Page 17 of The Witch They Fear

His hand. His pocket. His thumb on the button. He watched Balcour read my family's names off a piece of paper and then he reached into his pocket and he pressed the button and I screamed and hit the floor and relived the worst night of my life and he's crouching here like he's waiting for a bus.

The rage comes so fast it nearly blacks me out.

It rises through the emptiness the fail-safe left behind—hot and jagged and ugly, filling the hole where my magic was with something just as dangerous. My hands stop twitching. My jaw locks.

Every broken, yearning thing inside me turns to iron.

"Was that fun for you?" I spit blood onto the stone. My voice is a wreck—hoarse, shaking, barely held together. "Watching the witch break on command? Big moment for you—must feel good to remind everyone what a vampire can do to someone like me with the push of a button."

He doesn't flinch. He doesn't stiffen.

I push harder. I want him to crack. I want to see something real on that face, even if it's ugly—especially if it's ugly.

"You didn't even blink when I walked in, did you? Not scared. Not impressed. Just another witch to manage." I drag myself upright, wiping blood from my lip with the back of my hand. "Tell me, Professor—is this what you signed up for? Putting witches on the floor so the council can feel safe? Or did you actually have to audition for the job?"

Nothing. He gives me nothing. His jaw is still set. His eyes are still on me—hazel, steady, patient, ancient—and his hands are still on his own knees, and he doesn't defend himself. The restraint is so total, so absolute, that it's louder than anything he could say. And I hate it. I hate it more than I would hate anger, because anger I could fight. This—this stillness—I can't even find the wall to throw myself against.

"The assessment is complete," he says. Quiet. Level. Like I didn't just try to flay him alive with my mouth.

I get to my feet. My knees almost buckle and I lock them as I stand there, swaying, blood on my face and dust in my hair and the fail-safe purring at the base of my skull. The room is wrecked. Cracks in the floor, cracks in the walls, cracks in the ceiling. A chunk of stone the size of a textbook lying in the middle of the ward-circle. The lights still buzzing wrong.

I did this. I always do this.

Balcour closes his folder. Caps his pen.

"Well," he says, with the energy of a man wrapping up a quarterly report, "that's approximately what we expected." He tucks the folder under his arm. "The results will be included in my first monthly submission to the council. Miss Dellaby, you're free to attend your first class. Magic Theory, Room 204, in—" he checks his watch—"forty minutes."

I stare at him.

That's what we expected.

The test was never about whether I'd succeed. It was about documenting how I'd fail. Three exercises designed to prove what my file already said—that I can't create without destroying, can't defend without detonating, can't feel without breaking. They brought me down here, poked every wound I have, and wrote down what happened.

This wasn't an exam. It was a ledger entry.

"Forty minutes," I repeat. My voice is flat. Dead. The sharpness that's been carrying me since yesterday is gone, burned out, replaced by something grey and heavy.

"Professor Aamon will escort you upstairs," Balcour says. Already leaving.

I don't look at Aamon. I walk toward the door.

He follows. I can feel him behind me—his presence, his silence, the weight of the remote in his pocket pressing against my awareness like a bruise I can't stop touching. Every step I take, I'm calculating the distance between us. Three feet. Four. Not enough. Not nearly enough. The man who just put me on the floor and watched me scream is carrying a school bag in his other hand—dark leather, academy-issued, presumably stocked with whatever supplies the council decided I'd need for my first day of class. Another gift from my keepers.

We climb the stairs in silence. The wards loosen as we ascend but the knot in my chest doesn't. I keep my eyes forward. My hands clenched. My jaw locked.

And I make a promise to myself that settles into my bones like concrete:

Never let your guard down around this man. Not once. Not for a second. That thing is in his pocket and he will use it. He has used it. Twice in two days. And both times he looked at you afterward with those steady hazel eyes and felt nothing.

Remember that. Tattoo it on the inside of your skull.

He. Felt. Nothing.

We reach the ground floor. The building opens into a wide corridor—the same one I walked through yesterday, the one that leads to the academic wing. Aamon stops beside me. Holds out the bag.

I snatch it from his hand. He lets me.

"I can find the classroom myself." My voice is raw gravel but I hold it steady through sheer spite. "Go back to your basement or wherever the fuck you hide, Professor. I'm sure there's another witch there who needs your help."