Lillian thrashed against the men who held her, screaming and kicking and biting. There was blood staining her bodice, but she didn't appear hurt—only enraged. It was only when another cultist went behind her and grabbed her hair that she was able to be subdued, and even then she didn't stop gnashing her teeth.

"Sir," said one of the men who was struggling to hold her, "she killed Benjamin. Came out of the air and slit his throat faster than we could react."

Benjamin Hughes, Charles thought, realizing whose blood that was.

Monroe didn't seem to care that one of his colleagues had been murdered. He just eyed Lillian thoughtfully while she glared at him with cold fury. Suddenly he turned to the last few cultists in the room who weren't currently occupied. "You four. That mage child is still on the loose. Get her. I don't want her escaping."

The cultists nodded and ran out. Once they were gone, Monroe gestured with his hand. "Bring the thief to me."

"No!" Charles shouted. He tried to rush towards her, but one of the cultists holding onto him dug his fingers into Charles' upper arm with such strength that he could only cry out in pain. Unable to move, he watched helplessly as Lillian was dragged up onto the raised platform. When she was in front of Monroe, one of the men kicked the back of her shin, causing her to stumble and slam down onto her knees.

"YOU FUCKING MONSTER!" Lillian screamed. "YOU CHILD MURDERER. YOU PIECE OF HIGH-BORN SHIT—"

Monroe cut her off by waggling his fingers. Suddenly, a clump of dirt rose from the ground and flew into Lillian's mouth, cutting off her shouts. Her eyes widened, and she attempted to cough it out, but Monroe held out his hand, forcing the dirt to stay in place with his power.

"Don't try to spit it out," he said kindly. "I can make that dirt go plenty of other places you wouldn't like. Keep your mouth shut."

Lillian glared at him, pure hatred in her eyes, but didn't make another move to spit out the dirt.

"Now," Monroe said, looking back at Charles, "I was being generous before. I offered you a rather nice deal, but I can see that you're a stubborn man, Charles. You have a certain set of ideals. I still think you would do well to join our organization, but I understand you need to be persuaded. So let me try again." He reached into his cloak and pulled out a knife, the very same knife that Charles had seen in the memories and had slit at least two children's throats. "Agree to keep your mouth shut, or your thief friend dies." He appraised Lillian who, despite being silent, was still thrashing wildly against her three captors. "She's a mage, is she not? Shame that she's not a child. We won't be able to extract her magick." He spoke plainly, as if he were giving a lecture on science as opposed to discussing the murder of a human being. "As one ages, magick digs in deep, like a pesky weed with a messy tangle of roots. So killing her would be a complete waste... but it'd be all your fault." He let the words hang in the air as a deadly warning.

Charles struggled to reach for the emergency potions in his pockets, but the cultists held onto his arms, restricting his movements. He saw Lillian's eyes, wild with fright, and finally cried out, "Fine! I'll keep my mouth shut. I swear. Just let her go."

But Monroe didn't signal for the cultists to free her. He only narrowed his eyes. "You swear?" he repeated. "Oaths are powerful things. Would you swear on your life? On your brother's life? Speaking of your brother..." Monroe reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small bottle of green sludge. Charles recognized the potion immediately. "It's been very convenient to have a future son-in-law with an expert potion-maker for a brother. I've bought so many of James' potions over the past year, but this one has always been my favorite. Helps me sort out the liars and keeps quite well in my icebox." He grinned, shaking the vial as he walked towards him. "Ready to open your mouth and prove your loyalty, Charles?"

Charles wanted to keep his mouth shut, but he knew he had to play along if he wanted to survive. Despite every bone in his body telling him not to, he let Monroe pour the vile liquid into his mouth. He did his best not to swallow, thinking that if he just held the liquid in his mouth, he could somehow prevent its effect. But the potion seemed to have a mind of his own, slinking down his throat and settling into his stomach despite his best efforts.

People can beat truth potions, Charles thought to himself, remembering Lillian's warning. I just have to focus... I just have to find the little truths in whatever I say.

"So Charles," Monroe asked. "Will you join our organization and keep your mouth shut?"

Don't say it, don't say it, he thought, and yet despite his mantra, words rushed out of his mouth. "I'll never be a part of this," Charles growled.

Monroe frowned. "Never?" He sauntered back up to the dais, knelt beside Lillian and glanced at the man who held her by her hair. Nodding, the man yanked her head back further, exposing her throat. Monroe then pressed the edge of his knife to her flesh; a thin bead of blood formed along the blade. "What about now, Charles? You're sure you can't keep my secret?"

"I'll keep lying to you," Charles shouted, wishing he could hold back the words but failing miserably, "until I find a way out of this! I'll lie over and over again to save her! I'll never join you!"

Monroe breathed out. "Well, this is unfortunate." He shrugged. "I guess it's time to say goodbye to your little friend. Perhaps watching her die will change your mind."

Lillian looked at Charles with wide, frightened eyes. She tried to spit out the dirt but failed. She thrashed around but couldn't break free. Charles tried to do the same, using every ounce of strength he had to try to throw off the men holding onto him, or at least reach one of the potions in his pocket, but it was useless.

Monroe picked up his spell book. He flipped through the pages, settled on a passage, and then began to read, his voice rising as he chanted in that horrific language. Soon the few remaining cultists in the room joined him, their voices filling the space. The air vibrated with an angry hum, the sickly song of murder. Then Monroe pressed the knife against Lillian's throat for a second and final time.

It happened so fast that at first Charles didn't realize what had happened. Lillian slumped forward, and for a moment he thought that was it, that she was dead.

But then he looked up and saw that Monroe was lying on the ground, and there was a woman with a bright red hair on top of him. "Cecilia!" Charles screamed, realizing that his fiancée had tackled her father. She had either been feigning unconsciousness for the past few minutes or had woken just in time to stop Monroe from slitting Lillian's throat.

Cecilia was still atop him now, and as she attempted to scramble off her father, Monroe lurched upright, eyes red with rage. "You bitch!" he shouted, taking the knife meant for Lillian's throat and driving it into Cecilia's stomach.

Everything that happened next seemed to occur in slow motion. There was a horrendous squelch as the blade met flesh. Cecilia screamed and stumbled backwards, falling to the ground. And Charles felt something inside him break.

"No!" Charles cried, struggling against the cultists that held him. In his rage, he could feel his power rising up in him, an odd sensation that threatened to overwhelm him. But with it came a brilliant moment of clarity.

He looked at the cultist on his right, a man who gripped his arm with clenched hands. Charles stared at the spot where the man's fingers touched his arm, concentrating on their shared connection where flesh met flesh. And then, like a current through a wire, Charles entered his mind.

Charles had never used his gift to purposely hurt someone else, but right now, it was the only solution he could think of. He started wildly grabbing at memories, yanking them from their currents with reckless abandon and siphoning them out of the body. With no vial to catch them, each memory dissipated into the air.

He only dared to waste a few seconds on this endeavor, but when he withdrew from the man's mind, he could immediately tell that he had been successful. The man let go of his arm and stumbled back, looking both dazed and tearful.

With his right arm free, Charles wound up and threw a punch at the cultist at his left, slamming him in the bridge of the nose. The man let go of Charles in an instant, hands pressed to his bloody nose, and like that Charles was free.

He ran forward, up onto the small platform in the front of the room. Lillian was struggling against the three men who were all trying to hold her down. Charles grabbed a vial from his pocket and threw it at one of the men; as the glass shattered against his head, the potion exploded in a daze of silver sparks. The distraction was just enough to free Lillian, and the thief scrambled to her feet and started fighting her remaining two captors, slamming her knee into a groin and connecting her heel with a skull. A second later, she had managed to fish two knives out of her underclothes, which she wielded with expert skill, metal flashing in the candlelight.

Knowing that Lillian was more than capable of fending off two cultists, Charles left her and raced towards Cecilia. His fiancée was groaning on the ground, her hands clamped over her abdomen with blood pooling around her fingers. "Cecilia!" he cried, but he was interrupted when something slammed into him from behind.

Charles stumbled, turned, and saw that Monroe was hovering in mid-air, the dark spell book in his left hand. "You're going to die, boy!" he said, pulling his right hand into a fist and causing the ground beneath Charles' feet to tremble.

He's one of the greatest battle mages alive. An earth mage, Charles thought. And except for the small platform he was standing on, the floor of this basement was nothing but dirt. Earth.

Charles had only three potions remaining in his jacket. He pulled a bright orange one out and drank it just as Monroe raised a large stone from the earth and hurled it at him.

The potion kicked in just in time. Suddenly, it was as if the boulder was moving at half speed—as if everything around Charles was moving more slowly. The rock still raced towards him incredibly fast, but Charles was able to dodge it, deftly stepping to the side.

Monroe wasn't deterred. He summoned more rocks from the Earth and threw them at Charles, one after the other. Charles dodged them as best he could, but there were so many that even with the potion speeding up his movements, he still couldn't avoid them all. One rock the size of a golf ball slammed him in the shoulder. It didn't do any major damage, but it stung horrifically.

Charles reached into his pocket, pulled out another vial, and threw it with all his strength. It exploded in silver sparks when it connected with Monroe's leg.

"Ahh!" Monroe cried in pain. But then his eyes narrowed, and he was flying, rushing towards Charles. Before Charles could process what was happening, Monroe had slammed into him, knocking him off the platform and onto the dirt ground.

They rolled on top of each other, grabbing at jackets, hair, and flesh in a chaotic tumble. Charles' fingers scrambled for his last vial, but Monroe saw the movement and swiped at Charles' hand, forcing the bottle to roll away, far out of the reach.

Monroe's hands clamped around Charles' throat, and for the second time that day, Charles' brain screamed for air. But this time, he knew what to do to stop it. Just like with the other cultist, he focused on their shared connection and entered Monroe's mind, yanking out any memory he could get his hands. Monroe seemed to realize what was going on because he suddenly let go of Charles' throat, forcing him out of his mind.

"You bastard," Monroe muttered, holding his head.

"Don't touch me again," Charles said, staggering to his feet.

Monroe eyed the ground and suddenly he was grinning. "I don't need to touch you to kill you." And then he furrowed his brow in great concentration.

Once again, the ground beneath Charles began to tremble. However, this time, the movement was confined to the dirt directly beneath his shoes. Charles tried to step away, but couldn't; the dirt roiled under his feet, moving and rearranging in such a way that he couldn't get out, and soon he was sinking, falling deeper into the earth. He reached out with his hands, trying to find purchase so he could climb out, but everything he touched fell away in chunks of dirt. Soon he was down in a hole at least eight feet deep, with barely enough room for him to extend his arms.

He's going to bury me alive, he realized with a jolt of terror.

Monroe's face came into view overhead. He grinned down at Charles, his face lit by the flickering of candles, and then held out his arm, palm open. "Goodbye Charles," he said, and slowly he closed his hand. As he did, the walls of earth on either side of Charles began to collapse. Chunks of dirt and rubble fell into his face. He tried to scramble out, tried to do something, but all he saw was dirt, dirt, more dirt—

Suddenly, Charles felt an odd sensation take hold of his gut; it was as if someone had grabbed hold of him, arms circled around his waist. But before he could piece that together, he felt a horrific yank on his gut, and suddenly he was launched into the air. "What?" he cried as his body burst out of the dirt prison, and then paused abruptly, hovering in mid-air only inches away from the basement ceiling.

It took him a moment to get his bearings, but when he did, what he saw was almost comical.

He wasn't the only one floating. Monroe, as well as the two remaining conscious cultists, were also suspended in mid-air. And despite Monroe's desperate attempts to fly, he wasn't able to move.

Charles looked down and what he saw made his heart soar. James had come back, but he wasn't alone. Standing next to him, arms raised to the heavens, was Juliette. Awake, alive, Juliette.

He had never seen the little girl so angry before. Her arms trembled with barely controlled rage, and she narrowed her eyes as she glared up at Monroe.

"I used to look up to you!" she shouted.

Monroe growled, extending a hand. The ground rumbled with his fury, but Juliette wasn't having it. She moved her arm in a violent arc, and with it, Monroe and all the other cultists fell out of the sky and slammed into the ground.

They lay still on the ground, unconscious from the violent fall, but James didn't seem to want to take any chances. He pulled a vial out of his pocket and started darting through the field of crumpled bodies, wafting his sleeping potion until he was sure everyone was out.

With that deed done, Juliette finally lowered Charles to the ground.

"Hiya, Mister Abbot," she said with a grin.

Charles ran and hugged her. "Juliette, thank Go..." he whispered, but then trailed off when he saw one of the bodies crumpled in the corner of the room.

"Cecilia," he said, letting go of the child and rushing over to his fiancée. Her eyes were closed and her hands rested limply on her abdomen. Blood stained her dress and fingers. She was still breathing, but just barely.

"Step aside," James said, forcing Charles to move away as he knelt on the ground. As James dug through his pockets, sorting through the different salves he had brought along, Charles couldn't help but pace. He felt powerless. He caught Juliette and Lillian glancing at him with barely contained pity, which only made him feel worse. It was then that he nearly tripped over something on the floor.

It was the horrific spell book Monroe had been reading from, lying abandoned on the small wooden stage.

Suddenly, Charles felt a rush of anger. This was the reason everything had happened. Without this book, Monroe wouldn't have learned the spell to extract magick from young children. Without this book, Charles wouldn't have been dragged into this terrible mess, risking the lives of everyone around him.

Without this book, Cecilia wouldn't be lying in a pool of blood right now.

Charles snatched the book off the ground and gripped it tightly, prepared to break the spine and rip out every page until not a single bit of the foul text remained. But then he paused.

Up close, the book looked different than it had from afar. It's... strangely beautiful, Charles thought. The wrinkled leather, the gilded pages, the thick stitching. Someone had put a lot of time into creating this book. It was genuinely one of a kind.

Don't get rid of the book, a voice purred inside his skull. You don't know what's inside. Perhaps there are other spells in here, ones you might like. Maybe one that will save your darling Cecilia? Or one that will make you better, more powerful. Don't you want that, Charles. Don't you?

"Charles," Lillian said, staring at him with a hint of confusion, "what are you doing with that book?"

"Rip the pages out!" Juliette encouraged, clapping her hands together. "Destroy it! They can't kill any more children if that book is gone."

But Charles could barely hear them. It was as if everything around him were a dream. These other people didn't matter. In fact, the book had a spell to deal with them. He just had to find it...

As if hearing his thoughts, the book's pages began to turn on their own accord, finally settling on a spell written in crusted red ink.

The letters on the page were twisted and strange, yet Charles knew exactly how to pronounce them. As he started reading, a feeling of euphoria flooded his body. How had he ever thought this language sounded wrong? It was like he was a conductor, leading a fabulous choir.

"The book is messing with his mind!" Lillian realized. "Juliette, get it away from him!"

Juliette gestured with her hand, attempting to yank the book of Charles' grasp with her power, but it was as if Charles and the book were one. It wouldn't leave his hands, no matter how hard Juliette pulled.

"I can't get it!" Juliette said with a hint of panic in her voice. "It's stuck to him."

"Use your lightning!" Lillian screamed.

Juliette's face whitened. "If I do that, I'll hit Charles! And what if... what if..." She trailed off.

Charles meanwhile didn't seem to care what was going on with the others in the room. He was wrapped up in the book's dark magick, the chant filling his head, tainting his blood. He felt magick rise up in him, magick he didn't know he possessed, and knew that once his spell reached its height, he would be able to get rid of those in his way, those who threatened the book and his ambitions, those who threatened to send him back to the life he had before, one of poverty and misery and nothingness...

"You have to do it!" Lillian shouted as Charles took a few steps toward her. His black hair was flying all around him, stirred up by an invisible breeze. His flesh glowed with an unearthly power.

Juliette seemed too shaken to do it. "James?" she said, asking for permission.

James had been doing his best to tend to Cecilia, but at Juliette's panicked cry, he turned around and saw the horror that was his brother. His jaw fell open, his hands clenched, but finally he closed his eyes. "Do it!"

Juliette winced and extended an arm. "SORRY MISTER ABBOT!" she shouted as a rumble of thunder echoed throughout the room, and then a bolt of lightning arced through the air.

The lightning hit the book with a flash of pure white light. Charles' whole body felt rigid and hot, as if every nerve was on fire. And then the world around him went black.