by S. W. Clarke
The fire swept around Loki, warm under my skin—invisible, I hoped—just as the door opened slowly, creaking.
My eyes remained shut to maintain the enchantment, and for a moment I recognized this feeling as Umbra’s test in the days before we’d left the house in Switzerland. She’d stressed me by asking about Tamzin, because little else could affect me more than the memory of my sister. The guilt. The grief. This was all that mattered: sustaining the magic under stress.
Distantly, I heard breathing from the doorway. It sounded human, not like a creature from Hell. But by the way Loki’s claws dug into my shirt, I knew this was no regular human.
This man was with them.
All remained silent in the roomette. I could imagine him standing in the doorway, a rectangle of light cast over an unmade bottom bed. And up above, the covers had been kicked low from the top bed, as though whoever had lain in it had left. (Thank god I had been too warm to keep them on.)
But why were both beds used and empty?
Where were the passengers?
That was the question. That was why the silence persisted as I pictured him surveying the room, his eyes passing over the vague outlines of our belongings.
Finally, a footstep. Then another. He had stepped fully into the room.
I forced my eyes open, turned my head right. And then I saw him—again. The reason for my night terrors. The sole figure responsible for my fear of the dark.
He stood over six feet tall, clad in lacquered black armor that reflected the light. The plates of it were sharp-edged, knifelike in their angles. From his helmet, two horns angled toward the ceiling, whittled to points.
I had forgotten those details. But I hadn’t forgotten how he’d made me feel.
Years and years ago, he was the one who’d appeared in the night. Approached my bed. Stood so close I could reach out and touch his sabatons.
And then the next morning, my family was gone.
Here on the train, the point of a sword’s sheath jutted from his back, coal-dark. The crossguard and grip sat left of his head, waiting for his hand to take hold.
All at once, he came to within a foot of me, so close I could smell him. His scent hit my nostrils—a strangely familiar musk, almost overripe—at the same moment as my hand lifted straight out toward him, ready to blast him with flames.
My whole arm shook. I couldn’t make it stop shaking.
He bent to the bottom bed, yanked away the duvet and sheets. When he straightened, I prepared myself. My palm went out, invisible to him, only a foot from his darkened face.
It was almost like he could see me. But that was impossible—I was cloaked. Protected. Invisible to everything and everyone.
When he reached out to inspect the bed, I would hex him. My lips were already parted, the words waiting on my tongue. Then I would blast his face off.
A second figure stepped inaudibly into the light from the doorway. Feminine. Long-haired.
Umbra.
It was about goddamn time.
Her staff went out, the tip pointed at his back. A pinpoint of white light appeared there, grew to blinding proportions, and then I heard the crack of lightning.
The window next to me shattered out onto the platform, and the intruder’s body slammed into the beds with a grunt and the sound of plate armor shifting.
This way, Umbra barked into my head.
But I was already in motion. Half-blind, I’d swung myself off the bed with Loki still in my arms. I hit the ground with bare feet, eyes searching to make out the one thing I needed.
My cloak.
I spotted the outline of it in the corner. Umbra had already stepped forward and grabbed my arm, but I reached out, yanked it off the hook. Then we were through the doorway and into the hallway of the train.
“Maeve,” a guttural man’s voice called from inside our room. Him.
She slammed the door shut behind us, touched her staff to it. Lightning surged up and down the seam, electrifying the whole thing.
I wouldn’t want to touch that, even with plate armor on.
Loki climbed up onto my shoulder as I pulled on my cloak, tying it at the throat. Umbra was already in motion, and I was close behind her.
Don’t use your fire, Umbra instructed me as we started down the hallway. I noticed her enshroudment swirled around her now, too. Whatever you do, do not reveal yourself.
At the end of the narrow hallway, a creature appeared under the light. One of the Shade’s monsters. Where the light should have hit it, it stopped at the creature’s hide, repelled in other directions.
This one rose from four legs to two, red eyes appearing.
Umbra pointed her staff at it, and with a single blast of lightning, she scored a hole through its center and into the outer door. The creature dissipated into smoke, issuing through the hole.
I’d nearly forgotten Maeve Umbra could kill the creatures in one strike, like Liara. Oh, my jealous heart, be still.
Before she could keep on, I grabbed her hand, turned her to me, and pressed my thumb to her forehead. Now, I said into Umbra’s head, you’re not the only one with the talking stick.
She shot me a split-second glare, spun away. Come, Clementine. We must be off this train.
Didn’t need to tell me twice.
Together, we passed down the hallway to the short staircase leading down to the entry. She went ahead, staff pointed. When we reached the door onto the platform, a single small crackle of lightning destroyed the door mechanism in an instant. Then she raised one foot under her robes and kicked the door open.
Eva was never going to believe me when I told her about that last part.
We came onto the platform, the two of us enshrouded, and found a dozen more of the creatures outside the train. Their attention had been drawn by the sound of the door opening, and by something else.
Inside, that same guttural voice yelled three words in a language I didn’t know. It was sharp, rasping, angry.
It was him. The intruder who somehow knew Umbra on a first-name basis.
The creatures were in a frenzy, at least a half dozen rushing the ajar train door.
We backed away slowly. We’re enshrouded, I said into Umbra’s head. So they can’t see us, right?
The door flew open again, slamming into the side of the car, and out stepped the intruder. He dropped onto the platform with his sword already unsheathing, his head turned in our direction. He reminded me so much of...Callum Rathmore. Of Lucian the prince.
But this man wasn’t him. I didn’t even know if he was a man at all.
They can’t, Umbra said. But he can. Run, child.
Chapter Four
As one, Umbra and I turned and ran down the platform. One creature leapt off a car above us, a silent specter, and Loki’s claws digging into my shoulder were all that clued me in. Even Umbra didn’t notice.
My eyes lifted, the whispered words coming easily. “Pairilis síoraí.”
The creature hit the ground in front of us in a heap, fully paralyzed. We rushed around it; Umbra didn’t even pay it any mind, like she trusted I’d have taken care of it myself.
She had larger concerns.
Ahead of us, creatures rushed down the platform toward us, some atop the train, some running along its side, completely sideways in some strange defiance of gravity.
They sensed us. They couldn’t see us, but I’d paralyzed one. And behind us—I took the briefest glance—the armored man or demon or wraith of the night encouraged his minions forward.
Which meant we were enclosed from both sides.
Umbra came to a halt, her hand on my arm, nails digging in to stop me.
What—, I began, but she was already lifting her staff, both hands gripping it like she held a solid weight and needed all her strength for what she was about to do.
The tip of her staff began to glow, and with gritted teeth, she drew the glowing end through the air, cutting a jagged, imperfect seam in the veil.
We weren’t nea
r a point of power. We weren’t at a leyline.
And yet Maeve Umbra was parting the veil anyway.
As she went, her face was illuminated by the staff, a sudden sweat beading on her forehead. It was an awful job, like a child cutting cloth with safety scissors, but she did it as fast as I could have on a good day.
She cut four feet down to the ground as, before us and behind us, the creatures converged. And it was in that moment of absolute adrenaline a rational thought occurred to me.
Pass, child, Umbra said into my head. The academy awaits.
But I couldn’t properly see through the part in the veil. I couldn’t see the trees and the leaves and the forest.
The leyline outside the academy might be corrupted. That was the rational thought.
I didn’t voice it, because I trusted Maeve Umbra. I trusted her more than I’d even realized, because I obeyed her at once. I didn’t obey without trust, and I didn’t have time to properly contemplate how she’d come to occupy that place of trust.
Maybe it was our summer in the mountains of Zurich. Maybe it was that she’d helped me more than once. Maybe it was because she was, simply, Maeve Umbra.
I stepped through the opening in the veil. And as I did, I came into a greater darkness than I’d ever experienced.
This was total darkness. This was obliterative, an absolute lack of light. Like light had never existed and would never exist.
Umbra and Loki came through after me, her shoulder touching my back.
I spun back toward the platform. The veil was already reseaming, everything disappearing. The train, the creatures, the light. “Wait,” I began.
“Oh gods,” Umbra said by my side, just as the veil fully closed.
And then I didn’t hear her again.
When I reached out for her, I swiped through empty air. I reached again and again, turning, until I realized I was stepping on slick, marshy ground. The air had gone cold, clammy, and something brushed against my leg.
I jerked, only to hear Loki say, “It’s me.”
I took a breath, reached down for him. When I found his furry body, I picked him up, and he crawled onto my shoulder.
“Well,” he said, his voice small in the emptiness, “this is bad.”
“Where are we?” I breathed.
“I don’t know.”
I snapped my fingers for fire. None came. I snapped again, and still no spark. But the creature inside me had raised its head. The Spitfire had come alive, even though I hadn’t called on it.
This was bad.
Around me, a strange, dark magic brewed, so thick I could almost swallow it like liquid. And from somewhere in the void, squelching steps sounded through the marsh. Plod-plod, plod-plod. They weren’t human, but they sounded recognizable. A creature I couldn’t place.
And they were nearing.
I listened, tense, the Spitfire’s head raised in my chest. Loki’s claws dug into my shoulder as the plodding neared.
“A horse,” I whispered. “It’s a horse.”
The noise came closer, closer, and a great exhale sounded—a horse sending all the air from its lungs out its big nostrils. Its breath carried over my skin, and the horse’s hooves went still.
I waited. No sound. The Spitfire remained in a stasis, peering out.
“Who are you?” I called, my voice at once smaller in this place and more demanding.
A pause, and then:
“Who are you?” my own voice returned. Except the words were laced with sureness and silk. It was my own voice, but with feelings I rarely felt. As though I belonged in this place. Owned it.
The Spitfire’s head rose higher, intrigued. Desirous.
I knew I was being toyed with.
“Clementine,” I said. “Clementine Cole.”
“Clementine Cole,” the voice said. “Why have you come here?”
“I’d like not to be.” My fingers clenched in fear, anticipation. “I want to pass through. Where is Umbra?”
“Umbra.” The voice was soft, higher. Wistful. “Maeve Umbra.”
“That’s right.”
“She’s not here. She has passed through—left you behind. Once and always a deceitful wizard.” The voice paused. “You wish to pass?”
“Yes.”
“So pass.”
I swallowed. “I don’t know how.”
A soft laugh. Still my voice, but not, like my voice box had been inhabited by someone cool and coy and full of darkness. “The creature inside you knows. Allow it some agency.”
The Spitfire. She meant the Spitfire.
As soon as I focused on it, its wings extended, flaring to fill the center of me. And as I had throughout my childhood, I heard its voice.
Except I had always thought it was my own voice. Just the anger in my head.
Part the veil, Clementine, the Spitfire said, easing its way into my arms, my wrists, my fingers. It wanted some control.
“Clementine,” Loki whispered.
The horse stomped in the marsh. “Who is that?” the voice asked. “Is that your familiar, Clementine?”
Loki shrank against my side, and because I so much wanted out of this place—so much wanted to protect Loki—I allowed the Spitfire to have its control. At once, its impulsiveness and anger and wildness took me.
My finger lifted, the creature filling me with its fire, and as I set my fingertip to a spot in the air, a red flame appeared. With a blade’s swiftness, the Spitfire parted the veil in a quick motion, head to gut, revealing the world beyond.
When I stepped through to the other side, moonlight streamed over me. The trees moved in a nighttime breeze, and the Spitfire receded.
I swayed on my feet, woozy. Feeling wet and sticky and tainted. When I dropped to my knees, Loki hopped off my shoulder, turning to stare at the space behind me.
“Well,” he said, deadpan. “That was bracing.”
I set one hand on my thigh, glanced back. The part in the veil had closed itself up, and I could see nothing of the world I had inhabited. Not the void, not the train station. And when I looked around me, I didn’t see Umbra, either.
We had made it to the academy. But not at all in the way Umbra had planned.
“Clem.” Loki stepped closer. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?” I breathed.
“You parted the veil in that place.” He paused. “It was the creature she mentioned, wasn’t it? The thing you used to call the Spitfire before you knew I could talk.”
“Yes,” I said, soft. “It was the creature.”
“I think”—his tail flicked—“we weren’t properly in the world.”
“I think I agree with you.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say it, but the thought came: We were in Hell. Or some shadow realm adjoined to it.
When I stood, my head pounded, and a strange lingering taste filled my mouth, like bile. My heart still thundered along, the adrenaline not fully receded. I only knew one thing: we had to get to the academy. It was only there, under the enchantment’s protection, I could properly think.
When Loki and I had walked a couple minutes down the path, someone stepped out from behind a tree in front of us. A hunched figure with a walking staff tapping through the leaves, white-haired—
“Umbra?” I said.
Her eyes met mine, her hair half-wild around her head. She looked haggard, like she’d been in a galestorm. “You made it. Thank gods, child.”
Before I could speak, she came to my side and was bringing me down the path toward the academy. She walked fast, her hand on my arm, Loki trotting alongside.
I took a glance over at her. “When you parted the veil…”
“Not now. We’re vulnerable.”
Her eyes held a strange, feral light like I had never seen before. The only other time I had seen this look on her face was in my first year, when she’d told me not to bring my anger into her office.
She’d looked at me like she was afraid of me then. Now, I didn’t kn
ow who or what she feared.
When we finally came through her enchantment and onto the academy grounds, Umbra let go of me. She came to a stop by an old tree, leaning against it, her eyes on the ground and one hand on her thigh as though catching her breath.
I came to stand in front of her. “The leyline outside the academy is corrupted.”
She gave a soft nod, not raising her gaze.
“That’s what happens when you pass through a corrupted leyline,” I said. “You’re caught in that place.”
“If you don’t possess the power to escape it,” she said. “Yes.”
“And you escaped.”
Her eyes lifted now, meeting mine. “As did you.”
My fingers curled at my sides. “I met someone in there. She mocked me, mimicked my voice.” I hesitated. “It was the Shade, wasn’t it?”
Umbra’s eyes widened. That look again. And then she covered it as quickly as it had come, as though she hadn’t wanted me to see her naked emotions. “I suspect so. What did she say to you?”
“She asked me my name, and she told me to part the veil if I wanted to pass.” I didn’t mention the Spitfire. I didn’t like talking about it.
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, her head falling back against the tree trunk. “As I thought.” She exhaled through her nose, straightened up. “What’s done is done.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means”—she began walking down the central path toward her office—“that the Shade now knows where we are.”
I followed. “But you came through the veil outside the academy, too.”
“Except I did not meet her.” Her eyes met mine for a moment. “I did not meet the Shade. She did not watch me pass through. But take heart: she cannot penetrate the enchantment.”
My body stiffened, and I stopped for a second before continuing beside her. “The Shade made herself sound just like me.”
“She is the mistress of disguises,” Umbra said. “With your voice, she could engender your trust. She could talk to you, and you would talk back. You cannot help but trust the sound of your own voice.”