by S. W. Clarke
“Please don’t tell me you’ll be breaking into her office. Or her home.”
I straightened, one hand at my chest. “Pardon? Such behavior is beneath a good witch.”
“Yeah”—he tore off a bit of roll—“which is why I’m worried.”
I snorted. “Touche. If I break into her place, I won’t rope you into it.”
“Maeve Umbra,” he said, rolling the name over his tongue. “I’m a little jealous, you know.”
“Of me, or her?”
“Of the fact that you get to learn from her. Personally. Do you know how rare that is?”
“Probably not.”
He tilted his head, observing me. “I’ve never heard of it happening.”
“I’ll be sure to rub it in your face every chance I get.” I winked at him. Then, after a pause, “Aidan, after what happened last May. On the tundra…”
“Yeah.”
“Are you all right?”
He shook his head, eyes unfocusing. “I’ve thought about what happened every night this summer. With Frostwish and Liara and Eva and Rathmore. All the creatures.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “For what happened to you.” Frostwish had cast the pain hex on him, sending him to his knees. I could still see his agonized face behind my eyelids.
“I’m sorriest of all,” he said. “Every time I thought about it, I wished I’d done more. I wish I’d known about Frostwish. I wish I’d fought. In a strange way, I wish I was more like my grandmother.”
My eyebrows went up. “Farina North?”
“Yeah.” His hand went to the birthmark on his neck, rubbing. “I wonder if she was right—if this gift was wasted on me. She would have done so much more with it.”
I leaned forward, elbow on the table, one hand out to clasp. “Aidan.”
He eyed my open hand. “Are we going to arm wrestle now?”
“Just take my hand, egghead.”
He did so, leaning forward with his elbow on the table. Meeting my eyes with some discomfort.
I squeezed his hand. “This is maybe the second time in my life I’ve ever been sentimental, and it might be the last time. So listen up: I don’t care if you never use your gift. I don’t care if I have to fight every fight. Stop blaming yourself for being a fish trying to climb a tree, all right?”
His breathing was audible through his nose. “A fish?”
“Yeah. Screw the gift, Aidan. Your brains, your insight—I’d be dead without those. You’ve always been right here when I need you. And I’m going to need you a lot more before this is all over.”
“Wow,” he said. “Sincere Clem. Never thought I’d meet her.”
I made a face. “Just squeeze my hand, North.”
And he did.
“Now,” I said. “Let’s talk about this prophecy.”
His eyes lit, and he slid a familiar book forward that I hadn’t even noticed him grab from the Room of the Ancients. “I’ve already deciphered the part about the blade. There’s another riddle.”
I groaned. “Wonderful.”
He opened the book, found the section describing the prophecy. With one finger, he read off, “‘The thief’s blade resides where power and pleasure cross.’”
I sat back, grimacing. I had no clue what that meant, and from the look on Aidan’s face, he didn’t, either.
“What do you suppose it does?” he said. “The blade.”
“Obviously it thieves people’s lives—when you cut off their heads.”
His nose wrinkled. “That’s crude.”
“Your face is crude.”
He set a hand to his cheek. “Did you seriously just use that line on me?”
“Anyway,” I said. “What do you think the blade is for?”
He set both elbows on the table with a definitive lean forward. “What’s the most valuable thing you can steal from a mage, Clementine?”
I stared at him a moment. “Their favorite pair of boots.”
He groaned, rubbing his face. “Not all mages even wear boots.”
“But if they did”—I smiled at his agony—”that would be it.”
His head lifted, eyes locking on me. “Power, Clementine. The most valuable thing you can steal from a mage is their power.”
That was a juicy theory. I didn’t know if he was right, but I hoped he wasn’t wrong. Still, I also wouldn’t mind a good decapitator.
The next day brought a new shock.
If you’d ever told me that Evanora Whitewillow and Liara Youngblood would arrive at the academy together, by consent, I wouldn’t have believed it. They felt like more than oil and water—they were of two different worlds.
Light and dark. Sweet and calculating. Sincere and sarcastic.
But the day after Aiden arrived, they came together, as part of a group of fae led by Professor Fernwhirl. And when they saw me coming out of the dining hall, they surprised me again.
Both dropped their bags, came flying toward me with such enthusiasm I didn’t know whether I should put my arms out or my fists up. Eva ran into me, arms wrapping around my shoulders with relieved laughter, and Liara stopped short, landing with sharp, dancing eyes not two feet away.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Eva said into my shoulder. “That we’re here.”
I met eyes with Liara over Eva’s shoulder, through the gauze of her wings. “Sounds like you two had an eventful time.”
“Oh, it was terrible.” Eva pulled away. “Every leyline around Vienna is corrupted, Clem. Fernwhirl had to fly a few of us far enough away from them to avoid their corruption seeping into the points of power. We ended up high atop a mountain before we could make our way to Singapore, and then we got word from Umbra to wait for her to secure the leyline outside the academy. It took three days.”
“Three days in Singapore,” Liara said. “Sounds like anybody’s worst nightmare, doesn’t it?”
I half-smiled at her. “Only if you’re trying to get into the restricted room at Kowloon Library.”
“Too soon,” Liara said, solemn.
“We brought Obe,” Eva said, her eyes and mind elsewhere. “My parents wanted him to stay with Liara’s little sister and her grandparents in Singapore.”
So it wasn’t the journey that had been terrible—it was what had happened with her family.
“Why?” I said.
“Eva’s parents are both guardians,” Liara said, and that was all she needed to—and maybe could—say in Eva’s presence. They were guardians, and they were on missions. They couldn’t leave their young son alone.
“Singapore’s safer for him,” Eva murmured. “There are fewer kidnappings.”
As if she’d known I would ask why, Liara said, “We have more guardians in Singapore. The city is vigilant about protecting its young.”
I nodded. All at once, Eva had gone from a kind of manic excitement to wide, distant eyes and a lowered chin. She’d had a hell of a time. My arm went around her, jarring her with a squeeze. “Hey, Guardian. We’ve got work to do, too.”
Eva’s eyes lifted. “Gods, I’m a guardian.”
“That’s right.” I glanced at Liara. “What should we get her drunk on after initiation? Red wine, or white?”
Liara’s eyes softened. She knew this was as important as acknowledging the state of the world. No human—or fae—could put a cork on that kind of stress for long. “Red,” she said. “It’s more potent.”
“Now wait a second,” Eva said.
“It’s tradition,” I cut in. “Isn’t it, Liara?”
Liara gave a nod.
“Don’t want to defy tradition, do we?” I turned Eva toward our dorm. “Tomorrow it is.”
As Eva and I walked to our dorm, we passed a group of first-years who walked together on their way to the dining hall, eyes on us in a wary, hunch-shouldered way. Eva waved at them, said hello, and only then did they relax enough to speak.
They looked young to me. When the hell did that happen?
When we had passed them, sh
e gave me a long look. “It doesn’t feel the same, coming back here. Does it?”
“It’s the same place, but…”
“The world’s changed,” she said. “Everything’s changed around us.” She nodded at one of the trees that used to contain a classroom. “And the feeling here has changed, too. There’s fear.”
She was right. Before, the enchantment around the academy had felt like a cute trick, superfluous. I hadn’t understood for a long while why it even existed.
Now, it felt like a thin, invisible skein of safety from her.
Eva leaned against my shoulder as we walked. “For a second, when I saw your half-sullen face, I almost forgot. And then you asked how we got here, and I couldn’t forget.”
I nudged her. “Hence the post-initiation booze.”
She scuffed the dirt with her shoe. “I’ve got a secret, Clem.” Then, before I could ask, “I’ve never been drunk.”
“Never? What about buzzed?”
“Not even that.”
“Well, Eva, it’s really not all that bad until you get to the puking—”
“I’ve got an even bigger secret,” she said, stopping us at the steps up to the dorm. I turned to face her, and she said, “I hate that I’ve never been drunk. And after this summer, all I want is to stop worrying about my family for at least a few hours. A few blissful hours.”
A bad taste came into the back of my mouth. I ignored it. “They’re fine, Eva.”
“You can’t know that.” She sighed. “Clem, all I ever wanted was to be a guardian. To protect the magical world.” She paused, her porcelain throat bobbing. “And then all this shit happened. One of my neighbors was kidnapped in June. She was seventeen.”
“I’m sorry, Eva. Was she…”
“Saved? No. She wasn’t.”
Silence fell between us. The happiness of seeing her again had gone as quickly as reality had rushed back. For the first time, I felt wistful for the simplicity of my first year here. My hotheaded innocence. My single-minded desire to tame a horse.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get in something comfortable and pretend for a night like the world isn’t falling apart.”
Chapter Seven
The next morning, Loki and I were called to the guardians’ common room, nestled not far from the faculty apartments in a large tree on the grounds. When I came into the common room, the others were already gathered: Mishka, Akelan, Keene, Elijah, Isaiah, and Liara.
They’d been waiting on me. Silence fell when I entered.
I gestured back the way we’d come. “We can leave if you want to keep talking.”
Elijah came forward, bear-hugged me. “Gods I missed your negative assumptions about people’s behavior.” A second later, Isaiah was hugging me, too.
I stood there in surprise. I hadn’t been that close with the twins. Then I got it. “You found out what happened with me and Umbra.”
Liara, leaning against the wall by the fireplace, gave me a look that said, I wasn’t part of any of this.
“Story’s all over the school already,” Mishka said from her armchair. She lifted the latest edition of Witches & Wizards. “Lucian the prince was spotted at the train station in Vienna during the witching hour a few nights ago.”
“The same night you and Umbra came back,” Akelan said. “Counting backward from how long she told us she’d been working on the leyline.”
“Which means,” Keene said, “the prince nearly got to the headmistress. And since you were with her, I suppose you would have been a casualty of war, wouldn’t you?”
So they thought William Rathmore had come after Umbra. And why wouldn’t he? No one but Liara knew the full truth. I may have been a witch, but I was also just another student at the academy, as far as the others were concerned.
That was fine by me.
“Well, you don’t have to miss my negative assumptions anymore.” I crossed to the sitting table, pulled out a chair and sat. Loki hopped up on the table and sat by me. “What’s on the docket this morning?”
“We’re picking a new leader,” Akelan said. “Now that Fi is gone.”
I hated that Fi was gone. She had been the leader we’d needed: steady, calculating, rational. Now she was out in the world, graduated. I’d heard over the summer that she had joined the guardian ranks in Amsterdam, which was all the better for it.
“I vote for you,” I said to Akelan. “Now can we go eat breakfast? I have to meet with Umbra in an hour, and she dislikes it when I’m hangry.”
“Why me?” Akelan said.
I shrugged like it was obvious. “You’ve got the same qualities as Fi.”
“It’s true,” Mishka said. “He isn’t quick to anger or fear. He’s deft at coordinating attacks.”
“I’m not one of the candidates,” Akelan said from his seat on the overstuffed arm of a chair. “Fi had two of us in mind. The outgoing leader has always picked the nominees.”
I had forgotten about this.
Elijah pointed at Liara. “You”—then at me—“and you.”
Beside him, Isaiah grinned. “Witch and fae. Should we have them duel it out?”
Mishka made a face at him. “Inappropriate.”
Liara and I met eyes. This wasn’t what I wanted for myself. I needed to spend this time focusing on finding the thief’s blade, readying myself for the Shade…
“I forfeit the role to Liara,” I said. “She’d be better than me.”
All eyes turned to me. Even Loki’s. “And why is that?” Liara said.
“You’re fast. Brave. Persistent. And if I’m being real honest, guys, you’re gonna hate the sound of my voice in your head by the end of this year. I get shrill when I’m annoyed.”
“Except,” Liara said, “you’re also fast, brave, and persistent. And if I’m being real honest, the only rescues we managed last year were because of you.”
“That’s why Fi recommended you,” Akelan said, eyes on me. “Because between you and Liara, things started happening. Good things.”
I swept out my hands. It wasn’t that I wasn’t grateful, or didn’t want to help. It was that I felt overwhelmed. “I’m disqualified, anyway. Umbra wants me to stay on the grounds for the foreseeable future.”
“Actually,” a voice said from behind me, “that doesn’t disqualify you.”
When the headmistress crossed into the center of the common room, no one looked surprised but me and Loki.
“It’s tradition,” Umbra explained, “for the headmistress to preside over the choosing of a new leader.”
My eyebrow arched. Wonderful; she’d arrived just in time to foil my excuses.
Umbra nodded at Liara and me. “You would both be fine leaders. May I propose, given the extenuating circumstances of the world outside the academy, a dual leadership?”
Akelan’s face tilted. “How would it work?”
“Yeah,” I said. “How would it?”
“Clementine is correct that she should not leave the grounds.” Umbra tipped her staff toward Liara. “But this one may. And given how the Shade’s powers and creatures have grown more dangerous, it would behoove you all—especially the new guardians to be initiated tonight—to have one leader watching from afar, and one on the ground.”
Watching from afar. I wasn’t good at watching a microwave from afar, much less people.
Mishka sat forward. “Do you mean the globe?”
Umbra nodded down at her. “Yes, Ms. Reddy. I mean the globe.” Her face lifted toward the two stories above us. “From here, Clementine can apprise you of what’s coming, what you face, and Liara can coordinate your forces on the ground to face it.”
My eyes lifted, too. I couldn’t see it from here, but I knew what Mishka and Umbra were referring to. The magical globe on the third level. I had thought it only acted as a map, a signifier of what had gone before, but maybe the magic in it was greater than that.
“No one has used the globe that way for decades,” Akelan said. “Not since the eighties.�
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“Then it’s about time it be dusted off,” Umbra said. “For these are fraught times.”
A sense of agreement flowed over the room. Everyone seemed to like this idea, though Liara and I still gazed at one another. I could see in her eyes that she would accept this, sharing a role with me.
But I didn’t want to be here during a mission. I was meant to be out there.
“Ms. Youngblood, Ms. Cole,” Umbra said. “Provided I can teach Clementine to use the globe, would you accept this dual leadership?”
“I would,” Liara said, arms unfolding.
Finally, my eyes trailed over to Loki. The one who knew me best, who knew how much I could actually take on. Say no. Please say no.
He licked his paw. Lowered it, then met my eyes with his emerald ones. “Do it, Clem.”
Well, I couldn’t argue with my cat. Not without looking stupid.
I returned my attention to Umbra. Nodded. “All right. For now.” Until I master the enshroudment.
“It’s a brilliant idea,” Keene said, eyes flicking between the two of us. “But I still want to see them duel.”
“You would,” Liara bit out.
The guardian initiation began at nightfall, and both Loki and I were in attendance. Two new guardians, one of them my best friend and roommate.
Evanora Whitewillow was finally becoming what she was meant to be from our first year. When she stepped before Umbra in the wisp-lit antechamber, she whispered her name through a tight throat, her wings trembling beneath her lavender hair.
This didn’t just matter to her. It was her life’s purpose, to guard and to protect those who needed her most.
Next came Maise Wheatless, a fifth-year from House Spark. She’d always been shrewd and witty and full of solid power, and I’d liked her from the day I met her. She was exactly who I wanted by my side in a fight.
Last to be initiated was a fourth-year I didn’t really know at all. “Paxton Tarrensteam,” he said with a voice as clear as a bell, his dirty blond, short-cropped head a foot higher than Umbra’s, his hands clasped behind his back. He stood with feet apart, serious and formal, and just by the look of him, I knew his house.