Chapter 5
The next day I didn’t leave my house. I told myself it was because I wanted to rest, but if I was honest, I didn’t want to find myself scanning the streets for Zakary’s absent face.
Seeing him practically run from me had brought the reality of my future crashing in.
I had hoped to win myself a position of value—to become someone like Faylee who was respected everywhere she went.
But I would have to find a new, simpler dream now.
But while I could avoid the streets, I couldn’t avoid my family. They all gathered for the evening meal except Anson, and the concerned looks my mother kept sending in my direction weren’t as surreptitious as she thought.
“It’s been too long since we did a day trip out of the city,” Harvey announced suddenly. “I thought we could all go tomorrow.”
“What?” Timothy protested. “But the Shrouded Mage is being sealed tomorrow! I heard they’re going to march him through the streets to the sealing ceremony, and my friends are all planning to go watch.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Ellis exclaimed. “The Reds would never do that. What if he escaped?”
Timothy scoffed and began a hot reply, but Harvey cut him off with a significant look toward me.
“Oh. Yeah…” Timothy and Ellis exchanged uncomfortable looks and focused on their half-empty plates of food.
“I thought we could take a picnic down to the river,” Harvey continued as if they hadn’t interrupted.
I sighed loudly. “You can’t all be tiptoeing around me forever. And I’m not going to spontaneously combust if I’m inside the city walls when the sealing ceremony takes place.”
I managed a grin. “Although I do appreciate the thought, Harvey. Even if Mother was definitely the one to come up with the idea and pressure you into making the suggestion.”
Ellis cackled. “Busted!”
“I’m so sorry, Aria.” Tears clogged my mother’s voice. “I never dreamed this would happen.”
“I know. You were just worried about me.” I stood and circled the table to give her an awkward side hug.
I had been furious with her in the first flush of my heartbreak, but my fury had burned out when I stood in front of Zakary and realized the true blame lay with the criminals.
And Teacher Wendell. I was reserving plenty of blame for him.
My mother hugged me back fiercely, and I barely extricated myself to return to my seat.
“You could come along with my friends to see the Sealed Mage,” Timothy offered tentatively. “Gordy decided last week that he’s in love with you, so they won’t mind.”
I gaped at him. “Gordy thinks he’s in love with me? But he’s fourteen!”
Ellis shrugged. “All my friends think you’re pretty.” His expression and tone suggested this was a great mystery that he hadn’t yet been able to fathom.
“They don’t live with her,” Timothy explained wisely. “And they haven’t seen her when she’s angry. That must explain it.”
“I am not going to see the Sealed Mage with a fourteen-year-old who wants to make eyes at me,” I said firmly.
“There’s no point going at all,” Ellis said in a superior tone. “The Reds aren’t going to parade him through town.”
“Gordy heard it from his sister whose husband works at—”
“I have to agree with Ellis on this one,” I said, cutting off Timothy’s spiel before it grew even more ridiculous.
“They built the shielded hall for the sealing ceremonies at the main law enforcement hub, and that’s sure to be the hub where they’re keeping the Shrouded Mage.
They have no need to parade him through the streets on the way to the ceremony. ”
“Exactly!” Ellis exclaimed. “They’ll have been keeping him in the cells there from the start.”
Timothy lapsed into sulky silence before suddenly shooting his closest brother a look. “And what will you be doing tomorrow instead, then?”
“Nothing that has anything to do with you,” Ellis said too quickly, and Timothy gave him a disgusted look.
I glanced between them, interested despite myself. What did Timothy know that I didn’t? Had Ellis found a new girl to chase?
“I can’t approve of your strange fascination with such a violent person,” my mother said, not seeming to notice the tension between her youngest sons. “I don’t see why any of us need to lay eyes on him. In fact, I sincerely hope none of us ever do.”
“As you’ve said every day since we first heard of his existence.” I shook my head, but I was smiling.
“And what else would a mother hope for, I ask you?” she said with a return of her usual tart tone.
She stood to begin clearing the table, and we all clambered to our feet to help her. I tried to position myself so that I could manage a quiet question to Ellis, but he adroitly avoided me. And as soon as the table was cleared, he disappeared completely, although it was far too early for bed.
The next morning he didn’t appear at the breakfast table at all, and curiosity got the better of me.
“Where’s Ellis?” I asked Timothy. “What’s he doing today?”
I didn’t really expect him to answer—despite the squabbles, my younger two brothers had always been a pair, just as the older two were—but he muttered a single word under his breath. “Traitor.”
I straightened, fixing him with my sternest older sister stare. “What does that mean? You tell me right now, Timothy! Or I’ll…I’ll find a snake to put in your bed.”
Timothy threw me a horrified look. “See, if they saw this side of you, none of our friends would think you were so pretty.”
“Never mind that. You tell me what’s going on with Ellis.”
Timothy sighed and slumped as far into his chair as he could, as if he hoped to disappear beneath the table. “Ellis left the advanced school after only two years, but he’s still friends with most of the boys his own age there.”
I stared at him for half a second, not comprehending. Then everything became clear.
“Byron is the same age as Ellis!”
Timothy nodded, his eyes on his food. “All the sixteen-year-old boys are accompanying him to the sealing ceremony and waiting to see his wrists when he comes out.”
“And Ellis is going with them?” I exclaimed, now understanding the label Timothy had given him. “Of all the traitorous…” I let my voice trail off with a wary glance at our mother who was coming toward the table with a fresh dish.
The kitchen door burst open, slamming against the wall as someone tumbled through the opening, gasping for breath. Mother dropped the dish she was holding, and it smashed, food spilling across the floor.
“Ellis!” she cried in indignation, glaring at the new arrival. “What in the kingdom are you—”
But he ignored her, his eyes on me as he struggled to speak through his panting breaths.
“Just…came…from the…law enforcement hub,” he managed to pant out.
“Yes, I heard you went there,” I said with narrowed eyes.
He waved a hand through the air as if to wave away such petty concerns.
“Heard…the clerk talking,” he managed to get out.
Timothy straightened. “Don’t tell me Byron’s name wasn’t on the list, after all? That would serve him right. I don’t know why you’re friends with such a poisonous toad. Last week, he said—”
“No. His name’s there.” Ellis’s words became more comprehensible as he regained his breath. “But so is Aria’s!”
“What?!” I leaped to my feet, my chair clattering to the floor behind me. “What do you mean? Are you sure?”
He nodded, gesturing frantically toward the doorway.
“We were hanging around in the foyer of the law enforcement hub after Byron went in, and we heard two of the clerks talking. One was listing off the names of the people who hadn’t arrived yet.
And he said your name! I even asked to be sure, and it was definitely you. ”
“But I don’t understand,” I said, bewildered and frozen with shock. “What does that mean?”
“It means your name got on the list as well as Byron’s,” Ellis said. “It means your name is down to be sealed. Today!” he added when I didn’t immediately move.
My mother sucked in an audible breath, looking between Ellis and me.
“Aria!” Timothy shouted, shoving me roughly in the back, propelling me toward the door.
“But…But how did it happen?” I asked, still struggling to make sense of Ellis’s dramatic pronouncement.
“Never mind that,” Timothy said. “The ceremony is happening this morning, and who knows when the next one will be. You have to GO, Aria!”
His words finally penetrated the fog of my confusion. I strode toward the door, and Ellis stepped aside to let me through.
“Run!” he shouted after me as I stepped into the street, and I picked up my pace.
It made no sense. It was impossible. If I was on the list, I should have been informed, surely? And yet, administrative errors did occur.
I pushed the questions out of my mind so I could focus on running. It didn’t matter how it had happened, as long as I made it there in time.
I dodged a wagon and leaped over a sack someone had dumped on the pavement while he chatted with a neighbor. The two men shouted after me, but I was already well past them.
I ducked and wove as I careened down the street, calling apologies over my shoulder whenever I bumped against someone. The ceremony being at the central hub meant it was closer to the palace and the sections of the city inhabited by the mage families than to my home.
My pace began to lag as my breathing grew labored. But the specter of missing the ceremony by seconds filled me with a second wind, and I increased my speed again.
I careened around a corner and onto South Road, the main street that ran all the way through Corrin to the palace itself. I had avoided it until the last possible moment, knowing it would be bustling with traffic. And sure enough, it was far busier than the smaller street I had just exited.
But ahead of me I caught a glimpse of free-standing red sandstone.
I dodged three horses, a donkey, and an elaborate carriage, ignoring the shouts of disapproval that followed me down the street.
Taking the steps into the building two at a time, I tripped, staggering into the foyer and nearly falling.