by S. W. Clarke
Was he the dark presence I’d felt at the fae market that one winter night?
I shook my head. “But it doesn’t make any sense.”
She gave a light laugh. “And why not?”
“He serves the Shade. He could kill me at any moment if he can find me at any moment.”
Now she stopped, so I stopped. She turned to me. “If all else I’ve said were true, then what is the logical conclusion?”
I went silent a moment, considering the other options after the most obvious one. But I knew which one she expected. “He doesn’t want to kill me.”
After Umbra and I parted ways, I didn’t seek Aidan out. He could wait until our moonlit duel. The one thing that couldn’t wait was my racing brain.
Back when I’d been alone in the system, I had always found a corner when things got to be too much. Too overwhelming. A place I could sit and bring all my thoughts to heel.
I didn’t have that here. So I stalked deep into the woods surrounding the academy, to where the thought of the horn wouldn’t plague me. Or not so much, at least. I walked a section of the forest I hadn’t passed through before.
When I found a green, dappled break in the trees, I sat down in the sunlight and crossed my legs. I removed the deceiver’s rod from the tangibly manipulated pocket sewn into my skirt and I held it in both hands before me.
With its power at my fingertips, I always felt more capable. Anything felt possible.
I considered Umbra’s words.
If all else were true, Lucian the prince didn’t want to kill me.
I had told Umbra it didn’t make any sense. If he served the Shade, that should be his only goal.
He appeared in my mind’s eye like a wraith. The heavy armor, the long sword, the sound of his voice when he called me “the sister.”
I had once thought he and Callum Rathmore were the same person. They resembled one another. But Lucian the prince was immortal, or something close to it, and Callum Rathmore aged. Aidan and I had seen pictures of him as a boy from some twenty years ago.
The last time Aidan and I had talked, we’d considered why someone would want to send us to Siberia. Now, Umbra had presented Lucian as the one who’d done it.
So why did Lucian send us to that empty place? I had a theory, one I would share with Aidan when he and I talked.
Which left the more immediate question: why had Umbra seemed so sure it was Lucian who touched the leyline?
The answer came at once: Because she knows it was him.
How? I thought.
He’s maybe the only person in the world capable of following you anywhere—and she knows about things like this. It’s a logical deduction.
“But why,” I said aloud, “wouldn’t he just talk to me outright?”
I had no answer for that. The birds might, if only I could understand their songs.
So the facts were these:
1. I had to locate the cursed chain before the summer solstice.
2. To get the chain, I had to cast a hex.
3. To cast a hex, I had to learn to hex properly.
4. To learn to hex properly, I had to tap into air magic.
5. To tap into air magic, I had to give myself over to Frostwish’s teaching.
And in the midst of all that, if Umbra were right, a demon who served the Shade had my scent. He could follow me anywhere.
Fear and powerlessness lanced my chest. My fingers tightened around the rod, its power—real or imagined—like an electric thing coursing through me, pressing away the uncertainty.
“Clementine,” a voice whispered.
I jolted, my eyes opening. Beyond the searing sun, I glimpsed red hair disappearing behind a tree.
In a moment I was up, the rod in one hand and my feet already moving. I’d seen that red hair in Aidan’s garden. Twice, though I had completely written off the first time. And the second time I’d wondered about my mental health.
But not today.
That voice had been as real as mine.
I passed through the grove, came into shadows with the rod before me. “Come out.”
No one came out.
When I approached the tree I’d seen her move behind, I paused, then jerked around the edge with a thrust of the rod.
Nothing. No one.
“It’s a deception,” a familiar voice said from above me.
Ora Frostwish.
My body went stiff as my eyes lifted. The rod dropped vertical to my side, tight against my thigh.
There she sat on a tree branch, her legs dangling. Umbra’s words came back to mind: A stakeout. “You’ve found my favorite spot on the grounds.”
“This grove?”
She nodded. “It’s a good place for thinking. And reading.” She tapped the book by her leg.
Not a stakeout, then.
“Sorry to interrupt.” Inch by inch I moved the rod behind me, out of her view. “Did you… Did you see someone out here besides me?”
“I saw a deception,” she repeated. “Not a very long one—maybe three seconds. But it was definitely you.”
“The deception was me?”
She half-smiled. “Unless you know someone else at the academy with wild hair and that smoky voice.”
I just stared at her, uncomprehending. Was she flirting with me?
“It’s a kind of hex,” she explained. “Different from the paralysis I showed you. The hex you used is called a ‘likeness deception.’ I’m sure you can put together what that means.”
My mind had already returned to the Boundless Labyrinth, when I had finally found the rod. And there, in the room where it lay, I had seen myself.
My likeness.
“I created an illusion,” I said, nodded over my shoulder. “An illusion that looked and sounded like me.”
“Except in this case,” Frostwish said, humored, “you hexed yourself.”
If I’d hexed myself, it was the rod. It was all because of the rod.
And Frostwish might have seen it. I couldn’t tell. I resolved to prod her the next time I was in her class, to force her to reveal her secrets. Her intentions. Or as much of them as I could drag from her.
I took a step back. “I’ll leave you to your reading.”
She didn’t move. Didn’t take her eyes off me. “Clementine.”
“Yes?”
Her head tilted. “The likeness deception is an extremely advanced hex. Did you know, only a few witches in history have been able to use it? And only one ever mastered it.”
I swallowed. “I didn’t know.”
“Where did you learn of it?”
I felt pinned. But if there was one thing I was good at from years in the foster system, it was weaving a tale when I was in a corner. “A book I read in the Room of the Ancients.”
“Oh? What’s it called?”
“I can’t remember the name right now.” I took another step back. “I’ll tell you when I do.”
She scrutinized me. The line between our eyes felt unbreakable, solid. For a moment, I wondered if she had hexed me right now.
And then, with a shrug, she pulled her feet up onto the tree branch and leaned against the trunk. “Please do. I should like to read it.”
Chapter Fifteen
The duel wasn’t meant to be for talking about riddles or hexes or untrustworthy professors. It was never meant to be for talking.
When Aidan and I met near the pond under the moonlight, I resolved to tell him everything after we’d pummeled each other with fire. And we did—pummel each other, that is. Blue flame met red flame over and over, the two of us sieging one another until the other hit the grass.
I got the best of him twice. He got me once.
The thing I liked most about dueling with Aidan was his sheer unputdownability. You wouldn’t expect it, but he never lay down and gave up. Not once since we’d started our duels in the summer.
He’d gotten better with his magic through sheer diligence. If there was one thing I appreciated most in t
he people in my life, it was that.
Consistent, unsexy effort. Day in and day out.
Both he and Eva had that quality. Maybe that was why we’d been drawn to one another. We didn’t have a whole lot else in common.
While we were sweating and exhausted and all we could do was sit there and look out over the water and talk, I started in.
“I’ve figured out the riddle,” I said.
He’d leaned back on his hands, his breathing fast. “That fast?”
“I wasn’t sure before I saw Umbra. Now I’m surer.”
“Go on, then.”
“The chain is in Siberia. Under the ground.”
“Huh. Because it cannot move or see?” When I nodded, he contemplated this a little while as the frogs croaked around us. Then, wiping sweat from his forehead, “It might be. And what happened when you saw Umbra?”
“She suspects I’m being followed. And the person following me sent us to that place.”
“By whom?”
I glanced at him. “Lucian the prince.”
His eyes narrowed. “The Shade’s lieutenant?”
“I think he pulled me up off the ground that night.”
Aidan sucked in a breath. “Once a demon touches you, he has your scent forever.”
“So says Umbra.”
He rubbed his face. “But why wouldn’t he have killed you already?”
“That, North, is an excellent question.”
“And,” he went on, “why would he send us to the place where the chain is hidden?”
“That’s what I’ve been debating most of all.” I picked up a stone, flicked it over the water. It hopped once and sank. “If it was this demon prince who did it, then it wasn’t a coincidence.”
“Why do it in such a roundabout way?” he went on, his voice gaining that distant quality when he’d been drawn into the annals of his own mind. At least I wasn’t the only one who would spend brain power contemplating that question now.
I gave him a minute, and then, “Something else happened today.”
He refocused on me. “Gods, what else?”
“I went into the forest around the academy to think on everything I’ve just told you. I found a break in the trees—it was a beautiful, empty grove.”
“The Contemplator’s Copse?”
“There’s names for the groves here?”
“That one, at least, has a name.” He nodded in that direction. “Just like you described. East, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a perennial favorite of the introverts. So what happened at the copse?”
I closed my eyes. “When I held the deceiver’s rod, I heard my name. Then I saw…an illusion that looked like me.” Aidan began to speak, but I went on. “Ora Frostwish was there, too. Sitting on a tree branch.” I cringed, even with my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see Aidan’s reaction.
But I heard it.
He sucked air between his teeth. “You think she saw the rod?”
“She didn’t mention it, if she did. It only looks like another weapon, you know. How could she know what it really is?”
“Did she see the illusion?”
“She said it was a high-level hex. That I had created it.”
He let out a low, slow breath. “And I take it she never showed you this hex in class.”
“God no. We’re still on the part where she hazes me like I’m rushing a sorority. I spend most of the class in her paralysis hex.”
He shifted in the grass. When I opened my eyes, he had turned to me in full. “You think this hex has to do with the rod?”
“I know it does. She called it a ‘likeness deception.’ A deception created by the deceiver’s rod. I saw the same thing back when I discovered it in the laybrinth—I saw myself.”
“You never told me that.”
“God knows why, but I didn’t think it mattered. I thought it was some magical trap set on the thing.”
Aidan nodded. “So if the key enhances your power, and the rod provides the ability to create a deception. Each piece affects your magic.”
Aidan was right.
Each piece of the weapon enhanced my power. Which meant I would have to test the possibilities of this likeness deception. And there were only two people I could trust enough to show it to: him and Eva.
“Seems that way,” I said.
“Well?” He clapped his hands. “You can’t just tell and not show.”
Fair enough. I brought out the rod, folded my legs. “Except I don’t know how to make the deception occur.”
“What were you doing the other time it happened?”
“Just holding it. Thinking with my eyes shut.”
“So do that. Retrace your thoughts.”
I did. Back in the copse, I had been contemplating what Umbra had said about Lucian the prince. I had been considering the riddle, and why he would send us to the barren place where the chain lay hidden.
And I remembered a feeling of distinct worry. Fear. Powerlessness.
That was when I’d tightened my grip. Relied on the power of the weapon to bring me confidence.
A twig cracked, and my eyes flitted open. Aidan and I both stared as, twenty feet away, my very own red curls vanished into the shadows of the forest. That was me—it was the likeness deception.
“Bloody hell,” Aidan breathed, eyes flicking between the forest and me and back again.
Now I understood.
My magic depended on my state of being. Umbra had once told me it would come in fits and starts as I grew as a witch.
And so it followed that it wasn’t my thoughts which created the deception. It wasn’t the contemplation of a riddle—it was my feelings. It was the power of my need.
I knew what I had to do with the rod. It was just like anything else I’d learned—
I had to master the likeness deception.
Aidan didn’t like my idea. Not one bit. I could tell by the way he worried his lip. “I don’t understand why you need to master this hex.”
“Only a hex can ‘tether the chain,’” I said. “And what do you suppose that hex is most likely to be?”
“The one associated with the weapon itself.” He sighed. “I’ve never broken into a library in my life, Clementine.”
“But you’re friends with me. You must have assumed it would happen eventually.”
He eyed me. “Maybe I shouldn’t be.”
“That’s where you draw the line? After everything we’ve done, your limit is breaking into a library. You love books. This should be your wet dream.”
“It isn’t just the library we’re breaking into, Cole. It’s their restricted room. Imagine what we have at the academy’s Room of the Ancients, but so much bigger. Many of the books are probably the only ones in existence.”
Aidan had told me only two libraries in the world could possibly have books on hexes: the Great Mages’ Library in Edinburgh, or the Kowloon Library in Singapore.
And we definitely couldn’t go to Edinburgh. Which left only one option.
I pulled up my knees, set my chin atop them. “I’m imagining.”
“And what will we even do once we get inside?” He stared out over the pond. “Are you going to memorize a whole book?”
“No. We’re going to use your phone to take pictures of the relevant parts.”
“Digital simulacrums? Sacrilege.” He sighed, still refusing to meet eyes. “You’re a guardian, Clem. You can’t just go running off to Singapore.”
“Umbra hasn’t bound us to the grounds. I think she knows if she did, our mental health wouldn’t fare well. Besides, we’d only be gone an hour. Tops.”
“Tops, huh? I’ve heard that before.” Still, the corner of his lips twitched; my point was taken. So he moved onto his next argument. “I don’t know the first thing about the Kowloon Library.”
“Do you know anyone from Singapore?”
He began to shake his head, then stopped. His eyes tracked back to me, grew delighted. Aid
an only ever gained that look when he was about to eat his mother’s minced pie, or…
I pointed at him. “Don’t look at me that way.”
His expression didn’t change. “Why not?”
“Because it means you’ve found a way out of my plan.”
He smoothed his pants leg. “I may know someone from Singapore.”
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the answer. In fact, I was pretty sure of it. So I kept my mouth clamped.
His eyebrows rose. “Well?”
I stood, brushed off my skirt. “It can’t possibly be that hard to get into the library’s restricted room.”
“You don’t even want to know who could help you?”
“Not with that look on your face.” I turned away. “See you in the morning.”
As I walked away, Aidan called the name after me. And it was about as bad as I’d expected. “Liara Youngblood,” he said. “She grew up there.”
The fae whose parents had been killed by a fire witch.
I stopped. “You might as well have said your grandmother’s name. She’d be as likely to help us.”
“You’d be surprised at how people can grow, Cole. I suggest talking to Liara again.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “I’d have to tell her the truth. Would you trust her that much?”
His mouth set in a grim line. “She is a guardian. Anyway, do we have a choice?”
No. No and no and no. We didn’t. But I still needed time to mull the idea over.
Chapter Sixteen
Two days later, Farrow approached me in the stables before Mounted Combat. She cleared her throat, arms folded. I could tell by her stance she felt uncomfortable.
I came to the half-door of Noir’s stall, leaning out as Noir’s head pushed me to one side. The two of us gazed at the quartermistress. “You’ve got ‘about to ask me a favor’ written all over your face.”
Farrow’s eyebrows rose. “Do I?”
“Yep.”
She worked her lips together, then, “I wondered if I might interest you in sharing afternoon tea with me.”
I shrugged with a dirty hoofpick in hand. “Do I look like the kind of girl who would turn down tea over mucking out my stallion’s stall?”
