Chapter 26
Hester Lewellyn
S he opens the door before I lift my hand to knock. Hester Lewellyn, professor, illusionist, and not so long ago, a hopeful scholar. She steps back with a small, knowing smile and I walk into an office bathed in candlelight.
‘I wondered if I’d see you. The final hour has a way of flushing out hopefuls.’
‘And questions.’
She bows her head. ‘I’ll answer what I can. What is within my gift to offer you.’
‘Your strength, the reason why you were chosen for the faculty of Killmarth isn’t just because you’re an illusionist,’ I say, turning to watch her as I stand in the middle of her office.
I point at the great mass of books, all the volumes in her collection.
‘It’s because of your knowledge as a historian. ’
She carefully closes the door with a click and slowly turns to face me. ‘Go on.’
‘Caroline Ivey recruited you. The Crown placed you here. Your study is crammed with history books,’ I say swallowing, picturing her face when she saw me at the masquier ball, bitten and bloodied. When she realised what had happened, what it meant. ‘Your expertise is on the cold ones.’
She sighs through her nose and moves to her desk. Taking a seat, she indicates that I should take the one opposite and I pull it out, never taking my eyes off her. ‘That’s an interesting theory.’
‘One you haven’t denied,’ I say. ‘You had a meeting in Darley Hall. In fact, I’d wager you’ve had plenty. You, Caroline Ivey, Edmund Locke, Professor Hess and Dorothea Parnell.’
She stares at me for a beat, unblinking before opening a drawer in her desk, and drawing out a stack of papers.
She pushes them towards me with her index finger, watching dispassionately as I reach for them.
I pull them towards myself, leafing through slowly, finding pages of reports and notes in her handwriting.
Research. This is research, information she’s drawn together, dating back thirty years …
‘I’m trying to establish a pattern. A kind of playbook that the Crown and Killmarth can utilise to develop their defence strategies for the next Great Hunt.’
I look up, searching her face, and find her poised, watching for my reaction.
‘You’re assembling teams. Each year group is a team for when—’ I swallow, feeling the phantom grip of the vampire’s teeth on my throat and suppress a shudder.
‘For when they’re all here to feed. The next Great Hunt of wielders. ’
‘It’s something we hoped would never happen again …
but all the warning signs are there. The early indicators, the same pattern playing out as eight years ago, and previously, just under sixteen years ago,’ she says.
‘Wars are not unique events. Each one has key markers, and we’ve developed a timeline.
But I’m determined that this time, we will prevail. ’
That word again, prevail . The word Grant used to hush us up after the Ordeal.
I continue thumbing through the pile, finding typed-out reports with some redacted names and lines, newspaper obituaries, letters, diary entries that have clearly been carefully removed from the owners’ effects.
With each page, my heartbeat quickens. ‘You’ve been building a picture of the enemy, to train us in what we’ll face. ’
‘Exactly. The Crown need to be able to mobilise a group of wielders with a certain skill set, and you are one group of several they can draw on—’
‘The Ordeals, Hess … that’s why he’s been brought in, isn’t it?
He worked with the Crown in the last attack.
He’s one of their own. The Crown know what’s coming, because of your research, your predictions.
They’ve ramped them up, introduced werewolves to simulate a monster attack …
You’re testing for strength of character, resilience, the ability to still keep going after witnessing horrors. ’
‘Correct. It goes beyond wielding. Killmarth is not just a place of academia, the Crown funds it to forge wielders with backbone. Too many died in the last two Great Hunts and aside from being an alchemist, Hess is a strategist. He’s highly trained.
The Crown want more of their own on the faculty.
It’s how … it’s how we met each other. Began working together, before coming here.
They want more control. It’s not just about funding this place anymore because, as a territory, we are weakening.
’ She blinks. ‘Although the final Ordeal remains as it ever was, the true test of magic.’
I pause in my scanning of a report on an occurrence eight years ago on the bank of the Serpentine, where three wielders were brutally attacked and drained, bodies left for the rats before discovery by the Crown’s guard. ‘I need to discuss that with you.’
She inclines her head. ‘Your ability to see all types of magic is incredibly useful. You’ll be reliant on that in the final Ordeal. That and the consistent stamina you’ve built up to wield illusion. It should get you through.’
‘Should?’ I ask, drawing my hands back to my lap.
‘We cannot be sure of the outcome, can we? You’ve trained, you’ve honed that ability, you’ve worked on sustaining a realistic illusion for as long as you can.’
‘Surely there’s more? Surely there’s more I could have done, other training …’
She leans back with a sigh. ‘You don’t have the raw power of Knox or Alden.
You haven’t been training all your life like Tessa, so you must use what you have.
What you have in your arsenal. If it only came down to backbone, you would breeze this, but I won’t sugarcoat it for you.
It’s going to be tough. As with any of the Ordeals, you may not succeed.
There’s no right or wrong answer in the final Ordeal, Sophia. You either succeed, or likely die.’
Cold creeps over me as I weigh her words.
She’s giving me the stakes, plain and simple.
Instinctively, I reach for my wrist and close my fingers around it, imagining the vice-like grip of that bracelet encircling it.
I can’t leave. I can’t go back to who I was before.
The only way, as with anything in my life, is through.
‘Thank you for your time. For sharing all this with me, professor,’ I say, scraping my chair back, readying to rise.
‘Hester,’ she says quietly, smiling at me. ‘Call me Hester, Sophia. Let me give you a piece of advice, look to the past. Search everything in your arsenal. I saw something in you that day when you turned up for the Crucible. Don’t prove me wrong.’
I pinch the bridge of my nose, parsing through her words. Search everything in your arsenal … look to the past … ‘Why are you helping me?’
Hester Lewellyn smiles. ‘Because I was in your shoes a few short years ago. Not knowing who to trust, whether I’d still be here the following semester as a scholar.
I see myself in you. And I want you to succeed.
I want you here next semester, sitting in my history classes.
I want to be the mentor to you that I needed.
I want you to walk into the final Ordeal with your eyes fully open, and find the strength that will get you through. ’
‘Professor … Hester …’ I blink quickly, overwhelmed suddenly.
To have a mentor who cares, who wants me to succeed, who wants to continue teaching me, who is honest …
I tentatively reach my hand towards her.
For a moment, she grips my fingers, then releases them with a sharp sigh.
‘ Bona Fortuna , Sophia. You walk into that final Ordeal, and don’t you dare look back.
We will need women like you in the days ahead. ’
When I leave her office, I walk straight back to Hope Hall.
Her words linger and I realise I haven’t been paying enough attention.
I haven’t delved into the depths of my arsenal.
There’s one place, something that’s followed me from my past to here, shoved in the corner of my bedroom that I’ve barely checked at all.
The trunk.
After swiftly closing my bedroom door, I pull it into the centre of the floor and kneel down before it.
Opening the catch, I find it just as I left it a few weeks ago, devoid of my personal belongings, which I placed in the armoire.
I’ve barely given it a second thought since.
But I know the Collector, I know how his mind works.
He taught me to observe, to listen, to learn …
I smooth my fingertips all around the lining inside, feeling for a lump, or a bunching in the fabric.
He asked me about the trunk; he wanted to ensure it had arrived at Killmarth.
And it wasn’t just so I had spare clothes; it was more than that.
It was a clue, a puzzle piece. He told me at the masquier’s ball to look for the initials, and I didn’t pay enough attention, not until tonight.
I reach the bottom of the chest, spreading my fingertips over the lining at the back and as I press down hard …
a catch clicks. The whole bottom of the trunk lifts up along the back edge, and I prise it away quickly from the lining and gasp.
There’s a false bottom to the trunk. And underneath, a collection of faded photographs, letters, ephemera from a past life.
And a notebook – no, a journal. My pulse quickens as I pull it from the trunk, a slim journal bound in dark green leather.
The edges are curled, the cover battered, but there are gold letters picked out in one corner.
E.D.
The same initials as on the outside of the trunk, his initials. It’s what he told me to follow; it was his only clue.
My heart thumps faster as I flip open the first page of the journal and as I begin to read, my life, every moment leading up to this point, everything I thought I knew …
Tumbles and shatters around me.