Page 11

Seven

The evening of the selection ceremony, Lydia washed and dressed, and arranged her glamour to mask the dark circles under her eyes.

The gown she chose was the most subdued in her collection—a high-necked sheath of black silk, with a long row of onyx buttons down the back.

As she looked at herself in the mirror, it occurred to her that even in her full glamour, she didn’t look quite the same as she had just two weeks prior.

It was as if someone had drained just a little bit of the color from her face, and no amount of clever magic would ever bring it back.

Lydia and Sybil had been hard at work campaigning, enduring simpering smiles and infuriatingly banal conversation over lukewarm cups of tea, and though Lydia had her supporters, the council remained divided.

Mistresses Alba and Josephine were still undecided, while Helena and Jacqueline were staunchly in Vivian’s camp and showed no signs of wavering.

“They’ll all come around eventually,” Sybil had assured her. “Once we secure Alba and Josephine, they’ll see that there’s no use in prolonging the inevitable.”

It had been two weeks since the attack. Two weeks since that precious scrap of paper had fallen into the hands of the Nazis.

It made Lydia want to scream. Her only comfort was in knowing that no lone witch, no matter how skilled, could project to the book’s location with nothing but a scrap of tattered paper to guide her.

A feat like that would require the help of a coven under a full moon, and that was nearly a fortnight away. It wasn’t too late.

Soon , she told herself. Soon she would be grand mistress, with the resources of the academy at her command. She would have a dozen witches searching for the Grimorium Bellum by morning.

And if you lose? a small voice asked. Lydia did not have an answer for that.

The sun had set, but the selection ceremony was still hours away.

Lydia thought she would go mad from pacing Isadora’s flat.

Books lay in haphazard stacks across the floor where she’d left them, forming a rough circle, like a fairy ring.

She sat in the center, feeling like a child in a fort—hidden and safe.

She reached for the nearest book, the one she’d tossed aside the day Vivian had come to call.

Warp the warding was the only known exception.

It was the work of hundreds of witches, most of whom had died long before Lydia was born—but not all.

In this warding, delicate threads of magic from witches both living and dead existed side by side, braided together in a single wall of spellwork that served not only to protect the academy itself but to maintain the magic of those witches long gone.

So long as even one witch lived who had cast her power into the warding, the magic preserved within would exist forever.

It was a work of magical cooperation that spanned centuries. And it was beautiful.

Lydia walked the length of the warding, searching as she went for anything out of the ordinary.

She came to a place where the spellwork extended past the walls of the shop and into the lot behind, revealing the footprint of the academy hidden beneath the glamour.

She knew from the map inside her mind that there was a library here, tucked and folded inside the academy’s glamour like a magician’s silk.

She followed the warding, imagining the jumble of ancient books and folios just on the other side of the shimmering boundary.

She took one step, then another, and then stopped.

There, cut into the centuries-old warding, was a doorway, not much taller than Lydia herself.

She stepped closer, noticing how the mangled warding seemed to sway in the breeze, as if it had been shredded by a knife.

There was something violent about the image, and Lydia shuddered to see it.

She peered closer, and there, sliced like a tattoo into the top of the doorway was a symbol. A rune.

Othala. Homeland.