The appearance of the most gossip-prone student in our cohort was a definite wrench in my plans, but I had no more time to hide in the stacks. Spine stiff, I hiked up the strap of my satchel and marched down the aisle, letting my heeled boots clack loudly as I rounded the end of the shelf and stepped into sight.
The gossip went silent.
“Good afternoon, Amber!” Yoslyn’s voice was too bright to sound natural. Her green-eyed gaze strayed toward the shelf I’d just rounded. “Are you…lost? In the Fundamentals-year section?”
“Just reshelving a book someone left out,” I said, a bit surprised when the lie slid out easily.
“There are staff members who do that,” Keryth said. “Yourjob is to study, not to clean.” Her brow crinkled in an affectation of concern. “Are you well, Amber? You seem a bit…out of sorts.”
“I’m fine. Thank you for asking. Again. I’ll see you in the lab,” I added as I headed for the door, silently cursing myself before the words had faded from my ears.
Appearing at the lab would do me no favors. I wasn’t even sure how to properly set up my station.
Silence echoed behind me as I pushed open the left half of the double door into the hallway. I could practically feel both gazes on my back, but—
“Ow!”
“Oh!” I gasped, startled to realize the door I’d swung open had hit Cressa Baxter in the face. “I’m so sorry!”
“Theright-handdoor,” she snapped, clutching her satchel and her wax tablet to her chest. “We use theright-handdoor, so those exiting a room don’t hit those entering.”
“Yes, I—” Had no memory of that custom at all. Though it made perfect sense. “Again. I do apologize.”
The door swung shut behind me, leaving us alone in the dark-paneled hallway.
“How are you?” she asked, her irritation seeming to fade. “I can’t imagine how difficult all this must be.”
“Well, it will be easier when I stop assaulting people with doors,” I said.
Cressa smiled, her gray eyes crinkling almost sympathetically. “You clearly don’t remember being hit with one, the second day of Fundamentals year.”
“I— No,” I admitted. “I remember nothing from the past two years.” And somewhat less than everything from the year before that.
“Lennox came barreling out the ‘in’ door from the Refectory and hit you right in the forehead. You were stunned and disoriented and had to spend a night in the infirmary for observation, and I grew concerned that Wilder would beat him senseless.”
I resisted the smile forming on my lips. “Well, I assure you I won’t forget about the doors again.”
Cressa nodded, reaching past me for the knob, and impulsively, I put one hand on the sleeve of her blue frock.
“You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
She turned from the door, her face entirely clear of confusion; she knew exactly what I was talking about. “I hear a lot of privileged information in my role as the Bluehelm’s student aide, and I am not at liberty to divulge any of it.” Something inscrutable passed behind her gray eyes in the candlelight flickering from the wall sconce. “Some of us take our duties and obligations seriously.”
“To the Bluehelm?”
Cressa blinked. “To alchemy. To theAlchemary. You must remain focused on the goal, to the exclusion of all distractions, if you ever hope to achieve it.” She reached for the knob again, but her attention remained on me for a moment longer. “I won’t tell them,” she said. “Because it isn’t my place, and it isn’t their business. Butyoushould tell them.” She pulled the door open, lowering her voice to a whisper. “They’re going to figure it out soon anyway.”
With that, she marched into the library and let the door swing shut behind her.
She was right, of course. My illness—or my accident, or trauma, or whatever it was…While my academic struggle was none of my classmates’ concern, it would doubtless affect them, especially if we were paired for an assignment, or if I were invited to a study group.
Yet there seemed no good time, nor any good way, to confess to my current state of scholastic decline.
I clutched my satchel as I continued down the first-floor corridor into the foyer, careful not to let my heels clack against the broad expanse of smooth gray stone. Students were not allowed to remove texts from the library without express permission—a rule I’d been “reminded” of two days before, in a decidedly humiliating encounter with the librarian—and that I had several of them in my bag at that moment made me eager to go unnoticed.
I glanced into every lecture hall I passed and was tempted to linger outside a couple of them. To listen as the distinguished voices of professors whose courses I’d already taken explained concepts that had since become lost to the dark vault of my memory. But the fear of being caught kept me moving past sconce after burning sconce mounted on the dark paneled walls.
Relief cooled my overheated face as I pushed open the front doors and emerged onto the quadrangle, directly across from the statue of Emperor Eldon and his beloved Avalona, lovingly embracing in larger-than-life marble perfection. I’d walked past it daily for almost a week, but I hadn’t taken the time to admire it up close, despite my curiosity, because the quadrangle was usually spotted with classmates I wanted to avoid. Halfway between the noon and the evening meals, however, it was largely empty. So I crossed the lawn toward the statue. An alternating series of curved benches and shrubs formed a ring around the marble emperor and his queen, outlining a bed of crushed white stone at their feet.
