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S he awoke to sun streaming in a window near her head, the light too bright to bear, her head threatening to split in two from the worst migraine she’d ever have. She groaned, pulling the covers up over her head. Soft snoring shook out the last remaining cobwebs of sleep, and she threw the covers back down, squinting in the bright light to see Valen sound asleep in a chair next to her bed, arms crossed over his chest, feet propped on the mattress next to her legs.
She was in an unfamiliar place again. Another Lybbestre stronghold? The room was sparsely decorated but comfortable, the bed deliciously soft with just the right number of pillows. She struggled to sit up as the events of the night before came flooding back—arguing with Valen, cuddling her cats, standing in the bathroom together, deception, the darkness.
She pulled back the sleeve of the oversized robe she was wearing to look at her right hand. It looked normal except for the tiny pinprick of black slightly off-center on the thumbnail. She didn’t remember that being there before. She scraped at it with her thumb, but it didn’t budge. The snoring had stopped. Valen was awake.
He sat watching her, the look in his eyes unreadable. Purposefully blank, she’d learned.
“How are you feeling?” His voice was hoarse with sleep.
“Better. What happened? Where are we?”
He dropped his feet to the floor and took her right hand in his, examining the dark spot on her nail. “I’m not sure what happened. Something bad when you dispelled the deception. I’ve never seen that before. You were overcome by something. It seemed to leave you during the night, but you still bear this mark. I don’t know what it means.”
She let him hold her hand until he released it on his own, a small kindness for the way he’d gotten her out of there and brought her somewhere safe.
Kindness, not forgiveness.
“Where are we?” she asked again.
“Lybbestre Keep. Well, one of them. I didn’t know where else to take you.”
“I understand. I would’ve done the same thing. Where else to seek help for a magical problem than the home base of the most magical group we know, right?”
He seemed relieved that she wasn’t acting angry at him. He hadn’t liked that before. She stiffened, putting her emotional barriers back up. She didn’t care what he liked or didn’t like, she reminded herself. He wasn’t her friend anymore. She had to remember that he was the reason she was in this predicament to begin with. He’d sold her out.
Lynorra entered the room without a knock, her flowing gray dress doing that mesmerizing underwater dance thing again. Her smooth skin appeared even more translucent in the direct sunlight, the dark veins disturbingly stark in contrast.
“You are awake. Excellent.” She approached the bed and took Evelyn’s hand from where Valen was still holding it. The look she gave him was possessive. Interesting. She pulled Evelyn’s hand up so that she could inspect the spot. “As I feared. He did right to bring you here. Necromagic is almost impossible to eradicate once it has taken hold.”
“Necromagic?” Evelyn pulled her hand free from the witch’s grasp, scooting back so she could sit with her back against the headrest. She’d never come across necromagic before. She’d read about it, but very rarely. It wasn’t something that was mentioned anywhere after the Dark Ages concluded. It was basically a myth. Only not, because of her black spot.
Lynorra tilted her head to the side and regarded Evelyn thoughtfully. “What do you know of necromagic, witchling?”
“Not much. I’ve come across the term, but I didn’t know it was still being practiced.”
“It isn’t. Officially, it has been wiped from the face of the earth.”
“Unofficially?”
“Diseases are never truly destroyed, are they? They simply… mutate.” She sneered when she spoke the last word, her top lip lifting delicately to reveal one sharp incisor. She wasn’t a vampire—at least as far as Evelyn could tell—but she would make the alley vamps jealous if they saw her. She had everything they wanted and then some. “We have worked tirelessly to rid it from our ranks, to prevent new witches from learning it. But free will makes that difficult, to say the least. Inconvenient.”
“Free will?”
“Yes.” She showed no signs of regret about her statement. “If I could force it to be forgotten, removed, no longer a threat, I would. It would be for the best of everyone.”
“Even if it meant the loss of free will.”
Her ebony eyes narrowed. “Even if. This is your first brush with it. You have no idea what it can do. What it has done. If someone is practicing it, here in the city, that is very concerning. And a surprising coincidence, I must say.”
“What does this mean for me?”
She smoothed one sharp-nailed hand down the front of her dress. “I do not know yet. I have summoned the council. But I will not deceive you about this, witchling. Necromagic is extremely dangerous. I know of no cure. We must hope the council will know something I do not. And that they will agree to help you.”
“You mean they might not?”
She shrugged, the movement so slight Evelyn almost missed it. “It is more likely than unlikely. We are not in the habit of using magic to help those not of our Order.”
Ah, so there it was. The Sage was no fool, and she was using this brush with necromagic to push Evelyn toward agreeing to work for the Lybbestre. Being aware of the attempted manipulation didn’t mean it wouldn’t work. Evelyn very much wanted to live. Valen had leaned forward to rest his forearms on his knees, his gaze locked on her face, the expression still carefully blank. He wanted her to say yes.
Evelyn closed her eyes and turned inward, searching within herself for the answer. It was a practice she’d turned to often as a teenager, but she hadn’t needed it lately. It only took a few seconds, then she knew. She was going to join them. She had always been going to join them. From the moment Lynorra first appeared at the top of the spiral staircase, her fate had been sealed. Her life was no longer her own. Hot tears threatened to slip out from beneath her lashes, and she blinked rapidly to force them back. Not here. Not now.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“What was that?” Lynorra leaned forward, her claws digging into the bedspread near Evelyn’s foot.
“I agree. I forfeit my life to the service of the Lybbestre.”
A flash of pleasure lit up Lynorra’s face, and the almost-smile returned for the first time that day. “Excellent. You have chosen wisely, witchling.”
She left, turning back at the door to motion Valen to follow her out. He reached into his pocket and set something on her bedside table, giving her a subtle wink as he did so.
Evelyn took off her great-grandmother’s moonstone amulet and held it in her hands. “What about the others who were with me in the Dark City. Valen tells me they’re safe?”
Lynorra’s eyes flicked to Valen with a flash of disapproval. “They are. For now.”
“For now? What does that mean?” Evelyn’s head throbbed.
“It means, witchling, that you bound their fates to yours when you brought them into this, and only your sacrifice will protect them. Fulfill your agreement to us, and they will remain safe and free.”
Evelyn scraped at the black spot on her thumbnail. “And if I die?”
Lynorra shrugged. “Then they will no longer be of any interest to us.”
Evelyn stood by the window near the bed. Hours had passed since her conversation with Lynorra and her acceptance of the agreement. The moon had risen high over the grounds, and Evelyn basked in the cool glow, grateful to be above ground. She opened the window a few inches to let the evening breeze flow in. It smelled like honeysuckle and jasmine.
Her life felt like it was over, but it she knew it wasn’t. She would find a way out of this mess. She absently picked at the black speck on her thumbnail. She would figure out a cure for the necromagic that marred her fingernail. She slipped the small bottle of Granny Lucy’s black obsidian powder Valen had left her into her pocket. And whatever came next, she was still determined to get the cursed book out of the wrong hands, even if it meant stealing it again. This time from the most powerful coven in history. Typical Tuesday.