“Why not?”
She cocked her head to the side, like a bird of prey. “Because I can hear the blood in your veins, and I can taste the flavor of your magic on my tongue, and I could call them both to me in the space between one breath and the next.”
It took all the control Ian had not to step back, not flee like a fox before hounds. “Yes. Certainly. That makes sense. We’ll hold off on the touching.”
“Good night, Ian.” Sydney’s voice sounded like the heart of a dark forest, thick and rife with secrets.
The air shimmered green behind her as she walked through the broken room, through the stone wreckage of the magic it had held, and Ian felt fear drip cold down his spine.
? ? ?
Sydney stood, still in the black dress she had worn to the challenge, in the cold hall of the House of Shadows, holding secrets to herself, feeling them vine around her bones. There was, she realized, a smear of the magician’s blood dried on her hand. One more thing not to think about, not while she was here.
She had felt the summons as she walked home—like someone had lit a match to the ragged ends of her shadow. She had come immediately, hating every step that brought her here, knowing that waiting would make things worse and make it more difficult to keep things hidden from the House. There was so much she needed to keep hidden from the House.
About a month after she first got out of Shadows, she had tried to resist the summons back. She was out, she told herself, beyond the great doors. It wasn’t as if Shara could physically bring her back in, not with the spell that bound her to the island. She would wait, return when she was ready.
Even then she wasn’t quite foolish enough to consider ignoring the summons altogether.
And so she went about her day. And so, Shadows responded.
It began like an itch, crawling across her skin. Mild, an annoyance.
Then the sensation increased: insects—tens, hundreds, thousands of legs. By then Sydney realized what was happening and was determined to resist. If she just waited long enough, it would stop.
She held out for another half day, until her skin was swollen and bloody, covered in welts from things that she had never even seen, from terrors that had been conjured out of her head. Until she felt like she might claw her own skin from her body for relief.
Then she went to Shadows.
Shara had not ended the spell until she had finished talking to Sydney.
Sydney had never waited to answer a summons since.
Magic burned like a fever through Sydney’s blood as she stood in front of Shara. She was close, she could tell, to not being able to conceal its effects. It wouldn’t be the worst for Shara to discover she held it, but if the House didn’t know she held the extra power, then it couldn’t order her to use it, couldn’t add its weight to the tithe she owed to pay back a bargain she had never consented to. If the House didn’t learn about it, the magic might be only hers. She had been stronger than the House before—she would be in this as well. She let the fever burn.
“The House requires an explanation,” Shara said.
Sweat beaded at Sydney’s temples. Her heart was skipping beats that it found to be unnecessary. She wondered, idly, if the excess of magic she had absorbed would mean that trees would burst forth from her as well, that she might birth a forest spontaneously. She bit the insides of her mouth to keep from breaking out in laughter she had no desire to explain. When Shara gave no further clue, Sydney swallowed the potential consequence and asked: “An explanation of what?”
“Of your performance and standing in the Turning so far.”
Nonsense, then. Nothing that mattered. The parroting of information that Shara would have already known, the summons simply an excuse to remind Sydney that she was not—not yet—free. “Candidate House Beauchamps is currently ranked first in the standings. I am undefeated.”
“Due to—” Shara said, and smiled, slow and saccharine.
“Due to the training I received here.” A beat. Magic so hot in her hands Sydney had to restrain herself from glancing down to see if they were blistered. It had been a rather large amount of magic she had taken in. An entire season. Could magic be measured in seasons? Would a winter’s worth feel different—colder, perhaps, and more crystalline—than this heated spring blooming in her?
Shara’s voice jarred against her thoughts. “And which—”
“And which I am grateful for.” Sydney considered for a heartbeat, two, reaching out with her magic and stopping Shara’s heart. With Shara dead, she would be free, though free only of Shara, and the question of what would happen to Shadows as a place without its avatar was one she wasn’t ready to answer. Besides, it felt like there were fireflies in her blood, which was perhaps not the most optimal set of circumstances for casting death magic. She could wait.
“That will be all.” Shara handed her the knife and pen so that the contract could be signed once more. There were still-healing marks on Shara’s hands. Sydney recognized their patterns—a ritual for the extraction of magic. A ritual she herself had been forced to endure on more than one occasion.
There was no one in Shadows who could force Shara into anything.
“Are you well?” Sydney asked. “Those look painful.” Not because she cared—because she wanted Shara to know that she had seen.
“We all make sacrifices,” Shara said. But she pulled her hands away, hiding them.
There were dark green edges on the piece of shadow Sydney carved off herself. Shara said nothing. Perhaps she didn’t see them.
Sydney was magic-sick enough to call for a cab when she reached the edge of Central Park. She didn’t trust her feet to carry her home without incident. When they arrived at her building, she tipped the cabbie double the fare and then stripped his memory of her.
She made it into her apartment, locked the door behind her, and collapsed to the floor, lost in the dream of the forest, wrapped in the thick, green blanket of its magic.
? ? ?
Had the eyes of the Unseen World been turned to the Angel of the Waters that night, instead of to their own magics, then they might have seen a wonder.
Green and spring burst through the air, all out of season in the current month. Vines wreathed the statue. A small rain rippled across the water, and the scent of spring flowers—of lilacs and peonies and hyacinths—filled the air.
And then.
The howling of a storm, wind sending waves across the fountain, birds pulled from their flight as if they had been flung into the column of a tornado. As if there was something hungry, reaching, reaching.
And then.
A crack. Spring paused in its progress, then shattered like stone. The winds quiet, the air once more that of early winter.
Snow fell, delicately, through the darkness.
CHAPTER NINE