by S. W. Clarke
Loki.
I was twelve years old, and my mother and sister were gone. I didn’t know yet that they had disappeared. That the front door was left open.
I only knew a cat was calling from somewhere.
When I emerged from my bedroom that morning, I came onto the landing and found the front door open. And there he sat, gazing back up at me with green eyes from the welcome mat. I had never seen fur so black.
It was the worst day of my life. I became an orphan, and I would never have a real childhood again.
It was also the day I found a tiny comfort, a small companion. If he hadn’t been on the welcome mat, I wouldn’t have survived what was to come. The foster system, the families, a different set of faces each year. A different bedroom, a different bed. A different life.
He was my constant through it all. Loki, who didn’t leave my side from that moment onward. My familiar, who’d faced off against the Shade with only his teeth and claws.
Teeth and claws. In the end, that was all we really had.
We had our teeth, and we had our claws. And I was meant to use them.
He called out for me again, that small cat’s voice, and I remembered my promise to myself—the little girl I had been.
I would never be weak.
The yell started in my chest, barreling its way up and out of my throat. It became a scream so powerful it rawed my vocal cords as it escaped my mouth.
And I didn’t see darkness anymore. I saw red.
All around me, I saw red.
I wasn’t making fire anymore.
I was on fire.
Burn, fuckers, I thought as the flames surged around me, incinerating the creatures piled atop my body. They screamed and shriveled to ash, turning thin and papery atop me as the flames surged.
Eventually I managed to struggle onto my stomach, pulling myself across the ground and out from under the writhing (still-burning) pile of shadows. I could still hear Loki, snarling and scuffling somewhere behind me.
He was alive. He was fighting, too.
I pulled myself free, crawling across the ground until I reached a boot. Two boots, actually, and they were attached to feet.
I followed those feet up a pair of legs and all the way to a towering form who stood partly in shadow above me.
“You,” he said in a baritone so low it sent chills through me. “You’re the sister.”
Above me, he stood shrouded in darkness. Just like the others, but not.
I’d heard mirth—interest—intrigue in those words.
I tried to answer, but my voice was gone. I had burnt my vocal cords with that scream, and I only managed to croak, “I’m nobody’s sister.”
He leaned over from his careening height, one hand pulling me up by the arm. That iciness flowed through me, and he didn’t let go when I’d found my feet. He must have been a foot taller than me, some six-five with shoulders three times wider than mine.
As the moon came into its full breadth over the barren valley, the darkness fell away from him, melting off his body like falling silk. And beneath all that stood a human.
Or a man who resembled one.
Black hair fell almost to his shoulders. His eyes were dark as pitch and the sclera white as ivory. My eyes flitted half-seeing over his features: regal cheekbones, a straight nose—he would have been aristocratic if his jaw weren’t so wide.
I sensed he held a sword in one hand, its blade half as long as me. I sensed he should cleave me in two with it.
He was one of them, after all.
His lips parted, white teeth flashing. “Clementine. She’s spoken of you. Fierce, aren’t you?”
She. She had spoken of me.
I was the sister.
We stared at one another.
“Tamzin?” I breathed.
Did he mean my sister?
That word registered in the slight narrow of his eyes. But he said nothing.
From somewhere behind me, the scrabbling sounded—fast and faster, loud and louder. I could hear the burnt ones groaning. The unburnt ones were running.
Something thumped into my back, pulling its way up my cloak, and Loki’s voice cried, “Go!”
Loki. He was alive.
My familiar was with me.
The moment was broken. With a yell, I swung an arc of flame at the man in my way. He leaned back, the flame narrowly missing him, and I took the half-second I had to pitch forward, ducking out of his grip.
He could have grabbed me. He could have stopped me.
He didn’t.
In another second, I threw myself past him. Pain stabbed up through my left leg, and I sensed it was sprained or fractured. I ran anyway.
One glance over my shoulder found him staring after me, those black eyes full of portent and malice and something else.
Something that made me uncomfortable.
Loki clawed his way up onto my shoulder, balancing there as I ran. “I hear a river ahead. Twenty yards.”
“A river?” I managed to push out through my broken throat. I couldn’t hear it, but he had better senses than I did. “Then what?”
“It’s a point of power. You have to use it.”
“I can’t.”
“You have the key still, right?”
The key. Did I have the key? It was in my pocket. “I have it,” I breathed, my lungs ready to implode.
“I think it allows you to tap into your power.”
Now I heard it—rushing water. How could I have missed it before? Oh, right: my blood had never thundered so loudly in my ears. I had never been reduced to such primal fear and ferociousness all at once.
It was awful. It was like a drug.
Ahead, the land fell away. I came to the edge of it and found what I had suspected and dreaded: a gorge some hundred feet below. At the bottom, the water snaked through with glimmering froth in the moonlight.
I turned back. The Shade held a flaming arrow in her bow, drawing the string back. Around her, the army of darkness had become its own force of nature surging forward.
A wave. The promise of death.
Her arrow sang through the night, nearly caught the edge of my cloak. It blew aside as the flaming arrow lodged in the ground by my foot. If she could shoot that well at this distance, I knew I couldn’t give her another chance.
I had to jump.
At the beginning of all this, I’d jumped off a bridge. I’d trusted Headmistress Umbra and feared the fate I’d meet if I didn’t in equal measure. But most of all, I’d trusted myself.
In the second before I’d jumped off the Anacostia Bridge, I knew if I had fallen into the river, I would not go easy. I would swim as hard and for as long as my strength held.
If anyone were to survive that river, it would have been me.
That was why I had jumped. Because, no matter my fate, I would not be weak. I would never be weak. I trusted that.
I spun back to the gorge. “Hold on, Loki.”
“Can’t you feel my claws permanently embedded in your shoulder?”
I extended one hand toward the river, palm out. The tiny cauldron of flame burned there at my bidding.
And what came next seemed to flow out of me like I had done it a thousand times. Like I had practiced it in the meadow with Eva.
With geometric precision, I drew my hand vertical, imagined cutting the two parts of the space before me aside. Separating the curtain—separating the veil between this place and the forest outside the academy.
The air shimmered with heat, but I wasn’t sure if it had worked. It didn’t matter—I was jumping either way.
I lifted one foot over the precipice, but a clawed hand caught the edge of my cloak. I was yanked back, and my mouth opened in a scream. Loki fell over my shoulder, tried to hang on with one paw, but the momentum dropped him over the edge of the gorge.
No—not like this. Not like this.
It couldn’t end like this.
Quartermistress Farrow’s face appeared before my eyes—something she’d said.
What was it?
Almost only counts in horseshoes and grenades.
I wasn’t caught. Not yet—but almost. They just had hold of my cloak.
Which meant I still had a chance.
I reached up, ripped the pin holding the neck of my cloak together. The two halves of the cloak fell away, freeing me from its weight.
I didn’t wait. I was free, and I would not waste this moment.
I pitched over the gorge’s edge after Loki the same way I had done when I had just been a regular human and not a witch. When I’d just been Clementine without magic.
And when I leapt out over the water, my eyes found the starry sky on the horizon.
Whatever comes, I thought, I’ll face it.
Whatever comes, I’ll fight.
Chapter Forty-Two
I didn’t dash my head on rocks. I didn’t land even land in water.
I landed on a carpet of grass and leaves.
I hit the ground knees-and-hands first. Pain shot through my joints before my momentum flattened me to the ground. I ended up with one cheek nuzzling the grass and the other facing up toward the night sky.
And in my periphery, I saw the veil. It shimmered, the air distended and dancing as it slowly, so slowly reformed. And with the tiniest schloop!, the veil closed.
I didn’t know where I was, but I suspected. And my suspicions were enough to allow me to close my eyes. For the first moment in a long, long night, I allowed myself to feel as exhausted and beaten down as I actually was.
Something was broken. Somethings were broken—that was for sure.
But I was alive. And my cat…
My eyes snapped open. My familiar.
“Loki?” I called, my voice a hoarse echo through the enormous trees rising perpendicular to my vision. “Where are you?”
Leaves cracked as motion sounded ahead of me. When I lifted my face, a wet nose touched my cheek. “You sound like someone’s six-packs-a-day grandma.”
Loki, staring back at me with those gemlike eyes. If I had the strength to move my arms, I would have grabbed him and kissed his head.
As it was, I burst into a strange laugh-sob.
“Thank god.” I lowered my head back down. “We’re not dead.”
“Despite all your best efforts.”
“Go to hell.”
“Already been there. Would not go again.”
My sob turned into a real laugh, as much as doing so burned my lungs and throat. “Yeah, me either.”
His warm body pressed against my head. “Get up, Clem.”
I groaned. “Why?”
“The horse. It’s nearly dawn.”
The horse. Noir.
This whole night had been an effort to save Noir.
I felt like I’d been punched everywhere and run through a juicer, but if I could make my limbs work, I would. I tried pushing myself to my knees, but my wrists wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do. One hung at an especially odd angle.
And my legs—moving them only sent agony up through me and out my throat.
Loki meowed once, padding away.
“Where are you going?” I called after him. “I’m hurt. You’re supposed to like...care and stuff.”
“I’ll be back,” he said as he trotted off.
Great, was my last thought. Just great.
I might have passed out, because it felt like I’d only blinked, and then I heard Eva’s voice.
She was saying my name, and her hands were on me. A wonderful, mending heat emanated through my body, and I murmured for her to never stop what she was doing.
“She’s coming around,” Aiden’s voice said from somewhere above.
I opened my eyes, turned my face to find Eva crouched next to me. Aiden was also on his haunches, his brown eyes carrying fear and worry in equal measure.
I glanced over to Eva, whose hands glowed green atop me. “When you do that, I feel like a can of carbonated soda.”
She tilted her head, a tentative smile appearing. “Is there any other kind of soda?”
“What happened to you?” Aiden said. I could sense his eyes roaming over my massacred body. “After I got the key working, we grabbed the book from Umbra’s shelf and...you and Loki were gone.”
The book. They’d gotten the healing book.
“A lot. A whole lot.” I really did sound like a six-pack-a-day granny. “I’ll tell you later. After we save the horse.”
“But Clem,” Eva began, “we have to get you to the med—”
“No,” I interrupted. “The horse first.”
Aiden and Eva didn’t argue further; with some effort, they helped me to stand. My head throbbed, and I couldn’t tell if it was from the concussion or from the beating I’d taken at the gates to Hell. Probably both.
Upright, the memories of it seemed to come more fluidly: the Shade, her hellhorse. The creatures of darkness. That man with his sword as long as my leg. His gaze on me, like he could see through to the center of me.
Even now, the memory of him affected me as much as anything.
He’d mentioned my sister. Tamzin.
But one thing at a time. First, I needed to walk.
I pushed the thoughts aside as, with one arm over each of my friends, I began hobbling toward the academy grounds. Loki trotted ahead, his tail upright like he hadn’t just been through a fight for his life.
Aiden had been right: the cat wouldn’t leave my side if he could.
He was the reason I’d survived.
We came to the stables as the first etchings of dawn grayed the sky. Noir was where I’d seen him yesterday—still on his side in his stall, though he’d been resting when we entered.
As we appeared at the entrance to his stall, his head lifted. Those black eyes widened.
I clicked my tongue, and despite everything, he nickered.
“Hey,” I whispered to the horse as Aiden opened the stall door. “We’re here to help.”
When the three of us were inside, they helped me lower myself down next to Noir. Eva and Aiden didn’t want to get near him, but I wasn’t afraid.
I’d survived the night. After that, this horse felt like a gift. His breath as I held my palm out to him felt like a welcome balm, and I kept my hand there for as long as he inhaled my scent.
I knew I smelled like many things, both good and bad. And as he absorbed all these things, I glanced over at Eva. “Go ahead.”
She nodded, taking the book from Aiden and opening it to the correct section. She knelt down next to the horse, near his broken back leg, as I spoke to Noir about what I’d experienced.
I murmured to him as Loki wandered into the stall and sat on his haunches by my side. While I stroked the velvet of his nose I told him of the wisps, the ebony key, the Shade.
At some point during the semester, Noir had decided he and I were not enemies. Perhaps not friends, but trustworthy. We had a bond. And even though he jerked his head around when Eva set her hand to his leg, he didn’t struggle. He didn’t bite her. Because I kept my own hand on his face, whispering soothing words.
And that was how the quartermistress found us an hour later. The sun had cast everything in a soft and pretty yellow light, and the three of us sat around the wild, unbroken horse with an unbroken leg.
“Clementine?” the quartermistress said. “Aiden? Eva? What are you doing in there?”
I turned slowly toward her. “You don’t have to put him down.”
She opened the stall door. “The three of you need to—” She stopped, seeing how gentle the horse was with my hand on his mane. Seeing his reformed leg. Seeing the three of us seated around him in what could have been a pastoral scene.
“Well,” she sputtered, “I— You—”
“He’s not wild anymore,” I whispered, returning my eyes to the horse, whose eyes were on me, too. Or maybe he was wild still, but he and I had come to an understanding.
Just because you were wild didn’t mean you weren’t worth saving.
Two hours lat
er, Headmistress Umbra sat across her desk from me, and we gazed at one another.
No marmalade. No tea this time, either.
I pressed the back of one hand across my nose, and it came away with dried blood. I hadn’t even been back to my dorm since I left the stables. When I’d crossed the grounds to Umbra’s office, anyone who had eyes had gawked at me.
I didn’t blame them. I looked like hell.
Breakfast was about to end in the dining hall, and class was about to begin in the meadow. I would die for a shower. But this meeting was a necessity. I needed answers.
Of course, I also needed to answer to my choices.
“Listen,” I began, “I know we stole—”
The headmistress raised her hand. It shook as she did, and her eyes were heavy with feeling. “I don’t give a damn about the healing book.” She paused. “You saw her.”
“Her?”
“The Shade.”
I swallowed, the hair on my arms rising as I remembered. “I think so.”
“And you fought your way back here.”
“With Loki’s help.”
“Your familiar.”
I nodded.
“What did you see, Clementine? Tell me everything.”
So I told her. About the wisps and the key, the Shade, the arched gates, the army of darkness. The man with his sword as long as my leg. And finally, the gorge I’d jumped out over.
Her eyes flicked to my ripped-up clothing. “Where is the key?”
I reached into my pocket, lifted out the ebony key from where it had sat at my hip for hours. As I did, the headmistress’s eyes widened. She seemed to lean away from it. “How did you get that?”
“It was offered to me,” I said simply. “By the wisps.”
“They gave it to you?”
“Something like that. They said it was my claim, but it felt like my hand reached out on its own.” I sat up straight, my head pounding as I did. I extended the key halfway across the desk. “I have no idea what happened to me. Well, I do—in broad strokes. But I don’t know how any of it happened.”
The headmistress didn’t respond; she only stared at the key in my hand like it was a venomous creature.
“Do you know, Headmistress?”
“This key is ancient,” she whispered. “A fragment of great power. And it has not been seen in five hundred years.”