“Alti was a land with many villains, and many heroes. They have all, one by one, been forgotten. Although the name of the Juran, those rebels who sided with the beasts in the Divide, has lived on, the names of those who led them have been lost.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

Deep night had plunged the world into extraordinary darkness, cloaking the city in an unnatural hush akin to that which had fallen with the snow on the night when Silver had encountered the Zara. There was no birdsong of any kind, no howling of coyotes in the distance; the world seemed to fall away just beyond her shuttered window. Silver stood just out of range of the stinging magic that kept her from opening the shutters any wider. Just moments ago, she had been fast asleep, side by side with the wolf and Seijelar. Whatever had woken her, she felt it had come from the trees.

Closing her eyes for a moment, she tilted her chin down against the fabric of her nightclothes. Since discovering magic, her senses had changed. She could pick out the familiar magics of those around her, and sometimes she could pick out other magics as well, a confusing jumble of imagined color in her head. If part of her reveled in the change, and in the vibrancy and intricacy it contributed to her world, another part was irritated that she constantly felt like she was staring at something with her eyes half-closed. It was a blurry and confusing mess. At the moment, though, she did not sense much of anything.

Glancing at the wolf, she saw that it, too, was awake, staring as she was through the chink in the shutters. The beast’s utter silence spoke volumes; they were not alone. After a few seconds, the wolf turned its head towards the door leading into the rest of the house. Seijelar was also awake now, emerald eyes open to half slits and smoke curling lazily from both nostrils.

“A human,” the tiny dragon hummed.

“Outside?” Silver half-whispered.

Elorian laid both ears back in agreement, but the dragon snapped its tiny fangs when the wolf rumbled, “For the moment.”

Tiptoeing around the bed, Silver gestured towards the door. In the darkness, she crept towards it slowly, glancing back only once, at the mirror by the window, as she pressed against the wood. Beneath her touch, it swung silently inward. It seemed Illian trusted them enough to leave the doors unlocked now, or at least did not see them as threatening enough to bother locking them up any more. Sliding, cat-like, out into the hall, Silver crept into the main room with the wolf in tow.

It surprised her, for an instant, when she saw the light of Faei’s eyes at the far side of the room, regarding her and the wolf. It surprised her more to hear the soft creak of someone else’s foot against the steps outside. She froze halfway out of the hall, aware of the dim glow from the creeping plants that cast a dusty sheen over the hallway and one corner of the table. Leaning back over her heels, she lowered herself into a crouch, eyeing Illian’s wolf. The beast stared back at the two of them, silent, but apparently deep in thought.

Before any of them could make a move, a sharp knock against the front door drew Silver’s gaze. For a moment, a pale blue symbol shimmered against the wood, clear and bright. Instinct kept her out of sight when the door inched open. Again, her eyes trailed to Faei. Illian’s wolf had not moved, but had turned its attention to the door as well. Its hooded ears came forward. For an instant, she thought she saw familiarity in that glance. This wolf, at least, knew who had come into the house.

That was good enough for her to leave them be, or it would have been, if whomever their late-night visitor was had not apparently spotted her in that instant. With a solid thwack, a knife barely the length of one of Silver’s fingers embedded itself in the wall just over her head.

“Show yourself,” a woman’s voice issued from the shadows at the other end of the room, “or the next one takes your eye.”

Shocked, Silver pitched forward onto her hands, flattening herself against the ground as she peered under the table to get a clearer view of her assailant. If the table had been a little taller, she might have seen more than the dim outline of heavy boots. Instead, she slammed her palm flat against the ground and drew on her magic to do something that she had never tried before; capture whoever had thrown the knife with magic. Or at least, that was what she intended. But she screwed up somehow, and the floorboards between her and the door groaned and shuddered, and then abruptly snapped.

Suppressing a yelp of surprise, Silver twisted around as something fell heavily across the table, slamming against her exposed back. Her fingers found heavy fabric around what she felt sure must be an arm at roughly the same time Elorian’s jaws snapped over her head and Faei leapt up with a snarl. Whoever she had grabbed, they grabbed her back, catching her forearm and then suddenly throwing their weight down on top of her. Thrashing, Silver felt her knee connect with something bony, but the weight above her did not shift, not even when her assailant let out a sound of frustration and surprise. Elorian was snarling as well now, but the wolf seemed to be battling something else in the confusion. All Silver saw in the faint light from the plants overhead was flashes of silvery fur and the shadow of someone looming over her.

Then a surprising thing happened. The wad of fabric clenched tightly between her fingers went slack. Something cold and undeniably sharp was pressed to her throat. Silver could feel acutely where it brushed against her skin, and the feeling sent shivers up and down her spine. By some primal fear she froze. Only then did she become aware of the silence that filled the room. It was a momentary silence, a stillness that could not last – no one would have been able to sleep through that racket – but for an instant, it prevailed.

Her captor exhaled slowly, not relaxing in the slightest. Their eyes met, but it was too dark for Silver to make out much of the features of the woman on top of her.

“Who are you?” the woman snapped.

Before Silver could answer, Illian’s door slammed open, and she recognized his heavy footsteps on the broken floorboards. He crossed the room in three strides and pulled the woman on top of Silver up by one arm. Light flared to life in the trenches along the walls, gilding the room in a sudden but muted light. That light revealed a woman with a dark cloak hanging from one shoulder, the silvery flash of a knife in her other hand. A dark wave of deep brown hair fell in loose curls across her shoulders, accentuating the arch of her cheekbones and defiantly set jaw. Wordlessly, she pulled her arm from Illian’s grasp.

He let it go.

For an instant, the woman glared down at Silver with eyes of nearly the same color as her own, though less vibrant, like green-tinted glass. There was plain power behind that gaze.

“A powerful magic user,” Seijelar whispered in her mind. Silver did not dare look in the dragon’s direction. It was all she could do to push herself up on her elbows and get her feet back under her.

“Cevora kuirsrinn,” Illian said firmly. Silver blinked at the exchange. She knew the words Illian was speaking – this woman was a princess?

“Illian,” the woman offered after a few seconds, casting a glance in the direction of the hallway dismissively. Silver glanced over as well. Bek, unsurprisingly, stood there, bronze eyes focused on the mess. Elorian stood just in front of him, defensively. Silver felt her cheeks grow warm when he looked at the floor, which now consisted mostly of warped, cracked, and broken timber. Bek saw her glance, and raised an eyebrow.

“What’s going on here?” the strange woman was asking sharply.

“These two are living with me,” Illian answered, though Silver saw how his eyes were studying the woman in the dark hallway, reading her face. “Princess, you should not be here.” Cevora frowned as she turned, crossing her hands across her chest.

“You hinted earlier,” she stated.

“I think not,” he said dryly, “and it is unseemly to be wandering the streets of Alti at this hour. You are of great importance to this nation.”

“I’m well aware.”

Illian frowned. “Cevora, my duty is to—”

“Your duty is to me, Illian. When you were appointed kivgha of the king, your family was given second priority to the safety of this nation, and when you were appointed my guardian, that became second to me.”

Illian tipped his head slightly, allowing her to continue. Silver shifted her weight in an attempt to stop a cramp from forming in her foot.

“Illian, it is time. I apologize, but…”

“There is no need—”

“Then we have much to discuss.” An awkward silence fell between them, and Silver finally pushed herself back into a standing position to fill it.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized quickly, “for…the floor.” The silence continued as she turned and wrenched the thrown dagger out of the wall. Elorian rumbled something as she turned back with it, and extended it hilt first in Cevora’s direction. “You’re very skilled,” she said, unsure what else to say to the princess that had nearly slit her throat.

For several long seconds, Cevora regarded her in silence. Then, the woman took the blade, slowly, and pointedly slipped it into a sheath concealed beneath her skirt.

“I must be able to defend myself, most particularly from fools and suitors.” Cevora smiled slightly, and Silver returned a nervous grin.

“Should I ask what you were trying to do, Silver?” Illian queried, his eyes still for Cevora alone.

“I wouldn’t,” Bek cut in unnecessarily from the hallway.

“I wanted to stop her from moving, using the floorboards,” Silver explained anyway.

“I see.”

She ducked her head, thinking that it might have been better if she had not given Illian reason to question her usefulness.

Cevora seemed unimpressed with their exchange, or with the floor. “Illian,” she said, “I know where my mother was headed that night. I spoke to the dragon srinn, Etrion. I need you to help me.”

Illian stiffened, standing suddenly straighter so that he towered over the princess’s pale face. His features hardened against the glare of her sea green eyes.

“You did what? You went into the Issurak?”

“Of course,” the princess replied, undaunted, “As I said, it’s time. We can’t break the Keliarn Agreement. My father brought something to the castle tonight…it was evil, Illian. If I had stayed any longer, I would have lost my chance to ever leave. I could feel it.”

“You know better than this, princess. What do you think will happen when the king and his council realize you’re gone?”

Cevora ignored him wholeheartedly, and Silver found herself already admiring the tenacity of the nation’s princess, standing alone in the house of the person she had come to order to do her bidding, surrounded by two strangers and their beasts – though the dragons were only just peering around Bek’s legs, and Cevora probably had yet to notice them – and calmly issuing orders to what seemed to be one of the most powerful people in Alti.

“Etrion offered us aid,” Cevora said.

Illian was silent, his gaze dark.

“The dragons have given us their trust,” Cevora stated, “So I would ask that you make it possible for the royalty of Alti to stand beside the beasts as we always have. As juran – friends of the beasts.” She paused. “As for the king and his council, they’ll do nothing. I left a note with the closest thing to the truth that I dared tell; I’ve gone to seek what Tiavell srinn could not find. If he sends anyone into the Issurak after me, it will destroy all of his careful preparations for war. Even the council wouldn’t dare send anyone into the beast’s domain now, for fear of retaliation. Their hands are bound.”

“I will follow you always, Cevora kuirsrinn, but the council – your father – will not take things like this lying down,” Illian said. Cevora placed a slender hand on his shoulder and turned her head to face Silver and Bek. Her eyes widened as she noticed the two dragons leering from behind Bek’s legs, their catlike eyes aglow in the semi-gloom of the hallway.

“Dragons…” she said softly.

“They’ve come from Atlantis,” Illian responded with such ease that Silver had to admit she would be hard pressed to catch him in his lie.

“I had heard that the trade ships were being turned away.”

“Who said anything about trade ships, princess? You had best not look too closely at what you do not wish to see.”

Cevora narrowed her eyes as she glanced sideways at him but, to Silver’s relief, asked no further questions about their origin.

“All of you,” Illian continued, turning to catch Silver and Bek in his gaze as well, “we leave at dawn.”

“Where are we going?” Silver asked, but Illian merely looked at her, and she knew she would not be receiving any answer.

“Use my quarters, Cevora kuirsrinn,” he gestured in the direction of his room, “I have preparations to make.”

The princess nodded slowly, and after a few moments, walked to the door of the proffered space, pushing it open. She looked back once, eyeing them all thoughtfully, before turning away. It was only as the woman disappeared into the dark room beyond the door and it snapped shut behind her that Silver realized she had never even asked their names.

A heavier silence followed her exit, one in which Illian merely glanced at the destroyed floorboards. He knelt and ran his hand over the wood, watching as it mended slowly.

“How long have you been practicing magic, may I ask?”

“A little over a month,” Silver answered slowly.

“She discovered her abilities late,” Bek added carefully. He paused briefly as the wood beneath Illian’s fingers groaned and suddenly snapped back into place. “There was not much time for her to receive formal instruction.”

“I’m surprised she can muster so much destructive power with so little training.”

“She has a lean towards pyromancy. And she’s a healer,” Bek stated.

“She’s been allowed to practice on a living being?” Illian did not raise his head as he asked this, which Silver thought might be a good thing; she was blushing again.

Bek said nothing for a moment, though she felt him glance at her. Then he said, “I’ll be in the room,” and made his way back to his room. She watched him go without following.

Several moments of silence passed. Illian rose from the mended floorboards and removed a sheathed sword Silver had not noticed in the chaos from his side. Ignoring her, he promptly set it on the table and sat, removing the blade. It was extremely thin, with a heart of black steel encircled by a single ring of crimson. From a pocket in his pants, he pulled some sort of cloth and began to run it across the blade.

“That is a beautiful sword,” Silver said uncertainly, attempting to break what she thought might soon become an uncomfortable silence. Illian glanced up at her, but then averted his gaze back to the blade.

“Yes. Each of us has one in the Trent family, and each is a little different.” She smiled slightly. Several more silent moments passed.

“May I ask a personal question?” Silver asked softly, coming to sit on the other side of the table.

He did not look up at her, and she guessed that his silence was as close to confirmation as she was going to receive. Still, she was well aware that she was about to stick her nose somewhere it definitely did not belong.

“Do you care for Cevora? Not just as her guardian, I mean?”

At first, Illian gave no indication that he had so much as heard her. He flipped the edge of the sword up, observing the sharp edge of the blade. Then, after a reasonable period of time, he answered, “I am tasked with her safety. I have cared for and loved her for a long time, but she is a sister to me. It is my duty to protect and cherish her.”

He paused for a moment, squinting at some minuscule mark on the sword’s surface.

“What is your relationship with Bek? It seems you haven’t known each other long. He reminds me of myself a few years back, if you’ll forgive my saying so.”

“Friends, I think,” Silver said airily, after a moment. “We met when my house burned down after the Zara came after me. Most of what I learned about magic, I learned from him.” Illian hmphed softly.

“It appears you trust him with your life, but he certainly doesn’t trust himself with it.” Silver would have asked what Illian meant by that, but he had already moved on, speaking more softly. “Cevora is very kind and very protective of her people. I never saw her shed a tear over her mother’s death in public. That is the kind of princess she is. Everything I do is for the good of Alti…and I believe strongly in what she would bring to this kingdom.”

“She trusts you,” Silver said, understanding somewhat why he had mentioned trust a moment before.

“Trust is also a weapon of sorts. Does your companion speak to you?” Illian asked curiously, suddenly switching topics and nodding a head at Elorian, who had come to lay at her side.

“Yes.” She recalled their earlier introduction to Faei. He nodded, but said nothing.

“I’m sorry…about the floor…again.” Silver refused to look at Illian even when she felt his dark eyes on her face and heard the whisper of his sword being sheathed.

“It was nothing I hadn’t expected. I could sense, somewhat, what Bek said about your magic having manifested not long ago. As he probably told you, magic takes the shape of our will and imagination. It is bound by the individual’s power, limited by their focus and skill, which can be learned only with practice. Bek said you have a lean towards pyromancy, and healing. A unique combination. My lean is towards sensing the magical abilities of others. I’ve assessed many magic users in my life, though it’s hard to put a number to the things I feel.” He looked at her. “I can sense your magic better than most people will be able to, Silver. I can sense its nature…in your time, whatever the tests told you, they’re wrong. You’re no pyromancer.”

She stared at him. “Bek said that not everyone actually has a lean,” she said after a moment.

“True,” Illian agreed immediately, “and it hardly matters if you do. It means some things come naturally to you, but it doesn’t make you a better or more capable magic user. If anything, it makes it harder to learn other types of magic. Not having a lean is common for magic users who manifest late. But I’m not saying you don’t have one, just that it isn’t pyromancy. Or healing.”

“Then what is it?” Silver asked, staring at him questioningly.

A long silence stretched between them, in which Elorian sighed heavily and shifted against the cold wood flooring.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I don’t think your abilities have fully manifested yet.”

Silver nodded slowly, leaning her elbows on the table.

“That makes sense.”

Illian was still watching her as he asked, “Why did you go to the MASO after you were attacked by the Zara?”

Silver did not answer immediately. The reason she had gone with Bek the night of the fire was obvious to her, but it was hard to say out loud. Illian seemed to expect as much. He said nothing and continued his work, but it was clear he did not plan to say anything more until he had her answer.

“I wanted to learn how to use magic to kill the Zara.”

She was surprised by how little her voice shook, by the calm that stole through her when she remembered everything that had happened that night. Illian was frowning darkly.

“Revenge is a terrible burden. If you devote your life to it, you will find you can shoulder little else. Maybe not all at once, maybe not even with your knowledge, everything else in your life will be lost, Silver. Revenge…breeds death. I wish I could steer you down the right path rather than only pointing out the wrong, but I don’t have that knowledge.” A pause. “In the end, the Zara…is it true that you destroyed it?” he asked then.

Silver eyed Illian thoughtfully, fingers curled into her clothes. The fabric in Alti was rough and unfamiliar, like everything else. Trust; he had mentioned it only a moment before. Her eyes strayed to the hallway as she thought of Bek. He had mentioned it as well. She sighed.

“No. I saved his life.” A moment passed.

“That’s surprising, given your motives for learning magic,” Illian observed then, regarding her steadily.

Silver shrugged. “When it came down to it, things were more complicated than I had expected. I had the chance to choose whether to save the Zara or watch him die, and I chose to save him.”

“Why?”

Silver thought for a long moment, glad at least that he had something to do while she weighed her answer.

“Part of me thinks that was my revenge. I forced him to go on existing in that tortured state. Another part of me thinks that I was afraid of trying to live with myself knowing I had killed a creature suffering as much as he was. To be honest, up until I saw him dying, I believed the Zara was evil and nothing else. But in his final moments, I had the sense he and I weren’t that different, it was just…I hadn’t lost hope, and he had.”

“It almost sounds,” Illian said when she had finished, “like the two of you spoke. What does one say to the beasts of shadow?”

“There is light even in the deepest darkness,” she said very softly, as if uncertain of the words.

“There comes a time for many of us,” Illian said after a long moment, “where we are forced to realize that there are few things in this world that are either good or evil. You are familiar with the term zaruviat?”

“No?” Silver said.

“It is a word I know too well. It means neither good, nor evil. Those things which fall in between. It is a term that some people use to describe everything. The world, our existence, the balance of life and death and chaos introduced by idealism in a non-ideal world. You say you saw the Zara as evil until those final moments. You fought on the side of the beasts who were good and kind to you, against the phantom that stole everything you loved from you. It likely seemed very clean cut, very simple, but things that seem so simple rarely are. When you saved the Zara, you stepped out of such a black and white world, to a place where judgment suddenly becomes hazy and morality does not feel quite so tangible. I’m sure Bek saw that because he’s been through it himself, but by the look on your face, he hasn’t said anything. I’m going to do very cruel thing.”

Silver stared at him, hazel green eyes dark as she waited.

“I’m going to make you face that decision,” Illian said calmly, “I know nothing about your time, but ours is not peaceful. Coming here tonight, the princess has implicitly agreed that she will help me to kill her father. Tomorrow, we will leave this city, and you will face beasts and men who will not hesitate to kill you. They are not evil, most of them. They fight for their nation, to protect their families, or their resources. They may be very noble, in fact. But you won’t be able to save yourself without killing them. In order to live, you will have to fight.”

Silver heard the unspoken words. You will have to kill. She shook her head as if to dispel them, touching the top of the wolf’s head as Elorian nudged against her hip.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s the truth. Better you face it now than later. You can decide whether killing them makes you evil, or if it means something in the grand scheme of things. You can pray for them, if it helps. We all deal with it in our own way, and few of those ways are wrong. But you can’t save them. This,” he said, shifting his sword so it caught the dim light from the channels in the walls, “is a weapon that you will learn to use. It is made to protect lives by taking lives. That is what weapons are, Silver, and magic is also a weapon. One day, you will no longer understand why you saved the Zara. You may forget that you once believed you were good and just. And that day may come sooner than you expect.”

He paused, eyes cold.

“We channel our feelings and intentions into our weapons. We can use them to protect the things that we cherish, and that is a very noble thing, but when we use them, we will also hurt other people; that is an unfortunate and unavoidable truth. It takes great power to defeat someone who would take your cherished things, but it takes greater power to have mercy on that person. Most of us do not have that greater power. If you wield a weapon for hatred or revenge, that’s even worse – you are merely slaughtering people by the force of your own will.”

Illian’s words chilled her, and she wrapped her fingers in the wolf’s warm fur. The hush, momentarily lost in their conversation, had returned with an even greater weight than before.

“Go and rest,” he said then, “dawn will come sooner than you know.” Silver yawned and rose to take his advice, trying not to stumble when the blood rushed to her head.

“G’night, Illian.” He glanced at her, seeming surprised.

“Goodnight.”