"So you're saying it wasn't a Hannan?" Seiren's brow knitted. Rowan managed a small smile.

"I don't know. The whole circumstances are strange, if you think about it."

"I spent six years trying very hard not to. All these bloody--"

"Flashbacks. I know. I remember. That's why I didn't want to tell you about it."

Ah. Back when he'd correctly guessed why she failed at burst magic, he'd also correctly guessed it was Madeleine in the necklace. Even though Seiren made a point of not telling him anything.

"Well, go on then," said Seiren in a low voice.

"With what?"

"Tell me why Loren died!"

"Well..." He hesitated. "I don't think you killed Kristen Harred. I don't think there was a Hannan there, that day, but Kristen Harred died. I saw her body in the casket at her funeral."

"Great, that's one thing we have in common."

Rowan didn't rise to her second bait either.

"I sent Loren to your old house in Finberry to see if she could scope out any clues. The kings' mages took over her investigation back then and we were just told the Hannan was caught and executed, but there was no trial, no body, no trails. It was all very hush-hush, not unlike all these mage attacks recently."

"So you sent her to die."

Rowan flinched.

That was a horrid thing to say, Seiren Harred, and you know it.

Seiren pressed her lips together, avoiding Rowan's gaze. He sighed heavily.

"I did. It's my fault she's dead."

"Don't say that!" she burst out, leaping to her feet. "You're meant to be angry! Tell me off for having a bad tongue and a mouth full of crap. Shout at me. Do something!"

To her frustration, Rowan merely gave a small, sad smile. "But you're right."

"You're an idiot."

Your insight is staggering, Seiren.

"Loren found out something she wasn't supposed to. I can't help but feel they're hiding something. I guess we'll never find out." Rowan looked so fatalistic Seiren wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him. "But... maybe it's the hopeful sliver of me left. I can't help but feel maybe, maybe, her death wasn't in vain. Maybe she could have passed something onto us, in only a way Loren could."

"'She's alive, Ker.'"

"I'm sorry?"

"Loren's last words to me before she -- before it happened." Seiren squeezed her eyes together to shut out the images that spun before her and they eased away. "She pushed chaos magic back at me, then said, 'She's alive. Ker.' and stopped talking."

"Ker. Ker. Ker."

"No, not drawn out like that. More like a kuh sound."

Rowan stared at her. "Kristen? Could she have meant Kristen?"

He might as well have slapped her with a fish.

"My mother is dead, Rowan. Two hundred people including you attended her funeral and saw her casket. They saw her dead body."

"Someone killed Loren after I sent her to Finberry to investigate. In Benover. It wouldn't be just any petty crime and Loren has no natural enemies."

"Is nobody looking into her cause of death?"

"Kommora headed the investigation, but the king's mages took that away from her. They said it's still ongoing."

"They said," Seiren said in a flat voice.

"You won't know this, but with all the rogue mages attacking state mages over the past few months, every single investigation has been in the king's mages' control. Anything we instigate, they will take over."

"You're awfully suspicious of the king's mages, Rowan." Seiren shifted. Her bottom was getting cold against the stone cave floor.

"Aren't you?"

"I can't..." She bit her lip. "The order. Domic Butterworth said the order to exterminate Acrise came from King Pollin, but the king's mages must have approved, too. They're his advisors. They would have tried to persuade him otherwise if they disagreed."

"So it would seem they agreed with his actions."

"But why?" Seiren racked her brains. She'd seldom seen King Pollin, merely read about him in the newspapers and with hearsay. Her seniors at King's Academy of Magic used to say he attended graduation and inauguration ceremonies but he'd ceased for at least five years, appearing only once a year to make a national announcement on Karma day since. A young girl's words came to her, from a long time ago. "He wanted to win the war and increase the land, didn't he?"

"Who told you that?"

"A little girl in Danaway. If we win -- and we should, with our mages -- then we have Hanna and an extra army. Moakai and Teirrin won't want to fight us, not with our firepower. I don't understand it."

"We don't need to understand it. There is a lot going on in the background we aren't privy to and we will never be."

They were silent for a while.

But Mother could be alive, said Madeleine in wonderment.

They saw her dead, but...

You saw me dead. Why couldn't she be alive through some other manner?

Listen to you. You were always her favourite. You were always so good.

It's called hope, Seiren. Try it.

"Mother might be alive," Seiren repeated. Saying it out loud sounded alien to her ears. It was not possible. "That body is fake? But two hundred mages attended her funeral. How could she have fooled them all? And... it's been six years. She would have said something to me. She wouldn't have left me to go through King's alone."

"Maybe she couldn't."

"You think she's held against her will?"

"Don't get too excited, Seiren."

She hadn't realised her heart had been racing and she'd sat forward, hands gripping the front of her cloak.

"It might be a worse situation than it all sounds."

"Mother is alive, Rowan. You don't understand what that means to me -- to us. We had nobody left in the world, and now, suddenly, it might not be the case."

"I just worry..." He heaved a sigh. "I just worry we're being played. This event with Acrise, the investigations into mage attacks being so hush-hush -- we're not seeing the bigger picture because someone more powerful is obscuring it."

"You think the king's mages have something else planned?"

"They must have. Pulling this stunt? And if Kristen Harred is alive, there is no way they wouldn't know about it. If she was dead, they wouldn't have just sat around, either. Killing a state mage is a crime enough as it is, let alone a king's mage. It would have triggered a war against Hanna, and yet nothing happened."

Mother is alive and the king's mages know about this. You know what this means? Madeleine sounded excited.

That I have to find Butterworth and beat the answers out of him?

"I guess we'll find out more once we meet up with Mage Haigh when we return to Benover."

Seiren couldn't help but have a bad feeling about their return to Benover. Butterworth had been quite clear the massacre in Acrise at the hand of state mages as decreed by King Pollin should not be released to the public. Seiren and Rowan's blatant disregard of the orders was evidence enough they had no intention to obey the secrecy, either. Loren held information that her killer didn't want spread.

Seiren straightened up and cracked her stiff spine and shoulders.

"We should get going if we're going to get to Ebbsfleet."

Rowan nodded. He waited till Seiren had also left the cave before collapsing it into the snow again with burst magic. To the left, whence they came, was a cluster of white-barked trees. To the right, the snow-drowned area stretched as far as the eye could see, broken occasionally by further clusters of them.

"How did Loren learn chaos magic?"

"Hmm?" Rowan studied the skies with a frown. "Oh. I don't know. She developed it."

"Everyone says that, but what does it mean?"

"She woke up one day and knew how to work this new magic."

"Very funny."

"That's what she told me. The day she turned eighteen, she came crashing into my room and started talking crazy talk about healing magic. I thought she was delirious. She wasn't. She spent the last two years in King's developing it and applied for funding about a year, fifteen months back to further her research. But she's been so busy, so successful in Bicknor that we haven't had much talk about her magic." He squinted at the sky. "We have maybe another four hours of sunlight left. If we continue--"

"In a hurry?"

Seiren froze -- and not from the cold. She spun around, her hand shoved into her pocket of runes. She hadn't seen him coming. Domic Butterworth stood with a hood over his head and most of his scarred features hidden behind a high collar, but there was no mistaking that silky deep voice or the menacing air he emanated. Beside her, Rowan also stiffened.

"Can we help--"

"What the hell do you want?" Seiren spat.

She'd expected a snide response. To her surprise, his single visible eye narrowed.

"You think you're being clever, Seiren Nithercott?" he said through gritted teeth. The heat came off him in waves. She almost expected the snow around to melt and vaporise. "You have no idea what you're doing, rejecting the king's orders, diving straight into battle, walking in arctic conditions... you're on quite the warpath to get your silly, wretched self killed, aren't you?"

She stared at him. She wondered what she'd done to enrage him so. "I've no idea what you're talking about."

"It seems your idiocy has not managed to wean you off the breeding pool yet."

She flushed, casting a quick eye at Rowan.

What the hell is Butterworth talking about?! she thought, taken aback.

Beats me. Seems like he doesn't want you to die?

Oh, he's so considerate. I'm thrilled.

"Thanks?"

He reached out a hand. "Come with me now, Nithercott."

"I beg your pardon?" She ogled.

"I will not repeat myself, even if you are a witless simpleton. Come."

Didn't he just repeat himself? said Madeleine.

"I'd rather die."

His eyelid twitched. "I can arrange that."

You don't need your left arm, do you? His threat in that underground corridor came back, sending shivers down Seiren's spine.

Seiren swallowed and stepped towards him. A hand clamped over her right wrist, warm and protective. She turned. Rowan glared at Butterworth, looking as if he wanted to punch the king's mage.

"She's not going anywhere with you, Butterworth," he said with barely-concealed animosity. "You are no mage, viewing our own countrymen as nothing more than fodder for war."

Butterworth surveyed Rowan with what could only be described as disdain, obvious despite the majority of his face being obscured.

"You are rebelling against a king's mage? Need I remind you how many of your friends are under our control in Benover?"

Rowan hesitated, and then clenched his jaw. "We can both walk away from this, Butterworth."

"You seem to misunderstand me, Woodbead." Butterworth's voice was soft, dangerous. He raised his right hand. The pulse of flash magic emitted small trails of steam from the water vapour in the air. "Nithercott needs to be alive for her to have any value. You, on the other hand, do not. Disappear."

He blinked with deliberation. Rowan clapped his hand at once, throwing up another stone wall in front of him and Seiren, its surface bumpy and uneven with dirt still tumbling off it. The jet of steam hit the wall with a hiss. The snow around them bubbled and melted, revealing the crystallised, dead grass and frozen ground beneath. The water shot into the air, becoming a weapon for Butterworth.

Can't Rowan just pull the water back? Butterworth's flash and burst magics both use elemental bases! thought Seiren desperately. In combat, her runes were useless. She dug out a red rune and, peeking from the side of the wall, angled it before snapping her fingers. The burst of energy erupted from her paper with a bright crimson glow.

Not with how flash magic uses almost pure explosive energy, said Madeleine.

Almost lazily, Butterworth waved his hand and a blast of energy hit the torrent of red rune magic, cancelling it in mid-air. Seiren's mouth fell open. He'd cancelled it with energy of the same magnitude, but with flash magic. It was impossible.

Butterworth, not even glancing in her direction, threw his hand out and blinked. Water coalesced from the ground and shot up in a tidal wave, racing towards Rowan. At the last minute, they converged, becoming a spiralling torrent that slammed into Rowan's rock shield, sending a shudder that dissipated across the ground beneath it. The wall held. Rowan clapped his hands and threw out a rush of flames over the top. Without effort, Butterworth's vapour condensed to water and caught it an impenetrable wall.

There was a hiss. Steam seeped out of Rowan's wall and with a crack that sent a shudder through the ground, the wall shattered into pieces, throwing shrapnel everywhere. Dust flew into the air. Seiren coughed, her eyes stinging even though she'd only just been nipped by the blast. Snow seeped through her sleeves, numbing her hands. She snatched at paper and chalk that had tumbled out of the pocket of her cloak, but fumbled and they fell through her fingers.

Butterworth strode towards the huddled, coughing Rowan, who had been knocked over by the centre of the blast.

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