Page 94 of Divine Oaths

Vivian was pleading, her eyes wide, beseeching me to hear her words.

Suddenly, screams cut through the night. They were bloodcurdling, and terrible. But we recognized the sound of the voice.

Luke.

He wasn’t far from us.

Vivian’s gaze steeled.

“I tried to warn him. I tried to warn you both. He thought he’d get into Sigma. That they’d accept him because his family’s been in Virginia for centuries. But he’s just collateral damage to them. Do you know which houses make up most of the board of trustees and their puppets in Sigma and Theta?”

She didn’t have to say it for me to understand.

Ivy House. Legacies of Westfield. The old money elite who made up the ivory towers of most of the oldest institutions in the country.

Luke’s screams grew louder, wilder.

“Sianna,” Vivian warned.

But I was already running. All around me, the night oozed and writhed, my footsteps a drumbeat marching toward unescapable horror. I couldn’t see past the foliage and shadowy forms, but the sound of Luke’s cries was like a signal drawing me closer and closer.

Vivian floated behing me, urging me to find shelter instead of racing toward Luke’s cries. I spun to face her.

“Luke is your friend, right? You’re just going to let him die?”

“There’s nothing we can do. Listen to me, if you interrupt their ritual, Sigma and Theta will sanction you. I’m already in bad graces with the sisterhood for intervening with the summoning at Theta. Do you want to jeopardize your chances of becoming one of us too?”

“We can’t just leave him.” The memory of that burning auditorium lived with me, always. So too had the images of the flames rising, and the decimating pain that had become a scourge on my body. The memories were mine, not a vision, but the pain was trapped in my own recollection.

Despite my parents’ tumultuous relationship, they had stayed together, loved each other, and died that night saving me. From backstage, my father had charged to where I sat playing. My mother was close behind him, and together, they’d covered my face with his suit jacket, lifting me off the stage and into the hands of a passerby trying to escape the worst of the fire. Above, the light fixtures had shrieked, groaning a terrible sigh before they came crashing down, erasing my parents from view. They’d protected me and they died because of it.

“We can’t abandon him.”

Vivian looked conflicted. “All right,” she said softly. “Of course.”

Deeper and deeper we ventured into the swamp. The screams were waning, but I could feel us getting closer. Finally, I spotted a group of figures in a small clearing.

It was Luke. But he wasn’t alone.

Beside him was another initiate, one of the Desi guys I recognized from Poppy House. Both he and Luke had been stripped to their boxers. They were being circled by three masked crows while a silver vulture watched, leaning against a tree trunk. But the crows had grown violent. They nipped at Luke’s and the other man’s bare chests, drawing blood from them as they screeched and chanted in the night.

My powers manifested at my fingertips. I focused on the roots and overgrowth beneath the Sigmas’ feet. With a flick of my hand, I drew on my affinity, imagining the roots coiling at their ankles over time and yanking the Sigmas to the ground.

“Stop!” I screamed.

The incantation set fire to my nerves. The magic churned in my mind and my veins siphoned the energy from the living world around us into the single syllable of the command.

The roots came to life and the Sigmas were thrust to the ground, a few feet from where Luke and the other man lay gasping.

“We need to find shelter,” I said, approaching Luke and the man, my heart racing in disbelief at what I’d managed to do.

But three masked figures I hadn’t noticed sprinted toward me.

“Unworthy,” they shrieked. “You are all unworthy.”

The man beside Luke used the distraction to yank off the silver rope that bound him and disappeared into the distance. The masked crows screeched in anger, rushing toward me. Pain jolted through my body as they toppled over me, jostling my arms and my hands with their beaks.

“Enough,” the silver vulture shouted. “Leave her. You know the law. Only a Theta can initiate another Theta bid.”