“The Sorting goes forward,” I said. “The academy is my responsibility. If Max isn’t an agent of the White Witch, you don’t have a fucking thing to worry about.” Iheld each of their gazes in turn, iron will in mine. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”
Sometimes it felt exactly like that. Like I was being shut out. But I shoved the thought down before it cracked something between us that couldn’t be repaired.
“If Max is truly the One,” I let a thin smile cross my face, “the lost heir of two powerful Zodiac Houses, loyal to our cause—he’ll pass through the Sorting unharmed. Right?”
They’d walked right into it. All three of them. Even Aelindor.
“So be it,” Aelindor said.
Caspian and Nikolai exchanged a glance that was loaded with shared conflict and unresolved tension before remembering they were still rivals. But they both gave a curt nod.
I’d take the warlock out before he could drive a deeper wedge between my brothers and me. Before he muddled my head any further.
I was doing this to protect us. To defend the Zodiac Covenant from any enemy, from any harm.
That’s what I told myself.
I had no regrets.
25
MAX
The grand library stood at the eastern end of the fortress. I’d wanted to visit it ever since I first spotted its peaked roof from the track. In my mind, I walked through its doors on a quiet afternoon, running my fingers along rows of books, filling in a decade of stolen education.
This wasn’t how I’d pictured it.
The building rose in three stories of pale stone. Its façade was carved with the merged sigil of the Zodiac Covenant—the four houses of Leo, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Aries intertwined in a circle of gold and silver. Wide marble stairs swept up from the courtyard to a pair of twenty-foot-tall double doors. They stood open.
Between those open doors, dragon fire burned. Steady. Patient. Malice made visible.
The flames filled the entire doorframe, floor to lintel, edge to edge. A wall of amber laced with threads of blue-white magic. The heat reached the bottom of the stairs. The air above the entrance shimmered.
The four heirs stood at the top of the stairs, two on either side of the flaming doorway. They wore full dress uniform in the colors of their houses.
Nikolai wore a high-collared military coat in oxblood, the color of House Sagittarius. Dark slacks, polished black boots, a belt with a gold clasp. On him, the uniform looked less like regulation and more like a warning. His gaze swept the assembled cadets with detached assessment before it landed on me.
Heat flashed through me. I remembered what we’d done in his penthouse. His wicked tongue. The pleasure I never thought possible.
Drakken stood in Leo’s dark charcoal. He radiated the particular menace of a man who had designed this trial and intended to see it through.
Aelindor wore silver, House Virgo. He stood with the stillness of a blade in its sheath. Always graceful. Always lethal.
Caspian wore storm blue, House Aries. The coat was fitted to his broad-chested, combat-ready frame. Structured enough to hold its shape, flexible enough to shift in. He was the most easygoing among the four. But today, his ease seemed stretched thin over sharp edges.
Thousands of cadets packed the courtyard below the stairs. First-years in standard fatigues: gray and slate-blue, no insignia. A blank slate that said you hadn’t earned anything yet. Behind us, the second-years stood in formation in their silver and steel-blue—the visible step up, the color of survival. They’d made it through Drakken’s first year and come back. They were here to watch the first-years go through the Sorting.
Every face in the courtyardwas turned toward the fire. Thrill. Fear. Anxiety. The air tasted of heat and magic.
The first group filed forward, shoulder to shoulder. They climbed the marble stairs and walked into the flaming doorway.
The fire parted for them. It split down the middle like a curtain drawn by invisible hands. The flames pulled back to either side, and the cadets walked through untouched. Not a hair singed. Not a thread of their fatigues scorched. They passed into the library, and the fire closed behind them.
Cheers erupted from the courtyard. Loyal soldiers. Loyal to the bone.
The second group climbed the stairs. One hundred cadets, moving in tight formation, faces set.
The fire parted again. Bodies flowed through. Then, midway through the group, the flames surged.
