Issuu

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a m b e r h a m i lto n

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Also by Amber Hamilton Seven Deadly Thorns

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For Aurora, my dawn, And for those who have endured the darkest of nights and survived to see the light.

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PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

Lonan: LOE-nan Gossemort: GOSS-morr Gault: gawlt Imaelhain: EYE-mel-hayn Antoine: AN-twawn Ollinde: AW-lind Nona: NOH-nah Froderick: FROE-duhr-ik Egbert: EGG-burt

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nce upon a time, far from the cursed land of Aragoa, across the deathly hills of Castelle and over the mountains where the Odd things dwell, in the Illuminated Kingdom of Gault, dwelt a soldier with his wife and only daughter. With her beloved gone and the war raging, his wife grew sick at heart, and she knew the end was near. She called her daughter to her side. “Nothing would bring me greater joy,” she said, “than a walk through the wood.” Though the forest was enchanted and full of terrible magic, the girl could not refuse her. They walked together along the riverside, deep in the wood, the wife of the soldier humming softly and combing her fingers through her daughter’s hair. Their hours there stretched and curled, and the sun did not rise or burn away the fog, for this was a place lost to time, a place of strange magic. While walking, the soldier’s wife drew a pair of shears from her apron and snipped a lock of her own hair. The daughter gasped, but the mother laughed and said, “It is only hair, Nightingale.” She trapped the hair inside a timepiece and gave it to the girl to wear around her neck. “Dear daughter,” said the soldier’s wife, “be clever and dauntless, for those virtues protect better than any sword.” With her new treasure around her neck, the girl wandered along the river to play, comforted by the sound of her mother’s humming. But when she returned, her mother had vanished, and only her humming remained.

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Years later, the soldier remarried and was again called away to war. He promised gifts to his stepchildren, who asked for herbs and bones to practice their spellcraft. But when he asked his daughter what she should like, she did not ask for treasures. She who had lost her mother already wished only for her father’s safe return. “Shall I bring bounties for your siblings and give you nothing?” her father asked. So she asked her father for one simple gift—a story. On his journey, he collected a tale for his daughter. However, the soldier did not survive his time at war. The story was left untold, for her caretakers considered it of an unsavory sort. They determined that there are some tales too great and terrible for the mind of a fledgling young girl. But they did not know that one day she would become great and terrible herself . . . a nd could tell her own stories.

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CHAPTER ONE

ometimes a heart breaks slowly. Sometimes all at once. But it is a rare and terrible thing for a heart to be broken by magic. Mine was broken long ago. My mother was a meiga, a magic-wielder, and could do beautiful and formidable things with Light magic. She snapped off a piece of my heart and promised it was for my safety, to keep me protected from the wretched world. “A heart, little Nightingale,” she told me, “is a bloody timekeeper. It marks the beginnings and ends of days. Every beat a tick, every rush of blood a moment closer to the end. The world is full of monsters who will gladly tear your heart to shreds. So it is safer for me to keep it. It is safer for it to be broken. No one can hurt a heartless witch.” Then she vanished, taking part of me with her. Her magic keeps me alive in place of my heart. But I’ve always wondered why, if my heart is so broken, do I still feel so much. My stepsiblings call me heartless. And I suppose I have quite a bite. Keep your distance. Don’t let them see how you care. Try very, very hard not to care at all. Those are my creeds, and I’m shit at living by them. For example, I should know not to go into the Blood Woods alone. But it’s my best friend’s scream that rends the evening air, and I make a stupid, reckless decision. At the sound of the scream, my head whips toward Hugo. He’s standing with me in the near- freezing water of the school fountain. We’d dared each other to jump in barefoot. Whoever gets out first loses. “That was Poppy.” 3

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His eyes are wide with terror too. But he sees the decision on my face—he knows me too well. “Vesper, don’t.” “That was Poppy.” “Let’s get the rest of the cohort, tell a teacher. We’ll find—” I lose the dare. Leaving my buckle shoes in a pile by the fountain, I grab my scythe and sprint for the school gates. Hugo shouts after me, but he doesn’t follow. I pass the tree line. I shouldn’t be out here. “Don’t go into the woods.” That’s what my father taught me. But then he died in the woods. Disobedient daughter that I am, I’ve been following him into them ever since. It’s twilight—the shadows of the great bloody oaks have grown cold, and the edge of the sun has dipped past the high towers of the academy behind me. There are mere minutes before the portcullis on the front gate of Gossemort will slam shut, when every window will be barred and every door will lock. And for the night, nothing left outside of Gossemort, student or fiendling, will be able to find its way in. I have to find her. And I have to be fast. I just really wish I hadn’t left my shoes behind. My stockings are sopping wet, and my toes are near frozen as I stampede through the woods. Twigs and sharp rocks scrape my soles as I listen for her voice again through the trees. She was on patrol tonight. Each night a team of students traces the perimeter of the stone walls that surround the school, ridding it of fiendlings. Fiendlings are an enigma. Even those of us who train against them do not understand them and hardly know what they look like. They change form at will. Made of pure shadow, they move like water, only revealing themselves for what they are with those red, glowing eyes. Patrol is dangerous, but Poppy has done it dozens of times. I’ve never heard her scream like that. I’d rather be locked out of the school in the perilous forest with Poppy than warm and safe inside while she was left to the Dark. She’d do the same for me. I slow my pace and try to get my bearings. And when I realize that 4

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I’m not sure which direction I’m going, when I realize that in the dimness and the strangeness of the shadows of the Blood Woods, I cannot even tell where the sun is, I look behind me, and I’ve lost sight of the school. The forest floor is thickly covered with creeping undergrowth. The shadows here are deep and sinister. All the trees look the same, their massive bloody trunks snaking upward. The townsfolk believe that these oaks draw their color from the blood of soldiers who died here defending the Kingdom of Gault from the Kingdom of Imaelhain. I know far more blood has been spilled by the monsters that live here. I listen for Poppy and realize that I can hear nothing. Not the wind. Not the rustle of life that a forest should have. But there is the faintest hush in the dark places between trees, slithering in the hollows and underbrush, creeping beneath thorns and thistles. I hear whispers. Fiendlings. They like the twilight, when they can jump from shadow to shadow, avoiding any shards of sunlight on the ground. This, the edge of night, is when they play. Older students protect the school during the risky dying hours, and tonight was Poppy’s turn. I might have abandoned my shoes. But I would never leave my scythe behind. I quietly draw the magic to myself, from the air, the earth, the dying sun, the whisper of the wind and the way the leaves tumble through it. Omnia magica sunt. All is magic. That is always the first lesson at Gossemort. I summon the Light to my scythe, and it glows lavender. The skull of a raven tops the willow-wood handle, the blade mirroring the curved beak of the raven, long and sharp and deadly. The wood is worn in the places my hands rest, and those grooves ground me as I watch the shadows. Breathe in. Breathe out. The steadiness and reason of the Light flow through me. And that’s when the fiendling shows itself. I see no body— not yet. Just two scarlet eyes. A set of gleaming fangs. And a smile. My stomach flips. 5

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Don’t hesitate. I strike. I hit. It roars. The fiendling surges upward, two—three— five times the size it appeared to be in the brush. It is a thing made of Darkness, its arms sweeping wide with long, billowing shadows like the cloak of an avenging angel. And then all turns to night. Shadows surround me like icy waters. Fiendlings are spirit, shifting shape at will. The scarlet eyes glow down at me from ten feet over my head. I feel its breath on my neck. I know you, it whispers inside my head. I feel its Dark tendrils wrap around my mind. And I falter. If the Light is calm, the Dark is chaos. If the Light is contentment, the Dark is hunger. If the Light is peace, the Dark is pain. Suddenly sharp grief nearly takes the breath out of me. Images flash through my mind—my mother humming while she held me, my father’s laugh, the cold face of my stepmother as she locked me in the attic, left to befriend the birds and rats. I can’t breathe. The fiendling lunges. Darkness wraps around my throat. I’m knocked off my feet. I arc my scythe through the air, but I’ve lost my tether to the Light. It pierces nothing. My head is shoved into the ground, the screech of the fiendling all around me. I feel the cold grip of its hands around my throat. My vision blots and I tear at the hands made of shadow that cut off my breath. I feel the cool press of the earth under my neck, and I remember. I bury my panic, my pain, my half-functioning heart. The scythe still glows, the timid lavender flaring brighter. And while the fiendling’s fingers squeeze tighter around my throat, I lift the weapon over its head. But before I bring the blade down on it, its eyes widen. Its grip slackens. It utters one pathetic, sour cry. And then it tumbles and shrivels. Was that my doing? I didn’t touch it. But then the shadows recede and the fiendling is left squirming on the grass as a great scarlet blade plunges into it. Strong hands bring the blade up and then plunge it deeper, and 6

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with a final cry, the fiendling shrinks into nothing, as though it had never existed. Standing over me, with a self-satisfied grin on his face, is Lonan Duval, captain of my cohort. “Evening, Fontaine,” Lonan says in a too-smooth voice. He grins like a devil. “I cannot wait to hear you explain this to the headmaster.”

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CHAPTER TWO

harming. Deviant. Cockroach. An annoyingly pretty cockroach, but a cockroach all the same. In the chaos of the Blood Woods, Lonan is entirely out of place. He grins down at me with dripping condescension, his nearly black, wavy hair neatly combed and dark eyes gleaming behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. His Gossemort uniform cuts sharp lines across a muscled frame as taut as harp strings. The blazer and tie have never been able to hide the effects of his training at our school for magical warfare. He’s tall, broad shouldered, and achingly perfect, half prince from a storybook, with his sword still gripped in his hand, and half scholar, more at home in a library than on a battlefield. He is practiced charm and carefully curated perfection. Except for two things—the eyes and the scar. The latter is a thin, faint line that travels from his jaw down his neck to his collar, and whenever Hugo or one of the more daring younger students has asked him about it, Lonan has answered them with a glare that could freeze fire. Even those who have known Lonan longest know little about him. He keeps it that way. But his eyes—those are his tell. He cannot hide the dark rims or that sleepy half-lidded look he wears that make him seem like he hasn’t gotten a good night’s rest his whole life. He cannot hide the piercing, chaotic gleam in his black-diamond eyes, as shadowed and slick as a raven’s feathers. That part of him, at least, looks at home in these woods filled with monsters. 8

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I glare up at him. “Stop gloating.” “I haven’t said a thing.” “I can feel you gloating.” I push myself to my feet. He still towers over me. “What are you doing out here?” “I’m your captain.” “Yes, we’re all familiar with your shiny badge.” I flick the little pin on his lapel that designates him as cohort captain. He barely surpassed me last year to earn that badge, and I’m clearly handling the defeat with the grace of a saint. He sheathes his sword and rests his hand on its hilt. “Hugo told me you charged into the woods. Alone. Just before sundown. I— where are your shoes?” We both look down at my feet. The freezing water has turned my toes numb and left the rest of me shivering. “I left them in the cloisters,” I say. “Why are your socks all . . . wet?” He sighs. “Saints below, Fontaine, are you trying to get yourself killed? You know what’s in these woods. You’re welcome, by the way.” “For what?” I pretend to dust myself off and pass by him, scythe in hand. I have to find Poppy, even if it’s growing dark and cold. I try to hide my shivering, but my teeth are clacking together. “For saving you,” he calls after me, following me farther into the trees. I call over my shoulder, “I didn’t need your help.” “You were about to be devoured by a fiendling. I didn’t want to explain your ridiculous demise to your godfather. Really, seven years at Gossemort, and you run out into the forest near nightfall?” He tsks like a schoolteacher. Saints, he really is begging to be slapped. “I heard Poppy scream, and I don’t frankly care if it’s near night. She’s out on patrol tonight, and if . . .” I can’t articulate the words, the images my mind wants to conjure. “If something happened, she needs help.” Camaraderie, loyalty, belonging—they’re what keep a cohort, this 9

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school, the whole kingdom waging its war against the Darkness together and functioning. Gossemort is a place to form bonds closer than family. It’s why it’s home. It’s why I can’t—won’t—leave Poppy out here to face the fiendlings alone. “It’s not going after her that I’m faulting. It’s rushing out of Gossemort alone and without proper footwear.” “Yes, Mother.” A voice breaks through the woods, distant enough that I can only hear a few squeals of . . . fear? Pain? “No, no, please . . .” That’s Poppy. And then there is another sound. A low, predatory roar that shakes the very trees. My eyes meet Lonan’s. And we both plunge into the woods. It’s a footrace through the trees to find her. We break through a copse of trees, and finally, there she is on the forest floor with her back to a trunk. And one of her legs is stretched out in front of her. She’s covered in blood. Immediately the panic in me turns to focus. I am the person my cohort wants with them in an emergency, the one they will one day want beside them on a battlefield. Because in the exact situations that cause others to panic, I become a sharpened blade, as severe and exact as my scythe. Focused. Unshakable. “You’re like this school, Vesper,” Poppy once told me. “A fortress. I’m pretty sure one of us could die and you wouldn’t shed a tear.” She didn’t mean it to hurt, and in truth, I knew she was right. I am too good with crises, too familiar with death to be rattled. So with Poppy bleeding on the forest floor, I jump into action. “Lonan, your jacket,” I demand. He sheds the school blazer instead of arguing with me. “Search the trees,” I tell him as I press Lonan’s jacket to Poppy’s wounded leg. “It might still be here.” I really shouldn’t be giving him orders. I’m making a mess of the chain of command. But he does as I say regardless, and I’m glad that for once he’d rather be efficient than argue with me. “How much pain are you in? Can you walk?” I ask Poppy. Her 10

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burnished red hair falls chaotically around her face. She’s too pale. Her shoulders are trembling—shock. She laughs painfully. “I’m all right,” she reassures. I don’t believe her. “I got it before it could escape. After it tried to tear off my leg.” Poppy’s magic has never lent itself much to fighting. Every meiga needs an object to anchor their Light magic—an object of warfare that chooses the meiga. But Poppy’s anchor is only technically a weapon—a ring with a small box containing poison. So she carries a magicless bow and tips her arrows with her poison. Clever, but not as effective as my scythe or Lonan’s sword. “Dead or alive, it’s not here anymore,” Lonan says. The shadows are deeper now. The sky is nearly black. Poppy’s injury has bled through the fabric of Lonan’s blazer. If we don’t stop the bleeding, she won’t be able to stay conscious. I tug off my cranberry school sweater embroidered with the Gossemort coat of arms and use it to try to mop up the mess of her leg. Saints, I can’t even tell where the blood is coming from. Poppy is pale and shaking. “Can you walk?” I ask again. She doesn’t speak, and her eyes blink too slowly. “We have to go,” Lonan says, and together we lift Poppy and help her limp back toward the school. I pretend not to feel eyes on us as we cross through the gate.

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CHAPTER THREE

hey told me they buried my mother in the graveyard of Gossemort. They lied. Towering over the other grave markers is an angel of weathered stone. It hangs its head, tears from years of rainwater staining its cheeks. It holds its scythe like a shepherd holds their crook, guarding her supposed grave with empty eyes. “She loved this school,” my father told me. “She belongs here, watching over you.” I certainly feel watched. But it is no comfort. It’s more like a splinter beneath the skin, digging its way into my awareness no matter how I try to ignore it. I know her body is not in that ground. She didn’t die. She vanished. My father told me I’d imagined it—the day she disappeared. He said it was the desperate fantasy of a child who couldn’t handle the sight of her mother torn to shreds by fiendlings. And though my memory of that day is hazy, with stark clarity I remember her holding my face, the smell of lilacs from her soap as she kissed my forehead goodbye. And humming— a tune I still find myself humming when my mind wanders. And that is why I can’t shed a tear. I can’t grieve her. Instead, my heart is broken and unfeeling. But always, always, always, I feel her eyes on me, like a prickle on the back of my neck. All students have vacated the cloisters. The courtyard with the 12

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fountain where Hugo and I soaked our feet like idiots not half an hour ago is now empty. The great clocktower looms over the graveyard, its face like a watchful eye as we pass through the rows of graves. “Night Cometh” cuts through the glow of the clock’s face. A warning. Beware the Dark. Cling to the Light. This is life at Gossemort. Poppy’s steps start to falter as we ascend the stairs to the arched front doors, and Lonan scoops her up. Just as we pass through the threshold of the heavy wooden doors of Gossemort, I hear the portcullis crash down over the front gate behind us. Gossemort is sealed for the night. By the time we reach the infirmary, Poppy has drifted into unconsciousness. Nurse Verne—a gray-haired man with a pinched face who likes to treat every ailment with peppermint candies and a good scolding about the rashness of youth— ushers us inside. He hobbles over to the bed and orders Lonan to deposit Poppy there with a grumble. I look up through the lancet windows that taper toward the buttress- lined ceiling. The sky does not seem quite as dark here as it did in the Blood Woods. The windows look like paintings this time of day, each one capturing a different cut of the sunset, from hot orange to ominous violet. “Girl, pay attention,” Nurse Verne barks, and holds out a cloth. “Hold this to her wound. Good pressure. That’s it.” I hold the cloth against Poppy’s leg wound, and as soon as I do, she bolts upright and yelps. “Calm down,” Nurse Verne says, pressing Poppy back into the mattress. “Just a cleaning. You’d think I’d amputated it, with your screaming. You, keep that pressure on it,” he chides me. “Shouldn’t be out at this time,” he grumbles as he gathers supplies from the cabinet. “Damn fools.” “She was on patrol,” I argue, even if arguing with Verne is as good as arguing with a gargoyle. “Don’t get me started on that. Don’t know what the headmaster is thinking, sending you all out there, with the creatures lurking in the woods these days . . .” “We train to fight fiendlings.” He locks his yellowed, world-weary eyes with mine. “I ain’t talking 13

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about fiendlings, child. You all are shut up here and don’t know the world. Well, I spend many a night in town among the regular folk, down at the tavern. And they have different tales to tell than what you’ll hear at Gossemort.” His eyes shift between the three of us. “Terrible things. Unnatural things. From over the mountains in that cursed country of Imaelhain.” “Worse than a fiendling?” I ask skeptically. He barks a laugh and begins stitching Poppy’s wound. “Worse than a fiendling, she asks. Oh yes, worse than a fiendling.” The gash is dark and deep. The fact that Nurse Verne is not dismissing the injury outright and stuffing a peppermint in her hand is telling enough. I count twelve stitches as he works. “Fiendlings is child’s play compared to what they got out in Imaelhain. Fiendlings is just beasts. Now, these other things—something else. It’s a sickness, they’re saying. Spreading town to town. Gets closer to here every damn week.” He looks up at the two of us, eyes bright and near fanatical. “Siphons.” The skin on the back of my neck chills. “Sounds like drunken tavern talk,” Lonan says. Nurse Verne’s eyes slice to Lonan as he finishes dressing the wound. “Dismiss it all you want, boy, but the sickness turns men into monsters. You’ll bleed your own mother dry till her body’s wrinkled as a raisin. And that’s to say nothing of what the army is meeting over those wicked mountains—a thing they’re calling the Great Nightmare. Razing dozens of soldiers in moments, so quick and damned deadly no one can tell you what it is, what it looks like. I’m telling you, I don’t like you young ones out in the woods close to nightfall. The days are darker than they used to be.” Lonan and I make eye contact again, and I have to stop myself from rolling my eyes. It’s Verne’s favorite saying, one Hugo does an excellent impression of whenever the mood strikes. The old curmudgeon is always complaining about how everything is worse off than it once was. But then again, there have been signs. At Gossemort, we train for war. Magic used to be so much more than 14

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that. The school now has entire wings that lie dusty and dormant, spaces for studying magical histories and sciences, arts and arithmetic. But then the war with Imaelhain began, the kingdom where all Dark magic has its roots. Things had to be pruned. The Kingdom of Gault, the Illuminated Kingdom, last refuge of the Light, needed meigas to fight, so Gossemort stepped in to train them. Poppy’s brother was sent to fight in Gault’s meiga forces last year. She used to receive letters from him. There haven’t been any in months. I think that’s what haunts her as she stares at the ceiling, her blue eyes wide, her leg wrapped in thick bandages. “Can she still go to the feast?” I ask. Tonight is Winter Solstice, and the school holds a feast and dance every year. “Definitely not!” “It’s all right, Vesper,” Poppy says. “What if she sits down the whole time?” I ask. This is our last year at Gossemort. Our last Solstice. “There is more to education than dancing and philandering.” “But—” “You think I don’t know what goes on at those dances? Oh yes, the lot of you are a bunch of hormonal, tongue-sucking miscreants. Then it’s up to the infirmary in the middle of the night, waking me up, and suddenly you’re all shy like you weren’t boinking bits like bunnies not half an hour earlier. ‘Nurse Verne, I need help.’ Like I’m the damned contraception fairy.” I have to pinch my lips shut to keep from laughing at the look of horror on Lonan’s face. “I don’t think anyone thinks you’re a fairy—” “I was young once! You think I didn’t smack every bottom I could when I was in this place? Boys, girls—didn’t matter. If they could bend over, I—” “Oh Saints, Nurse Verne, please stop.” Poppy has her hand clasped over her mouth, holding back laughter. Her freckles are being swallowed by the redness in her cheeks. Nurse Verne grumbles, “Hold still, girl, unless you want this leg to look like impressionist artwork.” 15

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The door to the infirmary crashes open, and I turn to see the rest of our cohort flow in. Hugo jogs ahead of the rest, coming to Poppy’s side. “I was searching the woods with Orla and Ollinde. I didn’t know you found her. Oh Saints, Pop. What happened?” He raises a hand as if he wants to put it on her shoulder, her face, her hand . . . but he can’t seem to bring himself to touch her, and he settles for letting his arm rest at his side, clenching and unclenching his fist as he asks her how she is. Nurse Verne waves him away so he can keep treating her. Hugo reluctantly sidles up beside me. “You know, you’ve got some savior complex.” “Do not,” I say. “What did you do with my shoes, by the way? My toes are near death.” He looks down at my feet. “That’s ’cause you’re still wearing those damn soaked stockings. Adding martyrdom to your complexes. You’re getting quite the collection.” “And I’m adding troublemaking to yours.” “Ah, but see, that’s not a defect. It’s a feature.” “Well, if my toes fall off, it’ll be your fault.” My stepsiblings have taken up the foot of the bed. Orla has her arms folded tightly around her chest, her hair hanging in a straight, white sheet around her sour face. But despite that, she talks softly with Poppy, who has always done a better job of relating to my prickly stepsister than I have. Her sibling, Ollinde, looks at me as if Poppy’s injury were my fault. Ollinde is a changeling, taking the creation principle of Light magic very literally. They rarely ever look the same, changing out faces like clothing. It’s only their eyes that don’t change—yellowish-green irises always set them apart. That, and the way they can cut me down with a glance. When in a human form, they shift between genders at will, sometimes blending both. Today, their face is a perfect balance of masculine and feminine—strong nose, delicate brow and lips, defined jaw, and absurdly tight golden curls that remind me of a powdered wig. My stepsiblings are not particularly fond of me. In some twisted way, I understand. My father left me his estate, to be awarded on my twentieth birthday. Technically speaking, whether they and their mother have a 16

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place to call home after that is entirely up to me. It doesn’t matter that I would never turn them out into the cold, regardless of how horrible they can be. They either don’t believe me or simply resent the power I hold over them. “Interesting,” Ollinde says with all the bite of a viper, “how these sorts of accidents keep happening. And always when you’re around, Vesper.” I open my mouth to retort, but Poppy inserts herself instead. “If she hadn’t come after me, this would all be worse. I might be dead.” “Yes, we should all thank the Saints for Vesper’s impulsivity and Lonan’s compulsion to cover up her messes,” says Orla. “Bleeding Saints, Orla,” Hugo says. “What’s wrong with you?” “I’d think you’d be most upset at Vesper. It’s your girlfriend’s leg that’s been mangled.” “I’m not his girlfriend,” Poppy says, blushing to her roots. “Stop,” commands Lonan. Since he’s been our captain, he’s developed this tone he uses when he’s keeping us in line— all command, no compromise. It’s very annoying. “It’s the Solstice and then end of term, and all of you have let it go to your heads. Picking at each other like kids. Sloppy. Tighten up.” He takes a breath and then lowers his voice. “I don’t care what night it is, what hour it is, or what’s happening around us. At this school, in this cohort, you stay sharp. And you have each other’s backs. Call it what you want, but Vesper had Poppy’s back tonight.” I’m surprised he’s complimenting me. But then his black-diamond eyes meet mine from behind his spectacles. “But before you go patting yourself on the back, know that marching off into the Blood Woods alone was the most asinine thing I’ve seen in all the years we’ve been here. I’ve had about enough of your thoughtlessness and self- reliance, Vesper. You think you know better than the rest of us. You don’t. You think you don’t need your team. You do. Learn that lesson, or I won’t be recommending you for advancement at the end of the year.” My stomach hollows out as my jaw drops in rage. I need the approval of my captain to graduate Gossemort and be inducted into the meiga forces fighting for Gault. I’m nearly the best in our year—only occasionally 17

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surpassed by Lonan when he can manage it. The idea that he could hold me back, keep me from serving as my father did . . . Oh, how he has miscalculated. He thinks he can hurt me, that he can scare me into compliance. But my heart is in pieces, and when I’m attacked, it goes ice-cold. I step close to him, so close that we share the same breath, that our noses nearly touch. I narrow my eyes at him, and when I speak, my voice could cut to marrow. “You think your threats work on me? You small little man. I will ruin you.” Something like power and the frigidity of resolve pass over Lonan’s face. It’s an expression I’ve seen on him before—just before he does terrible things, just before he wraps himself in the very evil he claims to fight. Everyone thinks Lonan and I bite at each other’s heels because we jockey for the first and second rank among our class at Gossemort. At a school as cutthroat as ours, where students have been known to spend a week in the infirmary due to stress, where being able to outshine one another feels life-or-death, you need little other reason to make an enemy. But that is not why I can’t stand Lonan. I loathe him for one simple, unshakable reason: I know things about him that I should not know, things that, if they came to light, would make any one of his admirers despise him as much as I do. He parades himself around this school like the paragon of goodness, perfect champion of the Light. In truth, he is anything but. “Tread carefully, Fontaine,” he whispers. “Remember who your friends are.” So much is layered into those words. Who my friends are— the people surrounding us, meigas of the Light who have no idea who I really am or what secrets Lonan and I share. Who my friends are— the two people who actually know my secrets. Lonan and my godfather. “Soulless bastard.” He smiles, and it’s empty of joy. “You know better than anyone, Vesper—being soulless and heartless is how we survive the Dark.” 18

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SIX HOURS TILL MIDNIGHT LONA N

It has always been about the girl. Enemies circle her like birds of prey. But I have one advantage over them. They think she’s defenseless. Yet I know teeth when I see them.

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CHAPTER FOUR

n the Founders Hall, where the Solstice feast and dance will be held, there is a wheel of Camembert cheese. The feast is yet to start, but I can picture the cheese in my mind—it will be creamy and melty and accompanied by fresh bread and jellied figs. Tonight, I will drown myself in cheese. But first, a much more irritating task. I have to follow Lonan. I make up some terrible excuse to leave the infirmary shortly after he does and catch up to him in the winding halls. His pace is much faster, and his head is bowed in that familiar way that tells me he’s focused, thoughtful. His mask has fallen. This is the version of him only I see. He doesn’t even glance my way when I come up beside him, matching his stride. “Cutting it a bit short,” he comments. “I’m here, aren’t I?” He sighs. Saints, I don’t know how it is that one little noise from him can get under my skin more than any cutting insult my stepsiblings throw at me, but it does. I bite my tongue and let my annoyance fuel my focus. The sky is deep amethyst. It’s nearly nightfall. There will be consequences if we don’t act soon. We make it to the cobbled drive that circles in front of the school, and Lonan stops me with a hand on my arm. “You remember the plan?” I resist the urge to roll my eyes, nearly bursting a blood vessel with the effort it takes. “Yes, Lonan. I remember the plan.” “And you’re ready?” 21

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“We’re wasting time.” I glance through one of the arched stonework windows of the cloisters that surround the front of the school. At the foot of the steps are the last carriages to leave for the night, and several of the school governors are huddled there together. I have my eye on one—the man in the top hat. Tonight’s prey. We were instructed to find him before the feast begins. Lonan clenches his jaw as he studies me, his eyes looking a sliver more exhausted than usual. “This has to go perfectly.” “I’m aware.” Saints, his condescension is in top form today. I gesture through the stonework opening. “Do your spooky little shadow thing and don’t worry about my job.” “ ‘Spooky little shadow thing’?” I glare at him, and he relents with a heavy sigh and crosses the open threshold onto the front steps of the school. I watch from the shelter of the cloisters as he saunters down the steps, hands hidden uncharacteristically in his pockets. It’s those hands I watch. Dark tendrils like serpents are already snaking their way up his sleeves. This is the secret I keep for Lonan—and the secret he keeps for me. We live and learn in Gossemort, the last stronghold of the Light, but he and I are cut from the same cloth of Dark magic. We practice both Light magic and Dark magic, under the same mentor, a cohort of our own, or so our mentor keeps reminding us. We are traitors. Wolves in Light’s clothing. If anyone knew, we’d be imprisoned, exiled, or possibly even executed. But our mentor tells us that the Kingdom of Gault needs us, that the Dark can do things for Gault that the Light cannot. We’re the kingdom’s most despicable soldiers. We muddy our souls for it. “Lord Bernard,” Lonan calls. A man in a suit sporting a top hat and an impressive mustache turns his head and looks at Lonan with confusion. He looks rather like a basset hound, drooping eyes and nose, jowls on jowls. He’s one of the school governors. We don’t know why he is our victim tonight—only that with his position, we must be discreet, and we must be quick. 22

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Lonan’s shadows obscure, they lure, and worst of all, they kill. But he rarely uses that final gift. Instead he relies on me—my lethality is far more subtle. Lonan smiles his most charming smile, the one that could seduce a rabbit into a viper’s nest, and says, “I wondered if I might have a word.” “Ah yes, I remember you. The clever young man with a keen interest in astronomy, as I recall. And a knack for chess.” Lonan has already laid the groundwork. Lonan’s smile broadens— the charm flickering into something vicious. “It’s a pleasure, sir.” As soon as the lord takes Lonan’s hand, his shadows strike. This is Lonan’s Dark magic—serpents of shadow slithering around him, surrounding the governor, till they cover him in a veil of darkness. As wicked as those shadows are, however, what has always been most unsettling to me is that in all the years I have watched Lonan wield Dark magic, I’ve never seen his anchor. It has to be small—he must keep it incredibly well hidden. But a person’s Dark anchor has to be an object of personal significance. For all my wondering, I can’t imagine what he could treasure so much and hide so easily. With the governor hidden in the shadows, Lonan overpowers him. He pulls the man’s arms behind his back, wraps a hand around his mouth, and drags him into the alcove beside the front steps. Anyone not looking too closely into the cloisters would glance right over the two of them. But I know what I’m looking for. I march into Lonan’s shadows. The serpentine Darkness winds around my legs, caresses my arms. They are cool to the touch, as slick as he is, and utterly lethal. In the shadows, I find Lonan holding the school governor’s hands behind his back. He meets my eyes. “Your kill, Fontaine.” I withdraw my timepiece from beneath my sweater— my anchor to Dark magic. My Light anchor is a weapon of war, but the Dark is different. The Dark draws from emotion, from feeling, from memory and meaning. To wield it I needed an object that mattered to me, and my mother gave me this little clock on its burnished chain the day she disappeared. Stars 23

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and delicate etchings adorn its face, and its metal is worn from where I compulsively rub my thumb against it. It dims with shadow as I draw my Darkness to it. I look at Lord Bernard, make myself witness the fear and confusion and rage written on his face. I do this every time, force myself to take it in—the death and terrible things I do, hoping that it will awaken something in my broken heart. But as always, the numbness washes over me. I feel nothing as I close a hand over his mouth and begin to recite my verse. You wondered when your eyes would see The last of this life’s reverie Though dying night and fleeting day Are said to be the rarest play In frigid dark may your body lie With this refrain, so shall you die I grit my teeth against the pain of the words carving themselves onto the flesh of my legs. This is the price of my magic. A new scar for every new poem delivered—cursed verse, songs of ruin. If Lonan’s shadow magic is a knife in the dark, mine is a spoonful of arsenic in a morning cup of tea. I let the words fall from my lips quickly and dispassionately. Lord Bernard’s eyes glimmer strangely as I hold his face in my hands. And then he collapses, fast asleep in a heap at Lonan’s feet. Lonan nudges him with a shoe to ensure he’s truly out cold. “Beautifully delivered. What will he die of ?” Lonan asks quietly. “Tuberculosis.” “Dismal.” “It’s a romantic disease. All the poets thought so.” Lonan exhales, long and slow. “The poets were wrong. No one deserves to die like that—slowly souring. If I could use my shadows— But we can’t have people dropping like flies on the front steps of the school.” “Yes, we all know how effective your creepy, snaky shadows are.” 24

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He frowns without looking at me. “I’m only saying it’d be a kinder death.” His words surprise me. They’re strangely vulnerable, and more than that—I didn’t think he, who lures his victims like an ambush predator, would care one lick about a kinder death. There’s something sad in the line of his mouth, a slight distance in his eyes. Lonan holds my gaze, and I’m so distracted by it that I don’t notice that Lord Bernard is not quite as unconscious as I’d thought. He lunges for me, wrapping his arms around my ankles. I trip, my hips and skull colliding with the cobblestone. Lord Bernard is on top of me, a wild look in his eyes, face turning ruddy as his hands clasp my throat. “Traitor! ” he seethes, his face twisted in hate. Then his eyes bulge. Darkness wraps around his neck, and a blade of crimson juts through his stomach. Lonan wrenches his blade out of the lord’s back, and the body falls dead on top of me. Dispassionately, Lonan kicks Lord Bernard aside and extends a hand, pulling me to my feet. Lonan and I stare at each other in the Darkness for a second longer than makes sense, my hand lingering in his, my attention suddenly pulled to the scrape of his calluses and the steady, steely look in his eyes while his shadows swirl around us. I feel strangely light— probably the lack of oxygen and possible concussion making themselves known. I have to look away, and instead my gaze falls to the dead lord at our feet. “Well, shit,” I mutter. “Waste of a spell.” Lonan nods. “And now we have a body. And a missing school governor.” “Shit,” I repeat. “He’ll want to know.” Lonan frowns. “He’ll be furious.” I don’t argue with that.

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CHAPTER FIVE

ord Van Asten, headmaster of Gossemort and my godfather, is a generous man, but he is not forgiving. “You left a body on the front steps of the school grounds.” He stands at the end of the aisle in the school chapel— a private place to meet when the Solstice feast is about to start. My godfather is tall and foreboding, his dark hair speckled with gray on an austere face. Since I have entered his charge, the lines on his face and the worry in his eyes have grown deeper. At this time of night, the stained glass depictions of Saints that grace every window are lit from below, their severe faces glowering down at Lonan and me as we stand before him. The school chapel is simple compared to some of the cathedrals in the larger cities, but it crams its centuries-old walls with the grandeur demanded by the school as the crown tabernacle of the Light. Lonan and I stand silent. Still. As we always do when we meet with him. But then Lonan does the unthinkable and speaks out of turn. “Lord Bernard had a number of enemies. He was as crooked as they come or else you wouldn’t have had us kill him. Surely that’s enough of an explanation for a violent death.” Van Asten’s eyes lance through Lonan. I have been on the receiving end of that stare too many times. There is nothing worse. I’d rather he scream at me, rage and break things. But my godfather is too formal, too calm for that. Instead, he devours you with a look. “You think the murder of one of the Elders of Gault is so easy to conceal? That there will not be 26

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questions? That the school—that I—will not be under scrutiny? A child would raise an eyebrow at your attempt at subterfuge.” “What would you have had me do? Let him choke her to death?” I resist the temptation to glance at Lonan. We do not talk back to Van Asten. “I would have had you use your head,” my godfather says, his voice low and threatening. “Vesper is very capable of defending herself. She has trained just as well as you have.” “He was choking her. You’re saying I should have just stood by—” “You do not resort to killing as your first instinct.” Lord Van Asten steps close to Lonan, who is at least an inch taller and does not balk at the virulent gaze of the older man. It’s suddenly very obvious that Lonan is growing into someone my godfather might not always be able to control. “You’ve always been an emotional boy, always given to flights of passion, rage, bitterness, tempted into petty revenge like a salamander to a fly. Dark magic feeds off emotion. It’s why you’re so gifted in it, my boy. But you are so steeped in the Dark that you lose your head. Calm your emotionally driven heart and think,” Van Asten says. “You know what the risks are. You know what would happen if the Elders found out about the two of you.” Gault is now a kingdom primarily ruled by the Eldership, replacing the king in all ways but ceremonial. King Marcel still holds his title, but the monarchy has been stripped of nearly all its governing powers. If the Elders learned that Lord Van Asten, who counts himself as one of their number, was using two Dark meigas to assassinate other members of the gentry . . . well, that would have results I don’t even want to contemplate. “Lonan, if you can’t control your emotions while wielding the Dark, there will be consequences.” “It’s my fault.” The words tumble from my lips before I even realize I’m speaking. Lonan breaks his stance, turning to blink at me. My godfather turns 27

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his head slowly in my direction. “Yours, Nightingale?” He uses my childhood pet name, but his words hold an edge of warning, as though calling me Nightingale will soften the blow of his rage. “I . . . didn’t execute the curse properly.” I fumble with my words. “He should have been fully incoherent at that point. Obviously he had the wherewithal to realize I had tried to hurt him.” The growl of the word “traitor” will not soon disappear from my memory. “You’re taking responsibility for the failure of this task?” “It’s not a failure,” Lonan says. “You told us to kill him, and Lord Bernard is dead.” “Quiet, Duval.” Van Asten narrows his eyes on me. “I told you to be expedient,” Van Asten says. “I taught you better than this.” The words sting like a slap. Emotion rises like a wave, and then, just as quickly, it drops, deflated by the brokenness of my heart. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. Van Asten lowers himself back into his seat with a sigh. There’s new tiredness in his eyes, a layer deeper than the sleepless bags around them. A dimness. A hopelessness. “The fiendlings have gotten worse,” I say. He doesn’t look at me, but the corners of his mouth turn down slightly. “We’re not winning, are we? The war, I mean.” He sighs deeply and rubs his eyes with his knobbed fingers. “You are too observant for your own good, you know. The Darkness is growing bolder. The Light is losing strength.” Lonan and I share a glance. “Will the Elders not take more . . . drastic steps?” Lonan asks. He’s always taken more liberties with my godfather than I have, and I’m afraid he’s run out of them tonight. But they’ve always had an oddly paternal relationship. Lonan showed up a year after the rest of us in our class, dragged out of some orphanage by Van Asten, timid, strange, and alone. I tried to befriend him at first. But then his rise through the ranks of Gossemort was nothing short of meteoric. My godfather started training 28

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us both in the Dark magical arts. Suddenly I was being edged out, and the orphaned new student was my equal and rival—for my godfather’s love as much as in academics. Van Asten relaxes back into his chair, his expression thoughtful and distant as he gazes into the bloodred embers of the dying fire. “This war will get worse before it gets better,” he says. There’s a thread of fear in his voice that I’m completely unused to. “We heard about something. A sickness spreading through the country. Siphons,” I say. Van Asten shakes his head. “The townsfolk love gossip. I beg you not to listen to the tall tales of Nurse Verne, Vesper.” I press further, perhaps only because Lonan dared to. “What about this thing they’re calling the Great Nightmare?” Nurse Verne mentioned it, and I can’t stop imagining it—a force so powerful it could erase companies of soldiers in moments, their Light helpless against a Dark that powerful. I’ve wondered for years how my father, one of the strongest meigas of his time, an unmatched deadly force for good, fell against the Dark. He seemed so unstoppable when I was a child. He’d been to war before, and he’d always returned. And then he was just . . . snuffed out. Quick as the wick of a candle. A mountain of a man. It didn’t make sense. But if this is what meiga forces are facing beyond the mountains, if this is how lethal the Dark truly is, shouldn’t we know? Shouldn’t Gossemort be prepared? Van Asten’s eyes cut to mine. “Verne told you about that as well, did he?” I hesitate. I don’t want to get Nurse Verne in trouble with his employer. My godfather sighs. “There is a rumor of a weapon some refer to as the Great Nightmare. But I will warn you, Vesper—fear and rumor are often more deadly than reality.” “But is it—” He lifts a hand. “That’s enough of that. You’re still a student. I am an Elder of Gault. You are not privy to every detail of this war. Not even I am.” 29

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Lord Van Asten turns and focuses his attention on the circular stained glass window that overlooks the ambo. The candlelight shines up ominously on the faces of the matron Saints of Gossemort. They call them the Sisters of Necessity, arbiters of destiny. Finally, Lord Van Asten speaks. “Vesper, you’ve had the benefit of a . . . unique education.” “Yes, sir,” I reply. “No one, and I mean no one, can do what you do. You’re special, Vesper. You should be proud.” It’s meant as a compliment, but it only hurts. I am not proud. I’m confused, ashamed, trapped . . . but I am not proud. I can feel Lonan’s eyes on me. Neither of us should exist. Wielding both Dark and Light magic shouldn’t be possible, and it’s definitely forbidden. But the Dark can do things the Light cannot, and my godfather is fighting many battles on many fronts. He needs every advantage. He’s been careful with my education. Sprinkle a little wickedness on a lifetime of miracles and, well . . . he prays the Saints don’t take notice. I try not to pray at all, lest I draw their attention. I feel the grim eyes of the Sisters looking down in judgment. “Yes, sir.” I can hear the words he’s thinking, like his mind is my own. He needs me to be able to do both. He needs Gossemort, and all of Gault, for that matter, to have some bite. I’m the teeth. “I’m sorry,” I add, because I can’t stand the silence. “I know.” The candlelight reveals new lines on Van Asten’s face. The streaks of gray in his beard and long hair have broadened in the last year, and Saints help me, I think of my father as he would look now. They’d be a pair—a couple of grumpy middle-aged men. But their friendship was cut short. He looks so exhausted, like he hasn’t slept in days, and I want to ask him how he is, if he’s eaten, whether he’s been sick. But now isn’t the time. He leans toward us and lowers his voice. His eyes soften as he says, “I brought you both here because I believe you can do marvelous things. The others might not understand your gifts. Not yet. But one day Gault will be grateful for all you do for it.” This is the contrast of him— the mind like a sharpened dagger and the 30

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heart of a father. When my father died, his lawyers told us that he’d left the responsibility of the estate to me upon my turning twenty, not to my stepmother. She was livid. His body was hardly in the grave before my stepmother had me removed from my old room and locked in the attic. When Lord Van Asten came to visit me, he was so furious I thought he might do something horrible to my stepmother. Instead, he told her that she should be thankful my father had loved her, and he left with me. He took me here, to Gossemort, and let me run wild in its halls until it was time to start my own education. He wearily drops into the front pew. Eyes on the visages of the Saints, he says with a strange note of sadness, “Lonan, leave us. Vesper, sit down. We need to discuss something.”

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FIVE HOURS TILL MIDNIGHT LONA N

I am a bastard. Lord Bernard had his hands around her neck, and I lost my mind. I couldn’t think, blinded with rage. Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d buried my sword in his intestines. I’m glad he’s d ead—good fucking riddance. But then she tried to take the fall for me. I don’t know what to make of that. Half of our days I think Vesper would gladly see me tossed into the woods and left to the fiendlings. And now she’s in that room with him—likely receiving the consequences of my actions. He is my teacher, my mentor, and the closest thing she and I both have to a parent. I should trust him with her. I don’t.

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