Emris nodded. “I lived in the north—the wastelands. I was an outlaw by the time my magic surfaced—like my father. I never knew my mother. I had to use my magic to survive, especially when my father was captured by the authorities. I spent years fending for myself, until the temples followed the rumors of a Rogue in the wastelands and captured me too.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Lena softly.

“Sometimes I think it was necessity that kept Chaos at bay, for me,” Emris continued. “I had no choice but to control it, in order to survive. And so I did, even though I felt its call and sometimes longed for its oblivion. Pure will is a powerful thing, Lena. You should take comfort from that—you’ve got a lot of will too.” He glanced at her, and she felt the conversation shift—as it always seemed to—away from Emris and back to her. “I think you’re going to be fine, Lena.”

She forced a smile, feeling uncertain. “How many Rogues are there exactly?” she asked, gulping again at her water.

“Among the five thousand or so mages currently in the city’s temple system, only forty of us arrived as Rogues. The rest were whisked off to the Binding at the first glimmer of magic.”

Lena nodded slowly. Forty. It wasn’t many in the grand scheme of things—half as many as the cryptlings she’d grown up with in Duke’s Forest—but it was something. She liked the feeling that there were other people in this city like her and Emris. She liked feeling that she was a tiny bit closer to normal. Cryptlings had been banished, hidden, controlled. To be merely mistrusted, she thought, was something of a luxury. But is that enough?

“Constance … she was a Rogue too,” Emris said quietly. “The first in centuries to arrive here from Duke’s Forest.”

“Did you … know her?” Lena pressed. “I mean, before she committed … her crime?”

“Necromancy,” he whispered. “She was a necromancer. And, yes, I knew her.”

“What’s necromancy?”

“The Chaotic magical arts associated with death.”

She frowned and was about to ask for more explanation when a pained expression flashed over his face, quickly smothered. “Finding out what she was truly studying … well, it changed everything,” he continued. “The thing is, Lena, Constance and I … we were close. Friends, at first, and then something more.”