“No,” she answers immediately before frantically looking both ways. What is she afraid of? “Find Victor Carver,” she whispers. “He’s been around her since she joined the academy. In the weeks leading to her death, they were meeting several times a week, and Olivia was always flustered after those meetings.”
This doesn’t help me. Victor is in prison, and he tricked me. But if he’s hiding Olivia’s secrets, I need to know. Visiting prison seems like an unsurmountable obstacle, with curfew and Lorne suffocating me with his presence. “How would I—”
“Beau will know where to get passes,” she says. “Lyria told me about what you did for him and Victor, and after all you’ve given up, he can’t refuse.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Let’s have tea together one day,” Sierra offers, her eyes crinkling when she smiles at me. For a heartbeat, I let myself believe that her kindness is true. But I know that all she sees when she looks at me is Olivia, and I will never fill her shoes.
“Should we reschedule?” Lorne pulls his hand away from the blackboard. We’ve been holed up in his office for hours now—it’s so cramped there’s barely any space to think. I sit at the only desk in the middle, facing the board. The rest of the walls are covered in bookcases filled with books about death magic. I shift my focus to what he’s writing, and he’s in the middle of drawing a dead bird. Gross.
“You are a fast learner, Viola, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay attention,” he says. He’s teaching me so many of the theories I’ve already studied from Nan’s books, and I wish he’d focus on showing me how to use my magic instead. Knowledge is great until monsters like Mara try to murder you. Instead, Lorne seems to think that we can bore the undead with facts.
My eyes drift to the single window overlooking Death Spire. From here, I see the top so clearly, the intricate metalwork of the railing and the lone bench.
I think of the ghost I anchored to. Did she jump? Was she pushed? Did Gorhail try to pin the blame on her, the victim, as they did with Olivia?
“Viola,” Lorne snaps.
I jump. “Yes?”
“Why are you looking out the window?” he asks. “Death Spire is a bad omen. You already have one foot in the Underworld. Do you want to expedite your death?”
I glower at him. He’s getting far too comfortable. “Do you think I want to die?”
The hard lines of his face soften into sympathy as he takes the seat next to mine. He glances at the door, then lowers his voice. “No, and I don’t want you to die either.” Then he turns a golden key into the third desk drawer, and, from a small hidden compartment, he pulls an old cloth-bound book with a muted blue raven embroidered on the front.
“What is this?”
His eyes meet mine, and I curse myself for thinking of how different they are from Sylas’s eyes. Not only in color, but in the way they perceive me. Lorne looks at me like I’m an opportunity; Sylas looks at me like… I shouldn’t be thinking about him.
“What if I told you, I could give you your years back…” He trails off, hesitant, waiting for any reaction from me.
“That’s impossible,” I say. Since I came back from Priya’s house, I’vescoured countless books from the library. They all said the same thing— resurrection is irreversible.
He smirks, and my skin tingles with fear. He doesn’t have to say it. Of course, none of the books in the library would hold any information. He’s talking about the blood arts—of magic so ancient and so morbid I refuse to even think about it.Thisis what should be a bad omen, not glancing at Death Spire.
“Today’s lesson is about lifedrain.” He flips the book open to a page with a dead bird, the same one he drew on the board. “Just like the blood arts drain lifeblood from the Mortemagi, they can also give it back through lifedrain.”
I look at him in horror. Nothing about this sounds good, especially when a bird’s lifeless body stares at me from his book. The drawing is so graphic, I can see the guts spilling out of its open stomach.
Lorne creeps closer to me, his long fingers reaching for my face, brushing my hair behind my ear. “I see potential in you, Viola. It would be a waste… to lose you.” His voice is soft, enticing; it wraps around me like the tendrils of death.
Something tells me he doesn’t speak of my potential as a student. “How?” I gulp, leaning into his darkness. As much as I despise Lorne, I don’t want to die. At least not before I’ve solved my sister’s murder.
“You see this bird?” He pulls away from me and taps on the book, then moves to the board. He sketches a bleeding human heart next to the existing bird. Then another bird. It reminds me of Lyria’s research and the diagrams in Founder’s Room, except she wasn’t killing anything to heal Mortemagi. Here, Lorne’s suggesting carving out hearts to take lifeblood back.
“The bird was how Rafael Grimm, the father of death magic, discovered lifedrain. He had a pet raven who died prematurely. At her funeral, he took the heart of a living raven and wove its threads into his dead raven. She went on to live longer than him.”
He pauses, a shy smile on his lips. He speaks of Rafael Grimm so fondly, as one would a paternal figure. It’s such a stark contrast to how alarmed everyone else seems to be about a second one coming around. I want to ask, but an odd feeling deep within tells me to stay quiet.
He must notice the questioning look on my face, because he continues, “Rafael Grimm was unfortunately terribly misguided.” He shakes his head.“He did unspeakable things in the name of magic, things that should never be forgiven nor forgotten. That being said, we can acknowledge his greatness as a scholar while condemning his actions.”
My shoulders drop. For a moment, I thought he may have been one of his followers. “Of course,” I reply. “Tell me more about lifedrain…”
“An animal can only give life back to another of the same kind,” he explains with a nod. “When Mortemagi take a mage’s heart, they absorb their remaining lifeblood—”
I gasp, questioning my hearing. Is he telling me to kill someone so I can live longer? “Lorne—”