Chapter 18
My first thought is obviously, Kill them.
My second thought is, Do not, under any circumstances, kill the Elders.
I take deep breaths through my nose to slow the urges.
My third thought is, Viv, you cannot have a syrabraxa-induced bloodlust episode right now.
I remind myself of what Deacon told me earlier today.
Those lapses into madness and pain are brought on by fury, and while I am suspicious and confused, I am not furious. Not yet.
The strange thing is, they aren’t demons, vamps, or lycanthropes.
They don’t seem like turned witches, either.
Hadn’t Deacon called them elven? Their unique ears and above-average height certainly point in that direction.
But elves are supposed to be lymantrian.
Good. And my aeon abilities are telling me otherwise.
I’ve never met an elf before, though, and I don’t think my father had, either.
Maybe all elves would cause an aeon’s body to tingle like this. Maybe…all elves are actually deviants.
It would give the Elders yet another reason to have taken out all the aeons—we’d be the only hunters who could tell they were hiding a deadly secret.
But then, were the first elves born in the underworld all those years ago, not the celestial lymantrian plane?
It’s too much for my brain to take. Especially when the vibrating need to kill is beginning to make me sweat.
Just my usual bloodlust, I tell myself. Not pain. Not madness. Just hunger for a fight.
“Your graces,” Fiona says with ease. She’s been here before.
She’s trusted by these men and women. Trusted to run the school as Professor Lisette, to guard the lymantrian secrets at the Windsor as Fiona.
I have no idea how I’m going to tell her my deviant radar went off in their presence.
She’s been working for these men and women her whole life. She’s going to be devastated.
One female Elder with a small, pinched face and pinned-back hair is staring at me. “You all right, girl?”
My heart slams against my chest. Did my face give away what I sensed? Only an aeon could know what they are. But I can’t lie…
Fiona doesn’t look at me. My breaths come quicker.
Think, think, think—
“First-year?” the female elf prods.
“Sorry. My senses have been overwhelming me,” I admit. Not a lie—an understatement, in fact. The syrabraxa makes any deviant encounter a sensory overload. But sensory overexposure is also common in first-years whose abilities have just developed at twenty-one.
“Ah.” The female Elder nods in poised sympathy. “That will fade with time.”
I try not to exhale all at once.
“Dean Lisette,” the male elf in the middle says.
He’s sinewy like a human twist tie. His graying hair reaches his shoulders but recedes, elongating his forehead.
Those wrinkled eyes make my fists coil, and I force myself to shake them out.
Relax. Deacon would say, Easy, tiger. “What do you call this council for?”
“I have discovered the identity of the High Thane, your graces,” Fiona says. “I came at once.”
The female elf says, “She speaks the truth.”
“And the first-year?” A round, big-bellied Viking of an elf husks. His beard is long enough to brush his stomach. His hands meaty and gripping the arms of his throne.
“She is a witness to my testimony.”
“What is your name, girl?” the female elder asks.
“Viv Abbot,” I say, though my voice wobbles. “Vivienne.”
The Elder in the middle nods, curious eyes roaming over my face. “Tell us then, Dean Lisette. Tell us what you have learned.”
Fiona stands a little straighter. “The High Thane is the Asteran businessman Caspar Harlock.”
“And how do you know this?” the female Elder asks, folding her hands primly in her lap.
“Miss Abbot was able to discern the information at an event today in the city. She witnessed him with his Brood.” It’s not exactly the truth.
But it’s a good loophole to their lie-detector abilities.
Fiona believes it to be the truth because it’s what I told her.
“One of those demons confirmed the knowledge to her before she executed him.”
More like, after he let me shove my dagger into his side for physical relief, but yeah. Same difference. I try not to look anything but solemn.
“Well done, first-year,” the portly Elder says. “You must be very strong.”
“I have good teachers.” I look to Fiona and offer a tight nod.
But the Elder in the center does not look as pleased. “You would be wise,” he warns, face a mask of stern authority, “not to breathe a word of this development to anyone until you are told otherwise by us.”
“We will need time to think on the correct course of action,” the female elf says. “But we are indebted to you both for your—”
“Correct course of action?” I interrupt.
“Isn’t the entire reason we learn to hunt here at this school to stop the High Thane?
” My back is starting to ache and writhe.
“This man is responsible for reprehensible crimes in the city. He’s the reason Edgar Driscoll turned.
The reason students at this school were murdered. He—”
“How do you know this?” the portly elf asks. “That Edgar Driscoll turned deviant and murdered students? That’s not public knowledge, Miss Abbot.”
I swear I hear Fiona’s knees locking up. When neither of us speaks, the Elder in the center turns to her. “Did you reveal confidential information to a student, Dean Lisette?”
Fiona shakes her head vehemently. “Of course not.”
And they know she’s telling the truth. Of course she is. All eyes fall to me.
“Viv—” Fiona starts. But she has nowhere to go from there. What can she say that won’t give me away?
“I was dating Reid Graveheart. He told me what was happening, right before he went after the dean.”
Fiona presses her hand to her face, but I suspect it’s in relief. This admission of truth has saved us from a far worse one.
The Elders shift, clearly uncomfortable, but they know I’m not lying. “You must know, Miss Abbot,” the female elf says, “it is against school rules for an instructor to consort with a student.”
I try not to let my relief shine out of me.
Anything outside of being suspected as the missing host is a win, even expulsion.
“I know. It won’t happen again. And he’s not employed at this school any longer, so…
” My voice withers away under their punitive stares.
But I’ve come this far. I’ve admitted this much.
“I have to ask…Are you looking for him?”
“Viv—” Fiona hisses.
“Looking for him?”
“Despite his indiscretion with me, Reid Graveheart gave everything to Harker. He was the best instructor this school had. And he’s here on campus somewhere.
He left me a message—” I’m careful not to admit that though it’s true he left me the camera, that’s not exactly how I know he’s here on campus.
“It shouldn’t be too hard to find him. Is anyone from the Citadel searching for him? ”
The first Elder’s black eyes bore into me. Something about that gaze…I swallow hard. “Would it surprise you to learn, Miss Abbot,” he says, leaning forward slightly, “that we have reason to suspect your beau may have been working with the turned dean?”
I can feel how wide my eyes get. “What?”
Even Fiona gasps. “That’s preposterous.”
“And now we learn Mr. Graveheart had an accomplice of his own. A girl who, for all we know, carries the syrabraxa’s mark along her very skin.”
“Alton,” the female elf snaps, head whipping toward him.
But the Elder in the center is unmoved. His eyes bore into mine. My heart is beating so furiously I’m certain he can hear it. “Show us your back, girl.”
All the blood drains from my face.
The portly Elder shifts in his throne. “Alton, that’s not—”
“Show us.”
“Is that really necessary?” Fiona breathes. I can almost hear her straining against the instinct to lie. She’s obviously not an aeon. You’d know if she’d been imbued with any kind of spell…
“In times like these we must take every precaution,” Alton says. “Disrobe.”
This is why we went to Dawnmere, I tell myself. In the long run, this is a good thing. I’ll be innocent in their eyes. It’ll make whatever I have to do next to find Reid or clear his name or get this spell out of me that much easier. Still, my hands shake as I unzip my dress and turn around.
I exhale as some of the Elders murmur their own appeasement. The chill of the room licks down my spine.
Until—
A tingle.
Just a shiver beneath the skin of my back.
In the time it took to trek from Dawnmere’s cottage, through the Fickle Thicket, and into the Elders’ throne room—the time it took to answer their questions and display myself for them…
My hour is up. I can feel the magic fading. The scar returning on my back.
I whirl around, zipping up my dress. “I think you’ve seen enough.”
“Viv—” Fiona levels at me.
But I’m out of time. Any second now, back bared to them or not, these deviants will be able to sense the dark magic swirling under my skin.
“No,” I bite out, just shy of a shout. “This is weird and inappropriate. I’m trying to do the right thing and somehow I’m on trial. Just forget it.”
And I don’t stop to hear how much trouble I’m about to be in.
I hightail it out of there faster than a cannonball. Though I can hear their murmurs of disapproval, I bolt across the delicate rugs and through the throne room doors into the hall. In such a whirlwind—such an urgent rush to get free of their senses, to spare myself and Fiona and—
I don’t even realize I’ve run right into a Citadel hunter.
And not just any guard strapped with weapons, but—
“Landon?”
Our new Combat Training instructor. With his ear pressed up against the door. In his hands is a sleek black case. We can only gape at each other. Both versions of What are you doing?
“I have a delivery for the Elders,” Landon tells me, standing up a notch straighter. “I was only listening to hear if I should come back at another time.”
I’m too riled up to skewer him for eavesdropping and lying about it.
Or to panic over what he may have heard.
Before I can make a quick excuse to bolt, my nostrils flare at something strange swirling in the air.
Tangy, iron-rich…Like pennies or gore. My eyes drop down to the box in his hands.
There’s blood inside. And stranger yet, my mind fills with images: bone-white antlers, glowing eyes, the deep red juice of black cherries spilled across—
But that makes no sense. Why would a Citadel hunter be bringing Deacon’s blood to the Elders?
“What are you staring at?” Landon asks, following my eyeline to the case in his hands.
But Fiona saves me a response, stomping out of the throne room and dragging me from the hallway. Before we turn down the stairs, Landon meets my eyes with simmering, dangerous curiosity.
Fiona doesn’t say a word to me until we’re out of the Fickle Thicket and half a mile from any Citadel hunter.
“What on earth was that?” she snaps. Her mess of thin blond hair is limned by the moon, which has finally slipped out from behind a blanket of clouds. “Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
“The spell was running out. They were going to see.”
“You weren’t just disrespectful. You were suspicious. They’ll have their eye on you now.”
“They’re deviants, Fiona.” My scar still thrums, but not enough to send me over the edge. I take another deep breath. “I felt it. My aeon senses felt it.”
Dread creeps up her features, slipping into her eyes behind those horn-rimmed glasses, but Fiona pushes right past it. “The syrabraxa must be having an effect on you. They are the highest good in our world. How could they be deviants?”
“I can’t explain it, but I know what I felt. I’m not saying they’re evil or they’re working with Caspar…but their genetic makeup is that of a deviant. I’m telling you.”
Fiona purses her lips in thought.
“Do all elves live that long?”
“There are no other living elves. So we don’t know…but no being is truly immortal.”
We learned that our first week of classes.
Neither deviants nor lymantrians can live forever.
But anyone who lives that long usually requires a nefarious source.
Like vampires with blood or demons with souls.
I almost ask Fiona what she thinks of that—if that might be sufficient evidence of their deviant nature—but she speaks first.
“I can’t believe they think Reid was working with Driscoll.”
“I know. And I can’t even tell them he spent hours and hours searching for those missing girls with me. Trying to solve the mystery right by my side. I can’t even tell them how gutted he was to have failed.” I rub my eyes in frustration. “They’d probably just say he was a great liar.”
“I’m sorry, Viv,” Fiona says. “I know how hurtful that must have been to hear.”
I cross my arms over my chest when the wind howls through us. “So you don’t think they’re going to go after Caspar?”
Fiona brings her hands to her temples. “I don’t know. But we have to trust that they know what they’re doing. That they have a plan.”
What if it’s like Deacon warned? That every corrupt government needs a scapegoat?
I think of all those Harker alums, working tirelessly for the Elders in that castle.
Working to make sure they have the final say on every dispute among lymantrians, every deviant killed.
I think of their records—how hunters across the world are tracked, trained, and recorded.
All the wealth they have amassed. How long they have been alive.
Through the lens of the deviantness, of the way they just treated us, of their disinterest in stopping Caspar…
the Elders are beginning to look a lot more like mortal oligarchs than the high court of lymantrian good.
“I think they’re using the High Thane as a boogeyman to unite lymantrians in fear. It’s how they maintain their control, Fiona. If there was no High Thane, there would be no need for the Elders or their Citadel. They have no intention of stopping Caspar.”
But I can tell Fiona doesn’t buy what I’m saying. Her career—her entire life—has been dictated by those elves. “You need to trust me, Viv. If they say they’ll take care of him, we have to let them do it in their time. There’s a delicate balance at play in Astera. There always will be.”
I’m grateful she doesn’t share the truth-telling powers of her overlords. Because even as I nod my agreement, I’m thinking that I’ll just have to stop all of them on my own.