Chapter 2 – — Field Notes on the Cycle, Veilguard Archives
Chapter Two
“Not every wound bleeds. Some take the mind first and the body after.”
— Field Notes on the Cycle, Veilguard Archives
“Run,” Jace yells again.
The man lets out a guttural sound that isn’t quite a scream and isn’t quite human.
And he’s closing the distance quickly.
I turn and start running, my boots barely touching the ground, but then I realize Jace isn’t with me.
I whirl around.
He stands with his arms out in front of him, a dagger clenched in one hand.
“We can help you,” he says, but the man doesn’t slow.
My eyes widen. I slap a hand over my mouth to smother the scream building in my throat as the man barrels straight at him. At the last second, Jace’s wings burst outward in a flash of silver and light, lifting him clean off the ground and over the man’s head.
My relief fizzles when the man turns and starts coming straight for me.
I freeze.
Jace drops from the air, slamming down onto the man’s shoulders and driving him to the ground.
The impact knocks the breath from my lungs even though it isn’t me taking the hit.
The man thrashes beneath him, limbs jerking violently, a low growl reverberating through the air.
He thrashes around like an animal caught in a trap.
He twists, shoving Jace off, and springs back to his feet in one fluid, unnatural motion. He lunges again, teeth snapping as if he’s trying to tear into flesh instead of fight.
This sick person is fast, but Jace is faster.
He ducks to the side and plunges his dagger into the man’s chest. I expect him to cry out, to grab the wound, to falter, but he does none of it.
Instead, his hands clamp around Jace’s arm, his jaw snapping wildly, teeth clicking inches from skin like he’s trying to bite through bone.
I grab the nearest branch and swing it as hard as I can, the crack of wood against his skull making my stomach turn. It doesn’t slow him.
Jace kicks him backward, sending him crashing to the ground, and then he’s on him again. The dagger rises and falls over and over. The man’s movements grow weaker until finally his body goes still.
Jace stumbles back, chest heaving. I rush to his side, my heart pounding so hard it hurts as we stare down at the body.
“Is he a vampire?” I whisper.
Jace shakes his head slowly. “No, vampires look like you and me. They don’t look like this even when they’ve been starved.”
I want to ask how he knows what a starved vampire looks like, but it’s not the right time.
“Maybe he was bitten by an animal or poisoned,” I say, my voice strained. “Maybe it drove him mad.”
Jace’s jaw ticks as he looks back down at the man.
“Yeah,” he says quietly, “let’s hope that’s all this is.”
We debate taking him back to the clinic to study him, to see if we can figure out what was wrong, but we both know it’s not a good idea. My mother and sister are there. What if whatever he had is contagious.
The run back is quiet. Even when we reach the village, we don’t say a word. The adrenaline fades, leaving an uncomfortable feeling of unease. We weave through the carriages lining the road, the familiar sights doing nothing to settle my nerves.
When we reach Jace’s house, I slow to a stop. “You don’t have to walk all the way back with me. It’s your day off.”
He shakes his head. “No, I want to grab a few supplies from the clinic, then I’m going back to check the body more closely.”
“I can go with you, if you want.” The offer feels hollow the moment it leaves my mouth.
He studies me for a moment. “You don’t want to do that. It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”
He’s right. I don’t want to go back out there. Not today. Maybe never. “I’ll see if I can find anything like this in my father’s notes.”
I’m planning to spend the rest of the afternoon going through his things anyway.
Jace nods, and when we reach the clinic, I don’t follow him in. Instead, I enter the next door over. My father’s office.
The room smells faintly of dried herbs and ink.
I move deeper into the room and light the lantern on his desk.
The flame flares then steadies, amber light filling the space with a warm glow.
Bookshelves line the walls, crowded with ledgers, bundles of notes tied with twine, heavy tomes, and jars filled with crushed leaves and powders, each labeled in his careful hand.
Everything is exactly as he left it.
I take a seat and run my fingers along the edge of the desk, over the nicks and scratches I remember making as a child while he worked late into the night.
I used to sit on the floor beneath this table, pretending to read while listening to the scratch of his pen and the steady rhythm of his breathing.
I used to think that sound meant safety.
Nothing has ever really scared me, aside from death.
Even as a little girl, far too young to understand what death really meant, I thought about it constantly. Awake at night, I’d wonder what happens after a heart stops, terrified that one morning I would wake and find my parents gone or my sister Briana cold and still beside me.
I don’t know if something happened to me when I was very young, some old trauma sealed behind a door my mind refuses to open. I only know that death and what comes after has haunted me far longer than it should.
Maybe that’s why I started working in the clinic with my father before I even understood what healing meant. As soon as I was old enough to carry a bowl of water or cut strips of linen, I was in the thick of it. Some villagers used to say healing was in my blood. I used to believe it too.
Working in the clinic was my way of trying to understand the thing that kept me awake at night.
I told myself that if I feared something, the only way to conquer it was to study it, learning its patterns and its rules.
If I could learn how to prevent death, how to anticipate it, how to accept it, maybe the fear would loosen its grip on me.
Maybe if I stood close enough to death, it would stop looking back at me.
I thought knowledge would ease the fear. Instead, all it did was sharpen the edge of the thing I dread most.
Even thinking about it now takes my breath away, the fear coursing through me at the thought of nothing. Time is the only enemy that can’t be conquered. We live this life, and then that’s it. Forever. For as long as the mind can stretch.
My breaths turn shallow as that familiar panic rises. It’s not fair that I was born human. We are not only the weakest race, but our lifespans are cruelly short. I would have given anything to be an angel, fae, or even a shifter. They live far beyond what any human can hope for.
I shake off the thought and reach for the nearest ledger and flip to the page I marked the last time I was here.
I have only worked my way through about half of my father’s things, and I know it will take time before I finish.
A part of me doesn’t want to. I draw out the process on purpose, clinging to the illusion that as long as there are pages left unread, he isn’t truly gone.
I skim patient names, treatments, and observations. I flip past them until the handwriting tightens, the margins crowded with notes written too fast to be tidy.
One cramped note in the corner catches my eye. “Injuries that do not match known beasts. Wounds that resist healing, as if the body itself is being told to fail.”
I chew on my bottom lip as I turn the page. The ink grows darker, pressed hard into the paper.
“The injuries are patterned. Not random. This is not a normal attack. It feels like preparation.”
I flip another page.
“If the cycle is delayed, then something else will respond. It always does.”
My gaze catches on a single word, underlined twice, and my breath stutters.
Ashwell.
“If the cycle is late, Ashwell will act.”
The final lines are shorter, the ink smudged.
“I pray it is not in my lifetime, or hers.”
How did my father know about Ashwell Academy? He never spoke of it, not even when I told him about Jace applying. And yet, buried in his notes, the name appears.
I read into the early hours of the night, turning brittle pages until my eyes burn. I don’t find anything else about Ashwell or what happened in the woods today.
I stretch my arms over my head and yawn, my body aching from the long day. My thoughts drift to Jace. I hope he made it back home safely. I debate going to check on him when a faint blue glow flickers in the middle of the room.
I shove my chair back and stand. Goosebumps ripple along my arms as I step around the desk toward the light, my pulse thudding in my ears. The orb hovers at eye level, no bigger than a coin at first, then it grows.
The light flares.
I throw my hands up to shield my eyes as brightness floods the room. When it vanishes suddenly, I lower my arms, blinking rapidly.
A tall man stands where the light had been.
I gasp and stumble backward until the backs of my legs hit the desk. He’s tall and broad, wearing a black cloak.
“Holy fuck. What are you?” I ask. This person is not human.
“Maelis Rose,” he says.
He knows my name. How does he know my name?
I nod numbly as he reaches up and pulls back his hood, revealing pointed ears and gray hair framing a slender face.
He’s fae.
He reaches into his cloak and produces a rolled piece of parchment, the paper bound with a seal of deep-blue wax. He holds it out to me, stoic and yet observant.
“Ashwell Academy of Medicine and Alchemy has accepted your application.”