Heshould be dead.
Pierce looks up, and my feet fall from Lambert’s lap as I scramble upright at the same time that every single door in the Arcanaeum slams shut.
“No.” Without his hold on me, I lose control of my physical form, falling backwards through the sofa. “No. It can’t?—”
“Kyrith?” Lambert asks.
“There was a complication, Magister,”Isidora says.“Anthea is still smoothing over the incident.”
Mathias’s mouth moves, but I can’t hear him over the ringing in my ears. His fingers twine in his beard in the way they do when he’s displeased. Even losing my physical form can’t erase the chill running through me.
Mathias Ackland is alive.
Mathias, who tricked me, lured me in with promises of magic, and then sank that dagger into my chest as I begged him to stop.
For five hundred years, I’ve listened to him gloat as I relived that moment, consoling myself with the knowledge that he was long gone, that he couldn't harm me.
I was wrong.
Fourteen
Kyrith
I’m still shaking my head mutely when Dakari strides over to the projector, shoving his hand into his grimoire as he goes.
The device crumples like paper, cutting off the image on the screen.
It doesn’t help. Mathias’s image is burned behind my eyelids. Frightfully familiar, even after all of these years.
He’s aged, but it’s still unmistakably him.
“Eejit.” Leo shakes his head, getting to his feet. “Don’t you know who that was? We could’ve learned something!”
“He was scaring Kyrith.”
“He could do worse, and now we don’t know shite about what they’re planning for Jasper.”
Leo’s right, but my view of them arguing is blocked by Lambert slipping around the sofa and onto his knees, crawling towards me like I might bolt. The room is freezing, I realise as his hand makes careful contact with my knee, drawing me back to reality.
“Boss,” he murmurs. “You’re safe, but I think you might want to take a look at Jasper.”
Wait? What’s wrong with Jasper?
I bolt upright, ghosting back through the sofa to the McKinley heir, who’s now ramrod straight in his seat. His pupils are blown, and his breathing is shallow. Dakari has given up fighting with Leo and is now crouched in front of his friend, waving a hand in front of that unseeing stare.
Oh. My gut sinks as I recognise what’s happened.
“He’s fine,” I say. “This is what someone shrugging off a mental ensorcellment looks like.”
Either the magic finally eroded completely, or something we just saw snapped its hold on him altogether.
I’m willing to bet it was the latter.
Conjuring a blanket, I tuck it around his shoulders, fussing longer than really necessary before my fingers fall still.
Shaking my head does nothing to clear my thoughts. Adrenaline is still running rampant through my veins, every cell screaming at me to run, to flee. Mathias might not be here, but my instincts don’t seem to have gotten that message.
Locks appear on every door in the Library, but their presence doesn’t reassure me.
