She should have known. All those hours she’d stayed up studying and training and cutting and cutting and cutting… she should have known that there was no way she could ever be good enough for these people. No matter what she did, she would always be wrong.
And the one person who was supposed to see beyond that was justas bad as the rest of them. Nina would do anything to win, but she couldn’t beat Sylvia. So she chose to take her opponent off the board entirely.
Sylvia had never felt a moment of shame for what she did afterward, despite the consequences. She’d known the attack spell wouldn’t land when she threw it at Nina and Vikrant—their advanced protection spells would never allow that. But it was the principle of the thing, the shock on their faces that someone would dare to fight back rather than just accepting one of their decrees. That their absolute power might not be so absolute.
Then Sylvia had fled. Bolted out of the building, throwing spells behind her as she ran. She learned later that she’d just caused a few light injuries, ranging from minor bruises to what one man described in his application for workman’s comp as “at least six paper cuts, two requiring Band-Aids.” Vikrant and Nina, of course, sold it as near deadly, a harrowing experience only survived because of the coven’s inherent strength and righteousness.
Sylvia couldn’t stay in New York. She’d left the city she loved behind, flying to California that afternoon.
Even on the other side of the country, Sylvia knew there would be capital-C Consequences for attacking Noctis’ most important couple. She’d avoided them for months, tooling around Los Angeles, trying to do magic without spellbooks. But finally, she had one too many near-death experiences with old magic, and she was forced to eat crow. When she’d gone to the then-head of Aestas to beg for the witching world’s forgiveness, she’d been sentenced to a three-year power dampener.
The punishment was unheard of. Six months, a year—that’s what Sylvia had been expecting. But Nina was determined to break her.
Sylvia couldn’t even remember those three years. Not in full. Just bits and pieces of misery. Full weeks at the start where she couldn’t get out of bed. Forcing herself up when she found an eviction notice on her door. Another job working the counter at a shitty convenience store, her manager constantly cracking jokes she didn’t have the energy to laugh at about how different the California branch must be from the Pennsylvania one of her youth. Every day the same, bleak and gray, asthough she’d never left home at all. As though the past ten years had been a dream that ended in a nightmare.
Sylvia never let herself break.
That was always what Nina failed to realize about Sylvia. Nina thought she was hungry, but if you put a meal in front of her, she’d take her time, pushing food around the plate, leaving half of it to the side because she didn’t want to eat the garnish, the fat, the burnt bits.
Sylvia wasn’t hungry. Sylvia wasstarving. She’d grab the meal off the kitchen window and devour it whole, plate and all.
Three years was nothing.
She wished she could’ve seen the look on Nina’s face when she came back. When she joined Aestas, quiet and conciliatory, and started playing their game, slowly rising through the ranks and gaining support among the coven. Nina’s outsized punishment had been brutal, but it had given Sylvia a gift—a new start. No one could have gone through that without learning the error of their ways. She was rehabilitated, freed from the burdens of who she had been. Everyone was impressed by how much she had clearly grown.Hear that, Nina?
The Nina on the phone—this Nina who Sylvia hardly knew, and yet still knew far too well—let out a loud sigh. Sylvia could picture her standing in her office, her right hand rubbing the back of her neck, like she always did when she was stressed.
“Sylvia,” Nina said, and for a second, Sylvia thought she could hear a twinge of genuine remorse. But Nina had always been an actress, she reminded herself. A good enough liar to convince Sylvia she was a friend for years, when she was really her biggest enemy. This was a change in strategy—Nina using what she knew about a girl desperate for love to get what she wanted.
Unfortunately for her, Sylvia had cut out that part of herself a long time ago.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” Nina said. “I was young and foolish and scared, and I made a mistake.”
Words Sylvia had waited so long to hear. Words that meant nothing, because Nina didn’t mean them.
Nina only did things for Nina’s benefit. She expected everyone tokowtow to her will because she washer, because she was perfect, because how could anyone not?
Sylvia could use that.
She let a crack enter her voice. Let herself mist up, let the tears enter her words. “Thank you, Nina. You don’t know how much that means to me.”
“I want us to be friends again, Syl. Like we used to be. You meant so much to me.”
It was hard not to scoff at that, but Sylvia managed to keep it down. “I want that too. I promise I’ll keep Silas safe.”
“Thank you. Really, truly, thank you. I hope this can be a new start for us.”
“I hope that too.”
A brief goodbye, and then Nina hung up.
Sylvia stormed back into her bedroom, hurling her phone at the mattress. She had spent so long designing this room, hand-picking every element until it was perfect. Until it was hers.
She’d grown up dreaming of having a space like this. A place that radiated thought. Care. Love.
She stared at it, and then she snapped her fingers and watched it all turn to ash.
The bed, a California king made out of a deep brown oak that she polished every month, went first. Her closet went next, the tastefully elegant wardrobe she’d spent so long curating—the one that was far too reminiscent of Nina’s—disappearing in a blaze of heat. Then the entire bedroom was burning away, ash stinging Sylvia’s eyes as she watched it all disappear.
