Chapter XVII
XVII
To speak candidly, I worry about what this means for the future.
Rare few witches have succeeded in accomplishing what Mann has.
Even before this transformation, he held power rivaled by few in the Order.
I fear now that he has surpassed even the Elders.
I worry who, if any of us, would be able to control him. *
*Indicates a section of the original text removed prior to archiving.
“This seems like a terrible idea,” Vic announced. Again.
Sarah didn’t turn around at the comment—she’d grown weary of Vic’s pessimism a quarter mile back.
May rolled her eyes and tromped deeper into the forest. Vic hurried after them, well aware that following two highly trained, albeit irritable, witches through the woods was preferable to being abandoned there.
As much to frighten away the wildlife as to protest Sarah’s grueling pace, Vic made as much noise as possible while stomping through the underbrush. She stepped on every fallen branch and crunchy patch of ice she saw through the lumpy blanket of snow.
It had been a week since the Brotherhood attacked, and tensions within the castle had reached a fever pitch.
While some members of the Order seemed to care about Rachel’s death, most focused their energy on the most obvious sign of change: Vic.
She drew hostile eyes every time she left the apartment and sat in training like a bug under a magnifying glass, her skin crawling.
But the Order must have heeded Max’s instructions, because no one tried to harm her.
For his part, Henry had reacted to the meeting the way he reacted to any unpleasantness—with undeterred optimism and a general sense of detachment.
It drove Vic nuts. The day after the meeting, she cornered him at the kitchen table and insisted they hash it out.
Vic thought he must be suppressing his emotions.
The situation was precarious; surely he was frightened.
But Henry insisted everything was fine and left for training.
Vic had not revisited the conversation they’d had after she found Rachel’s body, though a sick feeling of guilt twisted her stomach. Henry had begged her to leave the castle, and for the first time in her memory, Vic had ignored his wishes in favor of her own.
Xan let Vic return to working with the Sentinels once he deemed her adequately rested, and she’d spent most of the last week in the training wing.
The Sentinels’ combat skills had improved, and Vic reveled in the chance to fight people who knew what they were doing.
It was exhausting, and Vic fell into bed every night too tired to dwell on any of the many questions looming over her.
After the meeting, May Lin hung around Vic and Sarah more often than not, though Vic shot sidelong glances May’s way and never turned her back on the Sentinel.
“Tonight,” Sarah had announced at breakfast, “we are going out.”
May, sitting on the far side of the table from Vic, sighed into her coffee.
“Y’all have an ‘out’ here?” Vic asked.
“No,” May replied in an acerbic tone. “We do not.”
“It’s the closest thing we have,” Sarah said. “And you’ll enjoy it. Both of you.”
But Sarah refused to divulge any details about what they would find on the other side of their walk into the forest. She claimed it would ruin the surprise.
And so Vic found herself hiking through icy woods with two witches after sundown.
“To be clear: no human sacrifice, right?” Vic asked.
“Nope!” Sarah sang.
“No ritual slaughter of any kind?”
“Not tonight,” May said.
“No dancing naked under the moonlight?”
“Of course not,” Sarah replied. “It’s cold out.”
“We could light a fire,” May suggested.
Sarah told her to hush.
It was colder than Vic could remember experiencing before.
She didn’t own anything bordering on a winter coat, but Sarah had been eager to supply her with one before they left the castle.
Sarah pulled a thick white puffer from the bowels of her overflowing closet and tossed it in the general direction of Vic’s seat on her bed.
A few seconds later, a pair of pink gloves landed beside it.
Sarah wore nothing near Vic’s shoe size, so she trudged through the woods in sneakers.
Vic realized the instant the frigid wind hit her face that she had not left Avalon’s doors since entering them. The castle had an odd ability to distance its occupants from the world beyond it. Her life, her past, even time itself couldn’t find Vic there.
Reality came into sharp focus as Vic struggled to wrest oxygen from the icy air.
She rubbed her gloved hands against the sides of her face to warm it and sniffled back a drip of liquid insistent on exiting her left nostril.
While the winter looked serene from the comfort of the castle confines, it was absolutely god-awful to be outside in it.
Vic cursed herself for coming. She cursed Sarah for having the wretched idea, and she cursed May for lacking the good sense to put a stop to the whole thing. And if some of that cursing made its way out of her mouth, that was hardly Vic’s fault.
May chuckled beside her.
“Laugh it up. I bet you’re comfortable,” Vic said, pointing at May’s knee-length black down jacket. “You look like a tire.”
“It’s not my fault you packed like an idiot.”
Vic had no idea how Sarah navigated the dense forest without the sun’s help. To Vic’s eyes, they wandered into vague darkness, and May grabbed Vic’s arm to stop her from walking into a tree.
“Don’t touch me,” Vic grumbled, pulling her arm away, and May rolled her eyes.
“Fine. Next time I’ll let you run into it.”
Vic kept looking over her shoulder for signs of people nearby, but there was no one. No houses, no roads, no evidence of civilization at all. Avalon Castle really did exist in its own separate world.
“Are you going to murder me, is that it?” Vic asked. “All this time you’ve pretended to be normal so I would go into the forest with you. But really you’re woodsy cannibal witches who lure unsuspecting women to their deaths so you can stay beautiful forever.”
“If that was our goal, we would have picked someone younger,” May said.
“Gross!” Sarah intoned from the front.
“So you admit that you want to eat children?”
“Or someone with more flesh to offer, at least,” May said, ignoring Vic’s question.
“Hey, I’m plenty fleshy,” Vic said. “You would be lucky to eat me.”
May scoffed.
“Or maybe this is a virgin-blood thing. ’Cause if so, you are horribly mistaken. I know I’m grumpy, but I can promise that I’m not—”
“We’re here!”
Vic pulled up short. Ahead of them, a small clearing appeared, lit by thin moonlight bouncing off the snow.
At the center, a dilapidated structure huddled in what meager light reflected from the sky.
Gray stone and wood fell in upon each other in the loose shape of a house.
Vic saw a single dirtied windowpane still intact in each of the two frames on either side of the door.
Or the doorway, she should say, as no door hung there.
Whatever this once was, it had seen better days.
Sarah and May moved forward without hesitation. Vic stepped over several rows of large, misshapen stones, which formed a series of interconnected circles spanning the length of the clearing.
“Okay, now I’m actually worried.”
“For the last time, we are not going to murder you,” Sarah chirped. “Come on.”
The steps creaked a death rattle as Vic climbed onto the porch.
She marveled that the place remained upright and cast a wary eye at the condition of the exterior walls before following Sarah through the open space where a door ought to be.
Vic couldn’t see anything on the other side, but she didn’t immediately understand that there must be a reason for that.
Vic gasped when she crossed the threshold.
Dozens of people mingled around a large firepit at the center of an open space.
The interior of the hut must have borne witness to some serious magic, Vic realized, because the walls were immaculate.
The ceiling provided the only internal sign of the building’s decay.
Desiccated rafters had collapsed in some places, and the grim sky peeked through patches the roof once covered.
Despite the gaping holes overhead, the room was warm and cozy.
Light from the fire tangled with rows of candles set along the walls, dripping with wax and adding to the well-loved atmosphere.
It reminded Vic of a dive bar. If they had dive bars in the Paleolithic era.
Vic recognized a few of the people scattered throughout the room as the Sentinels and full-time members who lived in the castle.
Some waved at Sarah and May, and Vic caught a handful of curious glances.
But no one looked angry that she had come.
After a week of suspicious eyes trailing her movements, Vic appreciated the lack of interest more than she would have expected.
Sarah leaned toward Vic like she meant to tell a secret.
“We call this Lethe Castle,” she said. “And there’s only one rule when you enter.”
“Forget everything,” May said from Sarah’s other side.
“Clever.”
“It’s very high school,” Sarah said with an apologetic smile.
Vic shrugged, her eyes on the witches lingering throughout the space. She didn’t have enough high school memories to be offended by the similarity.
“It can be strange for people coming to the Order for the first time,” Sarah said, turning to hang Vic’s coat beside her own. “It’s like we regress when we get to the castle. Out in the real world, we’re a bunch of taxpayers, but you stick us in the wilderness and summer camp rules apply again.”
As she spoke, Sarah found a crate along the wall and pulled out a bottle of wine. She unscrewed the metal cap with a click.
“See?” Sarah asked, eyeing the bottle’s label. “I think high schoolers and members of the Acheron Order are the only people in the world who drink this stuff voluntarily.”