Chapter Thirty-Three Viola
Priya, I am not responsible for what students choose to do in their free time.
Those who have been breaking curfew have been dying, so unless you wish for me to punish ghosts, there is little I can do.
There is, however, the matter of a relic collector murdering students.
Parents are alarmed and requesting early leave. I’m awaiting directions from DOTS.
thirty-three | viola
I think I’m hallucinating.
Sylas is standing in front of me, a tempest raging in his eyes as he looks down at Raiku and me. I want to get up, go to him, and hold him, but I stop myself. It isn’t my place. He and I, we are nothing.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
There’s a slight flare in his eyes and a sudden tightness to his jaw. He leans against the wall of shelves, his arms crossed. “Same reason you’re here, I suppose.” His answer matches the coldness of my tone, but it’s very real. He is a few steps away from me, alive, and my stupid heart picks up.
I scramble to my feet, and Raiku slithers back to him. My hands reach for a random book. I need to be holding something, need to be doing something. Anything. How do I face him after telling him to rot in the Underworld?
“Oh? And what is that?” My shaky voice is a traitor.
He chuckles. It’s intoxicating.
“Viola.” There’s something about the way he says my name, the inflection in his tone, the silent command that compels me to pay attention. It lures a part of me that comes alive only when he’s around. “Can we talk?”
My fingers drum on the spine of a book, and I turn around, my back against the shelves.
He steps in front of me, and my breath hitches.
It’s hard to pretend he doesn’t affect me, even harder to pretend there is nothing between us.
His eyes drop to mine with a slight frown, and he tilts his head, his warm breath caressing my skin.
I spent most of the morning shoving him out of my head, and I did not consider the possibility of seeing him again so soon.
He sighs, and my cheeks flush and my throat tightens. He’s too close.
“What”—I clear my throat—“what do you want?”
I shift my gaze to the three patches on the left of his Firstline uniform. One for his rank. One for his House. And two smaller ones for his healer and killer aspiers. None for the Imortalis; I suppose Raiek is glaring enough.
“To apologize,” he says, his voice strained.
I lift my eyes to the smooth golden scales of Raiek, linger on the purple bruise on Sylas’s bottom lip, and finally look him in the eyes again. My stomach drops. How much longer will I lie to myself?
“I’m sorry I drove Olivia away,” he whispers, searching my eyes. By Death, I wish he would stop looking at me like my answer holds his fate.
“It wasn’t your secret to share.” My reply has no bite.
His apology should make me feel better, but it only drives the blade of guilt farther inside my heart—of course, he shouldn’t have said anything to Sierra, but he didn’t kill my sister. And I told him to rot in the Underworld. He doesn’t need to apologize at all. I should be the one to apologize.
“I needed to be angry at someone. You didn’t kill her. She… the cuff was already the target. I—” I am sorry, I want to say.
“Be angry at me. Be angry all you need.” He takes my right hand, pressing it to his chest. “I needed Sierra’s help. I was desperate—they were accusing Beau of killing Victor. I’m sorry, Vi. I’m so sorry.”
I would’ve done the same in his position.
“Sylas, I’m not angry.” I place my other hand on his chest, studying the sharp lines of his face.
A faint bruise is blooming under his left eye, and he has a new scar on his jaw.
Against all the warnings in my head, I reach for his face, running my thumb along the length of his scar.
His throat bobs. My heart stops.
For a stolen moment, I am not a Mortemagi, and he isn’t an Aspieri. We’re just man and woman, locked in the possibilities of what could be.
In the distance, hurried steps clap the floor, breaking this fragile moment. I push away from Sylas. He frowns, but I ignore it. I think of Overseer Paltro’s seething anger this morning. I shouldn’t even be entertaining this. Sylas is a distraction I do not need. “The ghost told me—”
“Viola, I—”
We speak at the same time. I avert my eyes. “Go ahead.”
“You first,” he says.
“The ghost said heirlooms can be used for personal collection, resurrection, entrapment, and reforging,” I explain.
Sylas bites his cheeks, mulling over the information.
I don’t stop there. I explain what she told me about resurrection and how she thinks the murders are personal because the lines are being killed.
“At first, I thought poachers were collecting heirlooms to release Grimm, but it’s not possible, is it?
They would need the blood of all the people who sealed him. ”
He slides against the shelves and takes a seat on the wooden floor, watching as Raiku coils and uncoils around his wrist. “We know that Azgar and Telam didn’t have any direct descendants, but have we considered that only one of them sealed him?
Firstline has no lead on the copycat, and I have a hard time believing they’re burying everything. ”
My hands fly to my mouth, thinking about what the ghost told me. This is entirely plausible, and if it is, we shouldn’t be worried about a copycat at all, but Grimm himself.
“The ghost said The blood that seals, and the relic are needed to release him, which implies only one. Is there… could he… be back?”
He looks up at me, and a thatch of hair falls over his brow. I pull my hand closer to my chest, fighting the urge to reach for him again. “I’ll scour reports, but if your ghost speaks true, then it’s a possibility. What else did she say?”
I repeat what the ghost told me only moments ago, “Dead lines tell no lies. Killing lines is personal.”
“Beau’s looking into the link between the dead family lines on the sixth floor.” He pauses, then looks away. “They… the poachers… they will come for your cuff, Viola. They have so many puppets. They are unlike anything I’ve ever fought against…”
This time, I’m the one who steps forward. I kneel in front of him, and his eyes find mine, the storm from earlier brewing anew. He sucks in his lower lip and gulps.
“Sylas,” I barely manage, pressing my forehead against his. We’re so close, I can smell the mint of his breath. “I’m not afraid,” I tell him honestly, my voice barely a whisper. I’m not afraid because I have you. The words die in my throat.
“They’re all dead because of me…” His voice is strained, his every breath cracking the invisible wall between us.
Before I realize what I’m doing, my hands are around his neck and my fingers through his hair; he leans forward and buries his head into the crook of my neck.
His shoulders shake against me, and I sit there quietly rubbing the back of his head.
He doesn’t have to say a word; the same guilt follows me around, hovering around my neck like a cleaver.
“I defied orders.” He chokes up. “I… they were all dead. I could only save Gryff.”
“Sylas,” I whisper, holding him closer. It breaks something in me, knowing that he trusts me enough to take down his walls around me. “Don’t do this to yourself. You don’t know that things would’ve ended differently. We’ve all seen what they can do.”
“It was different, Vi.” He pulls away from me and leans back against the shelves, his eyes bloodshot and his ears red.
He looks to the side, as if embarrassed he’s sharing something so personal.
“It was like they knew me; they knew my history, taunted me with personal things. I think… I think the puppeteer is someone we know.”
We sit here for a moment, the silence charged with the unspoken understanding that something’s changed between us.
Finally, I let out a heavy breath, lingering on his brooding face for a few seconds. “We’re closer to solving this than we were two weeks ago.” I rise to my feet, giving him my hand. He frowns at it, then tilts his head at me. “It’s metaphorical, Archyr. I can’t lift you up.”
“Careful what you’re offering, Corvi.” He gets up on his own, then takes my hand. “I might not let go.”
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1939
After our conversation in the library, I don’t see Sylas for the next five days; his siblings tell me he went to their family house in Iserine.
It turns out Paltro didn’t kick him off Firstline.
He was placed on bereavement leave for a week and has to see the institute’s counselor three times a week for the next month.
Beau has been in most of my classes, earning a few raised eyebrows from the Magisters.
Between her own classes and her research, Lyria fills in anytime Beau’s busy—Sylas apparently told them to be my shadow, and while I appreciate the sentiment, they shouldn’t have to fit their regular lives around me.
Finally, yesterday, Rhodes walked in while we were having lunch in Hollow Tree, demanding I sign a form stating that I’m keeping my anchored ghost. Aside from being my friend, the ghost has been instrumental in our private investigation.
Since Fable’s death, Firstline officers guard every courtyard of Gorhail, and one is stationed at the entrance of every House.
Rhodes continues to reassure everyone during her assemblies, but deep down, we’re all on the edge of a knife, waiting for the next murder.
We’ve stopped receiving copies of The Daily Mage and now have to rely on hearsay to know what is going on outside of Gorhail.
Tonight, as we drive past the evenly spaced cypress trees of Riverview, I mull over Sylas’s theory. That the poacher who murdered his unit in Gorhail Woods knew him.
“I shouldn’t be here.” Lyria clenches her counterfeit pass so tightly, I’m afraid it won’t be usable by the time we reach Riverview Prison. I reach across the car’s middle seat and squeeze her hand.