7. Leith
Leith
Iknow the second she’s back on the floor.
The tower tells me first.
Stone carries death well. Better than wood. Better than flesh. It settles into black mortar, old wards and lingers in the seams. Most creatures can’t read that kind of imprint. They feel a chill and call it atmosphere.
I know the difference between atmosphere and a body that has stood too close to endings.
Asha returns to her room like a blade shoved back into a sheath that doesn’t fit.
“Hello?” Hale snaps at me, clicking his fingers in my face. “Have you died for real this time?”
“That’s just rude,” I say, shoving his hand away.
“Yeah, well, I asked you a question, and you ignored me. That’s rude too.”
I stare at him across the dining hall table and narrow my eyes. “Your question?”
“Did you really pull her off trying to kill Tobe?”
“I pulled her off Tobin before she broke her hands on him,” I say. “I was saving her, not him.”
Hale grins, all teeth and bad ideas. “You liked it.”
“I liked that she went for his throat in a room full of witnesses.”
Tobin arrives with his tray and drops into the chair beside me with the air of a male doing us all a favour by existing. “You’re talking about me again. I’m flattered.”
“You should be worried,” Hale says. “He only pays attention when something might die.”
Tobin glances at me. “And? Might it?”
I let my gaze drift past them both, through the hall, through the pulse of the wards under the floor, up the tower where a wrong little heartbeat has gone quiet behind a locked door.
“Yes,” I say. “Possibly several things.”
Hale laughs. “Fuck, I knew it.”
Tobin reaches for a knife, then thinks better of it and uses magic to cut whatever dead thing is on his plate into precise strips. “You’re being dramatic.”
“I’m being accurate.”
His silver eyes sharpen. “You felt it too.”
Not a question. He’s too controlled to waste those.
“I felt enough.”
Hale sits forward. “Enough for what?”
“Enough to know she didn’t come back from Blackridge calmer,” I say. “She came back quieter. That’s worse.”
Hale’s grin slips into something more intent. “You can tell that from down here?”
“I can tell a lot from down here.”
Tobin sets his fork down with deliberate care. “What did Blackridge do?”
I glance at him. “If I knew what Blackridge did in his office, I’d be wearing his face.”
He ignores me and asks, “What are you getting from her?”
I consider how much to say. Not because I mind them knowing. Because I mind saying it out loud and making it more real.
“Her death isn’t straightforward,” I say at last. “It should be. Everyone’s should be. That’s the whole point. A line. A weight. A direction. Hers feels blocked and vast at the same time.”
Hale’s eyes narrow. “Blocked.”
“Yes.”
Tobin goes still, which means his mind is moving faster than the rest of us. “Constrained.”
“More than that.”
Hale looks between us with growing irritation. “Can one of you stop talking like cryptic bastards for five minutes?”
“No,” Tobin says flatly. “But I can translate. Blocked means something is in the way. Constrained means something is containing it. More than that means Leith is being difficult on purpose because he enjoys sounding ominous.”
“I don’t enjoy it,” I say. “I excel at it.”
Hale shoves his tray away. “Right. Done. I’m going up.”
Tobin doesn’t move. “You rushing into her room again seems unwise.”
“That’s never stopped me.”
“True.”
Hale gets to his feet. A few nearby students glance over and then away. Nobody wants his attention unless they’ve got a death wish.
“I would give her five minutes to adjust. A meeting with Blackridge is never something you just bounce back from.”
“True that,” Tobin mutters.
“Fine,” Hale huffs and sits back down. “Did she really run out of Sable’s lecture?”
Tobin answers. “She did. She was humiliated.”
“By who?” Hale growls, his hackles rising.
“Sable, obviously,” Tobin replies with disdain. “She was baiting her.”
“On Blackridge’s order,” I murmur. “Anomaly case.”
“She has a lot of bark, her bite needs work, but I give her an A for effort,” Tobin says and then breathes in deeply. “It hurt her.”
“Hurt her?” Hale snarls, thumping his fist on the table,
“Heel, arsehole. You can’t exactly go and throw Sable through a wall now, can you?” I say.
“Can’t I?”
“You can try,” Tobin says. “Then Blackridge will skin you and hang your pelt outside the hall as a warning to other impulsive students.”
Hale smirks. “Worth it.”
“Not if she isn’t grateful,” I say.
That gets his attention.
His head turns fast. “You think she wouldn’t be?”
“I think gratitude is not in her nature.”
Tobin picks up his fork again. “That is one of the more charming things about her.”
Hale glares at him. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
“I’m enjoying the puzzle. And I’m enjoying that she nearly climbed me in a lecture hall just to commit murder.”
“She attacked you because you provoked her,” I say.
He gives me a cool look. “And?”
“And if you keep doing it, one day she’ll finish the job.”
His smile turns sharp. “You say that like it’s meant to deter me.”
Hale scrubs a hand down his jaw, restless. His leg starts bouncing under the table. He’s had enough stillness. Enough distance. The bond he forms with things he wants is always ugly at first. Territorial. Violent. Half instinct, half ego
I know that look because I’ve worn versions of it myself.
When death brushes close and leaves empty-handed, something in you gets restless. I stand abruptly.
“Where are you going?” Hale asks.
“The library. I have some studying to do.” It’s a half-truth, and he knows it. But I need to see if I can figure out what kind of low-level witch carries the stench of death around with her like she is some sort of omen made flesh.
The hallway outside the dining hall is filled with the lunchtime rush of students and the odd staff member dotted about to keep order. They aren’t needed. Violence breaks out frequently, and only the bell or Blackridge can stop it.
It’s the way of SilverGate.
I pass a vampire, who bares his fangs at me, but I ignore him and head to the library. I have no idea where to start, but my reaper blood is screaming at me that something is off with her. Really off.
The library receives me the way it receives everyone. With judgement.
The doors open before I touch them. Silver sigils crawl over the black wood and vanish into the stone, recognising me, or deciding I’m not worth the effort of rejecting.
Inside, the air is cool and heavy with old wards, old paper and older spells.
Quiet hangs in here differently. Not peace. Restraint.
I prefer it.
Tier upon tier of shelves rise into the dark, linked by iron walkways and narrow stairs that have thrown more than one careless student over the rail. Candlelight drifts overhead in slow circles. Shadows gather in the corners and keep their own counsel.
I head for the controlled stacks first. Ideally, I would like to be in the restricted section, but that is warded off, even to the likes of me. It’s one of the few areas where I can’t slip through unannounced.
The librarian, Verne, glides into my path before I reach the silver chain, moving with the obnoxious smoothness of something that stopped caring about normal physics a very long time ago.
Her eyes are entirely black today. Yesterday they were white. I’ve never asked why.
“Mr Leith,” she says. “You are not authorised for this section without faculty consent.”
“I’m wounded that you’d think I’d try to get past your wards without permission.”
Verne’s expression doesn’t change. “I think that because you have.”
“Repeatedly.”
“Thrice this term, and we are only a couple of months in.”
I incline my head. “Only because your standards are inconsistent.”
Her black eyes hold on mine for a beat. “What do you want?”
“Texts on anomalous containment. Death displacement. Rebinding. Severe magical incompatibility across realms.”
That gets her attention in the smallest possible way. A pause. A stillness in the air around her.
“Academic curiosity?” she asks.
“No.”
“Then give me a reason worth my time.”
I look past her to the chained section. “A new student arrived yesterday.”
“And?”
“Word has it that this one fell into the courtyard from nowhere.”
Verne goes quiet. Not surprised. Interested. “Nowhere is relative.”
“Precisely.”
“Blackridge’s anomaly,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And you think she concerns your discipline.”
“I think she concerns several.”
Verne studies me in that blank, unpleasant way librarians and undertakers have. Creatures who spend too long around what’s left behind all end up with the same eyes.
“I’ll allow it if you take any findings to the Headmaster for his records.”
“I’m touched,” I say. “Truly. Nothing says trust like conditional access.”
“It says oversight,” Verne replies. “Try not to confuse the two.”
She lifts one long hand, and the silver chain across the restricted stacks loosens with a whisper. The wards part just enough to admit me. No further.
I step through before she changes her mind.
The temperature drops at once. The air presses heavier here, thick with ward-dust and old intent. Books line the shelves in dark ranks, their spines stamped in silver, bone, flayed leather, materials I don’t bother naming too closely. Too many things in SilverGate used to belong to someone.
I trail my fingers over titles as I pass. Containment Theory. Rift Incursions. Vessel Fracture. Sovereign Possession. Death and Displacement Across Boundaries.
I pull three, then five, then seven, carrying them to a narrow table wedged between two shelves where the candlelight stutters like it’s nervous to be here. Sensible.
The first text is useless within minutes. Academic speculation from some dead scholar who clearly never met a true anomaly and compensated by using too many long words. I set it aside and open the second.
This one is older, smarter and definitely meaner.
I skim pages as I think of Asha in Vey’s arena, fury in a body too slight for the violence trying to claw out of it. I think of the way her death feels blocked, not absent. It’s contained. Bent around something too large to fit inside the neat little line this realm expects from the living.
I flip the page, and the text vanishes. “Curious.”
Then the book vanishes, and so do all the others I pulled from the shelves. Even the useless one.
“I see,” I say, sitting back, hands in the air where the tomes can see them. “You are protecting her.”
We protect SilverGate.
“Understood and accepted. But what better way to protect these hallowed grounds than to find out who is walking amongst us?”
You think you can sway with clever talk.
“I usually can.”
You are death incarnate, an anomaly yourself, reaper.
“Hmm, quite. Born dead from two reapers is definitely an anomaly. Yet you allow me to walk these halls.”
Silence.
I smirk. “Yeah, stumped now, aren’t you?”
The shelves shudder once, enough to make the iron walkway above me ring.
A page drifts down from nowhere and lands in front of me, blank side up. I turn it over.
One line burns itself into the parchment in silver ink.
Look into her soul.
I stare at it for a beat, then laugh under my breath. “That is profoundly unhelpful.”
The line vanishes, and the page goes black. Then it catches fire without heat and collapses into ash on the table.
Rude.
I push back from the chair and look up through the narrow aisles of the controlled stacks. The ward-pressure eases a fraction, which is as close to being thrown out politely as this section gets. I could push. I could try another shelf, another title, another angle.
I’d lose, but not because I can’t break wards, but because the library has decided this matter belongs elsewhere, and fighting a sentient collection of homicidal books over one female I met this morning feels excessive.
I step back through the silver chain. It seals behind me with a cold click.
Verne is waiting exactly where I left her, which tells me she already knows how this went down.
“That went well,” she says.
“The books unionised.”
“They do that when they think someone is asking the wrong question.”
“I asked several. They objected to all of them.”
Verne’s black eyes stay on me. “Did they answer any?”
“Barely.”
“That means you got more than most.”
I consider lying. It would be a wasted effort. Verne and the controlled stacks have an understanding. I’m not certain where one stops and the other begins. “They told me to look into her soul.”
A long pause follows.
Interesting.
“So,” I say softly. “That means something.”
“It means the library agrees with you that the anomaly is not straightforward.”
“I’d already gathered that.”
“And it means,” Verne continues, “that texts won’t help you before direct observation does.”
I watch her for a beat. “You could’ve just said that before I spent twenty minutes being mocked by sentient parchment.”
“Who am I but a librarian minding the tomes?”
That is fair enough to be annoying. I glance back at the restricted section.
Look into her soul. Well, I tried that already, and all I saw was death. Not even that. A vague feeling that is stronger by scent than sight.
If I thought Hale was obsessed with her, I think I just joined him.