Chapter 2
The news of the incident in Lynsfeld had spread like wildfire.
There were as many opinions as there were wagging tongues.
There weren’t a lot of students in Umbrveyl in July, what with the new school year beginning in September, but Lesya was still at the campus along with Trisha and a handful of other students from both houses.
They were taking advanced classes that weren’t taught during the course of the usual academic year, primarily because these classes were a bit more dangerous and also highly competitive to get into.
Such as the class she had in less than an hour, Practical Alchemy with Professor Cassian Veilmonte.
Right after graduating, Cassian had traveled to Romania for a research-based fellowship with Romanian alchemists.
Once he’d finished his post-graduate studies there, he’d gotten an offer for a job in England, where alchemy was being heavily used in industrial processes.
It was between that job and a teaching position that Cassian Veilmonte had found himself.
The official story was that Professor Eldric had made the offer too sweet to refuse.
The unofficial story… Well, only Lesya knew it. And perhaps Trisha.
Presently Lesya sat under the shade of a beech tree in the castle grounds, lost deep in thought, the newspaper folded by her side. There was barely any mention of the Lynsfeld incident, and yet, it was the only thing that anyone could bring themselves to discuss on campus.
It was a hot day in July, and the handful of other students who were present on campus for either their supplementary classes or their advanced classes were hiding within the campus or seeking the shelter of trees and awnings and the shade underneath balconies.
There were some daredevils who played sports out in the open, completely unbothered by the sun’s searing intensity. Lesya envied them.
The castle itself was an imposing monument to magic. Its many towers, its several skybridges connecting different wings of the castle together, its vast building of stone with ivy creeping upon it, its tinted windows, its gothic spires and buttresses—all spoke to its grandeur.
And if that wasn’t regal enough, the backdrop of evergreen hills, lush alpine forests, plains, meadows, and hamlets all painted a picture of serenity, but that was only the apparent. What brewed under the surface was another matter entirely.
From the clock tower came the chimes that sent pigeons and birds fluttering from the giant mechanical clock at the top of the tower, the bell swinging in slow oscillations, its ringing carrying through the air.
At that moment, Trisha jumped down from the tree’s branch, holding unripe beechmast in her fists.
“They’ve got stings. Got my hand bad, shit,” she panted, putting the beechmasts on the white fabric that Lesya had laid out in anticipation.
“Gimme,” Lesya said, holding out her hands. Trisha turned over her bleeding palms and placed them in Lesya’s palms. Lesya closed her eyes and said the words to the healing spell.
The stings popped out of Trisha’s palms, the many holes closing up.
“There, all done,” Lesya said, grinning.
“And the student becomes the master,” Trisha giggled, studying her palms. “Thanks, Les.” Then Trisha looked angrily at the beechmasts and said, “What kind of nuts are these?”
“It’s Umbrveyl, Trisha. Everything’s touched by magic,” Lesya said, watching the beechmasts squirm and writhe on the sheet. “Wonder what Professor Veilmonte wants us to do with them.”
“Professor Veilmonte,” Trisha teased. “You can drop the shtick with me. You could not be more obvious, Lesya Rosefield.”
“Bite me,” Lesya said, getting up from under the shade of the tree, taking her stuff, and getting ready to leave. Sometimes Trisha could be as dense as a brick wall.
“Hey, wait up,” Trisha said, running up to Lesya. “I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“Really?” Lesya snapped, scowling at her friend. “And if you casually let it slip anywhere else, or if there’s someone within earshot, do you know what it could mean for me? Or for him?”
“Fine, fine! Jeez, one would think a few beechmasts got lodged up your ass or something,” Trisha said. “Professor Veilmonte it is.”
“Thank you.”
They crossed the grounds, stepping under the shadow of the castle. A few students from Solaris were huddled in a corner, holding a newspaper, excitedly discussing something amongst themselves. They all wore beige robes, the color of House Solaris.
“Think they’re going on about the shit that happened in Lynsfeld?” Trisha asked, eager to change the topic.
“Everyone’s talking about Lynsfeld,” Lesya said. “As if anyone knows what happened.”
“You know who’d know what happened?” Trisha asked, pulling open the giant gates to the entrance hall.
“If you say Professor Veilmonte, I swear to?—”
“No, you idiot. I was gonna say maybe call your mother,” Trisha said, rolling her eyes.
“We’re not exactly on talking terms, you know that.”
“Yeah, but when there’s a blast at the inn and supposedly several people dead, I’d think that you’d put your differences aside and get in touch with her.”
“And how’s that conversation going to go?
” Lesya asked, holding Trisha by the shoulder and pulling her aside.
A group of Balthazar students in their black robes were hurrying to the stairs.
She didn’t want them overhearing her. There was a twenty-foot-tall double-glazed, tinted window, one of several that adorned the entrance hall.
The two girls stood next to it. “Hey, Mom. I haven’t really come home for the past two summers because you’re a rotten piece of shit.
Anyways, can you spill the details on the explosion at the bar?
I heard you were right across the corner when that happened. ”
“And just like that, a family reunites,” Trisha said, clapping her hands.
“You know what she does, Trisha,” Lesya said, taking a look at her appearance in the window. There was a lot of sunlight coming in, which gave the tinted window a darker, more reflective shade inside.
Underneath her robes, she wore a mid-length skirt and a black blouse.
Four years in the undercroft and she’d finally accepted that black was her color.
It brought out her green eyes. It made her brown hair more distinctly brown.
It gave her already pale skin more pallor, which was perfect because it gave her this haunting appearance that made sure no first-years bothered her with over-eager questions.
Living underground, robbed of the sun, would do that to anyone. Even Trisha had lost a lot of her tan.
It was what she knew House Solaris called House Balthazar students behind their backs.
“Paleblood,” “ashface,” and a few other choice names that were meant to remind House Balthazar of their lowly origins, but what they ended up doing was bringing attention to how incapable House Solaris was at dealing insults.
No one in the history of House Balthazar had ever been offended by these names.
In fact, there was a dueling society within House Balthazar called “The Palebloods” because students liked that name so much they owned it and made their own.
She checked her mascara in the reflection. It was just enough that it gave her eyes a bit of shape. She wasn’t all colorless. There were dark red tops that she wore on her ears. One had to tuck her hair behind her ears to be able to see it. Later, after class, she was hoping that Cassian would.
That thought brought color to her cheeks and a slight smile to her lips.
She turned around to see that Trisha was not standing beside her. She was talking to a guy from their year, Orin Hallowshaw. Orin was taking the same advanced classes they were, but in the four years he’d been attending Umbrveyl, he hadn’t once talked to Lesya.
Most people did not talk to Orin either.
Trisha did not mind. She was a little unhinged like that, taking chances on people of all kinds. Even—in Orin’s case—children of the necromancer’s followers.
For four years, Lesya had kept a secret close to her chest. She’d thought about sharing it with Trisha, but Trisha came from a respectable family of doctors. She wouldn’t get it. And she was sure that others of House Balthazar wouldn’t get it, no matter what their family background was.
Lesya’s mother was just fifteen years old when Mortandagh, the great terror of the century, had perished.
Along those who died with him were Lesya’s grandparents, two diehard followers of Mortandagh.
All her life, her mother had remained a steadfast believer in Mortandagh, the lord mage who had supposedly ascended to godhood and had mastered Aeternumancy.
She did not change her convictions even when her parents died alongside Mortandagh. While she was never a Deathless herself, Merina Connaught, later Merina Rosefield when she married, believed that Mortandagh had never died.
That one day he would come back and reveal the secrets of Aeternum to his devout believers.
Lesya had no heart to tell her friend Trisha that her mother was a crazy witch who practiced all the profane-craft that she could get her hands on in that little cottage of hers in Lynsfeld.
Lesya had also lied about her father when Trisha had asked.
For to tell Trisha that her deranged mother kept her husband’s corpse in a cold chamber in the basement would be too much for her friend to fathom.
That she held onto the hope that one day Mortandagh would rise, and when he did, he’d reward her for her devoted worship and somehow bring her husband back to life.
* * *
“What were you doing talking to Orin?” Lesya asked, her bag slung over her shoulder, both of them pacing down the stairs headed toward the undercroft.
The undercroft wasn’t just the House Balthazar dormitory and common area.
There were lecture halls in the castle’s basements, as well as several of the teacher’s quarters.