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Dulcie caught Palamedes’ and Camilla’s eyes as all the Houses left the shuttles, sending them a quick grin before her eyes skittered over the other Houses, assessing. The Third, which had just landed, was just as regal and self-satisfied as she’d always imagined them, though she did have to admit that they used it to their advantage--especially the thinner twin. She seemed to hide behind her sister, almost, though it was in no way out of shyness. She hid behind her sister like some of the weaker Seventh House necromancers hid behind illness--like a gilded crutch, not even bothering to pull on their own thanergy. Dulcie had never entertained such airs, herself--both because, having felt the inevitability of death for most of her life, she very much did not desire it, and because the extent of her illness functioned well enough for that sort of thing that she had no need to exaggerate it in any way, except to pretend, as she so often did, that she was feeling better than she actually was. Still, though--that girl was interesting, and Dulcie could already tell that she would either make an excellent inclusion to her little trio with Camilla and Palamedes, or be a definite, terrible threat to them all. Already, this was shaping up to be excellent, and she hadn’t even looked at the other Houses yet!

The Second House was almost to be expected; Dulcie nearly dismissed them out of hand, except for the fact that she never dismissed anything out of hand, not even Palamedes’ reckless and terrible marriage proposal. She had refused him, of course; he was one of her dearest friends, but surely even the Sixth House wasn’t that desperate for genetic material that they would pressure him into it, and if his House wasn’t behind it she would not consent to marrying the boy who, through his letters, was like a brother to her. Regardless, Dulcie didn’t pay the Second House much mind after whispering to Protesilaus that they appeared to be a walking advertisement for the Cohort.

The Eighth House was next; they were as intensely interesting as the thinner Third twin, being siphoners, though Dulcie could tell, looking at them, that they were probably intensely boring as people. Still, though-- siphoners. Dulcie would honestly rather die than siphon from Protesilaus (it was one of the very, very few things she would rather die than do, since she very much did not want to die, and very much did want to do a whole lot of terrible and reckless things that would make Palamedes faint from worry and give Protesilaus whole hours worth of content for lectures on recklessness and--possibly--make Camilla give that dry little smile Palamedes had described in his letters, when she disapproved of what you were doing but was simultaneously quite amused), but she had to admit the whole school of necromancy fascinated her. Siphoners! Of all the fantastically dangerous things to do--she had once had, on her list of Dangerous Things To Do, “be siphoned from” as a bullet point, but after Palamedes had spent weeks compiling all the resources he could find on how terrible of an idea it was, and Camilla dug up some first-person accounts of being siphoned from, she moved it to her secret list, of things to do when (if ever) she recovered, though only once, because she didn’t want poor Pal and Pro to actually keel over from a heart attack. She considered briefly asking the Eighth heir to siphon her, just for a bit, after she became a Lyctor--but, of course, she had to become a Lyctor first for that, and while Dulcie did had multiple whole to-do lists of reckless and dangerous things, she had not yet made one for after becoming a Lyctor. As strange as it sounded, she didn’t want to get her hopes up too high, before she made it.

After the Eighth, the Fourth: two teenagers, terribly, painfully young. They reminded her almost of Protesilaus’ children, although much less well-behaved. These children, she thought, might sneak her cigarettes if she asked--though, again, better for after she became a Lyctor. Baron Tettares, fourteen and innocent and nearly identical in built to his also-fourteen year old cavalier next to him, whispering among themselves and looking at--the Ninth House, the fascinating black-robed nuns.

Dulcie followed their looks, and, quite by accident, caught the cavalier’s eye, who gave her a rogueish grin and a wink. She smiled back with a slight wave, which grew only the more enthusiastic when the Ninth necromancer shot her a deeply poisonous glare. Oh--this was wonderful! She always did love to watch a budding romance, and between a cavalier and a necromancer--of the Ninth House, no less? Delectable. Their appearances did not shed any light on whether they’d be a help or a hindrance to the Lyctor trials, though the cavalier’s sunglasses were an excellent dab of personality and the necromancer’s possessiveness something that someone with slightly better self-preservation skills than Dulcie would decide not to mess with. She decided to keep an eye on them purely for entertainment purposes--though, of course, the Ninth heir might turn out just as much a rival or a friend as the slight Third twin. Dulcie would have to wait and see.

The next House, then, technically her final one to observe, was the Fifth, who were over next to the Fourth and were composed of a married couple--adorable and fascinating, in Dulcie’s opinion. Abigail Pent was a renowned scholar--even Dulcinea had heard of her, which was impressive, since she preferred to learn through possibly ill-advised experiments on her own body and books from both her House and Pal’s. Her cavalier and husband, Magnus, was at her side, currently seemingly teasing the Fourth House children. Abigail would be a good ally to have; Dulcie caught Camilla’s eye again, sending her a small, secret smile; she knew that the other girl would seek her out so that they could compare notes on who to collaborate with, and Dulcie only hoped that Pal hadn’t told Cam about her hopes of trying out being siphoned from; as dreadfully boring as the Eighth House appeared to be, if they worked together it would make it much easier to ask that favor--after, of course, Dulcie became a Lyctor.

As the small old man calling himself Teacher summoned them all out of the landing docks, Dulcie allowed herself a tiny grin of excitement. However these upcoming trials happened--however her future as a necromancer appeared--as long as she lived long enough to experience, this whole thing was guaranteed to be exciting.

“--reckless, stupid, ridiculous mess of a plan!” Mercymorn stopped to take a breath for what Cytherea guessed was the first time in the past two hours, which was impressive: even Lyctors, after all, still needed to breathe. “I can’t believe--you really thought that that would lure John down into Dominicus? Really? And that you could take him?! I have been working--for a myriad-- to do it and I still don’t know how good my chances are and--oh, just cut the bullcrap, Cytherea, and call it what it really is--a messy, convoluted, idiotic suicide plan!”

Cytherea shrugged. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Either way, you’ve just ruined it, and our best chance of killing John since, if you haven’t noticed yet, Wake failed. Gideon killed her and she failed.”

“So you’re going to kill the babies John is having bumble around to become Lyctors?!” Mercy shouted. “They’re babies, Cytherea, they’re hardly a threat to us! Babies! If they succeed, they’ll either decide to join us or be so weak they can’t get in our way! You stupid, ridiculous, idiotic, stupid, dumb--”

“If that’s true,” Cytherea said crossly, “then there wasn’t any point in stopping me, was there? After all, I would’ve just been able to kill them all and then try to take John--and if I failed, I would be dead and there would be no new Lyctors and no place to make new ones, and if I succeeded--then I succeeded! John would be dead! Of course, we would need to evacuate the Houses, but honestly, who cares about them... oh, don’t look like that, Mercy, I was only joking!”

“Some joke!” Mercymorn exclaimed. “I’d thought you were funnier.”

“Well, we haven’t spoken in almost twenty years,” Cytherea pointed out. “Some people would say that’s a long time.”

Mercy scoffed, as if to say that it wasn’t, really, not for them at least, and Cytherea was glad she didn’t actually give those words breath, because otherwise Cytherea would have had to tell her that it seemed just as long, and they could change just as much--twenty years for a Lyctor was filled with the same pain as twenty years for a person, when under attack from your own body and filled with the never-ending guilt and grief for nine dead cavaliers and five dead Lyctors--or, technically, almost-Lyctors in Anastasia’s case, but Cytherea was never one to bother with the technicalities--Samael had died, and Anastasia had lived without him, and she was as much a Lyctor as the rest of them, existing as half a person with two souls in their heads.

“Anyway, you know as well as I do that we need to kill him, sooner rather than later. Wake failed, Mercy, or didn’t you notice? The Tomb is closed. Alecto’s still inside. We can’t count on any help from her--we need to take things into our own hands.”

“And how do you expect to do that?” Mercy sniffed, as though she didn’t know exactly how Cytherea expected to do it--hadn’t spent two days yelling at her for how she planned to do it.

“Lure him here, where he’s weak, and kill him, Mercy,” Cytherea sighed. “Kill his fresh baby Lyctors so he has no choice but to come here and investigate--because no way in hell is he sending the Cohort to his precious Canaan House--and then take him down.”
“I don’t kill babies,” Mercy snapped. This was, Cytherea felt, a marked improvement from “I don’t kill God without at least thousands of years of planning”, though it wasn’t quite yet an enthusiastic “let’s kill God, right now, this year”. 

“You don’t think the babies won’t want to die once they ascend to Lyctorhood?” asked Cytherea. “Don’t you remember how it felt? How it feels?”

Mercy glared at her for that one, but Cytherea pressed on.

“I can’t live like this anymore, Mercy, and I won’t let anyone else live like it either! The guilt--the grief--I’ve only borne it so long because we’ve been at war, and only through ‘til now because we were going to kill him--but we failed! I can’t do it anymore, and I won’t let anyone else feel this--this dreadful loneliness!”
Mercymorn’s anger cracked, slightly, revealing a sadness that echoed Cytherea’s own, before she sighed.

“I hate you,” she said. “I hate you. I hate this! Your plan is terrible! But fine! Fine! We’ll call him, and we’ll talk it out, and--ugh. I can’t believe I’m willingly going to ask him to come here to-- talk, but fine. We’ll figure something out, and--by the River I hate him, but whatever we choose, you won’t do it alone.”

“Thank you,” Cytherea said quietly, and Mercymorn plopped herself down next to her, shooting her a sharp glare.

“You’d better be thanking me. Killing babies! Really! Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if the oldest among them wasn’t any more than seven!”

Dulcie had not been surprised when Camilla flat-out refused to add the Eighth House to their list of people to possibly invite to work with them. She was surprised at Cam’s insistence at including neither of the Third House twins--the smaller one, they both agreed, was just terrible to be around, but her pretty, personable sister, whom Dulcie wanted to talk to if only to ask how she’d gotten such a healthy, non-necromancer body, was also on Camilla’s list of No’s, mainly because she seemed like much too much of a pushover for her sister. The Fifth House, they’d agreed, they would talk to once they ran into each other organically--and Cam was sure they would, if only because of the friendship the Fourth and Fifth cavaliers had struck with the Ninth necromancer, Gideon, who seemed to enjoy wilfully angering her necromancer even bound with a vow of silence. Gideon had also somehow managed to try to befriend Cam and Pal--Dulcie was fairly certain that as long as you were a pretty girl, Gideon would show up sooner or later, and indeed Dulcie had passed many an afternoon going over her notes with Protesilaus as Gideon did push-ups in the corner, apparently fascinated by Dulcie’s dresses and curls, but not quite fascinated enough to actually attempt communication like she had with Jeannemary and Magnus.

That was quite alright by Dulcie, though, since she didn’t exactly want to draw anymore of Harrowhark Nonagesimus’ ire than she already did by being a pretty girl in Gideon’s vicinity and a rival necromancer. She was, in fact, fairly certain that the only reason Jeannemary Chatur still breathed was that she was explicitly too young for Gideon to have a crush on--and besides, Dulcie thought that Gideon’s crushes on Harrowhark, Camilla, Coronabeth, and Dulcie herself was quite enough for one person to handle--in fact, it was bordering even on excessive. Cam hadn’t noticed, thankfully, but Corona seemed to encourage it in the cavalier fight club that Protesilaus so loved, and that Dulcie had watched on several occasions, because honestly--how better to encourage cooperation than going over your notes on Lyctorhood at the largest regular gathering of cavaliers in Canaan House? Already she’d had quite the fascinating discussion with Abigail Pent about methods of communication between the original Lyctors, and the possible uses for the many rooms in the ancient house, and Palamedes had shown up, once or twice, engaged in passionate discussion with Harrowhark about different necromantic theorems. It was, dare Dulcie to say, great fun, and she only wished she could hold a sword to join in. This wish seemed to be mirrored by Coronabeth, who had nearly fought all of the cavaliers at least once, and had almost fought the Ninth House no less than five times, probably due to the clear attraction between her and Gideon.

Harrowhark, of course, hated this, and Dulcie had found herself subject to many of the younger girl’s rants on the depravity of the Third House. It was the closest she’d gotten yet to striking up a friendship with the Ninth House, and as it had only been a few weeks Dulcie held out hope for a fuller friendship, especially assuming that they would become immortal saints together. She certainly did not want to spend an eternity with people she hated, and who hated her in return; sadly, Harrowhark did not seem to return the sentiment, and seemed indeed to quite enjoy being contrary to absolutely everybody she met, including the cavalier she was so possessive over.

“I wonder when they’ll fuck it out,” Dulcie murmured to Protesilaus, who blushed at the thought before shaking his head.

“If they haven’t yet, I don’t think they’ll do it until after you’re all much closer to figuring out Lyctorhood,” he replied. “I don’t think Nonagesimus is going to be that interested in letting off steam until she’s trying not to use it for anything.”

“They’re hopeless, really they are,” Dulcie said. “I honestly am beginning to wonder how the Ninth House gets anything done--their necromancer and cavalier are so out of sync.”

Protesilaus shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past Nonagesimus to convince her cavalier to do that--it would get us to underestimate them a good deal more, depending on how in sync they actually are.”
“Maybe,” Dulcie admitted, though she deeply doubted that anyone could purposefully master the pure chaotic energy and seeming-hatred for their necromancer that Gideon exuded, despite her clear devotion. It was fascinating, and Dulcie knew she wasn’t the only one who thought it, since--well, the Fifth House was keeping close to them as well, and Dulcie and Pal had already commiserated on how, if they didn’t snap Harrowhark into their group fast, she might join up with Abigail Pent, and then they’d lose a potential ally and might possibly gain two genius rivals.

Of course, Harrowhark clearly saw Palamedes as a rival already. Dulcie would have thought of her as a lost cause if it weren’t for the fact that she clearly both looked down on and resented her. Dulcie was going to use that as an opportunity to change the girl’s mind about her and gain a powerful friend and ally from this or die trying--mainly because she had absolutely no intentions to give up on Lyctorhood or anyone on her and Cam’s “to work with” list until either she died or succeeded--and if she succeeded, Harrowhark and Abigail almost certainly would be coming to her with questions. Dulcie would have her way with her plan, damn it; no emotionally repressed teenage girls were getting in its way.

And, indeed, it seemed right not to be working--to be working impressively well, in fact, because Harrowhark and Gideon were accompanying Dulcie, Pro, Cam, and Pal out of the labs after Magnus and Abigail’s anniversary dinner, and was not arguing with Pal about theorems for once. 

Granted, she was complaining about Abigail and Magnus coming into the labs, but--small victories. Dulcie and Cam had privately agreed not to recruit Abigail Pent until she approached them, both because as a renowned scholar they wanted to see what she would think of on her own first, and because she seemed the most likely of everyone in Canaan House to ever willingly work with someone else. Besides--who else would snap her up? Ianthe Tridentarius was terrible and nobody, other than her sister, would ever willingly work with her. Coronabeth was much more interested in her cavalier fight club than the labs. The Eighth House as a whole was dreadfully boring and dreadful in general, and honestly Dulcie was fairly certain that, if they hadn’t grabbed Harrowhark, kicking and spitting, into their little group, she would have already tried to fight the Sixth House herself. Of course, that left the Fourth, but--they were already in thick with the Fifth House, and besides, they were children. Dulcie didn’t expect motherly Abigail Pent to share her dangerous research with actual literal children that she had helped raise.  

Harrowhark grumbled something about people gaining leads, and Palamedes, with the air of someone who had just stuck his hand into a lion’s mouth and was merely waiting for the inevitable regret, patted her elbow once and said, “Look, it could be worse. We could have run into Ianthe Tridentarius.”

“God, don’t remind me,” Harrowhark said with fervour, after shooting him a dark glare for daring to touch her. Gideon, meanwhile, was grinning brightly and with manic amusement at the show, as Harrowhark launched into an exploration of Ianthe Tridentarius’s many faults.

“You say that,” Dulcie said as Harrowhark’s rant wound itself down into another sullen silence, “but I think she’s quite the talented necromancer--after all, or haven’t you noticed, that her sister has a cavalier’s build?”

Harrowhark, Palamedes, and Camilla all turned to look at Dulcie sharply. Gideon opened her mouth, but closed it without a word after a sharp glare from her necromancer.

“You’re kidding,” said Palamedes, with the surety of someone who knew Dulcie’s jokes and knew also when she wasn’t joking at all. “Coronabeth--you think she’s a cav?”

“It would make sense,” whispered Harrowhark. “I haven’t seen her perform the slightest bit of necromancy--granted, she’s a flesh magician, so I’m glad of it, but still--Griddle. Next time she tries to duel you, go ahead with it, will you? I want to see her fight.” She glared around at them, as if daring the other five to contradict her. Nobody did. Gideon seemed, however, to be trying very hard to communicate something with just her eyebrows. Harrowhark groaned, and said, “Yes of course I’ve seen you fight, Griddle. Haven’t you noticed how people keep giving out information there? I do have to admit, though, you are something else with that sword.”

Gideon blushed through her face paint, and Dulcie got the very real pleasure of watching a beautiful, very repressed girl experience actual cardiac arrest in real time. Perhaps, Dulcie thought, Coronabeth and Gideon would not get together before Harrowhark figured out her feelings towards her cavalier.

However, it almost appeared that Dulcie would not get to see the end of this particular scene of the show, since the Ninth House split off towards their quarters almost immediately after this little exchange. Luckily for her, though, voices started up almost immediately after Harrowhark and Gideon were out of sight--one familiar, one not so much, although it was immediately clear who it was.

“I’m something else with my sword, huh?” Gideon said, gleefully. “I bet you’d like it even better with my greatsword!”

“Shut up, Nav, you’re supposed to be under a vow of silence!” Harrowhark hissed.

“Only when we’re around other people--seriously, Harrow, you know I’m even better with my baby--you should see it!”

“Absolutely not, I hate that thing.”

“Okay, but do you hate it hate it or do you hate it but secretly like it like Dulcie and Pro and Cam and Pal?”

Dulcie grinned at her friends, glad in the fact that Gideon was using their nicknames--she liked them!

“I do not,” Harrowhark gritted out, “like Septimus and Ebdoma and Hect and Sextus.”

“Uh huh,” said Gideon, clearly disbelieving. “Well I like them a lot. So there!”

Harrowhark groaned. “Good Lord, Griddle, is there anyone here you don’t like?”
“I don’t like you,” Gideon said, which was as blatant a lie as Dulcie had ever heard, but she wanted to keep listening so she didn’t call her on it. “Also, the Eighth House? Terrible and boring. And Ianthe Tridentarius has awful vibes.”

“Ianthe Tridentarius is a bitch, and she clearly knows more than she’s letting on,” Harrowhark said. “If you liked her I would have you committed to a mental institution here and now.”

“Your mom’s a mental institution,” Gideon said after a moment.

“Don’t,” Harrowhark said, her voice dripping with an anger and a furious familiarity brought on by a shared secret, “say a single damned word about my mother.”

“Right,” said Gideon. “Sorry.”

And if Dulcie had any prior doubts about whether or not there was something interesting happening with Harrowhark’s mother, they were well and thoroughly dispelled now. She caught Pal’s eye with a mischievous grin, but Camilla shot them both a disapproving glance and started herding them away, and despite Pro’s love of gossip that rivaled Dulcie’s own, he pushed her wheelchair down the hall.

“They’re our friends, not a novel,” he softly admonished her. “We’ll find out eventually.”

“Oh, I guess,” Dulcie huffed. “Still! That was just getting interesting.”

Dulcie was still thinking about the mystery of Harrowhark’s mother the next day as the six of them made their way back into the labs--Harrowhark had actually waited for them at the entrance that day, which was major progress in Dulcie’s goal of getting her to befriend them, and that had honestly just added fuel to the fire of Dulcie’s desire to solve the Mystery of Harrowhark. She knew Pro didn’t approve, and Pal seemed much more interested in befriending the girl than learning her deepest, darkest secrets, which Dulcie could hardly fault him for. With the exception of herself and possibly Gideon Nav, all of his friends had been earned through study and it looked like Harrowhark would be no different. Already she had a Pavlovian response to Palamedes’ presence, pulling out some bone or other and launching into impassioned discussions of theorems, and she was even beginning to forget her disdain of Dulcie and Camilla, since Gideon had started spending more time trying to fight the labs than making eyes at the two girls. Honestly, Dulcie couldn’t wait until they all became Lyctors and she could watch the Ninth House romance play out over the millenia.

“Pent’s in Lab 6,” Harrowhark said abruptly when they all got to the labs. “We’ve got--2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 already?”

“We’d have more if you’d ever heard of self-care or working with your cavalier before now,” Pro murmured, quiet enough that only Dulcie could hear. She held back a snicker.

“Right,” Palamedes said. “Camilla was talking to the other cavaliers last night. The Eighth House has the ninth key, and they don’t really seem interested in getting anything else.”

“Gideon discovered that Pent and her husband have the seventh key,” Harrowhark added.

“Which leaves the eighth key,” said Dulcie. “And then, shall we complete the trials in the seventh and ninth labs before trying to convince Abigail and Silas to let us garner a look at their keys?”

“We don’t know that there aren’t more than one key,” Harrowhark said.

“Well--” Dulcie said, “just in case. And, at any rate, with Abigail in Lab 6, we’ll find out tonight! Besides, if we get the last lab, it’ll make the cav fight club later much more interesting for us necros--all the information will be out there somewhere!”

Just as she’d expected, Harrowhark’s eyes glimmered at the idea of all the information coming out and coming to her, and at the thought of holding the majority of it--even if she held that majority in tandem with Palamedes and Dulcie. “The eighth trial it is, then.”

“Excellent,” Palamedes said. “Just so you know, if it’s something ridiculously and dangerously physical, we’re throwing your cavalier at it first.”

Harrowhark looked like she was about to protest, but then Gideon pumped her fist and did a little victory jig that made her Ninth House getup much less threatening and Harrowhark abandoned the argument that her cavalier most certainly would not be the one thrown into a potentially potentially dangerous situation before it was made to instead lecture said cavalier about looking professional and keeping up her reputation. Gideon stood and listened for all of two seconds before she started making an obscene hand gesture and Harrowhark let out a wordless shriek of rage before stomping off to the eighth lab. Gideon followed, shaking with laughter, and Dulcie gestured for Protesilaus to wheel her after them. Cam and Pal followed, quietly discussing what the trial might be--Dulcie was fairly certain that whatever it was, they’d already managed to guess that it was dangerous for the cavalier, which was why Pal had already mentioned throwing Gideon Nav at the problem and seeing how that all worked out. It was always better to give Harrowhark a little time to chew over an idea before it was presented to her, and they all knew at this point how the Ninth House had cracked the second trial: Gideon had happily gone in to fight the construct, on a whim, before becoming the first person Dulcie had ever met to successfully convince Harrowhark to do something she was dead set against, i.e., include her cavalier in anything at all, and, judging by the conversations Dulcie had overheard last night, she was now working on getting her necromancer to play nice with others. It was highly likely that, whatever this trial contained, Gideon would be rushing in with or without any input from the rest of them, and honestly, it was better to get Harrowhark used to the idea now. Dulcie was starting to get the feeling that she really didn’t know much of anything at all about her cavalier.

When they entered into the lab, the first thing Dulcie noticed was the stairs. Annoying, inconvenient stairs that would be a major hassle to get her wheelchair down. God forbid God invest in a wheelchair ramp--honestly! After her bucket list of dangerous things to do, she was going to make sure wheelchair ramps were installed wherever possible and necessary, regardless of their convenience or inconveniences when it came to nearby stairs.

Stairs! Dulcinea Septimus’s worst enemy, after the cancer. Technically, the trouble of stairs was caused by the cancer, so she could have technically lumped them both together, but one was an internal issue and the other external, and so Dulcie tended to view them as two separate enemies.

“Oh, how I hate stairs,” she sighed, as Pro got ready to lift her up and carry her down the offending architecture.

Harrowhark stepped away from the grate divvying the room in half and tossed something from her pockets onto the ground. “You could just ask,” she snapped, and then bone grew over the stairs, turning them into a rather lumpy ramp. Relieved, Dulcie let Pro wheel her down, shooting Harrowhark a bright smile.

“Thank you so much!” she said.

Harrowhark huffed and stalked to the grate. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she muttered, trying for dignified and failing as Gideon beamed at her and gave her a rather enthusiastic noogie, and she shrieked and kicked at her until she was let go.

Palamedes finished doing something on the far wall and the grate slid up. “Harrowhark,” he called, do you have any idea what’s over there?”

“It appears to be a entropy field,” she called back. “It sucks out your thalergy--traversing the room to the pedestal means instant death. Look.”

Harrowhark stuck her finger over the line and Dulcie, Pro, Pal, Cam, and Gideon got the dubious pleasure of watching decomposition happen in real time--though Harrowhark yanked her hand back out and fixed up her fingers before any truly lasting damage was done.

“That’s...God,” said Palamedes. “How in the hell are we supposed to deal with that?”

“I don’t know,” Harrowhark said, face screwing up as though the admittance were physically painful to say. “I have--theories, but--”

Dulcie frowned, sticking her own hand over before snatching it back, leaving it only a fraction of a second longer than Harrowhark did, because she had a reputation to uphold. “Stop me if this sounds too far-fetched,” she said, “but this is the eighth lab...the Eighth House’s trial. It almost certainly has something to do with siphoning. What if...and I know how terrible it sounds...what if we’re supposed to siphon...thalergy, or something, from our cavaliers in order to walk over to get the key?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” grumbled Harrowhark. “Using your cavalier to artificially extend your own life--how barbaric!”

“On that, we are agreed,” sighed Palamedes. “Perhaps we can convince the Eighth House to take on this trial, and then bargian them for the key.”

“Absolutely not,” snapped Harrowhark. “They’re nearly as bad as flesh magicians!”

“Well,” said Dulcie, “on my bucket list I do have--”

“No,” Palamedes, Protesilaus, and Camilla said in perfect unison.

“You all are cowards,” Dulcie pouted, but she didn’t push it as Cam suggested trying out the other trials and seeing how they worked, and if perhaps there were multiple keys.

“There probably aren’t,” Harrowhark muttered, seemingly unable to be happy with any chain of events.

“Well, I am not and will never ask that of Camilla--”

“And I would do many things for the Warden but I could not in good faith volunteer to do that,” added Camilla.

“And Dulcie physically can’t, and I can’t imagine you would ask that of your cavalier, so the other trials it is,” Pal finished.

“Harrow doesn’t need to ask, she’s not a pussy,” said Gideon--the first words she had spoken to any of them since she’d gone looking for Harrowhark and ran into them outside of the labs. “After Harrow gets it, you all can split it and do your necro thing like always. It’ll be easy.”
“Griddle,” hissed Harrowhark, “do you even know what siphoning entails?”

“Nope!” Gideon said proudly. She looked like she very much wanted to try to poke the entropy field, but, to everyone in the room’s immense relief, did not attempt it.

“I would be taking your thalergy, your life force, and using it to walk into a place of certain death, which would seriously drain and may even kill you. You would be giving it willingly--if even for a moment, one of us broke the connection, I would crumble into dust and you would still be seriously injured or possibly dead.”

“Okay,” Gideon said. “And?”

“Nav, I don’t think you realize quite how dangerous that is,” Palamedes said, face pinched.

“I realize that if you take the first three letters of your last name and the first three letters of your first name you get Sex Pal,” Gideon said.

“Oh my God,” said Palamedes.

“Not him! No relation at all, Sex Pal,” Gideon said, grinning.

“Please don’t call me that.”

“I’m sure that once Harrow starts siphoning from me I’ll forget all about it.”

“I am not,” said Harrowhark, with great disgust, “siphoning from you.”

“Oh, are you too much of a coward?” Gideon taunted. “I triple dog dare you. On the Locked Tomb.”

“Griddle,” Harrowhark said warningly.

“What, so you could go to the Tomb and do all that at ten but you’re too much of a pussy to siphon from me?” Gideon said. “I triple dog dare you. I quadruple dog dare you.”

“Nav, do you even know what a dog is?” asked Camilla.

“It’s a type of dare,” Gideon said. “Obviously. Seriously, Harrow, you’ve been doing super crazy necro stuff since we were babies. You’ve done and undone a crap ton of traps back on the Ninth! What’s so different about this?!”

“On the Ninth,” Harrowhark gritted out, “the only one I was risking was myself.”

Gideon laughed, at that one. It wasn’t the delighted laugh Dulcie had seen when she was with Magnus and Jeannemary and the other cavaliers. “Harrow,” she said, “we both know exactly why and when that’s not fucking true. Barring that, you’ve literally tried to kill me with your necromancy more times than I can count!”

“That’s because you can’t count,” muttered Harrowhark.

“Okay, fuck you, I have fingers. Anyway! Pretending you care about my health is such a fucking bullshit excuse.”

The Sixth and Seventh Houses made awkward eye contact around the arguing teenagers.

“I don’t care about your health,” Harrowhark snapped.

“Fucking siphon me then?” Gideon said. “Do you really want to be indebted to the Eighth House?”

“No,” Harrowhark muttered.

“Abigail and Magnus won’t do it. Ianthe is such a snake that she won’t share no matter what. The Second House isn’t doing any of this lab shit at all. And I was there last night when you all dumbasses were talking about Corona--she might not even be a necro. Face it, Harrow, this is your only chance. Don’t you want to be a Lyctor? Restore that piece of dying shit we call a House? You can’t do that if you don’t get this key.”

Harrowhark’s shoulders tightened and her mouth pursed. “Fine,” she spat. “But you’d better not whine to me about how terrible you feel.”

Gideon just grinned. Then she went rigid--then Harrowhark stepped into the entropy field. Gideon’s breath started coming in quick gasps, and then she screamed.

“Oh, fuck!” Dulcie exclaimed.

Palamedes let out a long stream of curses, and he and Camilla grabbed Gideon as she slowly toppled over and curled up, still screaming. Harrowhark’s face was grave, her teeth gritted, as her robes and paint and hair disintegrated and she made her slow, awful way towards the key. Gideon kept screaming. 

“Keep going,” Dulcie whispered, as Harrowhark stumbled, her steps faltered. “You can do it, Harrowhark. Keep going!”

Gideon let out a piercing shriek, and Harrowhark stopped cold for a moment.

“Focus, Nonagesimus!” Pal called. “If you turn back now, all of this will have been for nothing!”

Harrowhark had started walking again at Pal’s voice, but she sped up a little at the end of his sentence. Dulcie’s heart lept into her throat when Harrowhark grabbed the key--and then--she grabbed it and threw it as Gideon’s cries reached a crescendo and it landed with a clatter just outside the entropy field.

“Pro, grab the key,” Dulcie said quickly. “Just in case--someone comes in.”

Protesilaus nodded and carefully transferred Gideon’s head onto Cam’s shoulder, walking over to the boundary and stooping over to pick up the key, waiting as Harrowhark staggered over and finally passed the boundary, handing her his coat and the key as Gideon’s eyes rolled up in her head and she passed out. Harrowhark snatched the key, and, holding it close to her chest, scurried over to where Gideon lay, breath coming in sharp gasps that Dulcie recognized as coming from overworked, phlegm-filled lungs, her face white as paper with veins standing straight up, sweat like pearls dotting her face.

“Griddle,” Harrowhark said, urgently. “Griddle.”

“Mmrnk,” Gideon said, forcing her eyes open. “Fuckin...I feel like fuckin shit.” She paused. “‘M fine though.”

“You are absolutely not fine,” said Palamedes. “Nav, that was, excuse my language, the craziest shit I have ever seen.”

Gideon let out what was probably meant to be an enthusiastic whoop, but honestly sounded more like a deflating balloon. Palamedes ignored her. 

“If the Ninth would allow, I brought medical supplies along. I could treat Gideon.”

“The Ninth,” Harrowhark hissed, “does not incur debt .”

“You wouldn’t be indebted to us. Think of it as...repayment for your assistance in the siphoning trial.”

“Palamedes’ medical expertise is spectacular,” Dulcie said, “and he does love using it. Honestly, it might even be a favor to him .”

“Haha nerd,” Gideon said. She was ignored again. 

“I really couldn’t ask that of you,” Harrowhark said. 

“You’re not asking, I’m offering,” Pal told her. “It would be my genuine pleasure to treat Gideon Nav—with no strings attached.”

“Very well,” said Harrowhark, pride appeased. “The Ninth House accepts your offer, and thanks you for it.”

“Excellent,” Palamedes said, adjusting his glasses. “Er, Camilla, would you mind carrying Gideon? Only, you’re a cavalier, so I think you’d be better at supporting her than any of us necromancers.”

Cam nodded, and scooped Gideon up easily, Harrowhark hovering around them like a distressed, poorly-tempered bird. They headed back in a small herd, luckily not meeting anyone who might want explanations or, God forbid, want to judge them over this...everything.

“At least,” Harrowhark grumped, dropping to the ground next to Dulcie’s wheelchair as Pal checked over Gideon, “we have an excuse not to go to that ridiculous fight club.”

“Oh, I think it’s fun,” Dulcie said cheerfully.

“It’s boring and a waste of time when we could be studying the labs,” Harrowhark said. “Besides, I do not need the Third House aware that my cavalier is...indisposed.”

“You’re just jealous that Gideon has a crush on Coronabeth,” Dulcie said with a quick grin, “aren’t you?”

Harrowhark immediately flushed. “No! Of course not! I just--it isn’t safe .”

“Uh huh ,” said Dulcie. Harowhark’s flush deepened. Dulcie laughed. “I’m just kidding! And don’t worry--Gideon clearly likes you the best, anyway.”

Mollified, Harrowhark started talking about theorems again, and Dulcie let her. It was fun conversation, anyway--and besides, the six of them had eternity ahead of them for interpersonal gossip. 

Lyctorhood, Dulcie was certain, would be excellent .

Augustine announced his presence by immediately fighting with Mercymorn. Honestly, Cytherea wasn’t even surprised by this any more--after ten thousand years, she knew her sibling Lyctors better than they knew themselves. After he greeted Cytherea with a kiss to the cheek, he rounded on Mercy.

“Seriously?” he said. “‘Come to X21B, it’s urgent, so come fast as in sometime this year--this month if you’re capable. Dios apate failed, we might try something new’. What’s so important you couldn’t wait until the end of the century, to keep John from getting suspicious?”

“Don’t ask me, ask Cytherea,” Mercymorn said. “Besides, why would he get suspicious? It’s not like he knows what we’re up to. We’re on an asteroid near Dominicus, for fucks sake! He’s not going to know we’re here, and if he does, he won’t care! The important thing is you shut up and listen for once in your life!”

“I have very rarely done anything once in my life,” Augustine said.

“Then shut up and listen multiple times, you big ass,” Mercy snapped. “We have a situation here! Cytherea was about to go off and do something monumentally stupid--”

“That’s a first,” muttered Augustine.

“It was a good plan ,” Cytherea sighed.

“No, it was idiotic. You would have died. The baby Lyctors would have died. John would have lived, and you would have tipped our hand to him. We would have lost .”

“Wait, baby Lyctors? What baby Lyctors?” asked Augustine.

“Seriously?” Mercymorn said to him. “You haven’t heard? John’s making a bunch of infants try to become Lyctors on the First House! I bet they’re all teenagers , too. It’s so annoying!”

“You’re so annoying,” Augustine said. “Did you seriously call me here just to tell me that? I’d find out soon enough!”

“No, idiot, if I wanted to chat I would blow a hole through my own head first,” Mercy told him.

“Do it, then.”

“That’s enough , you two,” Cytherea said. “John’s not going to find us here. I took extensive measures to cover my tracks, so even if he does show up, he’s just going to think you guys decided to meet up to argue on some random planet instead of whenever he calls us all back to the Mithraeum--get it out of your systems before the children become Lyctors. And, Augustine, you’re actually here to be a tiebreaker in an argument Mercy and I are having.”

“I’m siding with you, Cytherea,” Augustine declared immediately.

“Wait until you hear the plan first, buffoon,” Mercy snapped. “ Cytherea wants to kill all the baby Lyctors, and then all the Houses, to lure John here and then kill him. It’s a stupid plan. I think that we should leave them be, and take care of them once they actually make it--if they do--or let them die themselves. Why should we risk it? We have actually important things to do, you know.”

“You know, we could let the ones who actually become Lyctors join us,” Augustine said. “They’ll hate John for it too, probably.”

“They’ll have done it themselves,” Mercy pointed out. “They’ll have chosen to kill their cavaliers. Why would they want to help us avenge them? They’ll probably be on John’s side.”

“I chose to kill Loveday, and I’m still trying to kill John,” Cytherea pointed out.

“So we wait another ten thousand years for them to go mad with grief and be ready for deicide?” asked Augustine. 

“We can’t wait that long!” Mercy added. “I mean--we’ve been decimated in just the first myriad. We are not waiting another.”

“Mercy, you can speed up the process!” Cytherea said. “You’ve memorized the human body for a reason--you could mess with their brains so that the grief and anger sets in faster and they join us.”

“Don’t be stupid,” snapped Mercymorn. “Only an idiot would rely on lobotomy to accomplish their goals.”

“What, do you have a better idea?” Augustine asked. “Because right now, that one’s looking pretty good to me.”

“I’ll shove a better idea up your ass ,” Mercymorn hissed.

Augustine made an offended noise, and then he and Mercymorn were off again, sniping at each other, going for the throats. Cytherea groaned, coughed, and reflected on the sweet release of death.

The only really unusual part of the cavalier fight club was that the Third House was nowhere to be seen. It was hard to tell whether Harrowhark was frustrated that she wouldn’t be able to have Gideon find out whether or not Coronabeth was necromantic, or relieved that the Third House heir wouldn’t be there to flirt with her necromancer. It was particularly hard to tell since, at the moment, she was engaged in a bitter argument with Palamedes, Dulcie, and Abigail about the purpose of the Lyctor trials. Technically, this was an argument the three of them had had many times, but it had been breathed new life with the inclusion of Abigail, who was convinced the secret to Lyctorhood was found in the bond between the necromancer and cavalier, and, because of that, there was a type of Lyctorhood for both necromancers and cavaliers.

“It’s ridiculous,” Harrowhark scoffed, like she did whenever she heard a good idea that didn’t come from her. “After all, we’ve only ever heard of necromantic Lyctors.”

“Maybe they’re more subtle about it,” suggested Palamedes.

“Cavaliers?” asked Harrowhark. “ Subtle ?”

“I think Gideon, Jeannemary, and the Third House are the only cavaliers that might not be subtle, actually,” Dulcie pointed out. “And the Fourth House are teenagers, so it’s only to be expected.”

Harrowhark huffed as, less than five feet away, Gideon bench-pressed the Fourth House. “That’s irrelevant. Do you really think that, over an entire myriad, we really wouldn’t have heard nothing about non-necromantic Lyctors if they existed?”

“Maybe they remain mortal,” Abigail said. 

The necromancers fell silent as they considered the implications of watching their cavaliers wither and die without them. Dulcie imagined keeping watch over Pro’s kids and grandkids and great-great grandkids. That would be uniquely lonely, she thought: looking for Protesilaus’s eyes or hair in so many strangers, people she never should had known. Dulcie absolutely hated the idea of dying, but she also hated the idea of watching her family die, and not being able to do anything about it, and so she lifted her chin and looked her friends in the eye.

“If Abigail is right and cavaliers become some incomplete version of Lyctors as well, then we should work to make it complete! We’re the best necromancers of our generation--we’ll definitely be able to make our cavaliers immortal, as well.”

Palamedes and Harrowhark nodded. Pal had that glint in his eye that Dulcie had begun to recognize, when he saw a problem and had started to recognize the shape of the solution. Harrowhark looked determined, as if even if there wasn’t a solution for the problem of the cavaliers she would claw one out of her own bone if necessary.

Abigail clasped her hands together and smiled at them. “Let’s work together to figure this out, then!”

First, of course, there was dinner. How could there not be? After all, they had all the time in the world to figure this out--they would eat, and discuss the particulars of their alliance, and try to keep Harrowhark from sulking too much over being forced to play nice with others. This plan, however, was interrupted with the intrusion of--who else?--the Third House. For once, though, it wasn’t dramatic, beautiful Coronabeth intruding: it was her sister Ianthe, the possibly-only-necromancer of the Third House, who was taking her share of dramatics. The limpid girl was coated in blood--mostly dried by now, except for some bright red, fresh blood that she appeared to be using as lipstick, and more curling down her hair, giving the impression of wet streaks.

“Holy shit ,” said Jeannemary of the Fourth House, nudging her necromancer. “Isaac, d’you see that? D’you see? That’s wicked , Isaac!”

“Oh, yeah!” Isaac said, staring. “That’s so metal.”

“I hope by ‘wicked’ and ‘metal’ you mean something that you absolutely should not emulate under any circumstances,” Magnus Quinn called.

“Aww, Magnus!”

“That’s so boring, Magnus!”

“What about when we join the Cohort, Magnus?”

“Yeah, we want to scare our enemies then, Magnus!”

“Absolutely not,” Magnus said firmly.

“Whose blood is that?” said Palamedes, rising out of his seat. Camilla and Gideon stood as well, and Harrowhark reached up to one of her many bone piercings, looking as though she was angrily adjusting them, though after a week and a half of working with the girl, Dulcie knew that she was preparing to create bone constructs--preparing for a fight. Gideon clearly noticed this too, her hand going towards the rapier on her hip as though she would draw on the necromancer of the Third House.

Ianthe merely laughed at them. “You really don’t know?” she said. “None of you! None of you could see...Ninth, I thought you had the potential; I guess I was wrong.”

Gideon looked very, very much like she wanted to tell Ianthe to eat shit, but instead she just scowled--looking incredibly intimidating--and her hand went to her rapier.

“Potential for what?” Palamedes said calmly. Harrowhark scoffed at him, clearly wanting to answer herself.

Ianthe, for her part, just laughed.

“None of you saw!” she repeated. “None of you! And I, the best necromancer of the Third House, of all Nine Houses, even--”

“Don’t you mean the only necromantic heir to the Third House?” Dulcie asked, and Ianthe looked at her as though she were seeing her for the first time. This would have been hot, had Ianthe not resembled anything so much as a bundle of bleached, overcooked, bloodstained spinach.

“...Yes. Though, not anymore.”

“Oh my God, she’s made Coronabeth into a necromancer!” Jeannemary whispered. “That’s so cool!”

“Wonder how she did it?” Isaac whispered back. “Last we saw her, it looked like she was about to stab Naberius.”

“What?!” Camilla said, looking from the Fourth House to the blood coating Ianthe back to the Fourth House again.

“I did not make Corona into a necromancer. That isn’t possible,” Ianthe said crossly. “No--I’ve achieved Lyctorhood, you idiots.”

“With what keys?” asked Palamedes. “As far as I’m aware, there were no duplicates.”

And we have most of them , Dulcie silently finished his sentence for him. It was probably obvious to literally everyone there, that the alliance between the Sixth, Seventh, and Ninth Houses had the most keys, but there was still no reason to confirm it.

“You really think I needed keys ?” Ianthe asked. “I’ve been two necromancers since I was a child. I was able to crack Lyctorhood with the trials alone through reverse engineering! Could any of you do that?”

Harrowhark scoffed. “If you’ve been able to crack Lyctorhood, where’s your cavalier? According to our research, both necromancer and cavalier should be able to ascend.”

Gideon faux-gagged, clearly disgusted with the idea of Naberius Tern becoming immortal alongside Ianthe Tridentarius.

Ianthe laughed and laughed at that, for an uncomfortable period of time. Dulcie noticed that her eyes had somehow...changed, swirling lavender and spots of brown. She informed Pro and then Pal, who informed Camilla and Harrowhark. Nobody told Gideon. Gideon spent enough time looking at the various features of the various girls in Canaan House that Dulcie was certain that she had already noticed the eye thing.

“You could say that Babs is here with me,” Ianthe said, “in...spirit.”

“My God, did you kill him?” asked Abigail Pent. Dulcie wasn’t quite sure why, seeing as the answer was obvious: yes.

“Technically, I absorbed his spirit,” Ianthe said, “but yes. That’s how you become a Lyctor, after all, though I shan’t explain it to you. I’m sure you’re all too dull to get it.”

Harrowhark sucked an offended breath through her teeth and clenched her fists. Gideon, for her part, officially broke her vow of silence in front of everyone.

“So how does the cavalier-death bit work?” she asked. “Like, if you want to share with the class or whatever.”

Ianthe sneered at her. “I just said that I wouldn’t be explaining it to you dullards.”

“Harrow isn’t a dullard, asshole,” Gideon snapped. “Or Pal or Cam or Dulcie. Or Abigail.”

“Then they should be able to figure it out for themselves, shouldn’t they?” Ianthe said, and she turned and stalked out, and the room immediately went into an uproar. Dulcie didn’t even try to try to calm everyone down; instead of riding the waves of the chaos as she usually so enjoyed, she told Pal to meet her with Harrowhark in the lab for the avulsion trial as soon as possible and gestured for Pro to wheel her away.

In the four and a half hours it took for her friends to arrive, Dulcie had managed to draw up theorems for the ritual that (she was fairly certain) Ianthe had attempted, as well as how that might begin to extrapolate into the Lyctorhood they imagined, pulling together Palamedes’ notes and Harrowhark’s diagrams into something beginning to approach a cohesive whole. True Lyctorhood, not Ianthe’s half-assed, crazed attempt. Dulcie shuddered to think what she must had done to her sister--so she saved that to think about when she was going to bed and wanted to think about something interesting and fun and entirely unrelated (...mostly) to her work.

When Palamedes and Harrowhark finally made it to the lab, not only were they both covered in a concerning amount of blood, but they were also accompanied by Cam (which Dulcie was happily unsurprised about) and Abigail Pent (whom Dulcie was surprised about, and reserved judgement on).

“The Eighth House is dead,” Palamedes sighed, dropping down into his seat next to Dulcie. “The Second needed to be talked out of calling the Cohort, and Gideon and Magnus are escorting the Fourth to bed before looking for Coronabeth Tridentarius. Everything is going absolutely to shit, and if we really have an insane Lyctor on our hands…”

“Remember, she reverse-engineered it, though,” Cam pointed out. “She could’ve--she probably did --get things wrong. A lot of things. Her Lyctorhood doesn’t have to be the be-all end-all.”

“Besides,” added Abigail Pent, whose eyes were darting excitedly around the room while Harrowhark scowled at her, “even if she didn’t get anything wrong, who’s to say that the labs and the trials are all the information there is? Maybe she was too fast. Maybe the whole cavalier-killing thing was a test, or maybe we’re supposed to figure out the final part by ourselves.”

“We’ve been given the variables and need to design the theorem,” Harrowhark said in a tone of wonder, as though she was finally handing some of her hard-earned respect over to Abigail.

“And we’ve already been working on--” Palamedes' eyes fell on Dulcie’s work. “Dulcinea, you absolute genius! If all of us work at it--”

“--And get eight hours of sleep per night,” Cam added quickly, with the exasperation of someone trying to herd necromancers to sleep for much of her life and knew the importance of getting that qualification in early.

“Yes, fine, that too--if all of us work at it, I bet we could crack it within the week!” Palamedes grinned around at them all, and they smiled back--even Harrowhark’s face opened slightly with it.

The next few hours were a bustle of work. Abigail was trying to catch up on what the other three were taking as common knowledge, and Dulcie, Pal, and Harrowhark were having to remember to take Abigail’s experience and knowledge into account. Gideon and Magnus showed up at one point and ended up taking a Bunsen burner to make pancakes for everyone, and while the cavaliers were convincing their respective necromancers to eat, Dulcie noticed Gideon pulling Harrowhark to the side.

“Look,” she said, “I know how important becoming a Lyctor is to you, right? And, technically, you already know how to do it. And it’s my fault why you need it so bad, anyway, since...you know, everything, so why not just get it over with?”

“Griddle, what the fuck,” Harrowhark said, and then she grabbed her cavalier’s ear and stormed out, muttering about idiots and saltwater pools.

“Well, that...happened,” said Pro.

“I guess they’re finally going to fuck it out,” Dulcie said, and took another bite of her pancake, pushing the new Ninth House drama out of her head as she turned back to her work.

“God fucking dammit!” Augustine shouted, kicking a rock. He turned towards Cytherea and Mercymorn, who were having a recreational argument as Augustine checked out his email. “The Second House had contacted the Cohort--we’ve got another Anastasia and Samael situation, there’s a fucking half Lyctor at Canaan House and they want us to make her go away.”

Cytherea swore as Mercymorn started muttering some very uncharitable things about the Second House.

“Well,” Cytherea said, when it seemed that Mercymorn wasn’t going to be stopping her tirade anytime soon, “this gives us the opportunity to take my plan, doesn’t it? After all, there’s three of us so we can all provide alibis, and when John comes…”

“It’ll be three against one,” Augustine said, darkly satisfied. “We could certainly take him--eh, Mercy?”

Mercymorn sighed, looking very put-upon. “I’m outnumbered anyway,” she said petulantly. “What’s the point in kicking up a fuss?”

Gideon and Harrowhark had not, apparently, fucked. They returned to the lab about an hour or so later, soaked through and, in Gideon’s case, skull paint running so terribly her face resembled nothing so much as one of those pre-Resurrection creatures called a zebra. Despite all of this, Gideon bounced happily over to Camilla and Magnus, crowing, “I’m a real cavalier now!”

Everyone turned to look at Harrowhark, who flushed through her paint. “We took the oath,” she said. “Also, I suppose you all can call me Harrow.”

Gideon whooped. Harrow shot her a quick glare. Gideon smiled back at her and blew her a kiss. Harrow flushed and looked away.

Dulcie smiled to herself. No matter what happened, she was sure that her eternity definitely wouldn’t be lacking in drama.

In the end, it was a bit over a week before they finally cracked it. The Second House was buzzing about someone coming to collect Ianthe, who had been smugly allowing them to keep watch over her while she made pointed digs at their so-called cowardice. The Fourth House was keeping an eye on them , and told either the Fifth House or Gideon what was happening depending on their whims and whoever was nearest. Coronabeth had slunk back out of whatever hole she’d been hiding in and the other cavaliers had enthusiastically taken up training her. Everything was going well.

“The question is,” Dulcie said as Camilla and Pro went off to get Gideon, “whether becoming a Lyctor will cure my cancer or whether I should try and do that before I ascend.”

“I would say it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Palamedes said, “but I know that we haven’t exactly figured out a cure yet.”

“Because my cells fucking hate me ,” sighed Dulcie.

“Maybe if we managed to stop it for a moment, and then you became a Lyctor, it would work,” Harrow suggested. “If Lyctorhood keeps your body in some kind of stasis--with at least the nerve cells reverting to the state they were in when you ascended--then that should work.”
“How much does Ianthe Tridentarius count as an example of Lyctorhood?” asked Palamedes. “I mean, she messed it up pretty extremely.”

“She still got at least halfway there,” Harrow pointed out. “We can at least use her state as a starting block.”

“Assuming we can, then,” Palamedes said, “Dulcie, I’d recommend that Harrow and I become Lyctors first, then the three of us can knock out your cancer and you can ascend.”

“As long as I don’t die for the next couple of weeks, that sounds good to me,” Dulcie told him with a quick grin as the cavaliers returned. The first change Dulcie noticed on Gideon was that she was, for once, not wearing her rapier. The next was the absolutely massive sword strapped to her back.

Harrow’s face went white. “What is that thing doing here?” she asked. “You were ordered to leave it back on the Ninth!”

Gideon just shrugged and grinned, looking like the cat who had eaten a canary. “I heard stabbing was involved in becoming a Lyctor, and if so, I want to be stabbed with my sword, not the rapier!”

“The rapier is your sword now, Griddle,” Harrow snapped.

“This is my better sword, though,” Gideon said. As if to prove her point, she swung it out of its sheath with a practiced gesture and kissed the blade as Harrow screwed up her face and looked away.

“Griddle, if that sword even comes near breaking my flesh--”

“Don’t be a baby, Harrow,” Gideon complained. “Look, you don’t have to be stabbed with it. We can stab you with my rapier even. But I want to be stabbed with my sword.”

“That’s what she said,” Dulcie said. Gideon burst out laughing, and Harrow pressed the balls of her hands into her eyes and groaned. “Anyway! You all should probably ascend in private...it seems like a personal thing, so Pro and I can go tell the Fifth House it’s all sorted out while you do it, if you’d like?”

Palamedes nodded, clearly glad that he wouldn’t have to get involved with the Ninth’s sword debate, and Dulcie waved at her friends before Pro wheeled her away and they headed towards the common area.

When they arrived at Canaan House, it was hard for Cytherea to fight back the wave of nostalgia and grief that slammed into her chest. She hadn’t been here since...God, since she’d become a Lyctor. She hadn’t been here since Loveday…

It was immediately clear to all three Lyctors that the girl who had been espoused as an “unhinged, failed Lyctor” was neither unhinged nor failed, and clearly the girl knew that too, since she smirked around the room before bowing her head to the Lyctors in false piety. She wasn’t alone in the room. She had allowed herself to be guarded by the Second House, though she carried herself as though she knew she could take them--which, even as a new, infant Lyctor, she almost certainly could--and the Fifth and Fourth Houses rose at the Lyctors’ entrance from where they were quietly discussing what sounded to Cytherea like a denouncement of eternal puberty. There was a cavalier there, too, seemingly without a necromancer, though her hair and eyes and posture were undeniably Third, and--holy fuck. Had the Third House necromancer killed someone else’s cavalier in order to ascend? That would definitely explain why the other heirs were so upset. Cytherea couldn’t imagine how she would have felt if someone had murdered Loveday to become a Lyctor, especially if that person wasn’t her…

“The Eighth House is the one listed as killed by the whelp in the report,” Mercy said, stepping to the forefront to Augustine’s clear displeasure. “Let me guess--she killed and ate the cavalier to ascend, his necromancer pitched a fit about it, she killed him too, and the rest of you are crying foul play?”

“No, Your Grace,” said the Second House, formal as anything. “Ianthe Tridentarius approached us at dinner a week and a half ago and revealed that she had killed and...yes, eaten her cavalier, Naberius Tern, in order to ascend to Lyctorhood. She also revealed that her sister Coronabeth holds no necromantic ability. The Ninth, Sixth, and Seventh Houses revealed that they believed her to have botched the process; apparently, they had come to a similar conclusion and put it aside as impossible to be asked of us and were working on an alternate solution. Things escalated, and the Eight House engaged Ianthe Tridentarius in battle and were killed.”

“Well, that’s it, then,” Augustine said. “No crimes were committed, no Lyctorhood was botched. We’re sorry to say it, but Ianthe Tridentarius has done nothing--”

“Abigail, it’s ready!” called a girl’s breathy voice. Everyone turned as the Seventh cavalier wheeled his sickly necromancer inside--a girl whose eyes were alight with deep excitement and looked like, were she able, she would be attempting some sort of celebratory dance. Cytherea thought that this girl might end up hard to replace; perhaps it was for the best that her plan failed. At any rate they would be killing them all now. “Cam and Pal and Gideon and Harrow are attempting it now, if you and Magnus would like to head down to the labs, and we have a plan to kick out my cancer before Pro and I ascend...oh! Oh, my, who are you?”

This was said when she lay eyes on Cytherea, Mercymorn, and Augustine.

“They’re other Lyctors,” Ianthe Tridentarius said triumphantly.

The Seventh House necromancer--Dulcinea Septimus--snorted. “Sure, alright. Where are their cavaliers, then, oh wise one?”

Ianthe smirked at her. “Dead. Like Babs.”

Dulcinea laughed at that. It quickly devolved into coughing, and her cavalier knelt by her, helping her cough into a handkerchief before they conversed in whispers for a few seconds before he stood and tucked away the handkerchief, glaring protectively at the Lyctors.

“Please,” Dulcinea scoffed. “I bet they’re just friends of yours you called to pretend to be Lyctors.”

“I can assure you, Duchess, we’re the real deal,” Augustine said with a smile that said he was looking forward to killing literally everyone in the room.

Dulcinea laughed again, this time a sharp bark. “Bull! It’s like I came here to tell Abigail--we’ve cracked it. The Sixth and the Ninth are ascending right now, they might even be on their way up as Lyctors, real Lyctors, right now! You don’t need to pretend .”

“We aren’t pretending,” Augustine said, annoyed, “and the Sixth and Ninth House are probably going to die horribly for botching the Lyctoral process.”

Dulcinea rolled her eyes. Her youth was almost a shock to Cytherea, who considered for the first time that her original plan to replace the girl might not have gone perfectly, if only because of the sheer youth and energy behind her sickly body. She may have been the best necromancer of the Seventh House, but her attitude didn’t seem to be in any way traditional Seventh. If any of the other Houses had known anything more than Cytherea had about her...she might have been in some trouble.

“Death is my House’s modus operandi,” Dulcinea said. “I would have seen it coming if they were going to.”

A clear bluff, but the faith in her coworkers was real. An enigma, that Duchess Septimus. Cytherea considered killing her last. And then--

“See, Griddle, Palamedes agrees with me. There is something seriously and deeply wrong with that sword of yours.”

“You’re just jealous that I can lift it and you can’t.”

“No, I agree with Harrow--there’s something wrong with it.”

“ You’re just pissy ‘cause your eyes are in Cam’s face and they were the prettiest part of you.”

“That is patently untrue, Ninth--look, we should at least have Pent look at your sword.”

“I happen to think the Warden’s looks are perfectly fine.”

“Well, he does have your eyes now, and you’re hot, so…”

“Shut up , Griddle, we’re almost back!”

A small, self-satisfied grin found its way to Dulcinea Septimus’s face as the door swung open and two fresh Lyctors stepped in, a girl and a boy. The girl looked so much like Anastasia it was breathtaking, though she was much scrawnier, and--Cytherea’s heart almost stopped in her throat--she had Alecto’s eyes. How in the hell had Anastasia’s descendant gotten Alecto’s eyes ? What the fuck had happened with the tomb? 

The boy, at least, looked normal, though, like Anastasia’s descendant, much too cheerful for someone who’d just murdered his cavalier.

Then the cavaliers came in, a Sixth girl and--sweet fucking shit--a teenage girl in skull paint who looked like Wake alive again, with dark Ninth eyes--Anastasia’s eyes, black as pitch.

“Sweet fucking shit,” Mercymorn said faintly. “That lying bastard...I am going to kill him.”

“That was the plan,” Cytherea agreed breathlessly, staring at--Wake’s daughter and her necromancer, one of two pairs of--of--

Well, of whatever the fuck John and Alecto had been, because Cytherea wasn’t calling them Lyctor and cavalier. She couldn’t bear it.

Augustine, always one to look at the best of a bad situation, clapped his hands twice. “Alright!” he said. “You have two choices: help us kill God, or die.”

Cytherea felt herself grin at the shocked faces of all the necromancers, cavaliers, and Lyctors. After all, for someone who came to gain eternal life…

Well, there was only the one choice, wasn’t there?