It didn’t escape my awareness that this was the very thing my father had tried to shield me from. Everyone in the room had lost someone to the Brotherhood. They were all done running. Now they were mostly concerned with making sure my magic actually worked. No pressure.
“Linking to the source should take care of the remainder of the binding,” Deanna said. “Afterward, your memories should return fully. Go ahead and access your magic, and I’ll show you how to join the Circle.”
Everyone stared at me. It had been almost easy to access my magic since I’d returned to Earth, but all those eyes on me were making me doubt my ability to do it again. The stress of potential failure made it hard to focus. They were about to find out I knew absolutely nothing about magic. I cleared my throat. “I usually have to absorb someone else’s power. I can’t consistently do anything with my own magic.”
“We call that drafting,” Thomas said. “It’s the most energy-efficient way to start a spell, but you don’t have to do it that way every time. You should be able to access your own magic with the proper mindset.”
“But I couldn’t even access my power unless I took it from someone else. While I was in Aeterna, I tried —”
“Ah,” Deanna said. “You were too far from your source. Try again. I believe you’ll find the process a lot easier.”
Her words confirmed my realization that being closer to my own source would help. I didn’t need to take energy from other people to kick-start my own magic. I cleared my mind and opened my myself to the energy around me. Now that I understood it was my own magic, and I was calm and close to my own source, magic flared brightly around me. I sighed in relief.
Deanna laid her hand on my shoulder. “Good. Now imagine the magic as a physical form outside of you. Most people start with a sphere.”
I formed the layers of an orb in my palms, grateful for my lessons with Atticus and Tessa so I didn’t look like a complete idiot. The power flowed from me, pliant and responsive. It grew brighter in my palms.
“Now we’ll exchange power to form the connection,” Deanna said.
“Won’t using this much magic alert the Brotherhood?” Titus had followed Silas’s flare to our location in Alaska, and we were already channeling a lot more magic than anything I’d seen outside of Aeterna.
“No,” Thomas said. “The shield dampens our magic. We’re safe.”
The ball of magic flew out of my hand to Jason, who was sitting across from me. I flinched in surprise.
He added his own power to it, growing the size, before it zipped to Leah. This time, though, Jason seemed to keep one of the threads in his hands, leaving a thin trail of magic connecting him and Leah. Casius took the orb next, and another silken thread of magic connected him to Leah. Soon, the entire Circle had passed the magic from one person to another, in a spiderweb of shared energy, until it returned to me.
Deanna leaned in, presumably to explain how to keep part of the magic for myself before it moved on, but I’d been watching closely. I nodded at Jason. He called the magic to himself, completing the full Circle, and I was ready. The smallest white thread stayed in my hands, connecting me to the Circle.
“Within the Circle,” Deanna said, “you are the Focus, which means you’ll be closest to the magic. We need as much as possible to flow through you in order to break the remainder of the binding spell. Because we share a blood bond, I will be your Anchor.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” I whispered.
“You don’t remember,” Deanna corrected. “But you will. Trust yourself and your training. We’ve done this before.”
She had the same expression I’d often seen from Father Mike—my father. Pride. Love. Family.
I could do this even if I didn’t remember how.
“We’re aligned in order of power.” She pointed around the Circle, and I realized that the flares receded on my left and right equally from the strong, bright flares of Casius and Deanna then faded into the softer, less intense flares of Leah and Jason, who stood across from me. From strongest to weakest.
“Wouldn’t it be better to have only the most powerful magic users?” I asked, noting that there were stronger flares among the onlookers.
“The strongest users typically sit closest to the Anchor, to absorb more of the...” She searched for the right word. “Impact. But since we all draw from Earth’s Source, the strength of the flare doesn’t matter. That’s also why we all flare white regardless of heritage. It’s about balance. You’ll see.”
The magic built from person to person, creating an intricate, layered pattern that thrummed in my chest and head. The magic was stronger than anything I’d experienced before. We were connected to it as a part of us. It was perfectly balanced.
The net of energy lifted from each individual, high above our heads, weaving and growing. The flare was so pure, I could see the strands of color layered within it. Shades of blue, yellow, and red refracted like a prism. Just like the Council’s powers, the combined magic created a white flare within our spell. Earth’s Source was a perfectly balanced combination of all the different types of power from all the people living on the planet. The ring flexed and grew, forming an arc around us, connecting each of us to each other and the source. It was absolutely breathtaking.
“Can you feel it?” Deanna asked. “That is the life energy of an entire planet. It flows through all of us.”
The feeling was like nothing I could describe. It was pure magic. It was energy and life, every life on the planet—all the realms, even Mundanes. It was all in there, and it was a part of me.
“This is why we couldn’t let the Council drain Earth.” Casius said quietly. “We’ve dedicated our lives to protecting it.”
“Let’s start the unbinding,” Thomas said.
Deanna reached for my hand. When I placed my palm against hers, the power of the source pulsed inside my brain. I gasped as the walls in my mind fell away and the last of the binding shattered. Memories flooded back.
The smell of pine and earth as Marcel and I played in the woods together, building a secret fort between the trees.
My mother’s words of encouragement as I practiced deconstructing the layers of a conjuring. The warmth and strength of her white magic filling the room and boosting my own fledgling powers.
Endless hours of weapons training with Casius.
My first kiss with a boy named Ethan.
My parents, happy and holding hands as we walked through a field ripe with stalks of tall grain.
The day my mother was murdered.
The pain of my mother’s murder was so fresh. I actually grasped my chest. She died protecting me, Marcel, and our entire Sect. The anguish of her death felt like a jagged, burning hole in my chest. I couldn’t breathe.
I had a different life than the one I’d thought I lived. In my real life, I had a family. We’d been happy before the Brotherhood. Fresh pain burned through me. The memories of Marcel’s torture and murder were transferred with his attempt to unbind the spell hiding me, but the rest were mine. I had fought the old memories so hard that I’d pushed them down and repressed my own mind. Now, six years later, the binding was broken, and I was a different person entirely.
I opened my eyes and saw everything for the first time.
THE NEXT MORNING, I walked alongside my aunt Deanna through a field that was tall with a nearly ripe harvest of corn. She’d outfitted me in a plain brown shirt and a pair of too-short jeans. Size issues aside, I was glad to be back in denim.
I’d spent the evening remembering and reliving my own memories, but my memories of the Sect ended before they had come to this town. It was a strange homecoming. My entire understanding of who I was had shifted literally overnight. Even though the people in the town welcomed me like family, I still felt like an outsider. And the memories hurt. I had a lot of loss to deal with at once.
My anxious feelings weren’t alleviated by the fact that the Circle had already turned down my request for hel
p. They wouldn’t create a portal back to Aeterna. I was frustrated, but I had to admit they had good reasons. Even with their magic-dampening shield to protect the town from being discovered, the Sect couldn’t create a spell of that size without being found. I’d brought up the possibility of just getting a message to Aeterna—maybe to Stephan or Aria—but they didn’t want to risk the Council finding out about them. Thomas had informed me that the dampening shield would make it impossible for magic of any kind to get out, so I couldn’t do anything without their approval. Non-magical Mundanes could walk right through, but anything magic would get stopped. So I had no way on my own to communicate with anyone in Aeterna.
I’d tried connecting again to Silas through our bond, but I suspected the distance was too great, or maybe the shield blocked it. Either way, a growing knot of worry built in my stomach, but I didn’t know what to do to help him. I’d even considered returning to the Brotherhood’s portal in Boston, but without the Sect’s help, it was too risky.
I finally forced myself to be brutally logical. If Silas was dead, there was nothing I could do about it. If the Council believed Elias, they would search for the proof they needed to vote on Silas’s execution. And there wouldn’t be any. They would give the search at least a few days, just as they had for Alaric. My best shot at freeing Silas would be to bring the Council the real traitors.
“What is all this?” I waved my hand in the air, indicating the miles of farmland surrounding us.
“We’re considered a progressive branch of the Amish community.” Deanna lifted her chin toward the translucent dome of energy stretched across the entire town, blocking any sign of our magic. It covered the entire town like a giant, delicate bubble, protecting us from discovery. “If only they knew just how ‘progressive’ we are.”
The field opened to a large clearing, which revealed a row of wooden practice targets stretched in a line down the center. For several minutes, we watched Casius training a group of older teens, his lean frame standing tall and stiff as he instructed them.
He caught sight of us and trotted over, favoring his injured leg. “Do you remember any of your training?” he asked me.
I conjured Ripper into my hand. By the time I was fifteen, I had spent hundreds of hours training with him. Maybe even thousands. Every member of our Sect had since we were old enough to handle a weapon. As magic absorbers, we couldn’t use our energy offensively, making physical weapons a necessity. Casius honed that necessity into an art.
The memories of living on the street and getting into knife fights were created by my own mind as a connection to my extensive training, but my skills were really the result of years of hard work. Silas was right—I had been trained in hand-to-hand combat. Even without my memories, my instincts had served me well against the Brotherhood.
I flipped Ripper in my palm and spun toward the targets twenty yards away. The knife flashed and landed in the center. Bullseye. “I remember.”
The right half of Casius’s mouth lifted. “We missed you, Mae.”
The nickname made my lips curve up. These people were skilled and brave. But they had been on the run for years, and from what my aunt had told me, they’d hidden since my mother’s murder. With the Brotherhood recruiting from Lower Aeterna, and Shifters going into Rakken mode—choosing to spend their time in their animal form until they lost their humanity—the Sect had no chance against the Brotherhood.
My spirits plummeted. Titus would expect them to be running or hiding. He wouldn’t expect us to bring the fight to him. “We need something more magically offensive.”
“Our magic doesn’t work that way,” Casius said. “Manipulating the energy into a conjuring is one thing, but pushing pure energy outward into anything offensive is counter to our abilities.”
I wouldn’t have questioned that belief before I lost my memories. “It’s counter to our instincts, but it’s not impossible. When I didn’t know who I was, I absorbed the Brotherhood’s magic and turned it against them. Several times.”
“How?” Deanna asked, her eyes wide.
“I’ll show you. I need someone to conjure up a really big energy ball.”
Deanna called two teenagers over to us. Together, they built up a ball of magic the size of a watermelon. When the final binding layer was in place, I pulled it to me and focused hard not to absorb it, just as I had done in practice with Atticus and again with the tainted power from the Brotherhood. With the pure magic of my people at my fingertips, it was twice as hard.
With gritted teeth, I took control of the ball of magic, spun with it, and flung it into the target down the field. The target exploded into shards of wood and hay.
“That’s brilliant!” Casius whooped.
We practiced conjuring and throwing the sizzling energy in teams. Not everyone could resist the urge to absorb the magic. I paired the fastest producers with the few who had success redirecting. Before long, a few had even come up with variations of the technique.
Joseph, a father of three young girls, became quite good at throwing smaller, more accurate orbs. Jason, the third male from the Sect’s Circle, came up with a way to work in teams. Two people conjured small amounts of power and took turns feeding it to a third, who flung it at the desired target. As a team, they were able to move twice as fast with less strain on everyone.
We didn’t stop practicing until the sun had set and we were all bone tired. That night, I sat with the Circle after the kids were long gone to bed and many of the spectators had drifted off for the night. The conversation moved to strategy, and the ideas were all over the place.
“We have to catch the Brotherhood off guard,” I finally said. “We have to take the fight to them.” I explained about Titus’s recruiting efforts in Aeterna and how Atticus was already with them somewhere in Earth. He could tell us how the Brotherhood was taking the new recruits to Earth via our communication system. “I just need a way to talk with him.”
An hour later, with the Circle in agreement on a strategy, I followed Thomas to an outbuilding shaped like a small barn. He placed his palm on the corner post. His magic flared, and a doorway opened. Light shimmered overhead as we hurried inside the barn. The door sealed behind us.
Thomas sat at a workbench situated under a window, and I paused in front of a bookcase full of strange items. Each shelf was labeled in neat, square handwriting. Runes, herbs, parchment, metals... the items were endless. Another shelf was dedicated entirely to different types of crystals. Thomas’s expertise in all things magical was impressive, and he’d already started tutoring several promising students, including Tamara, one of the leaders of the Circle.
Thomas motioned me over to his desk, and I leaned over the moonlit surface. He pulled out a small wooden box and a woodburning pen with a metal tip. He plugged the tool into a wall outlet. It heated slowly, giving off a burnt smell.
I’d already explained the communication system to him, including the unique sigils linking Atticus’s satchel to Silas’s coordinating one in order to upload and download messages. Thomas pushed a piece of carbon paper and a pencil toward me. “Can you draw the symbols?”
It took me a few tries before I was confident I had drawn them correctly.
Thomas placed my drawing over the box’s lid and began chanting. Magic flowed around him as he used the woodburning pen to burn the mark into the wood. When he finished, he pulled the paper away and channeled his magic into the sigil. The symbol for Atticus’s satchel glowed brightly before it faded to black. Thomas rubbed his thumb over the symbol and handed it to me. “If I’ve understood your system correctly, this box should connect to your friend’s satchel.” He pushed his square glasses up his nose and leveled a knowing look at me. “It won’t connect to your contact in Aeterna.”
I swallowed back my disappointment, but I couldn’t pretend as if the idea hadn’t occurred to me.
“I’m sorry, Mae. It’s just too dangerous.”
I placed my pencil in the box and focused on the sigil. The
energy clicked into place and tingled with the familiar desire for more. I sensed the pencil disappear, and I released the magic link.
“What does the pencil mean?”
“We set up a system of communication that wouldn’t be obvious. The first object could be anything. It means we want an update, but we need to know that it’s all clear.”
Atticus would assume the message came from Silas, but I didn’t want to take the risk of a written note until we confirmed it had worked.
“And now?” he asked.
“Now we wait.”
IT TOOK ATTICUS UNTIL the next morning to send his response. As I sat at breakfast with Deanna, the box flared with magic, and I opened it eagerly. A small folded piece of paper sat inside.
Atticus had scribbled in pencil, “You missed the check-in. New orders?”
It had been two days since I’d left Aeterna, and Silas and Atticus checked in every other day. That meant Silas hadn’t connected with Atticus after I left. He’d been taken captive... or worse. Dread crept up my spine, but I needed to focus on one problem at a time. Getting information from Atticus would help us stop Titus, and stopping Titus might be the only way to prove Elias’s treachery and save Silas.
“Elias is a traitor. Found second portal. Silas captured. Where are you?” I wrote. I thought for a few seconds and added, “Eat this note.” Not my most clever thinking, but it would get him all the information he needed and hopefully wouldn’t leave him with an incriminating message the Brotherhood could find.
The box glowed a minute later, and I retrieved his message and read it out loud for Deanna and Casius.
“Maeve? Brotherhood followed your flare to Lost Sect. Attack at Blood Moon.”
Deanna and Casius exchanged glances, their eyes wide.
My stomach dropped with sudden despair. I’d been so eager to escape the men who had attacked me at the bus stop, I hadn’t even thought about them following my flare. I’d led the Brotherhood straight to the Lost Sect. Marcel had been tortured for their location, and I had given it away with my carelessness.
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