We’ve been back from the woods for hours, and I haven’t moved from the front steps of Overseer Paltro’s office, unable to go anywhere near the institute. The cold early afternoon air bites at my exposed skin. Still, I don’t move because I deserve every ounce of pain the weather chooses to inflict.
Paltro was in his office when I walked out of the passageway, my dead brother in my arms and my sister at my heels. He’d considered me for a moment, wondering if this was yet another of my antics gone wrong. But when my tears started flowing, and Lyria wouldn’t stop crying, he took Beau’s body from me without a word and carried him away, with Lyria following closely behind.
My fists unclench, and the stupid Afa’s Bloom stares at me—white petals splattered with Beau’s blood. Damas wears his name well as the God of Luck and Treachery. We came back with all the ingredients and my brother’s corpse. Then again, why do we pray to the Gods for a gamble?
I squeeze my fist, rub the flowers together, and toss them to the side. It’s all useless now. Beau is dead. And nothing can bring him back.
Around my wrist, Raiku coils and uncoils himself, occasionally slithering to my hand, and then back. Railesza hisses, her sharp eyes studying my face, then she wraps around my forearm. I run my knuckles against the soft scales of her head. She tried so hard, harder than she did with Dad, but like before, even she can’t bring back the dead.
“Sylas.” A labored voice calls in the distance. I lift my head, and Paltro walks toward me with an unsteady gait. As he gets closer, I notice his bloodshot eyes and the quiet sniffles.
“Let’s go inside, son.” He pats me on the shoulder, his face somber. He looks like a decade swallowed him today. I probably look worse, with my torn clothes and maroon-crusted nails.
I drag myself into his office, the rust stink of blood trailing after me, taking over the room’s usual scent of pine and wood. Paltro gathers a couple of books from his desk and neatly shelves them on the wall behind him. When he turns around, his face looks gaunt. He clicks his tongue, lets out a long sigh, then takes a seat, beckoning me to do the same.
The brown leather armchair squeaks when I slump in it. If Paltro expects me to talk, he’ll wait a long time. I already know what he’s going to tell me: I’ll have to answer to the Grand House for Beau’s death. They’ve probably already decided to throw me in prison. I’ve broken too many rules to ask for leniency—endangering the lives of two uncertified mages, one of whom was killed under my watch; breaking curfew with a mage who was accused of murder; stealing Afa’s Bloom from the Northern Greenhouse; and retrieving Chasmore without prior authorization. Even if I didn’tkillBeau, he was killed on an unauthorized field assignment led byme.
Besides, what would be the point of fighting their sentence? Going through life with Dad’s death weighing on my every thought is agonizing, but even the mundane task of breathing feels impossible when I think of Beau. How will I carry on for Lyria if I can’t hold myself together?
In silence, I watch Paltro drop two heaping teaspoons of tea leaves in the black iron kettle to his right. Beau used to be fascinated with thesekettles when he was younger—Arkani made, forged by manipulators and powered by dustmaker dust, they heat up the moment water is poured in.
“Silver’s missing.” Paltro catches me off guard. I was expecting him to chastise me, not go straight to investigating. Perhaps it’s how he copes. He lost himself in work after Dad died.
Beau’s aspier, Silver, was given to him a few years after his mother’s death, while his father’s aspier rests in his family vault in Riverview. Normally, a young Aspieri goes to a relicsmith to have their own aspier forged with a hair from their bloodline—usually their own—but Beau’s parents died when he was only two. They didn’t even have the chance to take him to the relicsmith.
Now the Cardot line is dead, and Silver is free to bond with another Aspieri.
“Rhodes mentioned that Victor’s relic was also taken,” I reply with a frown. I want there to be a connection, want a reason for the poachers to have murdered my brother, because I refuse to think Damas was this cruel. We’ve all gone into the woods countless times past curfew. Why did it have to be Beau?
Paltro hums while he retrieves a small towel soaked in alcohol and hands it to me. I hesitate. Washing Beau’s blood off my hands feels like I’m already moving on. He died mere hours ago.
“Son.” Paltro looks at me like I’m broken, and maybe I am. “Grief will swallow you whole if you don’t forgive yourself,” he says, edging the towel in my direction.
My hands wrap around the wet cloth. With each scrub, I hold back my tears. How could I let this happen?
“Sylas, I understand what you’re going through, but you need to pull yourself together,” Paltro says softly, plucking the towel out of my hands. Then he pulls two cups from his drawer. He reaches for the kettle through the mess on his desk and pours us each a cup. The earthy smell of his special blend of mint, vanilla, and black tea from Old Iserine calms me a little. I take a sip.
“Olivia Corvi also died this morning,” he says.
“How?” I nearly spit out my tea. Now, he has my attention.
“Drowned in Little Lake Albion. A gruesome sight.” He recoils, setting his empty cup aside. “Claws ripped through her arm. I’ll spare you the details. Her relic is also gone.”
Three relics stolen in three days. It can’t be a coincidence. “That doesn’t make sense, Uncle. Olivia Corvi was a nonmagi, wasn’t she? Nonmagi can’t wear relics, and poachers can track them.”
“A nonmagi who hid so well that no one found her until her death.” He nods. “Per the Firstline investigator assigned to her case, someone fashioned arealrelic for her at some point. She was going to be offered a teaching position at the academy, and they needed to test her relic for modifications, as per protocol.”
I have a hard time believing that the nonmagi wanted to stay at Gorhail for a teaching position. Magisters—mage teachers—are somehow paid even less than their nonmagi counterparts. Her motivations for staying aren’t convincing… and now she’s dead.
“Do you have the preliminary report?” I lean forward. This nonmagi may be key to figuring what happened to Beau.
“Firstline hasn’t released one yet, but the Albion sheriff says she tripped on the boardwalk and fell into the lake.” Paltro gives me a knowing look. “It’s certainly not a coincidence that Victor was found dead yesterday morning, and Olivia and Beau died around the same time this morning.”
He doesn’t have to say more. This isn’t the work of random poachers if they were unafraid to murder them in Gorhail and Albion, where Secondline patrols night and day. There’s a link between the three of them, and I have to find it. I need to know why my brother was killed. Only then will I allow myself to grieve him. “Who’s Firstline assigning to their case?” I ask.
Paltro nods. “Darro’s first case.”
At the mention of Gryff’s name, I look away. As much as I am comforted that Gryff has been assigned to the case, I hate that this is probably how he and his brother, Grayson, found out about Beau’s death.