Chapter 8

I t's midday when we reach the Monteverde Cloud Forest. Sunny, warm, birds chirping; a perfect day for tourists.

But Nariel descends into an empty parking lot at the tourist entrance. There's not a single car, no one even to sell tickets.

We land on what feels like compressed air, and dust all around us scatters for no obvious reason, because Nariel has hidden his wings again.

I take that to mean he expects company.

So as comfortable as I am with his arms still around me—lingering longer than necessary for safety, or am I imagining what I want?—I take a breath and pull away from him.

I pass him back his jacket, which he accepts as if it wasn't strange for me to be wearing it in the first place.

That was a fine interlude—and if it was more than that, I'm not thinking about it, because I don't have time for my brain to pick back over every word and movement and decide I've made a horrible fool of myself, thank you High Earth for heightening that complex—but now it's, mercifully, time to get back to work and something I know how to do.

Probably there's a lot to unpack in that I'm more comfortable challenging the powers that be of four universes than thinking about my feelings.

I try to return to some semblance of politeness and casualness, as if flying in a demon's arms was not a momentous experience, and ask Nariel, "How did you manage to arrange private access?"

Nariel looks toward the entrance to the Cloud Forest and inclines his head.

I follow his gaze as a figure emerges from inside.

He looks human—specifically, he looks like a scrawny Latino teenager, wiry with youth-bright eyes and messy hair—but as we approach I can feel the magic swirling around him. Not into him, as I would expect with a wizard if I felt this much magic around them, but more like it's holding him in shape.

A spirit, then.

"This is Gaspar," Nariel says. At the boy's darting look between them, Nariel adds something in a language I don't recognize. Given how much traveling I've done, that probably means it's a spirit world language. "Gaspar, meet Sierra Walker."

The boy inclines his head quickly, deeply—startled and unsure of etiquette, so that makes two of us—and I return the gesture more fluidly. My time in High Earth accustomed me to behaving gracefully at sudden formal occasions where I don't know the rules. "I'm honored to meet you, Gaspar. I gather we have you to thank for the privacy today?"

Gaspar's gaze flicks to Nariel, back to me, back to Nariel. He asks a quick question in that other language, and Nariel lifts his eyebrows and turns to me.

"How would you prefer to be addressed?" Nariel asks.

I blink, cock my head. "Is using just my name inappropriate?"

"In a word, yes," Nariel says seriously. "Hierarchy is important in Dark Earth, and practically speaking, it helps everyone know how not to give offense. If you wish any spirits you deal with to be comfortable, you should choose a title."

Ah. That is... a much more straightforward answer than I was anticipating, honestly.

"What do they call you?" I ask.

"Prince," Nariel answers with a touch of dryness.

Right. He's a prince of hell. Cool, very cool.

"I suppose just wizard doesn't work either," I muse.

"Since you are not just any wizard in this world, no," Nariel drawls. "The point of the title is for a useful distinction. I imagine you don't like ‘grand', like the magi? ‘High', perhaps?"

"No, I don't like the implication that I'm above anyone else, or the association with High Earth." I frown. "I need a thesaurus. ‘Adept' is a High Earth term, ‘principal' reminds me of school, ‘representative'..." I break off.

I like that. Isn't that what union officers are called? Letty would know.

But to be a representative, I would need a union. And as Nariel has pointed out, it's not as if I've been soliciting opinions from other wizards on this quest. It's all very well and good to say I'm working for the magical interests of all of us, but literally no one has ever told me this is what they want.

Demonstrating his faux-telepathy again, Nariel delicately suggests, "Perhaps for now, you may use ‘master', for your mastery of the art of wizardry."

An important distinction especially with a spirit listening to this back-and-forth, as it's not for mastery over another being. Imperfect, since it needs the clarification.

"I guess that will do for now. Master Wizard, then. Wizard Master? Wizard Master."

Nariel's lips quirk, and his head twitches just slightly in what I think is acknowledgement.

What a weird feeling, to name myself a master of the craft. That feels inappropriate.

My heart twists. But it's not like anyone else is ever going to name me such. As ever, I'll have to claim my space first, and then defend it.

Gaspar, throughout this, is looking increasingly nonplussed.

"Wizard Master Sierra Walker," I say more firmly, "at your service. Thank you for your help today, Gaspar."

"Wizard Master Sierra Walker," he echoes shyly. "You are welcome. Those of us here can hold the forest for you for a few hours more."

My eyes widen. There's... a lot to unpack there.

There's multiple spirits, working together, and he is organizing them. This means they have somehow either emptied the forest of visitors or prevented them from entering without calling down further investigation, along with the employees who would normally work here... The scope of this, and for him to say it so simply, is sort of overwhelming.

I bow my head again, and see both surprise and pleasure in his gaze at the recognition.

"We may have visitors from High Earth," I say. "Will your measures keep them out too?"

"No," Nariel says.

A flash of rebellion on Gaspar's face, quickly quelled. Ah, someone who wants to do more, then—a kindred spirit.

"Not without calling a confrontation down upon us we are not prepared for." Nariel's tone brooks no argument, though I see in Gaspar's clenched jaw that he would really like to argue.

But I'm not here to endanger anyone besides myself. That's one of the great advantages of being on my own.

"Understood, then," I say. "Anything else I need to know, or shall we get started?"

Gaspar bows once again, a jerky motion, and it occurs to me that maybe the problem isn't just that he doesn't know how to act, but that he is really fundamentally against bowing to anyone.

I am, possibly, projecting from my own adolescence in High Earth.

"The path is made clear for you," Gaspar says, and then melts back into the trees.

With a glance at Nariel, who gestures for me to proceed, I take my first step inside.

I t takes a little while of hiking the trail before you really get the sense that you're walking inside a cloud.

It's longer than that before Nariel finally says, "You can speak freely now."

With the quiet, with the surrealness of being shrouded in mist, it feels more private than it is. There could be a spirit behind any tree.

Well, that's not true. I'd feel that—unless Nariel is masking them.

And if there are any spirits here when Grand Magus Evram inevitably arrives to disrupt me, Nariel will absolutely mask them.

"Did you think I needed the reminder of who else I'm doing this for?" I ask him.

"I thought you might like to see that you won't always have to force people to help you."

I pause to frown back at him. "Gaspar is helping because you asked him to."

"Gaspar would like to be helping more if I would let him," Nariel says with a little bit of a growl in his voice. "He is smart and passionate but lacks... moderation."

"Well, I resemble that remark."

Nariel snorts. "No. If you lacked moderation, you never would have been allowed to learn all the skills you extracted from High Earth in the time that you had—time that you also extracted from them. Gaspar is one of my agents in this world to keep him out of trouble outside Makora."

And this fallen angel, who ruled over a demonic territory and planned to challenge the angels themselves, had taken notice of this one bright boy and found a way to help feed the spark in him rather than snuff it out.

I've never known how not to overwhelm people with who I am. I can only hide it.

That, of course, is why I'm reacting so strongly to Nariel.

He doesn't feel my presence as a burn.

"How did you do it?" I ask. "How did you kill your way to the top of the tower and then turn around and persuade bright young spirits to fight against injustice with you?"

Nariel huffs a disbelieving laugh. Dryly he answers, "Gradually."

"I'm serious."

"So am I. Grand gestures have their place, but it takes time and many, many smaller actions of a piece before people will trust you—particularly when they begin from a position of having reason to not trust you. You have several legs up on me there, having not killed any other powerful wizard who challenged you."

"Thank you for that image," I drawl, and Nariel's expression abruptly blanks. Oh lord, has he seen piles of dismembered legs? Quickly I ask, "Did being an exile from Bright Earth not help your case?"

"You mean, were spirits inclined to trust me because I was clearly working against Bright Earth's interests? No. Angels have been exiled for pettier reasons, for one thing, and anyone who can be exiled is thought weak, and thus a target to... work out frustrations with angels on."

I startle. "Are you weak for an angel?" Given how powerful he seems to me, that would be, uh, bad news, to put it mildly. Even given how little magic he has access to in Dark Earth—

Nariel smiles slightly, and his voice is velvet when he says, "Not anymore."

I resolutely do not shiver, but I am going to dream of the image of that quiet self-assurance.

He continues, "I wasn't magically weak when they cast me out, either—the exile itself caused that. But politically, my views were, as you might imagine, unpopular with more powerful angels. There were enough of them to matter."

"Were they unpopular with weaker angels, too?" I asked quietly.

Nariel's smile is wryer this time. "Hard to say, as given how I was treated, they weren't willing to make themselves sacrifices on my behalf."

But he'd still spoken. Probably if I asked he would tell me it was arrogance, unwillingness to believe that they really would exile him, or that it would be as bad as it was.

Still. After all this time, and after everything he's been through, the angels are going to find that they haven't taught Nariel to be silent.

It's enough to make me ashamed that in the last ten years I didn't figure out how to make myself a constant thorn in Evram's side, but Nariel went through a period he isn't proud of, too. We're both going to make up for biding our time with action now.

Not that our situations are perfectly comparable, of course, as I also didn't go on a wizard killing spree to get named their leader.

"I made it clear to the wizards here that I didn't consider myself one of them," I say. "That I thought I was better than them. Not because I knew more magic—frankly, most wizards I talked to didn't really understand how good I am at magic—but because they'd all given up. I'm afraid demonstrating that they shouldn't have given up is actually going to make me less popular. Like rubbing their faces in a mud pile of ‘I told you so' with a side of ‘and now High Earth is going to devote all their attention to upending your life because of my actions'."

"Ahh. You doubt whether you're truly doing the best thing and wonder if they should in fact trust you, then?"

I let out a breath. "Yeah."

"Then congratulations," Nariel drawls, "you're a sentient being with a conscience."

That surprises a laugh out of me.

"Do you really doubt that the current situation is unjust?" he asks.

"No." My answer is immediate.

"Then accept that you'll have doubts and make mistakes, and stay the course. Revolution is messy, and revolutionaries are rarely as popular as history makes them out to be in retrospect. Plenty of people will dislike you, because while the current system may not be just, they have managed to be comfortable in it. One way or another, changing the existing system will introduce uncertainty, and people will be affected who wouldn't have chosen to be. That's inevitable. You realize that?"

I nod slowly. "I suppose part of the point is that I want people to be affected anyway who wouldn't have chosen to be. I want them to have the opportunity to choose magic even if they don't think they need it. I'm just... not tremendously comfortable making decisions for other people, I guess. I don't really know what to do with people, you know? Maybe you don't know."

His eyes narrow. "Which means what, exactly?"

"Oh, just, you have a very easy charm about you, right? I'm not—I don't know how to make myself accessible, or likable, or relatable. At least not with other wizards. Or anyone else on Low Earth."

Nariel looks bemused. "Whatever natural charm I may possess was not an adequate antidote to killing scores of spirits, I promise. I have not known you long, but it is nevertheless abundantly clear to me that you will—what's the phrase? You will show up, and keep showing up, and do your best. Whatever else wizards here might believe of you, it should be self-evident that persistence is among your qualities."

"Obstinance, maybe," I murmur, as we climb steps to an arch of tree branches that look like a portal, with only mist visible on the other side.

Nariel grins. "You'll find your way as you are, Sierra. I have no doubt of that."

I suck in a breath, quietly but not quietly enough that he'll miss it.

When has anyone ever told me I was good enough?

When has anyone made such an effort to perceive me, and help me with the actual challenges I have to wrestle with?

Nariel goes still, and in another breath coalesces in shadows in front of me to take my hands.

"I believe you are up to this," he tells me, his gaze intent on mine.

(Was it so obvious I needed to hear this? Can I trust it, given that he's reacting to my need? How is a fallen angel the one person of everyone who can believe in someone like me—

Oh. Because he fell, of course.)

"I believe you will win all the magic you have ever wanted," Nariel says. "If you doubt yourself, then please believe that I, after so many centuries, would not risk all my careful plans if I was not confident of that." A slight smile quirks his lips, but his eyes are shadowed as he finishes, "But please allow me to believe you can do so and be happier than I have, too."

Magic is the only happiness I have ever needed.

With Nariel looking into my eyes and professing his belief in me, for the first time in my life, that feels like a lie.

I'm not sure if I'm bolstered or shaken by his words, but I am ready to do more than just talk.

So ready.

And so, so much more.

I actually get all the way through the setup for the second anchor without interruption.

This is so unexpected that after letting the feeling of the anchor wash over me, the knowledge that I did it, that I have now beaten my former mentor four whole times in half as many days, I turn to Nariel with a frown. So I am just in time to watch his expression turn from fierce pride to thoughtfulness to a narrow look.

"They're here?" I ask, pulse quickening. This is oddly a relief, because if they hadn't showed I'd have had to worry about why .

But why are they late? They would have been able to track a magical working that large, and this isn't exactly an occasion they can afford to miss.

"Coming in fast, and they're spreading out," Nariel says. "With the forest empty I cloaked a wide enough area that they don't have a precise fix on the magical surge they detected."

That might explain what kept them, but—"Then why don't you look happy?"

"Their formation is... odd. I suspect they have someone with them who isn't a mage, because I'm not sensing any magic in a place I'd expect to."

I frown. If he's not sensing magic, it couldn't be an object either—there would be no point for them to bring a nonmagical item with them. "A local guide, maybe?"

We meet each other's eyes. This is vanishingly unlikely: The mage team would have arrived at the forest where they felt the magic, not gone elsewhere for local expertise.

But I also can't think of why they would have brought someone without magic from High Earth, which means they went somewhere first.

Or there's another explanation I'm not thinking of, but either way, I'm worrying.

"How wide an area are they covering?" I asked.

"They're not to the anchor yet. We can still meet them before they set eyes on it."

"Let's make that happen, then."

We move fast, but not far, staying on the path so I don't have to keep track of my footing. At Nariel's signal that we're sufficiently out of range from the anchor, I pulse my magic, creating a dense cloud with actual physical heft in front of me and then dispersing it.

I want them focused on me, not on what I've done.

So satisfying to be able to do magic with real weight. It's like being able to sing a song at full volume instead of moderating for the neighbors on the other side of your thin walls.

Nariel's more magically sensitive than me, so I trust him when he confirms, "They're coming."

Taking the bait.

Good.

We keep moving, drawing them far enough away that the Cloud Forest does most of the work on the out-of-sight part for us, but Nariel wasn't wrong that the team from High Earth was coming in fast.

I feel them before I hear or see them, but it's still eerie to watch them begin to emerge out of the mist.

No Destien at the front this time, to my surprise, and since he's only ever in the front, I have more questions. Whatever damage he took at Stonehenge, he should have been healed by now.

That does explain why they're using the same surround strategy that failed at Stonehenge, though. Destien wouldn't have tried it on me twice, so someone with less experience battling me—possibly Evram, even—just lifted Destien's last strategy.

But it is different with the mist, because we're not all coming into sight of each other at the same time.

So the first to emerge are two on my right, and I hit them with a quick bolt of magic lightning that crackles through the air and smacks them with enough oomph to knock them off their feet, even with shields. I feel an answering sizzle against my shield and belatedly remember I'm in a cloud of mist full of water. Oops.

But that gives me an idea, and one that won't spend as much magic, given the environment.

"Go," I tell Nariel.

He casts a frown in my direction. "There are a lot of them, Sierra. I count twenty mages."

That is a lot of mages.

But not impossible if I handle this right. I didn't prepare the terrain, but I can work with what's here naturally. That means I need to focus, though, not worry about Nariel.

"Not your problem," I tell him.

Another second where he gives me a long, considering look and I think he'll argue with me, and then he disperses into shadow.

Meanwhile, I'm drawing the mist to me, condensing it into tiny bullets of water. It would make me more visible, except there's still enough mist further away from me to obscure everything. It's like I'm in a spotlight of clear sunshine that's only visible once you're sharing the space with me.

And no one is going to get that close.

I'm not as sensitive as Nariel, but at this distance I don't need to be.

Another pair appears behind me, and I shoot them. The water bullets burst on impact, but they're so small and I can fire them with enough concentrated force to make an impact. I feel the flare of the mages' shields cracking—they back up into the mist to fix that, so I have a window to not pay attention to them.

I'm already whirling to fire another round on my left, then another up into the trees—cracking the branches underneath the pair's feet. They're shielded, but that fall will take them out for a minute.

Clever, to come at me from above and try to use the terrain themselves. But not clever enough.

One of the mages on my left dodged, and she emerges out of the mist at the same time a pair tries to flank me from behind. She's moving faster than the others, probably trained in speed magic, so I condense mist behind me into a wall on the left before turning to deal with the two others.

Matching flames shoot toward me from each of their hands—a mistake, rendered less effective in the mist, but nice and visible to their comrades who may still be finding us.

And also to me. I grip magic tight and for just an instant erode the earth at their feet into soft soil.

They lose their footing and fall down the mountain.

I spin back around in time for the speed mage to burst my mist shield into a billion exploding droplets. Before she's made her next move, I strengthen my own shield and then zap the air, transforming each droplet into a tiny bolt of electricity she's surrounded by. No way to escape that. As they start to hit her she falls at my feet, twitching.

I step over her and fire into the next set of bodies coming out of the mist.

Another round of mage guards, and another.

This isn't like how it was with Destien at the grove. I'm being judicious about my power expenditure, but this time I have power to spend.

I am trained for this. You always want to use the minimum possible magic in a mage duel, to prove you didn't need to use any more to win.

Magic flares where you can't see, you're ready.

A form coalesces out of the mist, you hit it.

In the zone like this, I don't notice time passing. It's a battle trance, where it almost feels like I'm dancing. And gradually, more and more bodies stay on the ground when I drop them.

Objectively, it only takes maybe a few minutes, tops.

And then, finally, I feel the formation Nariel must have meant. Right on the path out of the mist come more mage guards first—initial water bullets don't faze them—and then Evram, and then there are more guards—

And then there is my sister.

I freeze.

And in my unmotion, the remaining mages—half are still down, leaving me with five, not counting the team with my sister—form up in a circle around me and hold positions, wands ready.

I am only dimly aware of this, my attention fixated like a magnet on my sister.

My sister, her eyes wide, mouth sealed with a silencing spell, and a glowing tether around her neck pulled by one of the guards. My effervescent sister, bound tighter than our parents ever managed. Like putting shackles on the wind.

It's like the air is sucked out of me in one go. I don't even remember exhaling, just feeling like my lungs are now crushed and I can't breathe—

A hand thumps me on the back, and I gasp in air.

Nariel stands next to me, visible , despite the probable cost—to him, to us—if word gets out.

But he's back even if he shouldn't be, he's with me despite the risk, and that thought alone unfreezes my muscles, and he is every inch hauteur.

That, I can't match.

I am much, much too angry, too shocked , to summon that kind of detachment.

"How dare you," I breathe. "How dare you, Evram. She's a civilian ."

"I see we were not wrong in our choice," the grand magus says smoothly.

"You were wrong," I say, and my voice comes out hollow.

Next to me, Nariel murmurs, "She's not been harmed."

My gaze snaps to him wildly at that.

Evram didn't know what my sister meant to me, because he'd never known I had a sister. But Nariel did.

Nariel, the one person I had dared extend even an ounce of trust despite the backlash I knew awaited, who pushed me to extend more.

Nariel, who I told where we were going and who arranged everything, who got his people out of the way, who is back for this and who would know if she was to be harmed if he had—

I close my eyes.

Open them.

Look at him hard.

His expression as he meets my gaze is just as haughty as the one he turned on Evram, like I am his enemy.

And if I believed he could betray me like that, he would be wise to consider me such.

Not looking away from Nariel, I raise my voice and ask Evram, "You brought her here to exchange. For what?"

"I waited until I was sure I'd have your full attention," Evram begins calmly. "You've demonstrated that you refuse to see reason and have wasted no time attacking mages of High Earth without provocation, so I will no longer try to save you from yourself—"

"For what , Evram."

A pause. "For the demon, Sierra."

I can't read Nariel's expression. I've never seen the shadows in his eyes so still.

That, in its way, is enough.

Evram adds, with his remarkable ability to twist a knife and sound like he's making an observation about the weather, "For you to have left this girl at such risk to begin with, I know you will not abandon the anchor, of course."

I turn to him slowly, breaking my staring match with Nariel.

Evram is right about that much.

I didn't truly believe Brook was in any danger. But I also didn't want to. Couldn't afford to.

What if I'd asked Nariel to protect her instead? I wouldn't have had him at my side, then.

Which of course is what Evram is trying to do: separate us, so he can eliminate me more easily.

I look at Brook's wide eyes—not just afraid; she's taking in everything around her. Trapped by High Earth, still constantly searching for options. She looks so much like me, she is so much like me in so many ways—but not magically.

The real shit of it is that what Evram's proposing is a reasonable plan.

Nariel can hold his own. Evram has binding magic at his disposal, but I'm not sure Nariel can even be caught by that.

I'm not not sure though, either.

But Evram is right, too, that I am not willing to be reasonable about this.

"You kidnapped my sister," I say in a low voice, "and you expect me to trade another person to you?"

"Really, Sierra. As you can see, your sister is perfectly well, if woefully unprepared for this experience." Another twist. "There's no need to make this personal. The transaction is a simple one. Your sister for the demon."

"Not personal," I echo.

The clouds around us press in. If there are still birds singing, I can't hear them.

But Evram hears something in my voice. "Sierra—"

I explode.

This is barely even a spell; it's a flex . I'm not conserving power now. With the power of the Cloud Forest rushing into me, around me, I gather that power to me and push it all back out in a sphere electrified with my power.

The effect is like I have just body-slammed everyone around us with enough magic at once that their shields are, to a person, completely overwhelmed.

Like trees falling, every single remaining guard falls down together, knocked out cold.

Leaving just Brook, somehow, and Evram, whose eyes have gone wide.

Not with surprise, this time.

This time there's something else as I advance on him.

"NOT PERSONAL?!" I scream. "You are a person who kidnaps civilians when someone annoys you, like a common thug! You lie and you lie and you lie and you make everyone else do your work so you can pretend your hands are clean! You steal from an entire world and have the gall to claim it as your due. Well if right is a matter of what a person can claim, Evram—" I point my wand at him, all alone, his guards fallen around us "—then you're about to be real fucking surprised when the person in the right is the one standing over your dead body."

Then a hand covers my wand hand, and Nariel says in my ear, "No." And then to Evram, without looking, Nariel points his other hand and says, "Don't you fucking move, or I will end you."

The grand magus does not fucking move.

"Sierra," Nariel says, "I know what this means to you. I know . But if you kill mages right now, any of them, your sister will never be safe again. Think ."

Think, Sierra, think .

If I kill the mages now, High Earth's first priority will be retribution. If they can't get revenge on me, they will take it on her, having determined her an effective target to engage me. And what was true before is still true: I can't protect her yet.

For all my genius, I can't protect her yet.

There is not enough power to maintain the kind of shields on her that would stop a concerted effort from Evram or a cohort of battle mages and still let me anchor magic in this world—and without the anchors to power them, any shield I put on her will fail.

The safest place for her is right where they think they want her.

I'm breathing hard, my hand clenched over my wand, as I dare to slowly move my gaze to Brook.

"You will be safe," I promise her, and I almost don't recognize the coldness in my voice. "I will save you."

And I almost break when, without hesitation, my sister, who has just watched me nearly kill a man in a rage, nods without hesitation. As though of course she won't be contained for long.

My eyes cloud with tears, but through them all, I can see hers, and they are fierce.

She would be right to blame me, and maybe she does. But she trusts me. And she trusts this decision.

I turn back to Evram and can't find any words.

So it's Nariel who croons, "If Brook Walker comes to any harm in your care, I will not keep Sierra from your throat a second time."

Evram's gaze flicks to his, his face ashen.

Nariel says, in a voice that is deathly gentle, "Go now. We'll see you at the next place."

And he does, and I watch my sister vanish in front of my eyes before the tears spill out and I collapse, screaming my rage into the silent forest.

I didn't win this round after all.