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I work to compose myself, inhaling slowly through my mouth followed by quivering exhales through my nose. The deep breaths slow my heart, though they do little for the bone-deep aches in my body.

The deck is scattered beneath me. The cards, the burns on my hands, and my face stinging are the only signs that what just happened was at all real—real enough to cause injury and completely exhaust my magic.

I was so much stronger than this, should be so much stronger.

I hardly recognize the trembling woman I’ve been reduced to.

But I’m determined not to let them know just how worn out I feel.

I push myself off the floor and stand tall like the victor I am.

No matter what, that future was forfeit the moment I cast it into the Chalice.

At least I didn’t fail in defeating it so I can claim a place in the academy as an initiate.

My gaze sweeps across the stands. The students are in a silent thrall.

Their faces are too blurred by the dimness of the hall to make out whatever emotions they might be feeling.

My eyes meet Kaelis’s, and as my focus narrows to him, the rest of the room falls away.

I can’t make out his expression. But I can feel the disapproval radiating off him.

No, it’s something more intense than disapproval. It’s hatred. Yes, you hate me. You loathe me—as much as I loathe you.

I manage to sink into a bow without falling flat on my face, adding a flourish by outstretching a hand.

Straightening, I cross the length of the circular hall and step around the Arcanum Chalice.

The student body finally begins murmuring, and I can only imagine what they’re saying after that display.

Plunged once more into near-total darkness, I ascend a staircase. There’s a fork in the road, but the path to the right is barred. I can make out the shadow of an enforcer farther down, and a chill runs its nail down my spine. That must be the path for those who failed.

I continue ascending into a beautiful parlor.

That beauty only further accentuates the anger welling up within me: We’ve been afforded such comforts while others have been Marked and marched to what will be their death.

This year’s round of initiates is twenty-five, by my count.

I’m not sure if this is a lot of people or a few, but given that we started with more than forty, it doesn’t seem like nearly enough.

Instantly, I know that all those sitting in the far corner, chatting exclusively amongst themselves, are the nobles. They have an air of familiarity with one another that wards away any who isn’t already “among them.”

I suspect that the handful of others milling about who seem taken with the silks and tufted velvets are from humbler backgrounds, like me. I’m surprised, yet pleased, to find that we outnumber the nobles nearly two to one.

My eyes meet a familiar cerulean set. “Luren?”

She grins up at me from the ottoman she sits upon, waving me over. Her gaze is a bit more shadowed than before the sacrificing. Her carefully pinned hair has come loose and now falls half down in waves. Her red-haired friend is still at her side.

“Glad to see you made it, too,” Luren says as I approach. Her apparent sincerity catches me off guard.

“Thanks.” I’m not sure what else to say.

She notices the burns. “Oh, you’re injured.”

“It’s superficial, I’m fine.” I tousle my hair a bit, trying to hide the burns on my cheeks.

“Who would’ve thought a vision could have bite?” her friend murmurs as she massages her right hand. Bruises coat her arm up to her elbow.

“The Chalice is ancient magic.” I sit on the edge of the sofa, in the farthest spot from the group of women and men whose company they keep. “Knowledge of it is fairly limited.”

“Oh really? You seemed to know a lot about it all before the trial, for an applicant.” Red Hair seems a bit skeptical of me. Not that I blame her.

I shrug.

“ Be nice . My rather brisk friend here is Kel,” Luren says.

“You don’t have to tell everyone our names,” Kel mutters, swooping bright-red bangs out of her eyes.

“We’re all going to be initiates together; people will find out.” Luren seems unbothered by her friend’s innate skepticism. Between the two, I think Kel has the right approach for the academy.

“Your knowledge came in handy,” a dark-haired and fair-skinned woman says to me. I recognize her as the one who followed my instruction with her skirts. “The dress trick was worth knowing. Thanks.” Her skirts are untied now but still wrinkled.

“Happy to help,” I say.

“Unusual to see someone helping others here,” one of the men says. His expression is unreadable, made harder by the shaggy mass of brown hair that shadows his pale eyes set against light skin.

“We don’t know yet how many spaces the houses have to accept students.

” I know what he’s getting at, even if he assumes I don’t.

The man has the energy of a lordling. Doubtless he considers himself to have an advantage over those of us with humbler backgrounds who don’t have the privilege of already knowing the workings of the academy.

“We could all be walking to a spot in a house.”

He snorts. “Unlikely.”

“Do you know how many spots the houses have, Farom?” a dark-skinned and spectacled man asks. He has a surprisingly deep voice for such a boyish face. I suspect the neatly trimmed shadow of stubble is to further emphasize his more adult features.

“I know she’s probably wrong, Dristin,” Farom says.

“So you don’t know at all, then.” The spectacled man—Dristin—shrugs.

Farom stands in a huff, muttering to himself as he heads toward the other nobles in the corner, “A long-lost noble? Can hardly expect her to be educated…”

The third man, who had yet to say anything, follows Farom, rather than remaining.

They both go to sit near a man who lounges in the back corner with the other nobles.

His eyes are an almost luminescent yellow and deeply sunken into the shadows beneath his brows.

Silver-white hair, short and wild, sits above a face more angular than a dagger point.

His eyes lock with mine, and his lips curl slightly in a manner both smug and sinister.

Dristin rolls his eyes, shifting his body back to the group and away from the other nobles. The movement pulls my attention from the pale-haired man, but I can still feel his piercing eyes on me. “I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.”

“Clara Redwin,” I reply, still trying on my latest fake name.

His eyes drop to my chest. For a moment I’d forgotten about the pin. But his shocked expression brings Kaelis’s deceit and my ruse rushing back. “Clan Hermit.” The words are more of a gasp. “But…you’re all dead.”

“I guess not.” I shrug. “I found out about my distant lineage recently. I’m barely a Hermit by blood, and wasn’t by name…

probably what spared me from the clan killing.

” The only benefit to this whole charade is that I can claim it’s new to me as well.

Meaning, it’s all right if I’m at least a little bit in the dark about my clan and the school. I hope.

“Really? But you already know so much about the academy.” Luren’s surprise is genuine.

“I’m a fast study.”

“As is to be expected of Clan Hermit.” Dristin gives what seems like a sincere and encouraging smile. I try to mirror the expression politely, despite having to resist squirming uncomfortably at being associated with the nobility I’ve spent my life despising.

“I’m Sorza, by the way.” The dark-haired woman adds the final name I was missing from the group.

“Nice to meet you all.” I try to commit their names to their faces.

“I agree with Luren on this. It’s nice that it doesn’t feel futile to learn each other’s names. I didn’t expect them to brand people the second they failed.” Sorza leans back on the sofa, rubbing the inside of her wrist.

“Any of you ever met a Marked Arcanist?” Dristin asks. Once an Arcanist is Marked, they’re relegated to the mills and nothing more. Forever. Despite their power, they’re pariahs.

“No,” Sorza answers.

“Me, neither,” Luren says.

For a second, the room fades, and I’m focused on a memory: a blood-drenched floor, a dagger, a shaky hand, and a shredded wrist. Mother’s panicked voice as she demanded I leave and go home to Arina. To put the candle in the window that would signal to her friends.

“Clara? What about you?” Dristin brings me back to reality, brushing short, thick locs away from his eyebrows.

“Once or twice.” I wrench myself from the past. The Arcanist that night didn’t bleed out from their clumsy attempt to remove the Mark, Mother told me later.

But I never knew what happened to them. They’re safe with friends, she whispered as she tucked me into bed.

Later, I suspected they were taken through the mountain passages she showed me when I was older.

Since then, I’ve helped nine people with that brand escape Eclipse City through Mother’s passages in the eastern ridge, and they all told me the horrors of receiving it.

I helped fifteen more Arcanists who had yet to receive it get out before they were forced to come through the academy—fifteen individuals who would rather chance escaping than face the Chalice, the academy, and placement within a clan.

There are only two paths for an Arcanist in Oricalis: graduate the academy and be placed in the service of a noble clan, or be Marked with the brand and sent to a powder mill to work until a swift death.

Magic is a rare commodity that requires even rarer resources to perform, making it highly controlled by the crown.

Those who can wield it are never safe, and never free. Not really.

“You’ve managed to speak with one?” Dristin sounds surprised.

“They’re still people.” I assess him again. His clothes are a little too fine for him to have come from the lower rungs of society. Perhaps he’s a noble offshoot?

Status in the noble clans is mostly hereditary.

The closer you are in blood, then marriage, to the High Lord or Lady, the higher status you have.

The further you are, the less connection you have…

until it dissolves entirely. In rare cases, a High Lord or Lady can ascend someone to status within their clan regardless of relation.

But, given that the power of individuals within a clan comes from their exclusivity, it’s rare to see.

Dristin strikes me as someone who’s far enough down a clan’s family tree that he’s not of the inner circles. But he’s also someone who’s had one too many comforts to know what the streets are like.

“After the Marked are sent to the mills, they never leave.” Dristin uses the words “never leave,” but what I hear is “die.” Only Arcanists can work the mills, due to the magic required to process powders.

So they’re worked until they cannot any longer.

Which is why Mother always said we had to help other Arcanists in hiding, Marked and Unmarked like us.

A new presence interrupts our conversation.

“Welcome, initiates.” A man emerges from the doorway on the opposite side from where we entered. “I am Lord Vaduin Thornbrow, and you may all call me Professor Thornbrow, Lord Thornbrow, or Head Professor. As I am the department head for wielding.”

He certainly sounds full of himself. The professor’s tone alone suggests that he has very strong opinions about the “respect” we’re supposed to give him.

The tiny hairs on the back of my neck instantly rise as I get my first real look at the man.

He’s of moderate height and build with black hair and light tan skin, the sort that keeps its color no matter how much exposure to the sun.

Those striking green eyes are impossible to miss, or to mistake.

It’s the same man who spoke to Kaelis on the balcony.

His broad shoulders and perpetually furrowed brow give him an imposing appearance, despite not looking much older than a third-year student.

His dark hair has been carefully coiffed on the sides but kept long on top.

As his attention sweeps the room, I don’t think I imagine it snagging on me for a breath.

“If you will all please follow me, I shall escort you to the Fire Feast. There we shall celebrate your victory, and you shall learn more about what is to come in your first—and for some of you, perhaps only—year at the academy.” Nothing in his tone sounds remotely celebratory.

Vaduin turns on his heel and strides through the doors and up the stairs beyond, back as rigid as a Stellis.

The other initiates are abuzz. It’s settling in to everyone that they are no longer mere applicants. They now formally stand as initiates. Their smiles would suggest the hard part is over, but I know our trials have only just begun.

Once more, I’m led through the corridors of Arcana Academy.

But this time there are two key differences: The first is that we are taking a much more direct route through the school, with fewer shortcuts through rooms, going through a passage that seems to have been designed for the purpose of getting initiates to wherever it is we’re being taken.

The second difference is that, this time, I can more clearly see where I’m going.

The lanterns have now been lit, and in their glow the stone walls uncoil before me like an ancient serpent.

The spheres of warm, inviting light guide us up and up and up farther still, and now that they’re alight, the previously grim corridors are an enchanted spectacle.

Extravagant carvings and tapestries catch the eye.

Oil portraits so realistic that the eyes seem to follow us line the walls.

Judging from the quantity, and the names beneath them, the portraits are of past house royals of every suit, every Page, Knight, Queen, and King.

Finally, one passage merges with another, dropping us all into a half-moon-shaped room, as if this room is where every corridor in the academy leads.

Vaduin pauses before two metal doors that are twice his height and three times as wide.

He puts his back to them, facing us, and outstretches his arms.

A lash of fire blazes along the outlines of the doors, trailing over the carvings of each of the four suits.

At the same time, magic pops on the other side.

The doors swing open, and, for the first time, we are ushered into the main hall of Arcana Academy, where we get our first real look at the students and faculty who will decide our fates.