This was the spell that had first brought the Guild to her door.

Some weeks after casting it, she’d described what the spell had wrought in one of her progress letters and had piqued Albert Grey’s interest. When he and Chancellor Bennet had come to see her, they’d cast the spell that revealed the presence of other spells, and Sera would never forget the look on their faces when they discovered that the entire inn shone warm, bright, and dazzling, like a single lit window on a dark night.

“You’re wasted here, Sera,” Chancellor Bennet had said, and she had believed him.

What was she supposed to do now?

The inn’s doorbell pealed, rescuing Sera from her increasingly bleak thoughts. She ran quickly downstairs, the worn steps creaking beneath her feet, calling “I’ll get it!” to Jasmine as she went.

She opened the door.

And froze.

“Francesca?” Sera’s heart gave a violent lurch. This was very, very bad.

“What’s going on?” Francesca demanded, throwing her hands in the air with an exaggerated air of drama. “You won’t answer your phone, you haven’t come back to the estate, you— WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?”

Sera squeezed her eyes shut in despair. She had known, of course, that the Guild would find out she’d lost her magic sooner or later, but losing one’s magic wasn’t a crime. Resurrecting a person from the dead, on the other hand, was , and that part she probably could have kept a secret.

If only it hadn’t been for the rooster.

Jasmine had been dead only minutes when she’d been brought back, but Roo-Roo had been dead a full year. He had, to put it delicately, decomposed . He was simply not alive in the way Jasmine was alive. He was, in fact, decidedly zombified.

He clattered up to Sera’s feet now, pecking at her in order to convey his desire to be picked up. Sera did pick him up, but only to prevent him from scuttling out the open door.

There was nothing to be done but tell the truth.

“ Shhhh ,” Sera said fiercely. “We have guests upstairs! I’ll explain everything, but you have to promise not to tell anybody what I’m about to tell you. Especially not your father.”

“I promise,” Francesca said at once, her wide eyes watching Roo-Roo like she couldn’t tear them away.

“Jasmine died two weeks ago. I brought her back.”

Francesca’s eyes snapped up to Sera’s face. “What do you mean, you brought her back? Like, with CPR?”

“No, she was dead dead, not whatever kind of dead CPR works on. I cast a resurrection spell. It brought her back, but it took away most of my magic.”

There was a long, incredulous silence. Sera watched Francesca anxiously. Then Francesca said, “Okay, first things first. Can I use your loo?”

Sera let her breath out in a relieved whoosh. Maybe she’d lost most of her magic, but at least she hadn’t lost her friend. She’d go back to the Guild and she’d study every book they had until she found a way, any way, to get her magic back.

Everything, she was certain, would be okay.

Three hours later, Albert Grey was storming into the inn, and Sera had no choice but to accept that everything would most decidedly not be okay.

* * *

Confined to the inn’s living room while Albert went outside to examine the skeletal rooster, Sera, furious and feeling utterly betrayed, couldn’t bear to look at Francesca. It was almost a relief when Albert marched back into the room.

“A resurrection spell,” Albert said coldly, spelling the door shut so that Jasmine could not follow him in and intervene on Sera’s behalf. “All that power, and you throw it away. After everything we’ve done for you.”

Sera had expected those words, or something like them, and yet she couldn’t help feeling like Albert’s tone was all wrong.

The truth struck her almost at once. It’s because he’s only pretending to be angry.

Every time she’d ever doubted Albert’s sincerity as her mentor, every time she’d caught the hard look in his eyes when someone else praised her, she’d glimpsed the real Albert Grey.

Whatever he thought of her casting a resurrection spell, it was outweighed by far by his pleasure that her magic was now a sliver of what it had been.

He was, once again, without rival. His throne, once again, was wholly his own.

That Albert was capable of pride and petty jealousy didn’t exactly come as a surprise to her, but it still hurt. She’d been his apprentice for five years. Didn’t he care about her at all?

“Sera.” Albert’s voice grew softer and coaxing, which was never a good sign. “Where did you learn the spell?”

Sera fidgeted with the ragged end of one fingernail. “It was in one of my library books.”

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t lie to me. For one thing, you’re not very good at it.

For another, Francesca has already told me about the fox she spotted slinking up the stairs shortly after she arrived.

Curious behaviour for a fox, don’t you think?

” Gripping her chin between his thumb and forefinger, Albert tilted Sera’s face up so she had nowhere to look but at him.

“Clementine has been here, hasn’t she? Did she teach you the incantation? ”

Sera jerked out of his grip, teeth clenched, and stayed quiet.

Albert, who was accustomed to getting his way, looked both surprised and irritated.

Sera was suddenly reminded of the time she’d asked him if his magic was a night sky, like hers, and he’d said no, his was lightning.

She hadn’t understood what that meant then, but she did now.

His was an angry, pitiless magic, quick to lash out and indiscriminate in its destruction.

“You’ve forgotten who you’re talking to, Sera,” Albert said sharply.

“I am still a Grey, born from a long, unbroken line of witches, and I still have every bit as much power as I did a week ago. You, on the other hand, do not. You are just a swan who has clipped her own wings. So when I ask you a question, you will answer.”

Unfortunately for Albert, this speech just made Sera angrier.

Albert, it seemed, had forgotten that his history might be a legacy of power, but hers was a legacy of resistance.

Not to get too dramatic about it, but Sera’s ancestors had not defied tyrants and broken free of empires for her to now give this man a single inch.

“I told you,” she said, “I found the spell in a book.”

To her surprise, rather than losing his temper, Albert tilted his head at her with sudden interest. “You’ve grown fond of her, haven’t you?

Good God, Sera, I’d credited you with more intelligence than that.

” Whatever he saw in her expression made him bark a laugh.

“She hasn’t told you what she did, has she? ”

Later, Clemmie would tell Sera the whole story.

In short, she had once been a witch of moderate talent and great ambition, and, bitterly resentful of Albert, who’d been insufferable throughout the years they’d known each other, she’d decided (in her words) to strike a blow for underdogs everywhere by cursing him.

As in, with a literal magical curse.

(That anybody would do something as seismically senseless as attempt to curse the most powerful witch born in generations was, frankly, ludicrous, and yet Sera found it remarkably easy to believe that Clemmie would do just that.)

The curse, a rare spell that turned its unfortunate target into an animal, was supposed to be temporary, but as was always the way with Clemmie, she hadn’t thought it through.

She hadn’t considered that she might not have the power to break the curse after casting it.

She hadn’t even considered that she might not have the power to cast the curse in the first place.

Plot twist: she hadn’t had enough power to cast such a curse. Not properly, anyway. Her spell had backfired, trapping her in the form of a fox.

The undoing of a curse was no easy matter, and the few witches who possessed the power were unwilling to risk Albert’s wrath by doing so.

At that point, the Guild had felt that being stuck in the body of a fox was adequate punishment, but that had by no means been adequate for Albert.

He’d wanted Clemmie under lock and key in the Guild’s castle.

Declining to be imprisoned, Clemmie had flexed her claws, bitten Albert around the ankles, and bolted.

On that afternoon in the inn, however, all Albert said about it was, “She tried to curse me, but ended up cursing herself instead. She’s been in hiding for years, but I should have realised she’d come to you as soon as word of your existence made its way to her.

I have no doubt she thought she could hoodwink a young, powerful, and unutterably na?ve witch into breaking her curse. ”

Sera maintained a stony silence, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

“Fortunately for you, Sera,” Albert went on, “I’m minded to be lenient.

You’ve lost your power, possibly for good, but you needn’t lose your place among us.

A resurrection spell is no small thing, and the Guild does not make it a habit to overlook such egregious lawbreaking, but if you help us capture Clementine, I’m sure I can persuade the Chancellor to forgive this transgression. ”

Sera knew that she was being offered a lifeline, and she wanted very, very badly to take it.

The only way she’d ever get her magic back, if such a thing was even possible, was with the Guild’s help.

Without them, without their resources and their libraries and their scholars, she’d have no chance at all.

All she had to do was betray Clemmie first.

All she had to do was give an inch.

She couldn’t. Clemmie had kept secrets from her, including deliberately neglecting to tell her that she’d been the one to cast the curse that had turned her into a fox, but without Clemmie, Sera wouldn’t have been able to save Jasmine.

So Sera looked her former mentor in the eye and said, “I can’t help you. I found the spell in one of my books.”

As soon as she said it, she realised she’d made a mistake.

This was what Albert had wanted her to do.

He didn’t care about capturing Clemmie. He probably hadn’t even spared Clemmie a thought in years.

But the moment he had clocked that Sera cared about her, Clemmie had become a convenient way to use Sera’s loyalty against her.

The only thing Albert cared about was his own pride, and now that Sera’s magic was no longer a threat to his, the last thing he wanted was for her to come back to the Guild and get a second chance.

“Then, on behalf of Chancellor Bennet and the Guild,” said Albert, not bothering to hide his satisfaction, “I leave you to the consequences of your choices. You are exiled from the Guild from this day forth. For the safety of all witches, you will still be beholden to the Guild’s laws, but you will not receive any further education or assistance from us.

You will not be permitted on Guild property.

You will have no access to library books or spellcasting materials.

Not a single witch in the country will extend a friendly hand to you now. ”

Well, there was really nothing left for Sera to do but lean into the drama, point a warning finger like a sorceress of old, and say, “You will rue this day, Albert Grey.”

And, most magnificently, it even rhymed.