This was different from fighting the House. This was different from fighting anyone.
Unlike her brother, Shara was a powerful magician. And for all that Sydney had made herself, it was Shara who had trained her. She hooked power into Sydney’s magic, tied it to the spell Miles had used that had been anchored into the Angel of the Waters, that had pulled power from the sacrifices sent into Shadows. That was now pulling power from Sydney, and from the Unseen World itself. Shara let the spell do the work, a terrible black hole of magic, consuming everything in its path.
Sydney felt like she was being pulled apart from the inside as that terrible hunger clawed at her magic, swallowing it down.
There were screams from the watching magicians, gasps of pain and terror, as their magic pulled away from them, too. Everyone who had used the magic that came from Shadows was being drained—not only of the magic that Shadows had given, but of their own, the hunger in the spell finally loosed to consume everything.
There was a weight, a balance. Sydney could feel the scale, cold and merciless, could feel the weight on the opposite side as she had felt it that first time she had signed her name on the contract to Shadows. She was very good at sensing magic. And the balance was this: There would be magic, or there would not be.
There was a choice.
Magic rose like spring, like green beneath her skin.
Sydney spoke a word, and the word was a knife, and with that word she cut a piece of her own shadow. She wrapped the shadow into the blade, sharpening its edge, until it was as cutting as life. She cut into her own skin and bone, following the scars that were already there. The scent of spring, heavy and thick and humid and full of life, rose into the air. Magic, amplified.
And then she opened her hands and gave her magic back. Stopped fighting the spell, the hunger, the pain as it unmade her.
“What are you doing?” Shara spat. “It’s too much.”
Sydney spun, whip-fast, and stabbed Shara through the heart with the knife of shadows. “I know.”
? ? ?
It was not the normal end of a challenge. There was a victor and there was a body, and yet there was still a chaos of magic unweaving itself in the center of the room. Shara’s spell had not died with her.
“Oh no,” Verenice said. “Oh, Sydney, what have you done?”
“What’s happening?” Ian asked, tension in every line of his body, both hands curled in different spells. “Can you help her?”
“Maybe, but—”
“You are the only one in this room who might understand the magic Shara used—you were the only other one strong enough. Please,” Ian said, “if you can stop this, do it.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Please,” he repeated.
Verenice nodded.
Magic, spring and green, sparked like fireflies from Sydney as she stood in the center of the room, being unmade. “The spell just needs enough magic, and then it will end. Use the knife.”
Horror on Verenice’s face. “Sydney, no.”
“Verenice, you said you would help. You would see Shadows ended. I need you to do this for me.”
Fast, fast enough that the motions left no time for thought, Verenice pulled the knife from Shara’s unmoving chest. She then gathered Sydney’s shadow, bundling it in her hand like fine cloth. She looked at Sydney one more time, and when Sydney nodded, she cut.
Sydney screamed like a broken heart as her shadow was severed from her body.
Verenice let go as soon as she finished the cut, and the terrible unweaving continued, each fragment of Sydney’s shadow being consumed. It flew in sparks, green like fireflies, green like spring, green like hope, and then it disappeared.
And then the spell stopped. The shadow gone, the scales balanced, the debt paid. The assembled magicians felt their hands warm as their connection to magic returned.
All of them except for Sydney.
“Thank you,” she told Verenice.
Verenice, weeping, looked away.
“There’s a will,” Sydney said to Grace. “The House is yours.”
And in the middle of their shock, she walked from the room, leaving magic behind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sydney stood on the balcony of her apartment, looking down at a city that glittered and shone so brightly that some people called it magic. High enough above it all to be alone, in the night, in the dark, in air that smelled almost like spring.
Nothing hurt. No backlash from the magic, no pain in the ragged ends of her shadow. There was simply nothing there, not even numbness. Not even a shadow.
She dug her fingernails into her palms until her hands bled, needing the pain to focus.
Things had worked almost, almost as she had planned. Shadows was gone. Magic remained in the world. There had simply been a sacrifice.
Sydney did not look behind her, where the lights of the city were not casting a shadow. She did not reach to feel the green crackle of power running through her veins. But her bleeding hands moved through shape after shape, spell after spell. Not hope. Not precisely.
She had known Shara would come back. Where else would she have gone, with her rage and ambition, but to the place she’d always thought should be hers? Sydney had just thought her spells would die when she did—Shadows and its avatar, both gone at once.
Maybe the spell had been too corrupt by then or the magic too bound into the Unseen World itself, into all the other magicians. Maybe Shara truly had outplayed her. Maybe she had just been unlucky.
Maybes didn’t matter—she was what she was, now.
And the magic of the city, those bright and glittering lights, was all the magic that was left.
Sydney went inside and crawled under all of her blankets. She didn’t sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The message arrived in a variety of ways. Email. Via text. Type-written formalities on plain, business-weight white. Handwritten letters in bordeaux ink, sealed with wax. In each instance, the words were the same.
Fortune’s Wheel had ceased its Turning. The world had been remade.
House Prospero—as led by Grace Valentine—would now head the Unseen World.
Laurent had been made, as he had hoped, Head of a new House. Very little else of the Turning had turned out how he’d expected it. He poured himself a whiskey and toasted its end.
Lara Merlin had been confirmed as Head of House Merlin. Miles had not been seen since the night of what proved to be the Turning’s final challenge.
The House of Shadows was no longer in existence. The Angel of the Waters once again held only the magic inherent in art.
There had been no further failures of magic.
Fortune’s Wheel did turn. Some had risen, and some had fallen. It was a new beginning, and all would be different until it was time for the world to be remade again.
? ? ?
“I see,” Miranda said, lips tight and thin, knuckles white as they pressed against her skin. “You said you were good at sensing these things—is it completely gone? Not coming back?”