Chapter 14
Fourteen
Kyrith
I’m still shaking my head mutely when Dakari strides over to the projector, shoving his hand into his grimoire as he goes.
The device crumples like paper, cutting off the image on the screen.
It doesn’t help. Mathias’s image is burned behind my eyelids. Frightfully familiar, even after all of these years.
He’s aged, but it’s still unmistakably him.
“Eejit.” Leo shakes his head, getting to his feet. “Don’t you know who that was? We could’ve learned something!”
“He was scaring Kyrith.”
“He could do worse, and now we don’t know shite about what they’re planning for Jasper.”
Leo’s right, but my view of them arguing is blocked by Lambert slipping around the sofa and onto his knees, crawling towards me like I might bolt. The room is freezing, I realise as his hand makes careful contact with my knee, drawing me back to reality.
“Boss,” he murmurs. “You’re safe, but I think you might want to take a look at Jasper.”
Wait? What’s wrong with Jasper?
I bolt upright, ghosting back through the sofa to the McKinley heir, who’s now ramrod straight in his seat. His pupils are blown, and his breathing is shallow. Dakari has given up fighting with Leo and is now crouched in front of his friend, waving a hand in front of that unseeing stare.
Oh. My gut sinks as I recognise what’s happened.
“He’s fine,” I say. “This is what someone shrugging off a mental ensorcellment looks like.”
Either the magic finally eroded completely, or something we just saw snapped its hold on him altogether.
I’m willing to bet it was the latter.
Conjuring a blanket, I tuck it around his shoulders, fussing longer than really necessary before my fingers fall still.
Shaking my head does nothing to clear my thoughts. Adrenaline is still running rampant through my veins, every cell screaming at me to run, to flee. Mathias might not be here, but my instincts don’t seem to have gotten that message.
Locks appear on every door in the Library, but their presence doesn’t reassure me.
“He shouldn’t be alive.” I just can’t get my head around it. “It’s been five hundred years.” Already I’m whirring through the possibilities. Without meaning to, I stand, pacing away from Jasper, then back. “He knows more about the Arcanaeum than anyone else. He’s a master necromancer.”
And the Library…isn’t shocked. It reacted to my fear by locking the doors, yes, but there’s a wary resignation to the way the books shuffle on the shelves.
“His grimoire was never in the Vault…” I whisper.
The Arcanaeum must’ve suspected something was amiss and wanted proof. If Dakari had found it, then it would’ve confirmed Mathias’s death. Josef demanded North search for it…which means he likely suspected the same thing.
Was that why he was killed? Was he complicit, like the Carltons? Or was he out of the loop?
Who has that book? Mathias himself? I glance at the blank screen, almost wishing the projector would repair itself so I can answer that pressing question.
And Pierce…
What’s his place in all of this? Why show us this? Is it a play against his mother? A bid to take her place as parriarch? Or a calculated move to ingratiate himself with me? What about Benny?
“Kyrie,” Leo snaps, putting himself bodily before me. “What’s going on?”
“Shh,” I say, stepping around him. “I’m thinking.”
Mathias is alive. Mathias has been alive for five hundred years—presumably—which begs the question, what has he been doing all this time? Why ally with the Carltons now, and how long have they been working together?
And why did it take the Arcanaeum so long to suspect something?
A pair of arms wrap around me, dragging me back to physical form. I didn’t even realise I’d fallen out of it again. Lambert’s hug is bone-crushing, and I blink up at him.
“It’s okay if you’re scared, boss. We won’t let him anywhere near you.”
Those two sentences, said with such earnest kindness, ground me. I will never admit to it, but for a second, I feel…safe.
Which is, of course, ridiculous. Lambert Winthrop may be good at magiball, but he wouldn’t stand a chance against the magister. None of them would.
I bite my lip and soak in the illusion a little longer, though. Just because.
“Mathias Ackland is alive,” Leo says. “And he’s chosen to ally himself with the Carltons? What for?”
I don’t know. Worse, I don’t know who I can trust. Any one of the six families could be working for him. Isidora mentioned Abe Talcott, the rector. If Mathias has the ear of the leader of our people, this could be worse than I feared.
What options do I have?
Close the Arcanaeum. Hide. A tiny inner voice insists, but I banish it.
“I need to speak to Pierce,” I say, instead of speaking my fears aloud. “It’s clear that I’ve been blind to this for too long. I believed he had died ages ago.”
Whatever my feelings about the Carlton heir, he chose to show us this. Discussing it with him might grant me some insight into his motives.
Jasper’s low moan pulls me from Lambert’s embrace, and I crouch beside him, murmuring a divination spell under my breath that reveals nothing.
In this instance, that’s a good thing. No trace of magic is left on him. He’ll probably have an awful headache, but he should recover.
His eyelids flutter, reality returning slowly as his hands battle the blanket, coming up to cradle his temples.
“Aww…fuck,” he groans.
“Slowly,” I caution, as his brows scrunch together. “Ten years of memories are about to flood you. It will go easier if you relax.”
Despite the sternness of my tone, I don’t expect him to do as I ask. Older and wiser arcanists have struggled with the onslaught. I’ve read that it feels like your brain swelling inside your skull—a frightening thought for anyone.
And yet Jasper just nods once, reaching out and grabbing for…
my hand? His fingers thread with mine as the corners of his eyes crinkle even more, and he grunts.
Without thinking too hard about it, I reach out like I have so many times with my magic, pushing those unruly strands of his hair out of his face, only to freeze when he leans into my fingers.
“What do you remember?” Dakari pushes. “Was it Carlton?”
Jasper is silent for a long while. “I was walking home from class, and there was this busted-up teenager stumbling away from a fight…” His eyes light with recognition. “Pierce. They used Pierce to lure me away from the street, then knocked me out. I woke up in that cell.”
Dakari curses, and I grimace.
“I’ll kill him,” the Talcott heir vows, already striding across the room.
“Not until I’ve talked to him.” I reappear in his path, putting myself between him and the nearest door.
“Not at all,” Jasper corrects. “You wouldnae believe it, but Pierce… Pierce was the only person in that house who didnae treat me like shit.”
Dakari pins me with a look. “Could his memories be faulty?”
I have to admit, I’m beginning to wonder…
“Actually…” Lambert sighs. “Pierce…is the most tolerable of the Carltons. I mean, yeah, dude’s an asshole, but he did save my life once.”
I gape at the Winthrop heir, who just shrugs. “His sister tried to kill me. I figure he only helped because he wanted to piss her off, but I almost died, so…”
Leo’s expression turns thunderous. “Anthea. Did. What?”
The words are bitten out, baleful, and his hand has dropped to his grimoire where it rests on the table.
“She poisoned my soup at the gala where my aunt officially announced me as heir.” Lambert shrugs again.
“Pierce picked a fight and ended up chucking a glass of wine in my face. He stormed out after ranting about how Winthrop was doomed if the best heir they could find was someone tainted with dull blood. The wine got into the soup, ruining it. I didn’t know anything had happened until I left the bathroom and found them arguing about Pierce ruining her plan. ”
That is perhaps the worst way to save someone’s life, and Leo’s jaw clenches. “Fecking Carltons. He probably only did it to make Anthea look bad.”
“I know that,” Lambert admits. “But since Kyrith wants him in her polycule, I figured I should point out he’s not a total dick, at least, not all the time.”
I open my mouth to object that I don’t want Pierce, but Jasper nods, cutting me off.
“He used to sneak down and fence with me,” he remembers, touching the scar at his cheek. “He’d occasionally drop hints about my family, in between…visits from Mathias.”
“Mathias Ackland is a lich,” Leo states quietly. “They require heavy restoration magic to maintain their bodies. We read about it. It makes sense. You were a child prodigy. Clan McKinley used to boast about how good you were at restoration. The Carltons targeted you for that reason.”
Something thick and swollen lodges in my throat, because what he’s saying tracks perfectly. Necromancy. Immortality. Decaying bodies that require regular infusions of restorative magic.
Was Magister Ackland already a lich before I was killed? He was elderly then, but I never asked his age. He kept me painfully isolated from other arcanists and any gossip I might’ve gleaned.
“I think… I think he promised to teach Isidora how to become one,” Jasper murmurs. “I remember overhearing things…snippets. They were so careful to begin with, but towards the end…they became less guarded.”
Because they didn’t think he was going to last much longer. My fists clench at my sides as I recall the condition he was in when Dakari brought him here. He was so close to death. Without my help, he wouldn’t have endured much more of what they were putting him through.
“They drove you to burnout by making you heal him, over and over.” I swallow. “Now you’re out of reach, they’ll be forced to find someone else. Other restorationists need to be warned, discreetly. It explains why they’re desperate to recapture you. Your family needs—”
“No more excuses to tighten my security,” Jasper moans. “Magic, if I tell them this, they’ll hire someone to watch me while I take a shit.”
“Then return to the Arcanaeum,” I offer. “You’re in danger.”
“Forewarned is forearmed,” he replies.
“If you’re right, then Kyrith is in danger,” Dakari says, and I jump as I realise he’s snuck up behind me without my noticing.
“That’s a bit of a stretch. He’s been banished from the Arcanaeum for hundreds of years.”
“Knowledge hunger,” Dakari recites. “That was part of lichdom, wasn’t it? This is the greatest depository of knowledge in the world, and you shut him out.”
I tug at my sleeves, hating the cold swirling in my gut at the very idea of being in Ackland’s crosshairs.
“I’ll be fine. Inside this building, I’m untouchable.”
“Are you?” Leo asks. “The Carltons are working for Mathias Ackland. He’s the one person who might actually understand why and how you’re bound to this place, and Pierce deliberately cracked you.
You have a body now. Bodies die. What if those two things aren’t unrelated?
What if Pierce cracked you to weaken you on Mathias’s orders? ”
It’s a theory that has merit, and it sets me to pacing again.
“Nothing will get solved tonight,” Jasper says. “Look, I’ll go home and tell my aunt everything. The clan will protect me, and they’ll protect the Arcanaeum too. They owe you for healing me and granting me Sanctuary.”
I sincerely doubt that Halinor will get that involved, but Jasper’s already shoving to his feet, grabbing his things.
“Someone needs to tell North what just happened,” Lambert realises. “He can’t be out of the loop. Nor can the other parriarchs.”
“My grandfather will want to know,” Leo agrees, a hint of true exhaustion entering his tone.
“I don’t like what Isidora was saying about my uncle,” Dakari grumbles under his breath. “If he’s involved with necromancy, I need to know.”
This is too hasty. We don’t have all of the facts, and they’re rushing off to confront their families.
“Wait,” I interject. “We need more information before you start a war with the Carltons. Yes, there’s a dangerous necromancer on the loose, but he’s been in hiding for centuries.
I don’t believe he’s spent that time doing nothing.
At the very least, he’ll have a contingency plan should he be discovered. ”
“Well, what’s your plan, then?” Leo asks.
I pause, thinking it over a second time, and then a third, before finally saying. “I want to talk to Pierce, and then I suspect I’ll need to speak with Benjamin Carlton.”