Chapter Twenty-Seven Viola
Sylas, Riverview Division has located poacher cells in the nonmagi communities of Bale.
I presume it’s to deter Firstline from looking for them among nonmagi.
We’re inclined to believe they are preparing for a new Grimm, but we don’t have clearance to investigate further.
Firstline is under a strict oath of silence— DOTS wants to conclude investigations before causing hysteria.
twenty-seven | viola
Half the lifeblood and half again. If I die tonight, it means I would have lived until at least eighty-eight.
It’s ironic, how the will to live rushes in when you’re told you no longer have time.
It was momentary, though, because now as I follow Lorne across yet another courtyard, I am as numb as on the frosty morning I found my dead sister by the lake.
The tears won’t come, the scream won’t leave my lungs, and my heart beats out of sheer obligation.
I know two things to be true.
First, a Mortemagi puppeteer is in fact behind the killings. It could be anyone, even the ones I cross in Hollow Tree.
Second, Sylas Archyr clouds my mind in ways that make me question myself, because even with death at my door, I cannot shake the way he looked at me at Priya’s house, nor the slight flex of his fingers when he pulled me closer in front of Delaney.
Soon after Delaney dragged all of us back into the House of Death, she ordered me to clean up and start lessons with Lorne before disappearing.
To my dismay, Lorne insisted on following me “to keep me safe.” He hovered outside my door as I showered, and the moment I was done, he urged me to go with him to collect some magical plants for today’s lesson.
As we walk across a low bridge, I marvel at the beauty of Gorhail.
The sky blends three hues of orange, with no cloud shrouding its magnificence.
It’s a rare sight around here amid the constant rain.
The sun makes me think of Nan, of how she used to have her morning tea alone in the middle of her garden, like she was savoring each ray of sunlight.
“Viola.” Lorne stops a few steps ahead of me. “You seem elsewhere. Is now not a good time to begin your lessons?”
Oh, Lorne. I buried my sister two days ago and found out that I was tricked by the ghost she told me to seek.
Meanwhile, her killer is still at large, my stupid relic is still a target, a terrible conspiracy is afoot among poachers, and I am nowhere close to figuring out what happened to her and will likely die before I do.
Now is the perfect time to begin lessons.
I say none of that.
“Congratulations.” He gives me a sheepish smile. “On your promotion to Magus,” he adds when I don’t reply.
His praise sits on my chest like sour milk. There’s no merit behind my promotion; it’s not something I earned at all. “Grand Master Parrish gave it to me out of pity,” I reply honestly.
It wasn’t out of pity. The ghost speaks, and I let out a quiet gasp. I thought she was gone.
“You don’t know that,” I mutter.
“What was that?” Lorne cants his head. Of course he can’t hear her. During our car ride back, Beau told me no one other than the anchored Mortemagi could hear or see their ghost. “I…”
As I prepare to spin another lie, I realize how exhausting this life is, and I think of my poor sister and how she must have struggled.
“I know you resurrected Cardot,” Lorne says, his eyes boring into mine.
I blink a few times, my neck warms, and the tingling at the tips of my fingers grows more intense. He can’t possibly know that. He wasn’t there.
“I know about Carver, too,” he adds.
I stop breathing.
“How?” The word escapes my mouth, like a gavel waiting for his answer to drop.
“Parrish sent an express courier to Dean Rhodes.” He shrugs. “I overheard when he delivered the message. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”
But what does he want? People like him prey on information they can use as leverage, and sooner or later, he’ll want something in return for his silence.
“I told you not to trust Aspieri.” He leads me down another corridor that opens to a lush garden with several rounded, white-lattice gazebos and a marble pond in the middle. I am not prepared to hear a sermon about whom I should and shouldn’t trust. Beau and Sylas didn’t betray me. Victor did.
Lorne doesn’t seem to understand that my continued silence means that I do not want to speak to him, and he sighs. “If it were up to me, I would’ve awarded you the High Magus title. Resurrection magic is an ancient art that very few Mortemagi have mastered. It takes decades.”
Whether or not he meant this as an accusation, it still raises the hairs on my arms. I cannot risk his knowing the truth about my anchored ghost—more because I plan to keep her around than because I care about what he thinks, and something tells me he’ll run straight to Delaney and lobby to have her expelled “to keep me safe.”
“Victor instructed me.” It’s not entirely false.
“It’s still impressive.” He abruptly stops at the end of the corridor, turns around, and places his hands on my shoulders. I flinch.
“Have dinner with me, Viola.”
And there it is. The ask for keeping quiet about my resurrection spectacle. I lower my eyes to where his thumb digs into my collarbone. Wasn’t he in love with my sister two seconds ago?
“I’m not hungry,” I say. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.
“You’ll be hungry by dinner.” His lips curl into a wolfish smile.
One that tells me he has me cornered, and there’s no one to save me.
“Besides, you’ll need new allies at Gorhail, the right allies.
Those snakes led your sister to her death, then they tricked you into cleaving your life to resurrect their serpent trash. ”
Beau isn’t serpent trash.
I back up, taking him in. His moss-green eyes that are at once familiar and foreign, his predatory lips pulled upward, and his mouth that I want to punch. One moment it’s Olivia, the love of my life, now it’s your sister. Lorne is the only snake in this story.
He takes my silence as agreement and creeps closer. At the same time, I notice something in the pond behind him. I squint to get a better view.
It’s not a thing at all, but a person.
“Someone’s in there,” I scream, pushing past Lorne. “Call the healers.”
A young woman, not much older than me, floats at the edge of the pond. Her glassy blue eyes, red with tears, stare at the sky. Gods, the healers won’t be able to do anything for her.
She’s dead.
I lower to my knees, and the wetness of the grass seeps through the fabric of my pants. Priya said that listening to the last words of the dead was still possible, so I lean closer to her.
Pulling up the sleeves of my sweater, I reach in the water, the cold biting at my skin, until her bloated hand is in mine.
Time stops, and her eyes flip to cloudy white irises. I am prepared for the last piece of her story. The serpent betrayed the sister’s secret, leading her to her death.
I withdraw my hand, wiping it against my sweater.
Now more than ever, I long for Olivia. She’d have solved this riddle within seconds.
My eyes travel over the woman’s body, looking for any claw marks, but there are none.
I lean in and notice a thin, clean-cut line across her neck, but no traces of blood.
“Viola! The overseers are on their way—they’re already aware of the body. I suppose Secondline didn’t section off the area,” Lorne exclaims from behind me, but my mind is busy patching together the riddle.
A serpent. A sister. A death. The answer hovers at the tip of my tongue, but still, I sift through a million excuses, because it cannot be true.
The dead don’t lie, my anchored ghost reminds me.
At the same time, footsteps hurry behind me. I rise to my feet and turn to see Rhodes, Overseer Delaney, and the overseer of House of Arcane emerge from the corridor. They don’t seem alarmed at all; in fact, they’re gesturing to the sun and the surroundings.
My anger coils at my fists. A young woman was killed, and they left her dead body to lie in the water for hours, for all I know.
I hate this godforsaken place and the cruelty that lives within.
Not far behind the overseers and Rhodes, Sylas walks besides Overseer Paltro, his eyes locked on to mine.
Pressure builds in my chest until my heart begins to ache and my throat begins to close.
The serpent betrayed the sister’s secret, leading her to her death.
Beware the serpent with one green eye. My sister’s last words barrel into my head. She was telling me not to trust Sylas. And like a fool, I fell for his ruse.