The weather got warmer as we teleported South, until we drew close to the mountains. They took up all of the horizon. The hills leading up to the Central Mountains were already at a higher elevation than almost all of Southern Westrion.

  We’d made it to a landscape of complete tundra. There were trees on the mountains in the distance, but these hills either didn’t get enough water or all the trees were cut down to help guard the border. We were faced with steep, yet oddly flowing hills of grass and rock leading to the not-so-distant mountains.

  “How will we get into Amdriel? Aren’t there patrols?” I asked.

  "On land and above in airships, yes,” Adaline answered. “But there are no patrols where we’re going.”

  Below these rolling hills, as Adaline explained, was limestone. It was under layers of soil in most places, but it was still riddled with caves. The hills were full of sinkholes and caverns, most of which ended abruptly and all of which could be dangerous. But one had been explored all the way to the other end.

  “The Lomallors were the noble family who held this part of Westrion,” Adaline said. “They’re the ones who explored it, some family member five hundred years before. They kept it secret as a personal bolt hole to move between territories. It was secret, and when the surviving Lomallors joined the Heirs of the Raxolan Empire they brought the secret with them.”

  “So this is how you’ve been crossing the country border all the time,” I said, staring at the mouth of the cave she’d brought us to. It was set slightly into the hill, and damp rain from the night before ran down stalactites at the entrance. It was all too easy to see the thing as a gaping maw ready to swallow us.

  It was known that the Heirs considered their boundaries to be where the Empire of Raxolas once ended, not the borders of the current Republic of Westrion. Every country on the entire continent of Westrion hated it, but they usually hung around the Northern half of the continent where the old capitals had been anyway. But it was one reason why the Mage Division viewed the Heirs as such a powerful, international threat.

  “Yes,” Adaline said simply. “But that won’t matter for much longer.”

  My stomach lurched.

  “Right,” I said. “Unless the plan to become supercharged and take over the continent doesn’t work for the Heirs.”

  “If the working at Raxolas’s tree on the Equinox goes wrong somehow,” Adaline said, “then it will be powerful enough that it’ll be practically guaranteed to kill them all and blow up half the mountain. One way or another, everything will change soon.”

  Before I could say anything to that, she started walking determinedly into the cave. Her pace was fast, and I had to half jog to catch up. She pulled a flashlight out of her bag. Not a magic one, there was no power there to sense besides the ordinary electric kind.

  “The Heirs turned to electricity to get through here?” I asked. My tone was not flattering. “They couldn’t solve every single problem with their oh-so-powerful magic?”

  “Ugh.” Adaline shined the light into my eyes for a moment and I waved her away. “You sound like Theo when you talk like that. Come on, we’re almost there.”

  “Maybe Theo had some points,” I shrugged, “aside from the murder.”

  “Maybe if his points were that good, he wouldn’t have needed the murder,” Adaline said. “I left the Heirs, Izak, can you stop bugging me about them? It’s not like the Hands of Humanity care much about collateral damage either. Let me know when you’ve found an organization that doesn’t murder and kidnap people, then you can start making remarks.”

  The truth was that her thoughts on how rotten the Hands, the Heirs, and the Mage Division could be were startlingly similar to my own. That only made me feel more sullen and tired. I didn’t want that to be the truth about the world. I didn’t want everything to be awful.

  “There’s more than three organizations in the world,” I said irritably. “It’s not all about magic.”

  She was leading me further into the darkness of the cave, and I walked closer to her automatically. It was starting to feel claustrophobic.

  “Can you actually name any organization that isn’t about magic?” she asked, focusing forward on the path instead of looking at me. “We’re Mages, Izak. Magic is what we do.”

  “Well,” I said, “as you’re so fond of pointing out, I was kidnapped as a child. That wasn’t my choice.”

  She stopped short, and I grabbed her shoulder. My fingers dug in hard, and it was probably uncomfortable, but I was too on edge to notice.

  “Why did you stop?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

  She blinked, finally looking over at me. “No, it’s only that that’s the first time I think I’ve ever heard you actually say that you were kidnapped.”

  “I’ve been kidnapped three times now,” I snapped, “I’m not afraid of saying it.”

  “No, but by the Mage Division,” she said. “I thought you were in denial about it.”

  “I was not,” I said, which was kind of a lie. “It’s just that there was nothing I could do about it. This entire world is larger than me, and it seems like every government or cult or terrorist organization out there wants to prove that I can’t do anything. Don’t you get it? That’s why I sympathize with Theo. I know what it feels like to be helpless and stranded at the mercy of people who want to rub it in. Now can we keep moving?”

  She blinked again, then looked down to her feet. “I… I didn’t really think about it like that.”

  “Yeah, well I did,” I said. “Now come on. I don’t know the way out of here.”

  She shrugged. “There’s no rush. This place is kind of creepy, but it’s not dangerous.”

  “Gods!” I swore. “You are the most oblivious person ever when you have power over someone else, aren’t you? I don’t know how to get out of here and I hate it and it’s just like my fucking cell!”

  “We didn’t keep you in a-” Adaline started indignantly, before remembering. “Oh. With the Hands of Humanity.”

  The darkness felt like it was getting thicker, as though it could choke the air. It felt harder to breathe. The smell was more moist and cave, danker than the holding cells ever were, but I was still trapped underground. And the only light was Adaline’s electric flashlight, which was buzzing ever so slightly just like those horrible fluorescent lights they had on us all the time.

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  All it needed was for someone to start screaming through their soul as the Machine tore out their magic and it would be the exact same.

  I crouched down, feeling the rough, uneven stone of the floor and trying to feel how different it was from the cement of my old cell. There was no metal here. I was alone except for my sister. I’m fine, I tried to tell myself, I’m fine. But it still felt like I couldn’t breath right and my body was so tense waiting for the screaming to start and-

  “Izak,” Adaline crouched next to me. “Hey, Izak, it’s okay. You’re not trapped. It’s only thirty more minutes-”

  “Thirty more minutes!?” I gasped. That sounded impossible.

  “Maybe closer to forty-five,” she admitted, “but still, you’re not trapped. You’re going somewhere and no one’s going to hurt you. You’re okay.”

  Her voice was soft and feminine, more like Nalei’s than the soldier brothers or whatever who had kept me captive in the Hands. It was different. And she put a hand softly on my shoulder, a more kind and gentle touch than I had ever gotten during the captivity in my cell. When I tried to breathe it was a little easier.

  I reached out blindly and she took my hands. I found myself able to start on a breathing exercise. Soon it felt possible to stand up, though I didn’t let go of Adaline’s hand.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m not going to think about the time. It doesn’t really matter. We’ll just walk and get out of here, right?”

  “Right,” Adaline said with a nod. “Then we’ll be in the city in one more spell.”

  I nodded back, and let my sister lead me through the dark. When we finally saw the daylight creeping out the other side, I ran toward it and nearly twisted my ankle on a rock. I fell down, slamming the ground hard and not even caring because I was laid out under the sunlight. My body was sore and aching, but I was in the light open air again. The possibility of freedom came back to me.

  At this point Adaline teleported us to the closest camp to the city. There was more walking after that, but we had been walking through the wilderness for days and this was domesticated farmland with clear paths. It was also easy as pie compared to the cave.

  It was well into nighttime by the time we got there, but the city lights shone golden into the night. It was a very different place from Lake City, smaller and quieter, but there was something reassuring about the lights of the city. It was like coming home in a strange way. Except it was also sad, because it meant I was leaving the wilderness behind.

  I swallowed hard, looking out at the city. “We’re finally here.”

  “We are,” Adaline said. “We should make camp for the night one more time, I don’t have anywhere to stay in the city. In the morning we can start searching for Sarai.”

  We made a fire a bit off the road. There was wide space for camping, and we weren’t the only ones doing it.

  There were other people, all looking kind of rough, but no one bothered us. Looking out with my magical sense, I could see that all of them were trained, though none of them were powerful enough to be Mages. They had enough magic to light fires and to know that Adaline and I were real Mages. Everyone gave us a wide berth.

  Maybe I should have been more stressed in Frostfall, surrounded by people, but I wasn’t.

  Even though it was cold, the city didn’t have a dour mood. There seemed to be preparations for some festival going on. Brick buildings were lined with colorful flags in shades of red, orange, blue, and white. The streets were bustling with people in warm leathers and furs, with accents of colorful sewn and quilted cloth, buying foods, firewood, and spices. Steams ran through the town, above ground and below, branching off from the thick river that ran down from the mountain, which turned into two large tributaries in the city square.

  Adaline and I blended into the crowd with our rough clothes and furs. Enough people went into the mountains every day that no one looked hard at us. It was also a fairly metropolitan trade city and, though most people had similar dark skin and light hair common to these mountains, there were people of all kinds of looks. It felt strange to move through a city crowd and not get wary glances at my ring or the Mage tags I no longer wore in my ear, weird but ultimately good.

  Buildings were shorter and squatter than Lake City, but the atmosphere reminded me of the city before the winter solstice and new years. Holidays known for celebrating family, community, and life that had been secular enough to survive the intense suppression of religion after the revolution against the Empire. I kept finding myself smiling, with fond memories of how Shamora gave me sweet trinkets like luck charms and Adain had given me flowers and sweets.

  In the city square, dancers were practicing for something. Two of the dancers were Mages, standing in ritual circles and practicing illusions of snow and sun.

  However, all of the dancers were generating sparkles with their hands. It made me stop and stare.

  Seeing the Mages made me fully realize something. Almost every single person I had seen in the city had shown signs of basic magic training. Even though the vast majority of them had nowhere near enough magic to be a full Mage, what magic they had was still trained. Probably all of them could recognize a full Mage and throw up sparks like this.

  Luckily I wasn’t the only person staring at the practice show, and the crowd naturally passed to allow us to stand and stare. Adaline stopped next to me.

  “This is where Sarai and I planned to meet if we ever got split up when we ran,” she said. “At the fork of the river in the central square at sunset. That won’t be for at least four hours more, and I’d like to find her as soon as I can.”

  I jolted slightly when she spoke, I had been so distracted by the dancers and my own revelation.

  “Have you noticed,” I said, “that almost every single person here has magic training?”

  She blinked at me. “Why wouldn’t they? Pretty much everyone can learn some basic magic skills like starting fires and recognizing Mages. The Heirs teach all the children basic things like that. It’s useful.”

  I stared at her. “It’s illegal.”

  “Sure, in the Republic.” She sighed. “I’ve been telling you that the Republic is backwards. They’re so anti-Mage they won’t even let anyone learn any magic without some permit. It makes Mages seem stranger and more dangerous, so people don’t object as hard when the government steals us.”

  Her points had a lightly rehearsed air to them and it was likely propaganda of the Cult. But it also rang true. Magic was a terrifying unknown to everyone I’d ever met in Lake City who wasn’t a Mage, and they relied on the Mage Division to keep it all in check. Not one of them could recognize a Mage without our tags, where the strangers camping near us last night knew to give us a wide berth. Today in the city no one was afraid to jostle us, but this was out in public where anyone could see magic and there were Mage performers as well as magic shops and goods being traded.

  This chain of thought led me to another stunning revelation: the people here knew Adaline and I were Mages, but they weren’t afraid.

  “They’re not afraid,” I said, looking around us.

  “Uh, yes, the people in the Republic are afraid,” she said. “I’ve haven’t been living in the capital all my life, but-”

  “No!” I said. Then I shook my head. “I mean, yes, the people there are afraid. But the people here aren’t. They all know we’re Mages and they don’t really care.”

  “That’s true,” she agreed, a thoughtful frown on her face. “You’d think they’d be a little more respectful.”

  “A little more afraid, you mean?” I asked. “Because I saw the non-Mages who traveled with the Heirs, and that wasn’t respect. That was fear.”

  She blinked at me, an expression I was beginning to dislike on her. “They weren’t- I mean they didn’t really-”

  She bit her lip and looked away, out toward the dancers with their two Mages being led by a random non-Mage. “Do you think Theo was afraid of me?”

  "Honestly, from the way he talked to me, yes,” I said. Maybe I should have been more tactful, but she should already know this, and my reserves of tact were not endless.

  “Why don’t we split up to cover more ground?” I asked to change the subject. “We can meet back here at sunset if we don’t find her.”

  She stared at me. “Do you even know what she looks like? What would you even say to her?”

  "That Adaline sent me,” I said. “And you’ve shown me your photo of her. I’ll convince her to come back here and we’ll wait for you. She might not even be coming here at sunset, otherwise- it’s not like she knows to expect you.”

  Adaline frowned at me, and sighed. Turning back to the performers she gloomily admitted: “You’re right. She probably doesn’t, not after how Maggie sent her away.”

  “Finding Sarai is our next step,” I said. “I want to do it as much as you do.”

  “You’re not worried about being cornered or trapped?” she asked. “Someone might be watching us, and you don’t have access to your magic anymore.”

  “I’m getting some back,” I said. Pulling up the sigil on my hand, I threw my whisper right to Adaline’s ear. “Testing, testing.”

  She started. “Your magic has returned?”

  “It’s slowly coming back,” I said. “Maggie was right. It needed time to heal and her magic binding is fading on its own. I’ll call for help if I need you, and you can take care of yourself.”

  Adaline smiled and nodded. “Fine. I’ll meet you back here at sunset.”