Origins: Kerrowyn Lightfoot - Part II

Part II: Kerrowyn Steals Her Future

Incandescent with Wanting

The first thing Kerrowyn Lightfoot noticed was the color. Not the flat blue of city constables or the bruised black of Imperial Guards uniforms, but a true, honest red—brighter than blood, richer than the velvet in the banners in Fountain Square—spilling through the gaps of an alley where sunlight had no right to go. She paused in the gap between two fishmongers, their voices already lost to the tumult of Fountain Square, and tracked the flicker to its source.

At fifteen, Kerrowyn had learned the precise volume of her own insignificance, especially in a city built to eclipse it. She slithered through the perimeter crowd, slipping from the tang of brine and fish scales to the cleaner air near the back. Her shoulders fit neatly into the shadows, her mop of blonde hair bound under a ragged cap that had once belonged to someone else—everything she owned had belonged to someone else, up to and including the surname she now wore with both pride and resentment. She had intended only to case the new merchant stall rumored to sell imported Sunstone shards at half the rate, but here she was, stalled by the impossible: magic performed openly, on the other side of the law, in full view of children, peddlers, and the city’s hungry.

The wizard—no, a student, she corrected—could not have been older than twenty. His robes were the sort favored by the Tower’s apprentices, stitched in alternating bars of indigo and cream, and they hung awkwardly on a body not yet sure what to do with itself. He stood atop an upturned fish crate, one hand raised, the other cradling a wand shaped like a willow switch. Even from across the crowd, Kerrowyn could see how his knuckles whitened when he gripped it, as if the wand might slip away and tattle on him.

She recognized the posture: a performer, afraid his act would fall apart with one jeer too many.

But when he spoke, the crowd hushed. It was not his voice that silenced them, but the magic—tiny lights, red as new wounds, leaping from his wand-tip and curling into whorls above their heads. The orbs spun in slow, deliberate loops before breaking formation and diving, each trailing a tail of orange that shimmered like captured sun. The audience gasped as the fire motes twisted into shapes: a swallow in flight, a ring of coins, a cascade of petals that fell and burned away before reaching the ground. The applause was hesitant, but the awe was real.

Kerrowyn felt it, too, and it infuriated her. Magic was for the towers and palaces, for the wealthy and the blooded—never for guttersnipes with branded backs and quick hands. Yet here she was, locked in place by wonder, unable even to blink as the illusions danced their impossible ballet.

When the trick ended, the student bowed, grinning through a face so bright with sweat it almost glowed. The crowd, emboldened by his humility, tossed coins and breadcrusts at his feet. He scooped them up, tucked them into a pouch, and then—amazing—began to pack away his props with the sort of sloppiness Kerrowyn associated with street-corner minstrels and the recently concussed.

The other student, a girl with a birthmark on her left cheek and a Tower-blue sash across her tunic, was slower. She collected the coins, righted the crate, and set about gathering up the scattered spell components—a handful of dried orange peels, a cracked glass lens, a skein of silvery thread. When she knelt, her satchel gaped open.

Kerrowyn saw the opportunity as clearly as she saw the brooch on the Matron’s desk, years ago. She let herself drift with the dispersing crowd, invisible again, then doubled back through the alley’s detritus: upturned baskets, a half-dozen empty wine jugs, a filigree of broken netting. The girl magician bent lower, both hands occupied with her task. The alley swallowed their figures from the main square; no witnesses, not even a city watchman on the corner, as all eyes remained on the main event.

Kerrowyn’s heart ratcheted up. There were rules for this, written in the marrow. Never touch the person—just the bag. Never linger. Never look back.

She sidled to the edge of the alley, checking the girl’s position. Her hands darted—three fingers, surgical, into the pocket of the satchel—she felt the familiar lump of coins, a clutch of dried lavender, and then: soft leather, worn at the edges, tied with an ineptly knotted cord. She drew the object out as lightly as a breath. The satchel shifted, but the magician didn’t notice. The student’s eyes were fixed on the last of the orange peels, squashed against a cobblestone.

Kerrowyn slipped away, pulse so loud in her ears she barely noticed the surge of activity at the alley’s mouth. Someone else must have tried for the student’s take; a scuffle broke out, voices rising in the minor key of street-level violence, and Kerrowyn let it cover her exit.

She cut left, then right, using the City’s alleyways as a net to catch her fall. Only when she reached the underside of the MidTown overpass—a place so terminally anonymous even the Lightfoot Clan only used it as a dead drop—did she dare to examine her prize.

The spellbook was smaller than expected, no bigger than a deck of playing cards, its cover mottled from years of anxious handling. She thumbed it open, expecting nothing but a list of showman’s tricks and aphorisms. Instead, she found diagrams—intricate, arcane, rendered in a hand that trembled between moments of clarity. The text was part Common, part something else: notes cribbed in the sideline, corrections in a different ink, margins filled with what looked like conversations between two distinct voices. Some of it was technical, but some of it—she read a line and had to stop, hand over her mouth, to keep from laughing.

It was a recipe, for a spell called “Flare,” and the ingredients included not only dried orange peel but also a dash of “showmanship, bitter and fresh.”

She flipped the page, and the diagrams grew more ambitious: illusions, manipulations of shadow, an entire section on how to bend light into the appearance of a moving animal. She devoured the pages with an intensity that surprised her.

This—this was different. This was not for profit or survival or for keeping ahead of the Matron’s ledger. This was for itself, for the pleasure of the possible. Kerrowyn recognized her own hunger in the margins, in the impatience of the notes, and she wondered who had written them, and whether they, too, had once watched from an alley’s mouth, hoping for more than what the city would allow.

She pressed the spellbook to her ribs, just beneath the new scars and the battered heart she’d learned to keep small. For the first time in years, she felt not invisible, but incandescent with wanting.

She was halfway across Nightvalley when the sense of being followed hit her like a cold snap. Not the dangerous kind—the men with staves or blackjacks, or the footpads hired by rival guilds—but something softer, almost polite. She ducked through a gate, doubled back along a side path, and crouched behind a mound of broken pottery.

Nothing. She’d shaken them.

Then, in the next instant, a voice: “You took something that wasn’t meant for you.”

She spun, fist raised. The boy from the demonstration stood at the mouth of the alley, not two paces away, his Tower robes dirtier than before. He looked at her hand, then at the spellbook, and then met her gaze.

Kerrowyn weighed her options. A fight, here, would draw attention, and she knew from his build that he wasn’t a natural brawler. But he also didn’t look scared—just tired, and maybe a little amused.

“Wasn’t meant for you, either,” she countered, trying to project bravado, but her voice came out small.

He stepped closer, careful not to threaten. “If you’re going to read it, you should know it’s mostly rubbish. The real spells are hidden between the lines. Tower trick. Keeps the unworthy from blowing off their fingers.”

She arched an eyebrow, uncertain whether to believe him. “So why let me get away?”

He shrugged. “Curiosity. Also, you’re better than most at sleight of hand. I’ve seen the Lightfoot game, but you—” he gestured at her, “—you’re more careful.”

Kerrowyn felt herself flush. “If you want it back, take it.”

He did not move. “If you want to keep it, learn from it. But be careful—magic’s a crueler master than any clan.” He smiled, a quicksilver thing, and then turned away, heading back toward Fountain Square as if their conversation had always been a foregone conclusion.

She watched him go, the spellbook suddenly heavy with expectation.

Kerrowyn slipped away, the book pressed to her chest, and in the quiet that followed, she realized her life had already begun to pivot toward a new kind of crime—one whose consequences might actually be worth the risk.

The Worst Mark She Ever Had

After the theft, Kerrowyn spent the better part of three days ensconced in the attic of the Lightfoot compound, spellbook on her lap and a tallow candle guttering low beside her. She had never seen her mother in such a temper—Klaudia prowled the house like a wet cat, muttering about Kerrowyn missing her quota, for the first time in months, despite her talent and training.

Kerric, ever the diplomat, brought her bits of news and bread crusts, which she accepted without thanks. Mostly, she read and reread the diagrams, certain that if she could only decipher the patterns, she might one day walk the city with the same confidence as the apprentices in Fountain Square.

On the fourth day, as dusk slid its way down the Capitol’s spine, Kerrowyn returned to the scene of her original crime. She did so not out of compulsion—she knew the rules about returning to a pinch—but out of something closer to defiance, a hope that perhaps the magician’s apprentice would be there again, flinging motes of red and gold into the city air. Or perhaps, though she did not like to admit it, she wanted to see if anyone had noticed her absence, or her theft, or if she was still invisible after all.

The Square was empty, the crate toppled over, but Kerrowyn’s keen eye caught movement in the adjacent lane—a quick flash of Tower-blue, the nervous hunch of a student newly aware of the world’s angles. She tailed him for three blocks, never close enough to arouse suspicion, never far enough to lose her mark. When he slipped into a narrow, stone-paved alley behind the linen merchants, she followed, keeping to the wall.

He paused to consult a slip of parchment, unaware—or so she believed—of her presence. She let him get three paces deeper, then closed the distance in a practiced, silent rush. She could not explain why she did it, only that she’d spent the week memorizing the diagrams of “Mage Hand,” and had finally gotten it to work the night before. In the stillness of the alley, she wanted to know if magic was really so different from any other form of picking pockets.

She made the hand movements, said the magic words and a small glowing hand appeared in midair, a clone of her own. She could feel through it, control it. She sent the hand slowly over to where the student stood. Sweating with concentration, she positioned the mage hand just above his waste, behind his back. Her fingers slid into the satchel at his waist, deft as her own. She felt the shape of a wand, then paper, then—suddenly a hand closing around her wrist, gentle but immovable. She blinked up at him, wondering how he could have possibly moved so fast before realizing he must have used magic to reach her. The mage hand dissipated as her concentration faltered.

“That’s not yours, you know,” said the apprentice, his tone more curious than angry. He twisted, not to hurt her, but to see her face.

Kerrowyn tried to yank free, failed, and then spat at the ground. “What’s it to you? It’s not yours either. You don’t even know how to use it.”

He considered her, eyes a gold-flecked brown, shot through with the kind of patience that infuriates the hurried. “You’re wrong on both counts, but especially the second.”

Kerrowyn drew herself up, all the meager height her gnomish blood allowed. “Let go,” she hissed, “or I’ll bite.”

The apprentice grinned. “Promise?” He released her hand, but kept himself between her and the alley’s mouth. She measured him: not large, but quick; nervous, but not scared. “I’ve seen you before,” he said.

His gaze darted down the alley, as if checking for witnesses, then returned to her. “You really want to know how it works?”

Kerrowyn hesitated, thrown off balance by the offer. “Yes,” she lied. “So I can sell it for more.”

He shook his head, a pitying gesture she recognized from every adult who thought they were cleverer than the gutter rats. “I doubt that,” he said. “But if you do, I could show you.”

She blinked. It was not the answer she expected. “Why?”

“Because,” he said, voice lowering, “you’re better at this than most. Its impressive that you had that much control over a mage hand without formal training. It takes most novices months to master that spell. And because,” his mouth curled in an approximation of a secret, “the only real fun to be had in this city is teaching it to do something it’s not supposed to.”

Kerrowyn considered this. The Lightfoot code was clear: never accept gifts from a mark, never trust a magician, never take on an apprenticeship unless you were sure you’d outlast the master. But this was something else—a challenge, maybe, or an invitation to a new sort of crime.

She nodded, just once. “Fine.”

The apprentice—Alric, as he introduced himself, with a perfunctory handshake—took her to a corner bakery two blocks over. They sat at a table dusted with flour, ignored by the staff, and Alric produced the satchel she’d failed to lift. From it he drew out a fresh, unblemished spellbook, bound in the same blue as his robe, and set it on the table between them.

He opened to a page halfway through. “Here,” he said. “Try this.”

Kerrowyn squinted at the page. “It’s written in code.”

Alric smirked. “So is your life, I’d wager. But read the diagram—see how the lines cross?”

She studied it, unwilling to admit how much it reminded her of the lock-picking diagrams she’d once memorized. The lines didn’t overlap so much as flirt, coming close, veering away, always just shy of touching. She said so, and Alric laughed—a bright, unstudied sound.

“Exactly,” he said. “You have to want them to meet, but not force it. Like this.” He pantomimed the motion with his wand—two fingers, then a flick of the wrist. Nothing happened at first, but then a spark, a blue one, flickered and hovered above the page.

Kerrowyn stared, lips parting in awe, and then caught herself. “That’s it? Just a spark?”

He shrugged. “For now. Next page, if you’re interested, is how to make it move.”

She snorted. “Child’s play.”

He offered her the wand.

The first time she tried, it did nothing but emit a faint, pitiful heat. The second time, the spark appeared, then died. By the third attempt, the blue ember hung in the air, quivering. It danced, a little, in response to her finger. She felt the thrill—the real thing, she could feel its heat, and the hum of something deep beneath her feet.

Alric watched her with a kind of mild pride. “See?” he said. “All you needed was a different lock to pick.”

They spent the rest of the evening in that bakery, and by the time the candles were burned to nubs, Kerrowyn could make a spark hover for a full thirty seconds, and guide it through a crude maze Alric drew on the tabletop with crumbs of bread.

As they left, Alric handed her a coin—a single bronze piece, old and worn, stamped with the Tower’s sigil. “For luck,” he said, “and as proof you didn’t leave empty-handed.”

Kerrowyn rolled it in her palm, feeling the weight of it. “You’re the worst mark I’ve ever had,” she said, but there was no anger in it.

Alric smiled. “You’re not my first pupil. But you’re by far the fastest.”

They parted at the corner. He walked back toward the richer side of the city, his silhouette tall and almost stately in the dying light. She tucked the coin into her shoe, along with the other treasures she’d stolen that week, but the next morning, when she found herself in the same alley, waiting to see if he’d return, she realized she’d been given something rare, something precious.

Hope.

Learning to Bend

The lessons continued. Sometimes in the bakery, sometimes on the roof of a warehouse, sometimes in a city park after dark, always careful, always secret. Kerrowyn learned to shape sparks into words, then into shapes, then into small illusions of birds and beasts. Alric taught her the fundamentals—focus, will, control—but also the gaps, the ways to cheat a spell or fake one entirely.

They shared stories. She told him about her mother, about the Lightfoot Clan, about the first time she realized the rules of the city were not written for her benefit. He told her about the Tower, the endless hierarchy of talent and blood, and the expectation that the sons and daughters of the Capitol’s elite would rise regardless of merit.

“Why help me?” she asked once, after he’d shown her how to conjure a globe of dancing light that she could hold in her palm.

He hesitated, then shrugged. “Because you remind me of what I wanted, when I first saw a spell cast. I wanted to do something no one else had done, and you—” he looked at her, really looked—“I think you just might.”

She laughed, bitter and unconvincing. “I’m a branded thief. That’s all.”

He shook his head. “No. You’re something else, or you wouldn’t be here. And neither would I.”

Incredibly, she believed him.

One night, after an especially good session—she’d managed to make a swarm of tiny sparks form a name in the air: KERRIC, and it hovered for almost a minute—she lingered behind the bakery, not ready to return home. Alric walked her as far as the main street, then stopped. “Next time,” he said, “I’ll show you something harder. But you have to promise me—no one else. Not even your brother.”

She made the oath, though she hated keeping things from Kerric. They’d always shared everything, but now, at the edge of something new, she knew this was hers alone.

When she returned to the Lightfoot den, her mother was waiting.

“Out again,” Klaudia said, arms crossed, face sharp as a coin’s edge. “With who?”

Kerrowyn played dumb. “No one. Just walking.”

“Don’t lie.” Klaudia reached for her, and Kerrowyn shrank from the touch, a reflex she despised. “You’re learning something, I can tell.”

Kerrowyn said nothing. She thought about the spark, the way it bent to her will, and wondered what it would cost to keep it alive.

“Remember this,” Klaudia said, voice low and hard. “City’s a beast. It eats the different, the special. You think you’re above it, but you’re not.”

But Kerrowyn, for the first time, wondered if maybe she was.

She lay awake that night, turning the bronze coin over and over in her hand, the lines of the Tower’s sigil worn nearly smooth. The Lightfoot code had taught her to survive, but now, with real magic at her fingertips, she wanted more than survival.

She wanted to be seen. She wanted to change the world that had never made space for her.

And if she had to break every rule to get there, so be it.

The Edge of Leaving 

Kerrowyn Lightfoot packed her future into a threadbare satchel, lit only by the conspiracy of torchlight that bled amber into the rough-hewn rafters of the Lightfoot Clan’s warren. The familiar stink of tallow, dust, and rusted lockpicks hung thick. Shadows moved along the stone like patient knives, and every sound—every scrap of leather, every jostled pin, every whispered breath—echoed up to the web of crawl-spaces where cousins and cutthroats slept with one eye open.

She kneaded her fingers, habit picking at the scar tissue on her knuckles where years of lock practice had made the skin bumpy and taut, then stuffed a battered spellbook between a rolled pair of socks and a ball of waxed string. On the cot beside her, Kerric watched, arms cinched around his knees, jaw set with anger. His shock of platinum hair was wild tonight, yet he sat motionless, resisting the urge to break the moment with words he’d rehearsed and discarded a hundred times.

“Shouldn’t you be, like, happy for me?” Kerrowyn said, slicing the silence with a smile she’d practiced in better circumstances. “You’re the only one who gets it, Kerric. The only one who doesn’t look at me like I’m a freak for wanting out.”

Kerric drew in a breath so sharp it whistled. “Wanting out, or wanting more? Which is it tonight?”

She stuck her tongue out in the darkness, could almost taste the bitterness on the air. “Does it matter? ‘Out’ and ‘more’ are the same direction. I’m tired of being an asset, a pawn, a—” she rifled through her lexicon of maternal insults—“a fucking ‘liability with legs.’ You know how long I’ve wanted this.”

Kerric’s expression didn’t change, but he blinked twice—slow, deliberate. “Yeah. I think about it every time you get that look. Like you already miss us, and you’re still sitting here. Like you’re halfway to the Wizard’s Tower and halfway out the window.”

He had that knack for speaking in metaphors even when he didn’t mean to, but tonight she found it charming instead of irritating. “I’ve got a letter,” she said, rooting around in the mess until she produced a slip of parchment. “Alric wrote it himself. Says I’m officially invited. They even have a room picked out for me. I’m not just running, Kerric—I’m being drafted. They want me. Isn’t that wild?”

He snatched the letter from her hand, held it up to the light, and read it with a scowl that deepened with every word.

“You know what else is wild?” he said. “How you think this changes anything. You think walking out of here, you’re not a Lightfoot anymore? Mom will send every cutthroat between here and the Tower after you.”

Kerrowyn shrugged, a gesture both fatalistic and stubborn. “Maybe she will. But I’ve done the numbers. The Tower has wards. Traps. Mages. If I can get there in one piece, no one can touch me.”

“‘No one can touch me.’” Kerric repeated it, voice soft, then louder. “You realize what that sounds like, right?”

She shoved a pouch of spell components into her bag with more force than necessary. “Don’t do this,” she said. “Not tonight. I need you, Kerric. If I’m gonna make it, you have to help me. You’re the only one who can cover my exit. You know all the shifts, all the watchers—”

“Oh, so now you need me,” he said, and there it was, the blade. “Not enough to stay, but enough to use as a distraction. Classic Kerrowyn.”

She didn’t rise to it, not this time. “You’re my brother,” she said, plain and final. “We look after each other. Even when it hurts.”

He looked away, rolling his shoulders under the too-small shirt he’d outgrown last year. “You ever think about what it’s like for me? When you’re gone, it’s not like they’ll forget I helped you. Not Mom, not the elders, not anyone. If you go, you’re signing my sentence too.”

Kerrowyn’s heart thumped. She reached out, tried to rest a hand on his arm, but Kerric jerked away.

“That’s not true,” she said, but it was. She’d calculated her own odds, never his.

He balled up the invitation and lobbed it at her head. “Yeah? Tell yourself whatever helps you sleep at night, sister.” He stood up, his feet making no sound on the warped floorboards. “We look after each other, huh? What bullshit.”

Then he was gone, the door closing with a hollow, terminal click, and the only company left was the faint blue fizz of a stolen Sunstone peeking out from her bag—her only souvenir of home.

For a minute, she just sat there, face blank, waiting to feel relief. What came instead was the icy certainty that she’d just burned her only bridge, and she hadn’t even stepped out the door yet.

No One Leaves 

Kerrowyn’s hands trembled as she repacked, more slowly now, the echo of her brother’s words still chewing through her certainty. She placed each item with surgical care, as though neatness might force the world back into alignment: the chalk, the lockpicks, the bundle of waxed thread. Outside the thin door, the hive-murmur of the Clan’s nocturnal operations had faded; even the picket thieves and the watch sentinels kept quiet, as if the whole house were holding its breath for a knife to drop.

She hunched on the edge of her cot and dug out the letter, smoothing the crease Kerric had mashed into it. The scrawled signature of “Alric Verenium” was crisp, authoritative, bristling with the kind of confidence she’d never known in her own blood. She could almost smell the parchment, the dry tang of ink—proof of another world, waiting for her if only she had the spine.

Her thumb traced the words: “...admitted to the Circle of Prospective Adepts... full tuition... accommodations...”

A crash sounded in the corridor. Then the door didn’t so much open as explode inward, splinters ricocheting off the stone. Klaudia Lightfoot stormed through, her silhouette blotting out the torchlight behind, her fists so tight the veins stood up like map lines.

Behind her, Kerric followed, not the swaggering brat of an hour ago but a much smaller thing, eyes glued to the floor, lips pressed white.

“Packing for a vacation?” Klaudia’s voice was the kind that left bruises. “You always were ambitious, Wren.” She only ever called Kerrowyn by that nickname when preparing to eviscerate her.

Kerrowyn rose but did not bother with a bow or a show of deference. She’d grown immune to her mother’s intimidation tricks years ago.

“Is this how you thank me?” Klaudia swept a hand at the packed bag, knocking it to the floor, contents scattering. “After I break my back to put you in line for succession, after I teach you every scam and trick in the Capitol—this is the legacy you leave? Running like a mark with her purse open?”

Kerrowyn set her jaw. “Maybe I don’t want your legacy, Mother. Maybe I want something that doesn’t stink of blood and broken fingers. Maybe I want—” She caught herself. “—to see how far I can go without you pulling the strings.”

Klaudia leaned in, smile acidic. “Without me, you’d be dead or worse. You think the Tower will let a half-rate lockpicker with a parlor trick through their gates? You’re a Lightfoot. The only thing you’re built for is what I built you for.”

Kerrowyn’s chest felt like it might explode, but she met her mother’s gaze. “I’m not you. I don’t need to be you.”

There was a long, expectant hush. Kerric twitched, as if ready to leap between them, but he knew better than to get in the crossfire.

Klaudia’s smile faded. “I suspected as much,” she said quietly, “the day you got yourself branded for the sake of your brother. Eight years old, and you’d rather play martyr than rat him out. Even then, I knew you were soft. I had hoped—” her breath came out ragged, an animal sound—“I had hoped you’d harden up. But here you are, all grown and ready to betray the clan for a fucking hobby.”

Kerrowyn’s cheeks went hot. “It’s not a hobby. It’s magic. You don’t get it, you never—”

“Don’t tell me what I get, girl.” Klaudia’s finger was in her face now, sharp and shaking with the effort of restraint. “You think I don’t know about longing? About wanting out? You think I clawed my way up from nothing, watched my friends get knifed in alleys, just so my daughter could toss it away for some Tower pervert’s wet dream?”

Kerrowyn’s heart did not break, but it did recoil—like a dog anticipating the next blow. “You want me to be just like you. That’s the only future you have for me. Well, I’m not doing it. I want—” her voice faltered, “I want something that’s mine.”

Kerric’s eyes flickered, just for a second, to meet hers.

Klaudia lowered her hand. “Nobody gets what’s theirs. Not really.” She turned to Kerric. “Get the others. Elders’ll want to know about this first thing in the morning.”

Kerric hesitated, the shadow of his guilt stretching across the room. But he nodded, and followed orders, closing the door gently behind him.

Klaudia bent and picked up the letter, examined it as if it were a piece of evidence in a murder trial. “You always thought you were so clever. Sneaking around, making friends in high places.” She laughed—a dry, sour noise. “You want to see how far you can go? Go. But if you do, don’t come back.”

Kerrowyn stood very still. The idea of “don’t come back” suddenly felt less like banishment and more like a death sentence. “You’d kill me? If I tried?”

Klaudia studied her, the first crack of pain showing in her eyes. “If I have to. No one leaves the clan.”

Klaudia dropped the letter to the floor. “You were always my biggest gamble, Wren. My only bet that might pay off.” She reached into her pocket and produced a set of iron keys, shaking them meaningfully. “Don’t make me regret it more than I already do.”

Kerrowyn stayed silent, head bowed, as Klaudia strode out, locking the door with a clatter that sounded like a verdict.

For a long time after, Kerrowyn just stood, watching the locked handle, chest heaving. She was angry enough to cry, but crying was for the weak, and she was only allowed one kind of weakness in this house—the kind that drove you forward, not the kind that made you kneel.

She sat down again, clutching the Sunstone in her fist, the ache of its light bruising her palm. She would go, even if she had to break every window in this cursed place. Even if she had to leave her brother behind, or die trying.

No one left the Lightfoot Clan, but Kerrowyn had never been good at following rules.

Flight of Wren 

Kerrowyn paced her room, which felt more like a cell than ever—three steps, turn, three steps back, turn—like a beast in a menagerie. The walls were stone and nothing, but her mind already mapped the whole of it: the squeak in the doorjamb, the loose flagstone beneath the cot, the glass window spattered with city grime. The lock on the door was ceremonial. The real prison was the network of cousins and lookouts and shadowy threats, all trained to keep the family business secure.

She was a good climber, maybe even the best in the clan, but the Lightfoot Clan had never, in three centuries, produced a child meant for scaling sheer walls. Still, she knew her odds. If she waited for dawn, there would be a rotating pair of guards, a search of her room, and probably a set of manacles fitted to her bones. If she went now, tonight, she had the silence and the darkness and, if luck stayed with her, a chance to be nothing but another shadow in the city.

She stripped the bed of its blanket, tore it into two long strips. Wrapped one around her right hand, the other around her forearm, doubled over for padding. She fished out the Sunstone from her bag—stolen, precious—and turned it over in her palm, gauging the glow. Not too bright, but enough to see by.

The window was glass: cheap, battered, but glass. She took a breath, steeled herself, and punched through with a crack. The pain was immediate but bearable; blood dripped on the blanket, bright and pulsing, but not enough to matter. She cleared the shards with the butt of her heel, picked out the dangerous ones with careful fingers.

Below, the street was an endless drop. Three stories. She knew the Lightfoot house: it hunched in the shadow of the warehouse district, wedged between tanneries and slaughterhouses, with a back alley that channeled all the refuse of the city. She could drop to the ledge, shimmy over, land on the roof of the old grain store. If her bones held up, if her hands didn’t betray her.

She stuck her head out and listened. No patrols. No voices. The entire block was asleep, or at least pretending.

Kerrowyn breathed out, then in, then out again, and swung her legs through the opening.

For a second, she just hung, belly pressed to the sill, the night air biting her skin. Then she levered herself over, dangled, and dropped.

The ledge caught her, but not cleanly: her fingers grazed brick, tore skin, and she scraped her ribs on the way down. She didn’t cry out. She bit her lip, tasting blood, and forced herself upright. She’d have to be quick.

She navigated the ledge, inch by inch, feet sliding on grit and moss, every step a prayer to any god who might favor a doomed thief. At the end, she found the drainpipe, exactly where it should be. She grabbed, slid, and rode it down the last two stories in a controlled fall, burning the skin from her palms.

The alley was empty, save for a rat the size of her shoe. She limped east, using the shadows and the stink of garbage for cover. She didn’t run; that would attract notice. She just walked, head down, Sunstone dimmed and clutched tight. Each step set fire to her right ankle, but she did not pause.

Half a block away, someone stepped from a doorway. She recognized the silhouette: Lorre, cousin, enforcer, all muscle and spite. He held a cudgel in one hand and a lantern in the other.

“Knew you’d try, Wren,” he called, voice lazy but eyes sharp. “Dad said you’d break something, and look at that. Broken window, broken pride.”

She spun, veered down a side alley, and heard his boots on the stone behind her. Not running was no longer an option.

She sprinted, her lungs burning, her ankle already swelling in her boot. The city opened before her: a labyrinth of shadows, every corner a gamble. She ducked under low beams, vaulted a pile of refuse, and felt the air behind her shiver as Lorre’s cudgel missed her head by a whisker. He was faster, bigger, but she had desperation and years of planning every possible escape route.

She made for the rooftops. It was suicide, but so was staying. She found the crumbling wall behind the old bakery, scrambled up, nearly lost her grip, but jammed her knee into the mortar for leverage. Lorre’s hand caught the heel of her boot—she kicked, hard, and felt his teeth snap shut an inch from her calf. She ripped free and pulled herself onto the slanted shingle roof.

There were shouts behind her now, voices she recognized. Kerric’s was not among them. They’d raised the alarm: Kerrowyn Lightfoot was loose, and the bounty for her hide was now known to every gnome in the quarter.

She ran, nearly slipping on the moss and dew, and vaulted the gap to the next roof. This time, the landing collapsed under her; she dropped through the wooden slats, crashed onto a barrel below, the wind slammed from her lungs. She rolled, wincing, and forced herself upright. Her entire right side was a bruise; her hand bled freely from the glass. She used the blanket as a bandage, wrapping it tightly.

Down the next alley, she saw the flicker of lantern light: a city guard. Couldn’t go that way. She doubled back, heard the sounds of pursuit on both sides.

Above, a tangle of ropes stretched between buildings—laundry lines, but for her, salvation. She grabbed one, swung across the alley, and landed awkwardly on the opposite sill. Lost her grip, fell again—this time into a pile of soft rot. The stench nearly made her retch, but she staggered to her feet and kept moving.

They were closer now. She heard Lorre’s cackle, the clatter of his boots. Then, a whistle—a sharp, piercing note. It wasn’t for her; it was for backup. She cursed.

Only one route left: the river. She limped down a flight of stairs, through the abandoned bathhouse, and out to the embankment. The water was black and freezing, but the current was slow. She waded in, boots filling, the mud dragging at her steps. The pursuit stopped at the bank, unwilling to get wet.

“Cowards,” she muttered, shivering, but she knew better than to celebrate. She moved downstream, teeth chattering, until the water came up to her chest. The pain in her leg went numb, then nothing at all.

She found the stairs, pulled herself out, and collapsed on the flagstone. She lay there a long time, staring at the stars, listening for pursuit. When she was sure no one was close, she rolled onto her knees and crawled to the street.

The Tower was close now. She could see the faintest glow above the rooftops, the promise of something better. The climb up the final hill was hell: her body screamed, her vision swam, her hand throbbed with every heartbeat. She barely noticed the arrows that followed; two stuck in her coat, one in her thigh. She pulled it free, kept limping.

The Tower’s gates were massive, barred with bands of polished copper, shimmering in the night. And they were open, it felt like just for her. She staggered through them and beat her fist against the door, the sound a muffled drumroll.

“Help,” she tried to say, but her throat was sand. She coughed, spat blood, and hammered again.

A slit opened in the door. Two eyes peered through: startled, then—after a moment—familiar.

“Kerrowyn?” said the voice. “You look like hell.”

She tried to smile, but it hurt too much. “Made it, Alric. Told you I would.”

The door opened, a sliver at first, then wide enough for Alric to slide out and haul her upright.

“They’ll be after you,” he said, checking the street behind. “We need to get inside. Now.”

He took her by the shoulder, and she leaned into him, half-walking, half-dragged. The pain was a distant memory now; all she knew was the warmth, the safety, the absolution of crossing that threshold.

She glanced back, once, at the darkness below. She thought she saw movement—a flash of platinum hair, a figure darting between shadows—but she couldn’t be sure.

The doors shut behind her, and she was in the Tower, safe for the first time in her life. She clutched Alric’s arm, the Sunstone burning against her chest, and allowed herself, just once, to feel relief.

Then she passed out cold, her last thought a silent apology to the brother she’d left behind.