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“Wolves and other things,” she says, her gentle hand on my back urging me forward. “But you have no reason to be scared.”

She taps my chest.

“Because they fear the darkness. And we fear no one.”

A horn blows, and she eases me off the platform. My feet thud on the ground and I feel the impact in my chest. The others sprint off, their legs twice as long as mine. I look back. Yagrin’s still watching. As I walk, my heart ticks like a timed bomb. How will my brother know how to find the oak tomorrow, or how to defeat the terrors that wait for us in the forest, if I don’t survive this first? I tighten my fists and close my eyes, imagining my face on the bodies of those glorious warriors in the stories I’ve read, with their fire broadswords and magical armor.

I open my eyes and dash into the forest at full speed. The old oak, I know: I can see it from my bedroom window. I head straight for it, at the heart of the forest. As I approach the clearing, something somewhere howls again.

I scan the woods but don’t see anything. I run faster. I should’ve found the oak by now, but everything is beginning to look the same. I switch directions, scaling sprawling tree roots. A coppery smell burns my nose, but I run and run until my lungs ache. I stop for a breath.

And spot glowing eyes in the brush.

* * *

I blink away the memory, and Headquarters bleeds to full color. I exhale and straighten in my chair. It’s been two days since I turned in my brother, and I still haven’t been able to sleep more than a few minutes at a time. Across the lobby, the Dragunhead’s office door is ajar, and Maei is still not there. It’s ridiculously early, but I had known the pile of reports on my desk would grow while I was away hunting answers about the Sphere. When I arrived this morning, on top was a note from the Dragunhead: Officium est honor volentis.

Duty is the honor of the willing. In other words, hurry up. The pressure to clear my workload before he arrives beats like a drum in my head. I’m usually always ahead on things, and he doesn’t need any reason to question the pendant that hangs from my neck. As swiftly as he gave it, he could rip it away.

Francis’s file is missing several pages. The samples I brought in to be tested are nowhere to be found. So I escalated his death to murder, but the Dragunhead hasn’t yet signed off on a formal investigation. I set the file aside, strumming my fingers across my desk, imagining I can hear the song they would play. But I pound an angry fist on my desk. With the Sphere’s worsened condition, any defenses it has will be weakened. I have to find Quell or get to the Sphere before she does. Not in a month’s time. Not in a week. Today.

But with no whispers of her anywhere, my only option—the second-best sun tracker in the brotherhood—is in a cell that I put him in.

I try to review a few raid reports, but a glimpse of the gold on my lapel drags my thoughts back to the night I earned my first virtue pin. We broke into the family Healer’s stores and had Yagrin ingest some dark stone to make him vomit, so he appeared too sick to go first. I took his spot and earned my pin, the youngest in Perl history to do so, then briefed Yagrin on everything to ensure he could do the same. But he failed.

I can still feel the lashing Father gave me afterward, but what I remember most is the way he looked at me. Like I didn’t deserve the duty pin on my chest. Like my very existence disgusted him because I couldn’t do the task he assigned me: ensure his precious firstborn pass with flying colors.

I stand and pace as I try to read another report. But no manner of distraction can smother the burning in my belly as the past nags my conscience. When we had showed up at Hartsboro’s doors with a tuxedoed Yagrin, he was ten, and I was eight. Though I’ve always been expected to behave as if I’m oldest. Expected to compensate for his childishness. That day he was supposed to be tested on what forms of magic he could show. But I knew he hadn’t unearthed any. I had unearthed two. And then my aunt stumbled upon me doing magic and begged my father to leave me with her at Hartsboro.

My mother cried. My father fumed. He told my aunt how I was a troublemaker, always getting into things that didn’t concern me. But she waved his warning away, and it was the first time I saw someone shut my father up. My aunt’s insistence felt like a warm hug back then; I wanted nothing more than to leave my father’s domineering shadow and become everything my aunt saw in me.

He agreed, only on the condition that I keep Yagrin on track: passing his Rites, earning his virtue pins, and securing the position of House of Perl Ward. But I quickly realized how impossible that was. Yagrin didn’t have any interest in magic, or the Order, or any of it. I did all I could to help him study: preparing all his note cards, reciting with him, giving up my own liberty time to ensure he was ready for his tests. I read texts aloud to him because he refused to do it himself. Sometimes my own performance suffered, but it didn’t matter to Father. Yagrin was the one who needed to succeed.

Perhaps I ruined him.

Memories of our childhood linger like a hungry ghost. I find myself at Maei’s desk and pick up the sentencing roster. How much time, exactly, does Yagrin have left? I open the folder to a long list of names, and Yagrin’s is somehow already close to the top. Ice skids down my spine. I flip the pages backward, trying to understand. These are endorsed executions, one after another.

The brotherhood took in more Draguns this past Season than it has in years. More Draguns means moving through the sentencing lists even faster. Over and over, I count how few names precede my brother’s, but the number doesn’t change. In the time I was gone to meet with Francis, there have been nine burnings. Sickness moves from my gut to my throat. Yagrin’s life hangs in the balance. Days…if he’s lucky. I close the papers on Maei’s desk and stare across the lobby at the pile of work I need to get back to. My brother is a sorry excuse for a Dragun. This is his own fault.

But I can’t move.

He never wanted this life. He did everything he could to avoid it.

“It is his duty!” I kick the nearby trash bin before raking a hand through my hair, grateful no one is in here to witness my petulance. I’ve done my duty. I’ve watched the light leave a person’s eyes; I’ve racked up a handful of bodies in the last two months. And yet my heart thunders harder now than it ever has. I thought he’d have more time. To think. To change his mind and cooperate.

If I do nothing and abandon him to his consequences…

By week’s end my brother will be a body on some other Dragun’s list.

I storm past Maei’s desk and slam the down button on the elevator. I can’t help him if he refuses to be helped. But if I ruined my brother, perhaps saving him is worth one more shot.

* * *

The underground floor where captives are kept stirs when the elevator dings open. The basement floor of Headquarters is a sweltering tomb of stone, and within a few steps I’m already sweating. I slip out of my House coat, the room’s elevated temperature burning my skin. I hate coming down here. Rows of cells run in either direction. Light from street-level windows slices through the darkness.

Each cell is closed by a veil of writhing shadows. Dark magic clings to a thin, translucent barrier made from some of the same material as the Sphere’s casing, creating a door that is impassable. The Shadow Cells are probably the Order’s most innovative and deadly use of toushana. I think of Francis’s papa. People probably died to make these, too…

My skin is slick with sweat. The prison is kept abnormally warm to keep captives from easily using toushana. I arranged for my brother to be in a well-lit area—a small kindness I hope he recognizes. I find him crouched on the ground, drawing circles in the dirt floor. The same motion, stroke after stroke. The trail of dirt forms tiny piles, and suddenly I can feel it all over my skin. I fill my lungs with air and hold it, shoving off the panic. I’m okay. I am not that boy anymore. When my brother looks at me, it anchors me to the present. He slips into Octos’s skin, the persona he used to trick Quell into trusting him.