Page 72 of Wicked Bonds
His arms tighten around me, and it occurs to me how insane this is. He’s dead. He’s been dead for over a century, this boy who looks barely older than me but has existed longer than my great-great grandmother would have if she’d lived. He’s nothing but consciousness and memory held together by unfinished business, and yet here he is, solid against my arms, holding melike I’m something precious instead of just another temporary visitor to his everlasting in-between world.
“Slow down,” he says, one hand coming up to brush hair out of my face. His fingers are icy against my cheek, but I lean into the touch, anyway. “Tell me everything.”
“There’s no time.” I pull away, already missing the contact. “I know how to find it, Drake.” I stare into his eyes. “The original contract isn’t just hidden somewhere, it’s hidden somewhen. It’s been temporally displaced, in between moments so it exists in the same space but not the same time. That’s why I couldn’t find it.”
Drake’s expression shifts as his brow unfurrows and his eyes widen. “That’s… incredible. And, brilliant.”
“Yeah, well, brilliant or not, I need to access it now before Wickersly finds me.” I hold up the book. “This explains how. A bloodmarked witch can use their ancestral connection to reach through time, to access the moment when the contract was signed. But I need someone to watch my back so I can have enough time.”
“You want to do this here? Now?” He glances around the abandoned corridor. “Rose, Wickersly will?—”
“She’ll kill me, yeah, I got that memo.” I set the book down on the dirty floor, opening it to the marked page. “But if I don’t try now, she’ll kill me anyway. She’s onto me. My window is closing, Drake. Hell, it might already be closed.”
He stands there for a moment, translucent in the moonlight, then he nods.
“Alright,” he says. “I’ll keep watch. Nothing gets past me on this floor, living or dead.” He moves to the stairwell door, his form spectral and ghostly again. “But Rose, be careful. Temporal magic is dangerous even for experienced witches. And you’re?—”
“Inexperienced, untrained, and probably in way over my head?” I finish for him. “Yeah, I know. Story of my life.”
He turns back to me. “I was going to say brave. Stupidly, recklessly brave.”
“Same thing,” I mutter, but I’m already kneeling on the floor, placing my hands on either side of the open book.
Drake positions himself by the door. “I’ve got you,” he says simply, and somehow those three words mean more to me than any elaborate promise.
I close my eyes and reach for my magic, for that wild, natural power that’s been growing stronger every day since I arrived at this cursed academy. The bloodmark burns hotter, and I swear I can feel my entire ancestral line throbbing through my veins. Generations of witches, all the way back to that first one who signed her name in blood and damned us all.
The book said to focus on the connection, to use the blood as a bridge between now and then. I press my hand against the bloodmark, feeling it burn with heat that’s almost unbearable, and I think about that ancestor. Some desperate witch during the Salem trials, probably terrified, probably thinking she was saving her family by agreeing to the Coven’s terms.
The air around me starts to get wavy and opaque, and I hear Drake make a sound of warning. But I can’t stop now. I’m already reaching, already stretching through time itself,following the thread of blood and magic back, back, back to the moment that started everything.
The fourth floor corridor glitches in and out, like someone’s changing channels on reality. For a second, I see it as it must have been decades ago, clean, well-lit, full of students. Then it shifts again, further back, the walls themselves changing, morphing into something older. The academy isn’t even built yet, and I’m standing in an empty field under the same moon that shone tonight.
That’s it. Show me. Show me where it all begins.
Thirty-Four
Drake
I listen to the academy breathe beneath us. Every creak of the old building, every distant footstep three floors down, every whisper of wind against the boarded windows, I monitor it all while Rose kneels on the behind me, trying to find a way through time itself. The emergency alarm stopped, which means they’ve either given up looking or they know exactly where to go. My money’s on the latter. Wickersly is formidable, that hasn’t changed since I was a student here.
A memory floods through me unbidden, my first day at this place, over a century ago. I was nineteen, cocky as hell, convinced I’d master every spell they threw at me. I’d taken the train from Boston, my mother’s warnings still ringing in my ears about not embarrassing the family name. The leaves had been the same brilliant gold and crimson they are now, the air carrying that same bitter promise of winter.
The academy looked different then, newer, though it was already ancient. And there she was, Victoria Wickersly, standing at theentrance in those same severe robes, that same cold smile. She’d welcomed me personally, said I showed exceptional promise. She knew I’d be dead before my twenty-first birthday, yet her conscience was unburdened. Cheerful even.
She hasn’t aged a day. Not one fucking day in over a hundred years.
And now she’s hunting Rose with the same methodical precision she used to hunt me when I got too close to the truth.
A door slams somewhere below, yanking me back to the present moment. I will myself not to drift.
Not now.
Behind me, Rose mutters something in Latin, her pronunciation egregious but she muddles through it stubbornly. I sense a shift in the energy surrounding her. She’s actually doing it. After all these years, all this waiting, she’s actually going to be the one to find it.
A century I’ve haunted these halls. All those years of watching students arrive, students leave, and some not at all. I’ve memorized every stone, every crack, every secret passage in this place. I know which floorboards creak on the second floor, which windows rattle in storms, which rooms are still filled with the ghosts of things that happened before even I died.
But more than that, I’ve been waiting. Watching every new student who arrives, looking for the right bloodline, the right magical signature. The Coven is careful about who they bring here, they have to be. Too risky. Too much potential for someone to figure out what I figured out, right before they killed me for it.
