Page 140 of The Mirror of Beasts

And Cabell, I thought. If it came to it, I’d drive a blade through his heart myself.

Nash hung back beside Neve, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked down at her, his face soft. “All right there, dove?”

I elbowed past him, taking his place beside her makeshift stretcher.

“Neve?” I said. “Can you hear me?”

Her veins were still pulsing with that same terrible light, but it was dimming now, and her skin had cooled enough for me to hold on to her arm. But her eyes were feverishly bright, and her expression was empty enough for me to know that she hadn’t fully returned to the moment.

“Where … ?” she breathed out.

“You are going to the Council of Sistren, maiden Neve,” Kasumi answered.

Neve’s eyes found mine, widening.

“They’re going to see if they can stop whatever is happening to you,” I told her. When I took her hand, I realized her own bracelet had either burned away or been lost in Lyonesse, and it left me cold at my core. “Is that okay?”

Neve nodded.

“Cait?” she whispered.

I never had the chance to answer. Her eyes fluttered shut again. The interaction had barely lasted a moment, but it gave me relief, if not hope.

“This way,” Kasumi said, guiding Neve’s prone form forward.

The Victorian redbrick building was situated at the very edge of the park. A tall black fence surrounded it, each bar capped with a spike. It took a second look to realize they weren’t merely decorative—each edge had been sharpened like a blade. Anyone who tried to climb the fence would find themselves disemboweled with one wrong move.

My top lip curled at the sight of the building. Victorian architecture was at best fussy, and at worst closely resembled a witch’s candy cottage meant to lure in children.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Emrys said, amused.

I followed his line of sight to the name carved above the front door. LAKE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL.

“Is this really a school?” I asked Nash.

“Sure is,” he said, eyeing the nearby camera and buzzer box. “Just not for mortals.”

Kasumi lifted a hand and the gate’s lock released with a loud clang, then swept inward with a menacing groan. A ring of slender silver keys hung at her waist, and she took care selecting one before she and Isolde guided Neve across the courtyard and up the steps to the black door.

I should have expected it, of course, but it still took me by surprise that the door to the school led to another Vein.

We passed out of its spiraling darkness into a sort of grand entryway, like the lobby of a luxury hotel. Marble columns rose up to the soaring ceiling, but not even the opulence of its design could distract from the battle preparations that were underway.

All of the furniture had been turned on its side and crushed into jagged forms to fill the gaps between the innumerable rock spikes that jutted out of the stone floors. There was a single, narrow path through the destruction, one that must have led deeper into the building.

Emrys leaned over a tangle of brass and crystal and let out a faint whistle; it looked like someone had intentionally smashed a chandelier and left the shards on the floor to cut any creature that dared to tread over it.

Shouting voices, a heavy hammering, and furious scraping echoed through the building. At our approach, several sorceresses looked up from where they were finishing the work of carving sigils into the floors and walls. A fierce protectiveness rose in me as they openly gawked at Neve.

“No one else will be entering through that doorway,” Kasumi told them. “You can line the path with curses now.”

The sorceresses did as they were told, pushing up the sleeves of their robes and tunics and attacking the sigils with renewed purpose. But I heard their whispers, that single word following us as we continued deeper into the building. “Unmakers.”

Something moved at my right, and I turned, jumping as my heart shot up into my throat—but it was only my own filthy reflection staring back at me. The walls were lined with mirrors as we reached the heart of the building. I noticed Nash studying its layout just as closely as I was, silently marking the path we’d taken, and all the possible exits.

That entry hall led into an expansive atrium, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a large garden, and, beyond that, the violet beginnings of a sunrise over a snowy mountain range.

Somewhere remote, I noted.

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