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God, the Kwen… Sciona hadn’t stopped to think about how they would react. Even when Thomil had tried to make her think about it, her mind had slid past the thought. Of course, the Kwen would be more stricken than anyone, more furious.

“Do you understand what you’ve done?” Alba demanded. “People are dying!”

“People have been dying the whole time,” Sciona said quietly.

“Then they’ve been dying for a good reason!”

“What? No, Alba, you don’t mean that. You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t tell me what I mean!”

“Look, I was upset about this at first, too,” Sciona said as patiently as she could. “I tried to deny it, just like you are now, but think about it. You’re a good person, a kind person, Alba. You can’t really enjoy what you have, knowing that it was bought with the lives of others.”

“I’ve earned everything I have!”

“It’s… Alba, it’s not a matter of what you’ve earned or not. Just because you’ve worked hard for something doesn’t cancel out what the mages have done to achieve the technology. It doesn’t entitle you to another person’s flesh and blood.”

“Oh really?” Alba’s voice pitched up, sounding as hysterical as Sciona probably had in the throes of her breakdown. “Really? That is rich, coming from you!”

“Alba, I—”

“Since when do you care about other people?” Alba demanded. “Since when have you ever cared about the work Mama and I put in for you? Now other people matter? Now that they’re a way for you to get attention for your magic?”

“That’s not why I did this!” Sciona protested. “I did this to help people.”

“How is this helping anyone? The Kwen have all gone mad, turned into animals! And what about your people, Sciona? What about the people who loved you when no one else would, who sacrificed everything so you could have your unmarried, intellectual life exactly the way you wanted? How could you do this to us?” Tears were running down Alba’s face, catching glimmers of the faint light from the hall.

“You don’t even care, do you? That you’re attacking everything we’ve built! Everything we are!”

“It’s not an attack to tell the truth,” Sciona protested. “Tiran is built on truth. Our religion is built on truth. What’s more important than upholding that?”

“Your family is more important than that!” Alba was almost screaming. “Tiran is more important than that!”

“Tiran was founded on ideals of knowledge, enlightenment, and integrity,” Sciona said, frustrated that Alba couldn’t seem to understand this very basic line of logic. “If we can’t live by those ideals, then who are we as a nation? What is this place?”

“It’s our home! For Feryn’s sake!” Alba was undone, pacing, tearing at her hair.

“It’s not some—some theoretical thing for you to sit around and ponder in your tower and prod at for your experiments!

It’s people, Sciona! It’s the people that gave you love!

Who are you to turn around and spit on that? ”

“I’m the one who saw Truth and didn’t look away.”

Alba stopped pacing. Her eyes narrowed in a terrible expression Sciona had never seen there before.

“And there it is,” she breathed. “That’s what this is really about, no matter how much you try to deny it.

All this… It’s about you being the smartest, the best, the chosen one. All this agony for your Goddamn ego.”

Sciona could have shrugged the words off from anyone else. Not Alba. Not Alba, who had always told her she was a good person when no one else believed it. Not Alba, who had pulled her from that window ledge and held her tight until she found the will to live.

Alba’s voice dropped to a lethal whisper.

“I always knew you were selfish, Sciona. I was always fine with that. Because what was the harm? But this… the Founding Mages gave you this city, Mama gave you a home, the archmages gave you opportunities no other woman has ever enjoyed in the history of our nation. And this is what you do with all of it?”

“You don’t understand. I—”

“I can’t believe I ever called you my family.”

Sciona’s heart broke. “Alba…”

“Shut up , Sciona! Shut up! I never want to speak to you again!”

“You—” Sciona choked on emotion, tears burning her eyes. “You don’t mean that.” She was staggering forward, reaching for her cousin like a child seeking its mother’s arms. “You don’t mean that. Please—”

Pain cracked across Sciona’s face, knocking her sideways. She blinked, unable to accept in her heart that Alba had slapped her, unable to deny the needle sting in her cheek.

“When the Kwen burn Tiran to the ground, it will be your fault. Congratulations on making your mark.”

Before Sciona could find any words to respond, Alba left, slamming the cell door behind her.

And Sciona had not known she could feel more off balance than she had the day she opened the first Freynan Mirror. But before Sciona had been old enough to practice magic, her aunt had loved her. Alba had loved her.

She didn’t realize she had started stepping back, falling, until she hit the wall.

She was crying, but there was an emptiness to these tears.

Somewhere in the past two weeks, crying had become like a reflex, her body impotently trying to prove she was still human when everything that made a human was gone.

She had already lost her dream, her career, and her reason for living.

Why not her family too? As she sobbed for the loss of Alba and Aunt Winny, an even darker thought threaded its way through the tears.

That slap across her face had all but confirmed her worst fear: Thomil was right.

Sciona had miscalculated. Because if Alba—kind, giving, infinitely patient Alba—met the truth with violent denial, what chance did the rest of Tiran have?

Slumping back against the wall, Sciona slid down until she was curled up with her knees clutched to her chest. She had thought—had hoped—better of her city, and she was the fool again. Thomil had been right again . Archmage Orynhel had been right. The people of Tiran were not ready.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured to her knees but knew that her guilt did no one any good. Not Alba and Aunt Winny. Not Thomil and Carra. And here Sciona was in a cell without a spellograph or note paper or any of her instruments of power to turn the tide.

When the tears dried up, the solitude slowly set in and began to drive Sciona mad.

Her twitching hands had never gone this long without a pen or spellograph—certainly never during times of stress—and she picked at her nails until they bled.

The prison cot was hilariously softer than the one Sciona used in her laboratory—if a little mustier—but sleep was impossible.

She gave it her best effort, lying back and closing her eyes, but each time calm seemed to be falling, the sounds of fresh violence would rise from the streets below, and her bloodshot eyes would fly open again.

“It’s your fault,” Alba’s voice whispered through the pounding of her heart in her ears. “When the Kwen burn Tiran to the ground, it will be your fault.”

A scream built in Sciona’s throat over hours. She was squirming with it, about to let it out, just to release some of the tension in her body—when the door opened.

“Highmage Freynan,” said a guard with deep circles under his eyes, “you’re being relocated.”

“What? Why?” she asked as he put a hand on her back and pushed her ahead of him down the narrow hallway between cells.

“For your own safety… and because the prisons are at capacity.”

“At capacity?”

“From the Kwen being arrested en masse.”

“What? But—if all the prisons are at capacity, then where am I going?”

“You’re being placed under house arrest.”

“But my aunt said she didn’t want to see me…” A childish hope flickered to life in Sciona’s chest. Maybe Aunt Winny had changed her mind; Sciona would get a chance to explain herself, to make Winny and Alba understand what she had been trying to do—

The door at the end of the hall opened, and she stopped, her back bumping against the guard behind her.

“Archmage Bringham!”

“Come.” Bringham took Sciona’s arm to guide her onward, and that was when she noticed the instrument clutched in his other hand. In the dark of the jail corridor, it looked like an oversized walking stick, but Sciona knew better.

“My God. Archmage, is that—?”

“Stay close,” Bringham said as the two of them descended the stairs to the front gates. “I’ll keep you safe.”

The jail itself was protected by a magical barrier that only allowed guards and approved visitors to enter and exit. Beyond the selective shielding spell, the city roiled with bodies.

Sciona had never known there were so many Kwen in Tiran—enough to make great copper-headed waves in the streets.

Most of the time, these people were invisible servants, cleaning chimneys and sweeping streets, working in the mines out of sight, tending to gardens behind fine houses.

They had risen from those mines and kitchens in their thousands—and it was terrifying.

“We’re not going out there?” Sciona’s feet slowed.

“What’s the matter?” Bringham asked. “Surely, you’re not afraid of a few of your precious, innocent, put-upon Kwen?”

Sciona had no answer. She had opened herself up to the barb. And Bringham had a point, as Alba had had a point. How had Sciona not seen this coming? The Kwen were human. They felt anger. They could be vengeful.

“Is this how I’m being executed?” Sciona asked as Bringham’s hand tightened on her arm, forcing her toward the gates and the bounds of the shielding spell. “Is that why you’re here? To throw me to the Kwen?”

“Don’t joke about that,” Bringham said, and in the weak light of the lamps, he looked genuinely hurt.