Sera trained them in an abandoned quarry outside Lowmere.
She started with a stone the size of her fist.
She threw it at Elias.
He caught it without moving.
Then she threw another at Mara.
The stone stopped a hand’s breadth from her cheek, suspended in a circle of violet light.
“Good,” Sera said.
“Now do it when you aren’t expecting it.”
She threw three stones at once.
Elias caught the first.
Mara deflected the second.
The third hit Elias in the ribs.
Mara doubled over.
Elias dropped to one knee.
The pain went through both of them, sharp and immediate.
Sera stepped forward, but Mara raised a hand.
“Wait.”
The pain had changed.
It was still there, but beneath it something else pulsed with power, threaded through the bond like a taut wire.
“Don’t fight it,” Sera said.
“Follow it.”
Mara reached for the wire.
Elias looked at her, understanding.
They moved together.
The stone in his hand crumbled into dust.
The same force struck the quarry wall, punching a clean hole through the rock.
Sera nodded.
“You can echo force between you.”
“Can we choose where it goes?” Mara asked.
“That’s what we’re finding out.”
They trained until sunset.
Elias learned to draw strength from the ground beneath his feet.
Mara learned to take a spell apart by finding its first intention.
The bond made each lesson dangerous.
When Elias bruised his knuckles against stone, Mara felt the ache.
When Mara’s magic snapped back against her, Elias tasted copper in his mouth.
They stopped when the pain became hard to hide.
“You’re both going to have to learn not to use each other as a shield,” Sera said.
Elias wiped sweat from his brow.
“We’ve spent our whole lives doing that.”
“And it killed you once.”
The words struck harder than the stones.
Mara stared at Sera.
“We didn’t die because we protected each other,” Mara said.
“You died because you believed the world would meet you halfway.”
Elias stood.
“Maybe it should.”
“It should,” Sera said.
“But it doesn’t. If you want to survive this world, decide what you’re willing to lose before someone else decides for you.”
Mara wanted to hate her for saying it.
She couldn’t.
Sera spoke like someone who had already lost everything and kept walking anyway.
“What do you mean, decide what we’re willing to lose?” Elias asked.
“Your anger is going to ask you to sacrifice something every time it feels righteous. Time. Trust. People who disagree with you. Sometimes your own safety. If you don’t make rules for yourselves, the worst moment will make them for you.”
Mara looked down at their joined hands.
“Our rule is we don’t leave each other.”
“That’s a promise, not a plan.”
“It’s still the first rule.”
Elias nodded.
“First rule. No one separates us.”
“Second,” Mara said, “we don’t use the bond to make the other one do something.”
He considered that.
“Even if you’re being unreasonable?”
“Especially then.”
Sera leaned on her sword.
“A third rule might be not letting the Crown turn you into the monsters it describes.”
Mara glanced toward the road.
“We haven’t agreed to that one yet.”
“I know,” Sera said.
“That’s why I’m asking.”
Elias looked at Mara.
She could feel the answer forming in him, but he waited for her to speak first.
“We’ll try,” she said.
“That’s all I can promise.”
On their way back, the first Crown hunters emerged from the trees.
They wore white armor and carried long spears etched with sunbursts.
At their center walked a woman in a gold mask, the priest from the palace.
He had replaced his broken staff.
“Mara and Elias Vale,” he called.
“The Crown offers you mercy.”
“That’s new,” Elias said.
“Return to the capital, and your crimes will be forgiven.”
“Which crimes?” Mara asked.
“Leaving? Refusing to wear your collar? Being alive?”
“You are being used by traitors.”
“He means me.”
The priest gestured.
The hunters leveled their spears.
Mara felt Elias tense.
She touched his hand.
“Together, but not wild.”
The first wave charged.
Elias took the spears on his armor.
Each strike rang through him and Mara both.
The pain became a rising storm.
Mara caught the force in the bond and turned it outward.
The spears flew from the hunters’ hands and buried themselves in the dirt.
Elias seized the lead knight by his breastplate and threw him into a tree, not hard enough to break him, but hard enough to end the charge.
Sera fought beside them.
She moved with the precision of someone who had memorized every mistake a soldier could make.
The priest lifted his staff and spoke a word in a language Mara did not know.
The world went silent.
Elias dropped.
Mara’s breath stopped.
The bond became a chain, pulling them toward the staff.
Mara found the command inside the spell: separate.
She looked at her brother.
He looked back.
They had been separated by walls, fear, fire, death.
Not this.
Elias smiled through clenched teeth.
“Break it.”
Mara grabbed the spell with both hands.
The silence shattered.
The priest’s staff split down the middle.
Light burst from the crack and raced across the quarry floor.
The hunters scattered.
The priest fell to one knee, staring at the twins as if he had finally understood what he had summoned.
Mara stood over him.
“Tell the Crown we’re coming.”
Sera caught her arm.
“Not yet.”
Mara looked down at the priest, then at the frightened soldiers behind him.
She let him live.
The choice felt less like mercy than restraint.
For now, that would have to be enough.