38. Vex
38
VEX
The black tunnel closes around me like ink in water, familiar yet unsettling. My power, usually a steady stream of magick under my skin, feels erratic here. Exposed. Uncontrollable.
“I’m not surprised you ended up down here.”
The instantly recognisable voice slides through the darkness like silk over steel. A figure materialises before me. Tall, aristocratic features, dark hair, and eyes so blue they seem to glow in the blackness. Professor Luke Blackthorn, Headmaster of MistHallow Academy.
“Uncle Luke,” I say dryly. “I’m not surprised you know.”
“The chambers have their own agenda, Vex. They called you here for a reason.” Luke moves through the darkness with inhuman grace. “Just as they called me here fifteen hundred years ago, when I faced my own trial.”
“Because of?” I ask, though I think I already know the answer.
“The Black family has always been drawn to powerful witches,” he says, ignoring my question and studying me with those ancient eyes. “It’s in our blood. But with that attraction comes responsibility. Obligation.”
“I’m not just attracted to her,” I say, the words coming out sharper than intended. “This isn’t some magickal compulsion.”
“No?” Luke’s smile is knowing, almost sad. “Then tell me, why do you think your father fell for your mother in the way he did?” He stops, something flickering across his face, which tells me more than I probably should about his love life. “Some patterns run deeper than we know. Our family’s history with powerful witches has shaped the very course of magickal history. The trial isn’t about proving your worth, Vex. It’s about proving you understand what’s at stake. That you’re prepared for what loving a witch like Matilda truly means.”
I study him in the darkness, this man who’s been both stranger and family. Four months ago, I didn’t even know he was my uncle. Now he’s standing here, talking about family legacies like he’s been preparing me for them my whole life.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” The question slips out before I can stop it. “About any of this? The Black family history, the anchors, you...”
“Would you have believed it?” Luke’s expression softens slightly. “Would you have understood what it meant, before meeting her?”
He has a point. Before Matilda, before the realisation of what she carries in her blood, I might have dismissed it all as ancient family superstition.
“The witch I loved,” Luke continues, his voice heavy with something that sounds like regret, “she wasn’t ready for what she was becoming. And I... I wasn’t ready to be what she needed. The price of that failure...” He trails off, his eyes distant with memory.
The darkness around us pulses. Hungry, expectant.
“The chambers remember every trial,” Luke says. “Every Black who’s stood where you’re standing. They remember our successes.” His voice drops. “And our failures. Right back to the beginning.”
“How do I know if I’m ready?”
“You don’t.” Luke’s eyes fix on something in the darkness I can’t see yet. “That’s part of the trial. But Matilda’s power is growing faster than anyone anticipated. The magick sensed it, just as it sensed your connection to her. They’re offering you a chance to understand what that truly means.”
The air shifts, and a door materialises in the blackness, made of pure shadow.
“Your trial awaits, nephew.”
The shadow door pulses with a dark energy that makes my teeth ache. Behind me, Luke’s presence feels more distant now, like he’s fading into the background where he belongs.
“The chambers will show you what you need to see,” his voice echoes. “Not what you want to see.”
I step forward, and the door swings open.
I’m standing in the MistHallow library, but not as I know it. The towering shelves are twisted, books floating in impossible patterns. In front of me is Matilda. But not Matilda, as I just saw her hours ago. This version of her stands suspended in the air, dark energy sizzling around her like lightning. Her eyes are completely black, and the power rolling off her makes my chest tight.
“This is what’s coming,” a voice whispers. Something old, something that belongs down here. “What will you do when her power breaks free? When it threatens to consume everything?”
I watch as the vision-Matilda raises her hands, and the library tears itself apart. Students scatter in terror, but it’s too late. The power rips through them, annihilating them. The foundations of MistHallow shudder at this violation of its sanctity.
The scene unfolds with brutal clarity. Matilda’s power rips through the library’s ancient wards like tissue paper. I can feel her slipping away, being consumed by something darker than either of us understand.
My throat tightens as I understand what the tunnel is showing me. What they’re asking of me. It’s not about being strong enough to support her power. It’s about being strong enough to stop it, even if that means losing her completely.
My hands shake, and I look down at them. The amethyst pendant hangs from my fingers, taunting me.
“You think you can stop me?” Matilda’s laugh is cold, and her power lashes out, slamming another student against a bookshelf. Their body crumples, lifeless. “This is what I was meant to be, Vex. This is what the magick always wanted.”
The pendant burns against my palm as she tears through another ward, her power growing with each life she takes. There’s nothing of my Matilda in those black eyes now. No plea for help, no final moment of clarity. Just ancient, hungry magick that’s finally found its perfect vessel.
“All those rules, all those limitations they put on us,” she snarls, floating higher as the ceiling cracks. “They were just afraid. Afraid of what real power looks like.” Her gaze locks onto me, and for a moment, I see something worse than hatred. I see nothing at all. No recognition. No love. Just the void looking back. “Are you afraid too, Vex?”
The chamber whispers grow urgent. The binding spell that would end this horror is in my hands. But it would destroy everything she is. Everything we are.
“Join me,” she extends a hand, dark energy sparking between her fingers. There is nothing left of the rainbow magick, only pure darkness. “You understand power. Together we could reshape everything.”
Below her, another student tries to run. She doesn’t even look as she obliterates them.
“You’re right,” I say, my voice steady despite everything breaking apart around us. “I do understand power. But this isn’t it. This is just destruction.”
Her laugh echoes through the disintegrating library, sharp and bitter. “Since when do you care about stopping destruction?” She descends until we’re at eye level, close enough that I can feel the cold radiating from her skin. “But I’ve seen inside your head. I know the darkness inside you. The things you’re capable of.”
Another student dies screaming. She doesn’t even blink.
“This was always going to happen,” she says, almost gentle now. “From the moment I was born, this power was waiting. Growing. And you...” her head tilts, studying me like I’m an interesting insect, “you were just a pleasant distraction along the way.”
The pendant burns against my palm, reminding me of its presence. Of what needs to be done. Everything I am rebels against it, but I look at her and see nothing of the girl who captivated me the second I looked at her.
“I love you,” I say quietly, raising the pendant, knowing I mean it with every cell in my body. It’s fast, it’s fierce, but I know it’s fucking right.
Her eyes narrow. “Love is weakness.”
“No,” I reply. “Love is why I have to stop you.”
She steps forward, ready to attack, but I’m faster.
In one fluid motion, learned from countless training sessions, I lunge forward and clasp it around her neck.
The effect is instant. The dark energy stutters, then explodes inward. Matilda screams in genuine terror. She knows what this means for her magick, but this time, it’s too late. This is the true meaning of the pendant, and I know, without a shadow of a doubt now, that her family didn’t make this. Someone more powerful than any creature I’ve come across did.
And they will pay with their life for making me do this.
“Vex—” For just a moment, I see her true self in those eyes. Then they flood with black again as her body cracks, lines of night spreading across her skin like shattered glass.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, holding on even as her form crumbles. “I’m so sorry.”
She doesn’t answer. Can’t answer. Her body is disintegrating, turning to ash in my arms. The power that consumed her disperses like smoke in the wind, leaving nothing but grey dust falling through my fingers.
The vision fades, but the weight of ash in my hands feels devastatingly real. I hold her until there is nothing left but the pendant against my palm, burning white-hot before it settles.
“You understand,” Luke whispers. “The price of loving power. The cost of doing what must be done.”
I stare at the ash coating my hands and the pendant, my mind struggling to process what just happened. What I just did.
A laugh tears from my throat, raw and broken. “Is this what you wanted to show me? That I might have to kill her?”
“To love power is to accept responsibility for containing it.”
“She’s not just power! She’s a person. She’s—” My voice cracks, and I drop to my knees where I lost her. Where I killed her. “She’s everything.”
“And that is precisely why you were chosen,” Luke says, though he remains hidden in the shadows. “Because you see both. The power and the person. The threat and the girl you love. You understand what’s at stake.”
I close my eyes, still feeling the phantom sensation of her turning to dust in my arms. The moment of recognition in her eyes before the end. The weight of the pendant that ended her.
“If it comes to this...” I whisper. “If she loses control like that...”
“Then you’ll do what needs to be done,” Luke finishes. “Because you love her enough to save her from herself, even if it destroys you both.”
The ash disappears from my hands, but the pendant remains. The chamber’s message is clear. Loving Matilda means being prepared for the worst. Being strong enough to stop her, even if it means watching her crumble to nothing.
“The Wells are anchors to powerful magick, Vex. You already know this, but the Blacks… the Blacks are the catalyst that causes the destruction in the first place. This is something you will have to live with, knowing you will encourage her darkness, even if you don’t mean it. It’s who you are.”
“You just said it yourself,” I grit out, standing up, my fist clenching around the amethyst. “I’m also a Well. I can do both.”
“Can you?”
My ancestry roars through my veins like poison. Black and Well, destruction and anchor, opposing forces at war in my blood. The chamber knows it. Luke knows it. Maybe I’ve always known it too.
“You’re saying I’m the trigger,” I say, voice hollow. “That just being near her will push her toward this.” I hold up the pendant, letting it catch what little light exists here. “Toward needing this.”
“Your very nature calls to her power,” Luke confirms. “Like moths to flame. It’s why Blacks and Wells don’t have many descendants. You and your half-brother Tate.”
I growl as I think of him. My rival for so long, and we never even knew we were related. Kept apart probably because of this shitshow. “Fuck, Tate,” I snarl, gripping the pendant. “All I care about is Matilda.” I encouraged her to take the pendant off to begin with. Have I been pushing her closer to the edge all along? The Well bloodline might balance me, but Matilda is pure power. No anchor to ground her except... “Except me,” I rasp as reality sets in. “That’s why I’m here. Why it had to be me.”
Luke’s silence is answer enough.
“I can be her anchor instead of her catalyst,” I insist, gripping the pendant tighter. “I can help her control it, not just... not just end it.”
“Perhaps,” Luke says quietly. “But are you willing to bet her life on that theory? To risk everyone else’s lives?”
“Yes,” I say, and the certainty in my voice surprises me.
Luke studies me for a long moment, his expression unreadable in the chamber’s gloom. “The trial has shown you the price of failure. Are you prepared to pay it if you’re wrong?”
I look down at the pendant. “I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to save her,” I say. “Whether that means being her anchor or her executioner. But I choose to believe in her. In us.”
The darkness recedes, pulling back toward the walls.
I stare down at the pendant and I know this is real. It isn’t just part of the fuckery of these underground chambers. I tuck the pendant away, knowing I have to tell her because this secret is too big. We aren’t strong enough to survive it if she finds out I lied to her.