Monday morning at Cairn-Gait arrived not with a sunrise, but with a bruised purple light that bled through the heavy Highland mist. The conservatory felt alive, a beast of granite and ivy breathing cold air through its cloisters.
Gwen moved through the halls of the North Wing with the precision of a clockwork doll. Her outfit was a manifesto of Aurelian superiority: a charcoal wool skirt pressed with pleats so sharp they could draw blood, a cream silk blouse buttoned to the chin, and a royal blue velvet headband that kept every silver-blonde strand in its rightful place.
Beside her, Sloan was a vision of scholarly romanticism, looking like a portrait plucked from a forgotten library. She wore a voluminous cream blouse with puffed sleeves and a delicate lace collar, tucked neatly into high-waisted, pleated trousers in Vespertine indigo. Sloan was a cloud of her own making—literally—smelling of iris, orange blossom, patchouli, and something slightly metallic that Gwen knew was the result of her latest scent-lab experiment.
Completing their phalanx of legacy were Charlotte Moreau and Estelle Durand.
Charlotte, draped in layers of sheer, midnight-black, moved with a dark, architectural grace. A studded leather belt cinched her waist over a floor-sweeping skirt, while a wide-brimmed felt hat cast a permanent shadow over her severe gaze, seemingly darkening the hallway as she passed. Beside Charlotte, Estelle radiated a golden, sun-kissed hue in a silky floral romper. The blush-pink fabric, blooming with deep violet and sage botanicals, featured dramatic bell sleeves and a plunging neckline.
“And then Kate told me that the third-year curriculum is basically just sensory manipulation in high-fashion contexts,” Sloan chattered, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings. Sloan had secured her mentor during the Circle’s mixer—a chic upperclassman with a penchant for social carnage. “She’s going to help me refine the Eau de Traitor line. It’s perfect, Gwen. One spray and your enemies can’t help but spill their darkest secrets just to get closer to the scent.”
“I heard this year’s first-year courses had to be watered down for all the Vapours,” Charlotte interjected, her voice like dry parchment. She didn’t look at Sloan, but rather over her head, as if searching for bats lurking in shadowed corners. “Though I doubt the curriculum accounts for those who lack the basic refinement to even perceive the nuances. My father says teaching Vapours sensory magic is like teaching a donkey to appreciate opera.”
“Oh, Charlotte, you’re far too kind,” Estelle chimed in, her golden features glowing in the dim light. “At least a donkey knows to stay in the audience rather than audition.”
Gwen murmured “Enthralling” under her breath, her eyes scanning the passing gargoyles. She needed to focus on Professor Prospero. Gwen hadn’t chosen a mentor yet. She’d spent the weekend orientation observing candidates like a hawk. She needed someone with enough prestige to bridge the gap to Professor Prospero’s selective third-year courses, but without the fragile ego that would lead them to sabotage a protégé who might eventually outshine them. Perfection required patience—and a silence that her companions seemed incapable of providing.
“You’re not even listening,” Sloan accused, tapping her scent-lab notebook against her hip. “You’re thinking about Prospero.”
“I am thinking about the fact that we are walking toward a lecture on Advanced Arcanum, and I need to impress the professor,” Gwen retorted. “Prospero is a master of ancient siphoning. I doubt he’ll accept me into his third-year courses for my aptitude for gossip. Try to act as though you care about the basics, dull as they may seem. It’s respectful to the craft.”
“Oh, I’m so glad someone else feels that way!”
Gwen froze. The voice was bright, eager, and entirely uninvited.
Bryn Hall materialized from the damp shadows of a pillar. She looked like a walking yard sale of practical: a thick, lumpy knit cardigan in mustard yellow and a backpack so overstuffed she looked like a frantic turtle.
“I’ve read all of Prospero’s papers—I thought the one on the Ley Line Fluctuations of 1999 was fascinating,” Bryn said, her hand nervously tightening around her backpack strap. “His theory on the ‘Inertia of the Ink’ is revolutionary. I’m Bryn, by the way. Bryn Hall.”
They all stopped. But it was Estelle who reacted first—her eyes raked over Bryn’s mustard cardigan with the horror one might reserve for a bio-hazard.
“Did that thing speak to us?” Estelle asked, her golden-hued face contorting in genuine, visceral disgust. “I can actually hear the friction of that dreadful polyester. It’s giving me a migraine.”
Charlotte stepped forward, her dark eyes raking over Bryn with a hardened disdain that made Sloan’s usual snark look like a compliment. “You’ve read his papers? How quaint. I suppose even a parrot can be taught to mimic Latin if you feed it enough crackers. But I wonder if this Vapour truly believes its borrowed thoughts have a place in a conversation between O’Dorchaidhes, Sterlings, Moreaus, and Durands?”
“Listen to me, you hovering cloud of desperation,” Sloan added, catching the rhythm. “You might have found a spark in your blood, but that doesn’t mean you have the pedigree to keep up with this conversation. Most Vapours don’t make it to second year.”
“I bet it lasts a month,” Estelle guessed with a nonchalant glance at her nails.
“Two weeks,” Charlotte bet.
“Vapours can’t keep up,” Sloan warned, her smile cruel. “Your ‘theories’ are just children’s stories compared to the weight of real history. Don’t bother making friends. No one is interested, Vapour.”
Bryn’s face went white, then a humiliated, blotchy red. Her lip trembled for a microsecond before she pulled her shoulders back, her knuckles whitening on her backpack straps. She didn’t say a word as she hurried past them, her sensible shoes squeaking on the stone.
“What a bully,” a voice muttered from behind them.
Gwen didn’t turn—but curiosity drew her eyes to glance over. The American accent was an immediate giveaway.
Cal Whitley stood there, a study in relaxed, sun-bleached defiance. He wore a pale blue and white striped linen shirt, the collar left casually open, and the sleeves rolled to the elbows as if the North Wing’s stifling tradition was a heat he refused to endure. His pastel pink shorts and stark white crew socks were a loud, modern intrusion against the ancient stone floors, paired with scuffed white tennis shoes that suggested he had more important places to be. Despite the casual attire, his pride was visible in the set of his jaw. Beside him was Will Holloway.
“Most Inks are snobs,” Cal said, not bothering to whisper his disdain. “The Sterlings and O’Dorchaidhes are the worst, pompous sort. And those two—just flies.”
Will didn’t look angry; he looked disappointed. He was dressed in another faded flannel shirt over a black t-shirt and jeans—the kind of casual, ‘I don’t care’ American style that felt like a deliberate insult to the gothic majesty of Cairn-Gait. His gaze met Gwen’s for a fleeting second, and in it, she saw a confirmation of every bad thing he’d thought about her during the sorting.
Gwen felt a sharp, jagged prick of irritation. She wasn’t a bully—she was a perfectionist. She had standards to preserve. There was a difference. She wanted Will to regret choosing the mud of Cairngorm, but seeing her through the lens of Sloan’s petty cruelty felt…unrefined. It lacked the elegance of a proper social victory.
“Ignore them,” Gwen snapped at Sloan, though the prick of irritation in her chest felt…jagged, unrefined. “We’re going to be late.”
“Honestly, Gwen,” Estelle whispered, tucking a golden lock of hair behind her ear as they continued walking. “How do you stand it? The smell of commoners is practically clinging to my silk. We really must speak to the Circle about separate corridors. How are we supposed to focus with all that trash in the halls?”
“Once Gwen and Sloan join the Circle Council, we’ll change things,” Charlotte added.
Gwen said nothing. She wanted Will Holloway to regret choosing the mud of Cairngorm, but being lumped in with Estelle’s and Charlotte’s vapid cruelty felt beneath her. She was a perfectionist, not a bully—but as she felt Will’s eyes on her back, she realized the distinction might be lost on him.
*
The Great Lecture Hall was a hallowed cathedral with theatre architecture: tiered mahogany desks, floating iron chandeliers that dripped green-tinted wax, and walls lined with the leather-bound records of the centuries of accomplishments—and failures—produced within these walls.
Gwen took her seat in the front row, centre-left. Precisely where a star pupil should be. Charlotte and Estelle slipped into the row behind, all the better to gossip. Sloan sat beside Gwen, immediately opening her scent notebook and ignoring the towering presence of Professor Prospero as he stared down at the lecture notes on his desk. Gwen noted that Will Holloway, in his rumpled flannel, and Callum Whitley, in his threadbare velvet, went straight for the back.
And then there was Bryn Hall. Gwen was surprised to see the frazzle-haired brunette scuttle into a seat just a few desks down. She hadn’t been intimidated into the back rows. There was a spark of something—not quite approval, but a cold respect—in Gwen’s chest. The Vapour had a spine.
That respect lasted exactly six minutes.
“Now,” Prospero barked, his voice like grinding stones. “Who can tell me the primary difference between siphoning a charm versus a curse?”
Bryn’s hand shot into the air so fast her cardigan sleeve hissed. “A curse’s resonance is predatory!” she chirped before Prospero had even finished pointing at her. “A charm’s resonance is receptive to being siphoned or manipulated. A curse will try to override or steal any power that tries to siphon it.”
Gwen gritted her teeth. Every Ink knows that, she thought viciously.
Five minutes later: “And why do we use stones and wands for spellwork?”
Bryn’s hand was back up. She was practically vibrating in her mustard sweater. It was a rhetorical question, but Bryn answered anyway, reciting the knowledge every elementary-aged Ink knew: “Because stones, wands, and crystals help anchor intention. These tools deflect resonance interference by acting as a grounded conduit for the caster’s magic.”
Gwen’s fingers tightened around her pen until the knuckles turned white. It was pedantic. It was elementary. It was the equivalent of a golden retriever barking at its own shadow.
Yet, to Gwen’s mounting horror, Professor Prospero didn’t seem to share her disdain. He paced the front of the room, his heavy black robes billowing like smoke, a faint, terrifyingly paternal glint in his dark eyes. He wasn’t annoyed; he was intrigued. He was looking at Bryn as if she were a particularly interesting specimen under a microscope, rather than a frantic Vapour who had memorized the glossary.
The status quo was shifting, and Gwen felt the sharpened edge of her ambition begin to cut. Being the best wasn’t just about the correct answer; it was about being perceived as the best. And Bryn Hall was proving to be a very noisy obstacle.
“Excellent, Miss Hall,” Prospero said. “You have the theory. But theory only gets us so far.”
He reached into a velvet-lined box on his desk and pulled out a small, jagged piece of rusted iron—a cursed masonry nail. Even from the front row, Gwen could feel the low, irritating thrum of the magic bound to it. It felt like a persistent itch, a clumsy vibration that made her toes tingle.
“Who wants to try siphoning the power out of this toe-stubbing curse and describe the resonance they experience?” Prospero’s gaze swept the room, sharp as a hawk’s.
A toe-stubbing curse. A minor, petty mala fortuna. Easy to siphon if one knew to use finesse over brute strength. Gwen knew magic was not a wild thing to be befriended; it was a blueprint to be executed.
Her hand didn’t just rise; it ascended with the lethal grace of a gallows lever. She was the first—she was certain of it.
Beside her, Bryn Hall remained frozen, her hand hovering halfway up before she seemed to think better of it. The girl knew her limits. Bryn was a creature of ink and paper, a theory-junkie who lacked the history in her blood to actually command power. She didn’t have the years of gruelling private tutors who had snapped at Gwen for every misstep in a resonance calculation.
Gwen felt a surge of predatory triumph. She didn’t look back, but she felt the weight of the Chosen One’s eyes from the back of the room like a low-pressure system. She wanted him to see the difference between a girl who understood the divine architecture of magic and the Vapours he had chosen to rot with.
“Miss O’Dorchaidhe,” Prospero said, a challenge sparking in his obsidian eyes. “The floor is yours.”
Gwen stood, her wool skirt falling into perfect, uncreased lines. She flexed her fingers—feeling her resonance connect with the grounding black tourmaline stone in the centre of her silver signet ring—moved with the slow, observant confidence of a wolf stalking a deer that hadn’t yet realized it was prey.
“It’s a low-frequency, blunt resonance, Professor,” Gwen said, her voice a cool silk that cut through the murmurs of the hall. “Commonly used by seventeenth-century hedge-mages to discourage trespassers. If siphoned improperly, it could infect the unlucky curse-breaker with a week-long bout of clumsiness. A lack of structure leads to a lack of stability.”
She stopped before the desk, the air around the rusted nail smelling of coppery rust and petty malice. “Fortunately, its highly infectious nature makes it easy to transform into useful energy—if one has the discipline.”
She hovered her palm above the metal. The curse snapped at her, a tiny, angry spark of ill will. Gwen didn’t flinch. She visualized her internal resonance as a sieve of golden sand, a rigid filter that could separate the fine grains of her intent from the chaotic noise of the world.
“A fortuna adversa ad viam inventam,” she incanted, the Latin syllables perfectly pronounced.
She felt the prickling bite of the curse, a blunt, weak push against her palm. She didn’t flow with it; she crushed it into a new shape. She willed the itchy vibration to smooth out, to cool, to surrender. The iron nail twitched once, its dark aura collapsing into a soft, steady hum.
Gwen smiled, a sharp, triumphant thing, and lowered her arm. She picked up the now-harmless iron weight with her bare hand. “Now it’s compass,” She turned to the rows of students, her eyes scanning until they locked onto a pair of startled green ones. “I know how easy it can be for…some students to get lost on campus. You’re welcome for the tip.”
Will Holloway’s expression shifted. For a heartbeat, he looked genuinely impressed—the kind of look a man gives when a wild stallion dismounts its rider. Then, the realization of her barb hit him, and his brow darkened into a frown.
Enjoy getting lost in the moors when I could’ve handed you a map, Gwen thought, her heart singing with a vicious, melodic joy.
“Very good, Miss O’Dorchaidhe,” Prospero said. “Unsurprising, but still a unique twist. Please take your seat.”
Gwen returned to her desk, catching the way Bryn’s shoulders had slumped in a fit of academic jealousy. Sloan had her open hand waiting below the mahogany desk for a congratulatory finger tap.
“What Miss O’Dorchaidhe just demonstrated,” Prospero lectured, “is exactly why it’s crucial to understand the basics of resonance. If you can break down a spell, charm, or curse to its fundamental resonance, you can change it to reflect your will.”
Gwen took diligent notes, just to seem humble, now that Prospero was aware of her skill. Everything was going exactly as Gwen had planned. She had proven her capabilities. She had established her dominance.
Until the afternoon.
The Modern Curses classroom was a claustrophobic vault tucked into the dampest corner of the castle. It smelled of wet stone and old, dangerous secrets. Gwen walked in, her silver-blonde hair a beacon in the gloom, and stopped dead.
Sitting at a cramped, ink-stained desk in the second row was Will Holloway. He was leaning back, his flannel shirt open over a black t-shirt, idly chewing on the cap of a pen. He looked entirely too comfortable in a room that was supposed to be a sanctuary for the elite.
Gwen marched up to his desk, her heels clicking like gunshots on the stone. “What are you doing here?”
Will looked up. A slow, crooked grin spread across his face. He leaned forward, and the movement caused the scoop-neck of his black t-shirt to dip. Gwen’s eyes were magnetically drawn to his collarbone. The fractal pattern was more extensive than she’d realized. The obsidian veins branched out across his skin like frozen lightning, the edges of the scars shimmering with a faint, vitrified lustre. It looked as if he were made of glass that had been struck but refused to break.
“I didn’t realize you were in charge of the seating plan,” he said, his American drawl feeling like a deliberate scuff-mark on her expensive silence. “Or is this your throne, Princess?”
Gwen’s gaze snapped back to his eyes, her face flushing. She was a curse-breaker in training; she shouldn’t be distracted by the geometry of a dead spell, no matter how beautifully it sat against his tan skin.
“Not here,” she snapped, her grey eyes dropped to his dog-eared spiral notebook and the scattered pens on his desk. It was an aesthetic nightmare. “This is an Aurelius specialty class. You chose Cairngorm.”
“That’s what I said,” Will agreed, his eyes lingering on her face a second too long for comfort. “But Chancellor Eddow insisted. Said I had to take a little bit of everything—or, you know, everything that light-show…showed.”
The unceremonious disrespect for the Primal Cairn felt like a wrecking ball to the skull. She was fractured between numb disbelief and raw outrage. “It’s not a light-show, Holloway. It’s a sacred tithe with a thousand years of tradition,” she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous octave.
Gwen inhaled a deep, steadying breath. Calm, Gwen. Don’t let the American ruffian fracture your poise.
“Fine,” she said coolly, regaining control. “Chancellor Eddow is right. If the Cairn sensed multiple areas of potential, it would be an insult to the Ink to ignore it. Even if the vessel is…lacking.”
Will’s eyes sparked. He leaned forward, the smell of rain and cedarwood suddenly overwhelming her. “I think that’s what he said, too,” he whispered, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial, flirtatious rasp. “Just, you know…less stuck up.”
The rage started to boil again, hot and messy. Gwen scanned the room. Other students were filing in, their eyes darting between her and the Chosen One. She had already missed her chance for the front row; Elodie Fawley was there, watching the confrontation with a smirk of pure delight.
Gwen would not—not ever—be forced to sit in the back with Will Holloway.
“Don’t draw attention to yourself,” Gwen warned, leaning over his desk until she was a mere inch away. She couldn’t help but glance at the dark, quartz-like line that pulsed—just for a second—when he swallowed. “This class is mine. My family mastered curses while yours was still trying to figure out fire. I want to forget you’re here.”
Will didn’t flinch. He just shrugged, that infuriatingly American casualness back in place. “Sorry, Princess. But I’m stuck here—whether or not either of us wants it. Might as well get used to the view.”
Gwen turned on her heel, her blood rushing like a flooded river. She stormed to a seat in the second row, her spine a rigid line of defiance. She was an O’Dorchaidhe; she was a masterpiece of biological and academic engineering. She needed to maintain perfect control. She sat, her movements a study in strained neutrality.
But as she pulled out her leather-bound notebook, she realized her hands were shaking. And it wasn’t from the Highland chill. It seemed the ‘Chosen One’ wasn’t just a legend; he was a destined rainstorm on her meticulously manicured parade.
Gwen had expected to endure the Newbloods and Vapours in the mandatory core classes. She had braced herself for the morning Intro to Advanced Arcanum lectures where the air smelled of stale coffee and damp wool (try a simple rain-repellent spell, Vapours) and reconciled herself to the Monday afternoon insult of Integration of Technology & Magic, watching tech-savvy Vapours smugly outshine the magic-reliant Inks.
But the universe, it seemed, was a cruel architect. Her schedule had become a gauntlet of Will Holloway.
Every Tuesday and Wednesday at 14:00, she had to endure his mangled attempts at the Linguistics of Power. While she articulated the ancient Enochian syllables with the precision of a diamond cutter, he butchered them with that lazy American drawl, looking frustrated until—impossibly—the air would suddenly crackle for him.
But the worst was the invasion of Modern Curses and her Friday Defence Seminar. In rooms that were supposed to be her dominion, there Will was. He mocked the very stone of the castle with his flannel and denim, looking in awe at every flickering candle like a child at a carnival.
Worse than background noise, he seemed to be set on actively undermining her. It started in their Friday morning lecture with Chancellor Eddow, History of the Grey Moors.
The air in the lecture hall was as dry as the crumbling parchment of the Chancellor’s podium. Sunlight, weak and filtered through the moor-mist outside, struggled to penetrate the stained-glass windows, leaving the back rows—the Vapour rows—in shadows. Gwen, naturally, occupied the very centre of the front row, her spine a rigid line of midnight-wool perfection.
Directly behind her, the air was heavy with the scent of expensive bergamot and a sharp, cynical chill.
“Look at his poor, quizzical face,” Estelle said, a whisper loud enough for Gwen and Sloan to hear. The wood desk creaked as Estelle leaned forward, her golden-hued features bright with performative adoration. “It’s a miracle the Primal Cairn didn’t just spit his resonance into the mud. He’s a fool for not accepting your help, Gwen.”
“He’ll never fulfill the prophecy with them,” Charlotte drawled, her voice a low, raspy scrape. She didn’t look at Will; she was drafting sewing patterns in her notebook. “Vapours are like weeds in the Highland heather. They take up space, contribute nothing to the aesthetic, and eventually, someone has to burn them out so the real flowers can breathe.”
Chancellor Eddow cleared his throat, a sound like grinding granite. “Who can tell the class why the Founders chose this specific coordinate for Cairn-Gait? Why build a haven for sorcerers here?”
The silver of Gwen’s signet ring flashed in the air before any other hand even twitched. Eddow nodded to her.
“The Founders were masters of resonance detection, Chancellor,” Gwen said, her voice a sharp chime that cut through the lecture hall’s dust. “They sought the convergence point of the ley lines—where the earth’s natural magic is most volatile and concentrated. By anchoring Cairn-Gait here, they ensured that every sorcerer taught here would be bathed in that frequency. Over generations, this exposure refined the blood of their descendants. It created the Ink resonance—a biological evolution of power that allows us to command magic with a precision the unrefined can never hope to mimic.”
“Beautifully said,” Estelle whispered, clapping her hands silently. “It’s in the blood. You can’t teach that kind of pedigree.”
“Exactly,” Charlotte muttered. “You can give a pig a triple-A crystal; it’s still going to look for the gutter.”
“But,” a voice interrupted from the middle row. It wasn’t loud, but it was persistent. Will Holloway was leaning forward, his tortoiseshell glasses sliding down his nose. “If they were the first people to find this place…they didn’t have ‘refined blood,’ did they?”
The room went deathly silent. Estelle let out a sharp, offended gasp.
Charlotte let out a dry, rattling laugh. “Someone should hex his mouth shut.”
Will shrugged, looking around. “I mean, if they were the ones who founded the lineage, they started without one. Doesn’t that mean the Founders were Vapours?”
A ripple of scandalized murmurs broke out among the Inks. Gwen turned in her seat, her eyes narrowing.
“Don’t be absurd, Holloway,” Gwen said, her voice dropping an octave into a dangerous silk. “The Founders were the first Inks because they had the will to claim the magic. They weren’t ‘Vapours’—a term meant for those lucky to be born with magic. The Founders were architects. Their right to protect magic was earned through mastery, which they then passed down as a sacred legacy.”
“I get that they were—architects,” Will countered, his green eyes bright with a logic that felt like an attack. “But even if you build a castle, you’re still the person who started in the dirt. If the very first people who felt a connection to Cairn-Gait didn’t have ‘Ink’ parents, then the source of all your ‘refined’ power is just a Vapour who got lucky at a ley line.”
Chancellor Eddow raised a hand to quell the brewing storm. “History, Mr. Holloway, is often written by the victors—and in this case, the victors were the families who survived the early Moor-wars. However,” he paused, his gaze sweeping over Gwen’s rigid form, “the archives are…let us say, incomplete. We know for certain that two of the six Founders came from established sorcerous lines in the North. But as for the others? Their origins are lost to the mists.”
“Whose side is the Chancellor on?” Estelle hissed, looking at Eddow with mounting horror.
“Blood traitor,” Charlotte whispered toward the dais, her dark features twisting in disgust. “He’s humouring the Chosen One.”
The silence that followed was heavy and uncomfortable.
Gwen felt rattled—not because Will had muddied her answer, but because he was right. She looked at his messy silhouette out of the corner of her eye. He was a boy from nowhere born with exceptional power, just like those four mystery founders. She hated the parallel.
Gwen couldn’t focus for the rest of the lecture. And he continued to distract her in every other class they shared.
Will Holloway was unrefined. He was messy. He was offensive to her sense of order. Yet, the potential the Cairn had sensed was a screaming, undeniable fact. He didn’t succeed because he understood the underlying resonance or the archaic words that shaped intent; he succeeded because magic seemed to recognize him as a long-lost friend.
Every time he broke a hex or mirrored a ward, his eyes would inevitably find hers across the room. He would offer a small, infuriatingly smug tilt of his head—a silent reminder that he didn’t need her Aurelian pedigree, the private tutors, or ‘help’ to be great.
“You’re staring again, Princess,” he’d whispered once as they passed each other in the entry to the Great Hall. His shoulder had brushed hers, a deliberate step toward her—to see who’d flinch first—and he’d forced her to deviate from her straight path to the Aurelian table. “Careful. People will think you’re the Chosen One’s number one fan.”
“I’m observing a safety hazard, Holloway,” she’d snapped back, her pulse betraying her. “Nothing more.”
To compound her frustration, Will had formed a trio that felt like a deliberate psychological attack. He was inseparable from the prideless Ink, Cal Whitley, and they had absorbed Bryn Hall into their orbit. Bryn, who had not only become the professor’s pet in their shared Wednesday elective, Introduction to Runes, but who seemed to delight in answering every question Gwen hadn’t even finished formulating.
Gwen was almost convinced her first-year plan was decomposing before her eyes. Until Friday evening.
The Aurelian Circle met in the sanctuary, the air thick with the scent of expensive whisky and the low hum of the restricted library. When the votes for the chair positions were announced, Gwen felt the world tilt back onto its proper axis.
“Gwenhwyfar O’Dorchaidhe. Community Service Chair.”
The title was a sanitized mask for what the position actually entailed: the volunteer patrols. Gwen would be responsible for campus security, monitoring high-risk zones, overseeing student conduct, and appointing Prefects. It was the ultimate power move for a first-year. She would have the authority to patrol the grounds, to be the shield that guarded the Ink—and the eyes that watched the Vapours.
Sloan had easily secured the Social Events Chair, her shimmering Vespertine influence making the vote a mere formality.
“We have the keys to the castle, Gwen,” Sloan whispered later, leaning against a velvet settee with a glass of crystal sherry. “I throw the parties, and you police the shadows. By third year, you’ll be Chairman of the entire Circle.”
Gwen ran her thumb over her signet ring, her gaze drifting to the dark Highland moors visible through the lancet windows. The Circle was her fortress. Here, there were no flannels, no chewed pen caps, and no instinctive, messy magic. Here, she was the architect.
She would use her new position to its full advantage. If Will Holloway wanted to play the hero of Cairngorm, he would have to do it under her watch. She was the Community Service Chair, after all. And she intended to be very, very thorough in her patrols.
*
The fog on the Highland moors didn’t just roll in; it possessed the landscape, a thick, suffocating shroud that tasted of peat and ancient, damp secrets.
Gwen moved through the mist with the silent, commanding grace of an Aurelian sentinel. She wore a high-collared tactical trench—charcoal, weather-proof, and cinched perfectly at her waist—and leather boots that didn’t make a sound on the heather. Beside her, Julian Vane, a third-year Circle member with a bored expression and a habit of checking his phone every five minutes, yawned. She’d appointed him as a Vespertine Prefect, but she was beginning to question his dedication—or if he only tolerated the position because her brother, Tristan, had asked him to keep an eye on her.
“Honestly, Gwen, it’s a Saturday,” Julian drawled, the gemstone in his hand glowing with a lazy, dim light. “Let the Vapours and Newbloods have their cheap booze and bonfire.”
“The rules don’t take weekends off, Julian,” Gwen replied, her voice a cool blade in the dark. “If we overlook the minor infractions, we invite the major ones.”
He shivered. “They sure picked the right Aurelian for Chair,” he mumbled, a familiar mocking in his tone that Gwen chose to ignore. “That’s five pounds lost.”
“What ridiculous bet do you have going on now?” she asked. “How long before I surpass my brother as the superior O’Dorchaidhe at Cairn-Gait?”
“I bet you’d mellow out within a month at Cairn-Gait,” he said. “Tristan bet—”
“Forget it,” Gwen said, silencing him. “Waste your money, not my time.”
They reached the Shattered Crag, a natural amphitheatre of rock that was a notorious—and restricted—den for Newbloods and Vapours looking for a taste of rebellion. Through the mist, the orange glow of a magical bonfire flickered. Gwen didn’t hesitate. She stepped into the clearing, her silver-blonde hair catching the firelight like a halo of ice.
“Party’s over. Clear out,” she commanded. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried the weight of a royal decree.
The chaos was instantaneous. Vapours scrambled, spilling illicit elderberry wine and extinguishing fires with clumsy water-charms. Julian began herding the stragglers back toward the castle gates, looking like a man annoyed by a swarm of gnats. But Gwen’s eyes locked onto a single, trembling figure huddled near the edge of the crag.
Bryn Hall.
The girl was clutching her lumpy cardigan, her eyes wide and darting toward the pitch-black moors beyond the Crag. She looked less like a partying student and more like a witness to a car crash.
“Miss Hall,” Gwen said, closing the distance. “I assume you have a remarkably logical explanation for being in a restricted zone after curfew?”
“I—I told them not to go!” Bryn stammered, her voice thin. She kept looking over her shoulder. “I told them if they didn’t come back in ten minutes, I was staying here to report them. To get help.”
Gwen’s eyes narrowed. “Them? Oh. You mean—where are Holloway and Whitley?”
“Will…he got a weird feeling,” Bryn whispered. “He said the air felt ‘wrong.’ Like it was screaming.”
Gwen let out a sharp, mocking exhale. “A weird feeling? Brilliant. This is a Conservatory of Magic, Bryn, not a psychic’s tent at a county fair.”
Gwen turned to Julian, who was busy escorting a group of terrified first-years. “Take the stragglers back, Julian. I’ll find the American and his shadow and ensure their detention is as structured as their stupidity.”
Julian shrugged. “Your funeral, O’Dorchaidhe. Don’t be late for the midnight check-in.”
Gwen waited until they were gone before turning toward the dark expanse where Bryn had pointed. She intended to march out there, grab Will by his flannel collar, and drag him back to face a disciplinary committee.
But as she stepped past the threshold of the Crag, the air changed.
The weird feeling hit her, but it wasn’t a psychic whim. A resonance. It was foul, a thick, oily vibration that tasted like copper and smelled like a fresh grave. Gwen’s heart skipped a beat. This wasn’t a student prank or a surge from a ley line. This was necromancy. Foul, decomposing, and utterly devouring.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, her hand instinctively flying to her leather satchel, already feeling for a twig of blackthorn.
She sprinted. The fog clawed at her, but she followed the sound—a rhythmic, heavy thudding that shook the earth. She crested a hill and froze.
In the centre of a scorched clearing, Will and Cal were backed against an ancient standing stone. Facing them was a nightmare pulled from the bloodiest chapters of Highland lore: a Dullahan. A headless rider atop a massive black horse that seemed to be made of shadows and malice. The rider held a whip of human vertebrae, and where a head should have been, a terrifying, flickering phosphorescence glowed in the stump of its neck.
Will was standing in front of Cal, his hands outstretched. He was casting—not with a gem or any anchoring talisman, but with raw, messy desperation. A flickering, golden-white barrier shimmered in front of him, but it was porous, cracking every time the Dullahan’s horse lashed out with its hooves.
“Stay back!” Will roared, his voice cracking. He collapsed to one knee when a crack of the rider’s whip sliced his flimsy barrier apart. Will was exhausted, his flannel soaked with sweat.
The Dullahan raised its whip, the bone clicking in the silence.
Gwen didn’t think. She acted. She stepped into the clearing, squeezed the blackthorn twig until the thorns drew blood, already directing its protective energy.
“Aegis Bastion!” she screamed.
A wall of shimmering, geometric gold erupted between the boys and the rider. It wasn’t a flickering light; it was a solid, architectural structure, humming with a frequency so perfect it pushed the fog back twenty feet. The whip struck the barrier and rebounded with a crack of thunder.
“Get back!” Gwen shouted, her eyes fixed on the headless rider. “We need to get back inside the walls! Now!”
Will blinked, his chest heaving as he stared at the golden wall she had effortlessly erected. “You? What the hell are you—?”
“Saving your life, you absolute moron!” she snapped, the strain of the barrier beginning to pull at her internal energy-pool. She’d never had to block a power this dark. This unrelenting. “That is a Dullahan. You can’t fight it. And I don’t have time to explain it.”
“I can take him,” Will insisted, his jaw setting in a stubborn line. He tried to step around her barrier, his own magic sparking at his fingertips.
Gwen grabbed his arm, her fingers digging into his flannel. “Holloway, look at me! Even a Chosen One can’t survive a mark from a Death Rider. You touch that horse, and you’re dead in minutes. Do you want to be a legend or a corpse?”
Cal grabbed Will’s other shoulder. “She’s right, Will! A Dullahan is serious. We have to move!”
The Dullahan let out a sound—a hollow, whistling screech that seemed to come from the very air. It spurred the horse forward, its hooves shattering the earth. Gwen funnelled every ounce of her control into the barrier, imagining gold sand swirling and hardening.
“Run!” she commanded.
They turned and bolted through the mist, Gwen keeping the barrier trailing behind them like a golden wake. They could hear the thundering hooves behind them, the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of death. They reached the stone walls of Cairn-Gait—hopping over the crumbling hole in the side—just as the horseman reached the edge of the school’s ancient, stone-etched, blood-bound wards.
The Dullahan screeched again—a sound of pure, frustrated hunger—as it slammed into the invisible wall of the conservatory’s protection. It recoiled, the horse rearing up before turning and vanishing back into the fog.
The three of them collapsed against the stone wall, gasping for air. Gwen’s lungs burned. She leaned her head against the cool stone, her heart hammering and hammering—pounding so hard she wasn’t sure it would ever stop.
“Holy…hell,” Will panted. He wiped a smudge of dirt from his cheek and looked at Gwen. The adrenaline was still high, and his green eyes were bright, searching hers. “That was…I mean, you were…amazing.”
Gwen straightened her trench coat, her hands still trembling as she dropped the withered blackthorn—its resonance drained to dust. She crouched toward him, her fingers reaching out to check his arms, his neck, looking for any sign the Dullahan had cursed him. Her touch was clinical, frantic.
“What are you doing?” Will asked, a small, lopsided grin tugging at the corner of his mouth despite the terror. “Checking to see if I’m still in one piece? For a second there, I almost thought you had a heart.”
“I’m checking for marks—curse marks,” Gwen hissed, ignoring the way her skin tingled where it brushed against his shirt. His hands and arms were untouched. “A Dullahan’s touch is a death sentence. If it even grazed you, I’d have to report you to the infirmary immediately. And you’d probably still be doomed.”
She hooked two fingers into the collar of his shirt, tugging the cotton fabric aside. Her breath caught. Up close, in the moonlight, the shattered mark was breathtaking. The obsidian veins seemed to go deep into the muscle, a dark lattice of protection and trauma. Her fingertips accidentally brushed the highest branch of the fractal behind his ear. The skin there wasn’t scarred or rough—it was smooth and unnervingly cold, like polished stone.
Will’s grin faltered. His breath caught, his eyes darkening as he stayed perfectly still under her touch. For a heartbeat, the danger of the Dullahan was replaced by a different, more intimate kind of peril.
His eyes dropped to her scratched palm. “Your hand,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, her voice soft. She realized she was still holding his shirt, her knuckles resting against the vitrified dark quartz of his neck. She pulled back as if burned, her face heating. “And you’re clean.”
Cal rushed to shove up his sleeves and tug at his collar, proving he was untainted without her needing to touch his shabby clothes. But she grabbed Cal’s arm and twisted it to inspect, just to irritate him.
She pulled back, satisfied that both he and Cal were unmarked by Dullahan’s fatal touch. “You’re lucky. Both of you.”
Will tugged his collar higher. He looked like he wanted to say something—something that wasn’t a joke—when a sound ripped through the night.
A high, shrill scream echoed from the direction of the Shattered Crag.
Gwen’s face went bloodless. They had made it to the walls. But the Dullahan hadn’t left empty-handed.