2. AURORA
Amazingly, I fell asleep.
Actually, I guess it’s not a surprise, considering it must be three in the morning.
But the van coming to a stop wakes me up.
I blink my eyes open to see lookout towers and a guard house, heavy gates and twenty-foot walls topped with razor wire.
End of the line, folks, and I’ll finally admit I’m fucking terrified.
The guard with the glasses gets out, and the night air rushes in. It smells awful: a mix of burning rubber, rotten eggs, and salt.
Plus it’s freezing. Now I’m full-on shivering as the wind pushes dirty ice rain through the door. Poofy gauze doesn’t exactly keep out the elements.
“Bit parky, isn’t it?” A rasping voice from behind makes me swivel around until I see those bright green eyes twinkling at me.
They’re captivating, shimmering with a wild depth that calls out to me in a way I don’t understand.
“But don’t worry, love. One thing they get right at Quo is the heat.
Keep it cranked up until it’s hotter than my nan’s vindaloo. ”
His right leg is jiggling in a frantic, rhythmic motion he doesn’t seem to notice. In fact, his entire lean body seems to be vibrating. Is that a leftover from the taser-blast?
“Don’t speak to her,” Julian pipes up, trying to find a spine. “She’s way beyond your league.”
Why the fuck he thinks he has any say in who I communicate with is beyond me. I cut a look at him, my lip curling. “Eat a dick, Julian.”
Whatever is ahead of me, it won’t involve Julian Walters playing the part of my protector.
The orange-jumpsuit guy turns his gaze toward Julian, looking at the preppy boy as if he’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.
He smiles widely, his teeth looking too white against the grime on his face.
“Oh, I love boys who think money brings them status,” he drawls.
His British accent is thick and dangerous.
“They always taste like Daddy’s disappointment and Mommy’s apron strings. ”
He starts to sing a weird, eerie rhyme.
“A hunting we will go, a hunting we will go. Ee, aye, addy, oh, a hunting we will go.”
Wisely, Julian shuts his mouth, sinking back into the shadows of the bench.
I turn to the failed escapee. “Why didn’t you run?” I ask him. “You had the key, why let them take you?”
The man leans forward as far as his neck chain allows, the metal links straining against the bolt.
His eyes lock onto mine with an intensity that makes the air leave my lungs.
“Got caught in the trap of two sparkly blue eyes, didn’t I?
” He grins, and despite the grit and the blood, it’s a beautiful, terrifying thing.
“My Pa warned me about blueballs. Didn’t think he’d been talking about a pretty girl’s peepers. ”
I think his accent is Cockney? Is that still a thing?
The man tilts his head, a stray lock of matted hair falling over his face as he takes up his song again.
“We’ll catch a fox and put him in a box, a-hunting we will go.”
He follows this up with an elaborate wink.
“Wouldn’t be very gentlemanly to let you walk into the belly of the beast without a chaperone, now would it?
” he continues. “Terribly rude. And the Quo monsters have such poor manners. My nan would be appalled—give me a right smack, she would.” He waggles a cuffed wrist. “Let me introduce myself, the name is London, love. Like the city—a little hectic, ridiculously expensive…and,” he gives me a smirk.
“Usually leaves the ladies a little bit damp, if you know what I mean.”
It’s so extraordinarily out of place, so fundamentally absurd, that for a beat I actually forget my wrists are bleeding into carbon steel. I forget I’m about to enter a cage.
Is…is he hitting on me?
But the dazed moment snaps when a guard nods to the driver, and the transport begins to crawl forward.
We lurch over a speed bump and then, suddenly, the air shifts.
The oxygen is stolen from my lungs as a low hum begins to vibrate in my very marrow. I’m semi-aware of the others gasping and groaning around me; even the driver swerves, clawing at his throat as the atmosphere thickens.
But then a summer sun ignites inside the van. A blinding flash of lilac and gold washes over my skin and sinks into my pores, tasting of honey and flames.
London yells, and I turn to see his green irises disappear behind blown-wide pupils. “Fucking spectacular,” he breathes. “What a rush. Is this what being witchy is like? Get in, mate! It’s blinding!”
What the fuck is happening?
My spark—a cold, dead stump for the last eight hours—roars back to life.
But it’s different. For millennia, witches have only had the ability to cast Arcane spells—structured, external, and intellectual.
But this? This feels like every cell in my body has been rewritten.
I’m not casting magic anymore; I am the magic.
I’m innately charged—a billion tiny stars erupting inside me.
And inside the men in the van. In this moment, we aren’t prisoners and guards—we are filled to the brim with something perfect.
For one heartbeat, every soul on Earth must have felt that…surge. That rightness.
At the same time, three distinct tugs jerk in my chest, like fishhooks made of starlight catching in the soft tissue of my heart. Before I can gasp, three golden threads, thin as spider-silk, rush out into the cramped space. They twist and turn, pulling on my sternum in a frenzy.
I’m the center of a golden web I don’t understand. It’s terrifying. It’s intoxicating.
It’s a surge of absolute rightness that makes the rest of the world fall away.
Then the van passes through the Quo Reformare gates and the wards clamp down. The universe snaps shut.
These shields don’t just dampen the power; they reach into my chest and rip the delicate lilac sparkles from my bones, the golden threads evaporate to dust.
It’s almost as though my soul cracks, leaving a cold, lonely ache. My spark retreats so deep I don’t know if I’ll ever find it again.
“Aw, fucking bollocks,” London sighs, his voice sounding sad and hollow. “Did you taste that, kitten? Did the vibrations sing to you?”
I don’t answer. I’m mourning something I don’t even have a name for yet.
Up front, the radio crackles. “Emergency, emergency. We have unrestrained magic all around the perimeter…”
The guard turns it down, his face pale as we roll to a stop beside an ugly concrete monolith of a building surrounded by spotlights.
The guard with the glasses slides the van door open.
He looks ashen—shaken by whatever just happened—but he recovers with a sneer.
“Welcome to hell, bitch. Let’s see how high and mighty you are after being passed around the block. ”
I channel every ounce of Drakeward ice I have left. “The help always get uppity when they hold the keys.”
“Burn,” London giggles behind me.
“I’m not moving until my lawyer arrives,” Julian groans, clinging to a status that died the moment we crossed the line.
A siren begins to wail. “Ooh, sounds like a riot’s starting. I always love a good riot,” London exclaims.
Out of the two of them, I’d definitely take the lunatic. A batshit-ally is better than none at all.
They drag London out first. It takes four guards to manage him, though he doesn’t fight; he just chuckles and skips his feet. “Let’s play, lads! Who knows how to Morris dance?”
He starts singing at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing off the damp concrete. “He seemed so shy, caught the maiden’s eye, with his bagpipes slung over his shoulder, oh!”
The manic laughter bounces off the walls until he’s felled like a tree by another electric shock, leaving the air thick with the smell of taser-ozone and burned-hair.
“Take the freak straight to the hole,” a voice snaps. “See how long it takes to break him.”
It’s the kind of icy, detached tone that reminds me of my father. I refuse to shiver. I won’t quake in my non-existent shoes.
As they haul his limp body away, a sharp twinge shoots through my solar plexus. It feels like a physical tear.
My fucked-up heart? Fucking ironic if I die of a heart attack before setting foot in a cell.
The sensation fades—not completely, but enough that I can walk as I’m frogmarched into the building.
We enter a long, sterile corridor, my stomach twisting into a cold, hard knot.
Three people stand there waiting, looking us over like we’re merchandise to be broken into pieces and sold to the highest bidder.
The male guard’s gaze lingers on the ragged rip in my skirt, his eyes crawling over my exposed thigh. I resist the urge to pull the cloth together. I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me hide.
The first female officer is small and stout, her black hair a nest of short curls. She looks at me with pure, unadulterated disgust.
The second woman stands further back. She’s tall and broad-shouldered, her iron-gray hair pulled into a bun, and her glassy stare sends a violent shiver down my spine. Her features remain completely without a trace of compassion.
Does she even have a soul?
I name her Ms. Trunchbull.
“Process them,” she says to the other two guards.
“Processing” is as bad as one could expect.
“Clothes off. Now,” the stout guard barks.
Fuck.
I should have expected this, I should have mentally prepared, but I just…didn’t. Because I’m a fucking idiot.
Pretending not to have a care in the world, I shed my dress.
Next I carefully step out of the Kiki de Montparnasse panties and bra set Marta had chosen for me from a Havengard boutique just last week.
I watch the white fabric hit the wet tiles, soaking up a cocktail of orange and green filth that pools in the grout.
It’s like watching tie-dye happening in real time.
Or the most depressing lava lamp in the world.
“Hurry the fuck up, whore.”
I just want to get lost in my thoughts, but the fucking bitch-guard pulls me back to reality.