It Ends in Fire

by Andrew Shvarts

  The door is locked, of course, but Marlena’s skeleton key opens it right up, humming with a multicolored light. I stole it off her earlier in the day, while her back was turned. It felt wrong, but it was the only way; I don’t know that she would have given it to me, and I couldn’t risk not getting it. I hope she’ll be all right. She’ll have to be.

  That guilt tightens my stomach, and I push it aside. I can’t think like that. What matters now, what’s always mattered, is the cause. Whispers’s voice echoes in my ears: You’ll learn their secrets, rise within their ranks. And when you’re done, you can burn that place to the ground.

  I’m sure as hell done here. Calfex made that clear. Which means there’s just the last step to go.

  In the daylight, Aberdeen’s office had looked elegant, a well-curated museum of antiquities. At night, lit by scattered moonlight ghosting through the window, it seems far more sinister, haunted. The floorboards creak like moans under every step I take, the eyes of the Wizards in the paintings seem to follow me, and that six-eyed skull makes me so uneasy I can’t even look at it. It doesn’t matter though, because I’m after one item, the one sitting on a dais in the center of the room, enclosed in glass. The Codex Transcendent.

  It’s not the book I’m after though. It’s just one Glyph in it, one last Glyph to learn. The Glyph that’s haunted me my whole life, the Glyph that killed my father, the Glyph that killed Sera. First-Degree Elemental Infusion, Fire Base.

  I’ll do Aberdeen’s little declaration, all right. I’ll stand on a stage with him and Marius and whoever else he wants to drag along, get them all together in front of the school. I’ll look them both in the eyes, both of those bastards, and I’ll smile, and then I’ll set it off, the Glyph I’ve carved into the floor. And then we’ll all go up in flames together.

  It’s not that I want to die. But it’s the only option I have left. I can’t win. I can’t run. So all I can do is burn.

  There’s a part of me, a small voice deep inside, that’s screaming in protest. It’s the voice that tells me I’m a coward, that I’m giving up too soon. It’s the voice that tells me I’m letting down Tish and Zigmund and all the other Nethros, the voice that tells me I’m dishonoring Fyl. It’s the voice that tells me I’m abandoning my promise to Marlena, that I’m letting down the one person who’s counting on me most. It’s the voice that tells me I’m just giving in to my anger, to my pain.

  It’s Sera’s voice, telling me to live.

  I silence that voice. It’s a voice of weakness, a voice of loneliness, a voice of desperation. I’m a Revenant, a fighter, a killer. My mission comes first, and my mission is all that matters. If the price of that means dying, I’ll do it. If the price of that means letting down my friends, I’ll do it. If the price of that means betraying Marlena, I’ll… I’ll…

  No. Can’t think like that. Can’t let myself get distracted. I’ve made up my mind, and there’s no turning back.

  But first, I’m going to have to find a way to open this glass case.

  I run my hands along its smooth surface, and it’s fixed in place. Of course. There’s a small keyhole at the base of the dais, but the skeleton key doesn’t work in it. I slip into the Null and don’t see any Glyphs, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some hidden. Breaking the glass is a last resort.

  I go to Aberdeen’s desk instead, hoping for a key. The drawers are locked, too, naturally. I shove aside some of the books on the surface, hoping to get lucky, but there’s just a sheet of paper, a half-finished letter with the ink still fresh. I’m going to brush it aside, too, but then I see the words Madison and Dewinter, and I can’t not read it.

  Esteemed Senator Madison,

  I trust that by now you have heard the results of the Second Challenge, and I write hoping that they are to your satisfaction. I have upheld my end of our bargain: your son Marius and his Vanguards stand victorious, soundly in the lead of the game once more. His choice to kill Lady Potts was his own and, if I may speak plainly, has put us both in a more difficult position. I certainly understand his rationale, but I do hope you can guide him from such excess in the future.

  I expect the Dewinter girl to bend the knee, but should she not, similar precautions will be taken for the Third Challenge to ensure we have no surprises. The Order of Vanguard shall win the Great Game, and all shall talk of your son’s glory. If anything, perhaps the narrative of him so soundly defeating the upstart Nethros will work to our advantage.

  I shall be in Arbormont at the end of the month, and I hope that we can find time to meet.

  The letter goes on and on, but I don’t need to read it. My hands tremble, and my vision burns with a fire hotter than rage. Because of course. Of course. I’d been so rocked by Fyl’s death, so overwhelmed with despair and guilt, I hadn’t even thought to ask the most obvious question: how had Marius beaten me to the center of the maze, anyway? I’d been cheating, after all, breezing through every puzzle, but he’d still somehow gotten there first.

  Turns out, he’d been cheating, too. But his cheating had come all the way from the top, from Headmaster Aberdeen himself, who’d made sure he’d win. All that talk of neutrality, all of the endless fixation on order and moderation… it was all bullshit. All of it. Aberdeen isn’t some neutral arbiter who only cares about order. He’s just as corrupt as the rest.

  Corruption is the blood that runs through this school’s veins, every brick, every stone, every vow and rite in place to ensure the preservation of the hierarchy. I’d thought my cheating was some bold transgression, but of course Marius and Aberdeen were cheating, too.

  They’re Wizards. It’s what they do.

  I tuck the letter into my pocket. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet, but I know it’s got value. Maybe I’ll leave it for Marlena, something she can use to blackmail her way off this rock. Maybe I’ll—

  “Hey!” a harsh voice snarls from the doorway. “What the hell are you doing there?”

  Even in the dark, I can recognize that growl, know the shape of that bald head. Groundskeeper Tyms. He jerks a lantern up my way, bathing me in its hot yellow light, and I freeze like a child caught with her hand in a cookie jar. “Dewinter!” Tyms growls. “I knew you were up to no good!”

  My mind races. The world dulls. I cannot believe I let myself get caught by Tyms, of all people, but I am not going to let him be the one who ends me. My hand twitches for my Loci. “Not a move!” Tyms says, way too loud. “You touch those Loci, and I will end you, girl! I swear it!”

  I curse inside. I could probably beat him in a duel, but I need to handle this quickly and quietly, which rules magic out; there’s no use in dropping Tyms if it means bringing the rest of the building down on us. “Listen,” I say, hands raised, stepping toward him. “This is a misunderstanding. Headmaster Aberdeen asked me to grab some papers for him.”

  He laughs, which is fair because it was a transparently bad lie. “Like hell! You’re a little sneak is what you are! How did you get in here?” He pauses a moment, his beady eyes narrowing with realization. “Wait a moment. You’re the one who stole my key, aren’t you?”

  “Groundskeeper, please…” I say, and I need him to just get a little closer, close enough that I can grab him. “We can work this out.…”

  He doesn’t step toward me, doesn’t give me the opening. Instead, his free hand pulls open his robe, and I see a whip hanging at his side, a cruel leather rope strung with jagged thorns. The whip he uses to punish servants. The whip he used on Marlena. “You devious little bitch,” he growls. “I’m going to lash the flesh off your bones. I’m going to make you scream till you’re raw. I’m going to—”

  But I never find out what he was going to do, because right then someone steps up behind him and drives a knife into the side of his throat.

  He lets out a horrible sound, a rasping, whistling wheeze, as blood sprays out in a hot crimson stream. Eyes wide and white, he stumbles back, his lantern falling and going dark, and I can see the person who stabbed
him now, a silhouette in the shadow. It’s small, slight, a girl, I think, with six inches of razor-sharp steel in her hand. He turns to her, gurgling, and now she stabs him in the chest, one, two, three times, each thrust sinking the blade deep into his flesh. Blood bubbling through his lips, he grasps for the girl’s head and grabs only the hair on the side, tearing it out of its bun and sending it cascading down her shoulders, and she stabs him one final time, this time driving the knife up to the hilt in his chest. He lets out one last gasp and then collapses onto the floor and lies still.

  It all happens in just a few seconds. I slump back against the wall, and now my Loci are drawn, points gleaming at the figure in the shadows. “Who are you?” I whisper.

  The figure steps forward into the light. Pale skin. Black hair. A servant’s uniform. “Marlena,” I say, hands dropping with relief. “Oh, thank the Gods, it’s you.”

  Her face is splattered with Tyms’s blood, her hands trembling a little at her sides. “You stole my key,” she says.

  “I’m sorry. I can explain,” I start, but then the words evaporate in my throat. Because as the moonlight hits her face, she looks different. Maybe it’s the way her hair looks when it’s down, hanging loose around her shoulders, the tips curling so slightly. But all at once, I see her, really see her, see her with clear eyes. When we’d first met on the docks, so many months ago, I’d felt like there was something about her, something familiar. Now I know what it was.

  She breathes in deep, and her expression softens, just the slightest bit, with relief. “Alka Chelrazi,” she says. “It’s time we had a talk.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Now

  Hearing my name, my own name, is like a spell, one that freezes me, paralyzes me, reduces me to stone. I don’t speak. I can’t. The act of making words, of forming coherent thoughts, feels impossible, like weaving dust into gold. I just sit there in numb shock as Marlena drags Tyms’s body to the side, as she tidies up the room. I just follow her distantly, silently, as she takes me by the hand and leads me out of the office, out of the building, across the dark campus and back to our dorm. I slump onto the floor of my room as she washes herself in my basin, soaking a wet cloth across her arms, her shoulders, her face.

  And with each dab of the rag, I see her more and more clearly, the face I’ve blocked out because it’s too painful to remember, the face that’s so tied up with the memories I’ve repressed.

  It’s a face I saw just once before, in Von Clair’s study on that terrible day. It’s the face of the girl Sera died to save.

  I don’t know how much time has passed. Maybe five minutes. Maybe an hour. Finally I manage to come together enough to speak. “You knew…?” She nods, expressionless, her pale face still splattered with crimson. “That I was… that I was a…”

  I can’t quite form the word, so she does it for me. “A Revenant,” she says, running the wet cloth along her arm, letting the droplets of Tyms’s blood seep down into a basin. “Yes. I knew.”

  My mind reels at the idea, struggling to make sense of it, struggling to figure out what to feel. Relief? Excitement? Fear? After so much time building up this mask, so much time striving to hide who I really am, here I am, utterly exposed. And worse? I’ve been exposed all along. “Since when?” I manage to get out.

  “When I saw you get off the ferry, that first night, I… I was struck by the resemblance,” she says. She’s not looking at me, can’t look at me. Her hands are shaking just a little as she looks instead at herself in the mirror. When she speaks, every word is heavy, a footstep sinking deep into snow. “I thought perhaps I was going mad. Could this really be her? The girl who saved me from the fire, the girl to whom I owed my life? Could this really be the girl who I’ve been thinking about every night for the last four years?” She runs the cloth over her hands, and her lip twitches just the tiniest bit. “Then I saw you charge at Headmaster Aberdeen with a knife in your hand and murder in your eyes. And I knew.”

  “You ran into me on purpose,” I say, as piece after piece slides together in my mind. “All this time—helping me study the Codex, get through classes, win the challenges—you did it because you knew.” All this time with her, I’d struggled with what to tell her, how much to trust her, what I could do for her. I’d seen myself as the manipulator, her fate in my hands. But all this time, she’d been the more powerful player, the one with the knife to my throat. Ratting me out for cheating would be one thing. But exposing a Revenant spy in the midst of Blackwater? She would’ve been wildly rewarded, treated like a hero. She would’ve gotten everything she wanted and more.

  But she didn’t. “If you knew… why did you help me?”

  She breathes deeply, her chest rising and falling as the drops of red fall off her cloth with a drip-drip-drip. “Because I believe in your cause,” she says. “Because I hate Wizards. Because your sister died to save my life.”

  My heart freezes in my chest. “You… you saw.…”

  She nods again. “Yes. I saw what happened. I heard you screaming. I saw her burn.” Her eyes water, just barely. “She gave her life for me. So that I’d have a chance to live, to be free.”

  It’s like there’s a lump in my chest the size of a fist, like I can barely breathe. My mind reels, trying to piece her story together, trying to make this all make sense. “You said you only left the island once, with…”

  “With Professor Barclay. I was assisting him with transcription of Old Marovian texts. When Barclay was invited by Senator Von Clair to see his archives, he brought me along as his personal servant.” She looks right at me. “Everything I told you was true. That was the one time I’ve ever left. And I’ve thought about it… about you… every day since.”

  I want to believe her. No. I do believe her. Because I’ve felt it all this time, felt, in a way I couldn’t understand, a connection, a sense of something deeper and more powerful between us. This whole time, she hasn’t been looking at my mask, hasn’t been looking at Alayne. She’s been looking at me, the real me. All of those moments together, studying side by side in the library, practicing night after night below the dorm, laughing as we ran through the snow… those weren’t just part of the game, part of the deception, part of my cover. All of those were real.

  It’s been so long, I’d forgotten what it feels like. And now she’s not the only one tearing up. My breath is coming in ragged gasps, and tears burn down my cheeks. She’s seen me. She’s seen me. All this time! “Gods, Marlena… why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you let me know?”

  “Because I was scared,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “I was scared that maybe I was wrong, that maybe I was imagining things. I was scared that even if I wasn’t, you’d see me as a threat or you’d be angry with me for lying.” She swallows hard. “For the last four years, you’ve lingered in my mind, like… like a phantom. Like a guardian spirit. The girl who ran into the fire to save me, the girl who lost her sister, the girl who risked it all to give me a chance. I’ve thought about you so much, wondered where you were, prayed you were alive, dreamed of meeting again. It was a fantasy, a hope against hope. And then there you were, alive, real, back in my life again.” A tear runs down her cheek, turning red as it strikes a spot of blood. “I was scared you’d reject me.”

  “No…” I say, and now I can move at last, now I have to move. I cross the room, taking a seat by her side. “I’d never reject you. Never.” I take the wet cloth from her hand and without a word, raise it to her cheek, to that last splatter of Tyms’s blood. The last barrier between us is gone now. She knows me, and I know her. I gently run the cloth along her soft skin, washing away the last of the blood, and she closes her eyes with a tremble, turning to lean into my touch. Her lips graze my skin for just the tiniest second, a shadow of a kiss that sends lightning through my veins, that makes my palms burn. “Alka,” she whispers, leaning over to press her forehead to mine and, Gods, hearing my name, my real name, from her lips still feels so strange, so stunning, so powerful.
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  Then she kisses me.

  There is one solitary second of surprise, one second when I can’t quite believe it. But then I discover how she feels against me, her soft lips against mine, the warmth of her body pressed to me, and I kiss her back. Her arms are strong, surprisingly strong, and I let them envelop me, just as I envelop her. It’s a kiss that’s more than a kiss, a kiss that’s a dam bursting, a kiss that shatters every wall I’ve built up, that shatters me. I kiss her and she kisses me and we sit there lost in each other, two souls adrift in a dark sea, clutching each other just to stay afloat.

  She lets out a soft gasp as I kiss her neck, and I hold her so tightly it hurts, like I’m never going to let go. She feels like coming home, like belonging, like being held through the night. She feels like this is where I was always meant to be. In her arms, I find myself at last. It’s like all this time I’ve been in the Null, and I’ve finally, finally, pulled back into the Real.

  “Oh, Gods,” I whisper at last, when I’m finally able to catch a breath. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”

  She lets out a tiny laugh, playfully twirling a strand of my hair around her finger. “I guarantee you, I’ve wanted it longer.”

  I lean in for another kiss, but she stops me gently, two fingers to my lips. “Alka, wait,” she says, not without a hint of nervousness. “Don’t get me wrong. I want this—I want you—more than anything. But do you think—I mean, just, with everything going on—and the Great Game—and the thing is, I’ve never really—that is—” She takes a deep breath. “Do you think we could go slow?”