27. Chapter 27 The Aftermath #2
A student Lucien recognized from Kess's section crouched at the edge of the path and stared at the nearest scout's skull.
He reached toward the smooth dark armor and pulled his hand back without touching it.
Another student was crying quietly and turned away from the bodies to look at the garden wall instead.
The word "eyeless" was already moving through the group in whispers.
Liora came through the crowd.
She didn't push through it. The crowd parted. She was moving with purpose, her red skin catching the light, her silver hair thrown over one shoulder, her gold eyes locked on the garden and what was inside it.
She moved past Kess and through the archway without slowing, and locked onto Lucien across the garden, over the bodies, through air that still carried the tang of old magic.
She took in the scene in a single pass: dead creatures on the ground, scorched walls, a professor in a blue dress standing close to her bond-partner, and Lucien at the center of all of it.
“Stand back, Liora,” Elyndra commanded.
She ignored the demand and crossed the garden to Lucien. She closed her hand around his forearm and pressed her fingers through the fabric, checking, confirming, a grip that had nothing to do with affection and everything to do with making sure the body under her hand was whole.
"Are you hurt?" she asked, her voice quiet and controlled.
"I’m fine. Professor Renvaya protected me," Lucien lied as he looked at Liora then the headmistress.
The coven bond hummed between them. It had been humming for minutes, since Lucien had poured staggering volumes of crimson into the gate seal below and the channel between their cores had flooded with a surge of resonance that Lucien knew she could never have experienced before.
The coven bond didn't transmit pain. It transmitted power, and for the last several minutes, a wave of it had been rolling through her mana channels in quantities that told her something massive was happening to her bond-partner and she couldn't reach him.
"We're talking about this." Her voice was low, pitched for him alone. She hadn't let go of his arm. "All of it. Tonight."
Tesslyn was behind Liora.
She slipped past the crowd a step behind Liora and stopped at the edge of the garden.
Her face went pale. The creature bodies did it.
The eyeless skulls and the bone plating and the fifteen-foot segmented thing near the far wall.
She stared at them, her bag pulled tight against her chest, her mouth pressed shut.
But the bodies weren't what held her attention.
Renvaya gazed at Lucien as he stood with Liora.
The look Renvaya gave him was not the same look she gave other students.
There was something different in it. Tesslyn looked from Lucien to Renvaya and stayed there for two seconds.
Then she looked away. Lucien knew she knew there was more to their story.
More students pressed toward the archway. Kess held the entrance and turned people back with two-word instructions that were not requests.
Elyndra addressed the students who had gotten through. "This area is under faculty jurisdiction. You will return to your usual tasks. All students. Now."
Students moved. Some left immediately. Some lingered, staring at the bodies, the destroyed garden, and the crimson residue on the walls. Kess moved them along without patience.
Elyndra turned to Lucien. "Mr. Margrave." The tone was measured and genuine. "Thank you. What you did today took courage, even if the judgment behind it was poor. A professor's instructions are to be followed. Do you understand?"
"Of course, Headmistress."
She held the look for one more second. Then she turned to Renvaya and dropped her voice below what the remaining students could hear. “We’ll talk later.”
Renvaya nodded. “Yes.”
Lucien left through the archway with Liora on his left and Tesslyn on his right. Corvath was at his feet, moving proudly.
The corridor outside the garden was full of students who hadn't made it to the archway, standing in clusters, talking over one another.
Rumors were already forming: monsters had attacked, something had breached the grounds, Professor Renvaya had killed it, there was blood everywhere, and Lucien Margrave had been inside the garden when it happened.
They walked back into the academy doorway and down the corridor. Students passed going the other direction, heading toward the garden, carrying the electric charge of people who'd been told something had happened and intended to see it for themselves. A few of them looked at Lucien as they went by.
Liora walked close. Her irritation was controlled but visible in the set of her shoulders and the length of her stride.
She'd already heard the garden version: Professor Renvaya had killed them.
Renvaya had contained the breach. Liora knew what her bond-partner's power felt like when it flooded through the channel at volumes that should have been impossible, and she knew the professor hadn't produced it.
Lucien knew she knew that the cover story was a lie.
She held it together in public because she was Liora.
The interrogation would happen behind a closed door, he was sure.
"You're explaining everything," she said. She kept her eyes forward and pitched the words for him alone. "Not the version she gave the headmistress. Everything."
"I will."
"Damn right you will."
Tesslyn walked on his other side. She was quieter than usual, which was saying something. She'd gone pale at the bodies and the color hadn't fully come back.
"Are you all right?" Tesslyn asked, keeping it soft, keeping it small.
"I'm fine," Lucien said. "It was handled. The more important question is, are you? It was a grisly scene."
Tesslyn appeared surprised by his question. He had just been a part of a harrowing battle where death was a real possibility and he was asking how she was doing.
She nodded with a smile. “I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”
Lucien pulled up his sleeve and raised it for her to see. “See, not a scratch.”
They turned a corner and the student traffic thinned. The corridor that led toward the dormitories was dimmer, the mana lamps set to their evening output, and the noise from the garden faded behind them.
Corvath padded at Lucien's side, unusually silent, his black fur shimmering in the low light.
He had been in the garden during the faculty's arrival, in the tunnel before that, and in the chamber where Lucien had sealed a gate with more power than any student should possess.
Lucien was surprised that the cat had no sarcastic comments for him.
They reached the dormitory entrance. The heavy door stood open, warm light from inside falling across the threshold. Lucien's body ached in the specific way that came from channeling too much too fast. He was out of practice. He would get some rest and feel perfectly normal soon enough.
A heavy sigh escaped him. The list of complications in his life was longer now.
Kess had seen the kills. Elyndra had seen the crimson.
Renvaya had seen everything. Three faculty members holding three different pieces of a picture that none of them could assemble yet, and the only thing between Lucien and a conversation he couldn't survive was a professor who'd chosen to lie for him.
As if he were reading his thoughts, Corvath finally deigned to break his silence. His voice was dry and unimpressed, delivered directly into Lucien’s mind so nobody else could hear.
"My paws smell like drainage. This had better be the last time you drag me underground to impress a woman."
The gate was older than anything else on campus.
Someone had known it was there when they'd built the academy, and by morning, the Arcane Oversight Bureau would be in those tunnels asking the same questions Lucien was already asking. The difference was that Lucien could read the symbols on the gate’s frame and they couldn't.
He knew what was coming.
END OF VOLUME TWO