Chapter Thirty-Two
THIRTY-TWO
Dense fog rises around me; it clouds my vision. I can barely see a foot in front of my face. My arms stretch out, reaching for something to hold onto, something to tell me where I am or what direction I should head. But all I find is a vast emptiness.
The soles of my boots crunch over gravel as I step cautiously forward.
‘Hello?’ I call out into the murky air.
I wait … but no one calls back. My eyes start to sting against the fog, causing me to blink several times.
Stars, where am I? Where is all this fog coming from?
I turn, this way and that, squinting as if that’ll help me map out my location better but still, I see nothing. It’s eerie and quiet.
I seem to walk for what feels like hours, never once bumping into anything even though I can barely see my own hands as I hold them out in front of me.
I walk and I walk, listening to the sound of my own breathing and the crunch beneath my shoes.
The fog never lessens; the ground never dips or rises.
Minutes or hours could pass. Time doesn’t seem to exist.
Everything stays the same as if I’m stuck in a loop of nothingness.
That is until I see something ahead of me.
It starts as a tiny black spot in the distance.
I stop walking and stare at it, waiting to see if it’ll go away.
It doesn’t. My heart rate rises. I could be nothing, I try to tell myself, but it’s the first spot of colour I’ve seen in this world of grey.
My steps restart and quicken until I’m jogging toward it. The spot gets bigger, and bigger. There’s something forming from beyond the fog as if shifts. It looks … like a gate. My jog turns into a run, arms and legs pumping fast.
I run and I run … and I run.
I’m close. I swear I’m so close. It’s right there!
Malachite.
My unit. It must be my unit. Somehow, I got trapped outside and ended up in this empty world. If I could just reach it …
‘Come find me,’ a voice calls, melodic yet dangerous. It stops me in my tracks …
‘Arianell!’ Lillian’s voice rips me from my sleep. My eyes snap open and a feeling of relief washes over me at being able to see colour. Lillian’s hands are on my shoulders; she’s looking down at me, her dark eyes full of concern as I blink her into focus and sit up.
‘W-what are you doing back?’ I ask, rubbing my eyes. She sits beside me; her hands leave my shoulders to fold into her lap. She left a few hours ago, before the sun had risen. Something for her Elemental class, I didn’t ask what. I was too busy falling back to sleep.
‘I came to let you know Sebastian and Nicks have left campus. Jed and I will watch over you today during combat training. And I forgot my bag.’
My brow furrow s. ‘Where did they go? I thought we weren’t allowed to leave apart from visiting days.’ Or at least that’s what Lukas used to tell us.
‘Nicks took him to check in on one of the war camps a few hours from here,’ she explains.
‘Is that normal? For him to take students with him?’ I’ve never heard of students being allowed to visit war camps, not until they’ve graduated.
She shakes her head. ‘Not usually, though when it comes to those two somehow the rules start to bend a little.’ There’s a twinge of what sounds like jealously, maybe, laced in her tone.
‘You don’t like it?’
‘It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s a great experience for Sebastian; he wants to be a general one day and at the rate he’s going I have no doubt he’ll get there. I guess I just wish Nicks would spread out the love a little bit, you know?’
I nod, understanding her point. I would hate to be in Sebastian’s shadow, not that I would label Lillian being in his shadow.
I’ve seen her fight; she’s a powerhouse all on her own.
But I can imagine it would start to feel that way when he gets picked over anyone else to go on these excursions.
The thought has a question rising to the tip of my tongue.
‘Is that what it was like with Lukas?’ I ask, hesitantly. ‘Was he like Sebastian?”
Her lips twitch. ‘Like Sebastian? Absolutely not. Your brother was worse.’
Worse? I frown, confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Sebastian’s a fair leader and one of the best, if not the best warrior we have in our unit. But he doesn’t act like he’s above all of us, unless he has to. He doesn’t pull rank or enjoy the glory of it all. Your brother though …’ she cocks one of her pierced brows at me.
‘There’s no way.’ I can’t even imagine it.
‘Your brother had the biggest chip on his shoulder, Nocthare. I’m surprised it didn’t weigh him down when he walked.’
My fingers tug at a loose thread on my blanket as I try to picture him like that, cocky and arrogant … I just can’t. ‘But you were friends with him?’ I ask, trying to understand how she can think of him that way, yet call him a friend.
‘I was,’ she says. Her tone softening. ‘I want you to understand that while he could act like a conceited twat, your brother had something … magnetic about him. He walked into a room, and everyone turned their heads. And when he gave you his attention …’ she sighs.
‘He made you feel like you were floating among the stars.’
Emotion clogs my throat as I listen to her list every reason why I loved my brother so much.
Why I still love him. Because that’s how he made me feel.
Like I was special. Each time he came home and showered me with attention and taught me new things.
When he would tell me to hold my chin up and reassure me that just because I didn’t have my element, that didn’t mean I was any less worthy than him.
I don’t realise a tear has escaped until Lillian wipes it away with her thumb. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘It’s fine.’ A self-deprecating laugh comes out of me.
‘It’s just hard to hear about a version of my brother that I never saw.
’ I think about what Jed said about Lukas being the glue that held them together.
But after what Lillian explained, I’m starting to think that maybe he was the magnet that pulled them in, instead.
They rotated around him, being sucked into his orbit and when he died, they suddenly had nowhere to go.
They lost their momentum, their centre, which caused them to fall out of sync with one another.
‘He wasn’t like that at home?’ she asks curiously, pulling her legs up onto my bed and getting comfortable.
‘Nope. He was always kind and helpful. He never bragged about his success at ValAc. In fact, it was always me trying to pry information out of him. Even when he trained me, he never once made me feel like I was slow or stupid, even though he could beat me with his eyes closed.’
Lillian hums in thought, looking off into the distance. I can’t help but wonder what she’s thinking, if she’s trying to piece my version of him with hers. If she remembers the good or if it’s been tainted by the picture everyone painted of him when he died.
‘Lillian.’ My voice shakes. I know I shouldn’t ask her this question, but I’ve been dying to ask one of them. I just haven’t ever felt like the time was right. I need to know and for some reason I feel like it’s now or never.
Her dark eyes find mine once more, pulled away from her thoughts and back to where we sit, on my bed.
‘Where did it happen?’ I fist the blanket with both hands to stop them from trembling. ‘Lukas … where did he die?’
A sombre expression takes over her face.
It hurts to look at it, but I force myself to maintain eye contact.
To show her that this is important to me.
She owes me no favours, I don’t even know if we’re truly friends, but she knew my brother, she knew parts of him that I didn’t, as much as I hate to admit that.
But if she knows anything about this, and I’m certain she does, I feel like it’s only right for me to know as well.
‘Nocthare, I don’t—’
‘Please,’ I beg, reaching out to grab her hand. She looks down at it, where my fingers intertwine with hers. I squeeze her hand, pulling her gaze back to mine and whisper, ‘Please, I need to know.’
It takes a while, but she eventually squeezes my hand back. ‘It happened in the Grand Hall.’
It feels strange standing before the dais as it sits empty.
I look up at the platform and try to picture Lukas up there, covered in other people’s blood, but I can’t.
There is no version of him in my memories, or even the depths of my imagination, who could commit such a gruesome, violent act like the one Lillian vaguely described to me.
Apparently, Lukas was found right in the middle of the dais, with a handful of his fellow students laying around him. One from each unit. He was on his knees, covered in blood. Their blood.
It had happened in the middle of the night and by morning Headmaster Zain and the other professors had already cleaned up the mess, taken the students’ bodies to the infirmary where their families would collect them, and Lukas was out in the forest, being burn t at the stake.
To break the news, Headmaster Zain had held an emergency gathering in the Grand Hall and announced to the student body what had happened while they all slept.
I didn’t ask what her reaction was or how she felt. I don’t think I would have been able to sit there and listen to her tell me how she or any of them believed it or if they left that gathering with bitter tastes on their tongues.
It all just makes no sense to me. Why would he do it?
What purpose would he have to kill them and why did he take their hearts?
What was so important that their hearts had to be ripped out and why did he need one heart from each unit?
It’s black magic. I know that. But there are no texts on black magic anywhere.
I know because when Tilly, Xavier and I walked through the library, I was secretly looking for it.
Anything that even alluded to it. There was nothing.
As if it had all been cleaned out … hell, maybe it has.
Maybe after what happened they were confiscated.
The thought gives me an idea. I spin on my heels and almost run out of the Grand Hall, bumping into someone’s shoulder as I push through the double doors. I mutter a quick apology, set my pace and head for my Sympathetic Magic class that I’m sure will be starting any minute.
Xavier. I need to talk to Xavier.