Chapter Thirty-One Viola
The dead cannot be resurrected unless they were killed.
The dead cannot be resurrected unless their body is present.
Exceptions to the rule comprise: resurrection from entrapment.
thirty-one | viola
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1939
My nails are painted with blood as I pace outside the infirmary. It took us half an hour to find which of the three Gorhail infirmaries they sent the Firstliners to, and now all we can do is wait.
My eyes fall on Azgar Fountain a few steps away from the round-roof building, where the statue of Helna Azgar winks at me with one hand holding a book and the other clutching her relic—a golden laurel leaf—behind her back.
That same leaf later became part of the Arkani Coin when the four Houses merged into one in the name of unity.
Maybe the Arkani were right all along—if mages weren’t so busy with petty House rivalries, they could’ve worked together to find a solution against poachers.
The Riverview Division officers wouldn’t be dead or fighting for their lives right now.
For the third time, Beau touches my hand, prompting me to stop picking at my fingers. But I’m not the only one riddled with anxiety. Lyria sits on the steps, head hanging on her knees. She steals worried glances at Beau, jerks at the opening and closing of the door, and her usual optimism is gone.
I sit next to her, and she weaves her fingers through mine, her skin as cold as the morning frost. I glance down at our linked hands, and my throat knots.
I’ve told myself that Sylas cannot die about twenty times, yet I cannot help the pit of despair gnawing at my insides.
He doesn’t have Railesza anymore; he could be severely hurt.
And what if they found a way to take Raiek off?
My fist balls at my stomach, and I feel sick.
The last time I spoke to Sylas, I told him to rot in the Underworld.
Gods, if anything happens to him, I will never forgive my rotten tongue.
“We don’t even know if they were part of this unit. They could be in Riverview.” Beau kicks the pebbles in frustration, and Railesza hisses at him.
Boots slosh against the wet grass. I look up, and Overseer Paltro heads toward us, his face wearing a scathing look. When his eyes land on me, it’s worse. “What are you doing here, Miss Corvi?”
“I…” I get up, flattening my coat. “I am…” I try again, but his threatening glare buries my tongue. Do I even have a right to be here? Sylas is their brother, and I’ve only known them for mere weeks.
“She’s with us, Uncle,” says Beau, while giving me a reassuring nod. “We told her to come.”
The overseer doesn’t spare him a glance. His eyebrows lift in question. “Miss Corvi, do you have family in Firstline?” He regards me from the bottom of his glasses, as if I am worthless. “Friends, perhaps?”
“I—” My face warms. No, I don’t have family. Friends? Can I even call Sylas a friend?
“Then you have no business being here.” His words are a final blow. My cheeks burn, my eyes sting, and my vision blurs from the hot tears. I begin to walk away, drowning out Beau’s and Lyria’s protests. The overseer is right. I don’t belong here, not when I told Sylas to die the last time we spoke.
“Viola,” Lyria calls out. “Wait.”
“Sit down, Miss Archyr,” the overseer snaps. “A Mortemagi killed your mother. It serves you well to remember that.”
His harsh words seep into my heart, turning it to stone, and I sink in this poisonous reminder. Nothing will change that a Mortemagi killed their mother.
Nothing will change that I am a Mortemagi.
The hallway in the library is riddled with materialized ghosts. They gather in small groups, some talking about the weather and some about the poor selection of books in this century. As we walk by, my anchored ghost sighs.
“What?” I ask.
The dead complain more than the living.
“I suppose they lament the life they wish they had,” I say honestly. A few translucent faces turn my way, and I hurry past them.
Materialized ghosts tend to think themselves above the rest of us normal ghosts. They forget they are dead, sometimes. And it helps not having to worry about conduits or expulsion.
“Is that something you worry about?” I ask. If she did worry about either, she must know that I would never expel her. She’s the reason I was even able to bring Beau and Victor back; she is an excellent homework resource; and she feels more and more like a friend.
No. If you wanted to expel me, you would have a while ago.
I bite down a smile as I continue my walk.
Instead of going to my room to wallow about Sylas, I’m heading straight to the library, where I’m hoping the books might tell me more about heirloom relics.
I didn’t come to Gorhail to find friends or…
Sylas. I do not have much lifeblood left, and the killer might come after me any moment, so why would I spend my remaining time thinking about a man who probably hates me instead of focusing on uncovering the murderer?
Four hundred years, and Aspieri are still ever so pompous. The anchored ghost is probably talking about Overseer Paltro. And they wonder why no one likes them.
“Why are you so reclusive?” I ask the ghost as I push through the oak door of the library.
I don’t like people. A pause. When you live in solitude for so long, you get used to it.
“Why did you anchor to me then?”
No answer.
Every step I take wraps me with the smell of old books. Rows and rows of bookshelves line the walls. In the middle are study desks, arranged next to one another, most empty. I suppose most people don’t like to study at the crack of dawn—mages and nonmagi alike.
Gorhail’s library is six stories tall, three times the size of our library back in Albion.
When I was little, Nan used to take me there every Saturday, while Mother took Olivia to the playground.
We’d always pick two books, and I’d read one to her every afternoon in her garden, and the other she’d read to me before bed at night.
“Hello,” a soft, weary voice speaks.
I look around, and the welcome desk is empty. For a second, I think it’s a ghost, but a chair scrapes against the wooden floor, and my eyes fall on an old lady, perhaps in her eighties. She stands, and I immediately reach forward to help her.
Laughing, she pats my hand twice. “You remind me of your mother.”
“I do?” No one’s ever told me that before, and I’m not sure it’s a compliment, knowing my mother. But I’m not about to argue with this sweet old lady smiling at me. Did she meet Mother when she came to visit my father at Gorhail? Was she a different person then?
“I’m Zoya, the custodian of the library.” She shakes my hand.
I smile, pressing my other hand over hers. Is this what Nan would’ve looked like today if she were still around? Would she have taken me to the library and taught me about magic? I would have loved to learn from her.
“I’m—”
“I know who you are, Viola.” She gently lowers herself back into her seat. “How may I be of assistance today?”
“I am looking for books on relics.”
She directs me to the third floor and makes me promise to visit often.
If my life wasn’t hanging by a thread, I would’ve honored that promise.
Every day. I’d ask her to tell me about Nan when she was dean of Gorhail, for stories about Olivia from her time here, and even if she knew my father.
Grief crawls around my heart again, every memory of all the people I’ve lost clutching it tighter.
The third floor opens to a large seating area. Empty, as expected. Zoya told me I’d find books on relics on the last three bookcases to my right, so I make my way down until I reach the very last bookcase. Built in the wall, it’s narrowly stacked with books, and six shelves taller than me.
If you must know, I anchored to you because you listened to my song, the ghost finally answers.
I smile as I run my hands across the worn spines of the books. For the first time, I wonder if I made a mistake, running away from my magic. If it had been me instead of Olivia, would I have been able to defend myself?
A thick tome sits in the middle of the shelf, sandwiched between two brand-new editions of textbooks Lorne dumped in my room the other day.
My hands wrap around the soft leather of the book, and I run my fingers over the gilded edges until they stop on the fabric bookmark.
Death Magic, or a Life of Servitude by Isobel Corvi opens on the title page, as if it wanted to be found.
Etched on the first page in beautiful cursive is a note from my ancestor.
Resurrection is a complex ritual that requires a personal sacrifice from the Mortemagi.
When his human lover died, Damas, the God of Luck and Treachery, begged the God of Death for a favor.
In exchange for half of Damas’s soul, Death brought her back as the first Mortemagi, the ghost reads aloud, and for a moment I forget that I cannot see her and look over my shoulder. Pathetic story, she adds.
“Who broke your heart?” I ask.
The state of the world.
I ignore her, letting the pages guide me to what the book wants me to know. There must be a way to connect the missing cuff and book to the heirloom relics. “You don’t happen to know anything about relics, do you?”
I know a lot about relics, the ghost scoffs. I didn’t mean my question as an offense.
“Why would someone collect heirloom relics?” I flip through pages and pages about the lifeblood and the cost of resurrection.
Yet another reminder of my stupidity. If I had bothered to do my own research instead of hanging on to every one of Victor’s false promises, I wouldn’t be hanging on to life by a meager amount of lifeblood right now.
As awful as it sounds, my only consolation comes through the blotched ink in the margins, as if someone had been crying over the page. I feel the shattering realization of the mage through the shaky handwriting. I’m not the first mage who resurrected someone without knowing the consequences.
This book confirms that the only abilities that do not cost lifeblood are speaking to ghosts, listening to the dead’s last words, and leading ghosts to the Underiver. If I so much as attempt to take over a puppet’s threads like I did Mara’s, I could die.
Does Gorhail no longer teach?
I roll my eyes. “I didn’t… attend Gorhail.”
Still, you’re a Corvi. Yet you are nothing like your ancestor.
“I chose a life free of magic.” I close the book, moving on to a different section.
The ghost laughs, then the soft timbre of her voice melts into sadness. You never gave it a chance to begin with.
The one time I gave it a chance, I cleaved my life in four. Don’t mind me if I never want to have anything to do with it anymore. “Will you tell me about the heirlooms, or will you guilt me to my death?”
She sighs. Heirlooms have many uses: personal collection, resurrection, entrapment, reforging. Perhaps even more uses now than when I was alive.
Killing people for a personal collection of heirloom relics seems extreme, so does reforging.
Who would reforge heirlooms from dead lines?
Resurrection bears too high a cost for anyone in their right mind to sacrifice themselves.
Still, I ask as I pick up another book, “What would resurrection with heirlooms entail?”
The usual Mortemagi recipe: a bloodline sacrifice, the heirloom relics, and more lifeblood than a person has. In short, it is improbable.
Improbable? I think it’d be impossible. This leaves me with entrapment, where souls are trapped into a relic so they can never become ghosts and never move on to the Underworld.
“Entrapment…” As I muse aloud, the answer comes to me clear as day.
It’s not a copycat we should be worried about.
The poachers are collecting everything to resurrect Grimm.
I slap the book shut. “What do you need to release a soul from entrapment?”
The blood that seals, and the relic.
I distinctly remember Beau saying two of the founders—Azgar and Telam—did not have any descendants, so there goes my theory.
“I need your help,” I finally concede. “Mages are being murdered, their heirlooms stolen. Faro’s Cuff is missing, and The Founder’s Book of Relics is also missing. How are all of these connected?”
For a moment, she goes quiet. Are the lines being killed? she asks.
I nod.
Dead lines, she mumbles, tell no lies. Then after a moment, her voice grows distant. Killing lines is personal, Viola.