by Isla Frost
Somehow I didn’t think she’d be swayed around to my way of thinking.
There were only a couple of inches between the wardrobe and the wall it sat against, but with persistence and a great deal of shoving and wriggling, I managed to shift my temporary prison far enough to enable my escape.
I squirmed out of the jagged hole I’d created, shuffled sideways around the wardrobe, and returned at last to the rosewood desk where it had all begun. Thank every saint of thieves and snooping. Despite the exertion, my breaths came easier out here.
But I didn’t have time to linger. Someone might’ve heard me, and if not, Millicent might be mad enough to throw a professor out of bed.
I retrieved my wand and lockpicks, then did a quick survey of the room. For bonus points, breaking out the back of the cupboard meant whoever this office belonged to—aside from Millicent herself—might fail to realize what I’d done. For a while at least.
I was so exhausted a magical repair attempt was out of the question. It was a miracle my wand was still glowing.
But if I wanted a chance of my break-in going unnoticed, that open, empty iron chest was another matter entirely.
My heart started galloping like a three-legged horse. The circlet. I had to return it.
I groaned. I didn’t want to so much as go near it again. There was no damn way I was about to touch it.
So I selected a book from the shelf, slid my wand into my belt clip, and returned reluctantly to the wardrobe. On the off chance it had unjammed itself since my escape, I tried the door first. It swung open without resistance.
Relief and annoyance fought for dominance. I chose gratitude. A wary kind of gratitude in case Millicent was planning to smack me with the door that just opened, but still. It wasn’t like I couldn’t escape a second time. And it would be a lot easier to remove the circlet without accidentally touching it this way.
The evil thing was still where it’d landed—thrown from my head as I’d fallen backward into the wardrobe. Even looking at it made me uncomfortable, so I averted my gaze and clasped it between the pages of the book.
Hands outstretched, I carried it gingerly over to the waiting chest, dropped it inside, and shut the etched iron lid. The miniature dragon climbed up the case and wrapped his tail around the padlock loops before returning to what seemed like ordinary, lifeless steel.
My shoulders relaxed a fraction. But if someone was coming for me, I wasn’t sticking around to greet them.
I snapped the second lock into place, shuffled the hangers in the wardrobe to hide the gaping hole, and shoved the whole thing back into place against the wall. A final glance around the office didn’t reveal any obvious signs of my intrusion except for my map of Millicent, which I grabbed. It would have to do.
Fatigue pulled at me as I slipped from the room, urging me toward my bed. I felt less horrible than when I’d first been released from the circlet’s power, but that wasn’t saying much.
Besides, Millicent clearly did care if I was snooping. Or her grudge meant she wanted to thwart me at every turn regardless. Either way, I wasn’t going to get far unless I could convince her we’d just gotten off on the wrong foot.
But coming up with a way to reconcile with a sentient building was beyond my current abilities. So I gave up fighting the fatigue and headed for my dorm room.
Which was when Theus found me.
He’d been walking through the halls without the aid of a light, which would’ve made it easy to spot mine. Darn walkers and their superior everythings. And when I turned down a junction of the corridor, there he was.
My overwrought heart started galloping again. Did he know what I was up to? Would he throw me to the wolves (or the professors—which might be worse) if he did?
How could I explain my presence? The bathroom was in the opposite direction, so that explanation was out. Unless he’d believe I was stupid enough to forget.
Yeah, that might work.
Except my notebook was still open to Dunraven’s map. And who knew what state of dishevelment I was in after the dragon flame, the circlet, and the wardrobe?
He, on the other hand, was just as striking as I remembered. His only concession to the late hour being his chestnut hair that was slightly more unruly than usual.
Then my instincts kicked into gear, alerting me I was in the vicinity of a predator, and my mind went racing off in another direction.
What if the academy ruse was just an odd game they liked to play before they ate us? Or a distraction to keep the livestock from panicking while they picked us off one by one? After all, chronic terror couldn’t do good things for the quality of one’s meat supply.
And if we were here to be slowly consumed, what better place to single one out from the herd than in the middle of the night with the storm to cover my screams?
But Theus did not attack me. Nor did he threaten to call the teachers. Though I couldn’t rule out the possibility he’d done so through magical means beyond my ability to sense.
Instead, he said, “You’re the girl from the trial. The one that saved the flum kid with quick thinking and an impressive throw. Nova, right?”
I wet my lips, uncertain whether him remembering me was good or bad.
“That’s me.” The words came out a smidgen higher than I’d have preferred. “And you’re the one that saved all of us. Eventually.” I couldn’t help but amend.
Then I remembered my resolution to play nice—but not too nice with the pretty walkers, and added, “Hope the points were worth it.”
His eyes crinkled, but he didn’t elect to comment. “What are you looking for?” he asked instead.
I had the distinct feeling that answering my bed wouldn’t cut it. So I lifted my chin. Why should I bother hiding the truth? Or at least part of the truth. I wasn’t the one in the wrong here.
“I wanted to find the firstborns that came here in previous years.”
All of them, but one in particular.
Theus went against my expectations by offering me information. Sort of.
“They’re not here.”
“Then where are they?”
“It’s not my place to say.”
I clamped down my frustration. Why the hell was everybody at this academy so damn secretive? What were they afraid we’d find out? Or do with that knowledge?
I reframed the frustration in my mind. If they were secretive, they had something to hide. And if they bothered to hide it from the pathetic humans, then logic suggested the walkers must be vulnerable. Somewhere. Somehow. A vulnerability I might one day exploit.
If I played my cards right.
So I allowed Theus to evade that question and asked instead, “Are they alive?”
“Most of them.”
The lack of hesitation in his answer gave me some small measure of hope. Then he murmured something I didn’t quite catch, something that sounded like “sort of,” and I tried to clamp down on hope too.
Still, this walker seemed to have more time for humans than the others. Plus he was polite enough not to comment on my unkempt state. Either that or he hadn’t noticed—maybe the comparative imperfection of human features always looked messy to walkers.
But even if he’d been as condescending as the rest of them, the undeniable truth was that without his and Lirielle’s aid in yesterday’s trial, many of us would’ve been killed.
“Why’d you do it?” I found myself asking.
“Do what?”
I shrugged, trying to pretend the answer didn’t matter so much. “I don’t know. Save us in the trial. But not until the last possible minute.”
After we’d pushed ourselves to the breaking point, protecting ourselves with unfamiliar magic, and a full third of our number had passed out.
“How much do you know about world walker culture?” he asked.
“Around as much as I know about the mating rituals of unicorns.”
Theus looked puzzled. “Do you know a lot about the mating rituals of unicorns?”<
br />
The joke had gone straight over his head, but somehow I was the one blushing.
“No, nothing!”
He seemed to accept that. “All right. In walker culture, honor and strength are paramount. They’re valued far above trivial, transient things like fear or risk, and it’s considered humiliating to be so weak as to require rescue. Which is why I didn’t want to step in unless I had to.”
He studied me for a moment, his deep green eyes unreadable. “Or until you asked.”
Until I asked?
Really?
I recalled that desperate fight inside our increasingly overrun dirt walls. The air thick with blood, my limbs heavy with exhaustion, and the dread that seized my chest as I’d realized in a horrid moment of clarity that some of the kids around me were going to die.
Unless the walkers intervened.
I’d asked all right. In desperation, I’d cried out for help that I wasn’t sure would come.
And in the present, I managed—barely—to restrain myself from throttling Theus.
“Besides,” he continued after I failed to muster an appropriate response, “swarmcats are relatively nonlethal compared to most of what the students are going to be facing here. It’s best that the first time you bloody your blade—or wand in this case—you do so against an easy foe. They’ll be grateful for it later.”
That at least made a disturbing sort of sense. One that didn’t leave me with any warm fuzzies about the upcoming trials.
“But I saw you fight. You would have survived even when not everyone else did.”
He said this like it was supposed to make me feel better. And the ludicrousness of that finally got my tongue to work.
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
He looked at me without comprehension. Or maybe I just couldn’t read him.
“All your questions are about the welfare of strangers,” he said. “From what I was taught of human sentiment, I thought you would be more concerned about your family.”
I stared back at that beautiful face, equally uncomprehending. How could this be difficult to understand?
“It’s not an either-or proposition,” I pointed out. “I love my family and would give anything see them again, but that doesn’t mean I can’t care about strangers.”
If he couldn’t grasp why it mattered to me if kids died at my side, I didn’t feel like explaining it to him.
But he went against my expectations a second time.
“I could allow you to see them—your family—through a visual gateway, if you like?”
“You could?” The words slipped out before suspicion overcame me. “Why would you do that?”
He shrugged, an oddly elegant gesture on a walker.
“Because it is my understanding that humans place more importance on family ties than walkers do. Because it will cost me little and may mean a great deal to you.”
“What do you want in return?”
He smiled faintly. “For you to look at me with less suspicion when I’m trying to help you would be nice. But you will owe me nothing. Not even that.”
I bit my tongue on my next words. Why then? Why would you do me this kindness when your kind have done nothing but harm to mine?
I was here to learn. Here to play along. To play nice. Until I’d gleaned enough information to formulate a plan and execute it. And if I wanted more information than the crumbs they fed us, I needed a “friend” among the walkers. They kept their secrets close to their chests. Which meant the only way to learn them was to get close too.
And if it was a trap? How better to determine the nature of your hunter than to follow him meekly into the snare and let him tighten it around your neck?
By watching what happened when he laid it around someone else’s neck, I supposed.
But I was the only one here.
And the lure he’d placed in the trap was well chosen.
So I nodded and said, “Then I would like that very much.”
Chapter 15
The “hunter” led me to the girls’ bathroom.
Okay, that was sort of weird. But either Theus was taking me somewhere it would be easier to clean up the blood, or he needed a mirror as he claimed.
I was about to find out which.
“Why the girls’ bathroom?”
“They’re cleaner. Trust me.”
“And you really need a mirror for this? I mean, you can walk across worlds and open gateways with a wave of your hand, but you need a freaking enchanted mirror like in Beauty and the Beast?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure what Beauty and the Beast is, but any ordinary mirror will do. And if we weren’t inside this particular manor, I wouldn’t need one of those either.”
I wondered if that might prove important one day. “What’s different?”
“Gateway magic is protected against inside these walls. Only the professors have the override.”
That was good to know. If you took out the teachers and staged a coup, the manor could be used as a stronghold. One where the walkers couldn’t just use their magic to appear behind you and slit your throat.
I hoped Theus wasn’t being so open with me because he was about to slit mine.
We pushed through the bathroom door, and Millicent lit up the room. Maybe she was pretending to be good in front of the walker.
He went straight to the nearest mirror.
“A former student figured out the mirrors are a sort of loophole. Or a form of gateway magic the professors didn’t bother to ward against. It allows us to see out but no more than that.”
I trailed up behind him, and our eyes met in the reflection. It felt strangely intimate.
Then he pulled out a knife.
“I’ll need some of your blood as a link to your family, otherwise we’ll spend all night trying to locate them.”
As soon as I’d recovered from my minor heart attack, I snatched the knife from him. It wouldn’t take much to reopen the latest Millicent bite on my finger. But come on, what was with this place and everything needing blood?
What I asked aloud was, “Where do you want it?”
“On the mirror.”
I smeared my bleeding finger on the glass. Would the magic drink it like Millicent seemed to? Or would I have to clean it up when we were done?
Theus concentrated on the bloody smear and placed his palm against the mirror beside it.
Then I forgot all about Theus.
Because there in front of me, almost life-sized, were my brother and sister.
Reuben’s face was serene in sleep, stripped of the attitude he displayed during the day. And though he was going through the phase where he was too cool and tough to hang out with his little sister in public, there was Mila curled up beside him.
Actually, curled up was a misleading description. She might be little, but she was a chronic bed hog.
My back had borne testament to that many a time after I’d wound up sleeping awkwardly over the edge of the mattress to accommodate her sprawling limbs. And it looked like poor Reuben’s back would pay the same price come morning.
I smiled so hard my teeth hurt.
Mila too looked serene in sleep, though a smudge of dirt under her chin suggested she hadn’t changed her daytime behavior any more than Reuben likely had.
The last handkerchief I’d given her was clutched tight in one small fist.
How could seeing them simultaneously hurt so much and yet fill the hollow ache in my chest I’d been carrying ever since I’d left them behind on that rooftop?
I stared at them. I don’t know how long, drinking in every detail.
And then their beloved figures faded back into an ordinary mirror.
A mirror that showed far too clearly that I’d been crying. I hadn’t noticed. And Theus had been standing right there, watching me cry.
Dammit.
I swiped my eyes and faced him in the flesh instead of the reflection. “Thank you. That did mean a great deal to me.”
&
nbsp; And perhaps because I’d so recently been staring at two of the people I loved most in the world, for a moment I saw Theus differently. Saw him as I might have had the invasion never happened and he’d been just a boy I met on the street.
I wasn’t the swooning type, but damn, he was beautiful. Maybe not by walker standards, but I liked him more for his tiny imperfections. The unruly hair that never sat quite right. The freckles that dotted the bridge of his nose and scattered across his cheeks. The eyes that were not the brilliant, glittering green of other walkers but a deeper, richer shade, exquisitely framed by his dark lashes.
And through that temporary lens, I could’ve sworn I saw sadness and understanding in those eyes.
If my life had been my own, and if he had been human, I knew with utter certainty that I could have loved the young man before me.
But my life wasn’t.
And he wasn’t.
Not even close.
Exhaustion—both emotional and physical—hit me like a felled tree.
I headed for my dorm room.
Theus kept pace beside me but did not feel the need to fill the silence between us. Something I appreciated more than usual as I tried to hold on to that idyllic, heartwarming image of my sleeping siblings with everything I had.
Ugh, another reason to feel grateful to a walker.
It was only when I reached the red serpent that guarded my room that a new thought entered my sluggish brain. “Could you show me someone else?”
I was thinking of Fletcher. What I wouldn’t give to see his face and know that he too was okay.
Theus’s lips twitched. “Some other time maybe.”
I nodded, not about to argue when I was already swaying on my feet. “Okay. Well, thanks again. Good night, Theus.”
“Good night, Nova.”
I watched him glide silently down the corridor into the darkness and then pressed my fingers to the wallpaper.
Millicent bit me extra hard before letting me inside.
Chapter 16
I’d thought I’d gotten away with the night’s snooping.
