Page 103 of The Court of Venus

Roland nodded gallantly. But when I held the door open for him, he staggered, catching himself with a palm against the doorframe. “You go first,” he managed.

Edward glanced between us, but he was overpowered—he only had his butter knife. He followed, dragging his feet and sniffling, arms wrapped around himself. We traced the curve of the slick walls, guiding ourselves up, Edward whimpering and throwing glances down into the pit.

“The guards enjoyed my magic immensely,” Roland said as he limped up the staircase, a bruise on his collarbone now fading to a sickly yellow green. “I’d heal myself, they’d torture me again, and again, until I had no strength left.”

When we came to the felled guard, he chuckled under his breath.

“Wait.” I held my hand up. The door was already open, so I could see the whirls and diagrams Prospero had chipped into the walls of his cell.

Roland winced in pain as he lifted the torch from its sconce and carried it inside. He swept it along, illuminating all the surfaces Prospero had dug his nail into. Not only the walls, but the floors and ceiling, even his bed frame.

He’d drawn the planetary glyphs in various positions under the zodiac. Saturn in Libra. Jupiter in Cancer and Mars in Capricorn. The Moon in Taurus. The Sun in Aries. Mercury in Virgo and Venus in Pisces. “These are the signs where each of the planets are meant to be exalted, according to Prospero,” Roland said.

Beside Pisces, Prospero had etched a single name: Philippe. I thumbed it, shaking loose chalk from the wall.

But there was no time to study it further. Panicked calls for help echoed through the pit. Edward had peeled off and was climbing the staircase on his hands and knees.

“Bastard,” spat Roland. He shot me a knowing look, and I raced ahead of him. Roland struggled in my wake, clutching his side. Silhouettes were already gathering at the top of the pit, trapping us within. The Moon glinted off the tips of their pikes and spears.

My own planet, so luminous at the time of my birth, now shone on the very weapons that would kill me.

Roland paused on the step below mine, his breathing strained.

I nodded to the knife in his hands. “How many can you take at once?”

His expression turned grim. “Injured? Not enough. You?”

I glanced down. Down was the ancient king’s skeleton. And above, the guards had hoisted Ed over the rim of the pit and begun their descent, hands bracing the stone. “Not enough.”

Roland nodded. He hooked a loose wisp behind my ear and lowered his forehead, resting it against mine. Our ragged breaths shuddered against each other. “Liar,” he murmured softly. My eyes slid closed.

Whenever I surrounded myself in darkness, I felt my magic close by. It hung in the night sky of that darkness, guiding me whenever I was lost. I was lost now. I was lost so often. But what had Roland said in the library? We can become anything, if we are found by the right person.

It began with one guard, tearing into his hair and shrieking. His weapon tumbling into the gloom below.

Then the fear twisted in every direction, grasping for feeble minds. No emotion spread so quickly. Guards sank to their knees in the stairwell, bodies contorting as their screams rung out. When we rose from the pit and into the terror I’d unleashed, we found men lying in the fetal position, crying into their hands, men gaping at the sky, men gripped by such fear it evoked childhood monsters, screeching for us to run or we’d be eaten. Edward, trembling beneath the scorched tree, calling out for his mother.

I stumbled, already drained from holding so many minds at once. Roland limped beside me, stabbing my sword into the dirt every few steps to steady himself.

The sounds of terrified guards carried into the night, an eerie chorus. There was only one strange note. A woman’s laughter.

“I don’t mind this roughened look of yours, Lord Chancellor,” Miranda called. Crouched in the shadows of the graveyard, she inspected one of the guards I’d put to sleep. Dragged open his eyelid to ensure he wasn’t dead. Then, with a shrug, she stood and wiped her gown, taking a step toward us. Roland handed me back my sword and twirled his knife through his fingers.

“I had hoped you’d come, Moonborn,” she added, laughing to herself again. “There’s so much we have yet to—”

Her eyes suddenly bulged. Her hands rose to her throat, pressed lightly against her windpipe. Lingering there, not clamping down yet.

Roland raised the knife. Only I noticed it waver. His gaze was solely concentrated on Miranda’s trembling hands. I understood what he was trying to tell her: True power is found in restraint. “I’ve heard the Guildfords punish you. They order you to turn your blade on yourself. They don’t care for you.” He shook his head. “Yet your eye turns to Bianca instead. Why? Because of the tournament?”

“Y-yes,” Miranda rasped. She cut herself off, struggling against his hold. For a few terrible moments, they battled inside her mind.

“Humble yourself, Marsborn,” Roland said. “You stand before the most powerful magician in the kingdom. You want to crawl, don’t you?”

Miranda stumbled, falling before Roland.

He tsked. “No, no, not me.” He lifted his blade and pointed it.

Miranda offered the barest of nods. She crawled toward me, grasped the hem of my gown, twisting it in her hands. “It is—” A rough swallow. “—an honor.”