My fingers played across the river rocks molded into the cold wall before me, though I knew better than to search for an exit. Crow's End had opened another passageway and I couldn't fathom the reason why. I had wanted to clear my head. Thrusting me into a narrow, dank passageway with no windows or visible escape was not what I'd had in mind. 

Water trickled somewhere ahead, and I could hear the plaintive drops tapping against the stone. The ceiling was only a few inches taller than me, meaning a man like Darius would have to crouch to walk through the corridor. The light coming off the torches was heavy and oblique, hovering about the greased heads of the metal torches while illuminating little else. 

"Darius?" I called again, expecting no response. I wasn't disappointed. My voice echoed for a way before dying in the dark. "Marvelous."

I kept a hand to the wall as I walked. The bare torches revealed only sections of the floor, and its grimy pavers were slick and uneven. My shoe tripped on the lip of a raised block and I caught myself by clinging to the protruding stones on the walls. Crumbling mortar grated beneath my nails and fingertips, creating a loose sound of falling scree as it sifted over the wall. 

My chest became tight as I moved and the corridor seemed to close in around me. The space between each torch grew in length until I was submerged in long stretches of utter darkness. I could not fully extend either my left or my right arm without smacking one of the walls. Panic burbled in my heart as claustrophobia set in, but I tamped it down. 

My hand crossed something cold and metallic. I paused, running my fingertips slowly over the newest discovery until I decided it was some type of bar. I waved my hand before my nose and smelled the bitter odor of oxidation and rust. Exploring behind the bar, I felt wood paneling.

"Weird," I whispered, my voice loud in the prevalent hush surrounding me. I craned my neck to spy into the distance, where the next torch was a glimmer at the extreme end of the passage. I kept going, touching more bars along both walls as I walked. An eerie, ominous sensation gripped my stomach with each bar my fingers thumped against.

My suspicions were confirmed when I reached the torch. The light gleamed upon the lusterless structure of a cell's iron framework. The bars blocked access to a door, the wood of which was rotting, the corners and edges mottled by old mold.

Whatever Crow's End truly was—refuge or prison—this corridor was undoubtedly part of a dungeon.

The door beyond the bars abruptly creaked, then swung inward. I jumped with a soundless gasp as a man appeared.

He wasn't an intimidating fellow. He was only an inch or so taller than me, strong in build but somewhat round-shouldered, as if he spent a lot of time at a desk. His brown hair stuck out at odd angles and was liberally streaked with silver and darker patches of black. He wore a well-appointed duffle coat with silver edging and a light, steely blue lining.

There was a short rip on the breast of the black coat, as if he had torn off a patch and had stitched the tear closed. 

"Hmm?" the man mumbled, rubbing his stubble-strewn jaw. He was roughly forty in appearance, possibly forty-five. He would have been roguishly handsome, if not for the circles imparted under his eyes by sleep deprivation and the unkempt nature of his hair. His nose was crooked as if it'd been broken in the past, and a series of razor thin scars decorated his right cheek. 

There was silver ribbon tied about his neck. Its loops were uneven, the trailing ends frazzled.

I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd seen him somewhere before. 

The room beyond the man was lit by the warm, welcoming glow of antique gas lamps. I had expected a barren cell, but the furnishings were all well-appointed, if a bit dusty. The walls and floor were all made of the same colorless, unyielding stone and there weren't any windows. There was a selection of thick, leather-bound books on an oak shelf and a pentagonal table riddled with ugly scorch marks. 

The man's bronze eyes scrunched with confusion as he looked me over. "Can I help you with something?" he asked, speaking in a definite American accent. It was north-eastern, perhaps Bostonian, though I wasn't certain. The question was posed lightly, as if the man were used to women randomly popping up outside his cell door.

"Uh," I stuttered, torn between flight and curiosity. "I-I'm not sure—." I paused to breathe, though it was difficult with the needling, smothering sensation of being closed in still crushing my chest. "I'm not sure where I am."

The man looked both ways along the lightless passageway. "Why, you're in the dungeons, of course," he replied. "Where else could you be?"

"I've honestly no idea."

He chuckled and he leaned upon the struts bracing the iron bars. If I hadn't already been against the opposing wall, I would have backed away. As the man shifted, he happened to turn his left hand and the light showed a grievous mark upon his palm. He saw my eyes grow wide when I caught sight of it and obliged in my curiosity, holding the hand prone to show the mark.

"Not a pretty thing, is it?"

No, it was not. A black brand in the shape of an open eye spanned the length of his palm, embedded deep in the callused flesh. I wagered the wound must have been excruciating when it was fresh.

The man waggled his fingers. "Makes it bloody impossible to go shopping. Can't even stop by a local coven shop without sending someone into a fit." He sighed, poking the brand. "But I guess that's the point. Blue Fire does so love their petty little punishments."

Coven? Blue Fire? "Do you mean Blue Fire Syndicate?"

"Naturally." He nodded, smiling.

A trill of anxiety and exhilaration went through me. "Are you a mage?" I asked. I had never met a mage—aside from a brief encounter in which I had clocked one over the head with a pistol—and Darius had warned me against their kind, stating that it would be dangerous for both the Sin and me if we ran afoul one of the mage syndicates.

"Naturally!" Again the man smiled, head bobbing once in agreement.

"Are you with a syndicate?"

"Ah, I was. Not for some time, though, no." The mage scratched his scruffy jaw. "You're a curious sort, aren't you? Typically if a woman comes knocking upon a man's door, he's the one who asks the questions."

He had a point.

"And if that man is inside a prison cell, that woman typically takes her leave as fast as she can."

Again, the mage had a very good point.

Perhaps it was naïve of me, but I wasn't frightened. Disconcerted by the manor's finicky mood and layout, yes. Confused by the sudden switch in venues and the cramped passage, absolutely. I was exhausted and in pain after being dragged through the Realm by Darius—but frightened? Was I frightened of the mage?

I had committed terrible crimes in Verweald. I had killed cultists and a vampire, and was complicit in the death of many others who had met their fate at Darius's hands. I believed their deaths justified, but that did not mean I was a righteous person. I didn't regret what I had done, which was possibly the worst crime of all.

I was a criminal who had taken lives in the name of vengeance, who had formed a contract with a Sin. Maybe my own hubris would be my downfall, but I wasn't afraid of a mage caught in one of the manor's cells. Could his crimes compare to mine?

If anything, it was the mage who should be afraid of me.

The mage crinkled his nose and tapped one finger along its side. "Hmm? You're not a witch; you don't have the right smell about you. Not a sidhe either. Your aura's a bit too potent for that, hasn't withered to the dregs. What are you?"

My brow quirked as I shrugged. "Human."

The mage laughed. His amusement was full-bodied and unforced, as warm as laughter is supposed to be. I found that odd. He was in a prison cell, after all. "Keep your secrets, then. I don't mind. It was rude of me to ask without introducing myself first."

He stepped back from the bars and dipped into an abbreviated bow. I noted that while his pants were of the same fine quality as his coat, his shoes looked old and worn. "I'm Micajah Augustus Meriwether. Cage, if you will."

The corner of my lips quirked. "Cage the mage?"

He nodded as he grinned in turn. "Indeed."

"Can I ask why you're in there, Cage the mage? And where I am?"

The mage settled against the bars, seemingly content with their presence. Something hiccupped further inside the cell, and he turned just enough to reveal a tilted sideboard supporting a collection of strange silver instruments. He disregarded the sound and resumed his position.

"I am in here awaiting retrieval by my more rigorously moral brethren. As for where you are, I believe I've already answered that. If you mean how you got here and how you get to where you were, I'm not quite sure on either account." He shrugged. "Sloth's house can be quite vexing in that way."

I sighed, wincing at the lingering stench of wet rock. Darius's explanation about Crow's End reacting to one's whims and desires was still fresh in my mind. What whim or desire was the manor trying to fulfill by dropping me here? I didn't understand.

Why didn't Darius understand I only wanted to help him survive? I wasn't going to live, but I would do almost anything to help the fool endure Balthier.

The thought I had frustratingly considered while speaking with my Sin returned and gave me pause. I had pondered the notion only minutes before leaving the parlor. Had that been the wish Crow's End was trying fulfill?

What would I do to save Darius? What could I do?

What was the manor trying to tell me?

Cage absentmindedly scratched his deformed palm and toyed with the ribbon's loops. "So," he said, allowing the vowel to stretch. "Who are you studying under?"

I blinked, disrupted from my musings. "What?"

"I asked who you are studying under. Who is teaching you your runes? Your constructs? I sense you've been attuned. Ley magic, if I'm not mistaken. Not theurgy, and certainly not earth based as is the case with witches."

"What?" I said again with a severe lack of my usual acumen. "I don't have an instructor. I can't do magic."

"Oh, fluff." He twisted his hand in a convoluted pattern as he went to sit down. I started, certain he'd fall, but a brocaded stool appeared under his rear, catching the mage before he could hit the floor. I gawked. "Can't or won't? Because you certainly can, the question is whether or not you will, or even want to. I've known novices to forego the path entirely simply because they are unable to attune to the branch they wished to peruse.

"But, I digress. You are not a mage, and thus do not face such a predicament. I don't know what you are, but your aura reads ley magic, which means your innate skill is constructs and runes."

My mind was racing. "I thought humans can't do magic."

"You would be correct in that assumption, but wrong in the assumption that you are human. Not fully, at least." His head tipped, hiding part of his face in the wavering shadows displaced by the torch. "I do hope you realize that, and this isn't a sudden and great revelation."

It wasn't a great revelation. I had denied it in the past, but I wasn't so stubborn as to continue denying it when evidence to the contrary was compiling itself. Saule, the Verwealdian witch, had created my mana ampoule and shown it was not entirely clear as a human's would be. My father had spoken in a strange language, uttering va-natha'lan as he tried to banish Amoroth. Anzel's infusions had held even more silver in them than Saule's mana pots.

I was not...human. I was not normal, at least not in the way I'd always perceived normality. But I didn't know magic, I didn't know what a rune or a construct was. I knew nothing. I didn't even know where to begin.

I think, on some level, the mage understood this. Some of the pleasant light in his eyes fled, and his amusement waned as he rose from his appointed stool. "They've let you amok, then?" Cage exhaled and straightened, soothing the rumpled edge of his sleeve. "Very well. Place your hands with your knuckles pressed together and thumbs touching on your chest. Like this."

The mage made two fists and put them together, his thumbs sticking out so they could touch. He held his hands an inch or so below the ribbon's knot on his throat. Feeling foolish and wondering why on earth I was taking instruction from an incarcerated mage, I mimicked the man.

"Good. Push firmly down on your sternum with your hands."

I did so, biting the inside the inside of my cheek in a bid for patience.

"More force, girl! If anything, magic is not a half-hearted affair."

I pressed my hands into my chest until it felt as though the bone may bruise.

"While keeping your hands where they are, push your knuckles into one another with all your strength as if you were trying to force them away from one another."

I did so. My wrists trembled with the exertion but I held them steady, intent upon my task.

"Do you feel that hollow sensation in your chest? That build-up of strength in your limbs, in your hands? Concentrate on it. That is called imminent energy. That's all magic is, you know. Energy. Imminent, kinetic, potential. It's all about understanding how to manipulate those energies, how to summon them in an instant from your own soul, how to maintain them, how to read them.

"The production of energy in your soul produces mana, and that mana filters through your very being, into your blood, your bones, your muscles. Just as certain molecules can only bond with particular other molecules, so is it true mana can only bond with certain manipulations of energy. This is why the different species can only achieve certain kinds of magic, why a witch will never make a construct, why a mage will never make a mana pot, why the wyrm does not shift like a dragon, why the dragon does not shift like a Druid—."

"My arms are going to sleep," I interrupted.

"Ah, yes. Right. Sorry. I get a bit long-winded at times." Cage cleared his throat. "Hold that waiting energy in your mind as you hold it within your hands. Concentrate....Now pull your hands apart as swiftly as you can."

Having put enough pressure into my wrists and arms to numb them, the retracting motion came across as clumsy and slow—but I felt something twitch in my thoughts, a kind of misstep, the kind that draws you from a dream when you suddenly begin to fall and jerk away. The imminent energy in my hands was released and it became a tangible thing, expanding outward in the briefest flash of orange radiance. The scent of burning wheat filled my nose.

"There you have it," Cage said as he dropped onto the stool again, brushing lint from his coat. "Memorize how you summoned that energy from within yourself. That is how you work magic, my dear, and that proves you have it."

I stared at my own hands as if I'd never seen them before. "H-how did I—?"

He wafted a hand. "Oh, it's not a spell, rest assured. It's like...hammering a tack with a bulldozer. You snap the amounting energy quickly and with enough force and you get a tangible spark of your magic. Only creatures who have the capability of magic in their blood are able to make it manifest. Learning how to wield it, though, is an entirely different beast."

I flexed my fingers to force feeling to return to the numb knuckles. Such a strange sensation. Was that really...magic? Am I just losing my mind? Seeing things? "Why show this to me?" I asked, growing suspicious of the man behind the bars. "Why tell me anything?"

"I don't know. Boredom, I guess?" Cage blew air through his lips and laid his hands flat upon his knees. I noted he was very particular about how he arranged them. "I don't mind being imprisoned. It's the waiting that gets me. Bored out of my skull down here." He laughed at my scandalized expression. "What? Not the answer you were expecting?"

I shook my head. "No. That's not something I'd expect a prisoner to say. I am unnerved by your candor."

Cage only shrugged again and covered his mouth as he yawned. "Stifling politicians, the lot of them. Mired in bureaucracy. They'll sort through the paperwork while I sit here twiddling my thumbs, waiting for them to build my pyre." The mage jumped abruptly, which jolted me off the wall. "I see you're being summoned, little novitiate."

He chin jerked toward the wall and I turned to see a door had inexplicably appeared next to me. I imagined Darius had found Peroth by now. It was time for me to return to the manor's upper reaches.

I stopped before leaving. I could still feel the fuzzy, tingling sensation of energy—of magic—dancing upon my fingertips. I glanced over my shoulder and, summoning my courage, blurted out, "Can I return?"

Cage's brow rose. "Return?"

"Return here. Can I return? Will you teach me?"

"Teach you?"

I nodded. Though my heart was racing and cold sweat had broken out on the nape of my neck, I was determined. "Will you teach me magic?"

Cage snorted. "My, but you are bold. You don't even know who I am or what I've done to land myself in this cell."

"I don't care." I was curious, but who was I to judge the man on his crimes? The manor had sent me here for a purpose, had sent me to find this mage. He had recognized what I was capable of, and—in his boredom—was willing to impart information I so desperately needed about magic. "All I care about is learning."

Cage studied me. His amusement was replaced by a sudden severity brightening his reflective eyes. "Why aren't you afraid of me, girl?"

"Perhaps you should be afraid of me."

He scoffed, teetering upon his stool. "Funny. You won't even ask, will you? I should be insulted."

"Nope." I kept my face placid as I waited for him to come to a decision. I hoped he did so quickly. I didn't want Darius to appear and find me asking favors of jailed mages.

"It was black magic," Cage said without prompting. His voice was gruff, accent thicker. He glared. I gathered that the mage was trying to frighten me off, but I stared down demons on a regular basis. He was not nearly as intimidating. "Black as it comes. That's what the brand means, my dear. It means I am a black mage, and I am the worst of the lot."

"I don't care."

"I killed someone." His confession was accompanied by an uncomfortable silence. Cage reached forward and wrapped his fingers upon the bars. Each finger thumped noisily on the metal. Energy whispered under his touch, alighting through miniscule, incandescent lines carved into the walls. "Not so keen on the idea now, are you?"

I continued to stare at the mage as I answered. "So have I."

His hands fell from the bars. Cage hesitated, visibly taken aback. The steady trickle of water resounding from somewhere deeper within the dungeon didn't abate, nor did the whir of his silver instruments. The torch crackled, and in its greasy light I knew I must look positively ghoulish to the mage.

Cage began laughing again. It started as a broken rumble in his throat, then erupted in a low, breathless cackle. When he regained composure, he clapped his hands as if giving an applause. "Ah! You've got me, then. Fine. Fine! I find you quite interesting. Quite brazen. Return at your leisure, my apprentice. It's not as if I've something better to do."

"Okay, then." I turned to the door. I had my hand on the door when Cage's voice called me back.

"You never did give me your name."

I cracked the door open. A breath of clean air wafted through the space, joined by a blinding slice of fresh light. "Sara," I said. "Sara Gaspard."