Reparations by T. A. Hernandez Page B

magic. A Tainted One. Less-than. Subhuman.
Perhaps it was because of this that I confided in him. Perhaps it
was because my mother’s death left me so shaken that I forgot
common sense. Perhaps it was simply because I’d secretly fancied
him since the summer I was thirteen. Whatever the reason, one
spring day when he was tending to the hunting dogs, I told him my
secret.
    He didn’t believe me at first. The
extreme differences in our social statuses meant he couldn’t laugh
at me, though I could tell he wanted to. When I conjured the blue
light in my palm to prove what I was, he gaped, then snatched it
away from me just by raising his hand. “What are you doing?” he
hissed. “Do you have any idea what would happen to you if people
found out about this?”
    I did know. My parents had never
ceased to warn me about the dangers of exposing my secret. My magic
could have brought an end to my father’s status as a magistrate and
ruined my family. It would have been easier for them, at the first
manifestations of my ability, to pass me off to an orphanage and
tell some tale about how I’d died of disease. But my parents loved
me, so they kept my secret and trained me to hide the
magic.
    There were moments when I
slipped—by accident when I was young, and often deliberately as I
grew older. Each time, I caught a glimpse of contempt in their
eyes. As fleeting as a snowflake melting on warm skin, but it was
there. When I showed Kito what I could do, I waited for the same
contempt to cross his features. It didn’t. I loved him instantly
for that.
    I made an effort to see him more
often after that encounter. He was just a confidant at first—a
friend, someone I could be myself with. Eventually the feelings
developed into something more, though neither of us spoke of it.
Not until after we were imprisoned with the other enchanters and we
were sure we’d soon be dead.
    The rebellion broke out the
following summer. Tired of the restrictions and discriminatory
policies placed on them by the Pure Ones, the enchanters organized
an uprising. They’d been planning in secret for months. The entire
country was caught off guard, but leadership in the Imperial City
recovered quickly. My father was the one who suggested that all
enchanters be imprisoned, whether they were directly connected to
the rebellion or not. “It’s just a precaution,” he told me. “This
is getting out of hand. We can’t afford for any more enchanters to
join in.”
    “ Putting them in prison is only
going to turn them against you,” I said.
    “ We have to act with speed and
force. You have nothing to worry about. No one knows you’re
Tainted.”
    He had never called me Tainted—not
to my face. I’d never believed he thought of me that way, but in
that moment, I realized that was how he must have thought of me all
along. Tainted, less-than, subhuman. The hurt must have shown on my
face because he hurried to apologize for the slip. “Amaya, I didn’t
mean it that way—you know I didn’t.”
    I had already turned my back. I
ran out of our home and made for the servant’s district. I had to
warn Kito; he and his entire family were enchanters.
    Soldiers dashed through the
streets like hundreds of ants on a united mission. They pounded on
doors and yanked known enchanters out of their homes—a simple task,
since the law required all enchanters to be registered and to live
in designated housing. The force and brutality with which they
worked convinced me the enchanters would find no kindness in
whatever prisons they were to be sent to. I ran harder, hoping it
wasn’t too late to save Kito and his family.
    Soldiers already had his brothers
and one sister restrained by the time I arrived. Their hands were
bound together to prevent them from using magic. An older man lay
slumped against the side of the house with blood running down one
side of his head. Kito’s father, as I’d learn later—the first
casualty in his family.
    Two more soldiers came out