Lena backed away, fear clenching in her gut. This feels wrong. “I … I don’t know…” She felt something within her snap, some instinct springing to life. “I’m sorry, but I’ve changed my mind,” she said, her voice quivering. “There must be another way.”

In a flash of purple light, she flew back against the plinth, knocking her head.

“Constance!” Winton stepped forward, his face pale with shock.

As Lena sat on the floor, her head spinning, she watched Constance turn on her brother, her mask glowing gold in the lamplight. “I warned you,” she said. “Now, be quiet and watch the doorway.”

Lena couldn’t see Winton’s reaction—but she guessed he assented as she heard no further argument, his footsteps retreating a few paces into the gloom. She felt winded and dizzy, as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Constance stood over her, strands of her long fair hair falling around her shoulders, her dark eyes glowing faintly violet through the eyeholes of the mask.

“I’m sorry, Lena. Would that the spell had stayed where it was. Things would have been so much simpler.”

She flicked her cane, and Lena felt herself lifted into the air, her limbs straightened out like a doll’s. She was dropped into the empty sarcophagus, a cloud of dust rising from it. Her hair spilled over the ledge of old stone, and she felt the scuttle of some disturbed insect or spider across her brow. She tried to lift her arms, to summon her magic, but Constance was too fast: invisible bindings wrapped around her wrists and ankles, glowing purple in the darkness as the spell took hold.

And suddenly it came to her: Lena remembered the color of the butterfly’s magic the first time she had seen it.

Yes, it had been pale—almost white.

But certainly, without a doubt, it had been purple too.

“It was you,” said Lena slowly and dimly, as if through a fog. “You cast the spell.” Her eyes struggled to focus as Constance leaned over her, the mask gleaming in the mage-light.

TWENTY-FOUR

The Truth

Constance smiled beneath her mask. Perhaps … at last … it was time for the truth.

“What does she mean?” Winton’s voice drifted weak and low out of the shadows near the staircase, like the voice of a child. “What does she mean, Constance?”

She turned to face her brother. “She means I cast the storm spell. She means I am to be the necromancer. And I am here not to destroy it, but to reclaim it.”

Winton’s face crumpled, and through her anger and annoyance and determination Constance felt a pull of love and guilt, her emotions woven so tightly together they felt inseparable, like the strings of a rope binding her, tugging around her neck.

Cut the rope. You cannot be restrained anymore.