It was Maggie, but she was different. She was nothing like the beast Adaline could become, but her fingernails were long, sharp as claws, and her eyes shone yellow in the darkness. Even with my magic bound, I could sense runes humming under her skin. She had leapt from that tree light as a spider and with inhuman speed.

  I had no idea how much she had enhanced herself with magic, but we weren’t facing any ordinary old woman. Now more than ever, as she stared us down in the light of the moon, I could feel her power radiate out and around us: a Great Mage’s magic.

  “Adaline!” She snarled. “What are you doing?” She turned her eyes over to glare at me. “What did he say to you?”

  She lunged at me, so quickly that I only saw the motion when Adaline intercepted her. I stumbled back. Adaline’s hands dug into Maggie’s shoulder, keeping her still.

  “He only said enough to give me permission to do what I already wanted to,” Adaline snapped back. “None of you have listened to me about Sarai, but someone needs to get out there and help her! That wasn’t her body, Maggie!”

  Maggie stared at us, breathing hard. Her eyes were bright in the darkness, wide and angry and desperate.

  “Of course that wasn’t her body, you stupid girl!”

  Her words echoed in the trees, her cry desperately ripping from her throat. She closed her mouth tight afterwards, grinding her teeth so hard I could see a muscle pop her face. Maggie seemed as surprised at her words as we were, but she didn’t take them back.

  “Wasn’t her body?” Adaline asked. Strangely, the anger had drained from her voice. Her words were soft and fearful. “Maggie, what do you mean ‘of course it wasn’t’?”

  I had some sense of what she meant. Enough sense to know that Adaline probably wouldn’t like the answer. I closed my eyes tight for a moment, wishing I had full control of my magic and could teleport out of this place. Away from these two women standing on either side of a creek yelling at each other like only family could.

  “Ada…” Maggie sighed. “You can be so foolish for a smart girl.”

  “I am NOT a girl anymore,” Adaline said. “I am almost twenty-four years old, Maggie. I am a woman and an adult. I deserve to know. Were you involved in Sarai’s disappearance? What secrets are you keeping from me?”

  Maggie winced, but glared back at her. “I wouldn’t have had to do anything if you two hadn’t been so foolish. Planning to escape? Working on spells to get past Drianthenes? Did you think I wouldn’t know what you were doing?”

  Adaline’s hands began to grow claws that dug into Maggie’s skin where she gripped her.

  “Margaret,” Adaline said, her tone low and dark. “What did you do to Sarai?”

  “Much less than Drianthenes would have had me do, I’ll tell you that!” Maggie said. “I had to report it to him, he keeps a careful eye on my mind, but I played it as the foolishness it was. I convinced him that Sarai talked you into something silly because you were restless young women. He told me to deal with Sarai, and I did.”

  “I don’t care!” Adaline said. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. Just tell me where Sarai is!”

  “I don’t know,” Maggie said coldly. “I spared her life, had her catch a deer and used my magic to turn it into a corpse. Then I sealed her magic and told her to run and never come back. It was all I could do. I could only keep that from Drianthenes because he always favored her and didn’t want to know what I did with her. It would have been fine, if you could have just left it alone!”

  “NO!” There was a growl to Adaline’s voice as she stepped forward, and her eyes flashed a glow in warning. “It would not have been fine! You had no right to banish Sarai! You had no right to decide what was best for me!”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, girl!” Maggie snarled back. “What do you think you want? To go out into the woods? To forsake your family and the only home you’ve ever known? You’re young and foolish, and I can’t force you to learn the same lessons I have, but I can step in and stop you if I have to.”

  “Step in and force me to make the same mistakes you have?” Adaline challenged, her voice bitter. “My brother betrayed me, my parents are dead, and my only other surviving family member is right here.” She gestured to me, and I swallowed. I forced myself to straighten up. “You’re not worried for my family or my future. You’re just worried for yourself.”

  Maggie flinched back. She took in a sharp, ragged breath. She breathed in deeply, opened her mouth as if to scream back, and then let it out slowly. When she spoke, her tone was soft.

  “That boy,” she said with a jerk of her chin in my direction, “hasn’t been around you in years. He knows nothing of you. I’m more family of yours than he is.”

  Adaline blinked back at her, still tense in every muscle, still snarling furiously. But I saw tears in her eyes. She didn’t know what to say.

  Maybe Maggie was right. This wasn’t my fight. Except I needed to do something about it if I wanted Adaline to have a chance to get out of there. And, in truth, I wanted it to be my business. To be family in more than blood.

  “That wasn’t my choice,” I said, “and it wasn’t Adaline’s choice either. We didn’t get any choice about being separated or the strange places we ended up, but we’re adults now. For the first time ever, we can make those decisions. Why are you trying to take that away?”

  “Boy-” Maggie started, but Adaline interrupted her.

  “Man!” she shouted. “Woman! You are like a grandmother to me, Maggie, but that doesn’t make me a child! You’ve seen my work and you’ve seen Sarai’s. We’re full Mages and full women.”

  Maggie stared at her a moment, and then seemed to deflate with a sigh. She sagged against Adaline’s grip, no longer fighting her. I noticed my own shoulders relaxed as the magical pressure from Maggie dropped.

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  “You have no idea how young you are,” Maggie said. “No idea, Adaline. I’ve seen so many girls your age think they were ready to take on the world before crashing, or simply fading into lives that they hated. I’ve been one of those girls, and it took so many years to build something with meaning.”

  “I know, Maggie,” Adaline said. “I know. I just don’t understand why, then, you’re so determined to make me follow your path.”

  “You’re marrying the future leader of the Heirs, gi- Adaline,” Maggie said. “That wasn’t the path I took. I chose not to marry and they made me suffer for it. It took me so long to break out of that mold and build my own power and connections and family.”

  “They made you suffer for it because you were in the Heirs,” Adaline said softly. “They trapped you. They’ve trapped me, for all my life, though I couldn’t see it until Sarai showed me. Now I have the chance, maybe the only chance I’ll ever have, to get out. I would have had the opportunity sooner, if you had not betrayed us.”

  “Do we still have the chance?” I asked. It was a very soft, emotional moment, and my own voice sounded harshly practical in my ears. I didn’t want to interrupt, but I needed to know. “Is Drianthenes coming?”

  “No, no, I wouldn’t let him loose on Adaline like that,” Maggie said with a wave of her hand. “I didn’t even let him kill Sarai. I do everything I can for my girls, but I can’t let you do this.” She turned, dismissing me from her sight to stare Adaline in the eyes. “If you go, Drianthenes will be furious about losing both wives for his son. Calenthe will claw her way into your place. There’s no coming back.”

  “Will Sarai ever be coming back?” Adaline asked.

  Maggie was silent. Her mouth tightened and twisted unhappily, because we all knew the answer.

  “You could be Queen,” she said. “You don’t need Sarai for that.”

  “I would be Queen, and Friedrich would be King,” Adaline said, “and Drianthenes would be father to the King, puppeting from the shadows as he wants. I would still have to obey their every order. It would be empty. I’m bigger than that. Can’t you see that, Maggie?”

  “It’s bigger than you, Ada,” Maggie said. “If you’re not Queen, then what will happen after the Equinox? What will they turn the world into, with Friedrich and Drianthenes and Calenthe at the helm?”

  “Not much worse than what they’d turn the world into with me at the helm,” Adaline said. “Calenthe is petty, she wants personal power and comfort. Friedrich will make the real decisions, the decisions Drianthenes wants him to make. I know you love me, Maggie, and you believe in me. But do you really think I could stop that?”

  “I think you could try!” Maggie cried out, suddenly raising her voice again, her words cracking on the last syllable. “Just like I have tried to keep every girl in the Heirs safe for decades! Just like your mother tried to keep you and your brother safe!”

  Adaline flinched, but she didn’t step back. “And look what happened to my mother. Maggie, I know the Heirs need you, but they don’t need me. I can only be Queen if I play the part of a pretty face, and if I want to change things, honestly, if I want to stay sane, I can’t play that part forever. If it breaks me, then I’ll be a far worse Queen than Calenthe could even imagine being.”

  She lifted her chin, looking Maggie straight in the eyes. Maggie glowered back at her.

  “And you can’t stop me,” Adaline said. “You know how powerful of a fighter I am. I am done being anyone’s captive, Maggie.”

  Maggie barked out a laugh. “There’s a million ways I can stop you. You of all people, Adaline, might have a sense of my abilities. Would you still want to leave if I threatened to stop Izak’s heart?”

  I stepped back abruptly at that. The spell limiting my magic, Maggie’s spell, almost felt like it burned. It was my imagination, but I was more aware of it than ever.

  Adaline was silent. I gritted my teeth. It would have been nice to hear her immediately declare that she would protect me, but I knew that wasn’t how this worked.

  “You’ve taken a Healer’s vows,” Adaline whispered.

  “Vows can be broken,” Maggie said. “You think I’ve never been forced to break them before?”

  “Not like this,” Adaline said. “Not in cold blood to control someone else. Are you planning to take hostages to control my decisions, after you force me to become Queen?”

  Maggie reared back like she’d been slapped. “I’m not Drianthenes! I believe in you, Adaline, even if you’re being foolish right now.”

  “You can’t have it both ways!” Adaline said. “You either believe in me, or you don’t. Why can’t you trust me to do the right thing?”

  “Because you’re not thinking long term!” Maggie snapped. “What will you do after the Heirs complete the ritual? After they take over the world?”

  “Then if they kill me I’ll die as myself, instead of living as Drianthenes’s pawn like you!” Adaline snapped. “If you really want to take his side, like you betrayed Sarai to him, then call him now. Expose me. Take away any chance I have to come crawling back later claiming to have been kidnapped.”

  “You plan to crawl back?” Maggie said. “They’ll never make you Queen.”

  “Then I’ll be your apprentice,” Adaline said. “I’d rather be forced to flatter you for an immortal lifetime instead of Friedrich anyway.”

  “An immortal lifetime?” I echoed.

  Maggie spared me a disdainful glance. Adaline turned back to me to say, “That’s what the ritual intends to do. And I can’t keep up my flattery of Friedrich for that long. Eventually even he will realize the truth; what will I do then? ”

  “You plan to come back, claiming that your outsider brother kidnapped you?” Maggie asked. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  “Because I can’t promise to come back!” Adaline yelled, snapping her attention back to Maggie. “I won’t promise that.”

  I felt a few drops of rain on the back of my neck. It had been late evening when Adaline and I had left, but now it was true night. Maggie’s face was unreadable in the darkness. We stood together, silent enough to hear as more drops of rain pattered down on rocks below. The burble of the creek came into focus again, as Maggie and Adaline stared at each other silently in the dark.

  In some ways, many ways, Maggie was more family to Adaline than I could be. She was Adaline’s grandmother, regardless of blood. It didn’t seem fair that Adaline would get mother and grandmother, while I got neither.

  “I only wanted what was best for you,” Maggie said. “You’re the only family I have, girl.”

  “You need to trust me to know what’s best for myself,” Adaline said. “You’re the one who always says I’m smart. Why can’t you trust me?”

  Maggie sighed deeply. “I’ll trust you. I’ll let you go without a fight, make up some story about your kidnapping, but the Heirs will come after you. It won’t be easy.”

  “I know.”

  Maggie sighed again. “You do always think you know everything, girl.” Her voice cracked on the last word.“You’re being an idiot, but you might as well be smart about it.”

  She pulled out a roll of paper and offered it to Adaline. “Take this map and come back, if you can. Come home.”

  Adaline didn’t reply. I couldn’t see her face in the dark, but Maggie’s glowing eyes probably could. Maggie stepped forward and hugged Adaline close. Adaline squeezed back.

  I looked away. My throat was too thick for me to breathe, so I couldn’t calm myself with my exercises and pack my emotions away. Tears stung my eyes. For the first time in many years, I truly felt what the Division stole from me.

  Finally Adaline pulled away.

  “We need to go,” she said.

  “I know,” Maggie said. “Stay safe. I’ll do my best back here.” She looked behind us to the forest, gathering magic and bracing herself to jump, but hesitated. “Adaline?”

  “What is it?” Adaline asked, sounding tired.

  “If you do find Sarai, tell her I’m sorry,” Maggie said. Then her body flooded with magic and she jumped away, moving more quickly then my eyes could follow in the dark.