by S. W. Clarke
The moment I’d spotted them, they began filtering their way down toward the lake, some of them taking the switchback path down toward us.
How had they known?
Somehow, they’d known we would be here. They’d been waiting for us.
And now the truth of the situation was this: the lake was frozen, the Shade’s creatures were here, we were outnumbered, and we had failed.
After a whole year preparing for this moment, we had failed before we’d even begun.
We should leave, Liara said into my head. If they touch us—
If they touched us, they would sap our power. I knew. I knew how dangerous it was, and yet a deep, ferocious anger had kindled in me. After everything, we couldn’t end it this way.
I didn’t have another year to waste. I couldn’t come for the chain the following summer, not when the Shade’s army had grown so quickly in power. By then it would be too late.
Frustration simmered in my gut at a broil, lashing at my insides, and the Spitfire raised its head.
The Spitfire.
“Clem,” Aidan was saying from beside me, “do you see, across the lake…”
Eva was talking, too. Loki whispered something into my ear.
I didn’t hear any of them. A plan was forming in my mind. Reckless. Dangerous. Explosive. But god, if I wasn’t those things, was I even a fire witch at all?
“Aidan,” I whispered, “what’s the temperature?”
He paused. “What?”
“Tell me the temperature.”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Guess.”
“I’d say…negative three.”
“Goddamnit, I only know Fahrenheit. Is it well below freezing?”
“Yes.”
My grip on Noir’s mane tightened. I’m going, I said into all their heads. Don’t follow me.
“What?” Aidan said, his voice rising. “Clem, don’t be ridiculous. There must be twenty of them…”
But I had already squeezed my thighs against Noir’s ribcage. The impulse had rocketed from my brain down to my muscles, sent them into motion. The snow cracked under his hooves as he leapt straight into a canter, taking us straight toward the lake.
We hit a gallop not five seconds later, and soon the wind whistled by as I leaned close to Noir’s neck.
Someone flew up next to me. Liara.
“What are you doing?” she said aloud.
“I’m getting the chain.”
“Clem—”
“I can do it,” I said. “If anyone has prepared for this, I have.”
She hung by my side a second longer, her wings in terrific motion, before she finally said, “Just remember, you can’t die until you kill the Shade.”
It was her way of saying good luck.
Then she dropped away, leaving me and Noir and Loki alone and racing toward the frozen water.
I wasn’t sure if she even understood my plan. I suspected she trusted me either way.
The creatures moved fast. Some had already reached the lake, pure darkness racing on all fours across the ice.
“The ice may not hold us,” Loki said in a frantic voice, perched close to my neck. “It may be too thin.”
“Jump off, then. Save yourself.”
His claws dug in. “If you drown, I’m drowning with my idiot of a human.”
I almost laughed. Almost.
But we were about to hit the ice, and then we would find out how thick it really was.
Chapter Forty
Noir didn’t hesitate. He leapt when he reached the bank’s edge, landed on the ice with a clatter of hooves. For a moment we slid, and then he dug in, those corks punching into the ice. He pulled us straight toward the Shade’s creatures.
His hooves on the frozen lake sounded like four shots at a go ringing out over the landscape, echoing into nothingness a mile away.
Despite it all, the ice held. It didn’t break under our weight.
Loki clung to my shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?”
I kept my eyes on the nearest creatures as they bounded closer. “I’m taunting them.”
“Oh, you’re taunting them.” He let out a wild, careening laugh. “Wonderful.”
One of my hands left Noir’s mane, and I upturned the palm, a flame coming to life in the center of it. I knew what this must look like to anyone with eyes: a beacon in the night. And I knew now those creatures had eyes somewhere in their heads.
All of them came at us now. Every single one.
We rushed toward the opposite side of the lake, the bluff approaching so fast my breath seemed to freeze in my chest.
We couldn’t be touched. I couldn’t let them near me.
We flew past two of the creatures, who slid across the ice as they tried—and failed—to pursue us.
As we neared the bluff, I turned Noir at a long, careful angle, taking us along its face as the creatures dropped down all around us, too slow and too ungainly on the ice to properly pursue.
Come on, I thought as I passed them up. Just a little farther.
I needed them all behind me. This wouldn’t work if I didn’t have them on my tail.
As we cleared the bluff, I glanced over my shoulder. The whole group was in pursuit, every last four-legged bastard.
I swallowed, straightening. “Here I come, Rathmore.”
My thighs tightened around Noir’s ribcage as my left hand lifted away from his mane. I felt the fire in my belly, the rage waiting there as it always had, just beneath the surface of my calm.
I dug down into it, dredging up everything.
My mother and sister, gone.
Six years in the foster system. Unwanted.
My foster father who’d hurt me.
Maury at Corner Grocery Market, his hand on my thigh.
Every person who’d ever hurt me. Who’d betrayed me. Who’d gotten my blood up. They were all there, waiting, a ghostly line of their faces as clear as anything in my mind’s eye. I despised them all, even now, even here on the other side of the world.
It wasn’t hard to access. It wasn’t faint, and I didn’t feel the peace I thought I might about the pain in my past—
A wreath of nettles still sat in the center of my chest, piercing me every day. It hurt me so well and often, I could often forget it was there. But it always had been. It had never left me.
When the Spitfire raised its head, I knew the calm I sometimes felt wasn’t real. Rational Clem wasn’t real. Only the Spitfire existed, and it was all-consuming.
The fire claimed my hands, licked its way up my arms and toward my chest. It consumed me, veiling my vision in blue-white heat as it slid over Loki and on down to my legs.
I was the Spitfire. The Spitfire was me.
Last of all, it touched Noir. And when it hit his black coat, it took like a wildfire. Encompassed him, made us one. He lit up in the course of a single moment, head to tail, and we were a single creature of flame on the ice, unquenchable and mad with heat.
The Spitfire had control. I gave it over willingly.
Behind us, the ice cracked and crashed. It fell away, following our path, every hoofprint a scalding iron, our flames flowing out and down—undeniable, a furnace of heat.
The lake’s cold was nothing. We were the dominant element on this tundra.
And, beneath the fury, I recognized how natural this was. How easy it was to sit atop the horse as he galloped, for the two of us to become one, to set the whole world on fire.
And we did. By the time we’d come back around to where we first leapt onto the ice, half of it had crashed away into the lake. The Shade’s creatures had fallen with it, disappearing beneath the black water, never raising their heads.
It wasn’t enough.
We took a straight course through the middle, our flames demolishing the ice in our path. And only then, cresting the other bank, did I finally find the wherewithal to lower my hands back to the horse’s mane.
No, not wherewithal.
I was exhausted.
The flame sputtered, and I half-collapsed against him, Loki rebalancing himself on my shoulder and griping at me all the while.
Noir came to a stuttering halt, breathing hard and hacking, his head lowering.
The Spitfire receded, and Rational Clem—weak and tired and full of normal human concerns—returned.
From the far bank, small voices called. I couldn’t make out the words.
I didn’t know how long it took before I lifted my head, but Liara was already on the bank next to me by the time I did.
I cracked an eye, and she stood beside me with folded arms. “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.”
I found my voice, but words felt strange and foreign. “Are they all gone?”
“Oh, they’re gone.” She swept a hand out. “And so is everything else.”
When I looked out over the lake, I glimpsed Eva flying across it toward us. Aidan rode around on the bank Siren, a speck in the distance.
And in the center, floes of ice bobbed and floated, the smell of burning everywhere. Smoke hung over the lake like a late-summer fog.
I let out a breath, pushing myself upright.
It was time to tether the chain.
Eva landed next to me in a blitz of wings. “Clem, that was incredible.”
The anger and heat still tingled in my fingers. “I live to entertain.”
Aidan rode up at a gallop, stopping Siren hard. “More will be coming. We have to get out of here.”
I shook my head. “We’re not done.”
Eva rose into the air. “You can’t possibly intend to get the chain now. You’re exhausted.”
I sat up as best I could. “I do intend. This will only take a minute.” I hoped.
Liara stared out over the lake. “How will you raise it? There’s nowhere for you to stand.”
I nodded up the bluff. “From above. Let’s hope that’s close enough.”
Noir climbed the bluff with admirable determination, Loki silently bobbing on my shoulder as Siren followed. The two fae had flown ahead, Eva landing on the horse statue’s back, and Liara on Hrungnir’s head.
When we crested the bluff, Noir let out a massive, hacking cough, and I slid off his back. One hand slid down his hot, sweaty neck. “Eva, can you heal him?”
She flew down, landed beside Noir. “What about you?”
“I’ll be fine. He’s the one who did all the work.”
She raised her hand. “If he’ll accept it.”
“He will.” My fingers ran over his mane. “He’s a different horse than he was.”
Eva set one hand to his neck and one to his shoulder. I caught a glimpse of her yellow magic for the first time as I started toward the bluff’s edge. It swirled around her and the horse, poppy-yellow on the stark tundra.
Aidan dismounted, came to stand beside me as I stared down at the lake. “We won’t have much time.”
I glanced over at him. “If they come before I’m finished, will you hold them off?”
“As best I can.” He half-smiled at me. “I’ve perfected the Five-Finger Flick.”
I snorted. “You still need to rename that.”
Liara landed on my other side. “Remember, you need two of them.”
“I remember.” I slid my hand into the secret pocket in my cloak, lifted out the deceiver’s rod. Its power was palpable under my fingers. “Hex, and hex again.”
“That’s the gist of it.” She slapped me on the back. “Now go. Fast.”
I stepped up to the edge, beneath Hrungnir’s pointed finger. Closed my eyes. I could feel the magic pressing in from the leylines, a triangulated power squeezing out my own magic.
I pointed the rod down toward the lake. “Mealladh coltas,” I whispered.
“Louder,” Liara said.
“Mealladh coltas,” I repeated, casting my voice into the air.
When I opened my eyes, my likeness had appeared on my left, staring back at me. I couldn’t even see through her.
“It’s good,” Liara said. “A strong one.”
The trick was to do it twice. It was also the challenge.
I closed my eyes again, imagined my likeness speaking the hex.
Nothing happened. She didn’t speak.
I had to be louder.
So I imagined her projecting her voice across the tundra. Louder.
Still nothing.
“Clem?” Aidan said.
I raised my free hand for silence. Squeezed my eyes shut harder, my fingers tightening around the rod. I funneled what power I had into it, pressing back against the stifling magic around me.
This time, I imagined my likeness screaming the words.
That worked. She yelled them over the bluff, her voice carrying so far she reached a geographical barrier somewhere far off and echoed back.
My eyes opened. A second likeness stood on my right, also gazing back at me. She wasn’t as strong as the first—her semi-transparent form allowed me a view of the lake and tundra beyond—but she should be enough.
Eva’s wings sounded behind me as she landed. “Wow. This is what you’ve been doing all year?”
She had never seen the likeness deception before. Not like this.
“Wait until I raise the chain.” I took a long breath. “Then you can be impressed.”
“You need to imagine them both saying it as you say it,” Liara said. “All three at once. It must be three together.”
“Right.” I knew what I had to do, and I knew our time was limited. I lifted the rod, pointing it straight down to the center of the lake. Both of my likenesses turned as well, their right hands going out, index fingers pointing at the spot.
I imagined myself as me and as them. All three of us were one.
“Mealladh coltas,” I yelled out over the lake.
My likenesses yelled the same, but their voices came as an echo of mine, a half-second out of sync.
And nothing happened.
“I expect you need to speak together,” Aidan said. “All at once.”
Liara nodded. “North is correct.”
Behind us, Noir stamped. He often did that when he was anxious to move—or when he sensed something. Or someone.
I swallowed. All three of us had to speak it together.
This time I took a step closer, until the likenesses and I shared space. My left arm ran straight through the torso of the likeness on my left, and my right shoulder touched the other’s.
We were joined. I imagined myself as three and one at the same time.
And this time we called out the hex together. We weren’t a single beat out of step.
I stared down at the lake, which remained a black, unmoving pool. Not a wave, not a bubble, not a tremor.
“It didn’t work,” Liara spat. “Why didn’t it work?”
A voice sounded from above us, and our faces lifted to discover a fae hovering twenty feet above the bluff.
Blue-black hair. A lithe, feline body. The last person I’d expected to see.
“Because you’re still a novice at hexes,” Ora Frostwish purred down, “even with half of the Shade’s weapon in your possession.”
Chapter Forty-One
“You followed us,” I called out to Frostwish.
Frostwish floated down to our level, still floating over the lake. “Maeve Umbra isn’t the only mage powerful enough to sense a ripple of magic. And you, fire witch, created a massive one.”
Of course. I had fire ridden across the lake.
“More creatures are converging on this place,” Frostwish said. “Many more, and soon.”
“If you sensed the ripple,” Eva said, “then the headmistress and the guardians should be on the way, too.”
Frostwish shook her head. “I told Umbra I would personally come, to spare the guardians their lives. You see, the magic of the leyline is so potent here, they would be practically useless. It’s a miracle you managed to summon those two likenesses, Clementine.” She paused. “
But they won’t be enough to raise the chain.”
So she knows about the prophecy.
More were coming, and soon. I felt the urgency of that, but I also had questions that needed answering.
“Tell me how you know about the chain.”
“One cannot become fascinated by hexes without learning of the Shade—the originator of them.” Frostwish tilted her head. “I knew of the weapon and the prophecy before you were born. I read The Witching World before you drew breath.”
I went stiff; now I was free to finally ask what I’d suspected. “Raven Murkwood. She’s...”
“Yes,” Frostwish said. “She was the witch who became the Shade.”
I’d spent so long half-certain Murkwood was the Shade, but the knowledge practically knocked me over. I had read the Shade’s book on witching almost as soon as I’d arrived at the academy. I had memorized long passages of it.
The Shade had taught me how to be a witch.
I pushed my shock aside. Frostwish was speaking again.
“You have one chance to extract the chain,” she was saying. “I will imbue your likenesses with my magic, and it will be enough to press back the leylines’ power. But we must do it now.”
I focused on her. “You’ll help us.”
Rathmore’s words sprang to mind: Don’t trust Ora Frostwish.
I didn’t trust her. I felt even less confidence in her now than I ever had.
“Yes.” Her hands clasped at her waist as she hovered before us. “I will.”
“Why?”
“I serve the light, as you do. I wish to see the Shade eradicated from the world, and I would help you fulfill the prophecy.”
“You spent an entire year teaching me hexes,” I said. “And now here we are, needing a hex to raise the chain. That’s a stunning coincidence, Frostwish.”
Her head tilted. “And why do you suppose I taught you them?”
“So you saw the rod in the forest that day.”
“Of course I did. And I knew long before, back when I saw you duel Mariella during the second guardian trial. Your magic was too potent, too powerful, and I knew you had the liar’s key.”
I finally understood. “So you requested that Umbra allow you to teach me hexes. That was why.”
