Chapter 33 #3
Twyla had been no help. All the visit had done was make Audra feel sorry for the girl. She was clearly neck-deep in the Echoes cult, which was not surprising if she’d been an acolyte since the age of five.
She wondered what five-year-old Twyla had seen to tip off her folks that she was a budding seer. How potent Twyla’s power would be if she’d been born a Twyla SummerHeights and not a Twyla Desolateborn.
Audra hunched against the cold, determined to reach Central Main as fast as humanly possible without slipping to her death on the various patches of ice. The groundskeepers should be out here salting the pathways. Or, better yet, casting Ignis to melt the ice as soon as it formed.
But the realm was in a magical drought—no magic allotted for safe pathways, when it all went to the flowers in the fae godsdamned temple. She could only imagine what the palace in the capital city of Zenaida looked like. It was probably a false spring on royal grounds.
Another day of lectures, another three hours in the library studying and copying incras until her hand cramped up before the day neared its end.
Audra squeezed between two ghosts on the Arcane residence hall stairs and then again pressed herself against the railing to sidestep a pair of initiates kissing there.
Arcane Guild’s staircase was tucked off in a way the other dormitories weren’t, and from the corridor, you couldn’t see beyond the first three steps …
As such, it had unfortunately become a popular place for Arcane initiates whose significant others were assigned to other guilds.
This meant that in the hours after dinner, at least one pair of initiates could be seen cuddled up, blocking the narrow staircase.
She recognized one of the kissing initiates as Nepthys, the man who’d fought Wilder in demon form that first combat class, and the other she couldn’t be sure she’d ever seen before, what with his face being devoured by Nepthys’s mouth, but by the thickness of his biceps, she guessed Forge Guild.
Couldn’t they find a dark stack in the library to make out in?
That had also become a common ground for young couples; twice now she’d been searching for a text and had happened upon tangled limbs, panting, trousers pooling around ankles.
There had to be less public places for the initiates to fuck. Or they could just find someone in their own guild and use their forgotten gods beds.
Usually, new love made her feel giddy, hopeful, and all that, but her mood had soured under the weight of the impending doom trailing her like a thundercloud, and the fact that she was still no closer to answers about her predicament.
Audra managed to squeeze up the stairs without disrupting either the ghosts or Nepthys and his boyfriend, though, and heaved open the heavy door to the residence hall, dreaming of a hot bath.
Audra stilled in the doorway. The way in was blocked by a frenzied crowd of initiates, all vying for a closer look at whatever new thing had been tacked to the announcement board.
“What’s going on?” asked Nepthys, suddenly on the step below her as he peered above her head.
Audra snorted. She was surprised anything had distracted them from kissing; her trying to get up the stairs to her room sure hadn’t. “Not a clue.”
“What’s going on?” Nepthys’s boyfriend was now also peering above her head, though he made sure not to breach the threshold; his timepiece would sear his wrist like a lamb chop.
She glanced back at him. “I have no idea. But,” she raised her voice to be heard over the excited chatter, “I wish they would move so we could come inside.”
“Do you think they discovered the Heir?” he asked, breathless.
Audra ceased her snickering. Suddenly imagining a flyer attached to the announcement board demanding that everyone seize Arcane Initiate Audra Evers and bring her straight to the Archmagistra’s office.
Or would they demand she be brought to the temple?
She had no desire to find out.
“Excuse me,” she said to the initiates blocking the door. They didn’t acknowledge her, but they did step a fraction of an inch to one side.
Good enough for her. She pushed inside.
Whatever was on the board could wait until she’d hit the washroom and taken a hot bath, washed the day off her.
Her most brilliant thoughts always came to her while bathing.
Of course, at home, that had been in a copper tub, filled pains-takingly with water she’d boiled herself …
but here they had thankfully allotted enough magic to pipe hot water directly into the baths.
It was truly almost worth the heartache that came along with being an initiate of Holyvere Academy, especially because two out of every three days, she was getting the shit kicked out of her in combat class.
Audra had just made it to the stairs leading to the female sleeping quarters when she changed her mind.
She wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight if she didn’t know what had everyone so excited.
She pivoted, attacking the crowd from this other angle, and finally managed to push her way to the front, to see the board and—Fuck.