Page 42 of My Faire Lady

I swallow. If anything, this is a step backward.

It could be a dead end.

“It’s not a dead end,” Boden says.

A knock comes from the door, and Boden and I share a glance. This late, most of the creatures are asleep, the nocturnal ones keeping to the outdoors.

The knock comes again, louder, followed by Frankie’s voice calling my name.

My breath clogs in my throat. I push away from the table, rolling up the scroll as I walk, and swing open the door. “What’s wrong?”

Her face is pale, succubus wings limp on either side of her shoulders. “It’s Glen. I—I found him under the Queen’s Gate. At first, I thought he was asleep, but when I tried to talk to him, he wouldn’t wake up.” Her voice cracks, and a tear slips free from her eyes. “He’s unconscious, Scarlet, in the infirmary.”

My chest seizes, ribs twisting around each other. I shove the scroll into my back pocket. “Is he stable?”

She sniffs. “For now. But I don’t know how much longer he’ll last, and everyone is awake, asking questions. You need to do something. Now.”

“I’m trying,” I bite out. “Beyond searching for a cure all hours of the day, I don’t know what else I can possibly do.”

“That’s not what she’s saying,” Boden says, resting a hand on my shoulder. “It’s time you told them the magic is leaving.”

Bile rises up the back of my throat, and everything in me screams to disagree—that I can solve this without telling the creatures that the fabric keeping them alive is wearing thin. But they’re right. I have to tell them before any false rumors spread.

I hold out my palm.

There’s one spell my mother ingrained into my memory—insisting it was only to be used in emergencies. It hasn’t been cast since the war.

A summons.

Breathing through my nose, I trace the rune into my palm that sends an alert to every creature to meet in the courtyard. The moment I finish the final line, magic crests over my bones, singing through my veins. There’s a heaviness that follows—a weight that only hundreds of magical beings can create.

Worry.

I leave the library with Nesbit at my side, her feathers standing on end as voices fill the hallways. Murmurs of different volumes and dialects weave over the cracks in the stone. Yet I don’t need to speak their languages to know what they’re talking about. They’ve sensed the shift in the land—heard rumors about the sprite slowly losing his magic.

We pause at my living quarters, and I slip in, only far enough to open the coat closet. Shoving the hangers out of the way, I swallow and pull the Murrell cloak from its hook at the back, running my fingers over the ageless silk.

Despite being thousands of years old, it hasn’t faded from the hands of coven leaders it’s passed through.

But even as I swing it over my shoulders and pin the clasp at my throat, it doesn’t quite fit. Hundreds of Murrell witches have existed through the ages, but they earned the position of leader by strength or wit or spellcasting. I’ve never earned anything.

A chasm widens in my chest, and I close the closet door, staring at myself in the mirror on the back. My auburn hair glows crimson in the low light, matching the thread of the seven-pointed star embroidered over the heart of the robe.

“Scarlet?” Boden calls from the crack in the front door. “They’re waiting.”

Swallowing, I give myself a nod in the mirror, and dive within myself, searching for the strength and bravery my ancestors were rumored to have. Magic teases at my mind, but beyond that, there’s nothing but a wall. I dig my nails into my palm until the pain overshadows the ache in my chest.

“Coming,” I say.

I follow Frankie and Boden down the spiral steps to the mezzanine, trying and failing to steady my breathing. Out the double glass doors, a sea of magical creatures waits for me to tell them the magic is leaving the land, and that I have no idea how to stop it.

“We’ll come check on you after,” Boden says.

He gives me an encouraging nod as Frankie scoops up Nesbit and follows him down the final staircase.

I blow out a long breath and stare out the window. This is the first time a Murrell witch has ever addressed the creatures by herself. They’ve always had a coven behind them—daughters and mothers and sisters. But now, it’s only me.

The final Murrell witch.