“Oh, Gavrail, that reminds me.” She reaches into her bag. “A package was delivered to me this morning. From your mother.”
Gavrail freezes. I see it—the tensing of his shoulders, the flicker of something sharp behind his eyes.
“I was sorry to hear about your parents’ divorce,” she continues gently. “Your mother wrote the loveliest note. Said she was happy you and Celeste were at the same school and together again after all this time. She mentioned she hasn’t heard from you in years.”
Gavrail stays silent.
My mother, undeterred, presses on. Her eyes fix on him, pain and heartbreak at the thought of a mother and son estranged. “I don’t know what came between you two, but she’s your mother, Gavrail. That bond matters. Nothing is worth losing that.” She reaches across the table to squeeze his hand, as if warmth alone could heal the wounds left behind by years of silence. “Minka Senkova was always a complicated woman,” she says. “But she loves you. That I know.” She hands him the package—a rectangle wrapped in plain brown paper. Her eyesare curious. “Strange that she sent it to me instead of directly to you.”
Gavrail takes the package carefully, as if it might cut him. He opens it slowly, tearing off the brown wrapping paper. It’s a book, spine cracked and cover faded with age. His fingers trace the edge as he looks at the title:
Tales from the Breath of Stone.
I try to hide my gasp of surprise. Gavrail glances at me, eyes wide with warning and something else.
How did she know?
My skin prickles like I’ve stepped into cold water fully clothed.
I look between the book, Gavrail, and my mother—still sipping tea, lost in the gentle lie of a perfect afternoon.
I realize now how secrets make ghosts of the people we love.
And I wonder how many more haunt the edges of this school.
CHAPTER 45
Myth is never merely myth. In every legend, the pulse of history beats.
—A History of Magick, Vol. I
Parents’ Week comes to a close with hugs and handshakes, teary smiles and gentle touches. My mother and I both cry as we say our goodbyes. Noa’s parents make me promise to visit them in Virginia when I’m home for the summer holidays. My motherdemandsthat Gavrail come stay with us for part of it.
Once the excitement of visitors is over, Gavrail and I pore over every word ofTales from the Breath of Stone. The book is full of haunting stories wrapped in mythology—witches and warlords, dragons and mermaids, kings who bargain with the elements and lovers who don’t survive their devotion. The stories are beautiful in the way storms are beautiful: awe-inducing, inevitable, and always threatening to end in ruin.
Gavrail lent me the book, hoping one of us might find something the other doesn’t—Noa having now been roped into helping us with our research.
I sit cross-legged on the rug in my suite’s common room, the ancient book open in front of me. Noa lounges on the couch behind me, one arm draped along the backrest, his hand idly resting at my shoulder. The fire crackles low in the hearth, casting shifting light over the worn leather cover.Tales from the Breath of Stonesmells like dust and smoke and something older still—pages yellowed and soft at the corners, as though they’ve been turned by generations of hands.
I trace my fingers along the inked title of the chapter: “The Twins’ Unraveling.” The script shimmers faintly in the firelight.
“This one’s clearly about elemental fusion, Magick to Magick. It’s a warning, I think, about when it doesn’t go right.” I begin to read aloud:
There were once two mages—sistersborn under the same moon, but to different elements.
One wielded water, the other sunlight.
They believed their bond made them unstoppable.
In defiance of the old codes, they attempted the Rite of Convergence, seeking to fuse their powers into something no world had seen before: frozen light, solar radiance encased in stillness, a perfect weapon for truth—or destruction.
But they forgot the first law of fusion: balance.
One craved control, the other chaos.
When their magick met, it did not blend—it battled.
Their bodies unraveled into streaks of frost and solar flare, and the mountain where they stood shattered from within, creating a cliff over which a torrent of frozen water now forever screams into the void below.
