“How did you get Gray—” I cut myself off, shaking my head. Beau and Grayson have had acomplicatedrelationship, and I prefer to stay out of it, like I do with Lyria and Gryff. “Keep trying, please.”
Beau gives me a tight smile. I’m not sure whether it’s to thank me for not pushing my question or whether he’s agreeing to try again with Mrs. Carver.
Sighing, I shuffle through the notes in front of me. “We know they want Viola’s cuff, and I’m going to guess they’re looking for a key. And from my encounter with the puppet in the woods, it’s someone who knows us… or at least knows my history.”
“The book…” Beau adds, and I scribble it down. “Olivia hadThe Founder’s Book of Relics, but it was never returned to her house with her other belongings. It has to be someone from Gorhail.”
As we throw theories back and forth, the door to the Poisoned Stairwell opens, and Lyria and Viola walk in laughing. My eyes momentarily drift to Viola as she sets her bag on the sofa. In two days, I leave for Firstline again, and that agonizing ache of being away from her knots my insides.
She looks up, smiles, and I forget the world.
“Please don’t mind us.” My sister inserts herself between Beau and me. I break our stare and return to the scattered pages. Viola joins me, and it takes everything in me to not pull her closer.
“You missed Beau’s findings from the library the other day.” Lyria taps a pen on the page. “Our parents and everyone who was killed attended the institute at the same time.”
“That’s hardly relevant, Lyr. Generations have walked these halls. So many other mages’ parents have attended Gorhail at the same time.”
“Maybe we’re looking at it wrong. We still can’t find a link between everyone who’s died other than the fact that they were classmates.” Viola plucks the page from underneath my hands, her eyebrows knotted in afrown. “The ghost did insist that we should be concerned about the lines being killed, so maybe we need to look at their deaths. What if it’s something that started years ago? When did your parents die, Beau?” she asks, grabbing a pen.
“Right after my second birthday,” he answers quietly. “March 1919.” “Sy and Lyr?”
“Mom was killed in December 1918.” Lyria squeezes my hand.
Viola notes this down, too, then adds two more dates. “My father died at the beginning of 1919.”
Lyria shifts over next to Viola. “We’re getting somewhere. The Death-bringer went missing in early 1917. Could they all be connected?”
I slide off the chair, and step behind Viola, snaking my hand around her waist and leaning my chin on her shoulder. Her body melts into mine, this strange feeling of belonging twisting deep within me.
Beau and Lyria exchange a pointed look and a complicit smile, but they don’t breathe a word.
“Fable’s and Wren’s parents break the pattern. I scoured the records, and their parents died in the last couple of years. I don’t think it’s related, unfortunately,” I say quietly. It seems like their deaths were too spread out for there to be a connection.
Pulling away, I kiss the top of Viola’s head and walk toward my room. “We have nothing, other than the likelihood of it being someone from Gorhail.” The answer is within our grasp yet keeps sifting through our fingers like fine sand.
Out of nowhere, bells clang, jolting us from our conversation. There’s a pause, before they clang again. Lyria rushes out the front door. She comes back moments later, a frown on her face. “Rhodes has called an emergency assembly.”
Dean Rhodes stands on the balcony overlooking Hollow Tree, her usual red dress replaced by a somber black one, matching the uniforms of the faculty standing behind her. They’ve moved the dining tables, so we look like a colony of ants, stacked on top of one another.
Instead of being alarmed—as one should be about the first emergency assembly in over two decades—Hollow Tree is buzzing with theories about the murders. I swallow down my anger. Would they be this excitable iftheirfamily was targeted?
“Mages,” Rhodes says, looking down at us.
The chatter only grows louder. Rhodes claps twice, but the urgent whispers from the new Magus in front of me are incessant. In reality, most of them are so young. They shouldn’t have to worry about being killed in a place where they’re supposed to be safe.
“Silence.” The sharpness of her voice slashes through the noise. The younger mages freeze, lowering their heads in shame. Next to me, Lyria and Beau look nervous. A moment later, Viola joins us, her arms crossed, nodding at an empty space; I suppose it’s her anchored ghost.
“Where were you?” I whisper without looking at her.
“Downstairs by your safe. I was checking in on Scar,” she whispers, and Raiku gently hisses at her. In all the years I’ve had my aspier, he’s never hissed at anyonegently. He slithers to my hand and nudges Viola’s with his nose. I sigh. Even my aspiers are under her spell.
“As most of you are aware, poachers are attacking mages.” She tries to sound indifferent, but her forced smile betrays the frailty of her outer nonchalance. “Per the request of DOTS, the school term is ending immediately, and all classes are canceled. A general Gorhail lockdown begins right away; you are not allowed outside of your respective Houses—should you require leaving Gorhail, please get approval from your overseers.”
Gasps bounce off one another until they dwindle into an uncomfortable silence, as if they weren’t just placing bets on who would be next. A couple of new Magus two rows ahead of me lock arms, fear dripping from the reassuring smiles they give each other.
“Sylas,” Lyria hisses, but it’s too late when I turn to her.
Lorne buzzes toward us like an angry wasp, his ridiculous cape-like coat billowing behind him. His eyes are locked on Viola, and I instinctively reach for her hand. But she doesn’t take it.