Chapter 31 – — Aldric Family Record, Sealed Archive
Chapter Thirty-One
“A power that does not yet know itself is the easiest to remove. A power that learns its own name in time becomes a war.”
— Aldric Family Record, Sealed Archive
Eight weeks have passed since the midterm massacre.
Yes, that’s what people are calling it.
The wards have emptied of the worst of the casualties. Ellavee is fully recovered, and her scar has faded to a tiny pale line. Killian came back to class three weeks ago with a limp, but he’s fine. And Jace…
He has been back for five weeks and hasn’t spoken to me once. He wears an eye patch now, and dare I say it makes him look even more hateful.
I have hope that once bone year is over, we’ll return home to Ironfen together for the summer break and mend things away from this place.
The headmaster did give his speech the morning after the Shoreland fissure massacre, as Cael predicted he would, and he’s been keeping the fear of a looming cycle present.
But I can’t have constant anxiety over something that’s out of my control and still don’t fully understand.
All I can do is become the best healer I can be, and with my hands cured, I’m on my way there.
Ellavee and Lux have helped me check a couple more places for the mirror, but nothing has turned up, which only further confirms it must be in the headmaster’s private quarters.
Draven has been distant, returned to who he was before our trip to Holloweir, but I haven’t forgotten the glimpses he gave me of what’s underneath that rough exterior.
I’ve kept my end of the deal and not spoken a word about his true lineage, and he said in passing he would still help me the night of the ball after finals.
Finals and the ball are only a handful of weeks away.
Soon, I will have the answers I seek.
“Zuri and Cara found a dressmaker in Whitehaven who can do beadwork in only three days. Zuri said she’s going to wear emerald green, and Ellavee wants to wear pink, but she hasn’t found anything she likes yet.”
Lux has been rambling about this ball for days, and I don’t care what I wear to it, because I don’t plan on being there long. I haven’t told anyone other than Draven about the plan that night. I figured it’s better to keep it between us until after.
“Lux,” I say, urging her to take a breath.
She sighs and tucks her hair behind her ears. “You said you would go, and I know you don’t have anything to wear, and you’re running out of time is all I’m saying.”
She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms in Professor Nestor’s lab while we wait for him to show up.
I raise my eyebrows and bite my tongue. I have far more important things to think about than what dress to wear.
Like the fact that Draven is sitting three rows up and to the right, reading.
Or pretending to. The book in his hand hasn’t turned a page since I sat down, and I have been keeping track.
Two rows in front of him, on the opposite side, Jace is sitting with Killian, his new best friend apparently. Flick is on his shoulder, and I swear that tiny bat keeps giving me dirty looks.
“Mae,” Lux says, and I turn. She raises a single eyebrow.
“You are doing the staring thing.”
I shake my head and reach down to pet Primm, who has settled between us, her white head resting on the desk.
“I’m not doing a thing.”
“You are doing two things, in fact. You’re alternating. Primm has noticed too.”
I look down at the wolf. “You’re a little traitor too.” I laugh through my nose, and Lux giggles beside me.
“Let’s talk about the ball again. Do you think Ellavee will finally introduce us to the guy she’s been sneaking off with?”
Lux beams, relieved at the change of subject.
“Please, she has more than one.”
We both laugh, because Ellavee has game, and Lux and I are both alone. Or Lux is alone in theory. She has been flirting with a demon named Lyrian for three weeks and thinks I haven’t noticed. I’m just waiting for her to bring him up first.
The doors at the back of the lab swing open. “Apologies for the delay. I was speaking with the headmaster.”
Professor Nestor sweeps in with a stack of books under one arm and his coat buttons misaligned. He dumps the stack down on his desk, and the conversation in the room dies before he turns around.
“Bone years, today you are in for a treat. I have set up the room next door for testing.”
A low murmur ripples across the rows.
“Don’t panic. It’s not being graded. Today’s exercise is not for the faint of heart though.”
The room goes quiet.
“You are familiar with the lower bonds with your eidolon. Sensory. Directional. Some early attempts at perceptive.” He proceeds around to the front of his desk. “Today, I am asking you to attempt something the textbooks call a sensory overlay. Eidolons specialize. They don’t generalize.”
We’ve been working with our eidolons in lab once a week now for some time, but I have no idea what sensory overlay means.
“Today, we will test your connection to your eidolon and their specialty.”
A small ping of anxiety blooms in my belly.
“This is blood year Elizabeth. She has agreed to assist me today. She will bring you over one at a time and get you set up. While you are waiting, you may use the time to do this week’s reading assignment.”
Elizabeth pushes off the wall and crosses to the front of the room as Nestor turns and disappears through the door at the side of the lab. She perches on the edge of his desk, crosses one ankle over the other, and tosses her long black hair over her shoulder.
Her eyes find mine across the lecture hall.
She smiles.
I haven’t seen Elizabeth much since the Mirror Ceremony despite her insisting she was going to check in on me more, but I’m glad to see she’s almost made it through her blood year.
She writes something down and then finds my eyes again. “Miss Rose,” she calls, “looks like you’re first.”
“Of course I’m first,” I mutter, pushing my chair in.
“Go terrify him, Poppy,” Lux whispers as Poppy peeks out from under the desk and falls into step at my heel.
“Be good, little boners. I’ll be right back.”
I cringe. Elizabeth has been calling bone years Boners for months, and the joke has not aged.
Out in the corridor, she points to the room next door.
“Don’t look so worried, Maelis. It’ll be fun. He’s right through there.”
I nod. Poppy climbs up the side of my coat, and I hold her against my chest as I cross to the door.
“Come, come. Have a seat.”
Nestor waves us toward a bench against the wall the moment I step inside.
The room is one of the smaller exam rooms on this floor.
Two gurneys folded against the far wall.
A line of glass-fronted cabinets along the back.
A long counter beneath them with a sink at the far end and a row of stoppered bottles set in careful order.
Three straight-backed chairs along the side. The lamps have been turned low.
Poppy hops down from my arms and sits on the bench beside me, her small hands folded in front of her chest like a person waiting to be addressed. Her round dark eyes are fixed on Nestor.
He looks at her for a long moment before he looks at me.
“This little raccoon of yours has been on my mind for some time, Miss Rose.”
“Sir?”
“An anomaly eidolon such as her is rare. It is frankly a blessing to see one in my lifetime.”
I shift on the bench.
“In the last eight weeks, I have been making notes on her. Not on you. On her. Her behavior in this lab. The way she sits on your shoulder during my lectures and does not flinch when I dissect a specimen, where most eidolons leave the room or go inside their bearer. She tracks me across the floor. She watches the door before students enter. She is doing things I have not seen an eidolon do at this stage of the bond, Miss Rose, in this generation.”
I look at Poppy, who looks back at me with an expression I can only describe as unbothered by this assessment.
“I would like, if you would permit it, to study her more closely. I would write about her in my private notes. I would ask you questions from time to time about her behavior in your dorm, when she is alone with you. I would simply like to understand what I have been watching for several months now.”
He waits, his hands folded on his knee.
“Why is she so interesting to you?” I ask.
“Because she should not exist, Miss Rose.”
He leans forward slightly, eyebrows raised like a professor about to step into the part of the lecture he loves most.
“There are three known anomaly types in the historical record. A red fox in the eleventh century. A common house cat in the seventh. A mountain hare in the fifteenth. None of them recurred. Each appeared once, attached to one bearer, and the line stopped there. A raccoon has never been recorded in any archive of this academy. Not in any record I have access to. She is a category we do not have.”
“Maybe the records are incomplete.”
“The records are kept by a centuries-old order with limited resources, and they are not infallible, but the records are extensive enough that the absence of a raccoon anomaly, in any era, makes a compelling case.”
He looks at me.
“Your eidolon is not strange simply because she is rare. Your eidolon is strange because she is new.”
Poppy is still on the bench beside me, her clever hands folded, her small body relaxed in a way that tells me she is not afraid of any of this. She hasn’t moved since she sat down. She is, I realize, waiting for me to make this decision for her.
“Yes,” I say, “you can study her, as long as you ask before you do anything.”
“You have my word.”
“Sir, can I ask you something.”
He inclines his head. “You may.”
I take a breath. “You told me once to check the library records to see if my father ever went to Ashwell. I did but couldn’t find anything. His name was Charlie Rose. I thought maybe you have access to records I don’t.”
“I have looked, Miss Rose. After what I said to you that first week, I went looking. I didn’t find Charlie Rose in any class list of the last fifty years. I didn’t find him in the visitor logs. I didn’t find any reference to a healer of that name at this academy.”