Page 36 of Wicked Bonds (Serpentine Academy #1)

Thirty-Four

Drake

I listen to the academy breathe beneath us.

Every creak of the old building, every distant footstep three floors down, every whisper of wind against the boarded windows, I monitor it all while Rose kneels on the behind me, trying to find a way through time itself.

The emergency alarm stopped, which means they’ve either given up looking or they know exactly where to go.

My money’s on the latter. Wickersly is formidable, that hasn’t changed since I was a student here.

A memory floods through me unbidden, my first day at this place, over a century ago.

I was nineteen, cocky as hell, convinced I’d master every spell they threw at me.

I’d taken the train from Boston, my mother’s warnings still ringing in my ears about not embarrassing the family name.

The leaves had been the same brilliant gold and crimson they are now, the air carrying that same bitter promise of winter.

The academy looked different then, newer, though it was already ancient.

And there she was, Victoria Wickersly, standing at the entrance in those same severe robes, that same cold smile.

She’d welcomed me personally, said I showed exceptional promise.

She knew I’d be dead before my twenty-first birthday, yet her conscience was unburdened. Cheerful even.

She hasn’t aged a day. Not one fucking day in over a hundred years.

And now she’s hunting Rose with the same methodical precision she used to hunt me when I got too close to the truth.

A door slams somewhere below, yanking me back to the present moment. I will myself not to drift.

Not now.

Behind me, Rose mutters something in Latin, her pronunciation egregious but she muddles through it stubbornly. I sense a shift in the energy surrounding her. She’s actually doing it. After all these years, all this waiting, she’s actually going to be the one to find it.

A century I’ve haunted these halls. All those years of watching students arrive, students leave, and some not at all.

I’ve memorized every stone, every crack, every secret passage in this place.

I know which floorboards creak on the second floor, which windows rattle in storms, which rooms are still filled with the ghosts of things that happened before even I died.

But more than that, I’ve been waiting. Watching every new student who arrives, looking for the right bloodline, the right magical signature.

The Coven is careful about who they bring here, they have to be.

Too risky. Too much potential for someone to figure out what I figured out, right before they killed me for it.

Rose doesn’t know this.

She thinks I just happened to find her, who happened to know about the Accord because I was one of the unlucky ones, who happened to point her in the right direction.

She doesn’t know I’ve been waiting a hundred years for this moment planning exactly what to say, how to guide her without being too obvious, how to make sure I don’t make the same mistake last time.

When I trusted someone. When I told them the truth. When I put my life in their hands.

And look how that turned out.

But still, the guilt sits in my chest like a stone. If stones could sit in spaces that don’t technically exist.

Rose is perfect. The direct descendant, the natural magic that doesn’t need spells or implements, the wild power that changes everything. I knew it the moment she walked through the academy doors. I felt it. This was the one. This was my chance.

I should have told her.

A door slams somewhere below us, followed by raised voices. We have maybe five minutes before they reach us. Maybe less.

I turn slightly, just enough to see Rose out of the corner of my eye.

She’s got her hands pressed flat against the floor, the book open in front of her, and her whole body is trembling with the effort of what she’s doing.

The bloodmark on her arm glows through her sleeve, pulsating.

Her face is pale, sweat beading on her forehead despite the cold I know she feels in this place.

She’s beautiful. Alive. She makes me feel more than I have, since I too, was alive.

Maybe even before that. I thought I loved Isabell, but now I know that was infatuation, nothing more.

My feelings for Rose are stronger after a few weeks than they were after over a year of courting Isabel, of stolen kisses and secret rendezvous in the garden.

I thought I had loved her, but how could I have, when nothing every came close to how much I care for Rose Smith.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? I wasn’t supposed to care about her.

She was supposed to be a tool, a key to unlock my prison.

Use her, help her find the contract, let her break it, and finally be free.

Either to move on to whatever comes after this half-existence, or to become solid, real, able to leave these grounds and exist in the world again.

But then she had to go and be Rose. Sarcastic, brave, broken Rose who can see me and looks at me like I’m not a monster.

Who holds my hand even when it’s cold as death.

Who kissed me that night, made me solid with her touch and her want and her trust, and now I can’t stop thinking about the way she felt beneath me, around me, the way she said my name.

Isabell never looked at me like that. Even before she betrayed me, even when I thought she loved me, there was always something held back in her eyes. A calculation. She was saving herself, always. I just didn’t see it until it was too late.

The footsteps are closer now. I can hear Lucien’s voice. He wants Rose too, I can see it in the way he watches her. At least he tells her he can’t help her, instead of pretending to want to help her and not himself.

Like me.

The thought makes me want to be sick, if I could be. I’m no better than any of them. Worse, maybe, because Rose trusts me. She thinks I’m safe. She thinks I’m on her side.

I am, the desperate part of me insists. I want her to break the Accord. I want her to be free of the Coven. It just happens to benefit me too.

But that’s not the whole truth, and I know it. Because if she knew the truth—that I’ve been manipulating her from day one—she’d never forgive me.

And now, watching her, I realize something terrible: I don’t want to lose her. Even if breaking the Accord sets me free, even if I get everything I’ve wanted for the past century, it means nothing if I don’t have her.

When did that happen? When did Rose Smith become more important than my own freedom?

The space around Rose starts to grow foggy. The edges of her form blur, like she’s vibrating between two states of being. She’s doing it. She’s actually managing to shift her temporal position, to reach back through her bloodline to the moment of the original signing.

“That’s it,” I whisper, even though she probably can’t hear me. “You’ve got it.”

For a second, I see through her, see the floor beneath where she’s kneeling, and I have a terrible, terrible moment where for a second I think she’s like me.

Dead. A ghost. And for a second I break.

Because I don’t want that for her, not the girl who is so alive she makes a dead boy feel like he is too.

I feel relief when she solidifies again, even though it’s like she’s here but also not here, existing in multiple moments simultaneously. Not like me.

The footsteps are on our floor now. Running. I can sense Soren with Lucien.

I can even feel Wickersly, like a storm cloud approaching, dark and inevitable. The Headmistress isn’t with Lucien and Soren, but she’s close.

Rose’s form flickers again, and this time I see someone else superimposed over her.

An older woman in Puritan dress, her hair covered, her face drawn with exhaustion and fear.

The ancestor. The original witch who signed the Accord.

For a moment, both women occupy the same space, past and present colliding.

“Rose,” I start to say, turning fully toward her now because something’s wrong.

She’s disappearing. Not just shifting temporarily, but actually fading from this moment entirely. Her edges are becoming transparent, and I can see the panic on her face.

“Rose!” I move toward her, my hand reaching out instinctively even though I know I can’t touch her, can’t pull her back, can’t do anything but watch as she’s torn between two points in time.

That’s when the door explodes open behind me.

The force of it would have knocked me across the room if I were solid. Instead, it passes through me like a violent wind, scattering dust and sending the pages of Rose’s book fluttering.

But it’s too late. Rose is already gone.