19. Leith
Leith
Idon’t panic. I assess.
Blackridge is at the door. Tobin’s silver net is failing. The mark in the floor is still pulsing under Asha’s hands, stubborn as sin. Hale is between the door and the room like he thinks he can physically block authority. Which, to be fair, he usually can.
“Open it,” I say.
Asha whips her head round. “Have you lost your mind?”
“If he blows the door apart, this gets worse.” I step into the broken circle and kneel beside her, pressing my fingers into the stone over the brightest crack.
Cold death-current propels out of my fingertips, quiet and deep, sinking into the mark.
The purple shudders. “Tobin. Layer with me, not over me.”
“For once, a sensible instruction,” he mutters.
His silver magic shifts immediately, no longer trying to smother the thing. It threads through mine instead, building a veil instead of a cage. The pressure in the room changes. Less clash. More concealment.
Hale opens the door before Blackridge can make good on his threat.
Tobin and I rise quickly, as Asha stands there fuming silently. Having her magic, her beautiful, beyond powerful magic, within reach only to have it snatched away again must be crushing her soul.
Blackridge glowers at us with enough authority to make the room feel smaller.
His attention moves over all four of us in one clean sweep. Hale by the door. Tobin near the desk. Me half a step too close to Asha. Asha is standing over a patch of damaged floor with murder in her face and defiance in every line of her body.
“That,” he says, looking at the cracked stone, “requires an explanation.”
Asha lifts her chin. “Your academy is falling apart. I assumed the floor was joining in.”
I keep my magic low and buried in the stone. Tobin does the same. Between us, the mark is dim enough to pass for residual ward-burn if no one looks too hard. Blackridge always looks too hard.
His eyes settle on Asha. “You are at the centre of every disturbance within ten feet of you.”
“Unfair,” Hale says. “Sometimes it’s me.”
Blackridge’s gaze cuts to him. “Mr Hale, if I wanted comic relief, I’d have invited an idiot.”
“That did sound like an invitation.”
“All students were required to go to their own rooms. Why are you all crammed in here looking guilty as sin?”
“We were protecting the new girl,” I say, knowing Asha will remember that and make me pay for it later. “She has never been through a SilverGate lockdown before.”
“Quite,” Blackridge clips out. “Leave. All of you.”
Asha takes a step forward, and he growls. “Not you.”
“Had to try,” she mutters and then looks at me. “It’s fine. Go.”
“We aren’t leaving you.”
“Yes, you are. Don’t make me say it again, Mr Leith.”
I hold her gaze for one beat too long.
She wants us gone before one of us gives the game away.
Tobin catches it too. His silver magic peels back from the floor in a smooth, careful draw. I pull mine out with it, leaving only the faintest residue buried deep in the cracks. It should pass for damage if Blackridge doesn’t start tearing the room apart.
Hale doesn’t move.
Blackridge’s eyes slide to him. “Now, Mr Hale.”
Hale’s jaw tightens. The hellhound in him is right at the surface. The heat of the room and the tension in his stance are dead giveaways. For one second, I think he’s going to refuse outright and make this a much larger problem.
Then Asha says, “Go.”
Hale cuts a look at her that burns with possessive temper, then turns and stalks past Blackridge into the corridor. Tobin follows, slower, silver eyes skimming once over the cracked floor before he joins me at the door.
I don’t move until the last possible second.
Asha notices. Of course she does.
“Leith,” she says, low and lethal.
I incline my head once, more acknowledgement than obedience, and step into the hallway.
Blackridge closes the door in my face.
The latch clicks. Hale is already turning back towards it.
Tobin catches his elbow. “Don’t.”
Hale shrugs him off at once. “He has isolated her.”
“Making a second scene won’t help.”
The hallway trembles again under our feet. Not as violently as before, but enough to send a shiver through the ward-lines in the walls. Silver light runs along the seams and fades.
Hale plants himself beside her door anyway, arms loose at his sides, every inch of him a threat. Tobin exhales through his nose and glances once at me.
“We should go,” he says.
“We should stay close,” I reply.
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know.”
Hale’s fingers flex once. “If he touches her, I’m breaking the door.”
“He is not going to touch her,” I say, shaking my head. “He is the Headmaster, not some predatory creep.”
He gives me a sickened look. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
I brush it off. “Makes no difference. He knows what she is. Or pretty damn close. He won’t kill her or damage her in any way unless she becomes a threat to him, and that, right now, is impossible.”
“Her magic,” Tobin says, his tone almost reverent. “Fuck. Did you feel it?”
“I felt enough,” I say. Enough to know the power under that mark is not theoretical, not fractured witch-light, not some academic curiosity for Blackridge to pin to a board and label.
It is hers. It is old. It does not belong under this roof or even in this realm.
It has come looking for its master, and it isn’t going to be happy until it’s back where it belongs.
Tobin drags a hand through his hair and looks at the shut door as if he can see through black wood and headmaster arrogance. “It used you. The book reacted to you in the library, then again in her room. Reaper current, death wards, divine script. Something in that chain completed a circuit.”
“I’m aware,” I say with an eyeroll, but I know he isn’t trying to explain my own magic to me. He is thinking it through out loud. And probably also to give the hellhound a bit of a head start.
His silver eyes sharpen. “If her path home runs through death-function, then the crypt wards aren’t just a maybe.”
The floor gives another light tremor.
Hale ignores it. “Then we get her to the crypts.”
“Not tonight,” I say.
“Why not?”
“We need a plan. Flying into this blindly will get us all killed. Or worse.”
“How do you figure?” he asks.
“Her magic doesn’t know us, it doesn’t know we are trying to help. Her dimension, realm, whatever you want to call it, is calling her back. We are bystanders to that and possible threats.”
“We need to find out where her realm is, and what it’s called,” Tobin muses.
“Or we find out who she really is. A name,” Hale says.
“Her magic is incompatible with this realm; I think her name is as well. You see the contempt she has for the name she gave herself. It’s not hers, but she is unable to tell us.”
“So we find it.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Gentlemen,” Professor Vey says, sweeping down the hallway. “This is a lockdown. To your rooms. Now.”
Vey’s timing is atrocious.
Hale turns slowly, already pissed off. Tobin gets there first, because he always does when Hale is half a second from turning something into a brawl.
“We were just going,” he says smoothly.
Vey’s eyes move over the three of us and stop on Asha’s door. His expression tightens by a degree. “Then go faster.”
I don’t bother arguing. Blackridge is inside.
If Vey decides to involve himself, the hallway becomes crowded in all the wrong ways.
I start walking to my room next door. Tobin across the hall to his.
Hale stays rooted for one stubborn second before he finally shoves off the wall and practically kicks his bedroom door in opposite Asha’s before slamming it shut behind him.
I close mine in a more dignified way and then lean against it for half a second before I move quickly across the room to the stacked bookcase in the corner.
I hold my hand up, and a drift of ice-cold black smoke curls out of my palm, waiting for instruction.
“Realms ruled by goddesses,” I murmur. “Find me all of them.”
The smoke drifts over the titles, lingering at some, bypassing others completely.
I wait as the search continues.
A hundred books later, the magic has come up blank and drifts over to the door, slipping underneath it. I hesitate for one second before I pull the door open a crack and check that the hallway is clear.
It is, so I quietly leave my room and close the door behind me. The smoke is drifting down the stairs. I follow it. Asha’s room is quiet as I pass by.
Taking the stairs quickly and on the lookout for staff, I pause as the smoke goes under the door leading outside. I shove it open and spot the magic crossing the courtyard in the direction of the library. Now we are getting somewhere.
But movement at the far side catches my eye. Blackridge is leading Asha into the Admin building.
I’m torn between following her and following my lead. After a few seconds, I decide that following the magic will be more conducive. I’ve found something, which means I have to go and find out what it is.
The library doors part before I touch them.
That alone tells me I’m on the right track.
The black smoke slips inside ahead of me and climbs the central staircase in a thin ribbon. I follow at speed, my senses stretched for any sign of staff. The breach outside is dormant now, and the campus has settled.
The smoke leads me to the third floor.
I turn into the deities section and slow down when I see the shelves have moved.
Not a little. Not their usual irritating shuffle. They’ve opened a narrow passage at the far end of the aisle where there was solid shelving earlier. Candlelight burns low inside the gap, colder than the rest of the floor. The smoke drifts straight in.
“Well,” I mutter. “That’s not ominous at all.”
That is also something only a fool would enter alone, and I pride myself on being cleverer than most. “Will you still be here when I come back with reinforcements?” I ask it.
It closes quietly as a book drops back into place from being slid out slightly on the shelf.
“Noted,” I murmur. “Thank you.”
Never hurts to be polite. Hale likes the aggressive stance; I find the honey approach works better. I draw my magic back and turn to head back to my room. As soon as this lockdown has been lifted, we are all coming back here, Asha included.
Assuming Blackridge hasn’t locked her in a magical cage and is preparing to dissect her, of course.