“Drink this.” Dante handed the man a bottled liquid that his master, Ferrick, brewed this morning. “Two swigs a day until your cough is gone. It won’t taste good, but it should help.”

The man, Glenwal, gave both the bottle and Dante a quizzical look, but nodded. “And if it don’t get better?”

“Then come back, and Ferrick will take a look at you.”

Glenwal nodded again. He was a farmer, and a traditional kind of man—one who would more readily accept treatment from the town’s veteran healer rather than his scrawny, teenaged apprentice. Glenwal thanked Dante, pocketed the bottle, and made his way out of the clinic.

Glenwal’s farm neighbored Dante’s family’s farm. It had been some time since Dante had spent his days toiling in the family fields. He was grateful for that. Not that farming wasn’t an honorable profession, but Dante wasn’t cut out for it. He was nearly seventeen, but still scrawny.

As the afternoon wore into evening, Dante’s eyes drooped. Ferrick had kept him late once again. How many days in a row have I gone home in the dark now? There was always something to do. Brew a concoction to repel the bugs that had invaded the greenhouse, hassle the weaver for more gauze, and so on.

Some days, Dante did these various tasks, other times Ferrick set him to study a particular section of a book or, as today, stay at the clinic—really, the front room of Ferrick’s house—in case someone in the village needed medical attention while Ferrick took care of errands.

Dante never complained. Every moment he could spend away from home was a relief. Plus, Ferrick had agreed to take Dante on as an apprentice at no cost, which was unprecedented, so Dante did his best to make himself an asset. There was no way his parents could afford an apprenticeship fee.

By sunset, Dante was worn thin. Finally, Ferrick returned, frazzled—not an uncommon state for Dante’s master. He stumbled around the clinic, reorganizing supplies in a seemingly random fashion. At the very least, it was not a system that Dante had picked up on yet.

In between Ferrick’s sessions of mumbling to himself, Dante asked if there was anything else he could help with that evening, praying he could go home to rest.

“No, no, nothing else,” Ferrick said. He examined one of his bottled concoctions by the light of an oil lamp, probably trying to discern what the unlabeled liquid was. “You’d better get home actually. I will speak to your parents tomorrow if the situation requires.”

“If the—? Wait, what’s going on?”

“If the situation requires, boy!” Ferrick repeated. He stumbled into his supply closet, continuing to mumble to himself and loudly rummaging through the mess.

Dante sighed. It was impossible to get information from Ferrick when he was in a state like this. He was a good master, if somewhat eccentric. Dante would have to figure out what was happening on his own. If it involved his parents, it was probably bad news.

Dante fetched his coat and left the clinic. The bitter wind ripped at him as he walked along the cobblestone road that led him back to the farmhouse. Winter was over, technically, but spring in Saridian was only slightly more forgiving. This region was infamous for the thick blanket of snow that graced the land for a cruelly long portion of the year.

He wondered what it was like to live somewhere else, a land that was warmer and where he didn’t have to worry so much about trying to fit in.

Each time he walked home from Ferrick’s clinic he passed a particular crossroad, the site of the accident that had changed his life. Last autumn, when he was still resigned to his fate as a farmer, a carriage tipped over as he was on his way by. Dante watched the carriage wheel break, and the following incident in shock until Ferrick grabbed him, pulling him onto the scene. Ferrick had directed him in aiding the four injured passengers.

After it was over, Ferrick praised Dante, which surprised him—working under pressure had never been his forte. But this he had done, according to Ferrick, quite aptly. Aptly enough that Ferrick waived the apprenticeship fee and convinced his parents to let him leave his farm work. He had kept showing promise, and worked hard to prove himself to Ferrick and his parents.

None of Dante’s successes made his parents fully accept his new path in life. His father dreamt of Dante following in his footsteps, carrying on with the farm that had been his father’s, and his father’s father’s before that. His mother was less opinionated, but chronically agreed with his father to keep the peace. Plus, the farm hadn’t been doing as well the past couple years, and Dante knew losing a free farmhand was a big blow.

His parents’ disappointment left him feeling guilty. But working for Ferrick was the first time he had ever felt competent.

As Dante turned the corner that would lead him out to his family’s farm, his friend Milo pounced in front of him.

“Did you hear?” Milo was bright-eyed, full of more energy than Dante could tolerate in his exhausted state.

“Hear what?”

“Soldiers.”

Dante became acutely aware of his heartbeat pounding in his ears. “Soldiers?” He glanced past his friend, trying to see if anyone in blue and gold uniforms was headed toward the farmhouse. He didn’t see anything, but the farm was a way off, still.

“Yeah, right here in Briarglen. Can you believe that?”

Dante hadn’t seen many maps, but of the ones he had, Briarglen wasn’t marked with even the tiniest of dots. It was a small village, far south from the northern capital of Kingsmount, barely of note.

Soldiers didn’t come here, not without a reason.

“D’you know what they’re doing here?” Dante asked. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure what he did with his hands, normally. He crossed his arms, uncrossed them, then shoved his hands into his pockets.

“Haven’t heard. Word should spread soon. They got here ‘round noon.” Milo raised an eyebrow at Dante, apparently noticing his nervousness. “Look, don’t worry about getting recruited. I’m sure of all people, they wouldn’t want you.” He punched Dante’s shoulder good-naturedly.

Joining the army was low on Dante’s list of ways to get out of this place. In fact, it wasn’t on the list at all. This must be what Ferrick was alluding to. He had been offering to help convince his parents to not send him away, if that’s what they were planning. There hadn’t been mandatory conscription since the Magus War, generations ago, but the king still kept a standing army to enforce the laws of the land. Soldiers were paid well, and it was no secret that his family was tight on coin.

But right now, the idea of his parents pressuring him to enlist was his secondary concern. “Hey, look,” Dante said, “Have you seen my sister?”

“Nah. She wander off again? I can help ya look for her.”

“It’s fine,” Dante said. “I haven’t been home yet, she’s probably there already.”

He sent Milo on his way and hurried back to the farm. He was relieved to find there weren’t any unfamiliar horses tied off outside the house, but that didn’t mean the soldiers hadn’t come earlier. As he slipped inside, he could hear his parents arguing in the kitchen. When he heard his name among their squabbling, he quietly shut the front door and crept closer.

“—never take him,” his mother was saying. “He’s not suited to that kind of thing.”

“They’d train him to be,” his father responded. “Lira, you heard how much they’re paying now. We need the money.

Dante’s stomach churned. So the soldiers were here to recruit.

“We aren’t desperate yet. We could give it more time.”

“That may be so, but you remember… the incident as well as I do. It wouldn’t hurt for him to have some extra supervision.”

“Ferrick seems quite pleased with him,” his mother said. The compliment would have warmed Dante’s heart, had there not been a careful restraint to it. “Maybe—”

“I’ve made up my mind,” his father snapped. “That boy needs to do something useful for this family.”

Dante tried to tiptoe back out of the house unnoticed, but he forgot to omit the creaky floorboard from his path. As the wood squeaked, his parents fell silent. Dante’s father slammed the back door on his way outside, and his mother peeked her head out of the kitchen.

“So,” his mother said. “You heard all that?”

“Enough of it.”

Dante saw the sorrow in her eyes.

“Your father—he just wants to be proud of you—”

“He could be proud of the work I’m doing with Ferrick.”

“It’s respectable work,” his mother admitted. “It’s just, not what he had in mind for you. And—”

She cut her sentence short, but Dante knew her thoughts were going toward the “incident”, as his father referred to it as.

Dante wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers. “And what do you think?”

The question was edging on defiant, not a tone he often took. But he had to know. If his parents were of the same mind, there was little hope of weaseling out from under their expectations.

His mother retreated back to the kitchen to continue scrubbing a dish. Dante followed her, but she didn’t look at him when she answered. “I think it might be good for you to get away.”

“To ‘get away’?”

“From Jayden. I don’t want her to end up—” She waved a hand vaguely, as if that could communicate her meaning. In this instance, it did.

Bile rose in Dante’s throat. “She won’t. She’s not like me. And I’ve kept my promises to you.”

I hate the lies I have to tell.

His mother wrung out the rag. She said nothing. Even if he was being truthful, she would never believe him. It stung, but he supposed he deserved it.

“Where did Dad go?”

“To look for Jayden. She’s been out too long. Again.”

Dante turned to go back out the front door. “I’ll go help.”

His mother caught his arm. He could feel her concern as if it trickled in through her touch. “I’m sure your father can handle it.”

Dante shook himself free from her grasp, and despite her protests, he left. If soldiers were here, and Jayden was missing, she wasn’t safe. Protecting his sister was one of the few situations in which he would risk provoking his parents’ wrath.

He knew all of Jayden’s hiding spots, he just had to find her before someone else caught her practicing magic.

Dante headed straight for the forest path, the one that he and Jayden took when they picked wild berries. It was growing dark, and long shadows reached ominously across the trail. Once past the still-bare bushes, Dante reached the thawing creek and turned off the beaten path. He made his way into the thicker underbrush, branches prickling through his sleeves as he shouldered them aside, until finally, the trees gave way to a small clearing.

Their secret hideout. As children, they’d often played here. They’d also had to make excuses to their parents about why it had taken them so long to fill their baskets with ripe berries. Jayden was still making excuses; Dante knew he couldn’t mess around anymore.

He’d been right to look here first. Jayden was at the other side of the clearing, kneeling in the snow. As Dante approached, she looked deep in concentration. The air around her hands shimmered and distorted as she moved them slowly from her feet, up to and over her knees, and then each of her arms. When she was finished, she shook her hands as if to dry them, and looked up at Dante. He could see the magic clinging to her body, resonating from her.

She smiled at him. “I thought you might catch up.”

“Jayden.” He tried to think of anything to say that he hadn’t said before, but couldn’t. “You have to stop doing this.”

“It’s harmless.” Jayden glanced around the clearing. “We used to have fun here. Building shelters, playing games, telling stories.”

“This isn’t a game.”

“You’re right.” There was a serious note in his little sister’s voice. “It’s not a game. It’s practice.”

“It’s against the rules, against the law—”

“The rules are ridiculous!” A blast of magic resonated out from Jayden as she flung her arms up in frustration.

Dante recoiled as the magic hit him, sending tingles down his arms and knocking him back just a little. “If someone sees you—”

“If someone sees, they should be afraid, not me.”

Jayden turned away from Dante, bent her knees, and leapt at the tree in front of her. She jumped higher than should have been possible, and caught a branch a few feet from the ground. Easily, she pulled herself up onto the tree’s limb and perched there, towering over Dante.

“I’m not going to hide my whole life,” Jayden continued. “I have the gift, and I know you do too.”

The gift. Dante wondered where she’d heard that phrasing. He had heard it a few years back from a traveling trader, one that had a rare license to cross the border to do business outside of Saridian. He told tales to the children about how in the other regions, when a child developed magic, they were said to have “the gift”.

The trader scoffed at that, of course. Because here, in Saridian, it was a curse. King Riordan had decreed that magic was for the gods, not something to be sullied by mortals. Humans couldn’t be trusted with that kind of power. The “gifted” among them had to eschew their powers.

Dante clenched his fists. “Come down. There are soldiers here. You can’t mess around with magic, it’s too dangerous.”

“‘It’s too dangerous’!” Jayden mocked. She spun around on the branch, hooked her legs around it, and then leaned back to hang upside-down facing Dante. Her blonde hair dangled down to her elbows, swaying along with her momentum. “Look, I appreciate you pulling out the big brother act. But it’s time to stop lying to yourself. You’re like me.”

Dante had heard that less mages were born in Saridian than in other regions. To be born a mage here was a rare fate, but it happened. And if you were one of them, you could never slip up. Your life depended on it. “Please, just come home, before Dad or the soldiers find you.”

“Show me some magic first.” Jayden grinned and swung herself back on top of the branch, then used a combination of impossible leaps and sure-footed climbing to gain altitude. Dante’s stomach dropped in direct proportion to the height she ascended to.

“Jayden!” Dante had to yell for his sister to have any chance of hearing him. “I’m not going to make deals with you. We’ll talk about this after the soldiers leave.”

“You let everyone run your life! They control you. If you never take chances you’ll—”

A sickening crack broke off Jayden’s sentence—the branch holding her weight snapped, and Jayden crashed through layers of the canopy before beginning to plummet, a deadly free fall where the ground would be the finish line.

Time slowed for Dante. He’d seen this happen before. In his dreams, this scene had played out over and over, each time with an ending both different and the same. In a split second, he saw each potential scenario flash in front of him.

Jayden on the ground, body twisted unnaturally.

Jayden crashing into Dante as he tried to catch her, severely injuring them both.

Jayden caught in the branches, blood dripping from her body, hanging lifelessly.

So many nights he had awoken in a cold sweat, bloody images seared into his memory. He couldn’t lose his sister. But he wasn’t able to stop her and now she was going to die.

He couldn’t hold it back anymore—as his sorrow took over, so did his magic. It burst forth from his palms, a rush of tingling energy, shimmering in the air before him, useless, only good for getting people killed.

Then his instincts kicked in. He could sense what to do and he let his desperation guide him. Dante imagined a shell, a magical shield around his sister. With all the force he could muster, he sent the energy toward Jayden, and willed it to protect her in the moment of impact against the ground.

The magic obeyed, materializing as a glowing barrier, a thin wall of light that took the force of the fall instead of his sister’s fragile form. The shell shattered into fragments that flashed brightly before dissipating around Jayden’s prone body. As he ran towards her, Dante hoped that the shield had been the only thing to break.

She can’t be hurt. She… she can’t be dead.

Jayden was still, very still, but her body wasn’t contorted like Dante feared it might be. He knelt at her side, and brushed the hair away from her face. Her eyes were open and she seemed conscious, though distant.

“Jayden. Jayden, can you hear me? Are you alright?”

Jayden’s eyes became more focused and she took Dante’s hand, squeezing it feebly.

“I thought—I thought I was dead,” Jayden said. It was all she got out before tears welled up in her eyes. Dante pulled her close as she began to sob.

“It’s okay. You’re alright, you’re safe.”

After a couple of minutes, Jayden’s breath steadied. She looked up at Dante, tears still brimming. “You protected me. I knew you were a mage, I knew it.” After a shuddering breath, she added, “We used to tell each other everything.”

Dante wanted to protect her from this, only he couldn’t. Not when she was a mage too.

“It started a few years ago,” he told her. “When I was twelve. And I was like you. I thought, maybe, that I could get away with it. I could be careful.” He closed his eyes as he relived his memories. “Then Dad found out. He… wasn’t easy on me.” Dante had gotten a beating that day, the worst of his life. “He made me promise to never use magic again, but he didn’t turn me in. But if he finds me again...”

“You won’t get another chance.”

“No. And you might not get a chance at all.”

Jayden paused, then continued softly. “Being a mage. It’s part of who I am. We can’t abandon that. Not forever.”

“We have to.”

Another pause, longer this time. Dante knew his sister well enough that he could see her brain ticking, her mouth opening and closing silently as she tried to find the words on the tip of her tongue. “I saw the crystal, Dante. That thing Dad found next to the creek. It was broken already, so he threw what was left of it into the water. He said he might be dangerous. But you found the pieces, put it back together, didn’t you? With magic.”

A jolt ran down Dante’s spine. Panic, followed by a heavy dose of shame. “You saw it?” If she did, someone else could have. He should have been more careful. Better yet, he shouldn’t have fixed it in the first place. It was the only time, up until saving Jayden, that he had broken his promise to forsake magic.

Saving his sister’s life happened so fast, it barely seemed like a choice—though he would have chosen to save his sister regardless. But holding onto some magical crystal thing had been wholly on purpose, and it hadn’t been worth the risk. Guilt overtook him every time he thought of the useless crystal sphere, the memento of his failings.

“I saw candlelight from your room, late. Thought I caught a whiff of magic. A couple different nights. So I snooped. Under your bed is not a good hiding place, by the way.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.” Dante felt violated by Jayden’s poking about his room, but he tried to quench his anger. Not the time, not the place—just like being a mage. “Aren’t you too old for snooping?”

“Shush. You want me to be serious about this, don’t you? Well, I’m being serious. They can keep telling us it’s wrong, that King Riordan decreed that only he should have these divine abilities, blah, blah. But that doesn’t change the fact that we are mages. We can’t deny that.”

“Maybe one day, you can leave Saridian and go somewhere else where magic is accepted. But you’ll never live to make it to that point if you run around like this, if you try to be a mage right now. I want you to be happy, Jayden, I do—but I also want you to be safe. So please, promise me you won’t keep doing magic. Not here.”

A long moment of silence passed between them. Jayden sniffed and used her sleeve to wipe her face. “You think you’re so wise. You’re only a couple years older than me,” she said. The half-smile she wore seemed forced. “Okay. I mean, I’ll think about it. Good enough?”

“I’ll take it.”

Jayden’s mouth twisted grimly. “There’s really soldiers here?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen them yet, but Milo did.” He almost mentioned that their parents wanted to ship him off with the soldiers when they left, but he didn’t want his sister to worry about that unless there was something to worry about for sure. He’d double down, put in some extra time on the farm on top of his duties at the clinic, and get Ferrick to talk them down. Maybe if they heard, one more time, how good of a healer he was… well, maybe it would finally mean something to them. Something more than the coin and peace of mind they’d get by sending him away.

Despite not knowing his secret worries, Jayden said, “When I leave, come with me. Be a mage with me.”

“Jayden—”

“Think about it.”

Dante nodded. His agreement was solely to placate her. He wanted out of Briarglen, maybe out of Saridian, so he could be safe… but actually becoming a mage? Magic seemed dangerous even without the risk of being caught by soldiers. Jayden’s fall only proved that. Maybe Riordan was right to ban mortals from using it. Either way, Dante was no mage. He was barely capable in mundane matters.

Jayden put on a brave face, but as Dante gave her a hand up he felt her trembling. Could this close call put her on a safer course? Scared as she was in this moment, he wasn’t sure it would last. His sister’s determination was rooted deep. For now, he was grateful that she’d survived. Somehow doing the wrong thing, using magic, had saved his sister.

Dante couldn't stop the growing knot of anxiety. This nightmare had come to life, and it was far from being the only disturbing scene that haunted his dreams. The images were becoming more vivid each night. He could hope that it was a fluke that he had foreseen this event. A coincidence, or a one-time divination.

He could also pretend that his dreams weren’t what had driven him toward the crystal shards his father had dumped into the creek, causing him to painstakingly search out each piece, following the faint trail of magic that radiated from them. He did this despite any logical reason and against his better judgment.

But he had to do it, to stop the endless dreams—where each shard shone so much brighter than in reality, and he picked them up, over and over in his sleep, until he finally gave in and did so in his waking hours.

His dreams taught him how it felt to put the shards of crystal together, how they fit and how to bind them back together with magic until it was once again a single item—a perfectly round crystal sphere. It had been an obsession to make it whole once more, and then once it was… there was nothing. The crystal suddenly didn’t feel any more magical than a sack of potatoes. Regardless, he couldn’t bear to throw it away, so he stashed it under his bed and tried to forget about it.

Those dreams ceased, and the regular cycle of nightmares had continued to play out, instead. Jayden falling. Flames, everywhere. Screaming. Briarglen, in ruins.

He could feign ignorance, but deep down he knew: life was only going to become more dangerous.