Chapter 24 #2
I study the shimmer around the outer wall. My arm is throbbing under the bandage and I'm exhausted in the specific way that follows an adrenaline crash, and there are three hundred people sealed inside that barrier and Sage is one of them and the Headmaster put them there.
"There's a way through," I say. It's not a question.
Caspian watches me for a moment. "You absorbed quarry-level power last night through an anchor stone. If you can access what's left of that charge, you might be able to push through the containment barrier at its weakest point without triggering the alarm sequence."
"Might," Ryder says.
"Might," Caspian agrees. "Old wards weren't designed to account for a null who absorbs magic. The containment is calibrated to stop active casting. You don't cast."
"I absorb," I say.
"You absorb."
Ryder's jaw tightens. He's doing the calculation I can see him running, the risk assessment and the alternative options and the conclusion he doesn't want to reach.
"There's no alternative option," I tell him.
"I know," he says. "I'm not arguing with you."
"You're about to."
"I'm about to tell you that if you push through that barrier and the alarm sequence fires anyway, you'll have every warded guard in there on you before you reach the inner grounds."
"Then I move fast."
"Angelic—"
"Ryder." I turn to face him fully. "Sage has been inside those walls since last night. Malik is with her, but Malik can't fix what that suppression barrier does to unstable magic. I'm going in."
He holds my gaze. Then, slowly, he nods. Not agreement, exactly. Acknowledgment. The difference between the two is something I couldn't have read on his face two months ago.
"We go in together," Thane says. "All four."
"The barrier—" Caspian starts.
"Angelic goes first," Thane says. "She creates the opening. We follow through before it closes." He looks at Caspian. "Your family's methodology in the evidence you pulled. Does any of it cover barrier penetration timing?"
Caspian's mouth pulls slightly at the corner. "Six seconds. Maybe eight if the anchor is already stressed."
"That's enough," Thane says.
Ryder pulls his coat straighter and doesn't argue further, which is how I know he's already decided. Caspian rolls his split knuckles once, a habitual movement, and his expression settles into something focused and flat and entirely different from his usual practiced composure.
"One more thing," Caspian says. "The evidence about the wraith sourcing.
The Headmaster knows I pulled it. He knew before I handed it over to Ryder, because the retrieval triggered a secondary ward I didn't detect in time.
" His green eyes are steady. "This siege isn't a response to the wraith attacks failing.
It's a response to me finding out why they were happening. "
"He's containing the information," Ryder says.
"He's containing everything," Caspian says. "The students, the staff, the evidence chain, and us if we'd come back through the front gate like reasonable people."
"Good thing none of us are reasonable," I say.
Thane makes a sound that is almost, almost a laugh.
We start down the ridge toward the outer wall, moving through the tree cover as long as it holds.
The shimmer of the barrier is brighter from down here, a wrongness in the air above the stone, like heat haze running cold.
My bandaged arm hums with the charge still sitting in my bones from last night.
It's less than it was, but it's there, a low vibration under my skin that I've stopped trying to classify and started trying to listen to.
The trees thin forty feet from the wall. After that it's open ground.
"The weakest point will be where the anchor is furthest from the wall," Caspian says, low. "That puts it here, northeastern section. The ward strength is thinner where the geometry pulls it."
I roll my shoulders. The charge in my arm pulses once, recognizing proximity to the ward, and I feel the moment when the barrier's outer edge makes contact with whatever I'm carrying.
A kind of resonance. Two things that shouldn't coexist in the same space becoming briefly, uncomfortably aware of each other.
"Ready?" I ask.
Nobody answers, which is answer enough.
I step out of the tree line and run.
The barrier hits me like cold water and I push back against it, not with casting because I don't cast, but with the absorbed charge, letting it flow outward through my palm where I press it flat against the shimmer.
The ward resists. For two full seconds it resists, and my teeth clench and my arm burns from wrist to shoulder, and then something in the barrier's weave recognizes that I am not attacking it, I am absorbing it, and the section directly under my hand goes slack.
A gap opens. Not large. Large enough.
"Now," I say through my teeth, and I feel all three of them come through behind me, fast, Ryder first, then Thane's bulk, then Caspian's quick efficient movement, and then the barrier snaps closed again behind us and we are inside the walls of Nocturne Academy.
The grounds are wrong. Too quiet, the morning silence that should carry kitchen sounds and early movement carrying nothing.
Two students near the dormitory entrance are sitting against the wall with their heads down, and even from here I can tell it's the suppression, magic-users feeling the slow drain that Caspian described.
Ryder scans the main building. "Headmaster's office is in the east tower."
"Sage first," I say. "Then the Headmaster."
"The anchor needs to come down before the suppression does more damage," Caspian says.
"Then we split. You and Ryder find the anchor. Thane comes with me." I glance at Ryder. "Don't argue."
"I wasn't going to," he says, and the fact that he means it does something brief and sharp to my chest. "Find your friend. Stay out of the main corridor until we have the anchor down. If the alarm fires—"
"I'll hear it."
"If the alarm fires," he says again, and his voice carries something underneath it that he doesn't dress up with extra words, "don't wait for me."
"Ryder—"
"I'll find you." He holds my gaze for one beat. "I always do."
He turns and moves with Caspian toward the east tower, the two of them falling into a pace that suggests this is not the first time they've approached a hostile building together, whatever else they've been to each other.
Thane touches my shoulder briefly. "Dormitory?"
"Dormitory," I confirm.
We run.