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I t took a challenging quarter of an hour to dredge the spell jar from Saoirse’s body.

She found the process uncomfortable and harrowing, a far cry from Emery’s experience. He did his best to reassure her until, finally, Ambrose’s hand emerged with the quartz grasped tightly in his fist, magic dripping gorily from his arm.

Now they just had to convince the other initiates …

Saoirse wanted to speak to Hellebore alone.

It seemed the safest way to approach her, but the others posed a problem.

Emery didn’t like the idea of opening his home to anyone but Saoirse.

He didn’t trust them not to reveal everything to Morcant rather than cooperate, and they’d never enter another secrecy pact after the last.

What’s more, what did it matter if they had all the spell jars, if not the means to destroy them?

It was from the seed of this last problem that a plan was sown.

The tomb where it all began seemed the best place for it all to end.

They met Saoirse outside, on the dewy green of the necropolis, surrounded by gravestones. She rubbed her fingers together and whispered to them through chattering teeth, a mix of cold and fear making her shiver. “Hellebore isn’t here,” she said.

Of course, not everything could go right.

“Where is she?” Emery said.

“I don’t know. I’ve called and called, but she hasn’t answered.” She rubbed her arms to ward away the chill. “I’m scared he’s done something to her.”

Ambrose exchanged a look with Emery. If Morcant suspected they knew about the spell jars, he might have hidden Hellebore away in order to protect her own.

To finish this tonight, they needed her.

“Should we delay to search for her?” Ambrose asked.

Emery shook his head. “It will give Morcant more time to mount a defense against us. We have the chance to weaken him now. We should take it.”

Saoirse said, “What if she’s hurt?”

“He needs her alive and well to protect the spell jar she carries. If we destroy all but one, he’s that closer to dead. It will weaken him,” Emery insisted. “Which makes all of us safer, including Hellebore.”

Saoirse sucked her lips between her teeth and nodded. “I just hope she’s all right.”

“You remember how to cast the spell I taught you?” Emery said.

Saoirse opened her glove to show them the bloody handful of nettles she carried. “ I’m not the senile one between us.”

Emery smiled. “That’s the spirit.”

Entering the tomb, Ambrose thought he might have felt anxious. Instead, a meditative calm kept his breaths even, his senses alert. It was the same state of mind he’d entered before battles with the witch king, as natural as donning armor.

Of all the battles he’d fought, this one was most important he win.

They descended the steps halfway. From there, Saoirse went alone.

Distantly, the murmurs of the guild hushed at her arrival. Morcant’s resonant welcome echoed eerily up the stairs, but even whispers carried in the cavernous tomb.

So the meaty thunk of a body hitting stone carried just as well.

“Where’s Hellebore?” Saoirse shouted, her words a cacophonous din through the catacombs.

Morcant might have hidden Hellebore to protect her, but he hadn’t foreseen how protective Saoirse would be of her friend. She wasted no time in enacting their plan.

Ambrose and Emery took their cue, running the rest of the way down the stairs.

Morcant’s voice came wet and muffled, speaking through a bloody nose. “Ah, Saoirse. Your decorum today is so very ladyli— Ungh !”

“Where is she?”

They arrived in time to see Saoirse’s fist catch Morcant in the jaw, followed by gasps and a scream from the initiates.

She’d used the spell they’d learned from the witch king to bind Morcant to the floor, shadowy magic encircling his neck, wrists, and ankles.

His water deer was similarly held down by the neck, its hooves scraping against the stone.

Morcant could not cast spells. He could not move.

“Why you—” Morcant whipped his head up to glare at Saoirse, his nose bleeding freely. At the sight of Emery and Ambrose rushing in, his gaze narrowed. “Ah, I see. They’ve recruited you, have they?”

Emery swiped a tithe of salt water and spit before crossing the threshold to dispel any waiting sigils or traps. Saoirse stood over Morcant, her knuckles bloodied to match his nose. The initiates backed against the far wall, shocked speechless.

One of the new apprentices, Iris, shouted, “What is happening?”

“What is he doing back here?” another said, pointing at Emery.

“Yes, why don’t you enlighten them?” Morcant said. “I’m sure they’re eager to hear of your many attempts to murder me in cold bl—”

His voice cut short, slapped silent by Saoirse’s open palm. “Explanations can come later. First, tell me where Hellebore is. I won’t ask again.”

There was a glint of mockery in Morcant’s smirk. “If you insist. Hellebore, come say hello to your friend .”

His whistle in the echoing tomb split the air painfully. Ambrose’s skin prickled with goose flesh. Some world-weary soldier’s instinct told him they should have gagged Morcant and executed the plan without Hellebore.

But the corpse door already rumbled aside.

The tomb beyond was dark as ever. The initiates had gone still and silent as scared rabbits.

Saoirse approached the door, calling, “Hellebore?”

“Hello, Saoirse,” said a voice from within, tremulous and angry. “Run.”

“Hellebore,” Morcant said, “ restrain these upstarts .”

Saoirse didn’t move quickly enough. A figure burst from the tomb. The candlelight stripped the darkness from her. Hellebore, her makeup smeared, her hair stuck to her forehead under a hooded cloak, moved with supernatural speed. She rushed to her friend and seized her by the wrists.

“I said, run .”

“Hellebore, what are you doing ? Stop! ” Saoirse screamed hoarsely.

Ambrose’s heart dropped. He thought he understood, though he wanted badly to be wrong.

Saoirse wrenched her arms away. Hellebore cast a spell like the one she’d used to bind Emery the night she nearly killed him. Ropes coiled like snakes around Saoirse’s wrists and torso. In the ensuing struggle, the hood of Hellebore’s cloak fell back.

There was a circle of runes around her neck, glowing sickly green.

Saoirse, bound and uncomprehending, did not react in time. The enchanted ropes tied her so tightly she collapsed to her knees, skinning them on the stone floor.

She may not have had time to react, but Ambrose did.

“ Deal with the others ,” Morcant ordered, just before Emery cast a spell to gag him.

Ambrose caught Hellebore’s arm and twisted. He didn’t see what she drew from her cloak in her free hand—only the glint of steel right before she lashed out blindly, burying a blade in his shoulder.

Emery turned just in time to see. “Ambrose!”

Pain registered through the adrenaline, but Ambrose had weathered worse, and a shoulder wound was mercifully easier to fight with than if she’d struck anywhere vital.

He hooked an arm around her neck and squeezed.

She fought, scoring his flesh with her nails because the collar compelled her to.

But he sensed her desire to succumb. To let him squeeze and squeeze until unconsciousness took her.

Her energy drained like blood from a poisoned wound, she went limp, and Ambrose lowered her to the floor.

Saoirse, still on grazed knees, looked at her fallen friend with tears in her eyes. “Is she—?”

“Alive, but unconscious,” Ambrose grunted.

“Why did she—What is that around her neck?”

“It’s a compulsion collar,” Ambrose said gravely. “Like mine. It forces her to follow Morcant’s commands. He couldn’t manage it on Emery, so he put it on her instead.”

This news rippled through the initiates, horror tinging their hushed whispers. Emery rushed to Ambrose’s side at once, hands hovering over the dagger’s hilt.

“Tell me what to do.” He started rifling through his belt for healing tithes.

“I’m fine. Restrain Hellebore before she wakes up.”

“You’ve been stabbed .”

“I’ve come back from worse.”

Emery made a noise of frustration, but he did as requested, binding Hellebore with spell chains to match Morcant’s.

Ambrose tested his grip around the dagger’s hilt, estimating just how much pain he’d be in. Emery pulled crushed petals and dried snake skins from his tithe belt, the latter turning his palm cool white. He pressed it around the wound, the numbing anesthetic seeping through.

It helped, but it still didn’t feel good to wrench the dagger free. Emery quickly applied the petals to the gout of blood, magic turning them to sutures, knitting flesh until the flow staunched.

“Are you—?”

“I’m fine now,” Ambrose assured him.

Though they exchanged no affectionate gesture—now wasn’t the time—there was something tender enough in the way Emery tended his wounds that it made the initiates whisper more intensely.

Who is he? What have they done to Professor Van Moor? What did he do to Hellebore?

Emery took Hellebore’s dagger from where it had clattered to the floor and used it to cut Saoirse free.

She kneeled to check on Hellebore, Morcant watching the exchange with a silently murderous stare.

He could neither speak, move, nor cast magic, but they’d be fools to consider him harmless.

If beheading him right away were an option, Ambrose would opt for it, but they needed the initiates to cooperate, and they weren’t liable to after witnessing his murder with nary an explanation.

Ambrose had expected a fight when they confronted him. Ambrose knew how to fight. He knew how to weather an injury. Familiarity and experience went a long way to making a knife wound feel like the easy part.

Now, the time had come for explanations, and he found he was more afraid of the initiate’s responses than of any hidden dagger.

He had to recall, they were as he had been—convinced of their abuser’s good intentions. Convinced they deserved whatever punishment he wrought.

“Can any of you tell us what the hell is going on?” Windsor demanded.