“Oh,” Alina says, blinking. “That’s soon.”
“You’d better take care of yourself, then,” Lyra adds, arching a pointy eyebrow at me. “As in, you should probably be in bed right now.”
Maybe she’s right.
But I can’t just lie in bed all day, feeling my connection with Severin, going over and over that last conversation wehad in his office.
I haven’t told my friends about the breakup—or whatever it was. I’m not ready to. And I just really don’t want to talk about it.
But deep in my chest, the thread still tugs at me, frayed though it may be.
I fold the letter carefully, then slide it back into the envelope before slipping it into the pocket of my academy robe. At the table next to ours, someone clinks their silverware against a plate, and I grimace, the throb in my head pounding with a vengeance.
“Maeve?” Poppy says softly. “You don’t look well. I really think you should go back to bed.”
“I know. But I need todo something. If I lie in bed all day, I’ll go mad.”
Lyra gives me one of her mischievous smiles. “Sorry to say, but you’re already halfway there.”
Normally, I’d laugh at that. Right now, though, I can barely manage a half-hearted smile.
So I sit there quietly, finishing my tea while the girls finish breakfast. Then we leave together, stepping into the cool air outside the lively dining hall.
“After class, I’m going to the library,” I tell them, trying not to flinch at the light coming through the stained glass windows lining the tall walls. “I need to finish revising my application essay and start prepping for finals.”
“I can help you study,” Poppy says.
“Yes,please.” Lyra clings to Poppy’s arm like she’s a buoy in a storm. “I need help with studying for Advanced Arcane Ecology.”
Since our first year at the academy, this has been our tradition: drinking tea and eating sweets, studying with Poppy’shelp, and playing runeball in the snow when we need to blow off steam—though there’s no way I’m going out into the cold right now. The thought makes me sneeze, and Lyra jumps away, giving me a look that’s half disgusted and half concerned.
“Icannotget sick,” she says, using Poppy as a shield between us. “I’m visiting Cairn for Yule, and I won’t let you ruin that, storm witch.”
“Sorry.” I sniffle and step back.
The three girls look at me with mouths turned into disapproving frowns. They don’t get it though. Ican’tsit in the dorm all day. I’ll just think of Severin. And I don’t want to do that right now. Or maybe ever.
So I take another step back. “I’ll see you all after class.”
They watch me as I back away, and then I turn and join the students pulsing through the corridors, heading to morning classes.
As I walk through the halls, I feel the pull in my chest, subtle but persistent. It wants me to turn and head toward the history wing, whereheis, but I ignore it, curling my fingers into fists and walking more purposefully.
Because if I let that thread pull me off course, I might never find my way back.
Chapter 51
Severin
“UNLIKE MANY OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES, Vale did not devote his arcane work to conquest, court influence, or the accumulation of wealth. Rather, he devoted it to...?”
I turn from the board and cast my gaze out across the lecture hall of first-years. Even one semester in, they still look partially terrified, with wide eyes that tryveryhard not to meet my stare.
One warlock in the second row raises his hand, and when I nod, he says, “Vale devoted his life and magical workings to bringing crop irrigation to rural communities.”
“Good.” I writeIrrigationon the chalkboard. Then I set the chalk down, brush the dust from my fingertips, and turn to face the classroom. “Many wrongly believe that history only remembers the sensational: wars, plagues, magical catastrophes. But some of the most important figures in history are those who improved life for ordinary people.” I point at the board. “People like Elron Vale.”
As I pace slowly through the lecture hall, firelight from the hearth tosses beams of gold across the stone floor, the flames trying to chase the cold from the room. But outside the classroom windows, the world is bathed in frozen white.
