Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Briony
“You’re meant to be helping me, Nini,” Thorne says, not taking his eyes off the vegetables he’s chopping rapidly with a seriously sharp blade.
“I am!” I insist.
“You’ve stopped stirring,” he says, looking up at me and pointing to the saucepan and the wooden spoon that’s stalled inside.
“You’re distracting,” I point out with a pout.
“I am?” he says.
“Very! Especially when you do things like that with your knife.”
He laughs, a sound that makes my stomach flutter, and pauses his chopping to lean down to kiss me.
A kiss that’s interrupted when Fox comes marching through the front door and into the kitchen.
There’s a smug, excitable expression on his face I’m not sure I’ve ever really seen before.
Something boyish and, if I’m honest, a little nerdy.
“We found it,” he says. “We found something in the secret part of the library, in the books back there. We think we know how to do it.”
“Do what?” I ask, resuming stirring the sauce we’ve been preparing for the last hour.
“A way of activating the academy’s ancient magic.”
“That’s great,” I say. “So have you done it?”
“No,” he says, striding forward and snatching my hand. “We need you for that.”
“But I’m helping Thorne with the cooking!”
Fox stares at me like I’ve lost my mind, and he does have a point. We need this ancient magic to protect us. Something cooking is not going to achieve.
“Okay, okay,” I say. “I’m coming.”
I untie the apron from around my waist, wipe my hands on it, and place it on the countertop.
“Can you manage without me?” I ask, standing on my tiptoes to kiss Thorne’s mouth again – a simple action I’m still not taking for granted. Just to touch him is thrilling every single time.
“Of course I can,” Thorne says. “But do you need my help?”
“We’ll be fine,” Fox says, already pulling me out of the kitchen, through the hallway, and out the front door.
“Where are we going?” I ask as he tugs me along behind him. There’s no need for us to hide away now, although I do have to trot to keep up with his pace.
“The Great Hall,” he explains. “It’s the oldest part of the academy. It’s also the center of the campus. I don’t know how I never saw that before.”
“Saw what?”
“The layout of the academy. It’s star-shaped, with the Great Hall right in its center.”
I shake my head. “Fox, what are you talking about? The academy isn’t star-shaped at all.”
“Not now,” he says. “Not with the modern buildings that have been added – the shadow weaver clinic, some of the newer towers. But the ancient ones, the old ones, they form a star.”
I frown even harder. “I still can’t see it.”
“Some of the old towers were demolished,” he explains, “to make room for the new buildings. Before that, they formed a perfect star shape, with the Great Hall at the very center. It’s the center of this place, where the magic is at its most powerful.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’m still not sure how that means we’re going to activate it, but I’m happy for you to keep pulling me along.”
Professor Cornelius and Clare are waiting for us inside the Great Hall, lit with a thousand candles, far brighter than I’ve ever seen it before, its colorful glazed windows flickering in the light.
For the first time, it looks a lot less creepy and spooky and in its way, kind of beautiful with its rising pillars and vaulted ceiling.
“Here she is,” Fox says, depositing me in front of the other two.
“I don’t exactly know what you want me to do,” I mutter
Clare cradles a book in her hands, her recovered-glasses perched on the end of her nose.
She tips back her head in an attempt to right them, but it doesn’t work.
She huffs in frustration and, shifting the book awkwardly to her left arm, points to a spot in the center of the Great Hall with her right.
“I think you need to stand here.”
“Me?”
“Of course you,” she says with a little irritation, prodding her finger impatiently.
I step where she’s indicated, peering down at the ground. There’s nothing that marks this spot as any more important than any other.
“Why here?” I ask.
“If what I’ve read is correct,” she says, “and who knows, this book was written by shadow weavers,” she tuts in disapproval, “this is where one of the first firestones was discovered. I think that means this is where the magic is at its most powerful.”
“Can you feel it?” Fox asks, his eagerness reflected in Professor Cornelius’s old eyes.
I’m guessing this is what happens when you allow a bunch of nerds to indulge their innermost geekiness.
“I don’t know,” I say, shuffling on the spot and then closing my eyes.
Is it my imagination, or does my magic seem to tingle? Of course, that could just be because Fox is standing only a few paces away from me, and his proximity has always done funny things to my body.
“She might not be able to feel it yet,” Professor Cornelius ponders, “because it hasn’t been awakened. Miss Watson, do you have the spell we copied down?”
“Yes,” Clare says, lowering the heavy book to the ground and pulling a scroll of paper from her pocket.
She unfolds it, her eyes roaming hungrily over the words scribbled in her own handwriting.
She thrusts it out to me. “It took us a while to find it, but we think these are the words you need to say.”
I stare down at them. “This is in the old language,” I say, my cheeks heating with my own ignorance. “I can’t read them.”
“Oh,” Clare says. “Did you never learn?”
I look up from the paper and give her a hard stare.
“Right,” she says. “Slate Quarter. I forgot.”
“Could you read them to me and I can repeat them back?” I ask.
“Oh no, my ancient is horrible,” she says. “My pronunciation is all wrong.”
“I very much doubt that’s true,” the Professor says.
“It isn’t,” I say.
“You read it, Professor,” she says.
“Clare,” he says in that booming voice that usually has her knees knocking together, “you copied it down. You’re more likely to say it correctly.”
I offer her the paper back. Looking a little nervous, she takes it from my hands, clears her throat, and says the first few words.
“Wait,” Professor Cornelius says before I have a chance to repeat them. “I think you should call your magic forth, Miss Storm. Demonstrate to this ancient place that you really are a lumomancer.”
“Doesn’t it already know?” I ask. “I showed the library, and I used my magic out there when Fly was…” I trail off.
“It wouldn’t hurt,” Professor Cornelius says with a kind smile.
I nod, close my eyes, and let my light magic swim from my hands. Maybe it’s my imagination again, but it does feel easy here. Like the light is welcome. Like it belongs. It hums in the air, lighting the Great Hall with even more warmth.
“Can you say those first few words again?” I ask Clare. “Slowly.”
“Okay.”
Clare wets her lips with her tongue and says the first few words clearly and precisely. Clearly and precisely, I repeat them, my magic flaring in the air of its own accord, like a flame fed fresh fuel.
Clare says the next line, and once again I repeat it. Then the next, and the next, each time my magic flaring momentarily.
Then she comes to the final line. Despite not understanding the ancient language at all, I seem to comprehend it nonetheless, its meaning clear as I let it slip from my tongue – an invitation, a request, a plea to this ancient place to protect us.
This time, my magic doesn’t flare. It hangs in the air, still as a statue. I hold my breath, my heart seeming to forget how to beat.
“It doesn’t seem to have worked.”
And then – beneath my feet – a light ignites, like someone has struck a match. It spreads from where I stand, across the stone slabs of the Great Hall floor – the dark stone suddenly gleaming like marble.
The light races beneath the feet of Fox, Professor Cornelius, and Clare. They spin around to watch it surge to the walls, where floor meets stone, then climbs upward, illuminating the walls, racing along the vaulted ceiling above our heads until it meets in the center directly overhead.
We stand there, staring upward, heads tipped back and then I let my gaze sweep the entirety of the Great Hall.
The dark stone glows a brilliant white. It’s never looked like this before.
It has always seemed gloomy, shadowy, frankly menacing.
But now it’s transformed into somewhere worthy of the palace in Onyx Quarter; light, radiant, elegant.
Was this how it was once upon a time, when this place belonged to light wielders?
I look back towards Fox’s face, illuminated by the light, more handsome than ever, and I’m struck again by the color of his skin and the blue that seems to shine in his amber eyes. He looks more human than ever.
“Did it work?” I ask. “Did I do it?”
Fox nods, then looks to Professor Cornelius. “What do you think?”
“I’m not sure we’ll know for certain – not unless the academy is attacked,” he says, chuckling, “but this little light display does seem to suggest we were successful.”
Clare can’t help bouncing on her toes, clapping her hands. “You did it, Briony!”
“Me?” I say, laughing. “Clare, that was you!”
“Oh no,” she says, pushing her glasses firmly up her nose. “It wasn’t.”
“It was,” Fox contradicts. “You found the location, and you found the words. Professor Cornelius and I did very little.”
“You would have found it without me,” she says dismissively.
“Miss Watson,” Fox says sternly, “take a compliment when it’s offered. You’ve done a good job.”
Clare blushes tomato red and mutters something about needing to find Damien, then scurries off.
“Well, I’d better be getting to bed too,” Professor Cornelius says. “It’s well past my bedtime. Good night to you both.”
“Thank you,” I call after him.
“No need to thank me, Miss Storm,” he says as he hobbles away. “No need at all.”
I look back up at the ceiling. “It’s really beautiful in here now, don’t you think?” When Fox doesn’t answer me immediately, I let my gaze drop back to his face and find he’s closed the distance between us.
“I preferred it the way it was before,” he grumbles.
“That’s because you’re miserable,” I say.
“It isn’t,” he says, pulling me closer and grazing his fangs down my neck.
I giggle. “The dark corners and the shadows in this hall did prove useful.”
“That is true,” he concedes.
I sigh. “Guess we’ll have to find other places to do unspeakable things.”
“We will,” he growls.
I push him away. “But not right now. Thorne’s making us dinner. It’ll be getting cold.”
“Then let it get cold,” he says, trying to pull me back towards him.
“No, Professor. You promised we’d all be together tonight.”
“Did I?”
“You did,” I remind him.
He groans, but concedes, and we walk back hand in hand toward the Princes’ Tower, no longer caring who sees us together.