I follow Fox up the ladder until we reach a wooden trapdoor blocking our way. Fox presses against it but it’s obviously locked, and he has to use his magic to break through whatever’s holding the trapdoor in place. Then carefully he pushes it back, telling me to wait as he disappears through.
I hold my breath, my hand hovering in the air, ready to strike at danger if needed, prepared to save him if necessary. But after a few moments he calls my name and tells me it’s safe to come up.
I emerge into another dark, dank, and empty room.
“Do you know where we are?” I ask him.
“Yes,” the Professor says. “Put out the light, Briony.”
I do as he says, and immediately we’re plunged into a darkness so black I can’t see anything beyond the end of my nose. Then I feel Fox take my hand in his and lead me. His eyesight is much better than mine, especially in the darkness.
I hear the creak of a door and we emerge into a corridor. This time there is a little light, and immediately I recognize wherewe are. The Professor’s room is only a few yards further on. We hurry there quickly, finding the door once again locked.
I expect him to snap it open with his magic almost immediately, but he has his shadows tentatively crawling across the doorway instead.
“Whoever secured the door,” Fox says, “may have placed an alarm spell.”
“What does that do?”
“It will alert whoever is the owner of the spell that it is being tampered with. They’ll know I’ve entered my classroom.”
His shadows continue to crawl over the door.
“So we can’t go in?” I say.
The Professor smirks at me. “It’s pretty crude magic,” he says, “and easily,” he pauses, “undone.”
The door snaps open and swings back on its hinges.
“Who placed the alarming spell on your door?” I ask.
“Sterling,” he says. “Has the marks of his magic all over it.”
“So he’s expecting you to come back.”
“Perhaps,” the Professor says. “But then again Sterling is a paranoid, cynical man. Who knows?”
We step inside his classroom and he uses his own magic to light the space. It hasn’t changed from the last time I was here desperate to find Fox after he’d gone missing during the trial. The Empress’s elite guard had ransacked his room looking for clues, and the contents of the classroom – the books, the benches, even the duster and chalk – lay scattered across the room.
“They were searching for clues,” I say, “trying to work out where you’d gone.”
Fox slams the door shut with irritation and locks it.
“I see they took a lot of care in the process,” he scoffs.
But he doesn’t stop to tidy the classroom. With my hand still in his, he drags me to his apartment at the back of the room.
This has fared no better: the contents of his drawers, his wardrobe, his bookshelf, even the covers on his bed, are strewn everywhere. He shakes his head with even more irritation, and then he has his shadows swimming across the room, quickly reordering and repairing all the mess and damage until, in a matter of minutes, the room looks as if it hasn’t been touched at all. The orderly neatness of Fox is restored to his room.
He shrugs off the tight-fitting jacket and lights a fire in the hearth, warmth immediately swimming through the cold dungeon room. I go stand in front of it, heating my numb hands and stiff toes in front of the dancing flames.
When feeling starts to creep back into my limbs, I turn back to the Professor, who’s still straightening things on his desk and examining the books on his bookcase.
“Did they take anything?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nothing I can tell. There wasn’t really anything to find. I have nothing to hide, Briony.”
“I know that.” I nod. “I have to go and find Fly and Clare,” I tell him, already striding towards the door.
