Chapter XXV
XXV
It has long been theorized that Made witches pull their magic directly from the Veil, making the magic itself fundamentally distinct from that of Born witches.
Made witches, unlike their more distinguished counterparts, need not rely on spellwork or ritual to connect them to the natural world.
Their abilities are more innate, driven by a poorly understood connection to death more than by anything rooted in the world around them.
“Today will be the last day most of you spend in this classroom.”
Vic didn’t lift her eyes from the notebook in front of her when Nathaniel spoke.
He’d taken over classes today, as—he said—he was most equipped to prepare them for what was to come.
Vic was surprised the Order let him teach again, after the incident in Limbo.
Then again, Nathaniel was an Elder, and likely did as he pleased.
Most of the recruits were advancing to Level Two, having demonstrated adequate ability to manipulate objects. Most of the recruits, in this context, meant everyone but Vic. She hadn’t done a damn thing.
Whatever ability she’d demonstrated when she opened Meredith’s door, whether borrowed or her own, had not reappeared in her lesson this morning.
“For your final task as Level One initiates, you will destroy the item in front of you,” Nathaniel was saying, in a voice as snotty and boring as a textbook. “These are more complex than the stones most of you have already mastered. Dissolution of an intricate structure will enable you to advance.”
Vic was only half listening. In a spiral notebook she scribbled everything she could remember about her time at Avalon.
She’d taken diligent notes since her first day of training, but she wanted to fill in the gaps.
She’d take nothing but her memories when she left the castle for good, and Vic didn’t want to forget anything.
She did not attempt to transcribe her conversation with Xan the night before, which she could barely stand to replay in her mind.
The memory sat like an exposed wire in the back of her brain, begging her to touch it, begging her to get burned.
He’d tasted like sweat, and she’d liked it.
His brother had been killed by a leshy. He’d asked Vic to leave, and she’d agreed.
She’d woken up with a tightness in her chest—her own Pandora’s box of crushing feelings, which she tried, in vain, to force back inside.
“You may begin.”
On Vic’s table, a block of knotty petrified wood shattered in front of Sarah. Vic covered her face with her palm without looking up, and splinters bounced off her knuckles. Sarah sighed.
“Are you giving up, is that what’s happening?” Sarah asked.
“I’m not giving up.”
“You’re not even trying,” Sarah pointed out, picking up the ancient hunk of twisted volcanic rock in front of Vic and setting it on top of her notebook. “You’re doodling.”
Vic moved the jagged stone aside and eyed a crudely drawn manananggal. “I thought it looked pretty good.”
“Come on, Vic. What’s going on with you today?”
The classroom was noisy, full of students fumbling through spells aimed at breaking things. Bangs and crashes rattled in Vic’s ears and made her head hurt.
“Are you worried about your safety? Because May and I can—”
“I’m not scared,” Vic said. “I’m just thinking.”
“You can talk to me, you know,” Sarah said.
“Ms. Wood” came an obnoxious voice behind her, and Vic rolled her eyes as Nathaniel approached their table. He looked between the mottled form Vic was supposed to destroy and her drawing. “Still failing, I see.”
“Yep.” Vic smiled up at him.
“Elder Shepherd will be so disappointed. It seems he was wrong about you after all.” Nathaniel leaned in until he rested a hand on the table in front of Vic, his body hovering over her.
“Looks that way,” Vic said.
Sarah threw her a worried look, but Vic ignored it.
“Have your plans to stay in the castle changed at all?” Nathaniel’s voice dropped low, as if to avoid the recruits overhearing. Like they were discussing something private, soft and amicable, and not like he had tried, only days ago, to have her murdered.
“Does that bother you?” Vic asked. “That they’re my plans. That I leave your castle when I decide, and you can’t do a damn thing to make me?”
Anger twitched in his muddy eyes. “You have no claim to the secrets of this place,” he hissed.
Vic knew she shouldn’t provoke him, not when she believed he was the tie between Aren Mann’s Brotherhood and the Order.
She shouldn’t lean into the skid when he was so close to her and she was so overpowered here.
But she couldn’t stand the look in his eyes, and she refused to sit quietly while he insulted her.
“The mission of the Order has been to keep the realities of the world away from humans for centuries. Centuries, Ms. Wood. Do you have any idea how long that is? My family has been a part of that mission since the Order’s founding, and we have never, not once, allowed a human to enter our world the way you have. ”
“Some would call that progress,” Vic replied, though she wasn’t sure she believed it.
Dimly, she registered that the sounds of the classroom had quieted. The other recruits were listening.
“I’ve tried to puzzle it out,” he said. “But I can’t find rhyme or reason for why Elder Shepherd has taken a liking to your particular strain of human mediocrity.”
Nathaniel assessed Vic down the length of his nose, his eyes lingering on her chest.
“I can’t even imagine the allure he sees in you.”
Something awful lay beneath that stare. A virus meant to make her feel small. Nathaniel saw Vic as less than, worth only a small number of uses, and he assumed others saw her the same way.
“It sounds like your problem lies with other members of the Order,” Vic said. “You should take it up with them and leave me out of it.”
“How dare you—”
Vic looked away from him and focused on the shape in front of her.
Cold and hard now, though once the stone had been molten and wild.
Once, a long time ago, it ran red and hot and ruined everything it touched.
Vic could see the form of it now, layered and twisted, black and brittle where heat and gas had warped the shape of it.
She wondered if it missed running fast and dangerous.
Sarah jumped back from the table with a shout when the stone began to melt.
Not exploding, or shattering, or making any noisy display of power, the edges of the thing began to dissolve. It shone red and Vic blinked against the heat as the rock transformed back into the magma it used to be and melted through the table.
It made a searing sound as it hit the stone floor, and then that, too, began to melt.
Vic looked up at Nathaniel, who’d backed away from her.
“Does that count?” she asked.
Sarah grabbed Vic’s arm and pulled her away from the growing hole in the floor. Nathaniel stalked away from Vic without a word. The class erupted into chaos around them.
“How did you do that?” Sarah said.
Vic shrugged, staring at the burned black hole under the table. All she’d done was look at the stone. She was angry with Nathaniel, and she was staring at the stone, and was that all it took? Was she imagining it, or was the skin on her wrist beginning to burn?
Sarah tugged Vic into the hallway, and Vic caught the frightened eyes of several other students as they passed.
“We have a couple of hours until Sentinel training. We should talk to Max, see what’s going on.”
“I’m not going to Sentinel training,” Vic said.
“What?”
Vic hadn’t told Sarah about her exchange with Xan, and she wasn’t going to. She couldn’t begin to explain the way it had pulled her apart, left her open and raw. The feeling was new and frightening, and Vic imagined once again trying to shove a jar shut after its contents had fled.
“I have to go,” Vic said, pulling away. She marched down the hallway, leaving Sarah alone, staring after her.
—
A sprinkling of snowflakes landed on her eyelashes and she blinked. Vic sat on a carved marble bench beside a spanning elm. All its leaves had fallen, its branches crawling toward the ground like they sought comfort from the cold.
Vic tucked her hands under her knees and eyed the castle’s desolate courtyard. Frosted windows stared down at her on all sides, and gossamer sunlight filtered through the clouds. Vic’s footprints were the only mark upon the snow.
She’d come outside in search of solace, pulling on her borrowed coat and gloves before throwing open the castle doors and wandering out. She’d expected to find clarity outside, if the castle’s influence would wane enough to let her think.
But she’d sat on that bench, playing and replaying the questions in her mind, and she hadn’t found any fucking peace.
Though she hated to admit it, Vic wanted to belong here.
She wanted to sit down to a meal with Sarah and May and not feel hostile glances bouncing off her back.
She wanted Xan to look at her with something more than fear for her safety, and she wanted to be the kind of woman who could see her desires through without fear wrapping around her ankles, dragging her down.
Vic wanted to be powerful, the way the others were.
She wanted to feel at home, like she had finally arrived where she was always supposed to be.
But every time whatever power she might have reared its head, Vic flinched from it. It wasn’t hers, and she had long since lost control.
She hadn’t found closure in the castle. She hadn’t done anything but open doors she couldn’t walk through, find new questions she couldn’t answer.
“It’s freezing out here.”
Vic turned to see Max descending the steps into the courtyard, in a gray suit with a darker overcoat and his hands buried in his pockets. Snow fell on his hair. Though the dappling of white aged him, it made him look whimsical, less austere.
“How’s the arm?” he asked.