Young Writers Society

A tiny bead of water rolled off the tip of a clock that sat atop a dusty bookshelf. This bookshelf overlooked an opulent study whose fine furniture was heavily disguised underneath a thick layer of rumpled parchment, haphazard piles of scrolls, and candle wax and ink stains. Wedged between a large mahogany writing desk and a large glass cabinet filled with jumbled trinkets was a simple oak table.

A wingless angel bent over this smaller desk, her eyes flicking down a trailing piece of parchment.

The water droplet splashed into the lower basin just as Cassia Lightweaver signed this last approval with a scribble rather than a flourish, rolling it into a scroll and stuffing it into a tube she’d hand to a messenger later. Puffing her cheeks and blowing the air out in a sigh, she tipped her chair back and looked up at the water clock. Its upper basin was about two-thirds full.

That meant Cassia had about twenty minutes to commit mild blasphemy.

Well, there wasn’t much point waiting. She’d set up the components a full three days ago. They should have gathered enough power to fuel a small divining spell by now.

She pushed her chair back and crouched at the edge of a large circle painted in gold trim on the floor. Protection runes were emblazoned along the inside of the circle, which was fifty years old and growing stronger every year. Her mother had always told her that whatever mistakes she made when practicing new spells, this circle would protect her. So far, it had.

What she wasn’t so sure about was the ring of thin wooden dominoes she had set up to spiral into the circle. Telling the future drew on the essence of Consequence, since the future was really just action after action crashing into each other. After setting them up like this, then leaving them for three days with all that potential for just one to fall over and the rest to cascade after it, they should be practically full of Consequence magic.

The key word being should, because this ritual was highly experimental. None of her mother’s books had any divination rituals in it, though Cassia knew they were a magic humans had once used. The angels had just never bothered to write them down, because why carry out a long and difficult ritual to decide what to do about the future when you could just listen for a feeling in your mote, or if it was really important, your Archpriest could just ask Mithrinde?

Unfortunately, the’ Archpriest wasn’t available right now. And Cassia didn’t have a mote to listen to. Hence the mild blasphemy.

She stepped carefully into the center of the circle, narrowly avoiding brushing the closest domino and knocking it over. She knelt in the wide inner circle, traced the runes, and muttered a few words, drawing the Endurance magic up and over herself. The circle was strong, and so it would protect her. The belief made the magic.

Cassia glanced out the window, but it was late afternoon, and the moon wasn’t visible. “I’m sorry, Mithrinde,” she whispered. Then she laid a finger on the domino and started the ritual.

Some magic was supposed to be easy. Mithrinde’s magic, given to her angels in the form of mote when they passed from child to youth, was meant to be as natural as breathing. Wings, light, illusion — these were Mithrinde’s gifts to her godformed.

Without a mote, Cassia didn’t have that kind of magic. But as the Grand Mage of Mithrinden, daughter of the former Grand Mage, she had been taught a harder, older magic, the same as learning to read and write. The magic humans used because they had no motes of their own. This magic was drawn from the very objects around you, partitioned into seven distinct Essences that reflected the object’s nature.

So as Cassia chanted words under her breath to shape the magic and sharpen her focus on her question, she flicked the first domino over, and they fell, she drained their pooled Essence with a single pull.

The spell caught like a fuse against a candle. Cassia’s vision faded as her consciousness hurtled into darkness. The darkness resolved into dozens and dozens of thin white lines crossing each other in a spider’s web. Cassia’s breath caught as she recognized the vision — somehow the spell had drawn her consciousness into the Empyrean, source of all magic — but then an enormous knot of white lines rose before her, a twisted tangled snag so big it swallowed up Cassia’s entire vision, and still she could not see it all.

Cassia didn’t have limbs or eyes in this strange state, but she strained to see the scenes flicking across the knot. This had to be the future she was searching for.

Then the magic ran out, and Cassia’s consciousness snapped back abruptly to her body, the bright light from the window flooding across her eyelids. She sat back on her heels and muttered something under her breath she’d never say where her father could hear.

It should have been enough magic. She’d left them standing for three days, plenty for a smaller spell like this. And the domino set was an antique, so it accumulated magic faster.

That knot… Cassia was pretty sure the future cast by a specific question wasn’t supposed to look that tangled. The human she’d asked had mentioned something about two lines crossing for yes, and running parallel for no.

Before she could figure out what that meant, someone rapped on the study door.

Cassia jumped up with a yelp, barely managing to dismiss the protections clinging to her skin before they held her in place. She seized a blanket draped over the back of her chair and flung it over the fallen dominoes, then kicked the whole mess half-under her desk.

Only then did she go to the door and open it, first just a crack, then wider when she saw who it was. “Oh hey. What’re you doing here?”

Cassia’s twin sister Tilana glanced over her shoulder, then leaned in closer. Like Cassia, she had silver skin, a wide nose, and thick, sculpted eyebrows, but they weren’t identical — Cassia had inherited her father’s strawberry blond hair and freckles, while Tilana had their mother’s curly raven black tresses that she kept in a thick braid down her back. Unlike Cassia, Tilana had a mote of Mithrinde, and a beautiful pair of grey-white wings to go with it.

“Fetching you,” Tilana said, her voice almost a whisper even though they were alone. “Council meeting. Now.”

Terror shot from Cassia’s heart all the way to the tips of her toes. “Dad—?”

Tilana shook her head. “He’s fine. It’s something else, but Haliel won’t say.”

As the Grand Mage of Mithrinden, Cassia held one of ten minister’s seats on the council. The eleventh belonged to their father Micah, Mithrinde’s Archpriest. But he’d been fallen ill a week ago and been bed-bound since, leaving Tilana, as the Archpriest’s heir, to fill his chair and assume his daily duties.

His future was the one Cassia had tried to see with the divination spell. He was often sick at this time of year, but this time… this time was worse. This time the healers weren’t sure if he would have the strength for the Renewal.

And now Haliel, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, was calling an emergency meeting two weeks before the Renewal.

Cassia didn’t have to say it — to any outsider, Tilana’s face would appear perfectly composed, but Cassia could read her sister’s fear, and it mirrored her own. She took her sister’s hand and they walked together down the stairs. Cassia put one arm around Tilana’s shoulders, and a moment later Tilana unfolded one grey-white wing and wrapped it around Cassia’s waist.

They walked in step through the brightly lit halls of the Lunasium, the largest building in Mithrinden. Part library, part palace, and mostly the heart of Mithrinden’s government, it perched at the very top of Mount Selene, overlooking the city’s plunging cliffs and fields far below. But sixteen-year-old Cassia, daughter of Mithrinde’s Archpriest, just called it home.

Lost in anticipation as they reached the door to the Council chamber, Cassia almost didn’t notice the wan figure standing in front of it.

“Dad?” Cassia called out in shock.

Micah was already turning around, a smile beaming across his face at the sight of his daughters. His arms opened wide. Cassia ran and hugged him.

But putting her arms around him shocked Cassia. He’d lost so much weight that his large frame felt gaunt and diminished. His shoulder-length silver hair and well-trimmed beard usually made him look distinguished, but today Cassia mostly saw the deep, wrinkled lines on his face that his strong jawline could not hide.

“Ah, my favorite Grand Mage and Crown Priestess. Come on, go head inside.” Micah said. His rich voice was warm and soothing, but Cassia’s smile was more automatic than reassured

Tilana had joined the hug, but now they broke apart. “Dad, shouldn’t you be in bed?” Tilana asked quietly.

Micah’s eyes lost their smile. He shook his head curtly and ushered both of them inside, even though Tilana wasn’t strictly part of the Council now that Micah was there to fill his seat.

The chamber was spacious and airy, with tall windows that framed the bright blue sky. In the center was a circular table set with twelve hard, high-backed chairs.

Every other Council member was already seated, wings folded neatly behind their backs. Irin, the Minister of Agriculture, greeted Cassia with a nod and a smile.Bartholomew, Minister of Trade, winked. But it was Haliel whose expression sent a thrill of foreboding through Cassia. She looked like someone who did not know anymore whether she was dreaming or awake. Her sleek gown was wrinkled and her hair tilted precariously in a tight bun.

Tilana hesitated for a split second at the edge of the table, uncertain of her place, but recovered quickly and seated herself next to Cassia. They shared a look, and Tilana slid a hand along the underside of the table to hover next to Cassia. Cassia pressed the back of her hand against Tilana’s. It was a subtle gesture Cassia had invented to help Tilana calm her nerves without whatever important person she was negotiating with noticing she was nervous.

Once they were seated, Cassia caught Grand Healer Raphel’s eye and mouthed a silent question.

Raphel, a blond, kind-faced angel with messy hair, shook his head. You’ll see, he mouthed.

At that moment, Micah leaned forward, intent on Haliel. “Minister. Please tell us why we are here.”

“Of course.” Despite her rattled appearance, Haliel’s voice was steady.

“I don’t know how else to say it, Your Grace. The Treatise has been stolen.”

A clamor immediately broke out among the table as each Minister asked a different question or simply exclaimed in shock.

“That’s impossible!” Bartholomew blustered. “We’re guarding day and night—”

“Are you sure—” Raphel said.

“Do you think the drakes —” began Irin.

Cassia sat rigid, their words washing over her without sinking in. Surely she was dreaming. Surely she was just tired from worrying about Micah, and now her brain was making up worst-case scenarios. She was probably back up in her tower, napping accidentally.

Because it wasn’t just that the Treatise kept the peace between the gods and their godformed.

It was that Micah only always got better after the Renewal. She didn’t really know why, just that since he had helped make the Treatise nearly a hundred years ago, he was tied to it, and he always got weaker in the weeks before it was Renewed.

Without the Treatise, there could be no Renewal. What would happen to the Treatise then?

What would happen to her father?

Micah let the ministers talk themselves into silence before nodding again to Haliel.

Haliel cleared her throat. “We don’t know how it was stolen. None of the guards, angel or drake, report seeing anything last night. Our alarm spells weren’t even broken.”

The voices of Cassia’s tutors played in her head, repeating her lessons again and again. The Treatise… guarded day and night… at all times by two Orders together. This year they, Mithrinde’s angels, were guarding it, in an uneasy partnership with Selach’s drakes. The security was layers deep. No one should have been able to get in. But according to Haliel, someone had.

It didn’t seem possible.

“Are you sure the drakes didn’t stage this whole thing?” Irin said what was on everyone’s mind.

“As sure as anyone can be,” Haliel said. “We’ve done trace spells and all the evidence points to a human thief: one of the human mages who was working at the Temple. She got past our security in the dead of night, took the Treatise, and vanished with no one the wiser until morning, and just three weeks before the Renewal. The good news is that we’re certain only we and the drakes know it’s missing.”

Tilana frowned. Cassia didn’t have a knack for politics like her sister, but she could imagine the uproar if the other Orders discovered it was gone. The drakes would pin it solely on the angels if word got out, and everyone would believe it. They were vicious, and Tilana was always complaining how the other Archpriests in the Conclave mostly listened to Ashwythe, the drake’s Archpriestess. More importantly, Selachen lands bordered Mithrinden’s mountains, and the drakes had always seemed to hold a special hatred toward angels.

Micah surveyed the room. “I don’t need to remind you what is at stake. If we do not recover the Treatise within a week of the Renewal, it will break. That cannot happen, not as long as the Treatise is the only thing binding the tenuous peace our people have enjoyed these last hundred years. We must recover it.”

“As usual, the drakes are making demands,” Haliel explained. “They’re willing to keep this news quiet, but they insisted that they search for it alone. After some negotiations, they have agreed to form a team. One drake, one angel, working together to track the Treatise and return it as soon as possible.”

“Only one?” Cassia blurted out before she could think.

Haliel glanced at Micah. “Officially, yes.”

Tilana’s grip tightened under the table, and Cassia caught the insinuation. Of course the drakes would send out spies to recover the Treatise first. Although it was underhanded, Micah probably would too.

“So we meet to discuss whom to send?” Irin asked, lip curling in dictate at the idea of working with drakes.

“No,” Micah said, drawing himself up to his full height, his wings slightly flared. “This task will be difficult and dangerous. Whoever we send must be one of our best mages, with the skills and magic necessary to track and corner a dangerous adversary. More importantly, I, along with the other Archpriests, created the Treatise. It is my responsibility more than any other angel’s.

“All of this is to say that I have already made my decision. I will go myself.”