Chapter 24
Asta could come through the door to the dorm room any minute, now.
Detention was given until dinner—and that’s in less than an hour. But Asta might not stick to the order, because it wasn’t the headmaster commanding it.
The threat of her early return lights a fire under our asses. Serena and I are tornadoes ripping through the dorm, packing as much into our bags as we can fit.
I move so frantically that I hardly realise what I’m even doing—what it means to do this.
Serena snaps at me, breathy, “One bag!”
My hands still on the second backpack crumpled on the foot of my bed.
Bitterness twists my face before I toss it to the floor, then kick it under the bed. I scramble for the bedside table instead, rummaging for my black card.
I find it scooted all the way at the back, sticky to the touch. But before I can pack it, Serena hisses, “Are you out of your mind? You can’t bring that.”
I blink at her. “Why not?”
Her stare floods with disbelief. “Because they can track your spending on that.”
“Oh.”
I throw a frown down at the card, then reluctantly toss it back into the drawer.
I fish out the jewellery instead and cram it all into the slot of my overnight bag. The pocket jangles and clinks, the phial and syringe I stole from the storeroom knocking together.
Serena packs better than I do—more efficiently.
She moves with brisk determination, like she’s planned this over a hundred times in her head, and there’s no room for hesitation.
The urgency is in my bated breaths as I sling the bag strap over my head, letting it rest across my chest.
The weight of the travel bag tilts me.
Serena clasps her satchel shut, brand new—and so the smell of the leather reaches me across the dorm.
The perfume of possibly the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.
Worms coil and slap in my stomach.
Waiting, I stand, bouncing on the balls of my heels, my bottom lip chewed relentlessly in my bite.
I stare at the grandfather clock.
“Forty minutes until the gondolas stop.”
It took us too long to get out of detention.
The door was locked, trapping us in the room, and we had to climb out of the window onto the ledge and side-step along the narrow terrace for the main infirmary. Then it was a whole chunk of time spent on waiting for the infirmary to be clear before we could climb in through the windows.
But once we did, we high tailed it across the academy to the dorm.
Now, between the curfew and dinner in the mess hall, and the gondolas shutting down soon, and if we have to make it through a crowd in the atrium, we are wasting time we don’t have.
Serena still hasn’t done the illusion.
She flings the satchel strap over her shoulder and tugs back from the bed.
My heart lurches—
But she doesn’t move for me.
She races for the bottom of the wardrobe, sticks her hand under it and feels around for something.
The whooshing breath I release puffs my cheeks.
I throw a look at Courtney’s bed. Curtains drawn, wide open, just like they were when I got out of bed for the worst lunch of my life.
She could’ve given me a head’s up, but she didn’t.
A warning that the article was coming out this weekend could’ve spared me from a whooping in the phone booth corridor.
I spare a moody look on the thick drapes.
Serena is a whirl of dark shadows moving for me. Her hand steals mine on the way to the door, and I’m yanked alongside her.
“We can’t do it in here,” she says, soft, urgent. “We’ll have to go to the bathroom.”
The strap of an ivory coin purse slips over her bony wrist before she grabs the doorknob—
But I shove the toe of my boot against the door. “What if someone sees us?”
It’s not exactly quiet down there in the parlour and the corridors of the dorms. Not on a Sunday. And any sightings of me and Serena moving through the halls with packed bags and coats buttoned around our outdoor clothing, well that’s just not helpful to the whole running away thing.
Serena is unfazed. “Then they see us.” She turns a grim look on me, mouth tightened into a slanted line. “It’s better than anyone seeing two male masters coming out of this dorm room. That one is far more suspicious than two seniors heading to the bathroom with bags.”
She kicks aside my boot, then whips open the door.
My heart jolts.
I look down the spanning corridor—but it’s empty.
I loosen a breath, and it’s all the time I get before she’s tightening her grip on my hand, then hauling me down the corridor.
Her words catch up to me when we reach the second staircase. “Did you say male masters?”
Our boots thud down the wooden steps, uncarpeted like the main lot that lead down to the grand parlour.
“It’s only an illusion,” she assures me in a hushed whisper, then veers us off the stairs for the door to the cigar room.
Her reassurance silences the moment we’re inside, and the few students lounged around look up at us for only a beat before returning their attentions to the crackling fireplaces, the books in their hands, the faint murmurs—
But Serena is utterly still.
The door tries to close on her, pressing into her side for a heartbeat, then she steps back out into the hallway.
With a glance thrown up and down the passage, she ushers me back onto the staircase. “We’ll have to do it here. Quickly.”
She shoves the coin purse into my hands.
It rustles, as though stuffed with paper, but there’s a soft jingling at the bottom, like there’s a sprinkling of diamonds.
Serena’s chest swells with a deep inhale.
She brings her hands to my temples—and hovers them.
A tingle rinses down my face.
Not in the flesh, not in the bones, but like a weak shower drizzle running down me.
And it goes down.
Serena crouches, her hands descending the length of my body.
The trickling sensation descends with her, all the way to my boots.
I curl my toes.
But as I look down, I see no change, no difference.
I still look like me.
Serena doesn’t agree.
She steps back, eyes me over closely for a moment too long, then hums an approving sound.
She brings her hands to her own face—and starts the process on herself.
My frown feels so very much like my own.
The stings and aches and burns nipping at my face are still there.
It doesn’t feel like I have someone else’s face at all.
I don’t ask if it worked.
I watch it happen to her.
As her hands lower over her own body, and she crouches down all the way to reach her boots, I watch the illusion wash over her like a stream—
Then Master Lockwood rises to full height in front of me.
I blink at him—her—once, then the coin purse is taken from my hold.
“Ok.” Master Lockwood nods. And I hear the words in his voice. “You’re Silva—and if anyone stops you or tries to talk to you, say there’s an emergency and get away.”
I nod… or rather, Master Silva nods, and in a blink, Serena is stalking down the hallway to the grand parlour.
I rush to follow at her heels.
Serena slips through the gap in the door.
I follow, a shadow behind her.
And the swell of the parlour swallows me, whole. The excited Sunday chatter, the shouts across the room, the rustle of the curtains, the crunching of chips being shovelled into mouths.
I swerve my gaze from student to student, face to face, so enveloped by their own existences that most don’t spare a look our way.
The ones who do glance at us don’t look for longer than a second or two. It’s not entirely unusual for masters to be in the grand parlour. Not after a fight erupts between students—but that also means word has gotten out about what went down this morning in the corridor.
Word travels fast in this academy.
Serena moves faster, her swift purposeful strides that of a master on a mission, and she aims for the door.
We close in on it—but as we do, I spot Asta.
She’s slumped against the wall too close to the door, like she’s just come through it, but Landon stopped her from going any further into the parlour.
My lashes flutter at the sight of her.
Bloodshot eyes, tear-stained cheeks, a wobbling mouth, and a pleading, pained gaze fixed up at Landon.
I forgot.
I forgot they were friends. Close, even.
Landon’s face is twisted, brimming with compassion, something I’ve never seen on him before. He hunches over her, speaking in a soft murmur that I pick up as we pass them for the door—
“He’s never deserved you, Asta. I told you that. He’s not even worth the tears you’re shedding for him now.”
Whatever she says in response, whatever else he might add, it’s lost to me as Serena slips through the door, like none of that interests her at all.
I follow.
We step right into a buzz of students, a dozen of them, moving at the slowest pace imaginable.
The corridor is narrow, crowded wall to wall by the seniors passing the newsletter around.
The article.
Through the laughter, comments reach me.
“She’s alright—but leaving Asta Strom for her? That’s certifiable.”
My cheeks roar.
I wonder if that will show on the illusion of Master Silva’s face.
“There’s something hot about fucking a deadblood, though—oh, come on, don’t look at me like that. It’s as close to a krum as one can get without actually touching one.”
“Nah, it says right here! Nothing to do with her being a deadblood freak, he’s just crazy about her. We all knew it.”
It’s Teddy’s familiar voice that hollers, “It’s the only time I’ve ever understood Sinclair. I would crawl through glass and krum blood to get a taste of her cu—”
Serena clears her throat, and it sounds exactly like it came from Master Lockwood.
Looks are thrown over shoulders before, in a second or two, the crowd splits down the middle.
We pass through the divide, our steps brisk.
I force my stare straight ahead, not at the punchable face Teddy wears today.
If we don’t make it…
A shudder threatens to rattle me. I bolt my bones against it, tense, as I stick to Serena’s heels to the atrium… and dread spills through me at the sight of the crowd.
Serena only pauses for a split second, a blink-and-miss-it moment, before she’s storming into the mob.