Chapter 28 Dolericym #2
His gaze trails along her neck and jaw before settling on her eyes. “I thought we were only keeping secrets from other people from now on. Aren’t we going to tell each other nothing but the truth?”
She turns back to the lock. “Why would you think that?”
His chin sits on her neck, his voice hot in her ear. “You made me promise never to lie to you.”
“Yes, but I didn’t promise the same.”
“Didn’t you? That night in my room when you agreed to my rules. I told you—no secrets, else you will be punished.”
She turns, her back pressed to the door. Her nose scrapes his cheek when she says, “All right.”
“Is that what you want?” he asks as his hands sink down to her waist, and then farther down to the swell of her hips. “Should my Star Girl be able to act with impunity? Or should she be punished when she misbehaves?”
“You know my position,” she says, turning back to the lock. It clicks open, and she pushes the gate. She flashes a victorious grin at Cassius, motioning him to follow her inside. “Punishment is a cure.” When she reaches the stairs, she tiptoes up and says, “Watch your step.”
“Do you come up here often?” he calls after her. She’s too far up the spiral staircase to see his face.
“No,” she says.
“Sounds like you’re lying, Jolicoeur.”
She reaches the top floor and crosses her arms, eyes wide, mouth open. “I do not sound like I’m lying.”
“Yes, you do. Your voice is an entire octave above where it normally is, and though I can’t see your face, I can imagine your brows are raised exaggeratedly and your arms are crossed tightly at your waist.”
Claudia quickly throws her arms down at her sides and relaxes her face by the time Cassius appears. Secretly, she’s blushing over being so clearly seen.
To be loved is to be known. To love is to pay attention. And Cassius is paying attention to her. He always has been—even when she didn’t realize.
She unlocks the door to the observatory and braces her palms on it. “Are you ready for the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life?”
He stares for a long time and doesn’t speak.
“Well?” she asks, turning to face him.
He laughs. “I’m already looking at it.”
Claudia has to turn back around and cover her mouth to keep I’m dangerously close to falling for you from slipping out.
She doesn’t love him. These powerful, heart-pounding emotions are left over from the opera. This is Dolericym talking.
Pushing open the door, she brings him into the observatory for the first time, and the stars have never been brighter. They’re not pinpricks—they’re entire explosions of sharp white light. It’s breathtaking.
Cassius’s head falls back, and he gazes up at the glittering sky.
He paces around the circular room, effortlessly sidestepping dips and cracks in the floor as if he’s already memorized where they are in one sweeping gaze.
Skirting the edge of the observatory, he runs his hands over the old spines of the books while keeping his eyes fixed above.
“What do you think?” Claudia asks, suddenly filled with the same anxiety she’d have if she were bringing someone to her home for the first time. Does he like it? Should she have tidied up and dusted more before he arrived?
Finally, he says, “It’s beyond what I imagined.” His voice is heavy with awe.
She walks over and takes his hand. “I felt the same the first time I saw it.”
“When was that?” he asks.
“Oh, not long ago,” she says, painfully aware that she’s wearing her lying face and doing her lying voice.
His head tilts to the side. “What are you hiding from me, Jolicoeur?”
“I’m not hiding anything.” She needs to redirect this conversation. Sliding her hand up his arm, she says, “You knew I enjoyed the stars when you met me. Hence the taunt you made for me.”
“It’s a term of endearment.”
“It hasn’t always been.”
“Well, it certainly is now,” he says, kissing her cheek.
She smiles. She’s almost impressed with herself—how deftly she can change the subject and put the focus back onto their relationship.
Old wood groans from somewhere in the crumbling wing, and it brings Claudia’s attention back to the task at hand.
“Come with me,” she says, leading him to the desk with the grimoire. She flips it open to Corvus, Horologium and opens the big desk drawer.
There’s the needle, and there’s the empty space where Odette’s diary entry used to be.
Claudia now knows that Odette was wrong about Cassius, so who is the true killer Odette was searching for? And if Odette wasn’t killed, why didn’t she wake up? Nothing makes sense.
At least, thanks to Malevimus, Claudia can trust in Cassius’s innocence. Everything else is a shadowy, strange mystery with a million missing pieces.
She picks up the needle and closes the drawer softly.
“Where did your love of stars come from?”
“My mother,” she says. It’s not entirely untrue.
Her mother, arguably, told her about all of this years ago.
She simply didn’t know what her mother meant.
“She was fascinated by the stars. She said she could hear them speaking to her, and she taught me how to listen.” She shakes her head and says, “Give me your arm.”
He obeys. She rolls up Cassius’s sleeve and readies Lamour’s needle over his skin. Before she makes any marks, she says, “Remember, you can’t show this to anyone. It’ll only take a day or so to heal, but until then, the sleeve stays rolled down. Understood?”
“Understood.”
She very nearly calls him a good boy. Now is not the time.
“All right.” She pokes in the spell—first Corvus, then Horologium. Little bubbles of blood decorate his skin. Claudia whispers the spell, and the air immediately turns thick as honey. It sounds like an entire ocean is crashing against the inside of her skull.
It’s worse and weirder and more magical than anything she could have imagined.
“Claudia? Can you hear—” is the last thing she hears before the stars consume her mind, and all she hears is a metallic, melodic screech, like teeth on metal, like sawing through ice. It’s nothing like the sweet, holy hymns of Dolericym. This is divination. This is the language of stars.
This is madness.
Her brain is freezing hot. Her body is trembling. A string of round vowels and toothy consonants spill into her mind, and she’s certain she’s floating. She can feel the heat of the stars against her skin. She is moon-touched, star-kissed, night-bound. She is midnight itself.
No words are shared, and yet the message is completely clear in a way she can’t explain. There’s a loud, tinny, rhythmic ringing underscoring everything else.
This is what her mother heard all those years ago.
It’s the toll of a bell, and it sings of death.
The realization settles in like ice in her veins, like a dagger in her heart, like poison in her very soul.
Death waits at the end of one moon cycle.
In one month, Cassius MacLeod is going to die.
Suddenly, she’s crashing back into herself, gasping for air, clutching her throbbing heart, and fighting the urge to scream.
“—THE FUCK IS GOING ON? CLAUDIA, CAN YOU HEAR ME? CLAUDIA? CLAUDIA!”
Cassius’s voice is a guide back to consciousness. Slowly, her eyes flutter open. She’s in his arms, her body tight and tense. She must’ve fallen out of the chair and he caught her before she hit the ground. Above her, haloed by starlight, he’s beautiful. He’s divine.
He’s dying.
He looks so scared to lose her, but little does he know that he’s the one who is almost out of time. One month is nothing. One month is a blink. A breath.
“Cassius,” she whimpers.
“What happened? What did you see?”
“I—”
There’s a loud bang as someone throws open the doors and screams, “What is going on here?”
Claudia turns her head weakly, expecting to lock eyes with Lamour.
But it’s not him.
It’s High Sage Triche.
Cassius’s demeanor changes drastically. He stands Claudia upright and removes himself from her, without caring if she stumbles or falls.
“Triche, we were just—”
The High Sage comes toe to toe with him. He’s glaring upward, for Cassius is a few inches taller than him. Still, his presence is so large and domineering that it is still Cassius who cowers.
“I am deeply disappointed in you, Cassius MacLeod.” He points at Claudia.
“Ever since she arrived, I have heard nothing but horrible things about you. You’re fighting in class.
You’re losing debates. And now you’re breaking into the condemned wing of the school?
Who are you? You are not the scholar I once knew. ”
“I’m sorry, High Sage. It won’t happen again.”
“I’m afraid I do not believe you. Words are not an effective atonement for this.
” He glares at Claudia. “Miss Jolicoeur, I won’t tolerate your continued sabotage of our best student.
If this continues, I will expel you with staggering haste.
Do not forget that your position here is precarious at best. If you prove yourself to be a poison, rest assured you will never see this school again. ”
She keeps her head down. She doesn’t know what to say.
His words are like bugs in her ears—buzzy, unclear, menacing but unintelligible.
His threats hardly register. In any other circumstances, she would be panicking at the idea of being sent away, of losing her magic, of her chance at the blessing being ripped away.
But now, Cassius is dying. Cassius is dying right now and he doesn’t even know. The next several minutes are a blur.
The High Sage escorts them out of the Astrologia wing in silence. He locks the gate behind them as they stand in the corridor.
“Next Friday, instead of attending the opera, you’ll both report to the white room for detention.” He turns to Cassius. “And you can consider our work suspended indefinitely until you can prove yourself responsible enough to handle it.”
Cassius clutches his chest as if he’s been shot. “Surely you don’t mean—”
“I certainly do, Cassius. You must master responsibility before you can earn power.”
He shakes his head. “But we’re so close, High Sage.”