Domenic had no answer. He stalked across the aisles, his thudding footsteps disturbing the Vault’s reverent quiet. Then he halted at the final one. In the distance, a small figure slumped upon the floor.
“Hanna!”
Every candle flared as he ran past. But as he neared her, something slowed his pace. Hanna was not collapsed but rather sitting cross-legged, utterly still. He cringed as Valmordion’s light flooded over her. At the celebration this morning, Hanna’s hair had been swept back. Now it hung stringy around her face. Tracks of dried blood streaked down her cheeks. And her eyes gleamed with a glossy sheen, rolled back so far they were nothing but white.
As he approached, her irises slid down like slots. Until they froze, locked directly onhim.
Hanna rose, swaying, and a sudden pressure crushed against Domenic’s muscles, his bones, his windpipe. He knew he was only imagining it, no different than the red he blinked from his vision. But his body couldn’t be sure.
“Wh-what is it, Hanna?” he stammered. “What are you doing down here?”
Ellery slowed to a stop beside him. She pointed Iskarius.
Domenic seized Ellery’s forearm and wrenched it down. “Don’thurt her.”
“I’m not trying to,” she hissed. “I’m trying to disarm her. Look at her wand.”
Domenic whipped back toward Hanna. Her grip on Syarthis was so tight that her knuckles had paled to match the aspen wood. And as he peered closer, he realized Hanna wasn’t simply holding Syarthis—her skin had fused to it, the tips of her fingers crusted with bark.
“Hanna,”he said desperately. “Why won’t you say anything? What’s wrong with you?”
Still, Hanna gave no answer, made no expression at all.
Then, with a jerky hand, she raised Syarthis.
This time, when Ellery lifted her wand, Domenic didn’t stop her. Yet when he tried to do the same, he couldn’t. He was paralyzed, aching, petrified.
“That’s not her,” Ellery murmured.
Domenic already knew that, yet he still struggled to piece what was happening together. He’d never heard of a wand possessing its wielder before. But even if Hanna had insisted otherwise, she’d been pushing herself to the limit for years. Still, however much Hanna unnerved people, her perpetual scowl, her crassness, her unkempt appearance, Hanna was unmistakablygood. She’d never hurt anyone on purpose, let alone Alderland, let alone him.
It couldn’t be her. It wasn’t. Itwasn’t.
Then, as Syarthis’s gaze bore at him and only him, the full awful truth clicked into place.
“It’s not Hanna who’s the traitor,” Domenic rasped. “It’s Syarthis.”
Ellery hitched her breath. “Could a wand really be capable of that?”
“Syarthis isn’t like the other wands,” he answered, and shame throbbed in his chest when he thought of how terrible Hannahad looked all Winter, how exhausted. How she seemed to snap in and out of focus. How often she’d hovered silently in the corner of the room, holding Syarthis, always holding Syarthis.
It had been possessing her on and off formonths.
She was his best friend. How couldn’t he have seen it?
A glow gathered at Syarthis’s tip, and immediately, Ellery conjured a shield between them, glimmering with prisms of light. But before Syarthis cast anything, Hanna’s left hand shot toward its hilt. Her arms shook as she tried to wrest it down, fighting against her own body. One of her eyes thrashed, like a prisoner trapped.
Domenic’s exhales stuttered out in spurts. Syarthis’s corporeal magic might’ve been unparalleled, but it still was a Living Wand. And like all the Living Wands in this room, it answered to Summer. Tohim.
“Tell me what you’ve done,” Domenic commanded. “What treason did you commit?”
Suddenly, Hanna’s free hand slackened, falling subdued to her side. Her other rose higher, until the tip of Syarthis pressed against her throat.
“Don’t…” Domenic croaked. “Don’t hurt her.”
“I don’t think it will,” Ellery said.
“We don’t know that. It could—”
