The sensation of someone invading my mind was unfortunately no longer an unfamiliar one. Oathtongue had become something that I’d gotten used to seeing recently, and yet this… this was different. This was familiar in a way that spoke to me in an almost nostalgic manner, except I would have been much happier if this part of my past had been burned to shreds.

If there had been any doubt in my mind that this was the same lady in white that had overseen the majority of my childhood, the uniquely saccharine-sweet flavor that this brand of mind invasion had cleared them away.

Kyle and I froze, the magic hitting us hard and fast like we were little more than marionettes meeting our puppeteer. Our movements arrested, we hit the ground, and the pain was more of an afterthought when compared to the realization I had of what had just happened.

You’re supposed to be dead. Every last part of House Byron had been executed, its goods divided and its servants removed. We were supposed to be gone, purged from everything except the history books. The kingdom was good at this kind of thing. Thorough. I’d been there myself to watch the execution of my immediate family, and I knew through Jasmine that the branch families had been gradually obliterated as well. House Byron and everything attached to it was gone.

So why did pieces of it keep on showing up in my fucking life?

I opened my mouth and found that I could make an effort to speak. Her commands had never been the same as others. Looking back on it, I’d concluded that she might’ve had a Nacea oath or something to go with the oath that enabled her oathtongue. It would’ve made sense, given that a number of the facets of my childhood life--emotional and physical both—had been manipulated and pruned by that very voice, something that I was pretty sure someone like Orchid wouldn’t be capable of doing.

Shit. This was really, really bad. I couldn’t hear or see anyone behind us moving out, but they were bound to be closing in on us soon. We’d tried to kill a room full of Church oathholders—okay, maybe I’d tried to do that—and even if that one lady had said that their goal was to recruit me, I’d definitely pissed them off. I wasn’t looking forward to getting pinched between them and the veiled lady in white whose name I’d never learned.

From behind her, rounding a corner and revealing themselves from the streets, four others draped in white robes came. No veils, I noted. Not that that was particularly relevant to my current situation.

“You know this lady?” Kyle asked, still prone on the floor.

I could move enough to speak, but not much more than that. Fuck. Whatever nuance she’d packed into that fall, it was an issue. “She’s supposed to be dead.”

“Rumors,” the veil-lady spoke. “Aren’t they the nastiest thing?”

I jolted at her voice. She still had that same ethereal quality to her voice, as if she hadn’t aged a day since I’d last seen her. It felt wrong to hear more than just a handful of words from that voice. Back when she’d been the one who empowered my mind, she’d given me a short burst of commands that had allowed me to grow. Four words, every time. No more, no less.

And she’d just said a full sentence. A coherent one. It wasn’t like my worldview was breaking apart or anything, but it was weird.

“She was part of House Byron once,” I said. “She’s supposed to be dead.”

“As are you, little Lily,” the veiled woman breathed. “And yet here we are. Two remnants of a bloody past.”

“You’re with the Church now?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, refusing to elaborate. “Come now. We shouldn’t be wasting time.”

With a gesture, magic came forth from her hands, and suddenly my muscles were no longer seizing up.

Kyle and I rose at the same time in similar manners, ready to attack if necessary.

“None of that now,” she said. “Else you shall be facing the wrath of those significantly less rational than me.”

I looked back towards the Church building. There were a number of conspicuous holes in walls and windows now, and though it wasn’t quite ruined, the evidence of our fight was pretty clear.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“Come,” she said, beckoning us. It wasn’t a request.

With that gesture, the four other people dressed in white—they didn’t have veils, but they did have white masquerade masks that covered their faces, giving off a similar effect—surrounded us. I could feel their oaths radiating off of them.

A rock and a hard place. With us, there were oathholders. Behind us, there were oathholders. Both of them were Church-aligned, but I wasn’t so dumb as to believe someone that had managed to survive the fall of House Byron would be one that had simply decided to be subservient to the Church. No matter how much one served the Church, they had never had the power to stop the Crown from executing anyone.

No, the fact that the veiled lady was still alive meant that she was dangerous, and it almost certainly meant that she had her own agenda. Going with her was as much of a risk as accepting employment or whatever the Church wanted with us, but it was a risk for entirely different reasons.

But at the moment, it was the only option we really had. We could technically stand our ground here, yes, but the veiled woman had already gotten her hooks into us and she was stronger than she’d ever been before. On top of that, even assuming we did manage to defeat her, there was still the question of the mass of Church Chosen that were still inside that building.

They’d let us escape, there was no question about it—one hit from the old man with the odd distortion powers and we both would’ve been fucked. That meant that they had known—or thought they had known, at the very least—that we wouldn’t have been able to properly escape when we ran outside. Now, the question was: how much faith did I have in the veiled lady not just immediately taking us to another Church establishment?

Pretty high, actually. Maybe it was just my personal bias speaking, but I didn’t think anyone who had been a part of House Byron—myself included, unfortunately—was capable of just rolling over and following orders. Sure, there were non-zero odds that she was under a mental compulsion as well, but her presence here was causing that piece of the puzzle to fall into place. The veiled woman was most likely the one responsible for the mental compulsions, not one that was falling victim to them.

“Fuck,” I muttered again. “Got any better ideas, Kyle?”

“To be honest,” he said, his tone flippant like we were discussing nothing more important than what to eat for breakfast, “I was hoping you would.”

That settled it. I stood, and the oathholders came to meet me.

“We must not tarry,” the veiled woman said. “For if we do, we may have unsavory company.”

Unsavory company… did she mean the Church? If she did, that was further confirmation that she was working outside their bounds. If the Church had trusted her to pick us up, then that meant that she was only working outside their bounds now. What was up with that?

Well, there was also the possibility that she meant a heretofore unknown third party. I wanted to neglect that, though, since there were already way too many godsdamned moving parts in this conflict.

The veiled lady moved, and we followed. It didn’t feel like mental compulsion, but I’d spent enough time under it as a child to know that it didn’t need to. It had been one of the many parts of my upbringing that had only grown more terrifying with time, and the insidious potential that she had to be manipulating us right this second was a nagging worry at the back of my brain.

Just to reassure myself, I drew from my oath, forming a compact sphere of ruin at the small of my back. Not large or loud enough for anyone to notice. It was easy enough to form, the thought of Jasmine being taken from me by the Church enough to ease me into the hatred that powered my oath, but I limited it. Anything too large would be too obvious.

“None of that, please,” one of the nameless oathholders in white said. He hadn’t even been looking at me.

The man snapped his fingers, and a cold breeze passed over me, fluttering my hair. When it was gone, my magic was too.

“I’m totally st—learning that,” Kyle said.

“Silence, jester,” the veiled lady said, not bothering to look back. “The remaining length of your life is measured in the amount of patience I have for you.”

It was still weird to hear her speak. Hear her making threats, especially.

“Rise, still, gaze, grow.” That had been her mantra to me every single day up until that fateful moment when the Crown had stormed House Byron. What had changed? Had she always been capable of using fast-acting oathtongue rather than the gradual compulsions she’d placed on me?

There were too many unknowns. How had she survived? Where had she been all these years? Why the Church? Why stop now?

“You must have questions,” she said, a hint of playfulness in her honeyed voice as if she’d heard my thoughts. “They must wait. Follow my people.”

I didn’t acknowledge her, though I felt the urge to nod as she turned around.

“Going somewhere?” Kyle asked. Clown can’t keep his mouth shut. Figures.

She ignored him, sauntering off back towards the Church building.

“Let’s go,” the same man who’d cast aside my magic like it was little more than a soap bubble said. “We don’t have much time.”

This headquarters of the Church wasn’t far from the rest of the city, and it was in a pretty well-developed part to boot. Around us, buildings advertising clothes and food and all sorts of merchandise marked the area, though not many of them were open. No doubt due to the recent circumstances of the city, that.

The white-clad oathholders that surrounded us guided us into an alleyway between two shuttered stores. Cleaner than I’d expected, given the state of this city, and longer as well.

We didn’t get in there a moment too soon, it seemed. Behind us, I could hear raised voices. Angry ones.

The Church.

I didn’t quite catch what was being said, but it almost definitely had to do with the fact that the veiled woman was out there and we were elsewhere.

I did, however, catch some of the words of her response, as measured and breathy as anything she said.

Taken, relocated, reeducation. I couldn’t glean all the details from that, but I could get the general gist. She was making a statement to them, one that might actually be honest. That she’d taken us and was going to use us for her own purposes.

She must’ve said something that had staved them off, because I heard one final voice rise above the rest.

“One week. Last chance.”

An old man’s. At a guess, the old man’s, the one who had casually blocked the strongest attacks that Kyle and I had to offer without even lifting a finger. His voice was a cold that could’ve frozen boiling water, contrasting the wild anger that the others had apparently worked themselves into.

Not that that deterred the veiled woman at all. Her response was as warm as anything else, and then I couldn’t hear her anymore. We’d rounded a corner.

“These back streets are a lot more expansive than I remember them being,” Kyle noted. “Don’t think we’ve been around these parts.”

“We haven’t,” I said. “Not the alleyways, at least. Alzaq squad was too good to go into the less nice places, I guess.”

“Cut it,” a different one of the veiled woman’s soldiers said. “We’re almost there.”

I exchanged a glance with Kyle. He gave me a nod, and while I had no idea whether we were thinking about the same thing, I knew what I was going to do.

We’d been handed an opportunity on a silver platter. For some reason, the woman who was actually organizing our capture and subsequent indoctrination had decided to fuck off. The remaining oathholders were powerful, yes, but their leader was gone.

No point in holding back here. Being able to go non-lethal was a luxury reserved for having the upper hand, not a principle I could adhere to at all times.

I’m sorry, Jasmine, Despite the fact that I hadn’t really promised anything, despite the fact that she’d said she’d accept me for who I was, it still felt like a betrayal, just a little.

In one, sharp movement, I dashed to my left and elbowed the cold-wind oathholder in the gut. A moment later, Kyle realized what I was doing and followed suit, doing much the same with the one on his right.

“Should’ve used restraints,” he grunted as he swung, nailing his mark in the chest with a massive punch. “Might’ve helped.”

Our alley was a wide one for walking in, especially given that it was in between buildings where nobody would be, but it was still just an alleyway three meters across. There had been two oathholders a meter or three in front of us and two behind us at much the same distance. With our sudden strike, we’d hit the two behind.

Priorities. I glanced at the reeling man I’d just hit. They could still feel pain, which was important—I was pretty sure there were soldiers who had been modified so that they couldn’t. This one was the one who’d annihilated my magic with a snap. There was no guarantee that he was the only one that could do that, but he was the only one who’d shown he had the capability to do so so far. He had to be the first to go.

That sense of betrayal was worsening within me, but I pushed forward, pulling on the mass of negative emotion and using it to fuel my oath’s burning desire to feed.

Structured spells were slow. Too slow to use before this one recovered from being winded. Instead, I threw a mass of unstructured magic at him, less a single blast and more an amorphous blob of darkness.

For good measure, I sprinted forward wiht a kick, matching the pace of my magic to ensure he didn’t have a response to it.

The kick connected, but the magic didn’t. In the immediate aftermath, I could hear my target wheezing, feel where I’d just folded his ribs in with my foot, and see that the darkness was no more.

Someone else had removed it.

Kyle, on the other hand, had managed to get a spell off, nailing his target to the ground. Nonlethal, apparently. Of course.

More than one of them could cancel out magic, then.

I drew a knife from my wasit and dove down onto the one I’d kicked. Behind me, I heard roiling magic start and then sputter to a stop, the soldier unwilling to attack their own squadmate.

Without letting myself overthink the issue, I whispered another silent apology and stabbed the stunned man, sticking the knife deep into his throat. Its presence would stem the bleeding for a while, but given an hour or so this man would be unequivocably dead.

“Not something that’ll kill you in the next minute,” I said. “Best I can do.”

The words felt hollow. I hadn’t meant them.

Was doing this whole thing for Jasmine’s sake worth it? Part of me said that no, it was cutting down on my efficacy, but a much larger part screamed yes.

Anything for her.

A moment later, I felt the formation of another spell from behind and turned on my heels, casting a shield as fast as I could.

Not a moment too soon. Whatever spell it was, it hit hard, and though it didn’t keep going after it hit my shield, it annihilated it in a single blow.

Kyle hadn’t fared much better, the jester’s Adaptive Wall having failed to adapt to this new spell and breaking.

Two down. Two up. The remaining oathholders were a solid six or seven meters from us. Not that far away, but too far to close without risking getting hit by a spell first.

Kyle retaliated before I did, throwing another sphere. A moment afterwards, I added my blast of unstructured magic to the mix.

His sphere turned bright green and exploded, fluid of a similar color detonating out onto the walls and hardening. It obscured the enemy from view for a moment, but then a wall of green fell to the floor, a shimmering shield of force blocking it.

My magic hadn’t even hit the shield.

“The fuck was that?” I asked.

“Party trick,” Kyle said. “Thought it’d get them off guard.”

They weren’t attacking just yet, so I probed their defenses. A thrown knife with my ruin attached to it hit the barrier without effect, but a magic missile hit.

They’re not blocking spells. Whatever mechanism they were using to stop my magic, it was letting my sppells through. Once again, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure on that, but complete surety was an impossibility in a fight like this.

But my spells just weren’t fucking enough. I knew such a limited number of them, courtesy of not having had the chance to utilize my noble tutors to learn how to cast them by virtue of their deaths, and none of them were strong enough.

And that incompetence, my own godsdamned failure, meant that I might not be able to save Jasmine.

I wanted to scream or cry or throw myself against the shield or any of a thousand other things all at once and yet none at all, and I let that feeling crystallize.

I could feel it at the edge of awareness. The same pull I’d used for the first time just last night when the same threat had come through.

But it wasn’t. There was a difference to this. An invitation, not my final act of desperation.

With nothing better to do, I accepted it, and—

[MEMORY]

[INSTRUCTION]

[DETERMINATION]

—and I remembered, a hundred thousand images flashing through my mind in an instant. Of the broken god, of my own past.

Of Nishi.

There was too much for me to unpack in a single moment, too many implications to go over, but the important part was that I remembered now.

I’d never learned how to cast, but I’d studied spell theory like my life had depended on it. Funny how those things worked out, wasn’t it?

I knew what I had to do, and I knew the steps. I’d just never executed them, and those images had provided me with a lifetime of memories that weren’t my own that told me how.

Frame. One more complicated than anything I’d done before, but one that I’d read about time and time again when I was a kid.

Fuel. This was the easy part, the one that I’d gained the most proficiency in. I poured my magic into the frame, pulling on all the hate and disappointment that had been burning within me, and it sucked it up greedily.

Spark. A series of words that I’d read time and time again but had never uttered out loud. With the help of memories from another oathholder of the broken god, they sounded natural as anything else.

For the first time since I’d learned how to, casting the spell felt right.

A Manastorm tumbled forth from my hands, a more organized version of the blasts of magic that characterized my unstructured fighting style. Waves of ruin poured off me, flooding the alleyway so much that our opponents were no longer visible.

After a full ten seconds, the night-black torrent dissipated.

A strip of white fabric floated to the ground, its owner gone. Beside it, the other one had survived, an egg-white shell surrounding the last oathholder.

I moved to cast again, and then a honeyed voice caught me, stopping me in my tracks.

“Stop that,” the veiled woman interrupted. “We have things to discuss.”