Chapter 12 #3
‘Good gods, I need tea. And sleep.’ I wander towards Gantry, turning away so no one sees the blush marring my cheeks, and hear Tessa chuckling in my wake.
The professors address us all in Gantry Hall over breakfast. Professor Hess goes first, congratulating all the pairs left alive, his enthusiasm for the exemplary pair work making me feel slightly murderous as I clutch a spoonful of porridge.
Does he have any idea what we faced out there?
What he sent us into? Of course he does.
Now he’s praising us like we just passed a written exam, not danced with death in the Morlagh.
Then Professor Grant moves to the edge of the raised platform where the professors and chosen scholars dine, eyeing us all with a pinch more severity.
‘Forty-eight entered the forest and thirty-nine will progress to the next Ordeal. The hopeful that entered the forest without their partner was oblivious, and we have decided to be lenient and allow them to stay on for the next Ordeal. Particularly as they survived and returned unscathed.’
A ripple of murmurs run up and down the table as we all soak this in, looking around us to work out where the gaps are, who did not make it out of the forest. Nineteen pairs survived.
I press my lips together. That means that five pairs either didn’t find each other in time before one succumbed to the poison like Kipling, or they never found the mirrors again to leave the forest and return to Killmarth.
Maybe the four pairs that didn’t return will get lucky and make it to a hunting lodge.
Maybe they’re werewolves now.
Or worse, they met that pale monster.
‘One hopeful is being treated in the medical wing and thanks to the quick thinking of a few of you, they will survive their … affliction.’ She wets her lips.
‘Mentors have been chosen for each of you, and your first sessions will begin this coming week. Dates and times will be posted on the door of Hope Hall. Please take note.’ I glance up at the platform and find Professor Lewellyn looking at me.
I smile and she nods as Professor Grant continues.
‘A number of you have the use of a common room; enjoy the privilege for now. You may not keep hold of it for the next Ordeal. Which leads me on to announce the next Ordeal. The Ordeal of Illusions. The same rules apply when you choose a partner, you must both survive, or you fail. Bona fortuna , hopefuls.’
We trudge back in a gaunt line to Hope Hall after breakfast. I should be celebrating passing the first Ordeal.
I should feel victorious. But I’m strangely …
hollow. Nine hopefuls will never return, nine people, and I can’t even place their faces or remember their names.
I thrust my hands into my jacket pockets, feeling the cold metal of my switchblade brush my right knuckles, the wooden stake I fashioned in the Morlagh still in my belt, digging into my hip.
The Ordeals are a contradiction. They encourage teamwork, pairing us up, congratulating those of us who helped Greg.
And yet, they pit us against each other.
Actively encourage this cut-throat competition to whittle us down to the final twenty.
They want us strong. They want only the best, I realise.
The most resilient. The ones that can walk into a dark forest, teeming with monstrous creatures, and walk back out alive.
But I’ve been beating the odds for years, scraping through situations that should have seen me caught, in prison, or dead.
I’ve learned, adapted and somehow come back with the marks I’ve been sent to gather countless times.
Yet this does not simply feel like a college for wielders.
It feels like something more. A stray thread of breeze creeps under my collar and I frown at the vast, tumbling sea in the distance.
‘Did you notice that?’ I ask, catching up with Tessa as we near Hope Hall.
‘What?’
‘What Grant didn’t say. About the next Ordeal.’
She looks thoughtful, as though running through the professor’s words, the ripple through Gantry Hall when Grant announced it would be the Ordeal of Illusions next. Then she gasps, turning to me. ‘She didn’t say when it would take place.’
‘No.’ I swallow.
‘I’ve heard that sometimes they do this. Just spring them on you, and you have to be ready.’
I clutch my jacket collar tight around my throat as the breeze whips up suddenly, sending my hair scattering across my face. ‘So they like to keep us on our toes. What about Greg – will he be allowed to take part?’
‘They’re letting him stay on. That’s all I know. They haven’t sent him home. They’re treating him and administering a more potent infusion of wolfsbane. Which means—’
‘He’s still a hopeful.’ I narrow my gaze. ‘And they did harvest that wolfsbane from the poison garden in readiness. They knew it might be needed.’
Tessa blows out a breath, tiredness and worry etched under her eyes as she looks up at me. ‘The signs were there, the clues, but we didn’t work that one out, did we?’ I nod in agreement. ‘Meet you later to prep for the next round? That is, if you want to work together again?’
I smile and something inside me unwinds.
Tessa survived. She survived, and so did I, and she wants to work with me again.
Somehow … I have an ally. A friend. She wasn’t entirely honest about the extent of her relationship with Greg, but I can see that it was only to protect him.
I can live with that. If there was someone here who I cared about that deeply, who I had that kind of history with, I would do the same. ‘I do. Definitely.’
‘Good,’ she says, swinging through the main door of Hope. ‘Because after that first Ordeal, I think we can be pretty sure the professors have a few tricks up their sleeves, and I think we’ll need all the help we can get.’