“Silence,” Byron commanded with more harshness than I’d ever heard him address Robin, “it’s not your place, remember?”
“Oh, but don’t you find it sweet, husband?” I stiffened at Henrietta’s affected amusement, as her thumb brushed over the pulse point on Robin’s neck. Was it wicked of me to wish to burn her hands for touching him like that? “The infatuated mage wishes to remain with my daughter. Am I right?”
The question was gentle. Yet it was a trap. By Byron’s indrawn breath, I knew that he’d realized it too.
Yet Robin had already answered, “Always.”
Robin’s gaze didn’t leave mine, and his lips curled into a smile. At the same time, a single tear traced down from the corner of his eye, as if he knew what would come next.
Hexes and curses, he knew what Henrietta was about to do to him.
My scream was like a feral animal’s, but it was too late.
“Wish granted,” Henrietta whispered with the satisfaction of having caught Robin within her claws.
The wall beneath my portrait opened, and Robin fell into the gaping darkness behind. Bryon grabbed for his arm, but Henrietta slammed Bryon back. My burst of magenta magic sprayed out, touching the tips of Robin’s grasping fingers. I wailed, as my gaze locked one last time with his frightened one like just for a moment, he thought that I could save him.
Then the gallery wall sealed.
No, no, no…
There was nothing but silence in the corridor, apart from my sobbing, and Byron’s harsh breathing.
“Let him out.” I was numb. I couldn’t feel my body or even my burned fingers anymore. The way that Robin had fallen, his terrified eyes, and my magic curling around him replayed in my mind. Was my magic all that he had now in the dark? I craved to see Robin one more time. “In the name of Hecate, if you don’t let him out, then every Blessing that my magic bestows upon this academy, I shall turn into a curse.”
“Your witchy backside is about to get spanked, bitch.” Flair’s eyes glittered.
Henrietta’s smug expression fell, breaking into sudden fear. She looked at me like she’d never seen me before. I thought it was perfectly obvious that she hadn’t.
“You know the power of both our daughter’s magic and his. Why would you risk something like this? Free the boy,” Byron urged, clutching his wife’s sleeve.
Regaining her composure, Henrietta batted him away. “Do I need to cast a Lips Sewn Shut spell to ensure your silence?”
“When did you grow so cold and heartless?” Byron stared at Henrietta, and she shifted uncomfortably.
“Even were I to reconsider…” Henrietta cast a nervous glance at me. My magic was vibrating in a haze; I couldn’t control it. “This spell cannot be undone. It’s an ancient punishment for prisoners caught in our war with the mages: to be walled up alive in the walls of this castle. Once they’re trapped, there’s no way to remove them alive.”
“Then there’s no way to stop my curse.” I didn’t recognize my own voice, which resonated with an ancient power that was drawn from grief, nature, and my Blessed magic. Only, was if even Blessed anymore…?
Robin was gone because I’d dared to love a mage for the sake of pleasure and lust. There was a hollowness in my chest, and the whole world appeared to have slowed. My cheeks were wet, but I didn’t notice my tears. What did freedom matter if Robin was lost?
How long would he have to suffer alone in the dark before he…?
Cold flooded through me. My magic sparked to twinkling pink snow-flakes. I’d never be warm again.
Why was the corridor darkening? I stared outside the arched windows at the snow clouds gathering over the summer day.
“In the name of Hecate, stop this madness.” Henrietta shivered, vanishing the flames.
But I couldn’t. My magic had twisted with loss. Its roots spread throughout the entire academy, and now it raged.
When Byron ripped the peacock amulet from his throat, which he’d always worn, dashing it to the floor, I didn’t understand his pained gasp or the way that Henrietta cradled him with sudden tenderness.
“What have you done?” She murmured.
“What I should’ve had the courage to do long before.” Byron pressed his hand to the wall where Robin had been walled up, before he chanted the invocation, “By the branches of the tree, save your children, blessed be.”
I held my breath, hoping (please, please, Hecate), that Robin would burst free. After a long moment, however, nothing happened. Except, Bryon collapsed, held up only by the circle of Henrietta’s arms like whatever he’d tried had taken all his energy.
As a non-magical man, how had he even been able to attempt magic?
Then in a wave of certainty, I knew: Robin would die, and I’d be trapped forever.
I howled, levitating off the floor in a cloud of frozen magic. Flair and Echo flew off my shoulders to flank me. The windows blasted out under the pressure of the snowstorm that now raged outside, cursing the Rebel Academy. Shards of glass nicked me, slicing into my skin and destroying what would once have been my wedding dress and now was the dress that I wore to mourn Robin, but I barely felt them or anything but a consuming coldness.
Henrietta’s gaze met mine; was she truly terrified of me? “I was wrong. All these years, I was fooled by my husband that you were Blessedly Charmed, but instead, you’re Wickedly Charmed.”
It should’ve hurt. When you’re frozen to ice, however, nothing can hurt you any longer.
Even a hollow victory was still a victory. I’d take it.
“I wish that I’d known earlier.” My smile was sharp enough to slice. “I would’ve done less embroidery and had far more fun.”
Then I flew out of the broken window with my familiars at my shoulders, as my soul lay just as shattered as the glass, out into the dark storm. The wind screamed like the grief inside my head, but it also blew at my back. I didn’t command it because you don’t command nature: you either worked with or against it. Below me, the lake was a frozen teardrop and the Dead Wood was shrouded in white. I dived down, landing in front of Hecate’s Tree.
Flair and Echo perched on a fallen log.
I stood, tall and proud, in a glade that was now covered in snow drops, rather than sweet-scented lily of the valley because summer had turned to winter. I’d always felt closest to Robin here, but now I thawed, aching because his absence…death…hit me for the first time with all its reality.
He. Would. Never. Be. Here. Again.
I dropped to my knees, hugging the frozen trunk with my arms, resting my forehead against it. I enjoyed the way that it scratched because then I felt something. He’d never swing in these branches with me, shift into his squirrel or bird forms when he was at his freest, or…kiss me.
Finally, I wept.
“Hecate, hear me!” I pleaded. “I regret that I asked for my own freedom. I pray now for the freedom of all the Rebels here in the academy.” The tree didn’t pulse with magic; the branches didn’t shift. In desperation, I remembered my father’s invocation, which had sent a shiver through me. “By the branches of the tree, save your children, blessed be.”
“You should be praying to save yourself.” Henrietta’s hard voice struck me like a whip.