Chapter Twenty-Eight
Katherine was done trying to do the right thing.
Evidence, procedure, proof … What did any of that matter?
She knew what happened to Lily, and she was going to do something about it.
That’s what she’d done with Silas, right? She’d been telling herself that for the whole ride over—that he deserved it. That she was telling him the truth. That she was making him pay for the sins of his awful family.
But that was a lie.
The only thing she’d been making him pay for was her own guilt.
That was who she was. That was what she brought to the world. She might as well turn that cruelty on someone who actually deserved it—the man she was sure was responsible for Lily’s death.
Katherine cut into her hand, a blue rune lighting up on her palm as she turned the wood of the door in front of her to ash.
Byron Chambers lived in a bougie building in Century City, in an apartment that was exactly what she would have expected from him—expensive, pristine, and utterly tasteless. He was sitting on a wide sectional when she entered, football playing on the too-large flat-screen mounted on the wall.
He turned to her, his eyes showing no fear. Only amusement. “Katherine,” he said. “Twice in one week. I’m starting to think you have a thing for me.”
Her fists clenched. “Admit it.”
He stood, a smile ghosting over his face as he paced toward her. “I have nothing to admit, Katherine. I’m just an honest, trustworthy member of a coven you swore to uphold the laws of. Laws that do not include breaking into my apartment.”
“Where is the cauldron?”
“Are you okay?” He took a step closer, leaning in and resting his hand on her cheek. “I’m worried about you. This is bordering on delusional.”
Katherine couldn’t help it. She grabbed his wrist and wrenched his hand off her.
He laughed. And then he slammed her head into the wall.
The pain was instantaneous, a sudden headache splitting her apart. Blood trickled down her temple as she stumbled back.
She hadn’t been prepared for the physical violence of it. She’d been expecting a magical attack. But in magic, they’d be on equal footing. With his fists, she was just another woman trying to fight off a man twice her size.
Well, she could do that too.
She whirled at him and slammed her knuckles into his face.
He had the nerve to grin at her, red staining his teeth. “I had a feeling you’d be a hellcat.”
That snapped something in her, and then she was on him, fists and nails and teeth.
He was stronger than her, but it didn’t matter—she had rage.
He threw her body into the counter of his kitchen island, and she was up in seconds, clawing at his face.
He yanked at her hair, and she let him tear a chunk of it out as she kneed him in the balls.
He grabbed her shoulders, his fingers digging in until she heard bones creak, and she slammed her head into his so hard she saw stars.
Pain didn’t exist in this space. All that existed was him, and her desire to pound him into the fucking ground.
She aimed a punch at his stomach, but he ducked back, then surged forward, shoving her away from him. Her back hit the glass of his coffee table, which smashed to the ground beneath her. And then Byron was there, his body on top of her, pushing her further into the glass until she screamed.
She grabbed a piece of it and stabbed it into his bicep.
He let out a feral howl as he rolled off her, and she moved quickly, slamming her body on top of his, pinning his hands with her knees as she grabbed another shard of glass and held it against his throat.
“Admit it.”
Byron said nothing. She pressed the glass into his neck, drawing a prick of blood.
“Admit it,” she repeated, digging the glass in harder as he moaned in pain.
“Fine!” he yelled. “Fine, okay? I’ve been making the altum.”
Katherine kept the pressure on the glass, ignoring the sting of it cutting into her fingers from her tight grip.
“You sold it to her.”
“I sold it to a lot of people!”
Katherine gripped the glass tighter, drops of her blood dripping onto the carpet, mixing with Byron’s.
“You sold it to Lily.”
Byron’s brow furrowed. “Who the hell is Lily?”
“The unsettled witch from the coven meeting. You sold her drugs, and then she snapped, and she—”
Katherine’s voice fell off as she took in Byron’s bloodied face. He looked … confused. Like he genuinely had no idea what she was talking about.
Because he didn’t sell the drugs to Lily. No one did. Lily snapped, just like Sylvia said.
Oh god, oh god, oh god.
The glass clattered to the floor. Katherine pushed herself up, her body a distant thing.
Her vision finally cleared enough for her to see what they had done to the apartment—it was destroyed, blood and glass and mistakes everywhere.
Byron lay there, his hand on his neck, his breathing heavy with pain.
She was Aestas’ Executrix. Charged with upholding the laws of the coven. Being fair. Just.
This … this was none of those things.
She walked toward the door. Byron made a half-hearted attempt to follow her, but he couldn’t manage to stand.
She forced herself to leave. To walk out without looking back. To walk away from a mistake that she’d never be able to leave behind.
What the hell had she done?
There were people screaming at him to stop, but Silas ignored them.
He’d gone straight from the hotel to Libertad’s headquarters at El Sereno Coffee.
The home of Niles’ coven was closed, but that didn’t matter—one cut and he’d blasted the lock off the door.
There was a teen behind the counter restocking cups who made a move to stop him, but Silas froze him in his tracks before the boy even had a chance to light up a rune.
He blasted through the paltry wards on their spell library with a spell no one outside of Noctis even knew existed.
Libertad’s spell library was tiny—a converted storage closet, with one thin tome sitting on a folding table in the center. It couldn’t have held more than a few dozen spells. Less than the spellbook that sat in his pocket.
This was all Libertad had.
Silas pulled his caster out of his pocket.
He briefly registered a banging on the door behind him, but he didn’t turn. There was no way anyone could get past the block he set up. No way they could even begin to challenge him.
His spells were simply better. Nothing to do with him, or his magic. Just with the things he had been handed.
Katherine was right about him. Niles was right about him.
He was a puppet in his parents’ games.
So he’d play his part. Do what he’d been told to do since the day he arrived here.
He cut into his palm. Pulled the small spellbook out of his pocket and pressed his bloody hand to it. Felt the spell zip up into him, suffusing his body with power.
And then he pressed his palm to Libertad’s spellbook and set it on fire.
The heat of it singed his skin, reminding him of the hotel fire. It felt so long ago, despite the fact that his lungs still burned from smoke inhalation. A different world, one where he thought he might be able to get people on his side. Where he thought he might deserve to have an ally.
All of that had burned away in that fire. In the fight he and Katherine had after.
He pressed his palm harder into the book and thought of flame. Thought of the heat coming under that door and the fear that he was going to die.
The screaming outside continued.
And the book burned.
It hurt, this spell. He hadn’t realized it would, the first time he used it.
It was at a coven in Dallas, an offshoot made up of a dozen children from rich, magical families who decided that they didn’t want to have to follow someone else’s rules anymore.
Silas felt so righteous when he went, so sure of what he was doing—which was why his parents had chosen that coven to send him to.
They knew he’d need that justification the first time he was subjected to this.
He’d done it dozens of times since.
A spellbook was made out of a life of magic, sacrificed to benefit the greater good. Destroying it meant ripping that sacrifice to shreds. Ripping that life to shreds.
The magic that had scented the air of acid pressed on him, sizzled along his skin, slashed at him with imaginary knives. He gritted his teeth, forced his hand harder on the book, and it burned, and burned, and burned.
This should hurt.
And it did. It hurt like splashes of hot oil, like acid in his veins, like each of his bones snapping one by one.
Until, suddenly, it was over.
The power gone. The spellbook left in shreds before him.
Years of work destroyed in minutes. A sacrifice on a level he couldn’t comprehend, ruined. By him.
The voices crowding outside the door came in clearer now. Silas turned, meeting Niles’ furious gaze through the small window at the top of the door. He was warned, Silas reminded himself. Warned, again and again, that this is what would happen if he kept refusing Noctis’ summons.
That didn’t make it right.
Spellbooks were the beating heart of a coven, and he had gripped theirs in his hand and squeezed until it popped.
Silas walked to the door and pulled it open. He knew what was going to happen, but he didn’t bother trying to block the punch that Niles leveled at his face. The blow landed hard against his right cheekbone, and he grunted as he absorbed the pain.
“What the hell have you done?” Niles grabbed Silas’ shirt, using it to push him up against the wall. Silas let this happen too, but when Niles’ fist cocked again, he threw up a protection spell on instinct, repelling the man away from him as Silas was encased in a bubble of gold magic.
Niles’ mouth twisted in disgust. “God, you’re a coward.”
Silas didn’t deny it. Niles turned away, walking into the spell library, surveying the destruction.
“I’m sorry,” Silas said. He couldn’t think of anything that encompassed the soul-crushing guilt he felt, so he repeated those empty words a few more times, hoping that they could become something more with repetition.
“You…” Niles stopped, slamming his hand down on the table where his spellbook had sat. “Your fucking system. Who says that you get to control everything? Who gave you that right?”
Silas could quote the exact section of the Noctis handbook that gave him the right.
He could list the rules, tell Niles exactly how he’d violated them, how he’d brought this upon himself.
His whole life, he’d been told to follow those rules.
To hold them in the highest regard. To think of them not just as a duty, but as something fundamental to the way in which the world had to work to keep them all safe.
Standing here, in a literal bubble of his own privilege, watching years of work ripped apart in moments … he didn’t see how the rules mattered at all. He couldn’t see how this was preventing harm, when it seemed like all it did was cause it.
“No one.”
Niles huffed, then stormed out of the room and pointed to the front door. “Get the hell out. Before I do something I regret.”
Silas slunk out. He wasn’t brave enough to drop the protection spell until he was out on the street.