Over the next hour, things started coming back to Nemari. She’d sat down to discuss events with her father and uncle, and at some point, one of the servants had slipped something into her tea when they’d refilled the cup. They’d started asking her a lot of questions after that, then she’d passed out.

  What exactly those questions were still eluded her. There was a hazy memory floating in her brain, something about the rest of her team. She thought someone might have asked her for a room number, and she couldn’t remember if she’d told them, but she might have. That was concerning, more so than the rest of it. It meant she’d given away her team’s location to people she’d thought she could trust.

  Was it even my family? Some kind of illusion? Am I actually in my home right now?

  It wasn’t hard to imagine some higher-ranked climber from the Black Hellions accosting her, using soulprints she’d never heard of and God-only-knew what kind of interrogation drugs to get answers out of her, but as far as she could tell, she felt fine now. Besides, there was no reason to keep up the illusion if they’d already gotten what they wanted.

  That didn’t stop Nemari from poking and prodding parts of her room to test the integrity of the hypothetical illusion she might or might not be trapped in. In every way she could measure, it really seemed like her room at the family compound. That left just one possibility that she could conceive of, though, and the idea that her father had betrayed and imprisoned her was too ludicrous to give serious consideration to.

  And yet… Someone drugged me. And the door is locked. The window, too. I am effectively being held prisoner, with none of my gear or supplies.

  About twenty minutes after she’d woken up, Nemari heard a key in the lock at the door. She tensed up, unsure what exactly was about to happen but knowing that she needed to react in some way. Part of her reached for her magic. Another part prepared to charge through whoever opened the door.

  That was when she realized that the after-effects of the drug were still lingering in her system. Trying to pull anima through a soulprint felt impossible at the moment. It was like grasping a fish that just kept slipping through her fingers. She could feel it, but she couldn’t keep hold of it. Given a few minutes, she might have been able to fumble her way to success, but she didn’t have that much time.

  The door swung open to reveal a large, muscle-bound man with a gap-toothed smirk and eyebrows that grew much too close together. He watched her struggle for a second, her confusion plainly visible on her face, then nodded and said, “Yep, Dad said that’d be the case when you woke up. Come on, I’m supposed to take you to see him.”

  Oh, joy. Of course it would be Dant who they sent to fetch me.

  Her animosity with her cousin was well known. Dant, much like his father, was a firm believer in physical enhancement soulprints over magic soulprints. Unlike Uncle Nat, Dant liked to drink, and when he did, he also got incredibly combative about it. Not one to back down from a challenge, Nemari had gotten into more than her fair share of fights with the big lug over the years.

  The fact that he was rank 4, and she’d been rank 0 until a few weeks ago, meant that he’d won a hell of lot more of their arguments than he’d lost, a fact he was always eager to throw in her face. Now, she was technically a rank 2, though she hadn’t had time to farm much anima before returning home. Their next argument would be different.

  Or it would be when she was clear-headed enough to actually control her anima. Right now, she was even worse off than usual. Scowling, she stomped directly over to Dant, then tried to shove past him to walk through the door. He didn’t budge, of course. It would take far more physical force than she could muster to move him if he didn’t want to be moved.

  “Dad also said you have to wear this,” he told her, revealing a curious device. It was a belt, but with a short chain of maybe three inches attached to the front. The other end had a pair of cuffs designed to fit snugly around the wearer’s wrists, forcing them to keep their hands pointed down at their feet.

  “A mage’s restraints? Does he think I’m going to attack him?” Nemari balked. Did he do something to deserve being attacked?

  “Not going to argue with you, Nems. Just put it on so we can go. Or don’t, and I’ll make you. Either way is fine with me.”

  Inwardly seething, she wrapped the belt around her waist. It buckled on the back, and once Dant slipped the restraints on her wrist and tightened them down, it was no longer possible for her to remove the device on her own. Then she was marched like a prisoner through her own home until she reached her uncle’s study.

  Dant led her in, guiding her into a chair with a hand on her shoulder, and then took up his place looming over her while Uncle Nat finished writing what appeared to be a letter. He signed it with a flourish, then sprinkled some sand across the surface to speed along the ink’s drying. Finally, he looked up at Nemari and let out a great, weary sigh.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  “What am I going to do with you, my headstrong, foolish niece?” he asked.

  “How about you start with not treating me like a prisoner,” she hissed out, her voice full of quiet fury. Her chains rattled as she jerked her hands as far up as they could go. “I can’t believe you’d subject your own family to this.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t threatened to burn the house down,” Uncle Nat told her. “Sometimes in life, you don’t get what you want, Nemari. Sometimes you have to consider the greater good of the whole family over what you personally desire. It’s already bad enough that you’ve gotten mixed up in Hellion business; I refuse to let you make it worse.”

  “Maybe if you hadn’t drugged me, I’d know what you’re talking about,” she shot back.

  “You didn’t leave us much choice. Honestly, Nemari, what were you expecting to happen when you started demanding the Sildfalls go against the Black Hellions? We’ve got three people above rank 10. They’ve got twenty, and two above rank 15. That’s not even counting the hundreds of members below rank 10. We’d be wiped out, easily and immediately.”

  “How… How do you know their strength so specifically?” Nemari asked.

  “Grow up, cuz,” Dant said from behind her. “How do you think?”

  “You’re involved with them? We’re involved with them as a family?”

  “Every family worth being called one is involved with the Hellions,” Uncle Nat said. “They’ve got Floor 0’s economy in a stranglehold. You don’t have a choice but to deal with them if you want to do anything but live in squalor. Half the raw materials that make it down here come through the Hellions, and most of the rest move at their say so.”

  “All the more reason to break their power! It doesn’t have to just be the Sildfalls. There are other families. If we combine our efforts, we could win.”

  Uncle Nat shook his head. “I’d hoped you’d calm down and see reason in the morning, but you’re just as bad as you were last night. Let me be clear on this. Samael wants this mysterious stranger found. It’s going to happen. I let you send your little letter to your friends as a courtesy since they didn’t matter, but that’s as far as I’m allowing you to interfere.”

  Nemari had no idea what Uncle Nat was talking about. Then again, she didn’t remember apparently arguing that the family should band together to hunt down a criminal organization either. Whatever this supposed letter said, she could only hope she’d provided useful information to her team.

  “So what happens now? I’m just locked up like a criminal for the rest of my life? Does my father know you’re doing this?”

  “Sweetie, it was his idea,” Uncle Nat said. “He knows you better than I, and he assured me that you’d definitely act out if we didn’t take steps to keep you under control until we’ve weathered this current crisis.

  “As for what happens next, I think a hot meal, another dose of veltrum to keep your anima control restrained, then you’ll be returned to your room. I’m going to send this letter to Samael, and I suspect tomorrow, you’ll be escorted to see him, where you will answer his questions to his full and complete satisfaction.”

  “I’ll be doing nothing of the sort,” Nemari retorted.

  A maid entered the study, a cup of tea sitting on a platter. Nemari regarded it warily. It looked innocent enough, a simple porcelain cup painted with flowers that had a curl of steam still rising from it, but Uncle Nat had already told her they were going to dose her again.

  “You must be out of your mind if you think I’m drinking that,” she said.

  “My dear niece, you are gravely underestimating me if you think I’m giving you a choice.”

  His eyes flashed, drawing her into them. Reality blurred and time lost its meaning among the swirling light that became her whole existence. By the time she clawed her way back to consciousness, she was back in her room and the noon sun had drifted west to early evening. Nemari sat on her bed, a bit of drool wetting her chin, and had no idea what had happened over the last few hours.

  As she struggled to remember, faint flashes came back to her. She’d drunk the tea at his prompting, because of course her own uncle wanted what was best for her. That was only reasonable. Her cousin had helped her back to her room, keeping her upright when she stumbled and opening the door for her. That had stuck in her mind despite everything, if only because it was so out of character for Dant.

  Despite the missing time, it was clear that she’d been betrayed. The people Nemari trusted the most were holding her captive and willingly colluding with her enemy while her climbing team was being sacrificed to appease a crime lord. Obviously, the only thing she could do was escape, but the how of that plan eluded her.

  She was still thinking about it an hour later when Uncle Nat showed up at her bedroom door. A maid trailed behind him with a familiar tray bearing the same flower-painted cup he’d forced her to drink from in his office.

  “No,” she growled. They hadn’t bothered to remove the restraints keeping her from pointing with her hands, but with the veltrum in her, she was still struggling to channel anima anyway. Physical violence was her only chance of escape, but when she considered Uncle Nat’s specialty, the candle of hope burning in her chest guttered and died.

  “Come, my dear, it’s only for another few days until the Black Hellion captures the strange man you recruited. Once he’s satisfied, you can find a new team and get back to your work. Now, drink up.”

  His eyes flashed again, and the last thing Nemari remembered was the maid advancing to where she sat on her bed with the cup of tea. She held it up to Nemari’s lips—of course she did. It wasn’t like Nemari could reach that high herself now—and waited for her to take a drink. Part of her mind demanded that she spit the hot liquid out, but that part was lost under the sound of her uncle’s voice.

  The evening turned to night, and night turned to dawn. Nemari woke up again, clear-headed, but still a prisoner. A maid helped her go to the bathroom and get dressed, but the restraint wasn’t removed. She laughed bitterly at their over-preparedness. Even without cuffs, the tea was enough to render her powerless.

  Soon enough, Dant showed up again. “Time to go, cuz,” he said with a chuckle. “The big man in black wants to talk to you.”