Chapter 32 – — Founding Chronicle, redacted
Chapter Thirty-Two
“The walls of this academy are older than the kingdom that thinks it owns them. They will outlast every name carved into them, including yours.”
— Founding Chronicle, redacted
Malric had the decency to tell me Cael is close to death and has been asking for me. I don’t wait for him to tell me anything else and hurry as fast as I can to the patient wards.
I enter his room and find him on the bed.
He has always been thin, but not frail. Today, he is small.
The blanket has been pulled up to his chest, and his arms are laid out on top of it the way menders lay out the arms of a patient who is no longer turning on their own.
His skin has gone the pale gray that demon skin goes in the last hours, a color I have only read about in Cane’s textbooks. His eyes are closed.
Am I too late?
I approach the end of the bed, holding my breath until I see his chest rise and fall.
I promised him I’d listen to all of his stories and keep him company until he died. I thought we had more time. I’ve been listening to his stories for months and I’m not ready for them to end.
Poppy appears and crawls onto the bed, lying right up against his side.
I reach out and hold Cael’s hand. He doesn’t move.
“Cael, it’s me. It’s Maelis.”
His eyelids flutter but don’t open.
“Don’t go yet, old man.”
His brow twitches.
“Who are you calling old man?” he rasps, and I laugh as one of his eyes opens and finds me. But his lungs sound so bad. The wet, crackling sound of death.
“Cael.”
I move closer. Both his eyes open. His gaze drifts along the ceiling, and then lands on me.
“Girl, you came.” Every word is an effort.
“Of course I came. I should have come sooner. I’m sorry.”
“You came when you were supposed to.”
I’ve decided I’m not going to cry until after he’s gone, and I am holding to that decision. I will not unravel now.
“You should drink some water.”
“No, I’m past that part.”
“Is there anything you want me to do? To tell anyone?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “Tell that little raccoon of yours she’s welcome to my dinner tin.”
I let out a sound that is half a laugh and half a sob.
“She knows.”
“Good.”
His eyes close again. His chest rises and falls, and the rattle in his lungs grows stronger, but I stand there holding his hand.
“Girl.”
I look up. His eyes are open again.
“Yes, I’m still here.” I squeeze his hand. It’s so cold and lifeless already.
“Senna.”
I go very still.
“Cael, what did you say?”
He coughs and rasps again. “Senna.”
I search his face.
“Senna the blood lead died months ago.”
He doesn’t seem to hear me. He is staring off near the window.
“I saw her,” he murmurs.
“Cael, you’re tired. The medication—”
“I saw her last night.”
I furrow my brows. Is he confused? Delusional?
“Tenth floor.”
His voice has gone thin. He coughs, turning his head to the side, trying to take in a breath. I grab a damp cloth from the bedside table and clean his face. I pat his forehead.
“You are not on the tenth floor, Cael.”
I fold the cloth and rest it atop his head.
“I went last night.”
His eyes are closed. I squeeze his hand again.
“How? What?”
“I told her to leave it alone.” His voice is the thinnest I have ever heard it. “I should have told her to run.”
If he isn’t delusional, I’m afraid.
“Run from what? From whom?”
He starts coughing again. “Promise me.” His eyes meet mine and widen slightly.
“Promise you what?”
I lean in closer.
“Promise me you won’t go to the tenth floor.” He swallows. The effort is enormous. “When the moment comes, you’ll know.”
I have no idea what he means, but his eyes roll back, and he starts breathing heavily again.
“Cael—”
His eyes find mine one more time. The brightness flickers up, faint, and the man I have sat with all year is in there for one more second, looking at me, and I see him see me, and I am going to remember this look in his eyes for the rest of my life.
“My girl,” he whispers.
“Cael, you are going to be—”
His chest crackles.
His breathing stops.
The room goes completely silent.
Poppy lifts her head from his stomach and looks over at me. She makes a small sound that is not a chitter. It’s something I haven’t heard her make before.
I kneel down and lower my head to the side of the bed.
I sob into the blanket, and Poppy crawls over to me.
After a few minutes, the mender comes in. She looks at me and stands by the door, waiting.
I sniffle, pulling myself together.
I lean down and press my forehead to his.
“You old bastard,” I whisper and I kiss the top of his head.
Then I sit up, scoop Poppy into my arms, and tuck her against my side. Some people don’t enter your life. They build something inside it. And when they leave, the structure comes down with them.
I don’t look back at him as I leave.
I can’t.
I exit the room as the menders come in and hurry down the hall with my eyes burning and my chest wound tight, not looking where I’m going until I almost slam into him.
The headmaster is standing in the corridor outside Cael’s door with his hands clasped behind his back, his cloak pooling against the stone, his face turned toward the room I left. I realize he has been waiting here.
“Headmaster.”
“Miss Rose.”
I think about brushing past him, because he has done nothing to earn a single word from me today, and I owe him no explanation. But something stops me, some small, foolish grieving instinct that wants to make him to acknowledge the loss.
I open my mouth. “He—”
“I know.” He said it the way a man says he knows the time or the weather. “I think it is for the best in the end for everyone.”
I feel my eyes narrow before I can school them.
I want to lash out at him, want to ask him why he is such an enormous asshole, want to blame him for Cael and Nella’s deaths, for the names chalked on the board after the Shorelands fissure, want to confront him about the tenth floor and Senna and the wards he is letting slip and every cold thing Cael said about him at the end of his life.
But even with all of it pressing against my teeth, I know better, because there is something sinister behind the headmaster’s eyes, and I’m going to be the one who finds it. I can’t do that if he sees me coming.
I let my face fall into the stoic mask and walk past him. How can he say Cael’s death is for the best for everyone? Did he know Cael was on to him?
I pick up my pace, and I’m almost at the bend when his voice stops me.
“Miss Rose.”
I close my eyes for one second then turn.
He has not moved from where he was standing, he’s only turned to face me like he was watching me walk away.
“I’m glad you survived your midterm.”
I force a half smile, even though he unnerves me.
“Do make it count.”
He inclines his head, and I round the corner before he can say anything else, throwing myself into the lift, and the moment the doors slide closed, my legs give, and I sag against the wall with Poppy pressed to my chest and my forehead against the cold metal.
I don’t breathe until the lift begins to descend.
I’ve never wanted to be away from a person more in my life, and he was barely there.
Once outside, I gulp the frigid air in deep shuddering pulls, my breath plumed white in front of me. Poppy makes a small chittering sound against my coat and then disappears to rest.
Cael was old. He lived a long, great life, and at the end of it he got exactly what he asked for, someone to share his stories with until the end. He was ready, and it was his time.
I close my eyes. I hope you are at peace, old man.
The dorm is across the courtyard, and Nestor’s class will be over by now. I need to get my mind off things and study for finals. I need a hot shower and sleep too.
I am almost to the side of the building when I see Malric.
He is leaning against the wall with his shoulder set against the stone, one boot crossed over the other and his arms folded across his chest, his head tilted back so that the light catches the underside of his jaw and the hint of red in his brown hair. He’s been waiting for me.
Great.
“Well, Red, looks like I’m going to need to assign you new patients.”
I stop walking.
“Though everyone around you tends to die.” He pushes off the wall, and the crunch of his boots in the snow is the only sound between us. “Let’s see. Who don’t I like right now?”
“I’m not in the mood, Malric.”
“I can see that.”
He closes half the distance between us and stops close enough that I have to tilt my chin up to keep my eyes on his.
“You’ve been crying.”
I roll my eyes.
“Let me by.” I glance around. It’s empty between the buildings.
“You remember how I was there for you the last time you lost a patient, Red. I could do that again.” He takes a step closer and inhales deeply, like he’s breathing me in.
I scrunch my nose. “You’re vile. Now move.” I try to sound threatening and not nervous. I wish I had my scalpel right now. I would consider stabbing him with it.
“I just want to talk for a minute. You can spare me a minute.” He picks up a piece of my hair and twirls it around his finger.
I take a step back, but I’m all the way at the wall now. “I don’t want to.” I swat his hand away, and he drops my hair.
“I know. Indulge me anyway.”
His eyes are more red than gold, and I hope he can’t hear how fast my heart is beating.
“You’ve been busy this year, and I’ve been watching.
You may have come in playing the unremarkable human, but you have managed to become something else entirely.
” He rubs at his chin, studying my face.
“I don’t think you understand yet how visible you’ve made yourself and how dangerous that can be. ”
I narrow my eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
A smirk starts on his face, and his voice has gone different. The flirtation has bled out of it, and what’s left is the man I have only seen pieces of. The one he hides underneath the sarcasm and the wandering hands. The one likely responsible for killing Senna.
“I’ve known what you are for a while, Red. Probably longer than you’ve known yourself. It was the bite that did it.”
I don’t know what he means, but I know Malric spews crazy, so I swallow and stare up at him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I straighten my shoulders. “What do you think I am? Why are you telling me this?”
“Because the orders I have been keeping you alive under are about to expire.”
I think I stop breathing.
“What?”
Is he talking about the Obsidian Throne?
Draven’s family? No, because why would they care about keeping me alive.
Does he know my mother? Did Jace say something?
So many things run through my head. Did Draven tell him about our deal, that I know he’s the prince, but then if he was worried I’d tell, it would be all the more reason to have Malric kill me.
“After the ball,” he says, “I can’t help you anymore.”
“You haven’t been helping me. You killed Senna, didn’t you?”
I decide to confront him. This conversation is already taking a dark turn.
He throws his head back and laughs. “If that’s what you think, you’re blinder than I thought.”
Something about it seems honest, which makes what Cael said about the tenth floor even more alarming.
He steps into me until my back presses into the stone. He leans down and sniffs the top of my head, and I contemplate kneeing him between the legs, but I don’t have anything to defend myself with right now.
He tucks my hair behind my ear, his touch makes my skin crawl.
“Save me a dance, would you?”
“Hell would have to freeze first, Malric.”
He laughs. It’s short and not entirely amused. “We will see, Red.”
He steps away and walks slowly to the end of the alley and around the building.
Once he’s out of sight and I can no longer hear the crunch of his boots, I breathe.
I’m about to push off the wall when something pulls my attention up.
A figure on the balcony of the men’s dormitory across the courtyard. He’s standing in the shadows, but when he sees me looking, he takes one step forward, and our eyes meet across the snow.
Draven.
I shake my head and turn to go inside.
I don’t need to unpack what that means right now.
A long shower and a bowl of soup later, I’m laying on my bed staring up at the designs on the ceiling.
This year has been the second hardest year of my life. The first was losing my father. This year has been hard, but it still doesn’t compare to that. The day I got the letter to come here seems like an entire lifetime ago. Things were so different then.
I need to write out all the things I want to ask Ashwell once I find the mirror and make it count. Hopefully it will be forthcoming with answers.
Who applied for me to come here? Who wrote that line on the bottom of the parchment?
Blood remembers what history forgets. Your father knows you are ready.
My father may have applied for me, but he didn’t write that on the parchment.
Unless someone else applied for me, and it’s the same person who wrote that line.
Or the school itself summoned me and somehow put the cryptic message there too.
This is low on the list of things I need to know, but no less frustrating.
I haven’t received any mail from my mother or sister since coming here.
My mother not writing isn’t a surprise, given we are on rocky terms. But Briana, I thought she would have written something.
I can’t fault her, because I haven’t written either, and she’s probably busy with the clinic and helping our mother.
Jace wasn’t worried about the crawler in Ironfen, and if it had become a problem, surely we would have been notified by now if a large fissure opened in our home village.
Jace still writes to his parents. I don’t think he would keep that from me, no matter how much he hates me these days.
But then where did it come from? And why didn’t we see any crawlers in Holloweir?
No one mentioned any across the midterm locations either.
Have they become less active, or are they waiting for the cycle to begin?
I borrowed two books from the library about the history of the cycle and fissure events across the continent, but I haven’t found the time to read them yet. Almost everything I know about the cycle, I learned from Cael.
I can’t believe he’s gone. It feels so surreal to lose him and Nella both. I hope I don’t get assigned any more patients until next year. I don’t know if my heart can ever harden enough to where losing them gets easier.
I need to study. I need to get through finals. I have to keep my distance from Malric, make it to the ball, and find the mirror.
I place my hand over the key necklace at my neck and start to fidget with it.
The headmaster’s been watching me, but I don’t think he realizes I’m watching him too.
Cael wanted me to promise to stay off the tenth floor, but I never did.