Gentry growled at the witch who offered her the pill. The other patients in line snickered and her blood grew hot. Fuck these naive assholes. She hoped they all died from whatever curses they supposedly had. After all, unlike Gentry, their diagnosed status allowed them to visit their families without wearing an iron chainmail bodysuit to contain their curses. The magic-resistant metal mesh encasing her arms, chest, and shoulders added a good thirty pounds onto Gentry’s frame, making her sway from foot to foot in the outdated government hallway. Rather than rest her back onto the asbestos-riddled wall, she dug her heels in.

“C’mon, take the pill, please,” the witch — a big guy who could be no older than twenty and the most patient of the ‘state-sanctioned mages’ who babysat them — begged as he shoved the green pill beneath her nose, “we’re behind schedule as is. The families are here. Don’t you want to see your mom on your birthday, Greenbriar?”

Gentry’s nose wrinkled as the witch placed the pill at her lips like she was a dog. For a second, she thought of her mother, who desperately wished to see her. Her little sister who’d joke yet again that the iron mail coif covering her face made her resemble a demented falconry bird with its hood on. With her sister’s wild cackle playing in her mind, Gentry almost opened her mouth to accept the pill onto her tongue.

But then she remembered her plan, and how taking that pill would ruin everything, and how if she gave in to another witch again, she’d go insane with disgust with herself. Love for her family warred against logic and rage. The rage incinerated the competition. Gentry doubled down and spat past the green pill onto the witch’s plain white nursing sneakers.

The entire floor of patients groaned in dismay. Face purpling beneath his scraggly facial hair, the witch raised his hand in preparation to strike her.

Gentry gritted her teeth together in preparation for the impact. Experience taught her that a bitten tongue sucked way worse than a bruised cheek. The witch only healed the cheek.

A giggle belonging to a tall, shaggy-haired patient beside Gentry broke the tension and the witch faltered. The distraction came from none other than Gentry’s chronically altered roommate, Mykel. “C’mon, Justin,” she slurred, “leave her be. I think she likes getting hit by you guys. So what if she doesn’t take her pill right away? It’s wasted on her.” She winked at the witch as if they were old friends. Considering Mykel had slept with more than one mage for drugs of all varieties, them being friends wasn’t much of a stretch. “Besides, her mommy will raise another stink if you cancel the visit again.”

Justin stepped back from Gentry, his muscular frame stiff as he closed his eyes and let out a huff of air. He deflated like a balloon as he pinched his brow to massage away a headache, the spit-covered green pill between his fingers glistening underneath the fluorescent lights. “Fine,” he said at last, “you take your pill after the visit, Gentry. Everyone, let’s go.”

Not quite believing her luck, Gentry shifted uncomfortably in her chainmail before following the other patients and Justin through the massive labyrinth of a building, going down two floors. The rehabilitation center of the Curse Ward department stretched the length of two football fields. Or, at least that’s what the head mage had told her, her mom, and physician when they toured it five years ago. She wasn’t sure she believed it since every hallway looked the same. A disillusionment spell so they couldn’t escape? With no magic of her own, she had no way of telling.

Countless windowless doors came and went, and Gentry recalled with the same old bitterness that the tour had boasted display windows and laboratories and dumb inspirational posters in different sections. Those had been real. She’d confirmed it with her mother one visit.

At last, they stopped at another identical door and Justin beckoned them through to the visitor’s center. It bloomed open into a tastefully painted room full of circular wooden tables, its inspirational posters matching the Curse Ward of Gentry’s memories. Mothers, their faces haggard with worry, sprang to their feet, their husbands following dutifully behind as they found their poor cursed children. A few wives and husbands from the few older patients stood up, content to not join the fray of hysterical families. Squeals and trills of laughter from some of the younger visitors, siblings or children of the patients, filled the space with joy. Gentry’s fellow patients broke formation to hug and greet their loved ones.

Gentry looked in the direction of the table where her mother and sister always sat. Sure enough, a round woman with dark curls piled atop her head beamed in her direction. A young girl with straight black hair, light olive skin, and almond-shaped green eyes, around twelve years old, scrunched her face in sarcastic welcome. She smiled back. A small blue-frosted cake sat between them, an absurd amount of burning candles clustered on top. Without counting, she knew the bits of purple wax amounted to twenty-three.

Ignoring the other families’ parting to avoid her and her ‘containment suit’, she hurried to her birthday cake and leaned over to blow the candles out. Her chainmail hood dangled when she leaned, threatening to smear the frosting.

“God,” her sister, Beckett, whined, “no matter how many times I see it, I want armor too. You know that thing is illegal on the streets, right?”

Gentry shot her sister a grateful grin. The monthly visits had livened up with Beck showcasing her wicked sense of humor, a far cry from when Gentry had first been committed. Back then, all the seven-year-old Beck did during their visits was cry. “You’ll have to be a nutter like me to get one. They put me in the suit cause they’re scared of me,” she joked. “Hell, a mage turned himself into a frog just to get away from me.”

“Language,” her mother chastised absent-mindedly as Beckett giggled. Aya Greenbriar’s dark eyes were far away, their honey color the one trait she hadn’t passed on to her daughters. They both had their father’s pale green eyes. A small remnant of the man, which, in Gentry’s estimation, was too much.

The soberness on her mother’s face chased away her joy at the cake. Her mother was too tough, too organized to not have said happy birthday to her yet. “Mom. What’s wrong?”

Her mother started slicing the cake, her movements slow and methodical, just like she was with everything. “The head mage talked to me two days ago. You’re still not in good standing, Gentry. Do you know what that means?”

She stared at the piece of cake her mother shoved her direction, no longer craving the sugary goodness. “Yes, I know what it means.” It meant that they’d ship her off to a subsidiary facility several provinces away. Only patients with good standing got to stay at Curse Ward in Tunsa, where the Mage Corps headquarters were. It was considered a privilege. “Did Lucinda say how long I have?”

“In two weeks they’re submitting the paperwork for a transfer. They’re not changing their minds unless — and I’m quoting that horrible woman — ‘a miracle and a personality change happens’. You better make the miracle happen, you hear? We cannot afford to visit you once a month if they ship you off.”

“Oh,” Gentry whispered, her brain stalling at the news, “is that all?” She didn’t know what else to say. They were a hair's breadth away from the argument they always had. At the heart of the matter, she and her mother both wanted the same thing—for her to get discharged from the Curse Ward. It was the how they disagreed on.

Her mother pushed on as Beckett dug into her own plate of cake, the younger girl accustomed to their fights. “I won’t be able to protect you as well either. Do you know how many phone calls it takes to make sure these people are treating you right? Walking in is far more effective irritant to them. If they transfer you, you’ll have to play by their games, Gentry. Not yours.”

There it was. Indignation filled her. She spoke slowly.  “No matter what I do, I’m not getting a good score, Mom. Even when I was complying, they had it out for me. They put me through more tests, gave me more pills than anyone else when I was playing to their tune. I’m not like the other patients. None of their diagnoses explained my symptoms. They’re lying to us.” Cuts that sliced across her skin as if by a ghostly dagger. Exhaustion so intense her limbs sometimes felt like lead. And, to top it all off, hemophilia. That’s what her pill was for now, a preemptive healing potion so that she didn’t bleed out at the smallest of wounds. For years, she hadn’t known what was wrong with her, had believed the mages knew what was best for her. That was, until she remembered the truth.

Her mother scoffed. “Why does it matter whether they’re lying or not? They’re the ones who get to decide when you are discharged. If they tell you to act like a chicken, get bocking, girl. If they say you have three eyes, you better start feeling enlightened. Your admittance is government-ordered. I fought tooth and nail to keep you home, but it’s out of our hands now. Stop hurting us with your own stubbornness. Come home. Please.”

A deep flush creeping up her neck, Gentry watched her sister scarf down cake with more than a little envy. God, how her birthday had gone sideways. She wanted to eat cake. She wanted her mother to see things the way she did. Those witches never intended to let her go. It went against the deal her father had made when he sold her out.

“Here you go, a young healthy person, doctor physical notes included,” her father’s frightened voice warbled out, “my debt’s paid.” He didn’t look at where she was shackled to her knees on the freezing concrete of the warehouse floor. In fact, he never looked at her again, his scrawny, cowardly face drawn in equal parts grief and terror. If she could speak past the gag in her mouth, Gentry would’ve told him how pathetic he looked as he cowered before the masked witches circling her.

“What a witch you are, Maxwell,” an elderly woman wearing a hawk mask sneered, her warbly voice and wrinkled, bejeweled hands giving up her age, “I wonder what poor mother is looking for the daughter you kidnapped.”

Somehow, the truth was far worse.

The true memory had come to her in bits and pieces over the years, replacing the hazy period when she and her father had finished conning an insurance company out of enough money to pay for the apartment for a couple months. When she’d been fifteen, she’d left her mother’s house to live with her father. Now, as an adult, Gentry sorely regretted the years spent away from her mother and sister, her true family. Despite her disloyalty, they hadn’t given up on her. Not once.

“Gentry,” her mother sighed, “where do you go? Baby, I need you to focus.”

She blinked the memories and self-hatred away, and tiredness filled her bones with the same iron weighing down her shoulders and back. The fight for her freedom never ended, but she wanted to pretend for a second it didn’t exist. “Can I eat cake, Mom?” It came out far whinier than she wanted.

Her mother’s face softened. “Have some cake. We finish this discussion at the five-minute mark. Beck, slow down! This is your sister’s cake and it’s already tiny enough.”

“Yes, Mama,” Beckett replied, her cheeks stuffed full like a chipmunk’s.

Gentry hid her grin as she dug into the birthday slice, savoring the sugar for the treat it was. Leave it to her mom to put a time limit on her leniency. Before she’d been committed, the trait might’ve driven her crazy, but each second of mothering held a special place in her heart. Being mothered was a privilege.

For the next fifteen minutes, she and Beck goofed around. Beckett told her about the girl she liked, and all the other girls she hated. The groups of friends who all vied for her attention. Their mother chimed in as a fact checker whenever Beck’s stories took a turn for the fantastical; the school prank to sell a teacher’s car on social media had been thwarted by hers truly, thank you very much.

The time passed far too quickly for Gentry’s liking. It was like reality snapped back to gray and melancholy, the colors seeped from the walls, as soon as her mother said, “Tell me you have a plan to get in good standing, sweetie.”

Tell me you’re not going away. Come back to me. She heard the unspoken plea. “I have a plan.” Not to get in good standing. But technically not a lie. She did have a plan. All she did nowadays was plan. Nothing was taking her away from her family. Not even vindictive, nasty witches.

Her trickiness didn’t get past her mom. She settled back in her chair, shaking her head with sadness in her eyes. “Your father would get that crazy look in his eyes sometimes. It wasn't until you were locked up in here that I saw the same thing from you.”

“Don’t compare me to him.” The words came out harsher than she meant them to, harsh enough to where Beck gave her a wide-eyed look.

“Then don’t look crazy. If he cursed you like you said he did then I’d think you wouldn't want to be like him. Dial it back.”

“He didn’t curse me. He sold me out,” Gentry corrected sadly. For the past five years, all her and her mom did was fight. For the government to relinquish her involuntary commitment. For the Curse Ward to give her something to do rather than stare at blank white walls. To find where her fucking father was hiding. They’d lost most, won some. This was the first time she’d seen her mother look defeated.

Her mother was wrong. Gentry didn’t get her crazy from her father because that bastard never saw anything through. No, she strived to be half as stubborn as Aya Greenbriar, the woman who’d birthed her and never stopped fighting for her daughters.

A mage announced visitation hour was over as her mother collapsed her face into her hands. Beckett threw her arms around her, and Gentry hugged her back, borrowing her head into Beck’s bony shoulder. She smelled like lilac, like home. Ruffling her baby sister’s hair, she then rose and hugged her mother, who didn’t look up.

“Love you,” she murmured, “trust me, okay? Things are going to change.”

“I love you too. So much,” her mother whispered.

Gentry left with the rest of the patients, the pain in her heart singing as families murmured their goodbyes. The pressure in her throat rose when Jimmy, a ten-year-old boy with strawberry blonde curls, cried as he hugged his dad. His father whispered to him, allowing the curse boy to talk back. A witch had cursed the boy to only speak when spoken to. Even Gentry, who hated the mages with everything in her, hoped the boy was cured soon. They’d already found ways to mitigate the effects.

Entering into the bland halls of the real Curse Ward was sobering to say the least. Like the world snapped back to rules, experiments, probing questions, and yucky potions. Gentry scrunched her nose in disgust. Only another minute, she reminded herself as their line of patients lumbered through the halls, slower than when they came. Justin the mage glanced back at her, and she knew he planned to shove that healing potion pill down her throat as soon as possible.

They trudged up the first flight of stairs, and Gentry slowed, brushing shoulders, until she was at the end of the line. Mykel matched her pace.

“Go away,” Gentry whispered, looking at the high girl who blinked owlishly back at her.

“Nuh-uh,” Mykel slurred, “it’s peaceful back here. Don’t have to listen to you sniffle like everyone else. My family lives four provinces away. Won’t see them till the solstice.”

Then why did you come to visitation? But Gentry didn’t have time to ask the question, because they reached the top of the stairs. Her first opportunity. She looked back. The stairs stretched below them, the blue laminate floors gleaming at the bottom. God, this is going to hurt. Her nerves nearly failed her. This plan was beyond desperate, but she’d told her mother the truth. They weren’t going to transfer her. Not when she was so close to figuring out the truth.

“All my pain meds,” she said breathlessly to Mykel, “you get all of them if you deliver, remember the deal?”

Mykel’s pale green eyes widened underneath her shaggy bangs. “I thought you were just joking about that, Gen. Forget the drugs. That’s—”

Whatever her roommate’s excuses at reneging on their deal, Gentry didn’t hear them. She rolled back on her heel and let the heavy, heavy chainmail do its work. It tipped her backwards into the air. She fell.

• **

She’d like to say each stair blurred into the other, that her head, shoulder, and side bashing into harsh edges bled into just one giant injury, and she lost consciousness as soon as she hit that blue laminate flooring. That her ankle snapping and tooth biting through her tongue were masked by an absurd amount of adrenaline running through her veins.

But that would be lying, and only dirty fucking mages lied.

It’d taken two minutes for the mages to levitate her into the infirmary, and Gentry had been wired throughout, her brain racing as it catalogued each injury, each sharp throb of agony. The infirmary mage cursed as they peeled her chainmail off, the iron interfering with their ability to heal her. They then poured magic into her wayward rib, followed by her ruptured lung. At one point, she heard the Curse Ward director, Lucinda, snap at all involved that they couldn’t lose her, that their patron would be very upset and pull their funding.

Gentry snarled past the bubbling blood in her throat at yet another confirmation that they’d stolen her freedom for a paycheck, that her presence mattered so little as to discuss it openly. They ignored her.

The mages left her half-repaired on the hospital bed after two hours, declaring her body too laden with magic to continue healing. Her ankle throbbed in time with her heartbeat. She glared at the IV drip that sat unattached at her bedside. With her now stable, the Curse Ward worked far more slowly. The infirmary TV playing the 24-hour news cycle completed her torture.

A low whistle interrupted her seething. “God, girl, they really hate you, huh?” Mykel looked down at her with an impressed look. “Here, you need this more than I do.” The taller girl expertly hooked up the IV to her arm, the small prick causing tiny rivulets of blood to flow because Gentry’s hemophilia hadn’t disappeared. She was still cursed.

The pain medicine burned her veins. “How’d ya do that?” Gentry said, this time she was the one to slur.

“Drugs. I know all about my art”—Mykel settled into the chair next to the infirmary bed—“now onto business. I ran that software on your school laptop like you asked me to. Hooked me right up to Lucinda’s phone calls like you said it would.”

Elation mixed with the pain medicine. Years of advanced online schooling were the one thing the Curse Ward hadn’t deprived her of. She’d taught herself how to get past the security of her school laptop, and they hadn’t bothered to put patients and employees on a different subnet. The idiots. “Did she call anyone and kiss up to them about my condition?” She tried not to sound nervous. This entire plan rode on the assumption Lucinda would call the very people who her dad had sold her out to. The last puzzle piece.

“Some old bat. Lydia. Mean as hell. She halved her contribution to the Curse Ward until your medical documents are sent back to her,” Mykel said, scratching her arm and glancing at a camera whose microphones had been conveniently disabled. “You really aren’t crazy like everyone says you are, huh?”

I don’ t recognize that name. Gentry sucked in a breath. She’d memorized all the local witch covens, knew their leadership structures from studying thousands of messages from a private black market server selling body parts, artifacts of power, and all other materials needed for dark magic. As far as she knew, there was no Lydia on any of their rosters.

“What is your curse?” Mykel asked, interrupting Gentry’s spiraling worries. “I’m guessing if you were right about the mages not wanting to cure you, then you know just what it is you’re cursed with, right?”

For the first time since she’d met her roommate, Gentry looked, really looked, at Mykel. The tall woman was dressed in their typical medical standard outfit — a pair of blue jeans (no pockets) and a white shirt — but she’d painted the shirt with a gorgeous butterfly, the tips of its iridescent wings reaching her thin shoulder blades and ending at her hips. A fine sheen of sweat covered Mykel’s skin, making her shaggy brown hair cling to her forehead, and her pupils, ringed with the deep green of her irises, were diluted like she’d been the one to receive a dose of pain medicine.

“I’m not quite sure,” Gentry admitted, “but I think I’m taking someone’s injuries for them. I was never hemophiliac before. And apparently this Lydia woman wants me healthy at any cost. That’s why I'm stuck here. So they can monitor me.” A thought occurred. “What are you cursed with? You’re diagnosed.” Unlike Gentry and the newer patients, Mykel hadn’t had to wear the iron to visitation.

Her roommate shrugged. “Nothing as interesting as that.” She rubbed at her arms and rocked, looking anywhere but at Gentry’s face. “Oh he’s handsome.” She nodded at the small, sad 35-inch display which played the news. Without asking permission, she grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.

A banner across the screen flashed DRAYER NETHERTON ADDRESSES SKADRA CITY. A bland, traditionally handsome, white man with a square jar and sandy blonde hair stood behind a podium. Perhaps the medicine was finally kicking in, but Gentry sat up straighter. He looked familiar…

Yet when he droned on with the typical politician bullshit they all used when trying to get elected — equality and how all humans, magic or no, needed to mend broken bridges — she couldn’t pin him down. When he gestured with his hands glowing like sparklers, she scowled. A witch in office. Just what we needed. The pain med burning in her veins did little to abate her annoyance.

Unable to stop herself from listening further, Gentry scowled at the noncommittal, uninspired speech. Middle ground was the man’s stance on everything. So disingenuous. The man is a witch, and he doesn’t condemn the government for conscripting witch kids into their military programs? She hated witches, yet even she found the practice disgusting.

From the lack of cheers from his crowd, she wondered if anyone was falling for his act.

She reached for the remote control on her bedstand, but found nothing. “Hey Mykel, can you—” Something ripped through the flesh of her right shoulder and interrupted her question. It burned like someone had stabbed her with a hot poker. “Fuck!” The curse left her in a gush of air.

“Are you okay?” Mykel asked, her emerald eyes wide with concern.

Fighting the urge to writhe in agony on the hospital bed, Gentry touched her shoulder. Blood, hot and gushing, spurted onto her fingertips. “Shit, shit, shit.” She grabbed her blanket and pressed it against the wound, before looking around the empty hospital room. “Get down, Mykel,” she ordered, “someone shot me.” She’d never been shot before, but somehow she was certain.

“Oh.” She heard her roommate suck in a breath and Gentry looked up at the television screen. Screams came from the speakers, the sound hollow since the volume was still low.

The screaming ceased as the live stream switched back to the news pundits, who looked pale in their stage makeup. One woman, a blond in a tight purple suit, asked, “Did Drayer Netherton just get shot?”

On that question, the news cut to commercial. Mykel ran out of the room to call for a mage, leaving Gentry alone as an election commercial played. It featured the very man who’d been shot seconds ago.

“He’s the one,” Gentry whispered to herself, forgetting her pain as she tried to remember that warehouse with so many masked figures. That memory was always so blurry, always filled with terror. But there was no denying it now. She was cursed, and she’d found the man whose injuries had taunted her for years. Elation and rage filled her as she stared at the stupid witch’s face. “I found you. I fucking found you.”

When Mykel returned with a small crowd of panicked mages behind her, the hospital room television was turned off. For the first time in years, Gentry took her medicine without complaint.