Chapter 35 – — Professor Nestor, Lecture Notes
Chapter Thirty-Five
“We do not choose to become healers. The work selects us, and we spend the rest of our lives pretending we agreed.”
— Professor Nestor, Lecture Notes
I touch the black cloth, and it falls to the floor, forcing me to take a step back.
It’s the mirror. The same bone frame, ribcage curling up the side, antlers branching out at the top. The liquid surface ripples, and my reflection ripples with it.
It knows me, and I don’t have time to be afraid.
I close my eyes, breathe in, and think about the list of questions I’ve been carrying for far too long.
Then I step inside the mirror.
I’m instantly swallowed by a cold darkness. I look around but can’t see anything. Then I hear the heartbeat, as a presence settles around me.
“Maelisss Rossse.”
The sound of my name slithers up my spine like a serpent, and I try not to shiver.
“You have come to viss-it me again so sssoon. So sssearching.”
“Before, you recognized my blood. You said my father walked these halls, but I can’t find him in any school record.”
The presence shifts in the dark.
“Ah. Yesss. Perhapsss...you were searching for the wrong name.”
I take a breath and hug my arms around myself to keep warm. I don’t like these cryptic answers. I need to be more clear.
“Did Charlie Rose attend or visit Ashwell Academy?”
“No, sweet child. Charlie Rose never set foot inssside thessse walls. He wasss a healer of a small village. He stayed where he wasss kept.”
As though my father was placed in Ironfen by someone and meant to stay there.
I press a hand against my chest before I can stop it. I know where this is going, but I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it until I hear it.
“Was Charlie Rose my father?”
An ill feeling takes hold.
“Not by blood.”
I take in a sharp breath that feels like it’s going to come back out as a sob, and I grit my teeth and force it down. Not now. Not here.
“Who is my biological father?”
The presence in the dark shifts. The slow heartbeat echoes in my ears, slow and soft.
“You already know, Maelisss Rossse.”
“Tell me anyway,” I demand.
“It isss not for me to ssspeak hisss name. He hasss withheld it from you, and he will give it to you himssself, when the time isss right.”
I close my hands into fists at my sides.
The grief I have been holding back starts rising in my throat, and I can’t let it through. Charlie, my father, the man who taught me everything.
“He knew, didn’t he?” I whisper. “Charlie knew I wasn’t his.”
The voice that comes back is softer than before.
“He knew and chose you anyway. He loved you, and the blood you carry isss not hisss, but every other part of you he ssshaped with hisss own hands. The healing isss hisss. The empathy for patientsss isss hisss. The way you hold a sssscalpel isss hisss. No blood will ever take it from you.”
I cough on a sob and quickly wipe my face. In the dark of the mirror, I feel the cold presence watching me.
I steady my breathing.
“Who applied for me to come here? Or did you summon me yourself?”
“I would have sssummoned you eventually, but it wasss Helena Raven, your mother, who applied for you.”
Finally a straight answer.
But how did she know?
My mother, who has not looked me in the eye since my father died. My mother, who according to this same mirror has been hiding me from my real father for my entire life.
She sent me here. To him.
“Why would she do that?”
“That isss not mine to give, sssweet child. Asssk it of her when you ssstand in front of her again. There are reasssonsss.”
I am going to ask my mother the next time I see her. I am going to look her in the face and ask why she sent me to him.
“Did my mother ever attend Ashwell Academy?”
“Sssshe hasss walked thisss campusss, but it wasss not to attend classsesss.”
So she was here studying corrupted polar bears and getting knocked up.
“Tell me what I am, since I am no ordinary human.”
“You are a blood mage, Maelisss Rossse, the sssecond born to your father’s line.”
The answer startles me.
“No, it can’t be. I— I can’t even use current. I have no power.” My voice has gone thin. “Is the headmaster my father?”
I choke on the question, because it can’t be. I can’t accept it. I won’t.
“You are asssking the wrong questionsss.”
I run my hands over my face, wanting to scream in frustration. I keep it together. I need to hurry. I can’t tell how much time has passed, but it feels like too long.
“If I’m a blood mage, then why can’t I use current? I should be able to create it, like you.”
That chill presses against my spine again, the presence drawing closer.
“Two half-siblings, only one may come into power. For that to happen, one of you must die.”
The dark goes silent.
“I’m sorry. What?”
I think my vision would be narrowing with anxiety if it wasn’t already completely black in here.
“Blood remembersss blood, Maelisss Rossse. Thisss perssson will be closer to you than you think. You will be drawn to one another in sssome way.”
“How do I even go about finding this person? Who are they?”
“That isss not mine to give either. The ssshape of the answer is already in your handsss.”
I start to spiral. It could be anyone. I can’t kill anyone. The thought of having a half-sibling I’ve never known and being asked to choose between us—between my power and theirs, between my life and theirs—makes the dark pull tighter around me.
“What if neither of us wants to be a blood mage?”
“One of you will die. It isss desssstined.”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t believe you.”
“You ssshouldn’t worry about thisss now, child. You have more pressing mattersss to attend to.”
I almost laugh.
“More pressing than having a half-sibling and one of us destined to die.”
The coldness comes back.
“Tell me, child. What family hasss been known, for centuriesss, to eliminate any threat to the throne of Valen?”
I go still.
“What?”
“Ansssswer me.”
“I don’t—”
“You do. You know thisss one. Sssay it for me.”
My mouth has gone dry. The presence is pressing in close, the slow heartbeat of Ashwell beating slow underneath my pulse, and I can feel the question with my whole body before my mind catches up to it.
“The Aldrics.”
“Yesss.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“What family, Maelisss Rossse, hasss for four hundred yearsss hunted blood magesss to near extinction? What family ssspilled the blood of your kind acrossss every kingdom of Valen until there were ssso few of you left that the world believed your line had ended?”
“No.”
The word leaves me before the mirror has finished asking the question.
“Sssay it, child.”
“No. No, no, no—”
“Sssay it.”
“The Aldrics.”
“Yesss.”
I cannot breathe.
I am standing in the cold dark of the mirror with Charlie gone and my mother lying to me and a half-sibling I am supposed to kill or be killed by, and now the family that has been hunting my line for four hundred years has a name, and the name is Aldric.
The same name as the lost prince of Valen.
The same name as the boy who walked away from his throne.
The same name as the man who kissed me in the snow nearly thirty minutes ago.
“And now, Maelisss Rossse,” the voice slithers, soft and almost amused, “you find yourssself at thisss very ssschool with one of them.”
The dark spins.
A low rumble starts beneath my feet. The slow heartbeat of Ashwell skips a beat, and the cold around me deepens.
No not the cold of the warded room, not the cold of the dark, but something icier, something arriving from somewhere else.
The hair on my arms lifts. My breath plumes white in front of me.
The presence in the dark begins to recede.
“Wait.”
The cold tightens.
“Wait, mirror—”
The presence is moving away from me, the slow heartbeat already growing fainter, and I’m out of time. I lunge forward into the dark with my hand out as if I can catch it.
“Does he know what I am? Does Draven Know?”
The voice doesn’t answer.
The slow pulse beneath my pulse stutters and fades.
“Mirror! Ashwell!” I yell into the void.
The room shakes harder. The dark around me is fracturing, splintering in long thin lines that run away from me toward edges I cannot see, and I can feel the trance failing, the mirror slipping out of my reach, the warded room calling me back into a body that suddenly cannot hold itself upright.
“Mirror, please.”
Nothing.
The presence is gone.
The dark is mere dark now. Empty. Cold. The slow heartbeat has stopped.
A pain begins behind my eyes that I have never felt before, sharp, building.
My head pounds. My hand reaches for something to hold and finds nothing, because there is nothing in the dark anymore.
The mirror has let me go, and the room shakes around me, and the cold sinks into my bones, and the rumble beneath my feet has become a groan.
I feel everything starting to come apart at the seams of itself.
I stagger backward with my hands at my temples, and my knees buckle, and I drop to the cold, dark floor that is no longer there. Draven, did you know? The pain at the back of my eyes cracks open and the dark of the mirror becomes a different kind of dark.
Black.
I blink rapidly, and a blue-hued light comes into view overhead with a low hum.
“What?”
Then I see him. His face comes into focus as he leans over me. It’s the man I think is my father.
“Welcome to the tenth floor, Miss Rose.”