More hands grab my ankles. Ignoring my kicking, they force my shoes off and press my heels into grooves.
I didn’t see the shackles before, but I feel them now, solid and cold through my stockings. Worse still, Magister Ackland flicks back his robes and draws a golden dagger from an inner pocket, laying it on the stone beside me.
No. No. No, no, no, no. It can’t end like this.
Please, God, don’t let it end like this.
“Edmund!” I scream—barely realising that the silencing spell has been abandoned in favour of chaining me. “Edmund, please!You promised this would be my new start! My chance to finally do something with my life!”
But he steps back, his part done. Damn him. He looksbored.
They cuff my wrists above my head next. Tight, unfeeling metal cuts into my limbs, almost as icy as the look in their eyes.
Somewhere in the back of my frozen mind, I realise that this is necromancy, the eleventh and most forbidden school of magic. The terror pulsing in my veins ratchets up. My heart is racing like a wild thing, and my blood hammers in my ears.
The six parriarchs crowd me, carefully pressing their grimoires into rests carved into the stone. The tomes fly open, landing on six identical pages, each displaying the most complex runeform I’ve ever seen. It’s quickly obscured as they cover it with one hand and grab whichever part of me they can reach with the other.
Their hands are nauseatingly warm, and I flinch at the contrast.
“Don’t touch me! Please. Don’t do this. Magister? Magister, please!”
“Does everyone remember the incantation?” Magister Talcott asks, purple shadows flickering demonically over her face.
“We’re not students,” Ackland chides, ignoring my begging. “I’ve been practising this school of magic since before you wrote your first thesis, Cynthia.”
The rector dismisses their byplay. “Quickly now. Once we’re done here, we can retire to my parlour. I had my butler bring up a bottle of Commandaria from the cellar. We can enjoy a glass before you all return home.”
My body freezes as they begin to chant, and not just because of fear.
My panicked breaths mist in the air above me as the temperature plummets further. I’m shivering so hard that my teeth are starting to chatter.
They’re doing this.
They’re sacrificing me to the Arcanaeum. Using a liminal, so they don’t waste any of their precious adept family bloodlines.
I was always meant for this.
I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.
They searched me out, fed me, housed me, and now they’re slaughtering me like a pig for market before they go home and drink wine.
A scream, born of pure, unadulterated fury, finally breaks free of my throat. The animal noise pierces through their chant, echoing around us as the Vault’s acoustics magnify the sound tenfold.
My head bashes against the stone, forced back by one of them as they continue their icy magic. Above me, the gold spire gleams and pulses wickedly with bright white light. Hypnotic.
My eyes slide closed, and I cling desperately to that pool of warmth in the centre of my chest where my magic spikes fiercely, desperate to protect me.
But without a grimoire—without training—what can I do?
A searing punch of pain between my breasts hits as the chant reaches a crescendo. I try to scream again, but my indrawn breath sends fire streaking through my ribcage, cutting off the sound before I can make it. The cold is fading, replaced by the sensation of being pulled taut until…
Snap.
One second,I’m heavy. The next… I’m not.
Everything has stopped. The frantic rush of breath in and out of my lungs, theboom-boom-boomof my heartbeat in my ears. All of it is just…gone.
Even the chanting cuts off, although the echo of their voices lingers in the air.
