Alara was awake before she was aware. She laid with her eyes closed, feeling every bone and muscle in her body protesting against the movement of her breathing. She registered the cold dirt beneath her, the sound of metal and stillness around her. The air was icy and smelled of something familiar that made her stomach turn. She was no longer outside in the forest.

The sharp realization of what had happened hit her and she felt a new pain sharp in her chest. Her eyes cracked open to a dim darkness, a stone ceiling only just visible above her. And out of the corner of her eye, a set of metal bars. She was back in the dungeon, lying on the ground of the cell she had saved Khuna from hours before.

It took her another few minutes to get the strength to move her head, and she heard an immediate whisper of movement in response to her own.

“Alara?”

She tried to speak, but her throat was tight and dry. She swallowed and tried again, wincing as her voice cracked. “Runeo? Are you—okay?”

“I’m okay, but…” he paused and seemed to choke on his words.

Alara turned over with a groan, trying to find him in the dimness. He was in the cell next to her, sitting up, but Alara could just see a silhouette of something large on the ground next to him.

“I tried to save him,” Runeo said, his voice maintaining its uncharacteristic softness. “I tried, but I didn’t know what to do. Lili could have…” the words died on his lips and Alara lurched forward, eyes straining in the darkness as she took in Adelmo’s slumped form.

Alara realized the smell she had registered when she had awoken. Adelmo’s face was white and red, the skin burned away to show the muscle underneath. She only glanced down long enough to see that the rest of him had shared the same fate. She looked back at his face and looked into the hollow blue eyes of her friend.

Alara turned and gagged, her stomach tightening even though she had nothing to give. She hadn’t eaten since the night before.

“I’m sorry.” Runeo’s voice was soft.

Alara shuddered, a numbness sinking into her body. “It’s my fault. If only I had had better control. If only I had listened to Emaru.” She thought again of the look of cold disappointment on Emaru’s face. She chuckled humorlessly. “Ironic how listening to her could have saved us from her.”

“That was the woman who raised you?”

“Yes,” Alara said. She expected to feel something as she confirmed her relationship to the councilwoman—Sadness, guilt, anything, really. Instead, the hollowness in her chest only expanded.

Only silence from Runeo followed, and Alara took a moment to take in their surroundings. She noticed there was only one torch left burning across the room. The prisoners they had left behind only a few hours before were slumped in their own cells, the dim light outlining their pathetic bodies.

Her cell was only a couple of yards across at its widest. A single bucket sat in the corner and Alara tried not to think about what it was for. She was wearing her magite robes, although they were stained and torn beyond redemption now. Her weapons were gone, and she felt a pang of sadness when she realized that the. dull dagger that Quenti had returned to her was also gone.

She also noted the twin cuff that sat on her left wrist, matching her right. After attempting to pull at the thread of magia in her chest, she realized she couldn’t even feel the heat of it, as she often did. This realization left her cold, causing her to shiver in the damp air of the prison.

She fingered her cuff—the one that had been on her since she could remember. Hadn’t she always been a prisoner? How was it any different sitting in this cell than sitting in her room in the dorms, afraid to use her magia?

“I should have listened to Emaru. I shouldn’t have been so stupid, so afraid of my own magia.” Alara bit the words out. The continued irony only frustrated her further the more she thought about it.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Runeo said. “They would have never let you truly embrace it. They wanted you to fear it. The Council sees our powers as a tool, but they aren’t. They are a part of us, as much as an arm, a leg, or even a heart.”

“But it could have saved him still. It could have.”

Alara heard a shuffling and looked over to see Runeo leaning against the bars between their cells. “You’ve been fighting with one hand tied behind your back your entire life. It’s a wonder you had any power to show for it at all.” He stretched his hand out toward the torch across the room, the cuff glinting gold in the wane light. The shadows in the room shifted as a small breeze cut through the air.

Runeo’s eyes studied her. “It feels like trying to breathe underwater having this cuff on. How strong did you have to be to wear this cuff your entire life and still use your powers?”

Alara looked down at the cuffs on her wrists and felt the cold hollowness in her chest like a sharp blade to the gut. The image of her family home in flames and Adelmo’s burnt skin flickered in her mind and turned her stomach. “It doesn’t matter now. Do you think it will be a memory wipe or execution?”

Runeo’s laugh was rough and humorless. “I may be executed, but I doubt they’ll give you up after even this.” His dark eyes met hers in the dark again. “I bet you could still use your powers, even now, if you wanted.”

“I can’t even feel them.”

“Try.”

She flicked her hand toward the torch, its flames undisturbed.

“Okay, now actually try.”

She sent a sharp look of annoyance toward him, but pushed toward her powers at the center of her chest, barely feeling the brush of warmth there. She pushed them out, and the flame flickered. The shadows danced across Runeo’s face, a look of satisfaction glowing.

“What good does that do me?”

“I didn’t think you were one to give up so easily. You seemed like you had more fight back in Arbol.”

“Maybe I’ve learned my lesson.”

“The wrong one.” Runeo was pressed against the bars, and his black eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. “I’m not giving up yet and neither should you. We can fight them when they come for us.”

Alara looked at him, trying to muster the same passion and hope he still seemed to possess, but from the corner of her eye, she could still see the shadow of Adelmo’s form crumpled on the ground. She felt a burning behind her eyes.

“I’m done fighting.”

Runeo pushed off from the bars, moving to sit on the other side of the bars, his anger clear in the jerkiness of his movement. Alara tried to care, but she couldn’t. She stayed slump against the wall where she was and stared blankly into the darkness. She wondered, not for the first time that week, what it might be like to have her mind cleansed.

The thought didn’t escape her that she had somehow run home only to find herself in the same predicament she had been in Arbol. Would they erase Adelmo from her mind? Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. Perhaps it would be better to not remember and go back to blissful ignorance.

Alara lost track of time, her eyes focused on the flame across the room. She felt hypnotized by its flicker. And then there was the grinding of metal on metal and wood on stone and the prison shone with light.

Alara blinked into the sudden brightness, trying to adjust and make sense of the forms that stood before her.

“Senye Cruz,” Alara said as the forms shifted into focus. Councilwoman Lena Cruz stood before her, two councilguards flanking her and someone Alara recognized with a stab of fear: Luis, the Council’s mind-walker.

Runeo was right. They were there to wipe her memories.

Senye Cruz’s smirk was cold and unflinching as she stared down at Alara in the torch's light. Alara had grown to hate that smirk over the years. But this instance told a specific story. This smirk was the look of someone who had wanted the worst for her since day one and was finally seeing it come to fruition. Alara lifted her chin, sending a glare back at the woman, refusing to give in to the look of loathing.

“Well, well,” Senye Cruz said. “I always told Senye Emaru that one day you would end up here. She didn’t believe me. She thought she had you completely under her wing. Goes to show how much she really knows.”

Alara didn’t respond to this, but she felt herself flinch at the words. She saw Emaru’s face flash in her mind again—the look of disappointment as they fought on the border. And the look of cold disgust that had flashed in her eyes right before Alara had sent out the attack that had killed Adelmo.

“Leave us,” Senye Cruz said, glancing between the two councilguards.

They hesitated, looking at each other but not moving.

“The prisoners are behind bars and cuffed. What possible threat could they pose?”

“We’ve been given orders to escort you all to the councilroom for the sentencing and wipe,” one guard said, shifting by the councilwoman. Alara noted that neither of the councilguards were mages and she could almost feel their discomfort standing next to Senye Cruz.

“I’m giving you new orders.”

“But Senye Emaru—”

“Yes, yes, Linda is ever by-the-book, isn’t she?” Senye Cruz said. With a wave of her hands, the torch she was carrying flared up, sending the guards scrambling back for a second. Before they could register what was happening, Senye Cruz had her dagger in her hands. She slashed the blade across both councilguards’ throats, sending a bright red flash of blood through the air.

Alara fell back with a small scream as blood spilled onto the floor of her cell. She looked back at Senye Cruz and saw that she had stopped moving, her blade dropped to the ground and eyes wide. Behind her, Luis had a large hand gripped on the councilwoman’s head and Alara could just feel his power flowing from him.

Alara didn’t stop to think. She pulled hard at the thin thread of magia in her chest, fumbling for a second as she tried to grip it as she sent the thread out to the torch still gripped in Senye Cruz’s hand. The fire’s flare was only a quarter of the size of the one Cruz had managed before, but it was enough. The fire sprang toward Luis’s arm and he jumped back with a small cry of pain.

His eyes turned to her, anger clear as his hand stretched out to Alara.

The ground shifted under her, roots clawing out to grab at her legs. But the distraction had been enough. Senye Cruz had dropped to the ground and found her fallen dagger. Alara watched with wide eyes as the older woman turned with a smooth motion and stabbed the dagger repeatedly into the man’s side.

The roots at Alara’s feet stopped moving, and the man gave a strangled cry before he crumpled to the ground.

Senye Cruz stood up from the ground, stepping back from the man. Her eyes glowed gold when she looked up at Alara with a small smirk.

“Clearly, Senye Emaru has been underestimating you from day one.”