Chapter 2 #2
I’d already told her, Luc, Draken, Darragh, and Nyx that the Praecuri asked me not to talk about aspects of that morning, but that clearly wasn’t going to cut it with Miranda, either.
She and Draken both seemed to feel strongly that they were exempt from any restrictions put on my speech when it was something they badly wanted to know, even if those restrictions came directly from Magical law enforcement.
Miranda straightened, hands on hips, and huffed at me.
“You have to know how crazy that sounds, Leda. And why can’t you talk about it? Malefic was convicted, right? Can’t you talk about it now that his hearing in front of the Ethnarch is over? What possible secrets could they need you to keep now?”
“They’d still rather I didn’t.” Seeing her skeptical look, I tapped my watch. “I promise I’ll ask them,” I lied. “But you’ve got to go, Mir! You don’t want to miss the caravan. You’ll have to ride back alone if you do.”
“You just don’t want to tell me!” she pouted, still ignoring me about the time.
“That’s not true,” I protested. “I would tell you. You know that.”
That wasn’t true either, though.
Most of what the Praecuri wanted me to keep quiet about was Malefic’s probable identity as the Priest. But that was splashed all over the papers the day after he got arrested, along with rumors of him heading an “anti-human” cult of Anubis worshippers.
There were definitely parts of the story I’d left out that I could talk about, if I’d wanted to.
The truth was, I didn’t want to, not in the slightest, not with Miranda and definitely not with Draken.
Unfortunately, those same elements were the ones Miranda really wanted to know.
She honed in on those particular gaps in my story with unnerving precision.
There was no way I was filling in those gaps with the truth.
Not now, anyway. I definitely wasn’t up for the conversations that would follow, and there was absolutely no time for any of that before the winter break.
I told myself I wasn’t entirely clear where things stood with me and Bones right now, anyway. Why even stir up that hornet’s nest, when I didn’t know if it would be relevant by the time classes started up again? Why upset my friends over something that might not even be a thing?
Of course, in thinking that, I ignored the softer, much more annoying voice in the back of my head that told me I was utterly full of shite.
I may not know how Bones felt about things, but that didn’t mean I was totally oblivious to my own feelings.
I wasn’t ready to tackle that head-on either, though, certainly not in front of my best friend.
Frankly, I didn’t know what to do about that.
I hadn’t made up my mind to tell Bones, much less Miranda or Draken.
“You know why I was with him,” I said, like I’d been saying since everything happened that Saturday.
“It was bad luck. He asked if we could meet up at his place to go over my final exam for Offensive and Defensive Magic. He wanted to do it early because he had his own coursework to finish, and a number of tutorials for his finals, and we couldn’t find a good time to meet in his family’s Experimental Magic Shed.
We decided the easiest thing would be for me to drop by his place, since I’d be in the Mansion already. ”
“I still can’t believe he lives in an entire tower in Malcroix Mansion,” she scoffed. “What an absolute prat he is––”
“It’s only the top floor,” I corrected, then flushed when I realized I was defending him. When she looked at me, eyebrow raised, I subdued my voice. “I just mean… he doesn’t live in all of it. I’m pretty sure the rest is just storage.”
Miranda only scoffed, and gripped the handle of her suitcase in both hands to drag it off her bedspread. In the process she managed to pull off most of the duvet and dump the entire pile of clothes she hadn’t fit inside the case all over the floor.
She was a one-witch cyclone.
I couldn’t help finding it strangely endearing even as the disaster of her room made my eye twitch. I would genuinely miss her over the next four weeks, but I had no idea how she lived the way she did. It would drive me absolutely mental.
She seemed to pick up on the eye twitch.
“Just leave all that,” she said, looking up apologetically. “I’ll deal with it when I get back. Honestly, don’t hang it up, Leda. I know you’re dying to clean my room as soon as I’m gone, but I didn’t pack some of it because it smelled dirty. I’ll just wash everything when I get back.”
I snorted noncommittally.
I followed her out of her room, giving a last, eye-twitching look at the mess she’d left behind as she closed the doors behind us.
I knew she’d closed the doors in part to remove any temptation in me to do exactly what she’d just asked me not to do.
She walked to our suite’s main door, only stopping to grab me in a rib-cracking hug once she had it open.
She clung to me even more tightly than she usually did.
“Be careful,” she whispered in my ear, kissing my cheek before she let go. “Please, please, be careful, Leda. You don’t know who’s staying behind yet. Try to be with Luc as much as you can. Don’t spend the whole break alone.”
Her scarlet eyes looked worried as they met mine.
“Promise me,” she said solemnly. “Really, really be careful, Leda.”
I swallowed, hearing the genuine fear behind her words.
“I will,” I promised. I fought a tightening in my throat as I looked at her, and made myself smile. “Hug your mom for me. And Happy Yule!”
She gripped my hands one last time, her eyes too bright, then let me go.
I watched her cast a spell on her suitcase to make it lighter, then pick it up and begin hurrying down the stairs to the front doors of Valarian College.
I didn’t follow.
I couldn’t go with her to Bonescastle, anyway.
Once Miranda had gone, I was genuinely, truly alone.
It was a strange feeling.
Despite what I told Miranda, I honestly didn’t expect to see much of Luc before the spring term.
We’d talked about having breakfast together the first day of Yule, but he was supposed to have family in town for the holiday, so I didn’t think I’d see him beyond that.
I’d try to catch him for the occasional lunch or tea at the Mansion, but I doubted he’d often be available for that, either, not if he did most of his work in Bonescastle.
I knew most people staying in the area, whether they slept on campus or not, wouldn’t spend a ton of time here, not with everything going on in Bonescastle for the holidays.
Our entire dormitory building felt eerily quiet.
I wandered through the empty rooms of our suite, made myself not go into Miranda’s room to gather up her laundry to throw it in with mine, succumbed in the end and gathered up her laundry anyway, put it all down the chute in the hallway, then made myself a cup of tea.
I drunk maybe half of it while staring out the window at the falling snow and petting Wraith.
Then, after the adorable ball of fluff unwound herself, stretched, and stalked off to explore Jolie’s room, I decided I couldn’t stay in my window box any longer, either.
I needed to get back to my own research.
I didn’t let myself think too deeply about what I was avoiding thinking about.
There was no point.
I’d already been told he wouldn’t be back for at least a few more days, possibly a week, possibly even longer.
The vagueness and variability of the answers I got was maddening.
My mind wanted to make a few days into two days, but realistically, I had no idea what “a few” meant in this context, and a week could just as easily end up meaning two weeks, or the entire holiday.
It would be better not to think about it at all, since there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, so of course I obsessed on it constantly.
I definitely got the impression from my cousin, Valor La Fey, who was leading up Bones’s protection detail, that they didn’t know anything for sure themselves, yet.
I also got the impression that Valor was worried about moving him.
It hadn’t only been my face plastered across the front page of every newspaper in Magical England. In fact, I’d barely been a footnote compared to Bones.
It was difficult to believe it had only been a week.
The headlines had been screaming across the front pages of the London Twilight News and the Wings Herald since the Saturday evening after everything happened.
I tried to avoid looking at those headlines as much as I could, but it was pretty much impossible with copies strewn on dining tables and in armchairs scattered around campus, not to mention my friends reading headlines to me aloud.
“BONES PATRIARCH TRIES TO KILL OWN HEIR IN MAGICAL BATTLE!”
“BONES VOWS VENGEANCE AGAINST SON!”
“DID CAELUM KNOW? INSIDE A FRACTURED MAGICAL FAMILY”
“VARYA AND CAELUM: PRISONERS OF A TWISTED MIND”
“BONES HEIR SAID TO RECOVER. WILL HE EVER BE THE SAME?”
I tried not to read them, but they were everywhere. My role in things remained quiet for a day or two longer, just long enough for me to have some hope that the Praecuri managed to keep my involvement quiet.
Then the first headline showed up with me in the co-starring role.
I’d been walking through campus in a daze at that point.
Really, I’d barely known where I was after they took Bones away to that hospital in Cambridge.
I’d felt sick, dazed, plagued with strange headaches I couldn’t seem to shake.
I don’t know if it was magical depletion from the fight with Malefic, delayed shock, or some other reason, but for days I’d struggled to sleep and keep down food.
The morning my name hit the news, which happened to be the first day of finals, I felt the shift as if the earth had tilted under my feet.
I knew things weren’t going to go well for me even before I saw my friends’ faces at breakfast, where they hovered over a newspaper around a table by the fireplace in the Valarian dining hall.