Page 110 of Academy of the Wicked: Year Three

Vampire darkness. The kind that doesn't just absence light but actively devours it.

I take a breath that tastes of copper and old blood, then step through.

The door slams behind me with finality that suggests it won't open again until whatever trial awaits is complete. The darkness presses against me from all sides, thick enough to swim through, cold enough to make my teeth chatter despite the dragon fire warming my blood.

"Atticus?"

My voice doesn't echo—it's swallowed, consumed by hungry darkness that wants more than sound.

I'm losing connection,Mortimer warns, his mental voice already fading.The trial is blocking me.You're on your own until?—

Silence.

Not just the absence of his voice but the absence of the bond itself, like something has severed the connection temporarily. I'm alone in darkness that might be infinite or might be coffin-small—impossible to tell without reference points.

Then I hear it.

Breathing that isn't mine.

Slow, deliberate, predatory.

The sound of something that's been waiting for prey to finally enter its web.

"Hello, Queen of Spades."

Atticus's voice,but wrong.Older. Hungrier.

The voice of a vampire who's forgotten why he ever pretended to be human.

"Welcome to my parlor."

Red eyes open in the darkness—not two but dozens, all Atticus but also not, each pair representing different hunger, different decade, different version of control slowly slipping away.

"We need to talk about what you've done to me."

The darkness shifts, and suddenly I understand what Mortimer meant about trials being individualized. This isn't just about rescuing Atticus.

This is about confronting what our bond has become, what it's making him become.

What I've made him become by feeding him my blood, by changing his fundamental nature with every exchange.

"Okay," I say to the darkness and all its eyes. "Let's talk."

The eyes blink in unison, and when they open again, they're closer.

Much closer.

"Let's start,"all the versions of Atticus say in harmony that shouldn't exist,"with how you taste like dragon now."

The bond mark on my wrist burns with a warning that comes too late.

The trial has begun.

And I'm starting to understand why Mortimer was worried.

The Vampire's Trial

~ATTICUS~