“You’re welcome to try to stop me,” Sydney said. “I almost wish you would.”
“Do what you came here for, then.”
It was easy. A word that snapped like a twig being stepped on, like the crack of ice on water. The final breaking of the magic a spark across Sydney’s skin. The remaining shadows fell, all but those cast naturally by the February day.
Shara shook once, hard.
“There,” Sydney said. “You have your life back. Go where you want; do what you please. Though you may want to do it quickly, because I doubt there’ll be much left here soon.”
“Is it that easy, to destroy your home?” Shara asked. “To turn your back on me? All I ever did was make you stronger. It’s because of me you are what you are.”
“This was never a home. And I made myself what I am.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Perhaps you’re confused,” Miles said. “But this is a challenge against House Prospero. You are not that House’s declared champion, and so you aren’t allowed to participate in the duel. As I’m sure you’re aware, interference can be grounds to have your magic stripped.”
Sydney stood in a room full of magicians, almost all of the remaining members of the Unseen World. She stood between two of them, Ian and Lara Merlin, her physical presence there preventing the duel from taking place. “I’m very aware. But I’m not here to participate in the duel. I’m here because the duel shouldn’t be happening in the first place. You have no right to hold your House, and therefore House Merlin has no standing to challenge House Prospero.”
Miles forced out a laugh, the sort of thing that was meant to show how unimportant her words were, the sort of thing that would have worked had it not been so anemic. Had his hand not gone to his pocket, as if to check for something, reassure himself it was there. “This is ridiculous. Explain yourself.”
“If you can’t hold magic, you can’t hold a House. And you have no magic.”
The whispers of the crowd now an ocean of noise. “You’re talking nonsense.”
“Prove me wrong.” Sydney held out a candle.
“This is absurd,” Merlin said. He shoved his way forward and lit the candle. “See?”
“I’m sorry,” Sydney said. “I meant light the candle without relying on any of the magic that you’ve spent years stealing from the Unseen World and collecting for yourself.”
“Like this?” Lara said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small glass jar, silver-bound and humming with magic.
“That cabinet was locked—” Merlin bit off his own words, but the damage was done.
“House Merlin forfeits the challenge,” Lara said clearly. “On the grounds that it was improperly made, by someone with no right to hold a House. As heir, I serve notice that I intend to petition for immediate removal of Miles Merlin, both from his position as Head of House and from the Unseen World.”
“House Prospero accepts your forfeit,” Ian said, and stepped off the dueling grounds, formally ending the challenge.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Miles said.
“We’re not quite finished here,” Sydney said.
The gathering of shadows nearest to Sydney thickened, solidified. Resolved into the shape of a woman. Grace Valentine stepped out of them.
Miles stepped back.
“Oh, don’t look surprised, Miles. That is what you sent me there to learn, isn’t it? How to be a Shadow? Wrapping ourselves in them, becoming one with silence and darkness and secrets, that’s one of the first spells we’re taught.
“Although, I suppose you didn’t actually send me there to learn.” She raised her hands, and her scars shone silver. “All I was supposed to do was give up my magic and die. And not even for the Unseen World. Just for you. To pay a debt, you said.”
Sydney stood at Grace’s shoulder. “Though not the usual debt, not the one each House here has agreed to, not the one that they pay. A personal debt—one you owed to Shadows so that you could modify the spell your family had created. So you could keep that power for yourself. Even then, even after you stole Grace and locked her away in there, it wasn’t enough. And now, not only is your power gone, but the spell is corrupted. Your actions caused the failures of magic.”
Lara spoke up. “Which is why, as interim Head of the Unseen World, I formally renounce its ties to the House of Shadows. The link that we thought was to our benefit has nearly been our undoing.” She followed her brother, the noise around them both a roar of whispers and disbelief.
“You can’t possibly prove that,” Miles blustered.
“I have become increasingly weary of people telling me what I can’t do.” Sydney raised her hands, fingers moving as if she were playing a game of cat’s cradle, weaving and unweaving through the air. Not yarn, but magic—strands of magic that burned in the air. A spider’s web, with Miles Merlin at its center, a center that was a gaping, hungry hole, a drowning place for power to disappear into, the opposite end of each strand connected to a magician in the room—to a member of the Unseen World who had agreed to the bargain with Shadows, whose House had paid the required sacrifice.
She dropped her hands, the magic disappearing with the motion.
“Eventually, what this means is that all of you will lose your magic. Each and every one of you who tied your magic to that of Shadows—to make it easier, to make it hurt less, to make it whatever it is you told yourself you were doing so you could sleep at night. Each of you will have your magic fail and fail and fail again.
“Or you could break from it, and I do mean break. I will undo the spells for you on the condition that Shadows—and anything like it—never happens again. Your choice.”
“That’s not quite their only choice.”
Grace went white with shock. “Shara.”
“Sydney did tell me that I could do anything I wanted now that I was free. This is what I want. What I’ve always wanted—power here, among you.”
As pale as a corpse that had clawed its way out of its tomb, hair tangled and dress tattered, Shara held power in her hands as she stood in the center of the room and spoke to the crowd. “I can undo my brother’s mess. Give everyone here back their power and the ease with which they used it. Give them even more, if they like—Shadows has always been held back in what it could be and do. Miles promised me a place in this world, and I am claiming it now.”
“No,” Sydney said. “You’re not.” She looked out over the crowd. Laurent met her eyes, and when she nodded, said: “Candidate House Beauchamps challenges the House of Shadows, the challenge to have immediate effect.”
“Oh, good,” Shara said. “I was so hoping.”