dark mages,” I said. “But you’re not a mage. You’re a witch.”
“Half-witch,” she corrected me. “Half-mage. Apparently, I take after my dad.” She paused, then clarified, “He was the mage. Well, he is the mage. Apparently he’s still alive. And he’s here, in Ember.”
“That’s why you’re here?” I asked. “You want to find him?”
“Wait,” Ethan said before Torrence could answer. “Let’s backtrack a bit.” He faced Reed. “How—and when—did you, Selena, Julian, and the Supreme Mages find Aeaea?”
Aeaea—the name of Circe’s island. In Utopia, I’d learned that Circe had the ability to move the island. It made her nearly impossible to track when she didn’t want to be found.
And she hadn’t wanted to be found by Selena, Julian, Reed, and the Supreme Mages. That was what had been taking them so long to find the island.
“About two weeks ago, the Supreme Mages used their magic to find the island,” Reed said coolly. “We were working on a bargain with Circe. Trying to find something she’d trade in exchange for letting Torrence go.”
“How was that working out?” Ethan asked.
“Not well.”
“Not surprised.”
“We anchored our boat to her island, so that if she moved the island, we’d go with it,” Reed continued. “Then, after about two weeks of unsuccessful discussions, Circe’s palace exploded like a bomb had gone off. It took out the majority of the island. We were only safe because we were on the edge of it.”
“She was trying to blast you out?” I guessed.
“No.” Torrence’s eyes were now completely black. “I did it. It was how I killed Circe.”
“You killed Circe? On your own?” I asked, baffled. Because Circe was far more powerful than Torrence. It shouldn’t have been possible.
“Circe pissed me off,” Torrence said simply. “She pushed me to a breaking point. So I killed her.”
Her eyes returned to normal, and they were so haunted that dread filled my body.
“Circe was toying with me.” Torrence’s voice shook, but she straightened and got ahold of herself. “For weeks, she’d been trying to seduce me. But it wasn’t working. She isn’t my type.” She glanced at Reed, then looked away when she saw he was already looking at her. “Eventually, she got impatient. You wouldn’t think an immortal sorceress would get impatient, given all the time she must have on her hands.” She chuckled darkly, then continued, “But she did. She tried to force herself on me. And when she did… I exploded.” She motioned her hands outward and made a sound like a bomb going off.
“You blew her—and her island—up,” I said, and Torrence nodded. “How?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But I did. I was the only thing alive on that island after the blast.”
I studied her, confused. Because something didn’t add up. If Torrence had been there, alive and free on the island, and the rescue party had survived the blast, then why weren’t they all safe on Avalon right now?
Why had the Supreme Mages turned on Selena and Julian, and why were Torrence and Reed in Ember?
“Hm.” Ethan looked as suspicious as I felt. “What happened after that?”
“Julian, Selena, Reed, and the Supreme Mages found me curled up where the palace had been, covered in ash. And then, the mages sentenced me to Ember.”
“What?” I balked. “Why?”
“Because she went dark,” Reed said. “Once a mage gives in like that, there’s no coming back. All mages who give into darkness are sent to the prison world. Ember.”
I waited for Torrence to deny it.
She didn’t.
Instead, she smirked. “I didn’t only kill Circe,” she said. “Because I wasn’t the only one she’d trapped there. She kept hundreds of men—men she’d turned into pigs. And when I turned that island to ash, the pigs went, too. All of them. Dead.”
“So you murdered hundreds of people,” I said darkly.
“Yes. And I don’t regret it.”
Reed gave us a look as if to say, See? She’s completely dark.
Torrence stood there, unaffected by her admission.
At least there was one thing clear from her answers so far—she wasn’t holding anything back. She felt no guilt for what she’d done. She didn’t even seem to care that her best friend was dead.
“What happened to Selena?” I asked. “Why did the Supreme Mages kill her?”
“Right after rescuing me—while still on Circe’s island—Selena tried to talk the Supreme Mages out of my sentence,” she said. “When they didn’t budge, she used her magic on them. Not dark magic—she wasn’t trying to overpower them. I think she was just trying to scare them. She’d been working with them for weeks, so