“I know you are. You ready?”
“Yes,” Wan whimpered.
Gary leaned forward and whispered, “Who is the dark man in shadows?”
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Wan said, and he was visibly trembling. I’d never seen him like that before. Not even at the battle in the throne room. He’d struck me as fearless, or so close that it didn’t matter if he wasn’t.
“I do,” Gary said, lip curling. “Tell me.”
Wan shook his head. “I’ve never met him. I’ve never even seen him. But I heard the stories, okay? There’s nothing you can do to stop it. The fact that you already know of his existence means it’s already begun. You won’t be able to—”
I felt it first. Out of all the magic—the half-giant and the unicorn, the two powerful wizards, the inherent magic in Ryan as he was the cornerstone—I felt it first. It was just a brush along my skin, like a caress, fingers trailing along my arm.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
I frowned. “That’s—”
Wan sat straight up, the fear leaving him as if it’d never been there at all. He looked loose, relaxed. He had a small smile on his face. He drummed his fingers along the tabletop as if he were playing a song on a piano. He shook his head and sighed. “You would think,” he said, voice deeper than I’d ever heard it before, “you wouldn’t send a horse to do a man’s job.”
Gary’s eyes narrowed as he cocked his head. “Excuse me?”
Tiggy took a step forward, growling low in his throat.
Wan’s smile widened. “I heard about how it happened, you know. When they took it from you. Your horn. The way you screamed. It was like cutting through bone, wasn’t it? To feel a part of you taken away in such a violent manner. Well. No one can blame you for screaming, could they?”
Gary took a step back, rear bumping into Tiggy, who put a hand on his flank.
“Of course not,” Wan said. He rocked his neck side to side, like he was stretching out the kinks. “To have such a precious thing torn from you the way that it was. You screamed. For days, didn’t you? And when you stopped screaming, when it was over, you felt severed from everything else. Because unicorns are pure magic. Their whole beings are light. But if you snuff out that light, if you take away the concentration of their magic, what’s left besides a common horse?” He smiled widely before turning to look directly at me, even though he shouldn’t have been able to see through the enchantment. His gaze flickered over to Ryan before it settled on me again. “Isn’t that right, Sam? Take away the concentration of their magic, and what is left?”
“That’s not Wan,” I breathed.
“What?” Ryan said. “What do you mean that’s not Wan? He can’t see us. He can’t do anything. The room is warded against Dark magic—”
Morgan was already moving toward the door when Wan raised his hand toward it, chains rattling around his wrist. There was a bright flash in the room, and I felt it, the hook in the center of my chest, tugging. It was sickly and weak and wrong, but it was there. And for a moment, I almost took a step forward, wanting to follow it, wanting to feel that badwrong bittersweet pain, like pressing my tongue against a loose tooth.
Even as the light began to fade, the imprints still dancing along my vision, I felt the wards shatter as if they were paper-thin and had been created by an amateur. One moment they were healthy and strong, and the next, they were in pieces that stabbed along the green and gold, made up of a sickly yellow that felt like infection. I grunted at the force of it, more shock than pain. Ryan’s hand was on my shoulder, and he was saying my name in my ear.
Randall was next to me, standing tall, and I felt his magic curling around me and mine. It was different than I’d ever felt from him before. Normally Randall’s magic was used on me to prove a point, to teach me a lesson of some sort. The last time I’d felt it had been in the training fields when we’d come back to the castle after rescuing Justin. Then he’d been testing a theory on cornerstones without my knowledge, shocking me full of lightning he brought down from the sky. It was of the offense variety, an attack on me.
This was different. This was warm, and it meshed with my magic more than I thought we ever could. Mine felt young and vibrant, a little out of control. His was strong and ancient, moving with a measured grace. I was a cacophony. He was a symphony, and he pushed his magic over mine, wrapping it wholly, muting it so it felt like it barely thrummed under my skin.
“Gary,” I managed to say as soon as I’d caught my breath. “Tiggy.”
“He’s blocked us from getting into the room,” Morgan said from the door. “I’ve never felt anything like this before. It’s more than it should be.”
“I can’t get in,” Randall said, brow furrowed. “It’s not—”
“Of course you can’t,” Wan said, and I pulled myself upright at the sound of his voice. Because I knew it now, skirting along the edges of hazy memory.
“It’s him,” I said. “It’s him.”
Ryan drew his sword, little though it would do. “Wan’s the dark man in shadows?”
“No,” I said, taking a step toward the glass. “He’s a vessel. He’s been taken over.”
Tiggy was backed into the corner of the room, as far away from Wan as he could get. Gary was shoved behind him. Gary wasn’t playing the damsel in distress, however, and it was taking Tiggy all he could to keep Gary from launching himself at Wan, his glitter rage pouring out around him, eyes blazing.
Wan paid them no mind. He looked down at his wrists, frowning at the manacles. He jiggled his legs, hearing the chains rattle against the floor. “Interesting,” he said with a sigh. “I’d heard much about the Dark Hunter. It seems that my expectations were set far too high. That’s… disappointing.”