Emrysa Cheval galloped along the corridor, raven hair streaming, her skirts bustling about her bare ankles. She giggled, the sound of summer cheer bouncing from the walls, and cast a backward glance over her shoulder.

    Dermot gave chase, making ground with his long legs, his face wearing a strange hue of blue.

    “I’ll get you, sister! You’ll pay for this, you iconic muttonhead!” he called, though the edges of his threat frayed with humor and, perhaps, a little admiration.

    Emrysa kept running, grabbing fistfuls of her skirt’s folds as she did. “You’ve never caught me yet!” She squealed and quickened her pace. Her younger brother—well, younger by about an hour—was getting faster, stronger too, but his magic was still no match for hers. No match for anybody’s. Everyone said so, and although Dermot sometimes believed his sister to be teasing and taunting him with her magical practical jokes, but they both knew what she was doing. Emrysa was trying to help, trying to encourage him to play. To feel magic as something fun and light, and not the heaviness their parents had pressed upon his shoulders.

    It was simple.

     All witches and wizards had an amount of magical ability—to cast, to manipulate the world around them. But there were other forms of magic, Emrysa knew. It wasn’t that her brother was bad at magic, he was just yet to discover what magic would be his forte. He was yet to discover his True Ability. He preferred science. And perhaps, in and of itself, that was a form of magic.

    Emrysa rounded the corner, gripping the wall as she did to keep her balance. She wouldn’t run far. She never did. And her brother’s pursuit would always end with the pair of them in breathless fits of laughter.

    Emrysa always reversed her spells.

    The blue hue to his face would dispel but, she hoped, the lesson would remain.

    She burst through the double doors at the end of the corridor, where the low winter sun shimmered on frost-touched grass, sparkling at its touch. Barefooted, she picked up her pace in the open freedom, squealing at the coldness of her toes and checking over her shoulder to see Dermot close. Too close. Emrysa laughed with delight as he launched at her—the pair falling to the hard winter ground and tumbling down the hill toward the river, stopping only after a splash and an ice-cold watery embrace.

    Dermot gasped as he burst to the surface, hair and goofy smile plastered to his face. “Emrysa!”

    She laughed, wiping the cold water from her eyes and scrambling up the riverbank.

    “Why didn’t you use your magic to stop us from falling in?” Dermot almost shrieked whilst laughing through his chattering teeth. Even in the midst of summer, the Welsh water was barely a few degrees higher than freezing one’s nether regions off, so with winter well and truly underway, the chill was almost unbearable.

    Emrysa proffered a hand, helping her brother from the beautifully clear but frigid water. “Where is the fun in that? I like magic…” a wicked smile crept upon her face, “…but I love mischief!” And with that, she pushed Dermot back into the water, where he commenced his best water statue impression, complete with a rather impressive fountain streaming from his puckered lips. And without fail, his relentless good humor warmed Emrysa’s bones under her sodden clothes.

    For a moment, the pair almost forgot the truth of things.

    This time, when Dermot scrambled up the riverbank to join Emrysa sitting against the old oak, she whispered a few words under her breath and dried their clothes in an instant. They stared out over the expansive view of wild countryside and ragged cliffs shaped by the turbulent coastline.

    A mass of cloud hid the sun and the tips of the craggy mountains in the distance, just as a forced smile hid Emrysa’s concerns.

    “Out with it,” Dermot said, looking not at the view now, but at his sister.

    “Out with what?”

    Dermot raised a brow, dragging his hand through his reddish hair the spell had dried but not tamed. “That pensive little look on those haughty features of yours.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. He said these things, these mean things, but they both knew he never meant them. He loved playing the part of jester but Emrysa feared with their parents’ hands weighing heavier on them more than ever, their days of fun and frivolity would soon be over.

    It did not bode well in Emrysa’s bones.

    “It’s all going to change, brother. I can feel it. Something. Something… I don’t know. Just…” She trailed off, then turned away.

    “You’re worried because we’re to come of age soon?”

    “Only three moons,” Emrysa said, resting her head on her brother’s shoulders.

    “And I suppose you’re worried about getting that pretty face of yours all wrinkled and old and—ow!”

    Dermot rubbed his smarting ribs and Emrysa gave him another dig for extra measure. “You’re such an idiot at times, brother. No, I take it back. You’re always an idiot.”

    “Just because you don’t understand my alchemical equations, doesn’t make them gibberish. Besides, it’s better for others to think me a fool. At least that way, they don’t expect much from me.”

    “Like they do me, you mean?”

    Dermot shrugged. “Our parents expect so much from you because you keep showing them how capable you are.”

    “I’m not that capable,” Emrysa said. “You know Mother has a blocking spell on her mind. Father has a… I don’t know, like a prickly something around his thoughts and aura, I can’t get close, I can’t tell what’s going on anymore. They’re hiding something. Something big. And I feel like it all has to do with our eighteenth birthday.”

    “Oh! Come on, Miss Worrisome. They’re probably just sick and tired of you probing their minds for secrets. You might be a powerful young witch, but you are also an incessantly nosy, mind-trespassing little wench.”

    Emrysa laughed. Perhaps. Perhaps he was right, but her bones were not often wrong, and they rang out now like a chorus of worried birds warning of a brewing storm to come.

    “Come,” Dermot said, pulling his sister to her feet. “Let’s get back to the laboratory, and I can show you that wormhole I’ve been trying to create. It really is something. And perhaps, on the way, you could undo this spell from my blue face?”

    Emrysa smiled, somehow forgetting about the blue hue on his features under the heavy cloud of concern for their unknown future. With a click of her fingers, she reversed her spell, and everything went back to normal.

    But for how long? she wondered, looking up at the pale winter sky. Three moons. Three moons until everything would change.

    Beside her, Dermot gasped. “The Council?”

    Emrysa frowned, straining her eyes to better see in the distance.

    For a while she remained silent, waiting, watching, as the caravan of midnight black horses meandered along the rolling hillside. And even though they were hours away by the dots they made on the far horizon, Emrysa could still make out the purple and gold tapestries—the Council’s standard—fluttering from poles carried by leading riders. Casting a seeing spell, Emrysa caught sight of the somber stares and bleak auras around the Council members. A darkened cloud blotted the sun, concealing the land in shadows, and every bone in Emrysa’s body screamed one word.

    Run.