Page 111 of Serpent and Shadow

The room had filled with robed figures in the seconds I’d looked away. Even so, the spells holding the students to their beds had mostly been released. I saw kids walking over beds as they traveled along the wall in single-file, making their way for the exit. Once they’d reached the doorway, I saw them sprint down the high, arched corridor, all aiming towards the right, and presumably deeper into the structure.

The adults ignored them.

Rather than trap them with more magic, or even bar the way physically, the Dark Cathedrals seemed to have lost interest in them altogether.

The person whose view we shared clearly came to the same conclusion.

They looked deeper into the dormitory room, past the rows of beds.

A closet stood on the far right, in the deepest part of the room.

The door was open.

The witch I saw standing outside the door was one I recognized, although her hair color had changed. Rather than midnight blue, like I remembered from the New Years’ Eve fair in Bonescastle, it now shone a deep crimson, the color of blood. Her irises, instead of turquoise, now exactly matched the new color of her hair. She was like a warped, twisted version of Miranda’s playfulness with her hair and eye color.

She held up a hand sparking with magic and stared into the closet door, her mouth twitching with mirth.

“Don’t worry,” Sirena said, looking directly at us. “He’s resting now.”

The spy edged forward, moving more cautiously.

Sirena was back to staring at whatever she could see inside that closet. The door and the angle blocked us, but I already knew who I’d see inside.

“He’s pretty,” Sirena said, looking directly at the mirror a second time, and thus at the spy whose eyes we borrowed. “Come see, sister. Hybrid or no, he will make a darling pet.”

I felt sicker.

Even so, I didn’t miss the implications of her words.

The spy was a witch, not a wizard.

I was about to ask Forsooth and Blackstone what, exactly, I was supposed to be gleaning from this, when Sirena’s magic flared hotter. Lifting her hand and bare arm in the air, she murmured an incantation, something I didn’t recognize. Her hand and fingers twisted in a delicate series of mudras as she layered different things into her spell.

She looked about to release it, when––

A pulse of magic barreled by where we stood.

It flashed with a blue-green hue, lighting up faces under their hoods.

It exploded into my vision from the right, as if erupting from our witch-spy’s peripheral vision. It came so close to where she stood, I practically felt a shudder go through her as she reacted to the sheer power behind the bolt. That ball of magic slammed into Sirena, her arm in particular, extinguishing her magic in an instant.

It didn’t hurt her.

I got the sense it could have, if the wielder had wanted it that way.

Even so, Sirena looked annoyed. She shook her arm, as if the magical blast had stung. She looked like someone had reached out and physically slapped her out of the way. Her blood-red eyes narrowed as she looked past us to someone else.

“Little shit,” she spat. “What in the pharaohs do you think you’re doing?”

The other person didn’t answer.

I saw him first in the very corner of the mirror’s view.

I wanted the witch whose eyes we’d stolen to turn her head, but she didn’t. Even so, I didn’t doubt it was him. His white hair nearly glowed in the moonlight-like illumination that filled the room. Without thinking, I’d assumed it was moonlight, that there must be a window somewhere, letting in a view of the night sky. But it couldn’t be the sky, I remembered; the entire complex was underground, and anyway, the light seemed to be coming from the ceiling.

It had to be a spell.

The witch we were using didn’t look up, so I couldn’t be sure.