Page 165 of Bone Year

Something about it seems honest, which makes what Cael said about the tenth floor even more alarming.

He steps into me until my back presses into the stone. He leans down and sniffs the top of my head, and I contemplate kneeing him between the legs, but I don’t have anything to defend myself with right now.

He tucks my hair behind my ear, his touch makes my skin crawl.

“Save me a dance, would you?”

“Hell would have to freeze first, Malric.”

He laughs. It’s short and not entirely amused. “We will see, Red.”

He steps away and walks slowly to the end of the alley and around the building.

Once he’s out of sight and I can no longer hear the crunch of his boots, I breathe.

I’m about to push off the wall when something pulls my attention up.

A figure on the balcony of the men’s dormitory across the courtyard. He’s standing in the shadows, but when he sees me looking, he takes one step forward, and our eyes meet across the snow.

Draven.

I shake my head and turn to go inside.

I don’t need to unpack what that means right now.

A long shower and a bowl of soup later, I’m laying on my bed staring up at the designs on the ceiling.

This year has been the second hardest year of my life. The first was losing my father. This year has been hard, but it still doesn’t compare to that. The day I got the letter to come here seems like an entire lifetime ago. Things were so different then.

I need to write out all the things I want to ask Ashwell once I find the mirror and make it count. Hopefully it will be forthcoming with answers.

Who applied for me to come here? Who wrote that line on the bottom of the parchment? Blood remembers what history forgets. Your father knows you are ready. My father may have applied for me, but he didn’t write that on the parchment. Unless someone else applied for me, and it’s the same person who wrote that line. Or the school itself summoned me and somehow put the cryptic message there too. This is low on the list of things I need to know, but no less frustrating.

I haven’t received any mail from my mother or sister since coming here. My mother not writing isn’t a surprise, given we are on rocky terms. But Briana, I thought she would have written something. I can’t fault her, because I haven’t written either, and she’s probably busy with the clinic and helping our mother.

Jace wasn’t worried about the crawler in Ironfen, and if it had become a problem, surely we would have been notified by now if a large fissure opened in our home village. Jace still writes to his parents. I don’t think he would keep that from me, no matter how much he hates me these days. But then where did it come from? And why didn’t we see any crawlers in Holloweir? No one mentioned any across the midterm locations either. Have they become less active, or are they waiting for the cycle to begin?

I borrowed two books from the library about the history of the cycle and fissure events across the continent, but I haven’t found the time to read them yet. Almost everything I know about the cycle, I learned from Cael.

I can’t believe he’s gone. It feels so surreal to lose him and Nella both. I hope I don’t get assigned any more patients until next year. I don’t know if my heart can ever harden enough to where losing them gets easier.

I need to study. I need to get through finals. I have to keep my distance from Malric, make it to the ball, and find the mirror.

I place my hand over the key necklace at my neck and start to fidget with it.

The headmaster’s been watching me, but I don’t think he realizes I’m watching him too.

Cael wanted me to promise to stay off the tenth floor, but I never did.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“The first time current answers you, you will believe you have called it. You have not called it. It has been listening.”

— Veilguard Memoir, Unsigned

Lux is on her knees in front of her closet pulling out shoes, surrounded by all the dresses she took out on loan from the seamstress in town. Her entire room is covered in dresses.

“This one.” She holds up a black sheath with white lace at the collar and frowns. “No. Too much like a funeral.”