by Elena Lawson
“Well, whoever said that obviously didn’t know him,” she said with a little smirk.
Her long dark brown hair seemed lighter today. It looked as though the little bits of bronze and gold threaded through it were also now shot through with silver and gray.
Perhaps the new position was wearing on her. It dawned on me then how old she would have to be if she knew my father. Around 150, maybe? The prospect of living that long made me feel strange, though I didn’t think I had to worry about the added years. From the little we knew of mortal born witches; the common thing seemed to be a slightly more human lifespan. I wouldn’t live as long as Diana—or anyone else in the academy.
“I’ve made a decision,” Diana said after pouring herself another cup from the pot. “Well, two decisions, actually.”
“What decisions?” I asked, eagerly, seeing the excited gleam in her eyes.
“First, I’ve decided to begin Magical Defense training early. Starting next week.”
There wasn’t all that much time left in this term, but I could see why she’d want to start the classes now, after Lacey…
“That’s great—”
“And,” she added, interrupting, a large smile on her face. “Starting next weekend, I’ve decided to allow you to go home to Rosewood Abbey on the weekends—”
“Thank you!” I almost shouted, my chest expanding and body instantly feeling lighter than it had in ages. I could leave this place next weekend. Yes! Suddenly, I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to go now. This was the best thing she could’ve given me.
Diana laughed, barely able to conceal her own wide smile at my reaction. “Calm down,” she said, cooling her own laughter. “You didn’t let me finish.”
My shoulders slumped. There was a but wasn’t there. There was always a but.
“You can go,” she said. “So long as either Bianca or your familiars go with you. And only if you promise to only go to the Abbey, and nowhere else.”
“I promise,” I rushed to say. “I promise. I promise. I promise!” I squealed. “Thank you,” I breathed. “Really, thank you so much.”
She nodded. “Of course. Even I get a little claustrophobic being in these walls all the time.”
“I’m going to go tell Cal and Adrian,” I said, moving to stand. Diana stood with me, lifting the tray to clear it, and in the brief second when she bent forward, I caught sight of something on her ankle.
A small shimmering tattoo poked out from the top of her ankle-height boots. Inked in silver, it was a curling, looping sort of design. Three matching spirals all fused together by the strong shape of a triangle at its heart. Where had I seen that mark before?
I knew I recognized it.
Shaking my head to clear it, I took the tray from Diana. “Here, I’ll run it back to the cafeteria on my way down,” I offered, peering one more time at the odd design.
I wondered how young she was when she got it, and if she regretted it now. I’d always wanted a tattoo.
I’d have to ask her about it sometime. Not for the first time, I wondered how much different my life would be if my father married Diana Granger instead. If Diana were my mother, still alive, and we lived together at Rosewood Abbey.
The thought made me instantly think of Lara, a lance of guilt shot through my chest. Leo and Lara had been there for me from the very start, even though I didn’t fit their very peculiar mold, they’d cared for me for sixteen years.
And then, suddenly, I had an idea. I’d run it past them when I got to the Abbey next weekend. Lara would love it there—I hoped.
Giddy with excitement, I sped down through the academy and out into the rain. Unbothered that I was soaked within seconds of stepping outside.
“Harper, that’s great!” Bianca said later that evening when she got back. “I was hoping she’d let you spend some time away from the academy before your birthday. Sucks that you can’t leave the Abbey, though.”
I see-sawed my head. “Yes, and no. Honestly, I’ll take whatever I can get as long as it gets me outside these walls for a day or two.”
“Amen to that.”
“So, what do you think? Do you want to come with us next weekend? Cal and Adrian already agreed to come, but I think they only said yes to staying in a big old mansion in the middle of nowhere because I told them Martin makes a mean roast beef.”
She laughed. “Um, I don’t know,” she said after considering, picking through the fabrics on her lap. “I think it’s starting to hit my brothers that Uncle Sterling is gone. I want to be there for them, you know?”
I knew. “Yeah, I get that.”
“But maybe I could drop in for a bit?”
I nodded excitedly, happy to see she was looking a lot more herself than the last time I saw her. She came into the room like a whirlwind only ten minutes before, with fistfuls of shopping bags and a brilliant, white smile. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I commented.
She paused in her sifting of the new clothes with the big price-tags. “What do you mean?”
I cocked my head at her. “I mean about Lacey. You seemed really shaken up Thursday night.”
Her parted lips pulled themselves firmly closed, and a crease formed between her brows. “Yeah. I don’t—” she cut herself off with a ghastly shriek that made my ears ring with the pitch of it.
I jolted from the top of my bed and spun to look at what she was screaming about. “What—what is it? Another spider?” I asked, searching the stone walls around the windows, paying close attention to the corners. I shivered.
How was it that with everything we’d been through, a spider was what could undo us at the drop of a hat?
I didn’t find a spider on the wall, though. I found a face in a window.
It was Draven, knocking gently on the windowpane with the spine of my father’s journal. I blew out a breath and felt all the vertebrae in my back snap back into place.
He had to stop doing that.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Bianca whispered harshly.
I tossed her an apologetic glance and moved over to unlatch the window.
“Harper!” she shrieked.
But Draven was already inside the room.
Bianca rushed to cover up the massive amount of cleavage showing in her thin white undershirt. We weren’t exactly expecting company. I supposed we should from now on since Draven seemed fond of scaling walls and popping up right when you least expected him.
“Miss Matthews,” Draven said by way of greeting to Bianca, and I wondered when they’d ever had the chance to exchange surnames.
Bianca bit her bottom lip and cleared her throat, pulling on a thin sweater from her lap after she tore off the tag. “Draven.”
“Did you find anything?” I asked, not wanting to waste time with pleasantries. “Did you decipher it?”
“Slow down,” he said, handing me the journal. I flipped through several pages quickly, making sure everything was still intact and just as I’d left it.
“What is that?” Bianca asked, seeming overly interested in the little black book.
I hadn’t told her about it yet. Though not because I didn’t trust her, but because I didn’t want her getting mixed up in anything that might put her at risk. And after looking through it, I knew that this right here was the real reason my father was murdered.
I still didn’t know the particulars, but it was enough to know that I didn’t want anyone knowing about it who didn’t have to.
“I—It was my father’s,” I told her. It was a little late to hide it now. “Draven was helping me figure out what it says,” I added, trying to keep a level expression. “He wrote some entries in other languages.”
“Oh,” she said, “That’s neat. Can I see?”
My fingers clutched the pages, and Bianca, sensing the tension in the room, rose from her bed. “Or if you two would prefer some privacy…?” she asked, giving me a quizzical, raised brow as she looked between Draven and me.
“Yes. Yes, that would be great,” I r
eplied in a rush, tugging Draven to sit next to me on the bed. He came without complaint, but I caught his momentary flicker of confusion when I took Bianca’s offer.
Bianca grabbed a towel from the massive pile of black clothes still rotting away in her closet. “Okay, then,” she said, slipping out the door. “Just put, like, a sock on the door or something if you guys are going to—”
“Bianca!”
“Okay. Okay. I’m going.”
She shut the door behind herself and I slumped, leaning into Draven’s side.
“Are we doing something more than exchanging notes tonight?” he asked me with an infuriating smirk. “Let me know in advance next time, mon cher, and I’ll bring some toys.”
“Ugh,” I groaned. “Does that work on all the ladies?” I asked, pointing to the whole of his face. How his piercing eyes were offset by his black hair and his devil-may-care smirk made me want to slap him and tear off all his clothes at the same time. But he didn’t need to know that.
Draven’s stare only intensified as he leaned in closer. “Every single one.”
I shuffled a few inches to the left, putting some space between us so I could clear my head. Offhandedly, I wondered if he was using some form of low-frequency compulsion on me and that was the reason why I couldn’t seem to make my body not react to being in his presence.
“Just show me what you found,” I said, exasperated, handing him back the journal.
His smirk faded, and he frowned instead, his eyes darkening. “It’s going to take a lot more time to make sense of what’s in here than I thought. At least, if you aren’t going to let me show it to someone who knows more about code and ancient languages than me,” he ended hopefully, one of his brows raised.
“I’m not.”
“That’s what I thought, so, I’ll need more time, then.”
I knew he was all talk. “Did you manage to figure out what any of it meant?”
Draven’s sharp jaw twitched. “I did translate some of this entry,” he said, and flipped to a page written in the Melîn language he’s shown me before. “I dated a fae once. She taught me some of the language.”
He’d dated a fae? Even just seeing one in the mortal lands was pretty rare. They were nothing if not traditional and mostly kept to their immortal homeland of Meloran. How he’d managed to convince one to date him was beyond me.
“Ok?” I said, ignoring my impulse to ask him how he convinced a fae woman to bed him. “So, what does it say.”
Just then, I noticed the pen ink in the spaces between the lines of Melîn and in the margins. He’d written in the book! “You wrote in it?” I accused, my voice rising pitch. “Why would you write in it?”
His gaze narrowed, taken off guard. “I’m sorry if I—”
“Don’t ever write in it again,” I snapped. “This is over 150 years old. It belonged to my father, and it’s all I have that he—”
I choked back the words. Realized I probably sounded ridiculous and was overreacting.
The breath tumbled out of my lips, and I bit the inside of my cheek. “Sorry.”
Draven moved to place a hand atop where mine were holding fistfuls of blanket, and my talon-like fingers relaxed at the touch. “I apologize,” he said and when I chanced a look at him, I found an earnestness in his stare I didn’t expect. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have written in it.” He removed his hand and I flinched. “It won’t happen again.”
“Okay,” I mumbled.
“Now,” he said shuffling the journal and himself over so it was resting half on my lap and half on his. “Shall I show you what I found?”
I nodded solemnly.
“Here,” he said, and pointed a long finger to where he’d written a translation under the original script. “This references the reversal spell you said he was trying to create for the original curses.”
“Alright,” I replied. It wasn’t anything we didn’t already know then.
Draven pointed out another section, and I could read the writing under it that he’d added. To get information. A group? Coven? He’d written. “This part talks about getting information from a group. The way it’s written implies the group is some sort of organization. A secret one.”
“Manifesto?” I thought aloud. The name popping into my head at the mention of a secret group. “I think my father was a member. Maybe even one of their leaders.” As far as I knew anyway. I only had what little documentation I’d found in Sterling’s office to go on.
Draven narrowed his eyes at the parchment, as though he could make the foreign language divulge all my father’s secrets. “Maybe.”
“Anything else?”
He pointed out one last section near the end. “Just this, but I’m not sure what it means, exactly.”
Under the original text was what he’d written in blue ink.
Don’t tell. Danger if he (maybe they?) learn. A leader in control? He will not allow… something. They will all die if… something… blood? Maybe history?
It made hardly any sense. “I know,” Draven said, picking up on my confusion. “I’m still working through that section.”
I had a feeling I may know who the elusive they were that my father was referencing, but I wouldn’t say it aloud until I had more proof. If I did and anyone found out, it would be my head on the chopping block. Because who would believe that it was our current leaders who were responsible for the deaths of so many.
Before I made any hasty accusations, I had to be sure. And I needed to know why.
“You’ll figure it out,” I told Draven, flashing him a smile I was surprised to see him return. “I know you will.”
9
I didn’t know if it was just because I was so excited to leave, or if having Cal and Adrian close by had really served to brighten my spirits that much, but the week went by incredibly fast.
The Arcane Authorities left on Monday, and everything seemed to have gone almost entirely back to normal by Tuesday. The race to start studying for the ACE—Alchemical Comprehension Exams—was on, and the workload left little time for anything else. Bianca was determined to keep up her GPA, even though she didn’t have dear old Uncle Sterling breathing down her neck anymore. And as it turned out, she liked studying with a partner—which meant that generally, if she was studying, so was I.
It also made a perfect excuse for me to put a little distance between Elias and I. I still wasn’t happy about what he’d said to me in his cabin last week. I hated not seeing him, but all the professors were still on high alert, and several had taken to walking the grounds, keeping their eyes out for any sign of large animal droppings or intruders.
There wasn’t a trace of useable evidence on Lacey. Not a single hair. Nothing under her fingernails. Absolutely nothing that magic could trace back to the assailant.
All I knew was that I wouldn’t be going out to visit Elias any time soon, so we were stuck sharing looks in Arcane History.
Like now.
I dutifully scribbled my notes onto my parchment, copying the timeline he assured all of us would be on the exams next month.
“The dates,” Bianca whispered from beside me, looking over my chicken-scratch. “You forgot to put the dates. Those alone will be half the marks.”
Crap. “Thanks.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “How can you even read that? If you want, you can just study mine,” she added, gesturing to her pristine sheet of parchment. The timeline drawn with a ruler and all the little notes and dates were perfectly even, written in capital letters with such a precise hand I wondered if she’d ever considered a career as a surgeon.
Looking back to my smudged and messy note, I grimaced. “Yeah. Maybe that would be good.”
I was glad to see Bianca had all but returned to normal. I’d tried asking her one last time about Lacey and if she was alright, but she’d simply dismissed the conversation saying she didn’t want to talk about it. But she was still doing the thing where she obsessed over the placement of every single it
em on her half of our room—she’d even started moving around some of my few things. Arranging them neatly into little piles, straightening the quills into a neat line on my nightstand.
So, I knew she wasn’t completely fine. Not yet, anyway. But she would be.
The bell rang a moment later, and I eagerly shut my notebook, glad to be done with the lesson. I just had to get through the rest of the day now and I could go home—to Rosewood Abbey—with my familiars. I smiled to myself.
“So, are you going to try to come by the Abbey?” I asked Bianca for the third time that week.
“I’m not—”
“Miss Hawkins,” Elias called from the front of the room. “Could you stay back for a moment after class, please?”
My throat tightened, and Bianca gave me an apologetic look before she scooted out the door with all of the other students. I hadn’t told her everything, but enough for her to know that I wasn’t exactly thrilled with him right now.
Elias closed the door behind the students. “Don’t worry,” he said, turning to face me. “I’ll excuse you from being late to your next class.”
I gathered up my books and stood, biting the inside of my cheek. I didn’t respond, unsure of what exactly to say.
“I’m sorry,” he said after another beat of silence, and when I met his gaze, I saw the sincerity there. “It was wrong of me not to trust your judgment. And you’re right. I would have done it to protect you without question. I’m just—” he sighed.
I shook my head, sighing too. I didn’t want to harbor all these ugly feeling anymore either. And looking at him now, I knew that I wasn’t truly angry with him. I’d only been disappointed. But people said things sometimes without thinking. Hell, I was the queen of doing that at times. “It’s okay,” I told him, clearing the distance between us. “I just want you to trust me. That’s all. It sucked feeling like you didn’t—even if it was only for a second.”
I realized then that he was now the only one in my inner circle that didn’t know about my father’s journal, and what it possibly contained… or that I was doing my very best to find the person responsible for all those deaths.
