“Students dealing with notoriously deadly wards?” Cornelius’s eyes glimmered with excitement. “No one would bat an eye should something happen.”
“Precisely. You’d have to be careful who you target, but…”
“I think I have an idea.” Cornelius’s mouth curled up in a smile. He joined Thames on the bed, tenderly grabbing his face between his hands. “Whatever would I do without this brilliant mind of yours?”
The scene dissolved just as Clover’s mouth descended on Thames’s. The memory bled into another before Baz had time to consider what any of it meant.
Cornelius was being strangled by Wulfrid and still had the audacity to smile—to laugh—in the face of death.
“Do your worst,” he croaked.
Veins bulged on Wulfrid’s neck as he squeezed tighter. Cornelius’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, legs flailing and kicking as his body spasmed beneath Wulfrid’s. Thames had seen enough. He pounced, tearing Wulfrid off Cornelius and driving his fist into him again and again, something wild coming loose inside him.
“Enough, Thames.”
Cornelius pulled him up, looking completely unruffled. He righted Thames’s glasses for him, fixed the lapels of his suit, a crimson mirror to the white one Cornelius had donned for the party. He grabbed his trembling hand between his and pressed a gentle kiss to his bloodied knuckles. “There,” Cornelius murmured, and Thames felt the brush of healing magic against his skin, erasing the evidence of what he’d done.
Thames glanced at Wulfrid. “Is he…”
“Not yet. Though he’ll make for the perfect target, don’t you think? It was so easy to bait him.”
“What have you done?”
Thames and Cornelius whipped to the voice behind them. Three students looked at them with wide eyes—Wulfrid’s teammates. The burly Fröns student opened his mouth to alert the librarian on duty, unaware that Cornelius had already paid off Luce to be absent from her post tonight, given the party.
“Keep your mouths shut and do as I say,” Cornelius said, voice laced with the compulsion of Glamour magic. The three students went quiet. “Now grab your friend here and follow me.”
Thames was in the secret library room, assaulted by loud music and laughter. He flexed his hand, a phantom soreness after pummeling Wulfrid. His gaze caught on Baz, who watched Cornelius and Kai on the dance floor with an expression Thames knew well. “Cornelius is like that with everyone,” he said.
“Like what?” Baz asked.
“A shameless flirt. It used to bother me, too, at first.”
Lie. It still bothered him. He wanted Cornelius to have eyes only for him, but he was always chasing after those with the most interesting stories and magics. Everyone could be replaced at a moment’s notice in Cornelius’s eyes, his sister being the one exception, of course. But no one knew him like Thames did. Not even Cordelia.
If they knew the real Cornelius, they might see a monster. Thames only saw a scholar willing to go to lengths no other had the courage to.
“You’ve got something there,” Baz said to him.
Thames looked at the stain on his shirt.
Blood.
It must have gotten on him earlier. Thank the Tides his jacket was already red, making the stain look like nothing more than spilled wine. Still, he couldn’t risk raising suspicions.
He left the party to wash up, checking in on the four students as he did. Cornelius had Glamoured them to remain unconscious, hiding them away in a dark corner of the library. “Don’t worry, I put up a ward to shield them from unwanted eyes,” he’d said.
The plan was to deal with them after the party. But as Thames vigorously tried to scrub away the blood on him, doubt crept in. If Cornelius’s theory proved wrong, if none of these students turned into a Tidecaller, they would have four deaths on their hands.
They would be killers.
The party was over, the secret library room empty except for Thames and Cornelius and the three bodies splayed out at their feet. Dead, all of them.
The first to go had been the Fröns student. Drowned in a shallow bloodletting bowl that Cornelius had filled with the closest available liquid: moonbrew. Fitting.
He’d slashed a ceremonial knife across his palm, then the student’s, to combine their blood in the bowl, creating swirling trails of red amid the cloudy drink. Just like during the Selenic Order rituals.
Then he’d grabbed hold of the student almost lovingly, whispering in his ear, “Now fight for your life.”
