“What?” I asked.
Blood? Did that mean in the catacombs his wine glass had contained blood? And when he attacked me and cut my wrist, he was going to drink my blood?
“Yeah,” Isabella whispered. “It’s hard to get anyone to talk about it but there are mages who use blood as a way to gain significantly more powerful everi. Malakai told me at first it was a fun bit of foreplay—then he ditched me at the ball, and I found him with Saryna and confronted him, but instead, I found him drinking blood from Saryna’s neck like a fucking vampire. His eyes were red, Anna. Bright fucking red. Saryna was in bad shape and he let go of her when he saw me. I didn’t know what hit me. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital wing with Roslyn there.”
I sat down on the edge of my bed.
Isabella played with a strand of her hair. “It feels good to have someone to talk to about it. When I remembered Cody and Skylar, it was like waking from a dream only to realize it had all happened. Then I realized how you knew from the beginning that they didn’t make it.”
I turned to her, shocked. “Did they give you the memory back, or?”
“I have no idea,” Isabella said. “There’s still much I don’t understand. I think it’s going to take some time for all of this to make sense. It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
I looked at my hands. “Yeah, it is.”
I stoodat the top of the Northwest Tower, waiting for Isabella to catch up. It was the first day of the semester after winter break and I was starting all new classes.
“Are you sure this is where the Adept Wing is?” I asked.
Isabella nodded. “I didn’t make it to Adept for no reason, ya know.”
I shot her a wry look. “How did you manage to get there so quickly, anyway?”
Isabella shrugged. “I know my charm throws people off but I’m pretty smart too.”
I raised an eyebrow. I never doubted her intelligence, but there was something she wasn’t telling me.
“Uh-huh,” I muttered, the chill in the air reminding me I couldn’t be delving into Isabella’s hidden secrets right at that moment. Not when she was taking me on the scenic route to my first lesson as an Adept.
I was sure there was a balcony that wrapped the tower that rose high over the castle grounds.
“Go out onto the balcony,” she said. “You can’t see it until you are awakened.”
I eyed her skeptically as I muttered, “See what?”
She opened the door, and I followed her out, finding a sky bridge from the tower that certainly had not been there before.
It was a golden bridge that gleamed in the sunlight. It stretched far across the grounds to an opposite part of the castle that I had never been inside.
“It’s made of everi,” Isabella said. “Everyone envisions the bridge to the Adept Wing in their own way. Mine is covered in ivy and moss-covered planks.”
I blinked, and the bridge changed, now with better railing and a stone floor that appeared more structural.
“It changed,” I said. “Why would it change?”
Isabella giggled. “Yeah, mine has changed before too. It tends to adapt to what your mind needs at the moment.”
Oh. Structure and sturdiness did appeal more to me than thin twisting rails twenty stories high.
“What everi is it made of? Our own?” I asked.
Isabella nodded. “And the Aurkai’s. Try not to change its structure once you are on it. It tends to feel less stable.”
She ventured out onto it and crossed, pausing to look at me.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve never seen anyone fall.”
I took an unsteady breath.
