This had meant that, for Grace to be able to exercise away her feelings, she had to use the training room directly above the great hall. And that was why she was now sprinting from wall to wall, panting, desperately trying to drown out the sound of Alice’s anguish.

Running wasn’t working. She glanced around the room until her gaze settled on the grain-filled dummies hanging from the ceiling. Perfect.

Wrapping off-cuts of material around her knuckles, she sauntered over to the figures and looked them up and down. In her mind, she placed Hecate’s face over the head of the first one, and Blayne’s over the second. All right, so maybe Blayne just did as she was told, but she had been the one to knock her unconscious as she tried to protect Alice. So she was as good a target as any.

Expelling one heavy breath, Grace danced on her tiptoes and, after she had psyched herself up, threw a punch square across the jaw of the inanimate dummy. It swung pathetically.

It was taunting her.

She let out a cry of frustration and battered the dummies, no longer caring for technique or practise. All she wanted was to hurt something, anything, like she wanted to hurt Hecate.

Shrieks echoed around the cavernous lair. Alice’s shrieks.

Grace felt bile rise in her throat. Was this kind of visceral reaction to a witch’s pain normal for a Protector? She had only heard of such a connection between witches and Protectors who were bonded … but she couldn’t ask the one remaining bonded pair; they kept themselves to themselves. And they were terrifying. Hecate herself was scared of those with bonds; she had already banished two sets of them in Grace’s short time with the Sect. It wasn’t safe.

But Alice had changed everything. Everything. What if she and Alice had…

Grace flinched. A searing pain spread over her hand, and the pale material around her knuckle was now saturated with red. Lost in her thoughts, she had pummelled the dummy until the skin on her hands could take no more. The figure hung limply from its neck, as lifeless as ever. The only proof that Grace had touched it at all was the flecks of blood splattered across its head and torso.

‘Argh!’ Grace yanked the dummy from its noose, its head dropping to the floor. She flung the body across the room where it sprawled, helpless and broken, on the floor. A final growl escaped her lips and confirmed to Grace that training was only exacerbating her agony.

She stormed out, letting the heavy wooden door slam behind her. She shouldered her way past anyone she encountered, ignoring the tuts and the threats, until she reached the door of her room.

The pain had ebbed away. She could no longer hear Alice’s cries. She breathed a sigh of relief and pushed open the door into her safe space.

Only to find it had been infiltrated.

Grace swore.

Lying on her bed, feverish and asleep and glowing bright red, was Alice. Around her body there were singe marks on the bedclothes. Her brow was saturated with sweat and she was tossing and turning in her unconscious state. Grace had only witnessed one other witch fresh from her breaking, and that girl hadn’t survived. But that girl hadn’t had a Protector.