Chapter Three
Witch. Witch. Witch. With every step I take, I can hear the hate in Roze’s voice as he whispered that damning word in my ear.
Maybe I can bargain with him. It goes against every ethical bone in my body, but I might not have a choice. There are much worse fates than death that the Queen could dole out to a girl with magic in her veins and no family to defend and protect her.
Strictly speaking, I have a family, but I haven’t seen them since they left me at the orphanage when I was five years old. They still live somewhere deep in the caverns hewn into the mountainside behind the castle of Aragoa.
When the Mists came, there was little time to plan suitable residences for the nearly seventeen hundred people squashed together within the castle walls.
Townsfolk rushed to the castle’s safety, protected as it was by the favor of the Saints, and many were still outside when the gates were sealed, left to swallow the poison that devoured them from the inside.
When it was clear that the Mists would not soon dissipate, housing became an issue.
The ruling class had sequestered all the commoners in the servants’ quarters, which was ridiculous.
Hundreds of people, living on top of each other like cockroaches.
So the common folk devised their own solution—miners carved their way into the mountainside to create more space.
It wasn’t perfect. The caverns were dark and disease-ridden, but the Queen and the nobility mostly left those living there to their own devices.
Still, I was Saints-blessed to get into Vandenberghe, where I could have windows and a real bed to sleep in.
So few lowborn children are admitted, and we have to earn our place, while noble students like Roze are handed their spot without having to so much as lift a finger.
Most students come from noble families whose money and pride demand attendance at the school, carrying on with hundreds of years’ worth of tradition as though society isn’t crumbling around us, with the Mists swirling outside our doors and people gnashing at each other’s throats.
Once, Vandenberghe had been the crown jewel of learning on the continent, where only the most promising students—and, naturally, those whose blood was rich enough to demand it—from every country attended.
My professors say it’s a shadow of what it once was.
Finally, I enter the library and breathe, taking a moment to stop and crane my neck toward the flying buttresses overhead.
Three floors of books—wonderful, glorious books—circling the reading room in the center.
The soaring ceiling is the closest thing to open sky I’ve ever experienced, but I can barely see it when the sun is down.
The gas lamps do little to pierce the shadows at this time of night.
I follow a dark hall behind the main desk and find Professor Borges’s office.
I knock, and a throaty voice calls from beyond, “Come in.”
“Good evening, Professor,” I say as I step through the door.
Professor Borges is almost swallowed whole by her massive oak desk and high-back chair. She peers up at me through her round spectacles, her salt-and-pepper hair curtaining wildly around her shoulders.
Her office is large but so cluttered that it feels cramped—stacks of books and papers litter the floor in every corner, and the shelves are cluttered with books, vials, and other strange items: rotting cloves of garlic, a massive horse’s skull, and what looks like a dried cat carcass.
I’ve never asked about any of it. It seems safer not to.
“Viola. I wanted to speak with you about”—she pauses, her eyes darting toward the door—“your most recent exam.”
I frown as I take a seat before her desk.
“Oh,” is all I can think to say. This is about my exam, of all things?
Her spindly fingers sort through her papers until she finds mine and hands it to me.
“Your work is meticulous, but your translations are wooden,” she says, leaning back and folding her hands in her lap.
I bristle. My translations were perfect. I triple-checked.
“Wooden,” I repeat, trying to sound polite.
“Too literal.”
I know what “wooden” means.
“I—I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Are they incorrect?”
“Not technically,” the professor says, “but being correct is not enough. They lack spirit.”
Spirit. I bite my tongue to keep from saying what I’m thinking. “Am I not supposed to present the meaning of the text as it is?”
The professor pinches her lips. “All translation involves interpretation, Miss Sinclair. I’ve given you an opportunity no other student has, allowing you to work on the Hivernian project, and the quality of your work should reflect that privilege.”
“Of course,” I agree.
I’ve been spending my spare time assisting the professor with a project for the Crown—the translation of ancient runes that were once the primary written language of Hivernia, the name of the peninsula now occupied by the Kingdoms of Aragoa and Castelle.
Professor Borges has been searching diligently for the lost Book of Odds, an ancient text of magic.
It’s been lost for centuries, relegated to discussions of lore and myth.
But recently, interest in it has resurged because of the Mists.
All books on magic were destroyed at the end of the Aragoan-Castellian War, leaving the Kingdom helpless against the swirling, poisonous fog, thick as stone, that presses upon the castle.
So when Professor Borges found in her research that the Book of Odds told of a time when the Mists came before and how they were dispelled, she went straight to the King and Queen.
They granted her permission to search for the text, but even if she were to find it, they knew the book was written in Hivernian runes.
No one had been able to translate the runes for centuries, until Professor Borges started making breakthroughs in her work.
That is what the professor invited me to work on with her—to find a way for us to leave this castle, to produce crops, to travel, to live in the sun again. There could be nothing more important.
Professor Borges glances at the door again, and then returns her attention to me, tapping my paper with her long finger. I blink at it—once, twice.
“I’m sorry. I still don’t see what’s wrong.”
She huffs and draws the paper back, straightening her glasses and reading from the paper, “The heart is the dominion of evil.”
I nod. It’s a line from a very old Aragoise poem. And it’s an accurate translation.
“You think that’s really the best translation?” she asks, looking at me over the rim of her glasses.
Even though I know the translation is correct, the look on her face has me second-guessing myself. She narrows her eyes, staring at me with such intensity that it’s like I’m meant to understand something significant that’s just out of reach.
She exhales through her nose and shakes her head. “Brilliant girl. You have an excellent mind, Viola.”
“Thank—”
“But a stupid heart.”
I gape. “Ma’am—”
“I have something for you,” she says, like she didn’t notice I was speaking. She reaches into the drawer of her desk and withdraws a small, black leather-bound book. She lays it on her desk.
On the front of the book is a silver seal—a lion wearing a crown—the familiar symbol of the Kingdom of Aragoa.
But the lion is wrapped around a very unfamiliar dragon whose eyes shine like diamonds and who holds a scepter in its gnarled claws.
I take the book, looking closer. Around the seal are vine-like patterns, and hidden among the foliage are four symbols woven into the intricate knotted pattern—Hivernian runes.
The whole design is oddly … violent, unsettling, off.
My heart twists at the sight of it, like I’m looking into the mouth of a predator.
No, no. It’s just a book. Not a living thing.
“You may find it an interesting study,” the professor says. “I myself have found it to answer a great many questions.”
I look up. “Does this have to do with the Book of Odds?”
“Did I say that?”
I don’t understand. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m really here to look over my exam, or if something more peculiar is going on. The back of my neck prickles.
“Professor—”
There’s a loud bang, and I jump.
“Come in.” The professor’s tone is clipped, and when I whirl to look at her face, her eyes are narrowed and emotionless.
The door opens, and I turn. There stands a man so large he fills the doorframe—broad and stern with close-cut beard. I take in his maroon-and-gold uniform with the seal of the Crown stitched on his chest—the Captain of the Guard.
“Is this her?” he asks the professor without looking at me.
“It is,” she says.
I turn to her, my eyes wide. “What’s going on?”
“Come with me, girl,” the guard says, grabbing hold of my wrist and yanking me from my seat. Panic seizes me—they must’ve learned my secret. Either that, or Roze told them what he saw. I try to yank myself free, and his grip tightens painfully.
I look to my professor, my adviser, my mentor, but her expression is cold. “Please,” I beg.
Professor Borges clenches her jaw and moves toward me. She grabs my other arm, like she’s helping the guard, but then she takes the book from my hand and slips it into the pocket of my sweater, out of his sight.
“Submit to the Crown, Miss Sinclair,” she whispers. “With the King lie the answers. With the King lies salvation.”
I catch her gaze. Her eyes are hard, and I try to read something in them, but whatever message she’s trying to convey is lost to me.
“I don’t understand,” I plead.
But the guard tugs me forcefully by my forearm and drags me from the room.