The Cairngorm common room was a fossilized beast of a space, a jarring departure from the velvet-lined grandeur of the Aurelius dorm. Here, the air wasn’t perfumed with votive candles and liqueurs; it was thick with damp wool, cedarwood, and a sharp, fermented smell that Gwen realized—with an involuntary twitch of her nose—was cheap beer. The furniture was a mismatched graveyard of sagging leather armchairs and wooden tables scarred by decades of laboured spell-work and spilled drinks.
Gwen stood near the massive, soot-stained hearth, feeling like a bird of paradise trapped in a stone cellar. Her internal monologue, a voice trained by generations of elitism, itched to criticize every bit of it.
But she wasn’t here to enforce a standard. She could have written up a dozen citations for illicit brewing, noise violations, and discouraged spells before she even reached the centre of the room. But she wasn’t here tonight as Community Service Chair. She wouldn’t perform any of the roles demanded of her. Tonight, she’d forget the word legacy and embrace the terrifying reality of being a girl enjoying a party.
“Here,” Will said, appearing through a haze of pungent, rubbery smoke and laughter. He pressed a cold, condensation-slick tin can into her hand. “Try blending in with the commoners, Princess.”
Gwen took a sip and nearly choked. It was brutally bitter, a dark, heavy sludge that tasted like swallowing liquidized rye bread.
“It’s… robust,” she managed, her eyes watering as the liquid scorched a path down her throat.
“It’s cheap,” Cal Whitley interjected, leaning against a pillar that framed the opposite side of the hearth. His arms were crossed over his chest like a barricade, a narrowed gaze dropped to her royal blue A-line—a garment that cost more than most of the furniture in the room. “Why is she here, Will? Ink party run out of caviar? Or are you tallying up demerits for the morning, O’Dorchaidhe?”
Gwen felt the old, sharp words rise to her tongue—a reflex to crush his insolence. But the champagne from the Great Hall was still humming in her blood, whispering that the rules were merely suggestions for a version of her that didn’t exist tonight.
“Cal, give it a rest,” Bryn said, stepping into the firelight. She nudged him sharply in the ribs, her Sidereal-yellow halter dress looking like a stray sunbeam in the gloom. She turned to Gwen with a tentative, eager smile. “I’m glad you came, Gwen. Cal’s just grumpy because his goal save was a fluke, and he knows it.”
“It wasn’t a fluke!” Cal said, his freckled skin deepening to a dark, embarrassed red.
“Whatever it was,” Bryn said, her voice dropping as she looked around the room, “let’s stop looking for reasons to hate each other. Gwen stood between Will and the Rider. She helped Maya. We owe her a chance.”
Gwen felt a prickle of discomfort. The casual mention of Maya made her skin crawl. She didn’t want to be remembered for that imperfect moment.
It was her first time standing in a room where the Inks were so obviously outnumbered. She felt eyes on her, watching with a nervousness, curiosity, and even the occasional scowl aimed at her gold Ouroboros pin. But there was also a hesitant kind of acceptance. She wasn’t an icon here; she was a guest.
She raised her tin can toward Bryn, and they clinked metal against metal, and for a moment, the girl Gwen had resented in secret became the only anchor she had.
As the night wore on, the chaotic loudness of the room began to blur into a warm, messy convergence of categorically unintelligible chatter and cheap drinks. Across the crowded space, Gwen heard a familiar laugh.
Tristan.
He was leaning back against a stone wall, his head tilted in a genuine, unburdened laugh while Julian Vane’s arm was draped casually across his shoulders. It was the most human she had ever seen him. When Tristan’s eyes met hers, his laughter died instantly. The mask of the stoic, iron-willed heir snapped back into place so fast it was almost audible.
Gwen offered him a slow, mocking roll of her eyes and looked away. Keep your secrets, brother, she thought. I’m busy with my own tonight.
The Fen-Ball twins, Ezra and Riley Lee, drifted over, their mismatched Sidereal-yellow and Cairngorm-green jerseys bright in the firelight.
“So, Gwen,” Ezra started, a playful, daring smirk on his face. “Will says you’re the reason his casting didn’t explode the goal-posts today. Any chance you’re taking on more charity cases?”
“I… I can only manage one at a time,” Gwen said, her social mask slipping for a heartbeat as she looked at Will. “His case is… unique.”
“She’s the Community Service Chair, she’s patrolling with the prefects, and she’s in the Duelling Club,” Bryn interjected, her voice firm despite a slightly buzzed slur. She stepped closer to Gwen, almost protectively. “Annnnd she’s a first-year, Ezra. She’s lucky she has time to sleep.”
Bryn smiled warmly at Gwen, a look of unreserved, unearned kindness.
Gwen stood there, stunned. In the Aurelian Circle, every compliment was a transaction. Every defence had a price. But Bryn—the girl she had looked down upon—was defending her for free. The lack of a cost was more terrifying than any curse. It suggested a world where Gwen wasn’t just a ledger of expectations, but a person.
“She’s an O’Dorchaidhe,” Cal teased, his voice dropping into a mock-posh-English accent. “Her time is far too precious for the likes of us.”
A warm weight settled across Gwen’s shoulders as Will draped his arm over her, pulling her slightly to his side. Through the delicate sheer of her midnight-silk sleeves, she could feel every corded muscle of his forearm, the heat of his skin searing through her layers until her breath hitched in her throat.
“Leave her alone, Cal,” Will said. His voice was low, protective, and carried the weight of a warning. “She’s already taught me enough to keep the rest of you in the dirt for the season. If you want to poke at someone, poke at me.”
For a heartbeat, his hand brushed the fabric of her shoulder in a slow, unconscious caress that made Gwen’s skin hum. Then, they noticed the hush. Not silence, but a heavy pause in the chatter as forty pairs of eyes fixed on the tableau: the Golden Girl of Aurelius tucked under the arm of the Chosen One. Will seemed to realize the gravity of the image at the same moment Gwen did. He cleared his throat, a deep, scorched red blooming across his cheekbones as he abruptly withdrew his hand.
Gwen felt instantly chilled at the loss of his touch. To mask the sting of rejection, she lifted her third tin of bitter ale and took a long, reckless gulp, letting the heavy liquid numb the sudden ache in her pride.
The Cairngorm common room was a cacophony of unwashed wool, citrus smoke, and a confusing blend of cheap beer and rich whisky. The bass-heavy, normie music was a thrum under Gwen’s skin, vibrating the mismatched floorboards until she felt like she was standing on the deck of a ship at sea.
The world began to lose its sharp, terrifying edges. The Ice Princess was beginning to thaw into something softer, something far more dangerous. The silver clips in her hair felt like jewelled shackles she was desperate to shed, and her skin radiated a restless, alcoholic warmth.
“Truth or Dare!” Poppy Shaw announced, dropping onto a sagging leather couch.
Riley Lee and Roman Smith scrambled over, claiming spots on the floor. They sat across from Tristan and Julian, who remained in their couch corner with a stubborn, glaring unwillingness to surrender their comfy spots. Gwen saw Tristan’s knuckles whiten as he gripped his whisky glass, his eyes darting toward her with a warning he couldn’t speak aloud.
“I’m out,” Ezra said, retreating toward the far end of the common room.
“I’ve never played,” Bryn admitted, her shoulders pulling in.
“We’re in!” Cal shouted, throwing a heavy, boisterous arm around Bryn and pulling her close. He whispered something against her ear that made her cheeks turn a dusty rose, then levelled a look at Gwen that was pure, glinting challenge. “No backing out, O’Dorchaidhe. Unless the Ice Princess is scared of a little honesty? Or are you too good for normie fun?”
Gwen’s spine stiffened, the movement crisp despite the fact that the floor had tilted a fraction to the left. “An O’Dorchaidhe is never scared, Whitley.”
Will leaned in, his shoulder brushing hers, his body heat acting as a grounding wire in the swirling room. “You don’t have to do this, Gwen,” he whispered, his voice a low vibration that skipped across the sensitive skin of her neck. “He’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”
“Let him try,” she murmured back, though her pulse raced for reasons that had nothing to do with the challenge.
The group—Will, Gwen, Cal, Bryn, Tristan, Julian, Riley, Roman, and Poppy—formed a lopsided circle by the couches, like a primary school sorcerer performing their first ritual. Poppy Shaw, her eyes glittering with the greedy glee of a gossip-monger, passed around the Lunaria annua—dried, translucent honesty seeds that felt like slivers of parchment against the tongue. As they swallowed and whispered the word Veritas, the magical compulsion bound each of them to truthfulness or obedience. The spell tickled inside Gwen’s throat like an invisible hand, a phantom pressure that promised to wring the words from her lungs if she dared to resist.
The early, easy rounds were a blur of adrenaline and alcohol-fuelled humiliations.
Poppy was dared to turn her hair emerald green. Julian had to take a whisky shot for every time he’d hit the turf during the match. Bryn voiced embarrassed confusion over the differences between sorcery and hedge-witchcraft, prompting Will to give Gwen a desperate do-not-lecture-her look.
Cal performed a banned tattooing spell on Roman just to see if Gwen’s Circle instincts would kick in. She simply took a long, defiant swallow of her beer and watched the agitated skin on Roman’s shoulder swell with a drunken apathy.
Gwen found herself admitting, with a flush of genuine irritation, her hatred for the Integration of Tech and Magic. “CAPTCHAs are my undoing,” she muttered, the Veritas pulling the choked confession out. “The machines refuse to believe I’m human.” The ripple of laughter from the Newbloods was the first time she had ever felt like a source of amusement rather than a source of fear.
But the alcohol was a treacherous catalyst, and the game quickly sharpened into something invasive. The bottle spun, its glass base screeching against the scarred wood, and pointed its neck at Tristan.
“Tristan,” Riley asked, her voice dropping into a register of heavy, binding expectation. “Who was your first real kiss?”
Their corner of the room went tomb-quiet. Tristan ossified into pale, rigid, utterly terrified stone. The pearlescent light of the Veritas spell pulsed from his silver O’Dorchaidhe signet ring, a rhythmic, demanding heartbeat.
Gwen felt the world tilt. She saw the panic in her brother’s eyes—the fear of ruined expectations, the fear of their father… the fear of her sharing his secret.
Gwen did something she hadn’t done since they were children hiding from their tutors: she clamped her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, a desperate, futile attempt to physically reject the secret the magic would force him to share.
But the Vertias ritual wouldn’t be denied.
“Julian.”
The whispered name reached her.
Gwen’s stomach lurched, a sickening knot of panic tightening in her gut. It wasn’t just a suspicion anymore. If their father ever learned this truth, it would mean immediate ostracism.
The weight of the secret tightened the muscles in her neck and on her shoulders. Now she was armed with a horrible choice: use the secret as future blackmail to force his cooperation when needed… or bury the secret deep to save her brother from a life of exile.
Before she could calm the racing panic of her thoughts, the bottle spun again. It landed on Gwen.
Poppy leaned forward, her newly-emerald hair casting a sickly pallor across her face. “I have to know about the Equinox rumour, Gwen. Did you really cut off Maya’s arm on purpose—just to show the Vapours that you could get away with it?”
The silence that followed was a vacuum, sucking the oxygen from Gwen’s lungs. She felt the collective gaze of every Vapour in the room—a wall of judgment, bone-deep fear, and the eager expectation of a monster.
“What the hell, Poppy?” Will’s voice was a whip-crack. He surged to the edge of his seat, his hands curling into fists.
“You know Maya’s friends are here,” Bryn said in a hushed, scolding tone.
The words were dragged from her throat. “I wasn’t showing off,” Gwen said. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. “The curse was moving too fast. I made a choice. To save a life.”
The compulsion lifted, the sudden withdrawal of pressure leaving Gwen reeling and breathless. She could feel the eavesdroppers leaning in, their faces unreadable.
“Now we know,” Cal said quietly, low with an uncomfortable sobriety.
“F**k, Cal, seriously?” Will turned on him, his eyes blazing with a protective fury that surprised Gwen. And made her heart ache. “We always knew.”
“Most of us didn’t,” Cal said, taking a heavy swallow of his drink. “Not for sure.”
Gwen felt a shivering wave of nausea. The alcohol buzz turned into a dull, thudding headache. She felt exposed, her internal organs laid bare for a ravenous audience to poke and prod.
“That’s really the best you’ve got?” she asked, her voice trembling as she stood up. “I’m not impressed. And I am done.” She felt miserable. But she wasn’t letting anyone here take advantage of that. Not for one more second.
The floor swayed. She stumbled, her pointed heels catching on a warped floorboard, and Will’s hands were there instantly. His fingers gripped her waist to steady her, the contact a lightning strike through the silk of her dress. Gwen shoved his hands away, her spine snapping straight as she forced a stability she didn’t feel. She swept her silver-blonde curls over her shoulder, her chin lifting in a brittle attempt to fake indifference.
“Enjoy your games,” she said coolly, turning her back on the circle.
She pushed through the crowd, the heat of the room suddenly clawing at her throat. Her breath was coming in shallow hitches, a building panic expanding like a balloon inside her ribs. She needed out. She was desperate for a dark, soundproofed room where she could shatter in peace.
Will was right behind her. He caught her arm to save her from another dizzy stumble, his fingers wrapped firmly around the silk of her sleeve. His thumb brushed her inner elbow, and the sensation was an electric spark that cut through the fog in her brain. Her pulse leaped, hammering against his touch.
“Gwen, how about we get some air?” His breath tickled her ear, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that she felt more than heard, all sounds buried under the thumping music. “Let’s get away from the noise.”
Gwen looked at him, her vision blurred by the prickle of unshed tears and the slow-burning fire of the alcohol. She wanted to run, but her legs were heavy, anchored by the gravity of his gaze. She nodded once—a jerky, uncoordinated movement—and let him lead her toward the narrow stone balcony, out into the mercy of the Highland night.
The outside air was bracing, raising goosebumps along Gwen’s arms and mercifully shocking her rolling nausea into a dull lump in her stomach. Yet, even the freezing wind couldn’t slice through the heavy, velvet haze clinging to her mind. Gwen gripped the stone railing as she tried to focus on the dark, blurred silhouette of the pine forests that ringed the campus like a wall of spears.
The sky above was a deepening indigo stitched with indifferent stars that seemed to spin whenever she blinked. Her breath hitched in plumes of silver mist.
She felt raw—unspooled, like a length of silk caught on a brier. Leaving her gilded cage had been a catastrophic mistake; she was a creature of refined restrictions. She didn’t know how to act without a script.
“Gwen,” Will said softly.
He stood just an arm’s length away, the heat radiating off him as tempting as a hearth. He was close enough that she could smell the woodsy-coffee musk of his skin and the faint, clean scent of rain trapped in his hair.
“Forget what Cal said. Forget Poppy. She’s a vulture, Gwen. She’s got a Circle grudge that she feeds like a pet.”
Gwen let out a breathy, unconvincing laugh that caught in her throat, sounding more like a sob. “Like I care what an outcast and a Newblood think of me,” she said. She tried to sharpen her voice, to find that silver-edged chill that usually kept the world at bay, but the syllables felt heavy and clumsy on her tongue, softened by the three cans of bitter beer.
“I never doubted you,” Will said, his voice dropping an octave. He shrugged off his blazer and set it on her shoulder, shielding her from the wind. “Not for a second.”
Gwen didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. The gravity of his gaze felt like it would pull her apart. “You should have. Everyone else does.”
“I know being an Ink is your entire world,” Will continued, his hand hovering near her waist before he braced it against the railing, effectively boxing her in. “But you’re not like Oliver Anderson or those horse-badge jerks. You’re not like any of them.”
Gwen hung her head, the horizon tilting precariously. Her stomach twisted, but not because of the alcohol this time. It was the magnetic, confusing pull of the boy standing over her. She leaned back against the cold stone of the side wall, adding distance for her own safety, trying not to admire the worry forming behind his tortoise-shell frames.
“I am like them,” she said, the words stripped of pride, a burn in her throat. “I was born to be like them.”
“Maybe you were,” he said, then shrugged. “But maybe you’re what they’re all secretly afraid of. Someone better than them.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes, but moving that fast was a mistake; the world plummeted five degrees to the left. She reached out instinctively, her hand gripping his forearm for support. The contact was electric—a zap of heat that traveled through the rough pilling of his plaid shirt and dropped low under her skin.
“After you told me about your plan—making the Circle better—I asked Cal about the Founders,” he said.
“Let me guess,” she whispered, her eyes closing as she felt the world steady itself against his arm. “Cal said the Circle was always a collection of selfish, elitist try-hards.”
“He said it wasn’t always like this,” Will said quietly. Hesitantly, his fingers moved toward her chest, hovering over her gold Ouroboros pin. He traced the empty eyes of the dragon with a ghost of a touch before his hand dropped back to the railing, as if he’d burned himself.
“The Founders were protectors, right?” His lips twitched into a nervous, lopsided grin. “They helped people who were being hunted for their magic. How were they supposed to know that rules meant to protect the vulnerable would get so twisted?”
Gwen felt his sleeve brush against her skin, sending a shiver through her that had nothing to do with the night air. The Highland view was nothing compared to the proximity of Will Clark. In the starlight, she could see the nearly imperceptible shimmer of dormant magic in those dark marks around his neck. The little voice of societal politeness that usually told her not to stare was drowned out by a restless, alcoholic longing.
She really, desperately wanted to touch him.
“I know you think you can save that legacy,” Will said. “You are better than them, Gwen. Why else would you have offered a Vapour your hand on that first day?”
Gwen let out a sharp, self-deprecating laugh, her head lolling back against the stone wall. “Don’t be naive, Will,” she whispered, her voice brittle. Her hand followed the railing, her fingers brushing over his, moving up until the obsidian and tiger’s-eye beads of his bracelet rolled under her fingertips. “You’re the Chosen One. I offered you my hand because you’re a tool. A political asset. Something I can use to climb.”
Will didn’t flinch. He didn’t pull away. He leaned closer, his face inches from hers, until she could see the flecks of gold in his green eyes. “Maybe you’ve said that so many times you actually believe it. But that’s taking the easy way out. I think you’re terrified of being better than that.”
“I’m not better,” she snapped, a tremor breaking her voice. “Isn’t that what you Vapours want from me?” Her teeth clenched around a bitter smile. “What did Cal say—Wicked Witch, right? I’d rather be notorious than nothing.”
“Gwenhwyfar O’Dorchaidhe.”
The use of her full name—spoken with such raw, unvarnished recognition—cracked her armour wide open.
His hand brushed her cheek, tucking a loose, silver-blonde curl behind her ear. “Wicked people don’t run into danger to save people,” he said softly.
A sob escaped her, small and broken. She shook her head, her vision blurring. “I didn’t save anyone. Just ask Maya.”
“What other option did you have? Let the curse kill her?” he asked, his voice firming. “If it were me, I’d make the same choice. But I’d have been too slow. You weren’t.”
Tears finally spilled over, hot and salty against her chilled skin. She covered her face with her hands, the shame of her own vulnerability burning hotter than the alcohol in her system. Will’s touch was a nervous, feather-light graze on her shoulder before he pulled her into him.
Gwen hesitated—paralyzed by a lifetime of being told that O’Dorchaidhes aren’t allowed to look weak. Then she collapsed. She let her forehead rest against the rough, pilling fabric of his shoulder. She could hear the steady beat of his heart.
“I’m trying to hold it all together, Will,” she confessed into his shirt, the words spilling out in an unfiltered, desperate rush. “I-I had plans. I have a legacy. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to… so why is it all falling apart?”
He didn’t answer with platitudes. He simply held her tighter, not caring that her smeared mascara was staining his shirt.
“O’Dorchaidhes helped build this place,” she said bitterly, her voice muffled by his shoulder. “They gave their lives defending the right to use magic. And for what? To bully people with it? It’s disgusting.”
Will nodded against her hair.
“If the Circle is this broken…” She swallowed, the question she’d been running from for months finally catching her. “If it’s bad, what does that mean for me? My entire life is built on its foundation. All my plans depend on it. I was supposed to be the greatest curse-breaker to climb the Circle ranks.”
Her hand brushed his chest, and she drew her face back just enough to stare between damp eyelashes at the contrast of her pure-silver signet ring against the cheap plaid of his shirt. “I’m supposed to prove everyone wrong. But nothing I do helps. They look at me and they just see another O’Dorchaidhe monster obsessed with dark magic. They see another Gwydion O’Dorchaidhe.”
Will’s eyebrows drew together, a flicker of genuine confusion cutting through the intensity of his gaze. “Who’s that?”
Gwen tilted her head, her silver-blonde curls spilling over her shoulder. The question was so absurd she almost laughed. “Who? Gwydion… The Hollow Lord. He’s my uncle.”
Will went perfectly, terrifyingly still. The warmth that had been radiating off him seemed to vanish, replaced by a vacuum of cold.
“The Hollow Lord,” Will repeated, his voice hollowed out, stripped of its boyish warmth. “He’s an O’Dorchaidhe? He’s… your family…?”
The revelation hit like a thunderclap. It charged the air between them with an electric, painful static surge. Gwen felt a jolt of sobering panic. She pushed back slightly, expecting him to run, to see the monster in her features.
But he didn’t let go. His green eyes searched hers, wide and fractured, filled with the sudden, crushing weight of the destiny he hadn’t been fully permitted to see. Too much of his past and potential had been kept from him. He didn’t even know that the nightmare he was destined to destroy wasn’t a nameless shadow; it was a man with her blood.
“I-I’m sorry… I thought you knew,” she stammered, the alcohol making her honesty clumsy. She brushed a tear-stained cheek with the heel of her palm, the silver of her signet ring catching the starlight—the same crest his parents’ murderer wore.
Will shook his head once, a stiff, bewildered movement.
It wasn’t fair. Everyone in his life had kept this secret. What was the point in keeping him in the dark?
“I can’t believe Eddow kept this from you,” Gwen said, her voice sharpening with a protective, acidic bite. She stepped back, her heels clicking unevenly on the stone. “Prospero set up this tutoring… and you had no idea. That’s… Not okay. Why wouldn’t Eddow tell you…” She couldn’t finish.
Will exhaled a ragged breath that clouded the crisp air. He moved to the handrail, his knuckles white as bone. He stared out at the dark, misty outline of the Grey Moors, his shoulders hunched to brace for a blow that had already landed.
“Maybe… he forgot?” Will suggested, though the words sounded frail.
Gwen raised a cynical brow. “Eddow forgot? To tell you the name of your parents’ killer?”
“I don’t know!” he snapped, his shoulders tightening. He bowed his head a moment. “Maybe he didn’t want me to pre-judge you,” Will said, his voice tight with a defensive, desperate loyalty to the only mentor he had.
“Chancellor Eddow doesn’t forget, Will,” she said, her arms crossed. “He curates. He probably thought withholding that information would be useful.”
Will shook his head. He didn’t want to believe in her cynical view of the world.
Gwen shifted closer to him, joining him at the rail to stare at the dark and blame the night for everything that sucked in their lives.
“Is it an Ink thing to assume the worst of everyone?” he asked.
She turned to look at him, the tightness of his jaw. Her head pulsed with the start of a headache. “It might be,” she admitted. “But it’s definitely a Gwen thing.”
Will let out a short, surprised laugh. The coiled tension in his neck eased, just a fraction. He tapped his fingers nervously against the stone. Gwen felt her own tightness release, a strange lightness in her chest. Maybe it was the night air. Maybe it was him. But she felt a little better.
“I don’t know why Eddow didn’t tell me,” Will said, turning to look at her with a softer smile. “But it worked out. He’s a hell of a wing-man.”
Gwen blinked, her vision doubling for a second before snapping back. “Wing-man?” She laughed and shook her head. “How are you such a relentless optimist?”
He turned fully from the rail, his height looming over her. “Is that how I seem?”
“You’re too good, Clark,” Gwen whispered.
“Too good? I thought I was ‘adequate,’” he teased.
Her hands found the edge of his plaid shirt, her fingers tightening on the rough fabric because she wasn’t sure her legs would hold her up much longer. “You’re honest,” she said, her eyes dropping, too anxious to look him in the eyes with her confession. “You don’t have to perform being a hero. It’s like you wake up in the morning knowing exactly what to do.”
She forced herself to look at his face. “You’re infuriatingly amazing. I hate it.”
“You think I’m amazing?” Will asked. His voice was breathless, a stunned, lopsided grin tugging at his mouth.
“I’m very drunk,” she countered, her chest squeezing. “And yes. You are.”
Will stepped fully into her space, his warmth returning in a suffocating, tingling rush. His calloused thumb reached out, slow and deliberate, to brush a stray silver strand from her mascara-smudged cheek. His touch lingered on the curve of her neck.
“Since we’re being honest,” he murmured, his eyes dropping to her lips before meeting hers again. “I think you’re amazing, too.”
Gwen rolled her eyes. She was too familiar with the polite dance of returned compliments. And Will Clark was pointlessly kind. He probably felt like he had to say something nice.
“I don’t need you to be nice—”
“Seriously, Gwen,” he interrupted, his voice dropping to a gravelly, intimate register. “You’re the first person who made me feel… Like magic is a good thing. Like it wasn’t—like I’m not this out-of-control time bomb.”
Gwen’s stomach flipped. The balcony felt like it was spinning, but Will was the only thing that felt solid in a world made of smoke. She leaned in, her arms slipping around his neck, pulling him down into her orbit.
“Is it cringey if I say being with you is like magic?” he asked with a nervous shrug.
Gwen nodded, a small, delighted curl of her lips breaking through. “Incredibly,” she breathed. “But I’ll allow it.”
Will leaned in, his gaze dropping to her mouth. His breath was warm against her face, a tantalizing mix of wood-smoke and the cold Highland night. Gwen closed her eyes, her fingers tangling in the dark, soft hair curled at the nape of his neck, pulling him that final, agonizing gasp between them.
CRASH.
The glass of the balcony doors shattered. Detonated.
The world was a blizzard of splintered glass and crumbled stone. It was only Will’s instinctual flare of magic that saved them—an irregularly shaped, flickering, golden mass of raw power that deflected the debris. The concussive force rattled Gwen’s teeth, the stone railing biting into her spine as they were nearly thrown into the abyss below.
Inside, the music had been replaced by a symphony of horror.
Will’s shield sputtered and died. Gwen’s brain felt like it had been plunged into syrupy molasses; the world moved with a sickening, cinematic lag. She blinked, her gaze fixating with a bizarre, drunken intensity on Will’s arm. His plaid sleeve was shredded, a deep gash weeped crimson over his skin.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispered, the observation feeling like a monumental in her clouded mind.
A scream, high and curdling, tore through her stupor. Will’s hand clamped around hers, his calloused palm a grounding heat against her icy palm. He hauled her toward the blasted doorway, his sneakers crunching over the glitter of glass while she stumbled in her heels, her balance a fragile, treacherous thing.
The Cairngorm common room was no longer a haven of a rowdy celebration.
The air was a thick haze of pulverized stone and glass, foul with a coppery tang and the sulphurous, choking stench of an open grave. Emerging from a roiling cloud of necrotic grey mist was the Dullahan. The headless rider sat atop a stallion made of shadows and exposed, pulsing sinew, its ribs visible through a translucent, rotting hide. The Rider swung a whip fashioned from a human spinal column, the vertebrae clicking with predatory snaps.
The nightmare had crashed the after-party.
Gwen’s vision blurred as she searched for a conduit—anything to help her contend with the Rider. She tried to weave a frost-bind around the horse’s hooves, but her dizzy mind couldn’t anchor the spell—the icy chains emerged as a pathetic, shimmering thread that the beast snapped with a single, spectral stomp.
“Dammit,” she hissed, the room spinning. The sweet, heavy smoke in the air was making her lungs feel heavy.
In the centre of the room, the Rider’s whip lashed out. It caught a fleeing second-year in the shoulder; the boy didn’t just scream—he withered. Where the bone-whip touched, a grey, ashen rot spread instantly, turning living tissue into crumbling charcoal. He’d be dead in minutes.
“Riley! Roman!” Cal’s voice was a raw bark of terror as he dragged a dazed Roman toward the wall. Bryn was hunched over a sobbing Riley Lee; her leg was already blooming with that horrific, ashen decay. Another student minutes away from a painful death.
Tristan and Julian were a frenzy of coordinated motion, firing shards of crackling ice at the Rider, but the projectiles simply evaporated into steam before they struck the shadow-beast. The horse reared, its hooves hitting the floor as thunderclaps that made the remaining glass in the windowpanes shiver in their frames.
“Will, freeze those hooves!” Gwen commanded, her voice finally finding its O’Dorchaidhe edge through the haze. She didn’t have to explain.
Will didn’t hesitate. He funnelled his raw, terrifying reserves into the floorboards. Thick, translucent chains of ice erupted from the wood, coiling around the stallion’s smoky ankles. It was a perfect, intuitive reaction to her command. Without the pressure of a grade, he created a flawless trap.
“Bryn, Cal, get the unmarked out!” Gwen shouted, her eyes cold as she looked at Riley’s spreading rot. “Leave anyone cursed. If you touch those marks, you die too. Just take the unmarked. Now!”
Bryn’s eyes went wide with horror, but she saw the iron in Gwen’s gaze. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed to a terrified Riley, before scrambling toward the others.
“The Rider is blocking the exit!” Cal yelled, his face splattered with blood as Roman’s head lolled against his shoulder.
“You think a magic castle only has one door?” Gwen shouted. She turned toward a massive, faded portrait of the Shadow Stag near the stairs. “Oscail doras an dragain!”
The oil paint rippled, the forest background shifting into layered, grinding scales until the canvas tore open, revealing a dark, claustrophobic stone corridor. The Cairn-Gait founders had enchanted one frame in every chamber so that no sorcerer would ever feel trapped inside their sanctuary. But it helped to know the password.
“Just—shit—take every right turn!” she directed, knowing the maze inside the walls was much more complicated, but lacked the time to explain. “Go!”
Cal and Bryn each dragged bodies toward the dark maw of the painting. Poppy Shaw and a few others ran or crawled from their huddled spots along the walls.
The Rider sensed the escape. The horse raised its head, its eyes glowing a sickly, sulphurous yellow, and began to manifest spheres of hellfire.
Gwen stepped in front of Will, her feet planted wide as she threw up an Aegis Bastion. The golden dome groaned under the impact of the spine-whip, each strike feeling like a punch to her sternum. She was the only thing standing between the Chosen One and a headless executioner.
Tristan and Julian deflected more hellish bursts aimed at the Vapours fleeing toward the frame. But the Rider never aimed directly at them. Never Inks. Its fury chased Vapours—and Newbloods, like Riley Lee, her teeth chattering as she clutched a leg strangled with black, crawling veins.
“Tristan, go!” Gwen screamed over the roar of the hellfire.
“Not leaving you with a Vapour and a death-wish!” Tristan countered, levitating a heavy table to provide a barricade for the last of the retreating students.
“You’re drunk, and he’s untrained!” Julian added, his arm trembling with fatigue as he smothered another flame.
“I’m the Service Chair!” Gwen hollered, her vision narrowing to a pinprick as she focused through a pounding headache. The drain on her magic and the alcohol in her system made her body heavy. She was running out of energy, and the Rider was ceaseless, its bone-whip gaining strength with each student cursed by its touch. It was a stalemate they were destined to lose.
“Tristan, take them!” she pleaded, her voice breaking. “I have the Chosen One. He’s the only one with enough energy to match this thing, but I need to buy him the moment!”
Tristan looked at her—really looked at her—and saw the unyielding, terrifying resolve in her eyes. He nodded once, a look of profound agony crossing his face, and shoved the last stragglers through the frame.
“No pressure,” Will muttered. His voice was a ragged edge, his frame tensed with the effort of holding the ice chains. The beads on his bracelet clattered and twisted, his anchor stones screaming from the struggle against the Rider’s necrotic pressure.
Gwen turned to Will. She reached out, her fingers tangling in the dark hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him close until their foreheads collided. In the middle of the charnel house, the scent of him—sweet wood-smoke, overbrewed coffee, and fresh blood—was the only thing tethering her to consciousness.
“Will, listen to me,” she whispered, her voice a ghost of its former self, thinned by the alcohol and the cloying herbal smoke. “I can’t hold this shield, and you can’t hold that ice. We’ll die if we don’t stop the clock. And I can’t…” Her throat seized, her mind flashing to Maya’s face in the infirmary. “I can’t keep cutting off pieces of people to save them. We need to stop the clock.”
“Stop the clock?” Will’s green eyes were blown wide with terror.
“A Stasis Curse,” Gwen said. The word curse was bile on her tongue. “It sounds bad, but it doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s a pause. Everything in this room pauses. Us. The Dullahan. Giving the professors time to get here.” A fiery blast rippled across her golden shield, the heat searing her back. “I know the spell, but I don’t have enough power. You do, Will.”
One of the obsidian beads on Will’s bracelet cracked. The spectral stallion let out a screech and lunged, its hoof moving enough to splinter one of the ice chains. Will swore and flexed a tensed, shaking hand, his magic flaring in a desperate, violet pulse to raise renewed chains from the floorboards.
“Please, Will,” she breathed, her eyes locking onto his. “Trust me. Let me guide your resonance. Be my battery.”
“Gwen, I don’t know how to—”
“You don’t need to know,” she commanded, her voice regaining a sliver of its iron authority. She interlaced her fingers with his. “Just feel. Give me everything you’ve got, and don’t you dare stop until I tell you.”
Another bead shattered off Will’s wrist. The Rider broke the chains. The bone-whip whistled through the air—a streak of orange fire and skeletal shadow aimed to reap their lives.
“Tóg an t-am seo!” Gwen screamed.
The room vanished in a bloom of violet light—the same bruised, electric hue from the first time they cast anchor-less magic together. In a blink, energy shocked the room like a storm.
At first, the Stasis Curse drained Gwen like a parasite. The high-level curse consumed her resonance with a terrifying greed. Her internal reserves hit zero in a heartbeat; the curse hungered to devour every piece of her, reaching for her very life-force. Her vision flickered to black. She was a candle snuffed out by the weight of the spell.
Then, the connection shifted.
Will’s power roared, an equally hungry beast. The Stasis Curse, finding a sun where it expected a spark, pivoted with a violet, gluttonous snap. It began to devour Will’s endless reserves.
Gwen gasped, her body arching into his as the resonance flooded through her. It was a magnificent, terrifying force, tempting her with an irresistible, primal urge to simply let go—to drown in the elation of his power.
She felt like a curse herself. She was the vessel, the conduit, a starving thing getting lost in the magnificent sea of his magic. It was a liberation from the rigid, cold bars of her own discipline.
Control, Gwenhwyfar. Find the centre.
Through the intoxicating haze, Gwen forced her mind to build the cage. She envisioned the geometric lines of the spell—not as light, but as heavy, iron-clad walls. She guided Will’s roaring tide, funnelling it through the needle-eye of her focus.
Violet light expanded in a silent, concussive wave.
It hit the Rider’s bone-whip one vertebra from their faces. It swept over the stallion’s rotting chest, the students pinned under debris, and the floor where the second-year boy lay withering, and where Riley clutched her decaying leg.
Then, the world stopped.
It wasn’t death; it was a breathless suspension. The air thickened until it was denser than diamond. The sputtering flames in the hearth froze into jagged sculptures of orange glass. The Rider, mid-gallop, became a statue of necrotic malice, its whip frozen in a lethal arc. The dust motes in the air became fixed stars.
There was no sound. There was no breath. In the centre of the frozen Cairngorm common room, Gwen and Will remained locked together, their hands tangled, their hearts beating in a singular, slowed rhythm that the curse couldn’t quite touch.
Time became a dream. In the stasis, there was no before or after—only the violet warmth of their connection and the absolute weight of the silence. Gwen felt her consciousness drifting, dissolving into the stillness. She was no longer a Chair, or an heir, or a student.
She was just a spark in the dark, waiting for the world to begin again.