age,” Drianthenes noted. “It should mean less to you, at 17 and 19 instead of 7 and 9. But here you are.”

  Before I could think of a reply to that, Jaccobius appeared behind Drianthenes’s shoulder. No teleportation, but he could move silent as a big cat. I jumped.

  “The spell is ready, Your Excellency,” he said.

  “Oh, good,” Drianthenes said. He clapped his hands in satisfaction and turned to me. “Are you ready to leave the camp, Izak?”

  I eyed him warily, but I didn’t see any point in asking where we were going. He would tell me when he told me, that was clear enough. I remembered his urging in the command tent and said, “Yes. Your Excellency.”

  “Excellent.” Drianthenes smiled. “Take us there, Jaccobius.”

  And the world faded around us. The sense of Jaccobius’s magic was similar to Henri, almost startlingly so. He must be Henri’s teacher, maybe his only teacher. This wouldn’t be like the Mage Division, with full libraries and dozens of classes with different teachers. This was like the old Mage families, moving magical knowledge from master to apprentice, often down family lines. Keeping the study intimate and thus keeping a stranglehold on magical knowledge.

  The sense was sharp, but also tasted like ashes in my mouth. It took longer than other teleportation spells I’d dealt with - usually the spell was as fast as the name implied. Here there was a second of resistance, before it fell back and the spell finished.

  We were no longer standing in the middle of the campsite crowded with tents, the scent of burned wood and human sweat in the mist. Now the green smell of the forest overwhelmed everything. The soft sounds of an early morning gathering of humans disappeared into birdsong and the swaying of leaves. I breathed in deeply. The air didn’t seem to fill my lungs as much as it should have, and there was another smell on the air, faint but familiar.

  “Welcome to the Sacred Arbor.”

  Drianthenes raised his arms to the world around us. We were standing in a misty clearing, surrounded by thick trees with bleached bark and strong roots gripping tightly on the grassy rock below. The ground was subtly uneven, putting Drianthenes and Jaccobius on the ground above me. I looked around and saw the world fall away behind the trees. It took me a moment to process.

  “Are we on a mountain?” I asked. At the twist of annoyance in Drianthenes’s mouth I added, “Your Excellency.”

  “Yes, though I won’t tell you where,” Drianthenes said. “Though even if you did manage to escape back to your old prison of the Division, it’s hidden by old magic. Imperial magic that they’ve long burned and forgotten.”

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I could tell Drianthenes was already annoyed that I wasn’t as awed by his sacred site as I should have been. I was mostly curious. There was something thick and yet subtle in the air, something that pulled at me, and I felt off-balance in a way that may not only have been due to the uneven ground.

  I looked around, trying to understand, and I realized the trees were all set in a circle around us. As I looked, my eyes caught on one in particular.

  I stepped forward automatically, drawn in by my own curiosity. Drianthenes and Jaccobius exchanged knowing looks and stepped back, out of the way of my gaze. The tree was at the top of the circle and it was larger than the others, as wide as if it were an old palace tower of Division Headquarters come to life. I took a couple more steps forward and felt the sense in the air thicken. The tree was a soft white-gold, undertones of reds and blue lines running down its trunks like veins under the skin.

  Despite the season turning the leaves of the other trees shades of orange, this one had bright green leaves sprouting like early spring. It was still mostly bare, but as I watched another leaf drew out of its bud. My eyes traveled down the length of the thing to the roots, and I started as I noticed something that I should have before. All of the grass at its base was red. The grass everywhere else here was green or browning for fall, but here the grass was stained as if by fresh blood.

  I faltered. It could have simply been a strange kind of plant, a natural phenomenon. But I’d finally recognized the scent of ozone and the sense of being off balance. I stood frozen.

  It was the exact way I’d felt the morning of Adain’s disappearance.

  Drianthenes approached behind me, though I didn’t bother to turn around. Magicless as I was, if he wanted to hurt me then there was nothing I could do about it.

  “You’ve realized the majesty of this place,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. I couldn’t help flinching. “Even if you don’t understand it, you can feel it.”

  “What is it?” I asked, then remembered to add. “Your Excellency?”

  He smiled thinly. “This is the site where Emperor Raxolus reached into the heavens and attained his great power nearly 1000 years ago. This is the gate between the world of men and the world of Gods.”

  “This,” Jaccobius added, “is where the Heirs of the Empire will become ascendent again.”

  I swiveled around to face him as he approached the other side of me. His eyes were level and certain. It occurred to me how, even though Maggie didn’t seem to see it as a good thing, every single member of the Heirs did treat their future ascension as an inevitability. Standing in this place, I finally understood why.

  The magic here was thicker than the Mage Division, thicker than Oblivion Isle, fuller and deeper than any other place I’d ever been. The power was thick enough to taste and I realized that the slight shine in the air I’d taken for mist seen through sunlight was actually magic. It was the atmosphere of this place.

  It was unlike anything I had ever seen.

  Drianthenes took a step toward me, and I took a step back. Closer to the great tree.

  “This is the future,” Drianthenes said. “This is where the Empire was born 1,000 years ago and this is where it will be reborn. You, Izak, are lucky enough to have a choice. You can stand with us or against us.”

  “Don’t think we haven’t seen you hesitate,” Jaccobios added before I could speak, “with the titles and respect the future Emperor deserves. Your strange loyalty to anti-Mage factions like the Division and your brother. We see your conflict. We know you are not with us fully.”

  They kept walking as they spoke, slowly approaching me, and I backed away. The uneven ground caught at my feet, but I managed to stumble without falling.

  “We have decided to offer you a gift,” Drianthenes said. He smiled as he approached, friendly and open, while Jaccobius looked at me solemnly. “We will offer you the chance to prove your loyalty and become one of us.”

  “You could be brother-in-law to the Emperor,” Jaccobius said, “you could be in a position of power and respect among us. And we will be ascendent.”

  “We have watered this ground with bloody power,” Drianthenes said, “making sacrifices to the future ritual to come. When the interdimensional equinox is upon us this world will see power like it has never known before.”

  “We have helped feed it,” Jaccobius said. “And so will you.”

  My back pressed up against the tree. I looked down at my feet below, finding the blood red grass pulling at my boots. Looking back up, both men were one step closer to me. My mouth was dry.

  “Feed it?” I echoed. “How?”

  “We are seeking another human captive,” Drianthenes said. There was a gleam in his eyes. “We are doing one for each of the gods. It will be a mother, this time, for the God of Life. You will help us kill her, become one with us as part of the ritual. This is not only a proving ground, but a binding to pull us together.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned against the tree. I was empty, overwhelmed, and in over my head. I could hear Auralia offering a chance to prove myself. Behind me the tree thrummed with magic, giving me little static shocks with the power. It didn’t feel evil. Was it aware enough to feel the blood on its soil?

  “So, what do you say, Izak?” Drianthenes offered. “Will you join us? Become one with us?”

  I opened my eyes and cleared my mind. Breathing deeply, in and out, the only emotion I let myself feel was determination. There were things I understood, now, that I hadn’t years ago. Things about myself that were starkly clear.

  In the end, the choice was easy.

  “Yes,” I said, not allowing myself to think or feel anything about my lie.