"The fucking bastards!" cursed Pietro when they arrived home.

"Please," said Uma as she shuffled to the kitchen table and folded into a seat.

"Well, they are." Pietro rested against the back of the door, gazed up at the ceiling and squeezed his eyes shut. "Sucking us dry. How bloody much do they think they can take from us before we break?"

Rina walked from the small entranceway to the corner that served as their kitchen, took the flint from the stove, and began to strike it. "It's for our own good," she said between pants. The kindling caught after a couple of strokes, and she blew, collected the half-full pot of stew and set it to heat. "After what we're capable of. You should remember that before you send the lot of us to the scaffold or the Devastation."

A grunt from Pietro. "We? What did we do? I tell you what I did. Ever since I was a boy, I've been in the fields, attempting to breed with a—" he glared at Uma a moment, who flinched as if struck, then gulped and looked away, her face hidden by lank white hair "—and swallowing their stories about what I should be grateful for. It's sure as hell not working for me." He shook his head. "How do we even know the taint is bad, huh? How?"

"Stop!" Uma fisted her hands into her hair. "Will you just stop? I can't take it any more!"

He stalked toward his wife, his broad frame looming over her reedlike form. "Go to the devil, woman."

"Enough, both of you!" The fire flared with Rina's words, and the smell of burning broth reached her nostrils. Neither her aunt or uncle noticed, nor did they note her stomping about the kitchen, finding bowls, spoons, a loaf of bread and butter.

Pietro ambled to the sideboard, fumbled for the latch and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a clay cup. The liquid sloshed under his clumsy hands, splotches spilling over the brim. "Perhaps she got it right, my sister." He drank, back against the white-washed wall, and slid down to the floorboards, elbows on knees, forehead resting in the palm of his empty hand. When he looked up, he'd aged a decade. "She didn't live this life of lies overlong."

The first bowl thunked on wood. "We're alive, uncle, with a roof over our heads, food, medicine, an education, and most importantly, a purpose. So get up and fucking eat."

Grunting, Pietro rolled his eyes—but not before Rina saw a twinkle in them—and took another gulp before he uncrossed himself from the ground and slunk to the table.

"You've got a spark in you, girl. And intelligence. So tell me, what do they have that makes them better than us?" His chin tilted north, to the rising hill where the Euran merchants lived in their spacious townhouses. Higher still, where nobles lounged in their manses. Then to the citadel keep perched at the crest, home to Media and her Magisterium officials. "We may—or may not—have the taint, but regardless of what they say, they keep us as slaves. I know it in my heart. In my bones. This is wrong." A glaze settled over Pietro's eyes. "I don't need the fiction of some magister's imagination to dictate my life, Rina. Nor do you."

Rina's slapped the tabletop with her palms. "I said enough!" The candles sputtered out, and darkness enveloped them like a dark tide, but for the light of the two moons streaking through the paned windows.

Her uncle inspected the candle between them, head cocked, a bird considering a grub. The wick flickered back to life. Uma shivered. But the silence continued, and nobody said a word as they ate, Rina and her aunt gobbling their food like seagulls, Pietro eating at a sedate pace. Done, Uma wavered in her chair, spent, but unwilling to leave.

"You're quieter than usual tonight, niece—even after forsaking yourself." Pietro's amber eyes softened in that way that said, I'm sorry.

Shifting in her seat, Rina stared at the stray crumbs remaining on the breadboard and said, "They still want me to go to Nebia, uncle. After all this time. Media told me Mai wants to change things for us. That I could be part of his plans."

Ice returned to Pietro's eyes. "So why don't you go? You're besotted enough with the brute."

She met the glare. "Because I'm scared of what you'll do if I leave."

Pietro opened his mouth to speak but clamped it at a rap on the front door.

"Visitors, after a forsaking?" asked Uma, tucking her hair behind her ear and shaking her head. "Please tell me this is a joke."

Not bothering to answer his wife, Pietro groaned as he lifted himself from the bench and opened the heavy door, a rush of icy air filling the room. A small group of Denese men and woman, Isaac and Iskra included, huddled on the threshold. The rapid waving of stumped fingers ushered them into the kitchen.

Without a word, Uma stepped into the living quarter, straightening the cushions on the chairs and adjusting the position of her prize possession—a small dragon carved from obsidian with Carnelian crystal eyes. She didn't light the fire or say goodnight when she left the gathering—now nursing cups of whisky—just glanced between them and the statue and ignored the door when it knocked again. Instead, she ascended the stairs with near-silent footsteps.

Rina decided to follow Uma rather than allow her presence to be taken as acceptance. The selfish bastards could go to hell. The wood flexed beneath her knitted socks as she made her way up to her attic room on the third floor of the narrow building, muttering to herself. Frost crusted the edges of the window, and pale moonbeams illuminated the outlines of her bed, wardrobe and dresser.

She sat on the edge of her mattress, mind whirling, and stomach clenching. Today she had once again denied the high magister and her emperor. "And you think you can tell Pietro what is right and wrong," she hissed under her breath.

Sleep came on swift wings, despite the cold and anxiety. So did the dream.

The same dream she'd had so many times. Of a verdant land of forests, and rivers and lakes. An immense fortress overlooking the sea, shouldered between two arms of limestone cliffs that reached out to a turquoise bay filled with ships. Within its embrace, a field roiled with thousands of men in indigo and maroon armour. High above hovered a circle of blue-robed mages, one at their centre, surrounded by swirling lights that seemed to come from the lightning-lit sky, the browning foliage and the stumbling armies. As they always did, the mages fell one-by-one until two remained. A burst of energy shot out from the central mage as he opened his mouth to speak, and his companion incinerated into fragments of light. The mage clawed his fingers, face contorted with misery and rage. Then he plummeted to the ground on a primal scream, the blast sending shockwaves inland, and a wave out across the ocean, toward a small armada on the far horizon.

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A/N: Thanks so much for reading, guys, I can't thank you enough. Please let me know your thoughts. If you enjoyed the chapter, please hit that star button! 

Banner art 'Fantasy Battle' by 88grzes on DeviantArt

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Dedicated to TillyB789 for being one of my first Wattpad friends. Thank you for all your support and encouragement—and for many dreamy hours of reading and imagining that I am Lizzy (totally fangirling on Daniel).