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Sir Egbert’s eyes soften slightly. “Sometimes, great men must do terrible things. They betray the Light for the sake of the Light. I can promise you, boy, that great men are almost never good.”

I look to Lonan, searching his face. But his eyes are steely, his mask back in place.

“You asked for my help,” says Sir Egbert. “You said the school is under threat of a siphon. I lived and died in defense of the Light. Let this shadow of who I was serve the same purposes now.” And then Sir Egbert sticks out his tongue as though he expects me to inspect his tonsils. But looking closer, I see a small black string on the flat of the protruding bronze muscle. “Donth be thy,” Sir Egbert says around his tongue.

Lonan gives me a hard look. “Vesper, don’t—”

But I’ve never been good at following orders. I grab the black string protruding from Sir Egbert’s mouth, and I pull.

Something dark emerges from his mouth, at first like a wadded cloth. Sir Egbert’s mouth stretches wide as I wrench the string and thick black cloth tumbles from his jaws, spilling onto the floor, around us, above us, until everything is consumed and shrouded in Darkness.

And then I am falling.

Chapter Forty

Wind rushes past me through the dark. My stomach is in my throat. The panicked, tingling sensation of weightlessness shoots from my toes to my spine. My arms scramble for anything to grab, but there’s nothing—only space, only air. I fall so long that my mind goes fuzzy, and my eyes roll back in my head. I feel like I’m floating or drowning or flying. I nearly let go of my scythe, its blade catching the wind and yanking my arm upward, but I hold on like I’ll die without it, my only anchor to the Light.

And then I start to slow. It’s inexplicable, illogical, but my fall decelerates. My stomach goes queasy, not understanding the physics of what is happening. A warm, yellow light appears beneath me, swelling wider and wider until I can see a room below. I’m gently floating, featherlight, when I’m dropped upright onto the damp earth of a forest floor. The forest floor. For I know these trees, their red-tinged bark, their twisted, arching branches that block out the sun.

This is the Blood Woods. It’s near nightfall, that hour between safety and the screaming that permeates the woods. I’m in the thickest part of the wood, where the trees are tall as towers, their trunks so broad that it would take three of me to circle my arms around one. The closest tree forms a small cave with its roots, the roof of which is high enough for the two hooded men beneath it to stand upright in its shadows.

I jump around the edge of the trunk so that they won’t see me, my feet crackling loudly on the leaves. When neither of them turn, I realize they can’t hear me. I’m a phantom here, seeing something like through a dream.

“I’ve warned you, Antoine,” one of the hooded men says to the other. “I begged you, in fact. Why, Saints, why, do you insist on subverting me?”

“You think of your people,” intones a deep voice, one I recognize in an instant—my godfather. “I think of magic. Gault is not the only nation that will be affected if you’re allowed to continue, Marcel.”

I swallow. Marcel—the High King of Gault. Galvin’s father.

Marcel seizes my godfather by the clasp of his hood. “Enough. Enough of this. You’ve been talking like a deranged prophet for years. Imaelhain is at our gates. To the south, Castelle is in Darkness. Aragoa is cursed. What do you want me to do?”

My godfather is stalwart, unafraid of the menace in King Marcel’s voice. “I’d have you not rend magic in two,” he croaks. “The Dark has won, Marcel.”

“Like hell it has.” He releases my godfather, taking a deep breath. “I summoned you here as a courtesy, Antoine. You know I could have you executed.”

“So execute me,” my godfather says coldly. “I certainly deserve it.”

The hood hiding his face is dark, but even still, I can feel the intensity of the king’s gaze on my godfather.

“I’m no fool. I know you’re more beloved than I am. The fatherly figure to the meigas who fight in my armies. The beloved of the queen. She’d have my head if I had yours.”

My godfather remains silent.

“You don’t deny it?”

“What purpose would that serve?”

The king lunges for my godfather, hand around his neck, backing him into the rough trunk of the tree. Even though I don’t think they can see me, I back away, hiding around the curve of a root.

“You treacherous snake,” the king breathes. “I brought you in as an adviser, practically placed you in the Eldership myself! Just for you to turn them against me, strip me of all my power, turn me into an impotent, ineffectual limp-dick!”

The king growls, shoving my godfather to the earth at my feet, his hood flying back in the process. His head collides with a root, and he groans. Rubbing it, he says, “A bit late for all this bluster now, isn’t it, Marcel? Perhaps months ago, when your kingdom was starving, or when the Dark was eating away at border towns, or when your wife came whimpering at my chamber doors . . .”

The king’s foot comes swiftly down on my godfather’s throat. I don’t understand why he’s goading him. “As if you aren’t the poison yourself. You think you’ve been that clever, that I have no idea what you’ve been doing under my nose, that I haven’t heard the whispers—the gatherings in every dank tavern of Gault, the followers wearing the seal of your house, what they call you.” The king shakes his head disbelievingly. “You don’t even pretend to resist the Dark. You’re the serpent in the garden. You always have been.”

Van Asten’s fingers curl around the king’s boot that presses into his shoulder. “You wonder about the boy, don’t you?” he asks, wearing a malicious grin.

The king’s face pales, but his eyes are fire. “Galvin is undeniably mine.”