The first thing Gwen noticed was a collision of smells. It was the sharp, clinical sting of ethanol and sterile glass, layered over earthy dried lavender, and the cloying, metallic odour of blood-replenishing potions.
The infirmary.
Her eyes snapped open, but the daylight was a volley of silver-tipped arrows, stabbing through her retinas to the back of her skull. She groaned, the sound catching in a throat that felt like it had been scoured with sand and something acidic. Her limbs were hollow, unresponsive things—lifeless as a porcelain doll’s. Every cell in her body hummed with a vibrating fatigue, as if her very essence had been siphoned off. And it had. A little. This was the consequence of co-casting a curse beyond her level.
“Easy, Miss O’Dorchaidhe.” A hand, firm and cool, pressed against her shoulder. It was the head nurse, Matron Elara, her silhouette a dark, imposing blur against the room’s aggressive, white-hot brightness.
The infirmary was a study in the castle’s grim history meeting a modernized, clinical frontier: glowing runic monitors hummed with a low, rhythmic pulse beside heavy plastic bedframes, and floating glass vials of iridescent fluids hung like glowing fruit beneath the vaulted stone arches.
“You’ve been unconscious for nearly fourteen hours,” the Matron said, her voice a low, cautious warning. “The magical exhaustion alone… It is a miracle your heart didn’t simply stop.”
Gwen glanced at the analogue clock on the wall, the hour hand reaching toward the one. Fourteen hours. So it was Sunday afternoon.
Gwen’s voice was a dry, ghostly rasp. “Will… the Rider… Did the stasis hold?”
“The spell held until the Chancellor arrived to banish the creature—or rather, it chose to disappear,” the Matron said, her expression hardening into something unreadable. “You saved those students, Miss O’Dorchaidhe. No deaths. Riley Lee’s curse was reversed in time, but…” She paused, a shadow crossing her face. “But poor Harry Davies… The rot had taken the bone before your stasis reached him. We had to amputate at the shoulder. He lives. He will recover, in a sense.”
Gwen’s stomach knotted, a cold pit of guilt opening in her gut. Another student irreversibly altered on her watch. Another piece of someone lost to her ‘heroic’ efforts.
“The resonance between you and the Clark boy,” the Matron continued, “has the whole school talking. A Vapour and an O’Dorchaidhe, sharing the burden of a high-level curse? It’s a scandal that won’t easily be buried. The gossip-mongers and hobgoblins have been pestering me for your chart since sunrise.”
Gwen ignored the warning, her heart starting to gallop. She looked to the bed beside her, expecting to see a mess of dark hair and tortoise-shell glasses.
It was empty. The sheets were pulled tight, a cold, clinical, and terrifyingly blank slate.
“Where is he?” she whispered, panic flaring like a match in her chest. “Where’s Will?”
“He was fine hours ago,” a voice chirped. Bryn stepped around a privacy screen, her yellow Sidereal scarf looking rumpled. She held a single, vivid sunflower, its bright petals defying the clinical gloom. Behind her loomed Cal, his arm in a sling and his face a map of bandages and stitches.
“He’s okay?” Gwen asked, her breath hitching.
“He recovered almost instantly,” Bryn said, placing the sunflower with its small, plastic vase on the nightstand. “Chancellor Eddow says his energy reserves are… abnormal. He was walking before the Matron could even get a restorative potion near him.”
Gwen sank back into the pillows, a wave of relief so potent it made her dizzy. The nurse patted Gwen’s shoulder and promised to come back after her visitors left.
But the ease was short-lived.
“But it’s probably his last day at Cairn-Gait, no thanks to your ‘brilliant’ idea,” Cal spat, his voice tight with a familiar resentment.
Gwen’s eyes snapped back to him. “What do you mean?”
“Stop bothering her,” a frosty, melodic voice chimed. Sloan appeared like a spectre of perfection, bearing a massive, aggressive bouquet of royal blue chrysanthemums. She planted her gold-leafed vase directly in front of Bryn’s sunflower, obscuring it entirely. “The last thing she needs is the riffraff complaining about things they don’t understand.”
“Sloan, please,” Gwen said, her voice strained. “What’s happening with Will Clark?”
Sloan reached out, her fingers working quickly to restore order to Gwen’s bedhead, flattening and tucking until it resembled something tame. “He’s facing the disciplinary committee, Gwen. For casting an unregistered, high-level curse on campus grounds.”
Gwen bolted upright, her exhausted muscles resisting the movement. The room spun in blurs of grey stone and blue flowers. “But it was my plan! My spell. He was just—I used him as a battery. He didn’t even know the incantation.” She threw the white cotton sheets off her legs, her skin pebbling in the chill. “I have to testify.”
“Calm down, Gwen,” Sloan commanded, her hand steadying Gwen’s back with a grip like iron. “You look like a ghost. You aren’t going anywhere.” Sloan raised the sheets over Gwen’s legs.
“You’re really going to let him take the fall?” Cal challenged, his eyes burning with blame. “He saved everyone, and you’re going to let them expel him because it’s ‘messy’ for your reputation?”
Sloan levelled a dismissive glare at him. “He’s the Chosen One. He’ll get a slap on the wrist and a lecture. It’s part of the theatre, Whitley. Don’t be tedious.”
“No,” Gwen insisted, throwing off her covers again, her feet hitting the cold stone floor. Her knees buckled instantly, and Sloan had to catch her, easing her back onto the bed with a frustrated sigh. “Casting a high-level curse is… a big deal. Even for the Chosen One. I have to tell the committee it was an O’Dorchaidhe spell—that he acted under my direction.”
Bryn leaned forward. “Sloan is right about one thing—you can’t go anywhere, Gwen. You’ll collapse before you reach the Great Hall.”
Gwen looked at Cal, her mind racing through the fog of exhaustion. She needed a proxy. Someone the Circle couldn’t ignore. She glanced at Sloan. “Where’s Tristan?”
“At the trial, watching the show,” Sloan shrugged.
“I’ll go,” Bryn offered desperately.
“You can’t,” Sloan said plainly, examining her cuticles. “Vapours aren’t permitted in Circle chambers. You’d be bounced back from the doorframe like a rubber ball. It’d be funny to watch, but pointless.”
“Then you go, Sloan,” Cal growled.
Sloan laughed, a dry, sharp sound. “And ruin my standing? To defend a Vapour who can’t afford a decent anchor object? I think not.” Her voice dropped and softened as she turned to Gwen. “Let him take the hit, Gwen. Your record stays clean. The Vapours get a much-needed ego check. It’s win-win.”
Gwen felt the clashing loyalties tearing at her, more painful than the magical exhaustion. Sloan was offering her the easy path—back to the heir she was supposed to be—the path that led straight back to her grand plans. But an O’Dorchaidhe didn’t hide.
“Whitley,” Gwen commanded, her voice regaining its silver, lethal edge.
Cal froze.
“Go to the Circle Sanctuary,” Gwen said, her eyes boring into his. “Tell Tristan to verify that it was an O’Dorchaidhe curse. And I forced Will Clark to do it with me. If Tristan tries to wiggle out of helping, remind him about our game of Truth-or-Dare.”
“No Vapours in the Trial Room, Gwen,” Cal said, his jaw tight. “I’m not allowed in.”
“You are a Whitley,” Gwen said. Sloan hissed in disapproval, but Gwen didn’t blink. Cal went pale, the weight of his ignored lineage suddenly heavy. “You might be uninvited, but your blood is Ink. They cannot refuse you entry if you have a key.”
She reached out her hand, palm up. Cal hesitated, looking at Bryn. She took his hand and placed it firmly in Gwen’s.
“By my blood and name,” Gwen whispered.
A flare of golden light erupted between their palms—the regal seal of the Aurelius mandate. Cal flinched as the maps of secret passages and the passwords for the Circle’s inner sanctum flooded his mind.
“You are invited to the Circle,” Gwen finished, the light fading. “Go.”
“Now they’re really going to kill you,” Sloan murmured, watching Cal stumble back, looking stunned.
“I’ll be taking that invite back soon, Whitley,” Gwen warned. “Don’t abuse my trust.”
Cal huffed, though his eyes held a new, shocked respect. “Like I want a key to that den of snakes.” He glanced at Bryn one last time, then sprinted out of the infirmary.
Bryn squeezed Gwen’s hand. “Thank you, Gwen.”
Gwen pulled her hand away, the ice sliding back over her features. “Don’t thank me. I’m simply cleaning up my own mess.”
Bryn smiled, not fooled by the mask. “The flower came with a card,” she said, gesturing to the obscured sunflower, then she too excused herself.
Sloan pulled a chair to the bedside, her smile returning like a polished blade. “Now that the riffraff is gone, let’s talk about your future. You aren’t just the Hero of the North Wing anymore, Gwen. You’re the Saviour of the South. This is going to look spectacular on your resume.”
Gwen looked at the blue flowers, unable to shake the sinking, hollow feeling of the life Sloan was so eager to plan—the path they had once planned together. She wondered if she’d ever be able to breathe again without Will Clark’s raw, messy magic filling her lungs.
***
The stone floor felt impossibly chilled beneath Gwen’s thin slippers, the cold seeping into her soles like a premonition. She moved with the shivering, precarious grace of a glass figurine, her head swimming with phantom echoes of the stasis. Every time she closed her eyes, she didn’t see the dark; she saw the bruised violet of Will’s resonance, felt the phantom heat of his hand interlaced with hers, dizzy with the thrill of chasing that feeling.
She glanced once more at the sunflower, hand around the note she’d tucked into her pocket. Get well soon, it said in his messy, unrefined script. But below it, a line of text had been scratched out so fervently that the paper was nearly torn. She’d spent an hour tracing the indentations with her thumb, trying to find the hidden letters, but they remained a secret he wasn’t ready to share.
Matron Elara hovered nearby, her face a mask of clinical disapproval as she directed a hobgoblin to bring Gwen’s flowers to her dorm room.
“You are still ashen, child,” Matron Elara said, followed by the fourth sigh in as many minutes. “Your pulse is a ghost of what it should be. Magical exhaustion is not the common cold.” She shook her head. “If Lord O’Dorchaidhe wasn’t so insistent, I would keep you here another day.”
Gwen’s stomach twisted. She wasn’t surprised her father had intervened. Whether it was the portraits on the walls or the hobgoblins trading secrets, his shadows always found a way to listen. Even within Cairn-Gait, his control found a way into her life.
“I’ve rested long enough, Matron,” Gwen said, her voice sounding like dry parchment. She clutched a heavy, cream-coloured envelope. It had been delivered mid-afternoon, shortly after Sloan left.
The O’Dorchaidhe seal—the antlers of a peryton around a regal, elegant ‘O’—felt like a weapon aimed at her heart. Her father’s letter was a masterpiece of aristocratic subtext.
I congratulate you on the reputation your power has earned. However, dearest daughter, I remind you: do not reveal our family’s specialized spells so unwisely in the future, especially to those who lack the blood to understand them. A sorcerer who gives away her secrets soon finds she has nothing left for herself.
He didn’t care about the lives she’d saved or the second-year whose arm had been lost to a curse’s rot; he cared about the proprietary nature of O’Dorchaidhe magic. He hadn’t pulled her from the infirmary out of mercy; he’d done it because a sleeping heir was a liability. He wanted her back on the board before the rumours of her exhaustion could be used as leverage.
Gwen felt a crushing weight on her chest that had nothing to do with her depleted resonance. Seventeen hours in the safety of the infirmary was a dangerous absence.
While she’d been kept here recovering, a disciplinary committee had convened to write the narrative of a reckless Vapour—the Chosen One no Ink would choose—as the real problem.
Without her voice in the room, what had they done to Will? Had Tristan held the line, or had he folded under the pressure of the Circle’s Inks-first priorities? Control was the only currency Gwen truly possessed, and right now, she felt bankrupt.
Determined to regain lost ground, Gwen dressed in the armour Sloan had brought her: a jewel-toned blue windowpane-check pinafore layered over a sleek black turtleneck. The sweetheart neckline and cinched leather belt gave her the silhouette of the perfect, composed chairwoman, even if her muscles ached with the sheer effort of standing.
As she left the infirmary, she expected stares and whispers, but the corridors were eerily focused. Clusters of students were rushing toward the central courtyard, their faces tight with a voyeuristic hunger that made Gwen’s skin crawl. She considered killing her curiosity to take advantage of their distraction, but she knew the reprieve wouldn’t last. Better to face it now. She followed the current of excited murmurs, her curiosity quickly curdling into a heavy, clammy dread.
She stepped into the courtyard facing the Prime Cairn, and the sight nearly brought her to her knees.
The mound was a bleeding wound of letters. Hundreds of crimson envelopes were piled around the obsidian stones of the Cairn—the ancient, sacred foundation of Cairn-Gait. The letters weren’t just sitting there; they were vibrating, emitting a low, discordant hum that set Gwen’s teeth on edge. The obsidian stones of the Prime Cairn seemed to pulse with a livid, violet light, reacting to the encroachment like a poisoned body.
A ring of students stood in the courtyard, a suffocating wall of bodies. Some were filming with their phones; some dared friends to pluck a letter from the pile; others whispered behind their hands, their eyes darting between the desecrated Cairn and Gwen as she emerged.
The disrespect was sickening. The Prime Cairn was meant to be untouchable.
“Move,” Gwen commanded, even with the tremor in her voice, the single word cut through the crowd’s murmurs.
They parted like a retreating tide. Gwen’s exhaustion was suddenly incinerated by a white-hot flash of rage. She bolted up the hill, her loafers skidding on mist-slicked grass. Her lungs burned, and the world tilted precariously, but she didn’t stop until she reached the summit.
Pushing through the grey fog in her mind, she raised her hand, her signet ring catching the weak Highland sun. Students tripped over each other to clear the space, their faces a blur of shock.
How dare they? How could anyone—even a mastermind within the Circle—desecrate the heart of the school like this?
Gwen snatched one letter from the top of the pile, her fingers trembling as she tore it open. The vellum was the same, the corner embossed with the Circle’s seal, but the handwriting was different—a wider, more symmetrical script meant to hide the author’s identity. The change was clever. It would make it that much harder to use a handwriting sample as reasonable evidence.
The words rang in her ears, matching her thudding pulse with a high-pitched panic:
The Ink traitor may stay the clock, but our crusade will not be stopped. The so-called heroes you celebrate may stand against the Rider, but the Rider does not tire.
*> Vespertine first. Cairngorm second. Sidereal next.
*> The pursuit of the Rider will not cease until we save our halls from the plague of Vapours and mixed bloods diluting our legacy. Until William Clark is removed, we will call the Rider to clean our campus one by one.
The paper shook in her hands. Ink traitor. The accusation felt like a slap. Her balance shifted, lost in a moment of dizziness. The hunt had shifted from vaguely targeting Vapours to directly branding Will as the source of strife. While the Circle blamed him for the Stasis Curse, the Red Letter blamed him for the Rider’s recurring appearances.
The letter’s intention was not subtle: Turn on the Chosen One to save yourselves.
Gwen looked down at the walled pile of letters, then at the sea of gawking, terrified, zealous faces watching her. She felt the weight of their judgment, the pressure of belonging to a legacy that wasn’t what she thought it was.
“Litteras colligite!” she shouted. The black tourmaline in her ring stung her skin, a frostbite warning that she hadn’t regained her reserves. But the letters yanked away from the Prime Cairn, swirling in a howling, crimson vortex before slamming into a heavy, vibrating pile at the base of the hill. Students tripped over each other to clear the space, their faces a blur of shock.
“Rogum incende!”
Sparks jumped from envelope to envelope, and soon the pile crackled with amber heat, the smoke billowing into a tall spire that reached for the grey clouds above. The charred, acrid burn of vellum filled the air. At the top of the hill, she watched the paper threats curl into ash and smoke.
The content of the letters was likely already spreading through the school’s message boards, but she didn’t care about containment anymore. She cared about the sanctity of the Prime Cairn. She cared that Will hadn’t hesitated to risk himself to save them, and yet it was only a matter of time before they would whisper that sacrificing him would be worth it to restore their selfish peace.
Everyone needed to see what Gwen O’Dorchaidhe thought of this foul interpretation of the legacy. It deserved to burn.
“Gwenhwyfar O’Dorchaidhe.”
She turned to find a stooped hobgoblin at the base of the hill, his eyes wet marbles reflecting the dying embers of her pyre. He held a summons of heavy, cream vellum—a different shade of threat than the crimson letters she’d just incinerated.
“The Council is seated,” it croaked, thrusting the parchment toward her. “You are expected.”
Gwen’s stomach twisted in knots, a writhing friction that burned hotter than the ashen pile below her. The Circle had known the exact second she left the infirmary. She felt an undignified, primal urge to scream, to let the exhaustion take her. But she simply straightened her pinafore, smoothing the blue windowpane-check fabric with trembling fingers.
“Tell them I’m coming,” she said, her voice steadier than she believed possible. “And… Tea would be nice. Earl Grey, please. One sugar and a splash of milk.”
The hobgoblin hesitated, surprised by the mundane demand in the face of a trial. He nodded slowly. “It will be waiting, Miss O’Dorchaidhe.”
***
The Circle Council sat behind a crescent-shaped table of ancient, oil-rubbed mahogany, the fire in the hearth casting long, flickering drapes of bruised orange light across their faces. The air was thick with the scent of ink, expensive tea, and the dry, peppery dust of centuries-old ledgers.
Gwen stood in the centre of the room, the floor tilting three degrees to the left. Her vision frayed at the edges, a byproduct of the hollow, metallic fatigue vibrating in her marrow. Every second she remained upright felt like a victory over physics.
Her eyes flicked to her empty chair—the phantom limb of her identity—before settling on Alistair Thorne. He sat at the centre, radiating a performative, sickening compassion. Beside him, Isolde looked as though she had swallowed a lemon, her disappointment a sharp, unstable weight. Her hand was tensed on her collarbone, fingers hooked under her iron pendant’s choker chain.
Tristan was a statue of rigidity to their left. He refused to meet Gwen’s gaze; the shame of being blackmailed into verifying her story burned in the stiff line of his shoulders. And Sloan… Sloan looked physically ill, her fingers twisting a gold ring until the skin went white. She was upset—and terrified—that the scandal would end Gwen here and now.
“Gwenhwyfar O’Dorchaidhe,” Alistair began, his voice a smooth, dangerous silk that grated against Gwen’s raw nerves. “You stand before us to answer for two grave transgressions: the unauthorized casting of a high-level curse on campus grounds, and the breach of our sanctuary by inviting a… non-authorized person.”
“As the Chair responsible for enforcing rules, Gwenhwyfar should know better,” Catriona Sinclair snapped. Her eyes were narrowed slits of green malice. “This isn’t a lapse in judgment. I think those latest letters said it best—Ink traitor. This stunt looks like a confession to me.”
The words knotted her stomach again. Ink traitor. The council was already using the Red Letter’s vocabulary.
“I saved lives,” Gwen said, her voice a low, strained hum in the quiet room. “I didn’t realize the Circle’s priorities had shifted from protecting sorcerers to promoting witch hunts.”
The accusation burned the oxygen from the room. She knew it was too bold. Too soon. But it thrilled her to see how it stunned them. Good. They should be afraid. She would make the real ink traitors confess soon enough.
“Last night’s incident suggests,” Isolde added, her voice tight with a prickling pity, “that perhaps a first-year, no matter how gifted, was an untested choice for such a vital role.” She traced the thin chain around her neck.
“The Board of Trustees is already breathing down our necks,” Alistair said, leaning forward. “If they think we cannot govern our own, they will strip us of our freedoms. The Circle protects magic. But that protection is only possible with rules.”
“Gwen didn’t fling a random curse—she anchored a god-tier stasis to save lives,” Clooney countered, steady and warm. He leaned forward, the firelight catching his dark, feathery strands—the same messy strands Gwen had once known the texture of, back when the world was simpler, and the glasshouses were for hiding, when his brown eyes had watched her in dark places.
Gwen felt a traitorous twinge in her chest. Clooney had always been too much of a bleeding-heart for the cutthroat politics of Ink social circles, a trait that had eventually driven a wedge between them. Seeing Clooney defend her now, with that familiar, bruised look in his eyes, was an unexpected nostalgia.
“Gwenhwyfar demonstrated creative thinking while the rest of us were sipping champagne,” Clooney continued, his gaze briefly locking onto hers with devastating clarity. He noticed the tremor in her hands that she’d tried to hide. He knew she was exhausted. “Riley Lee and Harry Davies would be dead without her. Probably more.”
“Clooney is correct,” Heather Stewart, the Secretary, added, leafing through a brass-bound ledger. “Our bylaws allow for a ‘grey area’ regarding defensive casting. This was an act of protection.”
Tristan finally spoke, his voice a raspy friction. “She evacuated the room first. She only used the Stasis Curse when there were no other options.”
Catriona wasn’t finished. “And inviting Whitley? Were there no other options than letting that stain inside?”
“Whitley is an Ink,” Clooney corrected sharply. “The Circle shuns the name because of a dead man’s crimes. Maybe it’s time we rethink that.”
The debate swirled around Gwen, but she felt detached, a hollow glass vessel. Alistair finally turned back to her, his mask of pity slipping to reveal the cold ambition beneath. “Enough deliberation,” he said. “I call the vote.”
The Council shifted, the rustle of their clothes sounding like the sharpening of shears.
“On the charge of casting a curse,” Alistair said, “All in favour of dismissing, under the provision of extreme emergency.”
Hands rose. Tristan, Sloan, Clooney, Sean, and Heather. Even Alistair and Isolde added their reluctant approval, the political cost of expelling the ‘Hero of the North Wing’ and ‘Saviour of the South Wing’ too high to pay. Only Catriona remained still, her hand a tight, resentful fist.
Gwen felt a stuttering rush of air flood her lungs. She wasn’t expelled, not from the school or the Circle. She wasn’t a pariah. Not yet.
“On the charge of inviting a non-authorized person: pending,” Alistair announced, his tone cooling. “I will dismiss the charge once you officially revoke the invitation to Callum Whitley. As our fellow members have noted, technically, no rule was violated. However, we will not have an outcast roaming our sanctuary on a first-year’s whim.”
A ripple of nodding heads followed.
“You keep your position, Gwen. But let this be your only reprieve,” Alistair warned. “It would be disappointing to see your potential wasted.”
Gwen stood, her legs feeling like they were made of cardboard. She had retained her Service Chair authority, but the walls of the Circle now felt less like a fortress and more like a gilded cage. Every move she made would be dissected.
Yet, as she surveyed the room, a cold fire blazed inside her bones. She had heard Clooney argue for fairness; she had seen the Secretary cite codes of protection. The skeleton of the Circle’s moral code was still there, buried beneath the vanity of people like Alistair and Catriona.
This was the Circle she had promised Will Clark she could save.
She smoothed her platinum plait with steady precision. She would do more than hold her position; she would wait for her moment to take Alistair’s seat, and when she did, she would prune the rot—cut out the twisted, insular fools—to restore the Circle’s integrity.
“I believe my tea is waiting,” Gwen said, her voice ringing out in the silent chamber. She didn’t wait for Alistair to dismiss her. She turned and walked toward the door, her loafers silent on the mahogany, leaving the vipers to whisper in her wake.
***
The walk back to the Aurelius dorm was a study in slow-motion degradation. Each step a gamble against gravity. The Aurelius splendour of the North Wing, usually a warm, welcoming glow, now felt garish and accusing.
She hadn’t felt a setback this cleaving since she’d lost a cross-country riding title to Elodie Fawley—a mistake she’d corrected at the next meet. But this wasn’t a ribbon; this was her identity. In a single revolution of the earth, the carefully curated script of her life hadn’t just been rewritten; it had been set on fire.
Monday morning was looming, and she felt too brittle to withstand even the weight of her own name.
As she pushed open the heavy oak door to her suite, her breath hitched.
Lying on the silk duvet of her bed was a crimson envelope. The seal was a dollop of wax that looked like a fresh wound.
Gwen could feel the resonance of the seal from the threshold—a low, whistling hum of exclusionary magic. A privacy charm; this was a message meant for her eyes only.
She glanced at the empty bed across the room. Elodie was likely still lingering over dinner, gossiping about Gwen’s missteps. The solitude was a fleeting mercy. Gwen shut the door, the click of the lock echoing with a finality that made her skin crawl.
Her chest tightened, a phantom rope winding around her ribcage until every breath was a chore. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the letter. She broke the wax, and the seal dissolved into a wispy crimson smoke that smelled of stagnant water and the metallic tang of copper.
The red words were etched into the cream parchment with a hateful precision:
An O’Dorchaidhe provides the blade, not the shield. To fuel the tool is to blunt the weapon. You have mistaken a political asset for a peer, Gwenhwyfar. Do not mistake our patience for permission. The Rider comes for all those who threaten the Circle’s legacy.
Gwen sank onto the edge of her bed, the paper crinkling in a grip that had gone suddenly, terrifyingly numb.
The Rider comes.
Disgust rose in her throat, bitter and hot. First, the letters on the hill had called her a traitor; now, a private threat promised to turn the Dullahan on her for daring to stand in its way. She had risked her very life-force to stop a curse—the very pursuit she had been bred for—and her fellow guardians of Ink legacy were telling her she was wrong.
The Circle she had cherished, the institution she believed was the last line of defence for magical integrity, was cheering for the deaths of those it was designed to protect.
Her fury, her fear was a living thing now, clawing at her throat. She stood up, her legs shaking so violently she had to grip the bedpost for a moment before she could reach the hearth. She was too drained to use a spell; so she took a match-box from the mantle, struck a single flame, and watched it take hold of the corner of the parchment.
She tossed the Red Letter into the hearth. The parchment curled, the words “The Rider comes” glowing with a brief, neon crimson before turning to grey flakes.
They thought a few cruel words and the threat of a headless ghost would snap her back into the fold. They thought she was a frightened child who could be scolded into submission. But an O’Dorchaidhe never backed down from a challenge.
An O’Dorchaidhe provides the blade.
She leaned her forehead against the cool stone of the mantle. She would be the blade. She would sharpen herself until she could cut every one of those vipers out of their seats. She would find the architect, expose the rot, and restore the Circle to the pristine, honourable institution it was meant to be.
It was a good plan. It was a logical, step-by-step reclamation of her world.
She stood there for a long time, clinging to the rigid, desperate habit of being Gwenhwyfar O’Dorchaidhe. The heat of the hearth failed to penetrate the icy void in her chest.
As she stared into the dying embers, bitterness rose in her throat like bile. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Her life was a series of meticulously timed movements—every exam aced, every ribbon won, every social connection forged, every spell mastered—all leading toward a spectacular future that had been designed for her since birth. None of this—the death threats, the ruined lives on her conscience, the alcohol-induced impulse to choose Will Clark—none of this was part of the plan.
She felt a stinging, childish resentment toward the chaos of the last twenty-four hours. She didn’t want to be a hero. She didn’t want to be an Ink traitor. She just wanted her life back.
Will’s voice echoed in the back of her mind—the way he’d looked at her in the library, eyes bright with a terrifying, misplaced hope. “Be the one to break the cycle,” he’d said.
Gwen closed her eyes, a bitter, breathless laugh threatening to break past her lips. She wasn’t who Will Clark thought she was. He wanted a revolution; Gwen just wanted a restoration. The challenge of breaking the cycle had seemed tempting… until it started to hurt. She’d never asked to be the ‘Saviour of the South Wing.’ She wanted to return to the status quo where an O’Dorchaidhe name meant she belonged at the top.
She turned away from the hearth and crawled into bed, not even bothering to pull back the silk duvet. She lay on top of the covers, her eyes fixed on the dark ceiling as the last of the red smoke vanished. Outside, the Highland wind rattled the windowpanes, and, for the first time in her life, Gwenhwyfar O’Dorchaidhe realized she had no idea what to do.