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With the governor hidden in the shadows, Lonan overpowers him. He pulls the man’s arms behind his back, wraps a hand around his mouth, and drags him into the alcove beside the front steps. Anyone not looking too closely into the cloisters would glance right over the two of them. But I know what I’m looking for.

I march into Lonan’s shadows. The serpentine Darkness winds around my legs, caresses my arms. They are cool to the touch, as slick as he is, and utterly lethal. In the shadows, I find Lonan holding the school governor’s hands behind his back. He meets my eyes. “Your kill, Fontaine.”

I withdraw my timepiece from beneath my sweater—my anchor to Dark magic. My Light anchor is a weapon of war, but the Dark is different. The Dark draws from emotion, from feeling, from memory and meaning. To wield it I needed an object that mattered to me, and my mother gave me this little clock on its burnished chain the day she disappeared. Stars and delicate etchings adorn its face, and its metal is worn from where I compulsively rub my thumb against it. It dims with shadow as I draw my Darkness to it.

I look at Lord Bernard, make myself witness the fear and confusion and rage written on his face. I do this every time, force myself to take it in—the death and terrible things I do, hoping that it will awaken something in my broken heart. But as always, the numbness washes over me. I feel nothing as I close a hand over his mouth and begin to recite my verse.

You wondered when your eyes would see

The last of this life’s reverie

Though dying night and fleeting day

Are said to be the rarest play

In frigid dark may your body lie

With this refrain, so shall you die

I grit my teeth against the pain of the words carving themselves onto the flesh of my legs. This is the price of my magic. A new scar for every new poem delivered—cursed verse, songs of ruin. If Lonan’s shadow magic is a knife in the dark, mine is a spoonful of arsenic in a morning cup of tea. I let the words fall from my lips quickly and dispassionately. Lord Bernard’s eyes glimmer strangely as I hold his face in my hands. And then he collapses, fast asleep in a heap at Lonan’s feet.

Lonan nudges him with a shoe to ensure he’s truly out cold. “Beautifully delivered. What will he die of?” Lonan asks quietly.

“Tuberculosis.”

“Dismal.”

“It’s a romantic disease. All the poets thought so.”

Lonan exhales, long and slow. “The poets were wrong. No one deserves to die like that—slowly souring. If I could use my shadows—But we can’t have people dropping like flies on the front steps of the school.”

“Yes, we all know how effective your creepy, snaky shadows are.”

He frowns without looking at me. “I’m only saying it’d be a kinder death.”

His words surprise me. They’re strangely vulnerable, and more than that—I didn’t think he, who lures his victims like an ambush predator, would care one lick about a kinder death. There’s something sad in the line of his mouth, a slight distance in his eyes. Lonan holds my gaze, and I’m so distracted by it that I don’t notice that Lord Bernard is not quite as unconscious as I’d thought. He lunges for me, wrapping his arms around my ankles. I trip, my hips and skull colliding with the cobblestone. Lord Bernard is on top of me, a wild look in his eyes, face turning ruddy as his hands clasp my throat.

“Traitor!” he seethes, his face twisted in hate.

Then his eyes bulge. Darkness wraps around his neck, and a blade of crimson juts through his stomach. Lonan wrenches his blade out of the lord’s back, and the body falls dead on top of me.

Dispassionately, Lonan kicks Lord Bernard aside and extends a hand, pulling me to my feet. Lonan and I stare at each other in the Darkness for a second longer than makes sense, my hand lingering in his, my attention suddenly pulled to the scrape of his calluses and the steady, steely look in his eyes while his shadows swirl around us. I feel strangely light—probably the lack of oxygen and possible concussion making themselves known. I have to look away, and instead my gaze falls to the dead lord at our feet.

“Well, shit,” I mutter. “Waste of a spell.”

Lonan nods. “And now we have a body. And a missing school governor.”

“Shit,” I repeat.

“He’ll want to know.” Lonan frowns. “He’ll be furious.”

I don’t argue with that.

Chapter Five

Lord Van Asten, headmaster of Gossemort and my godfather, is a generous man, but he is not forgiving.

“You left a body on the front steps of the school grounds.” He stands at the end of the aisle in the school chapel—a private place to meet when the Solstice feast is about to start. My godfather is tall and foreboding, his dark hair speckled with gray on an austere face. Since I have entered his charge, the lines on his face and the worry in his eyes have grown deeper.