I know what Alice was about to say, and I’m wondering about the Rootcrafters now too. If my ancestral door was cracked before, the Rite opened it up again. In the stream, I’d connected to the Line of Arthur and the Line of Vera both, just like when I pulled Excalibur. This time I released just a pulse of aether—enough that the Mageguard had to shield against me—but it wasn’t a sustained battle; maybe the wave didn’t reach the Rootcrafters on campus.

Alice continues her update. “William knew right away something was wrong. There was no time. He scribbled a number on a piece of paper, shoved it into my hand, and pushed me out the back door. Told me to run. I didn’t make it far.”

“The Mageguard?”

“Yeah.” Alice’s voice goes quiet, and behind her glasses, her eyes go distant. “They were… I’ve never seen anyone move like that, look like that.”

My chest tightens. Alice doesn’t have the Sight, can’t see aether, has never been in a battle. And she’s never seen a Merlin in action, not even Sel. Before this, the only other Merlin she’d even met besides Sel was Isaac Sorenson, who mesmered and tortured her to get to me. I squeeze her hand. “That must have been terrifying.”

“It was.” Her brows furrow. “But so was finding out that they’d taken you.”

“What happened with Tacitus?”

She shrugs, but something about it looks off. Affected. “They took me back to the Lodge. He mesmered me to think I’d been at the library all night, but as soon as it was over, my memories started flooding back, like filling a gap. I could tell that wasn’t supposed to happen, so I pretended until he released me with an order to go home.”

“How?” I exclaim. “Tacitus is the most powerful mesmerist in the world.”

“That’s what I keep asking,” Gill says.

“I don’t know.” No one but a best friend could hear the lie in Alice’s voice. See the small flicker in her gaze when she, fleetingly, catches my eye.

She does know, but she won’t say here.

“What about the paper William gave you?”

Gill raises her hand. “That’s where I come in. Got a phone call from a frantic girl—”

“I wasn’t frantic!” Alice interjects, nose wrinkling in insult.