I say none of that.
“Congratulations.” He gives me a sheepish smile. “On your promotion to Magus,” he adds when I don’t reply.
His praise sits on my chest like sour milk. There’s no merit behind my promotion; it’s not something I earned at all. “Grand Master Parrish gave it to me out of pity,” I reply honestly.
It wasn’t out of pity. The ghost speaks, and I let out a quiet gasp. I thought she was gone.
“You don’t know that,” I mutter.
“What was that?” Lorne cants his head. Of course he can’t hear her. During our car ride back, Beau told me no one other than the anchored Mortemagi could hear or see their ghost. “I…”
As I prepare to spin another lie, I realize how exhausting this life is, and I think of my poor sister and how she must have struggled.
“I know you resurrected Cardot,” Lorne says, his eyes boring into mine.
I blink a few times, my neck warms, and the tingling at the tips of my fingers grows more intense. He can’t possibly know that. He wasn’t there.
“I know about Carver, too,” he adds.
I stop breathing.
“How?” The word escapes my mouth, like a gavel waiting for his answer to drop.
“Parrish sent an express courier to Dean Rhodes.” He shrugs. “I overheard when he delivered the message. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”
But what does hewant? People like him prey on information they can use as leverage, and sooner or later, he’ll want something in return for his silence.
“I told you not to trust Aspieri.” He leads me down another corridor that opens to a lush garden with several rounded, white-lattice gazebos and a marble pond in the middle. I am not prepared to hear a sermon about whom I should and shouldn’t trust. Beau and Sylas didn’t betray me. Victor did.
Lorne doesn’t seem to understand that my continued silence means that I do not want to speak to him, and he sighs. “If it were up to me, I would’ve awarded you the High Magus title. Resurrection magic is an ancient art that very few Mortemagi have mastered. It takes decades.”
Whether or not he meant this as an accusation, it still raises the hairs on my arms. I cannot risk his knowing the truth about my anchored ghost—more because I plan to keep her around than because I care about what he thinks, and something tells me he’ll run straight to Delaney and lobby to have her expelled “to keep me safe.”
“Victor instructed me.” It’s not entirely false.
“It’s still impressive.” He abruptly stops at the end of the corridor, turns around, and places his hands on my shoulders. I flinch.
“Have dinner with me, Viola.”
And there it is. The ask for keeping quiet about my resurrection spectacle. I lower my eyes to where his thumb digs into my collarbone. Wasn’t he in love with my sister two seconds ago?
“I’m not hungry,” I say. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.
“You’ll be hungry by dinner.” His lips curl into a wolfish smile. One that tells me he has me cornered, and there’s no one to save me. “Besides, you’ll need new allies at Gorhail, therightallies. Those snakes led your sister to her death, then they tricked you into cleaving your life to resurrect their serpent trash.”
Beau isn’t serpent trash.
I back up, taking him in. His moss-green eyes that are at once familiar and foreign, his predatory lips pulled upward, and his mouth that I want to punch. One moment it’s Olivia, the love of my life, now it’syour sister. Lorne is the only snake in this story.
He takes my silence as agreement and creeps closer. At the same time, I notice something in the pond behind him. I squint to get a better view.
It’s not a thing at all, but a person.
“Someone’s in there,” I scream, pushing past Lorne. “Call the healers.”
A young woman, not much older than me, floats at the edge of the pond. Her glassy blue eyes, red with tears, stare at the sky. Gods, the healers won’t be able to do anything for her.
She’s dead.