I joined him, shooting fire into the monster’s face, and Rook shied away, hurrying back to the shadows.
Together, we drove the monster into the main hall with waves of flame. Rook curled in on himself, darkness flowing over his body like a cape of protection. He grew larger, more monstrous—the new shadow and fog. But he did not know how to control it, and he shriveled in the face of our assault.
We were going to kill him.
“Stop!” I shouted, trying to push through to Rook. He roared in pain, leaping into the air.
Someone screamed at the corner of the room, by the staircase—Eliza. God, she hadn’t left with the other women. She gaped up at the beast, her face white with terror. The sorcerers were all caught off guard by her cries. With shadows bristling on his spine, Rook roared toward her.
Someone threw herself before Eliza.
“Run!” Fanny shouted, her body protecting the girl.
Rook dragged Fanny to the floor as Eliza escaped. Fanny’s legs kicked wildly as he buried his fangs in her white neck, and I could have sworn I heard the smallest, most sickening crunch. He began tearing and thrashing like a dog shaking the life out of a rat. Even in the near darkness, I could see the blood gush onto the floor. Fanny stopped striking at Rook. I attacked him then, blindly, because I knew that it wouldn’t hurt Fanny. Horrified, I knew she was beyond all that now.
And I heard Magnus’s wail.
The sound was agony itself. He charged into battle with a mass of fire at his fingertips. Rook leaped off Fanny and snarled, his mouth dripping with rich, dark blood. Magnus launched fire, strengthening it with wind, and all the others joined him. The onslaught sent Rook crawling across the floor like an animal. Magnus moved to shield his mother’s body, his face illuminated, his eyes frenzied.
The front door blasted off its hinges with a squeal of metal. Splinters of wood rained onto the floor. Dark figures in the doorway surged forward, cackling gleefully. Too fast to make a sound, several sorcerers fell, blood gushing from their necks.
“Kill them!” someone roared.
We opened fire on the shadow Familiars, catching two, three, five of them. But there were so many. Two landed on either side of Rook—of what had once been Rook—and lifted him high up into the air.
“Little lady sorcerer,” one of the Familiars cackled. I knew it was Gwen. “The bloody king has claimed what is his. You should have gone to him!”
Shoving forward, I exploded in fire, a searing column that took out a group of Familiars. They tumbled to the ground, crisping as I went after Gwen while she laughed and laughed. The men about me shouted to stop—I was going to take the damn house down with me.
There was enough reason in me left to know they were right. The column disappeared, and the room around me was all smoke and darkness and death again.
Gwen and the remaining Familiars flew back out the door with Rook between them, leaping over the threshold and up into the night sky.
I ran alongside the other sorcerers, though I was barely conscious of what I was doing. Pouring outside, we discovered the Familiars and Rook had vanished utterly. The night sky was clear.
Amid the screams and shouts of terror from the guests, Blackwood was shaking me, saying my name. I could barely hear anything, couldn’t feel anything.
Until I went back inside the house and found Magnus sitting on the floor, his mother’s body cradled in his arms. The candles and lanterns had flickered back to life, illuminating the garish scene. Crimson blood had spattered everywhere, most of it pooling in the center of the room. People had tracked through the gore, leaving red footprints in wild zigzags. Five sorcerer bodies lay upon the tile, gazing vacantly at the ceiling. The ashed corpses of Familiars littered the staircase. Magnus rocked Fanny back and forth, sobbing into her hair. She looked so small now, so fragile. Eliza clutched the banister, weeping openly. Her and Magnus’s cries blended in gruesome harmony.
My legs gave out, and I slumped to the floor. I was useless to them, as useless as I was cruel.
Cruel and useless: the Howel family motto.
Sorcerer funerals are held as soon as possible. The magic of the earth clamors for its own, so they say. A day after they had taken Fanny’s body from her son, washed her, tended the horrible gashes in her neck, and dressed her in her best black gown, we were at the churchyard saying goodbye. The men who had fallen last night would have a grander ceremony tomorrow, with the queen’s blessing. It was a miserable morning, the sky an oppressive gray and the air thick with bone-chilling mist. Rain would have at least been something.
Blackwood, Eliza, and I listened to the minister’s promise of everlasting life. Eliza crushed a handkerchief and wept as the final blessings were said over the casket. Then, one by one, the mourners left, stealing away as awkwardly as dinner guests who’ve overstayed their welcome. The undertakers lifted Fanny’s shrouded body from the coffin. Sorcerers were never buried in wooden boxes—caskets were for the funeral service. A sorcerer was wrapped in black silk, head to toe, and placed directly into the ground, to be absorbed by the earth that much faster. Though Fanny had never had a sorcerer’s powers nor wielded a stave, she had been a sorcerer’s daughter and had given birth to a sorcerer son.
I thought about the laughing, happy woman I had met only a few weeks earlier. I could not understand how such a lady now lay under the earth, her body called back into the dirt and the darkness. I thought of the way she’d greeted me when I’d come into her home that first time, as though I were already a friend. As though she could trust me.
Even in my numb state, tears began to fill my eyes. I had allowed Rook to transform and damn himself with her murder. I whimpered so softly only Blackwood noticed.
Magnus stood by the grave’s edge, his face pale against his mourning clothes. I had never seen him in black before. His rich auburn hair stood out starkly against his bleak garments and the gray of the day. He dropped the first handful of dirt onto the body, then stayed staring into the grave. There was no flicker of life in his face.
“We’ll stop by the house to pay our respects,” Blackwood murmured to Eliza. “Since you are his fiancée.”
He didn’t have to say it so cruelly, I thought.
At the house, black-garbed sorcerers moved silent as shadows. Only the occasional hushed whisper, or the creak of a floorboard, indicated that anyone walked these rooms at all. Sheets had been hung over all the mirrors. On the dining room table, someone had laid out a circle of candles. They were all lit, save one in the very center.
“The unlit candle signifies the sorcerer’s extinguished life.” Blackwood stood beside me in the doorway and spoke low. “After sunset, they’ll light it and leave it burning the entire night. It’s to represent her soul as she moves from this world to the next.”
In the parlor, Eliza was sitting beside Magnus, her cheeks stained from crying as she spoke to him gently. He was hunched over with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
Eventually, people drifted out the door. The house grew even quieter, until there was only the ticking of a clock and the muffled sobs of Polly in the kitchen. I looked in to find her sitting down, her apron over her face, wailing bitterly. Through the front window, I saw Dee standing by the side of the house, near a cherry tree. He was leaning his forehead against the trunk and biting on his fist. He would not share his tears with anyone.
I wanted to go to them and offer what comfort I could, but it was as if my voice had been stolen away. The words would not come.
Returning to the parlor, I watched Blackwood collect his sister. They went to gather their hats and cloaks while I sat with Magnus for a moment.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, finding my voice at last.
It seemed he had not heard me. Then he said, “I could’ve seen them all safely outside, but I had to go back. I wanted to see what all the excitement was about.” He laughed bitterly.