Meira CONALL AND GARRIGAN launch out the door, crashing into the servant who topples to the ground as they continue through the air to collide with the brick wall of the nearest building. Everything in me drains clean away. I threw them. Hands lift me, voices murmur, but my vision swirls, the magic aching in every nerve. I close my eyes, just for a moment. But a voice I don’t know bites a reprimand. “Is she ill?” It’s a woman, her words high and feminine and close by. When I open my eyes, two people hover on either side of where I’ve been deposited on a chair in some grand room in one of Putnam University’s buildings. I don’t remember getting here, and disorientation makes me sway toward the woman who spoke. She’s in her thirties, her skin creased by wrinkles around her wide, watchful eyes. Thick, black curls tumble over her shoulders like perfectly arranged spirals of onyx, just barely brushing an ax on her back. Sharp and gleaming, two blades sweep out of a center of burnished wood.
