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“They’re everywhere,” I say softly. “Well, I haven’t carved any on my ass. Saving that for something good.”
He doesn’t laugh at my joke.
“Tell me.” Lonan’s voice sounds strangled. Desperate. He swallows thickly and lifts his eyes. Saints, I don’t know how I could’ve ever mistaken Galvin for him. His brother’s eyes are the deepest waters of an arctic sea. Lonan’s, though—brown that’s nearly black. Depthless. Ravenous shadows. “Please,” he says. Gentle. A little broken. And I can’t logically explain what it is about that voice that splinters my resolve.
“This is how my poetry works.” My chest tightens. “This is how I curse them.”
“Every time?”
“Every time.”
“He knows?”
“He knows.”
He shakes his head again. “No wonder you hate the Dark. Vesper, I can’t believe he’s making you do this.”
“I trust him.” Or I did. Before I found out he was the king of the Kingdom of Darkness.
I can’t possibly explain it to him—the way my chest hollowed out when my father died, the way Van Asten stepped in, gave me a home and a purpose, the way he anchored me.
“So do I,” Lonan says. “But this . . .”
I don’t understand. Lonan has been doing my godfather’s bidding for years, the same as me. Darkness is in his blood. But this is too much for him.
Gently, he runs his fingers over an old poem, one of my first ones, in fact. It’s old enough that the handwriting, my own, bears the traits of a much younger girl—the letters less refined, the verse elementary and pretentious in the way only novice poets are. Lonan swallows.
And then he does something entirely unhelpful. He leans down, and with my foot still resting on his knee, he lays a gentle kiss on my calf.
A new sensation runs through me—not the thirst for blood, not the unyielding tether I feel toward Galvin. This is something softer, something truer, something that sends a whisper of life through the shattered remains of my broken heart.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The top floor of Gossemort is where the worthless things are kept. Items both magical and mundane, long after their tenure on showcase near the school entrance, where they can be admired by visitors, find their way up here, to the Archive of Honors. Archive of Garbage, more like.
The objects in the room have the skin of my arms chilling. They line endless shelves and tables—art, old books, trophies, coats of arms, and all manner of strange and menacing things. A taxidermied creature with sleek black fur and too many eyes. A guillotine blade with nefarious stains on the rim.
“Just a bit farther,” Lonan tells me, stepping over what must’ve once been a very valuable carpet with a concerning brownish-red stain marring the center of it. I open my mouth to grumble at him—
“I say, who goes there?”
I jump and whirl in the direction of the voice. In a blink, my scythe is drawn and ignited, and Lonan is beside me, sword at the ready.
But there is no one. Piles of paraphernalia litter the floor. Stacks of trunks. A wardrobe. Motionless among it all is a familiar bronze bust on a pedestal—a grim-faced man with a mustache and bulbous nose, collar cutting up to his cheekbones, and a very shiny bald forehead.
Sir Egbert. He’s a favorite superstition among students. Fretting about an upcoming exam? Come give Sir Egbert’s head a good rub, and he’ll grant you knowledge and a sharp memory. Hugo would never face exams without a visit to Sir Egbert first. My stomach twinges painfully at the thought of Hugo. I can’t deal with that now.
I squint at Sir Egbert’s glistening head and bronzed eyes, taking a step closer. Something feels off. I could’ve sworn I saw . . .
Sir Egbert bristles its mustache, and I leap back.
“Oh, what ill-tempered hand of fate have I wronged that I find two Gossemort students lurking about this time of night?”
Lonan and I stare at the bust, frozen.
Sir Egbert narrows his beady eyes. “Could it be you’re searching for something? A quest for knowledge or wisdom? I’ll warn you, if you’ve neglected your studies, a magical sinciput isn’t going to do you any good.”
We both stand agape. Sir Egbert is a bust, not an enchanted one. He’s never spoken before.
