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A last letter. The word ‘last’ hit Sciona with a discomforting reality: they were fast approaching the end of her story.

Her career would be one of the shortest of any highmage, so short that she had not even fulfilled her dream of publishing research under her name.

This was her final chance to put something into the world—even if it was something as simple as a few words to her auntie.

And she had to wonder if this had been Bringham’s intent in his seeming gentleness: to make her stare down oblivion and lose her nerve.

“Tell me what you’d like to say.” Crossing the room, Bringham plucked a pen from his desk and dipped the end in an inkwell. “I’ll write it down for you.”

“Give me the pen, and I’ll write it myself.”

“I’m not going to give you a pen.”

Sciona paused in confusion. What did Bringham think she was going to do? Stab him in the neck? His reasoning dawned on her, and she laughed. “You think just because I cracked a few old texts, I can do magic without a spellograph? Like Stravos? Or a Kwen witch?”

Bringham’s frowning silence said ‘yes’ or at the very least ‘maybe.’ In the old days, many mages had been able to cast spells without the use of spellographs or conduits, but that had been with decades of practice and more materials than a simple ink pen.

“I don’t know what you’re capable of,” he said.

“God,” she marveled with a smile. “You’re really afraid of me.”

Bringham eyed her in unease. “Does that excite you?”

“A little,” she admitted. Just because Bringham seemed committed to playing the innocent, well-intentioned mage didn’t mean she was going to.

So, do you have anything to say to Miss Alba? To your aunt?”

“I suppose I do.”

Sciona’s hands still ached from the tome’s-worth of scrawling and typing she had done in the past week. But through all of it, she hadn’t spared a word for Alba or Aunt Winny. The thought had never crossed her mind.

It was a callous oversight, she realized now, and a damning illustration of all Alba’s accusations.

Sciona had stood before the Council and berated them for ignoring the suffering the Kwen had undergone to build this city.

And the whole time, Sciona had largely ignored the sacrifices her own family had made to get her where she was.

She swallowed, feeling the sting of Alba’s hand on her cheek anew.

Alba and Aunt Winny deserved better. No matter how wrong they were about the plight of the Kwen, they deserved better from the girl they had raised with so much love. The Kwen might owe them nothing, but Sciona owed them her best effort at an apology.

“Dear Aunt Winny,

The week after I lost my mother to sickness and my father to indifference should be among the worst of my memories.

But when I revisit it, it’s not a dark memory.

I owe that to you—the way you looked at me like you wanted me there more than anything in the world, the way you wrapped me up without a moment’s hesitation, even knowing an extra child was going to be a financial burden you could barely afford.

“You’re my little girl now.” You kept saying that — “You’re my girl” — even as years passed, and I wasn’t little anymore, and I continued to take, and take, and take without ever giving back.

I understand why you didn’t want to see me in the jail.

The most giving being in the world must have a limit, and every lie has to run its course.

See, when you called me “yours,” that was always a lie—a kind one, but a lie all the same.

You must have seen, even when I was that tiny girl crying in your arms, that I wasn’t made of the same stuff as you and Alba.

I could never give as selflessly or love as earnestly as you.

I won’t apologize for what I did at the High Magistry…

But I will apologize for the way I took you for granted.” Sciona paused, realizing that Bringham had stopped writing mid-sentence. He was staring at her, disbelieving.

“You won’t apologize for what you did? Not even for your aunt’s sake? The woman who raised you?”

“I think it’s important to be honest with the people you care about, Archmage.

” Sciona briefly met Bringham’s eyes before looking back down at her hands, her fingers knit together in her lap, one thumb rubbing over the other.

“But tell her… I am truly sorry for any pain my work has caused her. I know the sacrifices she made for me. I’ve always been grateful for them, though I’ve been bad at showing it.

I’ll still be grateful for her in Hell.” She looked back up at Bringham to find that he hadn’t resumed writing. “What is it?”

Bringham set the pen down. “She’ll blame herself.”

“Well, tell her not to be too hard on herself.” Sciona met Bringham’s gaze again and held it this time. “She’s not responsible for the way I turned out—and neither are you, Archmage.”

“I don’t know that we can say that when, as you pointed out, I consciously brought you into the High Magistry—”

“But you already have said it, Archmage. You told me the day of the exam not to let people credit you or anyone else with my success. Well, that goes for blame, too, alright? You bear the shame for your actions—which is shame aplenty for one soul, I think. My actions are my own.”

“You never had a father,” Bringham said quietly.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I suppose you’ve probably always harbored some anger about being left to the care of two working women when your mother should have taught you to be a lady, and your father should have taught you about the world.”

For a moment, Sciona could only shake her head, dizzied by her own indignation.

Archmage Bringham didn’t know that her real father was Perramis. She had only ever told him that her father was a rich man who had cast her out. And this had been in deepest confidence, with the unspoken understanding that Bringham would never speak of it again—let alone use it against her.

“I should have realized,” Archmage Bringham said. “In the absence of your real father, that anger could turn back on the Magistry, on me.”

That—listening to Archmage Bringham try to diagnose her with a lack of male influence like that idiot alchemist—was the thing that made Sciona snap.

“This isn’t about you!” she burst out so violently that Bringham drew back, one hand moving to his staff. “None of this is about you, Archmage! It’s not about my father! It’s not about God!”

“What is this about then, Sciona?”

“This is about me.”

“About you?”

“Tiran got to this hideous, inescapable place because men like Leon and Faene—like you —let greed and ego run away with all their other values. You took reality and reimagined it to be a story with you at the center, all designed for you, all for your taking. Well, this part of the story is about my ego.”

Every painful thing Alba and Thomil had ever said of Sciona was true. Having seen the devastation her actions had brought on Tiran, she could no longer deny that, nor would she try to. Because in this one way, she was not like Bringham. She was not a coward.

“Revealing the Otherrealm was my decision, the work that made it possible was mine , and you have no business taking the blame or credit for it. I need you to understand that there was nothing you could have done to stop me. That’s what I’m telling you, what I’m telling Aunt Winny, and what I’ll tell the Council tomorrow morning.

” She was back on the ledge of her bedroom window the first night after she had found the truth.

That momentum had never gone out of her body, she realized.

She had never truly changed her mind after that forward tilt off the edge—only her course.

“So, you truly don’t regret what you’ve done here?” Bringham said, still sounding heartbroken. “You wanted all this to happen?”

“No,” Sciona said. “I didn’t want…” She paused to swallow. “I didn’t want the innocent people of Tiran to suffer. But that collapse out there”—she gestured to the rising sounds of chaos from beyond the gates—“That was the inevitable fate of a rotten city built on lies.”

“Don’t say that!” Bringham’s voice rose for the first time in their conversation.

“I know you’re hurt, Sciona, but don’t discount all Tiranish achievement because of one dark truth,” he said as though that one truth didn’t undermine everything Tiran pretended to be.

“You—You’re an innovator, Sciona. Regardless of where the magical energy comes from, you must respect what we’ve built here!

The sheer vision and majesty of this city. You must!”

And Sciona experienced a savage satisfaction. The great Archmage Bringham still wanted her admiration—still needed it, as a father needed the admiration of his child. Which meant that she could hurt him worse than he had hurt her. She could deny him.

“I respect real innovation,” she said, “not theft. Tiranish magic came from stolen texts, and everything since has operated on stolen life force. What piece of this is really ours? What piece of greatness can we really claim?” Damn it, though.

Her voice was shaking. Of course, this particular knife cut both ways.

Of course, battering her own reflection left mirror shards in her flesh.

“It was all stolen in the most underhanded, untruthful way possible. And that would have come back to haunt us, if not by my spellwork, then by some other means.”

A crash from outside. The gates had come down.

Cursing under his breath, Bringham took up his staff and rose.

“Wait!” Sciona scrambled to her feet and followed him out of the library through two sets of double doors toward a wide balcony.Below, Kwen wielding sticks and crowbars poured onto the grounds and up the vast hill toward the mansion.

Bringham raised his staff.

“Don’t!” Sciona shouted. “Archmage, don’t hurt them!”