My aura was a torrent, blue and teal both flowing together like white water rapids. It carried more power than I knew I had, and it raced around the old home like a storm. My chant turned into a scream, and my voice filled the air around me like blood in water. The world was quiet chaos and polite violence as amiable shopkeepers and kindly neighbors tried to force their way past me. All to destroy the life of a man, still a child in their eyes and disobedient in his perception of a reality they hated.

  I was going to send them home.

  ‘Undone’ could erase action for up to an hour. I’d used it many times, on small areas. One person at a time. A window or a disturbed grave. That was supposed to be my limit. But I’d gathered power with every soul I’d helped. Not just with grand actions, but with long moments and clumsy conversations. I’d grown stronger, and I’d done it so I could protect men like Vel from the expectations of the cruel.

  I enveloped the entire mob with my aura. The violent and the eager and reluctant together. I stepped to the side as the man I’d been speaking to left the way he’d come, magic guiding his boots through the same steps he’d taken in his bid to hurt me. He stood still in the doorway, knocking on air and shouting at nothing as the crowd waited behind him. Still, I poured aura out like it was my own soul, and I could spend it to save Vel.

  After a few breaths, the entire crowd began to back away. The man at the door backed into them, and the crowd behind the house finally appeared. In their reverse march, they looked quite foolish. What had once been a dangerous and threatening parade was turned into an oddity as the group retreated without turning their backs. I wouldn’t kill them. I couldn’t. But I could send them away. I could steal from them the memory of why they’d come, like they wanted to take Vel’s agency.

  I’d perhaps have felt like a stern mother, sending misbehaving children to their rooms. I may have, if using so much aura didn’t feel like opening a hole in my chest and pouring myself out. I’d never cast the spell over such a wide area and over so many people at once. As I did so, black bit at the edges of my vision like hungry dogs, snapping toward the center and retreating, making progress a little at a time. The further from the home they got, the harder it was to maintain the spell. It was fortunate that ‘Undone’ reversed time more quickly than its original flow, as a failure of the spell would still grant us the chance to once again escape.

  I would have followed them if I could have. Just to ensure I sent them the full hour back, before they knew to chase me, and when they were as far from Vel as possible. But the further back they went, the more they would go in different directions. I couldn’t follow all of them, and I could let myself get further away from Vel than any of them. None of that mattered as much as the stone my aura was hitting, however.

  Not a literal stone, but something I was failing to affect. This worried me more than any of the mob I was sending away. Something was fighting me. Resisting my aura. I thought it was just a failure of my reach, at first, but the longer I chanted, the more certain I was. Something was pushing back. Its aura was meeting mine, and it was pushing back.

  My tome magic wasn’t easy to escape. Time is a fact of reality and not one that can be denied. I could change how it flowed, or if it flowed at all, but I could not step outside of it, and I certainly couldn’t simply ignore it. For those without time magic, living in whatever direction it was flowing was an immovable reality. My spells, once a person was caught in them, could be escaped as easily as the moment their victim lived in.

  There was only one way to escape them, and that was to prevent the aura from touching you in the first place. This could be done only by fleeing, stopping me from casting, or meeting my aura with your own. Filling the space around you with magic so my time magic couldn’t reach you. That was the only explanation for the resistance I was feeling. Another mage.

  Luke was there, and he wasn’t being sent away by my spell.

  A chill ran down my spine at the thought. He was dangerous. I didn’t know how he affected my mind, but if he managed it again, I wasn’t sure I could end the loop before the obedient part of me ensured it was permanent and persistent. I wanted to run the moment I realized he was there. But I wouldn’t. Because I’d promised to protect Vel.

  I had to release the mass spell. It was my only option. Luke was fighting back, but it was a close fight. With all of my aura focused on him, I could win. I could push him away from Vel, and we could get to safety. The rest of his cult wasn’t as far away as I’d have liked, but I had no choice. I didn’t know where Vel was, but I could feel Luke, if only as a space my aura couldn’t reach. He was dangerously close. Almost too close to still be outside the home. I let my aura drop all at once, turned on my heel, and ran back inside.

  “Mars, hurry!” Margaret yelled, and I pushed myself harder. Her voice held a desperation like I hadn’t heard since the night she died. It was only a few steps, but each one felt too heavy to bear. When I found myself back inside, I was greeted by three faces. Vel looked like some unsettling mix of panicked and resigned, while Margaret looked angry and helpless. Luke simply looked disappointed. Water dripped from dry hands, leaving an ever-growing puddle at his feet as he shifted his focus to Mars.

  “So that’s what you look like,” he spat. “A demon of Luna, sent to lead my children astray. Interesting. I didn’t expect you to know shame—when I heard what you’d done. But you seem to wear it like a shawl. I can see it just looking at you. The deep shame flowing through your veins like blood. Perhaps there is hope for you after all.” My hands trembled with fatigue and fear, but I clenched them into fists and set my jaw.

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  “I do,” I agreed. “I carry shame with me everywhere I go. And I don’t know if there is hope for me. But I’m going to try anyway.” Aura fell off my every movement like dust, and my grimoire glowed blue with it as I spoke. “I need you to move. I am taking Vel to safety.” Again, I couldn’t trust the confidence I was feeling at that moment. But I needed it regardless. Luke sighed.

  “Kill him, Mars. You have to kill him if you want to save anyone,” Margaret insisted. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps I was being selfish and stubborn. But I had tried to send the innocent to their death before. And so had she. Neither of us could be trusted to make that judgment—and I couldn’t live with it. But I could fight. With Vel there, counting on my protection, I could finally fight instead of running away.

  “You can’t deny Aethon’s grace. You are only displaying disobedience to him the same way Vel here is to his father,” Luke insisted.

  “Y–You’re insane,” Vel whispered.

  “No, I am faithful,” Luke sighed. He then held up a hand, and water surrounded by teal aura poured from it like a raging fall. I wouldn’t let him hurt Vel, so I threw my own aura in the way. I used a spell to simply slow it, providing Vel the chance to run behind me as the water crawled through the air. Vel didn’t waste the opportunity and ran behind me as soon as he realized he had time to. We had to get out of there before the rest of the cult returned. But Luke was relentless, pouring water in every direction and flooding the home up to our ankles. All the while, new spells were launched at us as Vel cowered behind me. I caught each, slowing what I could and reversing anything too large. I grabbed Vel’s hand and pulled him out the front door, running into the usually quiet streets. Luke was right behind us, and I could already see his crowd of supporters approaching from the direction I’d sent them.

  “You can’t run forever. This isn’t going to work, Mars,” Margaret insisted. “And you can’t fight back properly while protecting the kid. Not if this is how you are fighting.” I looked around. I threw aura behind me, which collided with water, stopping it and creating a wall. Just like Margaret, Luke seemed to control two types of magic. A basic focus and another that only existed in fae tales. Water and control. I didn’t know how many of the approaching mob were under control and how many were there willingly. But Margaret was right. I used the wall of frozen time to buy us a few moments. I turned and put my hands on Vel’s shoulders.

  “You have to run. You have to run alone, and let me hold them off. I’ll find you. I have a way to find you. But you have to go ahead of me,” I begged. Vel looked me in the eyes, then at the wall of violent water behind me.

  “Thank you,” was all he could say before he turned, pulled his shoulders away, and ran. I took a deep breath, my heart rate spiking as he stumbled and scrambled to his feet before continuing his flight. I didn’t know if I was up for this fight. In fact, I knew I wasn’t. But if Beddenmor had taught me anything, it was that it didn’t matter. I was going to fight whether I had the stomach for it or not. I couldn’t hold up the wall for much longer anyway. Not after all the aura I’d spent sending the mob away. So, once Vel was out of sight, I let it fall. I narrowed my aura, protecting myself with a wedge to reverse the flow of the water, which might hit me, and let the rest of the wave flood the road around and behind me.

  Luke easily threw the returning water to the side, glaring at me as he approached. “You can’t stop us. We are agents of Aethon, and we will restore his truth in this city. Step aside, and let us bring the boy back to his father,” Luke insisted. I thought of that day I’d spent in his underground temple, punishing all those he detested for their disobedience. I thought of the way Vel’s father ignored his wife’s death, easily living his life as if there had been no loss. I pictured the corpses, ferried to Luke’s sermons to be treated as liars even in their own deaths, which implied the world Luke believed in wasn’t real. Even if I surrendered, Vel wouldn’t be going back to his father. Luke didn’t spare those he thought of as disobedient. He punished them. He might not have the slow cruelty permitted by time magic this time, but that didn’t mean he had no cruelty left.

  I couldn’t kill him. I just couldn’t. But I couldn’t leave him thinking it was safe to keep chasing Vel, either. So I ignored him, gathering as much aura as I could instead. Behind him, I was able to see the faces of his mob again. They were getting closer. Luke saw that I wouldn’t obey, so he scowled and redoubled his efforts with his water. Streams with enough pressure to cut stone fired from his fingertips, familiar teal aura wrapping around each. I was tired. I was so tired. But I’d begged Vel to come with me. I’d begged. So even as every muscle in my body screamed, I pushed more aura than I had out, and I caught all of it. Every bit of water he fired at me. I sent it back to him, deliberately slowing it. Gathering it. Closing around him with my aura from all sides and stopping time outside of him so the water would have nowhere to go. I trapped him in a bubble of his own violent magic, and I let the water suffocate him.

  Tears ran down my face, and I tasted blood as I bit into my lip. But I held him there until I could feel his aura stop fighting back. Only when it vanished like a snapping twig did I relent and let the water collapse onto the cobblestone. Luke lay in the center of it, breathing faintly, but clearly unconscious, and I was reminded that I had once been a master mage. I panted, and I gasped for breath as I realized I’d been holding it. But I hadn’t run, and I’d won. I looked up and saw the mob running now. My grandmother’s eyes glared at me again, no longer amused at my ineptitude. Furious at my competence instead, as she always had been when I dared to show it. I looked at Luke one last time. He was breathing. He was definitely breathing. I had managed it, and I hadn’t hurt anyone. I was right. I could save Vel, and I didn’t have to kill to do it. Margaret said nothing as I stood, and I ran after Vel.

  I caught up to him far too quickly.

  It only took a few seconds. I could hear the shouting of the mob behind me even as I found him, collapsed in the mud. He was drenched and face down in a puddle of water. He’d been too far for Luke to get to him. I didn’t understand it. But Vel was dead.

  Margaret was right.

  End of the First Day