Magic wasn’t a gift; it was a hierarchy, and Gwenhwyfar O’Dorchaidhe had spent eighteen years building a reputation that would make her worthy of its highest arts. Standing at the prow of the ferry with the mist of the Grey Moors clinging to her skin, her spine was a rigid line of anticipation. She had crossed the black mirror of the loch countless times as a visitor, but today, finally, she was crossing to claim her seat.
Behind her, the other first-years huddled in summery dresses and shorts, shivering and unprepared for the way the Highlands bared their teeth on August’s final Friday. Gwen welcomed the chill. To her, the dreariness was the first lesson of Cairn-Gait Conservatory: the best sorcerers did not seek comfort; they relentlessly hunted challenges until there was nothing left to conquer.
High above, the castle loomed—a crown of granite and shadow etched against the bruised Scottish sky. This was the seat of the Ink. For a thousand years, the old sorcery bloodlines like 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. And she had never been one to let a throne go unclaimed.
Once ashore, the crowd moved toward the Gatehouse. A student guide—a third-year 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, ensuring not a single strand escaped the gravity of her discipline. She had traded the traditional short skirts of the social elite for tailored wool trousers and lug-sole loafers. She knew how many eyes would be on her during the sorting. If the ancient magic of the stones decided to be temperamental today—as it often did when testing a sorcerer’s specialty—she wouldn’t be caught tripping over a pair of senseless heels.
“Gwenny!”
Sloan Sterling 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 far better at 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.’
“You’re fifteen minutes early, Sloan. Barely acceptable,” Gwen remarked, her thumb and forefinger beginning its restless, rhythmic polish of the O’Dorchaidhe signet ring around her pinkie.
“You’re 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 disappointment.
Gwen offered a thin, practised smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Sloan was, like most Inks, 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 the mouths of absurdly traditional pureblood sorcerers. 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, wearing a faded denim jacket over flannel and beat-up sneakers. He looked more like he belonged at a rock concert than at the world’s most prestigious magical conservatory. He was laughing at something a red-haired boy in a pilled hoodie was saying. The broad, tall ginger looked distinctly Scottish—likely one of those Whitleys—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 Vapors 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 ring-fidgeting. She looked beyond the clustered buildings that circled the tilted rise from the stone curtain walls to the main castle atop the central hill. 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 meant to be.
“I heard that’s him—the Chosen One baby all grown up,” Estelle whispered behind her, eyes fixed on the boy in the denim jacket. “Apparently, he’s some Vapour named William Clark.”
Hair prickled the back of Gwen’s neck. The name passed through the group like a static charge. Every Ink and Newblood shifted—the subtle tightening of shoulders, the narrowing of eyes, the whispers spreading like ripples in water.
“I thought he’d be older—how can he be in our year?” Sloan asked.
“The Hollow Lord’s last battle was seventeen years ago,” Charlotte answered, her dark brown eyes pinched with disdain. “He’d be eighteen now.”
“He looks… so normie.” Estelle gestured vaguely with a manicured hand.
“Rumour is he was raised by some American relatives—to hide him,” Estelle gossiped, her voice low and conspiratorial as she leaned closer. “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 screen of her phone. The gossipers gestured toward the guy 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, 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.”
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 Hollow Lord 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 an oil spill into a majestic coral reef. 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 steel 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. The legacy students knew to send their luggage ahead with old-fashioned magic.
A Newblood boy, recognizing the crest on Gwen’s ring that marked her as sorcery royalty, immediately scrambled to his feet. He elbowed the befuddled Vapour next to him—a girl with dark coiled hair and eyes glued to an open book—who looked up in confusion before being nudged out of her seat.
The boy offered the space 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 own, lesser-known crests 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 or charmed flying carriage—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. Her goal for the sorting was the Vespertine dorm, alongside Charlotte and Estelle. The other Ink-dominated dorm.
The Primal Cairn sat at the heart of the original hill, exposed to a small slice of clouded sky inside the main castle’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 craggy stack 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 linen suit, his silver beard neatly trimmed, he had an indisputable prestige. 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 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 both the chains and 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 drown her. To be sorted into Cairngorm—the dorm of labourers who spent their days sweating over alchemical formulas—or the star-gazing sentimentalists 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 a pantsuit 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 rib 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, comical wave. Gwen looked away, her lip curling in a faint, involuntary scowl. 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 competition, stepped forward. At least he wasn’t a rootless Vapour; 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,” hissed the girl who’d been forced to give Gwen her tram seat. She clutched a book—The Primal Cairn: A History of Resonance—as if it held the secrets to the universe. A Vapour trying to out-read a thousand years of instinct. “That stone is the oldest part of the school. It reads the resonance in your blood. Like a magical Myers-Briggs and DNA test all in one.”
Gwen resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The stone didn’t ‘read’ blood like a textbook; it recognized it. It was a predator sensing its kin. But Vapors 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 parties than study groups, stepped up. The Cairn flared a faint, flickering green. Dorm Cairngorm. His shoulders slumped. 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 courtyard 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. She felt the gaze of the entire school—the hungry envy, the calculating scrutiny. She heard the murmurs as they recognized her last name, already anticipating what having another O’Dorchaidhe at the school would mean.
As she reached the Primal Cairn, the obsidian shards seemed to groan. A rhythmic, tectonic thrum vibrated through the soles of her loafers, climbing up her legs until her very teeth ached with the frequency of the earth. The professor held out the blade, catching the cloud-covered Highland light.
“Hand,” the professor commanded.
Gwen offered her palm as if it were a gift. The obsidian edge slid across her skin—a sharp, cold bite. She watched a single, dark bead of O’Dorchaidhe blood 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. Triumph swelled in Gwen’s throat, releasing a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. 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.
The forbidden flicker of something unwanted was swallowed whole by a final burst of blue and gold. It was a stain. An itch, a whisper of something that didn’t belong in her perfect O’Dorchaidhe lineage. But the crowd applauded. Gwen stepped back, forcing 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 and forefinger immediately pinched the raw skin of her pinkie.
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 and curtsy. 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.
Callum Whitley stepped before the stone in his pilled hoodie and shorts, his 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 Clark.”
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 prophesied Chosen One. The boy who had been marked by a death curse and whose survival ended a war overnight. Gwen’s manicured nails bit into her palms. The flannel-clad boy stepped forward.
When his blood hit the grooves, the Primal Cairn didn’t simply glow.
It screamed.
The light was a violent, kaleidoscopic war for dominance. Blue fought amber and bled into green. The stone vibrated so fiercely that ancient granite dust rose like a ghost from the ground, coating the courtyard in the stone’s powdered bones.
The earth rumbled, and a barrage of slicing shards of pure energy erupted outward. Gwen reacted before she could think, throwing up a defensive shield that hummed as the shards shattered against it, saving the first years behind her from being flayed open. Fortunately, Eddow, the professor, and the student guide had similarly shielded students standing on the opposite side.
Through the golden veil of her shield, Gwen caught the boy’s eye. His hands were shaking. Shame and horror. The crowd was stunned into a terrified silence. But Gwen felt an envious itch to fiddle with her ring. This was supposed to be her moment—the start of her rise. Yet, without even trying, he’d become the one to watch.
Chancellor Eddow stepped forward, placing a hand on the Chosen One’s rigid shoulders. “The Cairn cannot decide,” he said. The warmth and calm in his smile stilled the boy’s tremors and gave the crowd reason to breathe again. “Mr. Clark, for the first time in a millennium… the choice is yours.”
The Inks huffed and hissed with scandalized disapproval. But Gwen? She saw the madness as 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 could be the girl who tamed the legend. Their alliance would be the apex of the Conservatory. She could see the headlines in the Arcane Press, 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. And never again would they blame Gwen for her uncle’s crimes.
She stepped away from the Aurelius line, her voice a clarion call of calculated grace.
“Clark,” she said, intercepting him. She made sure her tone was generous—the soft, firm hand of a royal 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 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. He had to see how her potential complemented his, a lineage 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.
Will looked at her. Really looked at her. His green eyes didn’t linger on the superficial trappings of status, not her silver signet ring or the genuine gold clip in her platinum hair. He tracked the way she stood—at a distance, as if the very air he breathed was beneath her. Will looked at Callum Whitley, who was standing by the Cairngorm banner like a kicked dog waiting for a scrap of acceptance.
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 fascination. The curse-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 cutting. 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’ll pass.”
He didn’t just refuse her; he discarded her. He turned his back, his plaid flannel 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 princess who had been publicly snubbed by a Vapour pauper.
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 forefinger and 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 Hollow Lord returns to finish what he started, Clark 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 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 to a drafty South Wing in desperate need of renovations, the Aurelian common room was a sepulchre of gold-veined marble and ancient, dark-stained oak. High-level protective wards were 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 gold.
As Gwen entered, a hobgoblin—a leathery grey, 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 a cross between a toad’s croak and dry leaves.
“Earl Grey, please. One sugar. A splash of milk,” 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 attendants of Cairn-Gait were as much a part of the architecture as the gargoyles.
She climbed the sweeping staircase to the ladies’ chambers. 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 hung her silk blouses. Gwen had known Elodie for a decade of stifling formal luncheons and riding competitions. They were acquaintances 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, Clark, 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 to unpack her collection of gold-bound grimoires. “Not my problem,” she said coolly. “Let him learn the hard way he chose wrong.” She watched with eagle-eyed perfectionism as the hobgoblin arranged the volumes. “Oldest to newest, left to right.”
Gwen had successfully 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 exited her dorm refreshed and dressed to impress. 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 and her loafers for kitten heels.
“Heading to the Sanctuary?”
Gwen turned to find Catriona Sinclair, a Vespertine third-year whose reputation for social domination was legendary. She wore the Circle’s pin—an Ouroboros dragon—perched on her shoulder strap 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.
“You were the Social Chair last year,” Gwen said, her voice a calm, dangerous melody. “Lucky for you, it was a quiet year.”
“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.” Her dark bob tilted, her neck crooked as she stepped closer, a threatening proximity that would have made anyone else back into the wall. Gwen did not move.
“Don’t stress over standing out in the Circle year one,” Catriona said, her sickly sweet tone not matching the venom in her smile. “It’s taxing… even for the most capable sorcerers.”
“I’ve never found excellence particularly taxing,” Gwen shot back, an equally disingenuous, thin smile touching her glossed lips.
Sloan, flanked by Charlotte Moreau and Estelle Durand, met them in the hall where the Aurelius and Vespertine dorms met. Catriona shifted a step back.
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 matched her gold-lace romper.
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.
“Catriona was just telling us not to overexert ourselves,” Gwen said, her tone light but pointed.
“How considerate,” Sloan said, moving to stand beside Gwen and link their arms. Her long-sleeved cocktail dress shimmered with a faint, iridescent glow, smelling of bergamot and vanilla.
Estelle’s star-bright eyes scanned Catriona with a practised, elegant boredom. “As if any of us know how to do anything at half-measure,” she said. “Laziness is socially ruinous.”
Charlotte adjusted the cuff of her dark, sheer 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’s North Wing, 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, a blend of expensive liquors and herbal teas, and the intoxicating musk of pages that hadn’t been opened in decades. 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 Prime 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—or at least the Western world.
This was her world.
“Networking,” Sloan whispered to Gwen, 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 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 as Community Service Chair.”
“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 Clark’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 I’ll curse off their hair if they don’t,” 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 don’t want a single Ink doubting an O’Dorchaidhe belongs on top.”
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 Clark, are we?”
Gwen scoffed, the sound sharp and cold. “Hardly.” Yes.
She looked at the golden dragon on her lapel, her reflection caught in its tiny, embossed eye. She had the support of those loyal to O’Dorchaidhes, 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 sorcerer Cairn-Gait had ever seen. There was no other option.