Alyssa and I grab a few ciders and clink them together before taking long drinks from the cool bottles. Alyssa bounds off toward the stage and I laugh as she gets a front row seat to her alpha pounding away on a drum kit.
Marcus comes up beside me and I nod to the other omega. “Watch out for her tonight?”
He eyes the half-empty bottle of cider in my hand. “I will if you promise to take it a little easy tonight.”
I offer him my pinky in a pinky swear and then I’m being tugged toward a bonfire by my handsome explorer. There’s a thrilling anonymity behind our masks and with the bonfire between us and the rest of the party, it feels like we’ve snuck away. Simon comes up behind me and I’m caught between them, between Luca’s alpha power and Simon’s lean strength. We dance with abandon, shouting our reverence to the saints up into the night sky.
I grind between them until I’m flying just as high as our shouts and that’s when the first flash comes.
Burning. Acrid anise.
I shake it off and let the feeling of Luca’s lips at my neck distract me until another flash strikes me like a punch to the gut. Demonic masks, horned silhouettes, and burning, the quad alight with septagrams.
I go rigid in their arms, looking around the quad, desperate to see nothing but our fellow partygoers.
Simon draws back, his hand at my waist. “What is it, Juniper?”
“I… I’m seeing masks again,” I whisper.
Luca looks out across the quad and alpha power rips through him as he puts his body between me and the rest of the feast. “Not just you, princess. I see them too.”
The quad explodes into chaos, bonfires breaking free from their magical wardings, tearing across the winter-dry grass in intersecting lines, septagram after septagram branded into the quad, dark purple-black magic tinging the flames. Soldiers of Saint Aldous, in all black, their gruesome, demonic masks shining luridly in the light of the fire, storm the quad.
“Alyssa!” I shout, breaking free from Luca and grabbing my scribe.
A Soldier cuts in front of me and I don’t hesitate for even a split second. I whip my scribe through the air in a spell I’ve practiced hundreds of times now:sisteire corporeus augeire. The strongest stunning spell I can cast. The Soldier freezes on the spot and I duck around him, racing toward the stage, just as Marcus races toward me.
I get a vision, just a flash, of Alyssa caught in the thorns of an omega trap, of the stage burning behind her, and I weave through Fairhaven students.
Chaos and satisfaction, delight at the destruction, ripple across the quad and I know their source, the tenor of these thoughts: Andrew Radcliffe.
The arms of a Soldier go around Bridget and she kicks and fights in his arms until her honor guard stuns the Soldier.
“They’re trying to take omegas!” Bitsy shouts into the mic. “Protect your friends.” She grabs Ellie and they bound to the edge of the stage, Darika already lost in the mayhem.
Marcus grabs me and I fight against him, but it’s like fighting pure steel. “No, Juniper!”
“They’re going to take Alyssa!”
“I have to get you to safety.” He chucks me over his shoulder, and I kick at him, pummeling his back with my fists.
“Let me go! I need to get to Alyssa.”
He doesn’t listen. He powers forward, back to the safety of the omega residences, but I manage to fire off one more stunning spell, just as the thorns of an omega trap start to bloom, purple-black, from the earth at Alyssa’s feet. The trap shrivels as its caster drops to the ground. Another Soldier grabs for her and she fights like she’s got nothing to lose.
And then I lose sight of her. Spells and hexes fly through the air, lighting up campus like fireworks as students battle Soldiers.
I scream at Marcus that we have to go back, to get her away from the Soldiers, but before I know it, he’s setting me down inside the wards of the omega residences. I bolt forward, but he barks out an alpha command.
“Do not fuckingmove, Juniper,” he orders in a command I shouldn’t be able to disobey, but even I feel the command cracking under the force of my fight, of my resistance.
“How fucking dare you! My best friend is still out there.” The command presses down on me, bowing my shoulders, but I take one lurching step forward and then another.
I disobey.
“Please, Juniper. Stay. I can’t go out and find Alyssa if I’m worried about you. Stay where it’s safe, for saints’ sake.”
He dashes back out into the fray, just as Ian skids into the residences, hexes sizzling against the wards behind him.
