This was magic. The mist did not merely cling to the Grey Moors; it seemed to exhale from the earth itself, a cold, damp breath that tasted of peat and ancient secrets.
As the ferry cut through the black mirror of the loch, Gwenhwyfar O’Dorchaidhe stood at the prow, her spine a rigid line of anticipation. Most of the other first-years were huddled together, shivering in their civilian coats, but Gwen welcomed the chill. To her, the cold was the first lesson of Cairn-Gait Conservatory: magic was not a hearth to warm oneself by; it was a gale to be harnessed.
High above, the castle loomed—a crown of granite and shadow silhouetted against the bruised Scottish sky. This was the seat of the Ink. For a thousand years, the O’Dorchaidhes had bled into the stones of this place, their names etched into the Great Registry in ink that never faded. To Gwen, this wasn’t just a school; it was her birthright.
Once ashore, the crowd moved toward the Gatehouse. A student guide—a third-year, likely a Circle member—raised a hand, and a message of charcoal-grey smoke unspooled above his head: First Years Gather Here. Gwen checked her watch—an heirloom piece, mechanical and precise. She was thirty minutes early.
To be on time is to be late; to be early is to be prepared. Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind, sharp as a needle.
Gwen smoothed her silver-blonde hair and checked her tailored wool trousers. While other girls, like the ever-fashion-first Sloan Sterling, had opted for the traditional short skirts and heels of the social elite, Gwen preferred the utility of a fitted silhouette and lug sole loafers. She knew how many eyes would be on her during the sorting. If the ancient magic of the stone decided to be temperamental today—as it often did when testing a specialty—she wouldn’t be caught tripping over heels.
“Gwenny!” Sloan drifted through the crowd, looking like a fashion editorial that had lost its way in a bog. Dark hair fell in artful waves over a sage-green, open-knit cardigan, left open to reveal the scalloped edges of a cream lace camisole. Below, her pleated mini skirt—sharp in traditional tan and red plaid—gave way to a hint of thigh and the fine, white webbing of lace stockings just above her knees.
Trailing in Sloan’s wake were Charlotte Moreau and Estelle Durand, a matched set of legacy obligations that Gwen had endured since nursery school. Charlotte, with her strikingly dark features and heavy, shadowed eyes, looked as though she’d been born in a confessional. Beside her, Estelle was all luminous light—hair like spun honey and a complexion that seemed to catch the Highland sun like a star.
Sloan was already air-kissing them, her laughter a perfect, practiced chime. She was far better at this—nurturing the delicate, poisonous flowers of high-society friendships. To Gwen, Charlotte and Estelle were simply variables in a family equation she was forced to solve with every changing season of their lives. Their parents shared status, board seats, society memberships; therefore, they were ‘friends.’
“Tell me I haven’t missed the start of the sorting,” Sloan said, her heels clicking precariously on the uneven stone. “I already bet Charlotte on at least one Vapour fainting.”
“You’re fifteen minutes early, Sloan. Barely acceptable,” Gwen remarked, her thumb beginning its restless, rhythmic polish of the O’Dorchaidhe signet ring marked with her family’s crest.
“Gwen is just cross because we didn’t coordinate our luggage,” Estelle chirped, her star-like eyes darting over Gwen’s practical ensemble with a faint, shimmering disdain.
Gwen offered a thin, practiced smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Sloan was, like most Inks hailing from noble bloodlines, admirably ambitious. But her focus was always on the surface—the social gravity of being a pureblood. Charlotte and Estelle were satellites, orbiting whatever celestial body they could follow into relevancy. Gwen, however, was obsessed with the depth.
Gwen’s gaze drifted away from them, scanning the gathered mass of students. The divide was already visible to her trained eye. There were the Inks—the legacy students who stood with a certain effortless posture, their magical signatures already feeling like heavy, velvet cloaks. Then, there were the Newbloods, the mixed-lineage students who looked around with a nervous, twitchy energy.
And then…there were the Vapours.
The term was a slur in Sloan’s mouth, but to Gwen, it was a category of concern. Vapours were those born to entirely unmagical families—people with no history, unbound by generations of tradition to ground the power. They were like water in a desert: destined to evaporate if they weren’t contained.
Her eyes snagged on a boy standing near the back. He was tall, with a mess of dark, unruly curls. He wore a faded denim jacket over flannel and a pair of beat-up sneakers, looking more like he belonged at a rock concert than at the world’s most prestigious magical conservatory. He was laughing at something a lanky, red-haired boy in a pilled sweater was saying. The lanky redhead looked distinctly Scottish—likely a Whitley—but the dark-haired boy had an aura that Gwen couldn’t quite place. He looked…unbothered. It was a lack of reverence that felt like a slap in her face.
Further off, a girl with frizzy brown hair was practically vibrating with intensity, her nose buried in a copy of The Primal Cairn: A History of Resonance. A Vapour trying to out-read a thousand years of instinct. Gwen felt a flicker of pity for her; books could give you the ‘what,’ but they could never give you the ‘who.’
“Welcome to the Cairn-Gait Conservatory,” the guide announced, his voice amplified by a subtle vibration in the air. He was five minutes late—likely delayed by a group of Vapours who had struggled to find the ferry crossing. It was only a simple finding spell. “Today, we commend those who have proven worthy. When you are sorted by the Primal Cairn, you do not merely receive a dormitory. You accept a Covenant. To advance the Art. To better the world.”
The words swelled in Gwen’s chest, a humming, golden pride that momentarily stilled her restless thumb. She looked back at the castle. Today, the ‘what-ifs’ were over. She would drop her blood into the grooves of the stone, and the school would finally recognize her for everything she was and everything she should be.
An O’Dorchaidhe. The perfect vessel.
“I heard that’s the Chosen One—his name is William Holloway,” Charlotte whispered behind her, her brown eyes fixed on the boy in the denim jacket.
The name passed through the group like a static charge. It prickled the hair on the back of Gwen’s neck. Even Estelle’s airy posture stiffened. Ever Ink shifted—the subtle tightening of shoulders, the narrowing of eyes, the whispers marked by smirks. Even the Newbloods, usually preoccupied with trying to look like they belonged, went suddenly still.
“I thought he was older—how can he be in our year?” Estelle asked, her golden-touched features contorting in a blend of disdain and disbelief.
“The Battle of the Black Moor was seventeen years ago,” Charlotte answered, her voice low and conspiratorial. “He’d be eighteen now.”
“But him?” Estelle gestured vaguely with a manicured hand. “He looks…so normie.”
“Rumour is he was raised by some American relatives—to hide him,” Charlotte gossiped, leaning closer to Sloan. “No wonder he doesn’t look the part.”
Gwen didn’t turn her head—that would be beneath her—but she adjusted her focus, catching the reflection of the crowd in the polished black screen of her phone. Impossibly, they were gesturing toward the boy who was currently laughing with the frayed Whitley boy as if they were at a summer camp rather than the threshold of the world’s most prestigious sorcery school.
He looked extraordinarily ordinary. Dressed like a lead in an American teen drama—denim, flannel, and a pair of beat-up sneakers. He was lean, perhaps tall enough to be an athlete, but he lacked the groomed, lethal elegance Gwen expected of a prophesied saviour.
“How do they know it’s him?” a Newblood girl whispered nearby.
“Someone saw the curse mark. Look at his neck—wait, don’t look now.”
Sloan let out a sharp, mocking puff of air. She and Gwen exchanged a look that required no words. Charlotte and Estelle were already busy dissecting his vintage sneakers, but Gwen and Sloan were looking at the reality. That was the boy who had survived an attack by the Dark One as an infant? If the fate of their world rested on a boy who chose to wear off-the-rack cotton to his own sorting, they were all doomed.
“Now that looks like everyone,” the guide announced, spell-casting a pulsing trail of amber light in the air—a beacon for the herd to follow. “Toward the tram, everyone. Keep it moving.”
The group shuffled forward to follow the student guide. It was a strange procession. To Gwen’s left, ancient gargoyles carved from weeping stone glared down at them; to her right, a sleek, glass-and-steel tram station hummed with a low, electromagnetic thrum.
This was the great contradiction of Cairn-Gait. Her father spoke of the Conservatory as a cathedral of purity, yet the 21st century had bled into the campus like ink into water. The intersection of powerful ley lines made traditional electricity temperamental—WiFi speed here often relied on the phases of the moon—yet the administration insisted on integration.
“On you go,” the guide shouted. “And first-years, we’re off at the Primal Cairn stop. You can’t miss it. It’s the big rock pile. The stop is Primal Cairn. If you get off on the opposite side of campus, I’m not going after you.”
As they stepped onto the tram, Gwen felt the familiar, elitist itch. The vehicle was a miracle of normie engineering, stabilized by charms, but it felt…wrong. It was too convenient. It stripped away the pilgrimage.
There was no sitting room, a fact that seemed to distress the Vapours, who clutched their brand-new, overstuffed backpacks like life rafts. A Newblood boy, recognizing Gwen’s silver ring and the stitched crest on Sloan’s purse, immediately scrambled to his feet. He elbowed the befuddled Vapour next to him—the frizzy-haired girl Gwen had noticed earlier—who looked up in confusion before being nudged out of her seat.
The boy offered the space to Sloan with a bow that was a bit too eager. Sloan slid into the seat with a smirk of pure expectation. Gwen thanked the boy with a stiff, regal nod and sat beside her. Manners were the armour of the Ink; one must always be gracious to those who knew their place.
The tram jerked into motion, a mechanical shudder that made the Inks gasp. Charlotte and Estelle muttered annoyances as they clutched the hanging loops. Their surnames hadn’t earned the relative safety of a seat. Gwen’s heart jumped into her throat—she’d never ridden a vehicle that wasn’t a chauffeured car—but she kept her face a mask of porcelain calm.
Across the aisle, she caught the eye of the flannel boy. He wasn’t holding onto a rail. He was balanced perfectly, swaying with the tram’s movements, a small, amused smile playing on his lips as he watched the Inks struggle with the ride’s physics. Gwen turned her gaze away instantly. His amusement was an insult. She’d like to see him be so calm riding a peryton for the first time.
Charlotte and Estelle rushed with the crowd to finally dismount at the Primal Cairn stop.
“I don’t think we should take this again”, Charlotte whispered, and Estelle nodded.
“Being shoved arm-in-arm with a bunch of Vapours?” Sloan mused, linking her arm through Gwen’s as they fell in step behind Charlotte and Estelle. “I can practically smell the unrefined magic. Lucky, I excel at scent charms.”
It was true that Sloan excelled at illusion and sensory enchantment. She’d likely be sorted in the Vespertine dorm, alongside Charlotte and Estelle. Exactly as she wanted. But Gwen didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the summit.
The Primal Cairn sat at the heart of the original hill, surrounded now by the encroaching stone walls of the Great Hall’s courtyard. It was a jagged, obsidian pile that seemed to absorb the light around it. Gwen could feel the cairn’s magic in her marrow—a low, tectonic thrumming that recognized her blood.
Standing beside the stones was Chancellor Eddow.
In her father’s rants, Eddow was a traitor—the man responsible for opening the gates to the ‘Vapour flood.’ But standing there in his deep purple robes, his silver beard braided with golden rings, he looked like a god of the old world. His eyes, sharp behind small, round spectacles, seemed to weigh the soul of every student who approached. Despite her father’s warnings, Gwen couldn’t deny the gravitational pull of the man’s power. He was an Ink of the highest order, with achievements in magical theory unmatched by any sorcerer in the last thirty years.
“Welcome, first years,” Eddow said. His voice, despite the croak of age, possessed a deep, resonant rumble. It was clearly a sound-enhancing charm, but the effect was undeniable. “You have all earned your place, whether by the weight of your history or the spark of your potential.”
He paused and turned slightly toward the obsidian heap of the Primal Cairn. A mischievous glint danced behind his round spectacles. For a moment, he seemed less like the school’s head and more like a man who knew exactly which secret was buried under which stone.
“You are all welcome,” he finished, “and you are all expected to honour the legacy the founders established.”
Gwen felt a shiver trace her spine. Legacy. For an O’Dorchaidhe, that weight was a suit of armour she wore every day, polished to a blinding sheen. For her, that meant the Aurelian Circle. It meant being sorted into Aurelius Dorm, the dormitory of elite protectors and curse-breakers. If the Cairn placed her anywhere else, she might as well walk back into the loch and let the kelpies have her. To be sorted into Cairngorm—the dorm of laborers who spent their days sweating over alchemical lead—or the star-gazing sentimentalist of Sidereal? It wasn’t just a dormitory assignment; it was a social execution. An O’Dorchaidhe sat at the high table, or she didn’t sit at all.
A professor in robes the colour of a poisoned forest stepped forward. In one hand, she held a glowing glass tablet—sleek, cold, and offensively modern. In the other, she gripped an obsidian ritual blade that looked like it had been pulled from the throat of a dying god.
“Thank you, Chancellor,” the professor commanded, her voice like a whip-crack. “When I call your name, approach. You will offer a drop to the stones. The Cairn will see your truth. Do not gawk. Do not linger. Join your dormitory leader immediately.”
To the side, the four dorm leaders stood like statues. One of them—the Cairngorm representative—gave a cheery, commoner’s wave. Gwen looked away, her lip curling in a faint, involuntary sneer. Disgraceful.
“First. Marcus Bones.”
The silence was a thick, suffocating blanket. Marcus, a Newblood whose family had just enough magic to be polite but not enough to be powerful, stepped forward. At least he wasn’t a rootless Vapor; he knew the difference between a conjuring stone and a scrying stone. The obsidian blade parted his skin, and he squeezed his hand over the stones. A bright, sunny yellow pulsed from the Cairn’s depths. Dorm Sidereal.
“Why’s it doing that? Is it broken?” a voice whispered from the back. A Vapour, clearly. They had all the magical intuition of a damp tea bag.
“Whatever colour it shows is your specialty—the type of magic you’re good at,” the frizzy-haired girl Gwen had noticed on the tram, hissed back. She was still clutching that book—The Primal Cairn: A History of Resonance—as if it held the secrets to the universe. “The stone is the oldest part of the school. It reads the resonance in your blood to determine where you’ll flourish.”
Gwen resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Flourish? The stone didn’t ‘read’ blood like a textbook; it recognized it. It was a predator sensing its kin. But Vapours always did love their little definitions—it helped them feel less like they were trespassing in a temple. Their lack of connection put them at such a disadvantage.
The line moved with the agonizing slowness of a funeral procession. Oliver Anderson, a boy from a decent Ink family who had spent more time at summer galas than studying, stepped up with a look of terrified arrogance. The Cairn flared a faint, flickering green. Dorm Cairngorm. Gwen saw the boy’s shoulders slump. The Andersons were meant to be scholars, not transmuters. To be sent to the dorm of matter-manipulators was a public admission that he was too shortsighted for the high arts. Predictable, Gwen thought. He always did have the focus of a startled bird. His family would be disappointed, but not surprised.
“Gwenhwyfar O’Dorchaidhe.”
Her name echoed off the granite walls, sounding more like a challenge than a summons. Beside her, Sloan’s grip on her arm tightened for a fraction of a second—a rare crack in her poise—before she let go.
This was it.
Gwen stepped forward. Her loafers, reinforced for the damp moors but polished to a mirror finish, crunched on the stone—the sound of a girl who knew exactly who she was. Or, at least, who she was supposed to be.
She felt the gaze of the entire school—the hungry eyes of the Newbloods, the envious stares of the Vapours, and the calculating scrutiny of the Inks.
As she reached the Primal Cairn, the obsidian shards seemed to groan. A rhythmic, tectonic thrum vibrated through the soles of her feet, climbing up her legs until her very teeth ached with the frequency of the earth. The professor held out the blade, catching the dim Highland light. It was ancient, cold, and smelled faintly of iron and old rain.
“Hand,” the professor commanded.
Gwen didn’t flinch. She offered her palm as if she were offering a gift she knew the stone was worthy of. The obsidian edge slid across her skin, a sharp, cold bite that brought a single, dark bead of O’Dorchaidhe blood to the surface. She turned her hand over, watching the drop fall into a jagged, bottomless groove in the stone.
For a heartbeat, the world stopped breathing. The wind died. The Highland mist froze in mid-air.
Then, the Cairn erupted.
A brilliant royal blue bordered by a blinding gold surged upward—the unequivocal, absolute signature of Dorm Aurelius. Gwen let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, her heart swelling with triumphant pride. She was exactly what she was supposed to be. But as the gold reached its peak, a thin, scraggly vein of violet—the colour of a bruise or the sky before a lethal storm—shot through the centre of the light.
It was there for a heartbeat, a forbidden flicker of something unwanted and uncatalogued, before the blue and gold swallowed it whole.
Gwen stepped back, her hand curling into a fist to hide the cut. Gold was stability. But that violet…it felt like a stain. It was an itch, a whisper of something that didn’t belong in the perfect O’Dorchaidhe lineage. But the crowd was already cheering, and the Chancellor was nodding, and Gwen forced the phantom colour into the back of her mind.
“Aurelius,” the professor announced, and she recorded the result on the tablet.
Gwen moved to the side, her face a mask of porcelain perfection, though her thumb immediately found the raw skin of her knuckle.
The sorting continued with the efficiency of a guillotine.
Sloan Sterling floated toward the Cairn, her blood sparking like diamonds against the obsidian. When the stone erupted in an iridescent, silver shimmer, Sloan offered the crowd a slow, feline grin. Dorm Vespertine. She sauntered toward the silver-and-indigo banner, already weaving a subtle glamour through her ebony hair, making it ripple like liquid silk in a rare beam of sunlight peaking through the cloud cover. Trust Sloan to treat a thousand-year-old ritual like a runway walk.
Charlotte and Estelle were unsurprisingly similarly sorted into Vespertine, although the stones glowed a little dimmer—more rhinestone than diamond—with their sorting.
Bryn Hall followed, the Cairn humming a quiet, bronze, and soft yellow that seemed to twinkle like faraway stars. Dorm Sidereal. The girl looked at her hands with a furrowed, analytical pout. She looked like a girl who had memorized the map of the stars but was suddenly told she had to live among them.
Then came Callum Whitley. He stood before the stone in his pilled, tragic sweater, shoulders hunched as if expecting the rocks to pelt him rather than sort him. When the Cairn groaned a sturdy, earthen green, he let out a breath so loud it was almost a sob. Dorm Cairngorm. He looked relieved to have a roof over his head, but Gwen saw the way his eyes lingered on the Aurelius gold. He’d wanted to be more.
Finally, the name they’d all been waiting for was called. “William Holloway.”
The name didn’t just fall; it detonated. The student body, previously a sea of bored aristocrats and nervous Vapours, became a single, gasping entity. The survivor. The boy who had been kissed by a death curse and lived to tell the tale. Gwen’s manicured nails bit into her palms. The flannel-clad boy—the one who smelled of rain and audacity—stepped forward.
When his blood hit the grooves, the Primal Cairn didn’t just glow. It screamed.
The light was a violent, kaleidoscopic war for dominance. Blue for Aurelius fought amber for Sidereal and bled into green for Cairngorm. The stone vibrated so fiercely that ancient granite dust rose like a ghost from the floor, coating the front row in the stone’s powdered bones. The earth rumbled—the only signal before a barrage erupted, sending slicing shards of pure, hardened energy outward. It would have injured the circled observers, if not for the professors and a few attentive Inks—Gwen included—that threw up defensive shields to absorb the riled resonance.
The boy in the centre of it all glanced at her—where the shards met her shield and dissipated—saving the first-years behind her from a few cuts. His hands at his sides were shaking. The cowards in the crowd were stunned into silence. But Gwen felt an envious itch to fiddle with her ring. This was supposed to be her moment—to start of her rise—and yet, without even trying, he’d become the one to watch.
Chancellor Eddow stepped forward, his eyes wide and reflecting the chaotic storm. “The Cairn…cannot decide,” he whispered, a terrifyingly human tremor in his voice. He looked at William Holloway, who looked like a boy who’d walked into a bar and accidentally started a revolution. “Mr. Holloway, for the first time in a millennium…the choice is yours.”
The Inks erupted in a scandalized, high-bred hiss. But Gwen? Gwen saw a masterpiece waiting for a frame. Choice. Her heart thundered. The word whispered in the back of her mind like a forbidden spell.
In a heartbeat, her mind spun a thousand futures. If she brought the Chosen One into Aurelius, she wouldn’t just be a student; she would be the girl who tamed the legend. They would be the apex of the Conservatory—the Golden Pair. She could see the headlines in the Arcane Gazette, her father’s smug smile, the way the Circle would bow. She would refine him. She would take that raw, terrifying, uncultured power and polish it until it blinded their enemies.
She stepped away from the Aurelius line, her voice a clarion call of calculated grace.
“Holloway,” she said, intercepting him. She made sure her tone was generous—the soft, firm hand of a queen bestowing a title. “Don’t let the chaos confuse you. This is an invitation to honour the potential you clearly possess. Join Aurelius. We are the elite, the guardians of true magic. Aurelius can take you to the heights you were destined for. Don’t limit your legacy with the secondary dorms.”
She offered her hand, palm up, a silent command disguised as a gift. She was the most beautiful thing in the courtyard, backed by a thousand years of blood and gold. She expected him to be grateful. Surely, even a Vapour would recognize that she’d given him a lifeline, an invitation into the highest echelon of magical society despite his status.
Will looked at her. Really looked at her. His green eyes didn’t linger on the gold clip in her platinum hair or her perfect, porcelain skin; they tracked the way she stood—at a distance, as if the very air he breathed was beneath her. He looked at Callum Whitley, who was standing by the Cairngorm banner like a kicked dog waiting for a scrap of kindness.
As he tilted his head, the collar of the cotton shirt under his flannel shifted. There, tracing a jagged line from beneath his collar and disappearing behind his ear, was a splintering vein of shattered obsidian. Not a bruise or a tattoo; it looked like a fracture in a windowpane, yet shimmered like a dark, translucent quartz.
It was a stain of malevolent magic on an otherwise mundane boy. Gwen’s breath caught—not in fear, but in a sudden, sharp greed. The mark. It was real. She was about to take the hand of a legend.
“Elite?” Will repeated. His American accent was a serrated blade, messy and sharp. He looked at Gwen, his gaze dropping to her outstretched hand as if it were a gilded trap. “Sounds like Aurelius is the place with limits. If the only way to reach those ‘heights’ is to look down on everyone else, I think I’ll pass.”
He didn’t just refuse her; he discarded her. He turned his back, his flannel jacket a middle finger to the Aurelian gold, and walked straight toward the copper-and-emerald banner.
“I’ll take Cairngorm.”
The silence that followed was a crushing ache. Gwen stood there, her hand still extended, her mercy hanging in the air like a bad joke. The heat that rushed to her face was a forest fire of humiliation. The whispers started instantly—not about the Chosen One’s power, but about the O’Dorchaidhe girl who had been publicly snubbed for a dorm that smelled like copper dust and complacency.
Her hand dropped. Her face didn’t crumble; it calcified.
She turned back to the Aurelius line, her spine so rigid it was a wonder it didn’t snap. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t look at anyone. Her thumb found her signet ring, grinding into the silver crest, tracing the subtle grooves of the antler pattern around the O’Dorchaidhe ‘O.’
Fine, she thought, the word a cold, jagged shard in her mind. He wants to play in the dirt? Let him. When the Dark One returns to finish what he started, Holloway can try to block a curse with an alchemist’s mortar and pestle. I won’t waste a single ward on a boy who prefers the mud.
The ‘Chosen One’ was an American fool in flannel. And Gwen? Gwen was going to make sure he regretted every step he took in those pathetic sneakers.
***
The transition from the chaos of the sorting ceremony to the sanctuary of Dorm Aurelius felt like stepping from a storm into a cathedral. While the dregs of Cairngorm were likely dragging their salt-stained trunks into the damp, subterranean vaults beneath the castle, the Aurelian common room was a sepulchre of gold-veined marble and ancient, dark-stained oak.
The air here smelled of expensive cedarwood and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone—a byproduct of the high-level protective wards woven into the very masonry. Towering lancet windows offered a view of the moors, but the freezing Highland mist was held at bay by a massive hearth. The fire within roared a steady cobalt blue.
As Gwen entered, a hobgoblin—a leathery, wrinkled creature barely three feet tall—shuffled out of the shadows, wearing a perfectly pressed charcoal-silk waistcoat. It bowed so low its long nose nearly brushed its buckled shoes.
“Tea, Mistress O’Dorchaidhe?” the creature croaked, its voice like the dry leaves.
“Earl Grey. One sugar. A splash of milk—no more than a tablespoon,” Gwen replied, her gaze already sweeping past the creature to the sweeping double staircase. She didn’t wait for an acknowledgement. In the world of the Ink, efficiency was expected, and the domestic spirits of Cairn-Gait were as much a part of the architecture as the gargoyles.
She climbed the sweeping staircase to the ladies’ wing. Her bedchamber sat at the terminus of a corridor lined with a heavy tapestry depicting the Great Warding of Flanders in 1302. The silver-threaded figures in the weave tracked her progress with flickering, stitched eyes, the figures moving about the battlefield in slow motion. The tapestry was so old, the spark of life giving it motion had faded.
Inside, the opulence was muffled and heavy. Two massive four-poster beds were draped in enchanted velvet so thick it swallowed the sound of the outside world. Elodie Fawley was already there, leaning against an oak vanity while a pair of hobgoblins steamed her silk blouses. Elodie was a girl Gwen had known through a decade of stifling hunt balls and debutante luncheons. They were the kind of friends who exchanged shallow compliments in public and tracked failures with the precision of a master bookkeeper in private.
“Aurelius. Naturally,” Elodie said, her voice a smooth, calculated silk. “Though I’m still in a state of tremors that the Cairn gave that American, Holloway, a choice. And then to reject your sales pitch? It was…spectacularly public, Gwen.”
Gwen’s jaw tightened, a microscopic movement she hid by turning to her bookshelf. She directed a hobgoblin with a sharp flick of her wrist toward her collection of gold-bound grimoires. “The boy chose the cellar over the spire, Elodie. Let him rot in the mud. It only makes the gold of Aurelius shine brighter by comparison.”
She watched with eagle-eyed perfectionism as the hobgoblin arranged the volumes. “Oldest to newest, left to right. If a single spine is misaligned by a millimetre, I’ll have you re-sorting the entire library by page count.”
Gwen had anchored herself in the North Wing’s ‘Golden Duo’—a part of the original Cairn-Gait castle that housed the Aurelius and Vespertine dorms. Most first-years would share the mandatory lectures, but Gwen’s electives were a masterpiece of ambition. Classes like Ancient Siphoning and Modern Curses were designed to turn her into a surgeon of the Dark Arts. She didn’t just want to defend; she wanted to dismantle the darkness until it served her.
An hour later, Gwen descended the stairs to the common room, her presence refreshed and lethal. Her silver-blonde hair was smoothed back with a royal blue headband—Aurelius’ signature colour. She had exchanged her travelling trousers for a structured, blue-grey dress that matched the icy depth of her eyes.
“Heading to the sanctuary?”
Gwen turned to find Catriona Sinclair, a third-year whose reputation for social domination was legendary. She wore the Circle’s pin—the Ouroboros—partially concealed beneath her lapel like a bared fang. Her dark, blunt bob razor-straight above her long, exposed neckline, and an oddly grotty iron drop necklace on a gold chain.
“I suspect we’re following the same scent,” Gwen replied, her voice a calm, dangerous melody.
“I’ll walk with you,” Catriona offered. It wasn’t a kindness; it was a territorial display. “Legacy invites are one thing, Gwen. Survival is another. Few first-years have the stomach for the expectations. Really, the pressure is too much. I suggest you relax and enjoy your first year here. Don’t stress over standing out in the Circle. It’s…taxing…for even the most capable sorcerers.”
“I’ve never found excellence particularly taxing,” Gwen shot back, a razor-thin smile touching her lips.
Sloan, flanked by Charlotte Moreau and Estelle Durand, met them in the hall where the Aurelius and Vespertine dorms met.
Charlotte, with her dark features and a gaze that seemed to calculate the cost of everything she looked at, gave Gwen a sharp, tolerating nod. Beside her, Estelle was a shimmering contrast, her skin and hair radiating a golden-hued glow that made her look like a fallen star. They weren’t friends in the way Vapours might define the word; they were a coalition. Their families had traded favours for three generations, and supporting Gwen and Sloan was simply the most profitable position to hold.
All three were dressed in Vespertine-inspired indigo and silver. Sloan’s long-sleeved cocktail dress shimmered with a faint, iridescent glow, smelling of bergamot and vanilla. Charlotte wore an A-line dress with black, sheer sleeves; her dark waves pinned to display diamond-studded, silver hairpins. Estelle’s simple indigo sheath dress was accented with a shimmering belt and layered silver necklaces.
“Catriona was just telling us not to overexert ourselves,” Gwen said, her tone light but pointed.
“How considerate,” Estelle chirped, her star-bright eyes scanning Catriona with a practiced, elegant boredom. “As if any of us know how to do anything at half-measure. It would be socially ruinous.”
Charlotte adjusted the cuff of her dark sleeve. “Power is only taxing if you don’t know where to lean, Catriona. Gwen knows exactly where the leverage is.”
Together, the five of them moved toward the oldest limb of the castle, hidden in a disguised spire far from the reach of the tram lines and the hum of normie technology. They reached the gilded frame containing the portrait of a sleeping dragon, its golden scales shimmering with an oil-slick lustre.
“Sanguis Et Atramentum,” Gwen whispered—Blood and Ink.
The stone wall groaned open, revealing the Aurelian Circle’s Sanctuary—the clubhouse of the Ink-governed student union. It was a dark academia fever dream: a cathedral of lost knowledge. Two-story bookshelves were accessed by brass rolling ladders, and the air was thick with the scent of beeswax, expensive pipe tobacco, and the intoxicating musk of vellum that hadn’t been opened in centuries. These restricted grimoires were texts the Vapours would never see—spells too heavy for thin blood to carry.
Floating candles cast long, dancing shadows over glass display cases holding grisly, beautiful relics: a preserved basilisk eye, a shard of the original cairn, and scrolls that wept black ink when the moon was high. This was the sanctuary of those who didn’t just study magic, but worshipped its history and its weight.
The room was packed with the elite of the elite. Gwen recognized every face—the scions of families her father traded with, and her mother invited to social events; these children belonged to the greatest bloodlines the magical world had ever known. This was her world.
“Networking,” Sloan whispered, her eyes already scanning for influencers. “Go for the jugular.”
Gwen moved through the crowd with the grace of a predator. She didn’t boast; she performed. Whenever Gwen made a point, or Sloan drew attention to an achievement, Charlotte was there to provide a pragmatic footnote on its importance, and Estelle provided the social validation, her golden presence drawing eyes like moths to a flame. They were allies fighting for the same social climb; they curated the space, ensuring that every word Gwen spoke about her bid for Community Service Chair and Sloan’s pitch for Social Events Chair felt like inevitabilities.
“A stable shield ward at nine?” a second-year boy asked, his eyes wide. “My father didn’t let me attempt barriers until I was twelve.”
“The O’Dorchaidhe line has always prioritized early training,” Gwen said. “I’ve already mastered the third-tier of minor curse-breaking. I intend to bring that same… determination to the Community Service Chair. We need a hand that understands the foundations to protect our walls.”
“Gwen’s mastery is precisely why my father—who’s on the Board, as you know—suggested her for the role,” Charlotte added smoothly, her dark eyes locking onto a wavering voter. “Stability is a luxury we can’t afford to lose.”
Gwen pivoted toward Sloan, bridging their ambitions. “And Sloan’s grasp of the modern pulse is unparalleled. She’s already managed to build marketing buzz for her enchanted eau de parfum—it has normies begging for the chance to be charmed. If the Circle wants to stay relevant in an age of data and silicon, we need her vision for our Social Events.”
Gwen caught Catriona’s expression across the room. The third-year was fuming, fingers nervously pinching her iron pendant, watching as her voting bloc leaned in to hear Gwen’s polished rhetoric, bolstered by the silent, powerful consensus of the Moreau and Durand legacies. The feeling of victory was like fine wine—sharp, heady, and addictive.
It almost—almost—dulled the sting of Will Holloway’s green eyes and his flat refusal.
By midnight, the crowd had thinned. Gwen and Sloan were tucked into a corner of a velvet settee, with Charlotte and Estelle occupying the chairs opposite them like sentries. They sipped crystal-glass sherry as hobgoblins snuffed the floating lights.
“Sixty percent of the first-years,” Sloan murmured, checking a digital ledger on her phone. “And a third of the upper-classmen. Charlotte, your cousins’ votes are confirmed?”
“They know where our interests lie,” Charlotte said, sipping her sherry.
“I want eighty,” Gwen said, her thumb finally still against her ring. The raw skin was a reminder of her anxiety, but her eyes were fixed on the future. “I don’t just want to win, Sloan. I want to make it so that the next time someone looks at an O’Dorchaidhe, they remember their place.”
Estelle tilted her golden head, a small, sharp smile on her lips. “Then we’ll get eighty, Gwen. It’s a much more satisfying number for our victory.”
Sloan’s lips curled into a taunting smirk. “Still thinking about Holloway, are we?”
Gwen scoffed, the sound sharp and cold. “Hardly.” Yes.
She looked at the golden snake on her lapel, her reflection caught in its tiny, onyx eye. She had the support of those loyal to O’Dorchaidhe, the backing of her friends, and the momentum of a landslide. She had something to prove—not just to the ‘Chosen One’ who had walked away from her, but to the very stones of this castle. Gwen would be the most powerful Ink Cairn-Gait had ever seen. There was no other option.