A rush of poison burns along her back, stinging her open wounds. She shrieks in pain. Her throaty cries echo through the room.
This is it. No one can save her. She doesn’t know how to stop the spell, all other celestial witches are dead, and no one else even knows where she is. She is truly, completely alone.
Stretched across the cool ground, she waits for tears to come, but they don’t. She lies there in perfect silence, her consciousness moving like an ocean over her brain. One big wave of awareness washes over her, dreamy and warm, and then it fades, slowly drifting back, back, back, into the dark. Over and over. The wavesgrow weaker each time. She’s fading. Dying. Poison crawls up her throat, lacing her tongue with disgusting bitterness. She’s a complete and total failure. She lost her love, her mind, and herself.
But if she could go back and undo it all, she wouldn’t. If she had never bargained with the god of stars and nightmares, she never would have come to Cygnus, and she never would have met the love of her short little life: Cassius MacLeod.
At the thought of his name, she hears whispers of a sweet, familiar song. It crescendos through her mind, enveloping her consciousness in a soft velvet symphony. She knows this is a symptom of madness, but she doesn’t care. Let her be mad—it will make dying easier.
She smiles at the perfect slide of notes twinkling in her ear just right. It’s sweet as candy on the side of the tongue. Drooling, humming, she sits up and looks at the dark ceiling. She welcomes a rush of cool air as the ceiling opens itself up to the sky. The music is written up there in the stars, notated by clouds and night. It’s a haunting, achingly lovely piece that sounds like the end of childhood, tastes like lemonade in summer. Finally, she recognizes it: “Iphigenia’s Lament.” Sound washes over her like a warm ocean wave. She’s floating now, high above the school, and higher, higher, higher still. Beyond the trees and clouds and stars. Beyond the night and the dark.
“Dolericym?”
But it’s not Dolericym who answers. She tastes his magic before she hears him—saccharine, sticky sweetness.
“Hello, Claudia,” a rich, familiar voice says. In a sea of black, a pair of red glowing eyes open.
“Malevimus,” she whispers.
“Right now, I need you to make a choice.” His voice blankets her, warming her wounds. “You can die for the High Sage or fight for Sidarphion.”
“You’re a god. You don’t need me.”
A hum reverberates through the black. “I have wanted tosave Sidarphion for the last century, but he is trapped out of my dominion. None of the gods can reach him. His cage is warded in magic that even we cannot touch. You are our last hope to free the god of stars and nightmares, and right now, you have the chance to try.”
Her voice is thin as air when she says, “Why should I? He and Triche are both guilty.”
“In this case, there may be an absence of good, but isn’t there a lesser evil?”
She almost laughs. “I am not worthy of determining which is which. I am not good.”
“You confuse good with perfect. Goodness is an intention; perfection is an impossibility. Mistakes and failures do not erase your morality. They shape it and serve as a map to your truest self. You are good, Claudia, because you want to be. It has always been your aim to do the best you can. That is all goodness asks of you.”
“You’re wrong,” she protests. “I’mwrong. I deserve this punishment. You said yourself that punishment is a cure.”
“It is, and you have been punished enough,” he declares, his voice booming like thunder. “Now is the time for forgiveness.”
Her lip quivers. Through all her misdeeds—the lies she told, the bargain she made, the life she took—she has always wanted to be better. She still does. Even now, goodness calls to her like a siren song. It is all she wants to be. It is what she will choose.
Olivier’s very first lecture whispers in the back of Claudia’s mind:The loss of evil is equal to the acquisition of good.This is the job of a rhetorician—define, defend, and always find the good.
There is good to be salvaged here. There is a lesser evil to be spared. Sidarphion isn’t all bad—he’s desperate. Because all this time, Triche has been killing him.
He’s been dying, too. Just like Claudia. Just like Cassius.
Claudia stares into Malevimus’s red eyes. “They have both done wrong,” she says, “but one was desperate, and one was wicked.There is a difference. Sidarphion should be saved.” Her eyes well. “But I don’t know how.” Claudia can’t defeat the High Sage. She already tried and failed. Her soul is slipping. Her life force is flickering out.
“Yes, you do. You know the new magic he has not yet mastered.”
Visions swirl over her mind. Odette’s diary. The poems, the constellations, the spells. “But Idon’tknow it. I don’t,” she cries. “I don’t understand it. I can’t use it. I can’t—”
“You can. Think, Claudia: Where do the disciplines intersect? What do they already share?”
“I don’tKNOW,” she yells. “I DON’T FUCKING KNOW! JUST TELL ME!”
“The potency of the magic wanes when you lack the desire to uncover the answer yourself.”
“I don’t lack desire. I lacktime.”
