One
STEVIE
It was supposed to be a simple sleeping spell.
Midnight Lullaby, I named it, diligently writing out each ingredient in my new grimoire with a precision that would make my Academy professors proud.
A piping hot brew of valerian root, chamomile, and lemon balm to help me sleep.
A rose quartz crystal on my bedside table for a dose of soothing, loving energy.
Salt poured across my doorways and windowsills to protect me from outside forces.
The Four of Swords placed beneath a white candle to encourage rest and healing, paired with The Moon beneath a silver candle for insightful dreams.
And two sprigs of calming lavender tucked under my pillow.
Sounds heavenly, right?
I thought so. Thought the whole magickal, sleepy-time shebang would send me straight to happy-happy-dreamland without incident.
And after all the incidents of the last few days—the vicious attack by Professor Phaines, losing my mother’s grimoire and the Journey Through the Void of Mist and Spirit book to enemy hands, learning that I’m an emanation of the Star card and bound to four mages I’m alternately crushing on and wishing I could just plain crush—Ireallyneeded this to work tonight.
Well. Clearly someone broke into my suite and replaced my chamomile with cayenne pepper, or my restful Four of Swords card with the anxious Nine. It’s the only explanation for the way things are going down between the sheets tonight—and no, I don’t mean “going down” in the good way.
I’m stuck between asleep and awake, unable to nudge myself fully in either direction. My body senses that I’ve been in bed for hours, but I’m still vibrating with adrenaline. My heart’s going crazy, my muscles keep twitching, and now I can’t decide which is worse: being trapped in a nightmare you think is real, or being trapped in a nightmare youknowis a nightmare and being unable to wake yourself up.
Right now, I’m betting on the latter.
Iknowthis shit isn’t real. Here on planet reality, my mind is fully present, my eyes wide open. Every few minutes, my darkened bedroom flickers into view, superimposed over the hellscape I seem to be trapped inside in the dream realm. I canfeelmy body lying safe in bed, feel the cool sheets twisted around my legs, smell the spent candle wax scenting the bedroom air, but I can’t make myself move an inch. None of my usual nightmare extraction tricks are working—jamming the heels of my hands into my closed eyes, counting backward from ten, pinching myself, shouting at the monsters that they’re not real. I even tried to throw myself off the top of a building, hoping to Goddess I’d wake up when I hit the ground.
Nope. Like some immortal video game character who just can’t die, I keep spawning back to life, dropped unceremoniously into the center of Arcana Academy. Not the beautiful, colorful campus with its gurgling Tarot foundation and black-and-silver house flags snapping proudly in the wind, but a post-apocalyptic wasteland identifiable only by the skeletons of once-familiar buildings rising out of the earth in clouds of black smoke. The sparkling red stone pathways crisscrossing the Academy grounds now run red with blood, bent and broken bodies littering the grounds at every turn.
And beyond that, the carnage is still unfolding, the air vibrating with the clash of magick on magick, of metal on metal, of flame on flame. All around me, students and professors alike band together to fight the onslaught of a treacherous magickal enemy with whatever powers they possess.
“Stevie! Run!” Someone shouts from behind me, and I spin around to catch Nat dashing toward me on the path, her silver-and-teal hair whipping out behind her. She leaps over a body and lands hard on her heels, slipping in a pool of fresh blood and nearly crashing into me.
“Slow down,” I say, grabbing her arms to steady her. “What’s happening?”
“They took Isla. We have to run! They’re coming!”
“Who took Isla? Who’s coming?”
“Stevie, we can’t—” Nat’s body jerks, her eyes going wide, then closing. She drops right out of my arms and slumps to the ground. An arrow sticks straight out of her back, still flaming with magick.
I feel her soul pass through me and leave this plane, and it nearly hollows me out inside.
But there’s no time for grief. Three dark soldiers barrel down the path from the direction Nat came, one of them pointing at me and shouting while the others nock their arrows. Behind them, a charioteer ushers her beasts to a full gallop across the quad, barreling straight toward a group of students huddled together outside the Breath and Blade dorms. Behind them, their home burns.
“Onward!” the charioteer shouts. The cold determination in her voice chills me to the bone.
She’s going to plow straight into them.
“No!” I yell above the din, my feet already carrying me toward the terrified group. That’s when I realize I’m not wearing shoes or much in the way of clothing—just a pair of underwear and the hoodie Baz wrapped me up in the night the Claires nearly drowned me in the River of Blood and Sorrow.
Still, I push hard, feet slipping in blood and gore and things I’d rather not contemplate, the entire campus reeking of death and destruction.
Where are the guys? Where is Headmistress Trello? How the hell did this happen?
