And there was a poignancy to it, too, the bittersweet knowledge that this magic was only borrowed. For a moment, the thought of letting go of this, of the withdrawal that would set in once I returned to my small, real life, nearly bowled me over with anticipatory anguish.

Then the mantle’s magic doubled down, drawing my focus to a single point—bending Igraine to my and the mantle’s commingled will.

I folded at the waist until I loomed closely over her, my giantess’s face bearing down into hers. “Elder Blackmoore, are we understood?” I asked her in a more restrained tone, closer to a small avalanche than rolling thunder.

She struggled, lips twitching, the feeling of being outclassed clearly both new and distasteful to her. When she hesitated too long for the mantle’s liking, a bolt of lightning came streaking down from the churn of clouds overhead and leapt into my hands. It danced around them like a sparking web of electricity, warm and gently tingly, like touching one of those Van de Graaff orbs that made your hair stand on end.

It all fed very nicely into any superiority complex I might have been storing in the basement of my psyche. You know what? I could kinda get used to this.

“Are . . . we . . . understood?” I repeated, with slow and silky emphasis, twitching my fingers until sparks rained from them.

“We are, Your Eminence,” she managed, dipping into something between a curtsey and a bow. Like she’d reluctantly remembered that I hailed from royalty, or maybe one of the more obscure pantheons. “Though I did not intend any disrespect, House Blackmoore offers you apologies. Let us set aside this . . . unfortunate misunderstanding, and move forward in good faith.”

Okay, I could really get used to rolling like a demigoddess.

“Apology accepted,” I said, straightening. The tame lightning in my hands died down as though it had been grounded through my feet. Above, the welter of clouds fled to the horizon in a surging rush, like a time-lapse photograph of a retreating storm. “Once more, and for all to hear—first victory goes to House Avramov!”

This time, the resultant clamor was purely one of joy, pierced by a high, triumphant whoop I suspected belonged to Talia. When I looked across the lake to where her camp stood, I found her hovering above the Avramovs, still suspended in a cloud of that dark matter, like ink and raven feathers airily commingled.

Even enrobed by the mantle’s heady magic, the smile she flung my way, grateful and victorious and somehow semiferal, made me more exhilarated than I would have thought possible.

12

The Witch Woods

Listen, I did not sign up for this mess,” Rowan Thorn groused. The wine bottles he and Linden were bringing to the Avramovs’ bonfire clinked together in the apple-picking tote that swung from one of his hands. A luminous sphere of witchlight hovered over his other palm, lighting a path through the thick forest behind The Bitters. “Comrades in collusion? Here for it. But tell you what, fam, I do not need to be in these woods tonight, with those trees looking like they want to suck my soul out through my nose.”