No Kiora to bail you out this time...

Whoever slapped the handcuffs on me must have had a good suspicion that I shouldn't be there. I couldn't see them randomly placing these handcuffs on a wizard.

“Uncuff me,” I say in my most indignant, wizardly voice. “Uncuff me and set me free at once.”

“No,” a polite man's voice says. “I don't think I will. I don't believe it's in my best interest to let you free. You're not a wizard after all.”

“Is that so?” I ask.

“It is,” he responds.

I open my mouth to say something else, but before I have a chance, the man jerks the cuffs to the side and starts moving me across the ceiling.

I can see an opening in the bookshelf off to the right.

“You realize that once inside the Forbidden Library, a wizard has to vouch for you and take you up to the main floor, correct?” the man asks.

I swallow. “I am a wizard. So let me go.”

The man laughs. “You're a wizard? Okay, free yourself then.”

The man lets go of the cuffs and I turn to face him.

He wears the robes of an adept. He's my height with curly blonde hair. His mouth is tiny and his eyes regard me not with disdain or disgust, but amusement. There's something underneath that amusement though. A sort of desperation I don't like.

What about Maldive? How did he get past this guy?

I open my mouth to ask this man that exact question when he places his hand at the center of my chest, right between my breasts, and pushes me.

I fall back, bouncing on my ass, sneering up at him in anger.

Silvy chooses that moment to appear on my shoulder. “Bad news. I can't portal out. You'll either have to walk out or figure something else out. I can't get us out of this.”

“Wonderful,” I say.

The man lifts an eyebrow. “Do you talk to yourself often?”

I lean forward and use my momentum to get onto my knees. I stand and face him, arms still handcuffed behind me.

“You're going to leave me handcuffed to fight you? Seems cowardly.”

The man raises an eyebrow and snaps his fingers. The magick encircling my wrists falls away and he tilts his head slightly to the side, your move.

“A little help,” I say to Silvy, but she's floating over by the bookcase, leisurely reading the titles of the books.

She glances over at me. “You’re completely outmatched right now, darling, and you don't even know it. No amount of help is going to actually help you.”

“Fine,” I say, looking back at the adept. “I'll do it myself.”

The man's initial look of amusement shifts to concern.

“Who are you?” he asks. “I feel like you're probably in over your head. Why don't you just let me—”

I drop my hand in my pocket as fast as I can. My fingers are greeted with a jumble of witchstones. I can't tell the difference between any of the witchstones there. They're all out of the holster, out of their memorized slots. It feels like I have a pocket full of glass rocks.

The man raises an eyebrow. “Looking for a snack?”

“No,” I snap. “This ends now.”

I pull out one of the witchstones and glance down at it.

It's a bubblestone.

That's fine. I slip it into my mouth and the adept rolls his eyes. As the magick moves into my veins, the adept doesn't do anything. He just stands there waiting patiently. No battle stance. No green seal beginning to form in front of him. He doesn't even move his hands to his pockets.

That's fine with me. I want this over with as fast as possible.

I spit the depleted witchstone into my hand and slip it into my back pocket.

I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with as much air as I can and blow out. Lightning-fast tracers of magick zip out of my mouth like tiny fireworks, moving towards the adept.

And then moving right past him.

My eyes widen.

I've used this type of witchstone before. What's supposed to happen is the magick surrounds the person you've spit it at, wrapping them in a sort of tightly webbed cocoon of magical energy.

It's as if the adept is coated in oil and the magick just slipped by him.

I frown, pulling another witchstone out of my pocket before the adept has time to regroup. As if the adept needs time to regroup.

He crosses his arms and is now looking at me as though he's half interested.

I glance down at the witchstone, see the colors, and squeeze it as hard as I can.

It cracks in my hand and the magick flows through my veins. I take a deep breath, blink twice, and prepare. I squeezed the witchstone even harder and feel the secondary crack.

One crack to open it, the second crack to activate.

I blow the witchstone dust towards him, and it flows out in a massive cloud that grows thicker and thicker until it completely obscures him. When I can't see him, I put my hand back in my pocket and pull out another witchstone.

There's a sudden snap of fingers and when I look up from the new witchstone I'm holding, the cloud is gone. The adept stands there, and he no longer looks interested. He looks more annoyed than anything else.

“Are you done?” he asks.

My mouth falls open. I've never met an adept who could dodge spells like this one could.

My stomach sinks. I'm in the Forbidden Library.

He puts his hand behind his back and when he brings it back around in front, he flicks it at me, like he's throwing a frisbee, only I don't see anything leave his hand.

My hands whip behind my back and I feel the magick encircling them there.

“You’re not a wizard,” he says.

He walks up to me, shaking his head in disappointment. “And here I was—”

I spit in his face. It's not the nicest thing, but I'm irritated by how easily he's defeated me.

I feel like a toddler fighting a parent. I have nothing on him. I have no way—

His eyes blaze with anger and my entire body goes rigid. My shoulders slam down and I my spine cracks in several places. My head lifts up away from my shoulders and it feels like my neck is trying to separate itself at every vertebra.

Oh God. This is bone magick. He’s a bone wizard.

I try to open my mouth, but find that my jaw is frozen shut.

“Listen,” he says. “I don't know how you got in here, and I don't care. One of those Austerium idiots kidnapped my girlfriend. And you know what you're gonna do? You're gonna go with me. You're gonna be my new thrall. How does that sound?”

I want to answer, I want to say something, but I can't move my mouth.

“Let's go,” he hisses and even though I'm not the one in control of my legs, I start walking anyways.

Silvy, floating by the bookshelf, shrugs at me. “I said you were outmatched. Maybe you should listen to me more often, darling.”

That little vermin. She's known all along that this guy is a wizard, not an adept. Why is he wearing adept robes then? Why was he lurking at the entrance?

The wizard leads me to a large room filled with light. There are tables, chairs.

He makes me sit in one of these chairs and he sits down opposite.

“I'm not a rude person,” he says. “Normally. I need you to understand something though. What you're about to do, I wanted you to do it of your own free well. I wanted you to do it in promise of release. I know you're not a wizard, and that's fine. You're obviously someone who has powerful enough witchstones, but you should realize that those have no power over someone like me.”

He rubs his face with his hands and leans forward, putting his elbows on the table. He stares down at the table for a long, long time.

“I don't want to be doing this,” he says. “They made me.”

I watch him, unable to do anything else but scream internally.

“They kidnapped my girlfriend. Do you get that?”

I can't respond.

“I don't suppose you do. They kidnapped her because they figured out what I was doing. They figured out my plan.”

My eyes dart around the room, looking for Silvy, praying that she'll do something. I'm not sure how much she'll be able to do against a wizard though.

“I just want her back,” he says. “I just want Pixie back.”

My heart starts pumping.

Pixie.

Girlfriend.

This was Dom.

I found the person I've been looking for and now I can't even speak to him.

“I was doing what was best for Nidema and the rest of Anara, do you understand that? I was trying to keep Filigree out of the hands of the blood wizard, but do you know who doesn't care about the blood wizard? Do you know who doesn't believe the blood wizard exists?”

He waits a second.

“The Austerium, and do you know why?”

He waits a second.

“Because the blood wizard has apparently infiltrated the Austerium. He has people working for him. From within, you get it?”

I want to scream. I want to tell him I'm on his side and want to help, but the only thing that happens when I try to open my mouth is a sharp grinding pain in my jaw.

“I'm telling you this so you understand why I have to do this. Why I have to do what I'm about to do.”

My heartrate kicks up again as he puts a collar on the table between us. It's gold and studded with red witchstones.

Being in the business, I immediately recognize them as bloodstones.

He then pulls out a bracelet that's studded with bloodstones.

I recognize the collar. I've seen it in use before, in the Red Market.

The collar uses blood magick. So does the bracelet. Once the collar is on someone, the person wearing the bracelet can slip into their mind, controlling every bit of them even if they aren't a blood wizard.

“When they found out about the witch I was training, they tried to blackmail me. They killed her when I told them I wouldn’t help,” Dom says. “Then they kidnapped my girlfriend to keep me quiet. They’re going to kill her though. I know it.”

He looks at me with sad eyes as he picks up the collar and pulls my hood back. He sucks in a quick breath when he sees the horns. He walks back around the table and examines at me with his eyes.

“Pink,” he says in a quiet voice. Magenta. “You're Hexana Covington.”

He looks at me for a long time and for a moment I think he's going to release his spell, let me talk, let me say anything. He doesn't though. He looks at me with his sad eyes and gives me a sad smile to match it.

“I don't know how you've got yourself mixed up in this, but you have.” He slips the collar around my throat and I feel the needles that carpet the inside of the collar pierce the back of my neck.

He slips the bracelet around his own wrist and I watched as more needles press into his flesh.

“There,” he says and even though I can hear his voice clearly, his lips never move. He's speaking directly into my mind.

Dom, I know your name. I know who you are. I know—

“This isn't how I wanted to do this,” he says. The thoughts must only flow in one direction. “It's how it has to be, though. Let’s see what the other wizards think of you.”