Jade
A massive stag with glowing silver antlers steps forward, fixes me with intelligent eyes, and turns toward the tree line.
“I think it wants us to go with it,” Evie whispers, wonder in her tone despite everything.
“Or it’s leading us to slaughter.” Kieran’s dagger remains out and ready.
“A magical stag seems like an inefficient assassination method.” She’s already stepping forward, although a shimmer of heat appears in her palm, ready to protect us at a moment’s notice.
Kieran’s by her side immediately.
The stag looks to me and stamps its hoof.
“I guess we’re following the magical deer now.” I let my electricity crackle along my arms and follow them. “Why not. It’s nothing crazier than anything else in my life recently.”
As we walk, the forest closes around us.
The trees are twisted and strange, their bark shimmering in the starlight.
Flowers glow along the path, and the air smells like salt and honey.
Wolves pad through the underbrush while lions watch from the shadows, birds circling overhead like they’re keeping tabs on our every move.
It should be terrifying.
Instead, it feels... protective?
We haven’t been walking long before a palace appears so suddenly I almost walk into a vine-wrapped pillar.
White marble rises out of the night like it grew here, surrounded by gardens so dense with herbs and flowers that the smell hits me before my brain finishes processing the sight.
Fountains scatter starlight across the grounds, and the whole structure is so aggressively beautiful it almost feels like a threat.
“By the gods,” Evie says, gazing around in awe. “It’s just like the illustrations in Dwellings of the Divine.”
Kieran moves ahead, dagger in hand. “Stay close, stay alert, and touch nothing.”
Together, we climb marble steps veined with silver. The animals follow but don’t enter, spreading around the palace entrance like guards taking their posts.
I stare at the massive door and take a breath. “Should we just… knock?”
A red fox scurries up the stairs, paws at the door, and it swings slowly inward.
“Okay,” I mutter. “I guess the enchanted animal’s telling us to make ourselves at home.”
Kieran leads the way into an interior that’s even more impossible than the outside.
Vaulted ceilings are painted with men kneeling before a dark-haired woman, their bodies sprouting fur and tails.
Tapestries depict myths I half-remember from school—a woman sprouting branches for arms, a winged man flying close to the sun, and a king with golden hands cradling his frozen daughter.
The fox hurries ahead, and we follow it through corridors and courtyards until we reach a chamber bathed in golden light.
And there, seated before us, is an ageless woman with wavy dark hair and golden eyes. She’s wearing a simple purple dress that manages to look both ancient and timeless, but it’s what she’s doing that makes me freeze.
She’s weaving.
The loom in front of her is easily twice my height, and the tapestry taking shape on it makes my heart stutter.
Three figures glow in the woven threads.
A woman with brown hair holds a crescent moon bow, a white wolf at her side.
A blonde has beams of sunlight shooting from one hand, gripping a golden scepter in the other.
The third has white-blonde hair with blue at the ends, and she holds a pointy, glowing disc in the shape of a star.
And there, next to her, silver and orange threads are creating a familiar shape.
Me.
The figure is incomplete, her edges blurred, her face not quite finished. And there are marks on the weaving—scorch patterns that cut across the threads.
The woman’s hands still on the loom.
“Tempest’s Chosen Champion.” Her voice is low and layered, the kind that makes you listen whether you want to or not. “Welcome to my palace. I’ve been expecting you.”
Her palace.
Circe.
“You know who I am?” I ask her.
She turns, her golden eyes fixing on me with an intensity that makes me step back. “You’re the fourth and final piece of a pattern that’s been weaving itself for longer than your mortal mind can comprehend.”
My stomach drops. Fourth and final piece sounds a lot like last resort, and given everything I’ve managed to screw up since arriving at Blaze Academy, I’m not exactly inspired by the universe’s hiring choices.
But I’m here for answers, and I’m going to get them.
“Do you know why Tempest chose me?” I ask. “And what I’m supposed to do?”
“Those are large questions.” Circe moves away from the loom, her bare feet silent on the marble floor. “What do you already know?”
Where do I even begin? There’s too much, but what Constance told me on Halloween night seems like as good of a start as ever, since it’s the most concrete information I’ve gotten so far.
“Before I left Blaze Academy, the Headmistress pulled me aside and told me that change is coming.” I twist my bracelet, metal cutting skin. “She said it was the type of change that reshapes worlds, topples kingdoms, and rewrites the laws of magic.”
Circe’s golden eyes sharpen. “Go on.”
“She said it requires champions willing to burn the old world to create the new.”
The sorceress tilts her head, looking more intrigued by the second. “What else did she tell you?”
“She mentioned Revenants.” I watch her face for any reaction, finding none. “She said they’re creatures that shouldn’t exist and that they’re hiding in the academy, but I don’t know anything more about them than that.”
“Revenants,” Circe says slowly, as if savoring the word. “To understand them, you must first understand what came before.”
She moves to a table near the loom, pours four glasses of golden liquid from a pitcher, and gestures for us to sit.
I don’t want to sit. I want answers. But Kieran’s already lowering himself onto one of the cushioned benches, setting his blade across his knees. Evie follows, her notebook in hand.
Fine. I sit, but I don’t touch the drink. Neither do Kieran and Evie.
Circe simply smiles and begins to explain.
“Long before your academies, your covens, and the supernatural world organizing itself into the hierarchies you know today, there was the first vampire, Ambrogio.” She settles across from us, her eyes distant as she speaks the name I already know from the book Thad gave me.
“He was cursed by the gods, betrayed by the woman he loved, and banished to the Underworld for crimes against the divine order.”
Evie leans forward, her eyes lighting up like they do in class when she’s learning new information.
“The woman he loved was the moon goddess Selene,” she breathes.
“I’ve read fragments about her story with Ambrogio, but the texts are incomplete and always focus on her love story with Endymion instead. ”
“Most do.” Circe’s lips curve into a half smile.
“Selene wanted nothing to do with Ambrogio after his transformation. She had him banished to the Underworld, although he never knew she was the one behind it. Selene then fell in love with the shepherd Endymion and asked Zeus to make him immortal. Zeus’s solution was to put Endymion in an ageless sleep, and Selene visited him every night in his dreams.”
Evie opens her notebook to a fresh page and begins to write.
Circe gives Evie an approving nod. “Selene grew tired of not being able to see Endymion whenever she wanted. So, she assigned four of her daughters to rule the celestial domains in her stead—moon, sun, stars, and storm—and stayed with Endymion in his world of dreams, sleeping eternally with him in his cave. Ambrogio, however, believes Endymion stole Selene, and that she needs to be rescued from Endymion’s cave and brought out of her eternal sleep so the two of them can be together forever. ”
“What does this have to do with the Revenants?” I ask, wanting to get to the point.
Evie gives me a look that says I need to be more patient, because of course she does.
Circe’s gaze sharpens. “Ambrogio doesn’t just want revenge. He wants an army with enough power to tear through the barriers between realms, locate Endymion’s cave, and wake Selene from her eternal sleep.”
“The Revenants are his army,” I realize, the pieces clicking together.
“Yes. They’re a new kind of vampire, since while vampires are powerful, they’re limited.
” Circe traces a finger along the rim of her glass and looks around at our full ones, as if daring us to drink.
“Traditionally, supernaturals turned vampire have air magic, but they lose the abilities they had before transformation. A witch turned vampire loses their fire. A shifter loses their affinity for earth. A fae loses their connection to water. But Ambrogio has discovered a way around that limitation—Revenants. They’re vampires turned by Ambrogio who retain their original magical abilities.
A witch-turned-Revenant would have both fire magic and air magic.
A fae would keep their water magic along with their new air magic, and a shifter would keep their earth magic along with air magic.
But more than that, their abilities are further amplified because of being turned by Ambrogio, which means even a traditional vampire benefits from becoming a Revenant. ”
“He’s creating an army of Revenants to storm the heavens.” Kieran’s hand rests on his blade.
Circe’s gaze tracks Kieran’s multiple weapons—daggers at his hips, throwing knives strapped to his forearms, and twin swords across his back. “I see war is in your blood,” she says. “You carry it well.”
“It’s training,” he corrects her. “Not blood.”
“Either way, you’re right—Ambrogio wants to storm the heavens with his Revenant army.
” She gives him another once-over, then turns her attention back to all of us.
“He believes that with enough power, he can kill Endymion in the realm of dreams and free Selene, so they can be together forever. From there, he wants to start a new order where supernaturals are no longer forced to live in hiding, so they can reign over the mortal realm.”
Evie circles a paragraph in her notes. I’m glad she’s a good note taker, because there’s no way I’d remember all this.
She places her pencil down, refocusing on Circe. “Do you know if Ambrogio has created any Revenants yet?”
Circe tilts her head, considering. “When the star goddess Celeste’s chosen champion and her winter prince visited me this spring, Ambrogio was still recovering from his resurrection.
Whether or not Ambrogio has regained his strength to where it needs to be to create his first Revenants…
” She shrugs and spreads her hands. “I’ve had no visitors from the outside world since then.
I can’t say what’s happened in the months between. ”
Months.
A lot can happen in months.
And given that Constance warned me that Revenants are hiding in the academy… then Ambrogio’s already created them.