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along, because I was the one who’d talked them out of arresting the people who’d helped the refugees on Earth. But if it stopped them looking at me like they saw only my father, I wasn’t about to complain.
    Markos turned to them, the defiance vanishing from his expression. Kind of odd, considering he towered over everyone and if they wanted, he and his brothers could pound us into the polished floor in a heartbeat.
    “What is the problem?” Mr Sanders asked.
    “Merely a family misunderstanding,” said Markos. “It seems my presence is required on Aglaia.”
    “Then we should go.”
    As we left Central, the few passersby on the street stopped to stare or just moved as far away as possible. Sensible thinking. At least they couldn’t understand the centaurs talking about how filthy and hideous London was.
    But soon enough, we turned into the side street leading into the Passages. No one lived there anymore, thanks to the damage caused by a rampaging wyvern. Though the torn up cars had been taken away, several houses were little more than crumbled brick and there were deep gouges in the road where the wyvern’s tail had slammed down.
    The place where Ada’s attack on the Campbells had burned a small crater into the pavement drew my eyes before I had the sense to look away. Third level magic left permanent marks where it struck. Just outside the Passage entrance, a plaque on the wall had been engraved with the names of the people who’d sacrificed their lives defending Central. Mr Sanders paused by the memorial, head bowed for an instant, then continued into the Passages.
    As Earth was back in its low-magic state, it made the impact of magic in the blue-lit corridors even more noticeable. Like an electric surge, and a faint red tint to the air, like through a coloured glass pane. With magic at my fingertips, it was difficult to forget how close I’d come to being another name on the list of the dead.
    On Earth, I couldn’t use magic at all, which was why I hadn’t known I was a magic-wielder until I’d first broken into the Passages as a third-year Academy student. After I’d accidentally zapped Aric with second-level magic and nearly killed him, I’d never trusted magic. But in a hostile world like Aglaia, it would be a stupid move to ignore it.
    The buzzing grew stronger as we went deeper through the wide, high-ceilinged corridors, past doors which led to various points on other worlds, starting with the Earth’s close neighbours, the original five worlds of the Alliance. Aglaia, as a recent member, was a fair distance from London, almost at the second level, which was reserved for dangerous, non-cooperative worlds like the Enzarian Empire. Almost all were high-magic. On Aglaia itself, third level magic was highly illegal, but if it turned out a human had killed the centaurs’ leader, that was the quickest, deadliest weapon. As easy as hitting a button… except for the backlash, of course. I’d been lucky not to get hit by the recoil when I’d used it, and even then, it had burned the skin off my hands. The aftereffects had gone on for weeks, like an electric shock through my fingers every other minute.
    Cut that out, I thought, as magic tugged at me again. Like I’d fall for that now. I glanced at Raj, but he didn’t appear bothered. I’d wondered before if having an internal source made magic react to me differently. Made it feel too damn good to resist.
    But I did, though I half expected an ambush when we stepped through the door to Aglaia. The heat struck first, a marked contrast to London, which was fairly cold for early autumn. Aglaia’s climate felt more Mediterranean. We’d crossed several time zones when moving through the Passages, and it was afternoon here judging by the position of Aglaia’s burnished red sun above the trees. The doorway appeared to have been cut into a large tree, leading into a clearing in the midst of the forest.
    Centaur territory. We were in a sunny, forested