Autumnal tones have been sprinkled throughout the room. Red-brown bookshelves filled to the brim with books of every colour line the walls, their spines creating a disorganised rainbow of new books and some very,veryold ones whose spines are cracked with age. There’s a maroon rug beneath a cherrywood desk that’s impeccably tidy, with pens sitting perfectly spaced apart and parallel to each other. There are unopened and opened envelopes with elegant, slanted script on the fronts stacked in two separate piles, and on the corner of the desk sits a giant slab of agate.
It’s the largest crystal I have ever seen, about the size of a dinner plate. Its shell is rough and bumpy, but the inside looks smooth as glass, as if it’s been polished. Its rings range in thickness and colour, from the darkest brown to a slate grey, to greyish-blue and then finally a white in the centre. Visually, I never thought of agate as a stone I found particularly beautiful – there are far more fascinating ones out there – but looking upon this one, I can’t help but appreciate the calming exquisiteness.
I remove my eyes from the stone and see a map that has been framed and fixed to the wall behind the desk. It’s a map of Valmora, and it’s so …detailed.
I attempt to rein in my surprise as I scan every inch of it, feeling like I’m looking upon something I shouldn’t. Never in my life have I seen the full map of our continent. In particular, I have never seen a map that depicts the black inky spot sitting at its very peak.
A thick line shows The Veil, the barrier that separates Valmora and the blackened shadowlands on the other side, Nyris. The Veil is smaller than I would have thought based on the nightmarish stories I heard as a girl.
It’s only a quarter the size of our continent and yet, it’s feared enough that it’s been wiped from our maps and books, cleared from our history and is almost forbidden to speak of. Seeing that thick smudge of ink is a stark reminder of why Nicks trains students like Sebastian, Lillian and Jed into warriors. Of what happens outside of the walls of this academy.
I suppress a shudder, thinking of the warriors that are sent out to guard The Veil. The ones who have set up camp and been there foryears. It’s where Lukas would have ended up if he were still here and training at the academy. It’s where I could still end up.
Something shifts in the room. I feel him before I see him, like a wave of power rolling over my body and making my skin pebble.
‘Miss Nocthare.’ I pivot on my heel and find Headmaster Zain stepping out of a hidden doorway that’s covered by a thick velvet curtain. He closes the door behind him and tugs the curtain across a bronze metal rail to conceal it. I store that information in the back of my mind for later, wondering what could be behind it.
Bartollo’s long legs eat up the space between us. He’s clad in yet another three-piece suit, much like the one he wore at the ceremony, but this one is a deep cedar brown with a beige dress shirt beneath it. How early are these people waking up to get dressed like this? Who the hell has the time?
He gives a curt nod to the professors on either side of me. Kroff steps a few paces back to lean against a shelf, but Nicks stands right by me. I spare him a quick glance, wondering if his proximity is because he thinks I’m a flight risk and I could possibly be guilty, or if there’s aslight chance he’s trying to show a semblance of unity after referring to me ashisacolyte to Kroff.
‘Are you aware of why you’ve been brought here, Miss Nocthare?’ Bartollo asks, coming to stand before me. His mere presence makes me want to shrink away. He isn’t a large man, not in the way Nicks or Sebastian are – stacked with defined muscles that make you feel small just by standing beside them.
It’s Bartollo’s aura that makes him feel like he sucks up the empty space around me, filling it with his domineering presence. He emanates power and authority, and he knows it, too. I force myself to stand my ground and not wither in front of him, looking up into his eyes, expecting to see the same cloudiness I noticed on ceremony night. But they’re different …
His eyes havechanged.
At the ceremony, his entire iris was swallowed by that unusual cloudy blue, but now, a dark ring circles the outer part of his iris, and the smudgy blue has shrunk in severity.
‘Well?’ he prompts, snapping me out of my assessment.
‘Not entirely,’ I answer quickly. ‘Professor Kroff mentioned something about a student being hurt.’ The playing-dumb act feels ridiculous as the lie falls from my lips. But I want to hear whathehas to say rather than fill in the gaps myself.
‘Not hurt, Miss Nocthare.Murdered. A student was murdered this morning.’
I force the shock that I felt earlier back onto my face. ‘What? Who was it?’
‘Harley Vyger,’ he states, narrowing his eyes. Searching for my reaction. I feel Nicks’s and Kroff’s eyes on me too, waiting to see what I’ll do.
An innocent person would be appalled, even terrified to discover a fellow student had been murdered right beneath their nose. And while I am both of those things, Harley and I have history. He tried to kill me; strangling me to the point where I fell unconscious, leaving bruises around my neck.
Do they want me to act sad that he’s dead? Because I’m not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a monster; I sympathise that a young man’s life was taken away and that there will be people here, and outside of these walls, who will grieve and mourn him. Parents, friends and siblings. They will feel his loss like a knife to the gut, I know. ButIcannot fake grief for him. I’m still grieving the loss and death of my own brother. Someone whom I loved very much. I’m not sure I’m capable of adding more of that onto my plate.
I won’t. I’ll break.
Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but suddenly I understand how Xavier feels about his cousin, Daymon Davis. I guess the two of us make a fine pair.
What I am concerned about though, is that someonedidkill Harley, someone who is still out there and not inherebeing questioned. What if they hurt someone else? Someone innocent? I saw the dead look in Harley’s eyes before I passed out. I stared right into his blackened irises, and it was as if no one was really looking back. He didn’t see me; he didn’t hear my screams or feel the way my nails dug into his skin. Whoever did this, they had to be stronger than Harley, or they killed him before he could wake up and fight them back.
‘Harley’s … dead?’ I say it slowly, as if I’m hearing it for the first time and need a moment to process. ‘And you thinkIhad something to do with it?’ I don’t have to fake the distress that fills my face, because I truly have no idea why they are pointing fingers in my direction. I wasasleep.
‘What I think, is that you are the last person Harley spoke to, and given the hostility of that interaction and your family’s track record—’
‘My family’s track record?’ I blurt, interrupting him, which might be a terrible move, but I couldn’t stop myself if I tried. ‘What isthatsupposed to mean?’
I know what it means, but it aggravates me that he thinks he can say something like that to my face and expect me to, what? Just roll over and accept it? Stars, how did Lukas ever like this place?
‘I think what Headmaster Zain is trying to say is that everyone is still on edge about the tragedy that happened a few months ago.’ Nicks steps forward, which surprises me; I wouldn’t have picked him for the peace-making type. ‘I’m sure you’ve noticed there are a number of people here that feel somewhat impacted by your presence.’
