27
broken oath, broken life
Mary snatched Sera’s wand and Timothy’s as well. She paced backward down the nave, careful steps leading her to Noah. He stood in front of the pulpit, a stand with carved black wings at either side of it, where for centuries so many before him spewed hateful lies against seventhborns. Behind him, the stained glass depicted a gate and six guardians of magic standing before it. And locked behind the gate was the seventh sister, haloed by a black flame.
Hands bound in whips of magic, Timothy and Sera were dragged down the nave. Timothy’s voice echoed above the shuffle of their footsteps as he attempted to soothe Sera whenever she’d grunt or hiss with a bump or stumble. “Everything will be okay,” he said, but nothing could ease the anger she wrestled to tame in her veins, the magic at her fingertips, hot and scalding, begging for uninhibited release. She glanced up to the crumbling bricks and rotting rafters. One wild blow of magic and she could bring this place down around them. But she’d been through this before; she couldn’t risk Noah escaping again.
She had to keep Timothy safe. And Mary…
She looked at her friend. Her sister. Her traitor. Was this what true friends—what sisters—did? Every laugh, every shared cry…had any of it been real?
Pain of Mary’s betrayal jabbed Sera’s heart. She winced, and her hold on her magic slipped; the glass windows around them exploded, a deafening shatter. Shards of multicolored glass rained around them. Timothy shoved the Brother holding him and started to reach for Sera, but the Brother yanked him back by his cloak.
“Enough!” Noah growled, his face contorted in anger. He lifted a hand. A shock of magic slammed into Sera’s chest, clawing its fiery talons into her ribs and thrusting her into the air. She crashed against the squared base of a marble statue, its pointed edge digging into her back. A jolt of coldness rushed down to each limb. Tightness gripped her chest.
“Bring them to me.” Noah’s voice was calm, soft…soothing almost, though savageness radiated from every part of him.
Two Brothers dragged her to her feet and tugged her and Timothy toward the altar. Timothy struggled, but with the ache of Noah’s blast radiating through her, Sera stumbled upon the beveled tiles and rubble, unable to fight at all.
They were brought to a stop before Noah. Kicked in the back of the knees, both she and Timothy collapsed onto the broken tile floor. Sera winced, a stone jammed into her knee. A Brother pressed his wand to her neck.
She imagined Noah would be angry, yet a smile pulled at his lips as he descended the altar stairs slowly, his red robe dragging behind him. She looked into his eyes to better gauge his mood, but found nothing. He was worse than a tempest.
Stopping before her, he lifted a hand to her face, a sick thrill of fulfilled longing burning in those brown eyes.
“I’ve been thinking of you,” he said over Timothy’s grunts and demands he stay away from her. He reached around and slipped a pin from her hair, his touch gentle as his fingers tangled in the brown strands. Sera braced; he never stayed tender for long. “I think of you all the time.”
He removed the other pins and dropped them to the ground, one by one, until Sera’s hair tumbled down onto her shoulders. “Every day.”
He moved quickly, and there was a loud snap. Burn spread across Sera’s cheek, and she crashed to the ground, rubble jamming into her palms on impact. She growled, her magic spiking. It gathered and rattled for her to let go, but she ground her teeth together. Not yet.
Noah knelt before her and smoothed a hand along his hair, raking it back into place. “I’m sorry, Sera. I’m sorry. I…I hate losing things. I hated losing you. I was worried sick they would tame you.”
His words gave her pause. He’d been worried she’d be tamed? Of course. Barrington had told her such in so many words. With control, she was stronger. With focus, she could destroy him. With focus she would destroy him.
“Let her go,” Timothy snarled, now held fixed by three Brothers, two at his sides and one behind him. “You have me; you have no need of her.”
Noah’s look changed then, the unnatural quick coming of a thunderstorm. Brown eyes turned to Timothy, his jaw tight. With hands clasped behind his back, he walked the few steps to where Timothy knelt with hands bound.
“It’s a good thing telling me your secret will kill you, otherwise I’d be forced to skin you alive for coveting things that aren’t yours.” He turned his eyes to Sera momentarily, then focused his attention back on Timothy. “What is this spell that you keep?”
Timothy’s eyes sparkled, though a sad smile touched his mouth. “Let her go, and I’ll tell you anything you want.”
Sera gasped, her heart pounding. “Timothy, you can’t!” Her magic pulsed. A nearby statue burst, and stone shards crumbled to the ground, white dust wafting around them. Noah raised a hand. The binds on Sera’s hands slithered like snakes up her arms, burning, and she screamed—the magic she gathered shattered under the pain.
“I told you before, it’s me you want. Leave her out of this!” Timothy growled. “Swear a blood oath to me that you and your men will not hurt her, and the spell is yours.”
“Timothy, no!” Sera struggled to funnel her magic into one current she could use against Noah, but it was spread everywhere within her, wanting to incinerate everything.
Noah drew a dagger from a scabbard at his side. “A blood oath it is. She will not be killed in exchange for your spell. But if you try anything once you get back your wand, you’re dead, and I will use her to raise you. Mary?”
Mary tossed Timothy’s wand at his knees. Hands still bound, Timothy picked up his wand and held it out to Noah. Noah sliced his palm and dripped blood onto the rod, then held the tip of the stained wand to Timothy’s. “My life and those of my men in exchange for her life.”
Sera was sure if she hadn’t been on her knees, she would have fallen onto them anyway. How could someone who she’d barely spent time with care for her to this extreme, and yet the one who pledged to be a sister betray her in such a way? She turned her eyes from the oath being made to Mary, who lingered by the transept door. Her face was turned down, her wand clasped at her core. If not for the rise and fall of her chest, Sera would have thought her dead.
Noah lowered his wand. “Our oath has been made. Now for your secret.”
The well of pain tore open to a hollow pit. Tears Sera wished didn’t exist spilled from her eyes.
Timothy hauled in a breath and braced. “The Rites of Supremacy.”
The words spoken were like a blow to the gut, and he cringed, collapsing onto his bound hands with a groan.
Sera winced but forced herself to watch him struggle to stay upright. “Timothy, please don’t do it. Don’t tell him.”
“What are the Rites of Supremacy?” Noah gripped Timothy’s hair and lifted him back onto his knees. Timothy’s face was flushed, his mouth pressed into a tight line as pain mapped his veins. “What are they?”
Sera grunted and tried to force her magic into control. Focus, focus, focus!
Timothy took in a deep breath and met Sera’s eyes again, as though to bolster himself against the imminent pain. “As there were seven guardians of magic, so you must also find seven sisters, each element represented. The blood of six must be shed and the seventh must drink this offering. Upon saying the following words, the gates will be opened, where you will find the ultimate power: power over time…” He cried out and fell forward onto his hands. Droplets of blood streamed from his nose to the floor, a crimson constellation on the dirty tile.
Bursts of power gathered in Sera’s hands, but at the sight of Timothy in pain, of his imminent death as a result of his love for her, her heart stuttered, her magic scattered, and another statue exploded.
“What is this spell?” Noah asked greedily.
“Leave him alone!” Sera roared, and the window behind Noah shattered into a cloud of pulverized glass.
Noah flinched but straightened, his murderous gaze trained on Sera. He would make her pay for that, she knew this, but managing to gather a bit of power, she shot an orb of magic toward him, hoping to bind him—anything to engage him and give Timothy a reprieve.
Noah swept aside coolly, evading her attack. The binds whipped around a pillar behind him, and quickly fizzled. Noah clenched his hands then, and Sera cried out as the binds he’d whipped around her dug deeper into her skin. She toppled over, writhing in pain that spread like blood through her veins.
Timothy fell onto his hands and, shaking, drew out a linked set of ciphers to a spell with his blood. He groaned, the sob caged behind his clenched teeth. As much as he tried to stay strong, he heaved and retched clots of blood beside him.
Sera focused on her pain and thrust a wild flare up to the rafters. Planks of rotted wood crashed down around them, but it wasn’t enough to bring them down. She knew she had to calm herself in order to gather her magic into stronger blows, but her soul clawed her insides. Things couldn’t end this way. They couldn’t.
Noah stared down at Timothy, unaffected, consumed. “Continue. What is the spell they must speak?”
Timothy struggled to remain upright but tumbled forward onto his hands. Blood streamed from his eyes, his gaze distant and unfocused. “I bleed my sisters. I bleed this life. I…open…”—he clutched his stomach—“I open that…which has been closed. I end that which has…begun.”
He collapsed onto his side, wheezing weak and shallow breaths. “My broken oath. My broken life.”
Sera screamed. Flares of fire surged around them, erratic pyres materializing out of thin air. They blew in and vanished like ghosts until, spent, heartbroken, and hopeless, Sera fell forward onto her bound hands beside Timothy.
She bent forward, resting her forehead against his. “I’m so sorry, Timothy. I’m so sorry.”
A broken, bloodied smile twitched at his lip. “My love,” he whispered. He lifted a hand to her face, but with a blink of those clear blue eyes, his hand fell lifeless at his side.
“It is done,” Noah whispered. “The Master will be pleased.”
Sera sucked in a breath, but her lungs locked and refused it. She clutched her bound hands at his chest where his heart did not beat. “Timothy?” she croaked.
A blast cut through her mourning, then another, and another. Startled, Sera ducked into Timothy as magic clashed and burst around her, trailed by the Brothers’ screams as Noah killed them all. Shots hurtled toward Noah haloed in white, but he brushed them away with ease, a flick of the hand, a wave of his wand. One orb ricocheted off the tip of his wand and crashed against the pillar beside Mary, who screamed and ducked, the rubble exploding outward. She held her arms over her head as the stone, dirt, and weeds rained down on her. Sera lifted her eyes as another blast of magic whisked past her and slammed into the last Brother behind her. He crumpled to the ground, a fire-rimmed hole glowing in his chest.
“Can’t have them knowing the spell, now can we?” Noah muttered.
Breathless, Sera slumped back, her chest heaving. Noah remained standing through the haze of lingering smoke and magic, unaffected. To the right of them, Mary struggled to her feet, and Sera paused. An unnerving awareness spread within her, a heavy burden that made it hard to breathe.
Noah turned his wand at Mary.
Eyes wide, she shifted back against the pillar as if she could vanish into it. “I did what you asked,” she cried, frantic and ungraceful. “I did what you—”
Noah speared a black orb of magic at her.
“No!” Sera raised a hand, meeting his flare with a flare of her own. A thunderous clash resounded at the collision that thrust his magic off course and into the wall.
Noah turned a venomous gaze to Sera, a look she’d been at the end of many times before. He whipped binds around her wrists, scalding ropes of black smoke cutting deep into her flesh. Though they’d spent years apart, their connection forged itself immediately, and at once she felt him everywhere, an impermeable mist crowding and filling her. The scars on her body scorched to life as though recognizing their maker. Sera clenched her teeth and stifled a roar. Her magic scattered under the intense pain that twisted her heart in her chest. The ache was alive and wormed its way behind her eyes and to the top of her skull. Her stomach twisted, and the same sick sensation lurched in her throat as he pushed closer, seeking to tap into her reserves.
Sera refused him and held the spool of her powers so tight, the underside of her skin burned from the strain.
A slow grin twisted his lips. You still insist on fighting me? Let me in, little bird, he spoke into their connection. Nothing’s changed; you won’t win this.
He wouldn’t kill her, no. He swore a blood oath he wouldn’t, but there in his eyes was a promise. He would drain her within an inch of her life.
Never again.
Unafraid, Sera released her hold on her powers. A surge of fire roared out from her belly—hot and angry, but controlled flames that forced his shackles from around her wrists and destroyed their connection. Shafts of fire whipped from her hands and pushed back Noah’s magic.
Their warring magic spurred wild winds around them. Her hands trembled, her magic fanning outward as though splintered. Still, she struggled to keep her powers in check. One burst could deplete her reserves in an instant, and then she’d be at Noah’s mercy. She didn’t mind death, not with the agony and guilt that hollowed her soul. But not here. Not now. She had lost Timothy. Had lost Mary. She would not lose herself.
Determination, cold and cruel, roared upward in a wave of heat within her, and her magic pushed Noah’s back. She looked at Mary pressed against the pillar, sobbing into her hands, and her eyes flooded with tears.
Memories of them together flashed quickly through her mind as if spurred by the savage winds that whipped around them. Unwittingly she cast them out into the smoke that haloed their opposing magic. Images of meeting Mary her very first day at the Academy played out like flashes of lightning. When Mary popped her head into the room, her smile a ray of light during a tempest of anger. Weekends spent in the tower room, laughing at the latest gossip…or Sera comforting her after another letter had come from her mother. All of it could have been real. They could have been real friends, real sisters.
And she’d betrayed it all.
Lost in these thoughts, the pressure in her core grew to a steady hum that vibrated along her skin. The white beam of her power focused from its erratic wisps into a single channel of white. Noah pulsed his magic again, but digging her heel into the ground, Sera shouldered against it. Still, he was stronger, and within seconds his magic had pushed closer.
She wouldn’t be able to do this alone. Her pain was not enough to defeat his evil. But she knew of a pain that was…
Agatha Beechworth.
Briar Wakefield.
Catherine Yates.
Elsie Godwin.
Harriet Adams.
Winnie Forge.
Ophelia Crowe.
Holding fast to their names in her mind, Sera focused on their screams, their tears, their lives lost to this monster and his vicious cause. Pressure mounted in her temples as her power split, half into fighting Noah, the other into a summoning. White fog crept out from her shaft of magic, its phantom fingers webbing along the floor and up the walls, encircling her and Noah in a cool white cloud. Shadows appeared in the fog again, standing side by side. Wide eyed, Noah watched them materialize one by one. They were everywhere—girls and women, young and old, dressed in modern attire and clothes of a time long gone. Their smoky bodies turned to Sera; they each placed a hand on their hearts. A black line tattoo marked their wrists. Seventhborns.
Whispers crowded her mind, colliding against one another. Yet, here in the midst of her battle, Sera understood their plea.
Show you…
Barrington had warned her that channeling without an anchor was a risk, but Sera nodded. He’d grown to be her anchor, whether beside her or miles away.
“Yes, show me,” she cried. “I want to feel it all.”
Every tear. Every pain. Every unfulfilled dream. Every lost love.
Myriad hands came upon her, fingers gripping desperately at her limbs. Voices—sobs and prayers and mournful wails—flooded her thoughts and screamed in her mind as the seventhborns fed their pain into her consciousness, their tears and frustrations, their fears and their deaths.
A cry grew in Sera’s throat. Raw heat flushed through her veins, and she felt as if she was dissolving in layers; first her clothes, then her skin. Blood and organs, veins and bones. Until only her soul remained. Here in this immaterial state, the channeled pain was blinding and heavy and terrible—it was theirs. Every ache borne over being a seventhborn bled into Sera, and the heat of her powers grew.
“No!” Noah screamed, clenching his teeth against Sera’s fire overcoming his.
The pain of the gathered power crested, and she knew she had to release it or it would consume her.
She surrendered to magic.
Black spouts of smoke whirled around the funnel of her power, enveloping it, forcing it into a single shaft of pure black fire. Noah’s eyes widened. The black flames overcame his and pushed closer to him, closer, and swallowed him whole.
Her reserves plummeted and weak, Sera’s knees buckled, and she collapsed. The dead seventhborns surrounding her lowered their hands, and their voices faded from her head. One by one, they inclined their heads at her and turned, walking back into the cool fog that soon dissipated around her.
…
For some time, Sera and Mary coexisted in complete silence, the mournful howls of the wind the only sound. Her wand before her, Sera did not release Timothy’s body, and Mary did not move from beside the pillar.
“Pick up your wand,” Mary ordered, her voice deadened. She peeled away from the wall and walked across from Sera, a specter in the moonlight. “We can’t stay in this church forever, and regardless of how tight you hold him, he’s never coming back.”
Sera glared at her from over Timothy’s head pressed against her chest. “I won’t waste my magic on you.”
Mary’s mouth trembled, her eyes filled with tears. “You must fight me. The Brotherhood will never let me live after this.” She kicked Sera’s wand closer, the plea clear in her eyes. “I will not kill you without a fair fight.”
Sera chuckled into Timothy’s hair. “A fair fight? You’ve found your morals, I see.”
“This was not easy for me, either, Sera. But my father, he had unsurmountable debts. How else do you think he managed to go from nothing to a well-respected healer? The more magic he had, the more patients he could see. The Brotherhood, they promised him as much blood magic as he needed in exchange for his cooperation in the future. And they called on that debt. Don’t you see? Refusing them would have been the same as signing my death sentence and my family’s.”
“You signed it the moment you betrayed us.”
She wiped one of her tears roughly. “I had no choice—”
“How can I trust anything you say?”
Mary recoiled at the anger in Sera’s words, more of her tears falling.
“You were my sister, the only thing that kept me sane in this godforsaken place. I would have died for you, I nearly did, and it was all for this? For these monsters?” Her words slurred through her own tears.
“You think I wanted this, Sera? All I’ve done was try to protect you. I overheard my father say the Brotherhood sought powerful seventhborns and had their eye on seventhborns at the Academy. I knew I had to find a way to keep you safe without revealing my parents’ association with them, so I told Susan about your scars, then used Mrs. Fairfax to help Whittaker break into the records room so he could steal your file. I thought you’d be too embarrassed and would leave the Academy. That way the Brotherhood couldn’t hurt you.”
Air rushed into Sera’s chest, and her heart heaved. Mrs. Fairfax’s tearful plea for forgiveness had been Mary all along?
“I tried, Sera. I tried to get you away before they came for you. Had I known they were in the forest that night, I never would have run out there. All I’ve ever wanted was to keep you safe, but then they requested my cooperation. If I didn’t do what was asked of me, they would have killed me and my family. The way my mother begged me to save them… I had no choice. You have to believe me. I never wanted to hurt you. All I ever did was for you, Sera. I love you.”
The church doors exploded open. Aetherium guards swept inside, their illuminated wands drawn and aimed at Sera and Mary as they encircled them. Three guards swept into the circle and lifted Timothy’s body out of her arms, quickly carrying him to where Sera could no longer see him. Another guard dragged Sera up to her feet.
“Identify yourselves!” a guard demanded. He was dressed in a forest-green robe and, unlike the other guards, he carried no wand and wore an Invocation ring. Sera knew him to be a Lead Inspector. He looked at Mary. “Did this seventhborn harm you?”
Sera braced. No doubt Mary would play the victim and blame her for everything—for Timothy’s death, for working with the Brotherhood—and with her word against a seventhborn’s, everyone would believe her.
“No,” Mary whispered, a tear streaming down her cheek. She thrust her wand on the ground. “I hurt her.”
Folding one knee, then the other, she knelt down and held her hands in front of her, her wrists touching. “My name is Mary Tenant. It was me who pushed Mrs. Fairfax down the stairs at the Aetherium’s Witchling Academy and tethered myself to her reserves. I then possessed her and instructed her to break into the Academy’s records room. I lured Miss Dovetail and Mr. Delacort here under instructions from the Brotherhood…”
While Mary confessed to her crimes, commotion behind Sera drew her attention. She turned just as the officers parted and let Professor Barrington through. He rushed into the circle and stopped before her, his skin pale, his hair as disheveled and rumpled as his half tucked-in shirt and open cloak. Worry saturated his stare that he trailed along her quickly, as if wanting to make sure she was okay in one look.
He met her gaze and exhaled deeply, relief washing over his tense frame. “Sera.”
The sound of her name from his lips was a whisper yet struck into her like a whirlwind.
“Nik.” Hot tears pooled in her eyes, rendering him a speckled mess of light and shadow. Agony, shame, remorse, and mourning gripped her with a vengeance. Her chest locked, her lungs refused, and her knees gave out beneath her.
But she didn’t fall.
Strong arms came around her and, proprieties aside, Barrington held her, a quiet wall supporting her as she seized his lapels, breathless, and twisted them the way her insides churned. Every tear and sob caged in her heart for years burst from the deepest parts of her soul. From Noah’s evil to Mary’s betrayal to Timothy’s sacrifice. From a family she sought to the curse of being a seventhborn.
For the first time, she broke, wholly, with no desire to be strong.
For the first time, she allowed herself to be held, allowed herself to feel human.
Allowed herself to be cared for, too.