“Who can stop an army of magickers?” I ask with a snort. “Not anything I know of.”
“You would have been trapped within these walls and others like it,” she says, slapping her hands against her hips. “Vampirescannot rule, not while the sun is in the sky. You will always be regulated to prowling at night and hunted during the day.”
I hold up my finger. “But that’s the beauty of their plan. We are in the Academy of Magickers and once they have it at their disposal, they will also have all the magic they need to overcome their weaknesses. Although there is only one magic Morozov says he needs. Water magic.”
Bronwyn goes so pale that for a second, I wonder if she was bitten and is now a vampire. “Water magic?” she breathes.
“His specialty. His obsession, more like,” I snort in disgust as I think back to the hours, I had to listen to Morozov ramble on about it. “He swears that there is a spellbook written by a long-dead magicker who mastered water magic which will help him attain what he wants.”
“Petrov Hansimov,” she mumbles so quietly that I can barely make it out.
“Yes, that does sound familiar. Morozov says that this man was more powerful than any magicker here today, that he once created a storm that covered the whole of Ruskhazar. Morozov wants to recreate that storm. Blot out the sun with the clouds and rain. Then the third era will end,” I say with a shrug. “He is so obscene he wants to create a fourth era, the era of monsters.”
Bronwyn looks down at me, her face is still but I can see a thousand thoughts racing through her eyes. “How does he intend to get Hansimov’s spellbook?”
I lift my shoulder in a shrug. “Probably by turning the guardian of it into a vampire and forcing her to work for him for her own survival. It’s his plan for most things.”
Bronwyn lunges forward, I blink in surprise, but she simply drops to her knees in front of me. She clutches both my hands, holding them up in front of us. “Wilder, we need to get this book before he does. Will you help me?”
I hesitate only with my mouth but already I feel myself nodding. At this point I’d do anything to stop Morozov’s plan, even if it comes at the cost of my future of never having to hide from the sun again. “I—yes. But how are we going to do that?”
“I have a plan,” she says as she pushes to her feet. Then she turns away and starts down the hall, seeming to believe that’s all she has to say to get me to join her.
She’s right, but I’ll expect a full explanation later.
Chapter Twenty-One
Bronwyn
Ishould have pressed Wilder harder from the start. I should have done anything I could to figure out Morozov’s intents. I had thought him a devious vampire, certainly, but I had no idea his plan stretched this far. To take over the academy by turning everyone within into a vampire?
To blot out the sun?
I am used to conniving vampires; I was raised by one. My sister is another. My mother is a recent addition. I suppose that made me underestimate just how evil Morozov was because I never saw vampires as inherently evil.
I was always just so focused on my own task of gaining that spellbook. Wilder and Morozov were mere curiosities and annoyances—each in equal measure.
But I was blissfully unaware that if Morozov had his way he was going to snatch it from right under my grasp and turn me into a vampire in the process. Ahead of my time.
“Where are we going?” Wilder demands as he takes in the entrance hall to the building. The hallway opens up to a highvaulted ceiling with a massive stained-glass window above the doors that leads out to the courtyard of the academy.
I wonder if Wilder has stepped through these doors at all since arriving here. Being a vampire can greatly hinder your freedom, and I doubt anyone taught him the tricks my father learned to continue existing in the daylight. To wear layers and cloth masks pulled over his face to protect himself from harmful rays that would threaten to boil his skin.
Fortunately for us, it is night so there is nothing stopping Wilder from being able to enter the courtyard. I shoulder open the door and glance at him. “I thought you could do with some fresh air.”
His mouth twists in disbelief. “We aren’t leaving the academy, are we?”
“Not in a manner of speaking,” I reply as I start toward the wall. The shadows of the night, normally my fellows, feel threatening. Where is Morozov? What is he planning? Does he still consider this a grand game, or has he decided to move up his timetable due to our reactions at dinner?
All I know is that I don’t intend to be dismembered tonight. Or any night really. It’s a policy that I tend to try to stick to.
However, we make it across the dark courtyard without any problem. The northern lights flicker ahead, reflecting on my hand as I raise it to knock on a door built into the wall.
It takes a few knocks before Sofarynn opens the door, stifling a yawn. Despite the late hour, it doesn’t appear that I woke her from a sleep. She’s dressed in her everyday robes, and her curly hair is no more disheveled than usual.
She pauses when she sees me. “Bronwyn?” her eyes move to Wilder, and confusion clouds her features.
“May we come in?” I ask, twisting my ring.
