Tonight, I Burn

Book 1: The Witches of Halstett

by Katharine J. Adams

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Dark Fantasy; Romantic Fantasy

Synopsis

A thorn witch with the power to walk between the realms of Life and Death finds herself at the centre of a magical rebellion - and a dangerous romance - that could destroy her coven and her soul in this dark and decadent debut.

Thorns, Tides, Embers, Storms, and Ores. All five covens are bound in servitude to the tyrant High Warden of Halstett.
Penny Albright is a daughter of the thorn coven, forced to patrol the veil between the realms of Life and Death. Each night, one thorn witch - and only one - must cross the veil by burning at the stake. Each morning, that witch draws on their magic to return. Failure to follow the rules risks the veil and risks them all.
But one morning, Penny's favourite sister Ella doesn't return. And that night, determined to find her, Penny breaks the rules. She burns in secret. And she discovers that all isn't as it seems in Life or Death.
Her journey leads her to Malin, a devastating lord with too many secrets; to Alice, a mysterious captive prophet; and to a rebellion brewing in the shadows beneath the city. And as Penny's world splits, she'll face a devastating choice. Because it's not just her sister's life that hangs in the balance. It's the fate of all magic.

All it takes is one witch - and one spark - to set the world ablaze

Release date: November 7, 2023

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 448

Sample

On a dark and stormy night, the kind of night most people shutter their windows against, the smallest of flames burned on a clifftop. A girl cradled it, fuelling its ember with stolen magic. Four others stood beside her, and their magic was stolen too, contained in the crystals that hung around their necks.

The girls’ skirts cracked in the gale, damp hems snapping against their calves while rain needled their skin and bruised their flesh.

It had been simpler, before magic came. No one died, no one aged, no one fought. Magic walked hand in hand with Death and it awoke evil in the hearts of men.

Death smelled of dirt and rot and silt in a desiccated stream. When the first villager grew sick, it was chalked up to an unfortunate mistake. Then a second and a third fell ill. Skin betrayed age and fingers creaked with the passing of years. Memories faded and wits dulled. People exhaled and never breathed in.

“Where did they go,” the survivors asked the gods in their prayers, “when their eyes turned to glass and their hearts ceased to beat?”

The Sorcerer replied, “Death.”

“How do we stop it?” they prayed.

The Dark Mother replied, “Give up your magic.”

But magic is seductive. And men have always been inclined to bargain with Death. So they began to whisper, to plot and scheme. They turned to potions and herbs and necromancy. When they failed, they turned to her.

To Death they must make a sacrifice. Such was the word of the elders. A girl, young and vital, full of power and life. An excellent bargain. She wasn’t inclined to agree.

The other covens did the same—chose a girl and named her their saviour.

But the girls did not want to die. Alone, the girls begged the gods for mercy, and their gods replied, “Divide magic and we will crown you as their queens.” The Sorcerer gave them a knife, so sharp it could cut the air in two, and the Dark Mother guided their hand. The five girls listened and agreed. They stole all the magic and ran.

Together, they faced the sea and the storm they’d summoned. They could have thrown magic to the tousled seas and peace might have returned. But the gods had offered them crowns, and power is a difficult thing to resist. So, they joined hands and reached for the storm.

They drew it down and down into their hearts until lightning sparked in their eyes and the sea rose in a great standing wave above the cliff. Rocks trembled and shook. The wind softened into a silence that swept down the hill. All around them the world began to burn.

Death roared a warning from beyond the veil.

The girls laid the stolen magic on the ground, a pile of sparkling rainbow crystals that contained all the magic in all the world, and with the Sorcerer’s knife and the Mother’s hand, they divided it. Five piles of magic crystals shone in the light, red and blue, green and yellow and purple.

Ember, storm, tide, ore, and thorn.

The girls returned to their covens to claim their god-promised crowns.

In the burnt and bleeding grass they left behind, there lay—a crystal black as midnight; one rainbow bright; and the Sorcerer’s blade stuck deep into the ground.

A witch will burn today.

This time it isn’t me.

This time I’m lighting the match.

A coven of witches should have a more efficient way to start a fire; with magic at our fingertips, sparks should fly with a wave of our hands. Regrettably, we don’t. My coven and our thorn magic is bound entirely to Death. And the ember witches don’t like to share. Not with us.

The first strike of the match-head against the box fails. Sparks fly and wink out as they fall. The second strike catches and gutters down to a tiny orb of flame before flaring, pale wood curling black as fire consumes the matchstick.

My sister catches my eye. She’s the one who should be trembling; she’s the one about to be burned alive on the Warden’s orders. But Mila’s been walking in Death for years. She’s the oldest of the three of us, the Thorn Queen’s heir. She gives me a superior smile, the kind of smile she’d accompany with a flounce of her hair if her hands weren’t manacled to the iron stake behind her. “Penny, you’re going to burn yourself if you’re not careful.”

A low chuckle ripples around the coven. Twelve of us laugh.

I don’t. It isn’t funny.

I drop the match, right into a little pile of straw set at the base of the pyre. It catches without hesitation, and that is courtesy of the embers.

I wish there was an easier way—a way that didn’t feel so needlessly brutal. But leaving a body behind rather complicates the whole thing. I’m not sure it’s even possible. Spell books state that burning is the most effective method of crossing the veil if we want to return, but then again, the spell books we’re allowed to access are all preapproved by the Warden or his council of sadistic old men. At best, they’re watered-down versions of the truth. And I know everything in Halstett is a lie.

Mila’s smile wavers, falters a little. Reforms.

Pain is coming. She knows it. She’s done this before. But tonight is my first time lighting the pyre, and my oldest sister is the first witch I burn.

Smoke wisps around the straw, wraith-like fingers rising to clutch at her ankles.

Her bare toes press into the platform in a tiny movement of unease. We all feel it, linked as we are. Ella slips her hand in mine, a sisterly gesture, a squeeze of solidarity. “Breathe, Pen,” she murmurs. “It’s going to be fine.”

Then, the chanting starts, ancient words that open the veil between Life and the cold plains of Death. The low hum of magic builds in my ears, and I join my voice to theirs—words I learned as a child, words I wished I’d never have to say. Yet I’ve repeated them each night since we were brought to Halstett thirteen years ago.

I didn’t want to be a death-walker. But I am. And as Grandmother says, we can’t fight the truth of who we are, only choose what we do with it. Not that we have a lot of choice. Imprisoned within the Colligerate walls, those with our particular power have two paths: serve the High Warden as a death-walker or become one of his soulless Gilded army. There’s no in-between.

Grandmother reaches for my hand, her eyes flashing with a glint of the queen I haven’t seen since the Gilded tore us from our village. She was respected once—an ageless beauty who fearlessly guarded Death from those who sought to defy it. Now, her gnarled fingers ensnare mine and the circle around the pyre closes. Warmth prickles at the soles of my feet, though the flagstones beneath them are cold as winter ice. The scent of singed cotton clogs my nose and throat. Mila begins to burn, her feet blistering, smoke rising from charring skin, and searing heat claws at my own.

Still, we whisper; still, we chant.

I watch my sister die and it’s eerily like watching myself. With our colouring so similar and only a few years between us, Mila and Ella and I used to be mistaken for one another. Until they began to walk and the light began to fade from their eyes, their skin grew dull and paler, their bodies somehow diminished. Auburn hair flickers with fire, and I lose the line where Mila ends and the flames begin. Her silver eyes squeeze shut. Her fingers dig into the post she’s bound to.

As my sister burns, we burn with her in spirit. We’re stronger together. Every moment is shared, divided by thirteen. I wonder how bad this would be alone, without a coven to ease the passing.

Mila doesn’t scream. No one does. Death for us must be quiet and emotionless. Screaming wakes the dead; fear summons fog-wraiths hungry for destruction.

Pain lets us pass.

With a soft sigh, Mila is gone.

My sister is dead. But it’s a routine patrol, a walk along the borders between Life and Death. She won’t go deep. Thorn witches rarely go far from the veil. She’ll be back by morning. Then, tomorrow night, we’ll do it all over again. It’s a vicious life, a brutal one, slowly stealing a part of our soul each time we walk. Still, it’s better than being Gilded. Anything is better than that.

In two days, it is my twenty-first birthday. And I will be ordered to burn for the very first time.

The ritual demands that the witch who strikes the match stays to undo the empty manacles and ensure the veil closes behind the witch who burned. Not having come of age, I don’t sense the veil yet, so Ella takes on that role tonight. A light frown creases her brow as she nods, confirming Mila has passed without incident, and I gingerly release the manacles. They clatter against the stake accusingly, and I wish I’d been more careful. Ella’s still frowning while I place the key neatly on the low wooden workbench in the corner and wipe the ash coating my fingertips against my shift skirts.

The chamber allocated to our burning is deep beneath the Colligerate wing we are told is our home. Vents draw in the cool autumn night—and filter the smell of burning flesh from the smoke when it rises up the chimney and into the sky, ensuring our regular demise does not disturb the Warden’s evening stroll.

Ella wrinkles her nose, freckles twitching. “You’ve got Mila’s ash on your ankle.”

I snatch a checked cloth from the bench and scrub. I long for a bath, a small consolation—a piece of privacy and quiet. I can slide under the water, close my eyes, and pretend I am anywhere but here. I wonder if that sense of comfort will fade, once I walk. When I step into Death for the first time, which fragment of my soul will I leave behind?

Ella pulls the cloth from my hand and there’s an odd glint in her eye that I don’t like at all. “Pen, I need a favour.”

“What kind of favour?”

She rubs her elbow, pressing a thumb into the crook of it, thinking her way around a problem like she used to when Mother set us potion tests. Then her frown clears to a calculated satisfaction that sharpens her eyes. “Remember how we used to sneak out?”

My heart sinks as my hope of a bath floats away. “You mean, when we were little and the worst punishment we faced if we were caught was a rap on the knuckles. Yeah, I remember. Why?”

“I left something in the library.” Ella bunches up the cloth and shoves it back on the bench.

“We can’t get into the library,” I protest as she pushes me out the door.

“We can.” She hurries a bit faster up the stairs and down the passageway, past the doors to the baths.

“What’s so important it can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“A book.”

I huff with frustration. “Fine, be like that.”

Ella halts so suddenly, I barrel into her back. “I’m not lying.”

She most definitely is. “Just being economical with the truth?”

We’re by the entrance to the Thorn Coven’s wing, an arched door made of grey, polished wood. Gold studs mark a pattern of diamonds that reflect flickering lamplight, and there’s a keyhole to which our coven has never seen a key. I’m not sure it’s ever been locked. Beyond it lie the Colligerate hallways.

Ella’s silver eyes sparkle, bright with challenge, and she’s the sister she was before she first walked, when we used to sneak out all the time. “Scared, Pen?”

“No.” My answer is reflexive, not a well-thought-out response. Going to the library after the curfew bell rings is a terrible idea.

“So you’re in?” Ella’s tone, the way she raises an eyebrow daring me to back out, makes it feel bigger than a trip to the library.

I shrug. “Someone probably needs to keep an eye on you. Who knows what trouble you’ll get into on your own.”

Ella grins, flashing white teeth and dimpling her cheeks. “Stay close. Once the curfew warning rings, we have precisely ten minutes before the next round of the guard.”

Before I can ask how she knows, Ella slips out, leaving me no choice but to go after her.

The bell sounds as the door clicks shut behind me. The hallway lamps dim in response to the warning, ember magic burning low in glass-scalloped sconces set high up the walls. Night hangs outside the windows, creeping over the sills as the chime reverberates through flagstones and drifts up to ceilings the lamplight can’t reach. When the next bell rings, anyone in a corridor without permission will be at the mercy of the Gilded, and the Gilded and mercy don’t mix.

The buildings that make up the Colligerate compound are perched high on the peak of a hill right in the centre of Halstett’s fortified city walls. A second wall circles the foot of the hill, and a third rings the Colligerate itself. I think it was a sanctuary once, a place of knowledge and learning before the Warden criminalised the truth and bent history to flatter his image. The library tower is in the very middle, seven corridors spread out from it like the spokes of a spiderweb. Each coven has its own spindle, five wings with a tower at the end.

The sixth corridor is wider, more extravagant, a gold-carpeted path to the Warden’s luxurious palace where he keeps his consort wife and his pet prophet locked away. It’s heated in the winter and cooled in the summer, that corridor. The three of us sisters, Mila and Ella and I, used to hide behind the tapestries when the cold of our own wing turned our fingers numb. Aunt Shara caught us one day, wrapped in fabric and giggling. She taught us a lesson, one we didn’t forget in a hurry: She took us to watch the next trials, showing us precisely what the Gilded’s punishment would be if we were found out. I still remember the sound of blood dripping to the courtyard flagstones, the shock in the woman’s eyes when she saw her finger on the ground.

Yet, here we are again, out of bounds. Holy Dark Mother, Ella should know better than this. So should I.

She slows and holds out a hand behind her, twitching a finger to send me closer into the wall. We’re at the circular juncture where the spokes of the Colligerate meet. If we’re caught anywhere, it’s most likely to be here, near the seventh corridor, which leads to the courtyard outside the Gilded Barracks and the amphitheatre that houses the eternal fires.

I hate those fires and so does every other witch I know. Halstett is built where the veil is thinner, and where the fires burn is the thinnest place of all. Magic creeps from Death into Life there. It scratches our skin and crawls down our lifelines like carrion beetles scuttling into a corpse.

Hidden in the shadows between lamps, we listen. It is utterly silent, amplifying the quiet thud of my own heart in my ears, the movement of cotton against my ribs as I inhale, the soft wheeze we all get after a burning as I breathe out. Ella squeezes my hand once. A signal to wait, stay still—don’t breathe.

Boots sound in the distance, along with a male laugh and a deep-voiced reply. I imagine the palace guard are spiders creeping along spidersilk, hunting their prey. I hope it’s the guard and not the Gilded.

As we huddle close, I can smell the smoke clinging to us. If the Gilded catch that scent on the dry Colligerate air, their attention will swivel in our direction, and once they begin a hunt, their quarry never escapes. The Gilded can manipulate lifelines and control consciousness, holding prisoners aware as they punish at the Warden’s command. In their hands, death is a distant hope. An impossible dream.

The boots turn a corner and fade into the quiet of the night, and we run the rest of the way to the library.

Ella has had some bad ideas over the years, but this is one of the worst. In the shelter of the library entrance, I hiss in her ear, “What now, genius?”

“We go in.” Ella pulls a ribbon out of her pocket, black velvet tied with a bow to a key the length of my pinkie finger.

My eyes widen. “Where did you get—”

“Don’t ask, and I won’t lie.” She’s so sure of herself, so determined, and it’s infuriating. I hate getting half a story, and she knows it.

Her tone softens as she sees my scowl. “I’ll tell you a secret?”

A secret? She’s reaching if she thinks a promised secret will convince me. If she’s reaching so far, she needs me more than she’s letting on. “It’d better be a good one.”

“It is.” She pauses. “Please, Pen?”

Reluctantly, I nod, and she unlocks the door.

We step together into the hushed library quiet. I close my eyes, savouring the smell of books. Even the air is respectful here, a gentle reverence that would not be out of place in a church or temple. It’s also the only place in the whole Colligerate where the Warden and his Gilded do not step foot. Here we are safe, free of the Warden’s demands. For a while, anyway.

Ella slips a hand into mine and takes a lantern from the hook by the door. With a tap of one finger, she activates the ember spell in her lantern, and light pools around us, illuminating the library reception desk, an island of warm-polished cherrywood in a sea of black-and-white checked marble floor.

The library belongs to us all.

And some of us belong to the library. Reading is a faith requiring suspension of belief in a shrine of knowledge and imagination. Stories feed my soul and words are sharper than knives if you know how to wield them—and how to listen.

Here, magic cooperates even if the witches who wield it do not. The covens hate one another, Grandmother says, and I’ve never seen evidence to suggest she’s wrong. Our villages were divided by forest and water and vast expanses of wilderness. We came together only once each season for the coven leaders to sit in council and to barter magic in times of peace. I don’t know how it was in times of war. The only war I ever knew, we lost. History has a nasty habit of erasing lost people from its pages.

But the covens refuse to be erased. Ore magic is woven into the stones of the library tower, shimmering in the moonlight and making the impossible spiral of stairs and landings a magnificent reality. Ember magic glows softly in the dormant lamps that circle each landing. Storm magic shines in the glass windows, filtering the light of the moon, and tide magic hums quietly in the vents, pulling the moisture from the air to preserve the ancient tomes. Only thorn magic is missing. Not even the library welcomes Death.

The stairs alternate black and white as they curve up the circular library tower. Nine floors rise into the darkness above. We listen and pray we are not listened to by whatever shuffles books about on the shelves in the night. When we hear nothing, Ella gives me a little nod, and quietly we climb the stairs to the first floor where spell primers live and small witches cluster when their lessons are done. We tread carefully, light footsteps barely making a sound on the semicircle landing that takes us to the next flight of stairs.

On the second floor, the shelves are lined with fairy tales, so many it might hold all the fairy stories ever written in all the world. Each spine is a dark rainbow shade and it’s the closest we get to full colour. I wonder if they know, the Warden and his council, that the library defies their colour restrictions. Maroon and bottle-green and midnight-blue leather all embossed with silver and gold take on a brightness they never had before the laws came into force. If the leather bindings are precious, the pictures inside are priceless. I used to wish I lived in a fairy story. Now I wish I had a little more time before I walk in Death and lose fairy stories for good. Mila walked for a year before she lost all joy in painting. One day she put down her brush and never picked it back up. Ella took a little longer. She still loves the library but never reads for fun anymore, and I can’t face the idea of slowly losing my hiding place in the pages of a book.

As we get close to the stairs, we tiptoe, Ella and I, holding tight to each other’s hands. Miss Elsweather, the overseer of literary pursuits, has her rose-embellished office on this floor; if she’s working late and catches us, justifying our night-time wanderings to her will be almost as painful as trying to talk our way out of it with Grandmother.

Ella speeds up on the Third, pulling me faster, and I don’t know why. This is the dullest floor; I spent most of today on my knees at the foot of these bookcases, reorganising the military history of the High Warden’s rule, inaccurately documented in untruthful detail. Each book is a dreary shade of brown, the titles stamped in black ink, and no one ever comes here except the occasional palace guard and librarians on cleaning duty. My sister is jumpy, glancing down each aisle between the books, and I don’t think she breathes fully until we reach the Fourth, where the spell books permitted to the covens’ general use stand on neatly dusted shelves.

There are gaps in the books here. Series missing volumes. Tomes missing chapters. Those pages that survived the Warden’s censorship have lines crossed out in heavy black ink. Books awaiting censorship are still whole and perfect, locked safely away from us in the censors’ offices along the back wall. The offices are connected directly to the furnace by a chute topped with a steel lid. The Warden’s dull-eyed clerics work there in the daylight hours, taking words from books and throwing them away. I hate this floor, filled with what could have been and what we should have known. The rough-ripped edges of torn-away pages are a wound in our magic that’s unlikely to heal.

The air is heavier on the fifth floor. The dark becomes darker, denser. Shadows sharpen and tables take on nefarious angles. Bookcases shiver as if they hold more than neat lines of books. Mythology, legend, and the history of spell craft live side by side on the Fifth; there are no labels on the shelves, no filing system to organise them, the books are left where they fit best; a decorative edition of Ballads of the Wayvern Spine sits beside Advanced Techniques in Pyromancy, and an old, broken-spined copy of The Epidemiology of Magic leans drunkenly against a shiny hardback of Notable Storms of the Western Seaboard, which appears unread.

I try to slip my hand from Ella’s, but she tugs me toward the stairs. I’ve never been above the Fifth. Only more senior librarians than us are permitted access. Last time I was caught in an alcove I wasn’t supposed to be in with a book I wasn’t permitted to read, I was banned from the library for an entire moon cycle, and it was quite possibly the most effective punishment I’ve ever received. But my reluctance is more than fear of repercussions. I do not want to disturb what resides in the upper floors. Ella tells me it’s nothing, but we all know something is there: something made of magic and spell craft, or caged by it.

Fear trails a chilled finger down my neck, and I can’t take another step. “Ella, stop. Please. Whatever game you’re playing, this is too far.”

She’s pale, even in the warm light of the lantern. “You want that secret?”

“Not this much.”

Ella huffs, lets go of my hand, and leans back against the banisters. Moonlight outlines her hair silver and reflects off green gilt on book bindings, looking for all the world like tiny eyes watching us from the shadows. “This is big, Pen.”

I lean beside her so the banister presses against my spine. “Define big.”

“I’ve…” She falters.

I nudge her with my elbow. “I’m not going up another step unless you tell me why.”

“I just need you to hold the light.”

“Why?” Holy Dark Mother, she’s infuriating.

Ella laughs nervously as she turns toward the stairs to the Sixth. “I’ve met someone.” She swallows. Grins. And runs.

“Damn it, Ella!” I whisper. I can’t let her go up there alone. And she’s got the light. I take a breath and then hurry after her, skipping every other step, trying to ignore the rules I’m breaking. “Wait! Who did you meet?”

We run around the sixth-floor landing. I have no idea what books this level holds; none of the books seem to have titles on their spines, and there are no labels anywhere, no writing, just a curious flicker of light that keeps changing colour from green to orange, purple to pink, and back to green. And I have no desire to investigate; I don’t want to be here at all.

Ella comes to a stop on the Seventh, panting slightly. No one goes to the Eighth. Above that is the Ninth, and whatever hides there is enough to keep the Warden away and stop the Gilded from entering. I once asked Miss Elsweather what was concealed there, and she answered that knowledge is like fire: safe in a wintertide hearth, but devastating in an inferno. Knowledge turned a continent into a wasteland outside of Halstett’s walls and took our home with it.

But whatever it is, I hear it sometimes, a soft murmur of my name that scuffs down the elevator shaft when I’m loading a book trolley at the bottom.

The Seventh is filled with dusty tomes, padlocked shut and chained to the shelf. Dust is caught along the panelling and it smells different here. Drier. Less book and more magic. Maybe this is where the spell books that were too powerful to be destroyed by the Warden’s magic purge are hidden. I look at Ella, who’s staring at the number seven embossed in gold upon the ebony-panelled wall.

A small spider rests on a little web it’s woven in the number, its eyes sparkling green in the odd light. It’s brighter here—or darker farther up. I can’t quite tell.

“Stay here,” she says in a voice that crackles like rice paper.

“You can’t be serious.”

Ella tries to hand me the lantern, but I’m not taking it. If I take it, she’s going higher, and she can’t. She shakes it in frustration, sending shadows dancing down the spines of gilded books with elaborately scripted, illegible titles. “Hold the light. I won’t be long.”

“You are not going up there! The last person—”

“Didn’t come back?” she finishes. “Lies meant to scare us.”

“They did come back?” I saw the silver coven sash they recovered when Skyla vanished. They said the stairs to the Ninth were wet with ink.

“Penny, please.” I realise suddenly that Ella doesn’t want to be here any more than I do.

“Just tell me what’s going on,” I say, my eyes intent on her face.

Ella picks at the freckle on the inside of her forearm absently, her attention on the darkness at the top of the stairs. “You don’t want to know.”

“If this is some dare…” I leave the accusation hanging even though I’m fairly certain she wouldn’t be so foolish. “We’re too old for this nonsense.”

“Fine.” Ella unfolds her arms and squares her shoulders, and it makes her look smaller. “I shouldn’t have involved you in this in the first place.”

“Involved me in what?” My voice rises.

The elevator clangs. Once. We both freeze, listening to its echo. The silence afterward.

In the apex of the library, the darkness is cut with a stuttering green glow. A faulty elevator light? They do that sometimes. The magic is old, the spell work complex.

In the book-muffled silence, Ella leans close to whisper: “A gear settling?”

I swallow. “Must be.” I don’t sound convincing.

She shoves the lantern at me. Everything in me is screaming to grab my sister’s hand and run, down the stairs, out the library, back to the relative safety of the Thorn Wing. Instead, I take the lantern and mutter, “If you’re not back by the next bell, I’m coming after you.”

Ella squeezes my shoulder, nods, then turns and runs up the stairs before I can change my mind.

Her shift seems to melt into the shadows as she reaches the next floor. Even when I lift the lantern higher, I can’t see her. I can’t hear her either. No footfall on a stair, no thud or shuffle. Nothing. It’s as if she vanished into thin air. I count my breaths to keep myself steady. The next bell will ring soon—sounding curfew this time, not a warning.

Green light sparkles on the next landing, my lantern bouncing off a spell book or a green glass inkwell. Whatever it is, it’s unsettling. I blink hard and tap on the lantern to dim it. My hand shakes, and the light snuffs out, plunging the library into a darkness so solid it presses on my nerves.

Above me, glass smashes. The lantern slips from my hand.

Ella gasps.

My heart pounds so hard I feel sick.

I drop to a crouch, frantically feeling for the lantern. I can’t get to the stairs without the light and I need to get to Ella. My fingers scrabble over nothing and I want to scream.

I squeeze my eyes tight shut. Inhale once. Smell a rose, Mother says when the walls of panic start closing in. Blow it away. I exhale and snap my fingers. The lantern blinks on at my feet, warm light illuminating a crack in the glass and Ella.

She stands at the bottom of the stairs, staring straight at me. Through me. Her eyes are wide and glazed, her lips slightly parted. Silently, she holds out a hand, and I take it and tug her away, too scared to speak in case it’s not Ella that answers. I’ve read too many stories with monsters disguised as friends, watched too many gildings steal my family. I can’t lose Ella. Not like this.

All the way to the ground floor, Ella is silent. Not one word as I hang the lantern on the hook and pull her out the door. She locks it, pockets the key, and hand in hand we tiptoe from shadow to shadow, darting into an alcove when we hear voices coming from the corridor to the barracks. Her fingers are ice-cold, but they’re beginning to tremble—and any sign of life is a relief.

We don’t stop until we reach our rooms, and I whisper: “You’re not hurt?”

Ella’s expression doesn’t change as she shakes her head, but her fingers are still trembling.

“How