Chapter 16 Bloodless and Barren
The following afternoon, I stepped into the garden in search of Sequoia.
The air met me like a surprise—unseasonably warm and heavy for late January, as if spring had arrived out of turn.
I inhaled deeply, the humidity clinging to my skin, urging me to shed my coat.
After weeks cloistered within the House’s stone confines, the open air felt disorienting, almost indulgent.
And yet, beneath the soft breath of early warmth, there lingered a quiet tension—a reminder that winter had not yet relinquished her claim. She was only waiting—patient and unseen—to play her final hand.
Sequoia was sitting on a bench, nibbling on a blackberry jam sandwich, the edges dripping sweetness. She looked deep in thought, but her eyes brightened when she noticed me approaching.
“Dahlia, come join me,” she said licking her fingers, scooting over to make space. Her coat and scarf lay in a pile on the ground next to her.
“It’s strangely warm today, but I think it might still rain; the air is so heavy,” I noted.
“I love being out here, no matter the weather. Look, you can see the inklings of spring, ready to burst forth.” I followed her gaze, but all I saw were dried rose bushes. Perhaps she had a keener eye than I did.
“I just wanted to check on you. See how things have been with Aspen since our reading. It was . . . a lot.”
A pang of guilt twisted in my chest as I remembered how hard I’d pressed her for answers.
Normally, I didn’t lose sleep over extracting information—especially from someone I suspected.
But with Sequoia, it felt different. Not like strategy, but trespass.
And for the first time in a long while, it felt less like investigation . . . and more like crossing a line.
“You can say that again,” she replied, splitting her jam-laden sandwich and offering me half.
When I shook my head, she tucked the other half of the sandwich back onto the napkin in her lap and gestured for me to sit.
I settled beside her, our knees brushing lightly.
Suddenly, I felt self-conscious, her effortless grace a mirror to my own rough edges.
I fidgeted with the clasp of my necklace, trying to free it from the tangle of my hair.
“Let me do that for you,” she offered. Before I could protest, her fingers moved gently through my tangled curls, gathering them to one side.
Her hands brushed across the nape of my neck as she freed the clasp from my hair, her fingers moving with the fluid grace of flowing water.
Her calm confidence was almost electric, charging the space between us.
“How do you do it?” I asked.
“The clasp?”
“No, being you. You move through the world like a feather through silk.”
She giggled, and I felt a pang in my chest. I wanted to hear her laugh like that many more times.
“There’s nothing I have that you don’t, Dahlia,” she said, meeting my gaze. “Many things are difficult for me, but tapping into my femineity has always been the easiest.”
“That has been anything but easy for me,” I confessed. “I wish I could be comfortable in my own skin, but it’s like I need a costume for the world to accept me.” It was the same way I felt with my bookstore patrons; they only saw the image I projected, never the person underneath.
I turned my gaze toward the garden, to the withered rose bushes bowed beneath the weight of winter. I could feel her eyes on me, steady and searching, but I couldn’t bring myself to meet them.
“I see you, Dahlia. Costume or not,” she mused.
I turned to her, and her eyes were like two pools of caramel, warm and inviting, pulling me closer.
I wanted to trust her; I wanted to believe that we could truly be friends.
Until Foresyth, I’d rarely had peers of my own.
It had always just been Gabriel and I, tucked away in the alcoves.
But these students were different from Gabriel—they didn’t just want to read stories and myths, they wanted to live in them, create new ones of their own, even.
It was simultaneously exhilarating and unsettling.
“I actually came here to give you something.”
“Me?”
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a small wooden box. “I just fixed it up recently; it was missing a gear. I thought you might like it.”
Sequoia took it from my hands, examining it from every angle. Finally, she opened it, and an airy musical tune began to play. She squealed in delight.
“A music box, how lovely. Thank you, Dahlia.”
“It’s the least I could do . . .” I drifted off. The guilt of my reading was still hanging heavy in my chest, despite having helped her on her Druid paper. The music box didn’t erase the ache in my chest, but I did feel a little bit lighter seeing her in such delight.
“Nonsense. You’ve already done so much for me.
I’m glad to know I’m no longer alone in this House.
It can be so lonely, being around people all day but not having them see who you really are.
But now, neither of us are alone,” Sequoia said, closing the music box and taking my hand. “I’m glad you’re here.”
And this time, I didn’t instinctively pull back. Instead, I let my fingers interlace with hers. We stayed there, holding hands for a while. Despite the circumstances, a part of me was glad to be here, too.
*
After lunch, I made my way back down to the lab.
Most students frequented the library after meals, but I preferred studying alone.
Aside from the occasional visit from Nina, who sometimes worked on her taxidermy, I had the lab to myself.
It felt like a sanctuary, a place where I could think and study in peace.
Today, I wanted to set Julian’s case aside, if only to focus on the numerous research topics I’d been assigned.
I had handed in my runic paper outline to the Meister, but now there was the looming Council meeting.
Falling behind on my research tasks would only weaken my cover, and I couldn’t give Aspen any more reason to suspect that I was a detective.
I stacked the books from my satchel in the order I planned to read them.
Even though I could manage nearly a hundred pages an hour, it would take most of the afternoon to get through the stack I’d set for today.
Preparing for the Council meant immersing myself in the history and lore of The Book of Skorn—the rare text Julian had been researching.
If academic rigor was what they valued, I was determined to deliver it. The magickal devotion, however, was where I was at a loss. How could I experience something I didn’t believe in? Perhaps I’d ask Nina for advice when she returned.
A few hours passed as I combed through the books, jotting down notes. I found a steady rhythm and was content to stay there for the rest of the evening. But just as I was getting hungry for dinner, Nina came bolting down the stairs, several dead pheasants in hand.
“Dahlia, oh thank goodness you’re down here!” she exclaimed, her excitement evident as she dropped the pheasants right onto my workstation.
“Hey, you’re going to get that all over my notes,” I said, pushing the feathered creatures aside. I looked up at Nina and noticed she was covered in dirt. Dark smears of mud ran down her cheeks; some was even caked in her hair.
“What on earth have you been up to?”
“Field research,” she replied, plucking the pheasants off my desk and moving them to her brine baths. “That card scrying trick of yours worked. I finally found those grounds! Aspen is going to eat his words.”
“Do you find them dead, or . . . do you kill them?” I asked, wrinkling my nose at the birds. “Actually, never mind. I’d rather not know.”
“Once I put these away, you have to come with me. You have to see it for yourself,” she said, her voice high with excitement.
“Out there? It’s raining. And we aren’t allowed out after dark.
Plus, it’s almost dinner time.” I began stacking my books back into my bag.
I hadn’t spent much time outside since arriving at Foresyth save for this morning with Sequoia.
The weather had been inhospitable, and Richard had mentioned that landscaping wouldn’t start until March. “Maybe tomorrow, when it’s light out.”
Nina grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. Despite her lanky build, there was a surprising strength in her grip. Her short hair was plastered to her head with mud, but her eyes were wild and determined.
“No, we have to go tonight. I need to make sure what I saw is real.”
There was something in her tone that made me uneasy. What did she mean, real? What had she seen?
“Fine, but let’s have dinner first. You missed lunch, so I know you must be starving. Besides, if we sneak out after dinner, it’ll raise less suspicion than if we’re both missing now.”
Her grip loosened as she considered. “Fine, but you promise we’ll go out afterward?”
“Yes, I promise,” I replied, already wishing I’d held my tongue.
*
Dinner was uneventful. Richard was serving a vegetable dish, so luckily there was no risk of eating pheasants. Everyone was at the dinner table, including Leone and the Trees. I made easy conversation talking about the experiments Leone and I ran the other day.
“It worked like a charm. I didn’t believe it at first, but that box works like magick.
Plus, Dahlia’s analysis itself was impressive,” Leone said, raising his wine glass to me.
He was in a jovial mood after I had resolved his timeline dispute.
A swell of pride rose in my chest. This feeling of acceptance was new to me.
“How do you know it worked?” Aspen injected. “I mean, how do you know the sample that Dahlia said is the oldest, is actually the oldest? There’s no way to verify it.”
“That’s why it shouldn’t be the only method of dating. Leone has other conventional ways of dating the maps, such as the ink colors used or other markers,” I defended. Why was he always so contrarian?