Chapter 46
Talisa
The next afternoon, Mage-Instructor Mundise acknowledged me with a warm nod as I entered the Fundamentals of Magecraft II lecture hall. “Miss Bernswick. I trust you’re recovered from your exertions in the arena?”
“Mostly, Mage-Instructor.”
“Excellent. I look forward to hearing your insights on using Earth magic spells. Given your recent practical experience.”
A ripple of laughter moved through the commoner section. The aristocratic benches at the front of the lecture hall remained quiet.
Mundise continued, “Before you sit down, please come up to the board and give us Mage Sancola’s formula for stabilizing fractured substrates.”
As I stood on the instructor’s dais and wrote out the requested formula on the chalkboard, I was acutely aware of Lukhan staring at me with such focused intensity that I half-expected his gaze to summon a forbidden Fire spell and burn a pair of holes between my shoulder-blades.
After Mundise’s lecture, I returned to my room to exchange Sancola’s Theory and Practice of Magic for his Advanced Applications of Magecraft and my Intermediate Potions lab notebook before my next class.
The Western Tower’s common room was empty, most students still at their morning lectures or labs.
The corridor leading to my suite was deserted.
My door was unlocked. I’d left it that way—we all did, here in the commoner dormitory. Trust was the one luxury we could afford.
Then I saw the notes that had been slid under my door—three of them, folded into tight squares. No envelopes. No seals. Just expensive cream-colored paper, heavy and velvety between my fingers when I picked them up.
Warily, I unfolded the first one. The penmanship was beautiful: Congratulations on your lucky victory, Miss Fishwife. The academy’s magical infrastructure has never been less reliable.
The second note was written in a careless scrawl: I hope you enjoyed your ill-gotten win, you fish-stinking trollop. It won’t ever happen again.
Then the tingle of a spell prickled my skin as I unfolded the third note. I braced myself for a curse or a magical attack of some kind, but nothing appeared to happen. This one said, The Domina-Regent’s famous generosity apparently extends to awarding prizes to the undeserving.
I rolled my eyes. Someone—several someones, in fact—had spent effort and expensive notepaper for insults that could just as easily have been said in the dining hall or in the classrooms.
Then I looked up and saw my bedroom door standing open. I knew I’d closed it before I left for class. My heart began pounding as I rushed in.
My bed was still neatly made, the way I’d left it. My desk looked orderly, papers stacked, and the textbooks on my bookshelf looked undamaged.
But my armoire stood open, when I always closed it after getting dressed in the morning. Cautiously, I peered inside.
My heart sank when I saw that my Stole of Aurelian Merit had vanished from its hook. And when I reached up reflexively to touch the neck of my academic gown, my fingers found only coarse wool fabric where my Champion’s Badge had hung just a moment ago.
So that’s what the spell did! I thought, feeling sick and angry with myself for touching those notes instead of kicking them out into the hallway and dousing them with water to break any charms attached to them. I should’ve known better! Especially here, where so many people hate me!
I pulled my jewelry box out from its shelf inside the armoire and instantly saw that my finalist pin was missing as well.
The other lesser award pins and the velvet purse with the collection of silver denarii I’d won in earlier rounds of the Trials still nestled next to my late Grandmother Wynne’s mother-of-pearl earrings, my necklace of green glass beads, and the carved cow-bone and brass bracelet that Papa had given me when my magic woke in me for the first time.
My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat a dull, sickening thud in my temples and behind my eyes.
I dropped to my knees and searched under the bed. Nothing. I opened my clothes chest and frantically riffled through the layers of folded linen and wool, though I already knew I wouldn’t find my stole or my gold pins tucked between my spare chemises and knitted stockings.
The drawer of my bedside table had been closed, but not quite flush with the frame. I yanked it open. My comb and brush set, my hairpins, and my little manicure set were all there, undisturbed.
Whoever had done this had only wanted the symbols of my Aurelian Trials victory.
I collapsed onto my bed and wanted to throw up.
∞∞∞
I debated skipping my Intermediate Potions lab, but a fit of contrariness overruled my desire to avoid dealing with Lukhan FitzMurad and his hangers-on. I didn’t want them to see how much the theft had affected me.
Because I knew with absolute certainty that if Lukhan hadn’t actually stolen my prizes himself, he knew they were gone and who’d taken them.
Sure enough, when I entered the lab, the first thing I heard was his beautiful voice dripping with malice. “And here’s Miss Fishwife! And to think I worried she might stop coming to class because she’s too good for us now.”
I ignored him and went to my assigned workbench.
But he wasn’t done tormenting me. “Isn’t she supposed to be wearing her Champion’s Badge?” His tone was bright with false innocence now.
I heard Lady Beatrix giggle. “Perhaps she mislaid it. Commoners can be so careless, you know.”
Despite my best intentions, I couldn’t help myself. I looked at Lukhan and his friends, and saw their faces alight with the vicious glee of people sharing a delicious secret.
Only Damien Corvellan stood apart. He looked upset, even angry… and not at me.
Then I met Lukhan’s eyes. The distance between us might as well have been inches. I could see the perfect curve of his mouth, the way his flawless pale face showed the slightest blush over his high cheekbones, and the cold clarity of his long-lashed green eyes.
He smiled at me.
And it wasn’t the performative contempt he usually directed at me—the curled lip, the raised eyebrow, the theatrical disgust of a nobleman forced to acknowledge something beneath his notice.
No, this was a smile of unabashed enjoyment and triumph.
Rage burned through me like a fever as I held his gaze. I fought hard to suppress a snarl.
I can’t let him know he won.
Instead, I managed a shrug and a dismissive smile, as if wondering what all the fuss was about.
After a long moment, he inclined his head the tiniest fraction and turned back to his companions.
Then Mage-Instructor Varro entered the lab, and I spent the rest of the two-hour lab trying—and failing—to concentrate on today’s assignment.
∞∞∞
When the midday bell rang, I forced myself to go to the dining hall, though food was the last thing I wanted when my gut was churning with useless anger. I sat with Mira and Juno and the others, pushing chunks of stewed beef and vegetables around my bowl without eating them.
Where’s Elio? I wondered. It wasn’t like him to miss a meal. And I needed to tell him what had happened.
The Circle of the Open Hand members seated at my table buzzed with outrage when I told them what had happened.
The rest of the meal passed with them expressing sympathy, offering to help investigate, and forming theories about what kind of spell could teleport objects from one place to another and if it was even possible or just a distraction from someone having walked into my room and stolen my prizes.
Elio never showed up.
Worried, I looked for him after the midday meal. I found him sitting alone at a table in Western Tower’s common room with a textbook open in front of him and a cup of tea at his elbow.
“Someone stole my finalist and champion awards from my room,” I said without preamble.
His amber eyes went wide, then narrowed. “When?”
“Sometime during my Fundamentals of Magecraft II lecture this morning. They took my Stole of Aurelian Merit, my finalist badge and my champion’s badge.” I took a deep breath and pushed down my renewed surge of rage. “Lukhan knows. I saw it on his face.”
Elio closed his book with a snap that made the tea in his cup jump. “They took mine too,” he said. “And left me some nasty notes, including one with some kind of charm on it.”
“I got the notes, as well. Thank the Divine Mother I paid off my fines and deposited the rest of my Champion’s Grant,” I said bitterly.
Elio nodded “I deposited my winnings yesterday afternoon,” he said, adding, “They left the bronze pins and the denarii. I guess those weren’t prestigious enough to steal.”
We traded wry smiles, then Elio rose. “Let’s go talk to Assistant Chatelaine Julissa and report the theft, for all the good it will do.”
∞∞∞
During the walk to the Student Affairs Office, we rehearsed what we would say.
We agreed we had to remain calm and strictly factual. No accusations we couldn’t prove. And definitely no mention of Lukhan FitzMurad, though his name sat on my tongue like a poison pill.
I had learned that naming an aristocrat without ironclad evidence was its own kind of offense—one the academy took far more seriously than theft.
As before, Elio and I were left waiting outside Assistant Chatelaine Julissa’s office for a long time.
Aware that every word would be overheard by the clerks sitting at their desks nearby, Elio and I didn’t talk.
I sat with my hands folded in my lap and studied the pattern of wear on the woven rug beneath my feet, where generations of nervous students had probably worn down the pile with their shoes.
When the door to the assistant chatelaine’s office finally opened and her curt voice summoned us, she did not invite us to sit. Elio and I stood before her desk like supplicants, which I suppose we were.
“Miss Bernswick,” she said with cool unfriendliness. “You requested another meeting so soon? And you brought Mr. Ferraro this time, I see.”
I fought to keep from clenching my fists and let Elio do the talking.
“Assistant Chatelaine Julissa, this morning someone entered our rooms in the Western Tower while we were attending classes and removed several items of significant value.” He ticked off the items on his long, supple fingers.
“They took our Stoles of Aurelian Merit, our Finalist pins and our Champion’s Badges. ”
Julissa’s eyebrows lifted a fraction of an inch. “The same badges that you’re supposed to wear at all times? I see.”
“Whoever it was used a spell attached to a note to remove my Champion’s Badge from my gown as soon as I walked into my rooms,” I said.
“Interesting. And were your doors and windows secured?” Julissa asked.
I shook my head. “Everyone leaves their doors unlocked in the Western Tower.”
She pursed her lips. “How careless of you.”
“We assumed—wrongly—that our humble belongings would be safe here at this most prestigious institution,” Elio said, not trying to hide the acid in his tone.
Julissa frowned. “Don’t be insolent, Mr. Ferraro. This is an extremely serious matter.”
“We’re aware of that, Assistant Chatelaine,” Elio said, sounding like he was speaking through gritted teeth.
I added, “That’s why we came straight to you.”
“As you should in cases like this.” She sat back in her leather chair and folded her hands on her desk. Her nails were perfectly manicured. “I will, of course, launch an immediate investigation.”
Relief washed through me, warm and sudden. I hadn’t expected her to be of any aid. “Thank you. I—”
“We’ll begin by questioning your immediate neighbors in the Western Tower,” Julissa interrupted.
“What?” Elio exploded. “No one there would—”
Julissa cut him off as ruthlessly as she’d done when I was speaking. “Given the proximity of the theft, and that these items were taken from a commoner dormitory where doors are routinely left unlocked, it seems logical to begin with those who had the easiest access to your room.”
“You’re going to investigate our friends?” I croaked in disbelief. “Why not start with the people who wrote these threatening notes?”