18
stay with me
The night had grown colder, winter’s teeth fully bared in the mid-December night. Sera scanned her surroundings. The winds wailed, and the trees shivered.
She blinked, needing clear eyes and a clear mind to find Mary, but the tears remained, multiplied. Through the cold, heat gathered in her cheeks, shame a weight heavy on her chest. She had to find her and explain. How would she explain it? There was no excuse. No way to hide it; she had seen his kiss with her own eyes. Surely she would know Timothy accompanied her to the dance only in order to be with Sera.
Sera’s heart tightened. Barrington’s betrayal had broken her, and now she’d inflicted that pain upon another. Mary would never bear it. She would lose her friend forever.
“Mary!” Sera shouted. How could she have single-handedly ruined all the good in her life? Her friendship with Mary, her agreement with Barrington? Her heart begged to escape, to run through the thickets, scale the gate, and flee the Academy. What was left for her here? Her chances at a referral had been destroyed along with her partnership with the only man who’d ever given her a chance to prove herself beyond a seventhborn. And now her only true friend was gone. Her breaths caught and broke in her chest. She couldn’t have ruined this, too. No, no, no.
She pushed through the dense brush. Things couldn’t end this way. She wouldn’t lose Mary, not without first apologizing. She hadn’t moved quickly enough to catch Barrington, but she would find Mary if it was the last thing she did.
She held out her wand, illuminating the spaces around her. “Mary!” The winds shifted and howled. Disturbed gaunt branches made shadows dance on the ground as if to scare her. But she trudged forward. Mary had come this way, and she wouldn’t turn back without her.
“Mary, please,” she yelled out into the darkness. “Tell me where you are so we can talk.” She whirled, hoping to catch sight of the girl or the light of her wand. The Academy spires were smaller than expected; she hadn’t noticed how far she’d run. Still, she ran deeper into the dark, her magic torchlight wavering. Roots tripped her. Barren branches sliced at her face and snatched at her dress as she dashed through dense thickets. She stumbled forward into a small meadow and spun wildly. “Tell me where you are! Mary!”
She expanded her light but found no trace of her friend. Only a deep, unnatural silence. Uneasiness squeezed her bones. “Mary?”
A masculine chuckle resounded from the dark between the trees. “She isn’t here.”
Sera tightened her grip on her wand. “Whittaker, I have no time for your nonsense.”
“Whittaker? No, he isn’t here, either. But we are.”
A robed figure emerged from the darkness. Sera spun slowly, watching more of them appear from behind the trees, one by one, their wands illuminated red. They wore black, beaked plague masks, and in their light, she caught sight of the emblem on their robes—ravens.
No…
Fear rushed to her limbs in a dizzying manner. Was he here? She eyed each man carefully. No, Noah wouldn’t ever use a mask. He was much too proud. Much too sadistic.
Instincts flared, and she aimed her wand at them. “Don’t come any closer,” she warned, her eyes darting at the figures as they spread about and encircled her. She would never escape. Accepting this, she held her wand steady. They wouldn’t take her alive. Not without a good fight. “I won’t go with you. I’ll never be your puppet.”
One of the robed figures stepped into the circle. “And how do you know this, witchling? Not even the Aetherium has caught on to us.” He lifted his wand to her swiftly. Shackles of magic whipped around her, scalding ropes of red. She screamed, fell back onto the damp grass, and writhed against the burn that cut through the fabric of her dress and into her skin. Blood seared as it seeped from gashes, wetting her skin. Her wand tumbled away from her, but even if she held it, no magic would come. Only pain. Eyes shut tight, she thrashed, struggled to evade the ache spreading over her skin, digging its claws into her pores. It was everywhere.
He lowered his wand, and the flow of his magic stopped. “There’s nothing to be scared of. The master is certain you will help us usher in a new era, and that’s a great purpose. You should be honored, seventhborn.” He held out a hand to her.
The master…
In spite of the pain, Sera struggled onto her elbows, to her knees, and faced the Brother. This couldn’t be her end. She couldn’t let Noah reach other witches, other seventhborns. She looked into his eyes. She would survive this. She had to.
Noting her defiance, he lifted his wand to her throat. The tip was filed to a point sharp enough to slice through skin. He trailed it along her neck, the spike pricking at her pulse.
“It’s a shame the master asked us to collect you. With your reserves, I could get two uses out of you.”
Reserves…
Sera’s mind worked like mad. He knew her reserves. And Portia mentioned she had large reserves as well. How would they have known? What did she have in common with Portia where they would know? Sera gazed up, the Academy spires like shadowy swords against the night sky. Her heart twisted. Of course. Portia had applied for the seventhborn program, where their reserves had been tested and documented, just as Sera’s were documented for school purposes. The Brotherhood didn’t target random seventhborns. They targeted powerful ones, with vast reserves based on the applications for the seventhborn program. It had to be, and Barrington needed to know.
“I’m being kind, seventhborn. Come.”
Sera set her jaw. “No—”
She arched forward with a cry as blistering pain spiked into her body. She rolled onto her stomach and attempted to push herself up. The Brother kicked her arms from under her, and she slammed onto the ground, winded.
Magic thrashed within her, a wild beast rattling the cage of her control. She hooked her fingers into the earth and called to her magic from every part of her being, funneling it until it became a solid thing in her chest, pumping with every heartbeat. Focused, she closed her eyes and felt her pain, used it as fuel to the gathering magic. Her hands trembled; the magic she felt churning within her held the promise of oblivion once she let it go. The last time she’d felt this way, the last time she’d released this beast of magic, she’d collapsed a building around her, nearly killing Noah and herself. Now it rattled for release. Her reserves were greater now; she may not survive it this time.
It was her only choice.
“You will come, seventhborn,” he said. “You wouldn’t want your friend’s death on your conscience, would you?”
A gust blew. Within the wind’s moan and crackling of the branches, she heard it—a grunt. The circle opened, and another hooded figure entered. He held Timothy by the neck, his wand aimed at his head.
Sera winced, yanking back the leash on her magic. She couldn’t unleash it here, not with the possibility of it killing Timothy as well. “It’s me you want,” she said quickly, holding tight to the wild magic within her. “Let him go.”
“No,” Timothy said. “I’m Timothy Delacort, and it’s me they want.”
“Don’t listen to him—”
“You want to know about the Scrolls, no?” Timothy cut above her. “I can help you. Let her go and you have my word. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. My father knows people who can help.”
The Brother chuckled once more. “Yes, your father knows many people. He knew us very well before he abandoned us.”
Sera blinked. Timothy’s father, a Brother?
Timothy’s momentary silence told her he didn’t know this, either. “I don’t know what your past is with him, but he’ll do anything to get me back. Let her go, and I promise he’ll help you.”
“A liar, just like your father,” the Brother said coolly. “No one person has the Scrolls, boy. Had your father not abandoned us, he would have known that.”
The Brother grabbed a fistful of Sera’s hair and yanked her to her feet. “Kill him and set his body on the Aetherium stairs—”
“No!” she screamed.
Timothy grunted and snatched his arm away from his captor. The upward movement knocked off the Brother’s mask. The man stumbled. In the momentary distraction, Timothy snatched his wand and aimed it at the group surrounding Sera. She yanked herself away and lunged to the ground. A trail of heat and light dashed above her and exploded, mixed with screams and the roar of fire. She looked over her shoulder. The group of Brothers was now strewn along the field, some engulfed in flames. Their fiery bodies writhed and speared magic blindly, setting fire to the field and the trees around them.
She spun back to Timothy—
“Timothy, behind you!”
The Brother punched Timothy in the jaw, sending him whirling to the ground and the wand flying from his hand. The Brother snatched up the wand and aimed it at Timothy.
This was it.
Sera released the chain from around the magic she’d siphoned, and with a guttural cry, let the energy pour out of her. Unchecked by a wand, unfocused by desperation, governed by rage. Her wild magic fed out in a continuous flame and melded with that of Timothy’s magic consuming the field. The fire roared, doubled, and devoured, both men and trees burning.
Her gathered magic running out, Sera collapsed onto her knees, her reserves dangerously low. Wracking coughs scraped her insides, the smoke a thick sheet around her. Heat closed in, preceding the angry flames.
A shadow became visible through the vapors.
“Timothy—”
Not Timothy, but the Brother.
He sliced down with his wand. An arched blow of blinding magic cut toward her. She screamed, rolled out of the way, and groaned in agony, her arm seared in the flames. His magic spurred the fire, bringing it closer.
Through the licks, she saw him searching the flames for her, his wand in hand.
She gathered more magic, though much less than before, and lifted a bloody, scorched hand to the fire.
The flames crested and sucked the man into its void. But fire knew not friend from foe and edged closer to Sera.
The Brother lunged through the smoke, a determined hate in his eyes. She’d burned but not killed him, and now he’d kill her. Breath caught, she held up a hand, calling to her magic once more, but with her reserves near depletion and her fear of the surrounding flames, of imminent death, her energy scattered, and she was unable to focus it into another blast.
He clutched her arm and dragged her close. Sera tried to kick him, but her feet tangled in her skirts and never connected with the man.
“You will burn, witchling, but not here,” he seethed, haloed by fire. She craned her neck, hoped to bite his face, his arm, anything to secure her freedom. He was taller, stronger.
The Brother seized her by the neck and whipped binds around her hands and feet. She struggled, but he sent the binds deeper. Her wrists and ankles charred, her magic once again dispersed under pain.
Their small patch of land didn’t burn, but the licks of fire crowded them, sought to reach in and devour them alive. Brothers ran in the raging flames, fiery figures trying to escape a death that had already enveloped them.
Anger bloomed in her again, and unlike the fear that scattered her magic, this rage she could hold on to. She wouldn’t let them leave here alive, not to torture more witches. Hands bound, she grasped the Brother’s arm, dug her fingers through his fire-shredded sleeve, and held on, her legs raw as the flames bit through her dress and sank teeth into her skin. Through the ache, she focused her magic on anger and called upon it to bind them together. A band of white whipped from her hands and wound about his arm. The way they’d done to other seventhborns. And like them, he, too, would burn.
The bands of magic around him burst into flames, and the Brother screamed, his body engulfed in fire.
Tethered to him, Sera cried out at the fiery lashes of his cloak that brushed against her face. She collapsed onto her knees, her fight clipped by pain and her need for air. Still she held on to him with all she had and willed another whip of magic to bridge them together. She hadn’t guaranteed Noah was dead. She would make certain this man was.
Strange pleasure prickled her insides as she watched her skin burn, the men burn, the trees burn. She could not control these fires, but at the same time she couldn’t bring herself to care.
Their binds severed, and she dragged her arm away from the fire and the dead Brother. But it didn’t matter. Her reserves spent, debilitating fatigue rolled over her body, and she could barely move, barely breathe. Sera rested her head on the ashy ground, welcoming the darkness that tugged her in and out of consciousness.
Shafts of frost washed through the flames. She closed her eyes against the coolness that pricked her seared skin, a painful balm, a blistering relief. The frost climbed over the ground, devouring the lingering fire, and crept over her skin. She turned her head. Brilliant icicles glimmered in the moonlight. Dying wouldn’t be so bad here, she thought, the smoke like clouds and icy grass blades like stars.
White billows curled upward from the earth where dead Brothers were strewn among scorched and splintered branches.
A figure cloaked in black rushed through the field, gazing wildly down at every burned body. He moved unnaturally fast within the smog as though born of smoke himself. Maybe it was Death, she wondered, but the forest smeared around her—brown, blue, and gray smoke—and she conceded that perhaps this stranger was a figment of her fading wits and life.
The smoke folded outward, and she saw him clearly, the image flashing through the vapors and fog. She hauled in a weak breath. “Prof…essor.”
He didn’t hear her and continued his survey of the bodies on the field. She would die before he reached her, before she could tell him everything. She dug her nails into the earth and dragged herself with what strength remained, needing to go just a little farther.
She managed a short distance, but charred arms crumbled beneath her, and she met darkness, her face against the now damp ground. She rolled over and whimpered, unable to move more.
Barrington spun at the sound, the smoke a halo around him. He was beside her in an instant. Horror shaded his eyes as they traveled along her frame. She could only imagine what her body looked like, scalded and bloodied.
“Reserves,” she struggled to whisper. “Seventhborns…”
“Don’t speak,” he ordered and pressed a hand to her forehead, to her temple. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.” To her chest, to her stomach. “No.” Coolness waved through her with each of his touches, but it was faint. He let out a broken breath, and she knew he failed at healing her.
Professors and groundskeepers ran out onto the field, their wands drawn. More voices sounded far away. She struggled to keep her eyes open. Her lids heavy, the world around her speckled behind frosted lashes. Barrington swept her hair back, neared his face to hers. The drain of magic made his skin pale, and in the night, he was phantomlike.
“Seventhborn…program,” she said again. “Brotherhood…reserves.” She met his eyes with the last of her strength, hoping he somehow understood her fragmented words, hoping that other seventhborns could be saved, even if she couldn’t be.
“She must be taken inside,” Mrs. James shrilled, suddenly beside him. She made to reach for Sera, but Barrington swept her into his cold arms and held her close.
“I’ll transfer her to the infirmary. Secure the grounds,” he thundered. And as the world vanished around them and darkness swallowed them whole, the last she heard him say was stay with me.