“You’re barking, both of you.Youespecially,” he added with a growl. “You’d think last year might’ve scared you off fucking around with these people, at least a little––”
“Last year?” I retorted in disbelief. “And how could I have avoidedthat,exactly? You act like I’ve gone looking for this stuff, Bones, when most of the time, it’s been hunting me! Now you’re angry that I tried to get ahead of it a little? What am I supposed to do? Sit around and wait for someone to come for me again?”
He winced, his expression pained.
He didn’t look away from me, though, and I saw conflict in his eyes.
“Can’t we just talk about it?” I asked, exasperated. “Do you know where he is? Alaric? Is there any way you could get a message to him?”
But he barely seemed to hear me.
“…Even if youdidfind out what they have planned, what then?” he muttered, his words holding a touch more venom. He pulled at the duvet with his fingers. “What do you even hope to accomplish? Do you think you can just go to your praecurus cousin with that information, and he’ll just snap his fingers to make it all go away?”
His eyes rose to meet mine. Anger shone in them again.
“I hate to tell you, Shadow, but in all likelihood, you’d just get your cousin killed if you did that. You might get some inkling of what percentage of the Praecuri have been compromised by Dark Cathedral in the process, but I doubt that knowledge will do you much good. Especially since you’d likely get taken out bya fire-curse or hauled off to prison, right after they silenced your cousin, his wife, and anyone else who got in their way.”
I stared at him, clenching my jaw as his words sank in.
Bones’s expression hardened as he stared back.
“…Or maybe you planned on going after them alone?” His tone grew mocking. “Maybe yourarroganceis so great, you think you can take out an organization that’s been around since the time of the Pharaohs, single-handed? Wasthatyour plan, Shadow?”
I didn’t answer. I could practically see the mask waver in and out over his features now. His magic was charging up again too, even though he’d just drained it. When I didn’t speak after a few seconds, Bones exhaled, rubbing his eyes with two of his fingers. Something about that, and the way he looked around the room blearily afterwards, reminded me, again, where we were.
“Do you have a way to get me out of here?” I asked.
He looked over at me, and frowned.
After a pause, he nodded, once. “Don’t worry about that.”
“You have flatmates though, right?” I felt a twinge of nerves. “Aren’t they going to wonder who you’re in here with? And who you’re shouting at right now?”
“I don’t have flatmates,” he said. “Anyway, the room’s protected. No one can hear anything. I could set off an explosion in here and it wouldn’t matter.”
I frowned back. No flatmates?
My mind went to the map of colleges I’d looked at, maybe a few hundred times by now. At various points, I’d studied every room in Valarian, and in Grathrock. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wondered which was his. I’d guessed he must be housed on one of the lower floors, since I’d never run into him in a corridor or anywhere near any of the toilets. I’d never run into him above the ground floor of either college at all. I’d only ever seen him inthe dining halls, the common spaces, the lower-level balconies, the foyers, and, occasionally, in the kitchens.
I glanced back towards the largest window of his room.
It struck me again that it was floor to ceiling, with iron framing, unlike any window I’d seen inside any room in either Grathrock or Valarian. His bedroom was enormous, too, easily three times as large as mine in Valarian, with four or five times as many bookshelves, and a whole study across from the bed. He also had three separate doors in the walls. The long wall nearest to the bed was curved, as was the wall where his enormous desk stood, under a second window only slightly smaller than the one by the bed.
The reality of that tall, half-curtained window near his desk sunk in only then.
He had windows on both sides.
How was that possible?
Being significantly more awake now, something else hit me when I looked back towards the window by the bed. While our views were roughly similar, the angle of his was a lot higher than mine. Miranda, Jolie, and I shared a room on Valarian’s highest floor, but Bones’s room was significantly higher than that.
Moreover, his line of sight to The Eyrie and Devil’s Fall was much more head-on. He was closer to both. His window stood nearly due south of The Eyrie, in particular, whereas my view aimed more to the northwest. Even from his bed, without me standing by the window, I could see both landmarks in significantly more detail.
We were further west here, and not by a small amount. My bedroom in Valarian was the furthest west in the entire building, which is how I had the view I did.
We weren’t in Valarian College.
“You live in Malcroix Mansion,” I said, bewildered.
