Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The students are clustered in a tight knot near the main courtyard, some crying, others standing with their hands over their mouths. I push through the largest group with Mica on my left and Asher close behind.
"What happened?" I grab the nearest student by the arm. She's maybe twenty-five, dark-eyed, shaking. "The guardian. Where did it go?"
She stares at me.
"Where did it go?" I repeat.
"I don't… it just…" She pulls her arm free and wraps it around herself. "It took her. It just took her."
In the distance, thunder rolls across the campus in a long, slow wave. I glance up, but the clouds are gone.
What does that mean?
Mica pulls another student by the shoulder, a boy with a shaved head and a gash across his forearm he hasn't noticed yet.
I rush over to try again. "Why did it take Violet? Did it say anything?"
He seems more present than the girl, blinking hard. He opens his mouth. Closes it.
I recognize him. The realization hits, and I scan the other faces of the crowd. Shit. I know all of them.
The woman with the copper braids, the twins with the matching burn scars on their hands, the guy with the hearing aids who sat in the far bed of the Order infirmary and stared at the ceiling for hours.
I sat with these people.
These are the recovered witches, every single one of them, pulled out of Laurel's compound with their magic drained and their eyes hollow.
So, where is Lily?
I turn a full circle, my stomach dropping.
There.
Standing apart from the rest, my youngest sister is near the edge of the path that leads to the west wing. Her face is tipped up toward the churning sky, her arms hanging heavily at her sides.
"Lily!" I close the distance at a run, and she turns toward the sound of my voice.
Tears track down her face in silence, not the dramatic crying of panic but more like her mind can't process what’s happened.
She sees me and her expression melts. Extending her hand toward me, she shows me a small blackened sphere. “She tried to channel it, but it didn’t work. Why didn’t it work?”
I have no idea what she’s talking about, and don’t care. I pull her against my chest and Asher wraps himself around both of us.
Lily grabs two fistfuls of his jacket and holds on. He doesn't say anything, just keeps a hand at the back of her head and looks at me over her dark hair.
The look on his face is as heavy and grave as the weight I feel in my chest.
I pass my sister over to him and crouch down to speak with S’Nark. He's sitting as a white cat at Lily's feet. His tail is wrapped around his paws as he watches the distant sky.
"Talk to me. What happened?”
He flicks one ear toward me without moving his head.
"They were all out here having a happy little witch social, celebrating that two of the recovered got their affinities back this week. Then the storm rolled in and the lightning started. Your sister tried to use that conduit sphere they all carry, but it burned out. That’s when she really started to panic, and that enormous feathered nightmare dropped out of the clouds and took her. "
My jaw tightens. "Did it say anything?"
He looks at me properly for the first time. "It said she was demon-marked. And that her bond with evil endangered the people of Arcana."
The words land like a boulder in a still pond.
Fucking hell. The blood bond. Tharuzel's mark on the Hallowind line is what it objected to. It was why it hated me when I first got here.
"Where does the guardian take people?" I turn to Mica, who has appeared at my shoulder. "When it decides someone is a threat. Where does it go?"
She blinks. “How would I know? I was never a student here. Maybe Wylder would know.”
Right. Damn it.
The doors to the main building swing open, and Headmistress Briar rushes down the steps and cuts across the courtyard at an urgent pace.
Her midnight-blue robes snap around her ankles, as her cloak blows out behind her like she’s some kind of superhero. Her gaze sweeps the clearing, cataloguing damage, bodies, expressions, all of it in about four seconds flat.
Mica and I meet her halfway.
"What happened?" Her voice is a blade of steel wrapped in silk.
"Your guardian grabbed my sister out of the courtyard." I keep my voice level. I'm proud of that. "It spouted off the same bullshit about being marked and evil as it did when it attacked me, then it flew off with her. Why the hell does your school hold such a grudge against my family?"
Briar's gaze cuts to me, sharp and cold.
"There is no grudge." She says it like the suggestion is beneath her. "And while I don't know why Violet was taken, I do know that standing here slinging accusations won't bring her back."
My jaw tightens. "It said her tie to evil endangers the students of Arcana. If it actually believes that shit, what will it do to her?"
Her gaze holds mine, and there is nothing soft or comforting about it. "The guardian is ancient and has its own sensitivities. A demon mark on a bloodline may make it faster to act where your family is concerned. That's a reality you need to understand."
"So, what you're saying is my family gets to be profiled by a giant magic bird?"
She lets off a dismissive sigh. "Poppy. Not now."
I swallow the rest of it. She's right, and I hate that she's right.
I turn to the students instead. Most of them are still standing in loose, shaken clusters. I raise my voice and call out. "Did anyone see what happened before the guardian came? What was Violet doing?"
There’s a beat of silence, and then the guy I was speaking to earlier steps forward.
"Dr. Thorne told her today that her powers were building. She must have felt it coming because she got her conduit out, but then it just—escalated. Really fast. Like it skipped all the stages and, bam, the conduit burned out, she freaked, and the storm hit.”
I turn back to Briar. "I thought they were safe here. That was the entire reason I agreed to them coming. You told me they wouldn't be overwhelmed by their affinities if their powers came back online here."
Briar doesn't flinch. "We promised they wouldn’t die from the surfacing of their affinities, not that they wouldn’t be overwhelmed.
The academy's wards prevent a complete magical catastrophe, not a frictionless transition.
A witch with particularly strong magic will still struggle, even here.
The wards contain the worst of it. They don't remove the difficulty entirely. "
"That's a lovely distinction."
"It's an accurate one."
"So where did it take her?" Asher squeezes my shoulders, his arm still around Lily. "Does he have a territory?"
Briar's expression shifts, and she looks north, toward the wall of mountains that frames the academy's horizon. "The guardians, as a species, have a colony in the ranges above the city. If he's taken Violet to safeguard Arcana, he’ll take her there to appear before the matriarch.”
There’s a lot to unpack in that sentence, but I don’t have time. “We need a map, trail access, elevation, whatever you have."
Briar pegs me with a long, considered look that I recognize as the headmistress equivalent of an eye-roll. "We are an academy of the arcane. Why would we have those things?”
The heat that climbs my neck is not helpful. Right. Everyone connected with this school has arcane power. Who needs a map when people portal? Who needs a tracker when people scry?
I know how to scry. I have a pendulum. It has been in my hands approximately twice since my return to Emberwood. I didn’t think to use it because in a crisis, my first instinct is still to think like someone who grew up without magic.
Asher wraps an arm around my back. “Forget all this. Let’s go get your sister back.”
“You will do nothing of the sort.” Briar levels a stern scowl at us. “I will set things in motion through proper channels, and you will leave it to me. The guardians are a powerful sect and have customs to be observed. You kids are wholly out of your depth.”
I scoff. “As if that has ever stopped us.”
She arches a manicured brow. “You have no standing here, Miss Hallowind. No authority. If you’re not killed on the spot for invading guardian territory, what will you say to the matriarch? Their entire purpose is to protect Arcana. If Violet is perceived as a threat—"
"Violet is not a threat!"
She points to a giant scorch mark burnt into the lawn. “I beg to differ.”
“And what, no other student has lost control before? How often do the guardians kidnap your students? Is this a thing?”
Briar pegs me with a droll glare. “If the danger was inherently her, the guardians would have acted the moment she set foot on these grounds, as they did with you. Since he took her once the storm set in, he was responding to her losing control of her affinity."
"Which means she needs help. She needs a healer or Dr. Thorne to stabilize her magic. She doesn’t need some ancient raptor grabbing her out of the dark and carrying her off to a mountain nest. That's the opposite of helpful."
Briar's chin lifts. "I won't argue with the guardian's instincts to protect my school."
“Of course not. Because that would mean you’re culpable in what’s happening to my sister.”
The moment the words are out of my mouth, I realize my mistake.
Briar stills, and the glare she hits me with chills me to my very core.
“I understand you’re upset, Miss Hallowind, but if you ever accuse me of protecting my own interests over the lives and safety of my students, you will find out firsthand what it means to be at odds with a woman of my standing and power. ”
Magic crackles in the air between us, singeing my skin, and I don’t even think she’s overtly doing anything. “Sorry. My mouth got away on me there. I’m just freaking out.”
She draws a deep breath and presses a hand against her sternum. “Take Lily back to her quarters. I’ll send for you when I have news.”
And with that, Headmistress Briar sweeps her robes to the side in an elegant turn and strides back up the steps and into the school.
I swallow, but my throat remains dry.