“Leda!”
I snapped out, startled.
Breathing hard, I found myself sitting on the stone in pitch darkness. It was like someone had switched off the light. I was so shocked at the sudden change, it took me a few seconds of staring at the receiver in front of me before I understood what I was seeing.
The green dial was completely black.
For a long-feeling few seconds, Alaric and I just sat there, staring at it, both of us breathing way too hard. I felt like I was choking on the cold oxygen swirling around The Eyrie’s roof, even though I was ensconced in warmth, inside Alaric’s chimaera, under his spelled blanket, with his warm body pressed against mine.
“What happened?” I asked finally. I could hear the panic in my voice.
“I don’t know,” Alaric said.
“But whathappened?”
“He vanished.” I heard the same quavering, manic, verging on hysterical notes in Alaric’s voice that I heard in mine. “He was talking and he just bloodyvanished,Leda––”
“Did he say anything? Before he went?”
“No.” Alaric shook his head vehemently. “Nothing.”
Both of us sat there on the soft pillows, breathing hard, staring at the dark receiver on the blanket, willing it to come back to life.
It didn’t, though. The dial remained black and dead.
Not a single sound came out of it. I didn’t see the round face so much as flicker, and no more magical mist swirled around the spiral in the center.
The Priest, whoever he was, was gone.
10
Strange Encounters
Present Day
October 13th
Malcroix Mansion
Malcroix Bones Academy
Nothing happened that night, when Alaric and I got back to our dorms. I don’t know what I’d expected to happen. Someone waiting for me in the Valarian foyer? Someone waiting for me in my dormitory bedroom? Whatever I’d feared, it never came to pass.
Nothing happened the next day, either, which was a Saturday.
Or the day after that.
I saw Alaric both of those days.
We’d exchanged looks across the expanse of tables both days, at several different meals, and Alaric even wrote me a note in our made-up code, telling me that everything was fine on his end, that he’d heard other royals gossiping about the cut-off transmission but no one seemed to know the cause. He assured me that no one had acted any differently towards him, and hehadn’t heard from his father, so he guessed we hadn’t been successfully traced, even if they picked up on our attempts to pirate their signal.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. I’d been wearing my mother’s crystal, and Alaric’s chimaeras were shockingly good. Still, I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t get the panic or that feeling of having been caught out of my mind. I imagined eyes on me, and couldn’t tell if the feeling came from paranoia, or if I was picking up on something real. It wasn’t until Sunday night that I finally stumbled across a real distraction, around eight o’clock Sunday evening.
An official-looking drakai wearing a black cap flew through the window at Frumpy’s, and handed me a thick, rolled-up parchment.
I’d received my first letter from Archie.
He’d written me fifteen pages in his small, mostly-legible script, all about the Sanctum Occulus and his life there, the food they served, the other Obeah students, his teachers, Valor and his wife, Esalia, a friend he’d made named Rosti, his fascination with primals and monoceri and wings and mirrors, the odd buildings and furniture of the Sanctum itself, his favorite teachers and classes. Interspersed throughout were at least twenty questions about me, demands that I write him back immediately, demands that I tell him everything now that I was allowed, and disbelief that I’d been in Magique all this time and no one told him.
