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I raise a brow. “Have you not heard how sharp the blade of a guillotine is?”

“I’ve seen... I mean, you’veneverused medius spells before?”

I lean in and whisper, “Only when I’m sure I’ll get away with it. The local luminist loves to—”

As if summoned, he appears. A luminist, in glowing white robes, ringing his spiritual bell as he walks the far side of the underbridge. My heart leaps into my throat.

“Live virtuous, modest lives. Follow the rules of the linea, and be reborn as linea. Pay homage at the luminarium.”

I yelp, grab Maskios, and duck behind a brazier.

He murmurs against my neck, “Why are we—”

I slam a palm over his mouth and shake my head.

Only when the luminist has passed do I exhale and drop my hand, now damp with Maskios’s breath. He stares at me in the dark, and that oddly ticklish shiver returns.

I hold his gaze. “He and I don’t see eye to eye. If he sees me, he’ll tell Father.”

We emerge from behind the brazier to tend to a malnourished child covered in rashy rings.

“Is it plague?” her mother asks, clutching her close. “Is she going to—”

I take the girl’s pulse. “It does look fearsome, but I’ve seen this before.” I speak gently to the child. “Did you play in the woods? Did you touch a plant that looks like strawberry vine?”

She nods. I smile. Maskios watches closely.

“She’s touched thistleweed,” I murmur. “Harmless. It’ll fade on its own eventually. But...”

I pour a spell into her skin. Within minutes, the rash fades.

It’s past midnight when I heal the last person in the line. My head is spinning from overexertion, my limbs heavy. Still, I keep upright, mostly because Maskios is watching. I pull myself up the icy path toward the street.

The cobblestones blur. The lights from nearby houses shimmer.

And then I tip...

Into strong arms. Again.

I bite back a few self-chastising words and shiver. “Windy.”

“Let’s sit a moment.”

We perch on the bridge wall beneath a sky dusted with stars. Across the canal, the dome of the royal luminarium glows with magic. I grimace at the sight, but bow.

Maskios studies me. “The way you were with the luminist, I thought you didn’t care about the Arcane Sovereign.”

I shrug. “I distrust the idea that if we follow linea rules we’re reborn as linea, and I have definitely—repeatedly and shamelessly—broken linea rules. Bowing seems redundant. And yet... just in case.”

Maskios nods slowly. “I’ve told myself again and again not to do certain things. And yet, I keep doing them anyway. Telling myself no seems pointless, but still. I keep trying. And failing.”

I smile faintly. “Are you trying and failing to reform your criminal ways?”

“As successfully as you are.”

I laugh. “I wish I could practice properly. As a vitalian. There’s so much I don’t know, so many spells I’ve only heard about, and even more I haven’t.” The Arcane Sovereign himself must have it in for me up in the heavens.

The luminist’s bell sounds again ahead. And approaching fast.