16. Asha
Asha
The library goes quiet once they’re gone, and I dislike how much emptier it feels without the bickering.
I stay at the table for a long time, staring at nothing, letting the wards hum around me like some ancient power trying to lull me into obedience. It won’t work. It’s never worked. Not on me.
Home. StormGate. There’s a way home somewhere in this godforsaken academy.
I press my palms flat against the wood and breathe through the fury still boiling under my ribs.
If Leith is right, and he seems disgustingly confident that he is, then somewhere in these black stone halls there’s a door, a seam, a crack I can pry open with enough patience and enough power.
The problem is patience isn’t exactly my strong suit, and power is currently locked behind a body that throws a tantrum every time I so much as breathe wrong.
But I’m in the right place to start searching for this gate.
I need to see if there are any books at all on StormGate in this library.
The name of SilverGate is too much of a coincidence not to be connected to my home realm.
So it’s just about finding that connection and if Leith is right about there being a portal.
I rise, rolling my shoulders until there is a satisfactory crack in this pathetic spine. The library shifts around me, candlelight drifting in slow, lazy circles overhead, shadows pooling in corners that watch too closely for my liking.
I head for the stacks where Leith was standing a little while ago.
Deities. If there’s anything on StormGate, this is the best place to start.
I scan the spines, searching for anything written by someone with a backbone.
The Divine Fall. Ethereal Oaths. I pull a book titled The Sovereign Fractures and drop it onto the table.
It groans under its own weight. I flip through the pages. My fingers itch to rip them out.
Nothing mentions StormGate. I search for maps instead. If this place is SilverGate, there has to be a counterpart. A twin. A shadow. I find a diagram of the celestial currents. I don’t care about the bloody physics of it. I want the location.
The blue light at my fingertips spits a tiny spark onto the page. I don’t suppress it this time. If the portal is on these grounds, I’ll find it. I’ll burn through every ward in this wretched university to get back to my throne in StormGate.
StormGate.
I frown. How come I can say the name of the realm but not my name or that of Z-man?
That has to mean something, doesn’t it?
It does mean something, I know it does.
Names have power, and in my realm, a name is a weapon, a command, a birthright. I try to force my true name past my lips, but my throat hitches like I’m swallowing glass. It’s a seal. A nasty little enchantment meant to keep me anonymous and small.
I shove the book aside and turn back to the stacks. The dust dances in the candlelight, mocking me. I run my fingers over a leather-bound volume on Rift Stabilisation. The ink feels cold, a sharp contrast to the heat crawling under my skin.
The blue light flickers again. It’s a pathetic spark, but it’s mine.
I focus on the map, searching for a mirror image of the silver.
SilverGate. StormGate. The symmetry is too deliberate for my liking.
I swipe my hand across the parchment, and the map shudders.
The ink bleeds, shifting under my touch.
For a heartbeat, the silver turns a bruised purple, and a new path appears.
A hidden seam in the geography of this world.
I see you.
The path flickers and vanishes, but I’ve seen it.
The portal isn’t just on the grounds. It’s buried beneath the weight of SilverGate itself.
I need to find the entrance, and I need to do it before Blackridge decides I’m not allowed to roam these grounds anymore and he locks me away.
It’s coming. I’m sure of it. I need to rein in my temper and stay under the radar, not drawing attention to myself in any way, shape or form.
It’s hard for a creature that adores being worshipped to even contemplate flying so low, but it’s for the greater good.
I slam the book shut and shove it in my book bag.
I need to move. If I stay here, the walls will start talking back, and I’m not in the mood for a lecture from a sentient building. I grab my bag and head for the exit.
The hallway is blessedly empty. I make it halfway to the central stairwell before the air thickens with a freezing pressure.
Blackridge.
I don’t turn. I keep walking, my head held high, even as the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. This is precisely the kind of attention I didn’t want.
“Miss Asha,” his voice drifts down the hall.
I stop and turn, my expression carefully blank. “Headmaster. Did I do something wrong?”
“Wrong is a matter of perspective,” he says. He walks toward me. The air turns cold. It’s a trick of his, a power play to remind everyone he owns the atmosphere in this tower. I plant my feet and wait. “You are causing a bit of a stir in this academy.”
“You can’t blame me for that. I didn’t want to be here in the first place.”
“Quite. Because you fell from the sky from a different place.”
“Indeed,” I say, matching his tone.
“And that place would be?”
I smile, trying to make it not look like a grimace. “Can’t remember.”
Blackridge stops an arm’s length away. He doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t look surprised either. He’s the kind of male who treats every lie like a gift he’s already unwrapped.
“A convenient void in your history,” he says.
“Life is full of conveniences. Like you happening to be in the courtyard when I arrived.”
“Who said I was there when you landed?”
Well, he has me there. My eyes were closed, so he could’ve arrived after the fact. “Fair enough,” I say carefully. “What do you think you know about me?”
If he is startled by my direct question, he doesn’t give it away.
“I think you possess a talent for overestimating your position,” he says, his voice like the scrape of a shovel on frozen dirt. “And I think you are looking for things that do not wish to be found.”
My heart gives a hard, traitorous thud. I don’t let it reach my face. “I’m a student. Looking for things is part of the curriculum, isn’t it?”
He takes a step closer, and the temperature drops another five degrees. “Professor Draeven tells me you have a unique understanding of internal fractures. It’s a dangerous thing to understand, Miss Asha. It suggests a mind built for ruin.”
I shrug, the weight of the book in my bag feeling like a literal anvil. “I’m a quick study.”
“Then study this,” he says, his eyes a flat, lightless black. “If you continue to dig, you will unearth more than you bargained for.”
He turns and walks away without waiting for a reply. The ice in the air lingers for a long minute after he’s gone.
I wait until his footsteps fade before I start breathing again. He knows. He might not have the name StormGate, but he knows I’m hunting.
“Fuck,” I whisper, my fingers digging into the strap of my bag.
The hallway feels narrower. The shadows look like reaching hands. It doesn’t sound like I have much time left before the cage door slams shut for good.
I head for the stairs, my mind racing through the map I saw. The hidden path. The bruised purple line. It started in the lower levels. The crypts.
Leith said the wards there ignore him.
But first, I want to check them out myself. I’ll have to wait until tonight when lectures are over, and there are no students or staff milling around, waiting to bust me and send me to Blackridge’s office for another fun round of guess-who.
Pulling my timetable out, I head to my next lecture, blending in, trying to be invisible. It’s the last lecture of the day.
The lecture hall for Practical Invocation is a pit of misery.
I find a seat at the very back, away from the prying eyes that still think I am an easy target.
The professor moves across the front with a rod of silver that hums with enough power to make my skin itch.
I ignore him. My focus stays on the heavy bag at my lap.
The book I took from the library burns a hole through the leather.
Tobin slides into the seat next to mine and gives me that sharp, analytical gaze. He knows I am hiding something. I see it in the way his fingers tap against the desk.
I turn my attention to the front, pretending to care about the flow of energy while my mind maps the corridors to the basement.
I need Leith. I need his reaper blood to trick the stones.
This lecture must end before I lose my mind.
I dread to think what those arseholes are doing to my realm while I’m stuck here.
My revenge will be a masterpiece. I just need to survive long enough to reach the dark.