Alara saw the dancing lights before she heard the soft din of raised voices. She had been following Quenti down the narrow hallways for a few minutes already and was getting anxious.

“Hey, we should head back now.”

“What’s down there?” Quenti eyed the dancing colors that glowed through an opening down the hall.

“Nothing special. And definitely nothing we should be messing with.” Alara tried to grab Quenti’s arm, pulling her back. The girl was unperturbed by Alara’s hand and kept walking forward, dragging Alara along after her. The commotion up ahead told her exactly where they were going.

“It could be dangerous!” Alara gasped out.

“How would you know unless we check it out?”

Before Alara could express her apprehension or argue again, Quenti bounded forward.

“Quenti, the dark marketplace is dangerous!”

“And it has a name!” Quenti laughed. “Dark marketplace? So creative. And how would you even know about this dark marketplace, Senya Goody-goody?”

“I’ve lived here long enough to hear things and…” Before Alara finished, they rounded the corner, and her voice died, along with the rest of her thoughts. “Oh.”

The tunnel opened up into a long cavern.

Alara had indeed heard about the dark marketplace—Emaru had spent many an evening ranting about the continued struggle to shut it down and her own annoyance that the rest of the council was content to let it go on, albeit frowned upon. But she had never dared go looking for it and had never seen it in person.

It wasn’t as large as the upper marketplace, but it sure was alive. The cavern brimmed with people, noises, and lights as magia shot through the air. The same torches that lined the halls across the entire Haven were lit and burning along the cavern, but the flames danced with color. Mage fire shot through the air and glowing globes of water sent a kaleidoscope of chroma shining across the ceiling.

Directly in front of them, a dancer moved, her hands flicking and waving in the air as a pink-and-green-tinted firestorm swirled around her. Alara watched with wide eyes as the mage twirled and jumped between the flames without hesitation. The onlookers cheered and threw bronze pieces into the nearby basket.

“Emaru is going to kill me.”

“Does she stalk all magites round here?” Quenti asked, looking at Alara sideways.

“What? No.”

“Why you, then?”

“She doesn’t…” Alara glanced at Quenti before looking away again, her eyes transfixed by a dancer whose head was thrown back and eyes closed as she continued to jump between the flames. “She’s the one who found me… after my parents died. She took me in.”

“Oh.”

Silence fell between them for a brief moment.

“We really should get back!” Alara looked around them at the bustling crowd. What if someone she knew recognized her?

“Five more minutes, mama. Please!” Her eyes went wide and she arched her eyebrows at Alara.

“Seriously, no.”

Quenti gave a toothy grin before jumping away. “Fine! But you’ll have to catch me.”

Alara grabbed at Quenti’s tunic as she twisted away, but the thin wool slipped passed her fingertips. Damn it. What was this girl, five?

Alara pushed through the crowd, treading through a sea of elbows and shoulders that seemed to close in tighter as she waded through. The cavern was long but narrow, and Alara kept her head down, trying not to make eye contact with anyone she passed.

As she came to an opening in the crowd, she could just see Quenti’s curls disappearing ahead of her into a large group. Alara tried to focus on Quenti up ahead, but the assorted booths drew her attention. Some tables held a large array of rare foods and others held colorful stones and gems. At one booth, she noted that distinct shine of receptives: quartz, pyrite, jasper, and chrysocolla. Some pieces were small, barely the size of a fingertip and others were as large as Alara’s palm. Considering how tightly the Council controlled any magia receptives, she was pretty sure they were illegal.

Alara was still staring at the booth of receptives when she ran into a warm body.

“Hey!” Alara said instinctively before realizing it was Quenti. “No more running off, okay? We have to get going before anyone sees us.”

The other girl ignored her, her eyes focused on a booth next to the receptive stall. A tall dark-haired mage was performing a sort of puppet show, his hands waving smoothly to create intricate animals from water. They bound around the small stage set in front of him, l’lamas dancing around as a puma tried to attack them, missing each time by a hair’s length. Quenti’s own eyes were wide and bright, and before Alara could register what she was doing, Quenti had given a sharp wave of her own hand and a condor made of water droplets formed, circling the puma’s head.

The performer looked up, his grin wide as he made eye contact with Quenti, whose own face flushed pink. Alara took her moment of distraction to grab her troublemaking companion by the arm and pull them her away from the performance booth.

The crowds pressed against them as Alara tried to get her bearings in the dimly lit cavern. Alara had never seen such a mix of mages and blameless in a large crowd, with the two groups usually keeping their distance from each other. Centuries of division between those with magia and those without ending in a war that had almost destroyed the world had caused a rift that even the Council couldn’t quite heal—though it wasn’t for the lack of trying.

To Alara’s surprise, Quenti was no longer trying to run away from her. Her roommate’s mouth was in a wide grin and her eyes roamed around, sparkling in the torchlight.

Alara thought back to the almost perfectly-formed condor that Quenti had conjured seconds before. It wasn’t a powerful display of magia, but it showed an amount of control and finesse that Alara had never mastered.

“Who taught you how to control your abilities?” Alara finally said.

Quenti looked at Alara and gave a small frown, but didn’t answer.

Alara didn’t press her, and instead tried to focus on getting back home. She’d given up trying to go against the flow of the crowd, and instead went with the current, hoping it would loop back to where they started. They passed into a separate room where the distinct sound of wood and bronze meeting echoed. As she strained to see over the heads of the onlookers, she and Quenti were pushed forward. They found themselves standing on the edge of an open circle of people, jeering and hollering at the two fighters in the center of the ring. The man threw his spear at the woman across from him just as a burst of air flew from his other hand. The woman jumped out of the way and turned, throwing a blast of water at the wind mage. It missed by a few inches, but she threw another shot that met its target straight on.

Alara was mesmerized. She had never seen such a perfect union between physical and magia-based combat. She knew some of the best councilguards could use these techniques together, but most relied on one form or the other in their fights.

“Mama taught me.” Quenti’s voice was in her ear, cutting through the noise of the crowd. “And Khuno.”

Alara met her eyes with a questioning look.

“She was a girl…from the village next to mine.”

“Is she in the Haven now? Maybe we can find her and—”

“No.” Quenti’s voice was sharp.

“But—” Alara tried to speak again, but the roar of the crowd around them drowned out her words, and she realized the fight had ended. The wind mage stood in the middle of the ring, his fists raised and a smirk playing on his lips.

“Who’s next to challenge the Gran Diego!” An announcer stood on a platform behind the ring and called loudly over the crowd.

Quenti gave Alara a wide grin. “Do it!”

“What?” Alara backed up. Most people would be joking, but there was a terrifying spark in her companion’s eye.

“Right here!” Quenti yelled this time, shoving Alara into the circle with a painful kick to the middle of her back.

Alara stumbled forward, her hands raised. “No. She’s joking.”

“She thinks Diego here is a joke,” Quenti said. “You hear that? Tell them what you told me: ‘No better than a baby bruya,’ right?”

The man on the platform grinned, “We have a challenge.”

Before she could argue further, the announcer tossed a spear at her, which she caught it in the air without thinking. There was a loud whistle and suddenly the air mage—Diego—came at her from across the ring. She spun to the side, gripping her spear in a defensive position. She readied for him to lunge again, but missed the wave of his hand. A blast of dirt and sand kicked up from the ground and hit her in the face, just as the mage lunged at her. She blindly ducked out of the way again, but the butt of his spear caught her knee.

Above the roar of the crowd she heard Quenti yell, “Blast him!”

Alara twisted her spear around and threw out her hands, trying to call to the torches that hung around her, but the heat didn’t come and the mage was lunging again.

With a cry of anger, Alara twisted out of his way at the last moment, relishing the surprise in his eyes as his momentum threw him past her. She slammed the butt of her spear against his back, sending him sprawling on the ground. With a—probably showy—twirl of her spear she turned back to him, readying for a follow-up attack. But before she could throw her spear, another wave of air hit her at the knees, and she fell forward, off-balance.

A flare of anger surged in her and the heat in her chest sparked. A burst of flames shot from the torches along the walls. Completely unaimed, the fire shot through the crowd, onlookers ducking out of the way, and hit near the feet of her opponent. While it didn’t strike him, it distracted him enough that she could turn and take aim at his side with her spear.

“Stop!” a familiar voice rang out as her spear was jerked from her grasp.

A large hand rested on her shoulder, and Alara felt her stomach drop.