Chapter Eleven Viola
Crossmages could be an asset to Firstline. I have included a twenty-page examination of their potential. Please consider reviewing the decree that one of their classes should be sealed.
eleven | viola
One green eye. A harrowing scream. Everything goes black.
When I come to my senses again, thin rays of sunlight caress old books and dead plants across the room. My vision blurs, and my head hurts like it’s carrying the weight of a tree.
Faint voices murmur in the background, but I can’t make out the words, only the unmistakable inflections of worry. I’m trying to keep my eyes open, but instead, I drift off to a perfect world. A world where Olivia is alive, and I never had magic.
After a while, they open again to flameless torches lighting the room.
Faint but beautiful. My vision still struggles to adjust. A woman stands in front of me.
She’s my mother’s age. She’s striking, her black hair braided around her head in a crown, dressed in a simple black tunic.
An angel of death. Has she come for me? I don’t get my answer because sleep swallows me again.
The third time I open my eyes, I can see.
The ceiling is cherrywood, with several dead plants hanging from the beams. It looks as it smells, old, morbid, and sad.
At my side are several bloodied washcloths and a pile of torn pieces of cloth.
When I realize these are my clothes, I panic, look down, notice that I’m in a linen robe, and calm down.
“Water,” I croak. The sound coming out of my mouth is not mine.
A chair moves, and a woman approaches with a cup. It is her, the angel of death. Up close, she looks younger than my mother. But her bronze skin has dulled, her brown eyes are sunken, and her mouth is pulled in a frown.
She helps me sit up and brings the cup to my lips. The first sip doesn’t make it down my throat. I cough, spraying water over myself. By the third or fourth sip, I’m fighting back tears. The liquid feels like it’s peeling off the lining of my throat.
“Where am I?” I rasp, my voice still so foreign.
“You’re safe,” the woman says softly. “You’re at the House of Death.” Gorhail.
Why didn’t they just let me die?
“We’ll head to your room when you’re ready.” She brushes my hair tenderly. “The overseer has assigned you your sister’s old room.”
Olivia’s room? Death would have been more merciful. Do they want me to drown in the memories of a sister who was killed because of me? To find pieces of my sister that I lost over the last twelve years and have to say goodbye all over again?
I’ve barely been conscious a minute, and the institute already feels suffocating. I stop myself. Maybe waking up here is a sign from the Gods. Maybe they spared me so I could find out what happened to Olivia.
“Miss Corvi… how are you feeling now?” the woman asks when I don’t reply.
I open my mouth to answer, but all that comes to mind are Mara’s eerie green eyes and the sharpness of her claws digging into my flesh.
My throat closes, and my stomach tightens.
Instinctively, my hand drags up to my chest, where I was certain she ripped out my heart.
Nothing’s there. I peek inside the robe.
No open wound, not even a bruise, just white scars.
“What happened to me?” I finally manage to ask.
The woman gives me a tight smile. “You were attacked.” She shifts her weight and looks away; she doesn’t plan to elaborate.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Priya Parrish. Call me Priya.” Her smile warms, and she takes a seat on the chair near my bed. “Grand Master of Death Magic, and I also serve as Principal Grand Master at the Department of the Supernatural. You may know it as DOTS.”
DOTS. I can ask her about Olivia’s murder. Firstline took her body for further investigation, and Priya has to have more information if she’s in charge of DOTS.
“You have your father’s eyes,” she says, right as I’m about to ask her about Olivia.
I stare at her. She knew my father. Suddenly, I have a million questions. What was he like? Was he a whisperer, too?
Before I can ask, the doors creak open. Priya straightens, her eyes trained on the person walking in.
“Welcome, Miss Corvi.” A familiar voice fills the space. “Good to see you alive.”
Delaney’s heels click against the wooden floorboard, and it’s so… loud. How ironic that just two days ago, she gave me until Friday to make a decision, and here I am at the very place I spent my life avoiding.
“When is my sister’s funeral?” I ask no one in particular. With Olivia’s body moved to DOTS, funeral plans had to have changed.
“Monday,” Delaney answers. “We will arrange for transport to Albion, of course.” Monday seems soon yet so far.
I am torn between wanting to see my sister again and not wanting to say goodbye.
I imagine that’s how my life will be now; a constant push and pull; anger that she was ripped away from me too soon and regret over everything I could’ve done to prevent that.
“Will I be able to see her before then?” I try, looking from one to the other, before lingering on Priya. She is the Principal Grand Master; she is the authority.
“I’m afraid this will not be possible,” says Priya. “Rest assured, her body is being well cared for. It’s just… the full extent of magic doesn’t work on nonmagi, so we’ve had to call in a regular medical examiner.”
Magic doesn’t work on nonmagi. Her words sink like an anchor, dragging down my hopes of ever speaking to my sister.
I knew this. I’ve always known this. Only two types of magic work on nonmagi.
An Arkani reader’s touch to read their memories, and a Mortemagi whisperer’s touch to hear their last words.
How could I have forgotten? I was never going to be able to speak to Olivia’s ghost. It was never going to be more than her last words at the lake, and I didn’t even let her finish speaking.
“I promise, we’re working as fast as we can,” Priya reassures me, but it doesn’t matter anymore. “Sorry, Miss Corvi, I—”
“I don’t think there’s a need to apologize for formalities, Principal Grand Master Parrish.” Delaney clears her throat. “If one of our Secondline mages hadn’t run into you, you would have been dead, too, Miss Corvi.”
Of course she has to remind me that I am alive because of them. I glare at her insensitivity, but she’s right. I was dying, so how am I alive? “What did you do to me?”
Delaney’s head tilts to the side, her lips pulling into a proud smile. “We healed you.”
“At what cost?”
“We protect our own.” She meets my eyes with a silent understanding that I owe them the same. My anger boils at my throat. Why didn’t they protect Olivia?
At my side, Priya rises from her seat, her eyes on Delaney.
“What do you know of your magic, Miss Corvi?” Delaney looks at my cuff.
A lot. “Nothing.”
“Your grandmother was one of the greatest Mortemagi of her generation. The reason Mortemagi are able to serve as Firstline mages is thanks to her,” Priya speaks at last. If she was hoping to offer support, she’s only twisting the knife in my heart.
Of course, Nan changed lives. She changed mine in the short years I spent with her.
I wish she were still around. Olivia wouldn’t be dead, and I wouldn’t be here.
“I’d like to think you’ve inherited her greatness,” Delaney says, her lips twitching ever so slightly.
How much further could I have fallen? All I know of my magic is from books.
Before yesterday, I was only half a whisperer, Death’s errand girl.
I didn’t even know there was a difference between ghosts and the dead I used to listen to.
And now, I will walk through the same halls Nan did, disappointing her with every step I take.
“What makes you think I want anything to do with this magic?”
Delaney and Priya exchange a glance, and for the first time since the overseer walked in, I get the sense that one’s trying to scare me into attending Gorhail, while the other is enticing me with kindness. That their tension is manufactured, only there to manipulate me.
“Due to this week’s unfortunate events, classes have been suspended until next week.” Is Delaney addressing the murders of three students as “unfortunate events”? I shake my head in disbelief. “Formalities demand we test you on practical, theory, and physical to rank you appropriately,” she adds.
Why is she speaking like I’ve already agreed to attend this horrible place? She has so little regard for me that she doesn’t even care to ask. Then again, I don’t know what I was expecting from someone who essentially refers to murder as an inconvenience.
She continues her one-sided conversation. “I’m inclined to think that you are not clueless about our world and your magic, given you had free access to Rhea’s personal library.”
I’ve read nearly every book in Nan’s library, some multiple times.
I know what my magic can do, and more importantly, I know what it cannot do.
It cannot bring my sister back. It won’t even let me speak to her ghost. So why would I want to explore it further?
“I couldn’t make sense of most of the books,” I lie.
“May I give you some advice then, Miss Corvi?” Parrish says.
“Sure.”
“Gorhail has two principal rules for Mortemagi: If you are a whisperer, stay out of the Poisoned Stairwell unless you want to lose your mind. Ghosts cannot roam the halls of Gorhail because conduits will take them to the Underiver, but they flock to the Poisoned Stairwell.”
“And if I am a conduit?” I am not, but I’d still like to know.
“Then stay far away from the catacombs. A conduit’s cuff locks ghosts, leading them into the Underiver so they can then cross into the Underworld.
The catacombs are filled with tens of thousands of ghosts—they all flock to the cuff at once, overloading the conduit with magic, killing them in the process. ”