An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole - 40

Someone was screaming.

Ellory was back on the roof of the tower, surrounded by blue light. Instead of a globe caging her body, magic pumped through her blood, lit her arms, her hands, her chest, waiting for her to direct it. Tearing free of her dreamworld, emerging from Boone’s liminal path into freedom, she was awake for the first time in almost four years, back in the real world, harnessing her real power.

The screams grew louder. Ellory looked down.

The older Arthur O’Connor was on his knees, his head thrown back as light poured from every orifice: his eyes, his ears, his screaming mouth. His son writhed beside him, clawing at his own face as if he could tear the power out from under his skin. Blue bolts sizzled toward Preston Colt and Nathaniel Graves, forming the links of chains that dragged them to the floor. They, too, thrashed around in impotent fury, but none of them could break free of her magic.

Their magic.

Because she wasn’t alone. She never really had been.

One by one, the ghosts of the Lost Eight appeared on either side of her, their smiles victorious. They had told her that she’d know what to do, and she did. She had needed only to remember . This plan was hers to execute. This power was hers to command. These enemies were hers to destroy. They had thought they had her right where they wanted her, but Hudson had warned them of the truth:

This is my creation.

“This is my creation,” Ellory said, raising her arms.

Magic spider-webbed toward her as Letitia Rose, Manuel Sharp, Angel Mclaughlin, Olivia Holloway, Tasha Butler, Eugene Kang, Kristopher Douglas, and Joel Carroll linked hands with one another and with her, feeding more power into the roots she had woven between them. She had never met them, and she never would, but she cared enough to tell their stories. She had summoned them from a past that had forgotten them. Their spirits rippled with the kind of magic that had been restored to them only in death, and they gave it, all of it, to her.

Ellory slashed the air.

Again and again and again.

With each sharp movement, a globe shattered into sparks that then faded, freeing the disoriented bodies of the students inside. She destroyed all the cages she could see, and then she felt for the cages she couldn’t see and destroyed those as well, until she was certain every siphon had been cut off.

Her attention returned to the Old Masters, powerless except for the stolen magic still contained inside their traitorous bodies.

Without shadows for them to hide in, she could target them one by one. Gaia Hammond doubled over, vomiting as Ellory’s spell ravaged her, eating away her powers from the inside out. Miles Clairborne was trying to claw a path to the stairs, but he was crying, weak and pale, and she knew he wouldn’t make it. Even if he did, his magic would not. She tore it from his body like she was ripping out his still-beating heart, her mouth a grim line.

She did not revel in his pain, but she didn’t try to ease it either. This was what he deserved.

This was what they all deserved.

From that loss, you have to build.

Tai approached her, followed by Cody and Sofia, David and Ximena. She opened her mouth to tell them what she was doing, but there was no need. After being freed from their orbs, they had watched for long enough to piece together her retribution, and they were ready.

Their hands glowed as they drew on their magic to build her spell—not a sacrifice but a gift. They shuffled like newborns learning to walk again, some of them using the stone walls to hold themselves up. But like the dead students they likely couldn’t see and had almost become, they fed their magic to her so she could do what none of them had been able to do alone.

Because it was not just about the Old Masters. It was about the privileged.

It was about the people like Gaia and Miles, born in ivory towers, who thought that taking was their birthright.

It was too much power in the hands of the hidden few.

Ellory would end it all, here and now.

Beneath them, the floor began to shake. Ellory could feel every magic user, each of them a point in her mental web of light, and one by one, she siphoned that magic away. More screams rang out, an unholy symphony of pain, but she wasn’t worried. By the time she was done, they wouldn’t remember any of this. Their memories would be the price of their own destruction. The Old Masters wouldn’t just be buried but obliterated.

Tabby Rose.

Manuel Sharp.

Angel Mclaughlin.

Olivia Holloway.

Tasha Butler.

Eugene Kang.

Kristopher Douglas.

Joel Carroll.

Malcolm Mayhew.

Those were the ones who deserved to be remembered. Not as the Lost Eight or the Graves Ghost, not as sacrifices for a rich white man’s definition of a better world, but as people—wild magic or not—who had lived full lives that were taken too soon. The Old Masters had erased their names, but Ellory would make sure no one ever forgot them again. She would say their names until they passed into legend.

If magic faded from the world, maybe that was for the best. It was not the problem, but it had become a problem simply because of how it had been wielded. There would always be those who coveted what they did not have, who believed that the only way they could be powerful was if someone else was powerless. There was nothing to do with such a system but to tear it down.

“Lor,” Tai said, grabbing her shoulder. Her voice was strong, but her grip was weak. “The tower is collapsing. We have to get out.”

“Go,” Ellory said without taking her eyes off the writhing bodies of those who had thought they could control her. Control everyone. “Boone is waiting to get you out.”

Then he and Hudson would be next. Their magic would be destroyed, and their memories would be sacrificed. Even though Hudson had agreed, even though he’d said it was for the best, Ellory already knew she wouldn’t be able to face him again without crying. It wasn’t fair that they carried the taint of a legacy that needed to be abolished.

But they had been complicit in the Old Masters’ crimes, regardless of their reasons. They had allowed people who looked like them to be used so that they could each play at being “one of the good ones” in a system that had never been designed for their benefit.

Hudson was right. This was for the best.

Still, she would save them for last.

Tai still hovered by her shoulder. “But what about y—”

“ Go .” Ellory wiped at the blood that began to leak from her nose and shook her friend’s hand off. “I’ll be fine.”

It took a few seconds for her to hear the scramble of feet toward the stairs, but she waited until the last of them had faded before she unleashed the full weight of her wrath.

Magic was sacrifice.

And it was finally time for the elite to be the ones to surrender.

Ellory lifted her hands to the ceiling and tore it all down.