Chapter Seven #2
I try to hide my hands under my thighs, but the darkness creeps up my wrists now, and with it, my walls begin to fall.
I’m so tired. So tired of trying not to feel, of holding everything down, everything back.
I’ve been pretending that I’m fine, that I’m normal, every day of my life, but I’m tired of pretending.
What if I didn’t care anymore? What if I let them come?
Let them all see what I am, consequences be damned?
Saints, it would be a brutal, disastrous relief …
“Notes out, lips silent,” booms a voice from the back of the room, and with a jump, my shadows snap back. I quickly wipe the corners of my eyes dry and finish rustling through my bag for my notes.
That was too close. I can’t let myself get worked up like that again, no matter what’s going on. Too much is at stake.
Sir Patrick marches his way past row after row of seats, his broad frame filling the aisle.
“One of you had the gall to suggest to me before class this morning that you should be granted an extension on your essay on the Holy Virtusian Empire, because of the effect that the loss of our late King, Saints rest his weary soul, has had on morale this semester. You can thank that inspired individual for the extra three sources I’m requiring for your bibliography. ”
The class collectively groans, and Sir Patrick turns swiftly behind the lectern, silencing all of us with a glare from beady, ratlike eyes.
Sir Patrick is a portly man with shoulders as wide as the aisle between desks and a ruddy face.
His size only makes him more formidable; his presence commands the room.
“I realize that this semester has been far from ordinary with the death of the King and the whole Kingdom in mourning. However, now is not the time for complacency. As all of you are aware, I was a general in His Majesty’s armies during the war.
Let me tell you something about King Alexandre during his glory days.
He was relentless. Let that be a lesson to all of you that laggards will not be tolerated.
Now”—he turns tightly toward the blackboard behind him and lifts a piece of chalk—“second-century political uprisings. Who among you can tell me precisely when the Holy Virtusian Empire dissolved?”
My hand shoots up—the answer is such a good one.
Yes, I have a habit of answering too many questions, but maybe if I answer just this one, I’ll let someone else answer others.
Sir Patrick scans the room for a moment, and I glance behind me to see no other hands raised.
I know at least some of them know the answer.
I don’t understand why they don’t find this fascinating.
Sir Patrick exhales and says, “Miss Sinclair?”
“It’s a trick question,” I say as though I’d been holding my breath. “The HVE didn’t end overnight, and it’s impossible to put a date on its dissolution, since parts of it technically still remain in the form of smaller kingdoms in the southern part of the continent.”
Sir Patrick’s mustache bristles. “All true. Although I would’ve also accepted ‘Approximately one thousand years ago, sir’ as an answer.”
Several students snicker around me, but I refuse to be embarrassed. Am I supposed to be ashamed of knowing more than what he wanted?
He continues, “The HVE weakened and fell over the course of more than two hundred years, and the continent thus fractured into warring kingdoms, ushering in the reign of darkness and chaos. Here, on the Hivernian Peninsula, conquering bands destroyed the ancient Hivernian culture and formed smaller kingdoms between four and five hundred years ago. Those kingdoms then fought for dominance of the peninsula. And what happened when they fought, Vandenberghe students?”
He eyes the class sharply, but every head is down, madly scribbling notes. Sir Patrick is notorious for including the smallest details from his lectures on our exams.
When no one raises their hand, he sighs. “Miss Sinclair, would you like to answer the question?”
I try to hold back my grin. “Aragoa and Castelle conquered the other kingdoms. They became the two dominant forces on the peninsula.”
“And?”
I swallow, losing a little of my enthusiasm as we near the subject that everyone in the Kingdom readily avoids. “And we’ve been at war ever since.”
He meets my gaze, his eyes cold, haunted even. “Indeed we have.”
Sir Patrick turns his eyes away and continues with his lecture.
I turn my attention to my notes, but then a chill skitters over my skin, raising the flesh on the back of my neck.
Head down, I glance out of the corner of my eye instinctively toward the latticed windows.
And there is the face that, no matter how often I see it, still chills my blood.
The little ghost boy is outside the windows in the Mists. Panic jolts through me. Nothing that even appears alive belongs out there, and it almost makes me want to rescue him, break that glass and pull him through to safety.
He presses his small hands to the window, his large eyes staring woefully into mine.
Sir Patrick’s voice fades away as I watch him.
The Mists wrap their way around him, like the limbs of a carnivorous plant, folding its arms almost lovingly around the boy.
He screams silently, tears welling around his eyes, fingers clawing at the window.
I can’t look away. In a moment he’s swallowed by the Mists, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
When I open them, the Mists writhe over the glass like nothing has happened, like they didn’t swallow a spirit a moment ago. Then again, maybe the boy was performing that whole scene just to torture me. He loves to frighten me—something I’ve learned in the weeks since he decided to haunt me.
I watch the Mists undulate quietly. Our ever-present threat …
because of the Kingdom of Castelle. My memory flashes back to the symbol of the lion and dragon wrapped around each other on the cover of the book the professor gave me.
It’s the only starting place I have for finding a culprit for the King’s death, but Castelle, the war …
They’re hardly ever discussed, like we’re all afraid to look too closely at the threat of death closing in all around us.
“Professor.” My voice cuts through the classroom, and I hardly remember making the decision to speak.
The chalk squeaks on the chalkboard, Sir Patrick’s lecture coming to a sudden halt. He turns toward me, nostrils flared, his movements slow, like a cat approaching a mouse. No one interrupts Sir Patrick’s lectures.
He scans the room and then sets his eyes on me. “Miss Sinclair.”
“I—I know we’re covering the second century, but I wondered if you might answer a question I have about …
about the recent war.” A hush falls over the classroom.
Those young enough to not remember the war know better than to bring it up, and those old enough to remember never speak of it.
“Only because I know you were so crucial in the fight against Castelle, weren’t you?
” I say quickly. “As a general in His Majesty’s army, you had firsthand knowledge of what happened. ”
He narrows his eyes at me, and I’m certain he’s going to tell me off for being dreadfully off topic. I’m just praying his pride will lure him into telling us more.
“Go on,” he says cautiously.
I clear my throat. Everyone is staring at me as though I’ve just started dancing a jig and whistling the national anthem.
“During the war, meigas sided with Castelle, right? They sent the Mists.” The atmosphere in the room chills at the mention of meigas—I’ve just taken an enormous risk in bringing up magic at all.
“But the Mists weren’t able to penetrate the castle walls. We’re protected.”
Sir Patrick raises an eyebrow. “What is your question, Miss Sinclair?”
I muster every last ounce of courage I have. “I was just wondering if—if magic created the Mists, is it magic that also protects us from them as well?”
The room goes silent as the grave. What I’ve just suggested is verging on heresy. Magic is wicked—a truth that is drilled into us with our first nursery rhymes.
One witch, two witches, hanging in the gallows …
Sir Patrick surveys the room like he’s scanning for threats and slowly clasps his arms behind his back.
“This is hardly an appropriate subject for this class. However, I recognize that you all are too young to remember the war and may not understand why we don’t discuss such things in polite company. Perhaps this will help you understand.”
I can feel every single body in the room lean forward. Beside me, Kole sets his pen down and inches closer.
“The Mists are a phenomenon produced by the meigas who fought with Castelle in the Aragoan-Castellian War,” he says, speaking slowly, facing us now instead of making notes on the blackboard.
“The war started as a dispute over land and power, and over centuries turned into a philosophical conflict. As such, the two sides were utterly irreconcilable. It’s true that many meigas did side with Castelle.
And … a few did side with Aragoa. They created the wards around the castle that protect us from the Mists.
They allow smoke from our chimneys and fresh air from the outside to pass through, but they hold the Mists back.
Those wards, not these stone walls, are our blockade against the death that Castelle wishes upon us.
” He gestures to the shadowy Mists twisting outside the windows, and all our heads turn that direction.
“The meigas of Castelle have a darker, more sinister magic, the sort that can only be produced from truly corrupted souls. Make no mistake, were they to have their way, every last citizen of this Kingdom would choke and burn on their magic—our whole existence snuffed out like a lamp.”
A chill passes over the room, and though I know it’s not logical, I feel exposed, like every person in the room knows my secret, can see me for what I am—the monster lurking in their midst. It takes all my strength to pull back on the shadows pressing through the layers of skin on my palms.
But then reason—beautiful, glorious reason—cracks through my fear like a beacon in the night. Sir Patrick says the meigas of Castelle are to blame for the Mists. But if some sided with us, if some created the wards … perhaps not all meigas are dangerous. And perhaps there are some who know it.
Sir Patrick notably stiffens, standing taller.
“Aragoa’s mistrust of meigas exists for good reason.
The Mists you see outside are indeed deadly, and they’re just a small demonstration of the sort of thing I saw those meigas produce during the war.
” His eyes darken. “All power corrupts. Supernatural power, the sort that makes gods out of men … Well, you can see the level of its corruption in the lake surrounding us. The Mists wiped out nearly our entire Kingdom in a matter of—”
I raise my hand, and Sir Patrick’s eyes flash at the interruption. “Sir, what about the meigas on our side? Was their magic more …” I search for an appropriate word. “Good?”
His lips pinch, and I know I’ve asked something important … and that Sir Patrick doesn’t want to answer it. I hold my breath as I wait for an answer, fearing that if I breathe wrong, the spell will break, and he won’t give one.
“Let me be perfectly clear,” he says slowly.
“There is no such thing as good magic.” He punctuates every word like it’s a death sentence, and for a moment, I’m sure my heart stops.
“The meigas of Aragoa were once believed to have a nobler magic—a light side to meet the dark. But the great lesson of the Aragoan-Castellian War was that there is no light side of magic. King León of Castelle—the Death King, as he is often called—made a deal with his meigas, offering them more power and influence than they’d ever been granted before.
And there is nothing that a meiga craves more than power.
In exchange, they helped create the cursed Mists, a weapon meant to eliminate the entire capital city in one fell swoop.
And that it did, rolling through our streets and choking to death all who could not make it into the castle in time.
“Ah, but the meigas who sided with us, those you suggest, Miss Sinclair, might’ve been good …
” His eyes narrow on me. “They were discovered to have been colluding with their meiga brethren in Castelle. They had a plan to end the Roquelart line from the inside. Were it not for the Queen’s discernment and the King’s mercilessness, the entire Roquelart line might’ve been wiped out in a night. ”
I raise my hand again.
Sir Patrick lets out a breath that’s half growl, half sigh. “Sinclair?”
My voice is reedy when I speak. “What happened to them—the meigas who were on our side?”
His lips thin. The air is sucked from the room. And it’s like he’s speaking right to my own soul as he says, “They were tried, convicted, and finally executed for high treason. Such is the fate of all who dare oppose the Roquelart Crown.”