Chapter Thirty-Seven Viola
I’m afraid my end is near. All the secrets must come out. Let me begin with mine. I have done something terrible, something unforgivable—
thirty-seven | viola
Lorne’s hot breath scorches my neck. He walks so close to me, as if giving me any space would make me disappear. He ignores all my questions about rituals and relics, so I try asking about Gorhail’s lockdown. “Are you worried the poachers might still be in here?”
“Huh?” He slows his steps, and I match them.
“The ones who killed Fable,” I whisper, realizing how silly I sound. No poacher is around to hear me; we’ve passed by four Firstline officers on our way here, and I’ve watched all four of them not-so-subtly brush against students. All of them readers.
“Viola, you are too new to this world to understand the real dangers.” He sighs. “We’re safest within Gorhail walls.”
I clamp my mouth shut. Fable was killed within the safety of said walls.
“Should I ask why you have a Poison shirt on?” he asks when I don’t say anything.
No, you shouldn’t, I want to say.
“Yesterday, I was studying with Lyria and fell asleep in her room.” I impress myself with this lie, because it is plausible. “We had to report to assembly immediately, so I took her clothes.”
“Of course.” He heaves a sigh of… relief.
We turn into the hallway with the diamond-patterned rug, and I’m almost to my room when I abruptly stop, a question already slipping out. “Was Olivia planning to move to Wanora with you?” I ask.
Ever since Victor told me at the prison, the question has been burning at my lips. I need to know if she planned to leave with him.
“No, she mentioned there was somewhere else she needed to be, but she wouldn’t say where.” He lowers his head. “I wish I had insisted and left earlier. Perhaps she would have come then, and she would still be here now.”
My chin quivers. Olivia was really going to leave with me to Osneau.
I shake my head. The only thing I can do now is find her killer.
And now that I’m back in my room, I can see if she may have hidden The Founder’s Book of Relics somewhere here.
I combed the room my very first night here, but maybe I missed something.
“I’ll be out in ten.” I unlock my door, but Lorne gives no sense that he will move away. He takes one step too close, and my heart plummets. Not again.
When I refuse to move, he grunts. “Be quick, Viola.” He backs up. “I have business to attend to.”
Once I’m in the room, I don’t waste time.
I turn over the drawers and run my hands inside to check for hidden compartments, but there’s nothing there.
If Olivia hid the book, it would still be in here.
After digging through every drawer, I rush to the wardrobe, combing through every nook and cranny. Still nothing.
The door rattles, and a jolt zaps through me. Has it already been ten minutes? I pull on a House sweater without bothering to change the shirt. Two more knocks, and I jerk the door open.
No one’s there.
I step in the hallway, peek to the left and then to the right.
Shaking my head, I turn around, but a forearm laces around my neck.
It drags me back with so much force, I only manage to slip my palms in front of my neck to prevent it from crushing my windpipe.
My nails dig into the pale flesh, but it doesn’t budge.
So I do the only thing I can think of and bite down hard.
The acrid taste of rotten flesh takes over my mouth.
My bite should have drawn blood, but it doesn’t.
The person recoils, cursing.
Panicked, I whirl.
Mara cradles her arm against her stomach. Bloody saints, I thought Firstline had her locked up.
Something’s changed about her since the attack at Dearly Departed. Her edges are sharper, her posture straighter, and she’s not rotting away anymore. This defies everything I’ve learned about puppets, unless… the magic controlling her is also changing her appearance.
I could scream and try to alert someone, but I will be dead before anyone comes. Or I could run, but Mara is faster than me. The only remaining option will drive me to death at best, madness at worst, but at least it will be on my own terms.
I bolt to the Poisoned Stairwell. My hands are practiced now, and the notch clicks open immediately.
Mara lunges for me, and I step into the darkness in the nick of time, closing the door on her.
She bangs on the door with the force of a rabid animal, but it will hold. At least that’s what I tell myself.
My chest heaves, and I lean forward, steadying myself on the railing, and try to catch my breath. Saints, I wish I had traded the cuff for Scar, but all I have is the cold metal wrapped around my arm.
“Where do I go?” I ask the ghost, hoping she’s returned. She’d mentioned she would try to find out more about the sudden lockdown earlier, and she never came back.
No answer.
The door cracks behind me. Mara will break it open any moment. I leap forward, desperate, my heart thumping with terror. “Please, tell me where to go.”
Thank Death, I hear her voice again.
Straight, take three flights of stairs down, then take the long hallway to your left.
I follow like I am the epitome of piety, and she is my God. We stop in front of an entrance to another stairway. Up. Looking at the winding stairs that seem to lead to the skies, I hesitate. I know where I am.
What if she’s trying to trick me?
She’s closing in. But she won’t be able to get in here. The magic keeps puppets out.
My life teeters between certain death and a likely death.
So I climb. I climb until my thighs burn, until my shins threaten to split down the middle, until I can no longer walk and have to crawl up the steps.
Until I reach a landing with a single, arched, wooden, black door with four square windows.
I stumble on the last step, falling flat on the ground, tears blazing in my eyes.
The sinister feeling from the first night Mara attacked me by surprise clutches my neck, and for the first time since then, the acrid smell of death wafts around me. Gods, I might die tonight.
Get up, Viola. The ghost is insistent. I didn’t put myself through this for you to give up now.
What is she talking about? She’s a ghost. Nothing will happen to her. “You’re a ghost. So what if you walked through a few walls?”
I don’t hear her for a little. Then she lets out a quiet sigh. When I died, my memories were sealed to this cursed place. The moment I walked in, they all came back.
Gods, she chose to relive her horrifying death to help me. Gathering strength from her words, I push myself up, my limbs aching with every step I take toward the door. I push it open, and a gasp flows out of my lips.
Clouds roll off the highest peak of Mount Chazal, and blue-eared hawks circle some of the tall, flat trees on the top.
The tallest waterfall in Draterra twinkles as the water cascades down the ridges of the mountain into the thick clouds.
I was mistaken to think Sylas’s room had the most beautiful view in all of Gorhail.
We’re up so high that I feel like I’m in the skies.
The hawks move to the sound of the waves crashing on the cliffs in their own choreographed dance.
I sit on the bench, allowing myself to calm down. Mara can’t get to me here. I have to trust in the magic and trust in the ghost. She’s never led me astray before… but what if… My chest heaves again, and I grip the sides of the bench.
I didn’t bring you here to kill you.
It does nothing, my breaths are haphazard gulps of air, and my ears ring with paralyzing fear.
If I wanted to, you’d have already been dead in the catacombs.
Remember… I can possess you at length, make you forget yourself…
I drown out the rest of her words, reaching forward to the railing to prevent myself from getting sick.
The stretch helps, and tension eases in my shoulders, and slowly, my heart returns to its regular pace.
When I finally calm down, my eyes narrow at the intricate railing. It’s a mesh of ravens, roses, and bones carved in a beautiful pattern in the cold metal.
You freed me from the catacombs after four centuries. It’s time you know who I am.
“What is your name?” I ask, like a fool. Ghosts can’t give their names to whisperers. They can only confirm it. If I get it wrong, she can possess me forever, but I know she won’t.
This used to be my favorite place.
“You said you died here?”
There’s a note of sadness in her hum, but no regret. My lover was a prophet, a whisperer extraordinaire with reader magic. Spirits would tell him of the future. It was a gift until it became a curse.
My breath hitches, caught in the elegance of how she strings her words up here. Something’s changed within her, like a deep sorrow took root the moment she came back to Death Spire. I don’t dare speak, afraid that if I do, she will stop telling me her story.
I loved someone who was in love with himself.
I never stood a chance. He wanted the world to see the greatness of our magic, but as you witnessed, our magic comes at a great cost. He began to sacrifice innocent lives.
In a vision of the future, he saw them—the world of mages—shunning us Mortemagi, burning us, throwing us behind bars, executing us.
Dread fills my bones, because I can see mages doing this. There is so much prejudice, so much unfounded hatred across the classes. Purists would have no trouble executing crossmages, and Aspieri would sooner be rid of Mortemagi if they could.
I tried to stop him. I tried. I told him I couldn’t love someone whose lust for power ran so deep, that I wouldn’t stand by someone who chose to kill people over helping them see our differences.