“You are a mage.”

He wished to deny Edris’s claim instantly, yet he could not force out so much as a syllable, let alone a word. Whatever had just happened, it was clear it had not been the doing of the women, but his own. He himself had stopped the magical attack with nothing but his bare hands. It was an impossibility, yet it had happened.

“You are like us.” This time the girl’s voice no longer sounded surprised, but rather as though the realization had finally settled within her.

Quincey was the very opposite.

“I am not…” He could find no words. Instead, he lowered his head and raised his palms, studying them, heedless of the danger standing directly before him. Only moments ago Edris had tried to disarm—perhaps even kill—him with magic, yet it was difficult to dwell on that when…

It was not possible.

It simply was not.

Never in his life had Quincey wielded magic. Never had he sensed it in another. Never had he fought it with his bare hands. Never in all his life…

His life…

The burning scar on his abdomen forced his mind back to his sudden awakening in the past. Losing his life and returning two years back should not have been possible either—yet it had happened.

Was this a side effect?

His quiet panic was interrupted by a pair of small hands tugging at his cloak.

He turned his head automatically, and his gaze met wide, curious children’s eyes watching him with open, undisguised interest.

“Hansel.”

At the sound of his name, the boy turned his head toward his mother, and the knight did the same.

Lady Inara was reaching out, leaning forward in a desperate attempt to beckon her son, but the boy stubbornly clung to Quincey’s cloak and refused to budge.

“Hansel.” This time the woman’s voice grew more stern, yet still her call failed. In fact, it had quite the opposite effect, for more soft footsteps suddenly approached them, and when the brown-haired knight glanced that way, he saw the second child had decided to discover what was happening in the corridor—and, like her brother, she headed straight for the Messenger-at-Arms.

“Idril, Hansel, come here. At once.” The lady’s voice remained laced with authority, but now desperation began to creep in. She likely still believed Quincey meant to harm her children—only now for a different reason.

They thought he was a mage. Knowing his rank and his closeness to the king, they either believed Cassian knew his secret, or that he now stood in the same peril as they did and thus must silence the witnesses. Neither was true. At least, he hoped not.

The little girl, with round cheeks and braided hair, joined her twin and, just like him, grasped the knight’s cloak in her small fists. She looked up at him with the same keen curiosity, her wide eyes bright with childish wonder.

“I do not wish them harm.” Quincey shifted his gaze from the children to the women before him, who looked ready to act. He raised a hand in an attempt to calm them but it had precisely the opposite effect. He had failed to realize he was mirroring the very gesture Edris had made when she cast the spell to freeze his hand before it could touch his steel.

“I am no mage.” He chose honesty, though it was likely the most foolish thing he could have done. “I swear it.” He drew his hand back to himself. “I am not here to harm anyone. Not you, and certainly not the children.”

“You just used magic,” Edris pointed out the obvious—the very thing that contradicted his claim.

What he had done before was not the most foolish decision. That came now. He did not know what else to do, and so he truly said it:

“I have never done it before.”

Shock flickered across the faces of both women—perhaps at the truth he had let slip, but more likely at what his words implied. Small children played with magic as if it were a toy, and Quincey was an adult. He did not know how magic worked, but he was certain it never simply manifested in the middle of someone’s life.

“That is not possible,” Edris declared. The shock in her eyes quickly gave way to hostility.

“I speak the truth,” he assured her.

“That is not how it works.” The girl obviously did not look convinced and shook her head firmly, still piercing the knight with her gaze.

“I…” He searched for the right words, but the only thing he could say was the truth. One way or another, he needed answers, and this was actually an opportunity to get them, even if it was a risk.

“I was recently in mortal danger. I knew there was no chance to save my life, and yet I am alive. Someone saved me, and since then I have felt different.” It was not an exact retelling of the events of the past few days, but it was the best version he could offer without sounding like a madman.

Edris frowned, likely weighing his words, while her mother focused her attention on her children, who were still clinging tightly to Quincey’s cloak and watching him.

“I am telling the truth,” he pressed, trying to convince her. “I do not remember much, since my consciousness was fading, and I only have fragments in my memory. I remember a man from Nivemare and someone who gave me a potion to drink. I do not know which of those caused the change in me, but they are the only clues I have.”

“Nivemare?” the girl repeated, her brow furrowing even more. Even though nothing about danger from them was yet known at this time, rumors about them still circulated, especially about their cold-blooded nature and lack of empathy.

The knight nodded. “I know how it sounds. That is why I kept it a secret. I trust you can understand that.”

The hardness in her face softened slightly, and he hoped it was a favorable sign.

“What else do you know? Any other abilities that suddenly appeared in you?”

He shook his head in dissent, but then he did recall something. “All my wounds are gone. Fire burned me, yet my skin bears no mark of it.”

“There is no way to make someone a mage,” Edris declared, shattering Quincey’s hope that she was beginning to trust him at least a little.

“I would not lie,” he assured her. “Do you think I could have concealed such abilities for so long while living under the same roof as the Crown?” He did not want to invoke his reputation, especially how close he was to the king, but it seemed necessary to prove his point.

“My father was a knight, my mother the daughter of a merchant. I had no one from whom to inherit such gifts,” he added when she did not respond immediately.

The dark-haired girl kept looking at him, and after a moment in which silence fell and the air grew heavy, she surprised the knight by taking a step closer to him.

“Give me your hand.”

Quincey did not understand her request, and he was far from willing to comply. Not when he remembered how a mere flick of her wrist could have claimed his life, had his own latent powers not suddenly stirred. Who knew what she was capable of if he allowed her to touch him?

Edris, on the other hand, seemed to be gathering more courage the longer they spoke. So it was she who took another step toward him and was the first to extend her palm in his direction.

“What is it you intend to do?”

“Connect to your magic,” she answered, and he frowned in confusion. He still lacked even the most basic information about how such abilities worked, and it was increasingly proving to be his greatest new weakness.

“What do you mean by that?”

She seemed to hesitate whether to answer or to explain something that might ultimately harm her, but then she relented. “Mages can share magical essence. It is renewable, but sometimes certain spells require more than a mage has at a given moment.”

“And why do you want to do it now? To what end?” Instead of simply agreeing, Quincey’s mind remained sharp, and although his instinct whispered for him to trust her, he chose to rely on reason. Only that way could he stay alive and avoid making the same mistake as before, when he blindly placed his faith in another.

“I want to feel the magic in you. That way we will learn how powerful it is and perhaps even where it comes from,” she explained, her tone steady unlike his, where panic was already beginning to show despite his effort to remain composed.

“You did not harm my family, and I will not harm you,” she added when she saw his hesitation.

The Messenger-at-Arms had a choice, yet he also realized that he had asked the same of her, to trust him. The surest way to earn her trust was to place his in her first.

Perhaps he was about to lose his life again at any moment, and yet he followed his instinct and extended his palm toward her.

Edris did not hesitate and slowly took his hand into hers, as if deliberately being careful to reassure him that it was all right. Then she covered their joined hands with her other hand and closed her eyes.

“You must grant me leave,” she said.

“What?”

“I cannot connect to your magic without your permission. You have to think about allowing me and truly mean it. Otherwise, the path remains closed,” she explained, her eyes still closed.

Quincey had no idea how to do what she was asking of him, but then he decided to improvise and closed his eyes just like she did.

The first thing he became aware of was that his instinct, if it could be called that, had grown stronger. He no longer felt the strange pulsing only at the site of his scar, but rather sensed it slowly spreading throughout his entire body. He doubted he could truly control it, yet he still chose to try, guiding it in his thoughts toward the palm Edris held, trusting that she had given him no reason to doubt her.

“By the Gods!”

The moment the girl uttered the words and abruptly released his hand, he likewise snapped his eyes open and searched her face in confusion.

She looked shocked, horrified… almost as though she had seen a ghost. Quincey could not rightly name the expression, yet he was beginning to suspect that whatever had just transpired boded nothing but ill.

“What?” he asked, foolishly.

“Are you playing games with me?” Edris countered with a question of her own, her tone suddenly accusatory.

“What? What do you mean? I do not understand.” His voice, in contrast, was turning urgent. “What did you see?” He did not know whether she had sought to feel his magic or to behold it, yet accuracy no longer mattered to him. He cared only for answers.

“I have never seen…” She was visibly shaken, and it stirred unease not only in Quincey, but in her mother as well, who still struggled to draw her youngest children into safety.

“What? What did you see?” He felt foolish asking the same question a third time, yet he knew he could find no answer on his own. He did not know what she had done, though in some manner he still sensed the magic within himself.

“Your magic…”

“What of it?” His urgency sharpened, and he nearly stepped forward before realizing the children still clung to his cloak, and any sudden movement might unbalance them.

Edris met his eyes and held his gaze. He did not know what she sought within it, yet it seemed more and more that she did not wish to tell him what she had seen. Therefore, it had to be ill news. Why else would she withhold it?

“Please, Lady Edris.”

“I have never seen magic like the one you carry within you,” she finally revealed.

“What do you mean?”

She drew a deep breath before speaking words that shocked Quincey as deeply as her discovery had shaken her. “I have never seen magic so powerful. So vast. It is as though every cell of your body were forging an endless wellspring. As though you were not but one person. Such a thing should not be possible.”

“That…” If the knight had thought himself at a loss for words before, now it was far worse. It was as though his world had stilled entirely at this revelation.

For five and twenty years, or perhaps three and twenty now, he scarcely knew how to reckon it, he had heard only ill of magic. Every tale of mages and their craft had been meant to instill fear and deepen the hatred within him.

He was a knight of the Crown. He fought with steel, not sorcery.

First the words of the true heir, and now this… It was no longer only his identity that stood in question, but who he had become, what he had forged of himself by his own strength. It was as though… as though Quincey Acerbo had truly perished in the flames, and this new version of him bore little resemblance to the former. An entirely different man. An entirely different essence.

His scar still burned, the children still clutched at his cloak, and Edris watched him intently, as though expecting him to strike or to do something unforeseen. But Quincey? He was perilously close to despair, the kind that did not befit a knight of his standing.

“Can you look again?” His voice was small and uncertain, as was the hand he lifted toward her.

The dark-haired maiden’s gaze softened, becoming gentler, more understanding.

“I would see the same,” she assured him, and there was no longer the same venom in her voice as before. “Perhaps you were not born a mage, as you claim, yet you most certainly bear powerful magic. The kind many would not dare even dream of.”

The Messenger-at-Arms shook his head, as though he might simply refuse it into falsehood.

“Why would anyone do this to me?” he asked, though there was no chance Edris would know the answer when he himself did not.

“Perhaps it serves a higher purpose,” she surprised him by replying. This time, he did not need to ask her to elaborate, for she continued of her own accord. “You stand close to the Crown. Close to the king. There is a reason he made you his right hand. Perhaps someone bestowed magic upon you in the hope that if you wielded it, the king would come to see it differently, and it would no longer be a death sentence in Valerion.”

Her words might have held reason, had the truth not been more grim still.

Cassian had reason enough to kill him even without such power. Now…

Before he realized it, a bitter laugh escaped the knight’s lips.

“He would kill me.” The scar he bore was proof enough. “Without hesitation.”

Edris frowned. She could not protest, for unlike him, she did not know the king so closely. She had not spent her days at his side, nor stood in his favor. Quincey had grown beside him, and even that had not sufficed for the king to value his life.

“Then perhaps you should learn to master it.”

With every answer the girl gave him, she seemed to surprise him further still.

“How?”

He was certain there were no tomes on magic within the royal library, and the only man he might ask was Alatar. Yet that would mean entrusting him with his secret, and Quincey was certain that would be unwise.

“I will help you.”