Chapter 25 #2
Thane has been quiet at the back of our group. I turn to find him and he's already watching me, his dark eyes carrying the weight of someone who has been listening to a sentence he knew was coming and has been bracing for it anyway. The gold hasn't flickered in his pupils. He's very still.
"Thane," I say.
"I heard." His voice is rough. He looks past me to where Ryder is standing with his hand back on the pillar, jaw clenched. Then back to me. "If we complete it and the Architect uses the window—"
"We stop them," I say.
"You don't know that."
"I know I'm not going to let Ryder die to avoid a risk." I take a step toward him. "And I know you're not either. Not anymore."
Something moves behind his eyes. He closes them briefly. When he opens them again, whatever he was going to say has changed into something else, and the something else is worse, and I see it land on his face like a verdict.
"You can't complete it," he says. His voice has gone to stone. "Not with me."
"Thane—"
"You are an abomination." He says it flat and loud and the words hit like a physical thing. Several nearby students turn to look. Thane's expression doesn't shift. "A null who has contaminated three houses. Whatever you think exists between us, it was proximity and crisis. That's all it was."
The hall has gone quiet around us in a way that has nothing to do with the wraith attack. It's the quiet of witnesses.
My face is very still. I'm good at still faces. I have been practicing still faces since I was old enough to understand that showing your hurt to people who want to cause it is the least useful thing you can do.
"Thane," Ryder says. His voice has an edge to it.
"Stay out of this, Ashford." Thane doesn't look at him.
His eyes are on me and they're dark and flat and I'm looking for the gold and not finding it.
"The dragon council has protocols for null contamination.
If the bond completes, those protocols activate and they include execution.
" He takes a step back from me. "I am protecting this institution from a liability. That's all this is."
He sounds so certain. He sounds like the person he was when he burned my belongings, like the person he was in the early weeks when his cruelty had a specific practiced quality that I couldn't understand.
He sounds like that person and I know, I know, that I saw something real in him this morning on that cold stone wall.
I know it. And it doesn't stop the crack from running straight through my chest.
"Right," I say. My voice comes out even. "Very clearly stated."
I turn and I walk away from him, and the students part to let me through because nobody in that hall wants to be between me and wherever I'm going, and I get to the far door and push through it and I'm in the corridor and I keep walking.
Behind me I hear Ryder say Thane's name again, sharp and furious, and I hear Caspian say something low and urgent, and I hear the hall door swing closed between us and all of it and I keep walking because if I stop moving I'm going to fall apart in a corridor at Nocturne Academy and I refuse to do that.
I make it to the stairwell. I press my back against the cold stone and I breathe. In through my nose. Out through my mouth. The way I learned when I was small and the world was already full of people who thought I was less than nothing and I had to survive it anyway.
My hands are shaking. I press them flat against the wall.
The door at the base of the stairwell opens.
Caspian comes through it. He's moving wrong, his right side slightly stiff, and the dark stain on his hand has crept up to his wrist. He stops when he sees me. He doesn't say anything immediately.
"He did it to protect you," Caspian says. "The dragon council's execution protocols are real. If the bond sealed in front of witnesses—"
"I know." My voice is steady. "I know that's why he did it."
"Then why are you—"
"Because knowing why someone hurts you doesn't make it stop hurting, Caspian." I push off from the wall. "You should know that better than anyone."
He's quiet for a moment. The stain pulses on his wrist, a slow dark tide. "Fair," he says finally.
"How long do you have?" I ask.
"The transformation accelerates in proximity to wraith activity. The remaining wraiths are dispersing since my uncle died, so the progression should slow." He holds up his right hand and examines it with that same detached focus. "Forty minutes, I'd estimate, before the Veil starts pulling harder."
"The Veil pulling harder," I repeat.
"The partial transformation creates a resonance with the Veil. It wants to reclaim the curse." His green eyes find mine. "By pulling me through it."
I stare at him. "Caspian."
"I knew the risk when I touched the anchor," he says. "My uncle designed it knowing I'd be the one to reach it first. He built it to my specific magical signature." He lowers his hand. "That's a very particular kind of hatred. I've had years to prepare for it."
It's the most honest thing he's said to me that didn't involve manipulation or threat or the careful constructed cruelty he wore like armor for months.
I don't know what to do with Caspian stripped of all of it, so I do what I'd do for anyone standing in a stairwell telling me they're about to be pulled into the Veil.
"Tell me how to stop it," I say.
"The reversal requires a Conduit's anchor. You'd have to reach into the Veil's edge and pull the curse back through me instead of letting it pull me through. Reverse the direction of the resonance." He pauses. "It's not without risk to you."
"What kind of risk?"
"The Architect is using the Veil as a staging point. If you open yourself to the Veil's edge while they're present—"
"Then we do it fast." I straighten my jacket. "We do it before they can use the window. Where do we need to be?"
He looks at me for three full seconds with an expression I've never seen on his face before, not cruelty and not manipulation and not the haunted watching he does when he thinks no one notices.
Just something unguarded and slightly wrecked.
"Forgive me," he says. "For the things I did before I knew how to stop. "
"That's a conversation for when you're not being claimed by the Veil," I tell him. "Move."
We go back into the Great Hall. Ryder is on his feet and Thane is standing twelve feet away from him with the specific distance of two people who have just had a conversation they both needed to end before it became something that couldn't be walked back from.
When Ryder sees me, something in his face eases despite itself.
"Sage," I say to Malik, who has appeared at the hall's entrance with Sage leaning against him. The suppression barrier's collapse has brought her magic back in a rush and she's upright, barely, her face still gray but her eyes open and tracking. "You need to sit down."
"I need to not miss whatever is about to happen," she says. Her voice is hoarse. "Tell me what's about to happen."
"Caspian is being pulled into the Veil," I say. "I'm going to pull the curse back through him instead. There's a sixty-second window when the channel opens and the Architect will try to use it, so we need to be fast."
"The Architect," Malik says.
"Whoever has been running this from the beginning. The Headmaster and Caspian's uncle were both working for them." I look around the hall. "If anyone here has the ability to ward against Veil intrusion, now is a very good time."
Three students step forward. Two witches and a reaper second-year whose hands are already crackling with restrained casting.
Ryder moves to organize them with the efficiency of someone who spent years hunting things that came through the Veil, positioning them at cardinal points around the space we're using.
Caspian stands in the center. The stain has reached his elbow. His face is composed, which costs him more now than it used to.
Thane is at the wall. He hasn't moved toward us. He's watching with his arms crossed and his jaw set and the gold finally flickering in his pupils, small uncontrolled pulses that he can't stop, and I don't look at him long enough to read what's behind them.
"Ready?" Caspian asks.
"How do I open the channel?" I ask.
"You absorb. Same way you absorbed the anchor stone, same way you pushed through the containment barrier. You reach toward the resonance and you take it in instead of letting it take him." He looks at my bandaged arm. "The absorbed charge from last night will give you something to push back with."
"And the sixty-second window."
"Starts when you make contact with the Veil's edge. If the Architect reaches for the open channel before the reversal completes, the wards will slow them." He glances at Ryder's positioned students. "Slow, not stop."
"Then we move fast." I put my hand over the dark stain on his arm. "Ready when you are."
The contact hits like cold water and fire at once.
The Veil's resonance is nothing like the anchor stone, nothing like the containment barrier.
It's alive in a way that those were not, pulling with actual intent, and I understand immediately that Caspian is right, that without the reversal it would take him, not because it's consuming him but because it wants something through him. A passage. A door.
I pull instead.
The absorbed charge in my arm flares and I push it outward through the contact point, reversing the direction of the resonance the way you reverse current, forcing the pull to become a push, and Caspian makes a sound through his teeth that he cuts off immediately and the stain on his arm begins to move backward, slowly, reluctantly, retracting toward his hand.
Twenty seconds in, the Architect comes.