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How I’d desperately wanted to heal him.

How I’d stupidly thought we might have something in common. Pain. And that his was buried under a layer of armor only I could penetrate.

It only took a literal killing blow aimed at my heart to dissuade me of that notion.

I catch on quick like that.

My rib started to ache again, and I leaned into the gate. “Can you just give me a little fucking space please?” I muttered. “I know what comes next. I won’t move.”

“I’m making sure you don’t try to run. The selection of houses is ... not the way you remember it,” he said, his voice a low rumble that I felt through my whole body.

The gate rippled as I splayed my palm against the crest. Without warning, the thick brambles shot toward me, and I couldn’t help but try to leap back.

“What the hell!” I yelped.

“I warned you.” His arms were around me like iron bands, holding me in place as I leaned back, into him. “It knows the dangers we face, and the magic has reacted accordingly. There’s no room for error. The gate must get the placements right.”

The breath whooshed out of me as my right arm was wrapped up, vise-like, in the vines. Then my legs, then my upper body. I was lifted off the ground, feet dangling.

“Shit! Typhon ... I don’t like this.”

He let me go, leaving a hand on my lower back. “It won’t kill you. I don’t think ...”

I whipped my head around to see his lips twitching. Was that almost a smile?

“Fucker.”

“Not lately.” I thought I heard him say.

Was he cracking his first joke while I was being lifted from the ground by a sentient gate made of what I was now assuming were man-eating, magic-made vines.

The thick, snakelike cords tightened and pulsed around me, a heartbeat deep within the creation that had been made to keep students safe. To keep monsters out, and students in.

But I was no monster.

Even as I thought it, the vines eased their hold on me, allowing me a deeper breath. A single, thin vine crept toward my right arm and the bracer. The thorns dripped black, as though the vines were bleeding.

Or maybe crying?

This was nothing like my first time through the gate. Then it had been a single flare of magic. A single vine had reached out and, easy peasy, the Felinita crest had been etched into my armband. A very proper setting of the house amongst young ones entering their first year.

This was ... feral, wild in the way that only nature and the most chaotic of magics and gods could be, like the magic of the Horned King.

Unpredictable. Dangerous.

The thorns struck at the leather armband, the tips of them driving through to my forearm as they etched an image. I jerked and yelped but really couldn’t move much.

I saw the wings first and nodded to myself.

“Felinita,” I called over my shoulder. “Just like I said.”

The vines tightened around my middle, cutting off my air.

I stayed still. Sometimes fighting wasn’t worth it when it came to nature.

Only ... the gate and its vines kept tightening. I glanced back at Typhon, who was frowning.

When the pressure on my ribs had me arching to get away, I’d had enough.

I flexed my right hand, flicking my fingers one at a time, flames dancing off the tips.

I needed enough heat to make the vines drop me.

Only instead of loosening, they wrapped further around me until I was fully encased, to my neck.

I tried to scream, panic hitting me hard. Why wasn’t Typhon doing anything?

“Help,” I rasped.

There was a sudden sharp scent of flames burning green wood, and then the vines dropped me on the other side of the gate. I stumbled before catching my balance.

I gasped and spluttered. “What was that about? Why did you wait so long to help me?”

Typhon walked through the gate to join me, calm as a summer’s day, the vines pulling back for him as if nothing had happened.

“That ... is the welcome that you and each of the other seven have received. Violent, and wild. And I didn’t help you. The gate released you of its own accord.”

I swallowed hard. “Why?”

He shook his head. “The job was done. Your house crest made itself known.”

The bitter disappointment on his face told me that, until this very second, he had thought Tarquinius had made some sort of mistake with me. That I didn’t belong back at Neverthorn at all.

“I thought you said this place was safer now,” I mumbled, rubbing at my sore ribcage.

“Don’t twist my words.” His expression was grim. “I said I would ensure Opie’s safety. Now that we’ve cleared that up, I suppose it’s my duty to welcome you to your new house.” He motioned to the leather bracer, and I glanced down.

Wings, yes there were wings, but they weren’t attached to a small cat. In fact, I’d never seen this crest before.

“I don’t understand.”

I traced the design, feeling the heat of it where it had not only been etched but burned into the leather. The body of the creature was made of fire, the wings spread wide and wrapped around my forearm. It continued down over the top of my hand, ending in an open flame shooting from its mouth.

Impossible.

“House Phoenix. Reinstated out of pure necessity. Previously denounced and eliminated fifty years ago for dangerous and destructive behavior and an insatiable thirst for power. This is why it’s especially unfortunate that we need one of your kind to stop Nocta and his army.”

Typhon brushed past me.

I stared at the gate a moment, then lifted both hands and flipped it off. The gate mimicked me back and that ... well, shit, that made me laugh.

Magic was unpredictable, but at least it had a sense of humor. Unlike some people ...

Typhon kept walking, obviously expecting me to follow.

“So, Phoenix was meant to be my house from the start? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Apparently.”

I shook my head, still catching my breath as I caught up to him. Hecate’s hands, that would explain so much. Why I always felt out of place ... why I’d never found a friend ... maybe even ...

“Is that why I couldn’t learn the runes the way they wanted me to? Because I was in the wrong house, and –”

“Nope. I’m afraid that was all you.”

Alrighty, then.

“Your dorm room is on the seventh floor,” Typhon continued.

“Wait ... there was no seventh floor when I was here.”

“There is now. You’re one floor above Draconell. Neverthorn ... re-adjusted ... as the new House of Phoenix students arrived.”

The path we were on was as wide as the main gate, towering plinths on either side of us, like an oversized cattle chute made of river rock and cement. In between each plinth was a tree, no one tree the same as the next. But honestly, as familiar as it was, this was all tripping me out.

The gate. House Phoenix. On a floor above House Draconell?

Just being here was enough to make my brain hurt.

I reached up and pulled an apple off the tree closest to me and took a bite out of the fruit, so deep red it was almost purple. The flavor was a burst of freshness, tart and sweet at the same time, that had me moaning out loud.

“This is so fugging good.”

Typhon picked up his pace. “Your first class starts in fifteen minutes. Go straight to the third level, room 308 for History of Magic. Doyenne Elmwood will be teaching you and the others from House Phoenix all morning. After that, you’ll head to Politics followed by Controlling the Weather with Doyenne Storm, finishing sometime after five. ”

“Today? Like all day? I haven’t even slept yet.” I swallowed the last of my apple and tossed the core.

“We’re late, so make it work. You will have time to rest going forward. That said, you and your housemates will be on a unique schedule Monday through Saturday, which will change week to week as we assess your skills and needs.”

I blinked. “Wait, why not two days off? You know, a normal weekend?”

He paused and let me catch up to him as he glanced down at me. “Because we are preparing to fight a war.”

I swallowed hard.

Right.

That.

“What about my stuff, then? Take it with me?” I hitched my bag a little higher on my back.

He shook his head and picked up his pace again. “Keep the satchel. You won’t need your books yet. I’ll have the staff take the rest to your room in your new dorm.”

I looked down at my clothes. I was most certainly not in uniform. Perfect.

We rounded a slight curve in the path and the front of Neverthorn Academy popped into view.

The place was massive, a mixture between castle and prison, dark stone and blocky towers that peaked at the top of, yup, I did a quick count.

Seven floors now. That’s what I’d been seeing when I’d first gotten off the boat, my new dorm on the top floor.

That was why the school had been visible this time at a distance.

For anyone human coming to visit Dark Island, they saw a rundown castle.

For any Dwimmer who made the trek with ol’ Bones .

.. we saw it as it really was in our world.

Here and there I saw a flicker of figures – humans visible on their side of the magically woven fabric that separated us from them.

They looked like ghosts until they raised their cameras to take pictures.

The main door was to the left of the building, set into an arch that mimicked the front gate, just on a smaller scale. The wooden doors were studded with brambles, vines, and the Neverthorn crest in the middle, glimmering with deep magic.

Typhon made a quick motion with two fingers and the door opened inward on silent hinges.

“You know how to get to the third floor?” Typhon asked, his voice ... different now. Calm. Serious. Professorly.

I snorted.

He raised an eyebrow. Faster than a striking snake, his hand was on my throat holding me tight. I stared up at him as he all but dragged me close to him. “Can’t have you setting a bad example, can we?”

His fingers flexed one at a time – tracing the runes directly into my throat.

I blinked up at him as he let me go. “What did you do?”