The air is warmer than usual today, a light drizzle grazing my face in the short walk to the sheltered stone hallway.
“What is our House motto, son?” He claps a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“Bound by loyalty,” I reply like a parrot, and because I’m so used to adding Gorhail’s motto at the end, I finish, “Resilient in purpose.”
“Bound by loyalty,” he repeats. “Our House has come a long way since Sileas Ronin etched those words onto the first stone, but our values, our commitment, our duty do not waver. It serves to remember that.”
I gulp.
Paltro cannot possibly be questioning my loyalty, but what if he is… Will I have to betray Viola? Will I have to betrayhim?
“Scar has awoken,” he says, as if it were a weather report. “I need you to find her.”
I’m afraid my end is near. All the secrets must come out. Let me begin with mine. I have done something terrible, something unforgivable—
JOURNAL OF RHEA CORVI, FIRST AND LAST ENTRY, APRIL 1927
thirty-seven | viola
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1939
Lorne’s hot breath scorches my neck. He walks so close to me, as if giving me any space would make me disappear. He ignores all my questions about rituals and relics, so I try asking about Gorhail’s lockdown. “Are you worried the poachers might still be in here?”
“Huh?” He slows his steps, and I match them.
“The ones who killed Fable,” I whisper, realizing how silly I sound. No poacher is around to hear me; we’ve passed by four Firstline officers on our way here, and I’ve watched all four of them not-so-subtly brush against students. All of them readers.
“Viola, you are too new to this world to understand the real dangers.” He sighs. “We’re safest within Gorhail walls.”
I clamp my mouth shut. Fable was killed within the safety of said walls.
“Should I ask why you have a Poison shirt on?” he asks when I don’t say anything.
No, you shouldn’t, I want to say.
“Yesterday, I was studying with Lyria and fell asleep in her room.” I impress myself with this lie, because it is plausible. “We had to report to assembly immediately, so I took her clothes.”
“Of course.” He heaves a sigh of… relief.
We turn into the hallway with the diamond-patterned rug, and I’malmost to my room when I abruptly stop, a question already slipping out. “Was Olivia planning to move to Wanora with you?” I ask.
Ever since Victor told me at the prison, the question has been burning at my lips. I need to know if she planned to leave with him.
“No, she mentioned there was somewhere else she needed to be, but she wouldn’t say where.” He lowers his head. “I wish I had insisted and left earlier. Perhaps she would have come then, and she would still be here now.”
My chin quivers. Olivia was really going to leave with me to Osneau. I shake my head. The only thing I can do now is find her killer. And now that I’m back in my room, I can see if she may have hiddenThe Founder’s Book of Relicssomewhere here. I combed the room my very first night here, but maybe I missed something.
“I’ll be out in ten.” I unlock my door, but Lorne gives no sense that he will move away. He takes one step too close, and my heart plummets. Not again.
When I refuse to move, he grunts. “Be quick, Viola.” He backs up. “I have business to attend to.”
Once I’m in the room, I don’t waste time. I turn over the drawers and run my hands inside to check for hidden compartments, but there’s nothing there. If Olivia hid the book, it would still be in here. After digging through every drawer, I rush to the wardrobe, combing through every nook and cranny. Still nothing.
The door rattles, and a jolt zaps through me. Has it already been ten minutes? I pull on a House sweater without bothering to change the shirt. Two more knocks, and I jerk the door open.
No one’s there.
I step in the hallway, peek to the left and then to the right. Shaking my head, I turn around, but a forearm laces around my neck. It drags me back with so much force, I only manage to slip my palms in front of my neck to prevent it from crushing my windpipe. My nails dig into the pale flesh, but it doesn’t budge. So I do the only thing I can think of and bite down hard. The acrid taste of rotten flesh takes over my mouth. My bite should have drawn blood, but it doesn’t.