Chapter Two
Only fear can bind your hands.
My father’s warning echoed in my memory, too late to be of any use. I wasn’t afraid; it was everyone else’s fear that held me back. Their fear of my Kysillian blood, and the madness I must have inherited from my mortal mother, who had chosen to lie with a monstrous fey. To ruin herself.
Thankfully, on this occasion, my inferior, chaotic blood wasn’t my crime. No, that was my reckless pursuit of a dust sprite and trying to help a fool from getting soul-snatched.
The fool in question was safe in the healing wing with a rag over his bloody nose, a hideous black eye forming and one arm in a sling. I shouldn’t have taken satisfaction in his discomfort, but I indulged myself as I sat alone in the east wing hallway, the old wooden bench creaking beneath me. It was supposed to be for nothing more than decoration, carved with hideous depictions of mortal saints, but I was too tired to stand. Too drained to even think of the waiting rage from Finneaus’s father and the rest of the Council. Not allowing myself to begin to wonder how they’d twist my most recent in discretion against me.
My magic surged in annoyance, flushing my cheeks. The cool night air from the open arched windows down the long dim hallway doing little to calm the heat of it. The lanterns high above flickered with sharp crackles of bright orange light. Each reminding me what I’d done.
Dejected, I dropped my focus back to my filthy hands – smeared with dirt and the blood of the creature – as they lay in my lap. No evidence of the chaotic magic I possessed in my aching fingers, only the slight weak tremble as they gripped my torn and ash-smeared notes that I’d recovered from the ruined shelves. Useless now. What healing house would take in an apprentice as destructive as me?
‘That thing should be on trial for an assassination attempt,’ Master Grima’s voice hissed down the empty stone corridor from one of the Council Mage’s offices just beyond. The door left ajar, so I could hear every word and be humiliated some more. Their shadows moving across the slash of warm light that spilled across the floor.
‘Unjustified claims fuelled by nothing more than prejudice,’ Master Hale snapped, voice brittle with age. Guilt pierced my chest. How quickly he’d come back to the Institute from his visit to the South Courts so late at night. He’d gone there to fight for more fey liberation, and I was here, causing nothing but trouble in his rare absence. Forcing him to return. To clean up after me once again.
‘This is ridiculous ! She should have been cast out a year ago !’ Madame Bernard interrupted, shrill and vicious as always. ‘The volatile creature should be cleansed. Immediately.’
I flinched at that. Cleansed . What happened to reckless fey like me with no control of their magic: spellbound to never use magic again. To be stifled and slowly driven mad by the loss of it, just like those forced to work the farms off the southern shores or indentured to the workhouses.
‘Unless you’re trying to convince the records department she’s eighteen for the third year in a row?’ Master Grima mocked. I could almost picture the thin-lipped sneer on the Head Librarian’s face.
Shame burned through me. The lies Master Hale spun, the desperation to keep my ward status, so the Council didn’t have full control.
‘It is possible. Fey don’t keep birth records,’ Master Hale half spluttered with indignation.
True. However, I knew I was twenty-three and so did Master Hale.
‘She still has applications for partnerships pending with—’
‘They’ve all refused her !’ Madame Bernard chortled darkly. I couldn’t hide my wince at her joy, the certainty that the game was over.
They knew.
All my worst fears confirmed, my time really was up. No Master Mage wanted to partner with a fey, especially not a woman, and certainly not a Kysillian like me.
After all their attempts to ruin my chances of independence, the Council had finally won. In my defeat I let their shrill hateful voices become nothing more than a distant hum in my ears, unable to bear the desperate weak defence from Master Hale.
I looked down again at the unusable notes in my hands, blinking back the threat of useless, stupid tears.
Demure. Quiet. Still. Master Hale’s voice commanded in my head. One of the first commands he’d given me. My only defence against the council’s hypocrisy when I’d arrived at barely twelve years old.
Despite spending over ten years here, nothing had changed. Not their hatred, or the fragile Peace Agreement my presence here had promised. All I could do was pull in another calming breath, knowing my temper wouldn’t gain me any ground. That was what they wished to see. A Kysillian out of control. Wild and undisciplined. A female to be restricted and controlled.
Trapped.
I stuffed the ruined notes in my bag before rolling my stiff shoulders, feeling a strange cool prod at the exposed nape of my neck. A brush of frigid air, far sharper than the night breeze, like some strange presence trying to get my attention.
I looked down the shadowed corridor, the bench squeaking in protest, but there was nothing but the open window and the endless night. Thick shadows lingered in the corners of the hallway. The gold stitched tapestry of Elysior pinned to the wall rippled in the night air. The lanterns flickering more dimly than they had before.
Here. Something whispered in my mind, sending me slowly to my aching legs. To wander cautiously into that darkness, letting my palms run down the worn fabric of my stolen breeches, torn and ruined by my most recent misadventure.
Cautiously my magic flared, making my fingers glow slightly, but I curled them into fists, refusing its help. I wasn’t afraid, not as those shadows seemed to weaken, slipping carefully away, brushing over the stones in retreat to let the moonlight back in through the window. In a blink it was as if they had never been there at all.
‘Katherine.’ Master Hale’s voice sent me lurching around, hand to my chest to see him standing behind me, curiosity marking his weathered features.
The once-great war hero was still an imposing figure despite his old age and ailing health. His greying brown hair was in disarray as he limped down the hall to me, leaning heavily on his cane. Those deep navy council robes dragging across the ground, the silver pin of the scroll and sword showing him to be a Master Mage.
Guilt and shame rushed through me. ‘I didn’t—’
‘I know.’ He sighed, shaking his head almost incredulously. ‘The ruins?’
‘I’m sorry.’ I let my shoulders drop with defeat. He didn’t ask much of me, but I still managed to break the few promises I’d made.
‘Poor Alma will be scandalised.’ He huffed, leaning more heavily on his cane.
I’d forgotten about Alma. She’d lose her mind the minute she found out. I only hoped gossip didn’t travel faster than I could get back to my room. Silently scolding myself for not trying to slip away sooner. To find her and explain.
‘This hunger for knowledge isn’t going to end well, Katherine.’ Hale spoke softly as he stepped closer, cautious of anyone else hearing the warning. ‘No matter how much I know you enjoy the older texts these fools have forgotten about deep beneath these floors, it will never end well.’
He wasn’t wrong, but stubbornness was unfortunately another flaw I possessed.
‘When did that ever stop you?’ I challenged.
‘You should take this old fool as a warning.’ A small laugh left his lips, which turned too easily into a retching cough that stopped him in his tracks as he fumbled with trembling fingers for his handkerchief.
‘Master Hale?’ I took a firmer hold of his arm, trying to make him sit on that horrid bench to rest, but he shook his head as he pressed a handkerchief to his lips, only for it to come away bloody.
The sharp sting of fear consumed my heart. This man, who used to be the greatest warrior in Elysior, who once served the Mage King before joining the Lord’s rebellion to free Elysior, was reduced to nothing but a weakening husk. This strange illness that no healer could cure was like a curse put on him for helping me.
‘Go on, it’s best you get out of sight for a while. I’m certain Alma will want to sort you out.’ He cleared his throat, avoiding my concern as he tucked the bloody fabric back into his robes, revealing the cuff to be speckled with more blood from a previous bout. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’
He was getting worse.
‘The Council …’ I began, letting my gaze wander down the hall to closed doors of the Council Chamber, where the disciplinary hearings usually took place.
‘It’s late.’ There was a sharp dismissiveness to his voice. ‘They’ll take a day or so to gather if they wish to raise a complaint. Let us hope they lose interest in their pettiness before then.’
Hope . What a fickle and cruel thing. Crueller for how long ago it had abandoned me.
My lips parted in protest only for a distant ringing to begin, halting the very breath in my lungs. A sound I knew all too well.
Warning bells. Loud and thunderous from deep beneath the stone floor, making it rumble with the sound. Something from the ruins beneath had awoken, something big enough to set off the wards.
The lanterns flickered violently, almost plunging us into darkness as the guards down the hall jumped to attention, rushing off in the direction of the old entrances to the ruins beneath.
‘Go to your room, Katherine.’ Hale patted my arm, something in his expression guarded before he left me standing there in the draughty hallway as he hobbled away. That feeling of unease remaining inside me, nibbling insistently, telling me that something wasn’t right.
I ignored it, knowing nothing was ever right here.
‘Idiot,’ I hissed to myself, as I finally took my chance to flee. Moving through the stone hallways, the echoing taunt of those warning bells made the dread sink deeper. Ignoring the old leering statues of previous mages holding scrolls of wisdom, feeling their judging stone glares as I passed each one.
I moved up the narrow spiralling staircase, past the students’ floor, higher and higher until I reached the cramped fey quarters. A dark corridor greeted me, considering I was the only remaining resident and had to light my own lanterns.
Too tired and troubled to bother, I pulled the key from my bag and retreated into my room, not allowing myself to be relieved until I was pressed back against the closed worn, wooden door. Thanking the ancestors for the small mercy of Alma’s absence as I took in the confined space, a magical lamp still burning in the corner as the moth-nibbled curtains let moonlight spill into the room.
Home, I lied bitterly to myself, ducking under the low wooden beams to my small, dilapidated desk, untying my bag from my belt and dumping it on top. I leaned over the desk to push the small murky window open, letting the night air try and cool my flushed skin.
I needed to change, hide my clothes, put my nightgown on and pretend it all wasn’t as bad as it seemed. I pushed my papers into a neat pile as the wind disturbed them, hiding the ones from the ruins deep beneath all the others. I was almost done covering my tracks when a sharp smack to my arm and the distant slamming of the chamber door startled me.
‘Ouch !’ I snapped, turning to see the annoyed face of my assailant.
Alma stood there, brow creased, dark curls in disarray beneath her maid’s cap. The imprint of scales beginning to show on her left cheek with her wrath. Her vibrant green eyes alight with fury.
‘I can’t believe you have the audacity to be reading !’ she hissed, hands resting on her small, apron-covered hips. Her maid cap flopping onto her brow before she pushed it back with irritation. ‘Look at the bloody state of you !’
‘Alma, I wasn’t—’ I grimaced, not prepared to duel with her.
‘Don’t Alma me !’ she seethed, her cat-like pupils thinning into reptilian slits as she smacked my arm again for good measure. ‘I bloody told you not to go down there. You could have brought a ghoul back with you like last time !’
I winced at the memory of the flesh-eating ghoul still locked in a tin box beneath the floorboards under my bed. How thunderstorms made it rattle and try to escape. Reminding me I’d forgotten to put it back once again.
‘That wasn’t completely my—’ I began, but the sharp glare she sent my way made me swallow down the lie. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘If I have to listen to one of those fucking saint-loving maids say another horrid thing about you in the kitchens, I’ll lose my mind.’ She tore the maid’s cap from her dark head and tossed it onto a stack of my papers with disdain.
‘I needed a book on Vercarus theory to finish my paper. The last copy was in the Fifth Library before it fell. I really think it’s going to work this time.’ Or at least I did, before Finneaus Ainsworth and a demented dust sprite had ruined everything.
‘I don’t care about bloody papers, you menace. I care about you.’ Her words were followed with a heavy sigh, defeat clear in the fall of her narrow shoulders. A softness darkened her feline gaze. ‘The last fey student to go wandering off anywhere near the ruins got themselves killed, Kat.’
I flinched at the memory. The white sheet-covered lump at the bottom of the restricted stairs. An unlucky tumble while practising with an unpredictable spell. Out after curfew. Enough to deserve a death sentence for the likes of us in the Council’s eyes.
Lie. The word hissed mockingly through my mind, bringing the sharp pinch of a headache that threatened to return with all my worries.
‘We both know I’m not that lucky,’ I smiled, only her serious expression didn’t falter. Worry burning fiercely in her eyes.
‘I’m serious, Kat.’ Those words were softer, weighted with everything that had come before.
‘I’m not going anywhere.’ I ignored the weight of that truth as it sank like a stone in my gut. Clearly, my fate was to be locked in these dusty walls until the Council came up with some use for me, or worse, dispatched me the same way they had all the others.
Alma’s petite form flopped down onto the stool with a heavy irritated grumble that was close to a growl.
Quiet. Demure and still . Master Hales’ command coming back to me. The same simple rules Alma was forced to follow. To pretend. To lie.
Alma didn’t have magic. This was the falsehood we had dedicated ourselves to for the last ten years. She possessed something beyond simple magic and the Council’s control. As I watched, those scales slipped back beneath her smooth, tan skin.
Wild magic. Too feral and easily spread to be taught reason. To be leashed.
It was why she’d ended up at Daunton, the lost children’s home with me all those years ago. Another unwanted creature for the horrid Lord’s entertainment, in a place for beings nobody was looking for.
The last place she should be was here with me. Right under the Council’s watch. But greed had always blinded mortal men, and a Kysillian in their control was enough to distract them. Enough of a danger to keep them occupied and keep their gaze off Alma, the poor serving fey Master Hale had taken pity on.
I didn’t allow myself to wonder why Master Hale had brought Alma with me. Whether it was his guilt for the wars, for the fey that had died in these very halls that he didn’t save, or to show a little lost girl he meant no harm … but the older I got, the more the truth burned through those lies, leaving me with a sour taste in my mouth. Alma had been something to keep me in line.
She was the only thing of value to me that they could take away. The reason why I’d shackled myself to the Institute’s peace treaty until I could graduate, why I’d become their toy to keep the rebellion quiet, to keep a revolution against mortal power at bay.
The games they played and my place as a pawn at their centre left me exhausted and burdened with guilt for the things I pretended I didn’t see, didn’t hear.
A guilt I couldn’t escape, even as I worked at getting out of here, travelling beyond the Council bounds. Maybe finding a Healing house to practise in, or even a small teaching position in a fey village. Anything. There was a whole world beyond these walls.
Thoughts of my past might have kept me from sleep, but that small glimmer of a future pulled me back to the present, to consider the profile of Alma’s dark, annoyed face. Her gaze distant, looking at the tiny window, how it sagged sadly, dark mould staining the wood. Her brow furrowed with too many thoughts.
‘You seem irritated,’ I mused, regretting the words as her sharp murderous gaze came back to me, ‘by something other than me for once.’
She shrugged, reaching back to rub her shoulder as if it were stiff. I saw the darkness at her nailbeds, the threat of the claws that could emerge at any moment. How weakly those fingers trembled. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Alma, I—’ I leant forward, trying to reach for her but a sharp knock at the door sent her surging to her feet, grabbing her cap off the table and forcing it back on top of her raven curls. Back into her role.
‘If these are disciplinary summons, I swear on the ancestors …’ she seethed, unable to finish before something slid beneath the door and she stormed over to claim it.
I waited for her to whirl on me with rage but she went deathly still, back tense and I wondered if she was even breathing.
‘Alma?’ I asked.
I’d gone through quite a few trials. Most done when Master Hale was in better health and had more support within the Council. Now, with fey rebel attacks growing in the north and the Council’s contempt for magical beings stronger than ever, I doubted I’d get much sympathy.
‘They’re not trial summons.’ Her voice was nothing but a trembling breath, turning to me as that paper shook in her grasp, green eyes wide as they shifted from owl to feline pupils and back again. ‘They’re partnership papers.’
I didn’t remember leaving the desk or crossing the room. All I remembered was the weight of that paper in my grasp, the fire at my back and the short, panicked breaths of Alma at my shoulder.
Papers in presentation of a Mage Partnership Agreement
between:
Lord Emrys Silverous Blackthorn and Miss Katherine Woodrow.
The words were embossed in gold, and the strange dark wax seal of the Blackthorn crest covered in thorns. The paper was thick, luxurious and sealed in an envelope with singed corners telling me it had been delivered by fire-post.
Lord Emrys Blackthorn.
The Blackthorns specialised in occult studies and were one of the Mage King’s most trusted before the war. The last experts in dark magic and its effects on the earth. There were many stories about Lord Emrys Blackthorn, the only surviving member of the family. That he served in the Great War. How he’d commanded the Lord’s rebellion to bring that Mage King down and quelled the dark entities who had consumed the south fields of Elysior.
Ever since the monarchy had been overthrown, the rebellion settled and the High Council of Elysior formed, Emrys Blackthorn had become something of myth. Some records claimed he was dead, others that he’d gone mad.
He was little more than a rumour that plagued mages’ meetings, whose name was spoken in whispered tones like one mention would summon him.
Dark magic had a habit of consuming those who paid it too much attention, which was the reason most rumours stated he was dead. Yet the papers in my hand were very real.
I supposed this new dangerous twist of fate was my own fault for wondering just how much worse this could all get.