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Under the light of the morning sun, she shone incandescently. Light spilled off her cloak to tumble down the wavy blonde hair framing her face. She didn’t look at the crowd so much as look past it, reins clasped tightly in her hands—hands Orpheus knew were still shaking, because now his were, too.

“Sanctuary, we return, as promised!” At the head of their procession, Atticus raised a fist into the air. “And also, as promised, we do not return empty-handed. The savage’s mage has been apprehended, and the future of Sanctuary secured with his arrest!”

A roar rose, thousands strong. It echoed up the ramparts, rising like a wave to crash down over his head. Heat rushed across Orpheus’ skin while his heart sped into a pounding hammer, the crowd’s attention locked onto him. Anger curdled their sickly features, children hiding their faces as if one look from him may be all it took to cast a curse. Collared and muzzled, he wouldn’t be a threat even if he had his magic, but these people didn’t know that. They knew him as one thing: Lore’s dog.

A glance ahead revealed Atticus watching him. Their eyes met before Orpheus could stop himself. Atticus must have seen something of his discomfort because he smiled, then turned back to Gwen and urged her to wave at the crowd.

She hesitated, so Atticus took her wrist and lifted it high.

And oh, how the crowd roared. Some waved back, but a handful put the first two fingers of their right hand to their lips, then their brow. It was a curious gesture. More a warding than a blessing, and now that he knew what to look for he noticed a good number of the crowd performing the sign, some going as far as to place a palm to their chest after as if to seal an intention—the final flourish of their strange spell.

Orpheus swallowed uneasily when a crack tore through the cheers.

The clatter of wood hitting stone heralded the crowd surging forward.

Food. Vera’s food.

Children took the first wave, weaving between the adults to where their families must wait, apples and bread and dried meats in hand. One girl with two fistfuls of strawberries and a loaf of bread deposited her haul on a table shared by a man with eyes so pale and expression so distant he reminded Orpheus of Duluth. She broke off a chunk of bread and pressed it into his hands, mouth moving with words Orpheus couldn’t hear, but which the man obeyed—even the sick worthy of what meager bounty Sanctuary scraped together.

There was no yelling. No stealing. No unruly children running amok. No fighting for the food this whole city so obviously needed. No dirt in the roads or graffiti on the street to indicate any kind of dissatisfied restlessness. Simply a city of people dependent upon one another, who cared enough about themselves and their home to not allow either to fall into ruin despite their circumstances.

Savages, Atticus had called him—the Empire—the people he and Fenrir had saved.

Orpheus couldn’t help but think of the fairgrounds and wonder…was he right?

They left the market behind, passing over small canals brimming with gray water. Deeper in, blocky tenements with high sloping slate roofs replaced the market’s colorful storefronts while dozens of alleys snaked between each building, pockets of light appearing where courtyards might hide. His suspicions were confirmed when he spotted a dog napping in a sun-spot, hind leg kicking in its sleep, human companion curled atop a stone bench with her nose buried in a book, mind lost to an unknown adventure.

Something sharp and heavy burrowed into Orpheus’ chest and refused to be dislodged. Did they have a library here? A cinema? What secrets hid amongst the winding alleys and towering spires? What magic did Sanctuary hold that had nothing to do with the Netherflame Atticus said it depended on? Orpheus wanted to know. He wanted to see. He wanted to shed these shackles and explore the city as any free mage might—discover for himself what kind of spell this place had cast that made it worth the risk Atticus had taken to hunt him down.

When the courtyard disappeared behind a bend in the road, a part of him peeled off to stay behind, lost to a fantasy all the books in the Keep hadn’t been able to paint.

Ahead, a cathedral dominated the opposite side of an open square. If the city was a blackened saw blade of pointed roofs and stepped gables, the cathedral would be a trident. Three dark towers speared into the clouds above, their long shadows carving through the morning light. Orpheus ignored the sinking feeling in his stomach when their path headed straight for it. Its heavy doors were already open, the shadows inside darker than the obsidian, ready and waiting to swallow him whole.

He nearly jumped when the caravan trundled into the open square and a bell began to toll.

Ga-gong. Ga-gong. Ga-gong.

A late-arrived herald to their procession, over and over the bell tolled while Sanctuary’s people scrambled to the edges of the square and dropped to their knees. Again, they made that same gesture, this time bowing their heads over the hands they placed on their hearts. Atop her mare, Gwen stared straight ahead, hands no longer shaking but back so stiff she could have been held there by a spell.

Orpheus saw them, then—the figures filing out from the cathedral’s open doors.

Gray-cloaked instead of white, their robes were simple if well-kept, the stitching running the edges of their robes fine enough he almost didn’t see it—the silver sigils embroidering their hems.

Wait, sigils?

Memories scratched at him, because those robes, those sigils, he’d seen them before. And—

All hells, no. No.

Terror rose, catapulting Orpheus into a blind panic.

“Mhh!”

He threw himself into the corner of his cage, meeting the eyes of the men he passed and an attention forged not from curiosity, but necessity. Because Orpheus had been looked at this way before, and he knew what it meant—what kind of future it foretold.

The hermits. These people—priests—monks—whoever—they reminded him of the hermits.

All thoughts of cooperation bled out into the cathedral’s cold shadows. Despite his broken fingers—despite his encasements—he swung his hands into the bars like he could break them. Again and again while the gray-cloaked figures came together to whisper, watery eyes focused so wholly on him that when the cathedral’s cool shadows swallowed him up like the maw of some great beast, Orpheus didn’t scream.