by Marisa Mills
“A type of magic that should have remained buried long ago,” Du Lac replied hesitantly. “I’ve never…I’ve never seen magic like this used on mages before.”
Delacroix flopped to the ground nearby and tipped her head back. Blood was quickly seeping through her blue blouse. Celeste stepped delicately through us and began drawing healing sigils along Delacroix’s collarbone. Either I’d missed Celeste in all the confusion, or she’d been evacuating students. I realized, quite suddenly, how quiet the ballroom was. It was mostly empty now, except for a handful of students and teachers.
“You can control demons through their blood,” Gareth said slowly.
“And you think someone did this to Viviane?” I asked.
Who would do something like this to her? And for what?
“No one can know about this,” Celeste said. “There will be panic if word gets out that there’s a rogue mage controlling people.”
“No,” Viviane mumbled. “No, I—I won’t keep—”
“Let’s get you to the infirmary, Viviane,” Delacroix said, “So you can recover.”
“You, too, Wynter,” Gareth said.
Gareth crouched at my feet and drew careful sigils around the crystals until they all sank and melted away.
I slowly sheathed my rapier. Immediately, Alexander was at my side. He said nothing, only looked solemnly at me. We slowly made our way across the destroyed ballroom. Whatever Viviane had done, it was terrifying. In some places, the floor was cracked so badly that I could see slivers of the Lower Realms far below. Who knew Viviane had such power? And what did that say about the person controlling her?
Gareth was somehow making Viviane float behind him, which—while impressive—was also a little spooky.
“Is she going to be all right?” I asked.
“Yes,” Du Lac said, glancing at me over his shoulder, “With time.”
Why did I keep hearing buzzing sounds in my head? I paused, suddenly light-headed.
“Are you alright?” Alexander asked, gripping my arm.
“I think so,” I said. “You?”
“I’ve been better,” he smiled.
“If you hadn’t done that, what you did. You saved us all.”
I bit my lip, shaking my head.
“It wasn’t me,” I said quietly.
“Your demon?” he asked, eyes widening.
I nodded, and he squeezed my hand.
“Tell him thanks. For me.”
We continued towards the exit. There was a nail-thin crack in the floor beneath me. Everyone else had walked over it without difficulty; the floor seemed intact. It was only towards the center that it started to shift like breaking ice.
“Wynter?” Alexander turned back.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just felt like—”
There was no warning. I didn’t know if it was a lingering remnant of Viviane’s spells, or something else entirely, but the ground gave way beneath me. The Lower Realms were spread out below me, and my mind was slow to catch up to what that meant.
Alexander grabbed my hand as I fell, pulling him with me through the gap in the floor as it opened to swallow us both.
***
A woman screamed, and that sound was so shrill and panicked that at first I couldn’t even believe it was mine. I was falling, and Alexander was falling. And we were going to die.
Wynter!
There was a note of panic in Lucian’s voice, and I felt that panic in my own beating heart. Wind rushed up against us as we tumbled through the clouds. And I didn’t want to die. And—
You need to release me.
I looked over at Alexander, he was shouting something. He drew sigils on his cloak, trying to hold it out like a parachute, but the wind tore it away from him. Then he grabbed my arm in terror, his face white.
Alexander was still wearing his fancy suit, clutching my hand, and now I was the story, my blue dress fluttering behind me like a billowing tail. I was the mage-lady falling from the skies. A piece of broken mage tech, discarded into the refuse piles.
It’s the only way.
“Can you save us?” I asked. Alexander’s face fell, and he shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
But I wasn’t asking him.
“If I free you, will you save him, too?”
I swear I will, Lucian promised.
I wasn’t sure I believed him, but what difference did it make now? I’d messed up so many things, but this one was important. Lucian was right, I was just like the other mages at Reverie, using magic without caring where it came from. This was my only chance to prove that I could’ve been something more.
“I don’t know how!” I shouted.
Yes, you do.
I racked my brain. Was it a spell, a sigil? Something else?
Then it dawned on me. Of course, it all made sense now. It was the sigil that Lucian taught me, the one that let you pass through objects. I marveled at the simplicity. Lucian had given me the key to his prison weeks ago.
My hand shook as I unsheathed the rapier, holding it in a death grip. The ground was rushing up to meet us far too quickly. I swiped my hand across the fresh cuts in my arm. My fingers came away sticky with blood.
We were falling so, so fast. I couldn’t do this, but I had to try.
I lifted my fingers towards the blade. I could see my own terrified expression in the reflection. My hands shook as I painted the symbol on carefully. I had to get it right. I needed this to work.
“What are you doing?” Alexander screamed.
“Trying to save Lucian.”
“Are you insane? You’re letting him out? He’ll kill us!”
I laughed darkly.
“We’re dead already. At least one of us has a chance of surviving.”
“You can’t trust him.”
“It’s the right thing to do.”
I prayed silently as I closed the last line of the sigil. The blade turned blinding white, and sizzled in my hand. A victorious shout split the air as Lucian launched himself from the blade. For a moment, nothing happened, and all I could hear was the rushing of wind and my heart pounding in my ears as the ground flew towards us. We were close enough now to make out individual buildings, and I recognized a few spots in the Scraps from my childhood. The lone tree where we’d built a tire-swing to play on during my eighth summer. The house where the woman baked apple pie and sometimes gave us a sliver in exchange for the wildflowers Sterling gathered in the forest. My life had begun here, and it would end here. I took a deep breath, and waited to die.
I’d grab your princeling, Wynter.
I didn’t ask. I just grabbed Alexander’s arm and pulled him towards me, squeezing my arms around him in a tight embrace. And then—pain burst beneath my shoulder blades, so intense that spots danced in my vision.
Dark, smoky tendrils of magic surrounded us like soft feathers. I heard the rustle of wings, like being in the middle of a flock of birds. It felt like my body was moving on its own, pumping muscles I’d never used before. And then, our fall slowed.
When I looked over my shoulder, I had wings. They were large and black, like a raven’s. Alexander and I descended lightly. The moment Alexander’s feet touched the ground, he stumbled away from me in horror.
“What have you done?” he asked.
BOOK 2
One
SHARP PINE NEEDLES PRICKED MY skin. The forest around us was wet and damp; my legs were shaking, but it wasn’t from the icy wind blowing through the forest. I sheathed my sword and gaped upwards at Reverie, the floating kingdom we’d fallen from. We shouldn’t still be alive. Without Lucian, we wouldn’t have been. The scent of mold and leaf-litter tingled my nose. Bright green buds were poking through the carpet of dead leaves, but it was too early for spring.
The muscles in my back shifted. I winced in discomfort as the black wings between my shoulder blades, Lucian’s creation, folded away.
I felt the demon shifting around in my thoughts. I’m so tired, he murmured. I think I’m going to hide in the sword for a bit. I nodded, still too stunned to answer.
A hand seized my wrist. I tore my gaze from Reverie and looked instead at Alexander. He held me so tightly that I wondered if he could feel my pulse racing beneath his slender fingers. The intensity in his blue eyes took my breath away. It was as if he could strip me bare and see everything I was thinking. Light dappled through the forest canopy, casting spots of light and shadow over Alexander’s golden hair and fair skin. As I looked at him, time seemed to stand still for just an instant. He really was beautiful. Then he spoke and ruined the moment.
“What just happened?” Alexander asked, his voice shaking. “There’s no way we could’ve…”
He looked at me with a mixture of awe and fear, as if were a powerful mage, instead of a fraud from the Scraps. Which, I guess, he still thought I was. When I arrived in Reverie, I’d been a fraud, just pretending to have magic and cheating my way into the magic academy. I didn’t know what I was now. But as far as Alexander was concerned, I was a rich girl from Argent, the gated citadel in the middle of the Lower Realms. One who could talk to demons. A useful talent for a prince like him, even if it was forbidden.
I wasn’t ready for Alexander’s questions. Not after fighting against one of my possessed classmates, not after falling from Reverie, and not after all the magic it’d taken to free Lucian. I was too tired to lie, so I kept my mouth shut, averting my gaze towards the forest floor. It was so dark and green. I crouched, running my fingertips over the moss and studying a trail of ants.
“Wynter,” Alexander said, kneeling beside me. He brushed his fingers across my upper lip, and they came away sticky with blood. It reminded me of our kiss in the library.
“No one has ever survived a fall from Reverie,” he said, wiping his hands on a white, monogrammed handkerchief he pulled from his jacket pocket. He’d lost his cloak in the fall, and the silver trim of his dark gray suit glittered against the dark trees behind him; a subtle reminder of how much he didn’t belong down here.
“We did,” I replied absently.
“Yes, but how?” He handed me the handkerchief, now stained with blood, and I used it to clean up the rest of my nosebleed. Alexander’s rapier was drawn but held down at his side. I supposed that was a good sign. He hadn’t resolved to stab me yet.
I bit my lip. “I didn’t save us,” I said slowly.
I don’t think you should tell him, Lucian murmured.
Maybe not. But I was so tired of keeping secrets from everyone. And would it be so bad if Alexander did know what I’d done? If anyone in Reverie would accept me releasing a demon, it would be Alexander. Probably.
When I snapped my gaze back to him, Alexander’s eyes searched my face. Whatever he saw there didn’t please him.
“You actually freed it?” he asked, sounding hoarse. “But why isn’t it attacking? Wynter, you can’t—can you control it? Or did you just—”
It? Lucian asked indignantly. Remind your princeling that I just saved his life!
“No,” I said, “I can’t control him, and he’d like me to remind you that he just saved your life.”
He dropped his hand and backed away with a sharp suddenness. My heart sank. Alexander had been the one to warn me against listening to the voices. Like all mages, he thought the demons were evil creatures, whispering evil temptations and destroying minds.
Hundreds of excuses flitted through my head, like butterflies trapped in a glass jar. But I was too tired to deal with Alexander’s disappointment. Maybe I should’ve lied, even though no lie would’ve been good enough to satisfy him. We were both about to die. Freeing Lucian was the only option, and I didn’t regret it.
Alexander’s face lost all its color, and yet his eyes seemed to brighten and sharpen. Beneath the wariness and the alarm, there was a spark of fascinated curiosity.
“He can…hear me?” Alexander asked.
I nodded. “Lucian hears everything I do.”
Alexander laughed, the noise edged with something brittle and hysterical, and sank to the ground. After a few seconds, he fell silent. I let the quiet stretch between us, glancing over his shoulder into the dark woods. I’d never been this deep in the forest before, and I had no idea how to survive in one. I wondered how far we were from the Scraps. With a sinking feeling, I realized that Alexander probably hadn’t been in a real forest, either. He’d grown up in luxury, surrounded by sculpted gardens, and thought a visit to Argent was slumming it. For a moment I felt a stab of fear. Just because we’d survived the fall from Reverie, didn’t mean we were safe.
“This is too much,” Alexander said suddenly. “You—you weren’t—you weren’t supposed to release a demon! Wynter, what if he tries to kill us?”
“If he wanted to kill us, he’d have let us fall,” I said.
“What if it’s something…I mean…” Alexander trailed off. “How do we know we can trust him?”
“Lucian didn’t control our classmate and make her attack us,” I said. “And he didn’t tear apart the Academy floor and make us fall from Reverie. All he has done is save our lives, and I think if we’re going to talk about people we trust, Lucian is a safe bet.”
Alexander buried his face between his hands and mumbled something I couldn’t hear. I felt a pang of sympathy. He must’ve been so confused, but at least, he wasn’t angry. I didn’t think I had the strength to fight him.
I looked back to Reverie, nestled in the fluffy clouds and draped in the colors of sunset. It looked as beautiful as it always had, only I knew now it was full of dangerous politics and backstabbing mages. The earthquakes, the demon attacks. I took a deep breath and realized the air was thicker here, full of oxygen. I let it clear my head. For a moment, I wondered if I could just go home and leave this all behind me. I belonged on the ground with Briar and Sterling. I could just find a direction, head to the Scraps, and never think of Reverie again. Maybe I could even get Alexander to tell everyone I was dead, so no one would come looking for me.
But then I remembered Tatiana in the hospital, and the wild look in Viviane’s eyes when she attacked me. Someone in Reverie was behind the demon attacks, and the same person had possessed Viviane and nearly torn the Academy apart. Whatever they were looking for, I knew it wasn’t over. Could I really turn my back and let more people get hurt?
I looked back at Alexander and met his sharp eyes.
“I hope Viviane is all right,” I said.
“Me, too,” he sighed.
Viviane was awful to me, but I still wouldn’t have wished any harm on her. It must’ve been terrifying, to be controlled by someone else and forced to hurt people. After I’d burned through the glowing sigils in her arm, she’d collapsed and stammered in confusion. I wondered how much she would even remember.
“Do you think they were after Viviane,” Alexander asked, “or someone else? Because she was being controlled with sigils, it had to have been a mage. Probably one that was nearby, too.”
“Like one of our professors?” I asked.
Alexander nodded slowly. “I don’t understand any of this,” he said.
Neither did I. But whatever happened to Viviane was connected to something much larger—something involving demon attacks, earthquakes and potentially a magical charm. I thought of all the girls I’d met at the Academy, the girls who’d had classes with me and slept in the same dormitories with me. I thought of Celeste and Professor Gareth, who had both been so kind to me. Whatever was going on up in Reverie, it was unlikely to stop now, which meant everyone in Reverie was in danger.
Mages only care about themselves, Lucian muttered. They’re all the same. Let them deal with their own problems. I used to agree with him, but now I knew they weren’t. Some of the mages were kind. Some of them didn’t even realize that imprisoned demons were the source of their magic.
Alexander cleared his throat. “We shou
ld see if we can find out where we are,” he said. “Then we can find our way to the cable cars and get a ride up to Reverie.”
I nodded, biting my lip. We’d nearly died, and whoever was behind it was still up there. I wasn’t in a rush to return, but I couldn’t let Alexander know the truth about me, or where I really came from. The only reason I’d gone to Reverie in the first place was because my uncle had sold me to Dorian, the Count of Rosewood, who’d forced me to pose as a mage and steal an old journal from the Academy for him. He’d promised to give Briar, Sterling, and me a new life. A good life. But even after I’d delivered the journal, he hadn’t honored our deal.
I had to go back, and convince him to fulfill his promise. I couldn’t risk losing a chance like that. Not when the alternative was returning home to my uncle, and watching my brother Briar suffer a lifetime of abuse. I climbed to my feet and sheathed my blade. As Alexander stood, he gave me a tentative smile.
“If you trust Lucian,” Alexander said, taking in a deep breath, “I trust him, too.”
He’s just saying that so I don’t bite him.
“Thank you,” I said. The prince of Reverie trusted me. And I was lying to him.
Alexander nodded and looked vaguely abashed, as if embarrassed by how nice he’d been.
“The sun sets in the west,” he said. “So…”
I followed his gaze towards the setting sun, now obscured behind pink and purple clouds. It would be dark soon, and we couldn’t risk getting caught in the woods at night. The Rosewood estate was close to the edge of Reverie, and I’d seen the sunset and Argent from there before. I slowly turned my back to the sun and tried to visualize the maps I’d seen.
“I think we might be outside the Scra—Plumba,” I said.
Alexander grimaced. “Wonderful. Exactly where I’d want to be,” he said sarcastically.
I bit my tongue and quelled the instinctive desire to defend my home. Sure, the Scraps weren’t great, but what did Alexander know? He’d never even been to the Scraps, but he told me once that nothing good came from there.