Rowan had resigned himself to the worst when he arrived at Recca Mirren's office. Smoke trickled from several cracked, blackened gilded windows and military personnel stationed at Iwade swarmed the door, trying to break it down. He'd been there before, as a child, when his father had business with Mage Mirren. He couldn't remember the details, but he recalled the suffocating scent of autumn flowers that weaved the marble staircase and the disregard with which the mage spoke to his father. Rowan might not have been fond of his father, but Mirren's arrogant attitude stuck with him.

And the smoke. It reminded him of the time when his father had brought him to where the soldiers practised. It made him a man, he said. He made Rowan run alongside them. It was the same initiation as every Woodbead in the family, he said. Bolliver did it too when he was ten years old. Bolliver made it to major general. He made Rowan carry similar heavy backpacks and dive amongst artillery.

He also left Rowan in that shed when it went up in flames.

Seeing the thick curtain of demonic smoke sent shudders through his body, but he squared his shoulders. Seiren was in there in the midst of trouble, and Loren wouldn't be around to save her from injuries like last time.

"Move!" he shouted. The soldiers and personnel parted, eyes falling on his rainbow-lined mage's cloak and widening. With a clap of his hand, he threw magic forward. The ground beneath the entrance rumbled before erupting into rubble, shattering the heavy wooden doors. How he wished he had that magic back then. With a split second's hesitation, he swept in, squinting against the billowing thick smoke.

He clapped again and water gushed from his palms, dousing the flames and creating more acrid smoke. Eyes watering, he made towards the two shapes, tensing in case he needed to attack -- and then recognised the dark green uniforms. And then the broad-shouldered, dark-skinned man with the shorn head, in military uniform. He clutched something in his hands.

"Peron!" Rowan said, halting. Loren's aide broke into a toothy grin at the sight of him.

"Mage Woodbead!"

"Oh, thank the runes you're here!" said a female's voice. A smaller figure broke from Peron's side. Felora had soot streaked across her face and in her straw-coloured hair. Bloodied flesh peeked through the uniform sleeves that were slashed to ribbons. She dragged a third figure behind her. Rowan's heart jumped to his throat. Was he too late? First Loren, now her?

"Is that...?" he said in a hoarse voice. Felora shook her head, her expression grim, and lugged the limp figure forward. Messy dark blonde hair strewn over a pinched face. Dried blood crusted at the corner where she'd bit her lip. Halen Ashworth.

Her eyes sank in. If not for the shallow movements in her chest, Rowan would have thought she was dead. The paleness and corpse-like appearance reminded him of Loren like a kick in the gut. But of course the personnel wouldn't recognise it, not having much experience in magic themselves.

"Seiren managed to subdue her somehow." Felora sounded exhausted. "I don't know how."

He had an idea what. It was all he could do not to lose his calm façade in front of Loren's subordinates.

"Ashworth kept us both pretty busy with those knives."

Rowan approached gingerly, raising a hand before him. All at once, the cacophony behind him of the military personnel and soldiers securing the area, dousing the remaining flames, and barking orders faded away. Curled in Peron's arms was Seiren, looking much younger and more vulnerable than her conscious self would ever allow. A small trickle of blood snaked down her cheek from a cut below her left eye. Her blonde hair stuck up in all over like a dandelion flower. Peron had wrapped cloth around her right upper arm; blood seeped through. No. She couldn't possibly have used that magic on Loren. But it must have been her this time round, maybe out of desperation. Rowan withdrew his trembling fingers and tucked them into his armpits.

"Is she hurt?" he said in a curt voice.

"No, just exhausted, I think. Ashworth didn't manage to get too close to her -- luckily, or we'd all be dead by now. That last rune drained her."

"Drained Ashworth more, thank the runes," muttered Felora.

Two muscular personnel appeared beside Rowan. Felora dutifully handed them the magical cuffs and they took the unconscious Ashworth away. Felora wiped sweat from her face, smudging her forehead with more soot.

"I suggest you retire back to your chambers. You've been quite through an ordeal."

"But Seiren..."

"There are still rogue mages after her," said Peron in a low voice.

"I'll look after her." Rowan could see the fatigue in the two personnel. They were barely holding themselves together. To have survived an altercation with a rogue mage was luck beyond measure. "You two get some rest. I have Tylene and Dent."

Seiren's head lolled as Peron handed her over to Dent. Tylene draped her cloak over her, her brow furrowed. They brought her back to the inn and left Rowan in peace after they set Seiren down and Tylene had quickly cleaned her up. Rowan lit a candle with a clap of his hand and took up vigil in a chair.

Seiren remained dead to the world, her eyes swivelling beneath her eyelids. Without that permanent scowl and frown on her face, she looked at least four years younger, especially with her blonde hair sticking up at odd angles against the pillow like a little boy's. A light snore accompanied each breath and her hands and feet twitched every so often, as if she were having a vivid dream.

The helplessness twisted in his gut. With a growl, he slammed a fist onto the table, almost upending the candle, throwing dancing shadows onto the wall. The echoes of his father's dismissive words never truly left, and he was first faced with Loren's unresponsive body and now Seiren's unconsciousness. Loren and his solemn promises those years ago when they'd first enrolled in King's -- that they'd always have each other's backs -- remained as fresh as if they'd only sworn yesterday. And his little jolt of excitement when he request to mentor Seiren Nithercott was granted; he remembered that well. He hadn't known then just how much extra baggage this extraordinary student was going to bring.

But this... it was as if someone wanted to show Rowan just how insignificant he was.

King's mages. Rogue mages. Two parties, both with an agenda. Rogue mages were recruiting, and killing those who did not accept their offers. King's mages silenced those involved in the attacks, which would point towards an alliance, but they had no qualms about publicising the names of the rebels or, indeed, as evident today, sending mages to capture them. And Loren found a secret that one party was willing to kill her over.

He buried his head in his hands and groaned. Kommora's conspiracies were rubbing off on him. Something didn't feel right. The feeling of being a pawn in a bigger game at the mercy of the players irked him.

"What aren't you telling me?" he said aloud to Seiren, who remained motionless. Kommora had warned him. There was something about Seiren Nithercott that she, herself, might not even know, but she was involved -- probably in all this. Given how blunt and naive the girl really is, Rowan was pretty sure she was ignorant of the greater plan.

But then again, so was he.

"-ry."

Rowan's eyes jumped to Seiren's face. She turned her head from side to side, a frown on her face and a grimace turning her lips down at the corners. Her eyes continued to flicker beneath her eyelids.

"Please... I'm so sorry."

A dream. Rowan thought about waking her from it, but she might react even worse to his presence. They had parted on bad enough terms. Loren had mentioned these nightmares -- she called them Seiren's 'emotional baggage'.

"It should have been me. I'm so sorry..."

She must be talking about that night when her family were killed. Rowan frowned. It might shed some light on what happened that night if Seiren were reliving it, although how accurate it was, nobody would know.

"Daddy, please, wake up... oh god... Mother, why? That rune didn't even fire... it didn't work. How could it work?" Her words dwindled to a sobbing mumble. Rowan leaned in, holding his breath. She didn't fire the rune?

Seiren Nithercott didn't fire the rune that night. The rune that killed Kristen Harred. Did someone else? The 'rogue Hannan' that was executed behind the scenes? Someone else entirely?

The weeping quietened over several minutes and she fell silent again, her eyes puffy and tears streaking down the sides of her face to her ears. Rowan eyed the necklace on the bedside table beside Seiren that he'd fished out from her tattered travel cloak. Someone must have carved the rune that bound Madeleine Harred's soul there, even if Seiren never fired the rune that killed her mother. The blood tracing appeared black in the flickering candlelight beneath the crimson surface. It was a beautiful, intricate replica of a complex rune, one that Rowan himself didn't even know. He wouldn't be surprised if it were some sort of forbidden organic magic, powered by Seiren's soul, but he'd never seen it in action; he hoped never to have that opportunity. Even looking at the rune made him uneasy.

With trembling fingers, he touched it gingerly, half-expecting a jolt of electricity.

Nothing. The necklace remained inanimate like it was standard jewellery.

He sighed and leaned back.

"This is why I told you not to dive headlong into trouble," he scolded the unconscious girl, knowing full well she couldn't hear him. "What if you got Peron and Felora killed? What if you compromised mage secrets?"

But it wasn't her fault. She might be stubborn and hotheaded, but she never asked for a task of this gravity. It made him wonder who she upset up above to be assigned a death quest like this, to be sent to capture the very person everyone knew had attacked her only several weeks ago. But her impulsiveness and lack of experience reminded him of Aron.

It was Rowan's fault. Aron hadn't been ready to be a military recruit, and certainly not to accompany Rowan, a freshly-graduated mage, to reoccupy Acrise. Aron's behaviour had all pointed to that: the nervous tics when attending strategy huddles, the hesitation whenever he wielded a runed gun, the pallor when Rowan's team was assigned as back-up to the team storming the Acrise stronghold that was under Hannan control at that point.

He groaned. The images were as clear as if they'd only occurred yesterday, not two years ago. When they'd snuck up on the side entrance as they'd planned, with Rowan laying trap runes all around to ensure no Hannan survivors, there were more Hannan troops marking the site than they'd expected. But instead of altering tactics and switching to Plan B, Aron had stuck with his original role, unable to process any changes in his panic-stricken brain and deaf to the warning signs the rest of his team sent him.

Rowan should have died with them that day. One person. It was all it took. Fifteen people dead. And that was enough ammunition for his father to declare him the shame of the family, first for attending King's to study magic, and then for failing his first military task in such an abysmal way. Rowan sighed, rubbing his temples. He needed Loren's positive words right now. Seiren needed Loren's chaos magic and to wake up from that neverending nightmare. He just needed Loren to be there to support him.

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