by Isla Frost
We’d marked Dunraven’s map as we went, and there were very few rooms we hadn’t found a way into. But I supposed that if there were places the walkers didn’t want us to find, he probably wouldn’t include them on the floor plan.
It was only when we’d exhausted our own avenues of investigation that we thought to ask Millicent for help.
“Millicent, do you know what the real purpose of this academy is? Why did the walkers bring us here?”
Ameline spotted it first. A flying lizard with feathers like some long-extinct dinosaur was flapping its wings on the wallpaper. As soon as it had our attention, it began to fly. Through the wallpaper, that is. Other creatures ducked and leaped out of the way. Some waved their paws or puffed up fur or feathers in protest. But the lizard-bird flew on undeterred.
We followed it.
None of us were really surprised when our guide led us down to the basement. That’s where all the creepy things are. There was no wallpaper down here, and the lizard-bird was flying across the rough-hewn stones of the manor’s footings. It drew us to a corner we’d poked around in before. Not far from the salt-damp problem we’d cleared up.
Then it stopped, perching on one of the stones and ruffling its feathers as if to say Here, this is what you asked for.
Except there was nothing there.
Ameline, Bryn, and I glanced at each other, unsure what to try next.
Then an entire section of the wall sank into the floor in near-perfect silence.
Bryn sent a sphere of fiery light into the opening where the wall had just been.
What that light illuminated made my blood run cold.
There was a hospital bed in the middle of the room, one that was similar in style to those in the infirmary. But there the similarities ended.
Where there had been daylight and airy openness, there was darkness and unbroken stone walls. Where there had been a feeling of nurture and well-being, there was an ambience both sinister and disturbing.
The walls were unadorned rough-hewn rock. The floor was the bare earth. And spread around the bed was some kind of arcane circle of creepy objects.
Thick black candles offered the only source of potential light. Various bones, including several human-looking skulls, were carved with hundreds or thousands of tiny runes. Blood-red feathers that appeared too perfect to have come from nature rested upon the soil without any signs of dust. And then there was a locked iron chest. Much like the one that had held the evil circlet I still had the occasional nightmare about.
I was leaving this chest firmly closed. Whatever nasties were shut away in there could stay locked up.
I backed away a step.
“Basilisk’s balls,” Bryn breathed beside me.
Somehow I’d completely forgotten she was there. Too transfixed by the creepy room to remember softer, happier things like friends and light and life.
I leaped half a foot in the air like a sprayed cat. And then felt a surge of gratitude for her and Ameline’s companionship.
The lizard-bird guide was still here too—waiting on the section of wall that hadn’t sunk into the earth.
Why had Millicent brought us here?
To scare us?
To warn us?
To keep her company over the long nights by ensuring we might never sleep again?
But I remembered the question we’d asked her: Why did the walkers bring us here? And thought again of the comatose boy in the infirmary. Of Healer Invermoore’s words to me. That the successful students would go through a transformation ritual and that he’d come out of his like that. With so little left that he hadn’t moved since.
And I had a horrible feeling that this was where that “transformation ritual” took place…
Chapter 25
Millicent showed me one more thing about a week later. Just me this time.
She nudged me gently from sleep (I was so glad we’d gotten past the flinging-me-onto-the-floor thing), and when I saw she hadn’t woken Bryn or Ameline, I decided to trust her choice.
Even if the others would kill me when they found out.
The lizard-bird guide was back. It led me down to the first floor, near one of the old servant entrances that were usually kept locked, and guided me into a small room that might’ve once been a walk-in pantry.
I stood quietly in the blackness, waiting to learn why Millicent had brought me here. Then I heard something. The faintest scuff of a shoe over floorboards. And a pinprick of light appeared at eye level before me.
A peephole.
Not even breathing, I pressed my eye against the new aperture.
Then he stepped into view.
My stomach dropped all the way to my ankles.
Fletcher.
I hadn’t seen him in two years, but I knew him instantly. Every part of me screamed in recognition.
And yet…
Though his face was exactly the way I had remembered—except for a small scar above his right eye and his black hair longer than he used to keep it—some instinct warned me he was not the man I once knew.
It wasn’t the new muscles, or the strange clothes and weapons, or the extra inch of height.
It was the way he moved. Like he was walking from one nightmare into another.
It was the lack of expression on his achingly familiar face. The one I’d loved to watch because it so rarely stayed still for more than a moment.
It was the lack of light or warmth in his dark brown eyes. The bleak dullness that had replaced it.
My chest felt tight and my own eyes burned.
What had they done to him?
If the order of his birth hadn’t ripped all choice from him, Fletcher would’ve been a teacher. The man I remembered was gentle and kind and good, with a smile that brightened any room he was in. And that smile would always include everyone.
He might not have been conventionally attractive, but affection colored him handsome. Fletcher never left anyone out. His unfailing warmth extended to everybody, and kids used to follow him around to bask in his presence.
Next to him, I’d always felt that everything would be okay. No matter what else was going on. No matter what our futures held.
But this Fletcher? This version of my friend?
I dug my fingernails into my palms, throat too constricted to swallow.
A large part of me—the part that had grown up with Fletcher’s teasing and laughter and support—wanted to shove open the door and run to him, but I didn’t move.
The man in front of me wasn’t my Fletcher. I didn’t know who he was. Not anymore.
Besides, Millicent had hidden me here for a reason, and I didn’t want to betray her trust.
So I stood frozen in place, eyes burning but dry, and watched him knock on the door at the end of the corridor.
Cricklewood opened it and ushered Fletcher inside. The door shut me out of their conversation but not before I heard Cricklewood order, “Report.”
Had I been left to my own devices, I might’ve stood there for as long as it took to catch one more glimpse. But my lizard-bird guide urged me back to my dorm room, and I complied on wooden legs.
Minutes later, I crawled into the soft comfort of my bed. Sleep would be a longer time coming.
From day one, the goal had been for Ameline, Bryn, and me to excel at anything the professors threw at us. To distinguish ourselves and make the cut. And except when not knowing my affinity had led to a near-disastrous third trial, I was pretty sure our results had been above average in both trials and classwork.
But seeing Fletcher tonight and the creepy transformation room last week made me second-guess everything.
Now I didn’t know what was worse. To succeed and continue with the academy—which meant undergoing the transformation ritual that had put one guy in a coma and destroyed everything I’d loved about my childhood friend.
Or to fail and face a future that was even more unknown.
Chapter 26
More weeks passed, classe
s continued, and the shock of seeing Fletcher gradually faded in my memory. Perhaps I’d overreacted. The hallway had been dim and shadowy, and we hadn’t actually spoken. Maybe my fears had colored the way I’d perceived him.
Even if that wasn’t the case, our lives were on the line every time we faced a new trial. The walkers had made it clear they valued results over any risk of death. So if our choices were between winning or failing—winning seemed better for our health.
So we stuck with the plan. We stuck together. And we hoped it would be enough.
Theus had been right. The trials only got harder. But we were growing more competent along with them.
The three of us were shoveling down dinner on yet another Wednesday night when it happened.
The beginning of the end.
All the professors, who usually dined by themselves in a smaller, more elegantly appointed room on the other side of the manor, strode into the dining hall. The walkers moved like a lethal pack of wolves. Wilverness clopping along in her centaur form didn’t quite fit in.
There was no need for them to call for our attention. The hum of conversation sputtered and died of its own accord.
Our months at the Firstborn Academy had taught us to fear surprises.
Dunraven stepped forward. “For many of the human students, this will be your last meal at Millicent Manor.”
There was a collective intake of breath, and one poor kid started choking on their food. Shocked murmurs rippled around the room. The human side of the room anyway. The walker students had known this was coming.
“In two hours, you will undertake the final trial. Your performance in which will determine your future. Come dawn tomorrow, two lists will be posted in the dining hall. The students on one of those lists will continue with the academy. The students on the second will depart immediately.”
I was abruptly regretting eating so fast. Or eating at all. My food sat in my stomach like a wet brick that was trying to work its way back up my throat.
How had this snuck up on us? It must have been three months since the day we’d first stepped through that runegate and given Millicent an excuse to torture Bryn and me for the next couple of weeks. But in everything that had happened to us since—the homesickness and fear, the danger and deaths, the magic and monsters, and the revelations and friendships—time had blurred, and somewhere along the way I’d stopped keeping track.
Three months ago we’d just wanted the training and trials to be over. Now it felt too soon. Too sudden.
My breathing glitched. What if our names were on separate lists?
Ameline must’ve been thinking the same thing, because she reached out and grabbed my hand hard enough to hurt.
How many times had we made the promise to each other?
We’ll stick together, no matter what. They might take everything else, but they can’t take that from us.
I squeezed her hand back, wishing I could still believe that. Still believe that we had the power to keep that solemn vow.
Bryn noticed our gripped hands, and as brave and independent as she was, I grabbed hers too.
Her composed expression didn’t waver, but she gripped just as hard as Ameline did.
This was it then.
We stepped through the gateway from the floodlit lawn into the dark forest.
The trial that would determine our fates was similar to the first.
Only this time, instead of dozens of kids pooling their magic and skills, there was just the three of us.
This time the walkers were sitting on the sidelines. An anomaly that made me wonder whether any of us were intended to survive.
And this time, instead of clearing our path of apex predators as the professors had apparently done the first time, they’d be ensuring our paths crossed.
Oh, and it was nighttime. Bringing out a whole bevy of less familiar monsters who could see, smell, and hear better than we could.
In this trial, we would not be assessed on speed and survival alone. No, we’d been trained in strategy, endurance, knowledge of creatures and plants, magic use, and strength of mind and body—and that was what we would be judged by.
Every student was being watched. Every team monitored to ensure they’d be appropriately challenged.
In other words, we were like chess pieces in the walkers’ game, and they would throw everything at us just to see how we’d react. To decide who was worthy to continue at their little academy.
Our reactions, our performance, would determine not just whether we lived through the night but our entire futures. And worse, whether we would face those futures together—or the walkers would separate us.
They had ripped me away from my home, my life, and my family. I was not sure I could survive them snatching the only precious things I had left. Ameline. And now Bryn too.
Not with my heart intact anyway.
They stood beside me now. The walkers had allowed us this one small mercy at least. As part of testing our ability to strategize, they’d let us choose our small teams for the final trial.
The forest was eerie at night. The verdant beauty that drew me to it during the day was absent, cloaked in shadows. Leaving only the promise of danger.
Jayden had been the first but not the last of our classmates whose lives had been snuffed out by its perils.
The darkness was so thick I could feel it infiltrating my lungs with every breath I took. Making the next harder to draw.
Or maybe that was fear.
But we’d all learned to master our fear in the past three months. The few that hadn’t had died in their trials—or wound up in the infirmary with an illness of the mind rather than the body that Invermoore couldn’t heal.
So I continued breathing in that darkness, senses alert for attack, until my eyes adjusted.
Thank heavens the sky was clear and the moon was shining. Not that much of its light trickled through the canopy.
But we couldn’t afford to create our own light. It would only draw the monsters to us. So once I could make out as much of our surroundings as I was going to, I shifted my focus to practical matters.
“All right,” I murmured with a confidence I didn’t feel. “Let’s avoid as many of the nasties as we can tonight. To spot them before they spot us, we’ll need to use our second sight.”
Second sight was one of the more advanced magic techniques we’d been taught by Grimwort. It gave us an alternate way of viewing the world, a kind of secondary vision that overlaid our physical sight and varied from person to person.
Bryn could see the heat signatures of both living and nonliving things. Ameline could locate and identify mind signatures of living beings. And I could see life force energy. Kind of.
None of our magical perceptions were infallible. Bryn’s heat vision was unable to see through solid masses. Ameline was blind to minds so different from her own that they were incompatible with her communication magic. And both of them had to be looking in the right direction to see anything coming.
I could sense life force energy in a 360-degree circle around me, but indistinctly, like candlelight flickering behind closed eyelids. It was so faint I needed my eyes shut to perceive it, and for some reason no one would explain, I couldn’t see walker students at all.
Still, the combination of our second sights was a heck of a lot better than our naked eyes in this dark forest.
“Let’s not do too good a job at avoiding the monsters,” Bryn countered. “The walkers want a show, so we’ll give them one.”
“You just want an excuse to burn things.”
Her teeth flashed in the gloom, unrepentant. “That too.”
Still, she aimed her wand at her head to enable her second sight, and Ameline did the same.
Knowing they were temporarily distracted, I skimmed our shadowy surroundings again.
We were in a small clearing enclosed by trees and tangled undergrowth. Thirty feet to our right, telltale twin trunks that shared a single canopy were actually the legs of
a giant black locust bird whose plumage resembled green foliage and whose diet was the flesh of any creature foolish enough to wander beneath its “leaves.”
Like a tree-sized heron, only fishing in the forest instead of shallow waters.
A few months ago, we would’ve unwittingly walked right beneath its savage beak. But they were easy enough to avoid if you knew what to look for.
And weren’t fleeing for your life from some other beast hunting the shadows.
Ameline touched my arm. “Your turn.”
We’d bound our wands to our nondominant forearms so we could aim them while keeping both hands free. It was still sort of clunky but a small enough price to pay for having magic that might protect us. I pointed my left arm toward my face and imagined unmasking my second sight.
Shutting my eyes went against my instincts, but I trusted my companions and looked around. A large flicker of light confirmed my identification of the tree-bird. Behind me, lots of small, muted flickers suggested a large group of something nesting in the trees. Things I hadn’t spotted with my own eyes.
That left one direction that seemed clear. Or did it? I thought there might’ve been the faintest flicker in that direction too. Faint because it was weak? Far away? Hidden somehow? Or was I just imagining things?
Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed. Something else roared. One of the other teams had run into trouble.
My eyes snapped open. I spared a quick prayer that everyone would make it back safely, then returned my focus to the one part I had any control over. My own team.
“What do you guys see?”
Ameline answered first. “Black locust bird over there. A troop of masked wailer monkeys in the trees that way.”
That was bad news. Masked wailer monkeys were highly territorial. They weren’t nocturnal, but it wouldn’t stop them attacking if we ventured near. And they were spread through a good half of the surrounding canopy.
“Bryn?”
“That would account for all the heat signatures I’m seeing in the vicinity too.”