Awestruck, Claudia marvels. “This is beautiful.” Her eyes widen like mouths, drinking up the starlight dribbling down on her.
Professor Lamour mumbles something harsh under his breath, but she ignores him and continues to explore. All around the room are towering bookshelves, packed to the brim with neglected tomes. Dust blurs the faded foiled titles on their spines. A few yellowed papers litter the black marble floor. There’s a massive curved desk in the corner with one ancient book upon it. The edges shimmer and gleam with the same light of Lamour’s enchanted key. Claudia walks toward the desk and reaches for the book when her professor suddenly appears at her side and snatches her wrist.
“You have much to learn before you can touch the grimoire. If you touch it before you’re ready, it can make you very, very sick. It’s potent with ancient magic, and it is enchanted so that it can never leave this room.”
She jerks her wrist back and stops herself from delivering a scathing response. She’s not on his good side, and she doesn’t want to make it worse. “Sorry, I didn’t know.”
He looks into her eyes. For one small second, his gaze softens. “I am only trying to keep you safe.”
She nods. “I know.” Though she remains unsure.
Taking another swig from his flask, Lamour walks toward the desk. “Understand that the magic we teach at Cygnus is nothingmore than pure human desire refined into power. Celestial, linguistic, musical, mathematical, and floramantic magic—those are all mediums for channeling hedonistic urges. Desire is what makes a witch. The common mortal is complacent. They want for nothing more than they have, dream of nothing they have not already seen. But witches burn with want. Witches feel that pull of power. Witches were born knowing they were made for so much more than anyone around them could conceive. Cygnus teaches how to use academic disciplines as mediums to transmute your desire into power. The scholars who are chosen are here because they wanted it badly enough. Because they had so much desire that it made them magical.” He opens a drawer in the desk and pulls out a large celestial map depicting nearly a hundred constellations, which is shocking, for everything Claudia’s read suggests there are only fifty. Lamour spreads it out over the desk beside the grimoire. It’s midnight blue with each constellation painted in gold.
“There are so many,” she says, hardly any volume to her voice.
“Sidarphion showed Cygnus scholars all the undiscovered constellations before he left.” He traces Andromeda with his finger and sighs. “I’m going to do things differently than I did with Odette. I went too slow. I didn’t think she was ready to cast, so I didn’t teach her how. And now, she’s dead.”
“What do you think happened? Someone told me she died in her sleep. It seems like everyone here either thinks it was natural, or they think…”
“They think you killed her,” he says knowingly, casually. “I’ve heard the rumors.” He takes another drink. “But this has been happening long before your arrival. Odette is not the first of our kind to be killed.”
Claudia gasps, feigning surprise. “Really?”
“There were more of us. The Eyes of Andromeda, we were called. It was our purpose to protect celestial magic, though itseems we could not even protect ourselves. At this point, I suppose you and I are the last surviving members.”
“Do you have any idea why?”
“I used to wonder if it was Sidarphion himself, but I can’t know for sure. The problem with that theory is the variation in the killings. If they were executed by the same entity every time, why have some with their throats slit, some falling to their death, and then Odette simply not waking up? It lacks order and logic. Perhaps it’s intentional. But either way, there is grave danger here, and I will not watch you fall victim to it.” He turns his attention back to the map of constellations. “All I’m about to teach you is in complete opposition to the way Astrologia is meant to be taught. Like any other discipline here at Cygnus, this should be slow and entirely academic before magic is introduced. But you were right when you said you’d need to be able to defend yourself, so I will do everything in my power to make sure you’re not vulnerable.”
She nods. “Thank you. Truly. I need this more than you know.”
Distantly, the condemned wing creaks and groans, settling into its own rot. Lamour doesn’t seem to notice.
“I need you to promise me you won’t use it unless your life is in danger. I don’t want you to get caught or killed.”
“I promise.”
He sighs. Clearing his throat, he runs his hand over the map. “While linguistic magic involves manipulating desire through words, celestial magic utilizes constellations. Think of them like runes—each carries its own properties based on its origin and what it represents. We use constellations in tandem with one another to create different spells.”
She reaches out to touch the map, and Lamour lets her. She traces Perseus, Orion, and Lyra. Beneath them is an unfamiliar constellation labeled Dracoemagyl, the fallen dragon, with twelve stars stretched out wide like wings, and eleven more shaped like a long throat and a crooked mouth in a beast-like snarl. With everystroke, she feels phantom fingers dragging across different parts of her body, as if the map is a mirror to the underside of her skin. “What types of spells?”
“Celestial magic is adaptable—not omnipotent. And until you’re much, much stronger, the power will only work at night. Within those parameters, you can create a spell for damn near anything you want, so long as you can make a good argument for it. Constellations are just imagery. They’re open to interpretation, which makes them profoundly powerful but fiercely fickle.” Lamour picks up the grimoire and guards it the way a mother holds on to her newborn. “Inside this book are over a thousand celestial spells that celestial witches have tested and proven over the years, and there are more to be discovered. That’s what I do here. I come up as often as I can and theorize the potential of different combinations. But everything I do is entirely theoretical, for we don’t have the luxury of experimenting as much as we used to. Celestial magic is finite. Abuse the light of a star and it will burn out. And so long as we are without Sidarphion, there is no longer a wellspring of magic to heal the stars we burn.” He points to a constellation at the bottom of the map consisting of three lines weaving around one another. “The plait was the first to die. It was used to bind and enforce agreements, anything from playground pinky promises to peace treaties between warring nations. Have you noticed a decline in people who keep their word? I certainly have.” He grunts, shaking his head. “Damn you, Sidarphion,” he mumbles.
Lamour flips through the grimoire, allowing Claudia a glimpse at the first page, which depicts a spell called To Keep from Drowning. It features Andromeda and Aquarius.
Circling the illustration with his finger, Lamour says, “This is how we write spells. We used to be able to do this with ink, but the magic is too weak now. The blood of a celestial witch is the only way to channel it. When you want to cast, you’ll have to prick your finger and use your blood to draw a combination of constellations, then speak their names aloud.”
Flipping through the grimoire to a halfway point, he shows her a spell called To Keep from Harm using Orion, the hunter, and Sagitta, the arrow.
“This is the one spell I will teach you now, for if you are in danger, it will give you the best chance at getting out alive. Orion will let you bend light into a weapon, and Sagitta will stop a killing blow. It’s only a quick flash of aid, maybe a minute or so, but it’s powerful and relatively simple compared to other defensive spells.”
He puts the heavy grimoire on top of the desk, to the left of the constellation map. From the top drawer, he pulls a blank sheet of paper and lays it on the desk, as well as a long, thin needle reminiscent of a wand in a fairy tale. With his robes and the glittering grimoire, he looks comically wizard-like, as if he’s dressed up for some silly masquerade. Claudia would laugh if she thought she could get away with it.
He pokes the needle into the fat of his thumb until blood beads at the tip. While he draws out his celestial spell, he speaks.
“Orion was the son of Poseidon and Euryale. He was the most handsome hunter to ever live, though I can’t tell you whether that speaks to the strength of his beauty or the ugliness of most hunters.” His cadence is different while he tells the story, as if he’s performing in the style of someone else. He almost smiles. “Though, I suppose he must have been quite lovely to earn the affection of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. They were rivals at first, you see, for they often hunted the same targets. It was during a competitive hunt where their hatred for each other turned into a different passion: love. For years, they were together, but Apollo, the god of the sun, saw Orion as an enemy. Through cunning, clever magic, he tricked Artemis into murdering her beloved by making Orion appear as a target from far away. Artemis unknowingly fired an arrow straight into her lover’s heart. Heartbroken, she begged Zeus to immortalize Orion in the stars, making him the strongest and most widely recognized constellation to ever exist. At his shoulder is the red Betelgeuse, and his leg bends at the blue Rigel, both considered to be some of the most luminous stars in thesky. The three stars Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka form Orion’s belt.”
He finishes drawing Orion and already his blood starts to glow under the starlight. It’s just like when Claudia cut herself on the roof of her home. She’d thought herself deliriously drunk, but now she knows that the magic she saw was real.
