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D awn light crept through the trees, and the fire had burnt to ash by the time Emery and Ambrose returned to the ruined chapel to sleep.

Inside, Emery traipsed to the fireplace, leaning over to assess the scattered wine bottles in search of one that wasn’t empty.

He shook one, which sloshed fortuitously.

He uncorked it, sank into an armchair, and took a long swig.

The knot in his throat bobbed thrice. With his other hand, he fished a coin from his pocket and began rolling it across his knuckles in a neat bit of sleight of hand.

Ambrose, having already dropped invisibility, stood warily nearby. In his experience, not much good came from imbibing too much alcohol. He hoped Emery wasn’t a mean drunk.

“Sit,” said Emery.

Ambrose took his seat gingerly on the sofa opposite.

Emery lounged, one leg up, knee cocked, a slim wrist draped over the chair arm so he could stroke Katzica’s ear. “So, you’ve met him now.” He balanced the wine bottle on his knee and tipped it by the neck with one finger on the spout. “Morcant Van Moor. What do you think of him?”

Ambrose reviewed his brief encounter. Morcant put forward the impression of a nurturing, attentive teacher, passionate about his magical specialties and the need to pass it on to his pupils. He also seemed to harbor admiration for the witch king, something which did him credit in Ambrose’s view.

However, the pact he employed with his initiates would kill them if they ever broke it. He didn’t know why such lengths should be necessary to ensure their secrecy. They’d all submitted to the guild’s terms willingly.

“It is difficult to say based on such a brief encounter,” Ambrose answered earnestly. “My first impression was neither favorable nor unfavorable.”

“That’s all?”

Ambrose wasn’t sure what Emery wanted from him. “The pact he employs to ensure your secrecy is quite extreme.”

Emery’s eyes glowed with the embers of the fire. With a flick of his wrist, he dispensed something from his tithe pouch, and the flames roared alive again. Ambrose didn’t recoil, but he wanted to.

“You probably think us all idiots for making the vow of secrecy in the first place,” Emery said. “Though I suppose you’re in no position to judge.”

Ambrose bristled at the comparison. He had sworn fealty to a king who promised to make the world better. A king he’d adored.

The witch king’s voice was like a calming hand on the nape of his neck. Do not give in to ire too easily. We cannot afford to alienate him just yet.

“I had wondered how he earned your trust,” Ambrose said.

“That’s gracious of you.” Emery cast him a suspicious glance, perhaps weighing Ambrose’s answer with his body language to glean whether the grace was genuine. Ambrose’s curiosity was earnest. Besides the voice in his head, he had nothing to hide.

“He was kind, in the beginning.” Emery’s gaze drifted to the fire, so that he seemed to stare into a realm unseen. Distantly, he added, “And I was gullible enough to believe his charade.”

“You’re saying the face he puts forward isn’t genuine?”

Emery huffed. “Far from it. I said I’d explain everything to you. It’s not the sort of story best told sober, or to sober company. Want a drink?”

Best not to lower your guard near him.

Ambrose had never imbibed in the past. He couldn’t risk impairment with the witch king’s life in his hands.

“Suit yourself,” said Emery. “Morcant Van Moor approached me in my first year. I was top of his class at the time, in contest with Hellebore, who hated me already. He styled himself as a supportive, encouraging mentor back then. He still does, to the students he’s interested in.

Only after I’d made the vow of secrecy did the mask start to drop.

“It’s … difficult to recount. The petty things are what started it.

He’d belittle my progress. If I made a mistake, he’d say things like, ‘If you spent half as much time practicing spellcraft as you did with your nose in those tawdry novels you might make a decent necromancer.’ When he offered compliments, they usually had an underhanded meaning.

“So I devoted all my time to practicing. I could execute a spell perfectly, and a difficult one way above my level, and do you know what he’d say then?

” Emery sat straighter, the liquid in his half-drunk wine bottle sloshing.

He took on an imperious tone and posture to say in Morcant’s vacant drawl, “ I guess that will do .”

Slumping back into the chair, Emery paused, giving Ambrose another assessing look while he sipped his wine.

“The first time I spoke back to him, he hexed me so that every bite of food I ate for a week smelled and tasted like rotten eggs. He told me that if I’d been an adept-enough witch to cast the counter spell, I needn’t have suffered at all.

I did try, but it wasn’t an ordinary hex.

All the conventional means weren’t working.

And I was casting them correctly. I was. ”

He said it as if to convince himself. Ambrose didn’t know Emery well, but he’d managed a true resurrection spell, something only a skilled enchanter could accomplish. Morcant had sown a seed of doubt, and it had taken root.

Emery continued, “I wanted out. But Morcant made it very clear: This wasn’t the sort of guild I could walk away from. The secrecy pact kept my mouth shut, so I tried to find a way to expose Morcant to the other faculty.”

That hadn’t been wise, but Ambrose didn’t say so.

“Most of them think the sun shines out his arsehole,” Emery spat.

“He runs charities, rubs elbows with the higher administration, always remembers their birthdays and gets them something nice, that sort of thing. But there was one professor—Professor Valenti. He was the only one who asked questions. Why I wasn’t sleeping well.

Why I was excelling in all of my classes except Van Moor’s.

I think he suspected something. He’d tell me, ‘If there’s anything wrong, you should come forward.

’ He wasn’t taken in by Morcant’s bullshit like the rest of us, so I figured, I can’t tell him.

Not with the secrecy pact. But what if I showed him? ”

Emery delivered his recollections with an air of telling some sordid story that had nothing to do with him.

Ambrose privately thought that, while Morcant’s pact was questionable, the punishments Emery outlined were hardly the worst things he could imagine.

This sort of discipline and criticism were necessary to improvement.

He’d suffered worse in his own education.

He certainly wouldn’t be able to discuss them as if they were idle gossip.

“He got Professor Valenti fired,” Emery said.

“Morcant sent e-mails from my address, making it look as though we had some sort of inappropriate relationship for a student and professor. Valenti won’t— can’t speak to me.

Probably thinks the whole thing was my doing.

Rumor spread it was me, so of course, the rest of the faculty keep their distance, too.

No one wants to risk the same by association.

“Things spiraled after that. I drank myself stupid most days. Started failing classes. Hellebore was true to her name and made my life hell. With pranks, mostly. A spell so that my dorm always smelled like the inside of a gym bag or my bedsheets always itched. I’d retaliate, and Morcant would intervene.

Usually taking her side. I couldn’t adequately ward the place because it’s technically a publicly held property, so I moved here to get away from it.

He failed me on papers I should have got better than passing grades on.

He took control of my bank account and gives me a monthly allowance.

Enough to buy what I need for school and to stay alive, but never escape.

He runs surveillance on my Alakagram account.

Any avenue through which I could escape or weasel around the secrecy pact to ask for help, he’s cut me off from. ”

Ambrose frowned. He didn’t know what a “bank account” or “Alakagram” were, but he got the point. Emery didn’t need an arcane collar to be compelled. Morcant had seized control of his life.

He said, “How?”

Emery, who had been leaning back against his chair to stare at the ceiling, lolled drunkenly forward to look at Ambrose. “How?”

“How did he take control from you?”

“Everything’s digital nowadays,” Emery said, holding aloft his mobile phone. “He only needed the password. Which I gave him.”

“Why?”

Emery’s demeanor shifted subtly. Though he could say the rest as if drunkenly rambling about a stranger’s life and not his own, this part he sobered for. It raised more of Ambrose’s suspicions.

“He has leverage over me,” Emery said. “The details don’t matter, but if I don’t do what he says, he’s got the power to put me in prison.”

Ambrose thought that a very convenient detail to withhold. Whatever leverage Morcant had, it must be a powerful motivator for Emery to relinquish so much control.

What’s more, Emery had drunk the contents of that bottle over the course of a short period.

A man who’d locked himself in his bedroom because he didn’t trust Ambrose didn’t seem the type to imperil himself by drinking and lowering his defenses.

While he slouched and mimed the movements of someone partially impaired, he continued idly rolling the coin across his knuckles, occasionally vanishing it up his sleeve.

Great manual dexterity for a drunk. Ambrose suspected he was stone cold sober.

Perhaps it was all a performance to throw Ambrose off, but he suspected there was more Emery didn’t want him to know.

The story he told painted a clearer picture than Ambrose had twenty-four hours prior, but didn’t illuminate how he was meant to help.

“What do you need from me?”

“At first, I thought I could hold out until graduation,” Emery said.

“Just another year, then I can get the hell out. Move down south or to another country, even. But I eavesdropped on him telling Hellebore he plans on moving to another school, or another institution entirely. Somewhere he can continue the guild with lower risk of getting caught. And I have no intention of letting him take me.”

“So you don’t only require my services to protect you. You want me to help you escape,” Ambrose said.

“Escape?” Emery chuckled. “No. I thought you’d caught on by now.”

Ambrose waited.

“I wasn’t lying to them in that tomb,” Emery said. “I want them dead, and I want you to help me.”