The Indigo Spell recap

Sydney is hunting two things at once: Marcus Finch, the Alchemist who escaped the order, and a witch who steals the magic and youth of young witches. The witch is Veronica, Ms. Terwilliger's sister, and Sydney - untrained, powerful and unprotected - is exactly what she looks for. Marcus, found at last, shows Sydney what she half suspects: the golden lily tattoo carries compulsion that keeps Alchemists obedient and silent, and it can be broken. He wants her to run; she wants to stay and protect her people. Meanwhile the search for Veronica runs alongside a Court wedding, a collapsing family and a road trip with Adrian, whose feelings Sydney can no longer honestly deny. When Veronica is finally cornered she has already been drained by someone else: Alicia, a young witch everyone dismissed as harmless, who has been building her own power and now comes for Sydney's. Sydney destroys her with magic she can no longer pretend not to have. She has her tattoo broken, refuses to leave the Alchemists, and chooses Adrian - just as her sister Zoe arrives in Palm Springs to watch her.

Previously: Sydney Sage, an Alchemist, runs the Palm Springs assignment hiding Jill Dragomir, the Moroi queen's half-sister, whose death would cost the queen the throne. Jill attends Amberwood Prep as Sydney's sister, guarded by the dhampirs Eddie Castile and Angeline Dawes, while the royal Moroi Adrian Ivashkov, bonded to Jill since he healed her, lives nearby. Sydney has exposed one corrupt Alchemist, stopped a restored Strigoi who was murdering young Moroi women, and learned that human magic is real: her history teacher Jaclyn Terwilliger is a witch, and Sydney has an unusual gift she was raised to consider abominable. Her friend Trey Juarez turned out to have been raised among the Warriors of Light, a human society that considers every vampire an abomination; when the Warriors captured Sonya Karp - a Moroi who had been Strigoi and was restored - the group rescued her, at the cost of Trey's place among his own people. Afterwards Adrian told Sydney he loved her. She refused him in her order's language, that an Alchemist and a Moroi together is unthinkable, and it devastated him. She has also heard, for the first time, of an Alchemist named Marcus Finch who covered his golden lily with an indigo tattoo and walked away from the order.

Sydney and Adrian are keeping a careful distance that neither of them wants, made harder by his ability to reach her in dreams. Ms. Terwilliger's training turns urgent: young witches in the area are being found drained of their magic and their youth, left comatose, and the woman doing it is her own older sister Veronica. An untrained witch with real power is exactly what Veronica hunts, which makes Sydney a target and makes finishing her training a matter of survival rather than curiosity. At the same time Sydney has not let go of the name Clarence gave her - Marcus Finch, the Alchemist who covered his golden lily and disappeared - because if he got out, the order she has served all her life is not what it claims to be.

The group travels to the Moroi Court for the wedding of Sonya Karp and Mikhail Tanner, where Sydney moves among Moroi royalty as an Alchemist on duty and as a guest, and where she and Adrian spend an evening pretending nothing is happening between them. Court also gives Sydney access to Alchemist business and to people who knew Marcus Finch, and she comes away with a thread to pull. Back in Palm Springs, Ms. Terwilliger pushes her harder, Malachi Wolfe's odd expertise proves useful again, and Sydney begins working the kind of magic she used to insist she was only humouring her teacher by learning. Veronica claims another victim, and the search for her becomes a hunt with a schedule.

Sydney tracks Marcus Finch down. He is living outside the order with a handful of former Alchemists who call themselves the Merry Men, and he tells her what he learned before he ran: the golden lily on every Alchemist's cheek carries compulsion. It is not only a health charm and a seal on their tongues - it makes them loyal, keeps them from questioning orders, and can be reinforced. It can also be broken, by a painful procedure and a second tattoo, which is what the indigo lily over his own is. He wants Sydney to break hers and join him. Sydney, who has spent months noticing what her order does not tell her, believes him, and is not remotely willing to walk away from the people she is responsible for.

The hunt for Veronica takes Sydney and Adrian out on the road together, and the distance they have been keeping does not survive it. Sydney's family is coming apart at the same time: her parents' marriage ends, and Sydney does what she can to keep her younger sister Zoe away from their father and out of the Alchemists, which fails - Zoe chooses him, and holds Sydney's interference against her. Marcus's offer stays open while Sydney puts him off. A young witch called Alicia attaches herself to the coven's edge, apparently frightened and grateful for protection. Veronica's trail leads towards a confrontation Ms. Terwilliger has been dreading for most of her life, and Sydney is the strongest weapon either sister has.

When Sydney and Ms. Terwilliger finally close in on Veronica, they find her already destroyed - drained and left empty by a witch stronger than she was. None of the obvious candidates fit, and the answer, when it comes, is Alicia: the frightened, helpless young witch everyone dismissed, whose weakness was a pose and who has been quietly taking power from every witch who underestimated her. She is stronger now than Veronica ever was, and an untrained talent as large as Sydney's is the prize she has been circling from the start. Sydney has spent the whole hunt being frightened of the wrong woman, and the person who has been closest to her preparations is the one she should have been guarding against.

Alicia takes Sydney, intending to strip her magic the way she stripped Veronica's. What saves Sydney is the power she has spent a year refusing to claim: she uses it deliberately and at full strength, and Alicia does not survive it. Afterwards Sydney cannot unknow what she is. She goes to Marcus and has the compulsion in her golden lily broken: from now on she can lie to the Alchemists, refuse an order and speak about the order's business while still passing as a loyal member. She refuses to leave with the Merry Men - staying inside is how she protects Jill and the others - which makes her an Alchemist in appearance only, a far more dangerous position than defecting. Her family has split in the divorce, and Zoe has chosen their father and the order. And Sydney, having accepted what she is, finally admits what she wants: she goes to Adrian and tells him, and they begin a relationship that would destroy them both if it were discovered. In the last pages Zoe arrives in Palm Springs, assigned as Sydney's new Alchemist partner and housemate.

Veronica Terwilliger is not the last threat: Alicia, the harmless-seeming young witch on the coven's edge, has been draining witches herself and is the one who finally put Veronica beyond reach. She takes Sydney, intending to take her magic with her, and Sydney destroys her - using power she had spent a year refusing to admit she had, and afterwards being unable to unknow what she is. Sydney goes through with Marcus Finch's procedure and has the compulsion in her golden lily broken, so that she can lie to the Alchemists, refuse them and speak about them without the tattoo stopping her, while still appearing to be an obedient member of the order. She declines to run away with Marcus's group: she will stay inside and keep her people safe. Her family has broken apart in the divorce, and her younger sister Zoe has chosen their father and the Alchemists. Sydney finally admits what she feels and goes to Adrian; they become a couple, with the certainty that discovery would destroy them both. In the last pages Zoe arrives in Palm Springs as Sydney's new Alchemist partner, sent to live beside her and report on everything she does.