Aurora screamed.
Tables overturned behind me.
Enough! a voice shouted. Ms. Tamsin, one of the senior librarians, rushed toward us with a glowing ward sigil already forming at her fingertips. Miss Singer, stand down—
The spell hit her square in the chest. A flash of crimson-black slammed her backward into a bookshelf as books exploded outward in a cascade of torn pages. She didn’t rise.
The silence after that was brief and horrifying.
A portal tore open beside me, silver-edged and blazing. Keane emerged first, Wisp flaring at his feet. His gaze took everything in at once—Lucas bleeding, Aurora kneeling in his blood, Raven, me backing toward the wall.
How are you here? I asked.
My portals caught the disturbance, he said as Cyrus and Elio emerged behind him.
Cyrus raised his hand, and fire snapped into place—deadly and contained, a blue-edged ring that caged Raven without scorching a thing.
Don’t hurt her! My voice cracked. She’s still in there. She’s…
Cyrus’s fire blazed hotter, the blue flames creating a barrier. He nodded, but when his eyes found Aurora—pale and shaking, covered in Lucas’s blood—something tightened in his expression. But we’re not letting anyone else get hurt today.
The words hit me sideways. Anyone else. I looked at Lucas and then at the librarian who still lay silent where she had fallen. Raven, what have you done?
Keane was already at Lucas’s side, Aurora scrambling back to give him room. Aurora, can you walk?
She nodded, her eyes wide and terrified.
Ms. Tamsin, she whispered, gesturing to where the librarian lay crumpled near the stacks, unmoving and half-buried in scattered pages.
We’ll get her, Keane said. Now, through the portal. Medical center. Stay with him.
The portal shimmered open beneath Lucas.
Keane’s hand found Aurora’s shoulder. Go. Now.
She went, disappearing through the portal with one last terrified look at Raven.
Elio was already sealing exits, his illusions creating barriers while Echo’s scales flashed warning reds. Marigold, get back…
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t give up on her.
Raven laughed.
You think you can save her? The thing wearing Raven’s face smiled. I chose her, traitor’s daughter. Someone close enough to matter. Someone quiet enough to overlook.
My stomach dropped.
Someone you left behind, it continued, tilting its head. Here. At Wickem. While you were busy with your heirs and your plots and your drama. She was right there, Marigold. And you never even noticed.
The guilt was a knife between my ribs.
He wants me, I whispered.
Yes, it said pleasantly. And now I know how.
Raven, please. I stepped closer, reaching out with my necromancy to search beneath the corruption for anything that was still her. You’re not invisible. You were never invisible to me. I see you. I’m sorry I didn’t—that I left—but I see you now.
For one heartbeat, I felt her… trapped, terrified, fighting.
