Chapter XI
XI
Extending admission to those who claim power over Veil magic marks the end of the Acheron Order as we know it.
By happenstance, these humans have stolen the power of the Veil, which they wield without ritual or structure, which kills them as often as it aids them, and which they are wholly unable to control.
The Acheron Order exists on a foundation of rules and order.
Structure, ritual, the rigidity of our practices, all provide the essential supports upon which we operate.
These humans have none of this. They respect none of this.
This edict marks the end of our way of life, a way of life we have sworn with our blood to protect.
This will be the death of us. I wholeheartedly dissent.
A lonely car cut the slice of road visible through the treetops.
From her vantage point hundreds of feet above the ground, Vic saw everything.
The mountains, tipped in white, the sloping hills guarding them on either side.
And that car was the only sign of life. Vic raised her palm to the window and leaped back in alarm.
Though the frame was the same arched shape as those throughout the castle, the window had no panes. No glass. Nothing to stop Vic falling to her death. She clung to the stone window frame and pushed her body away from it, claws of panic scaling her throat.
Her heart pounded as she scanned the circular room. Rugged stone walls were broken by eight windows and an altar set with miscellaneous artifacts. The floors were bare save a grate at the center.
Vic saw the man the second time she searched the room, as if he had appeared once he decided to be discovered.
She was not surprised to see him here.
He was tall but not oppressively so. He was neither muscled nor gaunt.
He wasn’t old or young. He was handsome but only slightly—his was an attainable sort of perfection.
The dark suit he wore had been tailored to his exact measurements.
Blond hair was combed away from his face, and he wore a curious expression as he examined Vic.
“Have we met?”
The stranger smiled when Vic spoke. Not a brilliant smile, like Max’s would have been, but more practiced.
“My name is Aren Mann,” he told her in a smooth voice. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Victoria.”
She did not wonder how he knew her name. Of course he knew her name.
“Are you a member of the Order?”
He smiled again, displaying a row of perfect—though not dazzling—white teeth.
“Alas, I am not,” he replied. “I have not been welcome at the castle for some time.”
He didn’t look menacing, and Vic did not feel fear. Deep in the back of her mind Vic realized that her reactions did not make sense. She should be frightened. She should be confused and scared and this man should not be trying to have a pleasant conversation with her.
“Have you visited the North Tower?” Aren Mann asked in a casual tone.
“No.”
“It’s the only room in the castle with a view of the river. Although, after that display, I doubt you would appreciate it. You’re afraid of heights?”
Obviously she was afraid of heights. If Vic fell from up here, they’d have to hose her off the cobblestones.
“What is this place?” Vic asked. She ran a finger along the altar’s edge.
“My old workroom. I doubt anyone comes up here these days.”
“You brought me here.” Suspicion crept into Vic’s tone as reality dawned. She wasn’t in control of this interaction—he was.
“In a manner of speaking, I suppose I did.”
Vic stretched the muscles in her hands as she scanned the room for exits. She could hit him. She could incapacitate him, and she could run. But where would she run if she didn’t know where she was?
Aren continued to study her, his eyes dropping to her hands before lingering on her face. A smile played about his eyes as he watched Vic weigh her options.
“Why?” she asked.
He shrugged, but it was an affected nonchalance. Vic caught the tension in his shoulders.
“Curiosity, mostly. I wanted to meet you.” He raked his gaze once more over her face. “Well, meet you again. It’s been years and years. I doubt you remember.”
She did not.
“That’s the third time you’ve done that,” Vic said.
“Mention something assuming I’ll ask for more detail.
You drop a breadcrumb and expect me to pick it up.
You’re not welcome at the castle, you ‘suppose’ you brought me here, we’ve met before, though I don’t remember.
” She ticked them off on her fingers. “It’s an annoying habit. ”
His smile broadened.
“I’m dreaming,” Vic guessed.
“You tell me.”
The intensity of his stare was unsettling. It wasn’t degrading, like Nathaniel’s. It wasn’t concerned, like Max’s had been when last they spoke. It was, quite simply, strong. He paid full attention to her, every firing synapse in his blond head focused on a singular point: Vic.
“How are you enjoying Avalon Castle?” Aren asked, and Vic decided that none of this was actually happening.
“I feel out of place,” she said. “Like I woke up one day in someone else’s body. Everything around me is unrecognizable, and I’m running in circles trying to understand.”
“Some of that is simple observation,” Aren said. “Little of your life before will serve you here.”
“I understand the rules are different. Everyone tells me every chance they get that I don’t belong here and that I shouldn’t bother shutting the door on my way out.”
“You don’t belong.” Aren said it without judgment. It was a fact, plain and simple.
He pushed away from the wall as Vic inspected the altar. A basin, a bundle of black sticks, a wood-handled knife the size of her palm, and an empty chalice. Vic bent to examine the underside of the slab, but the bottom was flat and unremarkable.
Aren wore a curious expression when Vic looked back at him.
“Does anyone ever tell you you look quite a bit like your mother?”
Another breadcrumb.
“No one ever tells me that.” Because she didn’t.
Vic was a little taller, a little thicker, darker and meaner.
Instead of blue, Vic’s eyes were brown, and she frowned more than she ought to.
It had annoyed Meredith, when she’d been alive to notice.
But their fundamental difference ran deeper than their looks or temperaments.
It was something that sat at the center of them, keeping them apart.
“Are people at the castle being unkind to you?”
“Do you care?”
“I told you. I’m curious.”
“Some of them are,” Vic said. “They look at me like I’m dangerous, which is ridiculous considering I have no power here.”
“The Order is weaker than they would like to admit,” he replied, pacing half-moons around her. “You represent a compromise—one human allowed into the inner sanctum could mean more are coming. No one outside the Order’s control knows what the Order does. They like it that way.”
Vic remembered Xan’s warning. If Max was right and Vic could learn magic, she would be responsible for disproving one of the Order’s fundamental principles.
They believed, without reserve, in their exceptionalism.
Proving them wrong would change everything.
When has changing everything ever led to a peaceful outcome?
“On a more practical note,” he went on, “with your allegiance uncertain, they fear you could pass information to any of the Order’s many enemies.”
“ ‘The Order’s many enemies,’ ” Vic repeated. “Am I to assume that includes you?”
“It certainly does,” Aren said with a smile. “The Order and I possess incompatible views about how magic should function in a society.”
“You are not concerned with secrecy,” Vic guessed.
Aren picked up one of the blackened sticks from the altar and began twirling it between his fingers.
“The Order’s obsession with secrecy is a position born out of fear. Some of which is valid, and most of which is not.” The stem danced through his fingers as he spoke. Measured, like it followed the pace of his breathing. “I am not a man prone to fear.”
Vic wasn’t sure how much of this to believe. If her subconscious had created this scene, this man shouldn’t have any more information than she did.
“Do you know how a witch is Made?” he asked.
The stem froze in the air.
Vic shook her head. “No one talks about it.”
She’d asked Sarah at dinner a few nights ago, and Sarah, looking wary, said it happened by accident and changed the subject.
It never came up in class. Even when Elder Thompson discussed the history of the Order, even in the books she’d been assigned, the idea of Made witches was referred to only in passing, in a tone of rebuke.
But Vic could admit—here in her own mind—a furious curiosity about it.
The question had run unimpeded under her thoughts ever since she’d learned about the possibility.
It was tantalizing, the idea that someone could become the kind of person who belonged here.
Even if it was a shadow of belonging, that of the second-class, it was better than being an outsider.
“Because no one knows,” Aren said. “We understand the mechanics of it. We have watched it happen a thousand times, cataloged each of the steps, memorized the contours of the process. We know that, to all observation, the human dies. Their hearts stop, blood stills in their veins. And seconds or minutes or hours later, they rise. We know what it looks like from the outside, but no one knows how it works. Even those who have survived it never recall the experience. No one knows what lies in the space between the living and the dead. No witch, in all the many centuries of practice, has ever determined the secret to who gets Made and who does not. Despite thousands of attempts, no one has ever succeeded in manufacturing Made witches. Only a handful of witches throughout history have ever been Made on purpose, and only one of them is still alive.”