? ? ?
House Prospero closed its door behind her, the sound hollow in its emptiness.
It did not want to be empty. Its reason for existence was service of its family, and it had seen that family shrunk into—into this: empty hallways and closed doors, a fine film of dust settling like a veil. No life in it, no voices, no beating hearts.
It was hers, and she had gone.
It was lonely.
The House considered what it knew about the woman who had just left, what it had learned when she had placed her hands gently on its heart. When she had given it a piece of herself. It began reshaping itself in her image.
? ? ?
Sydney stopped a block from House Prospero. There it was: the familiar, hated feeling of the summons to Shadows itching beneath her skin. The cut edges of her shadow burned.
She had known the summons would come, as it always came. Known the question was when, not if. Knew, too, that there would be the same question through the rest of the Turning, through however long it might be before the House decided that she had earned her freedom.
Through when the House decided.
She was done letting the House of Shadows decide.
She clutched magic in her fists like lightning and stalked through the city like a storm.
On the shore of the reservoir, she lit the required matches. One. Two. Three. The magic just beneath her skin echoed their burning. She stepped into the boat, listening to the boards creak, the waves splash against its sides. Her eyes toward Shadows, looming larger in her field of vision. She focused until it was all she could see.
The boat shuddered against the shore, breaking into pieces. She stepped off. Shadows opened its doors.
Sydney did not walk through. She stood just outside the doors and loosed the magic she’d held tight in her hands. “I challenge the House!”
The House answered.
When it had been time for Sydney to leave Shadows, the testing had been rigorous. She had been required to perform a variety of spells—magics both subtle and complex—under adverse conditions. In cold and rain. Exhausted. Starving. In physical pain and mental anguish.
She had gotten out. She had won free. But she knew her magic, and she knew how close it had been—the moments that had been knife’s-edge balanced, that might have kept her inside.
Today was different. Today she was a hurricane.
Sydney cast magic that was an answer to everything she had ever endured behind these doors. She spoke words that cut through walls like knives and carved symbols of freedom on the foundations. She bent her hands into symbols of loosing and broke chains. She curled her fingers and sent windows shattering, letting light come in, shouting words of brightness until every corner was illuminated.
Until there were no shadows left.
She reached into the lines of magic that tied and wrapped like spiders’ webs, that offered peace and painlessness to magicians willing to send others to suffer. A word scissored through them, echoed by a wind that blew through Central Park like a storm, breaking branches, downing trees, and sending people running for shelter.
The Angel of the Waters rocked on its foundation, the stone lily crashing from its hand.
Sydney stole the sacrifices, the few that remained, transporting them to emergency rooms, fire stations. Places where unwanted children could be safely left.
It wasn’t enough to be free herself. She wanted no one else to ever be trapped again.
Sydney crooked her fingers, and the great doors cracked and fell from their hinges.
She walked through.
The air shifted as she crossed the threshold, and it was no longer Shadows trying to pull Sydney and her magic in, but the House desperately trying to stand against her. It twisted itself and changed its shape—moving hallways, throwing up walls, crumbling floors, but she kept walking.
As she walked, she cast magic of her own: freezing the House’s architecture in place, opening its doors, crumbling its foundations. Something rent and something screamed and Sydney raised her hands and the entire building trembled. Locks opened. Bars loosed. Shadows was a hell, and this was a harrowing.
Once more she reached. There, beating, was the heart of the House of Shadows. She took it in her hand.
“Enough!” Shara, trembling. Not with rage, with effort. Even now, her hand worked at her side, trying frantically to tie scraps of magic together, to prevent her House from falling. From dying.
“Enough,” she repeated. “Shadows agrees to release you from your contract.”
“I want to see it burn,” Sydney said. Not only her contract, but Shadows itself.
“That’s unnecessary—the word of the House is binding,” Shara said.
Sydney tightened her grip, and the heart of Shadows skipped a step in its beating.
“Fine.” Shara held up her hand, and the paper appeared in it, Sydney’s name written and written again in shifting darkness that was not ink at the bottom. She snapped her fingers, and it caught fire.
Sydney felt the chains that had bound her to Shadows break and pop and turn to ash as the paper burned. She pulled in a breath, and for the first time in her remembered life, it was fully, solely, hers.
“Are we finished here, you ungrateful brat?” Shara asked.
Sydney bent her fingers into one final piece of magic. The glass bottle that had held her shadow, the knife that had cut it, the pen that wrote, caught fire, burned. “We are.”
When the last flame died out, Sydney turned and walked out of Shadows.
She did not look back.
? ? ?
Shara stood in the wreckage of the House, her hands coated in ashes. She could feel the House’s crumbling inside her, like her own bones were loosening themselves from her tendons. Shadows was unmaking itself. Slowly now, but if unchecked, it would get worse. Her home was dying, and she would die with it. Because of course, of course, the one piece of magic Sydney had left fully intact was the spell that prevented Shara from leaving. There was a cruelty in her, and Shadows had taught her well how to use it.
Light shone through the rents Sydney had torn in the walls, and the magic—the magic that bound the sacrifices, that made everything—it was unraveling. Slowly now, but it would go faster, and then it would be gone. She stared at her hands, her scars showing in pieces through the ash, and wondered how she would ever get the power to rebuild. House Merlin had made the original spell, but Miles—she laughed, harsh and bitter—she doubted he had even noticed its falling. Even if he had, she knew better than anyone that he didn’t have the power to cast it anew.
The failures of magic would come hard and fast now. The look on Miles’ face—it wouldn’t be worth this, but she looked forward to seeing it. She looked forward to seeing him stand before her and beg. It was important to hold on to the little things.
Shara sat down in the ruins and laughed until the laughter tripped over into weeping.