Chapter 41 #2
An ambush? I scan the room, though my attention never truly left the lich or his new accomplice. No. Nothing else is amiss. The staff clatter carelessly in the hall outside. Pierce is unfazed, his posture languid in a way that suggests he finds nothing amiss.
“You look lovely.” I try to compliment Anthea, but honestly, I’m not sure what to do with this subdued version of her.
It’s true. She always puts effort into her appearance, and the gleaming black rhinestone and lace number she’s wearing probably cost more than some of Kyrith’s books.
“Thanks.”
One word. No trace of the simpering seductress I’m used to.
How am I supposed to get her to take me up to her room when she’s like this? Even if I were that great of an actor, the idea of making a move on someone so clearly out of sorts makes my skin crawl.
Isidora makes her way to the head of the table, smiling as she beckons Mathias to the seat of honour on her right. Pierce takes the other end, and Leo the spot between him and the lich.
Leaving Anthea and me to our own side.
Wonderful.
I pull her chair out, letting her slip into place before pushing her in, then frown.
There’s a red welt at her back, just beneath the slick blonde bun at her nape. The tip of it barely rises above the lace of her collar.
Something in me bristles.
Why is she injured? I don’t like her…but I glance up at Pierce. Is this normal? A training accident, perhaps? Isidora is a powerful destruction magister, and I know they both studied with their mother.
Still…normally training wounds are properly treated…
Pierce just sips at his wine, all of his attention on Mathias and Leo. His sister isn’t worth a second glance, for all that she’s right next to him, staring at him.
Has he even noticed her uncharacteristic quietness?
“You’ll have to tell us how it’s been, living with the other heirs,” Isidora begins, gesturing to the staff to begin serving the first course. “Never in history have all six families shared the same roof.”
“Not true,” Mathias corrects, breaking off from his conversation with Leo like he can’t resist the opportunity to correct her. “In my youth, there was an attempt to exchange children between the families, to foster better relations after a period of tension.”
“How did it go?” I ask, keeping my tone bland.
“Poorly.” Mathias shrugs, and for the first time, our eyes really meet.
His body might be showing his age, but his eyes are already dead. The irises are the same pale golden brown as North’s, but I’ve never looked at North and felt chilled to my bones.
“How unfortunate.” I won’t look away first, but damn, I want to.
“Oh, it wasn’t, really. They were expendable. I doubt anyone was surprised when they were poisoned.”
Then, as if he hasn’t just talked about the death of six children, he raises his spoon to his lips, slurping the cheerful green soup loudly.
“Staying at the Arcanaeum is hardly remarkable.” Pierce changes the subject before I can. “The food is inferior, of course, and the company is barely tolerable.”
I really hope he’s acting. If he is, I can’t tell.
Pierce Carlton is a born liar. Worse, if he’s not really my ally…then there’s no one at this table I can trust.
I glance around the group again, already wishing I could leave. If my uncle were here, it might be easier to sneak away and find that grimoire.
The table is only set for six.
The stone in my gut morphs into a boulder.
“You’ve not set a place for my uncle,” I say, keeping my tone light.
“Oh, how terribly remiss of us.” Isidora frowns over my head at one of the servers, and they bustle around, spurred into action by that one glare alone. “He is terribly late.”
Pierce shifts his jaw incrementally, his eyes landing on his sister, who’s taken a sudden interest in her soup.
“I’m sure your time in the Arcanaeum will come to an end soon.” Isidora effortlessly steers the conversation back on topic, dismissing my uncle’s absence. “It can’t be easy to be away from home for so long. I know we all miss Pierce terribly.”
It takes a lot of work not to scoff. She barely even bothered to greet her son when we arrived. Now she wants me to believe that she missed him? And acting like I have a family to return to is just stupid. I have an apartment; that’s it.
That’s part of the reason Abe is so reluctant to retire.
Living at the Arcanaeum is the closest I’ve had to a home since I was a teenager. Instead of saying as much, I offer a noncommittal grunt and shove my spoon into my mouth, turning my focus to where Leo and Mathias are talking.
“Can we not just—” Leo says, but Mathias shakes his head.
“Young man, it would disrespect our hosts to discuss work at the dinner table,” Mathias chides. “Your ensorcellment can wait a few more hours.”
Leo’s expression flashes through a hundred different emotions. Rage, disbelief, annoyance. It would make me smirk if it weren’t so damned pathetic.
He chucked aside the woman who was forgoing sleep to save him and pinned his hopes on a man who couldn’t care less.
Fucking. Moron.
I let the full force of my judgement rest in the smug smirk I level at him, then remember his words from before, and scowl.
Knock-knock—Crash!
Every head at the table swivels to face the red-faced server. He drops to his knees, scrambling to collect the fragments of the china plate he was holding. I forcibly lower myself back into my chair, hoping no one noticed my hand drop to my grimoire.
Not a threat.
The knock at the door comes again, and Isidora smiles as the butler bows, excusing himself to answer it.
“That’ll be the rector now.”
I glance to my other side, only to find Anthea’s gone as white as a sheet.
“Are you okay?” I mumble under my breath, against my better judgement. “Do you—”
Enforcers spill into the dining room, but my attention narrows on Mathias as he lowers his spoon to the table, a soft smile stretching those purple lips.
“Seize her!”
The woman beside me rockets out of her chair, heading for the smaller door directly behind us.
“Ad Arcanaeum!” Anthea cries, slamming her fist against the wood. “Sanctuary! Ad Arc—”
“What is the meaning of this?” Isidora demands, gliding to her feet as the enforcers silence Anthea with a dozen spells, all cast at once.
That seems excessive. She didn’t even reach for her grimoire, and yet now she’s immobile, pinned to the ground as they rip the book from its holster at her side.
The sense of wrong skitters up my spine, even stronger than before, and I rise to my feet.
“Parriarchs.” A uniformed female officer with her hand still firmly pressed on the page of her open and hovering grimoire addresses the table. “We’re here to arrest Anthea Carlton on suspicion of practising necromancy.”
My eyes flash to Pierce, whose lips part in shock. Either he didn’t know this would happen, or—
Isidora levels the other woman with a condescending smile. “That’s quite ridiculous. My daughter is—”
“She was the last person to see Rector Talcott alive before his murder last night,” the officer insists. “Two survivors of her attack named her as the necromancer responsible.”
Murder?
What the—?
Anthea is forced to her knees, and her dove grey eyes—the mirror of Isidora and Pierce’s—water.
I don’t think this is an act. At least, not on her part. Her behaviour all through dinner was that of someone facing a gallows, and yet…
“Rector Carlton,” the officer in charge says. “What would you like us to do?”
My eyes widen as I turn to Isidora. No one can possibly miss the flash of triumph in her eyes as she takes in her weeping child.
Isidora is now the most powerful woman in arcandom.
And if Abe is really dead, that means I…I’m now a parriarch.