by Cate Corvin
Anthony slid from her private rooms and opened the door, and the professors filed out.
I looked over my shoulder to shoot a glare at Dominic that I hoped would wither skin from bone, but he just met my gaze impassively and left. The servitor closed the door behind them.
Bloom raised her chin when I looked back at my new coven. Her hands were trembling.
“That takes care of the paperwork portion of the night,” Gilt said, slamming the book shut. My blood was already dry, the grimoire having soaked it up and absorbed it. “On to the main event, shall we?”
I took a step back and ran into something solid, roughly the size and shape of a refrigerator. Anthony’s dense arms wrapped around me. His hand slammed down over my mouth and forced something slippery and cold between my lips, and I couldn’t even struggle before darkness flooded through my mind.
The last thing I saw before my thoughts blanked out was Ivy Bloom laughing.
***
I woke up to flames reaching through the darkness, distorted and wavering.
Everything ached. My entire body felt like it’d been dragged over stone and tossed down stairs. My head was an overripe fruit about to split in half.
I couldn’t hold back a groan as I touched my face, convinced that my skin had been grated off, but everything felt whole and intact under my trembling fingers.
My eyes slowly adjusted to flickering light. It barely touched the ceiling of the enormous cavern I was in, even though the bonfire was enormous. The heat of it washed over me from twenty feet away.
I reached for my wildfire in a panic and found nothing but a guttering flame, nausea sloshing through my stomach when I tried to make it flare.
Her servitor’s nasty charm had blocked my wildfire.
Headmistress Gilt was a dark silhouette in front of the fire, Ivy Bloom at her side, both kneeling prostrate before a dark, hunched figure.
My heartbeat sped up as a strong hand gripped the back of my neck.
“Get up.” The rough voice belonged to Anthony.
He jerked me upright and I swayed in place, swallowing several times as saliva flooded my mouth and vomit threatened to rise.
The light played over something horrendous, just visible behind the leaping flames. We weren’t alone in the cavern.
Long, spider-like legs that rose higher than a house glinted in the light, rising into the darkness before vanishing overhead. All I had was the impression of some massive structure, an almost organic-looking machine looming over us, before Anthony pushed me towards the bonfire and my new coven.
The hunched figure wasn’t hunched at all, but sitting in a rickety old wheelchair that was exactly like the asylum wheelchairs Roman and I had found in the hidden corridor.
Whoever it was, they were draped in numerous layers of robes, a variety of fabrics that were all a dingy gray color.
A hood was pulled up over their head, and two shining eyes peered out at me. I almost got a look at their face, but they turned away just in time, leaving my mouth dry and stomach heaving.
Whoever it was didn’t look human. The face was all dry, peeling flesh and glittering eyes like beetles.
“Grandfather, we bring you the newest daughter of our coven, Lucrezia Gilt.” Headmistress Gilt’s tone was strange, like a little girl excited to show off her favorite toy.
Anthony shoved me and I went to my knees on rough stone.
“As beautiful as you said, Mallory.” Grandfather’s voice sent chills running over my entire body, as dry as a leaf, with hisses and gasps interspersed with his words. “Young, fresh blood. Girls?”
I was shaking and so shell-shocked I thought he was talking to us and raised my head.
Three squat figures pattered from the darkness like ghosts, wearing dirty, shapeless smocks. At first, I thought they were ghosts, but the firelight touched their features and proved me wrong.
They were Gilts, that much was clear. All three women had the look of both the very young and very old, their skin doughy with age, but albino-pale and unlined from years without sun or expression. Two had Mallory’s wild orange curls, but the third was mostly bald.
“Girls,” Grandfather breathed, and rattled out a cough. “Your new sister. Make her feel welcome.”
I was frozen in terror as they approached me, touching my hair and making cooing sounds. The bald one picked up my hand, ran her fingers over my chipped black nail polish, then dug a knife into my palm.
I yelped and jerked back, knocking over the one patting my hair, but with my blood shining on the knife they left me alone and scrambled back to Grandfather’s side.
The bald one pushed the knife under his hood, holding it sideways, and his rattling inhale filled the air.
“Delightful. There’s a good girl, Eleanor. You know what to do.” She nodded, and I realized all three of the ‘girls’ were either mute or insane, or possibly even both.
I pressed my sleeve into my dripping palm as Eleanor skittered away, cupping her hand under the dripping blade so she didn’t lose a drop of my blood.
A pale hand touched mine. Josephine sat next to me and pointed, her finger following Eleanor before she faded again.
The bald witch was nearly swallowed by darkness. She stopped in front of what looked like a giant slab of obsidian, the edges just catching the light.
She flicked the dagger and sprayed my blood over the stone, and hurried back to Grandfather’s side, her blue eyes bulging from her head.
My breath caught in my throat. The obsidian slab was the cornerstone! All I had to do was get up, break free-
I tried and only managed to wobble in place. My knees felt like pulp that refused to carry my weight.
And even if I made it there, my wildfire was nothing more than a struggling ember, barely flickering in the depths of my soul.
“There. Now your blood has joined ours. You are truly a part of Giltglass.” Gilt sounded satisfied, even relaxed.
Bloom was rigid in contrast, her face set.
Through the fuzziness in my brain, I slowly realized what had been done. Bloom’s name wasn’t in the grimoire in blood, but mine was. My blood was on the cornerstone… and hers wasn’t.
If every other Gilt were to die, succession of the coven would fall to me, rather than Mallory Gilt’s own blood.
I almost wanted to laugh in her face, but I was too terrified. The three Gilt witches were watching me, making soft sounds, and Grandfather stared at me from beneath his hood.
“You don’t seem pleased, Ivy,” he rasped.
She straightened and clasped her hands in her lap. “I’m overjoyed, Grandfather. Lucrezia Gilt’s truly exceptional abilities will be a blessing for our coven. It’s a shame there’s no more men in the covenstead to breed her with-”
Grandfather made a sound and Bloom stopped short, looking terrified.
“Am I not a man? The one who put Giltglass on the map and made it what it is today?”
Bloom swallowed and bent herself in half, prostrating with her forehead to the floor. “You are, Grandfather.”
“Of course I am, you waste of human flesh. Annabelle, Eleanor, bring Lucrezia to me.”
The pale witches broke from him and surrounded me, scooping me under my arms with hands like iron to drag me in front of the wheelchair.
I wanted to thrash and scream, but I too afraid to move to save myself.
They lowered me in front of him so that I was kneeling, almost close enough to touch the rough fabric of his robes. “Patricia.”
She stood behind him, delicately lifted his hood and pulled it back. A shriek caught in my throat.
Grandfather had the shape of a man, but his skin was like leather glued to the bone, wrinkled and gleaming. His lips had mummified over his teeth, and the pale blue Gilt eyes protruded like marbles in his petrified skull. Wisps of dull red hair floated in patches over the top of his head.
That this warlock was still able to speak at all was horrifying.
A dry, stick-like hand p
rotruded from his robes and rose to touch his face.
“It’s been some time since I was well-fed,” he said. My stomach sloshed alarmingly as his eyes ran over my face. What would they do to me if I threw up on their Grandfather? “I understand my appearance must be alarming for you.”
It was one thing to hear the hiss and crackle of his speech, and another to see him struggle to make words, saliva spilling over his chin.
He waited expectantly, and I summoned the dying flame of my courage. “Not at all,” I whispered, almost choking.
Grandfather leaned back in his chair, his breath rattling. “Sweet girl. You remind me of my Josephine, in a way.”
My own hands were slick with clammy sweat. It wasn’t possible. Josephine had been dead for two hundred years now.
Then that branch-like hand was reaching for my face. All I could see was the cracked, desiccated nails, barely holding on to the tips.
He stroked my face, running his withered hands over my cheek and down to my chin, and lifted it to peer into my face.
“Beauty withers and dies. Power remains.” One of his fingers touched my lip and my guts surged. “I’ve waited so long for a force of nature to join us. You will be the jewel of my coven, Lucrezia Gilt, the mother of many.”
Tears prickled the backs of my eyes, and one traitorous drop slipped out and ran down my cheek.
Oh, Aradia, what the fuck was he talking about?
Grandfather’s mummified lips tried to smile, and the dry flesh on his cheeks cracked. “You will grow used to this with time. But don’t consider using your wildfire against me, Lucrezia; your blood on the cornerstone binds you. You will not be able to do harm to a member of your new family.”
He finally removed his abhorrent hand from my face and gingerly lowered it into his lap. Patricia raised his hood, mercifully obscuring his features once more. “I will see you again soon, coven-daughter. Perhaps I will feed again to mark the joyous occasion, so you may see my true face.”
I couldn’t answer, my throat closed tight.
Patricia wheeled him away, followed by Annabelle and Eleanor, and when he’d vanished into the darkness, Gilt and Bloom both rose from their knees.
“He was quite taken with you,” Gilt said, preening as she pulled a length of cloth from her suit pocket. “He’s worked so hard to see his plans come to fruition. As I said, Lucrezia, the day Ashdarke let you go was a blessing for us. Your matriarch had no idea how much raw magic she was giving up.”
Bloom lifted me roughly from the floor. The white dress was now stained with dirt and blood.
Between my terror and fogginess, I felt like I’d missed something important. Something they were planning.
My new matriarch touched me in the middle of my forehead, uttering a word that hurt my ears and sent a flash of hot agony through my brain.
Gilt tied the cloth around my eyes, and my last sight was the legs of the monstrous machine looming over us, like a giant cage waiting to descend.
Chapter 23
Lu
They handed me off to Anthony, who kept a hand clamped around my bicep and occasionally told me in his gruff monotone voice if I needed to watch my step or walk up a flight of stairs.
I had no idea what was around me, relying entirely on smell, sound, and Anthony’s presence.
The depths of Cimmerian smelled like Locke’s prison, but a thousand times worse. Old stone overlaid with blood, sour fear, and an animal smell that grew stronger as we traveled upwards.
My feet scuffed stone, and other things creaked, hissed, or bubbled around me. Sometimes the floor was rough, and at other times smooth. Doors slammed behind us as we passed, and charms brushed against the wards in my mind.
Once, something reached out to touch me, and I jumped back with a strangled shriek. Anthony caught me, much gentler now that I was an avowed Gilt, and guided me away.
I lost all sense of time stumbling alongside him, but at one point we stepped into a room filled with a sibilant wheezing.
Whatever was making it, there were many of them, and the thick copper tang of blood was fresh and heavy in the air.
Anthony muttered a greeting to someone who was sloshing a vessel full of liquid, and the voice of Gilt’s personal stitchwitch said something in return. Her words were impossible to make out over the wheezing.
Eventually I smelled nothing but dust and stone, and the faintest tinge of spice and incense. We were in Locke’s passage. I could’ve walked blindfolded from there, but let Anthony lead me up the stairs and into the familiar halls of Cimmerian.
He shut the black door, peeled the blindfold from my eyes, and awkwardly stood in front of me for a moment before shuffling away.
I took a shuddering breath, standing in the moonlight, covered in blood, dust, and the decay of a man who should’ve been dead three times over.
Then I ran for the North Entrance, barely making it in time as my guts heaved and I threw up over the side of the garden wall.
I hung on the edge of the wall for what felt like hours before sinking to the ground and leaning on it for support.
My thoughts wandered, and for a moment I thought my mind might be completely fractured, and that I’d finally given in to total madness. But if I was aware I was insane, then I couldn’t really be insane, could I?
The thoughts were circular and pointless, but as they whirled, I calmed, until my heart settled and my stomach no longer heaved with bile.
I was a Gilt. I was magically bound by the cornerstone and couldn’t hurt a member of my coven. The Headmistress had neatly hemmed me in and sewn me into her plan, perfectly harmless and right where she wanted me.
Dominic was so silent I didn’t hear him. I only saw the lightness of his white shirt as he approached, striding from the North Entrance. I cringed, but the energy to get up and run was long gone.
“What did they do to you?” His voice was taut with shock and anger. I never would’ve imagined those butterscotch tones would make my stomach churn.
I turned my head when he tried to touch my face and took a deep breath.
“I met a living dead man who wants to breed me into his family and had my blood smeared on the cornerstone by terrifying albino triplets so I can never touch Gilt,” was what I meant to say, but a hissed breath was all that came out.
Shocked into forgetting my anger with Dominic, I tried again, but no words came out.
Panic set in as I tried several iterations, but it wasn’t until I changed the subject that my voice worked again.
Headmistress Gilt had laid a geas on me with her last touch. I wouldn’t be able to speak of what Cimmerian held beneath it to anyone. It was a terror that would remain locked in my head.
“You let them do this,” I snarled, slapping his hands away from me. Anger roared up from the depths of my soul, licked with flame; the charm that had killed the wildfire’s inferno had finally worn off. The taste of ashes was a welcome change, searing away the bitter taste of fear. “All you had to do was stay away!”
“There is a purpose to this. I had a good reason,” he said, and I scuttled backwards on my hands and ass until I could get to my feet, well out of his reach.
My hands were clenched so hard my nails threatened to cut into my palms, and I hit the stinging spot where Patricia had pierced me with the knife.
I hissed and shook my hand out, the pain zinging up my arm. “What purpose could there be? They-” My throat worked and nothing came out. “I’m one of them now!”
The full horror of it was setting in on me.
“Lucrezia.” His voice was hard as an iron whip, shocking me into silence. “There are places in this covenstead where only a Gilt can go. Curses keyed to the Giltglass coven. Do you understand?”
I heaved for breath, my lungs catching on suppressed sobs. Was this how Petra Moon had felt when she was silenced?
But at least I could still scream if I needed to.
“I understand. I understand that you’re still using me.” My voice ca
me out as a rasp. “You’re using everybody.”
“Yes.” To hear him admit it so callously was heart-wrenching. “I used you. I let them initiate you into their coven because there are some curses that only an avowed Gilt witch can break. If you want to find that cornerstone, you must be one of them to do it.”
I almost started crying again. I already had found the cornerstone, but I couldn’t tell them. I couldn’t make my way down into the depths without a guide. Alone, I couldn’t get past what laid in wait.
“You didn’t have to let them take me. Bloom could’ve done it for you.”
Dominic’s hands clenched and tightened until his knuckles were white. “Ivy wouldn’t do anything for me unless it directly benefited her. You have a vested interested in this, Lucrezia, as do I. One of us needed to join them, and you were the only one they wanted.”
I paced back several steps when he took a single step closer. “Easy for you to say. You didn’t see-” I wanted to scream every time my throat closed on itself.
He held out his hands, palm up, like he was trying to soothe a wild animal.
I supposed in a way, covered in filth from head to toe and wide-eyed with panic, I probably did seem like a wild animal.
“I know it was terrible, and I swear I will avenge everything they’ve done to you,” Dominic said. His rough-hewn face was no longer hard but desperate, pleading with me to understand. “But it had to happen this way. You have more access now than ever before- sometimes we have to make sacrifices, Lucrezia. I’m sorry you were the one who had to bear them.”
Part of me wanted to break down and shriek until the sun came up, until the light of day washed away everything I’d seen and felt, but I also wanted to hold on to that cold kernel of revenge taking root in my chest.
“What made this worth it for you? That’s all I want to know. Give me a reason to trust you at all.”
Dominic met my gaze steadily. “Simon Wicke was my brother in all but blood, and he died on these grounds. Laying his spirit to rest is the reason I’m here.”
I paused in my pacing, a distant memory trembling at the edge of my mind. “The boy in the photograph.”
