His gaze caught on the silver engraving on each of the marble statues. He’d seen them before, but only now did they give him pause. He moved closer to read them.
The engraving on the left statue readBlood spilt for the safeguard of knowledge.
The one on the right:Power eternal for the curious of mind.
The blood of the four founders, spilled under mysterious circumstances.
The knowledge of the Vault, accessible only to the college’s elite.
Like the very group who’d founded it.
A chill ran down Baz’s spine as he hurried to Clover’s table and plopped down in the seat across from him. “When exactly were the libraries completed?”
Clover combed through their research. “No specific date. But they were all completed on time for the college’s grand opening.”
“So, roughly around the same time the founders died?”
Clover blanched, looking up at Baz.
“We agree their deaths sound too ritualistic to be coincidence, right?” Baz said, heart pounding. “Four founding members from four different lunar houses, all of them dead within the same month, on their respective lunar phases, around the same time construction of their libraries ended… What if they weresacrificed? Their blood—their magical life force—spilled by the Selenic Order to erect the wards around the Vault. Wards that conceal the seat of the Order’s power. Wards that their own leader—the person they’d appointed as the dean—could have designed.”
Clover swore. “You think the Selenic Order would have murdered their own?”
“If it meant safeguarding the kind of knowledge they alone wanted access to? I wouldn’t put it past them.”
“The Selenic Order of oldwereknown to conduct lethal rituals,” Clover conceded.
“My guess is, the library founders knew they’d have to die. Why else would they not have grown suspicious of their peers getting killed one by one, each of them on their ruling moon phase?”
Clover rubbed his chin in thought. “The question remains: How do we unpick the wards?”
Baz’s mind raced. The Ilsker student had nearly bled out before he saved her. Wulfrid and his friends had been drained of blood.Blood spilt for the safeguard of knowledge. Power eternal for the curious of mind.
All these stories of mysterious student deaths and haunting presences…
Suddenly it clicked.
“Porpentious Stockenbach,” Baz murmured.
Clover raised a bemused brow. “The writer of ghost stories we were led to during the scavenger hunt?”
Baz rifled through their research. “Hilda Dunhall was a Shadowguide. Lutwin de Vruyes, a Purifier. Didn’t he write that other book we found in the scavenger hunt?Purifying Practices Against Evil. A book onexorcisms.” Baz’s heart thudded against his chest. “It can’t have been a coincidence what happened when the Ilsker student tried going past the wards. The library turning cold, that spectral wind howling between the shelves, the lanterns being nearly blown out…”
“Like a haunting,” Clover concluded.
Baz nodded. “What if the wards are directly tied to the founders’ deaths—more specifically, theirghosts?”
“How would that work?”
Blood spilt for the safeguard of knowledge.If all four founders had bled their magic—their lives—into the wards…
“Maybe Wulfrid and his friends had the right idea to form a group of four,” Baz said slowly, mind racing. “Just like the initial challenge they had you all doing. There were four founders to match the four libraries that sit atop a fifth—the Vault. If each founder’s ghost or soul is tied to the wards… maybe we need four people with the same magic. A Shadowguide, a Wordsmith, a Purifier, and an Unraveler.”
Clover caught his eye. Understanding rippled between them. If Baz was right, they didn’t need four people at all; Clover alone embodied all lunar houses, all tidal alignments.
He already had what they needed to break through the wards.
They went over their research again and again, coming up with ways to solve the ward equation. When at last they thought they had it, Clover’s excitement dimmed as a grim realization set in. “If we do this, I’ll be outing myself as a Tidecaller. My pull within the Order won’t matter then. I’ll be all but burned at the stake.”
