Chapter XIV #2
“As many of you are, I’m sure, aware,” Nathaniel continued, “a human was recently permitted to enter the castle without escort or, as far as I can tell, any protective measures in place at all.”
Ice flooded Vic’s veins.
“Not only has this human been given an apartment in our castle, she has been caught spying on the Chief Sentinel on at least one occasion.”
Vic couldn’t hear the crowd’s response over the blood rushing in her ears.
“What’s more, this human has been invited to participate in training, and has accompanied Level One recruits for almost two weeks.”
Some of the bystanders gasped. Vic was too stunned to think through what Nathaniel was saying, or the others’ reactions to it, as the room fell into outraged conversations again. Anger radiated from the crowd as its energy grew.
Each word hit Vic like a drumbeat.
“The mandates of the Acheron Order are clear as to how we must respond to such a breach.”
Max’s face was an expressionless mask as he watched Nathaniel.
“Given the severity of the offense, the only appropriate punishment for the Order member responsible is expulsion.”
The gravity of Nathaniel’s words sank home. He’d condemned another Elder. He’d called for Max to be cast out. Because of Vic.
“And…” Nathaniel was still talking. Why the fuck was he still talking? “As for the human in question, the rules are clear. She must be silenced.”
Vic caught several eyes watching her. A few people pointed, some shouted. The crowd realized where she was, and who she was. Nathaniel followed the room’s attention until his gaze found Vic’s.
Lit from behind by the fire, Nathaniel looked at Vic like he had the night they met. As though she were vermin, a particularly repellent insect he wanted nothing more than to crush under his shoe. Vic was less than him, less than anyone here.
How dare he look at her like that.
“Can I respond?” Vic called into the silence, no magic amplifying her voice.
“No,” Nathaniel said.
“You’re talking about me. I will respond.”
“This is not a court of law, Ms. Wood,” Nathaniel replied, giving every appearance of boredom. “You have no rights here.”
“My mother was Meredith Wood,” Vic said. “For her sake, at least, don’t look at me like a piece of pond scum—any of you,” she directed at the crowd.
Members made sounds of disagreement.
“You wish to contest the rules?” Nathaniel asked. A sickening smile twisted his face. He shrugged with one shoulder. “Fine.”
Vic shot a look at Sarah, whose eyes were wide with fear.
“I invoke the Rite of Trial,” Nathaniel said, and the crowd went silent.
“Absolutely not,” Sarah said under her breath. “No way.”
“If you wish to defend your place here, Ms. Wood,” Nathaniel said, “this is the way to do it.”
“Max won’t let him do this,” Sarah said.
Vic searched the crowd as if she would find clarity on the shocked faces surrounding her. At the back of the room, Xan stood alert, poised like he was about to jump. He was staring at Max, his eyes set under a furious frown.
But when Vic cast a questioning glance at Max, his eyes were on her. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.
“This could kill her, Max,” Sarah shouted, her voice pleading. Max shot her a stern look, and Sarah fell quiet.
Nathaniel was smiling. “Come here, Ms. Wood.”
Vic wanted to ask what it was, what Nathaniel was talking about, what she needed to do, but her mind went blank as she stared at the men on the dais. Max, whom she trusted, whose fate was on the line as much as hers, had nodded for her to go ahead.
She pulled herself away from Sarah, who stared at her with horror as Vic found a narrow aisle through the crowd and began to descend.
Vic recalled Xan’s words—do not try to run, and do not let them know that you’re afraid.
Had he and Max known this was going to happen?
Had they expected this? Vic set her jaw.
She would not run. She would not show fear.
Vic hardly noticed the crowd’s attention.
She was too focused on the robed men in front of her as she approached like a condemned woman walking to the gallows.
“Stand here, Ms. Wood.” Nathaniel indicated the center of the step leading up to the dais, several feet wide and a foot beneath the raised platform.
Vic breathed hard through her nose, counting each breath to hold panic at bay. Her heart pounded. She stopped at the center of the step and glared at Nathaniel.
“Elder Key, if you don’t mind,” Nathaniel said, addressing the old man who had opened the meeting.
The old man nodded and turned toward the sculpture behind the Elders. With bare hands he reached into the fiery mouth, and Vic suppressed a gasp. A second later, he extracted a metal box, weather-beaten and ancient, still glowing red from the flames.
He approached Vic with the box in both hands. His skin, wrinkled and thin, bore no sign of burns.
Vic shot a questioning look at Max, who was watching her with stone-cold severity, a furrow in his brow and an expectant gleam in his gaze. Whatever was in that box, Max thought Vic could handle it.
She stood straight and pushed her panic aside. She would not give Nathaniel the satisfaction of seeing her scared.
“The Rite of Trial,” Nathaniel began, addressing the crowd as if he were lecturing recruits, “has existed since before the Acheron Order and is the best-known means of testing an individual’s aptitude for magical practice.”
He opened the box without reacting to the heat.
Within lay a pair of shackles.
Thick and warped with time like they hadn’t been used for a thousand years.
The cuffs were several inches wide, and instead of chains they were connected by a band of solid metal. The wearer’s forearms would be bound together, rendering them unable to move.
The metal glowed red, and the air over the box shimmered with heat.
“The mechanism is quite simple,” Nathaniel said. He picked up the gnarled pieces of metal. “The shackles are composed of a potent energy that even an untrained witch—given the proper, shall we say, motivation—will be able to untangle.”
Nathaniel opened the shackles on both sides and faced Vic.
“There are two possible outcomes of the Trial,” Nathaniel said, muddy eyes on her.
“If the person undergoing the Trial possesses any magical ability whatsoever, they will succeed in the Unthreading and free themselves of their restraints. If they do not…” One side of his lip tilted up in a cruel smile.
“Well, the traditional alternative was death. But rest assured we will intervene before it comes to that.”
Vic couldn’t think through the rage and fear hounding her mind. She couldn’t focus on Nathaniel’s words through the disdain in his eyes. The possibility of death at the hands of these…whatever they were…hardly pierced the haze of Vic’s anger.
“Your arms, Ms. Wood,” Nathaniel said, standing in front of Vic. He wanted her to do this herself, to make clear she chose this. He was the worst kind of bully, Vic thought, one who made his victim feel responsible for the torment.
Slowly, Vic stuck her arms out in front of her.
Her hands balled into fists, and she held the muscles taut to avoid shaking.
She expected burning pain as the red-hot metal neared her skin.
She expected heat and fire. Branding marks and the smell of singed flesh.
But when the shackles closed over Vic’s wrists, they were ice-cold.
Vic’s kneecaps hit the stone floor with a smack.
She didn’t feel the impact.
She couldn’t feel anything beyond the pain.
Pain, everywhere. Every part of her body exploded in electric, white-hot anguish.
It was a sensation completely foreign to Vic. Broken bones, turned ankles, a punch to the face—nothing had prepared her for this.
She twisted on the ground as each cell in her body was strangled by magic she couldn’t see.
Something came off the shackles like smoke, pouring across her skin and leaking into her mouth and nose, and everywhere it went it brought blinding pain.
Every nerve ending in her body felt flayed alive.
Vic couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t sense anything but pain.
But after a minute, or an hour, or an endless day, she noticed—an errant thought dancing across a feral mind—that she hadn’t breathed since the gasp she took as she fell.
Vic focused every inch of her body on taking a single breath, and she found that one sip of oxygen made the pain a little less prominent.
And so she kept on breathing until she was inhaling slow and steady, and the pain began to recede.
Vic could almost see the magic winding around her body like a snake intent on constricting her to death. But what was she supposed to do with it? The Unthreading, Nathaniel called it, but Vic couldn’t see any threads. Couldn’t see anything but the illusion of smoke pouring into her.
She breathed hard and heavy and solid until eventually she could pull herself back to her knees, and she could feel her own body enough to register that her knees hurt. Kneeling hurt.
But this was a different kind of pain, one Vic knew well.
When she fell while training, this was what it felt like.
When her hand slipped while sharpening a knife, and the skin split open at the slice, this was what it felt like.
This kind of pain was predictable. It sent a message; it had a purpose.
Pain meant her body was alive enough to fight.
Vic focused on the pain in her knees, on the realness of the ache, and felt herself shoving the shackles’ artificial hurt away from her. It wasn’t real, she realized. It couldn’t rip her apart the way broken bones and torn skin could. It was pain for pain’s sake, and that was useless to her.
Her eyes flared open, and they were wet like she’d been crying. The world was fogged with blood-red clouds, and Vic blinked until she could see Nathaniel through the mess. He looked down at her with pure hatred.
“Enough!” Vic growled.
Max leaped forward and pulled the shackles from her arms in an instant. The second they left her skin, the pain fell away like it had never existed. No hurt, no damage, just a dull ache across every part of her.
Vic fell back to a seat, stunned.
She felt burned, exhausted, wrung dry by the magic that had coursed through her skin, bringing nothing but agony. But she had almost done it, hadn’t she? She hadn’t died, she hadn’t lost. A fragile hope took root behind her sternum.
She was so close.
Max threw the shackles aside and grabbed Vic’s shoulder. He smiled, weakly, though his eyes were wild.
But no one said a word.
The room was dead silent, and everyone stared at Vic.
One of the Elders behind Nathaniel moved forward.
“How are we to interpret…” He stared at Vic like she’d grown a third eye.
“Obviously, there has been a mistake,” Nathaniel spat, facing the Elders.
“I’ve never seen this before,” another Elder said, and the Elders talked over one another, arguing.
“She cheated!” someone called from the crowd.
“Now, hold on,” the first Elder began as the noise within the room grew.
Max leaned toward Vic and whispered, “Get ready to run. This is about to turn bad.”
“It hasn’t already?” Vic hissed in disbelief, her voice hoarse and low.
Max pulled Vic to her feet with a wry smile and turned to mouth something at someone in the crowd.
The Elders were screaming at one another now. One of them was in Nathaniel’s face, a finger ramming his chest, and the crowd met their energy. They were angry; they were confused. No one knew what it meant, and no one wanted to listen to explanations.
The crowd burst to their feet. Shouts surrounded her, and Vic spun in confusion, catching a haze of faces watching her. One of them stood out—Henry. He looked upset, angry or hurt or some combination. He must be worried about her. Vic called out to him.
Hands grasped Vic’s arm and she swung around to defend herself. But it was Sarah behind her, looking horrified and slightly awestruck.
“Now, Vic. Come with me.”
A body in front of her cut off Vic’s view of her brother, and she backed away from the shape.
A hand grabbed her arm, and she slithered out of the grip.
Someone reached for her, and Vic kicked them.
The witch fell backward with a grunt of pain.
Vic bumped into a body behind her as she wrenched backward.
There were people on all sides of her now, closing in.
Sarah pulled her to a narrow split in the cavern wall. Vic would never have noticed it on her own. Sarah pulled the stone away like a curtain to reveal a passageway.
While Sarah slipped into the passage, Vic cast a look at the chaos behind her.
In the back of the room, leaning against the wall and watching as if he had not a care in the world, stood Xan Galanis, his arms over his chest and one foot propped up behind him.
Even in stillness, the power he held was obvious.
Physicality and violence peeled off him in waves Vic felt from across the cavernous space.
And he was staring right at her.
She felt his gaze on her like a physical touch, and it sent a shiver down Vic’s spine. She found herself hoping that Xan would not be the one tasked with silencing her, if it came to that. He would destroy her.
Vic forced herself to turn, to follow Sarah through the gap and into the cramped passageway. She couldn’t stand without hitting the ceiling, and she lost Sarah’s face in the darkness. Shadows clung to Vic as she stumbled behind the vague outline of the Sentinel.
Voices at their backs grew louder as the others realized where they had gone.
Other people had entered the passage. They were close behind and getting closer.
Vic didn’t need Sarah’s one-word warning. She was already running.