The thought was laughable.
Really, it was pathetic.
I hadn’t managed to get a single word out of Caelum Bones since the night he’d left me by the fountain above the Malcroix gardens.
I couldn’t even get him to insult me these days.
He must have found some other way to deal with his magical “problem.” Again, I’d likely never know what solution he’d found, much less who or what it entailed.
I had to get over it.
I had to get overhim.
I’d let Caelum Bones suck way too much of my emotional and mental energy already.
“Yes,” I said to Miranda. I squeezed her hand and smiled at her, and it felt almost real. “Yes. I will go to thatridiculousparty with you.” I quirked an eyebrow at her, tilting my head.“Now what was that you said, about getting dresses ordered this weekend? And just how much isthatgoing to set me back?”
Miranda blinked at me in surprise.
Then, looking adorably like her corgi, she positively beamed.
9
A Cold Night
Present Day
October 10th
The Eyrie
Malcroix Bones Academy Grounds
The next few weeks flew by in a blur.
On the plus side, I managed tonotget screamed at in Offensive and Defensive magic again, or sent to get beat up by Bones in his private practice arena.
I also never really relaxed.
I wouldn’t say I feltasmanic as I had over the summer. Even so, being cut off from any ability to know what might be happening outside of school, or with Dark Cathedral, or with the Priest, made me tense in a completely different way. At least during the summer, I’d felt like I wasdoingsomething. I’d been frustrated by our progress, by my difficulty with the traces, with how little we actuallyknew,but I had Alaric, and we’d both worked nearly every daylight hour of every day to bridge that gap.
It hadn’t fully occurred to me that all of that would simply cease, the instant I got on the carriage to Bonescastle.
I’d gone from being frustrated with our slow progress to feeling completely useless and totally cut out. I couldn’t even work on it much alone. There was my schoolwork, for one, which took up a crazy amount of time, but even beyond that, I’d lost my connection to both the royals and Dark Cathedral. Without Alaric, I had no access to Priest broadcasts, or even informationaboutPriest broadcasts, nor any knowledge about other current developments within Dark Cathedral. Alaric had warned me, before we got left London, that he’d likely not have access to much information himself, not without his drakai spies, as he was known as an “unbeliever” among the other royals.
Apparently, they all knew one another’s rough alignment to Dark Cathedral’s ideology. Alaric listed families and individuals as falling into a number of different categories that were used regularly by the royals themselves: “true believers,” “loyalists,” who didn’t care about the ideology but where loyal to their caste and station, “fence-sitters” who were likely waiting to see which way the wind blew, followed by “apolitical,” “not interesteds,” and “hostile.”
The hostile faction got generally shunned.
So did a lot of the “not interesteds,” if they were vehement enough to get lumped in with the “hostiles.”
Alaric told me he’d carefully cultivated the “apolitical” designation for himself, which kept him from being shunned, but also locked him out of most confidences.
He also told me he wasn’t keen to change that designation, in case it got back to his father, and because it would likely draw all the wrong sorts of attention. He promised to let me know when and if he learned anything either of us could use, but warned me that it would mostly be through luck, and from overhearing things not meant for his ears.
As for me, I’d been trying to give him space.
During the same conversation, Alaric warned me it would bring both of us grief if we were too open about our friendship, even if his friends and mine both knew about it. I suspected it was his friends who worried him, not mine, but I didn’t argue the point. I didn’t want to cause Alaric problems, especially given his worries about his father.
