“Unworthy,” a phantom voice calls. The voice says something else, but Claudia can’t understand it through her father’s shrieks.
The Doorway stretches farther across the room, and the thick flames lick the curtains. Still, Claudia doesn’t move. She can’t pull her eyes away from her father. His skin is burning, bubbling, turning black as tar. He takes his last breath and collapses at the bottom of the Doorway.
Magic swells in the husk of her father, and his corpse explodes in a burst of wet blood and splintered bones. The torrent is so violentthat it throws Claudia onto the ground covered in his remains.
At first, Claudia feels nothing but pride. His death isn’t vengeance. It’s justice. A life for a life.
But then, Bishop twitches in her hands. Slowly, weakly, he coils around her wrist. When she gasps, she sucks blood into her lungs. She coughs and spits until she’s able to breathe again.
“Bishop, are you really alive?”
He nuzzles into her palm. Her relief is almost immediately swallowed by guilt. Then shame. Then grief, disgust, shock, and horror.
All while the green flames of the Doorway crawl across the room. They climb the damask walls and spit across Claudia’s bed. Their entire house is going to catch fire.
She can’t think. She can’t move.
Her baby is alive. Her father is not. The scales are not balanced. Her kill was unjust.
Her pulse pounds hard enough to bruise her bones from the inside. She’s done something terrible, and there’s no way to argue her way out of the guilt. She’s wrong. She’s bad. She’s a godsdamned killer. She’s everything she never wanted to be—vengeful, messy, unpolished, weak.
There is blood on her hands.Fuck, there’s blood all over her body.
If she walks through that Doorway, will she now be unworthy, too?
The room fills with green smoke that reeks of death and burned flesh. She can’t see her bedroom door or her window. Her only hope to escape is through the Doorway. It may reject her after what she’s done, but she has no other choice. With Bishop in one hand and her suitcase in the other, she rushes through and closes her eyes, bracing for the worst.
A rush of cold air embraces her. The smell of smoke gives way to an earthy breeze. All is silent, until that same phantom voice says, “Welcome, witch, to the Realm of Knowledge.”
CYGNUS
Just beneath the Cygnus constellation, the Gods split open the sky, creating the Cygnus Rift, and placed one glittering stone in the dirt of the Realm of Knowledge. The stone cracked and spilled over the ground, rising up and up into a cathedral that clawed the stars.
The Book of Cygnus: History 3:2–4
It’s not winter at Cygnus—it’s a crisp, vibrant autumn. The sinking golden sun spills between impossibly tall trees, and the air smells like apples and woodsmoke. Above her, waxy magnolia leaves flash their burgundy underbellies, and maple leaves are covered in orange bruises. In the lake-blue sky, the clouds are pillowy and perfectly still. It’s so peaceful that it’s almost uncanny. Claudia is used to city sounds—mechanical whirs and rickety wheels and throngs of people gossiping about anyone’s problems but their own. Here, it is quiet enough to hearthe symphony of the natural world—the gentle wind, the running water, the hushed whispers of leaves. She turns to see the university stretching up into the sky.
There it is.
Cygnus University, as real as the bones beneath her skin. Its beauty washes over the image in her mind of her father’s death. She can only focus on the majesty before her. The university is closer to a cathedral than anything else. After all that she has learned about the school, she imagined nothing less. It treats academia like a religion, in a way—gods to worship; answers to pray for.
In the center is a white building made of sharp stone that glitters in the syrupy yellow light. Tall steeples flank either side, and to the right is a dome-shaped building made of glass—an observatory. She watches the sunlight cut through the glass and gleam off the metal that holds the panels together. It looks like the eye of Polyphemus, big enough to see the whole sky at once. All the arched windows are made of stained glass—black, green, purple, red, yellow. When she comes closer, Cygnus quickly becomes too large to fit into view. The top of the observatory disappears into the deepening blue sky.
This place looks like Elysium, and she looks like a monster who shouldn’t be allowed inside. Her once-blue dress is dripping in her father’s blood. It splatters onto the white marble steps that lead to the arched doors of the school. Bishop’s scales are stained red. She slides his tired body from her wrist and tucks him into her pocket, where he curls around her Roe timepiece. Blood trails behind her while she walks up the stairs.
Here, she pauses, running her trembling hand over her face to swipe off as much blood as she can. Maybe she should change clothes. Maybe she should turn back. Maybe she should—
The door opens before she can make up her mind. A stab of light blinds her. When she steps inside, her eyes adjust, and a room full of bustling students all clad in black robes comes toa complete halt. Each robe has the Cygnus emblem in varying colors signifying their primary discipline—green for Scientia, violet for Musices, yellow for Mathematica, and red for Rhetoric. Everyone goes silent and stares at her: the stranger, covered in blood, crazed and confused. Bright light streams through the stained glass windows, illuminating Claudia’s gruesome form in vivid color. Shame weighs her down and holds her still. She wishes she could shrink into herself and disappear from this moment altogether.
“Who in the gods’ names is that?” a young man says, charging toward her. He is a riptide in a sea of still bodies. The red emblem over his heart indicates he’s also a Rhetoric student, and his shaggy hair is as dark as his black robes. His prominent cheekbones match the sharpness of his jaw, but round blue eyes and full lips soften his face. There’s a strange mark just below his left eye—it’s not a scar or a wound. It’s only a few shades darker than his pale skin. It almost looks like a star.
“Hello,” Claudia says weakly. She clears her throat. “I, um”—she looks down at her dress—“I’m so sorry, I didn’t plan to arrive like this.”
He keeps his distance, looking her up and down with disgust. “What did you do?”
I killed my father.The thought loops in her mind. She can think of nothing else to say.
He raises his brows, waiting for a response. “Well?”
