He raises an eyebrow. “To which question?”
“You’re making fun of me.” I cross my arms and glare at him.
“I’m not making fun of you,” he says, and for a moment his control slips, a genuine smile ghosting his face before he locks it down again. “I’m simply acknowledging that you’re a curious person.”
“Yes, I’m wonderfully curious.” I give him a fake enthusiastic smile that would make Margot proud. “Now, let me grace you with more of my curiosity, because right now it feels like I’m stumbling from one crisis to the next with no end goal in mind. Like… what happens after I have control? Will I have to hide my power forever? Will I ever fit in anywhere I go? Or am I doomed to be a supernatural outcast for the rest of my life?”
His jaw tightens. “Right now, you survive. You win a minimum of three duels without exposing what you are. Then we figure out why you have impossible magic, and who might want to use it or eliminate it.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?”
“First, we’re going to give you access.” He turns and moves toward a wall of carved names, running his fingers over theobsidian. “Freedom to move through the academy without being seen.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Watch carefully.” He positions himself in front of four names in the center of the hundreds carved into the wall and speaks each of them aloud. “Ulla Skaard. Béatrice Sault. Clíodhna Rourke. Erzsébet Varga.”
The names mean nothing to me, but the careful way he says them makes my breathing slow, as if I’m subconsciously doing everything I can to not distract him.
He remains focused on the wall. “You touch each name with flame-heated magic while speaking the incantation.” He demonstrates the motion without actually touching them. “By the Crone’s dark wisdom, through death’s own door, I claim passage, to the halls before.”
“That’s it?” My gaze moves from him to the names and back to him again. “Touch some names and say a creepy poem?”
He turns back around to face me. “That’s far fromit,and they’re not just any names. They’re the four founding witches who built these chambers. They created passages through the academy, hidden routes that have been lost to time. Almost no one knows they exist.”
My pulse quickens. “If almost no one knows they exist, then how doyouknow they exist?”
“That doesn’t matter.” He shrugs it off and steps closer again, his eyes locked on mine, as if he’s trying to distract me with that penetrating gaze of his.
It works.
He continues, maintaining eye contact the entire time. “What matters is that with access to these passages, you can move through the academy like a ghost.”
I shake my head, since it doesn’t quite add up. “And you’re just... giving me this information? Out of the goodness of your heart?”
“I told you,” he says carefully, like he’s reining in every ounce of control he has left. “What we’re doing together is mutually beneficial.”
There’s more he’s not saying. I can feel it in the way he’s looking at me and from the tension buzzing in the air.
But maybe that’s okay. Maybe we don’t need to dissect every feeling and motivation. Maybe it’s enough that he wants to help me when I obviously need the help.
So, I straighten, ready for whatever he might throw my way next. “Show me again,” I say. “The names. The order. The incantation.”
Relief flashes across his face, and he goes through the sequence again, slower this time, making sure I memorize each name and its position.
“Touch Ulla Skaard and say, ‘By the Crone’s dark wisdom,’” he instructs. “Then Béatrice Sault with ‘through death’s own door.’ Clíodhna Rourke gets ‘I claim passage,’ and finally Erzsébet Varga with ‘to the halls before.’”
I repeat the sentence a few more times to make sure I get it right, then take a deep breath and approach the wall. My hand hovers over the first name—Ulla Skaard. The obsidian feels cold beneath my fingertips, but the moment I channel heat into my touch and speak the words, the stone warms.
I do it again with the second name, then again with the third.
After I touch the last name and the final words of the incantation leave my lips, the four names blaze bright as fresh blood, and the solid obsidian wall shimmers out of existence.
Where there was stone, there’s now a doorway into darkness.
“Holy shit.” I gaze inside, trying to see what’s there and failing miserably.
Logan moves toward it, prepares to step inside, then looks back to me. “Follow me,” he says, and then, just like that, he’s gone.
