Growing up Black in the South, it’s pretty common to find yourself in old places that just… weren’t made for you. Maybe it’s a building, a historic district, or a street. Some space that was originally built for white people and white people only, and you just have to hold that knowledge while going about your business.

Sometimes it’s obvious, like when there’s a dedication to the “boys who wore the gray” on a plaque somewhere or a Rebel flag flying high out front. Other times, it’s the date on a marker that tips you off. Junior high school field trip to the State Capitol? Big, gorgeous Greek revival architecture? Built in 1840? Oh yeah, those folks never thought I’d be strolling the halls, walking around thinking about how their ghosts would kick me out if they could.

You gain an awareness. Learn to hear the low buzzing sound of exclusion. A sound that says, We didn’t build this for you. We built it for us. This is ours, not yours.

The Lodge has a black-and-white historic site marker right at the open gates. Original mansion constructed in 1793—the same year as Old East. My dorm is an antebellum building. Not built for people that looked like me, but definitely built by them. And the Lodge…?

I take a deep breath, ignore the buzz, and walk up the long gravel driveway. After one turn, I see it.

The place is a freakin’ medieval castle. A dark sorcerer’s keep, sitting isolated on a wooded hill in the middle of a forest. Four circular stone towers at each corner rise to conical points with fairy tale–style blue-and-white flags at the top.

And, like the trail that led me here, it’s coated in a faint, shimmering layer of silver aether.

I hadn’t realized the wisps I’d been watching filter through the trees were aether and not sunlight until I saw it gather in eddies on the Lodge’s gravel driveway. When I reach the brick steps, I touch the iridescent layer with a tentative hand. As my fingers pass through the shimmer, I feel a push away from the tall double doors. An insistent nudge urging me to move on. Not sinister, exactly, but intimidating. A subtle warning slipped between the folds of one’s brain, just like Selwyn’s message.

Leave.

My hand lingers inside the enchantment. The now-familiar clove and smoke scent rushes toward me. “Different casters use aether to do different things.” Does that mean this is a… signature? If so, the bright smell from my bandages had to be William’s.

Selwyn’s signature is so rich here I can taste it: the whiskey Alice and I stole from my dad’s liquor cabinet last summer. Cinnamon cloves. A campfire banked low in the woods and smoke carried on winter wind.