Page 35 of Wicked Bonds (Serpentine Academy #1)

Thirty-Three

Rose

I grab the book and bail from my dorm room, because staying put when Wickersly’s hunting me is probably the dumbest move I can make.

The hallway’s empty, but that doesn’t mean shit, she could be anywhere, could come out from any shadow as I run by.

My boots slap against the floor, and I’m pretty sure I look deranged, clutching a book to my chest while sprinting through the dormitory in my too-short, too-revealing Samhain dress.

Thorne wasn’t wrong. But at least I can run faster in this than I could in a floor-length ball gown.

The emergency alarm is still wailing, which means everyone who is staff or faculty is probably on alert now, including Lucien and Soren.

The bloodmark burns under my sleeve like someone’s pressing a branding iron to my skin, and I know it’s responding to my panic, my desperation, my absolutely batshit plan to access a temporally displaced document that’s been hidden for centuries to save my ass.

I race up the stairs, nearly eating it when my heel catches on the edge of a step. On the third floor landing I dodge around a half-naked shifter who’s trying to pull on pants while hopping on one foot, and duck under the arm of a witch who’s gesturing wildly about fire safety protocols.

Someone calls my name, but I don’t stop. Can’t stop. If Wickersly catches me with this book, if she figures out what I know, I’m dead. Not in two years, but tonight.

I’m racing up the stairs to the fourth floor now, almost to the door. I shoulder through it, and the temperature drops immediately. It’s always cold up here, I think it’s due to Drake’s presence, and I hope he’s here now.

The fourth floor corridor stretches out in front of me, lit only by moonlight streaming through windows that are half-boarded up.

Dust motes drift through the silver light like snow, and I can see my breath.

The whole floor feels abandoned, forgotten, which is exactly why Drake haunts it. This is his domain.

His prison.

“Drake?” I call out, my voice thin in the dark emptiness. “Drake, I need you.”

Nothing. Just the distant sound of the alarm below and my breathing.

I move further into the corridor, past doors that haven’t been opened in decades, their handles thick with dust. Some of them have numbers, some don’t. One has what looks like claw marks gouged deep into the wood, and I don’t want to know that story.

I turn in a slow circle. “Please, Drake. Where are you?”

The air changes, just slightly, and I feel him before I see him, that sense that someone watching even when no one is there. Then he’s here, materializing right in front of me.

“Rose?” His eyes, those perpetually sad eyes that have seen a century of students come and go, widen as he takes in my state, the disheveled dress, the book clutched to my chest, the probably wild look in my eyes.

The relief crashes over me. I don’t think, I just move, launching myself at him with trust I’ve never given anyone else other than my mother. He catches me, and for a second I think I’ll pass right through him, but then his arms are around me, solid and real and cold but there .

“Hey,” he says into my hair, and I can feel the rumble of his voice through his chest, which shouldn’t be possible but is. “What happened? You’re shaking.”

I am shaking, I realize. Full-body tremors that have nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the fact that I just discovered how to maybe save my life while simultaneously painting a massive target on my back.

“Wickersly,” I manage, pulling back just enough to look at him but not enough to leave his arms. “She knows. She’s hunting me. And I found it, Drake. I found out how to find the original blood contract.”

His arms tighten around me, and it occurs to me how insane this is.

He’s dead. He’s been dead for over a century, this boy who looks barely older than me but has existed longer than my great-great grandmother would have if she’d lived.

He’s nothing but consciousness and memory held together by unfinished business, and yet here he is, solid against my arms, holding me like I’m something precious instead of just another temporary visitor to his everlasting in-between world.

“Slow down,” he says, one hand coming up to brush hair out of my face. His fingers are icy against my cheek, but I lean into the touch, anyway. “Tell me everything.”

“There’s no time.” I pull away, already missing the contact.

“I know how to find it, Drake.” I stare into his eyes.

“The original contract isn’t just hidden somewhere, it’s hidden some when .

It’s been temporally displaced, in between moments so it exists in the same space but not the same time. That’s why I couldn’t find it.”

Drake’s expression shifts as his brow unfurrows and his eyes widen. “That’s… incredible. And, brilliant.”

“Yeah, well, brilliant or not, I need to access it now before Wickersly finds me.” I hold up the book.

“This explains how. A bloodmarked witch can use their ancestral connection to reach through time, to access the moment when the contract was signed. But I need someone to watch my back so I can have enough time.”

“You want to do this here? Now?” He glances around the abandoned corridor. “Rose, Wickersly will?—”

“She’ll kill me, yeah, I got that memo.” I set the book down on the dirty floor, opening it to the marked page. “But if I don’t try now, she’ll kill me anyway. She’s onto me. My window is closing, Drake. Hell, it might already be closed.”

He stands there for a moment, translucent in the moonlight, then he nods.

“Alright,” he says. “I’ll keep watch. Nothing gets past me on this floor, living or dead.” He moves to the stairwell door, his form spectral and ghostly again. “But Rose, be careful. Temporal magic is dangerous even for experienced witches. And you’re?—”

“Inexperienced, untrained, and probably in way over my head?” I finish for him. “Yeah, I know. Story of my life.”

He turns back to me. “I was going to say brave. Stupidly, recklessly brave.”

“Same thing,” I mutter, but I’m already kneeling on the floor, placing my hands on either side of the open book.

Drake positions himself by the door. “I’ve got you,” he says simply, and somehow those three words mean more to me than any elaborate promise.

I close my eyes and reach for my magic, for that wild, natural power that’s been growing stronger every day since I arrived at this cursed academy.

The bloodmark burns hotter, and I swear I can feel my entire ancestral line throbbing through my veins.

Generations of witches, all the way back to that first one who signed her name in blood and damned us all.

The book said to focus on the connection, to use the blood as a bridge between now and then.

I press my hand against the bloodmark, feeling it burn with heat that’s almost unbearable, and I think about that ancestor.

Some desperate witch during the Salem trials, probably terrified, probably thinking she was saving her family by agreeing to the Coven’s terms.

The air around me starts to get wavy and opaque, and I hear Drake make a sound of warning. But I can’t stop now. I’m already reaching, already stretching through time itself, following the thread of blood and magic back, back, back to the moment that started everything.

The fourth floor corridor glitches in and out, like someone’s changing channels on reality.

For a second, I see it as it must have been decades ago, clean, well-lit, full of students.

Then it shifts again, further back, the walls themselves changing, morphing into something older.

The academy isn’t even built yet, and I’m standing in an empty field under the same moon that shone tonight.

That’s it. Show me. Show me where it all begins.