Chapter 48
It is the nature of shadow to slip past what other magick cannot.
—Veil and Void: Advanced Theory of Shadow Manipulation
“What is his connection to your dad? I don’t buy the childhood friend bullshit your mother seems to think.
” Gavrail sits in the common area of the Spanish Steps, posture loose but eyes sharp as he, Noa, and I go over our latest fusion findings.
“Why the map of your farm?” he presses, drumming his fingers on the wood of the bar behind us.
The motion is casual. The question is not.
“He’s the headmaster of Whittaker with ties to the Service,” Noa replies without looking up from his notes. “I’m sure he has maps of every territory we control. Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Doesn’t it?” Gavrail tilts his head toward me. “You said it was tucked behind the others, folded. Not cataloged. Not part of the continent or Whittaker’s history. Just… there.”
I nod. “It wasn’t labeled or marked, but I saw the lake. The lake he died in. My hometown. He also mentioned a blue shirt; the same one my dad happened to be wearing the day he died. That can’t be just coincidence.”
Noa finally looks up, brows drawn, tension already in his jaw. “You don’t know what it means. You’re grasping at shadows.”
Gavrail leans forward. His voice drops and I swear the room seems to shrink.
“Maybe,” he says. “But sometimes shadows are cast by something real. I don’t like him.
He’s hiding something—I can feel it. The way he talks around everything.
The way he brought her here. To this school.
His school. That kind of care is not benign. ”
Noa scoffs, rising from his stool. “You want to what, break into his office? Tear through his files and hope he’s left behind a signed confession?”
Silence settles for a beat too long.
Gavrail looks at me the way someone reads a map: slowly, cataloging every weakness and every strength. “We could do it.”
“I never said I would—” I begin, but he cuts me off cleanly.
“But you’re thinking it.” The certainty in his voice leaves no room for debate. “You want answers.”
My pulse ticks upward. Not just because he’s right, but because I hate that he knows me so well.
“If there’s something in those file cabinets…
records, correspondence, anything. Maybe the letter he said my father wrote to him.
At least just to know that it wasn’t a lie.
I need to know what happened on the lake that day.
What their history is. Why Thorne knew so much and said so little.
If he knows the truth about me and my family’s history. ”
Noa pushes back from the bar, standing now. “You’re both insane. Thorne is dangerous. He’s protected, powerful, and he’s watching you already. You think you can sneak past him without consequences?”
“I think,” Gavrail says slowly, rising with the deliberate grace of someone who wants to be underestimated, “that the risk of not knowing is starting to outweigh the risk of getting caught.”
“No,” Noa says, jaw tight. “You’re not dragging her into this.”
“She’s already in it,” Gavrail snaps. “Her family’s buried in secrets and the one man who might know the truth is playing mind games. She deserves answers.”
“I’m right here, by the way,” I say, sharper than I intend to. “And I’ll decide for myself.”
They both fall silent. The tension crackles, like a storm about to break.
“I’m not saying we go in blind,” Gavrail says after a moment, quieter now, controlled. “We plan it. Timing. Entry. You know the office now, Celeste—what’s inside, maybe even ideas of where to look.”
Noa runs a hand through his hair. “This is a mistake.”
“Maybe,” I say, voice steady. “But it might be the only way to get answers.”
Gavrail meets my eyes, then nods once. “Then we do it.”
Noa turns away, pacing once before stopping, his back to us. “You’d better not get caught,” he says, low and frustrated. “Because if you do—”
“We won’t,” Gavrail says—less a promise than a verdict. His voice is smooth and dangerous, like a storm banked beneath clouds. Hidden. Waiting. Final.
I don’t say anything. But somewhere deep beneath the silence, I know: the choice has already been made.
* * *
We settle on the following week, a Wednesday night. The Administration building closes early, and Headmaster Thorne starts late on Thursdays, giving us a buffer if anything goes sideways.
Noa is still not totally on board with our plan, but he doesn’t try to stop us either. Having spent the most time in the Admin building out of the three of us, he tells us what he knows and manages to “borrow” a keycard from Madame Vanderwall, the office secretary.
Gavrail, meanwhile, catalogs any security measures with a glance—cameras, locked doors, wards.
Everything is inventory. He corroborates with Noa, the two of them going over every detail like they’re calibrating a weapon—angles, timing, sight lines—until everything clicks into place with a cold, perfect certainty.
We plan and re-plan: entry, egress, contingencies, safe windows, fallback signals. Every potential failure is a vector Gavrail quiets before it can breathe.
I want to look at the map, maybe Thorne’s scheduler to see where he was that day in August. Look through the file cabinets too—letters, records, anything that might tie Thorne to my father.
At some point between the maps and the watch rotations, I realize precisely how dangerous Gavrail is. Clandestine missions are not improvisation for him—they’re choreography. When he moves, the air seems to hold still for him. He doesn’t just anticipate risk; he dismantles it.
Secrets and shadows aren’t just things he uses.
They’re a religion.
And he’s their god.
I should be focused on the plan, the timing, the risks—but I find myself watching him instead.
The way he leans over the desk, one hand braced on the building blueprint, the other tracing invisible lines over it with shadow.
A book about rune warding sits next to it.
The lamplight spills across his profile, gilding the edges of his jaw, catching on a faint scar at his temple, one I’ve never noticed before.
His focus is absolute; a kind of stillness that makes the world feel narrowed down to breath and pulse.
He senses my stare before I can look away.
Of course he does.
“You’d make a great spy,” I tease.
He smirks—that damned dimple flickering. “Well, if I ever decide to disappear into the world of espionage…” His gaze flicks to mine, lingering just long enough for my stomach to tighten. “I know exactly who I’d want as my partner.”
I roll my eyes, but the warmth in my chest betrays me. “Right, because that time we took your dad’s car for an unauthorized spin went so well for us?”
He shrugs. “At least life would never be boring,” he counters.
I open my mouth to say something—but the sound doesn’t make it out.
His gaze lingers a beat longer, unreadable, before he turns back to the table, shadows folding close around him like they belong there.
And maybe they do.
That afternoon, he moves alone across the top floor, slipping through the building’s edges like a shadow with purpose.
He studies the headmaster’s door as a locksmith studies a vault—its pins, its tension, wards, magickal barriers.
He returns with a small glint in his eye, the kind that says a problem is only a series of smaller problems waiting for a hand willing to solve them.
Confident, not cocky. Certain, not careless.
A look that tells me that the lock-picking days of his youth, the same skills he taught me, will be more than adequate.
And not far from us, a door sits silent and inert, my past sealed behind it—holding truths to be torn open and secrets drenched in blood.