Chapter 19
Symond
A high-pitched voice cracked mid-sentence from the east corridor.
Then another cut across it, deeper, harder at the edges.
The sound of something—a book maybe—hitting a wall.
Symond’s shoulders drew up before his mind registered why.
His feet were already moving, carrying him toward the noise while the muscles in his forearms tightened, fingers curling slightly at his sides.
“Rhylee.” The boy’s name snapped out of him, sharper than he intended.
Rhylee’s boot scraped to a halt on the polished floor.
Across from him, a girl half his size pressed a leather-bound volume against her ribcage like armor, her dark hair falling forward to shield her face.
Rhylee’s right hand hung in the air between them, fingers tensed and curling inward, his shadow stretching across her hunched form.
Symond crossed the distance in two strides.
“Enough,” he commanded.
Rhylee flinched.
The sight of it punched the air out of Symond’s lungs, even as some hidden away part of him felt satisfied by the boy’s fear.
He hadn’t meant to scare him. He hadn’t meant to sound like that. The anger had surged up too fast and directionless. There was an odd gratification with asserting his authority. Like it was a performance that hid the shame underneath.
Symond swallowed the metallic taste in his mouth and pitched his voice lower, steadier. “Rhylee. We don’t do that here.”
The boy’s jaw muscle jumped beneath his skin. “She was in my way.”
“I wasn’t.” The girl’s whisper barely disturbed the air between them.
A vein throbbed at Symond’s temple. He pressed his thumb against it. “No,” he said, the word grinding between clenched teeth. “She wasn’t.”
Rhylee’s gaze slid past him toward the corridor wall. Symond turned.
Five apprentices leaned against the wall, arms crossed or hands in their pockets.
One boy with a half-healed cut above his eyebrow raised his chin slightly.
Another scratched slowly at a scab on his knuckle.
A tall girl at the back caught Rhylee’s eye and shook her head—not in disapproval of his actions, but in warning about Symond’s presence.
The girl scurried past Symond, retreating down the corridor without a word.
Rhylee’s upper lip curled. “You don’t get to tell me that.”
Symond’s spine went rigid. “I absolutely do.”
“Why?” Rhylee shot back. “I’ve heard you did worse.”
Symond’s cheek twitched. The corridor seemed suddenly airless.
“What?”
An apprentice with copper hair stepped forward, freckles stark against his pale skin—Alfie. His eyes never left Symond’s face.
“Don’t act like you don’t know,” Alfie said flatly. “You were like that all the time.”
Symond’s pulse kicked hard. “Like what?”
Alfie hesitated, then shrugged. “Mean. Angry. Always looking for someone to take it out on.”
“That’s not—” Symond’s mouth opened, then closed. The words dried up in his throat. “I wouldn’t—”
“You did,” another apprentice, Mari, cut in. “Especially to that one girl.”
Something twisted in his chest, half recognition, half resistance. A memory trying to surface while something else pushed it down.
“Elora,” someone supplied, like it was obvious.
His throat clicked when he swallowed. “Why would I—”
“Because Headmaster Thorn never punished her,” Alfie said, his freckles darkening as blood rushed to his face. “Everyone knew that.”
Protected.
Symond’s ears rang with the word, though no one had spoken it aloud.
Symond shook his head slowly. “That doesn’t make sense.” His fingers absently traced over raised white scars around his wrist. “I don’t remember being punished.”
The apprentices looked at him like he was the one missing something obvious.
“We all were,” the older boy said. “You more than anyone.”
The logic sat between them, blunt and unquestioned.
“That’s just how it was,” he continued. “You hated her because she never paid the price.”
The words made Symond’s stomach churn. Part of him wanted to deny it completely, but another part whispered that this explained everything—the gaps in his memory, the inexplicable tension whenever Elora’s name arose.
He searched his body for the anger they were describing—for that righteous, justified hatred—while simultaneously recoiling from it. He found a tight, nauseating wrongness, like something had been both ripped away and forced into place.
“I don’t remember hating her,” he said, though the lie tasted bitter on his tongue.
That earned him a short, humorless laugh.
“You don’t remember anything.” someone muttered.
Alfie scoffed. “How freeing it must be to erase everything that happened.”
Symond felt the heat rise again, sharp and volatile, even as a cold dread spread through his chest. His fists clenched at his sides before he realized it, nails biting into his palms.
“Enough,” he said, more to himself than to them.
The apprentices fell silent, like they were watching an animal they’d learned to keep distance from.
The realization landed quietly and viciously, then split in two. He wanted to shout: No, you’re wrong about me. I wasn’t that person. But another voice whispered: What if they’re right? What if this is who I’ve always been?
He wouldn’t know and that was the point.
They remember me like this. As someone dangerous.
Symond stepped back, the floor suddenly feeling unsteady beneath his feet, his own identity crumbling just as surely.
“Go,” he told Rhylee, his voice rough.
Rhylee hesitated, then did as he was told, brushing past him with a muttered curse.
The corridor emptied slowly, apprentices dispersing without another word. Symond was left alone with the echo of what they’d said, and the weight of what he couldn’t disprove.
Protected. Spared. Never punished.
Symond could follow that logic. Part of him understood—even justified— the anger, while another part recoiled from it. The sensation in his chest wasn’t clean resentment but something tangled with shame, regret, and worst of all, a terrible familiarity.
It wasn’t just a question of why he’d hated her, but how far that hatred had gone if it had consumed him.
∞∞∞
This time, Symond didn’t argue.
He still didn’t believe it would work—not the way Violette seemed to hope—but he took his place on the floor without protest, legs drawn in, hands resting loosely in his lap.
The stone beneath him was cool through his clothes, solid enough to press against, and he found himself grounding there without meaning to.
The healer set the candle between them.
Its flame wavered once, then steadied.
“You don’t need to go anywhere you don’t want to,” she said. “If it becomes too much—”
“I know,” Symond said quietly. His fingertips pressed white circles into his palms before relaxing flat against his thighs. “Let’s just... start.”
The flame burned orange-gold, unwavering now.
Symond’s reflection warped in the glass of the candle holder.
A muscle twitched in his jaw. His spine curved like a drawn bow against the wall, neck rigid, shoulders lifted a half inch too high.
The Institute was gone. He’d burned it out of himself. Eliminated it like infected tissue.
Hadn’t he?
Something fluttered beneath his ribs. His next breath caught at the top of his lungs, shallow and unsatisfying. Another followed, just as short. The space beneath his sternum hollowed, waiting for air that wouldn’t come.
He jerked his shoulders back and dragged in a breath that scraped his throat raw.
The hollow space remained.
It crept instead—spreading low beneath his ribs, coiling inward. His jaw clenched harder, teeth pressing together until his molars ached. Heat gathered there, unfamiliar and unpleasant, like anger without direction.
Not fear this time.
Heat.
Symond frowned faintly. His hands curled, fingers digging into his palms before he realized they’d moved.
His mind, always quick to respond, reached instinctively for a reason.
Elora.
The name surfaced without warning, sharp enough to make him flinch.
His breath hitched. The heat flared hotter, settling behind his sternum, burning with a resentment that felt practiced—well-worn. He could trace the shape of it easily. She had been protected. She had been spared. The unfairness of it all lined up neatly, exactly as the apprentices had explained.
It made sense.
And yet—
His stomach rolled.
The anger didn’t move through him the way he expected. It didn’t release. It didn’t sharpen and fade. It pressed inward instead, heavy and suffocating, feeding on itself.
“This doesn’t feel right,” he muttered.
The words surprised him as much as anyone.
The healer’s voice was calm. “What doesn’t?”
Symond swallowed. His throat felt tight. “The anger.”
She waited.
“It’s… too much,” he said slowly. “Like it doesn’t match the reason.”
The candle flame flickered.
Symond’s focus slipped, dragged somewhere else against his will. The heat in his chest collapsed abruptly, replaced by a cold, gripping tension that seized his body from the inside out.
His thighs pressed together. His shoulders locked. His spine went rigid against the wall.
Fear.
Pure and immediate.
He sucked in a sharp breath, lungs burning. His heart hammered painfully, each beat loud in his ears.
The name followed a heartbeat later.
Gerard.
Symond’s eyes flew open.
“No,” he whispered, the word scraping out of him. “That’s not—”
His body didn’t listen.
The fear didn’t spiral or escalate. It held. A steady, suffocating dread that rooted him in place, muscles braced as if movement itself would invite something worse.
The contrast hit him slowly, then all at once.
Fear brought Gerard.
Anger brought Elora.
They didn’t overlap. They didn’t bleed into each other. They existed side by side, utterly distinct.
His fear was old. Absolute. It asked nothing of him except submission.
His anger, by contrast, felt… guided.
Allowed.
The realization didn’t come as a thought so much as a physical rejection—nausea curling low in his gut.
“I wasn’t angry at him,” Symond said, voice shaking. “I was afraid.”
The healer nodded. “And her?”
Symond closed his eyes.