How do you like me now, you sanctimonious bitch?

“HOW . . . DARE . . . YOU!” I thundered, unsure if I was picking the words or if the magic was feeding them to me. “DO YOU PRESUME TO QUESTION THE MANTLE’S AUTHORITY, VESTED IN EMMELINE OF HOUSE HARLOW BY THE FOUR WHO MADE THIS HAVEN FOR YOU?”

She swallowed so hard I could hear the clicking gulp in her throat. “No, Arbiter, I—”

I cut her off with a slice of the hand. “YOU WILL ADDRESS ME AS YOUR EMINENCE.”

That part was just me, but the magic didn’t seem to mind.

“Your . . . Eminence,” Igraine said through clenched teeth, as if she had a suspicion that this command wasn’t entirely aboveboard. “I am only wondering if there might be something more at play here. Something at odds with the original intent behind the Gauntlet’s rules.”

“I AM THE ARBITER, THE FOUNDERS’ ENDURING WILL MADE FLESH. AND IT IS I WHO WILL SPEAK TO YOU OF THEIR INTENT.”

Now it was purely the spell being channeled through my mouth, with me along only for the ride. My delivery took on an unfamiliar timbre with each word, a chorus of voices emerging from me as if I were possessed. An imperious feminine tone that must have belonged to Caelia Blackmoore, Alastair Thorn’s low masculine thrum, Margarita Avramov’s foreboding purr, Elias Harlow’s mild-mannered authority.

I’d become their echo, a temporary vessel for what shadow still remained of them.

I felt a moment of pure panic at being swept up by something so powerful and alien, along with a visceral urge to reassert myself as the driver of this ride—and then I remembered my nana’s advice not to fight or overthink the mantle’s spell.

With a deep breath, followed by a long exhale, I relaxed as fully as I could, relinquishing control. For once, simply letting go.

Then something else came surging beneath the mantle’s spell, that same sense of unfurling I’d felt when I first touched the original Grimoire. An encompassing awareness that spanned from the lake rippling behind me, down to where a dragonfly had skimmed it with its grazing feet; to the slapping of shoe soles over the cobbles on Hyssop Street, where a little girl scrambled back to her parents, rattled by the darkened sky; to the smoke feathering from the chimneys of hearths that had stoked their fires for the season; to the shivering of leaves in the strange woods behind The Bitters, caterpillars clinging like commas to their tips. And much, much more; more than I was capable of registering.

For a moment, I was Thistle Grove, and the town itself was me.

Having so much magic pounding through me should have been terrifying, but it wasn’t. Now that I’d chosen to let it run its course, it was gorgeous, revitalizing, like jumping into a lake after a decade of thirst, and sucking all that sweet water down your parched and aching throat.