Page 33 of Bone Year

The hallways are quiet, most students already behind closed doors. My footsteps echo against the hard floors, and I find myself reaching up to touch the key beneath my collar. The metal is warm now, heated by my skin, and I wrap my fingers around it as I walk.

I need to find out how my father applied for me and what his connection is to this school. Why didn’t he tell me? How did he know I’d get in? Why am I the first human to ever be accepted to Ashwell, and what was that speech from the headmaster about?

Gods, I was too stunned to even think clearly in his office. The way he looked at me, the way he spoke like he knew things about my life that I don’t even know. How does he know anything about my father? My father was a village healer. He spent his life treating farmers and merchants and children with fevers. He wasn’t connected to magical academies hidden in the Frostlands.

Or was he?

I keep seeing the writing at the bottom of the acceptance letter scrawled in handwriting that didn’t match the rest. I keep playing them over in my mind. “Blood remembers what history forgets. Your father knows you are ready.”

What blood? Ready for what?

And if my father knew I was ready, why didn’t he prepare me? Why did he leave me with nothing but cryptic journal entries and questions I can’t answer?

I tighten my grip on the key until the edges bite into my palm.

He’s dead. He can’t explain himself. He can’t tell me what any of this means.

But someone at this school knows, and I’m going to find them.

Chapter Ten

“We called them omens. Then we called them myths. By the time we called them heralds, it was already too late.”

— A History of the Fissures, Vol. II

The body on the table sits up.

I’m whispering something to Lux about how I didn’t sleep well last night when the sheet slides off and the creature beneath it jerks upright with a rattling gasp.

The classroom is long and narrow, built like a chapel dedicated to something darker than any god. Rows of old wooden benches line either side of a central aisle, long tables in front of each one. The vaulted ceiling rises high above us, all dark timber beams and stone arches that swallow the weak light from the iron sconces along the walls. The air smells of dust and old wood and something metallic beneath it that clings to the back of my throat. At the front of the room, where an altar might stand in a place of worship, there is only the table. And the thing that was supposed to be dead now perched on top of it.

It’s massive, far larger than the crawler we dissected last night. What was once in the deer family has become something nightmarish. Its body is skeletal and towering even while seated, patches of rotting hide failing to cover exposed bone.

But it’s the antlers that are terrifying.

They branch upward and outward like a chandelier made of bone, twisting into dozens of sharp points that almost reach the ceiling. Its chest is partially carved open, ribs splayed wide, and I can see inside. There are organs in there, a heart and lungs and other glistening things I can’t name, but they aren’t where they should be. They’re suspended, floating in the hollow cavity of its body, held in place by faintly glowing strands that pulse with soft light. Like puppet strings made of electricity or current.

Someone screams. The sound bounces off the stone walls and multiplies, filling the narrow room with chaos. Chairs scrape back against the worn floor. Someone near the front falls trying to scramble away, their boots slipping on the uneven flagstones.

Draven Alucard catches my eye from where he sits a few rows ahead on the opposite bench, leaning back with his arms crossed like everyone in the room is being dramatic and he’s amused.

A sound comes from the creature’s throat, or maybe from its chest cavity. A low vibration that I feel before I hear rolls through the room like a wave. It rattles the old sconces on the walls and hums through the wooden bench beneath me, up through my bones.

My stomach lurches. My vision swims. The flickering light from the sconces seems to dim and pulse in time with that horrible frequency. Beside me, Lux doubles over, her pink hair flying forward as her hand clamps over her mouth, and I grip the edge of my desk to stay upright. The old wood bites into my palms. The panic is instant and irrational, flooding my veins with the overwhelming urge to run, to flee, to get as far from this thing as possible.

Professor Nestor stands at the head of the table, watching the mayhem with an expression of pure amusement. His hair is wild and gray, sticking up at odd angles like he’s just rolled out of bed or been electrocuted. His spectacles are crooked on his nose, and his white coat is stained with things I don’t want to identify.

The creature swings its head toward him, empty eye sockets searching, skeletal legs scrabbling against the table. Its hooves scrape against the metal with a sound that makes my teeth ache.

Around me, roughly twenty students are in various states of panic. Across the aisle, an angel with rich brown skin and massive gray wings pressed tight against her back grips her desk so hard I can see the tendons straining in her hands. I recognize her from orientation. She was near the front during the headmaster’s speech, standing tall and composed but she doesn’t look so composed now. Her dark eyes are wide, fixed on the creature like she’s calculating whether she can make it to the door before it moves again.

“Sit down,” Nestor says calmly, and the room starts to quiet as everyone tries to regain control of themselves. “It can’t hurt you. I’ve severed its motor control tendons.” He shakes his head at the class, disappointed. “It merely doesn’t know it’s dead yet.”

A few rows ahead, a man with pale white skin and striking green eyes hasn’t moved at all. He sits rigid, his jaw clenched tight, watching the creature with an intensity that makes me wonder if he’s a shifter. There’s something predatory in his stillness, like prey holding its breath while a hunter passes.

“What the fuck?” someone mutters from the bench behind me. I don’t turn to look.

Nestor pulls a long silver instrument from his coat, something between a needle and a blade, and drives it through the monster’s skull in one smooth motion. There’s a sound like cracking ice, and then the thing collapses back onto the table. Its antlers clatter against the metal. For a smaller gentleman, Professor Nestor packs some strength.