She used to call what he could do abronas. A gift bestowed by the gods. She thought it was amazing, that there was a reason for it. For the longest time, August let himself believe she was right. It made his power tolerable. He actually quite liked the word.
There was one day during a lesson about wielders, Lottie had asked why people feared them so much.
The tutor, an elderly man with drooping skin, had answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “Wielders are capable only of chaos and destruction. They are unnatural. An abomination. If left unchecked, they will destroy us all.”
And Lottie, only a child, had scrunched her nose and replied, “The way we’re born doesn’t define the kind of person we become.Wedo that. Why should it be different for them? Why do we get to decide who they are? Each wielder should get to choose how they use theirbronas.”
The tutor hadn’t liked her argument. He made Lottie stay late to write lines.
But August hadn’t missed the way she’d used the same word for wielder magic as she used for his ability. That was the first time he’d ever considered the possibility that perhaps he was one of them, that this thing he could do was actually magic.
At the time, the thought was invigorating, and it made him feel like part of something special. But that changed when he saw the chaos and destruction firsthand. Saw how they hurt people.
He’d been twelve years old. His father had granted one of their tutors permission to take them to find a gift for their mother, accompanied by two of their royal guards. He couldn’t remember the tutor’s name. She only appeared in a few ofhis memories, her face unclear—which was strange because he remembered both guards’ faces clearly.
He could recall the night market in great detail, too. He remembered marveling at the pink flames of the streetlamps, and that he couldn’t pick out the wielders from the regular people.
The outing felt like an adventure. Until one of their royal guards went staggering back into a crowd of people, crashing to the ground. A massive man hovered over the guard, staring down with an eerie smile and glowing pink rings in his eyes.
He didn’t look like a person. He looked like a monster.
The man kneeled and placed his hands on either side of the guard’s face. A blood-curdling scream tore from the guard’s throat, and the crowd broke into a panic as pink flames licked up his head, roaring hot and impossibly bright.
The tutor grabbed August’s hand, but a stranger tore him from her grip, dragging him away.
Even now, the memory of the visceral terror he’d felt in that moment dug in like claws.
Dozens of City Watch pushed through the dense crowd. One of them fired a shot, the sharp crack echoing through the square. The stranger dropped, and the other royal guard scooped up August and carried him away from the scene.
He watched over the man’s shoulder as four wielders were forced to their knees and executed without hesitation. Four gunshots, one right after another.
After that, he stopped acknowledging his ability. It wasn’t a gift, and he wasn’t a wielder. He would never be like them.
That tutor must have been fired, because he never saw her again. August lost his father shortly after. His memory of that entire year was an odd, hazy blur, the timeline occasionally folding over on itself. Grief did strange things to people, he supposed.
“I wanted so badly to pretend I wasn’t—whatever it is I am,” he told Felix. “So I stopped talking to Lottie about it and started ignoring the anchored.” He tried to remember how it had changed, if there was a decision, a conversation. But Lottie had sort of just dropped the subject after that night. “I don’t know. Perhaps she thinks I outgrew it.”
“Why would you want to pretend to be powerless?” Felix asked, sounding genuinely confused. “What you can do, it’s amazing.You’reamazing.”
The heat returned to August’s face.
“I’ve been forced to pretend my whole life,” Felix continued, gaze drifting. “There are so many things I’ve done, lines I’ve crossed, people I let—” He cut the sentence off with a sharp breath and a shake of his head. “I feel like I’ve sold my soul over and over and over. All for the possibility that someday I’ll be able to make some small sort of difference.” He looked back at August. “But youcanmake a difference. You can change everything. The aesling is a wielder!”
“Not a wielder,” August interjected.
Felix shoved up from the bench, his usual radiant brightness back in full. “Do you realize how massive this is? This could be the big change we need. A connection to unite us all. This is a chance for the aesran to see reason.”
“She won’t.”
“Don’t you want to try? To go back and see what she has to say?”
“No,” August replied. Yes, he missed his home, his room, Lottie. He feared not knowing what would happen each day. But for the first time, the pressure was gone. He was free. And he liked it here, liked being around people who were like him. “Let Lottie have the crown. I don’t want it.”
The disappointment on Felix’s face cut through August like a blade, but it didn’t change the truth.
“I can’t go back.”
“Why not?”
