My eyes stung and I put my head in my hands, pressing my palms against my eyelids. I didn’t want to see her. It was all, suddenly, too much. The sunlight was too bright and the smells too intense after so long in that dark prison, especially now that the adrenaline was fading. My head was pounding from the Machine, and every inch of my body was sore. I didn’t want to see her face. I didn’t want to think about the family I had left behind. I had enough to deal with.

  I sat, heavily, on the ground. My chest was building with tension and I knew I was going to cry, but I couldn’t. Not in front of this rogue Mage who was supposedly my sister.

  There was a soft noise as she sat down next to me.

  “Maxine?” She asked softly.

  I threw down my hands, seizing at the anger to keep off the tears.

  “Izak! My name is Izak now and I’m a man!” There was more I could say, about puberty and alteration spells and how I’d always felt on some level and the emotions I’d uncovered in the past decade of life since I’d seen her. But I didn’t want to explain. I was never good at explaining my transition, anyway.

  She looked me up and down, her eyes hovering over the spell on my navel. Spells were difficult to read, but most Mages could generally read active spells in their own field of study, and she would have to be well-studied in altering the human body to turn herself into a giant wolf-beast. I crossed my arms over my stomach and glared at her.

  “I understand,” she said. “That’s some neat spellwork.”

  My face heated. I should be over this embarrassment by now, but in my flimsy robe and raw from recent experiences, I didn’t feel like I could be over anything.

  “It’s about more than spellwork,” I snapped. “But that’s not important. You’re an illegal Mage and Theo said you were with the Cult of Tyrants. What the hell are you doing?”

  She looked the very picture of an illegal Mage, coated in blood and holding a large piece of wolfskin to cover herself. Every inch the dangerous, untrained barbarian with a light of cold anger in her eyes. Yet she had the audacity to snort at my question.

  “Every single Mage who doesn’t belong to your little government club is illegal,” she pointed out. “I’m sorry I didn’t report myself as a child to divide our family further or turn myself in to rot in prison as an adult like they wanted. The Heirs of Empire were our family’s only choice to stay together. I should be asking you what you’re doing with a known anti-magic terrorist group.”

  “I was being held prisoner,” I said. “You don’t get to ask me anything when you’re the one covered in blood!”

  I held the lab-experiment coat around myself and tried to sit up straight and look dignified, despite the exhaustion seeping into my bones. I had to keep going. If I felt too tired, I wouldn’t be able to teleport back to Division Headquarters to warn them about our capture or the Cult or Emry the spy.

  “I’m covered in the blood of terrorists,” Adaline said acidly. “The Division should be thanking us, if they knew about it. Are you alright?”

  I was swaying slightly. I closed my eyes and tried to find the concentration to teleport the unknown distance to Headquarters. The very prospect felt exhausting.

  “I need to get back,” I said. “I have to report-”

  “You have to get medical care,” Adaline said. I felt her put a hand on the side of my head and flinched back to glare at her.

  “I’m not interested in joining your cult!” I snarled. “I just spent weeks imprisoned by one set of zealots, I’m not looking for others.”

  She was frowning. “Why were you being held prisoner? Was there a girl there?”

  “What?” I asked. Then I shook my head. “Look, it doesn’t matter. Don’t talk to me, I need to concentrate.”

  “You’re going to blow yourself up trying to use magic in this state,” she said, her voice growing softer than it had been before. “I’m not looking to imprison you, Ma- Izak. The Heirs of Empire is a safe harbor for everyone with magical talent. We face enough out there in the world and you’re been through a lot, obviously. We can help.”

  “You perform human sacrifices,” I said. “No thank you.”

  “That’s… different,” Adaline said. “I can’t explain, but that’s something we have to do that we’d rather not do. But none of those sacrifices were Mages. Come on, can’t you give me a chance? I want to help you and get to know who you are now.”

  I held my arms around myself tighter. “Why? Why do you care?”

  “Because you’re my sibling!” she said, exasperated. “I was your older sister, once. I still am! Just let me help.”

  “Help, like you just helped Theo by trying to murder him?” I asked.

  She took a deep breath in and out, looking down at her hands. Then she looked back up at me, her eyes set and serious. “That was different. Theo killed our mother.”

  I started back. “What!? How?”

  I knew Theo had helped to imprison me and torture my friends, but I thought my brother had been sincere in his reasons at least. Theo’s set face flashed in my memory, his grim determination and near frenzied desire to eliminate magic. Every part of Theo had seemed to believe in what he was trying to do and why, even if it was terrible. Our family’s hardship was supposedly his reason.

  It was boggling. It just didn’t make sense. I didn’t even know how to feel. My own memories of my mother were dim, but the shock of the news rattled me. Adaline’s dark eyes were dead serious; with her gaze pinning me I struggled to know what to say or feel.

  “Poison,” she said. “And he imprisoned you, too, it looks like.”

  I shook my head, still in shock. “I just saved his life.”

  “You thought it was the right thing to do. You didn’t know,” she said. She grimaced unhappily. “Mother would have been so, so happy to see you again. Now she can’t. Could you at least come and talk with me, even if you can’t with her?”

  I stared at her. I felt sore, numb, and dumb. Some instinct of danger pushed at me, saying she was with the Cult of Tyrants and I couldn’t trust her. She was covered in blood, for fucks sake. But that part felt distant. The rest of me saw my sister after so very long, and, unlike my brother, she was actually offering to help me. She didn’t want to hurt me. Part of me wanted to curl up in her lap and cry.

  “They’re religious extremists,” I said, some vague memory poking at me. “The Cult. They won’t be okay with me being trans.”

  “They don’t have to know!” she said. “They won’t even be able to read your alteration spell, except Maggie, and Maggie won’t tell anyone! You can just stay with us for a while, until you’re back on your feet.”

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  Her voice was coaxing, warm, sympathetic. She leaned forward and her dark brown eyes shone with earnestness. I shook my head again, though I didn’t know what I meant by it at this point.

  “They won’t let me go,” I said. “They’re a Cult. I’ll be an illegal Mage.” I could still remember the Mages in Oblivion Isle. Their sad, angry, haunted faces. I didn’t want that.

  “You could be our first ambassador!” Adaline suggested. “Take our communications back to the Division. They could give you a medal for that. And really, how else do you hope to get back? Nap here and hope those anti-Mage freaks don’t find you? Try to channel a major teleportation spell while so exhausted your eyes look bruised? Unless they beat you, and those are actual bruises.”

  Ambassador. She made me sound like a spy. Maybe I could do that. I could bring a thorough report back to the Division. They never had gotten a spy into the Cult, as far as I knew. They couldn’t find them. That made going with Adaline now sound almost noble.

  “You won’t let them use me as a blood sacrifice?” I asked.

  It was a stupid question. No matter what she said, there was no reason to trust her. No reason except part of me still thought of her as family. No reason except I was so tired that it hurt and the idea of going back empty-handed to the Division felt almost as bad as going back into my cell.

  “I swear on my talent, the blessings of the Goddess herself,” Adaline said, using her fingers to draw out a star over her heart. “I swear on my mother’s memory. I won’t let them hurt you. I need your help, too, Izak,”

  I wanted to ask what, exactly, she needed my help with, except a man’s voice called out just then.

  “Adaline, is that you? What are you doing here?”

  We both looked up from our spot on the ground to see a man in an odd combination of military gear and fur approaching uss. His face was stern and serious, but his red-brown hair was wavy in some way set by gel or magic that made him look a bit silly. He was a Mage, just like myself and Adaline.

  “Friedrich!” Adaline called out. She jumped up as best as she could, while still awkwardly keeping the fur wolf cloak around her. “I came to help! Did you see how many of the enemy I took out? I was like the warrior Queen Rodane, coming to help you just as she did for the Emperor.”

  His stern mouth twitched at the edges. I suspected his more normal expression was a charming smile. “You did cut a swath through, didn’t you? Look at you! Wild and beautiful.”

  He leaned forward and caught her by the waist, pulling her toward him. She giggled in a bubbly way, something I had never heard from Adaline before, and I frowned. I knew we’d been separated when we were still children, but that sound was also nothing like the earnest and serious woman I had been speaking to. Nor, for that matter, the beastly killer after Theo.

  “Who’s this, though?” The man, Friedrich, asked. He frowned down at me. “A Mage? I didn’t think the Hands had any.”

  “He was a prisoner!” Adaline exclaimed. Something about the statement seemed to make her oddly excited. She put a hand emphatically on Friedrich’s shoulder. “I freed him, and now he’s going to come with us! Friedrich, the Hands are taking Mage prisoners now, I think that might be what happened to Sarai!”

  He started back, nearly letting go of Adaline. “What? But how could that be possible? Adaline-”

  She just forged ahead. “And guess what, Friedrich? This is my long-lost brother, the child the Division stole from my family! We’re reunited at last! Surely this is the work of the Gods.”

  He stared down at me and I stared back up at him. This all seemed to be a lot to process for both of us. Ah, well. I was rather comfortable in my patch of grass. Nothing I had waiting for me back at the Mage Division seemed worth it, besides reporting on Nalei’s capture. Except by now they knew we were missing and I had no idea where Nalei was, anyway. Adaline had described the Cult, or the Heirs, as a safe harbor for Mages. The Mage Division was so bureaucratic, maybe it would be faster to get help from this cult.

  Maybe these were all excuses for the fact that I felt no energy to run. But I kept sitting there, not even trying to force myself to bolt or teleport away.

  A couple more men came up behind Adaline and I knew it was too late. One was another young Mage like Friedrich, but the other one was an older man with salt and pepper hair and well-trimmed beard. He was also a Mage, but more powerful than Friedrich, Adaline, or myself. His magic was coiled up tightly inside himself in a condensed mass that was almost painful to look at. He reminded me of the only black-ringed elite Mage I’d ever met, a woman named Aurelia Biralei. His magic wasn’t merely neatly coiled, trained into shape by years of practice, but real power honed over decades. This was a Great Mage.

  I wanted to run, but his eyes were trained on me and I didn’t dare.

  “A Mage?” he asked, though it wasn’t a question. He narrowed his eyes. “A Mage Division spacetime Mage if I’m not mistaken. How did he come to be here?”

  My skin crawled. Those who were the best at determining the focus of other Mages’ powers from the shape of their magic alone were mental Mages. I breathed in and out deeply, trying to calm and empty my mind. After our graduation, all Division Mages were given a small rune behind our left ear to give us some defense against the powers of mental Mages, but I didn’t know if it would be enough. I desperately tried not to think of all the things I didn’t want him to know, on the off-chance that he could read the surface of my thoughts.

  “He was being held prisoner by those awful Hands, Your Excellency Drianthenes,” Adaline said. She spoke loudly and clearly, but bowed her head as she did. “He’s my other brother, the one lost to our family, Theo captured him somehow. We need to help him. And find any other Mages captured by the Hands!”

  “Adaline,” the young man who came with the Great Mage started, “you aren’t even supposed to be here-”

  But then the older man, Drianthenes, raised a hand and he shut up. The Great Mage narrowed his eyes at me. I froze, trying to think of nothing at all.

  “There is certainly something wrong with his magic,” he said. “I have no idea what might have caused that. We’ll have Maggie look at him. It’s not a good sign that the Hands of Humanity are taking Mage prisoners.”

  “But Adaline-” The younger man started. Drianthenes glanced over at him, eyes cold, and he shut up again.

  “Be quiet, Henri. I will speak with Adaline later,” he said. “But she is right about this, and another Sorcerer is a valuable resource. We’ve gone through the entire compound, and it is time to go home. The others will meet us there.”

  “That’s a Division Mage, my Lord,” Henri said. “He’ll have a tracker.”

  “His tracker is gone,” Drianthenes said. “I can see that much. Trust me, Henri.”

  Henri bowed his head. “I’ll start on the teleportation spell home, Your Excellency.”

  He pulled a knife from his belt and began to cut a circle around the forest clearing we were in. Friedrich and Drianthenes both stared at me, the first with curiosity and the second with an unreadable expression.

  “I thought your mother said you had a long lost sister,” Friedrich said. “Not a long lost brother.”

  I breathed in and out, trying not to stiffen. Trying not to show fear. Let them think I was angry at the insult, not afraid or suspicious.

  “Oh, that’s odd! But I suppose my mother never spoke of him much, you may have gotten the wrong impression.” She turned an adoring smile on Friedrich. “Maybe you simply wished for there to be more beautiful Sorceresses in my family for you to marry.”

  It was so strange to hear people use the words Sorcerer and Sorceress seriously in a normal conversation. Maybe they’d call me a lout and start calling each other thon and thou. They already looked strange, in their mishmash of furs and modern military clothing. It just made this whole thing surreal, like I was being taken (captured?) by the odd cast of a play.

  Friedrich smiled and it was so saccharine that I closed my eyes, so they didn’t see me rolling them.

  “You might be right there,” he said. “What a dream, to be married to two of you.” Then his face fell. “That’s almost how it felt when we had Sarai…”

  “We must go after the Hands!” Adaline declared. She tossed back her head, somehow seeming to strike a pose in Friedrich’s arms. “They have Mage prisoners now, they could have taken her!”

  Henri, who had drawn his circle and readied a few ritual objects, openly rolled his eyes at that. “Adaline, I don’t know how long you can hold on to that childish fancy. Sarai-”

  “This is not the place to discuss any of this!” Drianthenes snapped. “Adaline, I understand your grief, but you must keep hold of yourself. Freirdich, you will have to learn to control her. And Henri,” he sighed, “take us home now, without further commentary. Our mission is over.”

  They all nodded their heads and murmured a soft yes, my lord. Henri made a ritual gathering motion and the magic took us. It was odd, actually, being on the other side of the teleportation spell. I could still feel the magic, the rush of energy pulled to fill the impossible task of movement without time. I could sense more than a non-spacetime Mage could, I was familiar with how magic could resist physics in this specific way, but it still felt oddly different with Henri channeling the magic. It seemed to smell different, for lack of a better word.

  It took time to recognize the specific sense of each Mage. To get the specific “smell” of each Mage you have to directly interact with their magic, helping them with a working or being within a working. Adain’s had usually smelled of citrus in a soft way, like warm lemonade. Adain had said that mine was a mixture of something like ozone and flowers, lavender after a thunderstorm.

  I closed my eyes, letting the magic take me. I felt so full of losses. I’d failed to save Nalei, just like Adain. I’d saved Theo, but should I have?

  I was free of my cell, but my only option was to return to a home where I had been miserable or go with a cult.