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Almost there!Julita declares with unrestrained eagerness.
A growing tremor of divine energy is seeping over my skin from the Temple of the Crown. As the pale marble building comes into view, I give it a quick glance.
The body of the riven sorcerer hangs where it’s been suspended next to the main doorway, a display that typically lasts a day or two until the clerics decide the statement has been made thoroughly enough.
I yank my gaze away from his swollen skin and pick up my pace just a little.
My boots rap against the wide cobblestone road that leads around the grand temple farther up the slope to the walls that surround the college.
The school’s builders decided to go for a much more ominous vibe than those who built the temple—or maybe they felt that its inhabitants should be focused on learning rather than pretty architecture. Slabs of dull gray limestone loom before me.
Not that the college is exactly ugly. There’s something unnervingly breathtaking about the dark towers that jut up over that wall, dotted with narrow arched windows. And the frame around the broad wood-and-iron door holds an intricate carving: a rearing horse on one side, and a glowering gargoyle on the other.
This is where you need my bracelet,Julita says.Hold your wrist up so the flat part faces the gargoyle’s eyes.
She didn’t admit it when I mentioned the stolen bracelet earlier, but I have the sneaking suspicion that she was responsible for nabbing it. Taking a momentary snatch of control over my body while I reeled with the initial impact of her soul.
It definitely serves her purposes for me to have it, because apparently I can’t enter the college without the bangle.
I hold the bracelet to the level of the gargoyle’s bulging stone eyes. For the space of a few heartbeats, nothing happens.
A bead of sweat trickles down my back at the thought that Julita might be wrong—whatever magical security this vaunted place possesses can tell I’m not the proper owner of her bracelet.
Then the door creaks open.
The second I step past the threshold into the shadowy space beyond, Julita’s presence stirs in my head.Stop there.Just a second.
What now?
I definitely can’t ask her here. I freeze in place, peering into the darkened space around me.
I expected a short passage into the courtyard around the main college buildings. Instead, I’m in a dim, branching hallway that stretches a short distance ahead and on either side of me with no exit in sight.
Magic courses through the air, raising goosebumps on my arms. It doesn’t feel as vast as the power that emanates from the Temple of the Crown, but gods be sure there’s a damned lot of it in this small, silent space.
Julita murmurs as if to herself.What was the cursed password of the week? Lively fleas fly… No. Lively fleas rip from royalty like ribbons.
As I raise my eyebrows at the vaguely insulting phrase, she chuckles to herself and then explains.The entrance is a conjured maze to make sure no one actually enters who isn’t meant to be here. The password gives the current directions. Head left, then forward, then right, forward, right, left, right.
I’d have had an easier time striding ahead with confidence if she sounded more certain of the password. Willing my hands to stay loose at my sides, I turn toward the lefthand passage.
A few steps along it, more halls open up at either side of me. I keep going forward, then veer right when the hallway branches again. Forward, right, left, right…
As I take my third step into the final passage, an open doorway glimmers into being in front of me. The air there shimmers with a warble of magic I can hear as well as feel.
Go on through. If you have any harmful gift-magic attached to you, it’ll wash you clean.
That’s actually a pretty genius security mechanism.
All the same, I have to suppress a shudder at the ripple of sensation that passes through me as I step over the threshold. It feels as if I’ve been doused by a transparent, glittery waterfall.
Good. Looks like you didn’t attract any malice recently. The hard part is done.
Thank all that’s holy.
I walk on into the bright late-morning sun—and my pulse hitches with an unexpected smack of recognition.
I’ve never seen the main college building before—not up close without the walls hiding the lower reaches. Except I have.
