The next novice was placed in Dobro, but the following two went to Legion. Sera whispered to her mother, “More novices are being ordered to the Legion this year than I expected. Are our ranks so depleted that we need so many? We aren’t even in conflict.”

  “Who cares about the appearance of the Citadel grounds if our world is extinct?” Her mother’s amber eyes bore into her. “Survival is imperative.”

  Sera tightened the barrier around her mind and sat straighter as Nora took her place in the center of the arena. She looked like one of the statues of the founding witches: standing tall, shoulders back. She bowed to the chairs.

  Her sister would do well, but still, there was a nagging ache in Sera’s gut. A burning heat. A rattling lock. Sera clasped her hands together to stop the shaking while Nora prepared her portal.

  Nora had practiced for months, and Sera knew firsthand the amount of power she held. She still had the scar from when they were children. Sera had given her sister a little zap in jest, nothing more than a harmless spark. Nora, unfortunately, didn’t have control yet and left a raised burn on Sera’s thumb. The healers had offered to remove the scar for her, but Sera decided to keep it.

  Despite her heart pounding in her ears, Sera smirked. No, Nora wasn’t going to fail, and Sera was going to clear that notice board tomorrow. Fill every order for the Jedan members in need. It’d be like winter solstice in spring.

  A circle of blue light flickered in the middle of the arena and expanded evenly in all directions. The light bent and shifted with perfect control.

  Oohs and aahs swept through the crowd, and Lavinia smiled. Nora’s portal warped and ceased its horizontal movement, then raised itself to create a perfectly arched doorframe.

  Even the frame Nora had created around the portal was stunning. It looked to have roses and birds carved from magic. That alone would have gotten her into Daedeth.

  Sera swallowed.

  As each figure formed around the portal’s frame, Sera’s core grew hot. She tore at her wrist to make it stop. Her darkness thrashed and beat against her skin, over and over. Sera closed her eyes and swallowed the nausea. If she lost control now, it would be the worst possible moment. So many spectators, and two chairs to witness her abominable secret.

  She took a deep breath through her nose and out through her mouth. When her mother wrapped her hand around Sera’s limp palm, cracking her knuckles from the pressure, Sera’s eyes snapped open. A cold terror lined every one of Lavinia’s features.

  Sera glanced down and swallowed her gasp. A thick, bubbling fog, black as night, circled around their hands. It moved and thrashed. A steady stream trickled down the stone stairs, slithering toward the Menage center. Toward Nora.

  No. No. NO.

  The magic seeped from the cage she’d built around that never-ending well. Sera watched frozen as her darkness slunk to the Menage floor. Something was calling to it, pulling like a magnetic force straight for her sister’s portal. She tried to pull it back, gritting her teeth, and yanked with all her might. Held on to that burning through her skin so she could lock the door and throw away the key. Closing her eyes, Sera tried to focus, but her mother let out a cry.

  “Mama, let go.”

  Lavinia shook her head. Sera watched in horror as her darkness stripped the ebony of her mother’s skin. The tops of Lavinia’s long, elegant fingers were now blistered white, and the darkness, her darkness, was ripping away the pigment.

  Sera shoved against the foreign well of magic. “Please,” she whispered, “Shadow, make it stop.”

  Screams broke out through the crowd. She was done for. They’d lock her in the tower, or worse, kill her.

  When Sera glanced up, she expected to see Chair Blackwell before her, ready with a set of manacles or a sword pointed at her throat. Instead, every witch and warlock in the crowd was staring at Nora and the portal beside her.

  Sera’s dark magic had curled its way around the frame, morphing the roses and beautiful birds, which had seemed carved of light, into monstrous creatures. Skulls, beasts with horns and sharpened fangs. The blue of Nora’s archway was now wholly black.

  There was no office.

  No Uncle Artemis, no study with a life-size portrait.

  A tall figure materialized and sauntered onto the arena floor.

  Shadow. It was so much worse.

  Chapter six

  Seraphina

  “Hello, little witch.” A deep, unnerving voice grated her ears, sending shivers from her neck all the way down to the backs of her thighs.

  Sera had never seen a demon draped in flesh. Massive horned beasts covered in talons and wings… yes. Some of them with skin the color of blood. Others had thorned and plated armor. All of them were terrifying.

  But this demon’s outer form wasn’t what scared her.

  His salt-and-pepper hair was cut short, and a shadow of a beard covered his face. The cut of his jacket was sharp, resembling finely tailored formal wear dipped in a dye so black that looking at it felt like being sucked into a void. Power radiated off him in waves. Sera could almost taste it, like a faint tendril of smoke lying heavy across her tongue. Like ash.

  “Demon! You do not belong here!” Blackwell bellowed and threw a solid wall of magic toward the enemy, barely missing Nora. Witches and warlocks in the stand screamed.

  Sera homed in on her sister, and that raging heat she’d felt before was nothing compared to what the abomination was doing now.

  I see you. I feel you.

  Her mother slammed her palm on Sera’s forehead and whispered, “Out of the darkness and into the light.” A rush of frostbitten air went through her. Tears pricked her eyes with the ease of breathing, and she knew she needed to thank her mother, but when she turned, Lavinia was throwing out spells across the Menage.

  “Go back to your realm and meet us on the battlefield if you wish a fair fight.” Blackwell was standing now, circling the table, and threw a beam of magic toward the demon.

  Sera didn’t know what she was expecting. An explosion? For him to disintegrate? Instead, the intruder walked right through it. Untouched.

  Coven members tripped on their robes as they rushed up the steps to escape.

  “Come on,” she gritted and dove deep into herself. She hovered over that well of dark power: “Come back to me.” There was no spell for her to complete. No way for her to pull this… thing… back inside her.

  The demon’s power thrummed over the amphitheater. The ring on his finger, a silver skull with sapphires for eyes… She’d seen that ring before, and others like it. Always a skull, just different metals and stones sketched beside the forms of the horned beasts. Her breath caught in her throat.

  This was a lord of Gehenna.

  “Blackwell, you should know better than to use your magic on me. Try it again, and I’ll kill this little witch here.” He pointed to Nora.

  No.

  Sera took a step toward her sister, toward the danger in the center of the arena floor. Somehow, Nora kept the portal open, even with the darkness feeding on it. Sweat dripped down her sister’s temples. The demon stroked her face with two fingers.

  Fury prickled through Sera like needles. The chains she had wound tight were barely holding on. Soon, they would be a cage of twisted metal lying between her ribs, and everyone in this arena would be dead.

  “Seraphina, do something!” Her mother pointed and cast, pointed and cast.

  More of the abomination seeped from its cage and darted through her veins.

  Pain. If she wanted to control it, she needed pain.

  Sera clawed at her fingers and demanded that the magic return. She put her tongue between her teeth and bit down until her mouth filled with the taste of iron.

  “Ahh, yes,” the demon said. “I know all your little magic tricks.” He looked at Blackwell and then Thorne. “You’ve been up here too long. You forgot who made you.”

  “Demon, return hence to where you came.” Blackwell’s voice cracked.

  Sera spat blood on the floor between the benches, and slowly, her magic obeyed. Where were the other Council members? The Mesar? Where was the fucking Legion? Her mother let out a shuddering breath, silent tears tracking down her cheeks. Lavinia grabbed her arm, keeping her there.

  “You can do it, Nora. Keep it open.” Sera willed her sister to hear her words. She was twisting her magic around her wrists, pulling as one would a rope, and as her darkness receded, the top of Nora’s portal returned to blue.

  “Demon,” Chair Thorne said. “This is a novice witch. You’re committing a war crime against our coven.”

  “And who said I was going to kill her?” the demon said. “After all, a witch wouldn’t be able to call to me unless she had magic that sang to Gehenna.”

  In a heartbeat, he grabbed Nora, and her sister screamed.

  No. No. NO! Sera sprinted around her mother’s barrier toward her sister, her black magic bending to her will.

  Her sister clawed, struck, and screamed.

  “Let her go!” Sera shouted. Her legs burned as she tried not to trip down the steps leading to the dirt arena. He couldn’t have her. She wouldn’t let him.

  The demon pulled Nora flush to him and dragged her back into the black abyss.

  “Mama!” Nora screamed.

  He was pulling her through the beautiful blue frame. The black center reached around the demon, thousands of hands pulling him back to the depths from which he came.

  Sera’s heartbeat thundered in her ears. Hard stone turned to soft dirt of the Menage floor. The air around her pulsated with static.

  Dominick’s voice rang out. “Sera, behind you!”

  She jumped, her arms outstretched, extending, reaching for her sister. A purple projectile singed the ends of her hair, heading straight for the portal.

  The last image Sera saw as she hit the dirt was Nora’s face frozen in a silent scream. Then there was nothing but an explosion of magic.

  He had taken her. A demon, the mortal enemy of her coven, had taken her sister.

  The cage rattled. It rattled and cracked within her chest. Her arms shook with the tension of holding it closed. They burned with it. She gripped the dirt in her hands and cried out.

  “Sera!” Dominick’s face was taut, his mouth moving too slowly for her to comprehend. A roaring of flame turned into booming in her mind.

  I see you. I see you.

  Chimes. “Attention—initiating lockdown—remain indoors—trust the Council.”

  “We need to run, Sera.” Dominick held out his hand, and she took it. “Come on, before we’re locked out!”

  Her head spun. Sera spat out a mouthful of blood and rose to her knees, but that black vortex within her raged.

  Nora gone. Nora gone. It seemed to chant within her, and she couldn’t bring herself to move. It wasn’t until there were hands under her and a sharp shoulder in her middle that she realized Dominick had her.

  She built her usual mental brick wall around that well of darkness. It wasn’t working. The void absorbed each layer.

  Dominick put her down for a moment and pushed open a door leading to a quiet hallway. Books and quills lined the floor, waiting for their students to come back to them.

  Sera sank to her knees in the hall and trembled. It was agony. How was she ever going to control this? Her face burned as the flames of her darkness pressed against the inside of her skin.

  The vision of her mother’s hand stripped of its color, blistered and scorched, flashed through her mind, and behind it, like a bloody chorus, was the sound of screaming humans from Feybury.

  “It’s my fault,” she heaved. “They took her. She’s gone.”

  “It’s going to be all right,” Dominick rubbed her back.

  Sera pushed him away and crumpled further into herself. Her body seized. Just like that Legion officer, just like those people. The roiling inferno roared again. The smell of smoke lingered in the air. Her breath burned.

  “Breathe.” Dominick pushed out a wave of magic. She knew he meant to soothe her, but as the humming green light touched her skin, she cracked.

  “Shit,” he hissed. “Sera, what’s happening?”

  Nothing mattered. Nora was gone. Dominick saw what she truly was: a monster. She couldn’t stop the sobs that racked her body. The flood of shame in her heart.

  “Wait, you need to stop. Stop, Sera!” The panic in his voice was enough for her to look up. A solid pillar of mist encircled her from floor to ceiling. Twirling around it were achromatic flames, a blaze of black, gray, and white.

  It flared wider. Sera lunged for a quill atop a pile of books. Pushed the sleeve of her keeper uniform to the elbow, gripped the quill, and stabbed.

  Sera yelped and pulled the metal tip, letting it rip her flesh and, with that, calming the raging magic around her. She called to her magic, and finally, the mist and flame listened. Sera consumed the defiant abomination, sucking it in like a desperate breath of air.

  Dominick’s face was white. The books around her had been reduced to ash.

  Sera pulled down her uniform sleeve and pressed on her fresh wound. Down, down, down her well of power went. It was so much worse than she thought. Sera closed her eyes and wrapped her arms tight around her knees, welcoming the sting.

  Dominick slid closer. “Sera,” he whispered. “What happened?” He was still pale.

  “Do you hate me?”

  “Hate you? I don’t even know what you are.”

  All she could do was nod. He was right. She had kept this from him after everything they’d been through. “I deserve that.” She wiped tears from her face. “I don’t know what I am either.”

  “When did you know you possessed foreign magic?”

  “Galene sent me on my first artifact retrieval trip three months ago. I was supposed to recover documents and ledgers from a small human village near the borders. The officer indicated an artifact was sticking out of the ground in a field.”

  Sera scooted herself until her back hit the wall across from Dominick. “I went to see what was there and dug.” She ran her trembling hands through her hair.

  How would she explain this? What she did to those people? That Legion member? It was unspeakable.

  “When I started digging, I found something hard in the dirt. I did my best to follow protocol and retrieve it. I started using my tools, but I got impatient. I used my finger to brush away a clump of dirt, and when I did…”

  “What happened?” His gaze was glued to the ground.

  It was tempting to lie, to tell him something else had happened, anything but the truth. Sera bit her cheek and lowered her head, hoping some fabrication would come to mind to get her through this. She clenched her fists at her sides. No, it didn’t matter now.

  “When I touched whatever that piece was,” she continued, “it was like the world ended. A black mist covered the entire town like a death fog, and then flames engulfed every structure. I had no control, no idea what was happening, only the feeling of being burned alive. Like every inch of my body was aflame. I… I passed out.” She refused to look at him, not wanting to see his reaction to what came next. “The entire town was on fire, Dominick. So many humans died, and the Legion guard…” Her nose burned from holding back tears. “My mother, she heard me somehow. I can’t describe it, but she knew. She threw me through a portal, and that was the end of it. I don’t know what she did, I don’t know whose minds she melted to erase the memories of that day, but she did enough so the Council didn’t catch wind of it.”

  Dominick was still. “So you don’t know what it is? The magic, I mean?”

  She shook her head, the movement swirling her insides. They were both silent. She pictured the flames snaking down her arms and incinerating the guard, how the fire melted his skin in a matter of seconds. She thought of the woman who called her a creature, but wasn’t that precisely what she was?

  A monster?

  For three months, she had searched any records she could, within the archives and without, for knowledge of witches or warlocks who could wield flame black as night. After weeks of searching, she’d found nothing, not even in the ancient demon tomes, at least the parts she could decipher.

  She’d tried talking with her mother about it, but Lavinia kept telling her to bury it. Any conversation about the abomination was evidence of guilt.

  Dominick cleared his throat. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She heard how hurt he was by the tone of his voice, and her heart cracked a little more.

  “I don’t know. I was so ashamed. I had killed so many people. It changed me. What it did, what I did.”

  Dominick’s mouth was set in a grim line. “I could have helped you cope, shared this burden with you. Sera, you’ve been a fucking shell lately. You don’t sleep, you barely eat… I could have done something.”

  “I didn’t want you to,” she whispered. “I didn’t want you to know what I did. I’m a monster, Dom. I’ve researched the traits of each race and found no information on this power. I can’t find anything about mist or black flame. Beings like me don’t exist, and the scariest part is that I think this was in me all along.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “That’s it?” That couldn’t be it. She was unnatural. A defective magic wielder. A liability.

  “What are we going to do about Nora?”

  “I don’t know. I imagine my mother has already forced her way before the Council and demanded a rescue squad.”

  “Okay,” he said and stood.

  “Dom? Do you hate me?”

  He huffed a laugh and looked at her. “Of course not.” He ripped a long strip off his robe and motioned for her to come closer.

  Sera stared at his outstretched hand.

  “You going to let me wrap that or not?”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.” All she could think of was the warrior she had incinerated. The one who’d grown up in Jedan. The one for whom missing posters were pasted throughout her quarter—the sole reason she had started helping the lessers to begin with.

  “If you do, I wouldn’t even be mad. Just make sure to spell out Fuck You with my dust on the Ogdelo floor, yeah?” Sera extended her arm, and Dominick got to work. “You’re going straight to the healer.”