Chapter 1

I drift among the art stands, hardly seeing, just filling time. There is so much of everything at Emerald City Comic Con—the brightly colored art, the crush of people and noise—that nothing registers, and I might as well be invisible.

It's an echo of how I've felt for years, since I was returned to this low-magic dimension against my will.

Because the one thing this place doesn't have is magic in the air.

Really, I am trying not to look at all the imaginings of magic and power and action around me, because it reminds me of what I could once do in truth. The only thing I ever wanted.

I'm only here at all because my much younger teenage sister needed—according to our parents—a chaperone to attend. But she's watching a high-demand panel, so I'm out here, surrounded by the memory of when I could feel magic everywhere, saturating the air, and believed I always would.

So it takes me an extra second to realize that, suddenly, I can .

The air itself turns electric, crackling against my skin. For people who can sense magic, you can almost smell it, like fire in the air without smoke.

But there's also a tug of awareness to my left, a kind of—not pressure, more like when the sun comes out from behind a cloud and bathes you in light.

A portal opens up right in the middle of the aisle, a gleaming white rip in space, fritzing around the edges like static.

I plant my feet and face it, while people around me stumble away—still pulling out their phones, of course.

Then a severe old bearded white man, shrouded in a heavy robe and bearing a wand, walks through, flanked by four others I don't recognize in coordinating crimson uniforms that mark them as mage guards.

A man I never thought I'd see again, and he looks as if no time has passed at all.

But then, he has access to all the magic a world can hold and more than a century's worth of skill to use it, while our world has next to none.

My heart is pounding. Even though I know better—surely, ten years after my mentor broke his promise to me, I know better—part of me can't help hoping this is it. He didn't abandon me after all, and he's been working all this time on a way to bring me back forever to High Earth and all its magic.

But enough of me does know better, that betrayal suddenly as fresh as the day I first believed it, that I do not bow as I did once.

"Sierra Walker," my once-mentor in the ways of magic and power greets me warmly, like maybe I'm too stunned to remember the protocols.

I remember everything.

"It has been too long," he says.

It's like he's punched me right in the chest, and it's suddenly hard to breathe. He is the reason it has been so long.

As neutrally as I can manage, because maybe it really is time for me to go home—why else would he be here, now?—I say, "Much too long, Grand Magus Evram. What brings you to Low Earth?"

Low Earth, the Earth lowest in the diamond configuration of connected dimensions, the Earth with low magic.

Because all our magic gets funneled to High Earth, and from there what's left goes all the way up to Bright Earth where the angels live above us all.

(Not angels in the religious sense. But when they're beautiful and golden and powerful with awesome wings... the colloquial human name stuck.)

People around us are yelling questions, crowding for videos, while more are watching the show play out. Most think it's a stunt. Probably the grand magus is using the typical translation spell activated when dealing with Low Earthers, as if he's forgotten I speak his language, which means everyone around us can also understand what's being said, if not what it means.

The four guards spread out to establish a perimeter around me and the grand magus—because he of all people is powerful enough to not need their protection; they're functionally decorative—and suddenly I can hear again.

A transparent bubble surrounds us, so instead of my feeling like I am looking in on the world, the world is in fact clamoring to look at me.

I'm encased in magic, and for the first time in a decade, I'm not invisible.

Then the grand magus says, "I have a puzzle for you, Sierra."

As though nothing has changed. This is how Evram would bring me new training problems—"a puzzle for you, Sierra," "a challenge," "a game"—and I, excited to go deeper into magic, to prove that I deserved to live in a world where I could use magic all the time, would win every single time.

Like a trained dog, I still feel a thrum of excitement at the impending challenge.

But because I'm not, in fact, his student anymore, and haven't been since he'd promised me it was only temporary and then sent me back here like every other Low Earth student—as if, unlike the others, I hadn't at that point lived more than half my life there, hadn't risen to the highest magus levels they'd allowed me to test for—I ask, "For what reward?"

One of the guards looks askance over his shoulder at that. Demanding rewards of a grand magus isn't done.

Well, betraying disciples apparently is done, so fuck that noise.

The grand magus doesn't look disappointed, which might have made me feel a little bad, that I can't treat this as a heartwarming reunion. He looks surprised and a little annoyed, as if he'd expected I would remain his dutiful sycophant even after years of abandonment.

Is that really how little he thought of me as a person?

I quash the thought. I already know the answer.

"The reward of a job well done, of course," Evram says, and what little hope I had is crushed with it.

He's not here to bring me back.

He's just here to extract more work from me for his own benefit, and then leave me again.

I laugh, bitterly, a little hysterically. "You were never coming back for me, were you?"

Evram folds his face into sympathetic lines. I know too well how changeable his moods are, so maybe in this moment he does mean it. "It was never up to me, my child. You were born in this world, however much I might wish it otherwise, and I can't change that. But now you can help us all. There are lives at stake, Sierra."

It was up to him. As one of very few grand magi, he has the power—magically and politically—to do damn near anything he wants.

You just had to make him give enough of a shit, and apparently in ten years as his best student I hadn't managed it.

I'm not going to today, either. I tried to make myself so indispensable he couldn't get rid of me, and he did anyway, and now he thinks he can still use me.

I'm done playing this game. His game.

It's past time for a new one.

"And yet, you need a Low Earther's help after all," I say, focusing past the feeling of magic like static electricity dancing across my skin. "All these years, and you haven't trained anyone else who could solve whatever has brought you to me today."

The grand magus raises his eyebrows in familiar hauteur. "Do you think you can help, where no one else can? Then prove it."

"Of course I can," I say calmly, as if I'm not a flurry of emotion—of old hurt, of anger, of despair.

But above all is laser-focused clarity: I'm not going to beg him to let me have the magic I always should have. If that could work, it would have.

"You know I can, or you wouldn't be here," I say. "So show me the puzzle, Grand Magus, and in return, I'll solve your problem for you."

That, finally, gives him pause. "This is too important for games, Sierra. You can tell me the solution."

He started this with games.

"You won't let me have magic." My voice breaks, and I don't try to stop it. "That's the way it is, right? So please, now that I know it's the last taste I will have, let me savor working magic one last time. That's my only price."

This is a lie.

The grand magus is here, and he's brought magic with him, and with it so close, the tingling of magic all around me making me practically drunk with it, I'm not willing to settle for never again, just because an old jackass I once trusted says so.

If I want magic—and it is the only thing I have ever wanted—I will have to take it.

But it is just enough truth, because this man, he knows what magic is to me, that he buys it. Evram nods.

Not good enough. I know how slippery he is, and I trusted him once without a formal oath.

I bow. "Grand Magus, I swear I will solve the puzzle you put before me."

This is the usual way of things for him, so he doesn't bat an eye before swearing in return, "Sierra Walker, I swear I will provide you the magic to do so."

A flare of heat in my chest as the oath takes root. That feeling alone, of magic inside me, of casual, easy magic, almost has me in tears.

I get a grip. "The puzzle?"

He pulls a holding stone out of his robes, a deep black, perfectly spherical rock. After tapping it with his wand, an elaborate magical diagram unfolds, golden threads and arcane symbols that I now stand among. Any line I walk through feels like it sizzles within me.

To cast a spell, you need a wand and access to magic. Once you have that, there are basically two ways to do it.

Spells are constructions of arcane symbolism. You can visualize them flawlessly in your mind and channel your magic through them—or, as most people do if you're not a combat specialist like I am, establish a word or gesture as a kind of mental shorthand for a given spell.

But that's for spells that are one-offs, temporary effects, not built to last. For those, you have to somehow physically scribe them in a way that renders them visible.

What Evram has done is capture the physical spell that needs unraveling with a different spell inscribed into the stone that establishes it as a kind of remote access point. It's a multilayered, sophisticated process, and one I used to be able to do as easily as breathing.

I do breathe now, centering myself, and actually look at the thing.

"A plague?" I ask after a minute, surprised. There aren't many people in High Earth who could create a spell-structure this intricate, and the ones who could are politically powerful—which is to say, they don't benefit from people dying indiscriminately when they could be profiting from their labor, and their magic, instead.

"Nearly a third of Sarenac City is dead or dying," Evram says.

My head snaps around to look at him then, and this time I see the weariness and fear buried in his gaze. Sarenac City is the seat of his power, a thriving metropolis that has stood for centuries. To have lost a third of its people is unimaginable. It's like saying someone snapped their fingers and everyone in Paris or Beijing fell over dead. That doesn't happen to a place like Sarenac.

No wonder Evram was desperate enough to come for me, and to make this deal.

"I will fix this," I promise him.

His throat works, and he just nods.

Probably because he can't bring himself to admit that for all his power, experience, and genius, he can't fix it.

But he thinks I can.

I turn back to the spell, walking among the golden lines and symbols, passing my hand and body through the magic, studying how everything connects and feeling it with my whole body. Another former student from Low Earth would be rusty, and probably wouldn't have seen many of these symbols in training at all—most only learn enough to not be dangerous to themselves, then are returned here in a year or two.

Not me.

I was there for ten years, from age seven to seventeen, and I still see spells behind my eyes when I sleep.

And if ever I don't, I spend hours dreaming of spells by day to keep the magic alive, at least in my mind.

I have never moved on. I can't—I won't.

So with a sharp sense of vindication, I at least am not surprised when within a few minutes of study, I see the piece of this spell that will unravel the rest. Given how Evram views the world, I also understand how he could have missed it.

I scan another moment longer to make sure I haven't missed anything, then turn and hold my hand out to him. "Wand."

His eyes widen, then his expression turns furious—at how fast I've solved this. "Tell me."

"Even better: I'll show you."

Evram clenches his jaw, and it only then occurs to me he doesn't really believe I've solved it. He thinks I'm playing with him.

My own anger rushes up. "Do you really think I would just let people die?"

"You are the one who negotiated with people's lives," he snaps.

"You are the one who could have come here at any time before a third of your city was infected," I tell him. "And you're the one wasting time now. The wand, Grand Magus, and I will save your people."

Not ‘our' people. Not anymore. He chose that for me.

The grand magus stares at me for another long moment, and the weight of the formal oath pulses in my chest.

Then he swears under his breath and draws his wand.

I honestly wasn't expecting his own wand. The guards must all be low-level enough he doesn't think they can draw on enough magic to resolve this. It explains why I don't recognize them.

I still don't quite believe it when the grand magus keys his wand to me so I can use it.

Magic isn't truly a matter of words, just focused intent, so I feel it when the magic takes root in my heart like a seed.

I feel the shining connection to his wand when he hands it to me, a tether between me and this extension of my will.

I close my eyes, breathing deeply at the sudden rush flowing through me. Evram, to his credit, doesn't interrupt, letting me adjust.

He did teach me for a long time. Once, I would have said he knew me better than anyone.

When I open my eyes, I focus on an angelic symbol in the plague spell and twist it, sending off a cascade that unravels the whole thing.

And then while a grand magus of High Earth stares at the spot in disbelief, not watching me at all, I have a window. Just for an instant.

I take it.

I gather my will again, visualize the spell I need, and point the wand at the portal.

Evram's gaze snaps up to me. "What are you doing?"

"I banish you and your people from this world," I say. "Go back through this portal and do not return through it."

My former mentor's eyes widen and his expression has just started to turn outraged, but before he has a chance to say anything—to yell, to command his guards to steal his wand back—the portal becomes a void, sucking him and the unsuspecting guards back through.

The portal snicks out of existence like it had never been.

All the magic the High Earthers brought with them—the bubble, the holding stone—is gone with it.

It's just me.

Me, and the wand still keyed to me, which the grand magus can't undo unless he takes the wand back.

And that wand is connected to High Earth and can draw from the magic in that world.

Sound crashes around me, and I am no longer invisible.

The feeling of magic is no longer everywhere, but I feel electric, alive , for the first time in years.

Whirling, I use a tiny kernel of magic to part the sea of people around me, and ignoring them all, I take the wand and head for the door.

I hold magic in my hands.

Magic that I stole.

And magic I have a very small window of opportunity to make sure that I can keep.