Page 20 of Bone Year

Great.

The room is already more than half full, tables crowded with unfamiliar faces, the air threaded with overlapping voices and restless movement. Students continue to pour in behind us, boots scraping against stone, cloaks brushing past shoulders, laughter flaring in uneven bursts.

“Come on,” Lux murmurs, fingers closing around mine.

She tugs me forward before I can argue, charting a course through clusters of bodies, offering quick smiles and murmured apologies as we pass. We end up at a table near the front along the outer edge of the room, sliding into two empty seats beside a blonde girl with her hair braided loosely over one shoulder. A thin silver ring pierces the center of her bottom lip, and she keeps nudging it back and forth with her tongue as she watches the crowd like she’s already bored.

“This is Ellavee,” Lux says, motioning to the blonde. “She grew up in Whitehaven. It’s one of the few villages in the Frostlands.”

Ellavee’s eyes shift to me, impassively assessing like she’s filing me away in her memory.

“Hi.” Her mouth twitches.

“Do your parents teach here too?” I ask, glancing between them. “Is that how you know each other?”

Lux shakes her head. “Nope. When my dad isn’t buried in work, we stay in Whitehaven. Been running into each other since we were little.”

“Unfortunately,” Ellavee adds.

Lux bumps her shoulder. “She loves me.”

Ellavee doesn’t deny it.

I blurt out, “So…what are you? I mean, what bloodline?”

Ellavee arches a brow.

“Straight to the personal questions,” she says. “Bold.”

Heat creeps up my neck. “Sorry. You don’t have to answer.”

“I’m a demon.”

My eyes widen before I can stop myself. “You don’t have the vertical pupils like the guy I met earlier.”

Someone a few seats down snorts.

Lovely.

Ellavee leans forward, resting her forearms on the table. “You mean like this?”

She blinks, and her pupils stretch, narrowing into sharp vertical slits, then she blinks again to bring them back to normal. “We can control it,” she says, settling back. “I only use the scary version when I want something.”

Lux grins. “Which is always.”

Ellavee shrugs.

I swallow, nodding like this is all perfectly normal.

Ellavee tilts her head, studying me now with more interest than before. “You’re the human.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Huh,” she murmurs like I’m a mildly interesting puzzle. Then she looks toward the front. “Orientation’s about to start.”

The moment Headmaster Ashmoor steps onto the stage, an unseen pressure settles across the hall, thinning conversation until voices taper into nothing. Gazes fix on the tall figure at the front of the room, his posture rigid, his hands clasped behind his back, his dark eyes moving slowly across the first year students as if committing each face to memory.

“Welcome to Ashwell Academy of Medicine and Alchemy,” he announces, his voice carrying. “You sit here because something about you suggested potential.”