Chapter XXVIII. Domenic
XXVIII
DOMENIC
WINTER
“Domenic? Dom?”
Domenic resurfaced, his finger poised beside the last line he’d skimmed. “What?”
Ellery frowned from across the towers of yellowed wand registers between them. “I asked if you think we should’ve heard something about the vigil by now. It’s been almost an hour.”
Domenic swore it’d only been minutes since they’d sequestered themselves for their fourth day in a row in the Citadel library. But Ellery was right—as Domenic skimmed back through the endless cascades of fine print to where he’d started, he realized he’d already blown through several chapters.
“Didn’t Glynn say every eligible student registered?” he asked. “That’s a lot of candidates. It might just take time.”
“Or Ravfiri hasn’t found a wielder,” Ellery murmured. “Again.”
Domenic trained his focus back on the register. It did no good to worry. Someone would bond with Ravfiri, and as soon as they did, Domenic and Ellery would be summoned to meet them along with the Council.
Domenic almost pitied whoever they were. They had no idea what they’d really signed up for.
He’d barely continued reading when Ellery said, “I don’t understand why the Council didn’t want us to attend. It’s an important vigil—would it be that strange to reporters if we were there?”
Domenic grunted noncommittally.
“And all this work they have us doing. Do you really think”—she squinted at a line in her own register—“someone who wields Frithan is the traitor? I’ve never even heard of Frithan.”
“It specializes in herb gardening, apparently.”
“Yes. That has high treason written all over it.”
Domenic didn’t glance up as he flipped a page.
Not just because it ached to look at her.
But because he feared one meeting of their eyes would give it all away.
That the real reason they’d been omitted from the vigil’s attendees was because the Council no longer trusted her.
That he was terrified she loathed him. That simply to glance at her mouth would be to experience the phantom taste of it.
“You’ve really thrown yourself into this,” Ellery said. “What are you even expecting to find at this point?”
“I don’t know. A sign or something.”
“A sign,” she repeated flatly.
“What do you want from me, El? I’m just trying to…” Exonerate you. “It’s going to take Hanna weeks to interrogate the whole Order. We can’t just kick up our feet and do nothing in the meantime.”
When she didn’t respond, finally, Domenic braved her gaze—it was wary.
“You’d tell me if there was something I was missing, right?” she asked.
He stabbed his nails into his knee. “Of course I would. You know that—What? What’s wrong?” Ellery’s face had shuddered into an expression of horror.
Then abruptly she stood, her chair screeching. “Cadaver is here, in the Citadel,” she gasped. “I feel its heartbeat.”
“What?” He rose and grasped the back of his chair to steady himself. “Where?”
“It’s…” She drew Iskarius to better concentrate, then she blanched. “Below.”
Ellery took off, and Domenic scrambled after her. His mind fuzzed like radio static. Below meant the subterranean levels, and the subterranean levels meant the Vault, the vigil, and Cadaver was the … was the …
Suddenly, the elevator was opening, and he was in the same stone corridor that he’d last visited in another life.
Some thirty yards down, the grand door of the waiting room lay in a shredded heap, and Domenic had paced outside that door only weeks ago, had just watched as a colony of Order magicians carried away Julian Norwood’s charred, unconscious body.
Now a throng of magicians bottlenecked that same entrance.
Many had crumbled to the ground. They were gasping, moaning, and when Domenic looked down, he was shaking, shaking—
“Do you feel that?” Ellery hissed as they slowed to push past the fallen magicians.
“Yeah,” he heard himself answer. But he didn’t feel whatever she meant at all; not until they stood directly atop the threshold. A terrible pressure emanated from the room in a crush of gravity.
Hanna, a voice warned him, a voice he hated.
Yet as Domenic scanned the room, forcing himself to examine every unmoving body, every broken bone, every splotch of blood, he realized the students that lay around him weren’t dead, only unconscious—and grotesquely, almost exaggeratedly injured, like a scene staged.
There was their hands: bruised and mangled to every last finger.
The several limbs bent at revolting angles. The obligatory puddles of blood.
Only one still stood. Her eyes were rolled back into their whites. Her mouth hung crooked, and blue light leaked out from her throat, her ears, even her nostrils, glinting against the slick trail of her nosebleed.
“Demelza,” Ellery choked, lunging toward the girl. Dimly Domenic recognized her. That actress girl. Maybe a year or two below him.
He trained Valmordion on her.
“Don’t,” Domenic said, making Ellery halt midstep. His breath fogged in the frigid air.
“Wh-what are you doing? She’s—”
“The pressure in the room. It’s coming from her.”
“Shit. Shit.” Ellery’s hand trembled as she raised Iskarius. “But if Cadaver’s possessing her, how do we get it out without hurting her?”
“C-can you expel it?” Domenic’s voice wavered even as he fought to keep it firm. He glanced at the second door, flung haphazardly open, and realized with a clench of his stomach that a similar scene likely waited in the vigil chamber, that Iseul was in the vigil chamber.
Ellery’s expression softened as she studied him. “I’ll try.”
As Ellery cast a corporeal spell, her eyes, too, rolled back into her head. Domenic stifled a blaze of panic.
Someone lightly kicked his calf. He turned to the lone conscious student on the floor behind him—Tej Kumar, from two years ahead. His black waves hung loose and disheveled across his shattered glasses, and he had dark brown skin and a single ruby earring.
“Barrow,” Kumar croaked. “That ghast—”
“Not now,” Domenic muttered, unwilling to look away from Ellery.
“That ghast is no normal one. It blasted through the vigil chamber door looking like a … Well, you don’t want to know what it looked like.
But I think—I think it’s trying to stop anyone from bonding with Ravfiri.
It’s been possessing one student after the other, like it’s searching for the wielder.
And after what it did to all our hands…” Kumar winced, and Domenic realized that his hands were so mottled that white bone peeked out beneath a scarlet crust of frostmaul.
“Even if the wielder wakes, I don’t think they could move their fingers well enough to hold it. ”
“Here. Let me help you.” Yet as Domenic crouched to heal him, his gaze wandered across the students—there had to be at least fifty. And whoever Ravfiri’s wielder was, he needed to heal them and get them to the wand as soon as possible.
Frost melted down Kumar’s palms, and the boy cursed in visceral relief. Then he heaved himself onto his elbows, half-wheezing, half-laughing, entirely out of sorts.
“Kumar, listen to me,” Domenic urged. “Do you know who that ghast has possessed already?”
“It went for Cutler first, then Ianetti, then…” Kumar paused to retch slightly. “Then Ramezani. Glover, his pinky just broke right off. Look at him—he’s still holding it. Sort of ironic, when you think about it. It’s not like gloves will ever…”
Kumar puked onto Domenic’s loafers.
“Wow. Shit. I am so sorry,” Kumar said, while Domenic quickly vanished it. “I cannot believe I just hurled on a Chosen One.”
Something thudded, and Domenic whipped around to see Demelza collapsed on the floor, her eyes closed, the light gone.
Frost coalesced through the air, so fast Domenic could barely track it, until another student’s mouth began to glow.
Domenic didn’t even recognize him. He looked about fifteen, and he lay on his back, his white eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.
While Domenic straightened and trained Valmordion on him, Ellery stumbled, clutching her head.
“Are you all right?” he asked her sharply.
“I couldn’t expel it without hurting her. But I heard Cadaver’s true name. It’s called Maltherius. And it showed me…”
“It showed you what?”
“An alban tree. I saw Nordmere’s alban tree.”
The hairs on Domenic’s neck rose on end. But he didn’t have time to dwell on why Cadaver—why Maltherius—would do such a thing. Already, the new student’s body convulsed, and frostmaul crept across his lips, his cheeks.
Ellery hitched her breath. “He’s not strong enough to withstand it.”
“Th-then I’ll expel it this time.” He hated the way his voice cracked.
Like a needle, Domenic breached the student’s mind—Zachary, Domenic learned his name was. Immediately, Domenic realized Ellery was right. Maltherius’s power was freezing Zachary from within as it scoured his psyche, and even Domenic’s spell was making violet blisters bloom across his pale skin.
Domenic honed in on the source of Maltherius’s hold, like a shard of ice impaled at the base of the boy’s skull.
With a wave of Valmordion, Domenic wrenched it out.
Again, the ghast’s frost darted through the air, and despite Domenic trying harder to track it, soon, another student uttered a choking noise.
Kumar.
To Kumar’s credit, he fought against Maltherius, nails scratching across the stone floor, knees and arms locked tight against the ground even as his back arched.
“Kill it,” he sputtered. Bloodied spit dribbled down his chin. “Kill it.”
Domenic hesitated. Even if Kumar could control himself to this level, attacking Maltherius from within him was a huge risk.
“He’s trying to help us,” Ellery said. “Let him.”
“I could incinerate him, El,” Domenic snapped.
Then Kumar spoke again, too garbled to make out. But as Kumar clawed his half-ruined hands insistently toward Domenic’s ankles, Domenic surrendered and cast his spell.