Chapter 52 #2
The crowd’s reaction told the story. Laughter spread through the packed courtyard like a contagion. But underneath the laughter, something more significant: recognition. People were pointing at those students who openly wore the silver and garnet thorn-rings and whispering.
And the ring-wearers looked uncomfortable.
This is bad. If I’d learned anything about the Custodes Sanguinis during my time at the academy, it was that they ruthlessly crushed anyone who questioned their existence.
My stomach tightened, and I scanned the crowd.
I found what I was looking for almost immediately.
Lord Clarence Ormond and his cousin, Lord Henri Montplaisir.
Both of them stood an arm’s length away from me, their postures so rigid they might have been carved from the same marble as the fountain.
Ormond’s face was a study in controlled fury—jaw set, cheeks flushed, his dark blue eyes fixed on the water display with the focused intensity of a man memorizing an enemy’s position for later reference.
Montplaisir, beside him, kept flexing his right hand, opening and closing it around nothing, the silver thorn ring on his index finger catching the light.
And with them, Lady Cresta and Lord Bernardo, their gazes fixed worshipfully on Ormond’s thunderous expression.
I shifted position, easing around them until I stood close enough to hear without being noticed.
“—can’t allow this to continue,” Montplaisir was saying, sounding like someone holding his rage on a very short leash.
“Each hour this goes unanswered, each prank, like—this—” He jabbed a finger toward the fountain.
“It erodes everything we’ve worked for. You understand that, don’t you, Clarence?
Every commoner who laughs at us is one less person who fears us.
And fear is the only thing that keeps the rabble in check. ”
Ormond didn’t answer immediately. He was still watching the fountain, his expression unreadable. When he spoke, his voice was so low I had to strain to catch it.
“Mockery is a child’s weapon.” Each word sounded as if he’d measured, cut and placed it like stones in a wall. “Adults draw blood to right a wrong and restore honor.”
The chill that went through me had nothing to do with the winter wind. It was the voice of someone who had already decided that violence was not just justified but necessary.
“I want to help.” Cresta’s eyes were bright with a fervor that made my skin crawl. “Name the target. Bernardo and I will handle the rest. No one will trace it back to you.”
Bernardo nodded, his hand settling at the small of her back in that proprietary gesture I’d noticed before. “We all know who’s behind this abomination. Consider it done.”
The knot in my stomach grew teeth and chewed its way toward my spine.
I forced my expression to neutrality. Kept my breathing even.
Cresta was volatile even on her best days. The loss in the Aurelian Trials had scraped her raw. I’d seen the way she moved through our shared classes and the dining hall afterward, her composure brittle as thin ice.
As for Bernardo… he would follow her into a furnace if she asked him to hold her hand on the way into the flames. The combination was as predictable as it was dangerous.
They were both untouchable, and they knew it. Cresta’s father sat on the Imperial Council as Treasurer. Bernardo’s uncle was the High Admiral.
No assistant chatelaine, no mage-instructor, not even Chatelaine Lirelle herself would risk the political consequences of disciplining either of them for anything short of murder.
And from the look on Cresta’s face, murder wasn’t entirely off the table.
“Miss Fishwife… Talisa of Bernswick,” she said, as sweet and venomous as honey laced with poison.
“And that merchant boy, Ferraro. They’re the ones behind this.
I know it. Everyone knows it. They humiliated us in the arena, and now they think they can mock us here, in front of the entire academy.
” Her smile was thin and terrible. “We’ll make them pay.
And it won’t be by scaring them with some bloody dolls this time,” she added contemptuously.
Ormond studied her for a long moment.
His cousin shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking suddenly uneasy. Even Henri Montplaisir, for all his bluster, seemed to recognize that Cresta’s rage was like a wildfire, difficult to control once lit.
But Ormond nodded.
“Do it,” he said. “Make it clean. Deniable. Nothing that traces back to the Custodes.”
“They won’t know what hit them,” Bernardo promised, and the relish in his voice turned my stomach.
The group moved off toward the dining hall, their heads bent together in urgent consultation. I remained where I was, letting the crowd flow around me, and waited for my heartbeat to settle back into something resembling a normal rhythm.
I’d warned Talisa.
And she’d listened.
I’d seen the changes, the way the commoners now moved through the academy in tight, watchful groups, and the way dormitory doors that had once stood open were now locked.
But now, merely warning her wouldn’t be enough. Not against what was coming.
Cresta didn’t make empty threats. When the time came, she would hit Talisa and Elio Ferraro with everything she had.
I couldn’t let her succeed. The debt I owed Talisa of Bernswick was still outstanding, and honor—whatever Lukhan thought of the concept—demanded I pay it.