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“I’ll still see you.”
“When?” He snorted. His beliefs about my magic were as ill-founded as my mother’s, but somehow, the hope in his voice that suggested I would survive this wedding and actually be too busy as a wife and mother to see my own brothers brought a smile to my face that temporarily loosened the invisible gallows noose around my throat.
“I won’t miss your graduation,” I said.
He glanced at the floor. “That’s in two years.”
“Then I’ll come to your recitals.”
“Mother might not…”
I stormed forward. “Oh, she will let you continue learning piano or I will burn this house down.”
His eyes widened.
“Not really, Arch.”
“Oh, right.”
After a quick shove in the shoulder, I pulled him into a tight hug. He hugged back. It was the first time we’d really hugged in…a long time. Since we’d stopped pretending to ride the broom like it was a horse.
His arms loosened, and we stepped apart, awkwardly clearing our throats and wiping away tears. Archer was already taller than me.
“Stop growing, or Mother might think you have grandmother’s blood in there somewhere.”
His smile faltered. “Da was tall.”
“Arch, you do realize that even if you turn out to have some sliver of Nan’s blood, you’ll still be the same person?”
Archer and Danny had never shown any signs of having magic, to my mother’s great delight. At nine, it wasn’t unheard of that Danny might still manifest an affinity, but he’d never shown a single early sign of possessing magic. But Archer, at sixteen, was quickly aging out. The oldest documented age of an affinity showing up was seventeen, but that was rare, and Archer had never experienced any strange bursts of magical ability, the way I did. No, Mother only had to worry about one of her children turning out to have her mother-in-law’s wicked mind magic.
“What if you turn out to have her magic?” Archer asked.
I moved like I was about to shove my elbow into his stomach. He braced with his palms out to block me and then chuckled.
“Then I’ll die today when that ring of fire descends onto my head.”
Archer’s bright face collapsed into a tight frown. “Don’t say that.”
Outside, Danny yelled from the carriage to hurry up. With a sigh, I walked past Archer toward the still open door.
“Such is life for the Mystery Quarter,” I muttered, using one of the nicknames my schoolmates had thrown at me over the years. Quarter mages were rare; magic usually manifested powerfully, both in full-blooded mages and in half-mages. For magic to be fitful, passive, and unidentifiable by the Guilds was like having an incurable illness, and people feared it would contaminate them should they get too near. Being magicless was far superior to being occasionally magical.
“Ver.”
I spun back to face my brother. He seemed entirely too old in that moment.
“If I’m not a fire mage, then we all know what I am,” I muttered.
My brother’s face paled, and it looked like a boy’s face again despite his stature. “You are a fire mage. So what if your magic is spotty? You’re a quarter, not a full.” He hesitated, then added, “You don’t have to marry him.”
I wanted him to be right about my magic, that it would come through for me on the day I needed it most. I didn’t want to die today, and though I could acknowledge that I might die, I could no more believe that I would than I could believe my arms were wings.
I nodded, trying to encourage him, but my stomach felt hollow as the next words fell from my mouth. “It’s just the next prison, Arch. It won’t be that different.”
Before he could reply, I stepped outside into the blinding sunlight.
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