Shadow Witch

by Isla Frost

  Either way, the outcome was the same. We were going to be slaughtered.

  I sucked in a few more lungfuls of air. All right then. No point speculating when I had someone offering to answer my questions right in front of me.

  “Explain,” I ground out. “Human history places the Malus as your ally. Did your nasty monstrosity turn against you?”

  Theus flinched as if I’d struck him. “No. We did not come to your world to destroy, but to protect.”

  I laughed without an ounce of humor. “Well you did a bang-up job of that.”

  Theus shook his head. “The Malus was never our ally. It is our greatest enemy. Our opposite in every way. We are predators, yes, but we give back more than we take. Our magic is, at its essence, that of life. It sustains life. Magnifies life. That is why nature has increased in immensity, abundance, and power. It is why Millicent is sentient. Why humans are developing their own magic. We are predators, yes, but there is balance.”

  His green gaze seared mine, imploring me to understand.

  “The Malus. It’s not like us. It drains the life force from any and every living thing and gives nothing in return.”

  My heart pounded in my ears even though I was sitting completely still. How could that be true? How could any of that be true?

  We’d thought the Malus was a walker weapon. A terrible weapon. But the idea of it not being under their control was actually worse. A lot worse. The walkers, as foreign as they were, could be understood, reasoned with. The Malus as far as anyone knew wanted only to devour life with an unending alien hunger.

  I shook myself, throwing off Theus’s wild claims. “We saw you working with it,” I pointed out. “Before our communication technology went down. Walkers seized territory beyond what the Malus had already taken over. You forced people from their homes or killed them if they refused to leave. You burned everything to the ground!”

  Theus bowed his head. “We did that. It’s true. But not to claim territory. It’s the only tactic we know to hold back the Malus from advancing. Like a wildfire, if you take away its fuel, you can slow it down or even contain it for a while. We had to kill those that would not evacuate. If we left them, they would’ve fallen to the Malus and made it more powerful.”

  Ameline’s body was trembling against mine. Bryn’s magical fire had tripled in size and was threatening to burn down the wall. Or it would have been if the flames were consuming fuel.

  “You’re lying,” I snapped. “You came as invaders. You brought thousands of creatures with you that attacked our kind. And if you do have life magic, you used it only for death.”

  Lirielle canted her head, her expression one of mild puzzlement. “The Malus destroyed their world. Our world. We had to bring them with us or doom them to extinction by starvation. And while casualties were high, most of the species we brought only kill in defense or the need for food. Humans are rare in that they do not follow the same pattern.”

  “But in bringing them here you threatened us with extinction!”

  Theus cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Actually, there are still many of your kind left. And we are ensuring you and the other species native to this planet survive even now. That is where those that fail at the academy go. The Preservatorium. Perhaps—if the Malus is defeated—we can one day return the planet to a semblance of its natural state.”

  I opened my mouth and shut it again. I didn’t even know where to start.

  “I know it’s a lot for you to take in,” Theus said quietly, still calm and rational, like they were the good guys. Like humans had gotten it wrong for the past fifty years. “But whatever your parents or grandparents told you, whatever mistakes were made—and there were plenty on both sides from what I gather—you need to come to terms with the idea that we’re now fighting the same enemy. An enemy that could cause mass extinction of this entire world.”

  His utter conviction robbed my fury of some of its heat. There was no way he was telling us the whole story. No way I believed this overly prettified version of history. But that last part, the part about us fighting the same enemy? The fear that if we failed, we would all be wiped out? He believed it entirely.

  Which made me start to believe it too.

  And even if the Malus was their own creation that had turned against them, the outcome now was the same. We were in more trouble than any of us had previously understood.

  “Let’s say, hypothetically, that I believe you.” Even though I did kind of believe him, I almost choked on the words.

  “If the Malus can rip out the life force from anything and anyone, if it has already destroyed your world, and you superpowerful walkers haven’t found a better strategy than to freaking well slaughter and burn everything in its vicinity to slow it down, what the hell is the plan here?”

  Theus gazed back, still earnest.

  “It’s not quite as hopeless as that. Our elite warriors have been able to hold off the Malus’s advancement on key strategic fronts and even weaken it a little. And there is one way to protect against the Malus’s life-force-ripping power. That was one of the purposes of the transformation ritual you underwent.”

  “How?”

  “Your life force has been separated from your body and anchored elsewhere, which means when you come face-to-face with the Malus, it can’t just reach out and drain you. Its power is constrained by distance. Which is why the clearing method works. And why it hasn’t wiped out this continent yet.”

  I tried to process this. “Then why not do that to every person?”

  “Because we want to save all living things. And the procedure of separating someone from their life force is complex, risky, and comes at a steep price. Besides, in the long run, even that will not be enough to protect us from the Malus. That’s why we need wildcards.”

  Theus had explained to us before the ritual that in most cases a student’s magic would be strengthened and concentrated, greatly increasing their abilities in the one area of their affinity. But for one in fifty cases, the results were unpredictable. And for those outliers, those wildcards, their magic sometimes transformed into power of a type and magnitude that even walkerkind had never seen.

  I grappled to understand how that applied to what we were now talking about.

  “So let me get this straight. Your entire strategy is just to slow the enemy’s advancement and hope that one day someone will come along with a wildcard gift that holds the key to defeating the Malus?”

  Lirielle beamed, as if my anger and incredulity had flown completely over her head. “Yes!”

  Theus’s reaction was more subdued. “That’s about the sum of it.”

  I swallowed. And noticed Bryn’s fire had guttered out. She resolutely set it going again.

  “Has anyone come close to succeeding?” I asked.

  Theus shook his head mutely.

  “You know the definition of madness, right?”

  “Walking between worlds without packing your favorite sandwich?”

  “What? No. It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

  Theus raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like the definition of foolishness rather than madness. But I take your point.”

  “So explain it to me. You’re saying almost forty years of stealing human firstborns and putting them through the transformation ritual hasn’t gotten you anywhere close to success. What the hell sort of strategy is that?”

  “First of all, we didn’t steal firstborns. We traded them according to the terms of the Agreement.”

  I bit my tongue. Hard. Now was not the time to veer off on tangents. Even if the subject of those tangents made me see red.

  “Secondly, we’ve been trying different approaches with the firstborns, and you’re growing more powerful, more magical with each intake. We’re hoping that will make the difference.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  His mouth tightened. “Then we die.”

  Something that had been niggling at the b
ack of my mind throughout this conversation jumped to the forefront.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “How long what?”

  “How long did it take the Malus to destroy your world?”

  “A hundred years.”

  I did the math. It had been fifty years since they’d arrived here and overturned our civilization with unfathomable casualties.

  “Fifty then,” I said. “We have fifty years left to figure out how to stop this thing.”

  Theus shifted uncomfortably and dropped his gaze to the floor, something I’d never seen a walker do.

  “Your world is smaller than ours. We’re estimating ten.”

  Chapter Six

  My stomach plunged downward. All comfort I’d gleaned from being with my friends, all triumph I’d felt from making it through the trial phase of this academy, vanished.

  Despite everything we’d been through, everything we’d survived to come this far, we would be helpless in the face of the oncoming disaster.

  Ameline’s gentle warmth would be snuffed out, leaving a void I couldn’t begin to contemplate. Bryn’s fiery spirit would be forever extinguished.

  The news was world shattering. So much worse than anything I’d imagined. And here I’d thought I’d already imagined the worst. Thought the world had already been shattered.

  We couldn’t stop the Malus. It was impossible. Billions of lives had proved that.

  And every life left would prove it a second time.

  My heart seemed to falter.

  Because when we inevitably failed, my family would die.

  My family wasn’t supposed to die. I’d surrendered myself to the walkers to secure their futures. To keep them safe. But there was no future. No safety.

  Mila would never even reach my own scant age of seventeen. She would never experience adulthood, never realize her full potential, never learn who she was and what made her beautiful and unique. Hell, she would never even grow to her full height. And if Reuben lived long enough to marry and start a family of his own, it would be just in time to watch them die.

  Grief scrabbled down my throat, scraping it raw and filling and filling me until I choked on it.

  I hadn’t even realized how much knowing Mila and Reuben would have happy lives, that I’d secured that much at least, had kept me going until now. Until I felt so, so deflated. Defeated. Despairing.

  All my life I’d railed against the Firstborn Agreement. But this was worse. So much worse. And I didn’t have a hope of stopping it.

  Theus stood.

  “We’ll leave you three alone to process the news. I know it’s a lot.”

  “Wait,” Bryn said. “If wildcard gifts are so crucial to your big strategy, why are there rumors going around that the teachers are thinking of killing Nova? Why is she trapped in this room instead of in her bed like everyone else?”

  Theus froze and looked down at me with… Was that pity in his eyes?

  “You have Malus magic, Nova.”

  His words hit me like a collapsing building.

  I had the same magic as the evil monster that would kill us all. That would kill my sister. My brother. My father. My mother.

  Theus continued to address me even though it was Bryn who’d asked the question. “It’s the opposite of walker magic. Of life magic. It consumes and devours without end. And every life it takes, it uses to strengthen itself. It uses the strength of our fallen against us. That power is anathema to our kind.”

  He swallowed as if tasting something foul.

  “It’s hard to describe how much we’ve come to loathe it. We’ve had a hundred and fifty years of war and death to cement that loathing.”

  A hundred and fifty years of war and death.

  Only ten to go.

  It was my turn to swallow as if tasting something foul. The movement hurt my raw throat. If Theus’s story was even partially true, things were beginning to make an awful sort of sense. I recalled Cricklewood’s words to me.

  You’re either the one we’ve been waiting for or a horrifying aberration that ought to be put down. Now I just have to convince the cowards to give us the chance to learn which.

  My wildcard magic was of a type the walkers abhorred with a hundred and fifty years of accumulated bitterness.

  But nothing else they’d tried had worked. Maybe it would take Malus magic to defeat the Malus.

  Theus shoved a hand through his already tousled hair. He seemed distressed. At his vicinity to me and my hated magic? Or the prospect of my execution?

  “There is one last potential issue,” he said. “Although you were likely unconscious at the time, you did take a walker’s life.”

  Bryn bared her teeth. “So what? That doesn’t even begin to even the score.”

  Theus met her gaze squarely. “I know. And I disagree that it should come into consideration of Nova’s fate. But you should be fully informed of the factors in play here.”

  Ameline stifled a sob and Bryn made a growling noise in her throat. I just sat there, feeling wretched.

  “But despite everything, I believe consideration of the greater good will win out over any personal feelings. It usually does with walkerkind. And, Nova, it’s clear to at least some of us that you’re an asset. Even if you are a dangerous one.”

  “And if those in charge don’t agree?” Bryn demanded.

  Theus’s perfect brow furrowed, and even the imperturbable Lirielle looked agitated, losing some of her inherent stillness.

  “I-I don’t know,” he said finally. I hadn’t seen him lost for words before. “But I don’t believe it will come to that.” He was silent a moment before adding, “It can’t.”

  I was no longer sure whom he was trying to convince.

  His green eyes fixed on mine, and for a moment it seemed that they were laid bare before me.

  “For the little it’s worth, I am deeply sorry for the harm we’ve caused you,” he said. Then he strode out of my prison cell with Lirielle beside him.

  When the door had vanished behind them, Bryn released a torrent of curses, and Ameline released her own grief in the form of sobbing.

  But I was numb, hollow. As if someone had scraped out my insides and sewn me back up and I was still sitting there but most of me was missing.

  In that moment, with the sky the color of charcoal, fatigue dampening my spirit, and the shocking revelations of the past half hour whirling around my brain, it seemed to me that we were all doomed to die.

  And my plans to protect my loved ones, to end the Agreement, to bring the walkers down and reunite the surviving firstborns with their families, burned to ash on that impending funeral pyre.

  I closed my eyes and prayed I was wrong.

  Chapter Seven

  They came for me an hour after dawn. Every professor at the school except for Grimwort, who was noticeably absent. Their faces were stern and unsmiling, including the only non-walker among them, Professor Wilverness, who hung back in her antlered centaur form.

  Dunraven acted as spokesperson. He was tall and striking with skin the color of burnt umber, a closely trimmed goatee, and a penetrating gaze that always made me feel as transparent as a window.

  “It has been decided that Kyrrha’s death and the magic you possess shall not be held against you. Provisionally.”

  My breath came out in a whoosh of relief. Theus had been right. I would not die, not today. And I supposed that a conditional pardon was generous, because I still held each and every student death against them.

  “You will be expected to develop magical proficiency fast and prove to us you’re able to keep the power under strict control. If you fail to contain your magic, if you harm anyone else at this academy, or if you put so much as a toe out of line, there will be no second chances. Do you understand these provisions?”

  My mouth was dry and tacky, like I’d eaten some of the ash from my hypothetical funeral pyre. “Yes.”

  “Good. You missed an assembly this morning. But after your unauthorized
visitors earlier, I imagine you already know what you’re here for.”

  I waited, expecting reprimand or punishment, but he only said, “Classes start in ten minutes.”

  I pushed to my feet. I felt wobbly on every level: physically, mentally, and emotionally. My purpose, the one that had shaped so much of my life and formed such a large part of my identity, was on precarious ground. The history I’d grown up hearing and my understanding of the world and our futures was at threat of being overwritten. But Bryn and Ameline had only left when the bells had chimed for that assembly, and their companionship had done me good.

  The despair that had seized me had loosened its grip, and I was left shaken but resolute.

  I would fight until the end.

  Even if it was futile.

  So I willed my limbs and my expression not to betray me and swept past the professors out of my makeshift prison cell.

  Regardless of my, Bryn, and Ameline’s feelings toward the walkers, it was clear that the Malus needed to be destroyed. It was also clear that at least Cricklewood and Theus believed my unique wildcard magic might somehow make that possible.

  So I would choose to believe it too. Because otherwise I would crumple in a heap and be no good to anyone.

  My friends needed me. My family needed me. The world needed me—at least to try.

  So what if it was impossible? My first goal had been impossible, and I’d pressed on undaunted.

  I would do the same now. Even if I was only going through the motions.

  Perhaps if I bluffed long enough, I’d start to believe it for real.

  So while I didn’t trust the walkers—didn’t trust their version of history, their motives, or the limited truths they fed us—it was rational to learn what I could from them.

  Which meant the game hadn’t changed much. We would play nice. We would squeeze every bit of knowledge, skill, and power we could from this academy and walkerkind. Since if they were to be believed, they’d been fighting the Malus for one hundred and fifty years. Who better to learn about this new enemy from?

  And then? Well, it was too soon to plan that. But I’d seen the fear in the professors’ eyes. They were afraid of me. Which didn’t make sense when Theus claimed they’d found a way to protect themselves against life-force-stealing magic. But I hadn’t missed the bigger implication: fear meant they must be vulnerable.