When the bus arrived on the school grounds again, it wasn't Lucy waiting for Finnian. At least, not alone.
"Finnian!" his mother exclaimed, pulling him into her arms the moment he had stepped out of the bus. "My poor darling, are you all right? When I heard what happened, I came here as fast as I could!"
Finnian grimaced, then struggled out of her grip. "I'm okay," he said, and physically, at least, it was the truth. "Don't worry, Mom, it's—"
"You're not hurt anywhere, are you?" There was genuine fear in his mother's usually calm face, and for a moment Finnian felt guilty for putting her through all that worry. "Did they threaten you? Is anything missing?"
Assumptions, Finnian thought grimly. The same assumptions the guards had made earlier. Why did they all think that? Had no one else witnessed the situation?
"Actually," he said sharply, "they didn't lay a hand on me."
"And you're lucky they didn't manage to!" his mother replied, gently but firmly guiding him towards the car. "Go on, let's head back home. Dad couldn't make it here in time, he'll be waiting for us at home. Okay?"
Finnian knew it was futile to protest. Keeping his head high, he let her lead him into the car, pointedly ignoring Lucy as she opened the door for him even though he'd told her a million times that he could do it himself. Through the tinted window he caught a brief glimpse of his teammates' faces as the car pulled out of the parking lot. Their faces all held the same emotion: worry and fear, utterly pointless concern. All of them except Hikaru, who was watching them leave with a stoic, impassive look on his face.
Lucy didn't take the streets home. Instead she opened a portal in front of them, and the car rolled through the hole in the fabric of reality into the bizarre gray landscape of the Otherworld. Finnian barely had time to watch the ever-changing star-sprinkled shapes pass them by before there was another rift, and Lucy pulled the car into the familiar driveway of home.
His mother had barely spelled the door open before Finnian's father threw himself at him, scooping him up in his arms and setting him down at the kitchen table to inspect him from head to toe. "We were so worried about you," he said quietly. "Are you hurt anywhere? Did they touch you?"
Annoyance flared. "I'm not hurt!" Finnian snapped. "Why does everyone keep thinking that? Has someone emptied a bottle of ketchup over my head to make it look like I'm bleeding?"
"Don't sass me, Finnian," his father replied, his grave eyes hardening. "You were present during an insurgence of Dark Mage rebels. What were we supposed to think, if not that they came there for you?"
Finnian barked a humorless laugh. "Insurgence?" he repeated. "Oh, right, my bad, the very threatening insurgence of two unarmed teenagers with a banner. Can you imagine why I'm not shaking in my boots?"
"Finnian, this is no laughing matter." Gripping his shoulders, his father fixed his gaze firmly with his own. "These are violent, militant people who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. If you don't take this seriously, they're going to hurt you someday."
"Well, they didn't!"
Tearing himself free from his father's grasp, Finnian jumped to his feet. He'd had enough. Enough of people assuming things and warning him of nonexistent dangers when they hadn't even witnessed what had happened, hadn't even been there.
"They had the chance to hurt me!" he snapped, spreading his arms wide open in a furious gesture. "They could've hurt me, threatened me, taken me as a hostage! But you know what? They didn't even try. All they did was hang up their banner and talk to me, and the security guards—they—" Anger boiled up inside him, white-hot and venomous, threatening to overwhelm him. "They bashed their heads against the ground! They threatened to shoot them! Four armed adult men against a defenseless pair of teenagers! And you're saying that they were the villains here?"
His parents paled, and for a short, sweet, glorious moment, Finnian hoped they might be considering his words.
Then his mother looked at him the way she always did when he was very sick, and he knew it had been in vain. "Oh, sweetheart," she said. "What sort of lies did they feed you?"
Finnian clenched his fists. "I—"
"You saw two unarmed teenagers," his father told him gravely. "Who are you to say that wasn't all an illusion?"
Just for a moment, a brief second, Finnian wondered if that might be the case. But—no, it had been real, he was sure of it. The invisibility, that had been an illusion. But not the rest.
And even so…
"Even if it was an illusion," he replied, "the guards saw the same thing I did. How can you be so indifferent about them beating up a pair of high school kids?"
His father sighed. "The guards are supposed to protect you from people like them," he said. "By intruding on our territory, the witches accepted that they would be treated as enemies. If they didn't want to be treated like that, they shouldn't have entered the premises."
It took Finnian a moment to process the words, process that his father had really said them. "Are you saying that, because they entered the stadium, they deserve to be held at gunpoint and have their heads bashed in?"
"Of course," his mother replied with ease. "They have no right to enter our spaces, and they know that."
Finnian stared at her in utter disbelief. "Is that how you see this?" he asked. "What if I'd entered a Dark Mage space and had people threatening to kill me? Would you tell me I deserve it too?"
His mother paled, but before she could snap a response, his father grabbed his shoulder again. "Why are you defending them?" he asked. "They're Dark Mages. They thrive off human suffering, and Light Mage suffering most of all."
Finnian shoved his hand away. "Maybe," he snapped, "because I just watched two people beaten bloody for no reason at all, and that does something to a person? Or maybe because I have a hard time believing the people whose motto is peaceful protest are out to violently kill me?"
His father frowned. "They were never peaceful, Finnian," he said. "That's propaganda."
"How do you know?"
They weren't listening, Finnian knew. They weren't listening, and it was wrong. It was so wrong. They were his parents. They'd always had his back in everything.
"Have you ever watched their protests in person?" he asked as he backed away towards the stairs. "Have you listened to their leaders' speeches? Maybe you wouldn't be saying all this if you'd ever listened to Mercury Day!"
His father froze.
"How," he asked, "do you know that name?"
"So you know who she is." A bitter smirk spread across Finnian's face. "Great. Would you also care to explain how a Dark Mage just happens to have the same last name and eye color as us?"
His father made no response, and Finnian didn't expect him to. Spinning on his heel, he stormed up the stairs and slammed the door of his room behind him.
His pulse was still racing. His thoughts were spinning. He wanted to scream, and he wanted to erase this whole afternoon from his mind, and he wanted to hold onto the memory at any and all cost. How could they not understand? How could they not care? Would they still have said all of that if they'd stood by and watched it happen? Would they have watched, unfazed, as the security guards beat the protesters to a pulp?
That couldn't be right. His parents were good people—civilized people. They didn't condone violence, except as a last resort. What was different here? What had changed?
Had anything changed at all? Or had they always been like this, only peaceful and fair when it came to their own kind?
Finnian flopped on the bed. He hated this. He hated it. Why did things have to be like that? He and his parents had never had a disagreement like this, not over something that actually mattered. He didn't—he didn't want this. He didn't want them to fight over something so important. He didn't want to look at his parents and have to ask himself if they were really the good people he'd always seen them as.
And…what had been with his father's reaction to Mercury Day's name? He clearly knew who she was. But why? Keeping track of the so-called enemy side? Or…
Did that mean…?
Enough guessing.
Snatching his phone out of his pocket, Finnian opened the browser and typed Mercury Day's name into the search bar.
Mercury Day, nineteen years old. Dark Mage activist, Let Us In founder and spokeswoman, and…
He froze mid-sentence.
His instincts had been right. There was something up with this girl. And there was the explanation, written plainly for anyone to see.
Mercury Day didn't just have the same last name as him, the same eye color.
She was also a Twilit Mage.
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