❤❤❤ This chapter is dedicated to @JanJacinto for interacting with my story so much I really appreciate you ❤❤❤

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It wasn't an easy task because Sage was avoiding me. I had notes with my assignment for the day; if we talked, it was only over the walkie-talkies. When she saw me coming, she would run in the other direction. Jeremy and Amelia would press me for information about her every day when I went home, but I couldn't give them what I didn't have. Jeremy was also getting impatient. It was becoming apparent that he would have a hunter do it if I didn't figure out what was happening soon.

Then there was the tornado. The Midwest gets tornadoes from time to time, and they can be devastating. Still, for the most part, people know how to handle themselves during one, but to do that, you must know about it.

That day at work, I had been using the walkie-talkies to try and get Sage to talk to me, but she wasn't responding. I thought she was just ignoring me, but then they called a code T, which meant we all needed to get to the cellar of the greenhouse immediately. I was eating lunch by the grey house when it was called, so I got up to go with everyone around, but then I saw Sage's walkie on the shelf. She took the ultimate step in avoiding me. She left her walkie where she couldn't hear it. Instead of being indignant about that, fear gripped my chest. She didn't know about the code T. Like the crazy person I am, I didn't run with everyone else to the cellar; I ran to the rose garden where I knew she was. Tornadoes struck fast, so by the time I made it, she already knew she had messed up.

"Sage! Sage!" I nearly ran into her as she was leaving the garden. I gripped her arm as her hair blew over her face. The bushes were shaking and bending to the side, and loose parts of our clothes were trying to blow away.

"What are you doing out here? This is a tornado!" we had to scream over the wind. The air filled with dirt as the mulch started to take to the air.

"You didn't have your walkie. I came to get you!" I dragged her to a crouching position when I heard the first branch break. I didn't want it to hit us.

"You stupid, brave, but mostly stupid boy!" She took my hand, pulling me back to my feet. "Come on; the cellar will be closed now; we need to get to the shelter!" our feet were hard to control as the wind kept sweeping them out from under us. The sky was dark with a green tint to it. There was debris in the air that covered our heads so that they wouldn't hit us. We needed our combined strength to open the door, but we got inside. "Good news, tornadoes move fast, so we shouldn't be trapped here too long; just stay away from the windows. The grey house is low and sunk into the ground, so we should be fine theoretically." Sage got as much distance as me without getting too close to the windows. A tree from outside came crashing down on us as if on cue, and the glass wall shattered. There were three more thuds from overhead, but the ceiling held. Sage was right beside me instantly, gripping my hand as hard as I was gripping hers. The wind was loud in the room even after we closed the break room's interior door, not wanting any glass shards to take to the air and get us from the glass wall.

"Sage, I'm sorry if I upset you; when I asked about your magic, I just thought..." As if my hand shocked her, she released me. "Listen, I don't want to hurt you. I didn't even alert the hunters to your being here."

"I wondered why they never came to collect my brother and me." She hugged herself, eyeing me, looking for a lie in what I said.

"Collect you? I thought they would only do anything if they discovered misdeeds?"

"How do you think they discover misdeeds?" She backed a step further. "They interrogate you, but hunters can't kill us, so they have to come up with more creative threats, and sometimes, when they don't get the answers, they want they need to deliver on those threats. I can't let my brother go through that."

"As in, you have gone through that in the past?"

"When I was fifteen, a witch called me in when we played soccer against each other in a summer soccer program."

"Tell me." Simple words, but she knew what I meant.

"I don't talk about it." She tried to turn away, but I took her face.

"Tell me." Her eyes were locked on mine.

"I have never used my magic to hurt anyone. In fact, I barely know how to use magic. I'm a product of my mother's many affairs, Hyacinth Arden." I internally cringed. Hyacinth Arden is one of the most ruthless warlocks around. She has four legitimate children who follow in her footsteps, cursing humans, destroying fey lands, and killing. "My father is mortal, but he has some magic in his blood to have my brother and me. At first, when I showed magic, my mother was going to train me in the ways of warlocks, but when I was ten, she saw my inclination to help things grow. She left, and nine months later, she dropped my brother on the doorstep. She thought that a second try might produce a better-skilled child. She named us."

"Hyacinth's children are named Aspen, Scarlet, Jewels, and Rose," I said.

"Sage and Aster, too. She also gave us the last name Arden, so we weren't invited to go to your witch school because Ardens are warlocks. I thought I could be better, prove that my name doesn't define me, but when this girl reported me, they came. I was grabbed in the night. My brother was only five and not showing any magic yet, so they left him alone. They took me to this room and asked me what I was doing. They wanted me to admit to some crime even though I didn't commit one." She said. I don't know why, but I let her go and backed away. That is what Jeremy, Amelia, and I were arguing about. Still, we never even considered what the hunters would do to Sage.

"Sage I," my words failed me. Was this some kind of trick? It had to be that she was a warlock; they were the bad guys, not the witches.

"I refused to admit to crimes I didn't commit, so they tortured me. There is this thing where they stab you with whatever; if you're lucky, it is sharp to go through easier. For me, it was a pipe. Then they leave it in you as you are chained to the ceiling so you can't hold still. With every move, I could feel it in there. Once your body starts to heal around the pipe, they rip it out of you to open the wound. Then, when you start to heal, they stab it back in. It is a cycle. You get delirious from blood loss, and the pain comes and goes at weird times, mostly when they are doing it or when you move. I'll never forget the feeling of that pipe as I swung from my chains. My hands felt numb after I hung with the chains cut into my wrist, and my hands felt like a cold-sucking void. After two weeks of denying them a confession, they arrested me for resisting the authority of the hunt, and I was sentenced to a month in the storm cages." Sage looked like she was going to cry.

"But we are supposed to be the good guys," I said, folding her into my arms. I didn't know why I did it and didn't think it made it any better, but I didn't know what else to do.

"The world isn't black and white, Reed, no matter how simple that would make it, and even the good guys can do bad things if they think it is for the greater good." It shattered. The last strand of normalcy I had been clinging to, Reed was right. Warlocks were terrible, but Amelia was right, too. They have souls and a choice. And now, so did I.

"Sage, I'm sorry. You don't need to worry. I won't call the hunters, and I would never." She didn't hold me back, and this unnatural cold seeped into the room right before she spoke.

"Reed, you don't understand. Storm cages don't need to use our fears against you; it is where fears are created." She didn't tell me what it was like at the storm cages, and after what she described with the torture, I don't think I can imagine the horror that exists there. She cried, and we didn't speak again as the tornado passed overhead.

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Hello beautiful humans,

So what to unpack in this chapter? Tornado safety is a thing; these guys weren't in the safest place, but a low sunk-in building made of solid material was the best my witches could do now.

Also, we mentioned hunters and storm cages

hunters had been discussed before, and I think I said they were there. If I'm wrong, let me know.

Storm cages are the magical world's prison, and it is bad news no one wants to go there, but since the hunters only can kill those without souls, they have to have something to do with their other baddies.

So mote it be